When at last Urusander shifted his gaze and saw her, she noted his surprise. ‘Captain! I did not know you had returned to us.’
‘I have but just arrived, sir,’ she said.
She studied him as he approached. Like an apparition, he wore winter’s skin, white and vaguely translucent, as if clad in ice. The lines of his face were etched deep in the fading light. This transformation still startled her. The High Priestess Syntara names it purity. But I see a season of thought, the details of belief and conviction, all frozen in place. We are invited into sleep, drawn ever deeper into a world of extremes, where our hearts are locked.
Light yields no empathy. This is not the man I once knew.
Urusander said, ‘Tell me, I beg you, that Toras Redone has seen reason. I will not see a repeat of Lord Rend’s mad attack upon us, when we remain here, at peace.’
He hesitated then, and she could guess at the reason. He had ever been a reluctant commander, too severe for court politics, uncomfortable in the presence of the nobles of the Great Houses and their subtle, ambivalent ways. Nor was he a man known for being loquacious. But now, and here, there was little choice.
‘This is not how it was meant to be,’ he said. ‘If I did not move, it was with reason. If I chose to suspend judgement, I had good cause. Sharenas, we are not as we once were.’ He gestured, indicating his face, and then studied his hand, as it hovered before him. ‘Not this. The High Priestess sees far too much in such mundane attire. No, what has come to us – to us all – is a kind of ambiguity, as if our spirit has stumbled, suddenly lost.’ His gaze narrowed as he studied his bleached hand. ‘And yet, does this not invite the very opposite? The marks of faith?’ He glanced at her. ‘I am unchanged in that. She would call me Father Light, but that title is like a blow to the chest.’ Shaking his head, he looked away, letting his hand drop.
Father Light. High Priestess, have you no sense of irony? This father here has done poorly with his charges, true-born and adopted. Worse still, his soldiers run wild, like a family torn loose. He is father to thousands.
Commander, what will you do about your children?
‘Sir, Syntara would set you opposite, but equal, to Mother Dark. It is, I know, somewhat … simplistic. But perhaps that offers its own appeal.’
‘You cannot hold it in,’ he muttered, as if suddenly distracted. ‘Not for ever. No mortal has that capacity.’
‘Sir?’
His voice hardened. ‘Anger, Sharenas, is an unruly beast. We chain it daily, seeking the civil mien. Witness to injustices on all sides, appalled at the brazen abuse of that most basic notion of fairness, so arrogantly abrogated. And then, there is the effrontery. Indeed, humiliation. I would have walked away from it. You know that, Sharenas, don’t you?’
She nodded.
He went on. ‘But the beast broke free and now runs hard – but to where? Seeking what? Reparation or vengeance?’ He shifted to face south, as if he could somehow look upon the Citadel itself. ‘He painted what he saw, and now … now, Abyss take me, he sees nothing. By this terrible act of self-mutilation’ – he turned his head to meet her gaze – ‘did he make vow to the triumph of Dark? This is what I ask myself, again and again.’
Before me stands a man with too many thoughts and too few feelings. ‘Sir, Kadaspala was driven mad, by what he found, by what had been done to his sister and his father. There was no intent in what he did to himself, unless it was to claw out the anguish filling his head.’
After a moment, Urusander grunted, and his tone turned wry. ‘I lost grip on the chain and that beast is well beyond my reach now. I understand how it must seem, to Anomander, and to all the other highborn. Vatha Urusander waits in Neret Sorr, eager to begin the season of war.’
To that, she said nothing.
‘Sharenas, what word do you bring?’
What word? Well, an expected question, under the circumstances. Still … blessed Abyss, what island have I stumbled upon? What forbidding seas surround it? Was I alone in riding into the face of winter, looking upon freshly made barrows? Here you stand, seeking word of the outside world. Your island, sir, is lost on every map. Kadaspala? Forget that fool! We now gather with all swords drawn! Urusander, how do I venture close? ‘Sir, Commander Toras Redone is presently indisposed. Broken, I am told, by grief.’
The bleached visage before her revealed no hint of subterfuge as he frowned. ‘I do not understand. Has she lost a dear one, then?’
Sharenas hesitated. This was not a challenge to her courage – she would speak the truth here, as befitted Urusander’s most loyal captain. But this man’s innocence frightened her – an innocence, it seems, won in the slipping free of a chain. I see less a father and more a child. Reborn, Syntara? Indeed, and it’s a cold, cold cradle. ‘Sir, it seems that Hunn Raal has told you little of his various missions across Kurald Galain. I but rode into his wake, sir, and made of it all I could glean, although, it must be said, I was rarely welcome.’
At the mention of Hunn Raal’s name, Urusander’s expression twisted. ‘He is censured, I assure you, captain. This war against the Deniers is an absurd dissembling of our cause. It has done more harm than good. The man does not comprehend justice, nor even propriety, it seems.’ He half turned, to gaze southward again, and set a hand to his face, but cautiously, as if uncertain what his touch would find. ‘What is it, Sharenas, which you must speak? And why this hesitation?’
‘In a moment, sir, if you will forgive me. Since I last departed here, there have been changes.’
He shot her a look. ‘You doubt your footing?’
You fool. I doubt yours. ‘The High Priestess holds to a lofty station now. Is it Hunn Raal who sits cupped in her hand? What of Captain Serap? Sir, I must know – who advises you on affairs of the state?’
Urusander scowled. ‘I have accepted the responsibility for my legion,’ he said, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion – if not anger, then, perhaps, it was shame. ‘I will reassert the justice of our cause.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Captain, I am offered no advice, nor do I ask it. It may be that this may change, since now you have returned. But the others, they come to me inside clouds of confusion, and leave me bemused, and then made to feel foolish for being so blind.’
‘They tell you nothing?’
‘The pending wedding is all they will speak of. As if that was for them to decide upon!’
Ah, you see their contempt, then. Is this how it is, now? Righteous fury lost on the horizon, amidst white winds. And here before me, Vatha Urusander, the greying wolf with its fangs pulled. ‘Sir, what you might call marriage, they name machination. In a joining of hands, as you might see it, they grasp for leverage. Not a union of love, then. Nor one of respectful regard, you with her, her with you. Rather, they set you both upon the same anvil, and from two blades they would hammer and twist the pair of you into one single weapon.’
‘For them to wield?’
She almost stepped back at the sudden fire in his eyes, a flame of light unnatural in its fierceness. The fangs remain, but still I sense his … helplessness. Was this the mark of Syntara’s blessing? Skin of white and the blinding fires of Liosan … all pointless? Did she curse as well as bless? What reach this newfound power of hers, and was that what Sharenas saw in Hunn Raal? ‘It is my thought, sir, that they would take hold of such a weapon, even knowing the threat of uncertain edges, a sliding grip, an unexpected unbalancing, and swing hard, unmindful of innocent victims.’
‘As you say,’ he said sharply, ‘an uncertain weapon, no matter what they might desire, or expect. To think that we are seen this way, a Legion commander and a goddess. As mere tools for their ambitions. I will speak to her!’