Path of Revenge (59 page)

Immediately the figure leapt from the beast and unwound the cloth wrapped around his face. The man was young, fair of face, and not at all the sort of weatherbeaten fellow Robal would have expected in the desert. He looked more like a northman.

He spoke a few words in an unknown tongue, then called what sounded like a name. Another figure approached and unwound her face-covering.

‘Tammanoussa?’ she said, her eyes filled with hope. ‘The oasis is close by?’

‘Indeed, yes,’ Kilfor reassured her. ‘We camped there the night before last. You are at the foot of the Noussa Plateau.’

She turned and barked out instructions to those behind her, then addressed Kilfor. ‘We have an injured man who needs treatment. Are any of your party physicians?’

Robal’s eyes narrowed: he had heard accents from all over Faltha, but not one like this.

‘Alas, no. My father can do a little doctoring—’

Heredrew stepped forward, his height eliciting a start from the woman. ‘I am a physician,’ he announced. ‘Show me your wounded man.’

Robal closed his eyes. This was too much: would their companion next present himself as a swordmaster, a jeweller or a midwife?

Stella went with him. The two of them accompanied the woman into the sand wind, vanishing from sight. Robal checked on Lindha, ensuring the donkey did not suffer too greatly in the annoying wind.

A woman’s cry knifed through the desert air. Even before his conscious mind recognised it as Stella, Robal had dropped the handful of oats he was feeding the donkey and was rushing along the camel train towards her. His mind filled with a dozen different developments, most involving Heredrew threatening his queen.
I should not have let them out of my sight…

He found her standing outside a covered wagon, her face pressed into Heredrew’s chest. Robal grabbed at her shoulder. ‘What is it? What has he done?’

‘Drew has done nothing,’ Stella said, turning her wet-cheeked face towards him. ‘The man who is injured is the man I wished to meet in Dhauria. He…he is near death.’

Cursing himself for jumping to such a foolish conclusion, Robal pulled aside the cover and looked down upon the ancient man lying there, then turned his head away.

‘He was caught in a desert storm,’ Stella said.

‘It happened a week since,’ the woman from the camel train added. ‘We set out for Instruere six weeks ago, and last week, while camping on the shores of Soba salt lake, a courier stopped on his way east. “The Falthan king is dead,” he told us, and our master wept.

‘Since then he has driven us by the force of his will. He fears for the safety of the Falthan queen. We expected the king to live another year, at the least. So when the great sandstorm came he took a gamble and pushed on into it. We were eventually forced to take
shelter, but when we counted ourselves we realised we had lost a man. My master went out into the storm to retrieve him. We found my master the next morning as you see him, on the threshold of death.’

‘Oh, Stella, I’m sorry,’ Robal said. His sympathy was the only thing he could offer. He held her hand as Heredrew stepped forward to examine the injured man.

His exposed skin had literally been sandblasted away. Worst were his eyes: what had once been clear orbs were now completely opaque. Robal could only imagine the agony the man must have suffered.

‘Oh, Phemanderac,’ Stella said brokenly. ‘Look what Leith and I have done to you.’

FEW OF THE TRAVELLERS slept that night. Stella was inconsolable in her grief. The others suggested she find a place to sleep, to relax until morning, telling her she could not help Phemanderac by staying awake, that there was nothing she could do. They meant well, but none of them understood.

Now Leith had gone, Phemanderac was the last left alive of those involved in the Falthan War, save herself. The last of the Company. The only one remaining to whom she could talk about her feelings, who would understand her troubles. Tender-hearted Phemanderac, who had loved Leith more than she herself had.

The gentle scholar would be approaching a hundred years of age, but had kept himself in relatively good health. Until now.

If he died, she would be alone.

So she stood by the wagon through the night, braving the relentless wind, feeling it pile sand up over her feet as she waited. Occasionally Heredrew would allow her in to check on his patient, to find there had been no change in his condition.

‘He requires salves beyond my reach,’ Drew explained to her. ‘I am doing what I can for him, which is mostly easing his pain. I fear we will have to
decide whether to take him east or west; and it is my opinion that he will not survive either journey. I am sorry to bear this news, as it is clear you know this man. But death would be a mercy.’

‘It would
not
,’ she said with all the ferocity she could muster. ‘You do not know him. I have seen him keep a hall filled with people silent for hours with his voice or his harp. He is one of the few men I know with the patience to make children laugh.’ Her voice steadied as she revived a long-forgotten memory. ‘He is a philosopher without peer; already they talk about him in the same breath as Hauthius and Pyrinius, the two greatest scholars since the Fall of the Vale. He is the link between Faltha and Dhauria, our best hope of understanding what really happened in the Falthan War. He is priceless, do you understand?’

Drew looked at her with a faintly amused expression, though his eyes burned bright. ‘Such passion! I am overmatched. And rare for a farmer’s child from troublesome, rebellious southern Austrau to care so deeply for Falthan matters. There is more to you, Bandy, than you choose to reveal.’

‘This is not about me, not now. We might talk later of an exchange of secrets, warrior-physician of Haurn. In the meantime, heal my friend.’

He nodded, acknowledging the point. Secrets kept might become secrets shared.

‘There is one last measure I might try,’ he said, fingering a small pouch on his belt. ‘But it could as easily kill as cure. Ought I take the risk?’

‘It is not my decision alone,’ Stella answered.

The woman from the camel train—Fenacia, she gave as her name—supplied him with the answer when Stella called her over. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘None of us can bear looking at him like this. Supply him with some dignity, at least. Do what you can, physic.’

The long night hours dragged their feet as they passed reluctantly by. Eventually, as the pre-dawn glow began to enliven the horizon, Stella felt a sudden wave of nausea wash over her. The hollowness in her head returned; before she could react, she found herself on her knees, retching weakly, her mind blanking into unconsciousness.

She emerged from the blackness to feel hands touch her, then arms pick her up. A familiar voice called for assistance. Someone dripped water into her mouth and then laid a cold cloth across her forehead.

‘How is Phemanderac?’ she asked weakly. ‘How is my friend? Why won’t anyone tell me how he is?’ The heads gathered around her all spoke at once, but her ears rang with a buzzing sound and she could understand none of them. ‘Tell me, please!’ she cried, afraid that the hollowness she had sensed was Phemanderac’s passing.

‘He has…he has recovered,’ Fenacia said in a strange voice, motioning the others to silence. ‘He sits up in the wagon and asks after the man lost in the sandstorm.’

‘Recovered?’ Stella said, bewildered. ‘But he was dying. He will be in extreme pain. May I see him?’

‘Ah, lass, now there’s the mystery,’ Sauxa said. ‘One of many this night.’

Robal leaned over her, his soldier-smell reassuringly familiar. ‘Your friend is completely healed. There is no trace of the storm on his skin, and his eyes are clear. It is as though the injuries never happened. He does not understand what the fuss is about.’

‘There is a great deal you are not saying,’ Stella complained. ‘Where is Drew?’

‘So to our second mystery,’ Robal said grimly. ‘It seems we may have been sharing the desert trail with a sorcerer. Fenacia here says she passed by the wagon and saw Phemanderac damaged and near
death, then returned a few minutes later to find her master healed and you lying unmoving at the foot of the wagon. We have searched the camp for Heredrew, but he is not to be found. We can only assume he healed Phemanderac. Some of us suspect you happened across the miracle and, for some reason, he rendered you unconscious and made his escape.’

‘But…if he has such powers, why not remain to accept our thanks?’ Kilfor said. ‘Why knock Ste—Bandy out? There is nothing criminal about sorcery.’

‘Ah, but there is,’ Stella said, as realisation swamped her in a bittersweet flood. ‘I recognise the signs. There is a kind of sorcery where the magician draws from others to effect his magic. It is a form of magic frowned upon in Faltha, if not exactly outlawed. I collapsed because Heredrew pulled strength from me in order to heal Phemanderac.’

Conal nodded. ‘To steal from others, even to do good, is against the teachings of the Most High.’

‘Why did he not ask? I would have surrendered everything I have to save Phemanderac.’

‘Bandy, I must ask you this,’ said Fenacia. ‘What is our master to you, that you would show him such devotion? This is to us tonight’s third and perhaps greatest mystery. None of us can remember having seen or heard of you before.’

Weary, swamped by a welter of emotions and tired of the deception, she sat up and locked eyes with the Dhaurian woman. ‘I am Stella, the Falthan queen,’ she said. ‘Now take me to Phemanderac. I have questions to ask him.’

A ripple of silence spread outwards from Stella.

‘With respect, I once visited the court of the Falthan king,’ said one of the Dhaurians, an older man. ‘I sat beside Phemanderac on the High Table, and spoke with the king and queen. You do have her
look about you, I’ll grant you that. But she was much older than you, whoever you are.’

Ah, this will prove difficult.

She cast her mind back. Phemanderac had once been a biennial visitor to Instruere, but as he grew older had appeared but four times in the last thirty years. This man was perhaps sixty, and his use of the word
once
suggested the visit was not recent. She pictured the evening Leith had received Phemanderac in the Hall of Meeting, a night of great ceremony, the scholar having attained the rank of
dominie,
the first in Dhauria for a generation. Thought hard. Yes, she was almost certain who this man was.

‘You asked me a rather forward question, I believe,’ she said, looking straight at him and reading nervous corroboration in his eyes. ‘You wanted to know why I had served as the Destroyer’s Consort. As I remember it, I never got to answer you, which was probably just as well for you. Your master explained matters to my satisfaction, if not to yours. I don’t remember your name.’

The man opened his mouth, then snapped it shut.

‘I will say this, because others will think it,’ Fenacia said. ‘You look as though perhaps thirty summers have passed you by, no more. The Falthan queen is near as old as Phemanderac. How is this possible?’

‘You of Dhauria live long lives. Is it unlikely that someone who spent years in the company of the world’s most renowned sorcerers, people like Hal Mahnumsen, Deorc of Andratan and, yes, the Destroyer himself, might also be granted a long and hale life?’

The woman did not reply, but Stella knew her evasive answer had merely staved off further questions for a time. She stood, grasping the wide wheel of Kilfor’s wagon for support, and set out in
the direction of Phemanderac’s cot, a procession of friends and onlookers in tow.

With a fluttering in her stomach she walked up to the wagon in which he lay and drew back the cover.

‘Hello, Phemanderac,’ she said lightly.

His eyes widened slightly in his long, deeply lined face. ‘You look far better than anyone has a right to,’ he said.

‘As do you, given what you’ve been through,’ she replied.

Then she could stand it no longer and threw herself into his bony arms, crying for all she was worth, as she never had since she was a little girl.

After the tears had ceased, Stella told Phemanderac her story, leaving nothing out. The old man, his long, horse-like face softened somewhat by his kindly eyes, smiled sadly at her when she had finished. The morning was well advanced, and preparations for a day’s camp continued as they talked.

‘Oh, my dear, you have suffered so,’ he said. ‘Pain and fear, such a combination to have been gnawing at your spirit all these years. I wondered about this the last few times I visited you. Dear Stella, will it embarrass you if I tell you I suspected something like this? More than suspected? Or if I ask why you did not trust me enough to share your secret earlier?’

‘I trusted no one,’ she said, turning away from his steady regard. ‘It seemed my burden to carry.’

‘You told Leith, of course.’

‘Yes, of course. When he proposed his marriage arrangement to keep me safe from those who accused me of treachery, I told him everything I suspected at the time.’

‘When did you know you were immortal?’

‘Phemanderac,’ she wailed, ‘how will I ever know? If the only proof I am
not
immortal is to die, then the
only thing an absence of proof provides is evidence that I am not yet dead.’ She laughed weakly. ‘Does that make sense?’

‘Better to say, as did Symarthia in her treatise on the Fountain of Youth, that immortality is at best a hope even for the immortal, and not verifiable fact.’

‘But I did think it likely I was immortal, even back then,’ Stella said. She assembled her thoughts with care; Phemanderac’s logical mind would demand clarity. ‘I am almost certain he infected me with his blood. At least that is what the evidence suggests. The Destroyer often complained of the pain within him as a result of that one drink from the fountain. I suffered a similar pain when I awoke from the near-death from which he saved me.’

‘“He will be tormented for the rest of time by the power in his body,”’ the scholar muttered. Seeing her puzzled look, he added, ‘From the
Domaz Skreud,
the Scroll of Doom that tells of the Destroyer’s rebellion against the Most High.’