Chapter 9
While much of Xetesk still struggled to recover ten years on from the wars that had all but seen the end of life on Balaia, the college itself had been restored to its opulent original state. The very centre of the college, the Circle Seven, six towers set around that of the Lord of the Mount, had escaped largely undamaged. But buildings of great age and importance had been severely battered or, in the case of the library, destroyed altogether.
‘The shell is complete but inside the hollowness echoes for all we have lost,’ said Denser.
‘Very poetic.’
Ilkar did not turn from the balcony. They were stood at the tower’s highest point. It was the morning after their abortive first meeting and some tempers had cooled considerably. Beyond the grand marble courtyard, on whose borders the other six mage towers stood, he could see library, Mana Bowl, long rooms, refectory, lecture theatres and the massed buildings of the college administration. All wrapped up in the college walls and all shining with recent paint and polished roof tiles.
Outside the college walls, repairs were still not complete on the city’s own defences. Many buildings would never be rebuilt, their stone stripped for use elsewhere. There was poverty in parts of the city. Resentment too but no power with which to act. Smoke from open fires rose into the still sky. To the east, the horizon was obscured by mist.
Rich drapes hung in Denser’s meeting room. Fine-spun rugs lay on the stone floor. Paintings and tapestries hung around the circular walls. Cut glass and gold-inlaid jugs sat on trays on the carved wooden table in the centre of the room around which The Raven sat. A bizarre gathering. The bodies of strangers with the shadows of lovers and friends.
‘I wonder what the criteria are for making it back here,’ said Ilkar ‘We rather hoped you might be able to tell us that,’ said Sol. He was sitting in between Hirad in his merchant’s body and Erienne in her five-year old girl’s.
‘I’m working on it. The trouble is, this whole thing is so essentially wrong I can barely bring myself to believe what I am seeing and feeling. Indeed that I have the capacity to see and feel at all.’
Ilkar gazed down briefly at the body he inhabited. Its previous soul would never have seen the sort of finery on display in Denser’s tower. Ilkar’s soul, bursting into the air over Xetesk, drawn there by the presence and strength of Sol and Denser, had sensed the body immediately and he had reached it before others could take it for their own.
It had been lying sprawled in a narrow alley between the walls of two warehouses. From the attitude of the body, Ilkar had assumed the unfortunate youth had fallen while trying to jump between them. It had been an assumption confirmed by the broken neck, arms and ribs.
He had managed to heal the worst wounds but the pain of the fall was everywhere in the body. Still, it was young and strong, not yet twenty by his reckoning. Human though, and that was fundamentally unpleasant. Like putting on a suit of crawling insects.
‘I have to say that I don’t really understand that,’ said Sol. ‘I realise you are in strange bodies and that there is pain and confusion. But this is a second chance at life. Why is it so bad? Why does Hirad keep on saying he doesn’t want to be here?”
All around the table Ilkar saw the reactions of the dead. And he saw their inability to put their thoughts into words. Hirad looked up at him.
‘Go on, Ilks,’ he said.
‘All right. You see, the trouble is you are using assumptions based on the fact that you are still living. You assume that because of the manner of our deaths we must feel robbed of the life we expected and so would desire a return to finish what we started. Am I right?’
‘Something like that,’ said Sol.
‘Well we don’t. I haven’t spent a moment regretting being dead. And that isn’t a conscious choice; the thought just never occurs.’
‘So what is it like being dead, then?’ asked Denser. ‘It seems you all find it hard to put into words.’
‘Well that’s because death doesn’t conform to anything anyone living thinks it might be,’ said Darrick, his new voice rich and full toned.
‘Exactly,’ said Ilkar. ‘There is nothing to see, there is nothing to do in the way you would understand it. But the souls of those you love are always close and there is no risk that you will ever be separated from them. At least, there wasn’t. Can you imagine the comfort that brings? We have memories; we communicate but not through speech. We drift, I suppose. Time does not exist. Every moment is both a lifetime and the tiniest spark.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Denser. It sounds terribly boring. Interminably so. And standing in this skin and breathing the air of Balaia, I can see why you’d think that. But it isn’t. It’s, well, bliss, I suppose you’d call it. Endless bliss.’
‘Good job, Ilks,’ said Hirad, and he was not alone in having a mist of tears in his eyes.
Denser was frowning. ‘But you cannot see, hear, feel, taste or smell. There is no colour. There is no music. How can it be bliss?’
‘That’s exactly what Darrick was saying,’ said Ren, her young voice chirpy and bright. ‘You cannot apply the joys you experience as a living person to your existence after death. There is no comparison, barring the deepest feelings of love, friendship and intimacy. ’
‘You’ll have to take our word for it,’ said Hirad. ‘It’s not just enough, it’s everything.’
‘Coming from you, that is some statement,’ said Sol. ‘So how do we get you home? Presumably ridding ourselves of our latest enemy would be a good start.’
Silence inside the meeting room. The Raven dead could not look at him.
‘Did Hirad not tell you?’ said Ilkar, his voice quiet, the pain in his body intensifying. Heat was flooding him and the gale of the void threatened suddenly to sweep him away, such was the despair that surged over him. ‘You cannot beat them.’
‘He did say that but we are not bound to believe him,’ said Denser.
‘And even if you could, the land of the dead lies ruined. There is no going back.’
The words, like ice on Ilkar’s tongue, rolled over the room.
‘You’re stuck here?’ said Sol.
‘Oh great,’ muttered Diera. ‘Mouldering Raven has-beens cluttering up my inn.’
‘That would be the least of our concerns,’ said Sol sharply.
Ilkar winced at the expression on Diera’s face.
‘He’s right, Lady Unknown,’ said Hirad. ‘Our souls no longer have a place to rest.’
‘So what?’
‘So where do you think yours will go if you die?’
Diera put her head in her hands. ‘You know, I’ve seen and heard a lot in my time. Being married to The Unknown Warrior and the first, albeit reluctant, king of Balaia means I can’t get away from it. But this is too much. And I’m worried that I’m starting to believe you, like my daft husband and the Lord of the Mount do. So I’m going. Home. To open up.’ She shot a glance at Sol. ‘Let me know what hare-brained scheme you end up with. Meanwhile I’m going to spend some time with our boys.’
Diera got up to leave, ignoring the hand that Sol put out towards her. Hirad pushed himself from his chair and opened the door for her.
‘It is us,’ he said. ‘Just look at our shadows and say you don’t recognise them.’
Diera gazed at him. ‘This is Xetesk, city of magic, home of the Dark College as was. You think this couldn’t be some spell? Give me some credit, won’t you?’
‘Keep your boys close, Diera,’ said Hirad. ‘Be ready.’
‘You know we named the youngest after the real Hirad Coldheart. There was a man we could all love. You? I don’t know what you think you are.’
Hirad’s face cracked into a huge grin when the door had closed.
‘You’ve got a boy called Hirad, Unknown?’
Sol nodded, the beginnings of a smile on his careworn face. ‘We have.’
‘Hirad.’ The barbarian’s eyes sparkled. ‘Not Ilkar, then. Or Sirendor, or Darrick. Hirad.’
‘All right, Coldheart, we get it.’ Ilkar felt his mood lift despite himself.
