The Outcast

by Louise Cooper

  ‘Why?’ He seemed surprised by the question, and she nodded.

  ‘You owe me nothing. After we - parted-I thought - ‘

  ‘That we were enemies?’ Tarod finished the sentence for her. ‘No, Cyllan. I feel no enmity to wards you; in fact - ‘ He stopped, and a quick uncertainty flickered in his green eyes before he took a grip on himself again. Then he shook his head. ‘You must judge me as you think fit.

  You’ve seen the High Initiate’s documents for yourself, and for the most part Keridil presented the truth as he saw it.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t deny what I am, and if you look on me as an enemy I can expect nothing better. But, demon or no, I saved your life because I wanted to … to protect you.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps that sounds glib. If it does, you must put your own interpretation on it.’

  Demon or no … Cyllan detected the irony in his voice, and her throat tightened with an emotion she didn’t dare allow to take hold. Whatever else he might be, Tarod was no demon … the term was more fitting to Drachea, who had turned on her, condemned her without a hearing and elected himself judge and executioner.

  Cyllan had determined never to cry, least of all in Tarod’s presence, but she had the terrible feeling that she was about to lose control and break down. Her ally had betrayed her; her enemy had saved her life - and the old feelings, which she had done all in her power to crush since arriving at the Castle, were fighting back to the surface.

  Her hand started to shake and Tarod took the cup from her. He set it down, then gripped her fingers again, but gently this time.

  ‘Why did Drachea try to kill you, Cyllan?’ he asked.

  She bit her lip. She didn’t want to think about what had happened, but it had to be faced … and she had to tell the truth. She owed Tarod that, at least.

  ‘He - he found out that I’d been here,’ she said, so quietly that the words were barely audible. ‘He was - was berating me for not being at his side when he began to recover from … ‘ She stopped, swallowed, continued with an effort. ‘From what had happened to him.

  I was angry because his attitude was so callous, and I told him - told him - ‘ This time, she couldn’t finish.

  He began to understand. ‘So he jumped to the conclusion that you were … shall we say, a willing victim?’

  She nodded. The memory of Drachea’s twisted face, his injustice, his cruelty, surged up from the dark corner of her mind to which she’d tried to banish it, and with it came a burning, bitter fury. Unable to stem it, she said, choking on the words, ‘He called me a whore, and a serpent, and - ‘

  And suddenly the barrier she’d been tightly holding on to broke. Cyllan covered her face with both hands and burst into tears as the pent emotion shattered her self-control. She felt Tarod’s arms go round her and pressed herself against him, hiding her face in the black tangle of his hair. He said nothing, only held her, and the relief of being able to cry freely with no fear of rejection or contempt was like a cleansing balm.

  Finally, the storm of weeping subsided. Tarod made no attempt to release her, and eventually it was she who disengaged herself from his arms, rising unsteadily to her feet and walking towards the window. She wiped her face with both hands, leaving smears on her cheeks, and said indistinctly, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for. I’ve known many Adepts who’d weep at less provocation.’

  She shook her head. ‘No; I mean for more than that.’

  She wanted to look at him, to read the expression in his eyes, but didn’t dare for fear of what she might see. She took a deep breath, aware that she must say what was in her heart, now or never. If she had misjudged Tarod then the mistake would hurt her badly. But she felt that she had nothing left to lose - and emotion was dictating what reason had finally been unable to suppress.

  ‘I’ve done you a great injustice,’ she said quietly. ‘I believed that you were an enemy, not to be trusted, and I allied myself with Drachea because I believed - thought I believed - in the cause he espoused. He wants to destroy you. I thought he was right.’ She laughed, her voice breaking. ‘I call myself a seer, yet I couldn’t see the truth before my own eyes. Or at least … I wouldn’t acknowledge it. I thought Drachea’s wisdom was greater than mine.’

  ‘And now?’ Tarod asked softly, when she didn’t continue.

  ‘Now … I don’t know. Drachea thinks me a simpleton peasant, and perhaps he’s right. But I can only judge by what I see, not by what I’m told.’ The words were coming in a rush now, and with them was a growing fear that seemed to eat into her soul. She was gambling everything; if she lost, she couldn’t live with herself. But instinct - and emotion - told her to put her trust in the gamble, and believe that, at very least, Tarod would understand.

  ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that I’d listened to my inner self.

  Because … I don’t believe you’re the demon they say you are. And I don’t want to be your enemy.’

  There was silence for a while. Then she heard a faint rustle as Tarod moved, and thought that he had come to stand behind her, though she didn’t dare look round.

  ‘You’ve read the High Initiate’s testimony,’ he said.

  ‘No, I haven’t. Drachea read it to me.’ She smiled a smile that she didn’t intend him to see. ‘I can’t read.’

  There was no surprise in his voice, no amusement, no pity. He simply said levelly, ‘I can’t deny the truth of that document, Cyllan. I might challenge the interpretation, but the facts are real enough.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Doesn’t that repel you?’

  ‘No. If those papers described a total stranger, then perhaps I’d condemn, because I knew no better. But they don’t describe the man I met at West High Land, or the Adept who remembered me at the celebrations …

  or the man who saved my life.’ She drew a breath. ‘I thought I was afraid of you. But… I think I was more afraid of my own feelings.’

  Tarod felt as though something were constricting his lungs and throat. Cyllan was almost silhouetted against the gloomy light from beyond the window, only a faint blood-red gleam tinting her pale hair, and he wanted to move towards her, touch her, hold her. Her hesitant confession had stunned him - yet he knew she’d spoken from the heart, willing to risk mockery or contempt.

  She’d trusted him, and he imagined that throughout her harsh life such trust had rarely been honoured. She was still uncertain - the set of her small shoulders gave away her determined resolve not to seem weak - but she had bared her soul. And he, though he was soulless and had thought himself incapable of feeling, was overtaken by a force he couldn’t combat and didn’t want to. Emotions moved in him like an implacable tide; hope, wistfulness, an aching longing to be able truly to live again. He had held the feelings back, afraid of what they might mean and what they could lead to. But he could no longer control them.

  Cyllan laughed suddenly, chokingly. ‘I still don’t understand why,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why you saved my life.’

  He stepped forward and laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘Don’t you?’ he said softly, and bent to kiss her upturned face. She responded eagerly, almost childlike - then her body tensed and she pulled away.

  ‘Please, Tarod … don’t. Not unless - unless you mean it.’

  Tarod understood, and an image of Sashka as she had so often gazed at him, beautiful, hungry and inviting, came unbidden to his mind. He banished it. Sashka was dead; long dead for him …

  ‘I mean it.’ He drew her towards him, his mouth finding hers and his body responding to the warmth of her. ‘I mean it, Cyllan … ‘

  *****

  Desire was spent, but the emotion remained. They lay together on Tarod’s couch, Cyllan’s head resting in the crook of his arm. Neither had felt the need to speak, and now it seemed that Cyllan was asleep, her breathing light and regular.

  Tarod watched her. He felt more at peace than he could ever remember, and yet the peace was touched by a sadness that he had, as
yet, been unable to bring himself to face. He had been shocked by the feelings that this oddly courageous and loyal girl had aroused within him, but knew that there was nothing illusory or transitory about his love for her, or hers for him. And yet, despite the flowering of those feelings, he was aware of an emptiness at the core of his heart, a dark, emotionless shadow that marred his new-found happiness.

  Could there be a future for them? Here, in this strange dimension where nothing ever changed, they could exist for eternity if they chose. But for a man without a soul, unable to give completely, it would be a hollow existence because he could never be truly fulfilled. Tarod wanted to be complete again; to know the pains and the joys of completion. Soulless, he was but half alive …

  and yet to regain his soul would be to face once more the full implication of his true nature …

  He sighed, and Cyllan’s eyes flickered open.

  Tarod?’ Her fingers touched his arm lightly, sleepily, then she frowned. ‘Something troubles you … ‘

  She read him all too well. ‘Idle thoughts,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me. Please.’

  He drew her closer. ‘I was thinking of the future.’ He smiled, but not happily. ‘Since Time was banished, I’ve existed here without caring about all that I’d left behind.

  But now … so much has changed. When I lost my soul, I thought I’d moved beyond humanity. I was wrong. And yet I’m a husk; a shell - there’s a cold core within me that I can’t break down. I can’t give to you in the way that I once could have done; I can’t love you with my soul, because I have no soul. And yet if I should try to turn back, and if I should succeed - ‘

  Tarod …’ Sensing his distress Cyllan tried to interrupt him, but he silenced her by placing a finger on her lips.

  ‘No. It has to be said. You know what I’ve become, Cyllan. But do you know what I once was?’

  An echo of the old fear crept into her eyes, and he felt as though a knife had twisted in his gut. She still didn’t fully understand, and he was afraid that, when she did, she would be unable to face the truth without revulsion.

  But he couldn’t keep it from her. She had been prepared to gamble - so must he.

  ‘Once,’ he said, ‘I wore a ring. In the ring was a stone; a very beautiful gem. I learned that that gem was a focus of power, but I was ignorant of its true nature … until that nature was revealed to me by Yandros.’

  ‘Yandros … ‘ The word sent an atavistic shiver through Cyllan, and she said tentatively. The testimony claimed that he was - is - a Lord of Chaos … ‘

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the stone …’ She knew the answer, but needed to hear it in his own words.

  The stone was the vehicle for my soul.’ He ran his tongue over lips that were suddenly dry. ‘It, too, is from the Chaos realm.’

  She sat up, seemingly wrestling with some inner conflict - then turned abruptly to face him, reaching out to take his hand as her distress found voice.

  ‘But you’re no demon! You’re of this world; you’re human - ‘

  ‘Cyllan - ‘ He squeezed her fingers, moved by her loyalty and yet finding it a bleak comfort. ‘I’m not human. Not wholly. I never have been - though the Gods know it took me long enough to find that out.’

  ‘Then what are you?’

  Tarod shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Cyllan; I truly don’t know. I have human feelings, human reactions; yet I also possess powers which no mortal man should be capable of wielding. The Circle say I’m a demon. And Yandros … ‘ his gaze flickered uncertainly to her face, ‘Yandros called me “brother”.’

  Cyllan didn’t speak, and when he looked at her again her head was bowed so that he couldn’t see her face.

  Inwardly, she was struggling to assimilate all he had told her. She had expected him to deny the charges laid against him by the Circle; instead he admitted that, though slanted, they were in essence true. The idea that this man could be kin to a Lord of Chaos appalled her … and yet, no matter what every catechism she had learned since childhood might say, she couldn’t reject him; couldn’t turn against him for the sake of an abstract principle.

  ‘If I were to regain the soul-stone,’ Tarod said, ‘The links with Chaos would be reforged. Yet without it I can’t truly live, and I can’t find the fulfilment I long for with you.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Can you reconcile such a paradox?’

  Cyllan looked at him. ‘Is it a paradox, Tarod? Whatever that stone might have made you, you’re human enough! You were a high Adept, a servant of our gods, when you possessed your soul. You were no demon - why should that change if you regain it now?’

  He laughed bitterly. The Circle would disagree.’

  ‘Then damn the Circle! If they couldn’t see the truth before their eyes, they were fools!’

  He turned to regard her, unsure of himself. ‘Do you really have so much faith in me, Cyllan?’

  ‘Yes,’ she told him simply.

  The irony of her unquestioning loyalty, contrasted with the hostility he had met from those who had purported to be friends and peers of a lifetime’s standing, was sobering. During his cold existence alone in the timeless Castle Tarod had turned his back on the old allegiance to the Lords of Order, for with the Circle’s betrayal Order had failed him. But the stirrings of a rekindled humanity had brought back the love of his world. He wanted to be a part of that world again; and it was a world in which Yandros and his ilk played no part.

  He looked down at the buckled base of the ring on his left hand. ‘There could be dangers if the stone is recovered. It was the key to Yandros’s plan to challenge the rule of Aeoris, and it could be that it would open the gateway … that Chaos could threaten the world once again.’

  ‘You fought Chaos once before. Even the High Initiate admitted that. His papers said that you banished Yandros … ‘

  ‘Nonetheless, Yandros doesn’t accept defeat easily.’

  Tarod smiled thinly. ‘As I know to my cost.’

  Cyllan leaned forward and let her arms slip around him, moving closer until she was pressed warmly against him. ‘I don’t care about Yandros,’ she said with determination. ‘He’s a shadow - and I’m not afraid of shadows. All that matters to me is that you’ve lost a part of yourself, and you want to regain it. That’s what counts.’

  Tarod gazed down at her, and one hand reached out to stroke her pale hair. ‘Whatever that self might be?

  You don’t fear that?’

  ‘No.’ She kissed him, and the kiss was fierce. ‘I don’t fear that.’

  Chapter 9

  Drachea’s hand moved slowly, rhythmically back and forth along the length of the sword blade as he sat crouched over the weapon in one of the remotest of the Castle’s many empty rooms. He had carefully wiped Cyllan’s blood from the blade, but that wasn’t enough; he needed to polish the steel until it shone blindingly, eradicate every possible trace of her. Purity, he told himself over and over again, with a twisted ferocity; the sword must be pure before it was fit for him to wield - he’d have no taint of the white-faced witch about him.

  Memory of the frustration and fury he’d felt at being cheated of his victim brought a chilly sweat to Drachea’s brow. Bearing down on Cyllan, certain of securing her death, he had been momentarily blinded by the shattering aurora of light that materialised around her from nowhere, and when its brief flash faded she had vanished. He had no doubt that Tarod was responsible, though whether his skills had been enough to keep her alive he didn’t know, If she lived, then she was another adversary to be counted in his personal reckoning - but the scores he had to settle with both her and her demonic lover could wait awhile. He had more urgent matters at hand.

  Drachea stopped polishing, studied the sword critically and, satisfied, laid it with something approaching reverence on the bed before rising and crossing to the window. During his search for a safe hideaway he had found new clothes that he felt were more fitting to his station both as heir to a Margravate and as champion of the Circle against their common enemy. Taking up
a stance at the window, he flicked back the short, furtrimmed cloak that covered dark green velvet jerkin and grey silk shirt and trousers, trying to glimpse his own reflection in the glass. The panes distorted the image and irritated him; he turned back and picked up the sword once more, hefting it and testing its balance. Not ideal - Cyllan had failed him there, as in so many other ways - but it would do. And he had found a knife for himself, which might prove a more useful weapon. The knife now hung in a sheath fastened to the belt at his waist; he slipped the sword through the adjacent loop, adjusted its angle at his hip and decided that he was ready.

  Drachea had no illusions about his prospects if he should face and defy Tarod alone - his last experience at the Adept’s hands had all but unhinged him, and nothing would induce him to repeat it. If Tarod was to be defeated, he would need help - and the only chance of securing that help lay in finding a way to reverse the spell which had stopped Time, and call the Circle back to the world. Then retribution would be his for the taking, and he would relish every sweet moment. If Cyllan lived she’d learn to regret her alliance with Chaos, and he smiled to himself, thinking of the satisfaction that forcing her to witness Tarod’s final annihilation would give him.

  But to relish his triumph now was premature - he had a long way to go before the victory. And the first step was to search for the Chaos stone, which could prove to be the most valuable weapon of all. With that in his grasp, he would be in a position to bargain with Tarod - a bargain that would be very much to his own advantage.

  Drachea took a final glance around the room, wishing that he could have shared this moment with someone who would admire his courage and wish him well. No matter; he would in time receive the Circle’s gratitude as their champion and saviour, and they would see to it that he had his just reward.