The Nemesis Blade (41 page)

Teighlar faced
his companions.

“By the third
generation the Brotherhood ruled Luvanor, but they did not kill the
royals. You see, they knew only royals could hear the stones sing
or, more correctly, could decipher the messages. And so it was and
Grinwallin was delved and raised. What do I know of singing stones?
I know they warned of a cataclysmic inundation on Orb; I know they
caused this fair city; I know I have heard them all my life, until
recently.”

“Why did it
stop?” Quilla asked.

“He came,”
Teighlar said, glancing at Torrullin.

“Ah.” Quilla
nodded. “Torrullin?”

“I heard them
here, but thought it the wind sighing, internal prompting and such.
Only later did I understand the rock spoke. Why, how or what for -
I do not know.”

“Have either
of you heard or heard tell of stones singing elsewhere?”

Teighlar
shrugged. “Orb.”

Torrullin
denied knowledge.

“Not Akhavar?”
Quilla asked.

“I have not
been there since renewal.”

“That is
beside the point.”

Torrullin
sighed. “Fine, I have heard … something. In dreams of previous
times and I guess they were not dreams.”

Quilla smiled,
and then, “Now hear this; the stones are the building blocks of
Mother Universe. They are truly old and only those near the
beginning of the concept time have heard. Know this also, all
stones sing. Here, Orb, Akhavar, Valaris, Xen - all stones - and
each has a tale to tell of the long history of our universe. Few
hear the tales now, for the races are too young.”

He eyeballed
Teighlar. “Your Senlu are old, but are considered young. The fact
that you heard tells a tale all its own.”

Quilla
transferred his gaze to Torrullin. “The Valleur are born and die;
they may come from a beginning time, yet they are in the present
too young to hear. You have heard; I do not have to point out what
that implies.”

“You just
did,” Torrullin muttered.

Teighlar
managed a half-hearted laugh.

Quilla went
on, “The Q’lin’la are able to hear and have heard. We heard here,
we heard in our universe and I, last of my kind, still hear.
Agnimus is sure to, but not Declan. Immortal the Siric may be, with
more years than one can put a number to, but he is too young.
However, he can be trained to hear, for he has arcane knowledge.”
He paused and frowned. “That is not the point now. The point is,
out of so many tales, with so many stones needing to tell theirs,
with only one listening, it is not a simple thing to hear only one
thread. I listened as bade and I am humbled now by the wealth of
knowledge out there.”

Teighlar
interrupted. “Torrullin says the stones are a conduit.”

Quilla was
pleased. “Indeed they are! We hear them and …”

“Who, then, is
on the other side?”

“No who, my
friend - what.”

Torrullin
sighed as he made the connection. “Time.”

Quilla clapped
his hands. “Time!”

“I cannot say
I get it,” Teighlar frowned.

“Simple terms, then. Let us take an old house, one a few
centuries standing. When one walks through one is assailed by a
sense of history and one says ‘if only these walls could talk’. An
old tree, a thousand years old, ‘if only you could speak,
grandfather’ … right? In the presence of something far older
one
knows
there
is a tale. But maybe we should say ‘if only I could hear’. And thus
it is with stones. They have been around since the beginning, in
different form and place, and we are all younger - if only the
stones could talk.” Quilla spread his hands.

“If only we
could hear,” Teighlar mused. “Funny thing, though, we do. But,” and
he held a finger up, “how we hear is more about our perceptions
than about magic in stones.”

Quilla clapped his hands again. “That is exactly it! We want
to hear because our longevity begs the secrets of a time before
us!
We
want to
hear.”

“Therefore
Declan can be trained,” Torrullin mused. “He would want to
hear.”

“For the
short-lived it is a feeling only, one that cannot be built on in
time before death comes. They sense tales, but sense is as far as
they can go.”

Torrullin
threaded a hand through his hair. “Why did I not hear before
now?”

“You begin to
sense the burden of your years, Torrullin, and I do not mean six
thousand, or eight as some would have it.” Quilla switched to
Teighlar. “You have always felt the burden, therefore it was never
strange to you.”

“And then I
ceased hearing,” Teighlar muttered.

“No, you found
yourself in the presence of an older sentience. You simply thought
he would hear better.”

“Torrullin?”
Teighlar whispered.

Quilla
nodded.

Torrullin
paled. “How much older?”

“Do you want
an answer?”

A strained
laugh. “No! … yes, damn it.”

“I figure at
least back to the Dancing Suns, maybe further,” Quilla said. “That
makes you older even than the Q’lin’la.”

Teighlar
stared at his friend. “Torrullin?”

Torrullin
shook his head. “Before Nemisin? Impossible.”

Quilla
shrugged. “And maybe Nemisin was you.”

Torrullin was
white-faced. “No.”

“If I am High
King of Orb, then it is not impossible,” Teighlar murmured, and was
as ashen.

Torrullin
swallowed. “And Agnimus?”

“If you were
Nemisin, you made him.”

There was only
silence for a while and then Torrullin said, “What did the stones
tell you, Q’li’qa’mz?”

Chapter 31

There are
whispers in the dark. Are you listening?

~ Arc,
poet

Akhavar

S
aska was alone to think.

Prima said his
piece, and what a piece it was, although she had the distinct
feeling he did not know everything, or held back. She preferred to
believe the former. That fit in with Torrullin’s character - the
need to hold certain factors close.

Torrullin.
What to make of his coming? How to prepare?

She wandered
to the edge of the ledge and sat cross-legged on the warm stone,
her gaze drawn to the dancing colour upon the distant mountains as
the sun set on Akhavar.

Akhavar.
Nemisin’s world had a name at last.

She cast her
thoughts back. She met Torrullin two thousand and fifty odd years
ago. He was Rayne at the time, a mortal human sorcerer who joined
the cause against Infinity, the dara-witch, and later against the
Darak Or Margus. She loved Rayne, though it was forbidden to love a
mortal, and then Rayne became Torrullin, a Valleur Immortal, a man
angered by his fates, a man difficult to hold, and she loved him
more.

Torrullin then
became Vallorin and Enchanter and those pedestals made him ever
more slippery. Along the way he fathered twin sons with another
woman. He cheated on their commitment and she found a way to live
with it. He married her after the twins’ birth and for three years
they knew perfect bliss.

When she
thought of the man she loved, those years held all that was
good.

They set up
home in Torrke and welcomed the boys into their lives. Then the
boys turned three and Tymall recognised his underlying nature.
Nobody could tell which boy nursed hatred and evil, least of all
their father, and she bore the brunt. Not only did that boy attempt
to kill her, but his father withdrew from her. Torrullin chose to
love his son first, leaving her on the outside. She left him then.
She went on to become the Lady of Life and in her absence there was
Catalina Dalrish.

Saska sighed,
watching the sky turn deep mauve before darkness came.

She could
understand Torrullin’s need to be a father and she could understand
his hope to turn Tymall from darak, but she could not fathom Cat.
The woman was trouble on two legs, a mortal, and he fell for her.
Of course, she admitted, it was her own guilt over Cat that made it
hard to accept. Cat was pregnant when Torrullin left for another
realm and she, Saska, ensured the child would not be born.

That was one
of the continuing divides between them.

For two
thousand years she bore the guilt, a child ignored and miscarried
and Cat dying of a broken heart, and then Torrullin returned. Not
only had that wedge driven them apart, but so did the promise she
once made to him as Lady of Life.

Before he
entered an alternate realm she told him he could murder innocents
with impunity - she would raise the deserving from the dead - and
he was horrified. It had, in a sense, driven him closer to Cat. His
exit into another realm, she now knew, was partly to escape that
terrible gift. Torrullin possessed a mighty sense of right and
wrong and her ‘gift’ did not fit in with it.

Then there was
Lowen. Lowen Dalrish, Cat’s niece, a child who understood the
Enchanter better than most and saved the Valleur from the
destruction of Torrke, the event that catapulted Torrullin and
Margus into another realm. Lowen, remarkable seer, saw Torrullin
would return after two thousand years and chose immortality to be
there when the years had passed.

Lowen, whom
Torrullin, Vallorin, Enchanter, Dragon and Elixir, could not
resist.

Saska no
longer saw the mountains, the sky , and was unaware of the time.
She stared unseeing over vast distances.

Lowen saved
Torrullin from himself, more than once. If anyone knew him, she
would be at the head of a short list. That, Saska suspected, was
part of the lure between them, and yet, according to Declan and
Prima, they hardly spent time together. Perhaps the lure was also
what kept them apart.

Did Torrullin
love Lowen?

Twenty-five
years passed since she laid eyes on her husband. In the final
leaving - hers - he threatened to divorce her and then changed his
mind. She hoped he would get Lowen out of his system, as he had
Lycea and then Cat, and return to her.

She forgave
both Lycea and Cat, she could forgive Lowen also. Torrullin loved
her, of that she was certain, and she would love him until her
final breath, therefore she could find the way to forgive, no
matter how hard. But he had not come and it sounded as if Lowen
remained part of his thoughts.

Was it Lowen
keeping him away or was it over Cat and a miscarried child? Was it
the awful gift as the Lady? She hoped the renewal of Akhavar would
prove how she regretted her offer. Or was it being Elixir?

Saska sighed
again, feeling the chill of the coming night on her skin.

Whatever it
was, he would come soon. Nothing was settled by the intervening
years; would it be by seeing each other again? She could not answer
and doubted Torrullin was able to. He came because of Lowen and her
presence here was a nuisance, but, damn it, she would not vanish to
make it easier for him.

She had waited
long enough. One way or the other, it was time to move forward.

That decided,
she rose, stretched and headed indoors.

Saska gasped
awake and discovered she sweated as if she had run a marathon.

She
had
been running … in her dreams.

Shaking her
head to clear away the cobwebs of sleep, she shivered, and rose
from her bed. Hastily removing damp nightclothes, she pulled on a
warm tunic and soft pants and slid her feet into slippers. Her
heart pounded as she left her bedroom.

She needed
space.

Along silent
corridors, she made her way to the Throne-room.

The images
were too clear in her mind, as if telling her that her dreaming was
not mere fanciful adventuring. She had to settle what she saw with
physical action, her body calling her mind an idiot. Whatever the
result, she hoped to end up laughing at herself.

Once in the
Throne-room, she stood still in the quiet, listening to the echoes
of her dreams.

She had been
chased - no. Hunted.

Hunted became
hunter.

Saska muttered
an oath and strode to where the Valla Throne once stood. The
ages-old markings were evident on the stone. She stared at the
floor. Here the dais would have started and there the Throne
itself. Dare she step into the sacred space?

She laughed at
herself then. Yesterday she stood uncaring in the same place; it
was vacated a long time ago. What was the matter with her now?
Nothing had changed in the hours between, except news of
Torrullin’s imminent arrival. While it caused anxiety, it should
not affect her sense of place.

What
was
the matter with her?

Her
dreams.

Clearly she
would not laugh about this.

For a time it
felt as if the Throne hunted her and she was hounded over the open
plains of Akhavar, running for her life. Why, she did not
understand. In exhaustion came frustration and she turned to face
the feeling, gods, and saw the golden seat squatting malevolently
in the waving grasses. That was wrong. Alien.

Fear brought
bravado and bravado intensified into fury. She loosed a stream of
curses upon it and watched it retreat. Well, that was better. It
was about control, then. More cursing sent it back, and thus she
became the hunter, pushing it backwards more and more until it fled
across the plains and she said things she did not know she
knew.

As she
awakened, a final and fleeting image came, of a golden man laughing
at her from the seat’s depths. An aura of light surrounded him.

Who?

Wait.
Laughing at her.
Which meant the Throne had not fled; it led her
astray.

She was not,
however, about to allow her mind to dictate fear, damn it.