Pagan stood ten paces back, his attention all on his beloved, still naked and tied to a pillar in her bathing pool, deep within her suite of rooms, too far away for her cries to rouse a guard. Her smooth brown skin rested against white marble. She should have looked beautiful, but in his terror for her, Pagan thought the tableau obscene.
Vandal had smuggled her in on the pretence of lovemaking and the Guardsmen had been told to keep out. Naked and threatened with a concealed knife, Lae had been unable to do anything but obey his command to remain silent. Pagan had tried to gather help on the way in, but it was clear he was thought of as a jealous ex-suitor. No one would believe him that The Dark’s own husband threatened her, not when it had been clear to them that she loved Vandal so slavishly.
Or had, Pagan reminded himself. He could tell from the terror in her eyes that his son had not tampered with her mind. Vandal probably wanted her terrified, to add to his father’s torture.
‘If I kill her,’ Vandal went on, ‘you’ll have to decide between fighting me and reviving her. Because if you fight me you may take too long and she will be past the point where your powers can bring her back.’ He smiled. ‘Then again, if you try to revive her, you make yourself vulnerable to my sword.’
Pagan nodded, determined to stay focused, despite his fear for Lae. Body poised and mind alert for weaknesses. That had been his training. Vandal had received only a boy’s training, and though his powers were clearly formidable, he might be clumsy in their usage. Pagan could only hope. ‘I may finish you quickly,’ he told his son.
Vandal laughed, stirring the water at their feet as he took a step closer to Lae to place a possessive hand over her belly. ‘My child is within her. Does that hurt you, Father? To know that she fucked me,’ he glanced at her, ‘quite … voraciously, on many occasions,’ he looked back to his father and smiled, ‘while you were simpering with jealousy.’
‘Words cannot hurt me,’ Pagan said, his attention wholly on Vandal now, waiting for a moment’s inattention.
‘No?’ Vandal’s eyebrows rose. ‘Then perhaps action will.’ He twisted the knife at Lae’s throat and opened a vein.
She gasped, then was silent as blood spilled over her breast and down her leg to spread into the water at her feet, a dark stain floating in the white marble bath.
Pagan tried to steady his breath, to prepare himself for whatever would follow. He must act. If the bleeding could be stopped quickly, the wound would not be mortal. Yet if he tried to move in, Vandal might stab her through the heart. ‘Why do you not kill me?’ Pagan said, extending his sword in challenge. ‘If you want anguish, let her watch me be killed.’
Vandal smiled. ‘It is your anguish I desire, Father.’
‘I will not stand by and watch her be slaughtered. She will not be dead and you live.’
His son stilled, eyes betraying a sudden shift of attention, as though Pagan’s words had jolted him. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I will not let you kill my love,’ Pagan said.
Vandal frowned, as though for a moment he was swayed by his father’s plea. Then he said, ‘What about my love?’
Pagan shook his head. Was Vandal going to pretend love of Lae now? Precious time was wasting. ‘Let her go!’ he demanded, and took a step forward.
‘No!’ Lae gasped, her voice weak.
Vandal flipped the knife in his hand and caught it facing backwards, the tip now pointed at Lae’s breast. ‘Come at me and she dies,’ he said, drawing his sword with his other hand and extending it. ‘You choose.’
‘Please,’ Lae whispered, her stricken gaze on her beloved. ‘You must live if you would save me. I cannot revive you.’
Pagan nodded. It was sense to safeguard his own life, for in his blood lay the power to revive Lae, even from death. But to ask a warrior to stand by while his beloved was attacked … His son surely knew how such an act would eat into his soul. He must come up with another strategy. If they remained where they were, Lae would die and he would have no way to get to her. He must make his son move. ‘When your mother died,’ he said, ‘where were you?’
Vandal’s narrowed eyes flickered with an emotion Pagan could not name and he felt hope lighten his breast. Perhaps he could distract the boy after all.
‘Are you accusing me of killing her?’ his son asked.
Pagan had only planned to scorn Vandal for not reviving her. He had never imagined this. Still, he steeled his voice to anger, rather than the shock he felt. ‘I know you killed her,’ he said.
‘She fell. It was an accident.’
‘You told me it was suicide.’
‘She was drunk.’ Vandal’s hand on the dagger wavered and it nicked Lae’s skin. ‘I was angry —’
‘So you did kill her!’ Pagan took a step forward to the edge of the bathing pool. ‘You waited until I was gone so there would be no one to protect her, then you killed her.’
‘It was your fault!’ Vandal shouted, and came at his father with both sword and dagger, sloshing through the knee-deep water. ‘You killed her.’
Pagan stepped back to lure his son away from Lae whose head had fallen forward in a slump. Blood still poured from her wound. ‘You will not kill me as easily as you killed her,’ Pagan cried and parried the first sword blow as Vandal leapt over the edge of the pool.
A sound came into Pagan’s awareness then, over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. A disturbance in the air of the chamber. He saw a glittering at the periphery of his vision, to his left. This amazed him, but his son was intent on destruction. Pagan could not afford to glance away while Vandal rained blows down upon him.
‘If it wasn’t for you,’ Vandal shouted, ‘Petra would be alive. It’s your fault she’s dead!’ He smashed the sword out of Pagan’s hand and its metal hilt rang against the floor as it struck the marble. ‘You deserve to die,’ his son sobbed, throwing the dagger away to hold his sword in both hands.
Pagan dared not look away from his son’s maddened eyes, yet he was aware that the pale walls of the chamber had darkened. There was movement. People?
‘I’ve killed your whore, and now I’ll kill you!’ Vandal shouted and raised his sword to finish his father.
A dark blur from the left entered Pagan’s field of vision, then he saw feet connecting with his son’s shoulder, a clash of steel on stone as the boy’s sword clattered onto the floor. Then the dark-headed warrior rolled to his feet, snatching the sword which he turned on Vandal, now sprawled on the ground. ‘You will die for the life of my lady,’ he said. A voice out of Pagan’s past. A man he had thought dead.
Mooraz raised the sword to strike Vandal, and in that moment Pagan saw the stub on his other shoulder, the lack of a right arm, and he wondered who had disfigured him. Vandal lay still, making no move to protect himself. Before Pagan could consider whether he should defend his son against the man who had murdered his father, Kert Sh’hale’s fine blade drove silently into Mooraz’s back. The ex-Guard Captain was dead before his braided head struck the floor, but Kert was already moving past him towards Vandal, pausing only to flick a warning glance at Pagan. ‘The boy must live,’ he said, then set about tying him up.
The threat was ended, but it was a handful of heartbeats before Pagan’s mind registered the fact. Then his gaze rose beyond his son to the bathing pool, and he was off, vaulting its edge to dash through the water to Lae’s side. Blessing of blessings, his cousin Talis was already there, cutting her bonds. They exchanged a glance, both worried, before Talis went back to his task, Pagan supporting Lae’s body. Unmanly tears dampened Pagan’s cheeks, whether from relief or fear, he was unsure. But when Talis spoke to him he found that his mind was as thick as porridge. Fortunately he could obey, so at Talis’s direction they sat cross-legged in the pool and laid her between them in the water where her blood was spent.
As they began the Rite of Revival, Pagan, who knew he must concentrate, could not help the terror that froze his blood. Lae was dead. He’d felt that the moment he’d laid
a hand on her forehead. Yet Talis’s hand resting over his own gave him reassurance.
‘Her child yet lives,’ Talis said.
Pagan nodded. He could not smile. All his attention was on Lae’s face. Her eyes were closed, and her complexion, normally a smooth dark brown, was pale with the loss of blood, her swirling right-face tattoo stark against her pallor. Her black hair floated on the bloodied water like delicate strands of sea-grass. Silent tears continued to run down Pagan’s cheeks and he knew then that they were from grief. As though Lae was gone from him forever.
Talis spoke the words of the rite and Pagan closed his eyes, drawing all the power of his Guardian blood into his mind before beginning to direct it into Lae’s still body. He had no reckoning of whether this would be enough. He only knew that they must try.
A faint gasp rose behind them, and though Pagan’s concentration was fierce, he opened his eyes. The water around Lae was thick with her blood, but before he could fear that she had shed more, he realised that the rite was recalling into her veins that which she had lost. Slowly the water surrounding them cleared and Lae’s deathly pallor faded.
‘… Thus do we give thee the life thou hath lost,’ Talis intoned. ‘With a part of our own do we barter the cost.’
Pagan felt the weakness then, as a portion of his own life passed through his palm and into Lae’s mind, reactivating her body and reanimating her vitality.
Talis withdrew his hand, but Pagan could not shift a muscle. Time felt suspended, poised, then Lae’s lips moved and he heard her draw breath.
Alive.
Her eyes opened and flickered about until they found his. ‘You live,’ she said weakly. ‘I was so afraid you would die.’
Pagan gathered her into his arms and cradled her against himself, barely noticing Talis covering her with a cloak, for his head was buried against her throat which now thankfully pulsed with the beating of her heart.
‘Is Vandal dead?’ she asked, her voice muffled and warm against his neck.
Pagan shook his head. ‘Well guarded,’ he whispered.
‘Then we are safe.’
Pagan held her more tightly then, not wanting in that moment to know how his cousin came to be with Sh’hale and Mooraz, materialising in Lae’s bathing chamber just as they were needed. Some force had directed them there, but whether that was the Great Guardian or simple destiny, he cared not. His beloved was warm and alive in his arms, and his mind, which had suffered mightily from terror, grief and jealousy, could take no more. It simply would not move past love.
‘I am here,’ she whispered, as though sensing his needs. ‘You will not lose me again.’
He held her and said nothing. It was not a time for words.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
‘Living flesh makes a must satisfying meal,’ Teleqkraal roared over the sound of the wind above them.
Kai made no reply.
The demise of the anchors appeared to have increased the Maelstrom’s ferocity and that should have terrified Kai, but he was beyond fear. He simply stood at the top of the tiered stairs and looked down on the young serpent, who in turn gazed at his reflection in the sky-mirror. Kai should have felt comforted by this return to Fortress Sh’hale, but watching Teleqkraal torment and then devour the feeble remnants of the Plainsmen tribe had awoken Kai’s memory of the destruction of his own people here.
‘Only two remain,’ Teleqkraal said and Kai moved his eyes towards the captives, a woman and a boy child who lay beside Teleqkraal’s clawed foot. The blood-splattered stone beneath them was all that remained of their kin. Both survivors had broken limbs and Kai suspected their insides were crushed.
Unfortunately for the Plainsmen, Teleqkraal had arrived as they were dining, seated around the sky-mirror — all in the same chamber. While they jumped for their weapons he had swept the youngest children into a corner and begun to eat them. The few adults and older children not already captured had fought for their kin and thus none had escaped. But unlike the Northmen, who had fought and run haphazardly, the Plainsman offensive had been organised and relentless. They had come at Teleqkraal from all sides, battering him with sticks and swords to no avail. They would have made formidable allies, but Kai doubted that any mortal could overcome a God. Certainly he did not hold out hope that he would be the first.
‘You will not defeat us,’ the boy sobbed and Kai tasted his own cowardice then like a bitter oil on his tongue. The woman was silent and stoic. ‘Our people will not die,’ the boy said, and Kai saw the Plainswoman slide her broken arm across the floor, pushing from the shoulder, so that she might touch the boy’s hand with her own. Of all the tragic things Kai had seen in the company of the Serpent Gods, this was the saddest.
Teleqkraal simply continued admiring himself in the Sh’hale sky-mirror.
‘I, Raggat, Storyteller of the Plainsmen …’ the boy sobbed, his voice growing weak, ‘… go now to the High Plains with my leader.’ The woman’s shaking fingers closed over the boy’s and Kai saw her gentle squeeze.
Teleqkraal yawned, tilting his head to the side to admire the reflection of his bloodied teeth.
‘Our Ancestors … await us,’ the boy said softly, his breath coming in shallow gasps now. ‘We have fought and … died well.’
The Serpent God finally turned to look down on them with an expression Kai couldn’t decipher. Boredom? Exasperation? Then he belched, a startlingly violent sound accompanied by a fiery wind that swept over the two and finished what his attack on their people had begun. The extinction of the Plainsmen.
They lay still, silent, their bodies waiting only to be devoured.
‘I must eat more than this,’ the serpent said, flicking a claw at them.
Kai could find no words within himself to reply.
‘I must restore my strength if I would destroy this anchor. There weren’t enough Plainsmen.’
‘Should I search the fortress for others?’ Kai asked, but he knew there would be no more. Any living Plainsman would have joined the battle.
‘No.’ Teleqkraal’s volcanic red eyes drifted away. ‘The Catalyst took all but the Plainsmen with her.’
Beneath the layers of indifference shock had wrought in him, Kai felt a shift, a morsel of his humanity awakening. The Catalyst had been to this fortress in his absence? Though he continued to stare at the serpent, Kai saw her dazzling white hair in his mind, like threads of ice against the glittering black gown she had worn. He remembered how her commanding manner had stirred him, and though he had known himself to be a stocky barbarian in her eyes, he had dreamt of lying with her and taming her arrogance with his passion.
‘She waits for me at the castle by the ocean,’ Teleqkraal said, oblivious to Kai’s dreams.
‘Castle Be’uccdha,’ Kai said, then refocused his eyes to meet the curious gaze of the serpent.
‘Your voice has an odd timbre.’
Kai, who had been outside of fear for so long, felt it now, deep in his belly. He shook his head. ‘I witnessed your birth at Be’uccdha. It terrified me,’ he said, remembering the horrific splitting of the woman Kraal had impregnated, Ellega of Verdan, as the egg that had housed Teleqkraal slid out from between her bloodied legs.
‘You sounded entranced,’ the serpent said.
‘It is the castle of your birth,’ Kai replied. ‘I am in awe of it.’
‘I was born in the molten core of Haddash,’ the serpent said. ‘The mortal who conceived me was not my progenitor.’
‘There is no part of her in you?’ Kai asked, remembering her bronze hair and pale gold skin. ‘I thought it was her blood in your veins that allowed you to handle the talisman.’
Teleqkraal’s red eyes narrowed. ‘Do you seek weakness in your God?’
Kai shook his head, felt the pounding of his heart and wished the mention of The Catalyst had not woken him from the dream of death where his emotions had been lost. ‘I seek only to serve.’
‘I have further need of you,’ Teleqkraal said.
K
ai had suspected as much, yet hearing the assurance brought no relief to his heart.
‘The Loch of Verdan is newly filled with the dead. I will go back there.’
‘And I, Master?’ Kai asked.
Teleqkraal glanced back at the mirror. ‘Keep away from the anchor,’ he said.
‘As you wish, My God,’ Kai replied, bowing obediently. ‘I will go to the kitchens and forage for food.’
‘Vegetables,’ Teleqkraal sneered, then spread wide his membrane wings and rose on them, circling the anchor where it penetrated the opened ceiling of the Sh’hale great hall before Kai lost sight of him in the swirling black clouds above.
‘Why must I keep away from the anchor?’ he said softly to himself, returning his gaze to the mirror. Was it something to do with The Catalyst? Might he yet be able to redeem himself in his own eyes? In her eyes?
She would not have given him a second thought once she’d left the fortress, but Kai had been unable to stop thinking of her. That must count for something. Could he yet spend his life to buy something of value? A moment of her appreciation. A glance. If he was to die anyway, why not a glorious end, as was fitting for a clan leader of his race?
His empty stomach rumbled and Kai thought for a moment longer, then turned and made for the kitchens.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
‘I’m sorry I don’t remember our last meeting,’ Lae said. ‘My three years at the Volcastle have been stolen from my mind. Pagan told me pieces of it …’
Khatrene, sitting on the edge of her bed, squeezed Lae’s hand, wishing her friend would go back to sleep. Lae had woken an hour into the healing slumber Pagan had induced, but Khatrene was confident her exhaustion would soon see her succumb.
‘I can’t imagine us being stilted with each other,’ Lae added.
‘It was weird,’ Khatrene replied. ‘But you’re better off not remembering that time after Lenid’s death. Your grief was such a burden to you. And none of us needs burdens right now. Not with what’s coming.’
Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 Page 39
