The Plains of Kallanash (19 page)

“Watch what he does,” Gantor whispered. “Missandra will want a full report.”

Hurst waved him impatiently to silence. What did it matter now? Even so, he observed the Slave gently turn Jonnor over, remove the gorget and loosen the gear round his throat. Then he seemed to be feeling around his neck and shoulders with long bony fingers. His amber ring shimmered a little, raindrops sparkling on it. He stood up again, and conferred with some of the other Slaves.

“What did he do?” Trimon whispered. “Did he do anything? I couldn’t see.”

“No idea,” Gantor shrugged.

Jonnor’s three Companions materialised alongside them, and they stood, all seven of them, waiting. One of the Healing Slaves came over.

“He’s looking fine,” she said. “We just have to wait. Do you want to send for Most High Mia?”

Hurst shook his head, remembering her strained face when he had woken the day before. Was it only yesterday? It felt like longer. “
It would only distress her. It’s better she doesn’t know until… “

“Very well, Most High,” the Slave replied. “If you think it best.”

Almost immediately, Hurst thought better of it. “Actually… I believe she would want to be here – if anything happens.”

“I’ll find her,” Walst said.

“No need, I can send one of the guards.”

“I’d rather go myself. Better than standing around here.” With that, he was gone.

By the time Mia arrived, the Slaves had deemed Jonnor safe to approach, and they were gathered around him. He lay on his side, his face pale, but his breathing was steady. There was no suggestion to move him, for although the rain was a nuisance, it would not harm him. Mia knelt down beside him, oblivious of the mud, and stroked his wet hair.

“May I hold him?” she asked the Slaves, and the Healing Slave nodded.

Gently she lifted his head onto her lap, and stroked his face, sobbing a little, her tears mingling with the rain. Hurst wondered for a moment if she had cried so much over his prostrate body, and then sharply reproved himself for such thoughts. He remembered how red her eyes had been. She had certainly grieved just as much for him, even though her love was all for Jonnor.

Suddenly Trimon elbowed him sharply. “Look!” He knelt down and lifted the edge of Jonnor’s shirt. Hurst heard an
indrawn breath from Torman. For there on one shoulder, clear as the moon, was the dark outline of the mark of the Gods. And in that instant, Jonnor gave a little choking gasp, and then another, and then – nothing. His breathing stopped.

Mia lifted her face to the falling rain and howled her anguish.

The Slaves took Jonnor’s body away to be prepared in private for burning. Mia would not see him again until he was on his way to the funeral tower.

Her grief was too deep for tears. She moved as in a dream, unknowing, uncaring, letting her Companions lead her along. They took her to the family water rooms and bathed her and dressed her in the white mourning robe and tied the white scarves over her hair, and she stood passively under their hands. Then they too bathed and arrayed themselves in white, and went to the family hall to await the bell.

Hurst was there, of course. She couldn’t look at him. The blame was his, after all. He had taken Jonnor away from her, and even though the reality had fallen short of her dreams, he had been her husband. And she loved him, she reminded herself.

For all her misery, though, it was also a relief that the hideous time of waiting was over and the worst had happened. Perhaps in time she could begin to look to the future again.

Jonnor’s Companions were waiting in the courtyard, their faces drawn. It was a difficult business for them, trained for war, prepared to die at the point of a barbarian’s sword, but now expected to lie down and passively await death beside Jonnor. And for what? Because he had not wanted to share his wife. But he would need them in the Life Beyond Death; that was their role, to support him there, and they understood the honour.

The Silent Guards brought the bier into the courtyard, and one by one they all walked forward to gaze once more on Jonnor’s face, tranquil in death. His hair, dry now, wreathed his face in soft dark curls, and his skin was only a little paler than usual. When Mia had been quite young, one of the elderly women living with them, the remnant of a long-broken marriage, had died, and her face was grey, devoid of all life. But Jonnor was not like that; he might have been asleep.

They were all required to touch the strange irregular mark on Jonnor’s shoulder. Mia noticed the tiny red point at the centre of it, and remembered seeing the same on Tella, but she had no idea what it meant. Maybe nothing.

The procession passed through the narrow funeral gate in the outer wall. The Karninghold Slave walked in front with a pair of acolytes, then the Silent Guards carrying the bier, then Torman, Cole and Zanikor, their faces as white as their gowns, and two more Slaves behind.

After that, there was the long night to get through. Jonnor had wanted to stand vigil for Tella through the hours of darkness, and Mia felt she could do no less for him. So when the Slaves had performed their chants and withdrawn, and the Companions had drifted away, she stayed on the balcony overlooking the funeral tower.

She had expected Hurst to leave too, but he lingered, sitting silently on a bench, a goblet of wine in his hand. She set a cushion down and sat, letting her thoughts drift. The rain had long stopped, and the broken clouds were streaked with red and vivid orange.

“You should eat something, you know,” Hurst said after a while, making her jump. “You have had nothing since noon, I daresay. May I get you some fruit? Or a little wine? It will help if you are to be up all night.”

Her first impulse was to refuse, but she saw the sense in it and, to her surprise, she realised she was hungry. For an instant, she wondered if it was proper to eat, or whether that somehow made a mockery of her grief, but pragmatism intervened. At one end of the balcony various foodstuffs waited on a table, so she sat while Hurst picked out choice pieces of fruit and slices of meat for her. She drank a little wine, too, but when she reached for some bread, he stopped her.

“Not that, it will make you sleepy. And not too much wine. We need to stay alert tonight.”

“Do we?”

“We do, for we are going to watch for strange movements in the tower, and we don’t want to fall asleep.”

It was the last thing she had expected him to say. She had feared he might try to apologise for killing Jonnor, or, even worse, to express his love somehow. But this – it was quite unexpected.

“You are going to stay here with me?” she said. “All night?”

“Of course,” he said, in a tone of surprise.

“And you believe that I saw something last time?”

“Of course,” he said again. “As to
what
you saw, that I cannot vouch for, but this is our best opportunity to find out.”

So they stood vigil, taking it in turns to watch the funeral tower carefully while the other rested. But the night wore away with no signs of life at all, just the blue lights caused by the mysterious vapour burning steadily in the tower windows.

The first lightening of the sky had already begun, and she was half meditating and half dozing, when he suddenly nudged her awake.

“There! Quick, look there! Something’s there!”

And so it was, people moving around in the funeral tower, sometimes silhouetted against the blue lights and sometimes less clear, behind them.

“Two
– I see two…” Hurst murmured. “No, three.”

“I can only see two… No, it must be three, because one went off to the right and another appeared from the left. Look there! More!”

“Four,” said Hurst. “Definitely four. No, five, I can see five! Gods!
Five
people – how is that possible?”

Then they were gone, and there was nothing but the steady flame of the blue lights. They stood in astonished silence side by side as the dawn gradually painted the sky in washed out blues against patches of indigo.

Their Companions returned to the balcony, and then the Slaves, two acolytes struggling with the heavy gong, more waving censers and chanting, filling the air with incense. The gong’s hollow echo crashed across the open grassland towards the funeral tower. The blue light flared intensely for a brief moment. It was done, and still they stood motionless.

Mia realised that Hurst was holding her hand, but she found that she didn’t mind. She was numb with disbelief, and that warm contact, his fingers wrapped around hers, reassured her that she was not mad or deluded or mistaking shadows for something more, for he had seen it too. There had been five people in the funeral tower, where only four had been left, and one of those dead, and she had no idea what it meant.

Mia went to bed for a while, hurling the hated white gown into a corner and putting on a thick nightgown instead. The bed held so many memories, for she had shared it with Jonnor so recently. Of course, she had also shared it with Hurst, but she tried not to think about that. She lay in the gloom, curtains drawn against the morning light, and felt her flat stomach, wondering if there was a baby growing in there. Every month she hoped, and yet nothing had come of it. Surely this time it would happen, and she would have some little part of Jonnor to cherish.

After a while, she got up again, picked up the crumpled mourning gown and folded it neatly. Then she got back into bed and slept.

~~~

The routine of the month of mourning began. The first official mourners, as before, were Jonnor’s father and mother. Mia had dreaded their arrival, for she assumed they would be angry with Hurst for killing their son. Jonnor’s father appeared not in the least bothered, and actually congratulated Hurst on his success. His mother was clearly upset, and wept a great deal, but her husband was impatient with her.

“Women!” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Make a great deal of fuss about these things.”

“He was her son,” Mia said, shocked.

“Jonnor left us almost twenty years ago,” he said with a shrug, “and he lived with a couple of my brothers until he married, so we saw very little of him.” And then he smiled in his raffish way, looking sideways at Mia. “So – you’ll be wanting a new husband, then?”

It was the last thing Mia wanted. Nevertheless, there now had to be a new pair introduced into the marriage, and it was the obligation of the parents to bring along three suitable candidates for their consideration. The final decision would be taken by the Voices at the Ring, advised by the Gods, but Hurst and Mia could propose their own choice. The Karninghold Slave had talked at some length on the matter, suggesting what characteristics they should look for, and what pairings might be approved, and Hurst had tentatively raised the subject with Mia himself.

“I know it seems very early to be thinking about it,” he said as they sat opposite each other after meat. “I can hardly grasp what’s happened yet myself. It’s less than a year since Tella died, by the Gods. But the alternative is to break, and we don’t want that. Well,
I
certainly don’t.”

Mia shook her head.

“No. Well, that means we’ll have to think about it, and quite soon. But we’ll have plenty of choice, six men and three women. Something likely should emerge from that.”

The three candidates brought by Jonnor’s father were a range of ages. He had no idea of their abilities or personalities, and laughingly left his wife to introduce them. The first two were blandly unmemorable but the third son was a shock. He was twenty, and could almost have been Jonnor’s twin. He was a little shorter, perhaps, and more well-built around the chest, but the softly curling hair was the same, and many facial characteristics were reminiscent of Jonnor, even if not quite the same. Mia shuddered, and hoped she would not have to spend the rest of her life looking across the table at a man who reminded her so forcibly of her dead husband.

~~~

Drantior and Missandra had stayed on, although Mia was not sure whether they were being helpful or were covertly observing the rituals as part of their research. You never knew with scholars. They were very useful with the children, and one or other of them was constantly in the family hall joining in their hiding games, entertaining them by drawing pictures, telling stories, or simply cuddling one or other who had been hurt.

Hurst wanted to tell the two scholars what they had seen in the funeral tower, in the hope that they knew something – some detail from their historical research – that would explain it. Mia was reluctant at first, but she was as desperate as he was to talk to someone about it, so she agreed.

They all met in Gantor’s library, Missandra with baby Jinnia on her knee. Hurst told the whole story
– how Mia had seen something after Tella’s death, and how they had both watched this time, and seen people moving about. Then he told them about the vapour pipes for the blue lights and the maintenance tunnels for them, so that there was very likely a way in to the funeral tower from below.

“Oh, there are tunnels all over the plains,” said Drantior. “Well, pipes, anyway. Mostly for drainage. It was all swamp at one time, you know, lots of swamp everywhere, so it had to be drained. The builders put pipes in all over the place. But there are rumours of tunnels you can walk through.”

“Rumours?” Hurst said, surprised. “I thought you would know about that, at least. Building is your speciality, isn’t it?”

“One of them, yes.” Drantior looked embarrassed. “Look, you have to understand that the whole Ring is a whirlpool of rumours, and especially our bit of it. The scholars’ hall. We have a lot of historical documents there
– papers, books, artefacts – but it’s all a jumble, and we don’t have much time to do research. And things disappear. Some of the older scholars remember things. One said he’d seen maps of the tunnels; the walking tunnels, he called them. They went all over, he said, and they had proper air vents and everything. But years later, someone asked about the maps and he said they’d gone. They just weren’t there anymore. That happens all the time. So some things are just rumours.”

“Air vents,” Hurst said, brow furrowed in thought. “What would an air vent look like?”

“Towers, he said they were, but… well, it was a long time ago. I can’t say now whether there’s any truth in it.”

“Godstowers,” Gantor said. “Always wondered what they were for, but that would make sense
– ventilation for tunnels below.”

“So someone could get into the funeral tower?” Mia said. “It would be possible to get into the tunnels, somehow, and then get into the funeral tower, without the Silent Guards knowing anything about it.”

“Get in? Yes,” said Missandra. “And get out, too. I’ve always thought it bizarre, actually, to burn the Companions. This would be better – no poison for them, just send people in shortly before dawn, take them down into the tunnels and off somewhere to safety.”

“But where would they go?” Hurst said. “What would happen to them?”

“Oh, a new life somewhere,” Missandra said vaguely. “Who knows? Better than being dead, surely.”

“But they have to die,” Mia said, scandalised. “They have to help the Karningholder in the Life Beyond Death.”

“Life here and now is better,” Missandra said with a shrug. “The known life is always better. There now – we’ve bored Jinnia to sleep. Isn’t she sweet? Such lovely curls, even if they’re an odd colour.”

~~~

Mia hardly knew what to make of it. She could not believe that the Companions had survived, for everyone knew they had to die with the Karningholder, but there was no time to think about the possibilities. Every day had its share of rituals and routine, visitors came and went, and she had little enough time to herself. But every evening she and Hurst withdrew to the high tower to share their meat, and that gave her a respite from the pressures.