Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

the decks of the ships at anchor there. The steady murmur of sound that had been present all morning swelled to a crescendo as the doors swung open, and then it abruptly stopped and fell away as the crowd caught sight of her. A rigid, straining silence seemed to claim Chiara under the blue arch of the sky; and out into that stillness Dianora went.

And it was then, as they moved into the brilliant sunshine along the aisle, the shining path that had been made for her passage, that she saw Brandin waiting by the sea for her, dressed like a soldier-king, without extravagance, bareheaded in the light of spring.

Something twisted within her at the sight of him, like a blade in a wound. It will end soon, she told herself steadily. Only a little longer now. It will all be over soon enough.

She went towards him then, walking like a Queen, slender and tall and proud, clad in the colours of the dark-green sea with a crimson gem about her throat. And she knew that she loved him, and knew her land was lost if he was not driven away or slain, and she grieved with all her being for the simple truth that her mother and her father had had a daughter born to them all those years ago.

For someone as small as he was it was hopeless to try to see anything from the harbour square itself, and even the deck of the ship that had brought them here from Corte was thronged with people who had paid the captain for a chance to view the Dive from this vantage point. Devin had made his way over to the mainmast and scrambled up to join another dozen men clinging to the rigging high above the sea. There were compensations inherent in agility.

Erlein was somewhere below amid the crowd on deck. He was still terrified, after three days here, by this enforced proximity to the sorceror from Ygrath. It was one thing, he had said angrily, to elude Trackers in the south, another for a wizard to walk up to a sorceror.

Alessan was somewhere among the crowd in the harbour. Devin had spotted him at one point working his way towards the pier, but couldn’t see him now. Danoleon was inside the palace itself, representing Lower Corte in the ceremony. The irony of that was almost overwhelming, whenever Devin allowed himself to think about it. He tried not to because it made him afraid, for all of them.

But Alessan had been decisive when the courteously phrased request had come for the High Priest to travel north and join men of the other three provinces as formal witnesses to the Ring Dive.

‘You will go, of course,’ the Prince had said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘And we shall be there as well. I need to take the measure of things on Chiara since this change.’

‘Are you absolutely mad?’ Erlein had gasped, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

Alessan had only laughed, though not, Devin thought, with any real amusement. He had become virtually impossible to read since his mother had died. Devin felt quite inadequate to the task of bridging that space or breaking through. Several times in the days following Pasithea’s death he had found himself desperately wishing that Baerd was with them.

‘What about Savandi?’ Erlein had demanded. ‘Couldn’t this be a trap for Danoleon. Or for you, even?’

Alessan shook his head. ‘Hardly. You said yourself, no message was sent. And it is entirely plausible that he was killed by brigands in the countryside as Torre made it seem. The King of the Western Palm has larger things to worry about right now than one of his petty spies. I’m not concerned about that, Erlein, but I do thank you for your solicitude.’ He smiled, a wintry smile. Erlein had scowled and stalked away.

‘What are you concerned about?’ Devin had asked the Prince.

But Alessan hadn’t answered that.

High in the rigging of the Aema Falcon Devin waited with the others for the palace doors to open, and tried to control the pounding of his heart. It was difficult though; the sense of excitement and anticipation that had been building on the Island for three days had started to become overwhelming this morning, and had taken an almost palpable shape when Brandin himself had appeared and walked calmly down to the pier with a small retinue, including one stooped, balding old man dressed exactly like the King.

‘Brandin’s Fool,’ the Cortean in the rigging next to him said, when Devin asked, pointing. ‘Something to do with sorcery, the way they do things in Ygrath.’ He grunted. ‘We’re better off not knowing.’

Devin had gazed for the first time at the man who had destroyed Tigana and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a bow in his hands right now and Baerd’s or Alessan’s skill at archery. It was a long, but not an impossible shot, down, and across a span of water to strike a single soberly clad, bearded man standing by the sea.

Imagining the flight of that arrow in the morning sun, he remembered another conversation with Alessan, at the rail of the Falcon the night they reached Chiara.

‘What do we want to happen?’ Devin had asked.

Word had reached the Gulf of Corte just before they sailed that most of the Second Company of Alberico’s Barbadian mercenaries had now been pulled back from the border forts and cities in Ferraut and were marching with the other armies towards Senzio. Hearing that, Alessan’s face had gone pale, and there was a sudden hard glitter in his grey eyes.

Much like his mother’s, Devin had thought, but would not dream of saying.

On the ship Alessan had turned to him briefly at the question and then looked back out to sea. It was very late, nearer dawn than midnight. Neither of them had been able to sleep. Both moons were overhead and the water gleamed