PART FIVE - THE MEMORY OF A FLAME chapter 17
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SCELTO WOKE HER VERY EARLY ON THE M OF THE RITual. She had spent the night alone, as roper, and had made s the evening before at the temples of Adaon and Morian both. Brandin was careful now to be seen all rites and proprieties of the Palm. Iemples the priests and the priestesses had been almost fawning in their solicitude. In what she was doing there ower for them and they k.Shed had a short aless sleep and wheo touched her awake, gently, and with a mug of khav already to hand, she felt her last dream of the night slipping away from her. Closing her eyes, only half scious, she tried to chase it, sensing the dream reg as if down corridors of her mind. She pursued, trying to reclaim an image that would hold it, and then, just as it seemed about to fade and be lost, she remembered.
She sat up slowly in bed and reached for the khav, cradling it in both hands, seeking warmth. Not that the room was cold, but she had now remembered what day it was, and there was a chill in her heart that went beyond foreboding and touched certainty.
When Dianora had been a very small girl—perhaps five years old, a little less than that—she had had a dream of drowning one night. Sea waters closing over her head, and a vision of something dark, a shape, final and terrible, approag to draw her down into lightless depths.
She had e awake gasping and screaming, thrashing about in bed, uain of where she even was.
And then her mother had been there, holding Dianora to her heart, murmuring, rog her bad forth until the frantic sobbing ceased. When Dianora had finally lifted her head from her mothers breast, she had seen by dlelight that her father was there as well, holding Baerd in his arms in the doorway.
Her little brother had been g too, she saw, shocked awake in his own room across the hall by her screams.
Her father had smiled and carried Baerd over to her, and the four of them had sat there in the middle of the night on Dianoras bed while the dles cast light in circles around them, shaping an island in the dark.
"Tell me about it," she remembered her father saying. Afterward he had made shadow figures for them with his hands on the wall and Baerd, soothed and drowsy, had fallen asleep again in his lap. "Tell me the dream, love.”
Tell me the dream, love. On Chiara, almost thirty years after, Dianora felt an ache of loss, as if it had all been but a little while ago. Days, weeks, no time at all. When had those dles in her room lost their power to hold back the dark?
She had told her mother and father, softly so as not to wake Baerd, some of the fear ing ba the stumbling words. The waters closing over her, a shape in the depths drawing her down. She remembered her mother making the sign against evil, to unbind the truth of the dream and deflect it away.
The m, before opening his studio and beginning his days work, Saevar had taken both his children past the harbor and the palace gates and south along the beach, and he had begun to teach them to swim in a shallow cove sheltered from the waves and the west wind. Dianora had expected to be afraid when she realized where they were going, but she was never really afraid of anything when her father was with her, and she and Baerd had both discovered, with whoops of delight, that they loved the water.
She remembered—se, the things one remembered—that Baerd, bending over in the shallows that first m, had caught a small darting fish between his hands, and had looked up, eyes and mouth ically round with surprise at his own achievement, and their father had shouted with laughter and pride.
Every fine m that summer the three of them had goo their cove to swim and by the time autumn came with its chill and then the rains Dianora felt as easy ier as if it were a sed skin to her.
Once, she remembered—and there was no surprise to this memory lingering—the Prince himself had joihem as they walked past the palace. Dismissing his retinue, Valentin strolled with the three of them to the cove and disrobed to pluo the sea beside their father. Straight out into the waves he had gone, long after Saevar stopped, past the sheltering headland of the cove and into the choppy whitecaps of the sea. Then he had turned around and e back to them, his smile bright as a gods, his body hard and lean, droplets of water sparkling in his golden beard.
He was a better swimmer than her father was, Dianora could see that right away, even as a child. She also knew, somehow, that it really didnt matter. He was the Prince, he was supposed to be better at everything.
Her father remaihe most wonderful man in the world, and nothing she could imagine learning was ever going to ge that.
Nothing ever had, she thought, shaking her head slowly in the saishan, as if to draw free of the ging, spidery webs of memory. Nothing ever had. Though Brandin, in another, better world, in his imaginary Finavir, perhaps . . .
She rubbed her eyes and then shook her head again, still struggling to e awake. She wondered suddenly if the two of them, her father and the King of Ygrath, had seen each other, had actually looked each other in the eye that terrible day by the Deisa.
Which was such a hurtful thought that she was afraid that she might begin to cry. Which would not do. Not today. No one, not eveo—especially not Scelto, who knew her too well—must be allowed to see anything in her for the few hours but quiet pride, and a certainty of success.
The few hours. The last few hours.
The hours that would lead her to the margin of the sea and then down into the dark green waters which were the vision of the riselkas pool. Lead her to where her path came clear at last and then came, not before time, and not with<q></q>out a certain relief beh the fear and all the loss, to an end.
It had unfolded with such direct simplicity, from the moment she had stood by the pool in the Kings Garden and seen an image of herself amid throngs of people in the harbor, and then alone uer, drawn toward a shape in darkhat was no longer a source of childhood terror but, finally, of release.
That same day, in the library, Brandin had told her he was abdig in Ygrath in favor of Girald, but that Dorotea his wife was going to have to die for what she had done. He lived his life in the eyes of the world, he said. Even had he wished to spare her, he would have no real choice.
He didnt wish to spare her, Brandin said.
Then he spoke of what else had e to him on his ride that m through the pre-dawn mists of the Island: a vision of the Kingdom of the Western Palm. He was going to make that vision real, he said.
For the sake of Ygrath itself, and for the people here in his provinces. And for his own soul. And for her.
Only those Ygrathens willing to bee people of his four joined provinces would be allowed to stay, he said; all others were free to sail home to Girald.
He would remain. Not just for Stevan and the response shaped in his heart to his soh, though that would hold, that was stant; but to build a united realm here, a better world than he had known.
That would hold, that was stant.
Dianora had listeo him, had felt her tears beginning to fall, and had moved to lay her head in his lap beside the fire. Brandin held her, moving his hands through her dark hair.
He would need a Queen, he had said.
In a voice she had never heard before; one she had dreamt of for so long. He wao have sons and
daughters here in the Palm now, Brandin said. To start again and build upon the pain of Stevans loss, that something bright and fair might emerge from all the years of sorrow.
And then he spoke of love. Drawing his hands gently through her hair he spoke of loving her. Of how that truth had finally e home into his heart. Once, she would have thought it far more likely that she might grasp and hold the moons than ever hear him speak such words to her.
She wept, uo stop, for in his words it was all gathering now, she could see how it was ing together, and such clarity and presce was too much for a mortal soul. For her mortal soul. This was the Triads wine, and there was too much bitter sorrow at the bottom of the cup. She had seen the riselka, though, she knew what was ing, where the path would lead them now. For one moment, a handful of heartbeats, she wondered what would have happened had he whispered these same words to her the night before instead of leaving her aloh the fires of memory. And that thought hurt as much as anything ever had in all her life.
Let it go! she wao say, wanted so much to say that she bit her lip holding back the words. Oh, my love, let the spell go. Let Tigana e bad all the worlds brightness will return.
She said nothing. Knowing that he could not do so, and knowing, for she was no longer a child, that grace could not be e by so easily. Not after all these years, not with Tigana and Stevan twiogether and embedded so deep down in Brandins own pain. Not with what he had already doo her home. Not in the world in which they lived.
Besides which, and above everything else, there was the riselka, and her clear path unfolding with every word whispered by the fire. Dianora felt as if she knew everything that was going to be said, everything that would follow. And each passing moment was leading them—she could see it as a kind of shimmer in the room—towards the sea.
Almost a third of the Ygrathens stayed. It was more than hed expected, Brandin told her, standing on the baly above the harbor two weeks later, watg most of his flotilla sail away, back to their home, to what had been his home. He was exiled now, by his own will, more truly than he had ever been before.
He also told her later that same day that Dorotea was dead. She didnt ask how, or how he knew. His sorcery was still the thing she did not ever want to face.
Shortly after that came bad tidings though. The Barbadians were beginning to move north toward and through Ferraut, all three armies apparently heading for the border of Senzio. He had not expected that, she saw. Not nearly so soon. It was too unlike careful Alberiove with such decisiveness.
"Something has happehere. Something is pushing him," Brandin said. "And I wish I knew what it was.”
He was weak and vulnerable now, that was the problem. He ime and they all k. With the Ygrathen army mostly gone Brandin needed a ce to shape a ructure of order in the western provio turn the first giddy euphoria of his annou into the bonds and allegiahat would truly fe a kingdom. That would let him summon an army to fight in his name, among a quered people lately so hard-oppressed.
He ime, desperately, and Alberico wasnt giving it to him.
"You could send us," dEymon the cellor said one m, as the dimensions of the crisis began to take shape. "Send the Ygrathens we have left and position the ships off the coast of Senzio. See if that will hold Alberico for a time.”
The cellor had stayed with them. There was never any real doubt that he would. For all his trauma—he had looked ill and old for days after Brandins annou—Dianora khat dEymons deepest loyalty, his love, though he would have shied awkwardly away from that word, was given to the man he served and not to the nation. Moving through those days almost numbed by the divisions in her ow she envied dEymon that simplicity.
But Brandin flatly refused to follow his suggestion. She remembered his face as he explained,
looking up from a map and strews of paper covered with numbers. The three of them together around a table iting-room off the Kings bedchamber; Rhun a nervous, preoccupied fourth on a couch at the far end of the room. The King of the Western Palm still had his Fool, though the King of Ygrath was named Girald now.
"I ake them fight alone," Brandin said quietly. "Not to carry the full burden of defending people I have just made them equal to. This ot be an Ygrathen war. For ohing, they are not enough, we will lose. But it is more than that. If we send an army or a fleet it must be made up of all of us here, or this Kingdom will be finished before I start.”
DEymon had risen from the table, agitated, visibly disturbed. "Then I must say again what I have said before: this is folly. The thing to do is to go home and deal with what has happened in Ygrath. They need you there.”
"Not really, dEymon. I will not flatter myself. Girald has been ruling Ygrath for twenty years.”
"Girald is a traitor and should have beeed as such with his mother!”
Brandin looked up at him, the grey eyes suddenly chilly.
"Must we repeat this discussion? DEymon, I am here for a reason and you know that reason. I ot go ba that: it would cut against the very core of what I am." His expression ged. "No maay with me, but I am bound myself to this peninsula by love and grief, and by my own nature, and those three things will hold me here.”
"The Lady Dianora could e with us! With Dorotea dead you would need a Queen in Ygrath and she would be—”
"DEymonl Have done." The tone was final, ending the discussion.
But the cellor was a brave man. "My lord," he pushed on, grim-faced, his voice low and intense, "if I ot speak of this and you will not send our fleet to face Barbadior I know not how to advise you.
The provinces will not go to war for you yet, we know that. It is too soon. They ime to see and to believe that you are one of them.”
"And I have no time," Brandin replied with what had seemed an unnatural calm after the sharp tension of the exge. "So I have to do it immediately. Advise me on that, cellor. How do I show them? Right now. How do I make them believe I am truly bound to the Palm?”
So there it was, and Dianora khat the moment had e to her at last.
I ot go ba that; it would cut against the very core of what I am. She had never really nursed any fantasies of his ever freely releasing and unbinding his spell. She knew Brandin too well. He was not a man who went back or reversed himself. In anything. The core of what he was. In love and hate and in the defining shape of his pride.
She stood up. There was an odd rushing sound in her ears, and if she closed her eyes she was certain she would see a path stretg away, straight and clear as a line of moonlight on the sea, very bright before her. Everything was leadihere, leading all of them. He was vulnerable, and exposed, and he would urn back.
There was an image of Tigana fl in her heart as she rose. Even here, even now, an image of her home. In the depths of the riselkas pool there had been a great many people gathered under banners of all the provinces as she walked down to the sea.
She placed her hands carefully on the back of her chair and looked down at him where he sat. There was grey in his beard, more, it seemed, each time she noticed it, but his eyes were as they had always been, and there was no fear, no doubt in them as they looked back at her. She drew a deep breath and spoke words that seemed to have been given to her long ago, words that seemed to have simply waited for this moment to arrive.
"I will do it for you," she said. "I will make them believe in you. I will do the Ring Dive of the Grand
Dukes of Chiara as it used to be done on the eve of war. You will marry the seas of the peninsula, and I will bind you to the Palm and to good fortune in the eyes of all the people when I bring you back the sea- ring from the sea.”
She kept her gaze steady on his own, dark and clear and calm, as she spoke at last, after so many years, the words that set her on the final path. That set him, set them all, the living and the dead, the named and the lost, on that path. As, loving him with a sundered heart, she lied.
She finished her khav and rose from bed. Scelto had drawn the curtains bad she could see sunrise just beginning to lighten the dark sea. The sky was clear overhead and the banners in the harbor could just be seen, moving lazily in the dawn breeze. There was already a huge crowd gathered, hours before the ceremony was to start. A great many people had spent the night in the harbor square, to be sure of a plaear the pier to see her dive. She thought she saw someone, a tiny figure at such a distance, lift a hand to point to her window and she stepped quickly back.
Scelto had already laid out the clothes she would wear, the garments of ritual. Dark green for the going down: her outer robe and sandals, the hat would hold her hair and the silken uuni which she would dive. For afterwards, after she came back from the sea, there was another robe, white, richly embroidered with gold. For when she was to represent, to be the bride e from the sea with a g in her hand for the King.
After she came back. If she came back.
She was almost asto her own calm. It was easier actually because she hadnt seen Brandin since early the day before, as roper for the rite. Easier too, because of how brilliantly clear all the images seemed to be, how smoothly they had led her here, as if she was choosing or deg nothing, only following a course set down somewhere else and long ago.
Easier, finally, because she had e to uand and accept, deeply, and with certitude, that she had been born into a world, a life, that would not let her be whole.
Not ever. This was not Finavir, or any such dreamplace. This was the only life, the only world, she was to be allowed. And in that life Brandin of Ygrath had e to this peninsula to shape a realm for his son, and Valentin di Tigana had killed Stevan, Prince of Ygrath. This had happened, could not be unmade.
And because of that death, Brandin had e down upon Tigana and her people and torn them out of the known past and the still unfolding pages of the world. And was stayio seal that truth forever—blank and absolute—in vengeance for his son. This had happened and was happening, and had to be unmade.
So she had e here to kill him. In her fathers name and her mothers, in Baerds name and her own, and for all the lost and ruined people of her home. But on Chiara she had discovered, in grief and pain and glory, that islands were truly a world of their own, that things ged there. She had learned, long ago, that she loved him. And now, in glory and pain and wonder, had been made to uand that he loved her. This had all happened, and she had tried to u, and had failed.
Hers was not a life meant to be made whole. She could see it now so clearly, and in that clarity, that final uanding, Dianora found the wellspring of her calm.
Some lives were unlucky. Some people had a ce to shape their world. It seemed—who could have foretold?—that both these things were true of her.
Of Dianora di Tigana bren Saevar, a sculptors daughter; a dark-haired dark-eyed child, gawky and unlovely in her youth, serious and grave, though with flashes of wit and tenderness, beauty ing to her late, and wisdom ing later, too much later. ing only now.
She took no food, though shed allowed herself the khav—a last cession to years of habit. She didnt think that doing so would violate any rituals. She also k didnt really matter. Scelto helped her dress, and then, in silence, he carefully gathered and pinned her hair, binding it in the dark greehat
would hold it back from her eyes when she dived.
When he was done she rose and submitted herself, as always befoing out into the world, to his scrutiny. The sun now; its light flooding the room through the drawn-back curtains. In the distahe growing noise from the harbor could be heard. The ust be very large by now, she thought; she didnt go back to the window to look. She would see them soon enough. There was a quality of anticipation to the steady murmur of sound that gave evidence, more clearly than anything else, of the stakes being played for this m.
A peninsula. Two different dominions here, if it came to that. Perhaps even the very Empire in Barbadior, with the Emperor ill and dying as everyone knew. And one last thing more, though only she khis, and only she would ever know: Tigana. The final, secret lying on the gaming table, hidden uhe card laid down in the name of love.
"Will I do?" she asked Scelto, her voice determinedly casual.
He didnt follow that lead. "Yhten me," he said quietly. "You look as though you are no longer entirely of this world. As if you have already left us all behind.”
It was uny how he could read her. It hurt to have to deceive him, not to have him with her on this last thing, but there was nothing he could have done, no reason to give him grief, and there were risks in the doing so.
"Im not at all sure thats flattering," she said, still lightly, "but I will attempt to think of it that way.”
He refused to smile. "I think you know how little I like this," he said.
"Scelto, Albericos entire army will be on the border of Senzio two weeks from now. Brandin has no choice. If they walk into Senzio they will not stop there. This is his very best ce, probably his only ce, to link himself to the Palm in time. You know all this." She forced herself to sound a little angry.
It was true, it was all true. But none of it was the truth. The riselka was the truth this m, that and the dreams shed dreamt alone here in the saishan through all the years.
"I know," Scelto said, clearly unhappy. "Of course I know. And nothing I think matters at all. It is just . . .”
"Please!" she said, to stop him before he made her cry. "I dont think I debate this with you now, Scelto. Shall we go?" Oh, my dear, she was thinking. Oh, Scelto, you will undo me yet.
He had stopped, fling at her rebuke. She saw him swallow hard, his eyes lowered. After a moment he looked up again.
"Five me, my lady," he whispered. He stepped forward and, uedly, took her hands, pressing them to his lips. "It is only for you that I speak. I am afraid. Please five.”
"Of course," she said. "Of course. There is really nothing tive, Scelto." She squeezed his hands tightly.
But in her heart she was bidding him farewell, knowing she must not cry. She looked into his ho, g face, the truest friend shed had for so many years, the only real friend actually, since her childhood, and she hoped against hope that in the days to e, he would remember the way she had gripped his hands and not the casual, careless sound of her words.
"Lets go," she said again, and turned her face away from him, to begin the long walk through the palad out into the m and then down to the sea.
The Ring Dive of the Grand Dukes of Chiara had been the most dramatigle ritual of temporal power in the Peninsula of the Palm. From the very beginning of their dominion on the Island, the leaders of Chiara had known that theirs ranted by and subject to the waters that surrouhem.
The sea guarded them ahem. It gave their ships—always the largest armada in the peninsula — access to trade and plunder, and it ed them about and enclosed them in a world within the world. No wonder, as the tale-tellers said, no wo was on the Island that Eanna and Adaon had e together
to engender Morian and make the Triad plete.
A world within the world, girdled by the sea.
It was said to have been the very first of the Grand Dukes who had begun the ceremony that became the Ring Dive. It had been different in those early days. Not actually a dive, for ohing, only a ring thrown as a gift into the sea in propitiation and token of aowledgment, in the days when the world turs face toward the sun and the sailing season began in ear.
Then one spring, a long time after that, a woman dived into the sea after the ring when the Grand Duke of that time cast it in. Some said later she had been crazed with love ious possession, others that she was only ing and ambitious.
Iher case, she surfaced from the waters of the harbor with the ring bright in her hand.
And as the crowd that had gathered to watch the Grand Duke wed the sea shouted and babbled in wild fusion and wohe High Priest of Morian in Chiara suddenly cried aloud, in words that would run down through all the years, o be lost: "Look and see! See how the os accept the Grand Duke as husband to them! How they offer back the sea-ring as a bride piece to a lover!”
And the High Priest moved to the very end of the pier beside the Duke and ko help the woman rise from the sea and so he set in motiohing that followed. Sarohe Grand Duke was but o his power and as yet unwed. Letizia, who had e into the city from a farm in the distrada and had dohis unpreted thing, was yellow-haired and ely and very young. And their palms were joiogether then and there over the water by Mellidar, that High Priest of Morian, and Saronte placed the sea-ring oizias finger.
They were wed at Midsummer. There was war that autumn against Asoli and Astibar, and young Saronte di Chiara triumphed magnifitly in a naval battle in the Gulf of Corte, south of the Island. A victory whose anniversary Chiara still remembered. And from that time onward, the newly shaped ritual of the Ring Dive was enshrined for use in time of Chiaras need.
Thirty years later, he end of Sarontes ln, in one of the recurring squabbles for prece among the Triads clergy, a newly anointed High Priest of Eanna revealed that Letizia had been near kin to Mellidar, the priest of Morian who had drawn her from the water and bouo the Duke. Eannas priest ihe people of the Island to draw their own clusions about the schemes of Morians clergy and their endless striving for preeminend power.
A number of events, none of them pleasant, had unfolded among the Triads servants in the months following that revelation, but none of these disturbances had e o toug the bright new sanctity of the ritual itself. The ceremony had taken hold on the imagination of the people. It seemed to speak to something deep within them, whether of sacrifice or homage, of love or danger, or, in the end, of some dark, true binding to the waters of the sea.
So the Ring Dive of the Grand Dukes remained, long after all those feuding clergy of the Triad had been lowered to their rest, their names only half-remembered, and only because of their part iory of the Dive.
What had finally brought ao the ceremony, in much more ret times, was the death of Ora, wife to Grand Duke Cazal, two hundred and fifty years ago.
It was not, by any means, the first such death: the women who volunteered to dive for the Grand Dukes always had it made absolutely clear to them that their lives were worth infinitely less than the ring they sought to reclaim from the sea. To e back without the ri one an exile from the Island for life, known and mocked throughout the whole peninsula. The ceremony was repeated with another woman, another ring, until one of the thrs was found and claimed.
By trast, the woman who carried a sea-ring back to the pier was acclaimed as the luck of Chiara and her fortune was made for life. Wealth and honor, an arranged marriage into nobility. More than one had borne a child trand Duke. Two had followed Letizia to the sorts throne. Girls from
families of little prospect were not chary about risking their lives for such a glittering, halluatory future.
Ora di Chiara had been different, and because of her and after her everything had ged.
Beautiful as a legend and as proud, Grand Duke Cazals young bride had insisted on doing the Ring Dive herself, sing to allocate such a glittering ceremony to some ill-bred creature from the distrada on the eve of a dangerous war. She had been, all the iclers of the day agreed, the most beautiful vision any of them had ever seen as she walked down to the sea in the dark-green of ritual.
When she floated, lifeless, to the surface of the water some distance from the shore, in full sight of the watg throng, Duke Cazal had screamed like a girl and fainted dead away.
After which there had been rioting and a terrified pandemonium unmatched before or sin the Island. In one isolated temple of Adaon on the north shore, all the priestesses had killed themselves when one of their number brought back the news. It was the wrath of the god that was ing, so the portents were read, and Chiara almost strangled on its fear.
Duke Cazal, foolhardy and broken, was slain in battle that summer against the joined armies of Corte and Ferraut, after which Chiara ewo geions of eclipse, rising to pain only after the bitter, destructive war fought between the erstwhile allies who had beaten it. Such a process, of course, was hardly hy. It had been the way of things in the Palm as far back as the records went.
But no woman had dohe Ring Dive sinestra died.
All the symbols had ged with her, the stakes had risen too high. If another womao die in the Dive, with that legacy of chaos a . . .
It was far too dangerous, successive Grand Dukes declared, the oer the other, and they found ways to keep the Island safe in its sea-girt power without the san of that most potent ceremony.
When the Ygrathe had been sighted een years ago the last Grand Duke of Chiara had killed himself oeps of Eannas temple, and so there had been no oo cast a ring into the sea that year, even had there been a woman willing to dive for it, in searorians intercession and the gods.
It was eerily silent in the saishan when she and Scelto left her rooms. Normally at this hour the corridors would be loud with the stir and bustle of the castrates, fragrant and colorful with the sted presence of women moving languorously to the baths or to their m meal. Today was different. The hallways were empty and still save for their own footsteps. Dianora suppressed a shiver, se did the deserted, eg saishan seem.
They passed the doorway to the baths and therao the dining rooms. Both were empty and silent. They turned a er toward the stairway that led down and out of the womens wing, and there Dianora saw that one person at least had remained, and was waiting for them.
"Let me look at you," Vencel said, the usual words. "I must approve you before you go down.”
The saishan head rawled as always among the many-colored pillows of his rolling platform.
Dianora almost smiled to see his vast bulk, and to hear the familiar words spoken.
"Of course," she said, and slowly turned full circle before his scrutiny.
"Acceptable," he said at length. The ary judgment, though his high distinctive voice sounded more subdued than she had ever heard it. "But perhaps . . . perhaps you would like to wear that vairstone from Khardhun about your throat? For luck? I brought it with me for you, from the saishan treasures.”
Almost diffidently Vencel extended a large soft hand and she saw that he was holding the red jewel she had worn the day Isolla of Ygrath had tried to kill the King.
She was about to demur when she remembered that Scelto had brought this back for her as something special for that day, just before she had dressed to go down. Remembering that, and moved by VencePs gesture, she said, "Thank you. I would be pleased to wear it." She hesitated. "Would you put it on for me?”
He smiled, almost shyly. She k before him and with his deft and delicate fihe enormous saishan head clasped the jewel on its about her neck. Kneeling so near she was overwhelmed by the st of tainflowers that he always wore.
Vencel withdrew his hands and leaned back to look at her. In his dark face his eyes were unwontedly soft. "In Khardhun we used to say to someone going on a journey Fortune find you there and guide you home. Such is my wish today." He hid his hands in the billowing folds of his white robe and looked away, down the empty corridor.
"Thank you," she said again, afraid to say more. She rose and glanced over at Scelto; there were tears in his eyes. He wiped them hastily away and moved to lead her dowairs. Halfway down she looked back at Vencel, an almost inhumanly vast figure, draped in billowing white. He was gazing expressionlessly down after them, from among the brilliantly colored panoply of his pillows, aic creature from another world entirely, somehow carried ashore and stranded here in the saishan of Chiara.
At the bottom of the stairs she saw that the two doors had bee unbarred. Scelto would not have to knoot today. He pushed the doors open and drew back to let her pass.
In the long hallway outside the priests of Morian and the priestesses of Adaon were waiting for her.
She saw the scarcely veiled triumph in their eyes, a collective glittering of expectation.
There was a sound, a drawing of breath, as she came through the doors in the green robes of a rite that had not been performed in two and a half hundred years, her hair drawn bad bound in a green as the sea.
Traio trol, being what they were, the clergy quickly fell silent. And in silehey made way for her, to follow behind in orderly rows of crimson and smoke-grey.
She khey would make Scelto trail behind them. He could not be part of this procession of the rites. She knew she had not properly said farewell to him. Hers was not a life meant to be made whole.
They we down the corridor to the Grand Staircase. At the top of the wide marble stairs Dianora paused and looked down, and she finally uood why the saishan had been so silent. All the women and the castrates were gathered below. They had been allowed out, permitted to e this far to see her pass by. Holding her head very high and lookiher left nht she set her foot on the first stair and started down. She was no longer herself, she thought. No longer Dianora, or not only Dianora.
She was merging further into legend with every step she took.
And then, at the bottom of the staircase, as she stepped onto the mosailaid tiles of the floor, she realized aiting by the palace doors to escort her out and her heart almost stopped.
There was a cluster of men there. DEymon, for one, and Rhamanus as well, who had stayed in the Palm as shed been sure he would, and had been named as Brandins First Lord of the Fleet. Beside them was Doarde the poet, representing the people of Chiara. She had expected him: it had been dEymons clever idea that the participation of one Island poet could help terbalahe crime ah of another. o Doarde was a burly, sharp-faced man in brow hung about with a ransoms worth of gold. A mert from Corte, and a successful one clearly enough; very possibly one of the ghouls who had made their fortune preying on the ruins of Tigana two decades ago. Behind him was a lean grey- clad priest of Morian who was obviously from Asoli. She could tell from his c, the native Asolino all had that look about them.
She also knew he was from Asoli because the last of the men waiting for her there was from Lower Corte and she knew him. A figure from her own internal legends, from the myths and hopes that had sustained her life this far. And this was the one whose presence here almost froze the blood in her veins.
In white of course, majestic as she remembered him from when she was a girl, gripping the massive staff that had always been his signature, and t over every man there, stood Dahe High Priest of Eanna in Tigana.
The man who had taken Prince Alessan away to the south. So Baerd had told her the night he saw his
own riselka a away to follow them.
She knew him, everyone had known Danoleon, his long-striding, broad-shouldered preemihe deep, glorious instrument that was his voi temple services. Approag the doors Dianora fought back a moment of wild panic before sternly trolling herself. There was no way he could reize her.
He had never known her as a child. Why should he have—the adolest daughter of an artist loosely attached to the court? And she had ged, she was infinitely ged sihen.
She couldnt take her eyes off him though. She had known dEymon was arranging for someoo be there from Lower Corte, but had never expected Danoleon himself. In the days when she had worked in The Queen in Steva was well-known that Eannas High Priest had withdrawn from the wider world into the goddesss Sanctuary in the southern hills.
Now he had e out, and was here, and looking at him, drinking in his reality, Dianora felt an absurd, an almost overwhelming swell of pride to see how he seemed to dominate, merely by his presence, all the people assembled there.
It was for him, and for the men and women like him, the ones whone and the ones who yet lived in a broken land, that she was going to do what she would do today. His eyes rested on her seargly; they were all doing that, but it was under Danoleons clear blue gaze that Dianora drew herself up even taller than before. Behind them all, beyond the doors which had not yet been opened, she seemed to see the riselkas path growing brighter all the time.
She stopped and they bowed to her, all six men putting a straight leg forward and bending low in a fashion of salute not used for turies. But this was legend, ceremony, an invocation of many kinds of power, and Dianora sehat she must now seem to them like some hieratic figure out of the tapestry scrolls of the distant past.
"My lady," said dEymon gravely, "if it pleases you and you are mio allow us, we would attend upon you now and lead you to the King of the Western Palm.”
Carefully said, and clearly, for all their words were to be remembered aed. Everything was to be remembered. One reason the priests were here, and a poet.
"It pleases me," she said simply. "Let us go." She did not say more; her own words would matter less.
It was not what she would say today that was to be remembered.
She still could not take her eyes from Danoleon. He was the first man from Tigana, she realized, that she had seen sining to the Island. In a very direct way it eased her heart that Eanna, whose children they all were, had allowed her to see this man before she went into the sea.
DEymon nodded a and. Slowly the massive bronze doors swung open upon the vast crowd assembled between the palad the pier. She saw people spilling across the square to the farthest ends of the harbor, even thronging the decks of the ships at anchor there. The steady murmur of sound that had bee all m swelled to a cresdo as the doors swung open, and then it abruptly stopped and fell away as the crowd caught sight of her. A rigid, straining silence seemed to claim Chiara uhe blue arch of the sky; and out into that stillness Dianora went.
And it was then, as they moved into the brilliant sunshine along the aisle, the shining path that had been made for her passage, that she saw Brandin waiting by the sea for her, dressed like a soldier-king, without extravagance, bareheaded in the light of spring.
Something twisted withi the sight of him, like a blade in a wound. It will end soon, she told herself steadily. Only a little longer now. It will all be over soon enough.
She went toward him then, walking like a queen, slender and tall and proud, clad in the colors of the dark-green sea with a crimson gem about her throat. And she khat she loved him, and knew her land was lost if he was not driven away or slain, and she grieved with all her being for the simple truth that her mother and her father had had a daughter born to them all those years ago.
For someone as small as he was it was hopeless to try to see anything from the harbor square itself
and even the deck of the ship that had brought them here from Corte was thronged with people who had paid the captain for a ce to view the Drive from this vantage point. Devin had made his way over to the mainmast and scrambled up to join another dozen men ging to the rigging high above the sea.
There were pensations i in agility.
Erlein was somewhere below amid the crowd on deck. He was still terrified, after three days here, by this enforced proximity to the sorcerer from Ygrath. It was ohing, he had said angrily, to elude Trackers in the south, another for a wizard to walk up to a sorcerer.
Alessan was somewhere among the crowd in the harbor. Devin had spotted him at one point w his way towards the pier, but couldnt see him now. Danoleon was ihe palace itself, representing Lower Corte in the ceremony. The irony of that was almost overwhelming, whenever Devin allowed himself to think about it. He tried not to because it made him afraid, for all of them.
But Alessan had been decisive when the courteously phrased request had e for the High Priest to travel north and join men of the other three provinces as formal wito the Ring Dive.
"You will go, of course," the Prince had said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "And we shall be there as well. I o take the measure of things on Chiara sihis ge.”
"Are you absolutely mad?" Erlein had gasped, not b to hide his disbelief.
Alessan had only laughed, though not, Devin thought, with any real amusement. He had bee virtually impossible to read since his mother had died. Devi quite ie to the task ing that space or breaking through. Several times in the days following Pasitheas death he had found himself desperately wishing that Baerd were with them.
"What about Savandi?" Erlein had demanded. "Couldnt this be a trap for Danoleon. Or for you, even?”
Alessan shook his head. "Hardly. You said yourself, no message was sent. And it is entirely plausible that he was killed by brigands in the tryside as Torre made it seem. The King of the Western Palm has larger things to worry abht now than one of his petty spies. Im not ed about that, Erlein, but I do thank you for your solicitude." He smiled, a wintry smile. Erlein had scowled and stalked away.
"What are you ed about?" Devin had asked the Prince.
But Alessan hadnt answered that.
High in the rigging of the Aema Fal Devin waited with the others for the palace doors to open, and tried to trol the pounding of his heart. It was difficult though; the sense of excitement and anticipation that had been building on the Island for three days had started to bee overwhelming this m, and had taken an almost palpable shape when Brandin himself had appeared and walked calmly down to the pier with a small retinue, including oooped, balding old man dressed exactly like the King.
"Brandins Fool," the Cortean in the riggio him said, when Devin asked, pointing.
"Something to do with sorcery, the way they do things in Ygrath." He grunted. "Were better off not knowing.”
Devin had gazed for the first time at the man who had destroyed Tigana and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a bow in his hands right now and Baerd or Alessans skill at archery. It was a long, but not an impossible shot, down, and across a span of water to strike a single soberly clad, bearded man standing by the sea.
Imagining the flight of that arrow in the m sun, he remembered another versation with Alessan, at the rail of the Fal the night they reached Chiara.
"What do we want to happen?" Devin had asked.
Word had reached the Gulf of Corte just before they sailed that most of the Sed pany of
Albericos Barbadian meraries had now been pulled back from the border forts and cities in Ferraut and were marg with the other armies towards Senzio. Hearing that, Alessans face had gone pale, and there was a sudden hard glitter in his gray eyes.
Much like his mothers, Devin had thought, but would not dream of saying.
On the ship Alessan had turo him briefly at the question and then looked back out to sea. It was very late, nearer dawn than midnight. her of them had been able to sleep. Both moons were overhead and the water gleamed and sparkled with their mingled light.
"What do we want to happen?" Alessaed. "Im not pletely sure. I think I know, but I t be certaihats why were going to watch this Dive.”
They listeo the sounds of the ship in the night sea. Devin cleared his throat.
"If she fails?" he asked.
Alessan was silent for so long Devin didnt think he was going to ahen, very softly, he said, "If the Certandan woman fails Brandin is lost I think. I am almost sure.”
Devin looked quickly over at him. "Well then, that means . . .”
"That means a number of things, yes. One is our name e back. Another is Alberico ruling the Palm. Before the year is out, almost certainly.”
Devin tried to absorb that. If we take them then we must take them both, he remembered the Prince saying in the Sandreni lodge, with Devin hiding in the loft above.
"And if she succeeds?" he asked.
Alessan shrugged. In the blue and silver moonlight his profile seemed more marble than flesh. "You tell me. Hoeople of the provinces will fight against the Empire of Barbadior for a king who has been wedded to the seas of the Palm by a sea-bride from this peninsula?”
Devin thought about it.
"A lot," he said at length. "I think a lot of people would fight.”
"So do I," said Alessan. "Then the question bees, who would win? And the oer that is: Is there something we do about it?”
"Is there?”
Alessan looked over at him then and his mouth crooked wryly. "I have lived my life believing so. We may find it put to the test very soon.”
Devin stopped his questions then. It was very bright with the two moons shining. A short while later Alessan touched his shoulder and pointed with his other hand. Devin looked and saw a high, dark mass of land rising from the sea in the distance.
"Chiara," said Alessan.
And so Devin saw the Island for the first time.
"Have you ever been here before?" he asked softly.
Alessan shook his head, aking his eyes from that dark, mountainous shape on the horizon.
"Only in my dreams," he said.
"Shes ing!" someone shouted from the topming of the Asolini ship anchored o them; the cry was immediately picked up and strung from ship to ship and along the harbor, peaking in a roar of anticipation.
And then falling away to an eerie, chilling silence as the massive bronze doors of Chiara Palace swung fully back to reveal the woman framed within.
Even when she began to walk the silence held. Moving slowly, she passed among the throngs assembled in the square, seeming almost oblivious of them. Devin was too far away to see her face clearly
yet, but he was suddenly scious of a terrible beauty and grace. It is the ceremony, he told himself; it is only because of where she is. He saw Danoleon behind her, moving among the other escorts, t above them.
And then, moved by some instinct, he turned from them to Brandin of Ygrath on the pier. The King was o him and he had the right angle. He could see how the man watched the proach.
His face was utterly expressionless. Icy cold.
Hes calculating the situation. Devin thought. The numbers, the ces. Hes using all of this—the woman, the ritual, everyohered here with so much passion in them—for a purely political end. He realized that he despised the man for that, over and above everything else: hated him for the blaionless gaze with which he watched a proach to risk her life for him. By the Triad, he was supposed to be in love with her!
Even the bent old man beside him, Devin saw, the Kings Fool, dressed exactly like Brandin, was wringing his hands over and about each other in obvious apprehension, ay and vivid in his face.
By trast, the face of the King of the Western Palm was a frigid, ung mask. Devin didnt even want to look at him anymore. He turned back to the woman, who had uearer now.
And because she had, because she was almost at the waters edge, he could see that his first sense had been right and his glib explanati: Dianora di Certando clad in the sea-green robes of the Ring Dive was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in all his life.
What do we want to happen? he had asked Alessan three nights ago, sailing to this Island.
He still didnt know the answer. But looking down at the woman as she reached the sea a sudden fear rose in him, and airely ued pity. He grasped the rigging tightly a himself to watch from high, high above.
She knew Brandier than anyone alive; it had been necessary, in order to survive, especially in the beginning, in order to say and do the right things in a mortally dangerous place. Then as the years slipped by y had somehow been alchemized into something else. Into love, actually, bitterly hard as that had been to aowledge. She had e here to kill, with the twin snakes of memory and hatred in her heart. Instead, she had ended up uanding him better than anyone in the world because there was no one else who mattered half so much.
And so what came very o breaking her, as she passed through that multitude of people to the pier, was seeing how ferociously he was struggling not to show what he was feeling. As if his soul were straining to escape through the doorways of his eyes, and he, being born to power, being what he was, felt it necessary to hold it in, here among so many people.
But he couldnt hide it from her. She didnt even have to look at Rhun to read Brandin now. He had cut himself off from his home, from all that had anchored him in life, he was here among an alien people he had quered, asking for their aid, needing their belief in him. She was his lifeline now, his only bridge to the Palm, his only link, really, to any kind of future here, or anywhere.
But Tiganas ruin lay betweewo of them like a chasm in the world. The lesson of her days, Dianora thought, was simply this: that love was not enough. Whatever the songs of the troubadours might say. Whatever hope it might seem to offer, love was simply not enough te the chasm in her world.
Which was why she was here, what the riselkas vision in the garden had offered her: ao the terrible, bottomless divisions in her heart. At a price, however, that was not iable. One did not bargain with the gods.
She came up to Brandin at the end of the pier and stopped and the others stopped behind her. A sigh, rising and falling away like a dying of wind, moved through the square. With an odd trick of the mind her vision seemed to detach itself from her eyes for a moment, to look down on the pier from above. She could see how she must appear to the people gathered there: inhuman, otherworldly.
As Ora must have seemed before the last Dive. Ora had not e back, aation had followed upon that. Which was why this was her ce: the dark doorway history offered to release, and to the ination of her long dream in the saishan.
The sunlight was very bright, gleaming and dang on the blue-greehere was so much color and riess in the world. Beyond Rhun, she saw a woman in a brilliant yellow robe, an old man in blue and y<q></q>ellow, a younger, dark-haired man in brown with a child upon his shoulders. All e to see her dive. She closed her eyes for a moment, before she turo look at Brandin. It would have been easier not to, infinitely easier, but she khat there were dangers in not meeting his gaze. And, in the end, here at the end, this was the man she loved.
Last night, lying awake, watg the slow transit of the moons across her window, she had tried to think of what she could say to him when she reached the end of the pier. Words beyond those of the ritual, to carry layers of meaning down through the years.
But there, too, lay danger, a risk of undoing everything this moment was to bee. And words, the ones she would want to say, were just another reag out towards making something whole, werent they? Towards bridging the chasms. And in the end that was the point, wasnt it? There was ne across for her.
Not in this life.
"My lord," she said formally, carefully, "I know I am surely unworthy, and I fear to presume, but if it is pleasing to you and to those assembled here I will try t you the sea-ring back from the sea.”
Brandins eyes were the color of skies before rain. His gaze never wavered from her face. He said, "There is no presumption, love, and infinite worthiness. You enhis ceremony with your presence here.”
Which fused her, for these were not the words they had prepared. But then he looked away from her, slowly, as if turning away from light.
"People of the Western Palm!" he cried, and his voice was clear and strong, a Kings, a leader of men, carrying resonantly across the square and out among the tall ships and the fishing boats. "We are asked by the Lady Dianora if we find her worthy to dive for us. If we will place our hopes of fortune io seek the Triads blessing in the war Barbadis down upon us. <var>..</var>What is your reply? She waits to hear!”
And amid the thunderous roar of assent that followed, a roar as loud and sure as they had known it would be after so much pent-up anticipation, Dianora felt the brutal irony of it, the bitter jest, seize hold of her.
Our hopes of fortune. Ihe Triads blessing. Through her?
In that moment, for the first time, here at the very margin of the sea, she felt fear e in to lay a finger on her heart. For this truly was a ritual of the gods, a ceremony of great age and numinous power and she was using it for her own hidden purposes, for something shaped in her mortal heart. Could such a thing be allowed, however pure the cause?
She looked back then at the palad the mountains that had defined her life for so long. The snows were gone from the peak of Sangarios. It was on that summit that Eanna was said to have made the stars.
And hem all. Dianora looked away and down, and she saw Danoleon gazing at her from his great height. She looked into the calm, mild blue of his eyes a herself reach out and back through time to take strength and sureness from his quietude.
Her fear fell away like a discarded garment. It was for Danoleon, and for those like him who had died, for the books and the statues and the songs and the hat were lost that she was here. Surely the Triad would uand that when she was brought to her final ating for this heresy? Surely Adaon would remember Micaela by the sea? Surely Eanna of the Names would be merciful?
Slowly then, Dianora nodded her head as the roar of sound finally receded; seeing that, the High Priestess of the god came forward in her crimson gown and helped her free of the dark-green robe.
Then she was standing by the water, clad only ihin green uunic that barely reached her knees, and Brandin was holding a ring in his hand.
"In the name of Adaon and of Morian," he said, words of ritual, rehearsed and carefully prepared, "and always and forever in the name of Eanna, Queen of Lights, we seek nurture here and shelter. Will the sea wele us and bear us upon her breast as a mother bears a child? Will the os of this peninsula accept a ring of in my name and in the name of all those gathered here, and send it back to us in token of our fates bound together? I am Brandin di Chiara, King of the Western Palm, and I seek your blessing now.”
Theuro her, as a seurmur of astonishment began at his last words, at what hed named himself, ah that sound, as if cloaked and sheltered u, he whispered something else, words only she could hear.
Theurowards the sea and drew back his arm, ahrew the golden ring in a high and shining arc up towards the brightness of the sky and the dazzling sun.
She saw it reach its apex and begin to fall. She saw it strike the sea and she dived.
The water was shogly cold, so early in the year. Using the momentum of the dive she drove herself downwards, kig hard. The gree held her hair so she could see. Brandin had thrown the ring with some care but he had known he could not simply toss it o the pier—too many people would be looking for that. She propelled herself forward and down with half a dozen hard, driving strokes, her eyes straining ahead in the blue-green filtered light.
She might as well reach it. She might as well see if she could claim the ring before she died. She could carry it as an , down to Morian.
Her fear, amazingly, was entirely gone. Or perhaps it was not so amazing after all. What was the riselka, what did its vision offer if not this certainty, a sureo carry her past the old terror of dark waters, to the last portal of Morian? It was ending now. It should have ended long ago.
She saw nothing, kicked again, f herself deeper and further out, towards where the ring had fallen.
There was a sureness in her, a brilliant clarity, an awareness of how events had shaped themselves towards this moment. A moment when, simply by her dying, Tigana might be redeemed at last. She khe story of Ora and Cazal; every person in this harbor did. They all knew what disasters had followed uporas death.
Brandin had gambled all on this one ceremony, having no other choi the face of battle brought to him too soon. But Alberico would take him now; there could be no other result. She kly what would follow upon her death. Chaos and shrill denunciation, the perceived judgment of the Triad upon this arrogantly self-styled King of the Western Palm. There would be no army in the west to oppose the Barbadian. The Peninsula of the Palm would be Albericos to harvest like a vineyard, rind like graih the millstones of his ambition.
Which ity, she supposed, but redressing that particular sorrow would have to be someone elses task. The souls quest of aneion. Her own dream, the task shed set herself with an adolests pride, sitting by a dead fire in her fathers house long years ago, had been t Tiganas name bato the world.
Her only wish, if she were allowed a wish before the dark closed over her and became everything, was that Brandin would leave, would find a place to go far from this peninsula, before the end came. And that he might somehow e to know that his life, wherever he went, was a last gift of her love.
Her owh didnt matter. They killed women who slept with querors. They hem traitors and they killed them in many different ways. Drowning would do.
She wondered if she would see the riselka here, sea-greeure of the sea, agent of destiny, guardian of thresholds. She wondered if she would have some last vision before the end. If Adaon would
e for her, the stern and glorious god, appearing as he had to Micaela on the beach so long ago. She was not Micaela though, nht and fair and i in her youth. She didnt think that she would see the god.
Instead, she saw the ring.
It was tht and just above, drifting like a promise or an answered prayer down through the slow, cold waters so far below the sunlight. She reached out, in the dreamlike slowness of all motion in the sea, and she claimed it and put it on her fihat she might die as a sea-bride with sea-gold upon her hand.
She was very far under now. The filtered light had almost disappeared this far down. She knew her last gathered air would soon be gone as well, the need for the surface being imperative, reflexive. She looked at the ring, Brandins ring, his last and only hope. She brought it to her lips, and kissed it, and theurned her eyes, her life, her long quest, away from the surfad the sunlight, and love.
Downward she went, f herself as deep as she could. And it was then, just then, that the visions began to e.
She saw her father in her mind, clearly, holding his chisel and mallet, his shoulders and chest covered with a fine powder of marble, walking with the Prin their courtyard, Valentins arm familiarly thrown about his shoulders, and then she saw him as he had been before he rode away, awkward and grim, to war.
Then Baerd was in her mind: as a boy, sweet-natured, seemingly always laughing. Then weeping outside her door the night Naddo left them, then ed close in her arms in a ruined moonlit world, and lastly in the doorway of the house the night he went away. Her mother —and Dianora felt as if she were somehow swimming back through all the years to her family. For ah 1 these images of her mother were from before the fall, before the madness had e, from a time when her mothers voice had seemed able to gehe evening air, her touch still soothe all fevers away, all fear of the dark.
It was dark now, and very cold in the sea. She felt the first agitation of what would soon be a desperate need for air. There came to her then, as on a scroll unrolling through her mind, viges of her life after shed left home. The village iando. Smoke over Avalle seen from the high and distant fields. The man—she couldnt even remember his name—who had wao marry her. Others who had bedded her in that small room upstairs. The Queen in Stevanien. Arduini. Rhamanus on the river galley taking her away. The opening sea before them. Chiara. Scelto.
Brandin.
And so, at the very end, it was he who was in her mind after all. And over and above the hard, quick images of a dozen years and more Dianora suddenly heard again his last words on the pier. The words she had been fighting to hold back from her awareness, had tried not to even hear or uand, for fear of what they might do to her resolve. What he might do.
My love, hed whispered, e bae. Stevan is gone. I ot lose you both or I will die.
She had not wao hear that; anything like that. Words were power, words tried to ge you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.
Or I will die, he had said.
And she knew, could not even try to deny within herself that it was true. That he would die. That her false, benefit vision of Brandin living somewhere else, rememberienderly, was simply another lie in the soul. He would do no such thing. My love, he had called her. She knew, gods how she and her home had cause to know, what love meant to this man. How deep it went in him.
How deep. There was a r sound in her ears noressure of water so far below the surface of the sea. Her lungs felt as if they were going to burst. She moved her head to one side, with difficulty.
There seemed to be something there, beside her in the darkness. A darting figure further out to sea. A glimmer, glimpse of a form, of a man od she could not say. But it could not be a man down here.
Not so far below the light and the waves, and not glowing as this form was.
Another inward vision, she told herself. A last ohen. The figure seemed to be swimming slowly away from her, light shining around it like an aureole. She ent now. There was an ag in her, of longing, a yearning for peace. She wao follow that gentle, impossible light. She was ready to rest, to be whole and untormented, without desire.
And then she uood, or thought she did. That figure had to be Adaon. It had to be the god ing for her. But he had turned his back. He was moving away, the calm glow reg away towards blaess here in the depths of the sea.
She did not belong to him. Not yet.
She looked at her hand. The ring upon it was almost invisible, so faint was the light. But she could feel it there, and she knew wh it was. She knew.
Far down in the dark of the sea, terribly far below the world where mortal men and women lived and breathed the air, Dianora turned. She pushed her hands above her, touched palms together and parted them, cleaving the water upwards, hurling her body like a spear up through all the layers of the sea, of dark-greeh, towards life again and all the unbridged chasms of air and light and love.
When he saw her break the surface of the sea, Devi. Even before he saw the flash of gold sparkling on the hand she lifted in weariness, that they all might see the ring.
Wiping at his streaming eyes, his voice raw from screaming with all the others on the ship, on all the ships, all through the harbor of Chiara, he then saw something else.
Brandin of Ygrath, who had named himself Brandin di Chiara, had dropped to his knees on the pier and had buried his fa his hands. His shoulders were shaking helplessly. And Devin uood then h he had been before: that this was not, after all, a man who was only pleased and happy that a stratagem had worked.
With agonizing slowhe woman swam to the pier. An eager priest and priestess helped her from the sea and supported her and ed her shivering form in a robe of white and gold. She could scarcely stand. But Devin, still weeping, saw her lift her head high as she turo Brandin and offered him the sea-ring in a trembling hand.
Then he saw the King, the Tyrant, the sorcerer who had ruihem with his bitter, annihilating pather the woman into his arms, gently, with tenderness, but with the unmistakable urgency of a man deprived and hungry for too long.
Alessan reached up and removed the child from his shoulders, setting it carefully down beside its mother. She smiled at him. Her hair was yellow as her gown. He smiled back, reflexively, but found himself turning away. From her, from the man and woman embrag feverishly o them. He felt physically ill. There was a quite substantial level of jubilant chaos erupting all around in the harbor. His stomach was ing. He closed his eyes, fighting nausea and dizziness, the tumultuous overflow.
When he opened his eyes it was to gaze at the Fool—Rhun, they had said his name was. It was deeply uling to see how, with the King releasing his own feelings, clutg the woman in that grip of transparent he Fool, the surrogate, seemed suddey and hollow. There was a blank, weighted sado him, jarring in its distinuity amid the exultation all around. Rhun seemed a still, silent point of numbness amid a world of tumult and weeping and laughter.
Alessan looked at the bent, balding figure with his weirdly deformed face, a a blurred, disorienting kinship to the man. As if the two of them were linked here, if only in their inability to know how to react to all of this.
He had to have been shielding himself, Alessaed in his mind for the tenth time, the tweh.
He had to. He looked at Brandin again, and then away, hurting with fusion and grief.
For how many years in Quileia had he and Baerd spun adolest plots of making their way here? Of ing upoyrant and killing him, their cries of Tiganas name ringing in the air, hurtling bato the world.
And this m, now, hed been scarcely fiftee away, unsuspected, unknown, with a dagger at his belt and only one row of people between him and the man whod tortured and killed his father.
He had to have been shielding himself against a blade.
But the thing was, the simple fact was, that Alessan couldnt know that. He haded it; hadnt tried. He had stood and watched. Observed. Played out his own cool plan of shapis, steering them towards some larger abstra.
His eyes hurt; there was a dull pulsing behind them, as if the suht for him. The woman in yellow had not moved away; she was still looking up at him with a slantwise glance hard not to uand. He didnt know where the childs father was, but it was clear that the woman didnt greatly care just now. It would be iing, he thought, with that perverse, detached quirk of his mind that was always there, to see how many children were born in Chiara nine months from now.
He smiled at her again, meaninglessly, and made some form of mumbled excuse. Thearted back alohrough the celebrating, uproarious crowd towards the inhe three of them had been paying for their room by making music these past three days. Music might help right now, he thought.
Very often music was the only thing that helped. His heart was still rag weirdly, as it had started to do when the woman broke the surface of the water with the ring on her hand after so long undersea.
So long a time he had actually begun to calculate if there was anything he could do to make use of the shod fear that was going to follow upon her death.
And then she had e up, had been there before them ier and, in the sed before the r of the crowd began, Brandin of Ygrath, who had been rigidly motionless from the moment she dived, had collapsed to his knees as if struck from behind by a blow that had robbed him of all his strength.
And Alessan had found himself feeling ill and hopelessly fused even as the screams of triumph aasy began to sweep across the harbor and the ships.
This is fine, he told himself now, f his ast a wildly dang ring of people. This will fit, it be made to fit. It is ing together. As I plahere will be war. They will face each other. In Senzio. As I planned.
His mother was dead. He had been fiftee away from Brandin of Ygrath with a blade in his belt.
It was tht in the square, and much too loud. Someone grabbed his arm as he went by and tried to draw him into a whirling circle. He pulled away. A woman careened into his arms and kissed him full upon the lips before she disengaged. He didnt know her. He didnt know anyone here. He stumbled through the crowd, pushed and pulled this way and that, trying numbly to steer himself, a cork in a flood, towards The Trialla, where his room was, and a drink, and music.
Devin was already at the crowded bar when he finally made it back. Erlein was o be see. Probably still on the ship; staying afloat, as far from Brandin as he could. As if the sorcerer had the fai stilla of i in pursuing wizards right now.
Devin, mercifully, said nothing at all. Only pushed over a full glass and a flagon of wine. Alessan draihe glass and then another very quickly. He had poured and tasted a third when Devin quickly touched his arm and he realized, with a sense of almost physical shock, that hed fotten his oath. The blue wihird glass.
He pushed the flagon away and buried his head in his hands.
Someone eaking beside him. Two men arguing.
"Youre actually going to do it? Youre a goat-begotten fool!" the first one snarled.
"Im joining up," the sed replied, in the flat ats of Asoli. "After what that woman did for him I figure Brandins blessed with luck. And someone who styles himself Brandin di Chiara is a long sight better than that butcher from Barbadior. What are you, friend, afraid of fighting?”
The other man gave a harsh bark of laughter. "You simple-minded dolt," he said. He flattened his voi broad mimicry. "After what that woman did for him. We all know what she did for him, night after night. That woman is the Tyrants whore. She spent a dozen years coupling with the man who quered us all. Spreading her legs for him for her own gain. And here you are, here all of you are, making a whore into a Queen over you.”
Alessan pushed his head up from his hands. He shifted his feet, pivoting for leverage. Then, without a word spoken, he hammered a fist with all the strength of his body and all the tormented fusion of his heart into the speakers face. He felt bones crader his blow; the man flew backwards into the bar and halfway over it, scattering glasses and bottles with a splintering crash.
Alessan looked down at his fist. It was covered with blood across the knuckles, and already beginning to swell. He wondered if hed broken his hand. He wondered if he was going to be thrown out of the bar, or end up in a free-wheeling brawl for this stupidity.
It didnt happen. The Asolini who had proclaimed his readiness for war clapped him on the back with a hard, cheerful blow and the owner of The Trialla—their employer, in fact—grinned broadly, pletely ign the shards of broken glass along the bar.
"I was hoping someone would shut him up!" he roared over the raucous tumult in the room. Someone else came over and wrung Ales-sans hand, which hurt amazingly. Three men were shouting insistent demands to buy him a drink. Four others picked up the unsan and began carting him unceremoniously away in searedical aid. Someone spat on the mans shattered face as he was carried by.
Alessan turned away from that, back to the bar. There was a single glass of Astibar blue wine in front of him. He looked quickly at Devin who said nothing at all.
Tigana, he murmured under his breath, as a Cortean sailor behind him bellowed ?９９ｌｉb?</cite>is praise and ruffled his hair and someone else pushed over to pound his back, Oh, Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul.
He draihe glass. Someo Devin—immediately reached to pick it up and smash it on the floor. Which started a predictable sequence of other men doing the same with their own drinks. As soon as he detly could he made his way out of the room a upstairs. He remembered to touch Devins arms in thanks as he went. In their room he found Erlein lying on his bed, hands behind his head, gazing fixedly at the ceiling. The wizard glanced over as Alessan came in, and his eyes quickly narrowed and grew frankly curious.
Alessan said nothing. He fell onto his pallet and closed his eyes which were still hurting. The wine, naturally hadnt helped. He couldnt stop thinking about the woman, what she had done, how she had looked rising like some supernatural creature from the sea. He couldnt force out of his mind the image of Brandiyrant falling to his knees and burying his fa his hands.
Hiding his eyes, but not before Alessan, fiftee away, only that, had seen the shattering relief and the blaze of love that had shohrough like the white light of a falling star.
His hand hurt terribly, but he flexed it gingerly and didnt think hed broken anything. He holy couldnt have said why hed felled that man. Everything hed said about the woman from Certando was true. All of it was true, yet none of it was the real truth. Everything about today was brutally fusing.
Erlein, uedly tactful, cleared his throat in a way that offered a question.
"Yes?" Alessan said wearily, not opening his eyes.
"This is what you wao happen, isnt it?" the wizard asked, unwontedly hesitant.
With an effort Alessan opened his eyes and looked over. Erlein ropped on one elbow gazing at him, his expression thoughtful and subdued. "Yes," he said at length, "this is what I wanted.”
Erlein nodded slowly. "It means war, then. In my province.”
His head was still throbbing, but less than before. It was quieter up here, though the noise from below still peed, a dull, steady background of celebration.
"In Senzio, yes," he said.
He felt a terrible sadness. So many years of planning, and now that they were here, where were they?
His mother was dead. She had cursed him before she died, but had let him take her hand as the ending came. What did that mean? Could it be made to mean what he to?
He was on the Island. Had seen Brandin of Ygrath. What would he tell Baerd? The slender dagger at his side felt heavy as a sword. The woman had been so much more beautiful than hed expected her to be.
Devin had had to give him the blue wine; he couldnt believe that. Hed hurt a hapless, i man so brutally just now, had shattered the bones of his face. I must look truly terrible, he thought, for even Erlein to be so geh me now. They were going to war in Senzio. This is what I wanted, he repeated to himself.
"Erlein, Im sorry," he said, risking it, trying tle upwards from this sorrow.
He braced for a stinging reply, he almost wanted one, but Erlein said nothing at all at first. And when he spoke it was mildly. "I think it is time," was what he said. "Shall we go dolay? Would that help?”
Would that help? Since when did his people—Erlein, eveo mio him so much?
They went back dowairs. Devin was waiting for them on the makeshift stage at the back of the Trialla. Alessan took up his Tregean pipes. His right hand was hurting and swollen, but it was not going to keep him from making music. He needed musiow, very badly. He closed his eyes and began to play.
They fell silent for him in the densely crowded room. Erlein waited, his hands motionless on the harp, and Devin did, leaving him a spa which to reach upwards alone, yearning towards that high note where fusion and pain and love ah and longing could all be left behind him for a very little while.
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