Sunlight burst around him.
The great bowl, the mountain-head of the dragon, was gone. There was grass growing up between his fingers, as he held himself on hands and knees and hung his head to clear it. He was breathing in heavy, shaking gasps. He felt as if he had been under water for longer than he could remember.
Hands were lifting him. His legs staggered and banged into small branches. He sat heavily. There was an arm about his shoulders, steadying him.
‘I know it is hard, that place,’ she said. ‘I have made you breathe too much of it. I'm sorry, my darling.’
Ambrose opened his eyes.
He was sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of a forest in a mountain valley. Before him was a steep, sunlit, grassy slope stretching down to more trees. There the bottom of the valley dropped out of sight, replaced by the wooded hillside opposite. He could hear a stream rushing somewhere below. Towards the lower end of the meadow a narrow track ran across the slope. A few insects were busy among the grass stems, although it was still early in the year.
‘Oh, Amba,’ she said, hugging him fiercely. ‘I have been so frightened for you!’
He did not return her embrace. His head was still fogged. When she released him, he looked heavily around at the sunlit mountainsides. He saw the colours and the slopes, and the sky, and at the same time he felt that all he saw must be very thin, like a veil that might fall in an instant, leaving him under the eye of a huge creature ringing a wasteland of rocks, which was all that the Mother of the World saw of the thing she had made.
‘His name is Paigan Wulframson,’ she said, sitting beside him. ‘Paigan, the son of Wulfram the Seafarer. I did tell you; but I suppose you weren't listening at the time.’
Her voice was no longer distorted, nor relentless, as it had been on the rim of the Cup. It had flesh, and breath. And it was scolding him – I did tell you. I suppose you weren't listening – as if nothing had happened to part them all winter.
Walking in that place, it was as if he had been dreaming of her. Even when she had offered him her hand as he stumbled, and he had taken it, he had also thought that this was not her, and that a time would come when he would wake and she would be gone. Now she was still here in the day, and his feelings were coming back to him. They were not comfortable.
He did not want her there. He did not want to weep, or embrace her. She might still be dead, even though she seemed not to be dead. Or if she was alive, she would be dead again soon, and he would have to lose her all over again. He would have to go through all that once more.
‘You must remember his name,’ she was saying. ‘If you know his name you will remember that for all his tricks he is only a man.’
She had left him. She had left him to all the things that had happened to him!
‘He acts like a demon,’ he said sullenly.
‘He is a man.’
‘He wasted all the land by the lake.’
‘That land was wasted by men, my darling. Partly because of lies he had told your father, and afterwards because of a badly made peace.’
‘No one in Develin could see him. He made them all despair. Then he killed them.’
‘The tears give powers over sight – among other things. You saw how he walks among the rocks of Beyah's dream, and yet speaks into the world. No one knows he is near, unless he chooses to be seen, or they know how to watch for him. And because they do not see him, they believe the thoughts that he slips into their head are their own. And so he mocks the Angels, who have charge of our souls. And he lies, he lies …’
Her voice trembled with a kind of hatred, and her fists shook in her lap as she spoke.
‘I think he tells the truth mostly,’ said Ambrose.
‘Yes. Of course he does. And truth spoken with a false heart is the worst lie of all. But for all that he is a man, and the Angels have doomed him.’
Ambrose clutched his hands together.
‘But don't the Angels lie too?’ he said.
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘They do not lie.’
‘Then maybe they've changed sides.’
‘Amba! Why do you say that?’
‘One of them spoke to me, at Ferroux.’
She looked hard at him. ‘Are you sure?’ she said slowly. ‘Paigan Wulframson has many tricks.’
‘It wasn't him. I'd have known his voice. And it showed him to me. It showed me how to see him, and see what he was doing. It said he was the father of the house. Then it told me to go into the garden and wait for him.’
She had told him to trust the Angels. And they never, never promised anything. They just watched. The thing within Lex at Ferroux had watched, passionless, while Grismonde fought his battle with the darkness and was overwhelmed.
What was the meaning of anything, he thought angrily, if the Angels behaved like that?
‘Did he come?’
‘No. But his creatures did.’
Her eyes widened.
‘What happened?’
He shrugged. What could words tell her? ‘They could not pass the stones. They reached for me, and spoke to me, but in the end they went away.’
‘They spoke to you? What did they say?’
Ando.
‘I think they were trying to say my name.’
‘Your name! I see. I wonder … Ambrose, this may be important. The Angels do not “change sides”. If it was an angel that spoke with you, it will have told the truth. They always tell the truth, even if we cannot see the truth as they do. And the father of the house of Ferroux was not Paigan Wulframson. Did his creatures say anything else?’
Questions, always questions; but she had no idea what it had been like!
‘One of them said a word like “Anson”,’ he grumbled.
‘“Anson”? It means nothing … Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I'm sure!’ he shouted. ‘Of course I'm sure! And where were you?’
There! He had said it. He had said just a fragment of what he felt. There would be an argument now, but he had said it anyway. He hoped it had hurt.
She was looking at him with a dazed expression, as if she had finally understood what he was thinking, and yet was confused by it.
‘Amba …’ she said, using his child name again.
Ambrose drew his knees closer against himself. He was not going to answer.
‘My darling,’ she said. ‘These past months have been bad for you. I am sorry. I am sorry I could not come before. But I have had to hide. When I came up out of the pool I could do very little. I have had to grow – back into someone that could help.’
‘You did not come up. I waited for you.’
‘I came up. I came up among the brown rocks of her garden, for the pool exists in that place, too. How do you suppose I know what Beyah cries? It was awful, Amba, awful. And yes, I did not go to a fraction of the depth that there is in that pool. I have barely tasted a drop of what Paigan must have done. Still, I was confused. When I spoke to Aun it was as if I was in a dream. It was a long time before I could see enough to understand what was happening in Develin. Thank the Angels that Martin was there to hear me! I could not have faced Paigan Wulframson on my own.’
‘Why not?’
‘He would have killed me.’
‘They killed Martin, afterwards,’ Ambrose said, accusingly.
‘Amba!’
He glared at her. He saw her see his anger. Her mouth trembled for a moment, as if she was going to cry.
‘Do you think that you are the only one who has suffered?’ she exclaimed.
That was her. Ambrose had a sudden, painful memory of her standing with her stirring stick by the pot at home, driven beyond bearing as he whined for his supper. Do you think you are the only one who is hungry? And she had always served him first.
‘Don't you see what has happened to me? I am like him! Like him! Don't you care?’
For a moment she was glaring at him. But she must have seen his expression change, for she softened her tone.
&nbs
p; ‘No, Amba,’ she said. ‘I am not a monster. But the tears are in me now. In me. Can you imagine what that means? Nine-tenths of my living is among the rocks. I do not eat. I rarely sleep. I must drink, now and again, of the tears, but that is all. I fear his hunters, like you. I have skulked and hidden and prayed, in this hiding place and among the rocks, desperately afraid that they might catch me.
‘But what I have also come to fear, as time has passed, is that he has chosen not to hunt me – at least, so long as I do not try to interfere with him or with the stones. I was at my weakest in the days after I left the pool. I had very little protection. I could barely move. The rocks around that place are alive with his creatures. And yet I lived until I could come away. Why?’
Her voice slowed, as if her words themselves were made of pain.
‘I think he knows that if he lets me live, then I must go on living, like him; and that such a life as he lives in the end becomes worse than any death.
‘Above all, he knows that if he lets me live, I must see my only child die. And I will, my darling. Whether we defeat him or not, one day I will.’
She stopped. Her face was drawn. Her arms were clutched tight around her knees. And he realized that she was listening, to some sound he could not hear. And he guessed that it was the Mother of the World.
‘Capuu is a comfort to me now, and a shelter,’ she said after a moment. ‘But there may be a time when I cannot endure him any more. I tell you, it is very easy for me to see how Paigan Wulframson has become what he has become.’
Ambrose looked away across the mountainsides. His anger and his shock were both diminishing. He supposed, glumly, that it hadn't really been her fault. But there had been no one else for him to blame.
‘I'm sorry,’ he said at last.
Maybe she was waiting for more. But he did not know what else to say. Could he be sorry that she loved him? Sorry that he must one day die?
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I am far back – far back – along the way that Paigan has gone. And I do not wish to follow him. I am not lost. But do not lay Martin's death at my door. Or any of them. It is already very hard to bear.’
‘Yes,’ he said, feeling guilty now. And, ‘I'm sorry,’ again.
And that was all. The sun was on the meadow, and the mountain breeze was cool. A butterfly landed on a high grass stem near his right hand.
After a little he asked: ‘What are we doing here?’
‘Resting where we are safe,’ she said, as if no angry words had passed between them. ‘Also I have asked a friend to meet us. I had hoped he would be here when we arrived. Perhaps he will come later today.’
‘Did I dream what I saw – the dragon, and the Cup?’
‘You may call it a dream. But your body has come a great distance from Develin. The nearest place in the Kingdom is …' She looked puzzled. ‘I used to know it. The city with the big shrines …’
‘Jent,’ said Ambrose.
Everyone knew about Jent. She had told him about it many times. She had been there. He hadn't. Why couldn't she name it now?
‘I don't belong in this place any more, you see,’ she said. ‘Jent. Yes. We are some way from it, beyond the borders of the Kingdom. If you journey down the valley, which is …’ she thought for a moment ‘… north, you would come to the southern reaches of the March of Tarceny. There. That is the answer to your question.’
So they were farther south than he had ever been. The full length of the Kingdom lay between himself and home. He ought to have realized, of course, because the woods on these mountainsides looked nothing like the scrubby thorn-covering on the hills he remembered.
Yet for her, the same brown rocks lay in each place, and everywhere. Do you think you are the only one who has suffered?
After a little she said: ‘Are you going to tell me how you lost the stones?’
‘I spoke with him,’ he confessed.
She sighed.
‘He was saying it was my fault, what happened in Develin.’
‘And yet he must have hated Develin,’ she said. ‘Hated it. They were teaching people to hope. So he taught them to despair. They upheld Kingship; so he led them to abandon their king, and then he tortured them with their guilt at what he had swayed them to do. And when they escaped him, he turned his followers to kill them. I have seen him do this before.’
‘We wanted him to stop the killing. That's why I gave him the stones. He let us have one life. He told us where we could find her, and we did.’
‘My darling …’ She shook her head. ‘You see how he tricked you. Paigan Wulframson cannot order how each blow in battle falls. You gave him the stones. For that he sent you where you might save one life out of hundreds. With luck and skill you did, but you might have failed and been killed yourselves.’
‘He said there would be a price.’
‘Of course. Did he say what it would be?’
‘No.’
‘Who did he say it to?’
Ambrose frowned.
‘To both of us. Well – to Chawlin mostly, since it was he …’
‘Chawlin?’
‘Yes.’
‘There was a man I knew with that name …’
‘I think he knew you, though he never said so.’
‘I knew no wrong of him. But … Paigan Wulframson allowed Chawlin to see him, after going hidden in Develin all winter?’
‘Yes. I didn't think …’
‘Then we must guess that it was Chawlin he wanted to bargain with. And now Chawlin must pay a price, for a life …’
‘I thought he was going to be killed at one moment, in the fighting.’
‘I doubt that it would be so simple. Remember, Paigan Wulframson has only to whisper to his creatures, any day from now on, and the life that Chawlin saved will be taken horribly.’
‘Oh!’
Ambrose put his hand to his mouth.
The Lynx – Sophia. Hadn't they saved her after all?
‘Remember where his power comes from,’ she said grimly. ‘Let them eat their sons. Eat, corrupt, ruin, destroy. It serves him, but it also drives him. That is why he turns fathers against their sons, and friends against friends. That is why he prefers to turn a man to evil, rather than use a creature that is already his slave. That is why he will turn a good man, if he can find one, rather than use one he has already ruined. What price do you think Chawlin must pay, to keep his friend alive?’
After a while Ambrose said heavily: ‘I suppose it must be me.’
He stared unseeing across the sunlit meadow, where the insects wove among the bright flecks of colour. He tried to think that Chawlin would not allow himself to be forced to choose. He had been a friend from the day they had met. Yet Chawlin had named her above all others in the house. The Heron Man could send his creatures to take her at any moment. What would Chawlin do? What would he, Ambrose, do in Chawlin's place?
He remembered the hours of practice he had had with Chawlin. He knew how fast Chawlin was. He had lost count of the times Chawlin's staff had found its way past his own. He knew he was a child still. What would it be like when Chawlin faced him with iron in his hand? He felt helpless.
‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.
‘What do you want to do?’
… Helpless; and angry.
‘I want to fight,’ he said.
‘So do I,’ she murmured. ‘So do I.’
She was looking down the slope, to where the path emerged from the trees. Ambrose realized she had seen something. And there was movement down there – something among the trees, plodding steadily towards them. He could not see it clearly until it stepped into the sunlight and became a pair of horses, and, at their head, an armoured man.
‘At last,’ she said.
Ambrose saw a short figure in a stained white-andblue tunic, who looked familiar – and the horse, that big grey animal that followed him, he recognized at once.
The other beast was new …
‘Mercy of Angels!’ she ex
claimed.
‘What's that?’
It looked like a horse, although it was smaller than Stefan, and a muddy brown colour. But its head was the wrong shape, and so were its long ears. It was saddled for riding.
‘It's a mule!’ she said. ‘The foal of an ass! I suppose – I suppose riding horses must be very few in the March, now. He has done his best. All the same …’
The man looked around him, and saw them above him. Then he looped the reins of his beasts around a small tree, and began to climb the slope towards them. Ambrose, trusting nothing, watched him carefully until he was sure.
‘It is him,’ he said. ‘It's Wastelands.’
He was the same travelled, ragged figure that he had been when they had parted at Develin, and his stained armour did not shine in the sun.
‘What did you call him?’
‘Wastelands. Should we go down to him?’
She shook her head.
‘I am not Paigan Wulframson. I have not yet learned to walk in both worlds as he does. If I move, I must set my feet on the rocks of the Cup. Each place in the Cup matches a place in this world, but it is smaller. It is only a dream, after all. So a wrong step might bring me to the other side of this valley, or up to my waist in the stream. It is easier for me to be still. For now, let him come to us.’
‘Does he know about our enemy, and his creatures?’
‘He knows. He and I have spoken much since he fled from Septimus's defeat. And he too has had an evil winter since you rode with him. But you must not call him a wasteland. No man is all wasted inside himself, any more than our poor Kingdom, even now, is all destroyed. His name is Aun. He is, or was, the Baron of Lackmere. Of all the friends who helped me against your father – Martin, Evalia, Adam – he is the last. He will do his best for us.’
Ambrose frowned. After all they had lost, one fighting man did not seem very much. He remembered Aunt Evalia's voice, speaking by the fire at Chatterfall. Even then, she had known what must be done. The problem was that they had never had the strength to do it.
‘Can't we get more help?’
‘Not without risk,’ she said.
‘We should take risks then.’
The Widow and the King Page 31
