‘I do not know you either, my friend. My name is Geoval. My home is. . was. . on the coast. Now it is here, in this grey horror.’
‘Then I have gone mad,’ said Harad. ‘Or this is a dream?’
‘Aye, laddie, it is a dream of sorts,’ said Druss. ‘There is no easy way to say this, so I’ll be blunt.
Charis was killed on the mountainside. This is why she is here, in the Void. Why you are here is another matter.’
Suddenly something screeched down from the sky. Harad saw it and surged to his feet. The winged creature swept towards Druss, talons extended. The axeman reared up and hammered Snaga through its ribs. The demon disappeared instantly. ‘Where were we?’ said Druss. ‘Ah, yes. You should not be here, Harad. The life force is strong in you. Trust me, laddie, you cannot stay.’
Harad backed away from the axeman, then moved to Charis’s side. Taking her hand he raised it to his lips and kissed it. ‘This is wrong,’ he said. ‘It is all wrong. We will go back together. We will end this dream. Then we will make the life we planned.’
Charis stepped into his embrace, and kissed his bearded cheek. ‘I cannot go back,’ she said. ‘Oh, I so wish I could.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘You don’t remember, do you? Believe me, Harad, my dear, there is no way for me to return. You will understand when you go back.’
‘I’ll not go back without you.’
‘No, Harad. Please don’t say that. You are not dead. You have a life to live.’
‘Without you I might as well be dead. And if I am not dead, then why am I here?’
‘It was love which brought you,’ said Druss. ‘I can understand that. A man should be prepared to face death for the woman he loves. Charis is right, though. This is not the place for you. Charis can feel the Golden Valley reaching out to her. I shall escort her there. And you — you can hear life calling you. I know you are resisting it, Harad. But the call will get stronger.’
Harad’s head dropped, and he kissed Charis tenderly. ‘You are my life,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go on without you. I won’t!’
‘Love doesn’t die, Harad,’ she whispered. ‘And I will be waiting for you in that valley.’
He wanted to answer her, but felt strangely light-headed. A sense of weightlessness flowed through him. ‘Not yet!’ he shouted.
Then his weight returned, and he felt solid earth beneath his back, and mountain air filling his lungs.
Harad opened his eyes. Skilgannon was beside him to the right — the real Skilgannon, an ivory sword hilt jutting above his shoulder. Askari was sitting by his left. ‘Thought we’d lost you,’ said the warrior.
‘Your pulse faded for a while.’
‘Where is Charis?’
‘She died, Harad. I am sorry. Askari and I buried her.’
Harad tried to sit, but pain stabbed through his right side. He swore and sank back. Skilgannon spoke.
‘You are badly bruised, my friend, and may even have snapped a rib or two. You need to rest.’
‘How did she die? I pushed her away from the falling tree.’
‘A falling boulder struck her,’ said Skilgannon. ‘Death was instantaneous.’
Harad looked at the swordsman. ‘I saw your twin in the Void. He was with Druss. His name is Geoval. He lived near the coast.’
‘Druss told me he was protecting someone there.’ Skilgannon sighed. ‘Landis Kan killed him in order to give me his body. We exchanged places in the Void.’ He laid his hand on Harad’s shoulder. ‘Get some sleep. It will be night soon.’
‘It will always be night for me, from now on,’ said Harad.
Skilgannon moved away from the axeman. Askari joined him, and together they walked through the ruined wood. ‘That was a good lie to tell him,’ she said.
‘It was what a friend of mine once called a velvet lie. The truth would have crushed him.’
They paused by the graveside, and Skilgannon lifted Snaga from the ground. One of the blades was smeared with dried blood. He plunged it into the earth, then pulled up a section of long grass and rubbed at the blade until all sign of the stain had vanished. ‘We like to think of life as a constant,’ he said. ‘Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but that was a cruel way to die.’
‘They are all cruel, in their own way. And it wasn’t a complete lie. When the axe flew from Harad’s hand I think it struck the boulder and ricocheted. She would have known nothing. It was a swift, painless death.’
‘Yet pointless.’
‘Most deaths are,’ he said. ‘Even those that seem to have purpose. I died seeking to save a people I had grown to love. Now the nation no longer exists. The Angostin are part of the dust of history.
Ultimately my sacrifice was worth nothing. But then, ultimately, all the works of man are as nothing.’
‘Don’t agree,’ said Askari. ‘When I was a child I remember Kinyon rescuing a little boy from a cliff face. He was trapped on a ledge, a hundred feet above the ground. Kinyon climbed that rock face. It was raining, the holds were slippery. He almost fell several times. Yet he reached the child, swung him to his back, and made the long climb down. The boy died the following spring, of a fever. Does that mean Kinyon’s bravery was for nothing?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘My old swordmaster used to talk about the Now. It is all there is. The past is a memory, the future a dream, the present a reality. All we can ever do is live in the Now, and try to ensure that our deeds are worthy. Kinyon’s deed was worthy.’ He sighed. ‘You are right to chide me.
What counts is how we live now, not whether in a thousand years civilizations will fall.’
‘So what will we do now?’
‘We?’
‘You don’t want me with you?’
‘I don’t want you killed.’
‘If we can end the reign of the Eternal, then I won’t be,’ she said. ‘I don’t know much about destiny, and I don’t care about the Eternal and her magic. I never did. All I wanted was to live in the high country, to hunt, to swim, to eat, to laugh. It seems to me, though, that we are here for a reason. You, me, Harad.
Three Reborns, all from the same period in time. So tell me again of the prophecy, and let us try to make sense of it.’
‘There is no sense to any of it,’ he snapped. ‘Whatever Ustarte prophesied has become a piece of doggerel verse. Hero Reborn, torn from the grey, reunited with blades, of Night and of Day. Landis Kan did not tell me the rest of it, save, as I said, that it involved killing a mountain giant with a golden shield, and stealing an egg from a silver eagle.’
‘Perhaps the key to the riddle is in the tale of the eagle,’ she suggested.
‘A magical bird that flies round the sun?’
‘Feeds on the sun,’ she corrected, ‘and flies round the moon.’
‘Granting wishes to wizards,’ he said. ‘I was listening.’
‘Only with part of your mind. All legends have a base in fact. Kinyon told me that. They just get elaborated. They distort as they grow.’
‘There’s truth in that,’ he said. He laughed. ‘When Landis Kan first woke me I went to his library and studied all that was known about my life. I had no memory then, and wanted to learn about myself. Much of what I did was there, but hidden beneath ludicrous tales of flying horses and fire-breathing dragons.
Yes, you are right. We need to examine the fables. Tell me again all you can recall about the eagle.’
He listened as she spoke. ‘Why wizards?’ he said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Why would the bird grant wishes only to wizards? Why not heroes? Why not farmers?’
‘I don’t know. Righteous wizards, so the story goes. What are you thinking?’