Part 41 (1/2)

'A justification can be found for every action,' Stella said. 'But what frightened me most of all was how you seemed to enjoy it. You did, didn't you. You enjoyed watching the children bleed from the stumps of their handless arms. You enjoyed the screams of the women as your men-as they...Don't lie to me. Tell me you enjoyed it.'

The man took two deep breaths. In the silence Robal found himself tempted to lob the stone towards him, to make his false skin vanish to reveal the corruption underneath. Perhaps the magic would do the same for his arguments, which, Robal feared, were halfway to deceiving his queen.

'I won't lie,' said the Undying Man. 'Part of me rejoices in my continued life whenever I behold suffering and death. Have you never breathed a sigh of relief at a funeral, happy it is not you on the bier?'

'No,' Stella said. A long silence followed. The only sound, apart from Stella's distressed breathing, was a crackling sound from somewhere within the room.

'No,' she repeated, in a small voice. 'Never. I've seen hundreds of funerals, and at every one bar the very first I wished it was me embracing the flames.'

'You want to die? Why? You have the gift the rest of the world desires!'

'You know why. Purity so potent it acts like corruption pouring through your veins, every muscle screaming with pain-'

'A pain that reduces over the years.'

'-your loved ones growing older around you, partic.i.p.ating in a cycle of life and death forever barred to you, and strangers rise to take their place-'

'New companions! New friends! New loves!'

'Any love I have now will not last. If I take a lover, he will fade and die in bitterness and fear, knowing I will never share his fate. And so it will go on until, at the end, only I and the one I despise the most remain, standing at opposite ends of a charred and lifeless world, watching the cold sun die and the moon crash to earth.'

Robal's heart seemed to stop beating as hope and fear seized him in equal measure. The sun could die and the moon crash for all he cared. He just wanted her to say clearly whom she meant. To say his name and the word 'lover' in the same sentence.

'You despise me?' the Undying Man said, leaning towards her. 'You lie. You desire me as much as I desire you.'

'I...' She licked her lips. 'I cannot deny it. But I despise you all the more for it.'

A dreadful screech rang through the dwelling, provoking a gasp from the man lying on the bed, his arm outstretched towards Stella. He appeared to freeze in place, then toppled off the bed with agonising slowness, cracking his arm on the dresser beside the bed.

'Heredrew! What has happened?' Stella cried.

They were under attack of some kind. Robal could no more control his action than control the wild hope flooding his heart, filling him with energy. He hefted his knife and rushed into the centre of the room. He could see very little. The lord of Bhrudwo lay on the floor, one arm still extended, as though carved from stone. His eyes rolled left and right, the whites visible, but otherwise he appeared unable to move. Stella bent over the Destroyer, then looked up and saw Robal. Her eyes widened.

From behind them came a whoosh, as though someone had opened a window in a strong breeze. A curtain had somehow caught fire. As Robal tried to take this in another curtain caught alight, and flames began to lick the blankets. A crash of breaking gla.s.s came from behind the first curtain, and the flames roared.

An ugly possibility seized the guardsman. The fire was clearly magical. It moved too swiftly for a natural blaze. What if the Destroyer, angered by Stella's rejection, had started the fire himself? And even now fuelled the flames while lying there pretending to be paralysed in order to hold Stella in the room?

'Robal! Help me with-'

'He is evil!' Robal roared. 'He must die!' Still roaring, he swung his sword at the frozen figure.

'No!' Stella cried, and put her arm up in the Undying Man's defence. His blade took her arm off at the elbow. The tip thumped uselessly into the Destroyer's shoulder.

She screamed, her eyes wide with fear and confusion, as her bright blood began to spurt.

He threw down his blade, taken by terror at what he'd done, and shoved the stone in the pocket of his tunic. 'Stella, Stella,' he said, as if the repet.i.tion of her name was a spell capable of repairing the damage. 'Stella, your poor arm. I'm sorry, so sorry!'

'Get help,' she said to him, her face pale, lips barely moving. 'Fetch the mistress of the house. And fetch Lenares. Get Moralye to bring Phemanderac. Someone must have a cure for what ails him.'

'Him? What ails him? What of you?'

What sort of madness had taken hold of her? And why wasn't the Destroyer's real body visible, given he had the-It wasn't in his pocket. He must have dropped it. He scurried back for the precious stone, soon finding it.

'You seek the mistress of the house?' said a voice. 'She is here.'

Conal's self-pitying inward gaze was arrested by movement seen from the corner of his eye. The far door opened and in staggered two men bearing the body of the Destroyer. They carried it into the centre of the room and laid it on the floor, then moved away, leaving it there, rocking slightly, frozen in an att.i.tude of entreaty. The man had been begging when the spell took him.

The same two men reappeared with an obviously paralysed Martje in their grasp. Her they placed carefully on the bench above Conal, her back resting against the wall. No doubt she would enjoy a clear view of the proceedings.

The magician in Conal's mind gave a long sigh of pleasure and settled back to watch.

More movement, this time accompanied by thumping and raised voices. Stella and the thug Robal were dragged into the room and forced to sit on the floor some distance away. There was something wrong with one of Stella's hands: she had been injured in some way, her arm ended short of where it ought to, in a red blur. As he watched, unable to decipher what his eyes were seeing, someone-a servant, he thought-tightened a strap around her arm, then smeared something on the redness. Stella screamed at its touch.

'Did you see to the fire?' someone asked the servant. 'Mother will be displeased if her bedroom is ruined.'

'Aye, it was under control last I looked, if it please you, sir. I will check again for you.' The servant vanished.

You set this in motion, the magician said to him. Everything that happens tonight is on your head.

'My mother doubted this would work,' someone said, just out of Conal's restricted field of vision. One of the sons, no doubt, the words addressed to the Undying Man. 'But we had to try anyway. We are surprised at how little resistance you offered. I doubt any of us could have escaped the spell once the incantation was complete, but any one of us, even young Tomana, would have put up more of a fight than you did. Disappointing, really. The great Undying Man exposed as a charlatan. How many real magicians did your bidding, I wonder, and with what bribes or promises did you bind them?'

A foot came into view: it landed a vicious kick on the Destroyer's exposed arm.

'This is what we shall do. Each of your companions will be tortured before your eyes, and you will watch them die, one by one. Then you will be tortured in your turn, but we will not attempt to kill you. Instead, we will summon the factors of the realm-they will come; our good name will see to that, as well as the evidences we will send them-and, after a.s.sembling them here to see your humiliation, we shall lift the spell.'

The voice paused, no doubt allowing the message to sink in.

'You will never rule again. Everyone who has ever suffered at your cruel hand will seek revenge against you. The rest of your days will be a misery, and you will never forget what you did to offend the Umerta family. The name we carve on every inch of your skin will a.s.sist your memory.

'Now, let our vengeance begin.'

Rough hands seized Stella and dragged her into the open s.p.a.ce, dropping her beside the Destroyer. Knives appeared in those hands, and their wielders bent over her bound body and began cutting away her clothes.

This should be interesting, said the voice in Conal's head. Not for the first time, he wished he could silence it.

When the knives had finished and the screaming died away, they dragged the body across the floor, leaving trails of bright red blood. A soft thump told him they had cast it aside. Conal's heart shrieked in his chest, as though it had its own voice independent of his terrified mind.

'Now for the so-called priest,' the voice said, and hands stretched out for him.

Don't worry, I won't let them kill you, said the magician, a chuckle in his voice.

But the pain! I don't want to bleed.

As long as they preserve your life, your hearing and your sight, I don't care what else happens. In fact, it should be interesting.

Please! Please! But the magician had retreated to some dark place. Conal was left with no one to plead with.

One of the knife-wielders leaned close to him and brought his blade up to Conal's eye. 'You saw our dear sister Sena naked,' the man hissed. 'You thought yourself worthy to lie with her. There is a price to pay for such temerity.'

The blade p.r.i.c.ked the corner of Conal's right eye and entered the skin at the edge of his eye socket. The pressure increased-he knew what was about to happen, but was helpless to resist-and sudden, indescribable pain tore through his head. His vision went white, then red, then black.