Guy Kay - Tigana

Quietly spoken, a careful statement of relevant facts. No arrogance, only the steady, always enduring pride. And why should she doubt his sorcery? She knew exactly what it had done in war some twenty years ago.

That conversation had been yesterday. Afterwards she had turned to watch the sun go down into the sea. The night had been bright and glorious, with Vidomni waxing and Ilarion at her full, blue and mysterious, a moon of fantasy, of magic. She had wondered if they would have time to be alone that night, but in fact Brandin had been down on the plain among the tents of his army through most of the dark hours, and speaking with his captains after that. D'Eymon, she knew was going to remain up here with him tomorrow, and Rhamanus, more a sailor than a military commander, would be on the hill as well to lead the men of the King's Guard in defense, if matters came to that. If matters came to that they were probably dead, she knew.

Both moons had set by the time Brandin came back to their tent on that hill above the sea. Awake in bed, waiting, she could see his weariness. He had maps with him, sketches of terrain to study one last time, but she made him put them down.

He came over to the bed still fully clothed and lay down. After a moment he rested his head in her lap. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then Brandin shifted a little and looked up at her.

"I hate that man down there," he said quietly. "I hate everything he stands for. There is no passion in him, no love, no pride. Only ambition. Nothing matters but that. Nothing in the world can move him to pity or grief but his own fate. Everything is a tool, an instrument. He wants the Emperor's Tiara, everyone knows it, but he doesn't want it for anything. He only wants. I doubt anything in his life has ever moved him to feel anything for anyone else… love, loss, anything."

He subsided. He was repeating himself in his exhaustion. She pressed her fingers against his temples, looking down at his face as he turned again and his eyes closed and his brow gradually grew smooth under her touch. Eventually his breathing steadied and she knew he was asleep. She stayed awake, her hands moving like a blind woman's over him, knowing from the light outside that the moons were down, knowing the morning was war and that she loved this man more than the world.

She must have slept, because the sky was grey with the coming of dawn when she opened her eyes again, and Brandin was gone. There was a red anemone on the pillow beside her. She looked at it without moving for a moment, then picked it up and crushed it to her face inhaling the fragile scent. She wondered if he knew the legend of that flower here. Almost certainly not, she thought.

She rose, and a few moments later Scelto came in with a mug of khav in his hand. He was wearing the stiff leather vest of a messenger; lightweight inadequate armor against arrows. He had volunteered to be one of the score of such men running orders and messages up and down the hill. He had come to her first though, as he had every morning in the saishan for a dozen years. Dianora was afraid that thinking about that would make her cry: a brutal omen on such a day. She managed a smile and told him to go back to the King, who needed him more this morning.

After he left, she slowly drank her khav, listening to the growing noises outside. Then she washed and dressed herself and went out of the tent into the rising sun.

Two men of the King's Guard were waiting for her. They went wherever she did, a discreet step or two behind, but not more than that. She would be guarded today, she knew. She looked for Brandin and saw Rhun first. They were both near the front of the flattened ridge, both bare-headed, without armor, though with identical swords belted at their sides. Brandin had chosen to dress today in the simple brown of an ordinary soldier.

She was not fooled. None of them were, or could be.

Not long after that they saw him step alone toward the edge of his hill and raise one hand above his head for all the men in both armies to see. Without a word spoken, any warning at all, a dazzling blood-crimson flare of light sprang from that upthrust hand like a flame into the deep blue of the sky. From below they heard a roar of sound, as, crying their King's name aloud, Brandin's outnumbered army moved forward across the valley to meet the soldiers of Alberico in a battle that had been coming for almost twenty years.

"Not yet," Alessan said steadily, for the fifth time, at least. "We have waited years, we must not be too soon now."

Devin had a sense that the Prince was cautioning himself more than anyone else. The truth was that until Alessan gave the word there was nothing for them to do but watch as men from Barbadior and Ygrath and the provinces of the Palm killed each other under the blazing Senzian sun.

It was noon or a little past it, by the sun. It was brutally hot. Devin tried to grasp how the men below must feel, hacking and battering each other, slipping on blood, treading the fallen in the broiling caldron of battle. They were too high and far away to recognize anyone, but not so distant that they couldn't see men die or hear their screams.

Their vantage point had been chosen by Alessan a week before with a sure prediction of where the two sorcerers would base themselves. And both had done exactly as he judged they would. From this sloping ridge less than half a mile south of the higher, broader rise of land where Brandin was, Devin gazed down over the valley and saw two armies knotted together in a pitiless sending of souls to Morian.

"The Ygrathen chose his field well," Sandre had said with an almost detached admiration earlier that morning as the cries of horses and men began. "The plain is wide enough to allow him room to maneuver, but not so broad as to let the Barbadians flank around him without serious trouble in the hills. They would have to climb out of the valley, and then along the exposed slopes and back down again." "And if you look, you will see," Ducas di Tregea had added, "that Brandin has most of his archers on his own right flank, toward the south, in case they do try that. They could pick the Barbadians off like deer among the olives on the slopes if they attempt to go around."

One contingent of Barbadians had, in fact, tried just that an hour ago. They had been slaughtered and driven back by a rain of arrows from the archers of the Western Palm. Devin had felt a quick surge of excitement, but then that congealed within him into turmoil and confusion. The Barbadians were tyranny, yes, and all that it meant, yet how could he possibly exult in any kind of triumph for Brandin of Ygrath?

But should he then desire the death of men of the Palm at the hands of Alberico's mercenaries? He didn't know what to think or feel. He felt as though his soul was being stripped raw and exposed here, laid out for burning under the Senzian sky.

Catriana was standing just ahead of him, next to the Prince. Devin didn't think he'd seen them apart from each other since Erlein had brought her back from the garden. He'd spent a disoriented, difficult hour the morning after that, struggling to adjust to the shining thing that had so clearly overtaken them. Alessan had looked as he did when he made music, as if he'd found a hearthstone in the world. When Devin had glanced over at Alais it was to find her watching him with a curious, very private smile on her face; it left him even more confused than before. He had a sense that he wasn't even keeping up with himself, let alone with the changes around him. He also knew that there wasn't going to be any time to deal with such things, not with what was coming to Senzio.

In the next two days, the armies had arrived from north and south bringing with them a bone-deep awareness of destiny hanging before them all as if suspended on some balance scale of gods in the summer air.