The Three Lands Omnibus Part 53

I walked over to the hearth then and touched the mask of the Jackal. I could go to the Jackal now without asking the Chara's permission, and perhaps bring peace and perhaps bring greater trouble to Peter. Or I could go back to the Chara, leaving Ursula unprotected. Or I could take her with me by force to the governor, and then watch as she was arrested so that she could be tortured into revealing the Jackal's whereabouts. Or I could lie to Peter.

Ursula was waiting, and as I glanced her way I saw that her eyes were filled with uncertainty. A curse rose in my mind against the Jackal, so cold and dispa.s.sionate a G.o.d that he would put a young woman in danger's way. Yet the same G.o.d had said that he would reveal himself to the Chara, and I remembered Peter's questions through the last few days a to John, to Lord Alan, to me. All of those questions had been aimed at discovering what sort of man the Jackal was.

Finally I said, "The Jackal ought to have arranged that I could ask the Chara first what I should do. But the Chara told me today that he wanted me to be his amba.s.sador to the Jackal, so I will take that as his permission, and hope for the best."

Ursula came over to my side and placed her hand on my arm. "You won't regret it, Andrew, I promise you. The G.o.d's ways often seem harsh, but he is always right in what he does, and he brings not only peace to this land but also peace to the heart of those who know him. I have found that, no matter how much I suffer in following his commands, it is worth it all to have heard the voice of a G.o.d."

A short time later, any G.o.ds looking down upon us could have located us winding our way through the dark streets of Koretia's capital.

Ursula guided us faultlessly around the patrols of the city watchman and the governor's soldiers. As a slave I had been taught to move quietly and un.o.btrusively, but Ursula flowed from one doorway to the next as though she were a night shadow, and my spine began to p.r.i.c.kle as I realized that I was indeed in the presence of one of the Jackal's legendary thieves, a creature who could enter locked houses, steal past guarded doors, and murder a n.o.bleman in his chambers while his servants slept nearby.

She still wore no weapon, and I found myself wondering what she would do if we were sighted. Then I started to round a corner before she did. The next moment she had slammed me back into the shadows, hissed, "Stay!" and walked around the same corner herself, singing lightly under her breath.

Startled by the strength of her shove, I stayed in the shadows as I heard a man say, "Ursula, my dear, what are you doing out at this hour? Where is your husband?"

I ventured to peer round the corner and saw Ursula standing with her hands on her hips, merrily looking up into the face of the city watchman. "And where would any man be at this hour, Druce? I have come to drag John away from the Flower and Flame to the bed where he belongs."

The watchman gave a hearty laugh. "At work all day and up all night? That sounds like John the trader to me. I have never seen him when he did not look weary to the death. Here, I will escort you to the tavern, as I think that John is unwise to leave his pretty wife alone when other men may sneak into his bed while he is gone."

Ursula made no protest, but took the arm that the watchman proffered and disappeared into the tavern I had visited that noonday. After a minute the watchman left, and after several minutes Ursula slid out of the doorway and slipped, quick as moonlight, back to where I stood.

"That was lucky," she said under her breath. "The tavern-keeper's daughter there is one of us; she listens in on the conversation of traders like John so that she can obtain information for the Jackal. She told the watchman that John was in the back room."

John's name rose to my lips, but I whispered instead, "How did you learn to lie so well?"

"It isn't easy for me," she replied. "But whenever I'm working for the Jackal it seems as though he's with me, guiding what I do."

She said no more, for we were still in the open street. I silently followed Ursula, taking care not to outpace her again. As we went, I found myself wis.h.i.+ng that John were here with us. As Brendon had told the subcaptain, it was John who could best judge what sort of man the Jackal was.

Was the Jackal really a G.o.d, as I had always thought? Or was he just a man who used trickery to convince his thieves that he had divine powers? John had heard the G.o.ds' voices in his visions and would know in an instant whether the Jackal actually held the G.o.d's powers, but what proof should I ask of the rebel-leader?

The tavern was not far from the city wall, and there we stopped, sliding our way down into the ditch. A p.r.i.c.kling in my back began once more as Ursula guided me to the shallow hole under the wall. This time I was being mastered, not by fear, but by memory.

The hole had grown smaller since last I encountered it, or so it seemed to me, but I could still wriggle my way through. Ursula caught hold of my hand as we emerged into the shadowed side of the mountain. I followed her as she ducked her way across the governor's flower bed and through the trees, until we had reached the clearing in front of the cave entrance.

She stopped then, sat down abruptly on a flat rock in the clearing, and said in a low but relaxed voice, "We must wait until I see the signal that the Jackal has arrived in his lair."

I glanced at the cave entrance, and then looked back down at the wall we had just emerged from. "I've been through that tunnel before."

"I know. John told me how you used it when you were boys, so I searched it out, and now all of the thieves travel by it when they can't come in through the city gates."

I set aside an unpleasant vision of the thieves shoving a dead body through the tunnel and turned my gaze back to the dark hollow before us. It was the cave, I realized a the Jackal had made his lair in the cave where the Chara Nicholas had hidden his soldiers. The cave was close to the city but not within the regular patrolling ground of the mountainside soldiers a at least, not if the governor's subcommander ordered the patterns of patrolling I had known as a child. So unless the thieves did something to attract the attention of the border guards within the cave, they would not be found.

I asked, "How is it that you've been able to keep your thieves' work from John?"

"If you mean, how do I keep him from suspecting, that's easy enough, for the Jackal only gives me work when John is away on business. But if you mean, how can I stand to keep such a secret from the one I love ..." She drew up one knee against her body and placed her chin on it. Her eyes were fixed, not on the cave, but on the mountain slopes above. "It was one of John's trader friends who came and told me that the G.o.d wished to see me. The Jackal has many traders among his thieves because traders learn what happens in Koretia before anyone else does. John's friend told me that the Jackal had already called John to be one of his thieves, but that John had refused. So, since the Jackal could not have John, he sent his summons to me."

Ursula's eyes remained fixed on the mountain but she hugged the knee closer, as though trying to shut out some pain. "It took me three days to decide. I couldn't imagine lying to John, yet I couldn't imagine refusing the G.o.d. Finally I told the trader that I couldn't be sure of what to do until I spoke to the G.o.d himself, and the Jackal accepted me into his presence on that condition."

"And is he a G.o.d?" I said, finally putting the question to voice.

"I knew that he would be, but if I had had any hidden doubts, they were destroyed when I first saw the Jackal. He was standing there staring at me through his yellow eyes and smiling at me with his terrible teeth, and I knew that it was just a man wearing a mask, but I knew too that it was the G.o.d's mask, and that the G.o.d himself was there in the room with me. I could feel his power, and it was the power of the Jackal who kills his enemies without mercy and suffers wounds for his servants. I knew at that moment that I was right to come, so I pledged my loyalty to him, and I will always be his thief, in life or beyond death."

My breath hit the back of my throat as I watched her staring outwards, as I had seen John stare many times before, his eyes filled with visions of the G.o.ds. But Ursula, I knew, was not the type to see hidden visions. She believed she had seen the G.o.d in human form, and soon I would see this man too. For a moment, I lost all thought of the Chara.

Ursula added, "Later I realized that, by serving one of the G.o.ds whom John loved so much, I was really remaining loyal to John. It surprised me-" At Ursula's sudden silence, I looked up toward the mountain just in time to see a faint flicker of light, gone at once like a star falling from the sky. Ursula stood and said, "They're waiting for us."

She took my hand and we began travelling, not toward the cave, but toward where the light had flickered. The ground was black with shadows, and once again I lost our track and gave myself over blindly to Ursula's guidance. We wove in and out of trees and bushes, and between rocks, and I stumbled so often that I began to keep my eyes on the ground, seeing only my own feet and Ursula's. After a long while, she stopped. I looked up and saw a door.

My back began to sting again as Ursula opened the door of the G.o.ds' house. As we walked into the dark corridor, I caught a glimpse of some figures standing at the other end of the house. Their faces were in shadow, but the moonlight trapped itself on metal that one of the figures was holding. The blade shone for a moment like a piece of the sun.

Ursula tugged at my hand, and she began guiding me through the corridor I would have forgotten long before but for my dream. She reached a door, then hesitated and touched my hand before saying, "He is here."

I stepped into the room alone and heard the door close behind me. My mind was still filled with the vision that Ursula had just given me of her G.o.d, but my first impression, as I entered, was that I was here with no G.o.d but just an ordinary man. He was sitting on the windowseat, with his legs drawn up and his left arm hanging down loosely by his side. His head was turned to face the view. He looked in every respect like any man whom I had seen in Koretia, but dangling from the fingers of his left hand was the G.o.d's mask, with its fierce promise of death or deliverance. I stared a moment at the bright paint on the black cloth. Then my gaze rose from the golden hunting eyes of the thief G.o.d to the dark, dispa.s.sionate eyes of John.

Blood Vow 6 THE G.o.d'S LAND CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

I suppose that what I ought to have felt was anger and doubt: anger that I had been deceived, and grave doubt that the Jackal was anything more than the human rebel-leader that the Emorians had always thought him to be. For a moment, indeed, unidentified emotions twisted about in me, striving for mastery of my will. I stared at John, sitting quietly on the windowseat, his face as blank of expression as the mask of the Unknowable G.o.d. He was watching me steadily through his black eyes which, I told myself, were no G.o.d's eyes, but only the eyes of the blood brother with whom I had grown up.

He did not move. And yet, as I watched, his face changed, taking upon itself the mask of the Jackal: the sharp teeth that chewed on the flesh of the dying and dead, the sensitive whiskers, and the hunting G.o.d's eyes. John's own eyes were still there, calm and unknowably black, the eyes that had never changed no matter what roles he played in life: the vengeful eyes of the warrior as he prepared to kill the soldier, the loving eyes of the priest as he sought peace from the G.o.ds, the watchful eyes of the trader as he listened and weighed in his mind what to do. Now, though, they were surrounded by the golden eyes of the Jackal: the eyes of the G.o.d of Vengeance, the eyes of the G.o.d of Mercy, and the eyes of the G.o.d of Judgment. And I knew in that moment that John's eyes had always been those of the G.o.d.

The power Ursula had said she felt was too strong for me to bear. As the mask faded away, leaving only John's face, I addressed not the G.o.d but my blood brother: "I knew that you weren't the sort to break a blood vow."

The tremor of a smile pa.s.sed over John's face and was gone again, as quickly as the wind in a Koretian summer. His eyes remained serious. He gestured with his hand, and as I had done fifteen years before, I came and joined him at the windowseat. He was wearing the same Jackal-black tunic he had worn earlier, and he still bore no weapon.

"Some vows deserve to be broken," he said, "but I have always tried to obey the will of the G.o.ds. So when the G.o.d summoned me to become his thief, I obeyed; and when the man whose form the Jackal had taken died of old age, the G.o.d called to me again and bid me to wear his mask and speak his words. And since then the man named John has been united with the G.o.d, and through both my human powers and my G.o.dly ones I have striven to bring vengeance or mercy to this land, as is needed."

His voice was as quiet as it had always been, but it sounded through the room like the whispering edge of a wind that can bring down forests. My throat tightened, and I searched John's face, uncertain now of what creature I was seated beside. "I don't understand," I said. "Are you John, or are you the G.o.d?"

For a moment he was silent, and through the window came the faint sound of a jackal's howl, nearly lost in the camouflage of the cicadas' chatter. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. "That isn't a question I can answer in words. If you wish, I can show you through the manner in which I speak. Or if you prefer, I can do for you what I do for most people I meet: I can submerge my powers deep within me so that I am nothing more than a man. If all that you want from me is the blood brother you once knew, I can give you that. You need never see the G.o.d in me."

The moonlight fell carelessly upon us, and then spilled onto the floor of the sanctuary, broken only by the black outlines of our bodies, falling like death shadows before us. I stared at the floor of the G.o.ds' house, remembering a scene two days before, when John had seen my face take on a hard mask he had never known. He had accepted me then for what I had become. I said in a low voice, "I would never ask you to be anything other than what you are, John. Even as a child, you were different. The Chara asked me what kind of man the Jackal was. If only I had thought more clearly, I could have told him."

"I tried to tell him myself, when we spoke." John's gaze drifted back to the still mountainside and the city and the country beyond. "I tried to make him see what danger this land faces, but some things John the trader could not tell him, because these things are known only to the Jackal and the governor and a handful of others. War will come here in days, not weeks or months, and when it comes, every man and woman in this land will either kill or die. I have done my best in the past to allow the people's rage to be channelled into my small thieveries, but now, through my murders, I have brought about a state of fear and hatred so great that every Koretian must choose whether to be loyal to me or to betray me. For my people seek blood, and I have chosen to give it to them."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up as John spoke the words that, a few hours before, he had ascribed to the G.o.d whom he could not understand. He turned his head back toward me, and his gentle eyes had not changed, any more than they had changed when he tried to kill the soldier. But as I watched, the black eyes burst into golden flames like those of the Jackal's fire that had once eaten the city.

This, then, was what John had offered to hide from me: this terrible union of G.o.dly certainty and strength with human doubts and weakness, a union which had always existed potentially within him and which had now reached its full power.

It is no small terror to find oneself in the company of the hunting G.o.d. The only fate worse is to find him embodied in one's childhood friend. I remembered John staring with dark vision at the dagger that had nearly killed the Chara's son, and I said hoa.r.s.ely, "Jackal, what do you want with the Chara?"

The flames faded, and as they did so, I felt the power that accompanied them disappear from the room like smoke from an absent fire. The Jackal had reined in his powers, the G.o.d was now deep inside, and all that sat next to me was a young man who said quietly, "Not his death, I hope. I'm bound by my vow to bring peace to Koretia, but if I can do this without killing the Chara, I will. He is your wine-friend, and even if he weren't, it's better that Koretia should live in harmony with Emor than that we should gain our freedom through bloodshed. That's why I wish to meet with the Chara: so that I can convince him to free this land."

"John," I said tentatively, feeling it easier to address the man than the G.o.d, "you're asking me to act as amba.s.sador for the Chara, but you must know that when I return to the Chara, I'll tell him who you are before he ever sees you, and then he may or may not choose to use that information against you. Why have you appeared to me unmasked?"

I waited apprehensively to see whether the weaponless peacemaker I had known would speak further of blood. But he must have decided that his earlier words had been demonstration enough of what he now was, for he said simply, "Andrew, you are my blood brother. I could have appeared to you in the G.o.d's mask, as I appeared to Ursula when I wanted to be sure that she would become a thief out of more than love for John the trader. But it seems to me that the time for secrets between us is over. I won't hide any more from you what I am, nor will I command an Emorian in the voice of a Koretian G.o.d. I give you the G.o.d's command through the request of your blood brother: that you hand the Chara over to me."

A heartbeat's pause followed before I said firmly, "I cannot do that."

"I don't see how you can," he replied. He looked back again at the land outside, grey as ash after a fire. "I can't ask you to choose between your friends.h.i.+p to the Chara and your friends.h.i.+p to me, and yet you must make your choice, for there is no other way that I can meet with the Chara as the Jackal."

"Come with me to the palace," I said. "Come with me and tell the Chara who you are in private. He'll listen to what you have to say."

"And if he doesn't agree to what I want, what then? Will you give witness for me at my trial for my murders? Will you stay beside me as they slowly break my body for my treasonous acts?"

Out on the mountainside, the howl of the hunting jackal cut off abruptly at the same moment that my breath did. I opened my mouth to reply, but already John was saying, "I'm sorry. It's not you I'm angry with, but the Emorians, for infecting this land with their brutal and G.o.dless ways. That spy I killed had been too long around the Emorians and refused to believe I held the G.o.d's powers a and without some small portion of belief in him, he could not deem that what he saw came from the G.o.d. The Chara won't believe in my G.o.dly powers either, not unless he is a man very different than I take him to be. And if I am not a G.o.d-man, then I am no more than a murderous rebel, a man whom no ruler of any sense would negotiate with. He won't negotiate with me if I come with you, and he won't come to me if you tell him who I am."

I sat with my back stiff against the window jamb. "You misjudge him, John. He may come."

"I can't take the chance, Andrew." Something new and hard had entered into the tone of John's voice. It reminded me of how Peter spoke when he was in judgment. "If you leave here tonight and tell the Chara who I am, and he has me arrested rather than talk with me, then war will come. And when war comes there can be only two ends: either we will kill the Emorians and gain our freedom, or the Emorians will kill the Jackal, and his people will be put to the sword. I can risk my own death, but not the death of this land."

I placed my hands over my face, as I had every morning after dreaming of the death of this city. Then something about John's stillness made me look up. He was watching me carefully, and for the first time his eyes were guarded. I put my mind to what he had said, pursued the unspoken words, and said slowly, "The Jackal won't allow me to leave here and betray him."

"No, I will not. If you cannot serve me, then you must be my captive." He paused and searched my face again, as I had seen the palace slave-keeper search mine before he beat me, in order to decide how much punishment I could bear. Then, in the dispa.s.sionate voice of a judge p.r.o.nouncing sentence, he said, "Ursula knows that you are my blood brother, so she did not think of one thing when she brought you here. The Jackal is always in danger when he makes his lair, either in caves or in taverns or in the empty house of a trader who has gone away on business. But I and my thieves are in greatest danger here, close to the city. The governor is so eager to find the Jackal's lair now that we will not be able to stay here more than a day or two longer, lest the soldiers find us, and when we leave, we will be on the move from then on, for war is close at hand. When we leave, we will take only what we can carry, and when we leave, we will not be able to take prisoners with us."

He turned his head then, and I somehow knew that this time he was not staring out at the land, but escaping the look in my eyes as he spoke his final words.

Had he spoken those words the previous day, I would have felt deathly sickness in my spirit. But since that time I had spoken to the subcaptain, and he had brought together images in my mind that had been separate until then. Now, as I looked at John, I could think only of the Chara as he judged me under the flickering torchlight and spoke the words that cut deeper into him than into me.

When John finally turned back to me with his steady gaze, I said, "That's why you went to the priests' house today."

Something flickered in John's eyes, and the shallow guard he had placed against my next words disappeared, as though he had expected any statement but this. "You told me to trust the G.o.d," he said simply. "So I went to the priests' house and spoke to the Unknowable G.o.d who had refused to tell me why I must fulfill my blood vow to him by luring and perhaps killing my blood brother. I told him that I would do as he wished, without any questions. And then he gave me the understanding I had sought before. If needs must, I will kill you to save my land, and you will die rather than betray your own land. In doing so, neither of us will break the vows we made to each other. I still love you, and we will always be blood brothers, beyond betrayal and beyond death."

The night was very quiet. Outside the door I could hear a rustle that might have been the thieves, awaiting the results of their master's interview as they had waited the night before and two weeks before that. Down the slope of the mountain I heard the low, m.u.f.fled boom of the priests' bell as it called the hour. And at the foot of the mountain, past the wild-berry bushes and the golden cave, I could almost hear in my mind the light chatter of Koretians in the city market and tavern.

I said, the words bitter on my tongue, "You are right when you say that I cannot choose between you and Peter, between the Jackal and the Chara. I love you both and will always love you, whatever I do to you or you do to me. But one thing you have said falsely tonight: that I love Emor. I have never loved Emor, only its Chara, and so I will betray the Chara because it will save my land."

Then I hung my head, and for a long while there were no words between us, only John's hand on my arm.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Some time later, I sat in a windowless cell, resting on a thin pallet upon a stone bed. A wooden, candle-lit table stood next to the bed, holding the dinner which had been brought to me but which I had not touched. As I stared blankly at the wall, seeing nothing but darkness ahead of me, a soft knock came at the door. I mumbled something unintelligible. The door opened a crack, and I caught sight of pale skin and dark hair.

I beckoned, and Ursula entered, shutting the door behind her. She seated herself beside me, bit her lip, and then burst out, "I'm so sorry, Andrew."

I looked at her, and some tenderness that she seemed to bring out in me caused me to force a smile and say, "At least I once again know how I love this land, and that's something that I hid from myself for too long. It's good to be home again. I've missed the smell of wild-berries."

Ursula looked at me, and then at my abandoned dinner plate. Without a word, she reached past me to take it and hand it to me.

I bowed my head to her in obedience and forced myself to eat the food. She did not speak until I was finished, when she said, "John and the others have gone into the city to spread word among the thieves there of what will happen. John believes that kidnapping the Chara may itself provoke the war we expect, and he wants his followers to be prepared. He said that you wouldn't be leaving until the morning."

I placed the tin dish back upon the table. "John told me that it would be better to carry this plan out by daylight, when the Chara would be less likely to suspect danger. And I told him that, though I was known in the Chara's palace for my discretion and impenetrable thoughts, I doubted I could deceive the Chara for an entire evening. Peter was my only friend for many years, and he knows me too well."

Ursula sat with her arms hugging her legs. "I wouldn't have wanted to be you, having to choose between blood brother and friend. It's a choice that would have driven some men mad."

"Perhaps it would have, if I'd been forced to make it as a boy." I stared at the corner of the cell where a bit of candlelight had become caught in a spiderweb. "I owe Peter the gift of teaching me to love when it is painful, but I owe this much to my previous slave-master: he taught me to do everything else when it is painful. I feel as though I've been dropped into a bottomless pit, but I felt that during my time as Lord Carle's slave, and I knew then how to do my duty." I closed my eyes; little changed from the darkness I had seen before. I added quietly, "All these years, I've been troubled at night by a dream of the day when I left Koretia. I watch my mother die and my blood brother die, and I lose all my blood kin. Since then, Peter has been my kin, and I may have to watch him die as well... . I don't think I'll ever dream my old dream again, but I think this will be a sleepless night in any case."

I felt Ursula stir beside me. Fearing that my words were bringing her pain as well, I opened my eyes and tried to look at her in a rea.s.suring manner. Her usual quick movements were stilled, as they had been during our first exchange, as though she were controlling some deep emotion inside her. She looked quite young, and I reached out to touch her, placing my hand on hers.

She spoke then, very softly. "Andrew, I've had bad dreams about my mother too for many years. Mine are about the manner in which I was begotten, though of course I didn't see it happen. When I wake from these dreams, it has always been a comfort to me to find myself beside John and know that he is there and that I can hold him until I stop being afraid. Would you like me to stay with you tonight?"

She intended to say more, but I jerked my hand away from her at these words and turned to face her on the bed. Startled, she did not speak as I said stiffly, "Ursula, I do not know what you are offering me when you say that. If you are telling me that I may sleep with you tonight as a brother sleeps with his sister, then I thank you. But if that is not what you mean-" She tried then to speak, and I held up my hand to stop her. "If you mean that I should sleep with you as a man sleeps with his lover, then you should know three things. One is that I have come to see you as a friend. The second is that I would not break my blood vow to John by making love to his wife. And the third thing- The third thing is that I could not if I wished to. I am-" I stumbled, looking for the words I would have prepared before, if I had not blinded myself to the necessity of this moment. "I am not capable of loving a woman as a man ought to. That power was taken from me when I was sold into slavery."

I thought at first that I had been too subtle and that I would have to explain further. Then she swallowed hard, and her eyes dropped. I waited, my heart beating, to see what her expression would be when she raised her eyes again. When she looked up, her gaze was as firm as John's, and her voice was gentle.

"Andrew," she said, "you know that the love of a man and his lover isn't the only strong love in this world. You love John, and you love the Chara a they are both your friends, beyond death. Why should you think that it would be any different for women? I have fallen in love and wished to be kissed and to be taken to a marriage-bed. But that isn't how I love you, and the love I have is no less powerful because of this."

I could not speak for a minute. Then I said, "Is it because John is my blood brother that you care for me?"

"Partly." Ursula bowed her head, and her hair fell down so that her face was hidden. She said, "Is it so hard for you to understand? I don't suppose many men can feel friends.h.i.+p toward a woman, but women often feel that way toward a man, whether the man knows it or not. What I feel for you is no different from what you feel for your blood brother."

I reached out and pushed back her dark hair from her eyes. She looked up silently. I asked her, "Is there such a thing as a blood sister?"

A smile trembled on her lips. "I've never heard of such a thing. In any case, I'm afraid of blades."

"Blood vows don't need blood to take place. I like the thought of gaining you as a sister, and if you'd like this as well, I could be your blood brother."

She moved suddenly, as though the great emotion she had been controlling was suddenly released, and her hands flung open in an eager gesture. "Andrew," she said breathlessly, "you've never asked me how I met John."

I waited, wondering what revelation would appear next. Her body swayed to and fro on the bed as she said, "I never knew my father, nor have I ever wanted to meet him, because he raped my mother during the Border Wars. After I was conceived, John found my mother and arranged for her to be cared for by the priests at their house. John cared for her as well, treating her as though she was his own mother. Then, when she died after I was born, he took me under his care, and I was like a younger sister to him. That has never changed." She paused, but I did not say anything, and so she continued, "Since we aren't truly brother and sister, we decided, when he first brought me to live with him in the city, that we must pretend to other people that we were married. So I've played the role of John's wife during this past year, though I've never loved him in that way, nor he me. I-" She hesitated, as though she were entering into dangerous ground, and then said carefully, "I'm capable of love of that sort, but I'm not sure that John is. He's like the priests, who never marry but dedicate their lives to the G.o.ds. I think also that his friends.h.i.+ps are too powerful to allow him ever to form any other type of bond a especially his friends.h.i.+p with you. He told me several years ago that it was hard for him, not being able to help you when he cared for you so much. He told me-" Her movements stilled gradually, as though she were a fluttering bird that had come to rest on a branch. She said softly, "He said that was his first reason for taking care of me a that since he couldn't help you, he could at least help your sister."

I stared at her as she waited in silence for my reply. My training in silence overruled my voice, and I asked no questions but sat mutely, trying to understand what she had said. Into my mind drifted the image she had just given me, of John reaching out to help Ursula's mother, who had been left half-dead by a soldier. And beside it came a second image that had haunted me for so many years: John lying still next to the body of my mother, who had just been raped.

"She was alive," I whispered. "The soldier tried to kill her, but she lived. The soldier-"

I stopped abruptly. Ursula was once more hugging her knees. She stared at me silently with dark eyes, her pale face fringed with black hair. It was, I saw now, the face of my mother. But it was also the face of the Emorian soldier who had enslaved me.

I realized then why Ursula had not told me before.

I reached forward. As if I had had great practice in holding women, I slipped my arm around her waist and drew her head onto my shoulder. As she relaxed against my body, I whispered softly into her hair, "Sister, I will need courage tomorrow, and since the body supports the spirit, for courage I need sleep. I do not know what time we have left together in this dying land, but tonight, at least, I would like to spend with you."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"You're sure that you know how to do it?" John asked.

The next morning had arrived. Leaving Ursula still sleeping, I had risen from my bed and wandered the corridor until I happened across the outside door. At that moment, a man entered, his eyes narrow and yellow, his face black, his teeth bared in a ferocious grin. Then his hand removed the mask, and I saw the tired face of John, returning at dawn from his night-prowl.

"Have no worries for me," I said, slipping back with no effort into my cold composure. "It has been a while now since I kept my thoughts from Peter, but not so long that I have forgotten how to be his equivocal servant. I know how to tell lies with the truth, and Peter trusts me enough that he will not guess what I am doing. He will not know what is afoot."

John smiled, a tired and somber smile. He slipped his mask into the trader's satchel where he kept it hidden by day. I paused at the threshold to the doorway, and then said quietly, "Thank you for taking care of Ursula for me."

John nodded. "I was wondering when she would get the courage to tell you. I'd tried to convince her that you wouldn't care if her father was a G.o.d-cursed demon, but you can see how she's treated in this land. It was hard for her to believe that you would love her despite her beginnings."

"She should not have feared," I said. "I know as well as she does what it is to be half Koretian and half Emorian. As long as the two lands remain at war with each other, those of us who have ties to both lands will always suffer. So we must see whether we can do anything to change that." With no further word, I turned and made my way down the mountainside toward the governor's palace.