First Light (6 sample chapters)

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First Light

Michelle Frost

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Copyright Page Published in 2008 by YouWriteOn.com Copyright Š Text Michelle Frost First Edition The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Published by YouWriteOn.com

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Dedicated with love and gratitude to the three people who never stop believing in me: my parents, John and Beulah, and my husband, Alexander.

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Chapter 1

At the first jangle of keys in the distance the novices, heads bowed on their way to lessons, cringed instinctively. The older monks moved quietly back towards the inner wall of the corridor and a lay brother, scrubbing the floors, scrambled backwards on his knees, dragging himself and his water pail into a recess. No-one wanted to be in the way when the Castellan was in one of his moods. The tall monk who finally came striding down the shadowed monastery corridor was surprisingly young, barely thirty. As he swept past the novices, his dark robe flapping wildly around his legs, they bobbed their heads in fearful deference.

Idrith Talen might even have been described as handsome if it wasn’t for the deep frown lines and general air of irritability. His features were angular, but interesting and his fierce deep-set eyes were an incredibly brilliant blue. His hair, worn in the traditional monastic close-shaven fashion, was a most unusual colour - a light grey-brown that was perilously close to fair. The heavy key ring hanging from his belt was the mark of his position as Castellan – the Abbot’s personal assistant and one of the few positions of power in the monastery.

It was the Castellan’s duty to oversee the daily running of the monastery. He had to manage and maintain everything from the stocking of the larder to the needs of the visiting Pilgrims and the Abbot himself. To hold a position of power at such a young age was unusual, but Idrith Talen had a reputation for unrelenting standards of perfection. He might not show the true meekness of spirit the Abbot would have liked, but his bitter dedication to small details was already legendary. If anyone had commented openly on the fact that the Castellan, though feared, was held in high regard Idrith would have snorted in disgust. He’d always thought of the job 5

as being better described as something between a housekeeper and the Abbot’s personal slave. Idrith had no illusions of his own supposed grandeur. Titles and power could never repay for the loss of simple freedoms.

His life at Amyth was not an uplifting spiritual experience. Religion, as set out by the Laws of the Church of the Sind, was a constant battle against the evils of individuality and personal wilfulness. Salvation through submission to the Great Authority… or, in Idrith’s personal unspoken opinion, salvation through subservience to the Great Abbot. He had never come to terms with that reality. Although he had never wanted to be here he was still constantly disappointed at how empty the entire experience left him feeling. Surely a monastic life should make you realise that there was more to existence than simply existing? Instead it was something he endured with resigned hopelessness, like a terminal disease.

That theme of bleak endurance seemed embedded within the very structure of Amyth monastery. Set on the side of the harshest mountain range in the North of Sindorus, Amyth clung to vertical black-rock cliffs with stoic tenacity. Its thick stone walls had been hacked from the very cliffs it stood upon. On three sides the Ice Mountains surrounded the monastery while the fourth looked South across the great desert plain - a forbidden and forbidding area of heat, sand and death. The only way in or out of the monastery was up a narrow, steep path cut into the cliff side that twisted back and forth till it reached the plateau where the Pilgrims’ guest house stood. An equally narrow bridge, set over a splintered gorge, linked the monastery to the plateau. No one could describe Amyth as inviting, but it was an engineering accomplishment to be proud of.

The layout of the monastery itself was a different story. Centuries of add-ons had turned it into a totally confusing maze of corridors and courtyards that made simple things like going from the kitchen to the dining room a twentyminute trip. Idrith had often wondered why they didn’t serve cold food and be done with it, but common sense had never been a religious virtue. Every meal left the kitchen scalding hot 6

and was finally eaten tepid and congealed. The stupidity of it drove him mad, but then most of monastic life infuriated him and this particular day was no exception. It had been a long day of well-known frustrations and one of his headaches was already building, like a summer storm, in the blood that pounded behind his eyes. By tonight it would be at the peak of its crimson-flaring glory.

He opened the door of a meditation cell at the end of the passage and slammed it behind him, the uncommon noise echoing away down the monastic corridors and walkways. He hoped that a few hours of peace and meditation before sundown might ease the massing pain, but even the cool desert air filtering through the narrow slit of a window felt like sandpaper on his face. He went over to the window and leant his head against the cold stones, staring out at the desert that stretched away from the high cliffs of Amyth. The sun was beginning to set. As it touched the jagged horizon it’s fiery blood seeped brilliant reds across the sky and onto the desert plains. The pale desert sands caught the colour and transformed it into softer pinks and peachy oranges that seemed to ripple over the surface like the finest silken gauze.

It really was a beautiful view, but the scene did nothing for Idrith. All his eyes saw was the end of another pointless day in his meaningless existence. He stood by the window, drenched in this shimmering scarlet glow, completely unaware of the beauty before him. The distant sun and far horizon were no more than a bitter reminder of his permanent incarceration within Amyth’s claustrophobic walls. There is nowhere darker, nothing more bleak, than being where you do not belong and being helpless to change that fact.

Joining the monastery had not been from choice, there had simply been no other place open to him; not after the terrible scandal with his family. Sometimes, when the headaches were at their worst and he no longer cared, he would allow himself the luxury of self-pity and imagine how his life might have been if his brother had never been caught.

Law would have been his first choice, if there had been a choice. Ironic really, since it was the Law that had destroyed 7

his family and his life. He had been just a boy at the time, too young to understand things fully, but not young enough to escape the dreadful memories.

Now, as he stood by the window, he thought about his brother... Kail had been the older by ten years. The few clear memories he had of him were all filled with laughter and surprise visits, wildly funny stories of his travels and gifts from strange far-off places. He could remember sitting on the floor while his mother laughed till she cried at his brother’s ridiculous stories. He had always known that Kail was her favourite, but it had never bothered him. Kail was everyone’s favourite, so full of warmth and life. He had always forgiven her for loving Kail more, he just couldn’t find a way to forgive her for leaving him.

He’d been playing in the gardens when the news had come that Kail had been arrested for consorting with Rebels.

His parents had been shocked, but optimistic. Everyone knew that Kail was friends with everyone he met. It would all prove to be a misunderstanding... but when the Zah-Riel had demanded that Kail hand over a list of names of those Rebels he had refused to comply. It was only years later that Idrith had learnt about the threats and torture and how, near the end, their father had actually gone on his knees before the Zah-Riel and begged for his older son’s life. For Idrith the memories were mostly of his mother’s tears and the suffocating silence as everyone waited.

When the final judgement was announced it had been like the cloud burst after a lifetime of watching the storm clouds grow. Nothing could ever compare in horror to the news that Kail was to be executed as a traitor to the Za-Har. All of his family, except Idrith who was under age, were expected to witness the event which was held beside the monastery of Amyth. The religious reasoning to having the family present was that the family could thereby prove their innocence, by standing together in condemnation of the damned. The Za-Har reasoning was more practical. Watching someone die in agony, particularly someone you loved, was the best deterrent to rebelliousness ever invented.

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Their mother had gone quite mad with anger and grief, swearing that not even the Zah-Riel himself could make her stand by as witness to the murder of her own child.

Everyone had tried to calm her down and, by the day before they were to leave for Amyth, it had seemed as if she was finally at peace with the inevitable. Only Idrith had felt that something was wrong - she was too calm, almost dreamlike.

The night before the journey she sat beside his bed and they’d spoken about Kail.

“Don’t let them make you believe that Kail was evil,” she’d said, gently brushing the tears from his cheeks, “He was the kindest and the best. Even if you never understand why he did what he did, remember that he loved all of us very much and that he loved you the most. He was so happy when you were born. He carried you around telling everyone that you were his new little brother. Promise me you will remember the good things only, don’t ever forget how much we loved you.”

The ‘we’ had puzzled him, but he hadn’t questioned her meaning. It was enough to just have her there by his bed as he went to sleep, keeping the nightmares away…

It was one of the servants who found her the next morning. She’d hung herself from a beam in the storeroom in the stables. In a daze of disbelief his father had arranged a simple burial before travelling alone to the execution. When he returned he told his staff and Idrith that he had decided to sell the property and join the monastery himself. Returning to the routines of everyday life with so much wrenched from him was more then he could bear and the monastery offered him an escape. He would see out his last years in hiding from himself while Idrith was to be sent to stay with his father’s sister and her family.

The years with his relatives weren’t as bad as Idrith had feared. His uncle was a hard cold man, but his aunt was kind in her own vague way. Better still their only son, Aztar, was a bright cheerful boy about his age. They quickly became inseparable. They had even wanted to go to the military academy together, but that had been out of the question. Not even the lowliest of colleges was willing to take the younger 9

brother of a convicted traitor. In the end the only place willing to offer to take Idrith in was the monastery. His father had spent the last years of his life there. The Monastery Brotherhood had so loved this man, with his gentle ways and spiritual dedication, that they were more than happy to welcome in his son. Idrith had gone to Amyth and his uncle could once again invite dignitaries home without having to feel embarrassed. Aztar had been the only one to be upset by the news. He’d promised Idrith that he would write regularly and he had kept that promise faithfully for the past ten years. At least two letters came every month, full of news and jokes about the outside world that Idrith would never see again.

At first life at the monastery had been a challenge that Idrith was willing to make the best of. He had worked hard and been chosen for the responsible role of Castellan at the ridiculously young age of twenty-five, but then the old Abbot had died. The old Abbot had been a good man with a good heart. His fatherly influence was deeply missed when Abbot Fein took his place. Where the old Abbot had come slightly close to worshipping beer as a lesser god the new Abbot worshipped only status and power. Abbot Fein was a man who had nothing but contempt for the base emotions of kindness and compassion and in Idrith he saw everything worthy of contempt – the younger son of a tainted family line. Although he could not take Idrith’s position of Castellan from him he could, and did, take away most of his privileges and little freedoms. No matter how hard Idrith tried nothing was to be right or easy ever again… and since being Abbot was a lifetime position the chances were that he had many years of persecution to look forward to.

As Idrith stood by the window in the small cell he thought about that fact and wondered if his mother had been so wrong after all. Was life really worth fighting for? Surely there should be more to living than simply being alive? He banged his fist against the wall in frustration and anger - it made a hollow sound like a drum. That was a surprise; monastery walls were not built to boom like empty barrels. He stared at the wood panelling... that was a surprise also, how come he’d 10

never noticed that this room was panelled before? None of the other cells were. He ran his hands up and down the smoothly polished surface in wonder at his own lack of observation. The wood was darkened by age and polished smooth as water under his hands. The panels, set higher than his head, had a border of carving along the top. It looked like flowers or stars.

Fascinated, he pulled over a small stool to climb up for a closer view. He never even noticed, as he studied the panel carvings portion by portion, that his headache had completely disappeared. In the top right corner he found one flower that was different from the others. Instead of having five petals this one had seven and the centre looked wrong somehow. He ran his fingers over it, trying to feel what his eyes couldn’t make out in the fading light. The centre dented in under his enquiring touch and the whole centre panel slid back, with a soft wheezy sigh, to reveal a flight of very dusty steps leading down into darkness.

Idrith had heard of secret rooms and escape routes in some of the older mansions, but he had never heard any mention of such a thing in the monastery. As Castellan he was well acquainted with the maps of the many rooms and convoluted corridors. He had never seen anything about a hidden door. He went back to the table, to light the lamp, before entering the stairway. The panel had a handle on the inside and he closed it behind himself. No one was likely to come looking for him, but he didn’t want to take any risks.

This secret, he wanted to keep all to himself - something the Abbot couldn’t spoil.

With the door shut the air soon became hot and hard to breath as his footsteps kicked up the ancient dust. The steps went straight down at first, then he reached a long passage that went on for quite some time before turning sharply once, and then once more, to the left. It ended quite abruptly on the second turn, with a door so full of cobwebs that at first Idrith didn’t realize it was there. He wiped them off with the hem of his robe as best he could. It opened after a few hard pushes.

The small room beyond the door was as dusty as the passageway had been, but the air was surprisingly cool and 11

clear. When he held the lamp up for a better view he realized that the wall directly opposite was actually a window, so dirty that the only light showing was a single star framed in a hole of broken glass near the centre. Seeing the star brought him back to reality with a jolt. Evening Chants would have finished by now and there was no way that the Abbot would not have noticed his absence. Exploring the room would have to wait for a better time.

That better time proved to be almost three weeks later.

The Abbot made him pay for missing Evening Chants by setting him to time-consuming tasks, so menial that they were usually only given to novices in disgrace. Idrith bore his humiliation in grim but determined silence. He knew that any protests would only make things worse than they already were and he was hoping to have a chance to see the secret room soon. If he angered the Abbot further he wouldn’t have free time until he died of old age or exhaustion. The only consolation to scrubbing floors and washing dishes was that he was able to remove soap and a bucket without anyone noticing.

The room and its window were going to need a lot of cleaning.

The Abbot finally found someone else to be angered by and Idrith was able to arrange a whole morning’s solitude, with the help of some of the more sympathetic monks. Taking his cleaning supplies and water through the monastery had worried him at first, but he managed to accomplish this by moving most of the stuff an hour before the bells for Rising.

Once back in the secret room he decided to concentrate on cleaning the room only; the passage and steps were more of a job than he had the time for. By daylight he could see enough to realise that the huge window dominating this small secret room had something more wrong with it than merely age and dirt. Up close he could see that it wasn’t a single pane or even small squares, but was divided up into irregular bits by an outline of some soft metal.

He had never seen anything like it in his life. The pieces let the light through differently too, as if some of them were of smoked or textured glass. The only windows at the monastery that were smoked were the ones in the chapel.

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Smoked and textured glass was very popular amongst the wealthy city-dwellers. In a society where colours were considered decadent, sinful and even evil, people had learnt to treasure textures and patterns. The stores in Ocren, the capital city, boasted clothing in twenty different shades of grey and window glass in frosted, shaded, marbled and smoked variations. Smoked was the most expensive and therefore the most highly prized.

Idrith wondered why a window of expensive glass had been tucked away in this obscure place. Could it be because this window was broken? The hole that he’d noticed on the first night looked a lot worse by daylight, but Idrith knew the monks might still have thought it worth storing.

Monastery life was pared down and prudent – the monks never threw away anything that could be restored or used again. The only way to find out more was to clean the glass to see how bad the damage actually was as well as what the glass really looked like. Idrith smiled at that thought, cleaning was something he was becoming very experienced at. He pulled over a stool that had been standing in a corner and, after checking that it was still solid, climbed up onto it so that he could start cleaning the window from the top down.

The first piece he washed almost made him fall off the stool. It wasn’t smoked glass at all. It was blue. He had to sit down quickly as his legs felt rubbery.

Blue.

He wiped the sweat from his face with a hand that trembled slightly. Perhaps it would be better if he just left the window and room alone and never came back here again. An interesting puzzle was one thing, but this? This was more danger and excitement then he cared to think about. This could get you killed. Part of him wanted to run, but another stronger part held him trapped - the part tormented by the need to know.

How had the window come to be here? Who was responsible?

Was it all blue? Were there, gods forbid, more colours than blue on it’s terrible surface? He turned around to face it, hands on his knees. Why were the pieces such irregular shapes?

Idrith pulled a face at himself, shaking his head. He couldn’t 13

fool himself. He knew he would die of curiosity if he left now and never returned. He considered the facts - no one had known about this window in a very long time, so the chance of anyone finding it now was unlikely. He could clean it, look at it, and then leave for good. No one need ever know.

He climbed back up onto the stool and began washing with mechanical precision, not allowing his mind to wander onto what it was he was doing, what it was he was uncovering from ages of grime. Regular and methodical his hands moved, independent of any thought... wash-wipe-rinse, over and over.

The central hole must have happened a long time ago because the edges of broken glass were dull and heavily caked with dust and desert sand. It looked like something large had been thrown through it, or rammed into it from this side; the pieces of glass and twisted metal strips were pushed outwards. He deliberately kept himself from looking up while he worked his way down. Even when he was finished he kept his back turned to the window while he cleaned the rest of the room. He knew he was putting off the inevitable, but fear kept him trapped, unable to turn around, even though he knew that something dreadfully beautiful lay behind him covering the floor with dapples of incredible coloured light. At last he took a deep breath, sat down on the stool with his back against the door, and gazed up at the window.

He had never seen anything like it, could never have imagined that something like it was possible. The colours were breathtaking, so clear and pure that they seemed to glow with a life of their own. The window was a complete scene. At the top the sky was deepest blues and indigos scattered with tiny frosted glass stars that circled a larger seven-pointed star near the top centre of the sky. As the sky moved down towards the horizon it lightened into daytime blues as bright as his eyes. A rainbow of curved glass strips spanned the horizon from side to side: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. He said the forbidden names in his head, too scared to say them out loud.

Below the rainbow there seemed to have been a city, hard to see as it was here that the worst damage had been done.

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All that remained were a few milky turrets and the odd fragment of white wall showing between lush green trees and sparkling turquoise fountains. Below the city an unfurled scroll was held open by an assortment of brightly coloured birds. It had writing on it, but it too was badly damaged. Deeply gouged scratches made most of the writing illegible. Here and there a word remained but only the first two lines were complete and defiantly clear: BLESSED IS THE RAINBOW THAT SHOWS US OUR UNIQUENESS, SYMBOL OF SHIS PRESENCE IN THE WORLD, He tried to make sense of the rest of it, but too few words remained. BLESSED and LIGHT, REJOICE, STAR and PRAISES and something that looked like COLOURS near the bottom of the scroll. There was something about the rhythm of the first two lines that reminded him of the monks’ “Prayer of Direction”, said three times a day at Chants. He counted the total amount of lines and realized that it was exactly the same length as the Prayer too, but this was a blasphemous parody of the original, just the idea of comparing them made his skin crawl.

At Evening Chants, when the monks gathered for their final prayers before their evening meal, he couldn’t say the words of the Prayer of Direction out loud - other horrifying words kept trying to come out of his mouth instead. He leant back as far as possible and hoped that the shadows would obscure the panic on his face. In the darkening chapel, while the monks chanted the Codes of Law and Rules for Penance in the dull-voiced unison of centuries of repetition, he found himself staring up at the chapel windows. It took him a while to realise that there was something very familiar about them.

The central one directly behind the altar was the same size and shape as the one in the secret room.

He had no idea how long he had been staring at it, but it was long enough to have aroused the curiosity of those near him. With a sinking sensation Idrith realized that the Abbot’s 15

puffy white face was turned his way as well. When the chants were finally over he tried to slip out undetected, but the Abbot was ready waiting by the door.

“Brother Castellan; a word before you go.” Idrith turned back reluctantly, bowing his head more to avoid the Abbot’s stare than to show respect, “Castellan... do you find the salvation of your soul such a tedious thing?”

“No, Father.”

“Then why did you spend most of the time glancing about you? Wandering eyes are the sign of a wandering mind, Castellan, and a soul that wanders from the Path is damned for all time.”

Idrith tried to keep his voice as meek as possible, “I’m sorry Father, it won’t happen again.”

“It should never have happened at all! Perhaps a twenty-page appraisal of Abbot Kord’s works on the Five Thousand Paths to Damnation might help to fill this empty mind of yours?”

Idrith stifled a groan. Abbot Kord’s works were the most long-winded, depressing tomes ever written. He wouldn’t be able to return to the room for a week at least. Abbot Fein dismissed him with a flutter of pale fingers. Idrith knew he should go quietly but there was something he had to ask, “Father, how old are the chapel windows?”

He braced himself for another reprimand on idle minds, but it didn’t come. The Abbot had been caught off guard by the sudden question.

“The windows?” the Abbot turned to stare at them, “How should I know? As old as the chapel, of course. It was built seven centuries ago, the library records probably have the exact date.” He turned back to Idrith, “Why do you want to know the age of the windows?”

Idrith’s mind raced for a plausible answer, “Because I’ve heard that glass becomes brittle with age. I was wondering if it could be dangerous in the strong winds in Winter.”

“Is that why you spent so much time staring at them?” asked the Abbot, clearly irritated by such nonsense, “Well, since they are of such deep concern to you – you can clean 16

them and check for ‘brittleness’ tomorrow while the rest of us have breakfast.”

In the hour before dawn and Morning Chants Idrith found himself once again up to his elbows in cold soapy water.

At least these windows were easier to clean. They didn’t have centuries of dirt stuck to their surfaces, but as he washed and wiped he noticed that they did have something else rather peculiar about them - the stones around the windows were damaged. In some places they were chipped so badly that new stones had been used to replace them. During the following days he was irresistibly drawn to check every window he passed, feeling their edges in the shadows, looking for nicks in the light. By the time he had checked virtually all the windows in the monastery it had become perfectly clear that no other windows were damaged except the chapel ones. He also started searching through the libraries for information about the construction of the monastery’s chapel. He found nothing.

There wasn’t a single record about the building of the chapel or the monastery itself, no date and no original building plans.

He went back to the secret room when he had the time and measured the window carefully. His instinctive guess had been correct - it was the same size as the central chapel window. So this window mimicked the chapel one just as its verse mimicked their Prayer? Who could have done such a sinful thing and how had they brought this terrible window to the secret room in the first place? Trying to imagine how anyone had managed it boggled his mind. Even more awful was the dread-filled theory slowly forming within him about the two windows... a theory that grew more horrifying with every fact he found himself forced to add to the growing list in his head.

The only way he’d ever be able to rest easy was by proving his suspicions wrong and he chose Harmion as the person to ask. Harmion knew the oddest things. He was a regular pilgrim to Amyth and spent more time in the library than many of the monks did. He never involved himself in monastery gossip and he had made his contempt for the Abbot clear to them all. The Abbot only tolerated him because, as a 17

Pilgrim and a layman, he had no power to do otherwise. No one knew what Harmion did for a living or where he actually came from, but he was obviously a Lakelander, or part Lakelander anyway. Idrith found that thought fascinating. The Lakelanders were a little known race that kept very much to themselves in the heavily wooded Southern region between the Nauran and Darlan seas. They were smaller than the Northerners and their skins were darker shades of warm browns; very much the colour of the trees they lived amongst.

Their hair was strangely coarse and fair, and their eyes were equally strange, light and clear in colour. Idrith suspected Harmion had some Northern blood as his skin was more golden than brown. His hair was a golden brown too, but his eyes were pure Lakelander - pale as water, one silvery blue and the other pastel gold.

Idrith found this sphinx-eyed scholar in the library as usual. He started their conversation carefully by bringing up his problems with finding information about the monastery’s age and wandered on from there onto buildings in general. It wasn’t easy, Harmion never stopped staring at him in his unnerving way and he kept smiling at things Idrith said that weren’t in the least bit funny. He seemed to find Idrith’s interest in windows especially droll and Idrith was about to give up and change the subject to a safer topic when Harmion interrupted him, “What is it you want to ask me, Castellan? All this camouflaging conversation is absorbing but irrelevant, isn’t it?”

Idrith denied this with as much sincerity as he could fake, “ I do have a question, but it’s about what we’ve been taking about. I noticed recently, during my inspection of the monastery… which is a natural part of my duties as Castellan that some of the windows are damaged.” Harmion raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “I wondered if you knew anyone who fixed windows… if they could tell what caused the damage?”

“My uncle is a builder; I used to help him as a boy. If you show me the windows I may be able to tell you myself.”

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Idrith almost panicked then, “That isn’t possible, they’re in the inner courtyards and only monks can enter there.”

“I see... well then, perhaps you can describe the damage?” Idrith told him all he had noticed.

“Is that all? The answer is perfectly simple, Castellan, those windows have been replaced at some time.”

“But we’ve had broken glass replaced before in the kitchen and that window edge wasn’t damaged.”

Harmion smiled wider than ever, “I didn’t say that the glass had been replaced, I said that the window had been replaced. Someone removed the entire window, frame and all.

That is the only thing that could cause harm to the surrounding stones. They must have wanted to move it.”

Idrith felt sick, his suspicion was beginning to look more and more probable. He excused himself and left. If Harmion was right it turned everything he knew about the monastery and religion, upside-down. He went to the chapel and began a slow inch-by-inch examination of the stones surrounding the windows. He felt the grooves and hollows carefully, hoping to find something new; anything that would prove his misgivings wrong. In a deep thin crack at the bottom of the main window he finally felt something. Excited, he prized it out of its hiding place with one of his keys. It was small and smooth in his hand, he held it up to the light for a better look and the light streamed through it and bloodied his hand.

It was a fragment of red glass.

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Chapter 2

Daen folded her arms tightly, trying to keep warm as she stood waiting by the stables at dawn. Mornings were always cold at Gerlin, but this was the only time of the day that she was free to meet the trader. Around her the gentle hills of Gerlin were beginning to glow in the soft morning light. Behind her, further up the hill, she could hear faint noises from the main buildings of the fythe and house itself. When she glanced back towards home she could still see a few stars and the twin moons hanging above the rooftops.

She rocked back and forth slightly to try and keep the chill at bay. The sun was slowly rising above the distant mountains, their jagged outlines tearing through stripes of peach and lavender cloud. The Lacey Leaves, edging the lake below her, had a thin layer of frost on their branches that began to sparkle as the sun’s light stretched out to touch them. This precious liquid would soon return to vapour once the sun was up. It was turning out to be another hard dry year. The last heavy rains they’d had at her family’s fythe were well over five years ago and the lake was half the size she remembered it being in her childhood days. The only large plants left alive in the garden were the Lacey Leaves and even they were beginning to look weary and faded.

As the pale lemony sunlight spread out across the ground towards her feet Daen found her mind lingering more on the thoughts of a hot meal than the deal she was hoping to make with the trader. Her stomach gave a very undignified moan and she chuckled to herself. So much for playing the business woman. Here she was, about to conduct her first trade meeting, and all she could think of was hot Charob and lanoberry tart. Admittedly her stomach’s unhappiness was also due to nervousness. This meeting had to go well; the entire household was counting on her.

Most Northern maidens would have crumbled under 20

such daunting responsibility, but Daen Sibaris was far from being the usual Northern maiden. Her mother had died giving birth to her and her father, Bened Sibaris, had tried his best to raise her alone. He had let her have more freedom and much more education than was normal for a girl, as if this could compensate for the loss of her mother. Instead it had only made her more different from the neighbours’ children, and that much more alone. She’d spent most of her childhood wandering around the fythe by herself, mostly doing things girls weren’t supposed to, like reading books, climbing trees and running barefoot. Her love of drawing had grown from her love of the land and the animals that lived on it. Sitting up in the trees, with sun-browned legs dangling, she’d watched the wild animals coming to the lake to drink and seen the seasons change the land around her.

It wasn’t long before a drawing pad and pencil became an essential part of her outdoor gear. She’d vanish for hours only to be found somewhere she shouldn’t be - up on the stable roof drawing sparrow chicks in their nest, in the mud beside the pigpen sketching wildflowers. Her bedroom was cluttered with pictures, paper, reference books and bits of plants and stones. Instead of learning to sew her father taught her to ride his prize horses. Instead of learning etiquette and how to be a lady she learnt how to catch a fish and cook it over a fire on a stick. While other girls went only as far in their studies as learning enough to be able to read a grocery list and write a thank you letter Daen’s father gave her free rein of his large library and encouraged her to study and question anything she read there.

Long ago, when Rae was still a viable crop, the fythers had been richer than anyone on Sindorus, but the Rae trees had stopped producing fruit and the older trees had begun to die. With no fruit there were no new seedlings to take their places and Daen’s father had been forced to go into emmal farming. He had turned all the orchards into pastures and spent the last of the family savings turning the store rooms into a dairy and shearing barn only to face another disaster when the droughts began. Ten years of bright and empty skies.

21

First the emmals had stopped producing milk, then the wells turned brackish and the emmals had begun to die. Her father sold off most of the livestock; only a few emmals and his prize horses were left now. The fythe had been running at a loss for so long that she’d given up keeping a tally of how much they owed the banks. That was why she hadn’t protested when her father had arranged her betrothal; it was his only hope of keeping the fythe for her once he was gone.

Northerner marriages amongst the gentry and nobility were always arranged by the parents. They were practical alliances built on family names and financial gains. Daen, living so remote from everyday Northerner life and given the freedom usually only given to boy children, was completely unprepared for such a concept. When her father had begun negotiations for her betrothal just before her twelfth birthday she had been horrified. She’d had this dream that she would live at Gerlin forever, drawing and sculpting and running the fythe as her father’s manager. Her father had struggled to make her understand that he only wanted to do what was best for her.

At the age of twelve he had shown her the fythe books and bills and the letters from the banks. He’d explained how, unless she married into a wealthy family who could take on their debts, the fythe would one day be seized by the banks.

The idea of a life without Gerlin was far worse than the thought of a life with an unknown husband, so Daen had swallowed any unhappiness and tried to seem pleased when the Lindo family of Carlen had asked for her as the bride for their only son. Lacont Lindo, her father had explained, was a very wealthy man and his son, Aztar, would one day inherit an estate five times the size of Gerlin as well as the title of Lacont. Her father had been so happy, ordering a celebratory dinner for everyone in Gerlin. He had shown her the elegant letter the Lacont had sent him, promising that the fythe would be kept as Daen’s property after Bened’s death. This was an exceptionally kind gesture and a mark of how well-respected the ancient family name of Sibaris was, regardless of their current debt situation. By law a bride’s property and possessions automatically transferred to her husband once their 22

marriage was finalized. For Dean this would be when Aztar came of age in seven years time.

Daen had consoled herself with the thought that seven years was a very long time and tried as much as possible to not think about her future at all. Now and then, over the years, she wondered what Aztar looked like and if he ever thought about her. None of his family had ever visited or seen her; her family name was all that interested them. Would they think her pretty when they finally did meet her? Her father seemed to think so but she didn’t trust his opinion much. She tried looking at herself in her bedroom mirror with the same artist’s eye she used on every other creature, but the face she saw seemed very ordinary. Her eyes were the only thing worth drawing. They were large, long lashed and dark grey like her mother’s.

She knew that her wildly curly red-brown hair was going to be a problem because her nanny had been complaining about it since she was small. It was too curly to braid and too unruly to wear up in a coil and irrepressible springy curls and strands were forever working loose to hang in her eyes. Most of the time she tied it back out of her way with any bit of string or scrap ribbon, but even hanging down her back it would manage to tangle around door handles and tree branches. Over the years an assortment of maids and nannies had tried to brush it into submission, but it always won in the end. She’d never be able to wear it in the elaborate, multi-braided styles fashionable in the cities. She’d never be the kind of society wife people like the Lindos expected.

Yet, in spite of all her misgivings, when the letter from Aztar arrived, two months before their wedding was due, it was almost a disappointment. It was polite and short - Aztar Lindo respectfully requested the postponement of their wedding until he had finished his studies at the military academy in Debec. Of course Daen had seen the funny side to her feminine pique - that she was both relieved and annoyed simultaneously. The servants had been more outspoken, especially Cook and her father’s manservant, Rownly. Having been in service to her father for almost all of their lives they considered themselves to be family and had been looking 23

forward to the wedding celebrations as if they were marrying off their own daughter. For weeks after Aztar’s letter they went about grumbling over how rude the Lindo boy was, as if he had put off the wedding just to inconvenience them. Her father, in contrast, had said not a word, but behind closed doors he had shed a few quiet tears of relief that Daen would be with him a little longer. A few more years were a great gift made even more precious by the fact that his health was failing. The years of stress and struggle were starting to take their toll. He wasn’t eating properly and he was constantly saying how tired he felt. It never occurred to either Bened or Daen that there was something seriously wrong until the doctor sent him to the city for tests. The results all concurred; it seemed very probable that her father was going to leave her before she left him.

The next five years passed in uneasy bitter-sweet contentment at the Sibaris fythe. Daen and her father never spoke about his health. Instead they kept an agreement to live each day gladly, as it came, and not to fret over what would be.

Daen had her ink and pencil drawings and her reading to keep her busy as well as the added tasks of running the fythe. In the evenings after dinner she loved to sit with her father and talk about everything from agriculture to astronomy. When another letter had come on the week of Aztar’s graduation to say that he respectfully requested a further postponement they were both delighted… much to the servants’ horror. This time there could be no denying the insult to Daen and through her to the entire Sibaris household; no one had ever postponed a wedding this long. Daen was twenty-four years old - at that age most girls were married matrons with one or two children. A young man of Aztar Lindo’s standing should be thinking of producing an heir to the Lindo estate.

Lacont Lindo had tried to make amends for his son’s disgraceful behaviour by sending his own personal apologies.

In the letter he stressed how ambitious his son was, how successful and determined. Already, at an extremely young age, he was a Set Leader. His father went on to explain, at great length, how Aztar planned to be a Controller before his 24

thirtieth birthday. Lacont Lindo admitted that his son was aiming high, Controllers usually took power in their late forties at the earliest, but he had already achieved more than anyone had before him. To reach that high that quickly would take complete dedication and commitment, and as such leave no time for such trivialities as weddings. Aztar had informed his father of his deep regret at insulting the Sibaris name, but hoped that the honour of having Daen marry the youngest Controller ever would outweigh the disappointments. Daen had smiled reading that. She wondered how shocked her future father-in-law would have been to discover just how undisappointed she and her father actually were.

Lacont Lindo had ended the apologies to say that he hoped Daen would accept a humble gift from her future family.

The gift, they were informed, would be arriving by transporter within the next day or so. Daen wondered what the gift would turn out to be. Given Lacont Lindo’s obvious pride in his son she amused herself with wild guesses. Her favourites were that the gift would turn out to be copies of Aztar’s honour certificates or perhaps a life-size sculpture of his undoubtedly very large head, but when the gift finally did arrive it was to prove more outrageous than even the wildest of Daen’s imaginings.

When the transporter arrived with a large cage strapped to the cargo trailer Daen, leaning out the library window, had rolled her eyes in mock horror, “Papa, if he’s sent me some strange exotic animal as a pet I swear I’ll set it free! If I’m not allowed to be insulted by his son’s bad manners then he won’t be able to be insulted by mine.”

They went downstairs to take a closer look. What they found was not some wild animal, but a girl with the brand of a slave on her arm. The Sibaris family had never owned slaves and had always been open in expressing their very strong views against the idea. The servants had stood in appalled silence, not knowing what to do, but Daen had immediately climbed up onto the back of the trailer to set the girl free. Daen remembered only snatches from the rest of that day. She 25

remembered almost tearing the door off it’s hinges in her rage that anyone could have left this little girl chained up for an entire journey.

She remembered her surprise at realising that the girl was older than her height made her out to be and the shock of realising she was a Lakelander. Standing beside her to help her down off the back of the trailer the slave girl had barely reached Daen’s shoulder, but she was clearly in her late teens or twenties. Her hair was the colour of ivory, thick and long, worn in a heavy braid down her back. Her fine-boned pretty face would have been hard to ignore at the best of times, but it was her eyes that made her unforgettable. They were such a clear pale colour that they were no true colour at all.

Depending on the light and angle they seemed palest blue, then green, then grey. Set against the contrast of her smoky brown skin they seemed to glow as if their clarity came from a light within.

Daen had been all set to send her straight back to the Lindos, till her father had pointed out that the Lacont would undoubtedly take that as a personal insult and, worse still, most likely take his anger out on the returned slave girl. There was nothing to be done, but to accept her as graciously as possible and make the best of it. There was a short note with her stating that her name was Elry and that she was not only hard working, but also highly skilled in the growing and use of herbs.

At first Elry kept completely to herself. She took orders without a murmur and was never any problem, but she avoided talking as much as possible. It was Daen who found the way to coax her out of her silence. Day after day, Daen would find a reason to meet Elry in the kitchen gardens to ask her advice on the herbs needed for flavouring stews or soothing headaches. Together with Cook’s help she made certain that this strange girl was incorporated into the extended family of servants as if she had always been there. Cook called her “my little chick” and gave her extra treats at meal times.

With such devoted love and care Elry began to blossom along with the seedlings Daen had put under her charge.

26

When Bened started having bouts of fever it was Elry who suggested a herbal infusion before Daen even thought to ask. The mixture took some of the more unusual, and more expensive, herbs that came from the Southern regions. Rownly voiced some reservations at trying this unorthodox treatment on his beloved master, but Daen felt it was worth a try. None of his regular medications were working any more. It took the last of that month’s household budget to buy the herbs, but the results were well worth it. Not only did they lower her father’s fever, but he even began to eat full meals for the first time in months. By the end of the course he was even going on short walks about the house and Daen knew that she had to buy more of the herbs no matter what the cost… but where to get the money?

In the end it was Cook, of all people, who had the brilliant idea. Daen had done a portrait of the Cook’s daughter in ink, for Cook to keep after she left to get married. It had proven such a success that she had been flooded with requests for pictures from the rest of the staff. Cook pointed out that if they all loved her art than maybe others would too. Could she sell her pictures and get money that way? The idea of anyone wanting to pay money for her work had never crossed Daen’s mind. Noblewomen did not work for money. Her father must not be allowed to find out. No one beyond the servants could know, especially not the Lindos. She was certain that Lacont Lindo would be highly outraged if she did such a thing… although that thought worked more to encourage Daen then to put her off.

When she gathered the servants to tell them her plan Elry surprised them all by saying that she knew of a trader who dealt in artwork. Elry didn’t say how she had come to know an art trader. Daen wondered if this was someone she had known from before she was a slave. Elry’s past was something that Daen had left alone, sensitive to the fact that the past must hold unpleasant memories. The reasons why someone might end up being punished by slavery were many, and mostly unfair to Daen’s way of thinking. Daen didn’t question how Elry might come to know an art trader. She trusted Elry and if Elry was 27

convinced this trader was exactly the right person then Daen would take her word on that fact. According to Elry this dealer had a reputation for being one step ahead of the rest when it came to sniffing out a new successful artist. Elry gave her a name and address and Daen wrote a short note of explanation which she posted along with one of her better drawings.

The whole household held its breath waiting for the reply. Bened was weakening daily now and Daen kept herself busy sketching everything and anything around the fythe.

When the reply finally arrived everyone gathered in the main hall to hear it. Daen opened it with her heart pounding. Inside was a promissory note for a fair amount of money and a short letter in a thick bold writing: Very nice, do you have more? Will be passing through Gerlin on the seventh of next month if you want to arrange a meeting to discuss details.

There was a little money left over after she’d bought more herbs for her father and Daen had splashed out on food and drinks for a little celebratory party. The whole household had toasted her success and Cook had gotten drunk for the first time in living memory. A meeting was arranged and Daen tried to get together as many different pictures as she could before the time arrived: landscapes, still-lifes as well as portraits and small detailed pictures of the wildlife around Gerlin. Now the day of her first meeting had finally arrived and she’d decided to get up early and be the first to greet the trader, before the rest of the household swamped them. She knew that once they were in the house they wouldn’t have a moment’s peace until all the servants, from Rownly to the stable boys, had had a chance to see this art trader for themselves. It might be freezing out here, but at least this way she would be sure of being able to meet this trader for the first time in private. She wanted a chance to gauge the trader’s reaction to her work without an audience of half a dozen doting servants around her.

The trader’s transporter arrived just as the sun finally lifted itself free of the horizon. The bright yellow light 28

reflected so strongly off the transporter’s shiny metal body that Daen could only make out the trader as a vague, blurry shape that leapt from the transporter with the agile grace of a cat. It was only as the trader started up the slope towards her that she realised it was a woman. Daen was stunned; Elry had said nothing about this. Although she had been raised to feel that there was nothing that she couldn’t do as well as any man she still had the prejudices of her upbringing in the way she saw other women. With sudden shame Daen realised her first reaction was doubt and horror at the thought that her art was being sold by a woman. Daen moved towards the trader, trying to smile with convincing hospitality. The woman was a little shorter than herself and boyishly slim. She was wearing a smart grey leather coat, a rather ugly knitted hat and black trousers so tight that they would have Cook in vapours when she saw them.

She held out her hand to Daen, grinning broadly, “You didn’t expect me to be a woman, did you?” Daen felt herself blushing as she shook her hand. “I don’t see that you have any right to pull such a pop-eyed face considering you didn’t tell me that you were female either.”

Daen blushed again and the trader burst out laughing, her yellow-green eyes sparkling with delight at Daen’s discomfort. She wasn’t beautiful, her features were a little too bold for Northerner beauty standards, but her vivaciousness, combined with skin tanned to a pale gold and those amazing cat-green eyes transformed her face into something unique and fascinating.

“Well, are you going to stand there all day staring at me or shall we talk business?”

Daen apologized, “I’m Sorry! It’s a bad habit I have, I start thinking about drawing people and I completely drift away.”

“Oh hell, you don’t want to draw me, I’d never be able to sit still long enough, or stop talking long enough.” The trader winked, “You’d end up with a drawing of a face with this blur where the mouth should be.”

Daen had to laugh. The trader’s high spirits were 29

contagious. She had a vibrant warmth about her that made you feel like stepping into the sunshine after being in a dark room too long. On the way back up to the fythe she told Daen to call her Kemir and gave her a brief run down on her career as an art dealer and trader. At the entrance to the main hall most of the servants had gathered and their faces were a picture when they saw Kemir; Daen had never seen so many open mouths.

Kemir gave them all a dazzling smile before dashing over to the table where Daen’s pictures were laid out. Since none of the staff had regained the ability to move yet Daen offered breakfast herself and Kemir happily ordered rolls and hot charob as if she were an old friend on a daily visit. Cook, remembering her duty if not able to control her shocked expression, made for the kitchen while Kemir took off her jacket and made herself comfortable. She pulled off the knitted hat and ran her fingers through her shoulder length hair. It was blonde, light as sunshine and silky fine.

“You’re a Southerner!”

The words were out of Daen’s mouth before she could stop them. Kemir tilted her head to one side and studied her quizzically, for the first time since her arrival she paused before answering, “Yes, I’m a Southerner. I’m from Hannabas, the only Southern town to swear allegiance to the Za-Har. I even have family living in the capital, two blocks up from the Zah-Riel’s palace, but the moment anyone sees my hair... well, now you know why I have such terrible taste in hats. It’s the only one that I can hide my hair easily. So… do I get breakfast or do I leave?”

Daen held out her hands in submission, “I am sorry, that was totally tactless. It was just the surprise. I don’t care if you’re bald and you have family living in trees, just as long as you like my pictures and you’re willing to overlook the foot sticking out of my mouth.”

Kemir laughed and shook her head, “You’re a strange one for a Northerner.” She went across and began sorting through Daen’s pictures, “Well, you’re in luck. I do like your work and I do want to buy more of it, so why don’t we have our charob and start talking commission and percentages.”

30

By the time she was ready to go Kemir had chosen over a dozen pictures, eaten almost as many rolls, and managed to charm Cook with the promise to bring her a book of secret Southern recipes the next time she visited. Talking to Kemir was like having a whirlwind enter your head, blasting out the old thoughts and outdated ideas, and swirling in new possibilities that you’d never thought of before. As Daen walked her back to the transporter, her mind was whirling with ideas for new pictures and her hand kept going back into her pocket to feel the purse, swollen and heavy with enough money to pay for herbs for her father for months to come. She was so far away that Kemir had to repeat her question twice before Daen realized she was talking at all, “What did you say?”

Kemir rolled her eyes, “Artists! You’re all the same. I could fall off a cliff and all they’d notice was the view. I asked you who gave you my name. I’d like to know who I have to thank for putting us in contact.”

Daen was surprised, “Elry told me your name. I thought she was going to be here today to say hello, but she went to the market instead.”

“Elry?” Kemir looked puzzled, “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

31

Chapter 3

The narrow streets of the capital city of Sindorus were full of busy Sind hurrying to their appointed workplaces. Aztar hated Ocren. It was an ugly place of too many people squashed into too little space all hemmed in by towering buildings of Northland black granite and smoked glass. Built on a series of small hills that lay between the Entarren and Hurvan seas, Ocren had originally been a small Northern port but the ZaHar had transferred the high court, army headquarters and the main university there after the palace for the Zah-Riel was built on the central plateau.

The result was gross overcrowding in a city where not a single street ran flat. Everything sloped or slanted in Ocren, even some of the pavements were flights of narrow steps.

Walking around the city was exhausting but driving was even worse, the narrow tilting streets and overcrowding made for major traffic jams. He’d decided to walk today, he felt less trapped out on his own feet then stuck in some slow moving vehicle. He stopped by the smoked window of a bank to make sure his uniform was tidy.

His reflection was shadowy, but he could see enough to know that he had nothing to be nervous about. In his military uniform he looked particularly impressive, the charcoal double-breasted tunic with its high metallic collar showed off the width of his strong shoulders. Years of training had given him the muscles and grace of a Southland panther.

He smiled at his reflection and three people passing smiled back. People always noticed him, especially women. With his easygoing personality, twinkling lavender-blue eyes and charming smile he was popular with virtually everyone he met and he knew how to use the gifts nature had granted him to the fullest. He knew just how much charm was needed to get his own way with anyone from a Controller to a dancing girl. He wore his thick black hair long enough to be attractive without 32

blatantly breaking military rules and his uniform was custom made rather than the misfit standardized type issued from the army stores. The long black scarf that wound around his officer’s hat and hung over his left shoulder was of finest silk, rather than the usual cotton. People had more than enough reason to resent him, but he was so persistently friendly and hard to dislike that he got away with more than was probably good for him. Women could never say no to him.

Of course they never knew that he was already betrothed, that little detail always seemed to slip his mind. It wasn’t that he deliberately set out to lie, but rather that most of the time he forgot that he was betrothed himself. Besides, most Northern men had a mistress or two as well as a wife, since marriages were strictly business. Who would expect him to be happy with some unknown fyther’s daughter? Probably ugly, she had to be - her family were old gentry and most of those inbred families produced daughters that looked like emmals.

He didn’t even know her name... Aztar shook such silly thoughts from his mind. He had more important things to do than stand in front of windows thinking about women. He was in Ocren on the personal orders of Zah-Riel XI himself and the meeting was only two hours away now. Aztar gave his kneehigh black leather boots one last quick dust with a handkerchief before going on his way.

The Zah-Riel’s Palace stood in the exact centre of the only flat land in Ocren – the plateau. Most of the old buildings in the area had been demolished over the years so that a huge paved expanse spread out away from the palace on all sides.

The black Rae-tiled palace squatted in the centre like a giant toad on a geometric lily pad. It was an impressive, if extremely ugly building. The surrounding area was patrolled by the ZahRiel’s own personal troops, the Prime guards in their long black capes and visors. You had to be above a certain height as well as an exemplary officer to be chosen as a Prime guard and Aztar wondered if this was the reason he’d been sent for. He was tall enough and certainly would look perfect in the uniform. Two came towards him now and he saluted them before handing over his invitation and identity disc. The Prime 33

guards were led by the Prime Controller who was the next highest in rank after the Zah-Riel. Aztar had dreams of being a Controller before he turned thirty and he knew that as a member of the Prime guards that probability would become very possible indeed.

It took an hour to get through all the gates and security checks to reach the Zah-Riel’s inner quarters. In the early days of the militant Za-Har rulers there hadn’t been so many precautions, nor the empty area around the palace. That had changed when, about a hundred years ago, the Rebels had managed to blow up the then Zah-Riel as he left the palace.

They were all caught and dealt with, but the people of Sindorus had been devastated. New security measures, including the Prime guards and new laws to curb the Rebels were introduced. Aztar wasn’t sure when the Rebels had begun their secret war against the government. History had always seemed a useless subject to him.

He wasn’t even sure who the first Zah-Riel had been or what his real name was before he chose to call himself ZahRiel, an ancient Northerner word for mythical warlord-god. In the school books the first Zah-Riel was more like a god himself, fighting “a corrupt and putrid government” to free Sindorus. Aztar wasn’t sure what they’d been freed from, but that didn’t worry him either. The future was what he worried about. The future could be very kind to a man with just the right combination of ambition and intelligence and the future was where he chose to spend his energies. Leave the past to the dreamers.

Zah-Riel XI was sitting behind an enormous black granite desk when Aztar entered. There were two high-backed chairs facing the desk and he was rather put out to see that someone else was already sitting in one of them. It was unlikely that there would be someone else present if he was here to be promoted to Prime Guard. He hid his disappointment smoothly and gave his best salute to the ZahRiel. The great leader beckoned him forward, “Welcome, Set Leader Lindo, Please be seated.”

Aztar turned to sit… and froze. The man in the other 34

chair was blonde. He seemed amused at Aztar’s discomfort and gave him a wink.

The Zah-Riel was aware of Aztar’s hesitation, “Let me introduce you to Professor Anachar, he’s a highly respected member of Ocren University, from Hannabas originally.”

The professor held out his hand to Aztar, “I hope you don’t suffer from Northerner eye disease.” he said, squeezing Aztar’s hand painfully tight while smiling like a sunbeam.

“What disease?” Aztar wondered if he was being assessed for a Prime guard after all, health tests were part of the procedure.

“Oh, you know, the disease that makes all Southerners look like monsters.”

Aztar managed a rather tight smile. He sat down beside the stranger and studied him from the corner of his eye.

The man was quite tall for a Southerner. He’d looked shorter at first glance because he was so wide. His shoulders were twice the width of Aztar’s and his bare arms were as big and muscular as most men’s thighs. He reminded Aztar of an emmal ox, or one of those wrestlers from the pits where he liked to gamble on his days off. This Southerner had a face like a professional fighter too, the nose was bent to the point of being almost flat and there was a deep scar running up his left cheek from the corner of his wide peasant mouth.

He was, Aztar decided with some satisfaction, the ugliest man he had ever met. Even his colouring worked against him, his coarse brassy yellow hair made his darkly tanned skin look dirty and his Southern brown eyes look dull and to add to the horror the man wore his hair back in a braid, like a girl! He’d never seen a man with long hair before. His clothes were equally appalling. Tight trousers of pale grey and black check, a tunic of darker grey with thin white stripes and a sash of silver brocade with black fringing around his bulky waist. Aztar had never seen so many patterns and textures in one outfit. He was wearing jewellery too. A thick silver chain around his neck, at least half a dozen rings and a silver drop earring in his left ear. Aztar was mesmerised.

The Zah-Riel broke the silence, “I hope that the two 35

of you will be able to work together successfully. I’ve had accommodation arranged for you both and anything you may need will be seen to by my own personal manservant.”

Aztar kept his voice calm and even, “Work together?

What on, Zah-Riel? I thought you said that the professor worked at the university. How can a civilian be working for the Za-Har?” The Zah-Riel leant forward, lowering his voice as if afraid that someone might be listening, “The reason you are both here is that you are both experts in your own fields. I need to know that the men I have chosen are the best there is, that they can be trusted completely.” Aztar was curious; maybe this was going to be profitable after all. The Zah-Riel continued, “As you both know the production of Rae ceased entirely quite some time ago. Now it has been noticed that the trees are dying.”

“Why don’t the farmers simply plant new ones?”

Aztar asked.

“They can’t,” Anachar spoke up, “There are no new trees. Rae trees grow quickly but they only grow from seed and we don’t have any seeds.”

Aztar still didn’t see what all the tension and fuss was about, “So there’s no new Rae… I’m afraid I still don’t understand.”

Anachar sighed and shook his head, “I told you this would be the reaction. No one seems to realize just how serious things are.” he turned to Aztar, “What are all the buildings in Debec made of?” Aztar shrugged, “Rae.” “And what are all the weapons of the Za-Har made of?”

“Rae.” “And the missile launchers, the armoured vehicles and the security tanks?”

“Rae,” Aztar was becoming impatient, “I know that already, I’m not stupid, everyone knows that all weapons and important buildings are made of Rae. It’s the strongest substance ever produced on Sindorus, twenty times stronger than steel and not even half the weight yet simple to mould and 36

form into tiles, tubes, bricks or machine parts. So what if we have no more, we have enough, it’s indestructible, what we have will last for all eternity.”

Anachar glanced at the Zah-Riel, “I think I’d better show him.” He stood up and pulled a bag out from under his seat, it was large and bulky. He took out a small handgun and held it up for Aztar to see, “Do you recognize this?”

Aztar nodded, “It’s a standard Prime Guard weapon.

They were manufactured about eighty years ago.”

Anachar nodded without a comment and took out another gun, Aztar recognized it straight away, “That’s an early 515, the Set Controllers used to carry them when in dress uniform but they were all recalled about three years ago.”

Anachar held the gun carefully cupped in his enormous hand, “Do you know how old it is?”

Aztar shrugged, “Pretty old.”

“Three hundred and fifty years exactly. Here, take it.”

He handed it across and Aztar leant forward to take it from him, but when his fingers curled around it the barrel of the gun simply crushed to dust in his hand.

“That’s why they were recalled.”

Aztar was still holding what was left of the gun in his open hands, dust trickling between his fingers and onto his perfect uniform. “This can’t be, Rae doesn’t deteriorate.”

“It does now, or to be exact it has begun to over the past ten years.” Anachar scrabbled in his bag and brought out a carefully wrapped parcel. He unfolded the soft cloth as if it held the finest porcelain. “This,” he explained as he held it out to Aztar, “is a piece of armour from a Za-Har war tank. It was formed from the same Rae and in the same year as the tiles that cover the Zah-Riel’s palace.”

It looked dull grey rather than the normal deep shiny black. As he watched Anachar squeezed his hand shut and when he opened it again the cloth was full of nothing but dust.

Zah-Riel XI spoke at last, his voice sounding weak and unbearably tired, “All Rae over the age of three hundred years is turning to dust. That includes the palace and over seventy per cent of our weaponry... What do you think would 37

happen if the Rebels were to find this out?”

Aztar felt his skin go icy, he swallowed twice before answering, “They can never find out, it would be disaster.”

The Zah-Riel nodded gravely, the whole atmosphere in the room had turned cold, “That is why I want you to help Professor Anachar. He has a doctorate in the study of Rae trees and their fruit. So far he has been unable to find any reasons or solutions to the problem, but now I have given him permission to do research in the military archives and that is where you come in. No one can know the true reason for his research. We have no way of knowing who can be trusted. I have told only the Prime Controller the full story. Everyone else is being told that the professor is a doctor of medicine and that he is researching into the possibility of using poisons in warfare.”

Aztar was honoured but puzzled, why him? Surely one of the Controllers would have been the first choice? He was only a Set Leader.

The Zah-Riel seemed able to read his mind, “I suppose you are wondering why you were chosen. I have reason to suspect that one of the Controllers is a spy for the Rebels, but unfortunately I’m not sure which one. You, however, I know from good authority as being totally dedicated and beyond reproach.”

Aztar leapt to his feet as Zah-Riel XI stood up and came around the desk, he held out a small metal box. Aztar opened it and inside, on the black velvet lining, lay the silver dragons worn by Controllers. The Zah-Riel took them out and pinned them onto the epaulettes of his tunic, “Since I cannot entrust this mission to any of my Controllers it seems only logical that I make a new person I do think trustworthy a Controller.”

Aztar remembered very little of the rest of the meeting, it went by in a pleasant blur, all he could think about was the dragons. He’d been made a Controller at twenty-nine, the youngest ever, just the way he had hoped and worked for.

Rae and Rebels paled in comparison to the thought of his father’s face when he told him the news, even the fact that he would be sharing rooms with the Southerner couldn’t dampen 38

his joy. This was the finest moment of his life, not only a promotion but being entrusted with perhaps the most top secret mission at any time in the history of the Za-Har. In bed that night he mentally composed half a dozen letters to his father telling him the news. Wait until Idrith heard, he’d have to write and tell him too. Poor old Idrith, his life was so bleak by comparison, so alien to his own. There had been a time when Idrith was his best friend and the first person he had told anything to… the only person he told things to. Now, as the years passed and their lives moved in such separate directions, he was beginning to find it hard to write to him; hard to think of what to say. Idrith had been his best friend for so many years, but what else did they have in common now save that shared past?

He got out of bed and went to the window, Anachar was snoring loud enough to wake the dead in the room across the passage and he didn’t feel like sleeping any more. He kept thinking about Idrith, how they had met all those years ago. It had all started with messengers arriving at night and his parents arguing. In the morning his father had simply stated over breakfast that a cousin was coming to live with them… forever. No explanations. Aztar was used to that and had known better than to ask. His mother had been a bit more forthcoming. When the extra bed was put in his room his mother had sat on the bed with him and wiped her eyes with a tiny scented handkerchief as she spoke. The cousin was her brother’s son, just a little older than him. His family had met with some “terrible tragedy” and he mustn’t ask any questions.

Aztar had spent the whole day walking up and down the entrance hall waiting for the tragic cousin to arrive. His mother had made it sound as if all his family were dead and he was bursting with curiosity at what could have killed them.

Earthquakes and floods and wild man-eating monsters ran rampant through his imagination. The cousin finally arrived at dusk. He was as tall as Aztar but much thinner and his light brown hair stuck up about his head like bits of straw. He’d looked very tired. At dinner he ate very little and spoke not at all, but then Aztar’s father kept glaring at him and that was 39

enough to turn anyone’s stomach. Back in the bedroom that was now to be shared Aztar had lain awake and listened to his cousin crying quietly in the dark.

At first sharing with Idrith was a painful thing. Idrith hardly spoke at all. He kept to himself or sat and read books in their room. It was obvious to everyone that Lacont Lindo disliked the boy. He picked on him constantly so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Idrith avoided them all as much as he could. Maybe they would have stayed that way forever if it hadn’t been for the dreams. Aztar had had the dreams since as long as he could remember. Everyone has dreams, so did Aztar, but then there were the other dreams, the ones that were much brighter and so real that waking up felt more like dreaming. He had never told anyone about them. Who was there to tell - his mother with her clothes and her women friends or his father?

They would never have understood that some dreams were different than others. Once Aztar had tried to talk about them, he’d started by asking his father if he dreamed at night.

“Dreams?” his father had barked, “Of course I don’t dream. Waste of time.” Aztar never tried again.

Mostly the dreams were wonderful. They took him through a blue light to a magical place where it was always summer and even the nights were gently warm. Usually it was somewhere in a city - a city like none he had ever heard of. A city of white buildings. There were fountains and gardens and so many birds… and then it would end just like that. Back to reality… but sometimes the dreams were different. Those were the ones he feared; the dark dreams. They came only rarely, dreams of people crying in the dark and sounds of thunder.

The dark dream he had soon after Idrith came to stay was the worst ever, because this time he could see. He dreamt he was back in the city but everything was wrong and changed.

People were everywhere, running through the streets crying and shouting, some of them were carrying boxes. It was as if he was running with them and flying over them at the same time. He followed them through smoky streets and fire-filled buildings to a place he’d never dreamt of before, a courtyard so full of smoke that he couldn’t make much out. He knew the 40

people were doing something important, that they had to be fast, but what it was he didn’t know. Then the people were in another room, with that suddenness that dreams have, and soldiers were shooting them as they stood there. There was so much blood, but not any noise except the firing of the guns and one person screaming.

“What’s going on?” he’d awoken to his father’s angry voice and the realization that he was the one screaming. He had cringed back as his father towered over him – a dream terror swapped for a real one. He knew he would be punished severely for screaming like that. His father had made it clear that Lindos didn’t show pain and they didn’t show fear, his father would never forgive him for this. He hadn’t even been allowed to cry when he’d had his tooth pulled when he was seven.

“It was me.” Idrith had spoken up out of the dark. He was sitting up in bed watching them, “I had a bad dream.”

Lacont Lindo had turned towards him, his voice a whisper that made Aztar’s stomach churn, “You had a… bad dream? What kind of a useless, snivelling coward are you? No wonder your mother killed herself, who’d want to live with the shame of sons like hers.”

Lacont Lindo shouted at him for over an hour, but he never flinched once except for that first time when his mother was mentioned. When the Lacont finally left the room, slamming the door behind him, Aztar had felt as if he’d been holding his breath all the time. He knew he had to say something; Idrith had taken the blame for him.

“Thanks.” He felt so stupid. It was all he could think of to say.

“It’s okay, he hates me anyway.” They’d lain in the dark in silence.

Aztar spoke first, “What happened to your mother? I mean… you don’t have to tell me. I just wondered.”

Idrith had rolled over in the dark, his mattress creaking, “She’s dead, but I don’t know how, they wouldn’t tell me. I think it was something to do with Kail.”

“Your brother?”

41

“Yes, they took him away and they killed him.”

“Who?” “The soldiers.”

Aztar had been shocked, he knew that soldiers fought wars but he’d never heard of them taking people away before.

Kail must have done something terrible, he didn’t want to know any more, this was a hundred times more frightening than the dream - this was real.

Idrith had seemed to understand and changed the subject, “What did you dream about?”

Aztar had started to lie… then changed his mind. The least he could do was tell his cousin the truth. He told him about all the dreams, the good ones and the bad. They spoke most of the night. It was such an amazing feeling being able to tell someone about them and Idrith never laughed or said he was stupid. He’d sat and listened quietly and when it was all over all he’d said was, “My dad says - used to say - that dreams are important. They clear old thoughts out of your head, like cleaning a dirty room. I used to dream about dragons chasing me and he said it was because I was afraid of something else, something real. Then the old school master left and we got a nicer one and the dreams stopped.”

Aztar had been impressed, maybe his dreams were like that too? It made him feel normal again, “I don’t go to school. Father has a tutor come to the house. He’s away on holiday now, but he’ll be back next week.”

“Will he teach me too?”

Aztar hadn’t thought of that before, that would be rather nice. It was boring being taught all alone. “I suppose he will. Do you like math?”

“No, I hate it.”

Aztar had felt strangely happy, “Me neither... do you like to fish? We could go fishing tomorrow after breakfast.”

“Sure, I bet I’ll catch one before you do.”

“I bet you don’t!”

Neither of them caught a thing but they’d started a friendship that had lasted ever since, weathering even the deep disapproval of Lacont Lindo. Aztar’s dreams had dwindled and 42

finally stopped altogether; he’d almost forgotten that they’d ever been. The white city faded from his mind and was gone.

Now, all these years later, he stood in the dark listening to Anachar snore and thought about that night with Idrith and the dream that had started the best times of his entire childhood.

He went back to bed, smiling; he’d write to Idrith in the morning. It was just before he drifted off to sleep that he remembered something about the dark dream that he hadn’t even remembered to tell Idrith on the night it had occurred.

Why it should come back now was a total mystery, but he vividly remembered that the people had been wearing clothes of all different colours.

43

Chapter 4

Daen never asked Elry why she had lied about knowing Kemir.

She could see no point in pushing Elry to explain; being a slave was reason enough for her to be reluctant about revealing too much about her past. In many cases slavery was punishment for bankruptcy, whole families forced to pay their debts off in servitude. It was one of the reasons her own father had been so glad to get her betrothed off to Aztar Lindo - if the fythe did go under at least she would be safe. Daen had heard other stories too. Stories whispered of families considered dangerous to the Za-Har who had been deliberately forced into bankruptcy. Gossip hinted at nightmarish happenings where an unwise criticism of the government, or dubious friendship with a Southerner, could cost you your freedom forever. Perhaps Kemir had been too afraid to admit to knowing Elry, she was a Southerner after all. Kemir must have money problems of her own to take on such a risky job as that of a trader.

Daen began to spend as much time as possible drawing and sketching. It wasn’t easy, there was so much work to do around the fythe, but seeing her father able to sit up in a chair was payment in plenty for her long hours and lack of sleep. The servants tried to do as much as possible and Rownly took over some of the bookkeeping and general administration.

Daen still hadn’t told her father what she was doing. She saw no point in letting him worry about things he couldn’t change.

She’d always been prone to wandering off on her own so he didn’t find her long absences unusual.

At first Daen met Kemir at each month’s end in Selrec when she went to buy supplies, but the trip to Selrec took four days and that was a lot of time lost. If she could only send someone else instead, but who? The more she thought about it the more Elry seemed the perfect choice. She wouldn’t be missed if she was gone a few days, as Rownly or Cook would be, and Daen trusted her completely, except Elry had lied about 44

knowing Kemir… or Kemir had lied about not knowing Elry.

She decided to take Elry with her on the next trip; once she had seen how Elry and Kemir reacted to one another she would be able to decide what to do.

Elry was tense during their journey to Selrec. The dry scrubby landscape rolled by without end but Elry never looked away from the window, avoiding Daen’s gaze even after they reached their destination. Normally Daen bought her supplies first and then went to Kemir’s office, but today she decided to go there first and get the ordeal over with. Selrec had once been one of the busiest cities on Sindorus, the place where all Rae was brought to be sold.

The huge storerooms and auction houses stood empty now, but it was still an impressive place. The streets were wider than any other city, to accommodate the enormous Rae transporters that used to pass through. The city had been built in a time when there was plenty of money and gracious greystone buildings with intricate metalwork balconies hinted of a time when being a fyther meant a life of elegance and riches. The avenues were bare now, the exotic flowering trees had been killed by the droughts and the spacious parks were dust bowls, but the place still managed to keep an air of elegance missing from the newer cities of Ocren and Debec.

Their driver parked outside one of the auction houses near the edge of the city. It had been converted into offices and shops; Kemir owned a few rooms on the ground floor. The building felt cool and dark after the bright heat outside. The front room held a small makeshift gallery with a few sculptures and pictures, including some of Daen’s own work.

Fythers couldn’t afford much, so most of Kemir’s stock was sent on to the bigger centres. She came out the back to greet them. She was wearing a light flowing dress of some soft fabric with a big black and white geometric pattern. She wore a tightly fitting black bodice over it, a Southern fashion, and her silky fair hair swung loose about her shoulders. Huge silver earrings bounced as she shook Daen’s hand vigorously.

“Who’s your friend? I didn’t know there were any Lakelanders in this area.” Kemir held out her hand and Elry 45

shook it after a barely noticeable moment of hesitation.

“This is Elry.”

Kemir’s eyebrows went up so high they almost disappeared under her short fringe, “You’re Elry?”

“Yes,” Elry glanced at Daen before continuing, “We’ve never met but we have a mutual friend in common, another Lakelander.”

Kemir’s face was a picture, the changing emotions passing over it as quickly as clouds across the sky on a blustery day, “You’re a friend of the Guide?”

Elry nodded. Kemir took a deep breath before continuing, “Well… imagine that! This is a small world…”

She changed the subject, asking Daen what artworks she had brought this time. In a flash she had Daen’s bag open and was busy unrolling pictures. Daen’s initial tension was quickly dispersed as Kemir kept them entertained with amusing stories and clever comments as she sorted through her artwork. By the end of the visit Elry was visibly more relaxed and agreed quite readily to the suggestion that she take over Daen’s job of the trips to Selrec.

All that summer Elry took the trips by herself with the fythe’s driver. At first the extra money from the picture sales had made life in Gerlin seem like the old days when there was money enough for little treats and extras. Daen gave Elry permission to buy new plants for the kitchen garden and she came back from her trips to Selrec laden down with vegetable seedlings and potted fruit trees. Elry’s plants always flourished. She worked her Lakeland magic on them all and had them bearing delicious produce long before they should have. The household buzzed with activity and Cook served up delicacies not seen in decades. Then the sales tapered off and the money began to dwindle.

Kemir sent word back with Elry to explain that this was quite normal. When a new artist first became known in the bigger centres everyone was interested and sales were high but then, as the novelty wore off, sales tended to drop until they reached a plateau. That was all well and fine to know, but Daen had come to rely on the higher amount. She needed the extra 46

money. The droughts showed no sign of clearing and the emmals and horses were being fed entirely on bought feed there was no grass in the pastures at Gerlin. Daen tried to change her style in order to spark more interest once again.

She tried drawing more abstract works, but it made no difference. Kemir was very sorry, but if people didn’t buy there wasn’t much she could do about it.

When Elry returned in the first month of autumn with a parcel from Kemir, Daen felt light-headed with sudden fear was Kemir returning her work? Had sales become so bad that no one wanted her stuff at all? Elry handed her the parcel. It was wrapped in soft grey paper and was much heavier then Daen expected.

“Kemir said I must give this to you, it’s from a client.

He’s bought quite a few of your sketches and he thought that this would interest an artist like yourself.”

Shaped rather like a large shoebox, the parcel’s weight seemed to shift when she tilted it. Daen felt strangely reluctant to open it in front of Elry, “I’ll open it later, when I have more time.”

She took the parcel to her room and pushed it to the back of her wardrobe throwing a few loose items on top before closing the door and, after a few moments hesitation, locking it and putting the key in her pocket. For the rest of the day all she thought about was the parcel. More than once she found herself walking down the passage towards her room with no idea how she came to be there and no idea where she was actually meant to be. The servants left her in peace. They took her strange behaviour as a sign of her worries for her father’s health.

Bened Sibaris had begun to decline once again. Daen stopped in to check on him at regular intervals during the day, but he never showed any signs of noticing her. The herbs that had worked such miracles during the first year were now doing nothing. Elry explained that this did happen at times. Bened’s system had grown immune to the combination of herbs he was receiving. Elry knew other mixtures that could work, but they were as expensive as the others had been. Daen stood by his 47

bed and wondered what to do. His breathing was painful for her to listen to, she found that she forgot to breathe herself when she was with him and ended up having to walk out and stand gasping in the passageway.

She stayed with him for most of that afternoon, but for once her mind was occupied by more than just her fears for his health. The box in her room seemed to be calling her. She wondered who had sent it and why. She wondered what it contained and, most of all, she wondered why she had felt such a reluctance to open it in front of Elry. Something about that box made her feel both excited and terrified. Daen stayed with her father to help Rownly feed him his dinner; a few trembling mouthfuls of soup that left him totally exhausted. Daen waited until he had fallen into a reasonably settled sleep before returning to her room. She locked her bedroom door quietly before opening the cupboard and taking out the parcel.

The string around it cut quite easily and she folded back the double layer of thick grey paper to reveal a wooden box. It had a lid like a shoebox but with metal hinges on one of the longer sides and a heavy metal clasp on the other. When she lifted the lid the inside swung up into three tiered layers, each one holding a row of pottery jars with wooden stoppers.

There were four jars on each layer, twelve altogether. The jars were made of an ugly charcoal brown clay, but the stoppers were beautiful, made of a light golden wood and intricately carved.

Daen took one out to study it closer. It was heavy and solid feeling in her hand, whatever the contents were she didn’t think it was any kind of liquid. The wood looked a lot like Rae tree, which was most unusual and definitely antique. The use of Rae trees for wood had been banned for two hundred years or more; they were far too scarce and precious to waste in such a way. The carving on the one she held was a quite complicated design of intertwining plants and flowers around the edges with a seven-pointed star in the centre.

When she went to put it back she noticed a piece of paper showing at the bottom where she had removed the jar.

Frowning slightly Daen eased it out from under the other jars.

48

She wondered if it was a message to her from the mysterious sender. It wasn’t very big, folded once in half, she opened it up. There was writing on it, a spidery angular writing, and a rough sketch of a seven pointed star. The writing wasn’t easy to read. Daen held it up closer…

REJOICE IN THE COLOURS OF THE LIGHT Daen dropped the note as if it was on fire. It drifted to the floor where it landed face up so that the words were still clearly visible, as if mocking her. To write such a thing as this was blatant heresy, not to mention being a serious crime. The writer of those words could easily be considered guilty of the Corruption of Minds, a crime whose punishment could vary from several years in a mind-correction institution to the death penalty. She sat and stared at the note not sure what to do. Who had written this? The writing wasn’t Kemir’s. Was it from the client Elry had spoken of or had the note been hidden in the box by someone else?

If it was Kemir’s client then she should be warned.

Such a person was dangerous to have dealings with. And if the note was from him had he sent it to her deliberately? Did that make it a threat? Daen wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She grabbed up the box and stuffed the jar back, slamming the lid shut before she rammed the box to the very back of the wardrobe and locked the door. Then she took the note and tore it into smaller and smaller fragments until it resembled nothing. She went to the window and threw it out onto the breeze in small fingerfuls, but even when it was all gone and she was safe in her bed in the darkness she could still see the words in her mind every time she closed her eyes.

For the weeks after that Daen tried to convince herself that the box, and the note it had contained, simply didn’t exist.

Weeks of pure hell. At night, in bed, the wardrobe seemed to swell in the dark, pregnant with unanswered questions and unbearable secrets. Every morning when she dressed she opened the wardrobe in a rush, grabbing blindly for what she needed and slamming it shut as if it held some evil demon 49

captive. Something dangerous with lots of bright sharp teeth.

During the day she kept the wardrobe key with her at all times.

Every day she went through the same routine and every day, everywhere she went, the colours were there to taunt her; the amber gold of the fire at night, the brittle blue of the winter sky, the deep dark purple of the lake at sunrise and the wild orange reflections on it’s surface at sunset. It was as if she hadn’t seen the world around her before. Had there always been so many colours? How had she missed them …and why hadn’t she noticed before just how beautiful they were?

By the end of the fourth week Daen found herself deliberately searching out different colours. Noticing the subtler things, like how a bowl full of lanoberries wasn’t just a mass of red but a whole spectrum of reds ranging from dark blood hues to bright almost-oranges with highlights of palest pink. She was noticing how people were full of subtle colours as well. Skin tones were amazing. How had she never noticed that there were so many colours to skin? And eyes! Of seven servants who had blue eyes not one of them had the exact same shade of blue.

Daen was enchanted. She moved through the place she had lived all her life like a stranger in a new and exotic land. There was so much she’d never seen before. Cook came upon her on her hands and knees studying the marbling on the flagstones and a housemaid noticed her up against a Lacey Leaf, nose to the trunk, seeming to be staring at the bark. The servants decided amongst themselves that the stress of her father’s illness had finally caught up with her and tried to make her life as streamlined as possible without once mentioning her strange behaviour. If Elry noticed anything she didn’t let it show, but went about her usual duties as if finding her mistress looking at a bowl of berries for over an hour was perfectly normal.

The only thing that distracted Daen from her colourfilled revelations was her concern over her father’s health. Elry had checked in Selrec on the prices of the new herbs that she wanted to try. A bag that fitted in her hand cost as much as two month’s supply of bread meal. The money was needed for so 50

many other things like the servants’ wages as well as fodder for the remaining livestock. Bened was worsening every day now; the doctors predicted that he’d never make spring. Never see another spring; spring was the best time of year at Gerlin.

In the past, when the rains came, the spring landscape would be transformed by a carpet of wild flowers that covered the fields in wild splashes of colour from horizon to horizon.

REJOICE IN THE COLOURS...

Daen tried to shake the words out of her head but they wouldn’t budge. Sitting by her father’s bed she felt so tired, as if her very soul was worn thin. The last few years had just been too much - the droughts, the final and complete loss of their Rae trees, her father’s illness... Every time a new problem surfaced it was as if a little bit more of her heart just dried up and blew away.

That night, when she retired to her room, she removed the box and placed it on the table by the window where her ink blocks and pencils were stored. She must have sat and stared at it, without thought or emotion, for several hours before she finally leant forward and opened it up. This time she took all twelve jars out and checked each tier to see if there were any more unusual bits of paper hidden amongst them. There was nothing but the jars. She prized the stopper out of the nearest one and it came away with a small puff of dust, brilliant purple dust. Daen tilted the jar to the light; it was full to the brim with a purple powder. She put the stopper back and opened the next one, red powder this time. The next one was a clear cool green, like the fields after a good summer rain. Twelve jars. Twelve different colours including black, white, two shades of green, two shades of blue and a honey-gold yellow as well as a lemony one.

What were they for? Daen dipped her fingers into the purple and rubbed it between them. The colour clung to her skin. She dipped her fingertips in her paint glass to wash it off.

It tinted the water a faint mauve. Something about that fact made her feel that she should know what these powders were, 51

they reminded her of something. She leant her chin on the edge of the table and stared through the glass at the light beyond, the room was all turned lavender seen through the coloured water.

“Rejoice in the colours of the Light,” a voice in her brain murmured, irritatingly smug. It knew what she seemed to be sensing, but it had no intention of letting her in on the joke.

Daen turned the glass around absent-mindedly, she knew she’d never seen coloured water before so what was it that this reminded her of? The closest thing she could think of was how the water in the glass went dark and smoky when she cleaned her paintbrushes after using her ink block. Daen almost burst out laughing, how could she have been so stupid! The powders were paints - coloured paints. Her father had once bought her black paint in powder form from Selrec, but the block ink was much cheaper and she hadn’t thought of it because it had been so long since she last used it.

Were these powders really coloured paints? Well, there was only one way to find out. Daen got out her mixing palette and paper. She tipped a little of the lighter blue out and added clean water from her drinking glass. It mixed to a smooth paste, she spread it on the paper with a brush and it went on just like the black paint used to. Next she tried adding more water so that it was more like the consistency of her ink.

Like this it went further but the colour was less strong, more like reflections on water. She held the paper up to study the different effects and decided that they both had their merits.

She tried all the colours one after another and then began experimenting with mixing two or more together. The results were quite amazing. Who would have guessed that yellow overlapping red would give you orange, or that black added to orange would turn it into the most interesting brown?

It was only when the sunlight began to shine in her eyes that she realized she had spent the entire night mixing and trying the colours. She was very careful to pack it all away, and to rinse the water glass thoroughly, before leaving her room.

Even though she hadn’t slept a wink she felt more alive than she had in a long time. She went out onto the veranda and breathed in the colours. The sky was a dazzling blue and the 52

dry front lawn a million shades of gold and amber.

Elry, on her way to water the kitchen garden, wished Daen a good morning. Her eyes were such a startling watery colour; they’d be interesting to try to paint in colour. They were so subtle. Daen felt excited, the challenge of painting in colours was overwhelming. She realized she was standing staring at Elry and smiled to herself, she had to stop doing this before the staff called in the doctor. Elry smiled back, “You’ve opened your gift at last. I’m glad.”

Before Daen could even begin to take in the implications of Elry’s words she was gone. Daen followed after her, catching up with her behind the stables. Elry was busy watering a row of potted seedlings.

“What do you know about the gift Kemir gave me?”

Elry carried on watering, “It wasn’t from Kemir, it was from a client.”

“I know, I mean what do you know about the contents?”

Elry looked up this time. She answered carefully, “I know as much as you want me to know.”

“Okay… what if I said that I wanted to know what you know?”

Elry shrugged, “I don’t know very much.”

Daen felt like screaming, this was getting them nowhere. She tried a different line, “Elry, this is stupid. We can go around in circles the whole day if you want to but I’m not going to give up. This is important, if you know what was in that package then you know exactly how important it is.” Elry was facing away from her and gave no sign of an answer. Daen tried again, “Please, Elry, where did the box come from? And don’t tell me a client of Kemir’s, that isn’t good enough. The contents of that package could be very dangerous in the wrong hands; Kemir’s client might prove to be a dangerous enemy.”

Elry spun around at that, “Harmion would never do anything to harm Kemir or anyone else!”

“So this client’s name is Harmion? You speak with great conviction, Elry. One would think he was your friend.”

Elry sighed. She put down her watering can, 53

“Harmion is my friend and he’s Kemir’s friend too. He’s the Lakelander that told me about Kemir. We’ve both known him for years. He gave the box to Kemir while I was present. He told us what it contained.”

“You knew it was coloured paints?”

“Yes. Kemir was afraid to give it to you, but Harmion said the time had come.”

“The time had come?” Daen felt irritated, “What is that supposed to mean and just who or what is this Harmion anyway? You seem to be so sure he’s trustworthy.”

“He is. Harmion would never harm anyone, he’s a holy man. I don’t understand what he meant by giving you the paints, but it can only be for good.” Elry paused, “Sometimes Harmion knows things before they happen. It makes him do strange things that only make sense later.”

“And what did Kemir say to all this?”

“Nothing much. She knows Harmion; she knows he can be trusted.”

“Even when neither of you has the faintest idea what he’s talking about.” Daen didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. She shook her head in mock despair, “I seem to be surrounded by crazy people!” Elry gave a nervous smile, “I suppose you knew about the note too?”

For the first time Elry looked confused, “What note?”

“There was a note in the box, under the paints... do you know what Harmion’s writing looks like? It wasn’t Kemir’s writing, it had a very distinctive style.”

Elry started searching around in the pocket of her apron, “I have a letter from Harmion; he sends me any new herbal remedies he finds, old wives tales and things like that.

This last one was strange. It doesn’t have anything to do with curing ills as far as I can make out, but he seemed to think it was important for me to have,” she gave Daen another shy smile, “It’s nice to be able to talk to someone else.” Elry handed her letter over to Daen, “Here, is this the same as your writing?”

Daen took the letter and opened it up. The thin scratchy style was unmistakable. Her hands shook slightly as 54

she read it: Dearest Elry, A verse from Nau for you.

They call it ‘The Wisdoms of the Light’: RUBENOR for Clarity, Power of Reason, ORTAPAZ for Empathy, Power of Instinct, SOLABER for Inspiration, Dreams of the future, ISTRAEM for Mercy, Healing of the Body, DIASAPH for Knowledge, Dreams of the past, TILNATH for Enlightenment, Bridge to the Eternal, AMTHANE for Insight, Healing of the soul.

Daen handed it back to Elry, “It’s the same handwriting. My note was only a sentence, but I’d recognize his writing anywhere. The names in this verse… could they be the names of herbs?”

Elry shook her head, “I already thought of that, but I haven’t been able to find any mention of such names in any herb book and besides, what does light have to do with herbs?”

Daen didn’t answer; the mention of light had disturbed her. Elry was watching her, “What did Harmion write to you? It was something that made you afraid.”

“It said “Rejoice in the colours of the Light”.”

Daen watched for any reaction from Elry, but she seemed as puzzled as Daen, “Light isn’t coloured. Light just is... light. Was that all there was?”

“There was also a small drawing, a seven pointed star.

The paint jars have the same symbol on their lids.”

This time the reaction from Elry was unmistakable; she had gone quite pale. It was obvious that the star scared her far more than the note or coloured paints did.

55

Chapter 5

The next morning professor Anachar came through in a new, and equally startling, outfit of black and white striped trousers, silver dotted shirt and a waistcoat of black wool hand embroidered with flowers in all shades of grey. Aztar had heard that Southerners had a taste for the gaudy but he had no idea that they could be this bad. The man dressed like a clown.

After breakfast in the main dining room they were taken on a tour of their new working locale. It was only a short walk from where they were staying to the building that held all the ZaHar archives and historical documents.

Aztar was amazed at the amount of information held in its dark musty rooms. They walked for hours through corridors and halls lined with shelves packed from ceiling to floor with boxes, files and books. Some things were so covered in dust that it was hard to say what they were. Aztar figured they’d need years just to find out how the filing system worked. Finding specific information out about Rae was going to be a nightmare. Another set of rooms in the basement of the building had been converted into a mini laboratory; everything Anachar could need for the study of Rae was there. Aztar was fascinated, he’d never given the production of Rae much thought, it was so much a part of his everyday world that he took it for granted. If the Zah-Riel and Anachar were right, that Rae was beginning to decompose, then it would prove to be a disaster that would change life on Sindorus forever.

No-one knew for certain when the properties of Rae had been discovered, it had been in use for thousands of years and since it didn’t age or wear there was no way of telling how old some of the Rae products on Sindorus were. Usually scientists gauged their ages by studying what they were and the style of the article. Aztar wondered who the first person had been who had realized that the tough bitter Rae berries had such incredible possibilities. Rae berries were totally inedible, 56

even starving emmals wouldn’t touch them and they had the strongest digestive juices on the planet. They weren’t much to look at either, a dull white in colour about the size of Greenland cherries.

As they wandered through the buildings Anachar talked about the Rae trees that had once covered most of their world. Apparently there were only a few orchards and woods left now of what had once been great forests. They still flowered every year, he said, but the flowers didn’t turn into berries. It hadn’t seemed a problem before because the crops of the past had been big enough to allow the storage of excess Rae in large warehouses across the north. Anachar explained to Aztar that decades of use had almost depleted the stored Rae and now that the older Rae was crumbling they were facing a serious problem. They had to find out either what was causing the decay or find a way to make the trees produce again. He had been studying the problem for years and his results were depressing to hear. So far nothing he’d tried had proved successful in solving either problem.

The Zah-Riel had given them a small sack of dried Rae berries to experiment with and Anachar showed him how they went about rendering them down into a sticky, resinous substance that could them be poured into moulds or formed in ways similar to glass. Once it cooled and cured it became impervious to even the most extreme temperatures as well as to all forms of physical abuse - utterly indestructible. …or so they had always thought.

Aztar couldn’t get the picture of the crumbling gun out of his mind, “Do you think that maybe Rae over three hundred years has just finally reached a stage of being too old?” he asked Anachar as they went through the process of moulding a small amount of the Rae. Anachar shrugged, “perhaps, everything must have a final point where it starts to age, but even if that is the case it still doesn’t help us. We need to find a way to produce new Rae to take the place of that which is crumbling.”

He checked the temperature of the Rae resin, Aztar sighed. Rae took three hours to reach the correct heat and 57

consistency. All they could do was wait and test, over and over again. He watched Anachar stirring the pale milky resin for what felt like the hundredth time. “Why is it that colour? Rae’s black.”

“No it isn’t. What colour are the berries?”

“White, but the end products are always black, is it something to do with the process?”

Anachar grinned, “In a way, watch.” he went over to the shelves and took down a metal canister. The lid came off with a loud clang.

Anachar carefully measured out a cup or so of black powder. He went across to the Rae and stirred the powder into it; the Rae turned a glistening black. Aztar went closer for a better view; the Rae now looked the way he was used to seeing it, shiny black. “I didn’t know they added the black.”

Anachar nodded absently as he rechecked the temperature before pouring the stuff into a mould, “All Rae is shaded. White wouldn’t be acceptable. You know how the ZaHar feels about white, it’s always been considered a weak colour. Only suitable for young women and children. You can’t have the Zah-Riel living in a white palace or have the Za-Har army with white weapons. You know how vain Za-Har can be no soldier would agree to working with equipment that was considered a girl’s colour.”

“No, I suppose not.” Aztar tried to imagine the palace white instead of black… it made him uncomfortable. He changed the subject, “What about lunch? Za-Har food is terrible, trust me, I know. If you don’t want to starve or end up with permanent indigestion then I suggest we leave now and try to find our own food somewhere in the city.”

Anachar smiled, “I was at the palace for a week before you arrived, helping with the laboratory. I know all about your Northern army food. I’ve also lived in Ocren for eight years. I know all the best restaurants, as well as which ones will let me in. I know a place where we can go that serves the best seafood you’ll taste anywhere.”

Aztar understood. Ocren was not a city known for being open-minded or tolerant, “Being a Southerner here must 58

close a lot of doors, I suppose?”

Anachar looked at him, one eyebrow raised slightly.

Aztar felt suddenly rather embarrassed and ashamed. Anachar knew full well that he didn’t enjoy being around a Southerner either. He’d never thought before what it must be like for Southerners that supported the Za-Har, like Anachar. He couldn’t have many friends. “Ocren has got to be the most miserable place on the planet. I will never understand why they chose it for the capital. If you’ve managed to find a place here that sells good food and has friendly staff then you’re more than a professor, you’re a miracle-worker!”

Anachar smiled, “Then you don’t mind eating with a Southerner?”

Aztar tried to make his answer light and joking, “I can bear the company for the price of a decent meal.”

Anachar laughed and slapped him on the back, almost sending him flying, “Southerners don’t pay for Northerner’s meals, it’s against our religion, but I might be able to make an exception about the drinks.”

They began their slow laborious way out through the palace security checks. Aztar noticed how the guards checked Anachar’s documents twice while at some stops they barely gave his a glance. Some of them were quite open about snubbing Anachar, as if he were below notice, while a few made insulting remarks as they walked away. It began to get on his nerves, but Anachar didn’t seem to mind. He stood patiently through all their extra scrutiny and sneering with the same slightly amused smile that he’d had when they first met in the Zah-Riel’s office. Aztar wondered how the Prime Guards would have reacted if they’d known that the man they were so suspicious of had been entrusted with a mission so vital and secret that not even the Controllers knew about it. Was that what amused Anachar so much? He certainly seemed to take life in his stride. Didn’t anything annoy him?

When one of the prime guards at the final check point said something really offensive under his breath it was Aztar that wanted to hit him and Anachar who laughed and pulled him away.

59

“Fighting with a fool is two fools fighting.” he said, his warm brown eyes full of laughter. He patted Aztar on the head as if he was a puppy, “I thought you were famous for charming people not hitting them.”

Aztar was surprised, “Who told you that?”

“You mean why was I snooping around finding out more about you? Simple. Since we have to work closely together for a long time I wanted to know what I was letting myself in for. I don’t get on much with Za-Har, they have no sense of humour.”

Aztar had to agree with that, “And… what did you find out?”

“That you’re liked by nearly everyone, the girls on the waterfront have particularly fond memories, and that you’re extremely ambitious.”

“Then I meet with your approval?”

Anachar paused and looked him up and down, pretending to study him carefully, “Well... you’re too sure of your own importance and you are a Northerner, but I think we’ll get along alright. You don’t like Southerners,” Aztar tried to speak but was waved into silence, “don’t deny it. It is what you are; a part of your upbringing. What I liked was the fact that you were angry with those overdressed emmals back there because they weren’t treating us fairly, you may not like Southerners, but you don’t like injustice.”

Aztar didn’t know how to reply to that, being complimented by a Southerner was a new experience. He felt a hypocrite and a fraud He wasn’t any better than the guards really; at least they were open about their opinions of Southerners. A lot of the things they’d said he’d said himself with friends. That was why he’d lost his temper finally, so unlike his usual cool. The guard had repeated an old joke about Southerners that he’d often told himself in bars after a few drinks. He always got a good laugh with it. He’d never had to see the joke from the point of view of a Southerner before; never been made to feel ashamed of his own conduct either.

He’d wanted to hit the guard because of his own embarrassment, not because he was a champion of justice or 60

trying to defend Anachar, and that fact made him feel even worse.

Walking down the streets to the harbour he noticed how people turned to stare at them, some even made similar comments to those the guards had made. “Don’t you get tired of it?” he asked Anachar.

“Not much point, it wouldn’t stop them doing it. I can’t change the way others think, can I?” “It would drive me crazy.” Anachar just shrugged and laughed. They turned down a narrow, dirty back street that twisted down between the backs of harbour stores. “Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

Anachar nodded, side-stepping an overfull refuse bin, “Quite sure. Don’t let the outside deceive you, things aren’t always the way they seem.” He turned sharply to the right and Aztar realized that they were right on the water’s edge. The deep indigo waters of the Hurvan Sea lapping against the dockside wall. Anachar carried on a short while along the dock edge before coming to an abrupt stop outside a dull, dingy looking wharf storehouse. Aztar could hear muffled sounds and the faintest smell of cooking.

“Here? You’ve got to be joking!”

Anachar grinned, “What did I say about not judging by looks? Wait until you’ve tasted the food before you damn the place completely.”

He pushed open the dirty wooden door and the noise of people rose up a flight of dim steps to greet them. Anachar gestured for Aztar to lead the way. He started down the old wooden steps with great distaste, where had Anachar brought them to? Admittedly the food smells wafting up with the voices were very appealing, but if they were served from a kitchen that was as dirty as the steps then Aztar felt sure that he’d be dead of food poisoning before the day was finished.

The steps stopped on a rickety landing where another door stood, firmly shut. This one was a little cleaner, much to Aztar’s relief. Anachar stepped in front of him and knocked three times, a small flap opened and someone stared at them briefly. Aztar could hear the grating sound of a bolt being 61

drawn back. Anachar turned towards him, “Before we go in, there is one thing I should warn you about. In this place you’re the one who’ll be the outsider, so leave the ordering to me.”

Inside the room was very crowded, but much cleaner than Aztar had expected. The walls were brightly polished wood and the wooden floors had been scrubbed so often that they’d faded to the palest gold. Tables and benches filled most of the area and there was a long bar counter against the far wall. It was hot and steamy with the most incredible mixture of food smells, all enticing. Aztar was so overwhelmed by the noise and the heat that it took him a full minute before he realized that he was the only Northerner in the room. Not a dark haired head anywhere.

The patrons of the place had begun to notice him too, voices began to taper off as eyes turned his way. The growing silence was filled by a less inviting muttering, he could feel the sweat running down the sides of his face as dozens of brown eyes turned to watch him from all sides. Being taller than anyone in the room didn’t help either, it wasn’t as if he could hope to slip unnoticed into a back seat. He muttered under his breath to Anachar without moving his head, “Why did you bring me here?”

“Because it’s the only place where Southerners, like me, can get together and relax in this city.” he grabbed Aztar by the arm and pulled him along to the bar where he turned him towards the crowd, “Good afternoon everyone, I’d like to introduce a new friend of mine. As you can see, he’s a Northerner, but I hope you won’t hold it against him. It was a tragic accident of birth.”

Everyone laughed and Aztar tried to smile convincingly. Anachar continued unmercifully, “ Now I do realize that this one’s a Za-Har… and we all know what they say about the Za-Har don’t we?” Everyone roared with laughter at that, “but I can assure you that this one is different.

Truly. He’s housebroken, he doesn’t drool when he eats and he knows how to laugh - which is the real miracle.”

Aztar decided to go with it, he pulled himself up to his tallest and spoke out as loud as he could, “Of course I have 62

a sense of humour, I have to. I’m friends with you, aren’t I?” For a moment there was silence, Aztar began calculating how long it would take him to reach the door, then everyone began laughing again and a short straw-blonde man beside him at the bar offered to buy them both drinks. “No, I can’t let you do that,” Aztar answered. The room went instantly tense again, but Aztar just smiled his best boyish smile and winked at his audience, “I can’t let anyone do that because I’m buying the first round, for everyone in the place.”

All the patrons roared their approval and orders for all sorts of exotic, and expensive, drinks began to fly. In the chaos they managed to wriggle across to an empty table near the kitchen doors. Anachar was amused, “Good comeback.”

Aztar leant closer over the table, “Just wait until we’re out of here. Have you any idea what you did to my nerves?”

Anachar simply grinned back, “I thought Za-Har were trained to be fearless.”

Anachar’s wicked grin was infectious. Aztar shook his head, laughing, “I should be furious with you.”

“But?” “But I know what point you were trying to make. In you’re own crude Southerner way you just turned the tables on me – you showed me what it feels like to be on the other side.”

Anachar dipped his head like a coy maiden and fluttered his eyes, “Am I forgiven?”

Aztar pretended to consider it, “Maybe... those drinks are going to cost me a fortune, of course. If the food is as good as you say, and since you’re paying for it, maybe I’ll forgive you - by the end of the next century.”

A dainty waitress with short gold curls and enormous honey brown eyes came over to the table. Anachar ordered for them both, but the girl spent more time shyly watching Aztar than taking down their order. She drifted away from their table, glancing back several times. Anachar chuckled, “We’re probably going to get nothing we ordered. I don’t think she heard a thing I said - too busy admiring your pretty-boy Northern face.”

“Well, at least one Southerner has good taste.” joked 63

Aztar, leaning back to watch her as she walked away.

The food came at last, Aztar gave the waitress his best smile when he thanked her and she blushed and almost spilled the soup on Anachar. The meal was one of the best he’d ever eaten, just as delicious as Anachar had promised it would be. A hot spiced fish soup with freshly baked bread and then an assortment of shellfish served with small bowls of amazing sauces. Once the strangeness of being surrounded by Southerner faces wore off Aztar began to feel more relaxed.

Anachar made a perfect host, he was relaxed and talkative, but he knew when to shut up and just enjoy the food. After they finished eating they had a few mugs of equally good charob and the conversation drifted onto less formal topics. Anachar was a good listener and Aztar was soon telling him about his excitement of being made the youngest Controller ever and how much it would mean to his father. He even found himself telling Anachar about Idrith; how they kept in touch and some of the crazy things they’d done as children.

“Why did your cousin join a monastery? He doesn’t sound the type for a life of solitude and boredom.”

Aztar almost answered but caught himself in time.

Idrith’s past was something that his father had strictly forbidden him to talk about. Telling a Southerner his family’s dark scandal would be unforgivable. He finally made up a rather lame story about it being Idrith’s father’s dying wish. He knew Anachar didn’t believe a word of it, his expression gave that away, but the strange Southerner made no comment and Aztar steered the conversation back onto safer ground, “What about you, Anachar, do you have family?”

“A sister, she lives in Hannabas. Look, do you think you could call me by my first name? All these Northern formalities are tiresome, Having to say Controller Lindo every time is such a mouthful. I know that among your people only close friends and family call each other by first names, but since we’re going to be living in each other’s company constantly for now perhaps we could overlook the Northerner etiquette?”

Aztar felt strangely flattered by his presumptuous 64

suggestion, “I don’t mind. In fact…” he couldn’t resist adding, “it might make it easier to ignore how irritating you are and since I’m definitely going to be eating here from now on having the people here think we’re friends can only be an asset. My name’s Aztar.”

Anachar leant over and shook his hand, “How do you do, I’m Tarko Anachar, very pleased to meet you. Now, why don’t you buy your new friend a drink?”

It was almost sundown by the time they were finally ready to leave so they decided to stay and have dinner there as well. There wasn’t much point in dashing back for dinner, you couldn’t hurry through the palace security checks. Tarko wondered aloud what would happen if there was a fire and they came to the conclusion that probably everyone would burn to death busy checking each others documents. Aztar had to admit that the Prime Guards were a disappointing bunch on the whole, more decorative than useful. He even told Tarko about how he’d once dreamed of being one. Then they celebrated his luck at not being chosen with another round of drinks. Tarko told him the story behind his ugly face. How he’d been cornered and beaten up, when he was much younger, by a group of drunken Northerner cadets out partying in Harnel.

“That’s when I decided to start exercising,” Tarko flexed his heavily muscled forearms.

“I thought you said you didn’t approve of fighting?”

“I don’t,” Tarko grinned mischievously, “That’s why I keep myself in shape, who’d want to pick on someone who looks like I do?”

Aztar laughed, he could see Tarko’s point. The man was built like a professional fighter. The rest of the night passed splendidly. A Southern sailor taught them both a wickedly insulting yet extremely funny song about two Northerners lost at sea and Tarko tried to dance on a table to impress the pretty little waitress. He fell off twice, much to everyone’s delight. Aztar hadn’t had that much fun since his days as a cadet. Everyone kept buying them drinks and it was well after midnight when they finally left.

65

The Prime Guards gave them trouble at every security stop when they finally arrived back to the palace. Tarko found this hilarious and laughed so much that he choked, which in turn made Aztar laugh so much that twice he had to sit down on the floor and rest before going on.

When he awoke at dusk, just opening his eyes was an unbelievable ordeal, he had never been drunk in his life before.

As he knelt over the basin in his room all he could think about was how nice it would be to be dead. It took another few hours before the full implications of what had happened the night before began to sink in. He checked in on Tarko, but he was still fast asleep, Lying fully dressed on his bed, arms hanging over the end and his face all squashed to one side. Aztar leant against the soothing cool wall and tried to imagine how he was going to explain this to his father and the Zah-Riel. Controllers didn’t spend their time getting drunk with Southerners. He wondered if it was likely that they would take away his promotion. That was a truly depressing thought. He’d probably go down in history not only as the youngest Controller ever, but also as the shortest time the rank was held - two days.

A gurgling noise distracted him. Tarko was waking up at last. He was a startling sight, his hair had worked loose from its braid and hung around his face like old yellowed wool. For a moment, as he sat up yawning, his bloodshot eyes seemed to glow orange in the twilight; then he blinked and rubbed them and the illusion was gone. He stretched several times before rising carefully to his feet and gave Aztar a rumpled smile as he lumbered past on the way to the washroom.

He was in there for a long time, splashing and snorting like some water beast. He glanced across at Aztar when he finally he came out, “I gather that this is another new experience for you?” When Aztar didn’t answer he went on quite unconcerned, “Don’t worry, they won’t blame you. Noone would believe it was your own doing, they’ll figure me for the bad influence. It’s called blame-the-Southerner.”

Aztar said nothing. Tarko shrugged and went through into the small lounge they shared. Aztar watched him from the doorway as he settled down into one of the leather armchairs.

66

Outside the gathering twilight was turning the sky grey blue and indigo. Tarko stretched out his legs, “I don’t know why you’re so sour. I’m the one who should be feeling like death, considering how you went on. I couldn’t sleep a wink. You made so much noise I thought the walls were going to cave in.”

“I don’t snore.” Aztar’s voice was gruff.

“I never said you did! You weren’t snoring, you were yelling. Is it a normal Northerner habit to scream in your sleep? Must have been quite some dream you were having, you kept on and on about hiding the boxes from the soldiers.”

67

Chapter 6

Finding the piece of red glass had left Idrith dazed and overwhelmed. He spent the rest of the day walking about completely unaware of where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. Everything he had feared was looking to be the truth. The coloured window in the secret room had once stood in the chapel. It wasn’t a copy of the chapel window, it was the first window. That meant that the verse on it, the one that seemed to match the Prayer of Direction, wasn’t a parody of the original - it was the original. That made the Prayer of Direction a lie. Did that mean that everything else he’d learnt at Amyth was a lie too? That thought was more than he could bear to think about.

At Evening Chants he said the Prayer of Direction and thought about the words as he spoke them in a way he’d never done before; “Blessed is the Darkness that shows us our mortality, Reminder of our briefness in the world.

Blessed is the ordained Code of Laws, teaching us submission to His might.

Rejoice in the torments of salvation, Tremble at the certainty of death.

Whisper your praises and bow in deep submission, Accept the dictates of your Fate.”

As he mechanically recited the Prayer the words from his window whispered loudly in his fear-filled ears; BLESSED IS THE RAINBOW THAT SHOWS US OUR UNIQUENESS, SYMBOL OF SHIS PRESENCE IN THE WORLD. If the window words were part of an original prayer what was the rest like and why had the monastery destroyed it?

There was no mention of an older prayer in any of the writings, 68

as far as he knew, but then there was no mention of the building of the monastery either. What had happened?

Idrith spent every free moment he had searching through the libraries, picking out the oldest books and scrolls, or sitting in the secret room looking at the window. Over time he managed to get some shelves and a small table set up in the room. He took to going there to write his thoughts and do his research. The place had a soothing quality and he realised that since he had started coming to the room his headaches had decreased dramatically. He wished he could write and tell Aztar about it, but that was out of the question. The window would be considered heretical by the Abbot and criminal by the Za-Har. It was hard to think of Aztar as one of ‘them’ now; it saddened him. He’d never kept a secret from Aztar before.

Now he truly was alone.

With everything he had based his life upon turned on its head life at Amyth became almost unbearable; the prayers and daily routines a horrible farce. Only the window kept him sane. He wondered how he could feel so bad and have no one notice. The only person to give him more than the usual glance was Harmion and considering how much time they both spent in the libraries that wasn’t surprising. They seemed to be constantly bumping into each other, but Harmion never stopped to talk. He just smiled and nodded, or went on with whatever book he was reading. Most of the time he was barely visible, melting into the deep blue and purple shadows in the dark library corners, but Idrith felt him and often looked up quickly to see Harmion watching. Then Harmion would smile and Idrith would feel foolish. There was no way that Harmion could know about the window. Not being a monk he had no access to the inner monastery buildings and the meditation cells. Idrith told himself he was being ridiculous. Usually Harmion’s presence in the library was soothing, he kept to himself, hardly ever spoke and, unlike every other Pilgrim Idrith had ever dealt with, he never asked stupid questions.

That was what made his sudden chattiness a few days later so peculiar. The day had started normally enough - a nod to Harmion as he entered the library before he headed over to 69

the section of old scrolls that dated back the furthest, almost four hundred years. He was so deeply lost in his reading that he never noticed Harmion until he glanced up and found him standing right beside him. It gave him such a fright that he jerked violently and knocked the scroll he was reading off the table. Harmion retrieved it for him, apologizing in his usual serene style, and began immediately to discuss a book he was busy reading.

It was about the uses of bees in agriculture and he seemed determined to explain every conceivable portion of bee life to Idrith. Idrith tried sighing and staring to make Harmion understand he was not interested in bees, but Harmion was seemingly oblivious. In the end he gave up and just nodded at regular intervals, no matter how hard he tried to end it Harmion would not be silenced. Why he should think he would be interested in bees was beyond him. He tried to leave but Harmion actually followed him out of the library, still rambling on about pollen and plant fertilization. Then, as Idrith reached the doors to the inner courtyards where Harmion couldn’t follow, he leant forward and placed a small book in Idrith’s hand, “Just a little gift, Castellan. I’m sure you will find it most enlightening.”

Idrith decided Harmion must be touched with heat stroke from spending too much time travelling across the desert. He thanked him in a vague sort of way and put the book into one of his pockets. The book travelled around with him for several days without his even looking at the cover. It was only total boredom that led him finally, reluctantly, to deciding to read it after all.

The tutor of the novices had taken sick with an ague and Abbot Fein had chosen him to take over the classes. The Abbot knew how much Idrith hated tutoring. Sitting with a class of novices, all feverishly studying the scriptures for seven hour sessions, was worse than any penance Idrith could think of. He was supposed to be there to counsel and answer questions, but that rarely happened. The novices, by this second week of their indoctrination, had already learnt that 70

questions were frowned on by everyone and that the Castellan in particular had a temper that was better left undisturbed. The way they avoided his gaze and flung themselves up against the corridor walls whenever he strode by both annoyed and depressed Idrith. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d been a novice just like them, or so it felt to him anyhow. He hadn’t been bad-tempered and caustic-tongued back then.

Although the monastery had not been his personal choice he had still believed that the path he was taking was a righteous one. Now even that consolation had been taken from him; his life was a lie and there was nothing he could do to change it. He sat in front of the novices feeling the most incredible urge to stand up and rage at them. To tell them what a bunch of fools they were and how they were about to devote the rest of their lives to something that didn’t exist. It took all his willpower to sit there and stare at their meek sheep faces.

He took out Harmion’s book to try and take his mind off reality. It was a small book, older then he had realized. He opened it up at random, his mind full of other thoughts. The writing was small and the pictures and diagrams so faded that he could hardly make them out. He held the book up to the light to see if that would help, squinting and holding it at arm’s length. A piece of paper fell out of it onto the floor. In that infuriating way that falling things have it drifted on the air… and disappeared right under the heavy wooden desk he was sitting at.

Idrith cursed under his breath. He did think of leaving it there, but with his luck it would turn out to be something invaluable that Harmion would miss. He got down on his knees behind the desk, much to the fascination of the novices, and tried to get it out. The desk was low to the ground and the paper had drifted just a bit further than his fingers could reach.

He fetched a ruler from the desk and, with a lot of struggling and squashing his face against the floor, finally managed to push it out the other side. He went around to pick it up, dozens of eyes watching his every move. The paper was actually a small envelope. Idrith picked it up, gave the novices a particularly vicious glare, and went back to his seat.

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The envelope had gathered a lot of cobwebs and dust from under the desk. He wiped them off with distaste. There was writing on the front in a thick bold writing - it was Harmion’s name. That was unexpected. Idrith turned it over twice to make sure there were no other names or words on it. It didn’t feel very thick. He eased the flap open and tried to look inside without touching the contents, there was a folded paper in it and it was folded away from the opening. He’d have to take it out to see what it was. He pulled out the paper and opened it up. What he saw almost made him drop it all over again. It was a tiny picture, not very well done, of a bird on a branch… painted in colours. Idrith folded it shut with trembling fingers and, as casually as possible, pushed it back into the envelope. It was almost time for Evening Chants so he excused himself from the class, leaving one of the more dour novices in charge, and went as quickly as could back to his room. He hid the envelope in the centre of the book and put the book under his mattress before leaving for chants.

He left it alone until the next morning, when he could go to the secret room for a few hours after Midday Chants.

There, where he had no fear of being watched, he took it out again and studied it carefully. The bird was out of proportion but the colours were beautiful, bright red and yellow and greens like he hadn’t seen since he’d walked as a child among the trees at Melane. Now that he was less stressed he noticed that on the other side of the folded paper there was some writing in the same bold style as the envelope. It read: I’m sending you this sample as requested, not the best in the world but adequate enough to give your friend the idea.

Idrith stuck it back in the envelope, whatever it was about it was none of his business. He had to admit it was a surprise though, to find out that Harmion had his own coloured secrets. It felt rather good to know that; it made him feel less alone. He wished he could ask him about it, but what could he say? Anything he said would start by his admitting that he had 72

read Harmion’s private mail and that he knew Harmion was involved in something illegal. He had to get the book back to him as soon as possible.

He stuck the book back in his pocket and went searching for Harmion, hoping desperately that this wasn’t one of those times when Harmion was off somewhere else. He was in luck; one of the lay monks had seen Harmion arrive two days before. He wasn’t in the library, but someone remembered seeing him out in the Pilgrims guesthouse.

Idrith slipped out after evening meals to go and see Harmion. The night was cool and refreshing, he paused for a moment on the bridge to look out across the desert and savour his freedom. The desert sands were almost white by moons light; one moon was on the rim of the horizon while the other was already quite high above him. The wind was just enough to stir the hem of his robe, as light as breath against his cheek.

From here he was looking towards Ashide, once a prosperous Rae centre but now only a sleepover for Pilgrims. The road from there branched off to Gerlin and Selrec and from Selrec to Melane, his family’s home and one of the biggest wood producing areas of the North. Behind him, beyond the Monastery, the other road travelled along the edge of the mountains to Amrec then on to Debec where Aztar was stationed, and then on to Ocren itself. If he turned halfway and looked right out across the desert, directly south, he was looking at an area where no-one had ever been. It was the same view he could see from the meditation cells and the secret room.

Sometimes in the secret room he stood by the hole in the window and dreamt about going South. He’d imagine how wonderful it would be to walk out of the monastery and never turn back. He even worked on theories as to how the heat could be combated, ways of travelling through the desert and surviving. In daydreams the realities of dying from heat exposure or thirst could be overlooked. The moons were up directly above the south now. Their light turning the dull desert sands to opal and pearl. He shook himself free from the desert’s magic and strode across to the guesthouse.

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There was no-one else staying at the guesthouse but Harmion. He was sitting by the fire in the tiny lounge when Idrith entered. By firelight Harmion was particularly eerie, his pale eyes reflecting the scarlet flames, his face fading into the indigo darkness.

“Welcome, Castellan, would you care for a drink?”

Harmion wasn’t in the least surprised to see him; it was almost as if he had been waiting for him to show up. Idrith stammered out some story about being too busy to read the book and almost flung it at Harmion.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Castellan, I was hoping that you would find it of interest. It seems I was wrong… Are you sure you won’t join me in a drink? It’s some of your own Amyth liqueur, made with honey.” Harmion poured out a small glassful as he spoke and held it out to Idrith, “No-one is going to miss you.”

Idrith didn’t want to go back to his cold lonely room with all its unanswered questions. He took the glass and sat down. For a long while they sat without speaking, watching the flames and sipping their drinks. Idrith would have felt at peace if it wasn’t for the book in Harmion’s lap. Harmion finished his drink and picked the book up. Idrith went cold; what if the envelope fell out? Harmion opened the book and pulled the envelope out, “You didn’t have to push it in so tightly, Castellan, it only fell out the first time because I put it in the very back, see...” He demonstrated to Idrith how the back cover was slightly broken and loose.

“You wanted me to find it.” It was a statement, not a question.

Harmion tilted his head, “Who do you think the friend referred to in the letter was?”

“Me?” Idrith felt a wave of strong emotion flood through him, a swirling mix of terror and hope.

“I hope you don’t think it presumptuous of me, calling you my friend, it’s just that we have so much in common.”

“The monastery?”

Harmion smiled and shook his head, “The colours.”

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He opened the envelope and opened up the paper, tilting it so that Idrith could see the picture clearly, “Not a good example, as my contact said, but enough to give you an idea.”

“An idea of what?”

“Of what is available.” Harmion put the picture down on the small table beside him. The colours were different by firelight, deeper and more mysterious.

Idrith took a deep breath, “Very well… if the letter was meant for me to find, then tell me why. Who is this contact you talk about and what made you think I would be interested?”

“You seek the truth, that is always the first step, and you see the colours. I’ve noticed that much more in the past months, you stop and look at things as if you never noticed they were coloured before. Something has awakened you.”

Idrith squirmed slightly but kept his gaze steady. “You are not alone, Castellan, there are many who see like yourself, more than you could begin to imagine. That’s where my contact comes in, as a go-between. A dealer who buys and sells the things that are most precious - the coloured things. Pictures and illustrated books, even clothing, beautiful things.”

“Forbidden things.” Idrith pointed out grimly, “Things that could be your death warrant.”

“All beauty has a price, Castellan, and with all knowledge comes responsibility. The people who deal with my contact know this well and they know the worse price of ignoring it.”

“What would that be?”

“Emptiness.”

Idrith dropped his gaze at last. That one word described his whole existence, “Tell me more, please.”

Harmion spoke for hours. Idrith had never heard him say more than a few sentences before and he was surprised at how commanding Harmion could be. This strange little man had done things that made Idrith sweat just to think of.

Harmion was a smuggler; he helped in the trade of forbidden coloured artwork and other coloured things. By the sound of things he’d been doing it for a long time too. Idrith wondered 75

just how old Harmion was, his small stature tended to make him seem younger than he was, boyish. His face was clear of any lines and there was no grey in his curly brown hair, but his eyes had a depth and wisdom that left Idrith feeling that he was speaking with a creature older than he could begin to imagine.

Harmion told him how many people, a lot of them Northerners like himself, were willing to take any risk to own coloured things. Harmion hinted that some of these secret renegades were even Nobles and government officials; it seemed the need to have beauty in their lives outweighed any common-sense. Idrith thought about telling Harmion about the window but he wasn’t ready yet to be that trusting. He kept the conversation on Harmion’s double life and the goods he dealt with.

“How much would something like this painting go for?” Harmion mentioned an estimate price that made Idrith’s head spin. “That much?” He felt deflated; he hadn’t realized he wanted to buy the picture until he heard the price. Monks normally didn’t have any money but Idrith did have his family’s inheritance in the main bank at Ocren. He’d signed power over to Aztar when he joined Amyth monastery. He could easily ask Aztar for money, except this was a lot of money to ask for. It would look suspicious. What would a monk be wanting with so much money. “I have money in Ocren but I can’t get to it without others knowing.”

“There is no-one you can trust?”

Idrith saw Aztar’s face, but that was a face he hadn’t actually seen in ten years… “I don’t know for certain, not anymore.”

“Perhaps I can think up a plausible excuse for you, I’ve dealt with others who have had the same problem of having to conceal where the money went, or came from. Let me deal with that.” He picked up the picture and handed it across to Idrith, “In the meantime you might as well take this with you.” Idrith tried to protest, but Harmion ignored him, “Castellan please, accept it as a gift, from one kindred spirit to another. You can pay me for the next one.”

“Next one?”

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“Of course, this is only the beginning, not the end.”

Idrith stuck the picture on the wall of the secret room, to the left of his new shelves. More and more he found himself wondering how colours could be evil. If God, the Great Commander of the Universe, didn’t approve of colour then why had He created it? The Church of the Sind said it was a temptation, a distraction from the Path of Submission but then they also said the Prayer of Direction was ten thousand years old. What was the truth? He began to organize his searching more efficiently, dividing it up into sections. In the secret room he labelled each shelf with the question he was trying to answer. He didn’t have much to put on each shelf, but at least he no longer felt that this was a hopeless endeavour. The shelves read, from top to bottom: What is the window about?

What is the rest of the Verse? Why and when was Religion changed… and who or what was SHis? At first he’d thought that word on the window might be a spelling error, but the more he thought about it the less likely that seemed. The window would not have been allowed to have any flaws, he was sure of that. It had been built with love and joy and it had been made perfect. In their teachings the Great Commander, god of the Universe, was spoken of as He, Him and His. Was SHis some former god as well? Or was it the name for some thing, a place or a people? It felt as if the more he questioned, the less he knew.

Idrith was busy with stock orders when a monk came to tell him that Harmion wanted to speak to him. They met in the front office kept for mundane appointments. Harmion came right to the point, “I need to know who is in charge of your money. Certain excuses only work on certain people.”

“My cousin, Aztar Lindo.”

“Lindo? A well-known family, well respected and trusted. The son has recently been promoted. Is he your cousin?”

Idrith never ceased to be amazed at Harmion, “Yes, it must be, the Lindos only have one son. Promoted to Controller?”

Harmion nodded, “I forget what a sheltered life you 77

all lead in Amyth. The news about Controller Lindo has been keeping tongues wagging in the North for quite some time.”

That was a letdown to hear, Aztar hadn’t even bothered to let him know. “This could be a bad idea, Harmion, I don’t know if I can trust my cousin anymore. We used to be close, but time changes people.”

“No, people don’t change; they just forget who they really are. Your cousin is the perfect choice.”

“Then you have an idea?”

Harmion nodded, “I’ll need you to write a letter. I’ll tell you what you have to say, but you can put it in your own words. Do you have paper here or shall I get some of my own?”

“Now?” Idrith asked.

“Why not? I have to leave tomorrow. I can stop by in Ocren on my way.”

Idrith searched through the drawers and pulled out some paper. Harmion began to tell him his plan. It didn’t make any sense to Idrith. If he had to lie to Aztar why not use something more logical? He tried to argue Harmion out of the idea but the man was even more headstrong than he was, just sat there and repeated that if Idrith had a better idea he would be quite happy to give it consideration.

They finished the letter two hours later. Harmion took it with him when they parted, “I can’t be sure when I’ll be able to return, but I will be successful, you have no need to worry about that.”

“You’re always so damn sure, aren’t you? Always so smug. Have you any idea how irritating that is?”

Harmion grinned with obvious delight, “I never thought of it that way before. You surprise me, Castellan, I thought the monastery had drained all the spirit out of you. It’s very pleasing to find I was wrong. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” snapped Idrith, “I just insulted you,” Harmion only chuckled and walked away, leaving Idrith even more irritated then before. The Lakelander was utterly impossible. What had ever possessed him to trust him and write that ridiculous letter? When Aztar read it he’d think his 78

cousin had been driven mad by monastery life at last.

Although, Idrith thought wryly, that wasn’t far from the truth.

Dealing with Harmion was driving him crazy.

He went back into the office, slamming the door as hard as he could. He only hoped Aztar survived the experience of dealing with the Lakelander better than he had.

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