Guy Kay - Tigana

Every fine morning that summer the three of them had gone to their cove to swim and by the time autumn came with its chill and then the rains Dianora felt as easy in the water as if it were a second skin to her.

Once, she remembered, and there was no surprise to this memory lingering, the Prince himself had joined them as they walked past the palace. Dismissing his retinue, Valentin strolled with the three of them to the cove and disrobed to plunge into the sea beside their father. Straight out into the waves he had gone, long after Saevar stopped, past the sheltering headland of the cove and into the choppy whitecaps of the sea. Then he had turned around and come back to them, his smile bright as a god's, his body hard and lean, droplets of water sparkling in his golden beard.

He was a better swimmer than her father was, Dianora could see that right away, even as a child. She also knew, somehow, that it really didn't matter. He was the Prince, he was supposed to be better at everything.

Her father remained the most wonderful man in the world, and nothing she could imagine learning was ever going to change that.

Nothing ever had, she thought, shaking her head slowly in the saishan, as if to draw free of the clinging, spidery webs of memory. Nothing ever had. Though Brandin, in another, better world, in his imaginary Finavir, perhaps…

She rubbed her eyes and then shook her head again, still struggling to come awake. She wondered suddenly if the two of them, her father and the King of Ygrath, had seen each other, had actually looked each other in the eye that terrible day by the Deisa.

Which was such a hurtful thought that she was afraid that she might begin to cry. Which would not do. Not today. No one, not even Scelto, especially not Scelto, who knew her too well, must be allowed to see anything in her for the next few hours but quiet pride, and a certainty of success.

The next few hours. The last few hours.

The hours that would lead her to the margin of the sea and then down into the dark green waters which were the vision of the riselka's pool. Lead her to where her path came clear at last and then came, not before time, and not without a certain relief beneath the fear and all the loss, to an end.

It had unfolded with such direct simplicity, from the moment she had stood by the pool in the King's Garden and seen an image of herself amid throngs of people in the harbor, and then alone underwater, drawn toward a shape in darkness that was no longer a source of childhood terror but, finally, of release.

That same day, in the library, Brandin had told her he was abdicating in Ygrath in favor of Girald, but that Dorotea his wife was going to have to die for what she had done. He lived his life in the eyes of the world, he said. Even had he wished to spare her, he would have no real choice.

He didn't wish to spare her, Brandin said.

Then he spoke of what else had come to him on his ride that morning through the pre-dawn mists of the Island: a vision of the Kingdom of the Western Palm. He was going to make that vision real, he said. For the sake of Ygrath itself, and for the people here in his provinces. And for his own soul. And for her.

Only those Ygrathens willing to become people of his four joined provinces would be allowed to stay, he said; all others were free to sail home to Girald.

He would remain. Not just for Stevan and the response shaped in his heart to his son's death, though that would hold, that was constant; but to build a united realm here, a better world than he had known.

That would hold, that was constant.

Dianora had listened to him, had felt her tears beginning to fall, and had moved to lay her head in his lap beside the fire. Brandin held her, moving his hands through her dark hair.

He would need a Queen, he had said.

In a voice she had never heard before; one she had dreamt of for so long. He wanted to have sons and daughters here in the Palm now, Brandin said. To start again and build upon the pain of Stevan's loss, that something bright and fair might emerge from all the years of sorrow.

And then he spoke of love. Drawing his hands gently through her hair he spoke of loving her. Of how that truth had finally come home into his heart. Once, she would have thought it far more likely that she might grasp and hold the moons than ever hear him speak such words to her.

She wept, unable to stop, for in his words it was all gathering now, she could see how it was coming together, and such clarity and prescience was too much for a mortal soul. For her mortal soul. This was the Triad's wine, and there was too much bitter sorrow at the bottom of the cup. She had seen the riselka, though, she knew what was coming, where the path would lead them now. For one moment, a handful of heartbeats, she wondered what would have happened had he whispered these same words to her the night before instead of leaving her alone with the fires of memory. And that thought hurt as much as anything ever had in all her life.

Let it go! she wanted to say, wanted so much to say that she bit her lip holding back the words. Oh, my love, let the spell go. Let Tigana come back and all the world's brightness will return.

She said nothing. Knowing that he could not do so, and knowing, for she was no longer a child, that grace could not be come by so easily. Not after all these years, not with Tigana and Stevan twined together and embedded so deep down in Brandin's own pain. Not with what he had already done to her home. Not in the world in which they lived.

Besides which, and above everything else, there was the riselka, and her clear path unfolding with every word whispered by the fire. Dianora felt as if she knew everything that was going to be said, everything that would follow. And each passing moment was leading them, she could see it as a kind of shimmer in the room, towards the sea.

Almost a third of the Ygrathens stayed. It was more than he'd expected, Brandin told her, standing on the balcony above the harbor two weeks later, watching most of his flotilla sail away, back to their home, to what had been his home. He was exiled now, by his own will, more truly than he had ever been before.

He also told her later that same day that Dorotea was dead. She didn't ask how, or how he knew. His sorcery was still the thing she did not ever want to face.

Shortly after that came bad tidings though. The Barbadians were beginning to move north toward and through Ferraut, all three armies apparently heading for the border of Senzio. He had not expected that, she saw. Not nearly so soon. It was too unlike careful Alberico to move with such decisiveness.

"Something has happened there. Something is pushing him," Brandin said. "And I wish I knew what it was."

He was weak and vulnerable now, that was the problem. He needed time and they all knew it. With the Ygrathen army mostly gone Brandin needed a chance to shape a new structure of order in the western provinces. To turn the first giddy euphoria of his announcement into the bonds and allegiances that would truly forge a kingdom. That would let him summon an army to fight in his name, among a conquered people lately so hard-oppressed.

He needed time, desperately, and Alberico wasn't giving it to him.

"You could send us," d'Eymon the Chancellor said one morning, as the dimensions of the crisis began to take shape. "Send the Ygrathens we have left and position the ships off the coast of Senzio. See if that will hold Alberico for a time."

The Chancellor had stayed with them. There was never any real doubt that he would. For all his trauma, he had looked ill and old for days after Brandin's announcement, Dianora knew that d'Eymon's deepest loyalty, his love, though he would have shied awkwardly away from that word, was given to the man he served and not to the nation. Moving through those days almost numbed by the divisions in her own heart she envied d'Eymon that simplicity.