‘I told you, my strength is —’ She felt the knife press harder, swallowed tightly. ‘Yes, I have travelled time,’ she admitted. ‘I am younger now than I was in Ennae.’
‘Why?’ He leant closer; his eyes narrowed, probing her defences, trying to catch her in a lie.
Glimmer caught his hot scent and felt dizzied by it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice too loud, sounding as desperate as he did.
‘You lie.’
Her lips parted and she stared at his, wondering what it would take to bridge that small distance, to have him touch her with his mouth, probe her with his tongue. The idea of tasting him dizzied her more. Was she going mad?
‘Speak or die,’ he said coldly. ‘Why are you younger here?’ The knife pressed and stung her throat and she quickly regathered her attention. ‘Is it to gain sympathy from me?’ he demanded. ‘I will not spare your life.’
Yet he continued to speak to her when he could have killed her, had threatened to kill her many times. And had not.
‘I should be twenty-six, not sixteen,’ she admitted, wondering why she was. She must have done this to herself. But why? Part of her did not experience time in a linear fashion. Had that part already known she would fall outside her destiny and into love? And if it had, why had it acted to place her in Haddash with Kert instead of preventing the error?
Though the range of possible futures had narrowed, the section of her mind still intent on analysis saw a handful of possibilities in which she joined the Four Worlds, but not with a Plainsman at her side to focus the talisman. In these futures Glimmer saw herself focusing the stone and she hadn’t thought that was possible.
‘You do not gull me with your counterfeit innocence,’ Kert said and even his sneer was beautiful, yet Glimmer was forced to struggle with the anguish his rejection brought her. Sharp stabbing pain obliterated joy, and neither emotion was familiar to her. This was the torment Pagan had described — love unable to find fulfilment. ‘I will kill you if you do not do as I ask,’ Kert declared.
Glimmer tried to concentrate, to think despite her suffering. ‘I am of royal blood.’ She hoped to quell his hatred with a reminder of duty. ‘You have sworn to serve the throne.’
‘I served Mihale and his son —’
Yet at the mention of Lenid, instead of vengeance Glimmer saw hesitation in his eyes. She pushed her advantage: ‘Lenid was never meant to rule. His father has recently returned to Ennae —’
‘Mihale is alive?’ The knife lifted a fraction and Kert’s beautiful eyes widened.
Belatedly she realised she should not have told him that. Now his desire to return to Ennae would be increased. She had to keep him here, with her. ‘Mihale is adequately protected,’ she told him. ‘I am not.’
‘If you are The Catalyst, Pagan of the House of Guardians is your appointed Champion,’ Kert said coldly, ‘not I.’
‘I am the child of The Dark and The Light,’ she said with as much force as her pounding heart would allow. ‘If I die, who will save the Four Worlds? Or Mihale and his kingdom, your home …?’
Kert frowned. ‘You didn’t save Lenid.’ Pain was vivid in his eyes as he remembered the boy he had raised as his own, son of the king he’d thought dead.
‘That wasn’t my destiny,’ she said.
‘But saving Mihale is?’
‘Why do you think you are still alive?’ she lied, her lips trembling. She hoped he would think it was fear of his knife. ‘If you protect me now,’ she said, ‘when I am stronger we will return to Ennae where you may resume your role as Champion to the King.’
He glared at her but she could see that her words had given him hope. The madness of desperation had fled his eyes. She waited, unable to breathe until at last he took his knife from her throat and slipped it back into its ankle sheath, pulling her up with him. His cloak brushed her bare arm, setting off tingles that made her mouth dry. She bit her lip to find pain and a way to regain control over her wayward body, but when he grasped her shoulders to steady her, she swayed, lost again in his eyes and the tumult of sensations that overshadowed her analytical thought processes.
‘At the earliest moment you must return us to Ennae,’ he demanded, oblivious to her emotional state. ‘My duty lies there.’
She nodded. One day they would have to return. The Four Worlds could not be joined from Haddash, but the Maelstrom had not yet reached critical mass. While she waited to perform the joining she would try to win Kert’s love. Here on Haddash she would have years instead of the months that would pass on Ennae.
‘Mihale must live,’ Kert said, gazing through her now.
He appeared to be struggling to retain his anger at her or his duty towards Mihale — anything that might keep him from the dark realm of grief for his son. She could confirm that, as she had done many times on Magoria, reading Sarah’s and Pagan’s thoughts, but she didn’t dare touch Kert’s. To open her mind to him as she had opened her heart would be to lose herself completely, to not know where she began and he ended. One day she might have the strength for it. But not this day.
‘Will you protect me until I can return to my uncle’s kingdom?’ she asked to distract him, knowing her request, phrased in this way, would play on his loyalty to Mihale. ‘He will be grateful for your service to his kin. As will those who would see The Catalyst join the Four Worlds,’ she reminded him.
Kert’s hard grip on her shoulders eased and she allowed herself to enjoy this gentler touch, long fingers warm through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.
‘I am a sworn Champion to the throne,’ she heard him say warily, as though convincing himself to give up his vengeance. ‘My duty is to protect the descendants of the Ancients.’
‘And while I am in this weakened state I require your protection,’ she reminded him, untroubled by the admission. Her dependence on Kert was all that kept them together. She could hardly bemoan it.
‘How long must you rest?’ he asked, an edge of anger still in his voice.
She shook her head, as though she was unsure. ‘Anchoring the Four Worlds has sapped my strength. Bringing you here was too great a strain.’ On heart, body and mind. ‘It could be days.’ In truth, she hoped to keep Kert with her for years, but that wasn’t news he would want to hear.
‘Lenid’s … death unsettled me,’ he admitted. ‘I am sorry to have offered you violence.’ This was not said graciously but Glimmer did not care. ‘Clearly your life must be safeguarded if the Four Worlds are to be joined and Mihale is to live.’ So he blamed her for Lenid’s death, yet would protect her out of duty to Mihale. It was a poor beginning for a relationship.
He looked around. ‘Our histories of the Four Worlds speak of a Serpent of Death on Haddash, a fearsome beast that devours all who appear on his world.’
Glimmer nodded and tried to focus away from her body and how Kert affected her. She must sound sensible to regain his respect. ‘Kraal cannot exist on the same world as descendants of the Ancients. While I am here he cannot come.’ She knew she should show an interest in their surroundings, but while Kert was with her she had eyes only for him.
‘What else may offer us violence here?’ Kert continued to scan the nearby area. She saw that his animosity was no longer directed at her but was now aimed outwards, at any threats to their safety. That gave her heart. Where the anger had been, she hoped to plant seeds of love.
‘I don’t know,’ she lied, thinking the idea of threat might keep them in the cave where close proximity could breed intimacy. In reality Haddash was harmless. The Fire God’s underlings had disappeared with his castle when Kraal had fled her presence. Only the Domedwellers with their fetish for technology remained, and they were a spent force.
‘Have you been to this world before?’ he asked her. ‘Is there food?’
For the first time Glimmer noted a distant howling. Wind? The cave they had appeared in was evidently far from the exposed surface of Haddash. ‘I saw only the crumbling palace of the Serpent God, several domed citie
s and a great expanse of baked earth,’ she said. ‘There was little vegetation.’
He looked back to her and frowned in irritation. ‘Do what you must to regain your strength. Later we will venture forth in search of food.’
Glimmer nodded. He did not know the extent of her powers. That could be used to her advantage. After sleep she would be able to materialise edible moss in the next cave, together with a spring. Such meagre sustenance would not raise his suspicions, and convenient food would encourage him to stay in the caves. With no duties to perform he would be forced to keep his attention on her, watching her, talking to her. And if she pretended weakness long after her strength had returned, he would not be distracted by thoughts of returning to Ennae.
‘I will try to sleep.’ She lay back on the hard ground, her arm under her head for a pillow. Kert did not offer his cloak as bedding, and she did not ask. Her mind was trained, she could ignore discomfort. But she could not ignore Kert. Her eyes moved of their own volition, watching as he paced the cave, his long legs restless, the set of his shoulders tight. He stopped to inspect the wall, lifting a portion of the glowing fungus with his knife. He sniffed it, then dropped it to the ground and turned back to her.
‘Sleep,’ he ordered.
She closed her eyes. It was not a Champion’s place to command royalty, but his thoughts were obviously fixed on her recovery — selfishly at this point, because he wanted to be reunited with his king, to have distractions from the horror of remembering his son’s death. Her rest was simply a means to an end. In time, however, Glimmer hoped he would care for her without the need for ulterior motives.
In the privacy of her own mind she dreamt of more than a Champion’s concern from Kert. Her dreams were of love; wild as a waterfall, reckless as the wind and as enduring as time itself.
Lying still on the rock floor, she thought about that, about the poetry of her impetuous dreams, and the impossibility of them ever coming true. Time was not enduring. The linear time she existed in was about to end and she wanted to make the most of it.
If she remained on the fast-moving world of Haddash she could live ten years with Kert while a bare twenty weeks passed on Ennae. During that time the Maelstrom would spread the elements of the Four Worlds across each other: water from Magoria, air from Atheyre, earth from Ennae and fire from Haddash. These elements would mix with each other creating catastrophic climatic conditions.
Eventually, the four elemental worlds would be torn apart, and in that moment she must be standing on Ennae with the talisman, ready to focus her power to control the Maelstrom, drawing those elements to herself. Her body would form the gravitational centre of a new world, the One World, where the survivors of the Maelstrom might find a home, and where time would exist outside linear constraints.
This was the ending humanity had been evolving towards, the task for which she had been born. Not to live, but to die.
Those on Ennae thought her already dead, killed along with Lenid and Kert in the Volcastle mouth. But the despair of those counting on The Catalyst to save them did not touch Glimmer. Only Kert stirred her emotions. So although her best probability of joining the Four Worlds lay in an immediate return to Ennae to protect the anchors, she planned to stay on Haddash, with her love.
The part of her mind still functioning logically also concerned itself with the threat that lay sleeping in the core of Haddash — the Fire God’s child. Either the egg must be found and destroyed, or the new serpent, when it hatched, must be made to serve her purpose. If it did not, the future would become terrible beyond mortal imagining. Glimmer knew she must not let that happen. Only, just now her powers were weak and her mind was muddied with desire and attraction.
There would be time to attend to the Serpent God’s child … later.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pagan of the House of Guardians stood patiently at the foot of the pale stone dais in the Volcastle’s circular great hall. Above him, surrounded by flickering candlelight, his beloved Lae of Be’uccdha performed her rites of office. Behind Pagan, on the solid timber pews that lined the hall, the remnants of Ennae’s nobility clustered in groups like bunches of oceanberries. All were silent, listening to the instruction of a seventeen-year-old girl who had newly inherited the title of The Dark.
Grief had stiffened the soft lines of Lae’s narrow face, and her skin, a rich Be’uccdha black, appeared paler. The swirling tattoo of her calling was stark over the right side of her face, and the straight black hair Pagan longed to touch did not dance on her shoulders. Instead it had been scraped into a tight coil at her nape, accentuating the fragile lines of cheek and chin. Yet her voice was strong as it carried across the large room, offering comfort to those who had come to listen.
‘This is a time of uncertainty,’ she said, and there were murmurs of assent throughout the crowd. The peppery scent of luhz-kernel soap permeated the chamber and Pagan took heart from that. Many must have bathed with their last portions of the Verdan Forest specialty, and with rations low because of the long siege on their castle, this showed much honour towards his beloved, as did the gildings of gold and bronze on the supplicants’ clothing. They had dressed in their finest.
‘We must hold fast to our faith,’ she told them, ‘and we must not give up hope. Though our lord and king Mihale has ascended to Atheyre, and his dear son Lenid has followed him into death …’ She paused and Pagan saw her swallow several times, blinking rapidly. ‘We must trust that the Great Guardian will continue to protect and provide for us.’
‘Trust the Great Guardian,’ Pagan intoned with the others.
‘And know his peace,’ Lae finished the invocation, clearly with precious little peace in her own heart. Then she stared out at the assembly with empty eyes, the look of one lost in a memory. Was she remembering how she had saved the royal babe’s life when his servant mother had died in childbirth, then married Kert to seal the pretence that Lenid was their child, to save him from Lae’s own father, Djahr, who had coveted the throne?
Or were her recollections of the games she and Kert had played with the child — happy times together, of which there had been many in the three years they had been a family. For surely, though she had never loved Kert, they had both adored Lenid, and when Pagan had returned from Magoria to claim her as his betrothed, she had not wished to leave her husband and son.
Until cruel fate had decreed otherwise.
Now, as The Dark, it was Lae’s responsibility to conduct the requiem for Lenid and Kert, both of whom had died the day The Catalyst had come to the Volcastle. Two days ago. Two of the longest days of Pagan’s life. And though it was selfish to think of the tragedy in such terms, he could not help but acknowledge that the only impediments to his love for Lae were now gone. Yet rather than taking solace in his arms, Lae had turned her grief into a solitary vigil. She would not speak to him.
‘We will remember them,’ she said, and Pagan saw her take several slow breaths. He felt his own throat tighten in sympathy. But when she spoke again her voice was clear. ‘And we will hold the faith.’
She made no mention of The Catalyst’s death and, as per her written instructions, neither had Pagan. Their people needed time to come to terms with the death of a royal child they had not known existed. Lae believed it would lead to chaos if they were told that their world would be obliterated by the Maelstrom with none to survive. Pagan could not argue with that. In the dead dark of night, even he, a warrior who had been trained to face death every day, felt the cold fingers of desolation when he thought of their future. Those not trained to the sword would surely go mad with despair.
Lae fell silent and her gaze swept the audience behind him. Pagan was unnerved by her power to read auras so he shifted his attention to the anchor, marvelling at what had been wrought by the young royal woman, Glimmer, and an aging Plainsman. The sparkling sky-mirror, as wide as spread arms, rose up from the glowing volcano mouth of the Volcastle and through the open ceiling of the great hall into the sky, further
than the eye could follow. On clear days lookouts reported sighting similar sparkling pillars from the direction of the four winds — south at Castle Be’uccdha, west at Fortress Sh’hale and north at the Verdan Hold.
But marvel though it was, this mirror had tricked the poor child Lenid into thinking he was running towards Lae, when instead he had run towards her reflection and into death in the Volcastle mouth. Not even the desperate actions of his Champion Kert had been quick enough to save him from a fiery fate; worse, Kert’s lunge to save the child had rolled The Catalyst with him over the edge, consigning the Four Worlds to sure destruction. Those left alive now faced a bleak future, and as their only remaining Guardian Pagan had nothing to offer them except the lie that The Catalyst still lived.
Lucky Kert had been saved the anguish of trying to live with himself, knowing his small royal charge had died such a pointless death, the second king to die due to his negligence. Lae, however, was very much alive and she had loved Lenid as fiercely as any natural mother could. So large a love must surely leave a fearful wound when it was wrenched away. Pagan could not begin to comprehend her pain.
‘Though sadness lies in our hearts at these recent losses,’ she said at last, ‘I see also strength and the potential for joy.’ Her hand rose, pointing to someone behind Pagan whose aura she had read. ‘You are with child,’ she announced, ‘a healthy daughter,’ and as Pagan turned to look, the woman gasped in delight and the man at her side enfolded her into an embrace.
Lae’s eyes moved on, but Pagan continued to stare at the woman, knowing how Lae must covet the child within her, marvelling that his beloved had not betrayed that envy by tone or expression. How Pagan longed to give Lae a child, to stand at her side through this adversity. But she had chosen to adhere to the grieving traditions of her House, leaving her chambers only to perform the religious ceremonies that were demanded of her as The Dark. Few though they were.
Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 Page 5
