Tales of the Zodiac - The Goat's Tale (16 page)

It is a different sensation this time, heading into the throne room of ‘Our Saviour’. The room, with its magical array of lights and colours, seems even more dreamlike than it was before. I notice that the angles and colours must change as the day passes, as the sun moves through the sky. This feat of architecture, one that I since have realised must be the work of Brother Gemin, seems even more impressive now that I realise it is the work of a near-blind human rather than a god.

As for Our Saviour Himself, I feel more confident knowing what gimmicks I can expect. Understanding the language much better also helps. It is only now, seeing him again, obscured by his light shaft, that I realise something. I realise that perhaps the only aspect of this entire scenario that I have
not
given much thought to is the man himself.

I have not considered his authenticity for a second; if there is a God, I reason, then it is certainly not this gentleman. I have been taught that the Son of the Christian God was a kind and loving being, nothing like what I have seen of this man so far.

As if to confirm this point, his voice, distorted and inhuman, booms out across the golden dome once more. To my great relief, I am able to understand him.

“Welcome to my home, stranger. Have you taken me into your heart?”

“I love nothing but you, my God,” is what I hope that I say in reply. I have been preparing this speech, this lie, for literally months now.

“This is good. You have seen how my love can change your life?”

“Yes. I am a new person now, my God.”

“What gift have you brought for me?”

“I have only brought you my filled heart and my changed tongue, my God.”

“This is the best gift. And what do you ask of me?”

“I ask that I can leave my cell and live amongst the people of Brightstone, my God.”

“What of your home?”

“Your love is my home, my God.”

I stumble through this bit of translation. It is not an answer I expected to have to give, but nevertheless I am quite proud of the improvisation, if not the dishonesty.

“You are a changed man. No longer a stranger. How do you wish to be known?”

“Ser Gruffydd of the Green, my God,” I answer. If I cannot be a knight in my own land, then I shall be one here.

“Very well, Ser Gruffydd of the Green, you may have your freedom.”

“Thank you, my God,” I sigh.

This kind of behaviour sits ill with me. Just beneath the surface is a raging desire to tell him exactly what I think of him and his behaviour, to rip the façade from him, to make him consider what he really is. Instead though, I choose my life. It just feels a little tarnished now.

In the same way that Tallakarn, the name of the city, is used to describe the entire kingdom under its control, the name Brightstone also refers to both the empire itself and one of the islands within it. Confusingly, the Sun Palace, which is essentially the seat of Brightstone’s kingdom, is not actually on the island of Brightstone. Instead, it is on the small island next to it, called the Palatial Island. Brother Gemin arranges me an escort to help me leave the palace and find my way to Brightstone Isle. From there, my escort has been tasked with helping me find the villa belonging to Morrigan and, by doing so, help me settle into life on Brightstone.

It is a fine autumn day and the sun glows gently as we head along the ornate marble bridge leading away from the palace. A day like today is probably equivalent to an exceptionally hot day in the middle of a Tallakarn summer. The sea down below, in the channel between the islands and the mainland, is a striking azure blue and as still as glass. My escort, a broad man in full gold plate, is friendly enough, answering the questions that I am able to ask in my broken Bright-tongue.

“Can you tell me about your weapon? We don’t have them in Tallakarn,” I try to ask. The ominous tube hanging from his belt brings back memories of my first encounter with these people.

“It is a musket. There is a black powder inside that makes fire. The explosion sends a small piece of metal towards the enemy. It is very dangerous for both people. We only use it when we are in great danger… but it also needs time to use… I think arrows are better… faster…”

“The black powder? What is it called?”

“We call it ‘The Sun’s gift’. It has helped us many times against the savages.”

“I see. How do you make it?”

“I don’t know. This you should have asked Brother Gemin. It is something to do with bat poo!” he laughs. I, meanwhile, wonder if I have lost the answer in translation.

At this possible misunderstanding, I slip back into my own thoughts. I am overwhelmed. Brightstone seems to possess so much knowledge that Tallakarn doesn’t: they have explosive weapons, they have machines that can write books, machines that can track the sun, ornaments fashioned from plastic. There is so much for me to learn before I return.

The bridge and the streets leading from it are surprisingly quiet. Having seen the island from a distance during my approach from the mainland, I am surprised by this stillness. From that vantage point, the town had looked like a tightly packed hive of activity, with scarcely a dot of green visible amongst the white and red houses. My guide explains that it is quiet because most activity occurs either later or earlier in the day. The markets and harbours, he assures me, are ‘busier than hell’ if one makes it there at the right time.

It quickly becomes clear that this place will never be my home. It is neither the weather nor the stillness that bothers me. Instead, it is the dirty, cramped atmosphere that pervades as we move through the tight little streets. For all the advancements that exist, the vast majority of the homes we walk past are nothing but improvisations, vague approximations of houses, muddled together out of red stone and wood. Some of them, the ones that don’t have four walls, have moon-faced children staring out at us, or hard-faced women working on something or other. It is not lost upon me that this is probably a consequence of the rapid shrinking that the kingdom has experienced in the past ten years. These people have come to Brightstone to keep themselves safe from the savages. I try not to think about what they must have to do for money or for food. Having seen the kingdom from a high vantage point, I cannot help but wonder where they even have space to grow anything.

The inhabitants of one particular district that we pass through appear to have given up on the idea of housing altogether. Instead, adults and children alike just seem to languish under patches of shade like tired, scrawny cats. Where one would expect to see houses, there is just piles of rubble. More worrying is that they don’t even seem to care. Even as I walk through this place, a place that I would assume could become quite dangerous, no one dares to step anywhere near. The people who lurk here look beaten, whipped, and in full understanding that one should not trouble anyone wearing gold armour.

Things begin to pick up again as we move towards Morrigan’s villa. There is a point where the quality of the houses quite markedly improves. They suddenly find a handsome uniformity, all fully built in attractive white stone. The streets themselves begin to tidy up at around the same point, transforming from dirt tracks into red tile surfaces, and whereas previously it felt like there were always eyes upon me, it now begins to feel very quiet indeed. I wouldn’t expect a fortunate highborn such as Morrigan to turn up anywhere else.

As I get closer, I begin to realise that The Crow has landed on his feet once again. We are nearing a stone market square when my escort points his villa out. It would appear that he has the second floor of a large building overlooking the market square. The square is easily the busiest place I have seen so far, perhaps only half full but thronging with the noise of people and the smell of beasts. One smell rises above them all – a smell that I would know anywhere, the smell of home, that most piquant of smells, the smell of goat. At the opposite end of the square is a tall tower with a circular face upon it. This face, I assume, must be a clock face. Brother Gemin taught me about clocks during my captivity; they are machines capable of demonstrating the passage of time. Their primary function is to call people to prayer at the necessary hour. Ironically, my excitement at seeing Morrigan means that I do not have the time to try to understand the device now.

Thanking my escort, I head up the stone steps to Morrigan’s front door. I knock loudly. Strangely, I feel almost elated at the thought of seeing the man again. I am waiting for a short passage of time before I hear his heavy feet lurching clumsily towards me from the other side of the wood. When he arrives, he arrives topless and grinning.

“Holy hell, there’s a face I didn’t think I’d see again!” laughs Morrigan as I enter. The lazy contortions of his face immediately tell me that he is drunk.

“Why not?” I reply.

“Well... I can’t imagine that worshipping Our Saviour came particularly easy to you. I did have a little chuckle to myself when I imagined you in there,” he laughs, pouring me a goblet of the ubiquitous red alcohol that I have come to know as ‘wine’.

“I’m not stubborn. I know when to let go,” I reply, taking the goblet from his hands.

“Yes, you certainly do. And it only took you three months to work it out.” He drunkenly holds his cup up to mine and I, taking the cue, clink my cup against his.

“Anyway. Welcome to paradise! Everything here is better than home. And I mean everything,” he winks. His sheepish grin and state of semi-undress lead me to think he’s probably not alone.

“Have I interrupted something?”

“Oh… well… yes… actually,” he replies, as though suddenly remembering. “It’s not a problem though. I’ll ask her if she wouldn’t mind… err… coming back another time.” And with that he saunters off to what I presume is his bedroom door, across the other side of the room.

It’s a clean, well-maintained space with the red brick flooring and white stone walls that seem quite typical of Brightstone’s architecture. Light, obviously very important to these people, pours in through numerous open windows. Instead of being divided into sections, the entire space houses all the functions required to live; there is an area for preparing food in the far right hand corner, a dining table to my right and informal seating to my left. The state of the informal seating tells me all I need to know about what I may have just interrupted; it is littered with wineskins and various items of female clothing. I take a seat at the dining table.

It is not long before Morrigan, accompanied by a somewhat flustered-looking young lady, returns to the room. He dismisses her, half-dressed, from the front door without so much as arranging their next meeting.

“Didn’t she forget some clothes?” I ask, as the door slams shut.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure she has some more,” is his callous reply. He quickly tops his wine up and takes a seat next to me at the dining table.

We spend the next while in conversation about how we got here. There is a certain satisfaction in recounting the number of times that we probably should have died but didn’t. The incident in the burrow has also become more troubling in hindsight. What on earth was happening there? Whatever became of those people? How bizarre it is to imagine all the little stories taking place across that frozen land.

And, of course, we talk about Shara, the scorpion girl. Whatever happened to her? She just faded away at the start of battle, never to be seen again. Why did she run? If she wanted to run, why did she help us in the first place? The girl certainly left us with some unanswered questions.

After some time, Morrigan begins to talk about his new life on Brightstone. He couldn’t be more at home. He already knew the two other exiles (all three consider themselves thus) from their time at Ynys Gwyn. Owain and Ioan were key figures in the kingdom’s black economy, poachers of high renown, and, as such, were natural candidates to be sent on a similar quest to our own. He tells me that they live nearby and are good company, especially in terms of the people that they know.

As for money, he nonchalantly tells me that he’s been accepted into the Golden Brigade. This unit, the soldiers that wear the gold plate, are the elite set of soldiers that guard the kingdom. Being a member is effectively a key with which a man can attain any privilege he desires. It sickens me how easily Morrigan’s casual superiority has carried across into another culture. I suppose it is a fact of life that men like him will always be recognised by others of his own ilk, as though they are marked by some sort of invisible brand.

“I’m sshure I can get you in as well. You’ve sshown that you can… hic… handle yoursshelf… sshort of…” As his drunkenness progresses, the muscles on his face have relaxed even further and he seems to have lost command of the letter ‘S’.

“Oh well… thank you… sort of…” I reply. “But it’s fine. I’m not going to be here for long. I’m heading back.”

“Oh Gruff, Gruff, Gruff… You can’t… hic… head back… You know that as well as I do.” Although he is, as always, smirking, I detect an element of paternalism in his voice, a dash of actual concern hidden somewhere beneath the drunkenness.

“I can and I will. I got here, didn’t I?”

“You got here… because you got lucky. You had me… hic… and.. you had Shara...” he stutters, swaying in his seat.

“That was our first time. I’ve learned from our mistakes… and from Shara’s teachings.”

“Well… maybe you will, maybe you won’t… but that’s not even your biggest problem,” he replies, draining his cup. Throughout the time we have been talking, and it has been some time, he has been drinking his wine at a prodigious rate. Every time I think he must have exhausted his supply, he always seems to have another wineskin ready. I have not drunk three cups in the time it has taken him to empty three skins.

“Why do you think that?”

“You’re not… hic… even allowed to leave… You know that, don’t you?”

“That was never mentioned?”

“Well… hic… that’ssh the thing… you’ll be killed. It will be the will of God. He doesn’t… hic… want people to leave. There’ssh no law against it… hic… but at the same time, you will die.”

Outside of battle, I have never really seen Morrigan without his smirk. In this moment, however, it is gone. Without it, his face looks tired and sad. His eyes and mouth hang awkwardly, the muscles controlling them seemingly given up to drunkenness some time ago.

“How do you know this?”

“All… hic… the Golden Brigade know. It’s one of our… hic… functions.”

“So you’re supposed to kill me if I try to leave?”

“No… becausshe you’re not… hic… going to. Look… Gruff… Goat… Sprat… There’s no… hic…  reason to leave. It’ssh great here. You’ll learn to love it,” he says, almost begging, slapping his big hand against my shoulder, his eyes probing my face for acceptance.

“I think you know as well as I do that nothing’s going to persuade me. What are you supposed to do? Slaughter me here?”

“We don’t even… hic… need to. You try living for a day without thissh wine,” he says solemnly, raising the wineskin in the air as though to inspect it.

“What?”

“Thissh wine… hic… is… ha ha ha… the blood of Our Saviour. Through it he gives us the gift of life.”

“What?” I reply. Blood rushes to my face. Has he been brainwashed? “You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Mark my words. Men die from not drinking the wine… I’ve sh..sheen it. Some people… hic… choose to die by not drinking. The poorest people die becausshe they can’t afford it.”

“Well, I have a strong hunch that’s not going to be your fate,” I reply drily.

“I’ll… drink… to… that,” he says, just about, before passing out in his chair.

This conversation has nearly broken me. It changes things, brings new problems to the surface. Morrigan is lost to me, that much is clear. One of the main rumours that dogged him around Tallakarn was the talk of his thirst for alcohol. The sobriety imposed on him by our journey had masked the issue from me but now, presented with his lop-sided face and tall stories, I understand that it is a love affair much too far gone for me to stop.