Path of Revenge

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Yet he had loved her. A monstrous love, a love born of hunger, of loneliness and a desperate need, but love nonetheless. For the first time in her life she had been needed, not just desired.

  The Halites had one thing right. She had been the one to assist the Destroyer in his escape from Instruere. Handless, powerless, unable even to harness the manifold powers of his servants, the Maghdi Dasht, he had relied on her to guide him to safety. The priests named it a betrayal of Faltha, proof of her complicity with Bhrudwo. She could not deny it.

  How could she have refused him? He needed her.

  Leith had risked his life to attempt her rescue. She supposed the Halites also had that right. But Leith had not rescued her. She had refused him, unwilling to leave her care of another of the Destroyer’s servants, a eunuch whose tongue had been cut out for showing kindness to her. She knew what the Halites would make of that if they ever found out. Now that Leith lay dying, the secret would remain in her mind alone.

  She had made her own escape months later. Exhausted, starved, at the far edge of despair, she had hallucinated a vision of the tongueless man speaking in Hal’s voice. He bade her flee. In her weakened state she had taken his advice, and had lived with the guilt ever since. She arrived back in Instruere on the day Leith ascended the newly created Falthan throne. Leith, dear Leith, took her in when everyone else vilified her; made her his wife and elevated her to his queen.

  Queen? In name only. The Halites’ pernicious doctrine labelled her as the Destroyer’s Consort. She had seen their teaching for herself, all through the Seven Scrolls they held sacred. Such teachings engendered widespread mistrust; a mistrust grown worse over the years as the Halites strengthened their hold on the populace. Faltha would never be hers to rule. Whoever took power here would make it his first action to hand her over to the Koinobia, the Halite ‘common-life’ church—that is, if they did not simply seize her in the interim. The most likely scenario was that the Council of Faltha would take power here in Instruere, the Sixteen Kingdoms would once again act with true independence and she would be lost in the scramble for power, a minor consideration, mourned by a literal handful of people. And so Faltha would begin the long spiral down into defencelessness, and would one day once again be vulnerable to Bhrudwo’s immortal lord. Yes, it would take hundreds of years for the Destroyer to recover, and as long for the Falthans to weaken. But when that happened, she alone of those alive today would be there to see it.

  The Halites would not be able to kill her. Even after seventy years she did not fully understand what immortality meant, but she doubted anything short of brutal dismemberment would end her suffering. Perhaps not even that.

  There were millions of sets of eyes open right at this moment. A thousand years from now all those eyes would be closed but for two sets. Hers and his. Reflections in agony. And one precious set of eyes would be closed forever by the end of this day.

  She turned away from the window, her heart cold in her chest. Here she was, seventy years on, committing the same selfish sin that had entrapped her back then. Thinking of herself when someone else had the greater need. She drew closer to the bed: an unnatural pallor suffused the king’s face, and he breathed shallowly and unevenly. Not long, then.

  She thought of the years she had spent with this kind, generous, unselfish man. It had never been her intention to marry a man from her own isolated village: to her, Leith and the other village boys represented a safe life, a small life, a meaningless, inconsequential life like those her parents had lived. As a girl her consuming ambition had been to escape to somewhere interesting, exciting, important. Instead, excitement came to her village, sweeping her up in the most important events in Faltha for a thousand years. Despite this she had ended up with Leith, as the so-called Queen of Faltha. She had helped Leith make decisions involving thousands of people. Had lived a life unimaginable to her parents. Had been loved, truly loved.

  Yet…

  Yet, it had been a life made for her by others. Defined by the pain of the Destroyer’s blood, the cruelty of the Halite doctrine, the mercy of the Falthan king. Such a full life, such a privileged life, such a constrained life; she was not ungrateful, not exactly. The man who loves me, whom I…love—allow yourself to think it—is dying. And yet her overriding feeling was one of freedom.

  Perhaps the Halites were right to condemn her. Perhaps they understated the depths of her selfishness. They would be shocked at what she planned to do next.

  The afternoon wore on. Though Stella had specifically instructed all three of the royal physicians to keep the gravity of the king’s condition secret, such things did not escape others who worked in the Hall, and a crowd of curious onlookers began to gather on the grassy space below the tower. Individual citizens, families with food baskets, stallholders, one or two russet-cloaked Halite priests. Their clamour filtered up to her.

  She ignored them. Let them wonder, let them speculate, let them treat as a holiday the day the world was losing a wonderful man. They did not know, they had forgotten. The Destroyer was already half a myth; scholars wrote revisionist histories explaining real events as metaphorical. Even the presence of the Jugom Ark, glittering on the altar in the Hall of Meeting in Instruere, failed to dampen their foolish philandering with the facts. No different to the priests, really, serving their own god. Phemanderac had been commissioned to write an official history of the Falthan War, but in sixty years had not finished it. Afraid to insult or belittle any of his friends, he’d spent far too long on the maps.

  It didn’t matter. None of it did. Her eyes lifted beyond the city, where the haze had given way to the afternoon breeze. Out past the ever-wide Central Plains towards the gates of Aleinus, where Hal had laid down his life for his brother. And for Faltha, she added, remembering Halite orthodoxy. She could not see the Gates; their bluff slopes and enormous cliffs were well over the horizon. Thousands of leagues further lay Bhrudwo and the island of Andratan, on which Kannwar, the Destroyer, Lord of Bhrudwo, the Undying Man, was said by Dhaurian spies to be hiding, recuperating from his great defeat and loss of power. She narrowed her eyes, as if by squinting she could somehow make out the Tower of Farsight, highest bulwark on Andratan, from where he might be looking, searching the western sky.

  A knock at the door, a servant offering refreshment. Without bothering to unbar the door, Stella peered through the grille and waved her away. Behind the woman two physicians hovered. She waved them away also. Turned back to her window.

  She could feel him, that was the problem. His blood burned in her veins. Those first years had been pure agony, a chronic pain no palliative could suppress, wearing away at her sanity just as she knew it wore away at his. Then, over the last five decades, it had gradually eased—as she slowly healed and as, no doubt, he recovered. Did he feel her pain? She thought so. And recently he had begun to feel different somehow, less caustic, more desperate, as though taken by some affliction. Powerful, most certainly, more powerful than ever. Yet something had changed, and not for the better.

  Stella did not love him. She did not doubt her self-judgment on this matter, having been brutally honest with herself, knowing what being needed could do to a woman’s soul. Particularly one who had not been able to have children. No, she carried no love for their great enemy. She hated him. His desire for revenge on the Most High had cost thousands of lives, among them some she had counted as friends. His actions had been, at times, nothing short of deeply evil. She remembered a village, a pile of hands and feet, the cries of children. His ravaged face as he made his escape from Instruere, drawing on her, reckless of her life.

  Yet…

  Yet, he could not hide from her, nor she from him. He and she: the only two of a different species.

  No sound from behind her. She turned, fearing she had missed Leith’s last moment.

  He was sitting up in bed, his face glowing, healthier-seeming by far than at any time in the last month. His eyes bright, focused on her, alive with knowledge. She had seen enou
gh prolonged death to know what this was. The false bloom before the final blight.

  He breathed deeply, then spoke in the voice of a hurt child.

  ‘You’re going to him.’

  A dozen answers flashed through her mind. No, Leith, how could you think such a thing? I was just looking at the crowds below. I would never dishonour your memory by travelling to Bhrudwo. You’re tired; why don’t you close your eyes and rest? I was just gazing out of the window. The east window. It could have been any window. Any direction.

  ‘Yes.’

  The word surprised her, shocked her, ripped a ragged breath from her. Leith simply nodded.

  ‘Should have gone long ago. Nothing but persecution and imprisonment for you here. Tried to warn you; too pig-headed to listen. Listen now. Go. Go now.’

  Stella stood there, facing the knowing regard of the man she was hurting one last time, and wept until her chest and stomach hurt.

  ‘Leith, oh Leith, I…’ She could not finish. No lies, no shadings of the truth, no manufacturing of more lifelong guilt, not when she would carry it for eternity without hope of absolution. No falsehood to wrap Leith in, smoothing his final journey. She took his hand, hoping it would be enough. She had no words for him.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Something not right in what happened all those years ago. We missed something. He knows. Something coming, a terrible thing, greater far than Kannwar. He knows. You go. Get…answers to your questions.’ He paused for breath: the effort of speaking told on him.

  ‘Leith, you must rest.’

  ‘Stella,’ he said, and her heart broke anew at the way he said it, the layers of meaning in his thin voice. ‘Stella, thank you. But you must go. Save yourself, save him, save them all.’

  His eyes opened further, as though he experienced some private hallucination. ‘My brother…thanks you too. Wants you to leave.’ Opened still further. ‘And now I must…must also go.’ Closed.

  A last breath, a last whisper.

  ‘Goodbye, my love,’ he said, and left her.

  His hand was cold when finally she forced herself to let it go. Cold and empty. She stood up, easing bones supposedly near ninety years old that insisted on behaving as though she was still a young woman. At this moment she felt no kinship with the man in the bed, with the people in the city, with anyone at all. They could die; she could not. She was different. Thoroughly other. Completely alone.

  She wolfed down the cold gruel and emptied the water jug ignored this past day. Even the act of taking food and drink seemed pointless: forty years ago she had experimented with fasting, testing the limits of her immortality. The results were debilitating but not fatal; her muscles wasted somewhat in those weeks, but whatever had been set within her sustained her in any extremity. She’d resumed eating and drinking out of habit. Something to remind her of her humanity.

  She threw the jug across the room. It shattered on the wall near the north window.

  A few minutes’ rummaging in the drawers by the bed secured several tiny but valuable pieces of jewellery, which she placed in a small bag looped around her neck. She looked as long as she dared for something to help disguise her from those down below who awaited news of the king, those she needed to avoid, but found nothing. She would be walking into their hateful hands. She sighed. Better walking than being dragged.

  Face the bed one last time. A bow, a touch to the cheek, a kiss. A deep breath. Then a slow turn, so hard to do, a hand to the door, ease up the bar, open, close the door behind her, eyes blurry, not looking back.

  Stella had no idea how long ago the servant had last checked on the king. Perhaps she ascended the stairs even now, physicians in tow, seeking an update on the king’s condition. Or perhaps they enjoyed a meal together, or had taken themselves home for the evening.

  One foot in front of the other. A grey haze seemed to have descended on her: blinking away the tears helped her see a little better. A lock of her grey hair, dyed to help conceal her impossible youth, flicked an eye, a stinging sharpness. She fought back a cry of anguish. Not here, not now, not yet.

  She came to herself enough to wonder where the guards were. There was, of course, no tradition for this, as Faltha had never before had a king, but she had expected some sort of Death Watch, as practised by many of Faltha’s kingdoms. She had spoken to Elast, Captain of the Guard, about this. Ten guards at least, including Elast himself. Where were they? Why had no guardsmen come to check on their king?

  She turned left at the base of the stairs, head up, walking briskly. Over the years she had adopted the gait of an old woman as part of an attempt to disguise her lack of aging. She had to hope her youthful figure would not be recognised as that of the queen.

  Finally, at the arched wooden door to the street, she came across a guard. One, and not senior. He looked her over, his eyes narrowing with what she initially thought was suspicion, but then recognised as lust. Obviously taking her for a servant he made a series of lewd suggestions to her, each more inventive than the last. She forced herself to smile, though inwardly heartsick. She would take the chance he offered her.

  ‘Is that all you can do?’ she said roughly. ‘Talk?’

  ‘More than talk,’ he replied heavily, licking his lips. ‘Won’t talk at all if that’s how you like it. Make you talk, though.’

  Stella caught a glimpse over his shoulder, and her skin chilled. The servant approached, accompanied by four people: two of the royal physicians and two Halite priests. She recognised both the priests. One was the Archpriest himself, a tall man with an artificial dignity she despised. A very powerful man. Not a man she wanted to meet today.

  ‘You’re still talking,’ she said desperately.

  ‘In here, then.’ He grabbed at her arm; she brushed him off with a flick of her hand and a coquettish grin, then followed him into the small annexe serving as a guardroom.

  The man had his sword off and jerkin open even before she closed the door behind her. She picked up his weapon and smiled again. ‘It’s a big sword,’ she said, sliding it suggestively out of its scabbard.

  ‘I have a bigger,’ the guard said, leering at her.

  ‘Not big enough,’ she replied, and levelled the blade at him.

  ‘You bitch, what—’ He stared into her eyes, and belated recognition spread across his face. He sank to the floor on his knees, mouth so wide open Stella struggled to suppress hysterical laughter.

  ‘My queen,’ he said hoarsely, and stopped to clear his throat. ‘I thought…I am new here.’ He closed his eyes.

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘How could I?’ He began to tremble.

  ‘I led you on. Sit up; you look ridiculous.’

  He regained some self-possession, wiped his palms on his jerkin and laced himself up, then sat on his haunches. ‘The king?’

  ‘Is dead.’

  A sharp, indrawn breath. ‘Dead? But…but we were told, your majesty…The priests told us the king was in no danger!’ The light went out of his eyes.

  ‘And do you take your orders from the priests?’

  ‘No, of course not. But Captain Elast confirmed it for us. Out of his own mouth I heard it. The senior officers are off discussing it now. Next week, they said, the Death Watch would begin. Your majesty,’ he added.

  ‘A play for power, then, already begun. Do you understand? The priests and physicians have colluded to remove the Instruian Guard, a preface to their bid for control of Instruere and, ultimately, Faltha. I wonder what they offered Elast. Or what they threatened him with. Either way, you are betrayed.’

  ‘I understand, my queen.’ All too well, by the sick look on his face.

  Stella continued. ‘If you have been here more than a few days, you will know what the king’s death means for me. What they will do to me.’

  He nodded. ‘They won’t, though, will they? Your majesty,’ he added after a moment, still clearly yet to come to terms with what was happening.

  ‘I do not care to find out. I know you will not ask, but w
hat the priests say about me is not true. Well, it is true, but not in the fashion the priests have taught you. I do not, however, wish to discuss it with them. I doubt they have the wit to understand how truth can be turned into something else.’

  ‘Your majesty?’ Colour gradually returned to the man’s face. Good.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Robal, my lady. Robal Anders of Austrau, that is.’

  ‘Austrau? Excellent. Well then, Robal Anders, how would you like to do your queen a great service?’

  The guard fought an obvious battle to keep his face perfectly still.

  ‘Oh dear, you are going to be a difficult man, aren’t you. Just do as I say for now. And don’t worry. They may hate me, they may want to get rid of me, but when I write a letter explaining that I have taken you into my service, they will provide for your wife and children.’

  The man looked shocked. ‘No family, my queen. Do you think I would have…that I would…if I…I wouldn’t!’

  ‘No family? Better and better. Nevertheless, your sergeant and paymaster will need to know. Still, that will have to wait for later. For now, Robal Anders of Austrau, can you get me out of Instruere without attracting attention?’