Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (40 page)

‘S
hould we barge in as your cousin did?’ Kert asked.

Talis shook his head. Once again he was stuck with Sh’hale as a companion when he desired it not. ‘We must wait,’ he said.

At The Catalyst’s insistence, neither could intrude on the chamber where she, Pagan and Vandal now spoke in private. It was one of the many occasions in his life when Talis wished to disobey a royal command. Instead, he trusted The Catalyst’s greater vision and waited outside her door in the ill-lit corridor to see what would eventuate, his thoughts far from the calm a Guardian should cultivate.

By the look of him, Sh’hale’s mind was no more settled. The last time Kert had seen Glimmer was an hour earlier when he had placed Vandal, securely tied, at her feet. Locked outside her door, he must surely be fretting for his charge’s safety as well. Talis could only hope that the boy was still immobilised. Glimmer grew weaker with each world that was destroyed, and Pagan, weakened himself by the Rite of Revival, would not last long in a duel if his son somehow broke loose.

They had heard no raised voices, but Pagan’s state of mind had been as volatile as the Maelstrom itself. Talis had counselled him to spend time alone with his feelings and align them with honour and duty rather than passion and pride. But instead Pagan had left Lae in a healing slumber and, literally trembling with anger and the desire to confront his son, had barged in on Glimmer’s private conversation with Vandal and been allowed to stay. Talis, trailing his cousin, had been stranded outside with Kert, waiting and wondering what might be happening behind the solid timber door.

‘I had to kill him,’ Kert said, and Talis was a moment reorganising his thoughts.

Mooraz.

‘Lae will grieve his death,’ Talis said, knowing they must tell her soon, ‘as do I,’ remembering the thoroughness and patience Mooraz had brought to his service of the House Be’uccdha, and his devotion to Lae which none had suspected disguised feelings of love. ‘Yet it had to be done. To protect Vandal.’ Talis understood that Vandal must live if the Four Worlds were to be joined. But that didn’t diminish his horror at what the boy had done.

‘I had to kill someone,’ Kert said, gazing away into the shadowed end of the corridor. ‘Glimmer would never have let me hurt Vandal.’

‘And your rage at Lae’s death required vengeance.’

Kert fingered the hilt of his sword. ‘Yes.’

It wasn’t honourable, but it was a sentiment Talis understood. He had seen similar rages many times on the battlefield and had felt them himself, yet the constraints and the training of Guardian blood had saved him from enacting them. Kert’s training was solely in the deadly arts of battle, and Talis wondered again, as he had many times, why Glimmer had chosen him as her love.

‘What can they be doing?’ Kert said in frustration.

Talis noticed the Sh’hale nobleman’s hands were shaking but he made no comment on that. ‘Pagan was Glimmer’s father in Magoria,’ Talis said. ‘Vandal, her brother. Perhaps she uses these memories to bind their anger and heal the distrust that lies between them.’

‘Family?’ Kert laughed. A hard, unpleasant sound. ‘You do not know The Catalyst at all if you imagine she harbours such sentiments.’

‘I did not say she felt them,’ Talis replied, ‘merely that she could use them to mend the rift between father and son.’

Kert looked away.

‘And I
do
believe she harbours feelings of family,’ Talis persisted. ‘With you. Yet clearly you feel no such bond with her’

‘There is a bond,’ Kert said, folding his arms and tucking his hands away where Talis could not see them. ‘There is … feeling.’ He would not meet Talis’s eye, and in the awkward silence that followed, his cheeks grew flushed.

‘The serpent will be upon us soon,’ Talis said, and Kert’s jaw tightened. ‘Perhaps you should tell her of this … feeling before she dies.’

Kert gazed at the wall across from him and shook his head. ‘I have lost two charges already,’ he said. ‘Two men who I loved more than life, one who was like a brother, and the other my son.’

‘I understand —’

‘
You
can’t understand,’ Kert spat, the animosity between them flaring again. ‘You have never lost a charge.’ He dropped his arms and turned on Talis. ‘How would you know what that does to your soul? To your heart?’ And here he slapped his chest. ‘It closes over. Layers of closure like the finest cloth sealing it in. Protecting it.’

‘Then what is this feeling you profess for The Catalyst?’ Talis demanded, struggling to keep his own voice down.

Kert glared at him, then tilted his chin and said, ‘Lust. Nothing more.’ He crossed his arms again and looked away. ‘The only
feeling
I have for her is desire to see her in my bed.’

Talis didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Then you care nothing for her safety?’

‘She is The Catalyst. She needs no protection,’ Kert said, but his belligerence was fading.

‘When she is attacked by the serpent, you will stand by and do nothing?’

Sh’hale didn’t favour this with a reply, he merely continued to stare at the stone wall before him, the line of his jaw as tight as a strung bow.

Glimmer was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to fall into her beloved’s arms in the comfortable bed that lay in the next room, yet here she was, wasting their precious remaining time arguing to ensure her brother’s safety.

‘… and now I trust you no more than I trust him,’ Pagan declared, turning to glare at his son who lay in the shadows away from the firelight that bathed Glimmer and her furious Guardian. She noted that father and son were not only alike in build and colouring, both with long black hair and dark eyes, but Vandal had even taken to dressing as his father did in the brown breeches and flowing shirt of a Guardian. Only age distanced them. It was little wonder Lae had become confused.

‘He will not harm your beloved again,’ Glimmer assured Pagan. ‘He was overcome with grief at the loss of his own betrothed, as I have shown you.’

Pagan turned his glare back onto Glimmer. Clearly the memories of Petra’s death she had given him were not adequate justification for his son’s actions.

Vandal, bound but ungagged on the floor, could have spoken to soften his father’s heart towards him, but he merely glared back, his eyes two slits of emptiness in the shadows.

Glimmer wanted to sigh, and wondered if that was yet another sign of her emotional deterioration. Her golden gown was soiled, matching the sitting room they occupied which was part of a long unused guest suite. Thick dust covered the black sateen couches and the air stank of dust burnt on the many thin candles the ceiling chandeliers housed. In the next room, however, beneath the quilts of the bed, the sheets were smooth and clean. She longed for their caress. And Kert’s.

If they hadn’t been about to battle Teleqkraal, she would simply leave time to heal these wounds. But she had to be sure Pagan would not attack his son while her attention was distracted. And she could not restrain any of her Guardians. All would be needed.

She went back to Pagan’s most recent accusation. ‘What has happened to make you mistrust me?’ she asked.

‘I see from the memories you gave me that you are his confederate,’ Pagan said, stabbing a finger towards his son. ‘You waylaid him between Magoria and Ennae, and on hearing his plan to murder Lae, you let him keep his memories of Magoria and aided him on his way.’

Glimmer glanced at Vandal, wondering how she would answer this. He simply returned her stare, offering nothing of himself. She wondered whether he still wanted revenge on his father, or whether guilt over his own actions had begun to dissolve his anger.

‘And Sh’hale!’ Pagan went on raging. ‘For all his professed love of Lae, did he do aught to stop my son?’

‘Kert could do nothing to thwart my will,’ Glimmer said. ‘He was my prisoner.’

‘He is my enemy,’ Pagan spat. ‘He killed Mooraz, when that was my right alone —’

‘And what of Lae?’ Glimmer demanded regally. ‘Should you have let her remain in death while you sought this revenge?’

Pagan’s breath was fast and his eyes still wild, yet he added no further impetuous words.

‘You must make peace with your son,’ Glimmer ordered. ‘The serpent comes.’

Pagan’s eyes narrowed. ‘How do I know he will not try again for the life of my love?’

‘Will you?’ Glimmer asked Vandal.

He stared back at her, ignoring his father now, and there was something of searching in his eyes. Glimmer felt a pang of sympathy then. But that was only another betrayal of her diminishing control.

‘Speak!’ Pagan ordered of his son. ‘Will you seek to harm my love?’

Vandal turned his head slowly to look upon his father. ‘I will not,’ he said clearly.

Pagan’s chest still rose and fell in agitation, but some of the heat dissolved from his glare. His voice, however, remained untrusting. ‘How can I be sure of what you say? You have no honour on which to bind such a vow.’

‘I killed her and it didn’t make me feel any better,’ he said. ‘Why would I do it again?’

Pagan’s mouth fell open. ‘You killed my beloved, the mother of your own child,
to feel better?
’ The wild look came back into his eyes and Glimmer saw him flick a glance around the room. Searching for a weapon?

‘You can’t imagine the pain I felt when Petra died,’ Vandal said, his voice hard. ‘I killed Lae to stop it. To make it go away.’

‘But it did not?’ Glimmer asked, interested for her own sake — Kert’s imminent death was large in her mind.

Vandal looked at her as if he’d like to hurt her too. ‘No, it didn’t.’ He turned his face away from them both.

Glimmer returned her attention to Pagan. ‘He is reconciled to Lae’s survival. Can you be reconciled to his release? I need him to defeat the serpent.’

Pagan looked at her, then turned away and walked to the closed door, stopping before it, presumably gazing blindly at the polished timber panel before him. She watched his shoulders rise and fall. When several minutes had passed he turned back to her. ‘Do you ask me to forgive him?’

‘No.’

Pagan did not look at his son. ‘Then I give you my vow that I will not attack him.
Yet
I will not hesitate to defend myself or others from his ill intent.’

Vandal turned back to look at his father then. ‘My ill intent is over,’ he said softly.

Glimmer nodded at this. ‘And you?’ she asked Pagan. ‘Where do your loyalties lie?’

‘I am a Guardian,’ he replied stiffly. ‘My life is to serve the throne.’

‘Remember that,’ she told him, then nodded for him to leave. She’d had enough of argument for one day.

Pagan, however, had a parting remark. ‘You were wrong,’ he said to his son, ‘I can well imagine the pain you suffered the day your beloved was killed.’ He followed this with a glare, then swung the door wide to take his leave.

‘I deserved that,’ Vandal said.

‘You are lucky I need you,’ Glimmer replied. ‘It is all that keeps you alive.’

‘Not for long, though, I’ll bet.’

Outside the door she heard Pagan speaking to Talis, leading him away. Then Kert stood in the threshold blocking her view.

‘May
I
enter now?’ he asked. If she had bothered to read auras as her stepsister did, Glimmer would have seen frustration coming off her beloved in waves. ‘Or are there more secret conversations to be had?’

‘I will speak to my brother alone now,’ Glimmer said, knowing that if Kert touched her, she would not care for anything but to find sanctuary in his arms. And there was work to do first. ‘Would you untie him?’ she asked, knowing she barely had the energy to keep her head aloft.

‘And leave you here with him, unguarded?’

‘If you please,’ she said.

Kert turned his attention to their captive.

Vandal merely tsked and said, ‘If looks could kill.’ Then, ‘Ouch,’ when Kert was unnecessarily forceful with his bonds. At last Vandal was free and he stood and shook himself off, then stepped past Kert who bristled and leant forward in anticipation, but the boy merely draped himself across a couch and raised his eyebrow at his sister.

‘Thank you,’ Glimmer said to Kert. ‘We will not be long.’ She waited until Kert had marched stiffly from the room before saying to her brother, ‘Do you want them to kill you?’

Vandal shrugged. ‘Sure, why not? Quid pro quo.’

‘Sarcasm does not become you,’ she said. ‘But then, it never has. You were changed when you loved Petra.’

‘Love will do that,’ he said flippantly, but his expression had grown guarded.

‘Do you care to redeem yourself in her eyes?’ Glimmer asked and Vandal’s relaxed posture disappeared.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you want her to forgive you for your transgression against Lae?’

He sat up stiffly and faced her, his expression nervous and yet full of longing at the same time. ‘Is she watching me?’ he asked.

‘Anyone who has died can watch those on the physical plane. If they care to.’

Vandal sucked in a slow unsteady breath. ‘She cared,’ he said.

‘And your mother, Sarah,’ Glimmer speculated.

‘Is she watching me too?’ he asked softly, as though Sarah could hear him.

‘Probably. Would you like to redeem yourself in her eyes as well?’

He shook his head. ‘I killed her. How could I possibly —?’

‘You have copied her actions,’ Glimmer pointed out. ‘You killed an innocent.’

‘Lae wasn’t innocent —’ he started in but Glimmer cut him off.

‘That is simply your perception, and one your father disagrees with. Just as you disagreed with your mother about Petra’s innocence.’ She gave him a minute to take that in before adding, ‘By redeeming yourself of Lae’s death, you could show Sarah that she is redeemed of Petra’s.’

Vandal shook his head, his eyes wide and vulnerable. ‘Mum doesn’t need to be redeemed.’ Tears brimmed his eyelashes. ‘It wasn’t her fault. She was crazy. She —’ He hiccupped a breath but couldn’t go on. His hands came up to cover his face and he wept. Glimmer let him.

Finally, after a long time, he straightened and turned away from her, but she saw that his eyelashes were clumped together like starfish, the way they had been when they were children and he’d been hurt at school. Vandal had always cried silently. For some reason, remembering that made her chest ache.