much human blood became mingled with the Harshini line. The restraint on violence broke down and Xaphista learnt that if he could gather followers to believe in
“And how am I supposed to destroy him?”
“I have no idea, child. I cannot contemplate destruction. That is a human quality. You must find the answer within yourself.”
R’shiel didn’t even try. She liked the Harshini – it was impossible to dislike them – but she had no desire to become embroiled in some divine conflict. She accepted that there were gods. She had even met a few of them since coming here, but they did not impress her, and she certainly felt no desire to worship them. If the gods didn’t like one of their underlings getting above his station, then they should have thought about that before creating the problem in the first place.
She did not share her opinion with Korandellan. He was willing to answer any question she asked and teach her anything she wanted to know, but his aversion to violence made the subject of Xaphista an awkward one. That suited R’shiel just fine – she had no desire to discuss the matter anyway.
Time was a fluid quantity in Sanctuary, so R’shiel had no way of gauging how long she had been here. It seemed as if everyday she learnt something new, but if each day was a new one, or simply the same day repeated over and over, she could not tell. She regained her strength and then grew even stronger, exploring the vast network of halls that made up the Harshini settlement.
There were rooms here that were so like the Citadel she sometimes had to remind herself where she was. The artwork that was so determinedly concealed in the Citadel was exposed here, in all its glory. Although the walls were generally white, there wasn’t a flat surface in the place that was not adorned with some type of artwork, large or small. It seemed every Harshini was an artist of some description. There were delicately painted friezes lining the halls and crystal statues in every corner. There were galleries full of paintings depicting everything from broad sweeping landscapes to tiny, exquisitely detailed paintings of insects and birds. The Harshini studied life and then captured its essence in their art.
Curiously, the one thing she expected did not happen here. The walls did not glow with the coming of each new day and fade with the onset of night. The Brightening and Dimming that characterised the Citadel was missing. The Harshini used candles and lanterns like any normal human, although admittedly they could light them with a thought and extinguish them just as easily.
The valley floor, which looked so wild and untended from the balconies, proved to be a complex series of connecting gardens and the source for much of the Harshini food in the settlement. At least it should have been, Korandellan had explained, with a slight frown. The abundant gardens were trapped in time, as was the whole settlement. The vines never wilted, the flowers never faded. Bees buzzed between the bushes, crickets chirruped happily, worms wiggled their way through the fertile soil – but a picked berry was gone forever. Like the Harshini, and every animal in Sanctuary, they could not reproduce. The issue of food was becoming critical, so much so, that Korandellan had allowed a number of Harshini to leave the settlement. Some of them went openly, like Glenanaran, who had returned to Hythria to teach at the Sorcerers’ Collective. Others went out into the human world, disguised and cautious, to barter or trade for some badly needed supplies. Although he never said it aloud, R’shiel guessed it was fear of Xaphista and the Karien priests that kept them hidden.
They were performers, too, R’shiel discovered soon after she was allowed the freedom of Sanctuary. In the amphitheatre in the hollow centre of the gardens, against the permanent rainbow that hovered over the tinkling cascade, they held concerts in the twilight as the sun settled behind the mountains. The first time R’shiel had heard the Harshini sing she had cried. Nothing had prepared her for the beauty of their voices or their skill with instruments she had never seen in the human world.
Sometimes the concerts were impromptu affairs, where members of the audience would step forward, either alone or in groups, to perform for their friends. Other times the concerts were as well organised as any Founder’s Day Parade, and then the massed choir of the Harshini would transport R’shiel to a place she had never even glimpsed before. “The Song of Gimlorie”, the Harshini called it. The gift of the God of Music. A prayer in its own right, it had the power to devour one’s soul. The cadence of the song, the subtle harmonies, and the pure, crystalline voices of the Harshini, combined to create images in the mind that could be as euphoric as they were dangerous. The demons would appear in the amphitheatre whenever they sang for Gimlorie, their eyes wide, their bodies uncharacteristically still as they listened to the music with rapt expressions. R’shiel understood their fascination with the music and lamented its loss to the human world.
It was following the last concert she attended that R’shiel came to an important decision. Tarja was a pleasant, fading memory. Joyhinia and Loclon were so far buried in the back of her mind that she barely even acknowledged their existence. Xaphista was the gods’ problem, not hers. There was supposed to be a war going on, but it did not intrude on the serenity of this other-worldly realm. Sanctuary was peaceful, and the troubles of the outside world could not touch her in this magical place. She was half-Harshini after all, and welcome here.
R’shiel decided that she didn’t really care if she never returned to the outside world at all.
Chapter 13
Karien was a vast country, full of tall evergreens, rugged valleys and steep, but distant, snow-capped mountains to the east. With autumn approaching the weather grew colder as they sailed north. Adrina found herself shivering each morning when she took her daily exercise on deck.
The Ironbrook was a heavily populated waterway. They sailed past numerous villages, some large and prosperous, some mean and depressing, some barely deserving of the name at all. They seemed dirty and crowded to a princess raised in the spacious, pink-walled cities of Fardohnya. In fact, Karien seemed a nation lacking in colour. The villages were drab, the people even more so, and the frequently overcast weather leeched the remaining pigment from the world. She was not looking forward to spending her life among these people, not even as their queen.
Adrina was easily bored and the seemingly endless journey up the Ironbrook River toward Yarnarrow offered little in the way of entertainment. She had exhausted most of the opportunities for distraction available to her. She had admired all the scenery she could bear and waved at so many ragged peasants lining the riverbank that her arm felt ready to drop off. When she wasn’t being hounded by Madren regarding the proper way to behave in a Karien court, Vonulus dogged her heels with his instruction in the unbelievably demanding laws of the Karien Church. Adrina was beginning to think the reason so many people sinned was because it wasn’t humanly possible to remember everything that would lead one into temptation.
The only other activity Adrina had to while away the long days on the river was socialising with her ladies- in-waiting. She was not certain what a lady-in-waiting was supposed to do. They hovered around her like flies around a corpse, and seemed anxious to perform small, meaningless tasks for her, but they were offended if she treated them as servants and too sheltered to serve as entertaining companions.
Adrina was unusually cautious in dealing with them. It would not do for these young women (virgins one and all) to learn that for her sixteenth birthday her father had given her a handsome young
Today was proving particularly trying. Tall, dour, Pacifica had taken it upon herself to enlighten Adrina regarding the long and incredibly dull history of her family, the Gullwings of Mount Pike. She had only got as far as Lord Gullwing the Pious, who lived three centuries past, when Vonulus disturbed them. Adrina welcomed him into the crowded cabin. Even a lesson in the complex duties of a woman according to the Church of Xaphista was
