Guy Kay - Tigana

Then, as the months passed and the years, he watched helplessly with his rheumy eyes from under the crush of his mountains, as the terrible interwovenness of things added love to everything else. He was bound to Brandin unimaginably and he saw what happened. More, he was made to be a part of it, by the very nature of the relationship between the Kings and the Fools of Ygrath.

It was he who first gave expression, beyond his control, he had no control, to what was growing in the heart of the King. Back in a time when Brandin still refused to admit even the idea of love into a soul and a life shaped by vengeance and loss it was Rhun, Valentin, who would find himself staring at Dianora, at Saevar's dark-haired daughter, with another man's soul in his eyes.

No more, not ever again. The long night had been rolled back. The sorcery that had bound him was gone. It was over; he stood in sunlight and could speak his true name if he chose. He took an awkward step forward and then, more carefully, another. No one noticed him though. They never noticed him. He was the Fool. Rhun. Even that name, chosen by the King. Only the two of them ever to know. Not for the world, this. The privacy of pride. He had even understood. Perhaps the most terrible thing of all: he had understood.

He stepped under the canopy. Brandin was ahead of him near the edge of the hill. He had never struck a man from behind in all his days. He moved to one side, stumbling a little, and came up on the King's right hand. No one looked at him. He was Rhun.

He was not.

"You should have killed me by the river," he said, very clearly. Slowly, Brandin turned his head, as if just now remembering something. Valentin waited until their eyes met and held before he drove his sword into the Ygrathen's heart, the way a Prince killed his enemies, however many years it might take, however much might have to be endured before such an ending was allowed.

Dianora could not even scream she was so stunned, so unprepared. She saw Brandin stagger backward, a blade in his chest. Then Rhun, Rhun! jerked it clumsily free and so much blood followed. Brandin's eyes were wide with astonishment and pain, but they were clear, so luminously clear. And so was his voice as she heard him say:

"Both of us?" He swayed, still on his feet. "Father and son, both? What a harvest. Prince of Tigana."

Dianora heard the name as a white burst of sound in her brain. Time seemed to change, to slow unbearably. She saw Brandin sinking to his knees; it seemed to take forever for him to fall. She tried to move toward him; her body would not respond. She heard an elongated, weirdly distorted sound of anguish, and saw stark agony in d'Eymon's face as the Chancellor's blade ripped into and through Rhun's side.

Not Rhun. Not Rhun. Valentin the Prince.

Brandin's Fool. All those years. The thing that had been done to him! And she beside him, beside that suffering. All those years. She wanted to scream. She could not make a sound, could scarcely breathe.

She saw him falling too, the maimed, broken form crumpling to the ground beside Brandin. Who was still on his knees, a red wound in his chest. And who was looking at her now, only at her. A sound finally escaped her lips as she sank down beside him. He reached out, so slowly, with such a colossal effort of will, with all the control he had, and he took her hand.

"Oh, love," she heard him say. "It is as I told you. We should have met in Finavir."

She tried again to speak, to answer him, but tears were streaming down her face and closing her throat. She gripped his hand as tightly as she could, trying to will life from herself over into him. He slumped sideways against her shoulder, and so she lowered him to her lap and wrapped her arms around him, the way she had last night, only last night when he slept. She saw the brilliantly clear grey eyes slowly grow cloudy, and then dark. She was holding him like that when he died.

She lifted her head. The Prince of Tigana, on the ground beside them, was looking at her with so much compassion in his newly clear eyes. Which was a thing she could not possibly endure. Not from him: not with what he had suffered and what she was, what she herself had done. If he only knew, what words would he have for her, what look would there be in those eyes? She could not bear it. She saw him open his mouth as if to speak, then his eyes flicked quickly to one side.

A shadow crossed the sun. She looked up and saw d'Eymon's sword lifted high. Valentin raised a hand, pleading, to ward it.

"Wait!" she gasped, forcing the one word out.

And d'Eymon, almost mad with his own grief yet stayed for her voice. Held back his sword. Valentin lowered his hand. She saw him draw breath against the massive final reality of his own wound, and then, closing his eyes to the pain and the fierce light, she heard him speak. Not a cry, only the one word spoken in a clear voice. The one word which was, oh, what else could it have ever been? the name of his home, offered as a shining thing for the world again to know.

And Dianora saw then that d'Eymon of Ygrath did know it. That he did hear the name. Which meant that all men now could, that the spell was broken. Valentin opened his eyes and looked up at the Chancellor, reading the truth of that knowledge in d'Eymon's face, and Dianora saw that the Prince of Tigana was smiling as the Chancellor's sword came down from its great height and drove into his heart.

Even in death the smile remained on the terribly afflicted face. And the echo of his last word, the single name, seemed to Dianora to be hanging yet and spreading outward in ripples through the air around the hill, above the valley where the Barbadians were all dying now.

She looked down at the dead man in her arms, cradling his head and the greying hair, and she could not stop her tears. In Finavir, he had said. Last words. Another named place, farther away than dream. And had been right, as so many, many times he had been right. They ought to have met, if the gods had any kindness, any pity at all for them, in another world than this. Not here. For love was what it was, but it was not enough. Not here.

She heard a sound from under the canopy and turned in time to see d'Eymon slump forward against Brandin's chair. The hilt of his sword was against the seat-back of the chair. The blade was buried in his breast. She saw it and she pitied him his pain but she could not properly grieve. There was nothing left within her for such a sorrow. D'Eymon of Ygrath could not matter now. Not with the two men lying here with her, beside each other. She could pity, oh, she could pity any man or woman born, but she could not grieve for any but these two. Not now.

Not ever, she realized.

She looked over then and saw Scelto, still on his knees, the only other living person on this hill. He too was weeping. But for her, she realized, even more than for the dead. His first tears had always been for her. He seemed to be far away though. Everything seemed oddly remote. Except Brandin. Except Valentin.

For the last time she looked down at the man for whose love she had betrayed her home and all her dead and her own vengeance sworn before a fire in her father's house so long ago. She looked down upon what remained of Brandin of Ygrath with his soul gone, and slowly, tenderly, Dianora lowered her head and kissed him upon the lips in farewell. "In Finavir," she said. "My love." Then she laid him on the ground beside Valentin and she stood.

Looking south she saw that three men and the woman with red hair had descended the slope of the wizards' ridge and were beginning to swiftly cross the uneven ground between. She turned to Scelto whose eyes had now a terrible foreknowledge in them. He knew her, she remembered, he loved her and he knew her much too well. He knew all save the one thing, and that one secret she would take away with her. That was her own.