The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (60 page)

Narak sat with Pascha for three days,
neither eating nor sleeping, but she did not wake. The moat within Wolfguard had been drained down, the passageway scrubbed clean and the bodies carried out and burned.

Narak’s own dead, including Poor, had been identified, dressed in finery and laid side by side upon a pyre sweetened with scented oil and herbs. Every resident of Wolfguard had stood before it when Narak had touched it with fire, and they said farewell to their kin. That was how he saw it. All the people of Wolfguard were kin.

The Seth Yarra were piled on a bonfire without ceremony. There were twenty five hundred of them and the smoke could be seen for miles above the canopy of the Great Forest. The forest itself was now patrolled by wolves. They had come in their hundreds when Wolfguard was attacked, and although Narak had sent most of them back to their forest lives he had retained two hundred who roamed restlessly through the land above their god’s abode. There would be no more surprises for Wolfguard.

After three days Caster persuaded Narak to leave Pascha’s bedside, but only by volunteering to take his place. Pascha continued much the same – apparently asleep – yet none could rouse her. Her pulse continued to beat slow and strong.

Narak fetched the book he had left with Quinnial’s army. It was important. He saw that now. Since Pascha had done what she had done, and Narak still didn’t know quite what that was, he had felt better. It was not that he had been ill, but his mind had been weighed down by a thousand worries and griefs. Now he saw with a clarity he had not known for centuries. It was as though he could put aside the baggage of his history and see with new eyes.

What he saw most of all was Pascha. She was once again his reason for living, but she was not his duty. That lay elsewhere. Lady Sara’s book told him what he must do. So yet again he was torn. Hundreds of years ago he had chosen duty, and he had lost her. Now the same choice presented itself.

For all that Narak had learned and lived in the hundreds of years that separated the two events, he could not see that the choice was any different. It was only that now it was more urgent, more extreme. Centuries ago he could have discarded duty, at least in part. He could have neglected the wolves and the forest. Either choice would have cut him in half, because however he felt about Pascha he loved the other as much. Equally he felt that Pascha’s need had been more trivial, a girlish demand for attention. He had assumed that she would see the wisdom of his choice, eventually, and that there would be no problem. He had been wrong.

Now he had to choose again, and his heart chose duty. It was his nature.

Had he been another man he might have chosen to stay at her side and let the world fall apart, but for Narak the logic was coldly inescapable. If he stayed with Pascha he would lose her anyway, sooner or later. The only way he could keep her was to do his duty, to do what must be done, and hope that she understood.

The problem was not the war. The war was over. He knew that however reluctant the Bren might be they would obey Pelion’s law. They would come to Narak’s aid on the last day of spring. They would drive Seth Yarra from the kingdoms.

Yet Narak knew that they were going to do more than that. The Bren intended to exterminate Seth Yarra. They were going to attack their homeland, destroy their towns and cities, kill their women and children, and keep on killing until there was nothing left.

They were going to do what dragons had been created to do.

That was why the creature in the cave, the dragon of his dreams, had been so persistent. If Lady Sara’s book was even partly right, and to Narak it looked as though it was right in its most important aspect, then the dragons had been turned away from their destructive course by something Pelion had created. It was a gemstone. When the dragons had looked upon it they had acquired a virulent conscience. Now this creature, somehow trapped, was trying to prevent what it had turned away from centuries ago, and Narak was inclined to think that it was right.

It would have been difficult to explain it to anyone else. He had no love for Seth Yarra. They were his sworn enemy. They wanted him dead. Yet for all that they were men and women, just as the people of the six kingdoms were men and women. The rift between them was one of misapprehension and misunderstanding. They had been lied to, and however much they believed those lies, however determinedly foolish they might be, it did not sit well with him to see them wiped out. It was wrong.

He needed the gem. It was the conscience of dragons, and might it not also be the conscience of the Bren? The dragon had the gem, or at the very least it knew where it was. He was on thinner ice here. The creature had not said so. Indeed, knowing what he now thought he knew from the book, it seemed that the dragon had deliberately avoided mentioning it. Yet everything that he had been show made no sense otherwise.

He could not stop the Bren. He could not even stop Seth Yarra. The dragon, he suspected, could stop the Bren, but in doing so it would become the very thing it had denied.

It was all guesswork, but Narak knew what had to be done. He was once again, in Beloff’s words, the Doer of the Necessary.

It would be a journey, a real journey. The dragon’s place was a thousand miles beyond the roaming of any wolf pack. He would have to walk. It was cold, too, far colder even than the bitter winters of Wolfguard. There would be nothing there but snow, ice and rock, and so he must take all his food, clothing to keep out the cold, and weapons to protect himself, for there were unnatural creatures that stalked the frozen world.

He would have to build a sled that he could pull. He knew about such things from his distant but unforgotten youth when he had been a hunter and his father’s apprentice. They had ventured into the frozen lands every year. They did not go far, but there were small creatures whose fur was highly prized, and even one or two pelts could turn their season from ordinary to exceptional.

Thinking about his father brought on a wave of nostalgia for those perished times, and for the simple life he had led. It brought back to him the great gulf of years that his life had spanned, and for a moment he longed for all the better times, when peace had been commonplace and his only thought of violence was hunting as man or wolf.

Two weeks after the attack on Wolfguard he laid out his plans before Caster, and the swordmaster had nodded as though he had expected something like this.

“You will explain why I left?” he asked. “Why I had to?”

Caster shook his head. “I will say the words, Deus, and I hope that she will understand.”

“She will. Pascha has learned duty.”

“It may be so,” Caster conceded. “She is not the same person she was five hundred years ago.”

“We have all changed, Caster, but none so much. She will understand. She will understand more than I do, I think.”

“When will you leave?”

“There are preparations to make, things to check. A week. Ten days?”

Narak had tried to explain his reasons to Caster, but he could still see doubts in his old friend’s face. He understood that. He had not mentioned the dreams. When he sat down and tried to frame the explanations to himself they sounded foolish and self defeating. He regretted that he had not had the chance to explain it to Pascha. His track record of explaining things to anyone was poor, and even poorer to Pascha, and yet she was the only creature left in the world who had gone through the same centuries, the same wars, the same dilemmas.

They had not always seen eye to eye, and yet when Wolfguard had been threatened she had come. Nor had she been idle during the war. Her bow had taken a cruel toll of Seth Yarra at Fal Verdan. She had experimented with strategy in removing those who threatened the Green Road, and all the time Narak had been proud of her. She had stood by the people of the kingdoms, and it had meant a lot, when Narak could not be there, to have another of the Benetheon at their side.

Now she was beyond him.

If she recovered, and was in fact the true heir of Pelion, then she was beyond him indeed. He hoped that it was so. He hoped more than he could have expressed to Caster, or even Pascha. It would mean that he was no longer the last line of defence, the last resort. It would mean that he could turn to her as others had turned to him.

But now he laboured on his last great task. He had to travel north into lands where men could not live, and he would do his best, but if it proved the he, too, was unequal to the task, then that in its own way, would be a relief.

It would at least be an end.

Pascha opened her eyes.

She saw trees, the branches of trees waving above her head.
Beyond them the sky was blue. It was the sort of blue that defined sky, a hot, rich blue that could not be divorced from the sun, and there it was, benignly winking through the shuffling leaves. There was birdsong. Somewhere nearby a thrush serenaded the sky, belting out pairs of phrases as bright and startling as the day. There were other birds, too. They were more distant, less immediate. They sounded like a band of tuneful musicians practicing in the next room.

She sat up.

She had been lying on grass, a lawn to rival any manicured patch in any palace. It was long enough to be a soft and gentle bed, but trimmed to a uniform height so that it presented the tidiness of artifice. She ran her hands through it like hair. It was free of weeds and cool cascading through her fingers.

The world smelled of flowers. It was hard to say what they were, but she thought there was a hint of roses, and lavender, and something that might have been jasmine.

She looked down at her own body and found that she was clad in a simple cotton shift, tied at the waist with a slender silk cord. The shift and the cord were white. It was not the sort of thing she was accustomed to wearing, but it seemed comfortable, and the climate was certainly balmy enough that nothing more was needed to keep her warm. In fact the air was so temperate that the only reason for any clothing at all was modesty.

She had no shoes on her feet, but when she stood she was glad of it. Her feet were embraced by the cool freshness of the grass. The slight sensation of roughness delighted her, and she dug her toes into it.

She wondered where she was.

She remembered Wolfguard, and pain, and being held by Narak again. She remembered all the people she had killed. She tried to shake off that last memory, but it clung to her.

This wasn’t Wolfguard.

She looked around her and saw that the lawn led past a stand of silver birches in full leaf. She set off across the grass, walking slowly and trying to enjoy the warmth of the sun on her skin, but at the same time she saw the scattered dead and felt the warmth of Narak’s arms about her. As delightful as this place was she would rather be elsewhere. She would rather be with Narak, even if it meant pain.

There was a goat. She rounded a corner and it lifted its head and regarded her with an indifferent gaze, then went back to cropping the grass. It was a white goat. Its eyes were yellow. It had small, stubby horns that curved slightly back over its neck.

“Hello, goat,” she said. Her own voice startled her. It was so loud in the stillness of the garden, and it was such a silly thing to say, but the goat didn’t notice. It kept its neck bent to the task of filling its stomach.

A garden. It was certainly that, and if a garden then there must be a gardener. She walked on until she came to a stream, a bubbling brook, a ridiculously joyous chattering rill. There was a bridge, of course, a curved arch of polished pine that invited her to cross. She accepted the invitation, stepping confidently above the water. The wood was sun warmed and kind to her feet. There were no rough edges, every corner having been smoothed by a thoughtful hand. It was certainly not time or use that had done the work, because the bridge looked as though it had been built yesterday.

She heard a snatch of music, pipes playing in the distance. The sound reminded her of Sheyani, and she hurried in that direction. She was beginning to feel quite alone here.

She came at last to a larger open space, and there was a building. It was not a cottage or a palace or a stable. It was a confection carved from white bone, like a lace kerchief, supported on eight white pillars. There were no walls, just the intricately carved pillars and above them a roof that would not have done much to keep out the rain. It was a beautiful, delicate thing.

The building was poised on a floor of white marble, as though ready to blow away with the first modest gust of wind, and on the marble floor sat a table of glass, and on the glittering table there was laid out a feast the equal of anything Pascha had seen in her long and privileged life.

She stepped up from the grass onto the marble, and it was cool beneath her feet, colder than the grass but still pleasant. It was smooth, too. Usually Pascha disliked marble floors because they were always dirty, always gritty beneath her soles, shoed or not, but this one was clean and smooth even beneath her naked toes.

She noticed that there was a seat, a glass seat to match the table, but it looked impossibly frail, and so she ignored it, and stood looking at the food instead. She counted the plates. There were twenty seven meat dishes, nine types of cheese, thirteen different vegetables, twelve fruits, a huge fish almost as large as herself laid down the middle of the table, sliced and the cuts filled with a bright green sauce and decorated with purplish leaves, nine types of bread, thirty eight bowls of spices, peppers and salt, and everything was prepared with maniacal precision, exuberant panache. She was almost afraid to touch it.

“Don’t worry. Help yourself.”

She jumped at the voice, and turned round to see who it was, but even as she turned she realised that she knew the voice, and as soon as her eyed alighted on the battered face, the grey, thinning hair, she knew again.

“Pelion,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

The old man settled himself into a glass chair and stuck his fingers into one of the perfect dishes, then licked them. “What an odd question,” he said. “Go ahead and sit, sit, the chairs are stronger than they look.”

Pascha sat, carefully, in the glass chair. She was certain that he had not been anywhere near the building a moment ago, but that didn’t surprise her. He was Pelion, after all. “Where are we?’ she asked.

“A better question,” Pelion said. “And the answer is simple enough. Here.” He pointed to his own head. “And then again, not.”

“You never were one for a straight answer,” Pascha remarked.

Pelion laughed. “And you were never one to be overawed in the presence of the gods,” he replied.

“So what do you mean?” she asked.

“A straight answer then. I am inside my own head. This,” he gestured all around him, “is inside my own head, and so is my physical body.”

“Your physical body is inside your own head? How is that possible?”

“Magic,” he replied.

She gave up on that. “And where am I?”

“Your physical body? Wolfguard.”

“With Narak.”

“No. He has gone again.”

“Gone where?”

Pelion ignored the question, though she was sure he had heard it. “The rest of you is in here with me,” he said, tapping his head again.

Pascha decided not to ask any questions about it. Pelion usually told the truth, but delighted in making it incomprehensible. She felt that if she asked him he would, indeed, tell her, but it would mean as little to her as a Durander spell dance.

“But Narak is safe?” she asked.

“Safe? When is Narak ever safe?”

“You are avoiding my question,” Pascha said.

“I am avoiding answering your question,” Pelion replied.

“Then answer it.”

“Very well, if you must have an answer then you shall, but you won’t like it. Narak has gone to see Kirrith. To negotiate with Kirrith.”

“And who is Kirrith?”

“Oh, must you have all the answer?” Pelion almost whined.

“I must.”

“Kirrith is a dragon.”

“What!” Pascha was on her feet again in a moment, the glass chair banging against the delicate bone rail, slipping and hitting the marble floor, ringing like a glass bell. It didn’t break, though Pelion winced as though it might. Pascha knew very little about dragons, but the one thing she did know was that they were dangerous, lethal, even to the likes of Narak.

Pelion leaned forwards, the feeble old man quite disappeared for a moment. He pointed an unwavering finger at her. “Narak is doing what he must according to the dictates of his own conscience. He has always done so. You would be wise to follow his example, Pascha Lammeling, and tend to your own duty.”

“My duty is to Narak…”

“No!” Pelion slammed his fist down on the table and it was as though the earth shook beneath them. “Your duty is to me, to the creatures of the air, to Terras.”

Pascha sat down again, pushed by the force of Pelion’s voice. It did not surprise her that the chair she had knocked over was somehow upright and behind her again.

“Then what is my duty, Mighty Pelion?” she asked. She did not trouble to keep the resentment from her voice.

“You are the one,” the old man said, now once again subsiding into amiability. “The power is upon you. You are the true heir, and as such you are a danger to your world. Already you have wrought such harm as might bleed the kingdoms for a thousand years, and you need to learn. That is why you are here. That is your duty, to learn.”

“Harm? What harm have I done but kill a few Seth Yarra?”

“Farheim,” Pelion said. “You have brought them back into the world, and it was a better place without them.”

“I have done nothing of the sort,” she protested.

“Indeed you have,” Pelion replied. “Hestia.”

“Hestia? I healed her.”

“That is what you
tried
to do. Caster. Skal Hebberd. Cain Arbak. Sheyani Esh Baradan. Minette...”

“The kitchen maid?”

“The same. You touched all of Narak’s people.”

“And I made them all Farheim? I do not believe it.”

“Don’t be too distressed, dear child,” Pelion said. He reached out and snared a grape, bit it in half. “We did far worse things in our day, before and after we knew what we were doing. Mind you, I have no idea what you’ve done to Narak.”

“Narak? What have I done to Narak?”

“I told you, I have no idea. You certainly haven’t harmed him, and it may be that he is immune to even…, but no, there was a change. He is no longer a Benetheon god. He is something more.”

Pascha was silent. The revelations piling up around her were difficult to take in. She had created Farheim, the dreaded monstrous warrior elite of the god mages. But she did not see Caster or even Cain as monstrous. These were men of conscience, men who stepped around problems to avoid bloodshed. But the same had been true of Narak in the beginning, and he had become the bloodstained god, the victor of Afael, the killing machine of the gods. Yet for all that he was still Narak.

Pascha recognised that she accepted part of the blame herself. She had left him. It had seemed trivial at the time, but Narak had never taken up with another as she had. She suspected that he had been waiting five hundred years and more for her to come back to him and that the bitterness within him was born of that fruitless waiting.

And she had come back. She had resented Narak’s flawless nature, his honesty, his devotion to his wolves and his forest, his gentleness which contrasted so sharply with his martial talents. She had wanted him to fall from that perfection, and he had. Now she regretted it. She wanted to take her wish back, to make him whole again.

But Narak was destined to face a dragon, and nobody but Pelion had ever faced a dragon and lived. More to the point she was trapped here with Pelion, and she knew that here she would remain until he was satisfied that she knew what she was about.

“How long? How long will it take me to learn what I must?”

“I cannot say. Three months or three years, or even thirty. It depends on how fast you progress.”