City of Pearl

by Alys Clare

  And he nodded.

  I knew something else, then. But I wasn’t ready to think about it.

  Itzal was looking down the mountain. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We should move on.’

  We made our careful descent. Itzal went ahead, Salim supported Gurdyman from behind, and now I walked beside him wherever the path allowed, my arm held out to him and his hand gripping it tightly.

  He had just observed that I had changed, but I could have said exactly the same thing about him.

  Gurdyman was old.

  There was no escaping it; he had lost an element of himself, and old age had finally rushed in to take up the space.

  Even as I walked beside him, chattering brightly about the little settlement in the valley and describing my life there, part of my mind was detached and occupied with much more sombre thoughts.

  What had gone out of him?

  Was it the heart trouble that had robbed him of his essential vitality? Had his long convalescence come at too high a price, draining him of strength he could not really afford to expend?

  No, said the inner voice.

  It was trying to tell me something more. But I closed my ears.

  We climbed down the last few paces of the track that led out of the mountains and walked on into the settlement. I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen next; I think I actually had some idea that there would be another feast like last night’s, with Gurdyman the guest of honour. It made no sense, though, and perhaps I was only basing it on the fact that Itzal had been respectful, solicitous with Gurdyman as they made the descent, making sure he came to no harm.

  But, of course, he knew the perils of those narrow paths and naturally he would look after an old man trying to traverse them. As we came level with the long refectory there were no signs that people were industriously preparing a celebratory meal.

  The refectory was deserted. Its door was fastened, its small windows were tightly shuttered. The narrow path through the village was also deserted, and even as the four of us walked slowly along, I heard shutters closing quietly over other windows, and mothers hissing to their children through almost-closed doors, ordering them to come inside.

  The people of the settlement seemed to know what was about to happen and they were making it clear they wanted no part of it.

  I began to feel very uneasy.

  Where were we going? My alarm had made my pulse beat faster and, reminded abruptly of Gurdyman’s ailing heart, I drew closer to him, trying to look into his face without it being too obvious, trying to check for signs of anxiety, for the pallor, the blueness about the lips, that might indicate he was under a dangerous amount of distress. He knew what I was doing, though, and turned briefly to give me a swift smile. ‘I am all right, child,’ he said softly.

  We walked on.

  We passed most of the dwellings of the settlement. We passed the stables, the small inn where infrequent travellers coming up from the coast sometimes put up.

  We drew level with the last of the houses. We passed it.

  Then Itzal, in the lead, took the narrow little track that led up into the lower slopes of the spur of mountain that sheltered the village. Out of consideration for Gurdyman, he slowed his pace. Salim came up beside Gurdyman and took his arm. We climbed, sometimes up the steeply sloping path, sometimes up short flights of steps cut into the rock and the hard-packed earth, until we came to the low-roofed, single-room dwelling where Luliwa lived.

  And I knew, then, what was going to happen.

  I knew I was about to have the answer to all the questions.

  I also knew it would not be pleasant; that I would be forced to face things I would far rather not have known.

  We stood on the platform in front of the house. It faced west, and I thought irrelevantly that it must be nice to sit out there and watch the sunset. Itzal stood before the door. Quaintly – for surely his mother’s house was his home too – he raised his hand and knocked.

  The door opened. Luliwa stood before us, her face expressionless, her eyes unreadable. She glanced at us; briefly, with an almost imperceptible nod at Itzal; at Salim; at me, with the merest hint of a smile; at Gurdyman. She held his eyes for a long time. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved.

  Then she stood aside and, with a slight bow and a courteous, graceful movement of her arm, said, ‘Please, come in.’ She indicated a bench set against the wall. ‘Let the travellers be seated,’ she went on, ‘for you have journeyed far.’

  Salim and Gurdyman sat down, Gurdyman with a sigh as he leaned back and let his tired body relax. Itzal had gone to take up a position in front of the closed door, and I went to stand beside him. Only then did I notice a stool in the far corner of the room, where a figure I took to be Errita was sitting, muffled in his cloak.

  Now was the moment when most people welcoming travellers would offer comforts: hot water for hand-washing; a warming, restorative drink; something to eat.

  No such comforts were offered. I had not expected they would be, for I knew why we were there.

  After what seemed a very long time, Gurdyman broke the silence.

  Looking directly at Luliwa, standing straight and elegant before him, he said, ‘I did you a grave wrong.’ Something moved in her face, quickly suppressed. ‘I am sorry.’

  She seemed to be struggling with herself. Trying to tune myself to her, I sensed distress, pain, deep resentment and savage anger. It was a great deal for her slim frame to encompass, but she stood there perfectly still, barely a quiver of emotion on her face. Her eyes, however, were brilliant.

  After a moment she nodded. ‘You took what was mine,’ she replied. ‘In the City of Pearl, when we were all young’ – she shot a quick glance at Salim – ‘and under the tuition of Nabil. And of Makram.’ Her voice faltered as she said his name, but quickly she recovered. ‘I was the one. My very name told them all that.’ A flash of fury in her eyes. ‘But you pushed me out of the way and you set your feet on the path that ought to have been mine.’

  Now the anger was blazing silently out of her, and the golden lights in her eyes were like flames that shot towards Gurdyman as if they would consume him. He held her gaze, his face calm, his blue eyes empty of any emotion except perhaps sorrow.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  I thought he might have spoken in his own defence; said, perhaps, I was young and ambitious, heady with the power I had discovered in myself, and I could no more have acted differently than have given up my life.

  With my new-found, fledgling ability to read people, I was almost sure that’s what he was thinking.

  But he held his peace.

  And I realized that he was waiting for Luliwa.

  She gave a deep sigh and, when she spoke, her tone had changed. ‘But then I too did a deed I have regretted ever since’ – her face worked with some deep emotion – ‘and the result was far, far worse.’

  Gurdyman nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘You set the fire in the building behind my parents’ inn. It was your blue flames that started the blaze, and the fire was so hot that nobody could survive.’

  ‘I did not mean them to die,’ Luliwa whispered, the words barely audible. ‘I was … not in full control. All I could think of was hurting you. Being revenged on you.’ Her eyes blazed at him again. ‘I do not regret that impulse, for what you did was unforgivable.’ She paused, and I guessed she was fighting for control. ‘But I do regret casting the flames when I was not in the right state of mind.’

  I realized what she meant. What should have been hers had been purloined by Gurdyman, and in her hurt and her fury she had drawn on her own wild, undisciplined power and gone after him. She wanted only to hurt him, to be revenged upon him, to alarm him, to terrify him, perhaps even to say to him, You think you are so great and mighty, but see what I can do!

  And she had set the fire in his parents’ inn.

  But he wasn’t there.

  She should have known, of course. She could have known, a woman like her wit
h her abilities, but she had been too full of fury, too set on harming the young man who was her enemy, to stop and prepare properly.

  ‘I should not have done it,’ she whispered.

  And, something I thought was compassion in his eyes, he nodded.

  ‘Believe me, Gudiyyema,’ Luliwa said on a half-sob, ‘I have regretted the suffering of those people every day since the moment I came back to myself and knew what I had done. I have done such penance for their deaths that you would not believe.’

  ‘But it did not bring them back,’ Gurdyman said softly.

  ‘No, I know, and I am so very sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I was so angry, and I wanted you to know I was there, and see the power I had, and I started the fire to show you.’

  ‘Yes, I knew it was you when they told me.’ He paused. ‘I wasn’t even there, Luliwa.’

  ‘I know!’ The word came out as a sob.

  There was a long, painful silence. Salim sat like stone, eyes straight in front of him, giving no sign of what he was thinking. Beside me, Itzal too was still, and only the soft sound of his calm, steady breathing indicated that he was flesh and blood and not a statue. I looked quickly at his brother, but Errita’s face was still hidden in the shadow of his high collar.

  Then, as if he felt that Luliwa’s confession demanded more of him in return, Gurdyman spoke. ‘I underestimated how deeply my actions would affect you,’ he said. ‘I thought, if I even bestirred myself to think of you at all, that someone with your skill, your talent, your gifts, your power, would succeed, even if the inheritance you believed to be your right went to someone else.’

  ‘It was my right, and it did,’ she said neutrally. Her calm words carried more force than if she had screamed them at him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, so quietly that I barely heard. Then: ‘And you never forgot, did you? You made a life for yourself, you matured into what you were destined to be, your powers grew as the years passed. But it was not enough, for all the time I was out there somewhere in the world, I who had taken what was yours, who had sat at the feet of the master and steadily absorbed everything that he so generously gave me.’

  ‘It should have been me,’ she whispered.

  ‘And in the end, you had to act,’ Gurdyman went on, his tone distant, his eyes fixed, unfocussed, on the plain stone wall opposite. ‘I do not know how you discovered my whereabouts – perhaps you sent someone to enquire at my parents’ village, for once upon a time, so many years ago, I sent word to them to tell them where I was, and people have long memories.’ He glanced at her, a quick, hard flash of sharp blue eyes. ‘Or perhaps someone like you has other methods at her disposal.’ He sighed. ‘But it is of no matter. You found out that I had returned to my native land and settled down in a city in the east of the country; that I lived in a house set in a maze of little alleyways that is full of secrets and the perfect dwelling for a brujo such as I.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he murmured, ‘I well remember the word.’

  For the first time, I saw Luliwa smile in return.

  ‘You sent someone to my home.’ Was it my imagination, or did he really glance briefly at Errita? ‘To Cambridge, with instructions to make sure I had no choice but to come back.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

  Now Gurdyman in his turn was angry. I sensed the cold fury rise in him and it was as if a sudden draught was swirling round my face and neck. But his anger was different from hers: never, whatever the provocation, would it escape his control and inflict terrible damage that he did not intend.

  ‘Did somebody else have to die?’ he asked her. There was outrage in his powerful voice. ‘More than one person, for there were two victims of the fire in the lower areas of the City of Pearl, when your other child’ – now he looked straight at Itzal – ‘used your trademark blue flames to attract my attention and remind me why I had been brought back.’

  Now Itzal stirred, and I sensed a sort of chill flowing off him. ‘Like my mother before me, I did not mean there to be victims,’ he said, but despite the appeasing words I sensed a cold nonchalance in his tone, as if he didn’t really care one way or the other. The feeling of cold intensified and I perceived that there were unknown depths to Itzal that I hadn’t begun to fathom. ‘I had checked earlier,’ he went on, ‘and the building was derelict and deserted.’

  Gurdyman looked at him. After a moment, Itzal’s eyes slid away.

  Silence fell once more. The small space enclosed by the stout stone walls of Luliwa’s house was vivid with the pain of memories and the emotions evoked by them. It seemed to me that I could see them, like strands of harsh colour weaving a jagged pattern in the air. What harm these two people had done to one another, and to the innocent victims who suffered such terrible deaths because they were the unwitting witnesses to their personal war.

  ‘Between us we have made a breach in the natural order,’ Luliwa said, and her voice had changed again. Now she was the one who held control; she who would determine the outcome of this extraordinary, surreal encounter.

  She had spoken to me of this breach before, I thought suddenly. She had spoken of a wrinkle; a fracture in the plan that was set out for us; the way that ought to be. She had gone on to say – I could hear her words now – that sometimes people discover they have the power to interrupt this plan and they ignore the inner voice that tells them it is forbidden; that having the power is one thing but using it quite another.

  ‘This must be put right,’ she went on. Her voice was waxing stronger, far more powerful now. ‘You and I did wrong, Gudiyyema. We did the damage. We caused the breach.’

  He nodded, dropping his head, and I knew he was accepting his share of the blame. ‘And so it is up to us to repair it,’ he murmured.

  For a second time, she managed a very small smile.

  He must have sensed it, for when he looked up into her face his expression too had softened. I knew then that, once, before they had become such bitter enemies, Luliwa and Gurdyman had been friends. Good friends; affectionate, perhaps even loving friends.

  And love, I thought, never truly dies.

  But Gurdyman was speaking. I made myself listen.

  ‘You have already begun this process of repair, I see.’ Slowly he turned his head until he was looking straight at me.

  ‘I have,’ Luliwa replied. ‘She is altered, you find?’

  ‘I do.’ He sighed.

  ‘She has the makings,’ Luliwa said. ‘She was already on the path when she came to me, for she has been well taught by others.’ She gave Gurdyman a small nod in acknowledgement.

  ‘Not only I,’ he said.

  ‘Above all,’ Luliwa went on, ‘she has her own innate ability.’

  They were both looking at me now, and I felt the force of their two pairs of eyes as they stared into my mind. With an effort – quite a strenuous effort – I shut them out. I heard Gurdyman chuckle.

  ‘Indeed she has,’ he agreed. He glanced back at Luliwa. ‘She learned how to do that very early on.’

  It was strange to be standing there hearing myself talked about. Even stranger that, now I had stopped them probing into my head, I didn’t seem to mind.

  I thought about what they had just said …

  ‘She must fulfil her destiny,’ someone – Gurdyman, Luliwa, I didn’t know – said.

  They were focusing on me again; I felt it immediately. But it was different this time, for I understood straight away that they were not trying to read my thoughts, or determine what I knew, or in any way examine me. This felt quite different. It was novel, unfamiliar, and yet I had the strongest conviction that I knew what they were doing.

  The two of them were subsuming themselves and their power into me.

  Then I understood.

  In a flash of insight, I saw the pattern, the natural order, and I saw the damage that between them they had done to it. I saw how Luliwa had set about repairing it; how she had sent out the agency that had roused Gurdyman and made him understand that he had no choice bu
t to return to his own past and put right what had gone wrong. Both he and Luliwa must acknowledge the harm that they had done. They must both put aside their pride, their sense of self-righteousness, of being the innocent party. Then they must both begin to give. They must yield something of what made them themselves.

  And it seemed, if I understood aright, they must somehow transfer it into me.

  And that was how this breach of which they both spoke, this rupture in what should have been the right, the natural order, would be healed.

  I took a very shaky breath.

  It was quite a daunting prospect.

  NINETEEN

  The Malice-striker lay a short distance off the north coast of Spain, close to where a mountain river joined the sea.

  At the meeting point of river and sea there was a small fishing port, used only by local people and limited in its facilities. There was no quay, for the fishermen went out in small boats that were easy to carry up onto the shore, above the high-water mark. Those on board the long, graceful, alien craft wishing to land would have to ferry themselves across using the ship’s boat.

  Jack stood on Malice-striker’s deck, staring at the river winding its way from the foothills and surging out into the sea. Thorfinn had assured him repeatedly that the small settlement just visible that crouched beneath a spur of the mountain was the slim young man’s destination, and where they would finally end the long pursuit and confront him.

  Thorfinn had also assured him that Lassair was there.

  Jack had been determined to hold on to his doubts and his scepticism in the face of Thorfinn’s certainty which, far from wavering, had instead grown stronger as they sailed south. Every time Jack had raised an objection – ‘We cannot know he is on that ship!’ ‘How can we be so sure he’s going to this one port in the whole vastness of the northern coast of Spain?’ ‘How can you possibly be convinced that this river you once explored is somehow linked to Lassair?’ – Thorfinn would smile and say, ‘What alternative do you suggest? If you have a sound plan, tell me and we will consider adopting it.’

  But Jack had no plan, sound or otherwise. And as the days passed and events appeared to confirm that Thorfinn’s wild assumptions might be valid, Jack’s protestations grew fewer.