Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (28 page)

‘You take comfort from this deity?’

‘He’s not a deity. He’s … God. And not just a god,
the
God.’

‘You believe he exists?’

‘Doesn’t he?’ Of all the things Khatrene had heard, this was the most disturbing. ‘I mean, how can he not? He created everything.’

‘There is an intelligence, a force that creates,’ Glimmer said, but that Mona Lisa smile wasn’t entirely gone.

‘And I can call this intelligence the Great Guardian if I want to.’

‘Mankind has called it many names,’ Glimmer said. ‘Trying to carve it up into pieces they could own.’

Khatrene thought about that. ‘Djahr’s adviser, the Shadow Woman —’

‘A minion of Kraal.’

‘— she once said she served the most powerful God. But Kraal isn’t more powerful than this creative intelligence, is he?’ Khatrene absolutely didn’t want to hear that Kraal was her creator.

Glimmer smiled at her mother’s discomfort. ‘Kraal is just
a
god. He is not
the
God.’

‘Thank God.’

‘His minion ultimately served destiny, as do we all,’ Glimmer said.

And destiny could be another word for this creative intelligence.’

‘Bingo.’

Khatrene grinned. ‘So lovely to hear Magorian expressions again.’ Glimmer shrugged and they were relaxed with each other for the first time since they’d met. ‘So what do you want to talk about now?

‘Kert,’ Glimmer replied.

Back to square one.

But rather than being exasperated, Khatrene said, ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter if you waste time trying to win his love. If it turns out badly you can just go back and start over again.’

‘There is an element of risk,’ her daughter said. ‘If I die, I cannot go back.’

‘But you don’t die,’ Khatrene said, feeling confident about this. ‘The One World exists. You must succeed.’

‘In this reality I have succeeded. But if I fail, a different reality will be created.’

‘You’re saying we’ve just been lucky so far,’ Khatrene said. ‘If you die, our luck runs out and everything, everyone dies.’

Glimmer nodded and Khatrene felt a sudden impulse to shake her daughter until her head rattled. She resisted. ‘Tell me what’s happening on the other worlds.’

Glimmer took a deep breath, as though to clear her other thoughts away. ‘Volcanoes in the icecaps of Magoria have melted both poles and warmed the oceans. Thus, long-frozen beds of metacarbons on the ocean floor have been released into the atmosphere, poisoning it and overheating the planet. There is little dry land left.’

Khatrene felt as if time had slowed, and her breaths grew shallow. She’d known there would be devastation but had always thought of it abstractly. Now she remembered her school friends, the congregation of the church they had attended while in exile on Magoria, the shopkeepers in the little country town of Dakaroo. Were they all dead? ‘Will everyone on Magoria die? The animals? Plants?’

‘As matters stand currently, yes.’

‘But the prophecy said that people would be saved from each world.’

‘That presupposes ideal conditions.’

‘Like you showing an interest in other people’s lives?’

Glimmer missed the sarcasm. ‘The Serpent Gods have also altered the equation.’

Khatrene struggled to accept the facts. ‘The other worlds?’

‘The floods that destroyed Haddash are gone,’ Glimmer said. ‘I continue to control the environment of our cavern sanctuary, but the merciless Haddash sun has since scorched the planet and now winds have come.’

‘There’s nothing happening here,’ Khatrene said and looked around Atheyre. ‘But there was water.’

‘Fire is destroying the fabric of this world,’ she said and patted the bouncy surface beside her, ‘but I do not allow that to intrude on our conversation.’

Khatrene shuddered. ‘Ennae?’

‘All four elements rage across it, but not as viciously as on Haddash or Magoria,’ Glimmer said. ‘And the filaments I created — the anchors — they have the capacity to protect life.’

‘So people on Ennae might survive? But only if you join the Four Worlds?’

‘If.’

They looked at each other and finally Khatrene said, ‘Why is Kert so important to you? Why does it matter if he loves you or not?’

Glimmer’s superior manner slipped and she looked away, frowning. For a moment Khatrene forgot that she was sitting beside The Catalyst. Her daughter was just a young woman caught in the grip of first love. ‘The part of me that I will become at the end of this linear time, the part that I have always been, the eternal part, knows why this was done,’ she said. ‘I do not.’

‘I think I do,’ Khatrene said. ‘There’s something else in our lives that’s eternal. Perhaps you have to understand that before your experience ends.’

Her daughter looked at her mutely.

‘Love.’

Glimmer opened her mouth to speak but Khatrene held up a hand to stop her.

‘I’m not talking about possession and control,’ she said. ‘I mean surrendering to love. Surrendering your heart into someone else’s care.’

Glimmer’s eyes grew wide and damp. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid.’

Khatrene’s answering smile was sad. ‘Then I guess the experiment worked. You’re human.’

L
ae stood in the cloistered gloom of the physician’s recovery chambers, struggling to contain her impatience. ‘I know you mean well, Lord Verdan —’

‘Please,
Barrion
,’ he insisted.

It appeared the distinction was important to him, if not to Lae, and when she unfocused her eyes she saw his aura lit by the pale glow of honesty and honour, making it even harder for her to be rude. Such intimate forms of address would only lead the Lord Verdan to think he could elicit disclosures from her of a private nature. Exactly what she was arguing against. Yet he had offered the name, and now courtesy demanded she use it. ‘Barrion,’ she said graciously, ‘I know you esteem the Guardian Pagan highly —’

‘And deservedly so,’ Barrion replied, nodding stiffly enough to dislodge the sheet that covered his torso. It slid down a fraction from his shoulder.

Lae struggled to suppress a shudder. Barrion was able to be propped upright but could not bear for anyone to see the stubs where his arms and legs had been. Lae was not squeamish, yet she had no desire to see them either. While only his head was visible they could both convince themselves that he was still the tall, barrel-girthed owner of the Verdan Hold who had matched swords with any enemy and drunk more ale in a single session than any other man alive.

‘Pagan is my friend,’ he said. ‘Is it not right for a man to advocate for his friend?’

The cavernous room with its low candles and sour smell rising from the many crumpled beds was suddenly stifling, and Lae wanted desperately to escape, to ignore manners and go … where? There was no room in the castle where she would be safe from those who would meddle with her future. The other day her cook started telling her of Pagan’s virtues: his honesty, the courtly manners, a joke he had shared with the kitchen staff. They all loved him. Only Lae felt nothing.

‘In many matters advocacy is warranted,’ she agreed, sticking to law.

‘He loves you,’ Barrion said.

Lae drew a slow shaky breath. ‘I am pleased for you, My Lord Verdan,’ she said stiffly, ‘that your friendship is so deep the Guardian opens his heart to you in such frank fashion. I’m afraid you and I are not so well acquainted.’ She inclined her head and turned to leave.

‘I have insulted your hospitality,’ he said sadly and Lae closed her eyes. Now she must stay and reassure him.

A knock sounded on the door and Lae gestured for her acolyte to open it. Quickly.

‘My Lady, a visitor in your reception room,’ the guard said, then looked over her shoulder at Verdan and tilted his head marginally to indicate that more would be revealed out of earshot.

She turned back to Barrion. ‘If you will excuse me, Lord Verdan,’ she said.

He nodded in reply and the sheet slid down from one shoulder. The physician stepped forward to replace it but not before Lae had seen the misshapen jut of flesh that protruded where an arm should be. She averted her eyes and turned away as swiftly as her bad foot would allow, exiting the physician’s recovery room and setting off for her reception rooms, the guard matching her slow steps, and her silent acolytes falling in behind her. ‘Who is this visitor?’ she asked him.

‘My Lady The Dark, he claims to be the son of the Guardian Pagan,’ he replied. ‘Come to us from Magoria.’

Lae stopped and the acolytes almost ran into her. Their soft slippers shuffled loudly in the sudden silence.

‘Pagan’s son?’ Lae asked, images of Lenid flooding her mind. Pagan had left her scant months before Lenid’s birth. Though Magoria moved more quickly than Ennae and her mind should have allowed for this fact, her heart set the age of Pagan’s son at that of her own dear lost boy. Barely three. ‘How did he find his way here?’ she breathed, then refocused on the guard. ‘Did his father bring him from Magoria?’

‘My Lady, no. It appears not,’ the guard replied. ‘The boy said his visit would be a surprise. He asks only to see you at this stage.’

‘Me?’ A more sensible heart would have felt apprehension to be meeting the son of Pagan’s Magorian lover, but apart from a certain nervousness, it was joy that sang loudest in Lae’s heart, for the first time since Lenid’s death.

A boy. A son.

Was this a child to replace the one she had lost? A new destiny?

The guard gestured ahead and Lae set off again, quickening her step, limping awkwardly in her hurry as she wondered — though it was not the time to think of such things — whether this child could seal the rift that grief had created between Pagan and herself.

‘Here, My Lady,’ the guard said softly, and opened the door to her reception rooms.

‘Leave us alone,’ she whispered, waving away her acolytes. They frowned at each other but obeyed, taking up positions beside the guard at the door, white wraiths against the dark stone wall.

‘I will call if I need anything,’ she said to them all, then to the guard, ‘If Pagan comes, he is not to be admitted until I allow it.’ The child might have reasons of his own for not wanting to see his father. Though Pagan’s aura had shown her his truthfulness, Lae still felt there was more to the story of his affair with the Magorian woman than he had related.

‘My Lady,’ the guard said softly.

Lae stepped past them and the door closed carefully behind her. Alone with the child. Her heartbeat quickened and she pressed her palms against the stiff fabric of her robes, then wondered if their solemnity would frighten the boy.

Yet as her swift gaze covered the dark couches, low tables and candlelit extremities of the room, she found no child waiting for her. She limped forward on her plain black slippers and glanced at the wall tapestries. Had he hidden himself behind them?

She scanned the room again, then saw the toe of a shoe protruding from a couch near the fireplace. Had the poor child been tired and fallen to sleep waiting? How like her dear Lenid who had often succumbed to slumber when he had been desperately struggling to stay awake.

Lae tiptoed forward, not wanting to startle the boy. The warmth of the fire dispelled some of her nervousness. That, and the knowledge that the child would be far more nervous than she — somehow transported into a strange and alien land, not knowing anyone here save his father, young and vulnerable and …

Pagan.
The word jumped into her mind as she looked down at the couch’s occupant. But the name did not pass her lips. Lae was speechless.

It wasn’t Pagan. Yet in more ways than she could count, it appeared to be.

The ‘child’ sprawled before her was, in fact, a man. Such a man as Lae had not seen since she’d fallen in love with his father. Yet even as she moved instinctively closer, she began to see differences. This man’s lips were royal hued. Pink. Undoubtedly the legacy of his Magorian mother. And the hand that lay atop his broad chest also showed traces of royal colouring; yet the tone of his skin in general was that of his father’s, the olive colouring of a Guardian — sharp contrast to her dark Be’uccdha tones.

She simply stood and gazed at him for the longest time, marvelling at the silky strands of his liquid black hair curling around his shoulders, the way his chest rose and fell. He was clad in a quilted battle suit — Ennaen clothes — which surprised her. The pants rode low on his hips, and with one arm flung above his head and his jacket raised with it, a section of belly was exposed — a strip of skin bisected by hair that trailed down from his midriff …

Lae closed her eyes and remembered the last time she’d seen such a configuration, when Pagan had given his shirt to cover The Light so long ago. They’d been rescuing her from Lae’s father, and when Pagan had taken his shirt off, Lae’s cheeks had burnt hot with embarrassment but she’d felt a virgin’s excitement. The next day Pagan had kissed her. Her first kiss. She tried to remember how that had felt, when she had been a girl and Pagan as young as this.

She opened her eyes and looked back at his son, at the familiar sculpted cheekbones, at the place where the dimples would be hiding beside his smile, at his plush and perfect lips. So like his father whom she had rejected out of grief. Yet thinking of Pagan now woke the memory of passion in her. Would that die as quickly as it had been born when Pagan came and claimed his son, reminding Lae that her own son was lost to her forever?

The young man’s eyelashes flickered sluggishly and then opened. Lae realised she was leaning over him and hurriedly straightened, struggled to damp down the breathless feelings his appearance had stirred in her. He was not the object of her passion. Pagan had been. She knew it would be important for all of them that no one misunderstood that.

His gaze met hers and a sound came from his throat, an incoherent croak. He appeared young, startled and vulnerable. ‘Petra?’ he whispered.

‘I am Lae,’ she replied, tilting her head, unconsciously bringing her tattoo into the candlelight.

His gaze went straight to it and his breathing slowed. ‘Of Be’uccdha,’ he said, his accent guttural and alien to her ears.

‘Yes.’ She tried to smile, but the sudden lack of expression on his face unnerved her. Instinct took over and she unfocused her eyes, searching his aura, which she should have done first. It clung to his body, dark and dense, as though strong emotions were suppressed. Anger at his father for leaving him?

‘No one will hurt you here,’ she said.

His gaze bored into hers. ‘I know. That’s why I’ve come for you.’