Harshini dct-3

by Jennifer Fallon

  “It must have been spectacular.”

  “It was,” he agreed, with a frown at the stark walls. The wall at the back of the podium had been plastered over and whitewashed. R'shiel recalled the impressive Stone in the Temple in Greenharbour and tried to envisage a similar Stone taking pride of place in this Temple, but she could not imagine it. The Hall was filled with too much of the Sisterhood's history for her to really grasp what Brak could see.

  “Do you know how much mischief Korandellan and I used to find as children, with the God of Thieves and the God of Chance for playmates?”

  “You played with the gods?”

  “It was a different world then, R'shiel. There were no Sisters of the Blade. No Overlord. Not much violence at all, to speak of, except in Hythria, but that was the God of War's province and it rarely impinged on our lives.” He shook his head and looked around with regret. “The Sisterhood has done much to be despised for, but I think this is the worst desecration of all.”

  She stared at the stark, empty hall for a moment. She had seen Sanctuary and been overcome by the beauty of it, but she had a feeling it was a pale reflection of what the Citadel had once been.

  Brak visibly shook off his nostalgic melancholy. “Come on. If we're going to do this, we'd better get it over with. The city will be awake soon.”

  “Won't the priests feel us?”

  “Not in here.”

  “You neglected to mention that before.”

  “No, I quite deliberately omitted mentioning it,” he told her. “I didn't want you getting ideas.”

  “But they found me here the last time I drew on my power.”

  “Only once they were inside with you.”

  She scowled at him. “How many other little snippets of vital information like that have you deliberately omitted?”

  “Quite a few. Now get a move on. We haven't got all day.”

  This was the Temple of the Gods. To name a god here was to summon him. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if after all this time, the gods would still come to the temple if she called. She glanced at Brak and then shrugged.

  There was really only one way to find out.

  CHAPTER 38

  Initially, Tarja survived his captivity because nobody recognised him. When he regained consciousness with a pounding headache, eyes glued shut by the blood that had leaked from the wound on his forehead, he found himself in a crowded cell with a score of other men rounded up by the Kariens. He was blue from cold and shivering uncontrollably in his damp clothes, but otherwise unharmed, which surprised him a little. Of Ulran and the others there was no sign. They had either escaped or were being held in a different location.

  Tarja's anonymity was aided considerably by the fact that the Kariens had not thought to establish the identity of their prisoners. That was a job for scribes, and they did not consider scribes a necessary part of an advance war party.

  The main Karien army arrived in Cauthside the day after he cut loose the ferry. According to his cellmates, who had witnessed the aftermath, the ferry had been destroyed by the river, which had thrown it against the bank like a piece of driftwood. It was now good for nothing more than kindling. The news gave Tarja some small measure of satisfaction. For the time being, the Kariens were stalled.

  His good fortune did not last long. A week after he was captured he was reunited with Ulran, who spied him on the other side of the crowded cellar where they were being held and called out to him gleefully, loud enough for every Karien in Cauthside to hear.

  Within an hour, Tarja found himself, chained hand and foot, facing Lord Roache and Lord Wherland.

  With the discovery of the notorious Tarja Tenragan in their custody, the Kariens obviously felt that the Overlord had answered their prayers. He became the focus of everything that had gone wrong in their campaign: Cratyn's death, Lord Terbolt's death, the fact that their army was facing starvation because there were not enough farms or cities in northern Medalon they could ransack for supplies, that the Defenders had surrendered yet refused to be cowed - even that they still needed the Defenders to maintain control of the civilian population. They blamed him for the squads of roving deserters who harried their flanks and slunk away into the night before they could be captured, and they blamed him for the fact that they were immobilised on the wrong side of the river, a responsibility which Tarja didn't mind shouldering at all, considering he actually was accountable for that.

  Everything became Tarja's fault and they intended to see that he paid for it.

  The Karien dukes wore the frazzled air that surrounds men whose success comes at a very high price. Lord Roache did not accuse him openly of single-handedly hampering the Karien occupation of Medalon, but he came close. He had spared Tarja a contemptuous glance, then consulted the parchment in front of him.

  “You murdered Lord Pieter, Lord Terbolt and His Royal Highness, Cratyn, the Crown Prince of Karien. You also murdered the priest Elfron. You are responsible for countless acts of sabotage, up to and including the destruction of the Cauthside Ferry. You are responsible for the kidnapping of Her Royal Highness, Adrina, Crown Princess of Karien, and for handing her over to the custody of the barbarian Hythrun, where she remains a hostage. You have consorted with demons and pagans and have actively assisted Harshini sorcerers. Do you have anything to say?”

  “I think you left out the bit about eating babies,” he had said with the reckless abandon of a man who knows he is condemned and that nothing he said could make the situation worse than it already was.

  “You will hang, Captain. Your crimes allow no other course of action.”

  “Could you do it sooner, rather than later?” he quipped, enjoying the effect his insolence was having on the Karien duke. “The food in the cells is terrible.”

  “You mock me at your peril, Captain.”

  “I say we dispose of him now!” Wherland declared. He was a big man with a big voice and very little patience.

  Roache shook his head. “These Medalonians need to see that even the mighty Tarja Tenragan cannot escape our vengeance. If we hang him here, in this isolated country village, the people will refuse to believe it. He has to die as publicly as possible. We will wait until we reach the Citadel. I want as many witnesses as I can get.”

  “Then a little public humiliation will have to do. We'll put him in the stocks.”

  “No. The risk of his accomplices trying to free him would be too great. He'll be confined in the camp. I intend to make an example of him that the Medalonians will not forget.”

  They spoke Karien, perhaps not aware that Tarja understood them. He did not react to their words, preferring them to remain ignorant of the fact that he spoke their language fluently. If anything, Roache's determination to hang him in the Citadel gave him heart. It would be a month or more before they could get across the river. A lot could happen in a month.

  Roache turned back to Tarja and addressed him in heavily accented Medalonian.

  “You will be confined here and transferred to the Citadel at the earliest opportunity. If you wish to prolong your life, you will provide us with the names of your conspirators and the location of your rebel headquarters.”

  “You don't seriously expect me to tell you anything, do you?”

  The Duke shrugged. “One is never sure what a Medalonian considers honourable, Captain. You might be willing to barter your friends to save your own neck.”

  “A word of advice, my Lord. If you expect to hold onto Medalon, you would do well to learn what we consider honourable.”

  “Looking at the list of your crimes, Captain, I'm surprised you have the word in your vocabulary.”

  * * *

  While hardly luxurious, Tarja's accommodation proved better than he expected. He was confined to a tent in the centre of the Karien camp, guarded on all four sides by knights who held their loyalty to Karien and the Overlord above even their own mothers, Tarja suspected. They were taciturn to begin with, but as the days merged into weeks, they rel
ented a little and from them Tarja learnt what was happening in the outside world.

  The knights told him when the news arrived that Princess Adrina was now in Hythria and married to the Hythrun High Prince. Tarja appeared suitably surprised, not wanting to spoil their outrage by informing them that he had known about her marriage for some time. The news that Damin was the High Prince worried him a little. He wondered if R'shiel had had a hand in it. She had killed twice that he knew of and never shown a moment's remorse over either man. Had she acquired a taste for murder? Was the blood of the old High Prince on her hands now? The thoughts ate at him, added to the other memories of her that continued to haunt him. Memories that could not be real. Memories he had no reason to doubt.

  Although he had no idea of the fate of Mandah and the rest of his squad, he learnt soon enough what had happened to the Fardohnyans they had found in the abandoned boathouse. When Paval informed the remnants of Adrina's Guard that the Kariens had arrived, instead of fleeing south, which would have been the sensible thing to do, Filip and his men rode straight into Cauthside in a futile attempt to aid the Medalonians. By the time they arrived, there were enough Kariens in the town to outnumber them considerably. The fight had been short and bloody. A number were killed in the skirmish, including Filip and Paval. The remainder were summarily tried and hanged as deserters the following day.

  Tarja saw their rotting bodies swinging from a temporary gallows the Kariens had constructed in the town square when he was escorted to his new quarters in the Karien camp. He felt a pang of guilt and wondered why the Fardohnyans had risked such a fate when they could have gotten clean away. In the end he decided it was some incomprehensible idea of Fardohnyan honour that made them turn back. He had seen the look in Filip's eyes when he had offered their surrender to Damin on the border. Perhaps it was easier to die attempting something heroic against ridiculous odds than return home to Talabar to face the King. The Princess' Guard had not only deserted a battlefield, but had abandoned the Princess they'd been sent north to protect. That Adrina had ordered them to do both would not matter to Hablet. Tarja realised that the same fate probably awaited these men at home. All they had done was hasten the inevitable.

  Tarja spent almost a month in the Karien camp before the rafts were completed and he was transferred across the Glass River to the Citadel under heavy guard. He saw nothing of the journey or the Citadel when the Kariens entered it in triumph. Lord Roache had commandeered a closed carriage in Cauthside, and Tarja was confined to it, night and day, for the entire trip, allowed out only once each morning and evening to relieve himself. He was transferred to a cell in the Defenders' headquarters under cover of darkness, and there he remained, completely cut off from news of what was happening in the outside world.

  Tarja did not know if the Citadel had surrendered quietly, or if there had been a pitched battle for it. He did not know if the Defenders still existed, or if Roache had disbanded them. The guards on his cell in the Citadel spoke no Medalonian and he did not want to reveal that he spoke their language, so there was no conversation between them. If they discussed the events of the day as they whiled away the hours on duty, they were too far from his cell for him to overhear them.

  As he lost track of the days, Tarja found the isolation beginning to wear on him. He had spent enough time behind bars recently to grow accustomed to incarceration - a circumstance that bothered him more than he cared to admit - but he had always had something to occupy his mind. The torturers who had tried to extract the identity of his fellow rebels from him with batons and hot iron pokers had given him some purpose, even if it was merely to resist them. But here, so isolated that he had not seen another soul for days, he began to appreciate the need for human company. He saw no one. Even his meals were delivered anonymously through a hatch in the metal door.

  At first he tried to occupy his mind with plans of escape, but with no tools to break out and no contact with anybody who could provide them, he was helpless. He wondered if feigning illness would bring his guards running into the cell, but he had banged on the door until his knuckles were raw and his voice grew hoarse from calling out to no avail. Tarja began to wonder if his isolation was a form of torture in itself. There were worse things than pain, worse than humiliation or defeat. To be forgotten; to be so inconsequential that it mattered to nobody if you lived or died - that was proving to be the bitterest pill of all.

  With escape, or even the hope of it denied him, Tarja turned his thoughts inward. Introspection proved a dangerous game. His mind was filled with a past that horrified him, yet he was coming to accept it as real. For some reason - perhaps, as Mandah suggested, on the whim of a god - he had fallen hopelessly in love with R'shiel. He could remember it all, every thought, every longing, every kiss, every embrace, every moment of intimacy, every time he slept with her curled in his arms. What puzzled him was why it had not bothered him at the time - and why it bothered him so much now. He knew, on an intellectual level, that R'shiel was not his sister, but a lifetime of thinking of her as his own flesh and blood was not so easily swept aside. Yet he had loved her, seemingly without regret, until he woke in that wagon on the way to Testra and discovered his world completely changed and no memory or inkling of what had changed it.

  * * *

  When the door to his cell finally opened, Tarja leaped to his feet with pathetic eagerness. The man who opened it was a knight with dark hair and the disillusioned look of a young man who has discovered that war is not nearly as romantic or heroic as he imagined. His tabard was decorated with three stylised pines against a red background.

  Kirkland, Tarja thought. He comes from the same province as young Mikel. What happened to him, I wonder? Did he live through this or is he yet another victim of R'shiel's destiny?

  “My name is Sir Andony,” the Karien said in broken Medalonian. “You come with me.”

  Tarja looked down, aware of how bad he smelled. He was unshaved and filthy and his cell reeked, the bucket in the corner long since filled to overflowing.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Must be clean. You hang tomorrow. Lord Roache say you must look like Defender.”

  So, they were finally going to hang him. Roache had said he wanted as many witnesses as possible and he obviously wanted to remind the citizens of Medalon that he was hanging an Officer of the Defenders. The desperate, unwholesome creature he must appear at the moment would threaten no one. Tarja debated resisting for an instant then rejected the idea. There might be some hope of escape once he was out of his cell, although looking at the men arrayed behind Andony it was unlikely.

  Tarja followed Andony and resolutely refused to give up hope. He had escaped this fate before. He had eluded death so many times in the past that he had wondered if, like the magical Harshini, he were immortal. As the Karien guards fell in around him, he warned himself not to be so foolish.

  He was not invincible. Even the Harshini were not immortal. Barring some unforeseen miracle, in less than a day all his previous narrow escapes would finally catch up with him.

  CHAPTER 39

  Dawn broke over the Citadel on Restday to the ring of hammers pounding on wood as the gallows slowly took shape. The sandy floor of the arena was littered with construction debris as the workmen hurried to finish their task before the crowd arrived. Joyhinia Tenragan stepped down through the gate in the white painted barricade and surveyed the progress with a frown as she crossed the arena floor, tugging her cloak closed against the crisp breeze.

  “How much longer?”

  The foreman turned at her voice and dropped his hammer. He bowed hastily. “It will be done on time, First Sister.”

  Joyhinia nodded with satisfaction. The hanging was scheduled for noon. “You've done well.”

  “I've no need to be doing this at all,” the man complained as he picked up his hammer. “There's a perfectly good gallows behind the Defenders' headquarters.”

  “You don't approve of public hangings?” Joyhinia asked cu
riously. She probably should have reprimanded him for being so impudent, but she was in a rare mood today.

  “It's not my idea of entertainment, no,” the foreman agreed cautiously, perhaps realising the folly of being so outspoken.

  “I see. It's not that you harbour sympathies for the criminal, then?”

  “No, your Grace!”

  “I thought not. Carry on.”

  Joyhinia turned away from the workmen with a sour smile. That should take the lead out of their boots. A few words from the First Sister and men quivered where they stood. Even the threat of her presence was enough to unman some. It was the headiest feeling. Better than wine. Better than sex. Better even, than watching someone in pain...

  The First Sister strolled back towards her office in a fine mood. The day was cool but clear, and it would see the last of Tarja Tenragan. That her vengeance had taken so long did not concern the First Sister. If anything, it tasted all the sweeter for the wait.

  At the thought of her other enemies who were still at large, the First Sister frowned. She had expected some news by now, but no word had come about R'shiel. She had last been seen in Fardohnya, according to Squire Mathen, claiming to be the Harshini demon child. The news did not overly concern her.

  Tarja would draw R'shiel like a water diviner to an underground spring. Joyhinia had made certain that the hanging had been well publicised, surprising even the Kariens with her vehement insistence that Tarja's execution be delayed until the news had reached every corner of Medalon.

  R'shiel had to come. All this power, all that Loclon currently enjoyed in the guise of the First Sister would be meaningless if she continued to live.

  Squire Mathen was waiting when the First Sister returned. He was a thin man with curling black hair, long thin features and a dour disposition. He also had little patience with Joyhinia and it was only the knowledge that this man held the key to the room where Loclon's body lay, empty and alive at Mathen's whim while his mind resided in Joyhinia's body, that kept the First Sister from defying him.