The God Tattoo: Untold Tales from the Twilight Reign (28 page)

At last I developed the courage to start. We settled down onto a small sofa near the fire, huddling together with the comforting presence of books around us. The tall window was still shuttered
and the heavy drapes drawn so I felt secure and comfortable as I began to read. Cebana reached for another of the letters but I held on tight, selfishly perhaps but I wanted to know their contents
before exposing my wife to it. There were nine letters in all; some from correspondents whose names I recognised but several I did not.

I cannot say what suspicions they provoked in me – only that they dealt with a single event in one form or another. Most seemed idle hearsay until combined with the others, while one was
remarkable that it had ever been written and another quite shocking for the damage it could cause to so many, hinting as it did towards heresy, blasphemy— But I must say no more.

My mind returned to the despoiled tapestry upstairs, to the damaged figures of that most famous scene. My stomach tightened as I understood why it had been done. The eighth letter told of a
glimpsed scene that seemed a fever-dream, but as I recalled those marred depictions I realised the horror in the author’s mind had not been madness.

Cebana tried again to read what I had but this time I was sharp in my denial. I could see her anger and hurt, but my fear was manifest. She saw it in my eyes and it caused her to cry for me.
There we sat for the best part of an hour I think, holding each other tight and weeping as only lovers can.

Three times did she demand to share my pain and each time I was more resolved to keep it from all of them. Dever flew into a fury that I refused him, Forel was prepared to force the packet from
my breast pocket, but my calm silence eventually won through. All I could think about was enduring the night and returning to Narkang in the morning. Eventually they realised this and helped me,
but Forel and Daen especially continued in their questions.

Firstly, we saw to the house. Doors were locked and windows barred, we kept weapons close to hand as though preparing for a siege and in truth that was how we now felt. The servants felt our
mood and those who I asked to stay awake took to their assigned stations with knives and cleavers taken from the kitchen. It was a curious collection of sentries that stood guard that night, as the
womenfolk kept to our bedchamber.

Sana had picked up on the fear of the house and our main concern other than to stay awake was to keep her calm. There was a wild look in the girl’s face, as if she had guessed the truth
though it would have meant nothing to one of her years. She spoke as little as normal, but without one of her family holding her she would draw herself into a ball and whimper.

The night drew on. I paced the corridors, sometimes alone, sometimes with my sons. Each of us carried a blade and a lamp, but we heard nothing. Only once did I open a window to mark the weather.
The storm had ended. The air was still and I could make out the black outlines of clouds in the sky with the light of the uncovered moon. I tasted the fresh night air, the rising scents that follow
the storm and almost smiled. The worst, it seemed, was over. There was a peace on the Land I had not detected since arriving. The moors seemed merely that, no more than empty miles of heather and
peat soaked in rain. And then I noticed the quiet.

It was not the silence of night, for what night is ever silent? It was not calm, there was no peace out there but the empty noise of a dead place, of a noiseless brooding or lurking predator. It
is hard to understand that utter quiet for one rarely hears it. The absence of disturbance falters before this weighty space – devoid of sound but clamouring with sharp thoughts and buzzing
anger. I slammed the window as fast as I could and latched it well, locking the door of the room behind me and stamping my way downstairs to pierce the fog about me.

I awoke to a haunting flurry of notes that rang out through the house. I had no idea of the hour, but as I raised myself to my feet I felt leaden, as though it had been the
sleep of the grave. My body protested each movement, cried out at each step and my head was so fogged I twice found myself pressed against the wall for support. Still the music played. The high
unearthly notes of a virginal or harpsichord echoed in ancient tones through the wood and stone of this rock in history – a hypnotic song that caused my eyelids to droop. I had to fight to
stop myself from sagging to my knees such was the weight I felt on my shoulders.

‘Father,’ came a voice from behind me, choked and wavering though whether it was my head or the voice I could not tell.

Contriving to turn around I fell onto one knee, but held my head up to see Dever and Daen clasping each other in their own efforts.

‘The music . . .’ was all I could say, wondering which of my children was playing such a wonderful tune. I had no memory of any of them learning to such a proficiency.

‘Sana’s missing!’ blurted Daen out as they reached me. Her voice was a tired slur, drunken with the music.

Behind them, I saw Forel and Cebana making a slow journey down the stair from upstairs, Carana close behind. Fear clarified my mind once more. Though my body was treacherously weak I lurched
down the stone steps that led toward the discordant, beautiful sound. The ground slipped beneath my feet time and again – the music dragging at my heels so that each step safely gained was a
victory won.

I reached the ground floor and turned left, towards the ballroom and long gallery that lay at the north end of Moorview. My destination was fixed firmly in my mind, the memory of a virginal
propped in one corner of the ballroom, lit by the moonlight until I’d closed the tall drapes. Even as I crashed into a table on the corridor I did not take my eyes off the door ahead of
me.

With a painful lack of speed I dragged myself to the door. With each step the musical strains grew to abominable levels. When I reached it and placed my hand on the tarnished brass handle, the
melody was singing so violently at my ears I felt a wet touch of pain that felt like blood seeping from them.

I turned the handle, only to find it unyielding. In my weakened state it might have been carved from a single piece of stone for I could not move it even a fraction. And then suddenly the music
stopped, so abruptly the last note seemed to vanish from the air rather than gradually fade away. As the ache of the music receded, my head began to clear and my strength started to return, even as
the voices of my family behind me grew more insistent and real.

The door would not budge, but with the end to that awful, enchanting music I remembered another door off to my right. I turned to see it slightly open and ran with my last remaining strength. I
threw the door open, hand on my sword but it remained in its sheath as I saw Sana before me, sitting placidly at the virginal which had been rolled out from the corner to stand before the
ballroom’s great windows. The drapes had been opened and clear moonlight shone through, bathing her delicate features with cool white light.

I could see no one else but still I walked cautiously, looking all about me with my blade slowly emerging. Only my daughter giggling at my actions broke that caution and suddenly I threw myself
toward Sana to gather her up. Her arms felt cool and smooth as she wrapped them about my neck, unconcerned and unaffected. It was a complete departure to the whimpering and nervous child of
earlier, but profoundly welcome.

The others burst in but I ignored them, instead placing Sana back down on the stool she’d been sitting on. The stool had a cushion placed on it to raise her up to the correct height, but
she could not have been the musician.

‘Sana, who was playing just now? Was it you?’

She gave me her best smile, innocent and knowing in one bright flash, and shook her head.

‘Man.’

‘What man? Where did he go?’

A flicker of confusion crossed her face and she looked to her left at the other half of the virginal stool beside her. Patently there was no one there so she looked back over her other shoulder
to scan the room. The ballroom was almost entirely empty of furniture, certainly it contained no places to hide and she returned her attention to me with a shrug – that and a smile was the
only response I received.

‘What did he look like?’ I urged.

‘Big.’

‘And his face?’

‘No face.’

Perhaps any other parent would have slapped a child for being so foolish in conversation, but this was how Sana spoke. It was a curious habit, but one that made clear the anxiety of before was
gone without trace.

‘No face? What do you mean?’ questioned Cebana as she appeared at my side.

I held up an arm to stop her going any further in case it distracted the girl’s flighty mind, but Sana only waved a little greeting. ‘Do you mean he had no nose perhaps? Or was an
eye missing?’

‘He had a nose. Silly! Had eyes, had a mouth, had a nose. No face.’

There was something about her speech that made me believe her. Whichever way she meant it, Sana was sure that the man had no face.

‘How about his clothes? How was he dressed?’

It was a question I dreaded to ask, but knew I must. The child screwed up her face in thought for a moment, her button nose wrinkling before her smile shone again in the moonlight.

‘Ragged.’

The warning was clear enough. Neither barred door nor proud walls of history could protect us. It was the final reminder of my inadequacies and of the rank and name and
history I had never wished to inherit. Thus I have written these words, through night and day till dusk is now at hand. The cloud-wreathed moor has sullenly waited for my emergence and now the hour
comes.

Though my hand trembles at the prospect of what I must do, I believe I can bring these events to a conclusion. Those letters I have read again and again. They linger at the edge of my sight
as I write now. My eye has drifted to them constantly and though what they reveal is an awful truth, there remains a chord of hope in this dismal symphony. The letters are now collected with a
variety of more innocent correspondences that might provide directions to the foolish. All will lie safe in my jacket pocket.

As you must know, I was named for one whose body lies somewhere out on the moor. He was hardly a celebrated figure. He received no hero’s funeral and his death was recounted as a
terrible one, however heroic, but he did what was necessary and was remembered warmly by those who owed him a debt. I go now to join him and the other lonely voices of the moor – to face the
ghosts of the past and the fate I have chosen.

This statement I leave here. A man must be permitted to leave account of his life and last days. My king will require it and my family must be assured that it was love that took me from them;
that it is love that demands they investigate no further and secure a similar promise from the king.

The dark of the moor will know from my resolve that its secrets remain safe, despite these feeble scraps of parchment. One cannot lie to the dark and I pledge with my life that this curse
shall go no further. With the new day I can but pray the Gods bless me and walk with me now – and that in the morning the sun will again shine on Moorview.

‘Mother, why do you let him do that?’ Cara snapped as she entered their small kitchen.

Her mother looked up with a tired expression, a tiny woman struggling under the platter of food.

‘Do what, dear? Can you just . . .’ She nodded towards her shawl that was about to slip from her shoulders. Cara obliged and rearranged it, but the girl steadfastly remained in her
way.

‘Scare the children. Grandfather’s telling stories again.’

At thirteen, Cara didn’t think of herself as a child any more, rather a second mother to her younger siblings. She tossed her hair haughtily, as she had seen the older girls of the village
do, and waited. ‘Mother, are you listening? Why don’t you stop him scaring them with his stories?’

‘Yes Cara, I’m listening,’ her mother said patiently, ‘but your grandfather is head of this homestead and the stories are our heritage.’

‘But he’s telling them how bad we are, how we deserve our troubles by betraying the Gods. He’s scaring them, telling them how we’re lower than the other
tribes.’

Her mother let out an exasperated sigh and handed Cara the platter to take in herself, hoping the weight of it would cut any argument short. The look in her eyes was so much like her
father’s had once been. These days he wore the same tired, defeated looked that they all bore in these lands. It was hard to retain the vigour of youth in a place where snow could fall for
half the year and slavers prowled the highways. Their hardy crops were only just a match for the conditions and life was a constant strain.

‘Take this in and get the others round the table. We’ve had this conversation before and there’s nothing more to say. Keep that temper of yours or your father will put you over
his knee.’

She gave Cara a look that made it clear the subject was closed and turned to retrieve the rest of supper. The girl stamped her foot as best she could and returned to the main room. It was by far
the largest in the house, a great roaring fire on one side and an oak table large enough for the whole family on the other. Outside, the wind howled, flinging handfuls of snow and icy rain against
the shutters. Despite the fire the room was chilly with a pervading smell of damp thatch in the air.

They were eleven in total; three generations of noise and bustle. All the children sat around the eldest member of the family, a stout, bearded man of sixty summers. His rough, calloused hands
gripped his stick tightly as he leaned forward to stare into the eyes of the youngest.

‘And now Nersa,’ he said in his deep voice, ‘why do we not leave the village lines at night?’

The girl stared back, a little fear drying her throat as she tried to reply. Grandfather’s word was law in the homestead and there were few who’d argue with him in the village. Even
the others of the Elder’s Circle bowed to his judgement and his grandchildren respected rather than loved the stern man.