He lay there for some hours, as the fever grew. Finally delirium took him. He tried to fight it, forcing himself from the bed and falling to the floor. Then he had staggered to the gardens, and out into the meadows beyond.
Skilgannon remembered little of what followed, save that he had tumbled down a steep incline, then crawled towards a distant building. He seemed to recall voices, and then gentle hands lifting him.
He had awoken to a silent room in a church hospital. His bed was beside a window, and through that window he saw a cloudless sky, rich and blue. A white bird had glided across his field of vision. In that moment everything froze and Skilgannon experienced… what? He still did not know. For a single heartbeat he had felt something akin to perfection, as if he and the bird, and the sky, and the room were somehow one and bathed in the love of the universe. Then it passed and the pain returned. Not just the physical pain from the huge, lanced cysts and the terrible toll they had taken on his body, but the agony of loss as he remembered that Dayan was gone from the world, no longer to hold his hand, or to kiss his lips. No more to lie beside him on still summer evenings, her hand stroking his face.
Despair clung to his heart like a raven.
A young priest visited him on that first day and sat at his bedside. ‘You are a lucky man, general. Aye, and a tough one. By all rights you should be dead. I have never seen any man fight off the plague as you did. At one point your heart was pounding so fast it was beyond my ability to keep count.’
‘Was the plague contained to our area?’
‘No, sir. It is sweeping through the kingdom and beyond. The death toll will be awesome.’
‘The revenge of the Source for our sins,’ said Skilgannon.
The priest shook his head. ‘We do not believe in a god of revenge, sir.
The plague was spread by man’s error and greed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In the northeast there is a tribe, the Kolear. You have heard of them?’
‘Kin to the Nadir and the Chiatze. They are nomads.’
‘Indeed, sir. One of their customs is that if they see a dead marmot -
small furry creatures that live in the lowlands — they move on. According to their beliefs the marmots contain the souls of Kolear wise men. That is why the Kolear do not hunt the creatures. A dead marmot is seen as a sign that the wise spirits have moved away and that the tribe should seek fresh pastures. During the war many of the Kolear sided with the Queen’s enemies, and were driven from their lands, or slain. Other non-Kolear residents moved in. They saw the marmots and decided to trap them for their fur. It is good fur. What they did not realize was that the marmots carried the seeds of a plague. At first the hunters and trappers fell sick.
Then their families. Then travellers and merchants who bought the fur.
Then it struck the eastern cities, and people fled, carrying the plague with them. Strange, is it not, that the backward Kolear had, within their simplistic theological beliefs, a way to avoid the plague, yet we — more civilized and knowledgeable — gathered it and spread it?’
Skilgannon was too weary to debate the point and drifted off to sleep.
Often now, though, he thought back to the priest’s words. It was not strange at all. One of the first of the Prophets wrote: The Tree of Knowledge bears fruit of arrogance.
Skilgannon sighed, and once more became Brother Lantern. He stripped off his clothing and began to exercise. Slowly he freed his mind of all tension, then smoothly ran through the repertoire of stretching and balance. Finally he began a series of swift, sudden moves, his hands lancing out, slashing the air, his body twirling and leaping, feet kicking high. Sweat-drenched, he pulled on his robes, and knelt on the stone floor.
For the first time in many days he thought of his swords, and wondered what the abbot had done with them. Had he sold them, or merely cast them in a pit? Giving up the Swords of Night and Day had been harder than he could ever have imagined. Even the act of passing them to Cethelin had caused his hands to tremble and his heart to flutter in panic.
For weeks afterwards he had struggled against a desire to retrieve them, to hold them again. He had felt physically sick for days, unable to hold down solid food. It was the opposite of the exhilaration he had experienced when the Queen gave them to him. When his hands first touched the ivory handles a sense of strength and purpose had flowed through his limbs. It seemed incomprehensible then that they had been created by the loathsome hag in the faded red gown who had stood alongside the young Queen. Mostly bald, wisps of straggly white hair clung to her skull like mist on rock. Once she would have been heavily built, but now the wrinkled skin of her face hung loose over the folds of her neck.
Her eyes were rheumy, and one was marred by a grey cataract.
‘Are they pleasing to you, Olek?’ she had asked. Her dry voice raised gooseflesh on the back of his neck, and he looked away as she smiled, showing rotted teeth.
‘They are very fine,’ he said.
‘My swords are blessed,’ she told him. ‘I made one for Gorben many years ago. With it he almost conquered the world. Now I have made more.
Mighty weapons. They enhance the strength and speed of the wielder. The blades you carry now are fit for a king.’
‘I have no wish to be a king.’
The Old Woman laughed. ‘Which is why the Queen grants them to you, Olek Skilgannon. You are loyal — and that is a quality so rare as to be priceless. You will win many battles with these swords. You will win back the lands of Naashan for your Queen.’
Later, as he sat alone with the young Queen, Skilgannon voiced his disquiet. ‘The Old Woman is evil,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to use her swords.’
The Queen had laughed. ‘Oh, Olek! You are too rigid in your thinking.’
She had sat beside him, and he had smelt the perfume of her raven hair.
‘She is everything you say — and probably more. But we must win Naashan back and I will use every weapon I can gather.’ She drew a knife from her belt and held it up to the light. It was long and curved, the blade exquisitely engraved with ancient runes. ‘She gave me this. Is it not beautiful?’
‘Aye, it is.’
‘It is the Discerning Blade. It enhances wisdom. When I hold it I can see so many things. And so clearly. The Old Woman is evil, but she has proved herself loyal. Without her you and I would have been killed on that awful night. You know that. I need her strength, Olek. I need to rebuild the kingdom. As a vassal state to Gorben we could not grow. Now he is dead we can fulfil our own destiny. Take the swords. Use them. Use them for me.’
He had bowed his head, then lifted her hand to his lips. ‘For you I would do anything, majesty.’
‘Not anything, Olek,’ she said softly.
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘Do you love her more than you love me?’
‘No. I will never love anyone that much. I did not know I was capable of loving with such intensity.’
‘You could still come to my bed, Olek,’ she whispered, sliding in close to him and kissing his cheek. ‘I could be Sashan again. Just for you.’
He rose from the couch with a groan. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If I did that it would rip away all my reasoning. We would destroy everything we have fought for. Everything your father died for. You have my heart, Jianna. You have my soul. I loved you as Sashan, and I love you now. But it cannot be! There is nothing more I can give. Dayan is my wife. She is sweet, and she is kind.