Tigana (69 page)

She said: ‘Tigana is the land where Adaon lay with Micaela when the world was young and gave her his love and a child and a god’s gift of power to that child and those who came after. And now the world has spun a long way from that night and the last descendant of that union is in this room with the entire past of his people falling through his hands.’ She leaned forward, her grey eyes blazing, her voice rising in indictment. ‘Falling through his hands. He is a fool and a coward, both. There is so much more than freedom in a peninsula in any single generation at stake in this!’

She fell back, coughing, pulling a square of blue silk from a pocket in her robe. Devin saw Alessan begin a movement up from his knees, and then check himself. His mother coughed, rackingly, and Devin saw, before he could turn his eyes away, that the silk came away red when she was done. On the carpet beside her Alessan bowed his head.

Erlein di Senzio, from the far side of the room, perhaps too far to see the blood, said, ‘And shall I now tell you the legends of Senzio’s pre-eminence? Of Astibar’s? Will you hear me sing the story of Eanna on the Island shaping the stars from the glory of her love-making with the god? Do you know Certando’s claim to be the heart and soul of the Palm? Do you remember the Carlozzini? The Night Walkers in their highlands two hundred years ago?’

The woman in the armchair pushed herself straight again glaring at him. Fearing her, hating her words and manner and the terrible thing she was doing to her son, Devin none the less felt humbled in the face of so much courage and such a force of will.

‘But that is the point,’ she said more softly, sparing her strength. ‘That is the heart of this. Can you not see it? I
do
remember those stories. Anyone with an education or a library, any fool who has ever heard a troubadour’s sentimental wailing can remember them. Can hear twenty different songs of Eanna and Adaon on Sangarios. Not us, though. Don’t you
see?
Not Tigana any more. Who will sing of Micaela under the stars by the sea when we are gone? Who will be here to sing, when one more generation has lived and died away in the world?’

‘I will,’ said Devin, his hands at his sides.

He saw Alessan’s head come up as Pasithea turned to fix him with her cold eyes. ‘We all will,’ he said, as firmly as he could. He looked at the Prince and then, forcing himself, back to the dying old woman raging in her pride. ‘The whole Palm will hear that song again, my lady. Because your son is
not
a coward. Nor some vain fool seeking a young death and shallow fame. He is trying for the larger thing and he is going to do it. Something has happened this spring and because of it he is going to do what he has said he will do: free this peninsula
and
bring back Tigana’s name into the world.’

He finished, breathing in hard gasps as if he had been running a race. A moment later, he felt himself go crimson with mortification. Pasithea bren Serazi was laughing. Mocking him, her frail thin body rocking in the chair. Her high laughter turned into another desperate fit of coughing; the blue silk came up, and when it was withdrawn there was a great deal of blood again. She clutched at the arms of her chair to steady herself.

‘You are a child,’ she pronounced finally. ‘And my son is a child for all the grey in his hair. And I have no doubt that Baerd bar Saevar is exactly the same, with half the grace and the gifts his father had.
“Something has happened this spring,”’
she mimicked with cruel precision. Her voice grew hard and cold as midwinter ice: ‘Do you infants have any idea what has really just happened in the Palm?’

Slowly her son rose from his knees to stand before her. ‘We have been riding for a number of days and nights. We have heard no tidings. What is it?’

‘I told you there was news,’ Danoleon said quickly. ‘But I had no chance to give you the—’

‘I am pleased,’ Pasithea interrupted. ‘So very pleased. It seems I still have something to tell my son before I leave him forever. Something he hasn’t learned or thought out all by himself already.’ She pushed herself erect again in the chair, her eyes cold and bright like frost under blue moonlight. There was something wild and lost in her voice though, trying to break through. Some terrible fear, and of more than death. She said:

‘A messenger came yesterday at sunset, at the end of the Ember Days. An Ygrathen, riding from Stevanien with news from Chiara. News so urgent Brandin had sent it by his sorcerous link to all his Governors with instructions to spread the tidings.’

‘And the tidings are?’ Alessan had braced himself, as if preparing to receive a blow.

‘The tidings? The tidings, my feckless child, are that Brandin has just abdicated as King of Ygrath. He is sending his army home. And his Governors. All those who choose to stay with him must become citizens of this peninsula. Of a new dominion: the Kingdom of the Western Palm. Chiara, Corte, Asoli, Lower Corte. Four provinces under Brandin on the Island. He has announced that we are free of Ygrath, no longer a colony. Taxes are to be shared equally among us now, and they have been cut in half. Beginning yesterday. Cut by considerably more than half here in Lower Corte. Our burden will now be equal with the others. The messenger said that the people of this province—the people your father ruled—were singing Brandin’s name in the streets of Stevanien.’

Alessan, moving very carefully, as if he were carrying something large and heavy that might shift and fall, turned towards Danoleon. Who was nodding his head.

‘It seems that there was an assassination attempt on the Island three days ago,’ the High Priest said. ‘Originating in Ygrath: the Queen and Brandin’s son, the Regent. It apparently failed only because of one of his Tribute women. The one from Certando who almost started a war. You may remember that, twelve, fourteen years ago? It seems that in the wake of this Brandin has changed his mind about what he has been doing. Not about staying in the Palm, or about Tigana and his revenge, but about what must be done in Ygrath if he continues here.’

‘And he is going to continue here,’ Pasithea said. ‘Tigana will die, still be lost forever to his vengeance, but our people will be singing the Tyrant’s name as it dies. The name of the man who killed your father.’

Alessan was nodding his head reflexively. He seemed, in fact, scarcely to be listening, as if he had suddenly withdrawn entirely inside himself. Pasithea fell silent in the face of that, looking at her son. It grew deathly still in the room. Outside, far away, the uncontrolled shouts and laughter of the children in the field came to their ears again, the louder for the silence within. Devin listened to that distant mirth and tried to slow the chaos of his heart, to attempt to deal with what they had just heard.

He looked at Erlein, who had laid down his harp on the window-ledge and walked a few steps into the room, his expression troubled and wary. Devin tried desperately to think, to gather his scattered thoughts, but the news had caught him hopelessly unprepared.
Free of Ygrath
. Which was what they wanted, wasn’t it? Except that it wasn’t. Brandin was staying, they were not free of him, or the weight of his magic. And Tigana? What of Tigana now?

And then, quite unexpectedly, there was something else bothering him. Something different. A distracting, niggling awareness tugging at the corner of his mind. Telling him there was something he should know, should remember.

Then, equally without warning, the something slid forward and into place. In fact …

In fact, he knew exactly what was wrong.

Devin closed his eyes for a moment, fighting a sudden paralysing fear. Then, as quietly as he could, he began working his way along the western wall away from the fireplace where he had been standing all this time.

Alessan was speaking now, almost to himself. He said: ‘This changes things of course. It changes a great deal. I’m going to need time to think it through, but I believe it may actually help us. This may truly be a gift not a curse.’

‘How? Are you genuinely simple?’ his mother snapped.
‘They are singing the Tyrant’s name in the streets of Avalle!’

Devin winced at the old name, the desperate pain at the heart of that cry, but he forced himself to keep moving. A terrifying certainty was rising within him.

‘I hear you, I understand. But don’t
you
see?’ Alessan dropped to his knees on the carpet again, close to his mother’s chair. ‘The Ygrathen army is going home. If he has to fight a war it will have to be with an army of
our
people and what few Ygrathens stay with him. What … oh, Mother … what do you think the Barbadian in Astibar will do when he hears this?’

‘He will do nothing,’ Pasithea said flatly. ‘Alberico is a timorous man spun neck-deep in his own webs, all of which lead back to the Emperor’s Tiara. At least a quarter of the Ygrathen army will stay with Brandin. And those people singing are the most oppressed people in the peninsula. If
they
are joyous, what do you think is happening elsewhere? Do you not imagine an army can be raised in Chiara and
Corte and Asoli to fight against Barbadior for a man who has renounced his own Kingdom for this peninsula?’ She began coughing again, her body rocking even more harshly than before.

Devin didn’t know the answer. He couldn’t even begin to guess. He knew that the balance had completely shifted, the balance Alessan had spoken about and played with for so long. He also knew something else.

He reached the window. Its ledge was about the height of his chest. He was a small man; not for the first time he regretted it. Then he gave thanks for his compensations, offered a quick prayer to Eanna and, hands flat on the ledge for leverage, pushed upward hard and swung himself like a gymnast through to the portico. He heard Pasithea still coughing behind him, a hard, painful sound. Danoleon cried out.

He stumbled and fell, crashing into a pillar with his shoulder and hip. He pushed up and off, scrambling to his feet in time to see a figure in beige robes leap up from a crouch beside the window, swearing furiously, and sprint away. Devin grappled for the knife at his belt, a blind, thought-obliterating rage rising in him. It
had
been too uproarious in the games field. The same sound as before, when the priest had left them alone.

Only this time the priest had left them alone while he spied on this room.

Alessan was at the window, Erlein just behind him.

‘Savandi!’ Devin gasped. ‘He was listening!’ He spat the words over his shoulder because he was already running after the other man. He spared a fleeting moment of thanks, and wonder, for whatever Rinaldo the Healer had done to his leg in that Certandan barn. Then anger swept over him again, and fear, and the absolute need to catch the other man.

He vaulted the stone balustrade at the back end of the portico without breaking stride. Savandi, sprinting for all he was worth, had cut west towards the back of the Sanctuary grounds. In the distance on their left Devin could see the children playing in the field. He gritted his teeth and ran.
These cursed priests!
he was thinking, fury almost choking him.
Will they undo everything, even now?

If Alessan’s identity became known anywhere in this Sanctuary Devin had little doubt how swiftly that knowledge would reach Brandin of Ygrath. He had no doubts at all about what would happen then.

And then he was assailed by another whirling thought, one that terrified him. He drove himself to even greater speed, legs pumping, his lungs sucking for air.
The mind-link
. What if Savandi could link to the King? What if Brandin’s spy could directly contact him in Chiara now?

Devin cursed in the depths of his heart but not aloud, sparing his breath for speed. Savandi, lithe and quick himself, raced down the path past a small building on the left and cut sharply right, about twenty strides ahead of Devin, around the back part of the temple itself.

Devin sped around the corner. Savandi was nowhere to be seen. He froze for a moment, seized by panic. There was no door into the temple here. And only a thick barrier of hedges, just coming into green on the left.

Then he saw where the hedges were quivering and he leaped for that spot. There was a gap forced low down. He dropped to his knees and scrambled through, scratching his arms and face.

He was in a cloistered area, large, beautifully serene, gracefully laid out, with a splashing fountain at the centre. He had no time to value such things though. At the northwest corner the cloister gave on to another portico and a long building with a small domed roof at the near end.
Savandi was just now sprinting up the steps to the portico and then through a doorway into the building. Devin looked up. At one second-storey window an old man could be seen, white haired and hollow-cheeked, gazing down without expression on the sunlit cloister.

Running flat out for the doorway, Devin realized where he was. This was the infirmary, and the small dome would be a temple for the sick who sought the comfort of Eanna but could not venture down the path to her larger dome.

He took the three steps to the portico in one flying leap and burst through the doorway, knife in hand. He was aware that following so fast he was an easy target for an ambush if Savandi chose to lie in wait. He didn’t think that would happen though—which only increased his deeper fear.

The man seemed to be racing
away
from where his fellow priests might be found, in the temple itself, the kitchens, the dormitory or the dining room. Which meant that he didn’t expect help or aid, that he couldn’t really be hoping to escape.

Which meant, in turn, that there was probably only one thing he was going to try to do, if Devin gave him enough time.

The doorway gave on to a long corridor and a stairway leading upwards. Savandi was out of sight but Devin, glancing down, gave a quick prayer of thanks to Eanna: running across the damp ground of the cloister the priest had picked up mud on his shoes. The trail was unmistakable on the stone floor and it went down the corridor and not up the stairs.