‘No animals of any kind?’ She appeared startled by this, as Pagan supposed she might. Their worlds were very different. ‘But you’ve heard of them, so it won’t freak you out.’
Pagan reached the doorway and looked in. Sarah sat on the edge of a raised bath, her hand on a metal handle from which water emerged. All this Pagan saw in an instant. Then his attention rested solely on the person next to her. Smaller than Glimmer, dark with fine, thick hair and ears on the top of its head. A tail like the hair of Plainsman, only thicker and attached to its rear. The Light of Ennae had compared his warrior plaits to a cat’s tail and Pagan, now seeing where the tail was attached, belatedly took offence at those words.
‘This is Claude,’ Sarah said, and smoothed the top of Claude’s head, flattening his ears down with her hand.
Pagan winced. Did that not hurt? ‘How do you do?’ he said, offering his formal bow. ‘Claude of the House of … Cat.’
Sarah made a sound in the back of her throat and then said, ‘He’s of the House of McGuire, actually. Formerly of the House of Animal Refuge.’
Pagan kept his attention on Claude who said not a word. ‘Have I offended him? He makes no reply.’
‘He doesn’t, um …’ She pressed her lips together then said, ‘He doesn’t speak. He’s a cat.’
‘They are mute? Just so are our Cliffdwellers,’ Pagan said, fascinated when Claude came towards him and sniffed at his boots.
‘He wants a pat,’ Sarah said, and gestured at the stroking she had done before. ‘So there are other races on your world?’
‘Those loyal to the throne come in different hues, Be’ucchda black, the others paler, but we are all of the same race. Cliffdwellers are a separate race, with cloven hooves for feet and large golden eyes. They live in the caves below Be’uccdha and are placid and obedient.’
‘They sound like my cows.’ Sarah smiled but Pagan merely shook his head in puzzlement.
He lowered a hand and stroked Claude’s head, being careful not to press down his ears as Sarah had done. His hair was indeed fine and as soft as a Sh’hale cloak.
‘Mrrrrow.’
‘He spoke,’ Pagan said, and looked up to Sarah with a puzzled smile. ‘Yet I did not understand. Does he not speak as we do?’
‘No. He speaks Cat. We speak English.’ Sarah splashed a hand in the water then twisted the handles. The flow of water abruptly ceased.
‘You cannot translate?’ Pagan was disappointed. Lae had used sign-language with her Cliffdweller playmate, and thinking of Hush reminded him of the conundrum she presented. Her people showed no ability to communicate beyond the simple pointing gestures required to deliver the ocean food they gathered for the Be’uccdha kitchens. Cliffdwellers had always been thought of as witless. Yet Hush had been clear-eyed, purposeful and resourceful. It would surprise many to discover that at least one Cliffdweller was intelligent.
‘Pets are different.’ Sarah frowned. ‘It’s … not like talking to people.’ She shrugged and leant down to pick Claude up, cradling him in her arms just as she had cradled Glimmer hours earlier. ‘Aren’t you a good boy,’ she said, scratching behind his ear.
‘Claude is a child?’ Pagan asked, hearing the tone of her voice, thinking this must be the reason they had yet to understand each other.
‘No, he’s just … he’s a cat. They don’t understand. They’re not … intelligent like people.’
Pagan looked at Claude, cradled in Sarah’s arms, rubbing his head against her forearm. ‘I will not argue about that which I do not understand,’ he said, realising that kissing Lae had matured him. The Pagan of old had liked nothing better than to argue, no matter which side the truth lay on. His father’s diplomacy lessons must finally be taking root. ‘Yet I see no misunderstanding on Claude’s part. It is only you who do not understand what he says.’
Sarah gazed at Pagan in consternation, and for a moment he wondered if he had hurt her again.
‘Are you sure you’ve never seen a cat before?’ she asked softly. ‘Glimmer hasn’t?’
Pagan tried to understand why she was doubting him. Couldn’t. ‘Glimmer is newly born and I have told you that I am a stranger on this world.’
‘Okay, but earlier I saw Glimmer and Claude … talking, I think.’
Pagan nodded at this. ‘The Catalyst is a powerful being. She will grow to possess the strength to join the Four Worlds. To communicate without speech is a much lesser skill.’
‘Maybe to you,’ Sarah said, ‘but I don’t know anyone else who can talk to cats.’ She put Claude down and he walked away with his tail pointed up and his bottom shamelessly bared.
Pagan looked away, embarrassed.
‘Wait a minute.’ Sarah turned back. ‘Join the Four Worlds? Glimmer is just a baby.’
‘She is The Catalyst, the one prophesied to join your world of Magoria, mine of Ennae, plus Haddash and Atheyre.’
Sarah frowned as though the names confused her. ‘Why those worlds?’ she asked. ‘There are thousands of worlds —’
‘Yet only four worlds have life.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Finally she said, ‘My world is one of only four inhabited planets? In the whole universe there are only four? And we’re screwing ours up!’
Claude rubbed up against Pagan’s ankle and he crouched to pat him again. ‘I do not know “universe”,’ Pagan said, looking up at Sarah, surprised that her people hadn’t known their world was precious. They must truly be lost in illusion. ‘But I know the truths I have been taught. These Four Worlds, now linked only by the Guardian power that brought me here, will soon become one. The Maelstrom will tear them apart and The Catalyst will join what remains.’
Sarah put up a hand. ‘Whoa. Maelstrom?’ She waited until Pagan had stopped patting Claude and straightened. ‘Is that some kind of a storm? Coming to tear my world apart?’
Pagan nodded calmly.
‘And the baby on my bed is going to stop it?’
‘This child is unlike any ever born. On your world or mine.’
Sarah looked dazed. ‘Frankincense and myrrh, and it’s only June.’ She handed Pagan a towel. ‘I’ll leave you to it. I need to … lie down I think.’
With the door closed. Pagan gazed around, found a mirror in which his reflection was razor sharp and a seat with a hole in the middle. He was just frowning at that when there was a knock on the door.
‘You decent?’
‘I am yet to disrobe,’ Pagan called back and opened the door.
‘Forgot to tell you about the plumbing,’ she said. ‘This is the toilet,’ she pointed, ‘for … bodily wastes.’ She stepped forward and depressed a section on the top, whereafter a torrent of aerated water drained through it. Pagan had to smile, the more so when he saw the colour in her cheeks. ‘And when you’ve finished the bath, you pull out the plug.’ She pointed to a small round piece at one end. ‘The water drains out of there too.’
‘Magoria is indeed remarkable,’ he said, more to please her than because of the ‘plumbing’. A race of people who could not communicate with the others in their world was a primitive race indeed. However, Pagan knew it would be wise to keep such opinions to himself. At least for the moment.
‘Just wait until you see the television,’ she said, but a moment later her smile faded. ‘Then again, maybe we won’t bother with that for a while. It might be too much.’
Pagan inclined his head. ‘We are in your hands.’
‘Indeed?’ Sarah said, then turned to let herself out. ‘How … exciting.’ She spoke in an undertone as she stepped into the hallway. ‘I wonder if Reg delivers vodka?’
CHAPTER SIX
‘Awaken to sense, Mooraz,’ a voice demanded. ‘Where is my daughter? Where is my newborn son?’
Beyond his closed eyelids Mooraz saw an orange glow, as though a fiery brand were being held before his face, yet no heat warmed his skin and neither did he feel the cold stones of the shrine floor beneath his back. As though a thin strand of life held
him on this world, Mooraz had only the emotions that lived in his heart to tell him that he was alive.
‘Mooraz!’
A sound. Slapping. Yet still Mooraz felt nothing.
‘Open your eyes if you would live.’
Mooraz considered this. Would he live? Or would he rather die? Having failed to rescue his Lady Lae, should he not simply finish what Sh’hale had begun with a slash of his sword and relinquish his life in this solemn house of death?
‘I will find her. And then she will pay for turning my generosity into treason …’
Mooraz heard the threat in these words and they woke his slumbering will. The Dark was hunting his daughter. Once found, he would punish her. Perhaps kill her. Could Mooraz be of service to his lady yet?
‘Mmm … Lord,’ he groaned, and found that this small act of speech robbed him of further strength. Would he die in any case, whether he willed it or not?
‘Mooraz, speak to me.’ The Dark demanded. ‘Where is my daughter? Where is Lae? Does she have my son with her? I saw in the distance my wife, The Light, with her accursed brother and their Champion Talis, rising to Atheyre on a Column of Light but no child with her. Did she give it to Lae or the Guardian Pagan? Where is the child of The Light who will join the Four Worlds?’
Mooraz struggled to concentrate. He had seen no babe. Had looked for nothing but the safety of his lady, whom he had found alive in the company of Kert Sh’hale — the only two to survive the massacre in the crypt. Knowing Kert would do her ill, he had tried to deliver Lae to safety but she had believed him on a mission to return her to her father and had foolishly taken Kert’s side. The sword fight that ensued had been short and conclusive. Kert had taken Lae, and Mooraz, with a severed arm, had been left to die.
Ignoring the blur of sensation Mooraz now experienced in his body, he focused on Lae’s safety. ‘Daugh … ter … dead,’ he told The Dark, hoping this would end a search that could only bring grief to his lady.
‘Dead? My daughter is dead?’
Mooraz searched those slowly spoken words for sign of compassion or forgiveness. He willed his eyes to open but they would not. His mind clouded and he could smell again. Blood. A strong scent of blood.
‘She is of no use to me dead,’ Mooraz heard The Dark say, then more pensively, ‘But where lies her body?’
Mooraz was losing control of himself. The necessities of the body were intruding on the serenity of his near-death, pulling him back to life, to pain. ‘Sh’hale …’ he gasped, but that was all. Fire overtook his mind, and his body was his own again. The only sounds falling from his lips after that were moans of unendurable agony.
Djahr of Be’uccdha, known by his followers as The Dark, turned away from his Guard Captain, irritated by the sound of his physical distress. It seemed to illustrate Djahr’s own helplessness in the face of unfolding events. The blackness of the Great Guardian’s displeasure had come and gone with no sacrifice made to dispel it. A first in the history of Ennae.
Always in the past, The Dark had sacrificed an evil one to restore The Balance and the blackness had receded. Was the child of The Light already exerting his powers? The only other could be Lae, if she had taken the title from him prematurely.
Yet Mooraz claimed to have seen her dead. Djahr looked around the crypt again but the faint morning light filtering in through the skylight wasn’t adequate to illuminate all the bodies. He took a firestone from his pocket and scraped his fingers over it, creating a spark which he flicked onto a wall brand. Once lit, it burned steadily and Djahr inspected the desecrated resting place of their royalty, its rich tapestries torn from the walls and now littered with the bloodied bodies of Sh’hale Guardsmen and the ugly albino Raiders Djahr had engineered an alliance with in a desperate bid to secure possession of The Catalyst. There were no dark-skinned Be’uccdha in the Royal Shrine save himself and Mooraz.
He turned back to his Guard Captain, ‘Why would Sh’hale take the body of my daughter?’ Then more softly. ‘Was she fool enough to tell him who murdered his king?’ It was no surprise that Kert Sh’hale had survived. He was the best swordsman in the realm.
Djahr’s gaze fell onto his tightly bound captive. He considered her for a moment then said, ‘Perhaps Sh’hale intends to display her corpse as a warning to me. As I intend to display yours to your filthy tribesmen.’
The Plainswoman merely glared at him, the gag in her mouth preventing speech. In the shadowed darkness of the Royal Crypt her slanted eyes shone like slivers of pale bone, and though he hated all Plainsmen, Djahr could not help but marvel at her powers of survival. She had been injured recently, and her black shaggy hair was stiff with her own blood. Yet she had assisted The Light to deliver her child, as witnessed by the birthing cord Djahr had found on her person when he’d captured her. Filthy talisman. Yet though he had tested her resistance to pain, she had spoken not a word.
Djahr would have killed her then, only with his Guardsmen all slaughtered in the royal compound and a three-day march ahead of him to Castle Be’uccdha, he may need a hostage to ensure his safety through Plainsmen lands. His Guard Captain Mooraz would have been of even greater use, yet here he lay with his sword arm severed at the shoulder, near to death. Useless.
A noise from the Plainswoman caught Djahr’s attention. She was trying to speak, nodding towards his fallen Guard Captain. He walked towards her, wondering if she recognised Mooraz. Or had the threat of displaying her corpse to her tribesmen loosened her tongue?
‘Speak,’ he ordered, and reached down to rip the gag from her mouth, leaving her wrists bound to the pillar where he’d secured her.
‘The child of The Light was born in this place,’ the Plainswoman said, her voice surprisingly strong considering strangulation was one of the forms of persuasion Djahr had used on her.
Yet what was her motive in revealing this fact? ‘That may be true,’ he said cautiously. ‘It was from within this shrine that I saw The Light rise to Atheyre. But that being so, where is her child — our child — now? Where is my son?’
The Plainswoman looked up slowly, an insolent smile on her face aimed at his swirling right-face tattoo. ‘Your child is called Glimmer, and I know not where it is.’ She nodded towards Mooraz. ‘But he may.’
‘My son has no name until I name him, scum,’ Djahr said.
The Plainswoman’s smile faded. ‘You cannot take a name away, the child’s or mine. I am Noorinya, the leader of my people —’
‘You are soon to die. I have no interest in your name.’
Behind him the Guard Captain continued to moan and Djahr felt angered at the sound, as though it was delivered expressly to annoy him. What the Plainswoman said could be true. If Mooraz had seen Lae to know she was dead, he may also have seen the child. Could Sh’hale have him? At least he would be safe in the royal Champion’s care. Sh’hale’s fanatical loyalty to the throne had made Djahr’s assassination of Mihale difficult until he had come upon the king unprotected in the Elder Stand. Now that loyalty would work in his favour.
Djahr glanced back at Mooraz who lay in a pool of his own blood, the severed arm a distance away where Djahr had kicked it. The heavy braids of his Guard Captain’s hair obscured the wound but there was no doubting it was fatal. Unless …
‘Have you any magic to cure him?’ Djahr asked the Plainswoman.
‘I can stop the flow of blood,’ she replied. ‘And there are healing plants I could use. In my satchel.’
Djahr narrowed his eyes, trying to see inside the Plainswoman’s heart to find the reason she would offer such services. Djahr wanted Mooraz alive to help him find his son, but the Plainswoman had no such imperative. Still, what harm could it do to let her at Mooraz? She could do no further damage and may indeed be of help.
So thinking, he upended her fibre bag to reveal various dried leaves and twine. Nothing harmful to himself. Then he set to work, tying the Plainswoman’s feet with a length of rope that secured her to the pillar before untying her hands and stepping out of h
er reach. He nodded towards Mooraz. ‘Cure him,’ he commanded, then watched as she hopped over to the body and fell to her knees, scrabbling across the smooth stones to retrieve her medicinals.
‘The birthing talisman,’ she demanded, and Djahr took it from his robe pocket and threw it to her.
This she knotted above the wound, securing large leaves over the stub of Mooraz’s arm. He had stopped moaning and appeared to have lapsed into slumber, or something like. Djahr wondered idly if he was dead. He took a slice of dried sweetbread from his own supplies and savoured its fine texture as it dissolved in his mouth, eating from boredom, rather than hunger, though he was sure the Plainswoman would be starving. He deliberately dropped a half-biscuit on the floor and then flicked it away into the shadows. ‘Is he dead?’ he asked.
‘I thought The Dark had powers of discernment,’ the Plainswoman replied, not pausing in her task. ‘If you can tell sin from virtue, how can you not discern life from death?’ At this she raised her head to look a challenge at him.
Djahr did not favour her with a reply, merely continued eating, yet bitterness boiled within him like acid. The powers of discernment his noble Be’uccdha blood should have afforded him had not manifested at puberty as they had in all his ancestors. Djahr had never read an aura, had never seen into a man’s soul. Yet to take the spiritual title from his father, he had been forced to feign the act with the assistance of his Shadow Woman, she who had come to him when he had been most despairing and had told him she was part of his destiny.
Djahr had kept her presence in his life a secret and had relied on her for everything: the fulfilment of his sexual needs — for she could change into any pleasing shape; wise counsel, and most importantly to assist while he conducted the rites of his office, standing invisible at his side whispering the sins of his followers in his ear so that he might denounce them and earn himself respect.
Yet now the Shadow Woman was gone and he was alone. Still, there was more than respect to be gained in the wake of Mihale’s death. With the child of The Light in his control, Djahr would live to see the Four Worlds joined, and himself the master of them. No need then to pander to the whims of the Great Guardian. With The Catalyst’s power at his beck, Djahr of Be’uccdha would rule the One World in majesty and strength and his name would be the people’s only religion.
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