Tanalvah was in a bed on the far side of the room, well away from the shuttered window. She still looked very pale. The expression she wore when she saw her fellow Qalochian was unreadable.
‘How are you, Tan?’ Serrah asked.
‘I’m all right,’ she replied, unconvincingly. Her eyes were on Caldason.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he said.
‘Reeth,’ she whispered, lifting her hand to him.
It took Caldason a second to realise she wanted him to take it. When he did, lightly, her flesh was cold. She squeezed, her nails biting.
‘I’m sorry, Reeth,’ she breathed. ‘So sorry.’
‘There’s no need-’
‘Oh, but there is.’ Her gaze was intense. ‘Please forgive me.’
Caldason said nothing. After a moment she let go of his hand and slipped into an apparent drowse.
Kinsel came over and whispered a faltering apology.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Serrah told him. ‘We know she’s under a lot of strain. You all are. How are Lirrin and Teg?’
He nodded. ‘Fine. Or as fine as we could hope under the circumstances. How are things going on the outside?’
‘Mixed,’ Caldason replied. ‘The best you can do is stay put here with your family, and do as you’re told if we have to evacuate.’
‘Will it come to that? I mean, where could we move to?’
‘I’m sure it won’t,’ Serrah assured him. ‘Now you concentrate on looking after Tan and leave everything else to us.’ She planted a kiss on the singer’s cheek.
They made their goodnights in an undertone and slipped out.
Once they were sufficiently far from the door, Serrah said, ‘What did you think?’
‘She doesn’t look much like a bonny mother-to-be, does she?’
‘No. Something’s definitely wrong, but the healers can’t find anything specific. It seems obvious it’s in her mind.’
‘What does that mean?’
Serrah looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose I’m agreeing with what you said earlier; she’s been left low by her experiences. Melancholic. But she did try to make up with you.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes. She was apologising for your past differences.’
‘You think that’s what she was doing?’
‘What else?’
‘Let’s find Kutch, shall we?’
The Covenant sorcerers had been given a wing in the redoubt. On the way there, Serrah and Reeth ran into Goyter, who was looking for them.
After welcoming Caldason back, she said, ‘Phoenix wants you. Apparently there’s been some kind of breakthrough.’
They hurried to the wizards’ quarters and were quickly admitted. In a large hall, full of tables stacked with the paraphernalia of magic, makeshift beds and a scattering of chairs, Phoenix greeted them. Then Kutch emerged from the jumble, beamed widely, and joined them. Wendah, always his shadow these days, was close behind.
‘So what’s happened?’ Caldason wondered.
‘The hypnosis and infusions and…well, the several techniques we were able to apply to Praltor, have paid a small dividend,’ Phoenix explained. ‘But as he’s had the burden to carry I think it only right that he be the one to tell you about it.’
‘A small dividend,’ Serrah repeated. ‘Not greatly significant then?’
‘A small part of the wealth of knowledge the Source undoubtedly contains,’ the elderly magician made clear, ‘but a revelation in the normal course of things. Come, hear about it.’
They followed, intrigued. Phoenix took them to a bedchamber, one of several lining a corridor off the hall, and Kutch and Wendah crowded in behind him.
Praltor Mahaganis looked tiny in the vastness of an imposing four-poster bed, but his complexion was ruddier, thanks to some nourishment and certain restorative herbs he’d been given. His sightless eyes had a vigour that was close to unnerving.
Wendah moved to sit on the bed beside him, their hands meeting.
‘We have, you understand, come practically nowhere in terms of extracting any substantial material from Praltor’s brain,’ Phoenix said. ‘I’m not sure we ever shall, particularly given the time restraints we’re all labouring under now. But we have managed to unlock one segment, quite possibly as much by happenstance as intent, and released certain information into his conscious mind. Praltor?’
‘It was as though a whole slew of memories appeared in my head.’ There was a note of something like astonishment in the old man’s voice. ‘Which is absurd, because I couldn’t possibly have been present at the events depicted. Yet I…see what I see, in my mind’s eye, and it’s wondrous and terrible, and I don’t know if a mortal should be privy to such things.’
‘Go on,’ Wendah gently urged.
‘I was wrong,’ the old man confessed. ‘I thought that Founder descendants survived as some secret cult, hidden away from the world. I could hope for so comfortable a truth.’ He paused, massaging the bridge of his nose with thumb and index finger. ‘The Founders were once something like us,’ he resumed. ‘That was an unimaginably long time ago, when even the stars in the sky held different patterns to the ones now. Theirs was a magical civilisation, like ours, except that they constantly originated and refined the sorcery, and didn’t just consume it. Over an ocean of time these beings developed an ever greater expertise in the noble art. And through its use they evolved into…something else. Somehow they conquered material existence, or rather transcended it, and cast aside flesh and blood to exist in a non-corporeal state. They created a realm that was infinitely malleable, where their hearts’ desires could be fashioned at will. This is what we call the Dreamtime, and it would have been utterly alien to us in every way. It’s the place that you, Reeth, have visited in the visions that plague you; one of the heritages of your Founder blood.’
‘I saw it too,’ Kutch reminded them. ‘I shared Reeth’s dreams.’
‘You did,’ Mahaganis granted, ‘briefly, because of your inherent spotting talent, and the training you undertook to bring it out. Magic draws magic, they say, and what Reeth carries intermingled with your gift, Kutch. I would expect the same thing to happen to Wendah if she spent appreciable amounts of time in Reeth’s company, though your talents are different.’
‘Are you telling us anything we didn’t already know or hadn’t guessed?’ Caldason asked.
‘Hear me out and decide. The Founders moulded existence to their own design. They even defied death, gaining immortality or something very much like it. You Reeth, and Phoenix and myself, have all had a taste of that, just from touching the hem of the Founders’ gown, so to speak. You could say they created a kind of heaven. They certainly seemed to think so. But there was just enough of the beast in them still, a trace of the savage from the days when they were like us. And they did as savages will do and fell into dispute. They had two basic philosophies, opposing ways of reckoning with life, and a schism opened up. There was war in heaven. The upshot of all the destruction they wrought wasn’t extinction, as you might expect, but a fall from grace.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Serrah confessed.
‘Simply that. They fell. The heights they’d attained were lost to them. Their towering triumphs slipped from their grasp. They were relegated to flesh again, which they found loathsome. But they still had power, and they survived, and their quarrel carried on. For ages the two groups have been locked in a death struggle like a pair of scorpions. They’ve battled each other with humans as their pawns, perpetuating their ancient war. Only now, fearing a tangible threat, have they finally reunited to preserve themselves.’
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Serrah said.
‘The Founders didn’t die. Nor do they survive as a line of mere offspring with watered-down blood in their veins. Aided by what was left of their magic, they founded the empires. And now they’re coming to get us.’
30
The weather in most of Bhealfa was abysmal, and particularly along its eastern coast. High winds, driven snow and freezing sleet. No one should have been travelling, and sensible people weren’t, particularly at night, but Prince Melyobar’s court never stopped under any circumstances. Movement was its rationale, its reason for being. And in theory at least, it was better protected than other forms of transportation and more able to withstand bad weather.