The Right Hand of God (18 page)

Then she was lost to his sight as the blue flame surged in response to the Jugom Ark. The voice within the flame bellowed in words Leith could not understand, a cry of loathing and hatred. Blue fire met the white light of the Flaming Arrow. Everything dissolved into noise and vibration, as though the earth wrestled with the sky. For a moment the world went dark, then flickered and cleared. It was morning again. The blue fire was gone. A broken bowl lay on the ground at his feet.

As Leith shook his head to clear it, a voice cut through the clean light like a swathe of darkness. 'For this you will pay,' it said in a voice thick with anger. Under the arch of the Struere Gate the figure of Deorc stood, shaking his fist at the Company. 'You will pay! You will burn, burn forever,

pleading for release but never finding it. Just as your companion Stella now pleads. Think on that!' Then, with a snarl, the figure turned aside and vanished from his sight.

Desperately Leith looked about him, searching for any sign of Stella, but could see none.

Every person in the crowd lay on the ground, whether dead or merely insensible he could not tell, nor did he care. The Instruian Guard fared no better, having been toppled where they stood by the clash of the two great powers. Even the members of the Company lay still as death all around him. It seemed as though he was the only person left alive.

Someone groaned beside him. Phemanderac struggled to his feet, holding his head. One by one the Company stirred. '1 saw her,' the philosopher whispered, horror in his voice as he relived some terrible sight. '1 saw the flame reach out and take her! O Most High! It pulled her into its mouth! 1 hope she is still alive, but 1 fear - Ifear . ..' He came to himself, and realised Leith stood beside htm, mouth open abjectly. 'Oh, Leith; I'm sure she's all right. ..' His voice tapered off. 'I'm sorry. She cannot be all right. 1 am a fool.'

Ignoring his friend, Leith ran into the crowd, calling her name. Not a single guard stirred, but a number of the crowd had made it to their feet, some leaning on each other for support. Most were still unconscious. No sign of her.

Looking back at the Company, now all on their feet, Leith saw his brother make his way towards them, as though only just arriving. His mother embraced him. 'Hal! Where have you been?'

'Preparing our morning meal,' he said. 'What has happened here?'

'Much,' Mahnum replied. 'But before we can talk of it,

there are some things that must be said and done. Leith?' He turned to his younger son.

Leith nodded. The madness had passed. Pushing sorrow and anger aside, he stood once again on the platform. More than half those gathered had now regained their feet, but still not a guardsman moved.

'Today the enemy has revealed himself,' Leith told them. 'He set his dark magic against the Jugom Ark, and he failed. His lieutenant has been forced to flee, and his army lies stricken on the ground at your feet. The first battle in the War of Faltha has been fought here in Instruere, and you are the victors!'

The onlookers cheered, but it was a less than convincing sound. Forces far beyond their comprehension had clashed, and they were alive only by some lucky chance. Hundreds of frightened people scurried away from the scene, heartily regretting their earlier curiosity: at close quarters, magic had not proved to be the kind of spectacle they wished for.

Nevertheless, they told themselves, they were alive.

Leith continued on, choosing not to refer to those who were leaving. 'Now the Destroyer knows that the Jugom Ark has been found. He has seen it raised up against him. His preparation for war will be much the swifter for that knowledge. He will not be surprised to find us prepared.

'So let us prepare! Let us debate no longer! Those of you with courage and strength of arm, take the swords from the guardsmen near you, and be ready to guard them when they wake.

The new Council of Faltha will meet, and before the day has ended we will send out emissaries to every land in Faltha. Let the Jugom Ark unify us, as the prophecies have said!'

Within a few minutes the Instruian Guard found itself

captured by the very people it had been charged with striking down. A few fools tried to fight their way free, but they died under a rain of sword blows. However inexpertly the steel blades were wielded, the sheer weight of numbers ensured none survived who did not surrender. The others were marched to the space they themselves had cleared with the butts of their spears, then made to sit down with their hands on their heads. Hundreds of enthusiastic citizens stood over them, watching for any move towards escape.

Leith stepped down from the hated platform for what he hoped was the last time. He found a shadowy area away from the light, sank to his knees and began to weep.

Stella tried to scream, but there was no breath in her lungs. She tried to struggle, but could not move. She was inside the flame, absorbing and being absorbed by it, reduced to nothing more than an ember flickering in a cold grate, barely alive. She was beyond help, beyond redemption, in a place where mere pain would have been a welcome relief. She moved neither forward nor back, neither up nor down, could not tell how long she'd been inside the flame nor when the agony would end, if ever. She begged the flame to snuff her out, but it paid her no attention, its cold blue heart bent on some other matter.

Then, horribly, the blue flame began to scream in rage at an old memory rekindled. Stella knew she was about to be consumed, and gave herself up. Paradoxically, this saved her. She drifted upwards like a nearly-spent spark. Had she retained her will to live, the flame would have burned it and her with it. Below her the red mouth roared, enlarging as though intending to swallow the world, but even in her extremity Stella could tell the bite was too large for it.

There came an enormous detonation, a coming together of light and dark, of oil and water, a conflagration so large it threatened to destroy everything. Up, up the blast came, but it was weak by the time it reached her, and merely drove consciousness from her like a dove from a lake of fire. Stella sighed blissfully as the darkness claimed her.

She awoke in the dark. Her senses returned to her in a flood, sharpened somehow by the flame. Beneath her, rough flagstones radiated an intense cold, and the air was damp to the taste. She could hear the sound of someone breathing raggedly.

Disoriented, Stella at first thought she had been returned to The Pinion. A dreadful day and night she had spent there, chained to the inner door of an empty cell, exposed to smells, sights and sounds she told herself could not possibly be real. Certainly this must be a dungeon of some sort - but, she realised in surprise, she was not fettered. Somewhere in the darkness the breathing steadied and deepened. A witless dread crept over her.

Are - are you there? Is anyone there?' Her voice came out no louder than a whisper, but it was enough. A flame burst into life, small but steady. Behind the flame a figure came into view.

Then, as the flame grew and blue light flooded the room, Stella saw him.

He was tall, broad of shoulder and clad in grey raiment so dark it stole the light from around him. His eyes burned faintly red. A silver crown rested upon his brow. And his face - his face was old and haggard, scarred and lined, a wasteland where no rain had fallen for centuries, a face from beyond the grave. Then, as she watched, his face began to heal. Scars faded, lines smoothed away, until the man wore the visage of a king. The Destroyer.

He looked on her and knew her. This was the northern girl, the one Deorc was keeping for him, the one with the echo of the bright flame set within her. The bright, bright flame . . . the memory of his recent defeat tightened his shoulders and sent a spasm across his noble face.

But was it truly a defeat? He had exchanged a few useless soldiers, and perhaps a skilled but replaceable servant, for the knowledge he had been seeking these past years. Who and where was the Right Hand? The question had been nagging at him ever since he squeezed out the dying words of the Dhaurian spy twenty years ago. And now that question was answered, and more, much more. The flaw in his plans was finally laid bare, and early enough that it could be mended. His mistake was that he had neglected to ask the obvious question: what would the Right Hand be holding? Now he knew the answer. The cursed Arrow.

The Undying Man had made it a policy not to dwell on that day, two thousand years ago, when he had confronted the Most High in the Square of the Fountain; but now he forced himself to relive the moment the Flaming Arrow flashed past his eyes and sliced through his wrist, when he felt the agony and the shock, and looked up to see the silhouette of his nemesis standing over him. However, nothing the Most High might have done to him could rob him of the exultation that coursed through his body in that moment. The draught he had drunk fizzed through his veins as though boiling his blood. He remembered it clearly, he felt it still; a life beyond anything mortals knew, burning, burning,

burning. The water of the Fountain of Eternal Life. Worth the price of a hand. But the Jugom Ark represented the anger of the Most High and the threat he still posed to the Undying Man's grand designs. More than that, it symbolised his favouritism for the puerile First Men. And, as he had just discovered, it was more than a mere symbol. It contained a potency of its own.

The Jugom Ark, and the Right Hand that bore it, would have to be faced at some time; but not now, not yet.

Now to the matter of this northern girl, cowering on her knees in obvious dread of him. Two thousand years was a long time to live, but there were many new things to learn. He had not known the blue fire could be used to transport people from one place to another. He had not even considered the possibility. Of course, it might have been the backwash of the power generated by the clash of magic, and might not be repeatable. It would require further investigation. He had plenty of time.

Of more importance was the connection between this girl and the Right Hand. She had received the Fire from the Most High, of that there was no doubt; and this was a worrying development, for he had been certain the Most High would never again gift the Fuirfad to descendants of the First Men. She was an enigma. He could sense no talent, none of the soul-stretching the use of the Fuirfad engendered. How well he remembered it! She was either woefully weak or masked her power with a skill surpassing his own highly developed spiritual senses. There were ways to find out, of course, some of which would do relatively little damage to her. He might need her at least partially intact - though bound to him, of course - if the ideas seeding themselves in his mind were to bear fruit. That she was unaware of the power set within her, he did not consider for a moment.

'So, Stella,' he said in a surprisingly gentle voice, lifting her name from the surface of her shallow mind. 'You have come to me. There are things I would know about you - and your friends.'

As the questions began Stella bravely tried to resist, but the voice that until now she had only heard from out of the blue fire was dreadfully, infinitely more powerful in person, and her efforts were futile. Though the words were mild, they washed her away like a stick before a storm, and in a horror of self-loathing her mouth opened and she told him everything he asked, everything, everything.

'WE HAVE NO TIME to waste! We must act this very day!' Perdu said.

It was just before noon on the day of the Battle of Struere Gate - as it was already being called - and the Company seemed inclined to take his words, and the similar urgings of others, to heart. The consensus of opinion was that with the victory their position had actually worsened slightly. Deorc and his blue fire had been driven away, that was true, but no one could say what the limit of his power might be, or how quickly he could recover. And while the main force of the Instruian Guard was gifted to them by the clash of fires, there might be hundreds more not currently on duty, or still hidden in The Pinion, waiting to be unleashed on them all.

Less important, but more immediate, was the problem of the crowd. Few wanted to leave, most preferring the perceived safety of numbers and closeness to the Jugom Ark, but they had little food. They could not be sent home, for who would then guard the captive soldiers?

Something had to be done, and quickly.

Not much time remained. Hours, not days. While Leith's employment of the Jugom Ark in opposition to the Destroyer's blue fire may have rescued them from the present danger, it had alerted the Ancient Enemy to its discovery after two thousand years. The element of surprise the Company counted on was lost. There was nothing else he could have done, Leith explained desperately to the Company when they asked him what had happened. He had felt compelled to try to free Stella, he told them. Was he supposed just to look on as she stood there in chains, at the mercy of the Destroyer? Some were sympathetic with his actions, but Phemanderac cautioned him on the danger of surrendering to his emotions, a view seconded by Kurr.

 'You're going to have to retain a level head, boy,' the old farmer said gruffly. As much as I love the girl, it would have been better to have kept the Arrow hidden. As it is, you did not save her, and our position is much more perilous than it was.'

Leith's feelings for Stella still ran deep; seeing her for those few moments made him realise she meant more to him than arrows or armies. He had listened to his fair share of fairy tales as a child, where the protagonists fell in love and risked all for each other. The tales made a virtue of such behaviour, but Leith knew any suggestion he was considering setting aside the future of Faltha in order to search for Stella would not be well received. So he said nothing to those who offered criticism of his actions. There were more important things to decide than the rights or wrongs of what he had done, at least that's the way they would see it; especially when nothing could be done to mend it. He kept quiet because, fairy tales aside, he knew his friends were right.