Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

life, he was here among an alien people he had conquered, asking for their aid, needing their belief in him. She was his lifeline now, his only bridge to the Palm, his only link, really, to any kind of future here, or anywhere.

But Tigana’s ruin lay between the two of them like a chasm in the world. The lesson of her days, Dianora thought, was simply this: that love was not enough. Whatever the songs of the troubadours might say. Whatever hope it might seem to offer, love was simply not enough to bridge the chasm in her world. Which was why she was here, what the riselka’s vision in the garden had offered her: an ending to the terrible, bottomless divisions in her heart. At a price, however, that was not negotiable. One did not bargain with the gods.

She came up to Brandin at the end of the pier and stopped and the others stopped behind her. A sigh, rising and falling away like a dying of wind, moved through the square. With an odd trick of the mind her vision seemed to detach itself from her eyes for a moment, to look down on the pier from above. She could see how she must appear to the people gathered there: inhuman, otherworldly.

As Onestra must have seemed before the last Dive. Onestra had not come back, and devastation had followed upon that. Which was why this was her chance: the dark doorway history offered to release, and to the incarnation of her long dream in the saishan.

The sunlight was very bright, gleaming and dancing on the blue-green sea. There was so much colour and richness in the world. Beyond Rhun, she saw a woman in a brilliant yellow robe, an old man in blue and yellow, a younger, dark-haired man in brown with a child upon his shoulders. All come to see her dive. She closed her eyes for a moment, before she turned to look at Brandin. It would have been easier not to, infinitely easier, but she knew that there were dangers in not meeting his gaze. And, in the end, here at the end, this was the man she loved.

Last night, lying awake, watching the slow transit of the moons across her window, she had tried to think of what she could say to him when she reached the end of the pier. Words beyond those of the ritual, to carry layers of meaning down through the years.

But there, too, lay danger, a risk of undoing every-thing this moment was to become. And words, the ones she would want to say, were just another reaching out towards making something whole, weren’t they? Towards bridging the chasms. And in the end that was the point, wasn’t it? There was no bridge across for her.

Not in this life.

‘My lord,’ she said formally, carefully, ‘I know I am surely unworthy, and I fear to presume, but if it is pleasing to you and to those assembled here I will try to bring you the sea-ring back from the sea.’

Brandin’s eyes were the colour of skies before rain. His gaze never wavered from her face. He said, ‘There is no presumption, love, and infinite worthiness. You ennoble this ceremony with your presence here.’

Which confused her, for these were not the words they had prepared. But then he looked away from her, slowly, as if turning away from light.

‘People of the Western Palm!’ he cried, and his voice was clear and strong, a King’s, a leader of men, carrying resonantly across the square and out among the tall ships and the fishing boats. ‘We are asked by the Lady Dianora if we find her worthy to dive for us. If we will place our hopes of fortune in her, to seek the Triad’s blessing in the war Barbadior brings down upon us. What is your reply? She waits to hear!’

And amid the thunderous roar of assent that followed, a roar as loud and sure as they had known it would be after so much pent-up anticipation, Dianora felt the brutal irony of it, the bitter jest, seize hold of her.

Our hopes of fortune. In her? The Triad’s blessing. Through her?

In that moment, for the first time, here at the very margin of the sea, she felt fear come in to lay a finger on her heart. For this truly was a ritual of the gods, a ceremony of great age and numinous power and she was using it for her own hidden purposes, for something shaped in her mortal heart. Could such a thing be allowed, however pure the cause?

She looked back then at the palace and the mountains that had defined her life for so long. The snows were gone from the peak of Sangarios. It was on that summit that Eanna was said to have made the stars. And named them all. Dianora looked away and down, and she saw Danoleon gazing at her from his great height. She looked into the calm, mild blue of his eyes and felt herself reach out and back through time to take strength and sureness from his quietude.

Her fear fell away like a discarded garment. It was for Danoleon, and for those like him who had died, for the books and the statues and the songs and the names that were lost that she was here. Surely the Triad would understand that when she was brought to her final accounting for this heresy? Surely Adaon would remember Micaela by the sea? Surely Eanna of the Names would be merciful?

Slowly then, Dianora nodded her head as the roar of sound finally receded; seeing that, the High Priestess of the god came forward in her crimson gown and helped her free of the dark-green robe.

Then she was standing by the water, clad only in the thin green undertunic that barely reached her knees, and Brandin was holding a ring in his hand.

‘In the name of Adaon and of Morian,’ he said, words of ritual,