From their vantage point Talis could see Noorinya’s eyes open to thin slits, yet he doubted The Dark would see.
‘More than three and less than ten,’ a voice said. From the outskirts of the seeing-storm a Northman stepped and Talis felt his heartbeats slow. The Dark was allied to the Northmen? Their mortal enemies. His beloved had suspected this, but to see it confirmed was to know such anger as Talis had difficulty controlling. His breaths came more quickly as he watched their conspiratorial discourse. ‘We will battle them on the morrow,’ the Northman said, ‘and take pleasure in claiming their skins.’
The Dark turned to gaze at Noorinya. ‘Your sport would slow our progress,’ he told the Northman. ‘I would ward them away instead.’
‘I have no warding charms,’ the Northman began, ‘save a spear and —’
‘I have the very thing to keep them from following us,’ The Dark declared, and nodded towards Noorinya. ‘For just this purpose have I kept her alive. Her fresh corpse will be all the deterrent we require.’
‘No,’ Khatrene whispered and her fingers bit into Talis’s hand. ‘Not Noorinya.’
Though they’d had good cause to dislike each other on first meeting, Talis knew that a bond of friendship had built between the two women, forged in hardship and yet culminating in joy when Noorinya had delivered Khatrene’s child. To watch her death now…
The Northman stepped forward and grasped Noorinya’s hair, dragging her to her feet. She stumbled and regained her balance, then simply stood still, her eyes dull with exhaustion and defeat. Her voice emerged lifelessly, as though she was already dying. ‘I go to join my brother Preeshuz and my nephew Weedah, and the others of my tribe who I will find on the High Plains.’ This said to the Northman before she transferred her blank gaze to The Dark. ‘You will know pain before you die and the sum of your evil will be loaded upon you.’
The Dark simply turned away. ‘Kill her,’ he said and the Northman unsheathed his dagger.
Before he could act, Talis waved a hand before them and said, ‘Still the vision. I would see no more.’ Khatrene had buried her head in his shoulder and he would not assail her eyes with what they were unable to prevent.
The surface before them went obediently blank and looked no different to any other part of the misty landscape.
‘You have your brother,’ Talis reminded her, hoping that seeing him alive may take her mind from the contemplation of those who were not, but it was some time before she raised her head.
‘How can one person be so bad?’ she asked. ‘When I think about what Djahr has done …’
‘I know.’ Within Talis hatred dwelt also. Yet he knew the remedy for that. ‘We must hold onto what we have,’ he said. ‘We have love, we must not lose that.’
Khatrene nodded, her eyes large and haunted in her pale face. ‘I do love you,’ she said, ‘but sometimes I hate him so much I can’t feel the love. It’s as though there’s no room for anything but hate.’
Though it grieved him to hear these words, Talis understood her anguish. No one had lost more to The Dark than she: her parents, her brother, her own child. Yet as Talis had protected her from The Dark, now he must protect her from herself. ‘I fear that we are trapped on this world,’ he said, ‘and our hatred will serve no purpose here but to make misery of our lives.’ He touched her hair then took his hand away. ‘I bid you look no more into the seeing-storm; instead concentrate your heart where it may do the most good — in service to your brother who now joyfully lives.’
She nodded solemnly. ‘I am glad about that,’ she said, and after a moment reached up to take one of his warrior plaits between her fingers and toy with it, her eyes unable to meet his own. Then she turned to cradle herself in his arms. Talis was happy to accommodate her. ‘But Mihale won’t wake up. What can we do?’
‘I have no answer,’ he replied, pleased that he had steered her thoughts away from unprofitable fretting. He gazed at their king. ‘My Guardian power sees that your brother’s body is hale, yet his mind will not awaken to thought.’
‘Like a coma,’ she said absently, then to Talis, ‘On Magoria when people can’t be woken, the healers think they can still hear, so they ask their relatives to talk to them and sing to them and … generally behave normally as though they expect them to wake up.’
‘This we can do,’ Talis replied readily, adding, ‘although my singing voice is not as accomplished as some.’
‘Can’t be worse than mine,’ she said softly.
Talis could hear sadness edging her voice again and he strove to distract her. ‘Will you teach me a song from Magoria?’ he asked. ‘The one of which you are so fond.’
‘“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”?’ She rubbed her cheek against his arm and snuggled closer. ‘I don’t have an aura anymore,’ she said, and he was pleased to hear her sounding relieved rather than disappointed.
Talis found it odd that the display of multicoloured light bursting from her skin, which had proved she was The Light of their prophecies, had disappeared when they reached Atheyre. Perhaps it had fulfilled its purpose. If she had not been recognised as The Light she would never have been given to The Dark in marriage. While that joining still troubled Talis’s heart, he took comfort from the fact that Khatrene had been destined to bear a child with The Dark. No other pairing would have produced The Catalyst. Like much of Khatrene’s life, it had been painful but necessary.
‘Maybe I should stop singing that,’ she said.
Talis looked at her blankly for a moment before he remembered the thread of their conversation. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, ‘’Tis a beautiful ballad, and aura or no, I would hear it again.’
‘Sure you don’t want me to teach you “Stairway to Heaven”? It’s more apt in the circumstances.’
‘Your brother will remember neither tune as he has no recollection of his time spent with you in Magoria.’
Khatrene was silent a moment. ‘Maybe. But if a part of him does remember, we should definitely sing “Stairway to Heaven”.’
‘He admired this ballad?’
‘Hated it,’ she said.
Talis shook his head. ‘You make me glad that I had no sister.’
‘To torment you?’ Khatrene turned to look at him. ‘You had Pagan for a cousin. I’d say that’s torment enough for any man.’
Talis simply nodded. There was no arguing with that.
CHAPTER NINE
Sarah stood at the front door in her bathrobe, eyes blearily adjusting to the morning glare. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Reg told me you had a baby,’ Melissa said and tried to push past Sarah into the house. She had her I’m-your-sister-you-can’t-deny-me expression on.
Sarah pushed back. ‘No.’ The two sisters looked at each other, Melissa a half a head shorter and half as heavy again, hence her nickname of Cuddlepie. ‘I have grieving people in my house, not a circus,’ Sarah said. ‘Go away.’
‘You always have grieving people around you. It’s what you do.’
‘These people are different.’
Melissa wasn’t about to be deflected that easily. ‘Who are they? How did they come to be living with you?’
Sarah wasn’t sure whether she wanted to give Pagan’s story a trial run or just tell Melissa to shove off. ‘It’s six a.m.’ Not to mention that it was unseasonably hot for early winter. So hot, in fact, that if Sarah didn’t know better she’d swear there was a thunderstorm brewing.
‘You’re normally up for a jog at five. Why were you still in bed?’ Melissa was pressing against her arm, incredibly still trying to get in.
‘Stop,’ Sarah said, and the pressure eased. Melissa switched her gaze from inspecting the hallway behind Sarah to meet her eyes, the McGuire blue of Melissa’s lost in her fleshy face and the dreadful toffee-coloured frizzy perm her sister had actually paid money for. ‘You are being even more insensitive than usual, Melissa,’ Sarah said slowly. ‘I don’t know why. I don’t care why. I just want you to leave.
Now.’ Her bantering tone had fled and Melissa suddenly realised it wasn’t a joke. She took a step backwards.
‘Who are they?’ she asked softly.
‘The husband and baby of my friend. My dead friend. Lae.’
The words appeared to break through the barrier of Melissa’s insatiable curiosity and her expression softened. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go.’ She didn’t even ask who Lae was and Sarah was beginning to think it had been too easy when her sister’s eyes slid away from hers to look over her shoulder. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ she said in the same tortured undertone Sarah herself had been blaspheming in for the past twenty-four hours, and Sarah knew, even before she turned around, that Pagan would be standing behind her.
Okay, get it over with. ‘Melissa, this is …’ But when Sarah turned around, her eyes involuntarily widening, Pagan started backing down the hallway, the trousers she had loaned him hanging low on his hips, the shirt unbuttoned above it. Breathtaking didn’t begin to describe that chest, those abdominals, but something was wrong and before she could ask him he shook his head and stepped back into the guestroom, his room, and closed the door. Sarah could only stare, wondering what had upset him. Melissa?
‘Snug, I’m sorry.’ Melissa touched her arm and Sarah dragged her gaze back. ‘I’ll see you Friday morning to set up for the McLennan funeral. Call me if you need anything before then.’
‘Sure.’ Sarah stayed on the verandah while her sister padded down the stairs and as always she was struck by how graceful overweight people could be, even sliding into the driver’s seat of a too-small car.
‘Bye,’ Melissa called, and Sarah waved absently. Then the frown was back as she shut the front door and retraced her steps down the hallway, stopping at Pagan’s door. She knocked once, softly. ‘You okay?’
‘I do not understand the significance of these three letters,’ he said and Sarah had to repeat what she’d said inside her mind to get it.
‘Sorry. I meant all right. Are you alright?’ There was no immediate reply so she added, ‘You seemed upset and …’ Antisocial? ‘… Maybe you’re tired.’
‘Guardians do not become tired,’ he said.
They don’t get sick either. ‘Well, it was just my sister, Melissa, being nosy. I told her the story about Lae and she bought it.’ That should cheer him up.
‘I heard you speak of Lae.’ A brave voice, hiding something.
Sarah gazed at the solid timber door in annoyance. She wanted to see the look on his face. Just wanted to see his face, to be honest. ‘Is Glimmer alright?’
‘She slumbers now. Warm, dry and well fed.’
‘Good. I’ll make us breakfast,’ she said. ‘Just come to the kitchen when you’re ready.’
Pause. ‘Very well.’
Sarah nodded at the door even though he couldn’t see her, then headed to the kitchen and stood in the patch of sunlight that fell from the broad casement windows over the sink, letting it warm her up. She filled a glass of water and poured it into the planter on the windowsill, filling the room with the heady scent of lemon balm, basil and chives. Five minutes later that was competing with the coffee percolator and cooking toast, but still no Pagan.
She frowned then took the frypan off the stove, slid half the cheese and chive omelette onto her plate and sat to eat. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said to herself, ‘even if he’s not,’ snatching up a slice of Vegemite toast and taking a munch.
‘He is famished,’ Pagan said from behind her and she turned to find him standing in the doorway properly dressed, his pants belted, shirt buttoned and tucked in and his silky dark hair brushed and freshly plaited at the front. He looked like a little boy all freshly slicked up for his first day of school, except of course that he was one hundred percent adult male. In fact she could almost smell the testosterone from where she sat. Or maybe that was just her hormones going into overproduction again.
‘Omelette’s on the stove,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Bread’s in the toaster, just push down that button,’ pointing at the lever. ‘Coffee?’ She nodded at the percolator.
Pagan smiled and she decided that dimples shouldn’t be allowed before eight a.m. They were too hard to resist while she was still half asleep. ‘The Light of Ennae spoke of coffee,’ he said. ‘Her rapture was quite marked.’
Sarah had to smile back. ‘She missed that, did she? Suppose I would too.’ She got up and poured them both a cup, deciding it would be safer to show Pagan how to use things, rather than tell him, especially if they were potentially dangerous, like a jug of boiling coffee. When she’d explained where eggs came from he settled for toast. Looked like she’d be eating all the bacon on her own too.
Great. How was she going to integrate a vegetarian Russian refugee into a redneck town in the middle of cattle country? Sarah was the district funeral director, she couldn’t become a recluse. Even counter lunches at the pub — the town’s main social interaction — were devoid of vegetables. Well, maybe you could get a side order of chips. But apart from that it was T-bone, chops, rib fillet or sausages for the kids. You ate dead cow or you starved.
Problems were starting to mount up so she took a large swig of her coffee and asked, ‘Did Glimmer’s mum tell you where she lived while she was here?’ hoping to take her mind off how difficult this was going to be.
Pagan frowned. ‘A strange name. Dak-a-roo?’
Sarah blinked. She lifted a hand and pointed east. ‘That’s … a real town. Not far.’ She hadn’t been expecting that, perhaps subconsciously hadn’t believed his story because it sounded so far-fetched, royals from another world secretly in exile in an ordinary little town. ‘There should be records,’ she said. ‘Birth, death —’
‘They were not born there, but our Queen Danille, Glimmer’s grandmother, died on Magoria.’
‘A death record. I could request that on my computer right now.’ She received them every week. ‘And when Khatrene and her brother went back to your world —’
‘Ennae.’
‘Right, they could have been listed as missing persons.’ She could look that up too. Her thoughts drifted around for a moment, then she realised Pagan was sitting patiently with his toast going cold in front of him. ‘Please, eat,’ she said and he did.
It was funny watching his face as he ate — the expression of pure bliss at the first swallow of coffee, then the tentative pursing of his lips as he chewed the toast and eventually swallowed as though it was a brick.
‘Vegemite is an acquired taste,’ she said. ‘All of Australia love it but I don’t think it sells well in the States.’
He took another sip of coffee, then looked up at her, not keen to start back into the toast straightaway. ‘Is this what you call your kingdom? Australia?’
She smiled. ‘Kind of. That’s the name of my country, a big island surrounded by water. But there are other countries across that water, other kingdoms.’
‘Ennae is surrounded by water,’ he offered. ‘The Everlasting Ocean. Yet there are no other lands, only ours.’
She nodded, swallowing her last bite of omelette. ‘You guys have sailed all around and explored the ocean, have you?’
Silence from the other side of the table. Then, ‘No, it is simply known that there is no other land on Ennae.’
‘Lucky Captain Cook didn’t think that or we wouldn’t be here,’ she said, wondering if the people from Pagan’s world didn’t have the exploration gene that was so prevalent in the people of her own. ‘He’s the man who sailed across the sea to find Australia,’ she explained.
Pagan said nothing and she wondered fleetingly if she’d offended him.
‘More coffee?’ she asked, lifting her own cup. ‘Your turn.’
He nodded absently and rose, collecting her cup and pouring them both a second, getting the hang of the percolator and the sugar bowl quite easily. Sarah had to admit she was surprised by how quickly he’d adapted to all sorts of things that were obviously new, but perhaps that was why he’d been chosen for this job, because he was
a quick learner. Her explanation of electricity had certainly struck a chord with him and he’d compared it to the power in his Guardian blood, flowing through his veins.
He took another appreciative sip, then said, ‘If there are other people on my world who do not live on the land we inhabit, why have they not found us?’
‘Same reason you didn’t find them?’ she guessed. ‘They didn’t go looking?’
Pagan frowned and looked away, his shoulders moving restlessly inside the checked work shirt that had belonged to her father. She tried not to think about the chest she’d seen, or those shoulders with the smooth brown biceps. ‘So how is your shoulder?’ she asked, nodding at the one that had been injured. ‘Sore?’
He shook his head and his glance strayed to her arms.
‘I’m fine too,’ she said, moving her elbows in and out. ‘Not a twinge. You do good work.’
He smiled tentatively at this, as though unsure whether she was complimenting or teasing him. So endearing, that smile. So …
Stop looking at his lips.
‘And the colours?’ she asked. ‘You’re okay with them now?’
‘I am hale and ready to work to earn our keep.’
He obviously wanted to and Sarah had to admit there were a lot of too-hard jobs she’d been putting off: tree lopping, fence work, ditch digging. ‘If you’re sure you’re physically up to it?’
‘I will not let you down.’
‘You haven’t so far,’ she said softly, then rose to slide her dish into the sink, adding, ‘I can look after Glimmer here. I’ve got some paperwork to do today.’
Pagan stood also, a little awkwardly she thought. ‘I apologise for startling your guest this morning.’
Sarah had to think a moment to work out that he meant Melissa. ‘My sister is never a guest. She’s a nuisance. And you didn’t startle her. I was more worried that she’d upset you.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘I heard you at the door and came only to ensure your safety,’ he said, ‘realising too late that my state of undress was inappropriate.’ The colour was back in his cheeks. So sweet. ‘Then you spoke of Lae and …’ He glanced away, trying to get a grip on some emotion she couldn’t decipher. Definitely something between him and this Lae.
Daughter of the Dark: Shadow Through Time 2 Page 10
