‘You are my husband, then?’
‘No, I am merely a man who loves you. Take my hand and tell me what you feel.’
She did so. ‘It is a good hand, strong. And it is warm.’
‘You see nothing? No . . . visions?’
‘No. Should I?’
He shook his head. ‘Of course not. It is only . . . that you were hallucinating when the fever was high. It just shows how much better you are.’ He kissed her hand again.
Just as he was doing now. ‘I love you,’ she thought, suddenly sad that she was about to die. She rose through the ceiling and out into the night, gazing up at the stars. Through spirit eyes they no longer twinkled, but sat perfect and round in the vast bowl of the night. The city was peaceful, and even the camp-fires of the enemy seemed merely a glowing necklace around Resha.
She had never fully discovered the secrets of her past. It seemed she was a prophet of some kind, and had belonged to a merchant named Kabuchek, but he had fled the city long before the siege began. Pahtai remembered walking to his house, hoping that the sight of it would stir her lost memories. Instead she had seen a powerful man, dressed in black and carrying a double-headed axe. He was talking to a servant. Instinctively she had ducked back into an alley, her heart hammering. He looked like Michanek but harder, more deadly. Unable to take her eyes from him, she found the oddest sensations stirring within her.
Swiftly she turned and ran back the way she had come.
And had never since sought to find out her background.
But sometimes as she and Michanek were making love, usually in the garden beneath the flowering trees, she would find herself suddenly thinking of the man with the axe, and then fear would come and with it a sense of betrayal. Michanek loved her, and it seemed disloyal that another man – a man she didn’t even know -could intrude into her thoughts at such a time.
Pahtai soared higher, her spirit drawn across the war-torn land, above gutted houses, ruined villages and ghostly, deserted towns. She wondered if this was the route to Paradise? Coming to a range of mountains, she saw an ugly fortress of grey stone. She was thinking of the man with the axe, and found herself drawn into the citadel. There was a hall and within it sat a huge man, his face scarred, his eyes malevolent. Beside him was the axe she had seen carried by the man in black.
Down she journeyed, to a dungeon deep and dark, cold and filthy, the haunt of rats and lice. The axeman lay there, his skin covered in sores. He was asleep and his spirit was gone from the body. Reaching out she tried to touch his face, but her spectral hand flowed beneath the skin. In that moment she saw a slender line of pulsing light radiating around the body. Her hand stroked the light and instantly she found him.
He was alone and in terrible despair. She spoke with him, trying to give him strength, but he reached for her and his words were shocking and filled her with fear. He disappeared then, and she guessed that he had been woken from sleep.
Back in the citadel she floated through the corridors and rooms, the antechambers and halls. An old man was sitting in a deserted kitchen. He too was dreaming, and it was the dream that drew her to him. He was in the same dungeon; he had lived there for years. Pahtai entered his mind and spoke with his dream spirit. Then she returned to the night sky. ‘I am not dying,’ she thought. ‘I am merely free.’
In an instant she returned to Resha and her body. Pain flooded through her, and the weight of flesh sank down like a prison around her spirit. She felt the touch of Michanek’s hand, and all thoughts of the axeman dispersed like mist under the sun. She was suddenly happy, despite the pain. He had been so good to her, and yet . . .