Return to Alastair (32 page)

Anain turned away in silence.

“You speak strange words,” Catrin said boldly.

“You do what you are doing for the love of the priest,” Lucas answered her. “Let it be for love of God. Please. Give us strength in our battle.”

Anain nodded. “If the priest had not brought you, I would have turned you away. I would not have endangered my daughter and grandson.”

“But even the child sleeps under the blood of God,” Lucas told her. “Do you understand that? This house, with its red sash outside, is covered by the crimson river. The strength of God, and the mercy of God, is here.”

Tiarra leaned her head slowly down onto her knees, her eyes glistening with tears. The other women still stared at him, as if he were somehow touched in his mind. But he couldn’t help it. None of Anain’s medicines could cure Tahn now. Only their faith, his faith, could break through whatever held him. Nothing mattered now except the touch of 242 God.

24

T
ahn felt himself floating on a mist, black and silver-gray, thick as curtains and cold as the snow in winter.
Father, where am I? Help me. Help me see
.

Light spread across the corner of his mind, and he saw Alastair beneath him, the city of secrets. Captain Saud rode at the head of a group of men. They were on Vermeel Street, coming toward the painted house. Someone was waiting for them there.

Beyond them, he could see a ghostly crowd in the streets, not real at all, except in his memory. His father’s face was among them, warning him away in anguish as they tied his hands and pulled him toward a waiting rope.

God, why couldn’t you save him?

Samis was laughing. Saud was laughing. Somewhere a baron he had never seen was laughing too. The cage-wagon rolled to a stop. The silver-black mist closed in more deeply. Strong hands, unseen hands, pulled him toward a rope. Demons. Would this, then, be the end? Not in Alastair’s own gloomy streets but in this wretched corner, this sunless piece of a memory that had snared him?

“God, are you not here with me?” he called out. “Even here? Help me. They will steal me away, till I have nothing left.”

He could hear the baby crying in the distance and was surprised to understand that it was not Tiarra this time. She was grown into a beautiful woman with a golden heart buried beneath layers of anger and dismay.
Help her. Help her reach her hands to you.

He felt the rope as they slipped it over his head. He felt them tighten it harshly against his throat. He could not fight. He had no fight left. Even unbound, he could not lift his arms. The eyes around him were hard, hateful, like the faces in his long-ago dream. He had mistaken them for angels and God himself rejecting him, casting him away to torment. But he knew now that the dream was a lie. God did not hate. And these were no angels that held him.

Above their heads, in a swirling mass of clouds, was a tiny light like a star beckoning to him. He looked upward. He fixed his eyes on it, even as the rope grew tighter.

You drew me from darkness. Now I will live or die yours, God. Hold my hand.

Blackness rolled around him, but still he could see that tiny beacon of light. Flames licked over his back with the burn of scalding water and the whip’s awful scourge. He tried so hard to keep his eyes upon that light, but the blackness closed in. He was falling.

The panic, the terror, seethed inside him like a living beast, and he lashed out the only way he could. He killed Darin, he killed Britt, he killed nameless others. And a valiant, honorable man named Karll. Screams surrounded him from the night of his first killing and so many other nights that followed. Even his own screams in the locked room at Valhal. And he could see Lucas huddled in the corner, afraid to move lest Tahn lash out again in the pain of his dream.

God, why? Why do the demons hold me here? Help me.

Help me!

He tried to reach upward. He tried to find the light. But the weight of the sword in his hand held him down. Even when he cast it away, it lingered with him. It was part of him, Samis had said. Part of the man he’d become.

He struggled in the blackness. The hard hands had become chains dragging him down. Karll’s blood dripped over him. Blood flowed all around him, and he was sinking in it, drowning in it. The rope pressed him tighter. He couldn’t breathe. He heard Tiarra’s tears in the room somewhere above him, but he couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t see the light. Everything was lost.

The night’s darkness crept quickly over the little cottage, and Lucas prayed. Tahn was limp now, pale as winter clouds, and far beyond their reach. His breaths were far too shallow, strained, as though it hurt him to breathe them.

For some time they had heard nothing but silence. Lucas prayed that there was no plan of the devil afoot, that the bandits would stay away and the soldiers would go back to the baron, shaking their heads and telling him that Tahn would not be found. But when he heard a trumpet in the distance, he knew there was trouble. He knew that Saud was alerting his men and there was war in the streets. Had Lord Trilett come? Would the baron’s men dare to fight him?

Moments later, Marc Toddin came rushing to the cottage. “Lucas, one of the street boys tells me that Lorne is back with a troop of men. Lord Trilett himself is with them. The bandits tried to stop them, and now Saud is rallying his men. I’m going to go and stand with them should Saud attack. With God’s help, we’ll back them all down. And I’ll bring them—Lorne and Master Trilett. I’ll bring them when I can.”

Lucas turned his eyes toward Tahn. He knew him well enough to know that upon such a word, had he heard it, nothing could have stopped him from going to his friends.

Tahn’s sword was leaning in the corner beside a stool draped with sewing. It had been a year since Lucas had buried his own sword with Samis’s body at Onath, and he’d not felt a sword in his hand since then. “The blood covers us and there is nothing more I can do here,” he told Marc. “I will come with you.”

Tahn’s sword hilt felt strange in his hand, almost hot with the anticipation of battle. Lucas understood such things to be only in his mind, but it seemed almost real nonetheless. He would stand in Tahn’s stead. He would fight for him in every way he knew how.

“Live,” he whispered to his friend as he left the cottage behind him. “God grant that you’re here to greet us when we come back.”

The battle drew Tahn to its midst. Soldiers of Samis and soldiers of the baron were lifting their hands in murderous fury against Triletts. In the distance he could see a dozen lonely graves in a meadow near Onath, testament to the lives that were lost to Trent hatred and ambition.
God, let me help the Triletts. Let me serve them as I serve you.

But then he saw Karll fallen before him, the groom of a Trilett bride. And the guilt that should have been washed away tore at his mind. That was why the darkness held him. Because he was part of it. Part of the murder and the blood.

Help me! Oh, God, how can I help them?

From in him and all around him, he heard the answer, strong and solemn and final.

“You cannot be their help. You can do no more until you have forgiven.”

Tahn’s own words returned to him, from the night Samis had sought him out at Onath, challenging him to the fight of death. “I want to forgive you. I want to go on with the life God has given.”

He had turned his back then, only to receive Samis’s knife blade. But still he’d let him go. He’d bowed himself under forgiveness, lain aside the years of anger and hatred that made him want to tear the man to shreds.

God! You know! You know I have forgiven him! I won’t let him snare me! I won’t let him steal my life now!

But Alastair’s angry faces encircled him, and he could hear Tiarra telling him that he could have come back here lifting his sword. The woman who had told him of his sister—she and her husband had expected his vengeance. The whole town expected it. And he could have chased after the man who burned him so badly. He could have chased him down and put the sword through his heart. But he hadn’t. By God’s grace, he couldn’t.

Oh, Father, what more? I want to forgive them. This town. Samis. The baron. All of them. I thought I had. What more do I lack?

Suddenly he felt himself pulled downward. The sea of blood choked him, and he struggled to pull his head up again, into the swirling black mass of sky.

Far away he could see fighting. He could see the baron’s Captain Saud searching for Triletts with his sword in hand. Tahn thought of him as a demon suddenly, sent by the devil to take away what was important to him. But then in the mist he thought he saw a rider coming, hidden by a cloak. Whoever it was had come to claim him, to wipe away his struggle, until he sank down helpless and let the blood have its way.

He felt a touch, soft and warm, on his cheek.

“Mother! I don’t want to die. Please. Is there no other way?”

Martica stood before him, accusing him. And he remembered the weight that he’d carried for so long in his own heart.
It must have been my fault somehow. I must have been a monster even then.

“Who told you you were a monster?”

The question was strong, sudden, and it made him afraid.

“I—I needed no one to tell me. I knew. I have always known.”

He looked down and saw the blood on his hands. Karll’s blood. And the blood of countless, nameless others. There was so much of it, dripping from him, filling all the space he knew.

“Am I yours, God?” he cried into the blackness. “Are you here with me?”

“Son. Look at where you are.”

He looked. But his eyes were veiled, and it was hard to see anything. He seemed to be in a valley, vast and dark, swirling with black clouds.

“Why do you stay here?” the voice asked him. “Do you know who you are?”

“Your saved child! Father, please receive me! I want to be yours. Nothing but yours!”

Again he heard the awful words. “You can do no more until you have forgiven.”

He started shaking. He could feel the rope tightening around his neck, and his breath was caught and held in the blackness.
No, God. I don’t deserve it. I’m not worthy of you. Alastair knows it. Alastair knows what a monster I am.

Through the blackness he heard someone bursting through the door and rushing toward him. He knew they had come quickly. But it was still too late. Lucas said something, but Tahn couldn’t discern the words. Lucas had someone with him, someone who should not be here. Not for him.

He heard her screams again in the rooftop garden. Karll lay before him on the marbled tiles, his lifeblood draining hopelessly away. “I am nothing,” he told the woman. “Look what I have done.”

He could hear his sister crying, but he couldn’t help her. He had nothing to give. The blood still surrounded him, but he could see himself on a wooden gallows, hanging beside his father. There was nothing else. And no reason it should not be like this.

“Tahn?”

The voice was soft and distant, shrouded by fear.

“It’s too late,” he tried to tell her. “The darkness pulls me away.”

He felt her touch, tender and hesitant, cool as a flowing stream. “Tahn?”

There was heartbreak in the voice, always heartbreak. “Do you see, Lord?” he cried to the skies. “Do you see what I have done? And now there is nothing more I can do.”

“Until you have forgiven.”

For the third time those words soaked over him, and he wept.

But I
have
forgiven! Samis. The baron. The man with the scalding pot. All of Alastair! Even my father, God, and I don’t even know if he did wrong. There is no one left! I have forgiven them all! Help me!

His sword dripped with blood again. He knew it was there in the room, against the wall. And there were so many people here. But he could never be like them. He could not be one of them. He was dead, hanging in the darkness beyond their reach, with a river of blood rolling under his feet.

He knew it was over. He knew he had no more strength to fight the rope, the blackness, or the weight of shame on his chest. Not even for one more breath.