Legenda Maris by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Tanith Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781907737671
Publisher: Immanion Press
Published: 2015-06-29T04:00:00+00:00

6

“Heaven pardon me,” Vendrei would murmur, much later. “I should have begged their forgiveness too. Should have prayed for them, those drowned men in the cave. Have I lost my human heart? What have I become through all this?”

But much later was not yet, certainly not that night.

Having heard of the village, and that therefore some form of civilisation was near—food, shelter, a small boat that might ferry them to larger settlements—Frokash and Jacenth, with the help of Dakos and Crazt, had created a second smaller fire in the lea of the cliffs, and settled there for the night, with the widow Maressa.

Vendrei and Zephyrin were left at the larger fire, to their own devices, they and the single sword. Ymil also remained. “Someone should stay,” Ymil answered the merchant quietly, when asked to the second, calmer fireside.

“Not to leave them to their madness, eh?”

“Merely to watch,” Ymil replied, with abnormal truth.

Nevertheless, he sat back, some feet away from them.

No one spoke. From the other fire drifted faint talk, silences, presently the low snores of Crazt. The moon had come and gone long before.

When the big fire sank, Vendrei or Ymil replenished it from the store of driftwood and branches. Once Vendrei went up to the pool, then came back and sat down again. He had eaten nothing and refused the brandy. Although he was so quiet the smoulder of his rage was on him. His hair had dried, shone like guineas in the firelight, and the sword shone too, planted there, presiding, deriding the two unarmed men and their mortal dream of a duel.

Ymil, watching, saw how Zeph watched also only Ven. Those dark green eyes scarcely blinked, so fixed they were, But Ven watched nothing, or else only the angry blank his thoughts had become.

Well past midnight, Ymil began quietly but audibly to talk, almost as if to himself.

“How bizarre it is, that just the few of us were saved. Is our rescue then for a purpose? I mean, some purpose we have yet to fulfil? What can it be? Maybe, in my own life... I once did a cruel and stupid thing. There was a young lady I was set to marry. But I changed my mind. And—I abandoned her.” Under his watchful eyelids, (for Ymil sometimes watched even with his eyes shut), he studied Zeph’s finely chiselled profile. True to the aristocratic father’s embarrassed words, this young captain did look delicate enough to be taken for a woman, if one ignored the clothes. But that would be most unwise, for the core of Zephyrin, it seemed, was made of purest steel. Did the invented story Ymil now told touch any nerve? (Admittedly, in the father’s account, the genders were reversed, it was the son who had been abandoned by a girl.) No reaction? It was impossible to be sure. “I regretted my actions afterwards. I heard she had fallen very ill—my fault, I must assume. I wonder if I can atone for my crime against her. Or am I too late?”

Vendrei said nothing, did not even look up.

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