Beyond the Wall of Time Page 33

  “Fair point,” Robal said.

  “Maybe,” said Noetos, “but you were looking forward to the day when you could consummate your love.” Lenares didn’t need to see the faint blush spreading across her sister’s face to know that, for her, that day had arrived. “Without such promise, love has no meaning.”

  “Aye,” said one of the locals, an older woman. “I’m sorry for your friend, lass, but nature and the gods made us this way. We long for love. Only when we’re in love can we approach the exalted state of the gods. It’s the highest, most noble feeling in the world.” A single tear leaked from the corner of the woman’s right eye.

  “Exactly, madam,” Robal said, clearly warming to the argument. “We’re born male or female, and even the most ignorant can look at the equipment we’re born with and tell that we are all one of two pieces of a puzzle waiting to be put back together. Anyone who withholds their piece of the puzzle, whether because they’re unable or unwilling, can’t say they’re truly human.”

  He was so blatantly trying not to look in Stella’s direction as he spoke that Lenares’ attention was irresistibly drawn to the woman sitting alone. Her stony expression did not waver.

  Sauxa sucked loudly at his teeth. “So you’re arguing that love implies fucking, and that fucking is what makes people human?” he said, his coarse voice edged with something like menace.

  “Not quite. I think it marks the dividing line between child and adult. Those who remain on the child side of the line can never enter fully into adulthood.”

  Murmurs of agreement from around the gathering suggested that Robal had neatly summarised the majority’s view.

  “I think you’re wrong,” said the old man. “You’ve got it all backwards. I’m the oldest here and an expert on the subject, so—”

  “An expert on loving hundreds of women and breaking their hearts, you old goat,” Kilfor said, his whisper intentionally loud.

  “None of ’em objected at the time,” Sauxa said. “And you’re assuming that because I left ’em they were heart-broken. Most of ’em were glad to see the back of me.”

  “Well, there is that,” his son conceded.

  “Please,” said Lenares to Sauxa. “Tell us what you think.”

  “You got all these people tellin’ you you’re not normal if you don’t love someone, marry ’em and have children,” he said. “They think this is their idea. But they’re sheep, the lot of ’em. Sheep. Every village, every town, every city, every country wants children. To protect and provide for their parents in their old age, defend them in time of war, all that. Of course they want their sons and daughters to breed. So they perpetuate the old ‘true love’ myth. How else will they persuade otherwise sensible youngsters to lose their freedom and independence and throw away their lives on someone who might be totally unsuitable?”

  Moralye cleared her throat. “Hauthius once advanced a similar argument,” she said. “Society raises the ideals of love, monogamy and commitment in order to coerce young people into contracting permanent relationships, thus making them easier to control. The result is less migration, a more settled population, guaranteed replacement, all leading to the reproduction of society.”

  “I’m not sure about all the long words, young lady,” Sauxa said. “What I mean is—”

  “What rot,” Robal said. “Who is this ‘society’? Anyone seen this list of instructions ‘society’ wants us to follow? Love is very simple. We’re led to fall in love with someone because we want to have a family with them. What’s so difficult about that?”

  “Plenty of women can’t have children,” said one of the local men. “Is their love wrong?”

  “Not wrong, but ultimately futile,” said Robal.

  “You are a singularly ignorant man, even for a soldier,” said Kannwar from the far side of the square.

  “Thought you weren’t interested in this nonsense,” Robal replied.

  “It is hard to ignore such blatant stupidity,” said the Undying Man. “You talk as though marriage is a choice. For most people it is no choice at all. They marry for duty, or for business, or survival, or because they are forced to by avaricious parents. Love comes later, if it comes at all. ‘Falling in love’ is not the normal state of affairs. It is an ideal beloved of troubadours and old women.”

  “Exactly,” said Sauxa. “Romantic love is a nasty joke. You lose control of your sanity and make decisions you later regret. It never lasts. One day you wake up amid the snoring and the smells and realise it’s all a confidence trick.”

  “You think that because you’re a selfish old man,” Robal shouted. “While the feeling has you, you act unselfishly, in the best interests of your beloved. Then when it wears off you revert to your cranky old ways and get the inevitable heave-ho. No point in arguing, you know I’m right.”

  “So it doesn’t matter that I rid the world of Keppia,” Lenares said. “People here won’t accept Torve and me as real people because of the cruel thing the Emperor did to him.”

  “What does it matter, girl?” said Robal. “After all this is over, take your friend and find some place where no one knows you and make your home there. They don’t have to know what happens in your own house.”

  “You want us to hide?” Torve said, his voice rasping.

  “Well, you haven’t done anything deserving of such treatment, but there will be those who will not accept you because of what you are,” said the guardsman.

  Sauxa hissed. “Stupid boy! Those who oppose these two are the sort of people who’ve listened to you and your blather. Ulcers to your soul, you are an ignorant man! Tell me, can you describe this feeling you talk about? What does it mean to fall in love?”

  Robal took a step forward, again looking anywhere but towards Stella.

  “Love is the realisation you have feelings for someone so wonderful, so far above you, that you do not deserve their favour. It makes you forget about your own desires and focus entirely on the one you love. Then, as you and your beloved form a relationship, sex follows naturally. That’s what ‘making love’ means. The act of sex makes love.”

  “There are so many things wrong with that foolish notion, I don’t know where to start. This ‘falling in love’ is the most selfish of desires. It’s just an exaggerated form of the excitement you felt when you were young, when a certain fond uncle promised to carve you a serpent for your birthday. Something you desired was finally within your grasp. You barely ate or slept until I’d finished it. Then a week later I found it outside in the rain, cast aside, the thrill gone. Perfectly natural, that, but don’t dignify it by calling it ‘love’ or the highest feeling.”

  Robal went to reply, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Stella said, pushing her way past the guardsman, her dark eyes fixed on Lenares’ own. Now this was a woman almost impossible to read.

  “I was loved by a great man, one of the most decent and least selfish men I’ve ever met. When we were both young I was aware of his devotion to me, but spurned it as being of no worth. Instead I reached out for the promise of darker, more exotic desires and was ensnared by Deorc of Jasweyah, the lieutenant of the Undying Man of Bhrudwo.”

  Lenares saw Arathé twitch and a connection suddenly came into focus. She wanted to ask the question, but decided to listen to what the Falthan queen had to say.

  “This man delivered me to the Undying Man himself, who tried to woo me with pain and suffering. He forced me to serve him and I became known throughout Faltha as the Destroyer’s Consort, a byword for collaboration with the enemy. Yet after I escaped the Destroyer’s clutches, King Leith protected me, even to the point of taking me as his wife.”

  “Did he love you still?” Lenares had no need to ask the question, as the answer was obvious from Stella’s numbers, but the others could not see.

  “He did. His youthful passion had gone, killed by my betrayal, but he chose to honour me regardless. Something special grew between us, something strong and p
recious, if bittersweet.”

  “You never loved him.”

  “No, Lenares, I never did. Not with the sort of love Robal talks about. But through the years we found something better, Leith and I, a friendship built on a shared vision for Faltha. He named me his queen, despite the protestations of everyone of the Sixteen Kingdoms, and we set about restoring Faltha, along with Phemanderac, who devoted his life to assisting us.”

  “So you’ve never been in love, my queen?” Robal asked.

  “I never said that,” she replied. “I fell beak over tail in love with a most handsome councilman from Firanes, and in my latter years I was charmed by an importer of dyed wool from the Wodranian Highlands. But I chose true love over this ‘falling in love’ the stories tell us of and stayed with Leith. I never regretted it.”

  “Yet you never slept with him.” The Undying Man’s voice rang out around the square.

  “And that is no one’s business but mine and my friends’. A man with any understanding of how a woman feels would have kept those words to himself.”

  “I am a man who knows you value the integrity of your argument higher than your own feelings,” Kannwar said. “You yourself would acknowledge your story is not complete without that salient fact.”

  “A fact that was mine to reveal when and how I chose!” Stella snapped.

  Sauxa, the rebellious Central Plains itinerant, stood. “Queen Stella,” he said, “you make my argument far more convincingly than I can. No one could describe you as less than complete.” He bowed to her and sat down.

  Torve stood as still as a post, allowing none of his emotional turmoil to show. Stella understands me, he realised as the Falthan woman told her story, then went on to explain why she had never consummated her marriage to the King of Faltha. It seemed to Torve that she tailored her story specifically for him as she spoke frankly of her love and her frustration. Her poison blood makes her as crippled as I am, yet she found something approaching true happiness in her partnership.

  Robal, her star-crossed guardsman, was having none of it. He had no conception of how much the fool he was painting himself with his churlish words, his ridiculous assertions that Stella was somehow lacking. Others in the square had become noticeably angry with the man, having been swayed by Stella’s eloquence and sincerity.

  “Love is essential,” he argued. “It should not be resisted, no matter the cost.”

  Heredrew stared at the man as though he was a cockroach found in a lord’s parlour. “You’re saying the Falthan queen ought to have cuckolded her king by fornicating with this highland woolman? How long do you think she would have remained in power after such a dalliance became known?”

  “Who cares? At least she would have pursued her heart. At least she would have been alive.”

  “What utter nonsense,” Moralye said. “You speak as though the heart must always overrule the head.”

  “In matters of love, yes!”

  A younger woman with short, curly hair spoke up in a soft, shy voice. “I think the idea’s romantic. Imagine givin’ every thin’ up for love!”

  “Yes,” Sauxa growled. “Just imagine it. The good opinion of your friends, the love of your family, the respect of your comrades, all thrown away in pursuit of something that doesn’t exist.”

  “Doesn’t exist?” said the young woman. “Of course it exists.”

  “Describe it to me then, girl,” demanded Sauxa.

  “Well, it’s a… ah, it’s a feelin’,” she said, stumbling over her words. “A glorious feelin’.”

  “What sort of feeling?”

  “Makes me feel ill,” said a young man not much older than a boy. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I spend all my time thinking about her.”

  “Who?” asked the curly-haired woman.

  “Not saying,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t know her. Down in one of the northern villages. She might not even be alive.”

  “So that’s love?” Sauxa said. “And here’s me thinking that was what we on the Central Plains call obsession. You know, that selfish feeling we get when we want something we can’t have.”

  “That’s a completely different thing.”

  “Is it? Is it really? We train our women to search for this impossible thing, a thing they can’t even describe, this notion of romantic love, because it provides us the most effective way of controlling them. Of making them want to settle down and waste their lives with us. Look at you, boy. There isn’t a woman in the world who’d consider your stupidity attractive even for a moment were it not for the lies we’ve told each other for generation upon generation. As a result, we enslave women—no, women enslave themselves—and they end up spending their lives on us. In a world made up of cruel jokes, romantic love is the cruellest of all.”

  “Look, old man,” growled Robal, taking Sauxa’s arm in a meaty hand, “you can mash our words together and make them mean whatever you want, but love is what makes the world work. There’s nothing I wouldn’t dare for the sake of love, and in so daring I would enlarge my soul. The lack of love is why you’ve turned into a wizened-hearted old goat. It’s why your wife left you, why all those women turfed you out after a single night. Your soul is too small, Sauxa.”

  The plainsman let out a long, hissing breath. “Son,” he said, his voice hoarse, “if you really knew anything about love, you wouldn’t have said what you just said.” With a twist of his forearm he freed himself of Robal’s grip, heaved himself to his feet and strode out of the square.

  “He always hated being wrong,” Robal said to no one in particular.

  “You are such a fool,” said Kilfor. “Always have been, always will be. You come in with your big hoofs and trample all over everything worthwhile. Ulcers to your soul, Robal, you have some fences to mend before you and I next share a drink.” He followed his father away from the small gathering.

  “So what is my pink feeling?” Lenares asked, breaking the silence that followed Kilfor’s departure. “Is it love?”

  Duon frowned. “What do you mean, ‘pink feeling’?”

  “When Torve is close to me I feel pink. My arms and legs tingle, and my face and, ah, other places heat up. It is a very strong feeling. It makes me want to ignore the good advice my mind gives me. Is that love?”

  “Yes,” said Robal, at exactly the time Stella said, “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. What you experience is desire. Your body wants his body. It is a wonderful feeling, but it is not love.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” Robal said, the intensity of his gaze boring into his queen’s dark eyes.

  Torve had heard enough. Though every instinct commanded him to restrain himself, to exercise his Defiance in private, he put those instincts behind him, despising them for the chains they were.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said, stepping forward. “Everyone speaks as though love is the most important thing in the world, yet no one can agree on what it is, or who is entitled to enjoy it. Having listened to you all, I can only draw the conclusion that love can be anything you make it.

  “You people seem to think we’ll not be regarded as truly human because I am unmanned. Lenares and I are familiar with such regard. I doubt it will bother us. If she is willing, I am prepared to find out whether it is possible for people like us, people less than human, to love each other. We thank you for your time and your well-meant words.”

  He bowed to the small crowd, exactly as though his Defiance was over. As it was, he supposed; though this Defiance had been expressed with words rather than dance.

  Later, when most people had left the square and he and Lenares were left alone to take the first tentative steps towards each other, Stella came over to them.

  “I am sorry,” she said, “sorry for our intolerance and ignorance. If I were to offer you anything, children, it would be every encouragement to explore your relationship unfettered by any sort of expectations. Find out what you have rather than worrying about what you might not have. And if wh
at you have is not enough, don’t be frightened to let go.”

  “I don’t want to let go,” Lenares said, and Torve felt his throat tighten.

  “Neither do I,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

  “Good,” said the Falthan queen. “I hope you find happiness.”

  “When Umu is dead and the hole in the world is repaired, then I will be happy,” said Lenares.

  Torve nodded. Lenares would always be reaching for knowledge and understanding, always trying to fix whatever she saw as being wrong; she would never be satisfied with the mere love of one man. He couldn’t help feeling a surge of relief course through him at the thought.

  Queen Stella turned away and began to leave the square. There, on the edge of the open space, stood Robal, his beefy arms folded, a broad smile on his face, waiting for her. Torve did not hear their brief discussion, but as Stella spoke, the guardsman’s smile contracted and vanished, replaced by a frown. His interjections were short, and overridden by her increasingly irritated replies. After a few minutes of this, she drew back her hand and slapped him across the cheek, then strode off into the shattered village.

  A short while later Robal left the square, his shoulders slumped. Torve did not need Lenares’ gift to work out what had passed between the two.

  That night, the travellers determined to go on the next day. They sat around a small fire set in the road on the northern outskirts of Mensaya, talking in subdued voices while beyond the flickering circle drones buzzed and cicadas chirped.

  “We need to find somewhere isolated,” Kannwar argued. “We do not know where Umu is, or even if she ‘is’ anywhere. Therefore we need to draw her to us. I do not wish to meet her in a populated area as our attack would necessarily be constrained by the presence of innocent Bhrudwan citizens.”

  “Never imagined there was any such thing as an innocent Bhrudwan,” Sauxa whispered to his son in a voice just loud enough to be heard.

  Kannwar ignored the old man. Lenares could see the extent of his self-control. This was a man who wished to be treated as an emperor, who was used to instant obedience and unquestioning respect, but who received none of these things from the Falthans. Moralye had explained the antipathy to her. Two bitter invasions, one within living memory, had earned Kannwar the epithet “Destroyer.” The Falthans seemed to be having trouble accepting Umu as a greater enemy than the man who led them.