Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

‘I know what you just told me. I make my own judgements though, I always have. And the truth is, I have been made to realize tonight—by you and Catriana, both—that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause. Even my own.’

As Alessan finished speaking, he stepped forward quickly and laid a hand on Erlein’s brow. The wizard flinched, but Alessan steadied him. ‘I am Alessan, Prince of Tigana,’ he said clearly, ‘direct in descent from Micaela. In the name of Adaon and his gift to her children, I release you to your freedom, wizard!’

Both men suddenly staggered apart, as if a taut cord had been cut. Erlein’s face was bone-white. ‘I tell you again,’ he rasped, ‘you are a fool!’

Alessan shook his head. ‘You have called me worse than that, with some cause. But now I will name you something you will probably hate: I will unmask you as a decent man, with the same longing to be free as any of us here. Erlein, you cannot hide any more behind your moods and rancour. You cannot channel into me your own hatred of the Tyrants. If you choose to leave us, you can. I do not expect you will. Be welcome, freely, to our company.’

Erlein looked cornered, assailed. His expression was so confused Devin laughed aloud; the whole situation was clear to him now, and comical, in a bizarre, twisted way. He stepped forward and gripped the wizard.

‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re with us.’

‘I’m not! I haven’t said that!’ Erlein snapped. ‘I haven’t said or done any such thing!’

‘Of course you have.’ It was Sandre, the evidence of exhaustion and pain still vivid in his lined, dark face. ‘You did it tonight. Alessan is right. He knows you better than any of us. Better, in some ways, than you know yourself, troubadour. How long have you tried to make yourself believe that nothing mattered to you but your own skin? How many people have you convinced that that was true? I’m one. Baerd and Devin. Perhaps Catriana. Not Alessan, Erlein. He just set you free to prove us all wrong.’

There was a silence. They could hear shouting from the streets below now, and the sound of running footsteps. Erlein turned to Alessan and the two men gazed at each other. Devin was suddenly claimed by an image, another of his intrusions of memory: that campfire in Ferraut, Alessan playing songs of Senzio for Erlein, an enraged shadow by the river. There were so many layers here, so many charges of meaning.

He saw Erlein di Senzio raise his hand, his left hand, with a simulation of five fingers there, and offer it to Alessan. Who met it with his right so their palms touched.

‘I suppose I am with you,’ Erlein said. ‘After all.’

‘I know,’ said Alessan.

‘Come!’ said Baerd, a second later. ‘We have work to do.’ Devin followed him, with Ducas and Sertino and Naddo, towards the back stairs beyond the window.

Just before stepping through Devin turned to look back at the bed. Erlein noticed, and followed his gaze.

‘She’s fine,’ the wizard said softly. ‘She’ll be just fine. Do what you have to do, and come back to us.’

Devin glanced up at him. They exchanged an almost shy smile. ‘Thank you,’ Devin said, meaning a number of things. Then he followed Baerd down into the tumult of the streets.

She was actually awake for a few moments before she opened her eyes. She was lying somewhere soft and unexpectedly familiar, and there were voices drifting towards and away from her, as if on a swelling of the sea, or like slow-moving fireflies in the summer nights at home. At first she couldn’t quite make the voices out. She was afraid to open her eyes.

‘I think she is awake now,’ someone was saying. ‘Will you all do me a great courtesy and leave me alone with her for a few moments?’

She knew that voice though. She heard the sound of a number of people rising and leaving the room. A door closed. That voice was Alessan’s.

Which meant she could not be dead. These were not Morian’s Halls, after all, with the voices of the dead surrounding her. She opened her eyes.

He was sitting on a chair drawn close to where she lay. She was in her own room in Solinghi’s inn, lying under a blanket in bed. Someone had removed the black silk gown and washed the blood from her skin. Anghiar’s blood, that had fountained from his throat.

The rush of memory was dizzying.

Quietly, Alessan said, ‘You are alive. Erlein was waiting in the garden below you. He rendered you unconscious and then caught you with his magic as you fell and brought you back.’

She let her eyes fall shut again as she struggled to deal with all of this. With the fact of life, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, the beat of her heart, this curiously light-headed sensation, as if she might drift away on the slightest of breezes.

But she wouldn’t. She was in Solinghi’s and Alessan was beside her. He had asked all the others to leave. She turned her head and looked at him again. He was extremely pale.

‘We thought you had died,’ he said. ‘We saw you fall from outside the garden wall. What Erlein did, he did on his own. None of us knew. We thought you had died,’ he repeated after a moment.

She thought about that. Then she said: ‘Did I achieve anything? Is anything happening?’

He pushed a hand through his hair. ‘It is too soon to tell for certain. I think you did, though. There is a great deal of commotion in the streets. If you listen you can hear it.’

Concentrating, she could indeed make out the sounds of shouting and running feet passing beneath the window.

Alessan seemed unnaturally subdued, struggling with something. It was very peaceful in the room though. The bed was softer than she had remembered