by R. J. Grieve
She looked up from reading Callis’ note. “Yes. It was the worst thing I have ever had to witness in my life. Yet, I was proud of him, too. Mordrian offered to spare him if he would betray us, and he looked him in the eye and told him to go to hell.”
“I can almost hear him say it,” said Eimer quietly. “I’m glad you got them both out of the city. I’m just so sorry I wasn’t there to help you.” Then shaking off the unusually chastened mood, he indicated the note still in her hand. “What has Callis got to say for himself?”
“Good news, for once. He has found Bethro and will bring him here as soon as it is dark.”
A grunt of disgust issued from the Turog at that pronouncement and he began to mutter darkly to himself in his own uncouth language.
Eimer ignored him and eyed Iska thoughtfully. “I presume, once the dust settles, you are still going to try for the sword?” he asked perceptively, revealing a better understanding of her than anyone.
Her eyes twinkled in response. “You presume correctly, your Royal Highness.” She then smiled cheekily. “Want to tag along?”
Eimer grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world – but I think we need to get rid of Bethro first. I would guess that we are going to have to make a very hasty exit from this city and speed isn’t his strong point.”
“Agreed.”
“Also, I was wondering if by any chance, you would know where I could get a sword? I feel sort of naked without one.”
“I might just know where one is available.”
“Excellent. In that case I’m yours to command. Now, what’s the plan?”
The cavern of Sirindria Eleth was beautiful even when it rained. The blue skies, reliably visible for the last week through the apertures in the roof, had been replaced by soft pewter-grey clouds, and earlier that day a few drops had descended from the distant roof to plop into the pool below. Vesarion had found Sareth to be a little quiet and withdrawn that morning, and now understood her well enough to know that it meant she was troubled about something.
He had only come to recognise the trait recently and wondered at his blindness. Unlike her brother, when Sareth was worried or upset, she withdrew into herself, still outwardly pleasant and friendly, but at the same time a little remote. A paradox that he now realised accounted for her behaviour in Addania. The coolness and correctness that he had once so foolishly approved of, were not the real Sareth, but just the manifestation of inner turmoil.
She was standing by the edge of the pool, looking upwards at the patch of sky visible above. The rocks that ringed the void were mossy and fringed with delicate little saplings that had somehow found a foothold on the bare stone and were now peering curiously into the cave below. As she watched, the rain began again, gently at first but growing heavier. It fell steadily in a crystal curtain, illuminated by the light from above, straight into the waiting pool below. She stood listening to the hypnotically beautiful sound of water falling into water.
Vesarion came to her side, breathing in the fresh smell of new rain and wet vegetation.
At last, as if she had only just become aware of his presence, she said: “I love this place in all its moods. In sun and in rain, at midday, or even in the depths of the night. I wish I could stay here for ever.”
“It has an enchantment all of its own,” he agreed. “The presence of the Old Kingdom lingers on here. Certainly, it has bestowed on me such a remarkable recovery that I can no longer insist that miracles do not exist.”
“Iska would be astonished if she could see you now,” agreed Sareth. “When we parted from her, I think she was not even certain that I could get you here in one piece.” She fell silent for a moment, then added: “I was thinking about Iska. I wish I knew that she was safe. I wish I knew if she has found Eimer and Bethro. We have been over a week here and have received no word.”
“She told you that they would have to lie low for a while, so they may be some time. What concerns me is that the time-limit placed upon her by her brother to leave the city has expired. He may not be aware that she has helped us, but she is still in great danger from him.”
Sareth sighed. “I suppose our quest for the sword will have to be abandoned?”
To her surprise, he shook his head. “No. I intend to take it back, no matter what. If Iska does not show up within the next few days, I am going back to the city alone.”
The effect these word had on Sareth was dramatic. She whirled round to face him, and caught him hard by the shoulders.
“No!” she cried. “Are you mad, Vesarion? You must never go back! You barely escaped with your life the last time. Let the sword go! It’s not worth the price. Just look what it has already cost you.”
She abruptly released him and turned back to the pool to hide her distress from him.
He now knew what had been troubling her so much.
“Sareth,” he said gently. “I must recover the sword. Eskendria’s future depends on it. We are up against forces that are too powerful for us without its help. If we faced only an army of men, then perhaps I would agree with you, but we face powers that draw their strength directly from the Destroyer and we have nothing with which to counter them. In days of old, the Brotherhood of Sages would have stood against such creatures as Iska’s demon, and fought it at a spiritual level, but they have all gone. The only one left is the Keeper and he will not leave his tower. So we must obtain every advantage we can get. To do otherwise, to let it go, would be a betrayal of all we hold dear.”
She was standing stiffly, holding herself tense with a mixture of fear and anger. Without turning, in a brittle voice, she said: “I don’t care about Eskendria. I don’t even want to go back there.” She turned to reveal a stormy countenance, with a hint of tears. “Why would I want to return to Addania? There is nothing for me there. I don’t think there ever was.”
And somehow he knew that the moment had come. Now, at last, he must speak.
“Do you remember the day in Addania that I asked you to marry me?” he asked.
She didn’t reply for a moment, and they both stood listening to the sound of the rain falling into the pool. “Yes,” she said at last, in a subdued voice. “I remember.”
“To me that day now seems a very long time ago, almost a lifetime, because so much has happened, so much has changed. But there is something that I have wanted to ask you for a very long time about that day.”
She raised her eyes to his, and he saw that the expression in them had completely changed. She was looking at his very steadily, with something of that fascinating intensity that he had seen the day at the inn.
“Why did you agree to marry me, Sareth? And don’t give me any stories about being afraid of Enrick’s threats. Tell me the truth, even if you think it will hurt me.”
The rain had eased a little and the faintest glimmer of sunlight was beginning to descend from above. Some angle of sun and water cast the light upwards into their faces and she noticed that his eyes were the same colour as the pool when the moon shone into it, an unfathomable blue, and just as deep. Eyes that looked down at her with such clear perception that she knew that the truth could no longer be denied.
“I agreed to marry you because it was the only way I could think of to be with you.” she replied a little brokenly. “I had waited so long for you, and you never came for me. You were lost to me in that mountain fortress of yours and all I got to see of you was two or three brief visits during the year. I knew you didn’t love me, but being parted from you was more than I could bear. I….I don’t suppose you understand that. Enrick’s plans to marry me off to his advantage were not what was vexing me. It was the thought that I would be parted from you for ever; that I would be another man’s wife and never see you again. When he arranged for us to marry, I convinced myself I was protecting you, that I was doing my duty. Oh, I had a thousand logical reasons, but none of them were true. I just wanted to be with you, that’s all.”
He had listened to her intently, but now he reached ou
t and took both her hands in his.
“The man who asked you to marry him that day was not me, Sareth. He was just some fool called the Lord of Westrin, who happened to look like me. I look back at myself that day, at my arrogance and pride and I burn with shame. I felt I was bestowing on you the privilege of an ancient name, of becoming the Lady of Westrin, when in reality, I was utterly unworthy of you. It was only after our famous row in the Wood of Ammerith that my eyes began to open. When I think of that day, how easily, how carelessly I let you go, I can hardly credit the stupidity of my actions. I was like a blind man who held a priceless diamond in his hand and threw it away because he could not see its value.”
“And yet,” amended Sareth, a light beginning to glow in her eyes, “perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened, for it enabled us to start again, to get to know one another again free from all that weighed upon us in Eskendria.”
“Perhaps you are right. Do you remember that day at the inn, when you awoke to find me sitting beside you? I came so close to telling you that day, and looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t. I suppose it was the fear that held me silent. Fear that you still saw me as I had been in Addania. Fear that you had not realised that I had changed. Yet, when I was in that prison cell, convinced I was going to die in the morning, all I could think of was that I had never told you I loved you.”
Stepping closer, he took her face gently between his hands. “And I do, Sareth. Not the Lord of Westrin, but just me, Vesarion.” Then looking deep into her eyes, he said softly. “I swear to you, Sareth, that I will love you to my very last breath.”
Then he did what he knew he should have done a long time ago. He bent and tenderly kissed her.
When he leaned back, he saw that her eyes were shining up at him with such joy that it took his breath away.
Catching her hard against him, he kissed her again, but this time with such intense desire that she wondered that she could ever have thought him cold. He felt her arms go around his neck and she began to return his kisses with such unrestrained passion that very soon they were desperate for one another.
However, just as he began to draw her shirt free from her belt, an unwelcome interruption, of a wholly unexpected nature, occurred.
“Hellooooo?” called a familiar voice. “Anyone here? Hellooooo?”
“It’s Bethro,” hissed Sareth, in frustration.
Vesarion’s reaction was to smartly pull her into the concealing foliage of the willow tree.
“Did you ever meet anyone with a greater ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as Bethro?” he demanded in a fierce whisper.
Bethro, by this stage, had emerged from the tunnel and was looking about him uncertainly.
“I wonder if this is the place?” he said aloud and began to consult a scruffy slip of paper. “Ah! But of course it must be! There are their horses! Sareth? Vesarion? Anyone at home?”
Vesarion, taking advantage of the fact that they were completely hidden from view, responded by drawing Sareth against him once more.
“He’ll be upon us in a moment,” protested Sareth, half-heartedly pushing him away.
“Oh! He can go to the devil, for all I care!”
An imp of mischief crept into her eyes. “Are you not glad to see him?”
“No!” he declared roundly. “Oh, very well, yes. But he might have had the decency to arrive about an hour later.”
She smiled ruefully and caught his hand. “Come on, then. Duty calls.”
In the flurry of exchanging greetings, Bethro did not care to mention to Sareth and Vesarion that for the last few days before leaving the city, he had endured the sort of time that would have made a sojourn in the Destroyer’s dungeons seem like a holiday. For three hideous days, before Iska had managed to smuggle him out of the city, he had been stuck in a draughty bell tower, complete with pigeon droppings, a bossy female, an irresponsible young man who seemed to make a joke out of everything, and a sour and slightly malodorous Turog. Moreover, it had been made perfectly apparent that they were all very anxious to be rid of him.
Iska had been unable to obtain a horse for him, and it was all very well for her to say that he could find his way perfectly easily on foot, provided he followed her directions – except that he couldn’t remember them. After she had repeated them several times and he still couldn’t grasp them, in something approaching a temper, she had written them down on a scruffy piece of paper. Thus Bethro had found himself shoved out a drain one night to the east of the city, clutching a small parcel of food in one hand and the piece of paper in the other, and had been left to negotiate the perilous journey all by himself. He had been informed that it would take him two days to reach the cave, but in actual fact it took him twice as long because he had taken several wrong turns, due to his inability to decipher Iska’s handwriting. Yet, if truth be told, he had deliberately dawdled a bit on the way, for he did not know how he was going to face Vesarion, and the more he thought about it, the more a serious bout of moral cowardice had taken hold of him. Now he had finally arrived, anticipating with great dread, thanks to Iska’s description of Vesarion’s injures, what he would find.
When he had seen Vesarion approaching him from the direction of the pool, moving with a stride that was anything but enfeebled, he experienced almost a sense of shock. As he had drawn closer, Bethro had seen the discoloured remnants of bruising around his eye, but otherwise he seemed so normal that the prim librarian began to wonder if Iska was prone to exaggeration.
However, he had little time to pursue his thoughts, for hard on the heels of their initial greeting, Sareth asked him the question he had been expecting.
“Where is Iska? Did she find my brother?”
He smiled at her, delighted to be the bearer of good news. “Yes, she did indeed find Prince Eimer and when I left them four days ago, they were both safe and well.”
“Why did they not come with you?” she asked, ever direct.
She was a little too direct for Bethro, who had not anticipated getting into such dangerous territory so quickly.
“I…er… when I left, they were deep in plans to...er…recover the sword. I think they just regarded me as an encumbrance to be got rid of – although,” he added, bristling with annoyance, “they let the rodent stay - which I thought was the outside of enough. I mean, he’s a Turog! What use can he be to them?”
Vesarion’s brows had drawn together. “I knew it. I knew Iska would not give up so easily. We must return to the city at once. She will need all the help we can give her.”
“No!” cried Bethro in alarm. “She was afraid you would say that, and has given me explicit instructions to tell you to stay here. She and Eimer feel that they stand a better chance alone. Besides, you are too late to help her, because whatever they were going to do, they were planning on doing it last night. I’m afraid I should have been here sooner but I…er…got lost.”
“What exactly were they planning?” Vesarion asked.
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me - I think, perhaps, in case I was caught. All I can tell you is that whether they have been successful or not has already been decided. There is nothing you can do to influence events. Iska said that they would try to meet us here. So unfortunately, all we can do is to wait for them.”
“I’ve never been very good at waiting,” muttered Vesarion.
But Sareth, anxious to endorse Iska’s advice, said reasonably: “If we go back to the city we will probably miss them and that would spell disaster. I’m afraid we must wait, whether we like it or not.”
After all Bethro’s fears about having to face either a wrathful, or dying, Vesarion, he actually passed the most pleasant afternoon he had enjoyed in a long time. He told them of Eimer’s adventures, and his own, turning his exploits in the cellar into such an amusing story he had them both laughing. He then explored the cave, marvelling at the wonders of nature and examining with interest the carvings on the stone bench. But that evening, his rising
spirits suffered a check. When the time came for Sareth to treat Vesarion’s injuries, for the first time Bethro was brought face to face with the consequences of what he had done. Although the damage was clearly much repaired, the wine-coloured bruising across Vesarion’s chest and stomach and the healing lacerations on his back, brought home to Bethro the full extent of his crime with such force that he could not bear to watch. Hurriedly, he retreated down the passage to the outside world and finding a rock beside the dark pool below the waterfall, gave vent to his feelings and wept bitterly. Not one word of reproof had passed Vesarion’s lips, indeed, he had not mentioned the incident at all, but Bethro’s heart was so full of self-disgust, he thought it would burst. What he had done was beyond repair and he knew he would have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life.
However, only a few moments later, he saw something that brought him an unexpected gleam of hope. He returned to the cave just as Sareth was finishing her task and was helping Vesarion to resume his shirt. The sound of running water masked his footsteps and they were obviously unaware of his presence, for just as she began to draw the shirt on, she impulsively leaned forward and pressed her lips against the skin of his shoulder. Vesarion responded by swiftly turning round, catching her in his arms and kissing her in a manner that, even viewed from a distance, was clearly very far from cousinly.
The unseen watcher’s heart leaped for joy.
“He has found love,” breathed Bethro. “Sareth will bring him happiness and healing and undo the harm I have caused, and perhaps, if I can find the courage, someday I will beg him to forgive me.”
The old crypt was once more in total darkness. Three shadowy figures, crouched on the grass behind the grille, were trying to blend into the night and calm their ragged breathing so that they could listen for signs of occupation. They already knew that there were two sentries on duty at the main door, but otherwise all seemed quiet.
Iska nodded to Eimer, who carefully moved the heavy metal grille aside, wincing slightly when it squeaked. Inside, all at first seemed as dark and still as any place should be amongst the dead. Moving stealthily between the graven figures asleep on their ornate plinths, they saw a dim light emerging up ahead.
