A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

‘You do know me. Of course you do,’ he insisted. He tried to reach for her but she knocked away his hand.

‘I saw it so clearly down there in the darkness. Tell me now – I’m begging you. Who are you? Who are you, Erlan? Tell me. Tell me!’ Her last words were a cry of anguish, tears bursting from her eyes at last, and she fell on him, beating her fists against his chest.

‘You know I can’t speak of that. I swore an oath. A word as strong as oak.’

‘Oh, more words!’ she spat, breaking free of him again. ‘You’ve given away so many damned words and what have they ever given you back? They bind you and twist you out of shape until you are unrecognisable from what you could have been.’ She was sobbing now, tears streaming in rivers down her cheeks. ‘What you should have been. . .’

‘A man is what he is. His past binds his future.’

‘No. No, it does not. A man is what he could become. And the present is where he has the power to change his future. Now, Erlan!’ She held out her fist in front of his face. ‘Now is when you have what you could be in the palm of your hand. Don’t you understand?’

He turned away. Hiding from her again, she thought. But she was glad of what she had said. She could not endure this false love any more. It was killing her as surely as the eunuch’s cruelty. She watched him, watched as he turned over a world of memories in his mind. At last his eyes rose to meet hers.

‘I gave myself away to another once,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘All of myself. And when she was lost, I was lost with her.’ He shook his head. ‘If we return to the north, I know I shall have to lose you again. You’re a queen. You need a king beside you. And who am I? I am nothing. No one. You will have to choose another.’

‘No. No,’ she insisted. ‘Can you not see how your fate calls you to it again and again?’

‘To what?’

‘Kingship. Your fate calls you higher. And every time, you destroy it and run away.’

‘It is not I who destroys it,’ he said, his voice turning bitter. ‘I came here seeking the king of kings. I believed if I did I would find freedom. And I was wrong. I believed a lie.’ He shook his head. ‘An impossibility. I am still under the curse.’

‘Curse? What are you talking about?’

He expelled a long sigh. ‘When I came for you. . . in Niflagard. I drank the Witch King’s blood. He is in me, just as Vargalf said he was. . . and somehow I’m bound to him. It is he who thwarts my fate.’

She was, for a moment, bewildered by this answer. But the more she thought of it the more dissatisfied she became. ‘I know nothing of that,’ she said softly. ‘I see on you a greater curse. It’s your own words that bind you. Your own oaths.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘You can’t even speak your true name. . .’

She drifted over to the window to stare out at the distant blue hills shining in the spring sun. Behind her, Erlan sank into a chair and hung his head, the silence between them as vast as an ocean.

After a long while, he began to speak.

‘I was born in northern Jutland.’

She turned.

‘My father was lord of my folk. I loved. . . a girl. . . She was forbidden to me. And because of me, she is dead. I could not stay. And I can never go back.’

She stared at him. ‘Is that what your wandering is about? This is all to punish yourself?’

He didn’t answer, he couldn’t even look up, and looking at him, seeing him so wretched, she felt her heart soften. She went to him and slipped her hands into his, running her thumbs over his hard knuckles. ‘It’s not your fault.’ She saw tears falling on their hands.

‘You don’t know that,’ he murmured.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said again. He sank forward onto his knees. She clasped his head close to her, his face buried in the folds of her robe against her stomach. ‘It’s not your fault.’

They stayed like that for a long time.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Leo drummed his fingers on the folds of purple silk covering his knees. This imperial garb made him feel ponderous and slow. He despised it. He was a soldier, accustomed to speed, to motion, to springing onto horseback at a moment’s notice when the alarum sounded. Under the weight of diadem and imperial vestments he felt like a lion chained.

But today the soldier in him must die. Today he needed to be an emperor. He waited, the scent of ambergris oil drifting pleasantly from its censer, content because he had Katāros holding Abdullah al-Battal in an antechamber. He’d told the eunuch to keep Maslama’s envoy waiting there until the frustration was boiling out of his face.

Everything was ready. The khan’s horde was even now marshalling in the west. The fire-ships waited behind the massive chain spanning the Horn – like a nest of deadly vipers, ready to be released with their darting poison. There was even good news from the east. The remnants of the Armeniac and Anatolikon armies had linked up and won a small victory, relieving the beleaguered city of Nicomedia.

To the south, Leo’s spies had sent word that Caliph Umar’s new fleet had already left Egypt and been spotted in the Aegean, approaching the Hellespont. It would not be long. He had to admire the young caliph’s courage. A more cowardly ruler would have cut his losses by now. A more prudent one, certainly. But the Arab generals thought they still had dice to play. Alas, they would soon discover that one of the dice, at least, was loaded against them.

He heard footsteps