Path of Revenge (19 page)

The man’s plucked eyebrows rose. ‘I will remember this should our journey afford the opportunity. Be assured I will offer you both the best of care.’ He smiled again, such a pretty smile, as shallow and calculating as one from Rouza, then withdrew from the palanquin. Lenares knew from the numbers she’d assigned to the man that he would present himself to them again and again, seeking their favours. Disgusting.

Orders were shouted, their litter rose above the dust, and the journey began.

Lenares took the ends of her hair, nibbled at them and wedged them under her nose. She suspected they would be gone for much longer than a week.

THE FALTHAN QUEEN CONSIDERED it far too hot up here in the tower. Stifling, in fact. But the king loved to look out over his beloved city, its towers and tenements, its walls and bridges, its swirling crowds of people, and she saw no reason to argue with him about the heat, especially now.

Not now.

She stood at the east window and wished for a cool breeze. She wished for a lot of things, actually, but a cool breeze would have been something, at least. A sign, perhaps. The air stayed stubbornly humid, so unlike the lands in which she and the king had grown up together. The whole of Instruere, its half a million inhabitants, slumbered under an autumn haze. She lifted her eyes further but could see nothing beyond the Aleinus River. Not just the city. Faltha itself slumbered, rocked in the arms of lassitude.

The sound of ragged breathing ceased. She pushed herself away from the window and was at the king’s side in a moment. He shuddered, took a great gulping breath and opened his eyes.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m…still here.’

The queen found she could not reply. A Halite priest had once spoken to her of the joy associated with passing to the Most High, both for the departing one
and for those left behind, but she could see nothing to rejoice about. All very well for him, young and idealistic, immersed in the fervour of his cult, to say such things with the seeming immortality of decades stretching in front of him. She could have told him a thing or two about immortality—would have, had he shown any inclination to listen to what she said. Well, that was unfair. He’d kept out of the tower as she’d commanded. Mostly, she supposed, because she’d barred the door. The Halites had been very upset by that. King Leith was, after all, the younger brother of their god.

‘Stella,’ the king whispered, and the love in his voice made her heart clench as tight as a fist.

‘Leith?’

No answer. He’d sunk back into unconsciousness. She fussed with his bedclothes a little, then bent over and kissed his papery cheek.

He looked so old.
Was
so old; the Sixteen Kingdoms of Faltha had celebrated his seventieth year of rule in an extravagant ceremony a bare six weeks ago. Even then, the signs of Leith’s terminal illness could not be hidden. He had been carried to his throne by servants before the ceremonies began, and there feted for far too long, until tears of pain rolled down his mottled face. In the end she’d called a premature halt to the evening. The kings, priests and ambassadors had understood, they’d said, but the necessity of retiring with the king meant she could no longer listen to their gossip and their arguments. So frustrating. She had to know what was being discussed. There would be a struggle for power in Faltha once Leith died, and Stella saw it as her duty to make that struggle as painless for Faltha as possible. She’d regretted having to leave, but it was proper, and the Falthans insisted on propriety.

Seventy years. Even now she was not convinced Leith had made the correct decision in accepting the
throne. Barely seventeen years as a person, followed by seventy years as a king. Ripped out of his—their—village in the far north when Bhrudwan warriors kidnapped his parents, and dragged reluctantly into the Falthan War, the great conflict of their age. He had recovered the Jugom Ark, the flaming arrow of the Most High, then led the Falthan army east to counter the might of Bhrudwo, and in the end faced the Destroyer in single combat. How could anyone live a normal life after such events? And how could becoming the Lord of Faltha have helped the boy Leith once was become the man he should have been?

No. She shook her head; memory was so fickle. It had been Hal, Leith’s brother. Hal had faced the Destroyer in single combat, not Leith. He had taken Leith’s place, the foster brother assuming the role of the natural-born son. Had been struck down, seemingly slain, only to return—from the dead, the Halites claimed, the central tenet of their doctrine—to defeat the Destroyer at the moment of his triumph.

So much confusion that day in the Hall of Meeting: the end of an age, the beginning of another. The Bhrudwan army had swept into Instruere, led by their cruel lord, while the remnants of the Falthan army were held outside the gates under a sorcerous geas. Hal had failed in his bid to bind the Bhrudwans by his own magic and had fallen to the Destroyer, who had bound the Falthan armies in return, his Truthspell rendering them unable to fight. All their hopes gone. The Destroyer had only to witness their surrender and sign the secession document himself, and his lordship would extend across the whole of the northern world.

In a few turbulent moments everything had changed. From her own vantage point beside the Destroyer, just a pace from the events that saved Faltha, Stella saw little. Leith believed that the
majestic carving of the Most High on the ceiling of the Hall of Meeting came to life. The carving wore his brother Hal’s face, Leith insisted, and it loosed an arrow—the Jugom Ark—at the Destroyer, severing his remaining hand, breaking the Truthspell by rendering him incapable of signing the document.

So Leith said. But Leith had been responsible, at least in part, for Hal’s death. As leader of the Falthan army, Leith had been the one challenged by the Destroyer to single combat, but Hal had taken it upon himself, saving his brother. What would be more natural, then, than for Leith to imagine his brother coming back to life to save them all? Then to go further and interpret Hal’s death as a deliberate sacrifice?

The more the Halites preached the doctrine, the less Stella believed it. It smacked of sophistry, of stretching a truth to fit the facts. And the few discernible facts were ambiguous: the Destroyer certainly lost his hand—she more than anyone else alive could attest to that—but whether it was before or during the melee that erupted in the Hall of Meeting she could not say. It was also true that the carved figure of the Most High now most certainly wore Hal’s face. Though even this was disputed: some of the old Company—those who had set out from Firanes in search of Leith and Hal’s parents—argued that people now remembered Hal from the carving. Both Farr of Withwestwa Wood, and their own Haufuth, their village leader, maintained this until they died.

Slim evidence upon which to build a religion. But well-meaning people—zealots—had arisen in the months immediately following the Destroyer’s defeat, claiming special insight into the ‘meaning behind events’ and proclaiming their belief in Hal. Some were telling the truth, or as much of it as they knew: the
Company from Firanes had built quite a following during their stay in Instruere, and Hal had been a part of that. However, his wizardly powers had not at that time been widely known; most of the magic exercised by the Company had been attributed to Leith and the Jugom Ark. Conveniently forgotten now, or at least glossed over. It pleased people to exaggerate the truth, or more often mix it with hearsay, until it became difficult to remember what had actually happened.

Leith could have broken the Halites’ rising power with a few words. It was entirely on his testimony, after all, that their beliefs were built. This was the largest barrier between him and Stella, and they had never successfully breached it.

Well, perhaps not the largest.

Stella wandered over to the east window again and leaned out, her face catching the beginnings of a breeze. Leith never understood what had happened to her after she had given herself to Deorc. That was the real reason why their long marriage had proved difficult. None of the Company had understood. She was honestly not sure that she understood herself.

The king moaned a name. Hers? She was too far gone in her reminiscence to turn.

While the Company were raising an army from Instruere and the surrounding Falthan lands to oppose the Destroyer, she had fallen for a man named Tanghin. Foolishly she left the Company and sought him out, only to find he had been assuming a disguise to ensnare her. He revealed himself to her as Deorc, the Destroyer’s lieutenant, who had infiltrated Instruere and intended to rule in his master’s name. He had been commanded by his master to capture one of the Company, but had desired her for himself. When the Destroyer learned of his servant’s treachery he destroyed Deorc, but not before pulling Stella through his blue fire into his terrible presence. The memories of
that day, filled with fear and pain, were still too tender to examine closely, even after seventy years. From then on she had been forced to assume the role of the Undying Man’s consort. He inflicted agony on her, shared with her…gave her the gift of immortality, the curse placed on him for denying the Most High two thousand years ago. Now his eternal pain ran through her veins, a barrier between her and every other human. The cruelty of it was beyond her comprehension.

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.