‘I see that,’ said Keeva, ‘but with all your wealth you can have everything you want for the rest of your life. Every pleasure, every joy is available to you.’
‘There is not enough gold in all the world to supply what. I want,’ he said.
‘And what is that?’
‘A clean conscience,’ he said. ‘Now, do you wish to return to the settlement to see your brother buried?’
The conversation was obviously over. Keeva shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to go there.’
‘Then we will push on. We should reach my home by dark.’
Cresting a hill, they began the slow descent on to a wide plain. As far as the eye could see there were ruins everywhere. Keeva drew rein and stared out over the plain. In some places there were merely a few white stones, in others the shapes of buildings could still be seen. Towards the west, against a granite cliff-face there were the remains of two high towers, which had crumbled at the base and crashed to the ground like felled trees.
‘What was this place?’ she asked.
The Grey Man gazed over the ruins. ‘An ancient city called Kuan-Hador. No one knows who built it, or why it fell. Its history is lost in the mists of time.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘I expect the people here once believed they owned the hills and the trees,’ he said.
They rode down on to the plain. Some way to the west Keeva saw a mist rolling between the jagged ruins. ‘Speaking of mists,’ she said, pointing it out to her companion. Waylander halted his horse and glanced to the west. Keeva rode alongside. ‘Why are you loading your crossbow?’ she asked him, as his hands slid two bolts into the grooves in the small black weapon.
‘Habit,’ he said, but his expression was stern, his dark eyes wary. Angling his horse towards the south-east, away from the mist, he rode away.
Keeva followed him and swung in the saddle to stare back at the ruins. ‘How strange,’ she said. ‘The mist is gone.’
He, too, glanced back, then unloaded his weapon, slipping the bolts back into the quiver at his belt. He saw her looking at him.
‘I do not like this place,’ she said. ‘It feels . . . dangerous,’ she concluded lamely.
‘You have good instincts,’ he told her.
Matze Chai parted the painted silk curtains of his palanquin and gazed with undisguised malevolence at the mountains. Sunlight was filtering through the clouds and shining brightly upon the snow-capped peaks. The elderly man sighed and pulled shut the curtains. As he did so his dark, almond-shaped eyes focused on the back of his slender hand, seeing again the brown liver spots of age staining the dry skin.
The Chiatze merchant reached for a small, ornate wooden box and removed a tub of sweet-smelling lotion, which he applied carefully to his hands, before leaning back against his cushions and closing his eyes.
Matze Chai did not hate mountains. Hatred would mean giving in to passion, and passion, in Matze’s view, indicated an uncivilized mind. He loathed what the mountains represented, what the Philosopher termed the Mirrors of Mortality. The peaks were eternal, never changing, and when a man gazed upon them his own ephemeral nature was exposed to the light; the frailty of his flesh apparent. And frail it was, he thought, regarding his coming seventieth birthday with a mixture of disquiet and apprehension.
He leant forward and slid back a panel in the wall, revealing a rectangular mirror. Matze Chai gazed upon his reflection. The thinning hair, drawn tightly across his skull and braided at the nape of his neck, was as black as in his youth. But a tiny line of silver at the hairline meant that he would need to have the dye reapplied soon. His slender face showed few lines, but his neck was sagging, and even the high collar of his scarlet and gold robes could no longer disguise it.
The palanquin lurched to the right, as one of the eight bearers, weary after six hours of labour, slipped on a loose stone. Matze Chai reached up and rang the small golden bell bolted to the embossed panel by the window. The palanquin stopped smoothly and was lowered to the ground.
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