The King was lying only an arm’s length away from Rhun who had slain him. Rhun, who had been a Prince here in the Palm. Prince of Tigana. Lower Corte. If he had a space of time later, Scelto sensed that the pieces of this story might begin to come together for him. Even numbed as he was now, he could feel a lancing hurt in his mind if he dwelt upon that history. So much done in the name of the dead.
She would be near the water by now. She would not be coming back this time. He had not expected her to return on the morning of the Dive; she had tried to hide it, but he had seen something in her when she woke that day. He hadn’t understood why, but he had known that she was readying herself to die.
She had been ready, he was certain of it; something had changed for her by the water’s edge that day. It would not change again.
‘You are?’
He looked up. A lean, black-haired man, silvering at the temples, was looking down at him with a clear grey gaze. Eyes curiously like Brandin’s had been.
‘I am Scelto. I was a servant in the saishan, a messenger today.’
‘You were here when they died?’
Scelto nodded. The man’s voice was calm, though there was a discernible sense of effort in that, as if he were trying with his tone to superimpose some pattern of order upon the chaos of the day.
‘Will you tell me who killed the King of Ygrath?’
‘His Fool,’ Scelto said quietly, trying to match the manner of the other man. In the distance below them the noises of battle were subsiding at last.
‘How? At Brandin’s request?’ It was one of the other men, a hard-looking, bearded figure with dark eyes and a sword in his hand.
Scelto shook his head. He felt overwhelmingly weary all of a sudden. She would be swimming. She would be a long way out by now. ‘No. It was an attack. I think . . .’ He lowered his head, fearful of presuming.
‘Go on,’ said the first man gently. ‘You are in no danger from us. I have had enough of blood today. More than enough.’
Scelto looked up at that, wondering. Then he said, ‘I think that when the King used his last magic he was too intent on the valley and he forgot about Rhun. He used so much in that spell that he released the Fool from his binding.’
‘He released more than that,’ the grey-eyed man said softly. The tall woman had come to stand beside him. She had red hair and deep blue eyes; she was young and very beautiful.
She would be far out among the waves. It would all be over soon. He had not said farewell. After so many years. Despite himself, Scelto choked back a sob. ‘May I know,’ he asked them, not even sure why he needed this, ‘may I know who you are?’
And quietly, without arrogance or even any real assertion, the dark-haired man said, ‘My name is Alessan bar Valentin, the last of my line. My father and brothers were killed by Brandin almost twenty years ago. I am the Prince of Tigana.’
Scelto closed his eyes.
In his mind he was hearing Brandin’s voice again, clear and cold, laden with irony, even with his mortal wound: What a harvest, Prince of Tigana. And Rhun, just before he died, speaking that same name under the dome of the sky.
His own revenge was here then.
‘Where is the woman?’ the third man asked suddenly, the younger, smaller one. ‘Where is Dianora di Certando who did the Ring Dive? Was she not here?’
It would be over by now. It would be calm and deep and dark for her. Green tendrils of the sea would grace her hair and twine about her limbs. She would finally be at rest, at peace.
Scelto looked up. He was weeping, he didn’t even try to stop, or hide his tears now. ‘She was here,’ he said. ‘She has gone to the sea again, to an ending in the sea.’
He didn’t think they would care. That they could possibly care about that, any of them, but he saw then that he was wrong. All four of them, even the grim, warlike one with the brown hair, grew abruptly still and then turned, almost as one, to look west past the slopes and the sand to where the sun was setting over the water.
‘I am deeply sorry to hear that,’ said the man named Alessan. ‘I saw her do the Ring Dive in Chiara. She was beautiful and astonishingly brave.’
The brown-haired man stepped forward, an unexpected hesitation in his eyes. He wasn’t as stern as he had first seemed, Scelto realized, and he was younger as well.
‘Tell me,’ the man began. ‘Was she . . . did she ever . . .’ He stopped, in confusion. The other man, the Prince, looked at him with compassion in his eyes.
‘She was from Certando, Baerd. Everyone knows the story.’
Slowly, the other man nodded his head. But when he turned away it was to look out towards the sea again. They don’t seem like conquerors, Scelto thought. They didn’t seem like men in the midst of a triumph. They just looked tired, as at the end of a very long journey.
‘So it wasn’t me, after all,’ the grey-eyed man was saying, almost to himself. ‘After all my years of dreaming. It was his own Fool who killed him. It had nothing to do with us.’ He looked at the two dead men lying together, then back at Scelto. ‘Who was the Fool? Do we know?’
She was gone, claimed by the dark sea far down. She was at rest. And Scelto was so tired. Tired of grief and blood and pain, of these bitter cycles of revenge.
