Guy Kay - Tigana

"In a way," she said to him, gesturing at the Prince, "it would almost be better if no one ever knew who he was. But I don't think we can do that. Tell them, Scelto. Stay, and tell them when they get here. Whoever they are, they ought to know."

"Oh, my lady," he whispered, weeping. "Must it end like this?"

She knew what he meant. Of course she knew. She would not dissemble with him now. She looked at the people, whoever they were, coming quickly across the ground from the south. The woman.

A brown-haired man with a sword, another darker one, a third man, smaller than the other two.

"Yes," she said to Scelto, watching them approach. "Yes, I think it must."

And so she turned and left him with the dead on that hill, to wait for those who were coming even now. She left the valley behind, the hill, left all the noises of battle and pain, walking down the northernmost of the goatherd's tracks as it wound west along the slope of the hill out of sight of everyone. There were flowers growing along the path: sonrai berries, wild lilies, irises, anemones, yellow and white, and then there was a scarlet one. In Tregea they said that flower had been made red by the blood of Adaon where he fell.

There were no men or women on that slope to see her or to stay her as she went, nor was the distance very far to level ground and then to the beginnings of the sand and finally to the margin of the sea where there were gulls wheeling and crying overhead.

There was blood on her garments. She discarded them in a small pile on the wide sweep of that white sand. She stepped into the water, it was cool, but not nearly so cold as the sea of Chiara had been on the morning of the Dive. She walked out slowly until it came to her hips and then she began to swim. Straight out, heading west, toward where the sun would set when it finally went down to end this day. She was a good swimmer; her father had taught her and her brother long ago after a dream she had had. Valentin the Prince had even come with them once to their cove. Long ago.

When she began, at length, to tire she was very far from the shore, out where the blue-green of the ocean near land changes to the darker blue of the deep. And there she dived, pushing herself downward, away from the blue of the sky and the bronze sun and it seemed to her as she went down that there was an odd illumination appearing in the water, a kind of path here in the depths of the sea.

She had not expected that. She had not thought any such thing would be here for her. Not after all that had happened, all that she had done. But there was indeed a path, a glow of light defining it. She was tired now, and deep, and her vision was beginning to grow dim. She thought she saw a shape flicker at the edge of the shimmering light. She could not see very clearly though, there seemed to be a kind of mist coming down over her. She thought for a moment the shape might be the riselka, though she had not earned that, or even Adaon, though she had no claim at all upon the god. But then it seemed to Dianora that there was a last gathering of brightness in her mind at the very end, and the mist fell back a little, and she saw that for her it was neither of these, after all, not the riselka, nor the god.

It was Morian, come in kindness, come in grace, to bring her home.

Alone of the living on a hill with the dead, Scelto stood and composed himself as best he could, waiting for those he could see beginning to climb the slope.

When the three men and the tall woman reached the summit he knelt in submission as they surveyed in silence what had happened here. What death had claimed upon this hill. He was aware that they might kill him, even as he knelt. He wasn't sure that he cared.

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."