Dark Heart (18 page)

‘Of course!’ Ena said happily. ‘We are from Dhauria, the remnant of the First Men, descended from those who remained faithful to the Most High when Kannwar rebelled against him. We are not like ordinary people.’

A speech, Stella considered, probably learned off by heart by all Dhaurian youngsters. She thought of trying to prick this child’s veneer of confidence, then rejected the idea as shameful.

Two lights bobbed towards them. Phemanderac led a young woman, presumably the scholar who would read for Stella. ‘This is Moralye,’ he said, and she smiled.
She really is a pretty thing,
Stella thought, ideally suited to functioning in the scriptorium, with her large, luminous eyes and small stature.

‘Your clan is responsible for the maintenance and preservation of the scrolls, Moralye?’ she asked. ‘And while you train yourself in the skills necessary, you earn money for your clan?’

The woman smiled. ‘I welcome you to the scriptorium of Dhauria, Stella Pellwen,’ she said, speaking quickly. ‘You are every bit as perceptive as the
dominie
claimed. It will be a pleasure to work with you.’

Surprised by the use of her full name, Stella drew breath to frame a reply, but Moralye continued.

‘I have selected a number of scrolls in accordance with Phemanderac’s request, and members of the Saiwan clan are searching their indexes for others. They will bring these to us in due course.’

She drew breath. Her obvious excitement made Stella smile. ‘Some of the scrolls deal with the Undying Man,’ the girl warned. ‘Are you comfortable with this?’

‘I am,’ Stella said. ‘To me, there has always been a question surrounding his rebellion. Did events unfold exactly as the scrolls say?’ Her teeth tingled as she asked the question. Was there really any doubt? The likely truth was the scrolls probably obscured the worst of his excesses.

Moralye smiled, no doubt approving of Stella’s spirit of enquiry. ‘Until the remainder of the scrolls are brought to us, allow me to begin reading.’ The woman’s eyes danced in the lamplight.

‘Very well, then—’

Moralye had seated herself even before Stella could finish her comment.

‘This is from the memoirs of Mannimaritseth, the longest-lived of the First Men,’ she began. ‘It is said he lived eight hundred years in the Vale of Youth before the Most High translated him. He writes about his long life as follows:

‘“A new day is to me yet another opportunity to grapple with the depth of corruption in my own spirit. I seek the purification of the Most High’s holy fire, yet constantly fall short. My days are thus a burden, for I long for the day when my Lord decides I am hale enough to be separated from the cord that binds me to this black earth.”’

‘Cheerful fellow,’ Stella sighed. So much like her own experience. Eight hundred years. How did he remain sane?

Perhaps he didn’t,
came a voice into her mind, a voice from somewhere close by. Stella’s head jerked up, but of course she couldn’t see anything in the darkened chamber.

‘Mistress?’ Moralye asked. ‘May I continue?’

‘Please.’

‘“I besought the counsel of Amara, the oldest among us, and she averred the importance of forgetting. A balance is required between cherishing one’s memories, for memories are the only thing that connect you to who you are, and putting them aside so their accumulation does not drown you.”’

She nodded.
Yes. I cannot forget, therefore I drown.

At least you have not had others at work trying to alter your past,
said the voice in her mind. Definitely not her imagination. It seemed to come from the place occasionally used by the Undying Man to spy on her; that tenuous link between them that let her know how he was feeling. The blood-link.
Once they begin their work, you cannot be sure what it is you are trying to forget,
the voice went on.

Oh?
Anger blazed within her at the self-pitying words.
Why would people not want to remake their memories of such as you? And do you not know of the years I have had to endure my history being remade? I am now known as the Destroyer’s Consort. No one cares to know of the times I resisted you, and of the pain it brought me. They only remember me as your cat’s-paw, your obedient servant paraded in front of them on the day you came to sign the Declaration that would have given you lordship of Faltha. They despise me for it, and I have had to flee for my life.

I am as despised and misunderstood as you,
came the reply.

Stella laughed out loud, causing Moralye to startle and interrupting her recitation.
Despised, yes. Misunderstood, I think not. I understand you perfectly well.

Do you? You do not.

A man leaned into the cubicle and cleared his throat, attracting the young Dhaurian scholar’s attention. ‘Excuse me, Moralye, one of those studying in the scriptorium overheard me discussing your requirements with Palanget. He handed me this scroll and asked you to read it to the one who engaged you.’ He extended his hand, in which nestled a small scroll.

‘My lady?’ Moralye asked Stella.

Her whole body chilled. She had no idea what this scroll may be, but she knew whose hand—no, definitely the wrong phrase. She knew who had given this to Moralye’s associate.

‘Yes,’ she said, swallowing a sudden obstruction in her throat.
He’s here, in this room.

Moralye unrolled the scroll and leaned forward. Beside Stella, Ena kicked her heels against the wall of the cubicle behind her. Phemanderac, quiet until now, put his hand on the arm of the man who had delivered the scroll. ‘Stay a moment,’ he said.

Stella’s palms began to moisten as she waited.

‘Phyrgia, would you fetch the man who gave you this scroll?’ Moralye said, licking her lips as the man hurried away, his lamp flickering in the near-darkness. ‘I want to know where he found it. I’m curious, you see,’ she added, turning to Stella, ‘because I’ve never seen it before. Phemanderac?’

‘Nor I,’ said the old man, leaning over for a closer look. ‘Though I can barely see it now.’

‘You’ll want to read this,’ the young scholar said, her voice thick.

‘Please,’ Stella said. ‘Could someone read it to me?’

‘Yes, read it to us,’ Phemanderac echoed.

THE SENSE OF SOMEONE in her head had left Stella for the moment, though she had no doubt it would return if she summoned it. Not for a moment did she think the voice was an invention of her own mind. She knew him, knew the taint of him, the canker of his words.

‘“The Testimony of Kannwar of Dona Mihst,”’ Moralye began, and at her words Phemanderac gripped the table with both hands, his knuckles whitening. Stella felt herself becoming dizzy as her suspicions crystallised into fact. The woman made to continue, but a commotion at the door brought her up short.

‘
Dominie
,’ said the doorkeeper, striding quickly towards their cubicle, ‘I have an outsider here claiming the right of admittance, invoking your name as passage. Do I let him in?’

‘His name?’ Phemanderac could barely take his eyes from the parchment spread out before him.

‘Conal, he names himself.’

Conal?
For a wild moment Stella speculated:
He is a Halite, he says he has feelings for me, he apparently exercised superhuman power to rescue me from the Lord of Fear. But he is a man of petty vanity. Would such a man hide one so proud as the Undying Man? And how would the Undying Man have found a haven in his mind? Conal has been nowhere near Andratan.

‘Stella,’ a petulant voice called from the half-open door, loud enough to disturb the atmosphere of the room. ‘Why did you not tell me you were going to the scriptorium? Why would you leave me behind? We have an agreement, my queen!’ he said reproachfully.

‘Let him approach,’ she murmured reluctantly. Phemanderac nodded to the doorkeeper, who went and fetched the annoying fool priest.
Or the consummate actor?

‘My queen, I—’

‘Hush,’ she commanded him. ‘Give me your hand.’

His eyes widened, but he extended a hand nonetheless. Her hand closed on his. Flesh, nothing more—or less.

‘Very well,’ she said, releasing him. ‘Do not ask me what that was about. Now, Conal, you have interrupted matters of great importance. Sit opposite me and do not say a single word unless invited to. Agree to these terms or suffer yourself to be led away from this place. Are you my servant in this matter?’

Phrased in such a way, and by such as Stella, no Falthan citizen could refuse and still maintain their willingness to serve the Crown. Conal assented gracelessly, his face a picture of frustrated curiosity, and took his seat.

Everyone in the crowded cubicle took a deep breath at the same moment, and all eyes turned to Moralye.

‘“The Testimony of Kannwar of Dona Mihst,”’ she repeated. ‘“A Repudiation of the Lies of the First Men and an Apology for Rebellion. Written by my hand, Fourteenth of Ninemonth, two hundred and eighty-three years after the Fall of Dona Mihst. Placed in the new-built scriptorium of Dhauria by my hand six years thereafter.”’

Silence.

Broken by Phemanderac. ‘The parchment looks and feels authentic. We haven’t used this kind of parchment for fifteen hundred years or more. We use a different process of manufacture now, and I doubt anyone could recreate the substance before us. It has aged, but has not deteriorated to the extent one would expect. As for the script, the letters are in a well-practised hand, but there are hints of awkwardness, as though the hand is injured—or is not the writer’s natural hand. Perhaps I see these hints because I am looking for them. Any more than this, I cannot say, as my eyes betray me.’

‘I concur,’ Moralye said. ‘I will have my clansmen subject this scroll to the most rigorous investigation, including chemic analysis. I do not understand how a scroll over seventeen hundred years old has survived intact even in this beneficent environment, nor how it lay undetected for that long. I am willing to swear on any scroll you name that such a thing cannot be.’

‘If you swear it, I believe it,’ the old scholar answered. ‘You are the brightest light for a thousand years, and this is your domain. Perhaps we ought to leave further speculation until after we have read its message.’

Stella heard the young man beside her take a deep breath, the sort one takes before launching forth. ‘No, Conal, not a word,’ she said. ‘No matter how insightful or well intentioned you think it is. We are not the experts here.’

Moralye cleared her throat and began to read.

‘“You have heard it said that I sponsored rebellion amongst the First Men, and that the world suffered as a result. This is true. This is my apology.”’

‘He apologises?’ Conal said. ‘Apologises, then goes on to wreak destruction in Faltha not once but twice? I do not understand.’

‘In this context an apology is not, I suspect, a regretful explanation,’ Phemanderac said. ‘It is more likely to be a justification for debatable actions or beliefs.’

Moralye nodded, then continued.

‘“However, true though this succinct summary of events may be, many of the details are false. Here I set on parchment a true record that no one can contradict, for none but myself and the Most High were present when much of what I relate came to pass. You may consider that I misremember involuntarily as self-justification for my own misdeeds. I have no defence to offer against such an assertion, save your own judgment. Read my words, then those of the perfidious
Domaz Skreud
. Judge for yourself. If you judge against me, I will hold no blame against you, rather against myself for failing to convince you.”’

‘Fetch a copy of the
Domaz Skreud
, please, Moralye,’ Phemanderac said.

‘I have one here,’ she replied. ‘I was instructed to gather everything relating to the lives of the First Men and the Rebellion. The
Domaz Skreud
is one of the most important of such documents.’

She recommenced her telling. As Moralye read, Stella tried to shut out her feminine voice and imagine the words spoken in the Destroyer’s cultured tones.

‘“The writer of the
Domaz Skreud
claimed I was the youngest ever to receive the Fire of Life from the Most High. In this he is correct. I was but three years of age. What he does not know is that I tried to reject the Most High’s offering out of fear. I did not want to be known as a freak. I also considered myself too young. Yet the Most High forced the issue. No, he did not compel me to accept his infusion of Fire, but he placed me under duress using arguments both subtle and persuasive. After all these years I do not remember them in detail, but what I do remember tallies with the arguments he used when next we met.

‘“The
Domaz Skreud
names me as friendless during my growing years. Again, the writer is correct, but not because I refused friendship when offered. Just as I had feared, my peers were frightened of me and did not understand the Fire within me. Time after time I was rebuffed when I sought companionship. I made friends among the adults around me, but the
Domaz Skreud
does not mark this.

‘“Instead, the scroll outlines an incident that occurred when I was eighteen. The writer claims I fought with Garadh my cousin over the leadership of the Kerd Clan. Again, the statement is correct, but the supporting evidence is awry. It was not Garadh who was the gentle one, but I. It was not I who knocked my cousin to the ground, but he who delivered the felling blow. I left afterwards, yes, but only after Garadh refused all offers of reconciliation. I did not flee the scene of my guilt, as the scroll asserts, to begin fomenting rebellion; rather, I followed the immediate and unquestionable summons of the Most High.

‘“Consider the evidence. The words of the
Domaz Skreud
were written by one who was not privy to the events between Garadh and myself. I could not have supplied the writer with information, so who did? One who has a reason to appear justified before the world: Garadh himself.

‘“The Most High summoned me beyond the borders of Dona Mihst, beyond the cliffs where no man goes, and into the wilderness. For a year he fed me with strange fruit and debated with me, day and night, about his plans for the world and my place in them.

‘“This is what he said. He created the world and everything in it, but sought to retire from his creation and leave it for his creatures to enjoy, unencumbered by his guiding and ultimately deterministic hand. However, humans entreated him to remain and rule over them, and reluctantly he consented. A son and a daughter of men he raised to assist him in this task, giving them powers little inferior to his own. For many lifetimes of men this arrangement worked well, but the Son and Daughter secretly agreed to rebel against their Father and, with the help of humans, to drive him out of the world of men. In this they succeeded, as the Most High was reluctant to break the world in the clash of powers required to defeat his adopted children. He fled north with a remnant of the faithful, proudly calling themselves the Four Houses of the First Men. The truth is, your fathers and mine were refugees, as was your God. He fled, not I; his children rebelled, not I.

‘“Here is a question for you. The Most High is the One God of the world, you First Men claim. What, then, of the fabled lands to the south, beyond Jangela, from whence your own legends claim you came? The Most High now dwells in the north, you say. Is he no longer the Lord of the southlands? Who is god to the people of the southern deserts, the original inhabitants of the world, ancient before the First Men were born? This is a question you cannot answer, and it ought to trouble you, along with the history of the Most High himself.

‘“The Most High knew that problems would arise as a result of his expulsion from the south. The world needed his touch to remain stable. Without him it would eventually fall apart. So he bided his time and nurtured his few faithful followers for a thousand years, until the day the gifted child he had been waiting for was born. So he explained to me; and, when he reached this point in the story, I fled from his face. Not in rebellion, but in fear, for I guessed what he would ask me to do.

‘“Which of you, when told you were the product of a thousand years of careful planning, and that your destiny was to confront two gods hardly less powerful than the Most High himself, would not quail? Yet I fled not because I considered myself unfit for the task, but because I knew I could do it. It was this sudden pride, revealed in me, that frightened me so.

‘“Wherever I fled, he sought me out. I hid in a cave: a great torrent of water bore me back into the world of light. I took refuge in a lightless forest: a swarm of insects ate the trees bare around me, exposing me to his harsh, merciless light. I made a boat and cast off from the southern coast, but was thrown back to shore by unnatural waves. The Most High tells us we have a choice whether to serve him or no, but it seemed he offered me nothing save service or death. I considered death, and wondered how to achieve it.

‘“‘You are my Right Hand,’ he said to me, day after day. ‘You are my only plan. I raised you to support me.’ His constant argument made me think I was monstrous even to consider going against his wishes. He wore at my will as the sea wears at a cliff. Yet I was not wholly opposed to his plan, not until the day he revealed its true extent. ‘I have raised you not only to support me, but in the fullness of time to replace me,’ he said. I was to become the Most High, while he enjoyed the retirement he had so long sought.

‘“I entreat you, reader, examine your heart. I was like you. Mortal, weak, susceptible to injury and disease, conditioned to accept a finite time in the world of men. How might I countenance being made into a god? Instead, I rejected the Most High and his impossible demands, just as you would have done.”’

At these words Conal made an involuntary noise, betraying his thoughts to Stella. She kept her mind carefully blank, allowing the words to wash over her, all the while knowing who sat quietly somewhere in the background, awaiting their reading of his apology.

‘“From this point I was no longer innocent. My crimes began with deception and continued until, I admit with frankness, I became a monster, a parody of a human, and almost precisely what I had feared when the Most High first offered me godhood. How much further I will fall is unknown to me.

‘“I began my deception by asking the Most High how the puissance might be transferred to me. He explained that the Fountain set in the Square of Rainbows, the heart of Dona Mihst, was an upwelling of his power. The spray of the Fountain sustained the citizens of the Vale and, if drunk, the water would strengthen the drinker until he became as a god.

‘“‘But you have forbidden us to drink of the Fountain,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘because your mortal body cannot yet bear my power. Yet all you need do is tarry for a millennium of years, and you will be strengthened by the Fire within you to withstand the Water of Life.’ ‘A thousand years?’ I exclaimed. ‘I live a thousand years, while everyone I know dies?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, mistaking my emotion for one of exultation. ‘And what happens if I drink of the Fountain before this time?’ I asked.

‘“At this, the Most High was silent, finally discerning the temper of my heart. At any time he might have sought such knowledge directly from my mind: he is all-knowing, and nothing can be hidden from him. Yet he can himself limit his knowledge by choice, in the quest to allow his children freedom. Indeed, he must do this, or his followers become automatons, constrained to one future, unable to choose outside his knowledge. Thus he did not detect my rebellion until too late.

‘“Horrified by the bargain being offered me, I saw only one way out. I decided to drink of the water of the Fountain, thereby alerting my fellow men to the secrets of the Most High. I fled the desert, utilising every mite of power provided by the Fire of Life to outpace him. So profligate was I with the power, it burned out before I could control it. Yet I arrived in Dona Mihst ahead of the Most High.

‘“I began a rebellion. I do not repent of it. I explained as much of the truth as I could to as many people as were able to bear it, yet it was not enough, and many misinterpreted my words. Hence the half-truths contained in the
Domaz Skreud
.