Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3

by Louise Cusack

  Lae’s smile faltered and she frowned at him good-naturedly. ‘What other child could I have save my own?’ She shook her head, then turned to share a smile with her husband. ‘Should I have someone else’s child?’ She laughed at the idea. ‘Such miracles may be possible on Magoria, but not here. Unless …’ her voice dropped into an intimate undertone as she gazed into Vandal’s eyes, ‘Guardians have powers I know nothing of.’

  Vandal smiled back at her and the intimacy of the moment was more wounding than Pagan could have thought possible.

  ‘Your adopted son Lenid was not your own,’ Pagan said, and just as he suspected, Lae responded with complete confusion.

  ‘My … who?’

  Pagan turned on his son. ‘You took her memories,’ he said, furious and yet relieved finally to have proof. ‘What else have you done?’

  Vandal’s eyes narrowed. ‘What have you done to me? To my mother and my —’ He faltered, then, ‘— life. You destroyed my life. Surely it’s not too much to ask that you allow me this one?’

  ‘This isn’t a life. It’s a lie.’

  Vandal shrugged. ‘Jealousy is a terrible thing.’ His eyes glittered with malevolence. Lae had begun to sit forward and he pulled her back against his body. ‘Your desire to have her child be yours has twisted your mind. If you truly loved Lae you would be happy for her.’

  ‘I speak only truth,’ Pagan insisted, then to Lae, ‘Ask Firde about Lenid.’

  ‘Your bitterness knows no bounds,’ Vandal replied.

  And then even Lae looked at Pagan with distrust. ‘I would not have thought you devious,’ she said, ‘yet here you seek to steal my happiness.’

  Vandal’s hand, which had rested on Lae’s arm, now rose to brush back the hair from her forehead and remained there.

  Pagan looked at his son, knowing anything he said would be used against him. He turned to Ragnoth. ‘Come with me. I would speak to you alone.’ Then he faced Lae again and bowed formally. ‘The Dark.’

  Yet before he could raise his head he heard a short, wet sound behind him. An unmistakable sound. He turned to find Ragnoth falling to the ground, a knife lodged in his chest. Pagan’s only witness eliminated.

  ‘I will let no one threaten my wife’s happiness,’ Vandal said coldly, although Pagan saw his son’s hand tremble as he returned it to Lae’s shoulder, the palm of his other hand coming up to cover her forehead which was now creased in shock. Within seconds her astonishment at this brutal murder dissolved into a habitual smile of contentment.

  Clearly there was nothing to be done while Vandal had Lae in his power. Pagan would have to get away from them to think, to plan. He struggled to hold his composure. ‘Congratulations on your impending fatherhood,’ he told Vandal and turned to leave, unsure until he was out the door whether his fate would echo Ragnoth’s. But Vandal made no move against him. Indeed, his son welcomed his company, the better to torture him, Pagan suspected.

  The Maelstrom would eventually destroy their world, but before it did, Pagan would be forced to watch his son’s child grow in Lae’s belly. That would be intolerable. Yet as his footfalls carried him back to his own quarters he felt a spark of hope that he may yet win Lae’s love, despite the impossible odds. He would kindle that spark, though it might very well get him killed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ‘How does this anchor work, I wonder,’ Mooraz said, turning to Noola. They sat with the rest of her tribe on the steps leading down to what had been the focal point of the Fortress Sh’hale main hall. Out of its centre, surrounded by rubble, rose a sparkling mirror as wide as two men, soaring through the open ceiling and into the sky, seemingly without end.

  Noola looked up from the bowl she held and glanced at the sky-mirror before meeting Mooraz’s inquiring gaze. She brushed her cheek against his tunic at the shoulder, shrugged and went back to eating.

  Mooraz had grown used to her gestures of affection, but on this occasion her caress didn’t distract him from his line of inquiry. ‘Do you think there are anchors at the other castles?’ he persisted. ‘If there are two anchors,’ he went on, ‘there should be four. One at each castle.’

  Noola merely continued eating. When Plainsmen had no reply, they said nothing. It only wasted words. Mooraz, who had been thought of as taciturn at Be’uccdha, appeared verbose to their company.

  ‘I fear that the serpent will return to this fortress,’ he said, laying his concerns out openly. ‘He would eat us as easily as he ate the Northmen.’

  Noola glanced at him, put her spoon into the bowl and pinched the skin of her arm.

  Mooraz’s smile was slow to come. Plainsmen had thicker skins than any of the other inhabitants of Ennae. She was right. The serpent would find them a chewier meal. ‘Then he will eat me as easily as the Northmen,’ Mooraz amended, taking another spoonful of their meal.

  Noola looked at him from the corners of her eyes and licked her lips.

  Across from them, Eef laughed out loud. ‘You are exciting your bedmate, Mooraz,’ she said. ‘No more talk of skin and eating. My bedmate is gone.’

  Mooraz’s smile abruptly vanished. Although it was the Plainsman way to release the dead from their hearts, and it appeared Eef had done so, Noola was Hanjeel’s mother. He glanced at her to gauge her response to this reminder of her son’s death, but there was nothing of sadness in her eyes. She was smiling at Eef even as she put the bowl down to sign, I will not share. Leader’s right.

  Eef laughed again and went back to her food. Noola picked up the bowl and glanced at Mooraz, raising an eyebrow at his serious expression.

  ‘You are over your grief for Hanjeel,’ he said.

  Noola looked at him a moment longer then nodded.

  He went back to eating, as though the subject was closed in his mind, but in that moment he felt like an outsider. The necessity for such violent and short-lived transitions was easy to understand. Plainsmen had lived on the edge of existence even before The Dark’s pogroms had begun. Their wild passions were a matter of survival. Yet though Mooraz could understand this with his mind, his heart felt lost amid the differences. No matter that he was with the Plainsmen, he was not one of them.

  They finished their gruel and walked to the sleeping chamber Noola had chosen. The fortress had many luxurious chambers, all emptied of life before they had arrived. There had been no bodies, only splatterings of blood. To Mooraz it had felt akin to entering a crypt. Silent. Eerie. Yet there had been ort and dried grain in the kitchens and many comfortable beds. Earth shakes came and went on the Plains, but within the fortress there was no disturbance.

  You worry too much, Noola signed, then stripped off her travel tunic and lay on the bed.

  ‘I know.’ He sat on the bed beside her, his hand soothing her restless flesh, sliding up her ribs to cover a breast. ‘I think of the future,’ he said.

  Noola shook her head. Her hands rose. Don’t. Think only of this day.

  ‘In case that’s all we have?’

  She reached up to link her hands around his neck and pull him down for a kiss.

  Later, while Noola slept, Mooraz. lay staring at the fine bed drapes above him, wondering if this would be his last day. And if that were so, was this how he wanted to die? With Noola, the woman who loved him, in his arms? His arm. It should be a good enough ending for any man. Only, Mooraz could not still a persistent feeling of disquiet. Was it the boy with his accusation?

  You will abandon her. Magaru told me.

  Raggat had thrown this at him the previous evening and Mooraz had denied it vehemently, but they all knew Magaru was seldom wrong. If the old woman had been still alive Mooraz would have asked her to read the flames again. As it was, the prophecy could only be disproved by time. Mooraz was convinced there was nothing in his thoughts that took precedence over his responsibility towards Noola and her tribe. He had reconciled himself to stand by them.

  Lae was alive and restored to Be’uccdha, with a Guardian at her side to protect her. The Catalyst was dead. All
that remained to any of them was to prepare for the ending of the Four Worlds. To die with dignity.

  To die, having been loved.

  Mooraz rolled to his side and kissed Noola’s brow, smoothed now by slumber and the intimacies they had shared. He could not foretell how long or short his future would be, but recently he had determined that the future remaining to him would be lived honestly. Having spent a lifetime obeying the will of others, often to disastrous ends, Mooraz now looked only to his own heart for guidance.

  If that directive caused him to err, so be it. At least it would be his own mistake, and he would know his intentions had been pure. In the end, that was all a man could do.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  ‘You made me lose my memories when I returned to Ennae the first time?’ Khatrene wasn’t sure whether she should be outraged or grateful.

  ‘Your destiny required you to mate with Djahr of Be’uccdha in order to bear me.’

  Khatrene gave a shudder of revulsion. ‘It might have been necessary,’ she said, ‘but you can’t know how horrible that experience was for me.’

  ‘Without my intervention as the voice you heard in your mind,’ Glimmer said, ‘you might have settled on Talis.’

  ‘And you would never have been born.’ Khatrene held up a hand. ‘Okay, I accept that, but I don’t have to like it.’

  Glimmer shrugged. ‘Neither does the Guardian Pagan like my instruction to him, but he believes my voice to be that of your Great Guardian. It serves my purpose to let him believe that.’

  ‘Keeps him obedient, I suppose,’ Khatrene said. ‘Ditto for Mihale.’

  Glimmer shook her head. ‘I have not spoken to your brother.’

  ‘But … he knew you weren’t on Ennae. Could the talisman have told him that?’ Maybe he had been telling Khatrene the truth? Glimmer said nothing, and Khatrene sighed. ‘Feels like we’ve been talking for hours.’ She gazed at the monotony of white surrounding them. ‘How long have we been away?’

  Glimmer, who had been lying at her side, rose onto one elbow. ‘On Haddash ten days will have passed.’

  ‘Ten days!’ Khatrene jolted upright and the resilient cloudlike surface beneath her bounced. ‘Talis will be frantic. We have to get back.’

  ‘They are safe where I have left them.’

  ‘They’re not toys to be left behind without a thought,’ Khatrene said. ‘They’re people with feelings.’ Had none of what she’d said to her daughter sunk in? ‘They’ll be worried.’

  ‘I cannot experience their feelings without using my powers to delve into their minds. You have advised against that,’ Glimmer replied with perfect logic.

  ‘Can’t you try to imagine?’ Khatrene was starting to feel as if she’d been talking to herself. ‘Pretend you’re Kert for a minute. Think about how you’d feel being left in limbo for that long.’

  Glimmer sat up. ‘His physical location is Haddash.’

  ‘I meant … being left uninformed,’ Khatrene said. ‘You know Kert likes to control situations. Do you think he’d feel helpless? Or angry? Or —’

  ‘Can I not simply observe his reaction to our return?’

  Khatrene tried to hold onto her patience. ‘That won’t work. As I’ve already told you, sometimes people display one emotion while they’re feeling a quite different one.’ She searched her memory for an example. ‘Okay, here’s one. When my safety is threatened, instead of panicking, Talis appears calm and even makes jokes.’

  ‘I do not understand how cavalier behaviour could —’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Khatrene interrupted. ‘It’s not cavalier. He’s really desperately worried but he wants to reassure me so he acts calm.’

  Glimmer said nothing, and Khatrene had convinced herself her daughter was finally getting the message this time, when her eyes rolled up in her head and her eyelids began to flutter. To Khatrene’s horror, her daughter started to fade, as though becoming invisible.

  ‘Glimmer!’ she cried, and reached out to take her hand, feeling the insubstantiality of it; suddenly the flesh firmed again under her grasping fingers and her daughter was back. ‘What happened?’

  ‘An anchor is being destroyed. It can only be the Fire God’s child, but I can’t … see him.’

  ‘You faded,’ Khatrene said, not immediately comprehending what Glimmer had just said.

  ‘My life-force binds the anchors. Any disruption to their power weakens me.’

  ‘Do we have to do something about this?’

  Glimmer met Khatrene’s worried gaze. ‘The moment an anchor fails is the end of the world it anchors. They were to have shattered simultaneously, after which I would make the One World. But the serpent interferes.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t see him.’

  Khatrene held onto her daughter’s hand, relieved that she had not been made to relinquish it. With no idea of how much longer they would have together, each moment, each contact, was important. ‘Tell me about this … child of the Fire God,’ she said.

  Glimmer’s eyes closed again. ‘He calls himself Teleqkraal, and he has more power than his father.’ Her eyes snapped open. ‘He must have the talisman I need to join the Four Worlds.’

  ‘The Plainsman talisman? The memory stone?’ Khatrene was so caught up in that problem, she was slow to realise what the implications were. ‘But … Mihale had that. How could Kraal’s son take it from my brother?’ Even as the question faltered on her lips, Khatrene knew she wouldn’t want to hear the answer.

  ‘Your twin is dead,’ Glimmer replied.

  Coming from The Catalyst this had to be truth, but Khatrene’s instinctive response was to shake her head. ‘The first time he died, Talis and I took him to the Airworld —’

  ‘There is no return from this death,’ Glimmer said.

  Khatrene shook her head again, unable to feel the truth of it. ‘How long ago?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Moments of our time. An hour on Ennae.’

  Khatrene felt sick. Her brother had died and she hadn’t even known.

  ‘His death ended the life of the Fire God Kraal, if that gives you consolation.’

  It might, one day. At the moment all she felt was emptiness. ‘Mihale killed the Serpent of Death?’ She needed to know how her brother had died.

  ‘Kraal entered his body while he was vulnerable on Atheyre and has been controlling his actions ever since. Teleqkraal went to the Volcastle and killed Mihale, trapping Kraal inside his body to die with him.’

  Khatrene met her daughter’s eyes. ‘You knew my brother was possessed?’

  ‘I did.’

  There was really nothing to say to that.

  ‘Once Mihale possessed the talisman, Kraal was hidden from my sight,’ Glimmer said. ‘Now Teleqkraal has disappeared from my inner vision.’

  ‘Then how do you know this is true?’

  ‘He has a Northman minion who is easily read.’

  Khatrene nodded. It was real. Mihale was dead.

  She closed her eyes and put her hands over her face as a wave of grief washed her under. Her beautiful, beautiful brother trapped inside a body he no longer controlled. No wonder he’d acted so cruelly. And now he was gone. She’d lost him at fifteen when he’d ‘disappeared’ from her life in Magoria, and though she’d come to Ennae to find him, he’d never been the same brother. Djahr’s drugs had stolen his mind, and then when Glimmer, still in the womb, had taken that damage away from him, he’d only lived long enough to get himself killed trying to protect her. A handful of minutes she’d had her real brother back. Then he’d been dead, and somehow his revival on Atheyre had allowed the Serpent of Haddash to possess him. The brother she had loved was gone. Forever.

  At some point Khatrene felt Glimmer’s hand on her shoulder but she couldn’t stop crying. Her grief was like a dam breaking, and every horrible thing that had happened to her, compounded by all the bad that was yet to come, overwhelmed her.

  Glimmer sat next to her mother in awkward silence, unsure how to proceed. A faint twinge of
sympathy, like a phantom ache, came and went. Emotion for another, apart from Kert? Glimmer hated that the future now rushed towards her, but she was glad to have the opportunity to join the Four Worlds soon, before her control deteriorated completely

  She had thought love an unmanageable emotion, yet, looking at her mother, it appeared that grief was just as difficult to control. Would she feel this way when Kert died? Though he was safe on Haddash, Glimmer felt a sudden urge to see him again. She brought them quickly back through the void and into the cave, now a pocket of air deep underwater.

  Talis jumped to his feet as the two women appeared on the neatly trimmed grass of their replica ahroce garden.

  ‘I give her into your care,’ Glimmer said and stood watching as Talis enfolded Khatrene into his arms and held her there as she cried against his shirt.

  Kert was quickly at Glimmer’s side, his hands restless on her arms. ‘What happened?’ he asked, his hungry eyes scouring her body. She couldn’t decide whether he was searching her for injury or instigating foreplay, but either was acceptable, and in fact she revelled in the attention. She only wished it could go on — their time left together was so short — but she knew enough of human behaviour to realise it was about to stop.

  ‘Your king is dead,’ she told him and waited for his hands to drop, but they merely stilled. Kert dragged his gaze away from hers to find Talis had closed his eyes and held Khatrene more tightly as she sobbed.

  ‘Mihale …’ Kert sounded more astonished than grieved, but Glimmer watched him closely for signs that he would react as her mother had. She hoped she would have the opportunity to comfort him as Talis comforted Khatrene.

  ‘Come,’ she said and took his arm, easily leading him away to the other chamber where he surprised her by pulling her down onto their velvet couch. She fell into his arms and felt restored by his embrace, then pleasantly surprised when he continued to caress her and his hand found her breast. Clearly Kert’s feelings for her overshadowed the human conventions of grief. Had she been wrong in assuming he didn’t love her?