Guy Kay - Tigana

Which had ended tonight. Which would truly end, most horribly, for Tomasso in the morning, amid pain he didn't even have the capacity to imagine. He liked this dream though, this fever-induced fantasy. There was light in it. It kept the rats away. It even seemed to ease the bone-numbing cold of the wet stones beneath him and against his back.

He lifted an unsteady hand towards the flame. Through a dry throat and torn, puffy lips he croaked something. What he wanted to say was, "I'm sorry," to the dream-image of his father, but he couldn't make the words come right.

This was a dream though, his dream, and the image of Sandre seemed to understand.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Tomasso heard his dream-father say. So gently. "It was my fault and only mine. Through all those years and at the end. I knew Gianno's limitations from the start. I had too many hopes for you as a child. It… affected me too much. After."

The candle seemed to waver a little. A part of Tomasso, a corner of his heart, seemed to be knitting itself slowly back together, even though this was only a dream, only his own longing. A last feeble fantasy of being loved before they flayed him.

"Will you let me tell you how sorry I am for the folly that has condemned you to this? Will you hear me if I tell you I have been proud of you, in my fashion?"

Tomasso let himself weep. The words were balm for the deepest ache he knew. Crying made the light blur and swim though, and so he raised his shaking hands and kept trying to wipe the tears away. He wanted to speak but his shattered mouth could not form words. He nodded his head though, over and over. Then he had a thought and he raised his left hand, the heart hand, of oaths and fidelity, toward this dream of his dead father's ghost.

And slowly Sandre's hand came down, as if from a long, long way off, from years and years away, seasons lost and forgotten in the turning of time and pride, and father and son touched fingertips together.

It was a more solid contact than Tomasso had thought it would be. He closed his eyes for a moment, yielding to the intensity of his feelings. When he opened them his father's image seemed to be holding something out towards him. A vial of some liquid. Tomasso did not understand.

"This is the last thing I can do for you," the ghost said in a strange, unexpectedly wistful voice. "If I were stronger I could do more, but at least they will not hurt you in the morning now. They will not hurt you any more, my son. Drink it Tomasso, drink it and this will all be gone. All go away, I promise you. Then wait for me Tomasso, wait if you can in Morian's Halls. I would like to walk with you there."

Tomasso still did not understand, but the tone was so mild, so reassuring. He took the dream-vial. Again it was more substantial than he'd expected it to be.

His father nodded encouragement. With trembling hands Tomasso fumbled and removed the stopper. Then with a last gesture, a final mocking parody of himself, he raised it in a wide, sweeping, elaborate salute to his own powers of fantasy and he drained it to the dregs, which were bitter.

His father's smile was so sad. Smiles are not supposed to be sad, Tomasso wanted to say. He had said that to a boy once, in a temple of Morian at night, in a room where he was not supposed to be. His head felt heavy. He felt as if he were about to fall asleep, even though he already was asleep, and dreaming in his fever. He really didn't understand. He especially didn't understand why his father, who was dead, should ask him to wait in Morian's Halls.

He looked up again, wanting to ask about that. His vision seemed to be going completely strange on him though.

He knew this was so, because the image of his father, looking down upon him, seemed to be crying. There were tears in his father's eyes.

Which was impossible. Even in a dream.

"Farewell," he heard.

Farewell, he tried to say, in return.

He wasn't sure if he'd actually managed to form the word, or if he'd only thought it, but just then a darkness more encompassing than he had ever known came down over him like a blanket or a mantle, and the difference between the spoken and the unspoken ceased to matter anymore.

DIANORA COULD REMEMBER THE DAY SHE CAME TO THE Island.

The air that autumn morning had been much like it was today at the beginning of spring, white clouds scudding in a high blue sky as the wind had swept the Tribute Ship through the whitecaps into the harbor of Chiara. Beyond harbor and town the slopes mounting to the hills had been wild with fall colors. The leaves were turning: red and gold and some that clung yet to green, she remembered.

The sails of the Tribute Ship so long ago had been red and gold as well: colors of celebration in Ygrath. She knew that now, she hadn't known it then. She had stood on the forward deck of the ship to gaze for the first time at the splendor of Chiara's harbor, at the long pier where the Grand Dukes used to stand to throw a ring into the sea, and from where Letizia had leaped in the first of the Ring Dives to reclaim the ring from the waters and marry her Duke: turning the Dives into the luck and symbol of Chiara's pride until beautiful Onestra had changed the ending of the story hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and the Ring Dives had ceased. Even so, every child in the Palm knew that legend of the Island. Young girls in each province would play at diving into water for a ring and rising in triumph, with their hair shining wet, to wed a Duke of power and glory.

From near the prow of the Tribute Ship, Dianora had looked up beyond the harbor and palace to gaze at the majesty of snow-crowned Sangarios rising behind them. The Ygrathen sailors had not disturbed her silence. They had allowed her to come forward to watch the Island approach. Once she'd been safely aboard ship and the ship away to sea they'd been kind to her. Women thought to have a real chance at being chosen for the saishan were always treated well on the Tribute Ships. It could make a captain's fortune in Brandin's court if he brought home a hostage who became a favorite of the Tyrant.

Sitting now on the southern balcony of the saishan wing, looking out from behind the ornately crafted screen that hid the women from gawkers in the square below, Dianora watched the banners of Chiara and Ygrath flap in the freshening spring breeze, and she remembered how the wind had blown her hair about her face more than twelve years ago. She remembered looking from the bright sails to the slopes of the tree-clad hills running up to Sangarios, from the blue and white of the sea to the clouds in the blue sky. From the tumult and chaos of life in the harbor to the serene grandeur of the palace just beyond. Birds had been wheeling, crying loudly about the three high masts of the Tribute Ship. The rising sun had been a dazzle of light striking along the sea from the east. So much vibrancy in the world, so rich and fair and shining a morning to be alive.

Twelve years ago, and more. She had been twenty-one years old, and nursing her hatred and her secret like two of Morian's three snakes twining about her heart.

She had been chosen for the saishan.

The circumstances of her taking had made it very likely, and Brandin's celebrated grey eyes had widened appraisingly when she was led before him two days later. She'd been wearing a silken, pale-colored gown, she remembered, chosen to set off her dark hair and the dark brown of her eyes.

She had been certain she would be chosen. She'd felt neither triumph nor fear, even though she'd been pointing her life toward that moment for five full years, even though, in that instant of Brandin's choosing, walls and screens and corridors closed around her that would define the rest of her days. She'd had her hatred and her secret, and guarding the two of them left no room for anything else.