The Right Hand of God (5 page)

he had found and taken hold of the Jugom Ark, when no one else dared to touch its flaming shaft. Right then, in Joram Basin high above Kantara, the quest was still on track, and its fulfilment lay burning in Leith's hands.

Then the Sentinels jerked into life. Leith's heart quailed at the memory. The Arkhos of Nemohaim pursued the Five of the Hand, climbing up to the sacred Joram Basin, and something in the magic of the place, left there by Bewray himself, set the mountains shaking when the feet of traitors

desecrated the holy site. Though he had since spent much time reflecting on those fraught hours, Leith could still make no sense of the confusion that struck them all, scattered them all, and claimed lives. The shriek of the Instruian archivist as he fell into the chasm bound itself into his dreams. And, when the mountains finally stopped their shaking, he had lost his companions. The Arkhimm was no more. All that remained was the Jugom Ark.

After searching fruitlessly for the rest of the Arkhimm, Leith abandoned that high and holy place and, with Maendraga, the Guardian of the Arrow, made his way sorrow-fully to Bewray, capital of Nemohaim. There, with the aid of the Arrow, he performed a miraculous healing, and gained the friendship and assistance of Geinor the counsellor and his son Graig, making an enemy of the king in the process. The healing was still a difficult knot in his memory, deliberately left unexamined for fear of what he might find. Had it been the power of the Arrow? Or was he, Leith, like his brother, able to tap into (enhance, Hal called it) healing and other magical powers? Or was this all the work of the Most High, and were Leith and his brother - were they all - merely pawns? Of any possibility, that was the one Leith feared: that nothing he did, no risk he took, really mattered; that some divine protection ensured success by removing freedom of choice; that, like Hal, he was incapable of making a mistake, or at least admitting it. He wanted, to be more than one of the stars fixed in the sky, forever set to follow a predetermined course around the locus of the plans of the Most High.

And now he was here, out in the wide Wodhaitic Sea, sailing towards Instruere and whatever was to come. Here with Maendraga the magician, the Guardian of the Arrow, with Geinor and Graig of Nemohaim, and with a Pei-ratin

pilot and a crew who could not decide what to make of him. Here with the Jugom Ark, a mind full of doubts, a few haggard memories and the tattered remnants of a quest.

The last few miles of the journey up the Aleinus River were made against the wind and the tide, so Leith and Maendraga joined the others in paddling with those strange, teardrop-shaped oars the Aslamen used. Ahead of them Instruere rose from a low bank of fog, or perhaps a morning haze; certainly the air felt heavy, making it difficult to see any real distance even though the sun beat down on them and the day was otherwise clear. Few boats plied the River, fewer than Leith remembered from his morning walks on the walls when last he'd been part of this place. Far fewer than anticipated by those Aslamen who had made this trip before, raising a number of puzzled comments from the stern of the dugout. Still enough river traffic, however, to force the navigator to continue his conversation with Leith in a series of snatches separated by careful perusal of the waters ahead.

'You say we are hostile to strangers,' said the curly-headed Aslaman pilot, picking up a conversation he and Leith had shared since sunrise. 'If we are hostile, why did we allow you to set foot on Motu-tapu? And when you broke our laws, why did we let you leave?'

Leith nodded, conceding the point. 'But we've met other lo— other people who are not First Men, and they were very friendly.'

'Hmph,' the pilot snorted. 'They must have been people who still have their land. If they knew the history of the Pei-ra they would not think so kindly of First Men.'

Again Leith was forced to concede. 'But neither Maendraga nor myself have maltreated such people. We are not your

enemies! On my travels I attacked nobody, but was captured twice by people who are not First Men. The Fenni would have put us to death but for the intervention of one of their number, and the Widuz tried to sacrifice us to their god. How can you say that we're the ones to blame?'

'Whose land were you on when these things happened? Your own?'

For the third time Leith acknowledged the point. Even as he talked he remembered the words of Farr at the inn in Windrise, his assertion that the losian were not real people, ill-chosen words that probably led to the attack on the Company in the Valley of Respite.

That's true, but—'

But the Pei-ratin navigator turned away, and Leith noticed they drew level with the city docks.

The air here tasted acrid, filled with smoke and sulphur. The pilot called out politely to a dock worker, asking for permission to put ashore.

'You can't land that thing here, you savages!' Leith could hear the words, but the speaker remained hazy, though only twenty paces from them. 'What kind of craziness is this! With all that's happening, do you think we have time now for the likes of you? Go and see if you can land on the Straux shore, then take your chances. ..' The rest of the man's angry words faded away in the thick air.

The navigator directed his crew to paddle towards the centre of the River, then turned and faced Leith, his eyes sad and resigned. 'You say we're hostile. Perhaps we are when it comes to letting people set foot on our sacred island, especially to those whose kind drove us from our land. Yet I have never heard Instruere called a holy place. People from all over the world are encouraged to come to this island. Why, then, are we met with hostility when we try to set foot on it?'

Leith nodded again, as he had throughout the argument, but his mind was no longer on the issue of the losian. Smoke rose from a number of places inside Instruere's walls, and now he could hear an intermittent booming sound drifting across the water. Fires occurred often in Instruere, whether deliberate or accidental, but he did not remember it being like this. Perhaps Instruere was always like this in the autumn. But even as he considered these thoughts doubtfully, a new plume of thick black smoke curled over the walls and bent towards them, driven by the downriver breeze.

They drew close to the Straux shore, and there before them stretched Southbridge. Oddly, none of the soldiers set to guard the bridge looked in their direction as they beached the outrigger. Their attention was engaged with, of all things, a group of people in outlandish dress accompanied by a long line of unusual-looking animals with long necks, bulbous, horse-like faces and peculiar lumps on their backs which Leith at first mistook for baggage. Traders come to peddle their exotic goods in the Great City, no doubt. The booming sounds continued to echo across the River as Leith and Maendraga bade a cordial farewell to the Pei-ratin navigator. None of the others in the canoe acknowledged their departure, reminding Leith yet again that the agreement to take the two outsiders to Instruere had not been universal. Leith turned to the scene before him.

'Just let us across this bridge, boy, and that'll be the end of it!' snapped the leader of the traders. Leith's head jerked up, all else suddenly forgotten. 'We'll take the risk, if risk there is, if this isn't just a story to keep us out of the city.' Leith plunged forward along the riverbank towards the bridge, ignoring Maendraga's surprised cry.

'I've told you, none can cross today,' a bored voice replied. 'We are not prepared to expose visitors to our fair city to any risk until we've ascertained the nature of the problem—'

'Leaving us out here is a risk! What if it rains again like it did last night?' the trader yelled back.

By now Leith was sure, even though he could not yet see the speaker clearly. He filled his lungs with air, ready to shout - and at that moment an enormous boom shook the ground and knocked him off his feet. On hands and knees he turned towards Instruere. A great sheet of flame erupted from behind the walls. A second boom rang out, then a third, and slowly, ponderously, the Struere Gate collapsed into a pile of rubble.

DEORC, LORD OF INSTRUERE, settled into his austere, high-backed chair. He'd destroyed the red velvet monstrosity used by his predecessor. A palpable sign of weakness, one of many the overrated fool had allowed to cloud his judgment. The Arkhos of Nemohaim had not come through his last visit to Andratan at all well, his ambition and arrogance all too obvious even to Deorc, let alone to the subtle devices of the Master of All. The Undying Man told Deorc the Arkhos would need replacing. He'd had the fat man thrown out, just like he'd disposed of the red chair. A momentary twitch of unease spoiled his benign mood. Not quite like the red chair. While he'd set flame to the chair the Arkhos had used, the man himself continued to evade him. But not forever, the Destroyer's lieutenant told himself. The harrowing of Instruere was at hand, and eventually the hiding place of the Arkhos of Nemohaim would be revealed, along with many other things.

He leaned back, content with his day's work, and admired his favourite trophy. On the wall, hanging from chains, placed for him alone to see, was Stella, the northern girl. He knew his master would not exactly approve of the decoration, since he had said she was to be kept for his arrival, but if pressed Deorc would explain that the arrangement was part of the breaking process. It had certainly been effective. The struggling, arguing and weeping had passed into a sort of numb acceptance, and soon she would begin to believe she deserved this kind of treatment. Then it would be only a matter of time until the self-hatred surfaced; and at that point she would agree to whatever her master demanded of her. Perhaps she might even be returned to her former friends - if they still lived - to be eyes and ears for the Undying Man. He had seen such things before, had been party to them.

Time for reflection later, the Lord of Instruere told himself. The Ecclesia was due to meet soon, and they would expect Tanghin there to offer his words of wisdom. He wouldn't disappoint them, he thought as he rose and pulled on his cloak.

'I'm off to preach to your friends,' he taunted the girl. 'Do you have a message for them?' She turned her face towards him, but no reply came from her, and soon her dull eyes turned inward again. He laughed shortly, eased on his calf-high boots and strode from the room.

As soon as the heavy wooden door closed and the noise of the bolt sliding home died down, the dullness faded from Stella's eyes. She could touch the floor if she stretched her toes, though it sent agonising waves of pain up her pinioned arms. 'I must exercise my arms and legs,' she said aloud, as much to keep the memory of her own voice alive as to remind herself not to surrender to hopelessness.

Unable to keep track of time and deprived of contact with anyone apart from a small, frightened woman who cleaned

the room - and of course, the beast that was Tanghin - Stella spent hours and hours exploring her own mind. She'd been thinking a lot about her family. A weak father, a shallow, superficial mother and her brother the wastrel drunkard. She began to realise she hated weakness in all its forms: the wanderings of old age, the helplessness of babies or of cripples like Hal, ineffectual people like her father - or like Leith before the journey changed him - and especially the weakness she found in herself. She hated her inability to resist the strength of others, her unreasoning fear of Druin and of being trapped in a life of helplessness, of being tormented by someone strong and merciless, unable to escape. She had fled from all of that, and here she was. Here she was, led by her fears.

She remembered a time when she was very young. Her older brother would sit on his father's knee and listen to the stories he told. Once she crept out of her room and sat unregarded at the door to listen to a goblin story, where the hero had been trapped in a lightless cave, surrounded by evil creatures intent on catching and eating him. Paralysed by terror as the words washed over her, Stella missed the part where the hero had been rescued by his companions, and was caught up instead in a never-ending tunnel of clawed hands groping at her, wide open mouths leering, teeth clashing, hot breath covering her . ..

She bit her lip until she drew blood. Thinking like this did her no good. Ignoring the needle-like pain in her arms and legs, and the greyness that closed around her like a tunnel without end, Stella began her exercises.

The Ecclesia has grown like a mighty tree, the Hermit reflected. Well watered, its roots extended to touch the wealthy and

influential as well as the poor and powerless. Branches had been set up in Deuverre and Straux as day workers returning home to villages north and south of the Great City exported the Fire. The Mercium meeting now rivalled the Basement as the largest branch of all, an especially pleasing development for the Hermit, who remembered with bitterness having been driven from that iniquitous town many years ago. In the few short months since he set foot in Instruere many hundreds of people, he didn't know how many exactly, declared themselves for the Ecclesia, contributing much to the welfare of the people of the Fire. Last week the contributions tallied over four and a half thousand pending; he had the exact figure written down in a notebook.

More importantly, he told himself as he walked out on to the raised platform in the Basement, the Fire continued to fall. There they all were, waiting on his word or gesture. There! He pointed dramatically, and half-a-dozen fell to the floor cackling loudly. And there! A few more went down. Others lined the sides of the platform, their prophecies at the ready. Some of them were crackpots, going from one meeting to another trying to peddle their own vision, but he had trustworthy men tending the branches of his great tree, and they would not give place to the fakers or the deranged. He thought of Tanghin and his heart swelled with pride. Soon he would leave Instruere and the movement he had started to take charge of the Mercium branch, but only after installing Tanghin in the Basement. The man Tanghin had deep insight into the ways and plans of the Most High, and was a true disciple of the Ecclesia.