by Anne Perry
He stepped aside and aimed a hard blow at her shoulder, intending to numb her enough so she would drop the knife, but she was too quick. She twisted and fell to one knee, just at the same moment as the youth kicked at Tornagrain and caught him on the shin. The next instant there were half a dozen of them thrashing around in the dust, punching and kicking, gouging, cursing.
Sadokhar did not know how it happened, but one minute he was grappling with the woman, holding her wrist with the knife in her hand, the next her whole body heaved, her wrist turned and she was driving the knife into her own belly.
He was furious with her. He could never have denied the act, but he had not meant to do that! He watched in horror as the flesh tore open, gushing blood. She screamed, a terrible, rending cry, and her unborn child emerged from the ripped womb, struggled to breathe, made one desperate sound, and then died.
Sadokhar was paralysed with horror. What had he done? He had killed not only her, who must have chosen to be here, but her child who could be guilty of nothing!
The others stood staring at him, their faces hideous with accusation.
He would have given anything, paid all he possessed to have undone that moment. He looked at the dead child where it lay in the dust and blood of its own birth, its mother half curled around it, her belly gaping open.
“God forgive me!” he whispered, shame consuming him. He was barely aware of the touch of Tornagrain’s arm around him.
“Come,” Tornagrain said gently. “There is nothing for us to do here. We must continue our journey.”
“Look!” Sadokhar said, furious with Tornagrain for not understanding, but overwhelmingly with himself for in one act condemning them both. “In God’s name, can’t you see what I’ve done?”
“Yes, I see it,” Tornagrain replied levelly.
Sadokhar swung round on him in rage. “Are you going to tell me they are creatures of hell, so it doesn’t matter?” he accused, his voice choking almost incoherently.
“No.” Tornagrain faced him, his eyes unflinching. “Of course it matters, whoever they are. Their sin doesn’t alter your act, or the fury that gripped you. Only what you feel now can do that. God judges what you are, but also what you mean to be. If what you said about forgiveness is true for me, and it is, then it has to be true for all men, including you.”
“I didn’t mean to do that!” Sadokhar said, still staring at the bodies, his voice shaking. “I was angry ... but I didn’t know she was with child! I could never have ... I didn’t know she would die! I only wanted to be able to pass!”
“I know.” Tornagrain pulled him to his feet and urged him forward beyond the rest of the group. “We must go onward. We have things to do, a battle to fight.”
Sadokhar resisted.
“Are you going to let one mistake, however terrible, stop you from going on?” Tornagrain said grimly. “Where is your courage? Where is your trust?”
Sadokhar was still stunned. “What?”
Tornagrain stared at him fixedly, daring him to look away, to evade the demand of his eyes. “I betrayed you, for my own jealousy and ambition. Worse than that, I betrayed the ones you loved ... and you learned to forgive me. Are you greater than God?”
“Of course not!” Sadokhar said roughly. “But—”
“But nothing!” Tornagrain cut across him. “Are you sorry? Sorry to your heart and gut and to your soul?”
“Yes!”
“Then God can forgive you. Now stop standing here and find your courage to go on and fight the war you told me about. There’s no time to waste in indulging ourselves. Come on!”
“I must bring the child,” Sadokhar said hoarsely.
“Then I’ll help you.” Tornagrain was the first to turn back. It took Sadokhar longer. He could not bear the thought of looking on it again, but he knew he must. He could not leave this place of horror until he had done so.
He lifted his head and stared. The ground was simply dust, no blood, no child, only a small group of angry, sullen men and women, faces filled with inexpressible hatred so deep it twisted their features until they were barely recognisable as having once been human.
Then he understood. They were here because they were what they had chosen to be, seeing the light and the darkness, tasting them and knowing the meaning and the difference. There is neither birth nor death in hell. No child can enter damnation.
He felt Tornagrain’s hand on his arm again, a strong grip, firm, not to be denied. “Come.” His voice was warm, there was friendship in it—but stronger even than that, there was knowledge of himself and of the presence of God, even here in this place. “We must find the portal and try it again,” he insisted. “You and I are forgiven, because we have understood, and chosen the light. But we have work to do, and battles still ahead of us which we must help win. We can’t be forgiven for not trying—not when we know, and the weapons are in our hands.”
Wordlessly, but with a sudden lift of the heart, a coursing of blood through his veins, Sadokhar went with him, walking even more rapidly, running a step or two, certain of what was ahead and eager to be there.
The portal looked as it had when he had watched Tiyo-Mah go through it into the world. He hesitated, his mouth dry, his lungs tight.
“Courage!” Tornagrain said, a faint, twisted smile on his mouth, his hands clenched, and only because Sadokhar knew him did he see the fear in him, the terrible, consuming knowledge that he faced Heaven’s judgement, and Hell’s, and the decision was everything.
“Come!” Sadokhar stepped forward and side by side they went under the shadow of the archway. This time there was a door, heavy, iron-black. Not only had Yaltabaoth taken the key, but the keyhole itself was gone. Sadokhar raised his hand and touched it, then leaned his weight and it swung open. Breathless, shaking, they walked through and across the stone flags, past curved pillars that had guarded the great days of Camassian architecture, and saw ahead of them another door, standing ajar, and beyond it, light.
Sadokhar prayed in his soul that it would be the beautiful, beloved world, and he heard Tornagrain’s indrawn gasp beside him.
He pushed it wide and took the last step, afraid to look. He felt the breeze on his skin, cool ... sweet.
He opened his eyes and saw the ruins of Sylum in the amber and violet of sunset. There was a vine curling over the broken stones, its tendrils biting deep, gold trumpet flowers slender as horns. He stared at the damp soil at the roots and saw a worm slide into the mould, sleek and living in the beautiful earth.
His face was wet with tears as he turned to Tornagrain and saw him come out of the gate and then stop, blinking in the air. He saw Sadokhar and moved forward again. First his hand, then his foot seemed to shimmer as if he had reached some barrier, and as he pressed forward through it his whole body glowed. It was like breaking the surface of a pool, liquid and shimmering.
And then it was gone, and he stood in amazement at himself, at his own flesh, whole and complete. He stretched his hands, breathed in deeply, filling his lungs, and gazed around him. He could taste, touch, hear the far, bright song of birds. The scars on his cheeks were the wounds of the soul—healed at last.
It was the most natural thing, the only thing, to put their arms around each other and hold so tight they were almost bruised.
When they stood back Sadokhar saw Orocyno a dozen yards away, staring at them, his head skull-like, his body so thin he seemed barely to have substance at all. And even as they watched him, the last of the sun shimmered on his robes, the wind fluttered them and they rippled as if silk, and then water, and then no more than a mist with the light on it. And when they looked again he was gone.
There was nothing else, just life, and beauty, passion, and the greatest of all battles to be joined.
Chapter XIV
IN CAMASSIA THE FIGHTING died down. There seemed, at least for the moment, to be a desire for peace. Tentatively at first, trade resumed, people planted and began to repair and to rebuild. But it was uneasy, always teete
ring on the brink of violence again.
Ulciber was not seen, but Tathea knew better than to imagine he had gone. This was the centre of the world, the heart of the greatest population. He had succeeded brilliantly even if only for a while. He would retreat, but only to regroup before another attack, cleverer and more skilfully planned.
Was the slow, twisting corruption of Tirilis his doing also, aiding the natural subtlety of the Tirilisi? There was only occasional word from Ardesir, and he dared commit little to paper.
And yet Tathea felt an inner peace, almost a radiance, when she thought of Sadokhar. Something inside her had eased. A long battle was over, and she would not have another meeting with him in vision, struggling, sharing his agony. It was as if he were no longer there, and yet he was not dead.
She stood now in the amber light of evening watching Ishrafeli working with a farmer, trying to convince him that the labour was worth it, that he would reap what he sowed, that he should keep faith with the future. She looked at him with an ache of love so deep she was racked with it, because she saw the belief in him that they were tasting the beginning of victory, and it filled her with a loneliness that was almost beyond bearing.
She had tried to warn him. So many times the words were in her mind, but never found her tongue because of the division it would make even deeper between them. Standing by the wall of an old town in the calm of the last light, seeing the arch of heaven unbroken by cloud, the radiance ascending for ever, she knew this was the eye of the hurricane, not the end. Armageddon was not over in this way, and not so easily.
Ishrafeli would not have said it was easy! The dead were countless, not only here but in Shinabar as well. No one knew how many souls had chosen irrevocably the downward path.
But as she watched him now, talking to an old man about his vineyard, she saw the straightness of his back in spite of the long hours he had worked in the heat and dust, and it cut her to the heart that he was going to be so hurt when this did not last.
Asmodeus would strike again. The question was not “if,” only “where?” and “how?” Her imagination was crowded with ideas, but she knew the past well enough to be certain he would surprise them. It would come when they were unprepared and vulnerable, wherever they were weak. The waiting was part of the trial.
Ishrafeli concluded his conversation with the old man and walked up the incline towards her. She saw when he was still yards away the guardedness in his face. It was nothing to do with what had been discussed, it was because he feared the darkness in her.
He stopped but did not put out his hand to touch her as he would have done automatically only a short while ago. Now he told her what the man had said, and something of the solution he had offered.
“Good.” Tathea tried to invest her voice with enthusiasm, but he knew her far too well to be deceived.
“What is it?” he demanded, suddenly the raw edge of his hurt naked. She had excluded him, and he did not hide from it any more. “If you disagree with me, say so!”
“No, of course I don’t—” she began.
“Then what? Don’t look away from me! Anyone would think you didn’t want peace. People are rebuilding, sowing crops again, working with each other.” He gestured towards the vineyard and ploughed earth beyond, furrows shadowed deep in the fading light. “The civil war is over. Isn’t that what you want? Or do you see some glorious victory which we’ve missed? What is it, Tathea? At least be honest with me.”
What should she tell him? That Asmodeus was far stronger, far cleverer than anything he had yet shown? The war was real, the earth itself was the prize ... and they could lose!
Did Ishrafeli know that?
She looked at his face in the last of the sun, at the lines etched deep, and the loneliness in him. She ached to hold him in her arms and simply be close, to forget words, true or false, just to be with him in the intimacy of touch.
When the new attack came, he would be so hurt. And there would be nothing she could do to protect him from the grief, the disappointment, the jarring shock to the faith he had now that the worst was over.
She looked at him, and saw the isolation in his face. She had already waited too long to answer. He knew she was concealing knowledge, and that in itself was half a lie.
“Of course I want peace,” she said almost with conviction. “Peace is the real victory. I don’t have to look anywhere else for it. It’s here in the rebuilding and replanting.” She stopped. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was not the truth. In that instant he had understood that the war was not over, and that she knew it, and had lied because she wanted to comfort him.
He looked away, but he did not move. He stayed beside her, and she was aware of his emotions as if she held him in her arms. She could do nothing to help either of them.
With disbelief Asmodeus saw Sadokhar and Tornagrain break back through the portal. At first he was too amazed for any other emotion to find room in him. Then as he saw the two men stand together in the light and wonder and vitality of the world, their bodies whole, he was consumed with a rage so violent the dark sweat soaked his skin and his soul burned with a hatred like the corrosion of all matter. The thunder of stars breaking apart in the throes of death was split by the high, thin scream of his fury.
It was Tathea’s doing! The power of her love had taken her spirit to Sadokhar even there! Damn her! Damn her to torment inconceivable! He would make her suffer until she begged for oblivion! Until she would deny God to His face, rather than survive another hour of the pain Asmodeus would inflict on her!
She had robbed him of the soul of Tornagrain which should have been his! Had he not already won it fairly in terrible sin, unforgivable? And she had not only taught Sadokhar to forgive him but—infinitely more than that—to change him—to redeem him! She had likened herself to God! Only He could do a thing like that!
But the war was not over yet! God may have won the battle on that other world, in among the olive trees, but this was still Armageddon here, in this world, and it was going well. But he must hasten the ruin of Tathea. The wound like a knife blade in his body would twist and turn inside him every moment until he did.
How? The answer was plain. Her greatest strength was also her profoundest weakness. She loved many people, but most of all, the man Ishrafeli, who had been Asmodeus’ enemy since the Great Council in Heaven, and would be until he was finally destroyed, and the earth a smoking ruin to darken the stars.
And Tathea must see every moment of it! She must watch them all die, one by one, Ishrafeli last of all, and then know that it was she who had lost the earth to eternal night, every living and beautiful thing in it gone.
That would be enough! That would satisfy him.
He must turn his attention to Tathea again—now!
He stared across the abyss of darkness at the tiny blue jewel of world. He had gone there once already when Tathea had left the forest. It was too soon to go again. Someone, some man or woman with a vestige of spiritual vision might recognise him, and begin to understand his plan.
Ignorance was still the greatest of his weapons. People did not believe in him: he was no more than a figment of nightmare, an excuse for man’s own weakness, something to laugh at, to frighten the superstitious.
Ishrafeli had tasted power, and he liked it! Why not? He was a man, which meant he was just like Asmodeus in all that mattered. They were brothers, as all men were, from before the foundation of the world, cut from the same cloth, born of the same eternal Father. He had but to look in His own heart to understand them all! There might be a coating, an outer shell of compassion or belief in an eternal good, but crack it even a little, and underneath there was the same love of power, the hunger to control, to feel that elemental thrill of dominion and know yourself invulnerable.
Ishrafeli was obeyed, needed, admired. And so far Tathea was happy enough to see him taste and roll it over his tongue. But the time would come when she would like it less. Let him begin to become arrogant with it and in
time he would corrupt her also. But if not ... better still. If her old wisdom, the facts she had learned over all the years, were strong enough for her to see his error and be disillusioned in him, it would destroy her. She would not bear it.
If Ishrafeli fell, be it ever so slowly, then there was no heaven for Tathea to hope for. She was still human, and the need for love was beginning to undo her. Because he was there, warm in the heart and the flesh, with his passion and his need, his laughter, his courage, his pity, his urgency of life, in the end when she had to choose, she would love him more than she loved God.
The dark mists swirled around Asmodeus, gaining and losing shape, forever missing true form, as he himself would never have a body of flesh.
The plan was working. Tathea had lied to Ishrafeli, denied the truth she knew rather than lose some part of the closeness to him by telling him what she believed he was not ready to understand. And in doing it she had opened a gulf between them that would be the beginning of death for her.
But there were other things to be done before the final victory. Sardriel and Ardesir must be destroyed. Apart from their closeness to Tathea, they were dangerous in themselves, and deserving of punishment. They had defied him, Ardesir with his arrogance, his persistence in spite of fear, his belief, always his belief. And Sardriel, complacent, reason-loving Sardriel, who imagined the truth would preserve him, who thought he had already endured the ultimate loss and it had somehow made him invulnerable.
Well, he would learn differently! He had still to taste the pain of real failure, far deeper than some savagery on the steppes of Irria-Kand. He would learn the bitter knowledge that he had betrayed not only those he loved but himself, his own inner purity of soul. Then let him speak of pain, and he would know what it meant!
He could deal with Sadokhar later. Tornagrain hardly mattered. What was he but a soul already damned, only escaped hell by some mischance which would have to be put right? After the final victory all the world would be hell!
