‘Hey you,’ Sarah said. ‘Mattress too lumpy?’ It was Sarah’s little joke about the princess and the pea, an attempt to develop Glimmer’s sense of humour. It hadn’t worked so far. Glimmer did pay close attention to fairy tales, though, absorbing them the same way Sarah hung on Pagan’s stories of his home, particularly any mention of Lae.
The child held out a hand and Sarah went to her and took the tiny fingers in her own. ‘You are upset.’ Glimmer said, looking at her intently.
Sarah shook her head but Glimmer was nodding and soon Sarah was nodding too. ‘It’s a grown-up thing,’ was all she would admit.
‘I have the power to make people forget their past.’ Glimmer said, adding, ‘Temporarily.’
Sarah just stared at her. If Pagan could forget about Lae for ten minutes she’d having a fighting chance. But just as quickly as the excitement came, she dampened it down. ‘Can you read my mind?’ she asked.
Glimmer tilted her head and looked deeper into Sarah’s eyes. ‘Do not be afraid,’ she said.
‘I love you,’ Sarah replied immediately. ‘How could I be afraid of you?’ And that felt true. No matter what powers Glimmer possessed. Sarah couldn’t fear her. The trust was too strong. It was like a relationship with an adult, only Glimmer’s small body and her child frailty were so delightfully endearing.
‘You love Pagan also,’ Glimmer said, and once again Sarah found herself struggling to cope with this inherently painful honesty.
‘I love Pagan also,’ she admitted.
‘And there is more,’ Glimmer said. ‘Between men and women —’
Sarah couldn’t hear it. Not from a one year old. She put a finger over Glimmer’s rosebud lips. ‘He’s betrothed,’ she told the child. ‘That’s the end of it.’
‘I have sensed this resistance from you in the past,’ Glimmer said. ‘Yet today …’
‘Can Pagan read my mind?’ Sarah had to ask. Because if he could she may as well slit her wrists right now.
‘He can but he has not,’ Glimmer said. ‘There is a taboo against it and he honours the Guardian code.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘I am not a Guardian,’ she said simply. ‘I am The Catalyst. My destiny requires that I understand the inhabitants of the Four Worlds before they are destroyed.’
‘When you say it like that it sounds so real.’ Sarah didn’t want to believe any of it, telling herself it was their religion, not hers. But the climate changes Pagan had predicted were a reality. That had made her frightened and excited all at the same time.
Now she was only frightened.
‘The Maelstrom has begun and its effects will strengthen with time.’
Sarah nodded. They’d already had thunderstorms in the middle of winter and a snap freeze in late spring which had ravaged the wine regions further south. ‘I guess if the end of the world is coming I’m in the right business,’ she said facetiously, and as always the joke sailed right over Glimmer’s head.
The child nodded solemnly back. ‘There will be much death to redress the overpopulation of Magoria.’
‘Australia’s such a big country,’ Sarah said, ‘and there aren’t that many of us here.’ Stupid to be trying to make a case with Glimmer. As though she was the arbiter of who would live and who would die. But Sarah couldn’t help herself.
‘It is not my destiny to save individuals,’ Glimmer said.
Sarah could see the sense in that. ‘Joining worlds is a big job. I guess it doesn’t pay to get sidetracked.’
‘It may be easier,’ Glimmer said, ‘to think of it as an act of nature.’
‘And you have no idea when all this destruction will be happening?’
‘Not precisely, but I know Pagan will live.’
Sarah nodded. ‘He’ll go back to Ennae with you.’
‘His destiny is not here,’ the child agreed.
‘But mine is?’ Sarah asked.
Glimmer repeated her earlier statement, ‘It is not my destiny to save individuals.’
Sarah had a sudden insight. ‘That’s why you can’t feel, isn’t it? Because then it would be too hard to do what you must.’
Glimmer frowned. ‘I believe I would save the Four Worlds at the expense of an individual life even if I could feel.’
‘Maybe you would,’ Sarah said. ‘But I couldn’t stand by and watch you die.’ Even talking about Glimmer dying was enough to create a clutching fear in Sarah’s chest. ‘I’d rather die myself.’
Glimmer looked at her closely. ‘An interesting, if unproductive sentiment.’
‘But you’re not going to die,’ Sarah said, reassuring herself. ‘You have to live to join the Four Worlds. Pagan will make sure of that.’
‘His championing skills are more than adequate to the task,’ Glimmer replied, ‘Yet it is not his fighting prowess you admire.’
They looked at each other for a moment before Sarah said, ‘I’m really uncomfortable with you reading my mind.’
Glimmer nodded. ‘I see that.’ Neither said anything for a moment, then Glimmer added, ‘I will tell you if he weakens in his resolve towards his betrothed. The time is not now.’
‘But I’ve waited so long.’ The words were out of Sarah’s mouth before she could halt them.
Glimmer continued to gaze at her and Sarah tried not to squirm. Then the child spoke. ‘You know I am a shadow through time?’
‘So you’ve said.’ Thank God. A change of topic.
‘Yet you do not understand.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘No.’
‘You experience time in a linear fashion. I do not.’
Sarah gave herself a moment to assimilate that comment. ‘But you’re here at the moment …’ she struggled. ‘And you were here in my past, and presumably will be here in my future. At least for a while,’ she added softly.
‘I am always here,’ Glimmer said, ‘because I exist throughout time. For me, time is constant, yet I can manifest myself in any form.’
‘So … the fact that you’re young now and growing older…?’
‘Is only so you can recognise me,’ she said. ‘So I can exist in your linear time.’
‘But you were always here?’
‘And will always be here.’
‘A shadow through time.’ Sarah felt as though she was starting to understand, but didn’t want to. It made Glimmer so alien, so … other. But that didn’t change the fact that Sarah loved her. Or diminish the ache she felt every time she looked at Pagan.
‘He will weaken,’ Glimmer said and Sarah closed her eyes.
‘Okay.’ She stood awkwardly, the strain of having people see through her — first Reg and now Glimmer — wearing her down. ‘I’ll just go and …’ She waved a hand towards the door. ‘Have a vodka or six.’
Glimmer squeezed her hand. ‘Euphoria need not damage the body,’ she said and Sarah felt a tingle slide past her wrist and up her arm. ‘Lie down,’ Glimmer ordered and Sarah stumbled out, only just made her bed by the time the tingling reached her brain. She pulled the thick quilt over herself and closed her eyes.
Sarah, Pagan’s voice whispered in her car, only she knew the sound wasn’t external. Pagan wasn’t in the room with her, he was inside her mind, and no sooner did she think that but he appeared in her mind just the way she saw him in her dreams, standing in her doorway, backlit by the hall light. His hair fell onto bare shoulders. His jeans sat low on his hips.
Sarah, he said again, and inside her mind Sarah held out a hand to him, just as Glimmer had held out a hand to her earlier. ‘It’s not real,’ she told him, but he only smiled as he came to her side, then his fingers meshed with her own and Sarah suddenly wasn’t so sure. His large, callused palm brushed against hers and tingles raced up her arm. It felt real — the rush of cool air as the quilt lifted and then he was sliding into bed beside her. The mattress dipped and his hand came out of her own to cup her cheek. She gazed into his eyes, unable to believe that it might be true. Knowing it wasn’t true, but the feeling…
‘I want a son,’ she said, and felt tears on her cheeks. ‘When you go I want a part of you to stay here, with me.’
Pagan looked at her solemnly, just as Glimmer had moments earlier, then he nodded. I will give you what you ask, he said, and Sarah felt the ache run deep inside her, as though the punishment for getting what she wanted was having her heart squeezed inside her chest like a lemon. But it wasn’t punishment. It was love.
And it was also delusion. That’s what was hurting her, the fact that she could only have what she wanted in a fantasy, the knowledge that she would wake up in an empty bed with an empty womb. She started to cry in earnest then and Pagan dissolved from her mind. The euphoria Glimmer had given her tried to dull the pain with feelings of cuddling and comfort, but Sarah wouldn’t be comforted. She felt like a hole had been torn in her chest and her life was bleeding out of it.
‘I don’t want them to go,’ she whimpered.
Glimmer stood at the door, frowning, knowing her gift to Sarah had failed. She sensed, rather than heard, Pagan come up behind her.
‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ he asked.
She turned and put a finger to her lips, aware of the clumsiness of the action. The small plump arms she wielded were not designed for swift and accurate actions. She could understand Pagan’s impatience for her to grow so he could teach her battle. ‘Sarah is tired,’ she said, and took his hand to lead him away.
He averted his eyes and passed the doorway at Glimmer’s side. As always. Glimmer noted that his courtesy was more pronounced than Sarah’s.
‘She does not normally rest in the day,’ he whispered.
‘She is sad,’ Glimmer said. ‘I do not understand; however, I could see that she needed rest.’
Pagan nodded, glanced back down the hallway at Sarah’s room before escorting Glimmer to her bed and tucking her back in. ‘I hope we have not made her life too difficult.’
‘I am sure she finds it unbearable at times.’
Pagan frowned. ‘Yet I help with the farm. Surely the work is less now —’
‘She cannot marry while we live here,’ Glimmer said. ‘She cannot have children of her own, and one day we will leave and she will have nothing.’
Pagan nodded. ‘A husband would soon discover our differences.’ He glanced away. ‘She has sacrificed much.’
‘Yet she does so willingly, despite her sadness.’
‘She loves you,’ Pagan said, as though in explanation.
Glimmer simply looked at him and said nothing.
His frown deepened. ‘I do not want Sarah hurt, but I must think first of your safety. We are protected here. Would you have us leave?’
Though Pagan was her Champion and she still only a child, there was no question between them regarding her right of command. From the moment Glimmer could speak Pagan had respected her greater wisdom.
‘We will stay as long as Sarah will have us, and we must both ensure we do not deliberately cause her pain.’
‘I will do as you ask,’ he said, ‘yet I fear that Sarah’s love will give her more anguish than pleasure.’ He pulled the sheet up to Glimmer’s chin and stood.
‘Just as your love of Lae has,’ Glimmer replied, and closed her eyes to find the sleep her young body seemed to require.
As she had expected, Pagan had no reply to that comment and she was soon alone in the quiet room with the sound of her own breathing loudest in her ears. Beyond that there were cows in the distance and the occasional rattle of a car crossing a cattle grid.
Glimmer effortlessly filtered these noises out and settled herself to study the map of the Maelstrom her mind produced. She saw the end coming and had a vague sense of when she must intervene. As the time grew closer and events narrowed into an apex, she would sense it more precisely.
Storms were currently fiercest on the Fireworld of Haddash where earthquakes were already common. Volcanoes boiled the primal sludge ponds and the Serpent God’s underlings struggled to survive in their master’s absence. His illusory palace had dissolved and left them unsheltered on bare ground. The Domedwellers who shared Haddash with Kraal continued to spew pollution across the land, exacerbating the Maelstrom with their conscienceless brutality and technological expertise.
On Magoria the Maelstrom merely swirled at the edges of the seasons, jumbling them together and mixing them up. Time moved more slowly again on Ennae where the pull of the moons had set the ocean to odd sequences. The lower Cliffdweller caves had been flooded by an elevated tide, and ice on the northern mountains was starting to melt.
On Atheyre, where the remaining royals dwelt, there was no discernible change, thus Glimmer’s ‘flesh and blood’ mother, whom Sarah inquired about so often, was safe from harm. Glimmer knew that her mother’s destiny was yet to completely unfold, but soon that cycle would be ended, and with it the closure the Maelstrom delivered.
The only impediment in Glimmer’s path was what she had come to think of as the slip: a blind time into which she could not see.
A mere ten years.
A flickering in the eye of time. But beyond that flicker the possibilities multiplied, the straight path towards unifying the Four Worlds unravelled and Glimmer dropped out of time.
All she could hope was that the closer she got, the clearer that impediment would become.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘Call the herb woman! Bring a midwife! Run!’
From inside her locked room Lae heard terror in the voice of the proud mistress of kitchens and the subsequent frantic scurrying of the household staff, and as a consequence she felt fear herself.
Midwife? Why summon such a one? The child of the dead boy-king was not due for another month. Had Ghett hurt herself?
Lae limped to the door, her wrongly healed foot a burden when speed was required. Her Cliffdweller friend Hush with her long legs and nimble trotters would have beaten her to the door twice over. How Lae missed Hush, and even the maid Firde she had met only briefly while ill.
There were more shouts outside her door and Lae lowered herself awkwardly, lying on the cold stones to peer beneath the heavy timber panel. The corridor beyond was empty but she could hear the unmistakable sound of boots against stone. Someone was approaching. Quickly. She could hear the rapid strides. Lae wondered if she should pull back, if there was any reason that the sound would be someone approaching her, but suddenly it was too late. A shadow blocked the light beneath her door, and before she could think to retreat, the boots continued on down the corridor where they stopped and a door slammed open.
Kert Sh’hale. Lae knew him from a silhouette. From a scent. And hated even the air he exhaled.
Silently her lips formed the words of the ancient curse that was burned into her brain. The same curse she’d invoked the day she’d escaped her room and he’d found her and broken her foot. Then repeated when he shaved her beautiful hair to punish her for not bending to his will. The curse she would one day spit in his face.
I, Lae of Be’uccdha soon to be The Dark, will make your death, Kert Sh’hale. I will cut your heart from your chest and throw it to the hungry sea. You will die by my hand. Know that and fear me.
Lae narrowed her eyes and willed herself to feel nothing but hot hate. Yet the curse which had given her courage in the face of his cruelty, lately failed to sustain her. Her own guilt seemed to justify his actions, for in the months of her confinement she had gone over every detail in her former life of privilege and found numerous occasions where she had seen clues or heard conversations pointing towards her father’s evil. Yet she had denied them to herself so she might continue to live in luxury and contentment.
Admittedly, she had been a child, but she was no child now. Though only fourteen, Lae was a woman who lived to protect the murdered king’s unborn child so that her father would not be able to take the throne.
‘Towels. Hot water. Hurry!’ The mistress of the kitchen rushed down the corridor in Sh’hale’s wake, a flurry of servants trailing her billowing s
kirts like leaves on the end of a whirlwind.
Lae watched their slippered feet rush past and caught her breath as one slipped and almost fell. Water splashed onto the pale stones, and as Lae watched, a rivulet ran to her door and then underneath it along the cracks between the stones. Cold breath caught in her chest. The water was stained with blood.
She looked out under the door again, at an angle along the corridor where she could now see a thickening trail of wetness leading towards Ghett’s door.
‘The king’s child …’ Had Kert — no, he would die to protect the child within Ghett’s body. A miscarriage?
Lae’s heart kicked up a pace. The child must not die. Without him, her father would claim the kingdom and that must not be. Would not be. Fear for more than her own life governed her actions then, and Lae shoved a hand against the wall to push herself up, wincing against pain. ‘The child will live’ she promised herself and limped to the window, steeling herself to defy the dizzying heights and limp along the ledge towards Ghett’s room where she may yet serve the throne.
‘The child must live,’ Kert roared at the midwife, shaking her arm.
The old woman flinched, yet shook her head. ‘The mother is dead. The child will soon follow.’
‘No!’ Kert looked around Ghett’s luxurious suite, fear crowding in on him like a sudden fierce storm. How many times had he taken instruction from his boy-king in this castle? How many dreams of a future in service to the throne? Dreams crushed when The Dark had killed Mihale. And now Mihale’s child … ‘The babe will live,’ he said.
His gaze fell back to the bed and the corpse that lay upon it — Ghett, her glassy eyes staring at the ceiling, her limbs covered in cuts and blood. ‘Stupid whore!’ he railed, yet to what end? The precious burden within her would die because Kert did not know how to save it.
‘What was she doing outside?’
Kert’s head jerked up. Lae, with her stubble-hair, haunted eyes and bruised cheek, was climbing awkwardly in the open window. The very window Ghett had fallen out of an hour before while trying to escape his protection. She had known that the birth of her child was imminent and had probably thought to save herself by escaping Kert. He should have anticipated her actions, but he hadn’t. If only it had been Lae to fall and die. He swallowed back hatred. Guilt. ‘She fell trying to escape.’
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