The Godspeaker Trilogy

by Karen Miller

  His fingers closed on a small sharp stone. He snatched it up and slashed at his arms.

  “Aieee, god, are they dead for my sins? Must I see Ethrea weep blood so you are appeased? Here is my blood! See? I bleed for you, god! Speak to me, I beg you! I am deaf in this place. I am blind in your eye!”

  “What is he saying?” Helfred godspeaker demanded. “Is he summoning a curse?”

  “I don’t know!” said Dexterity, and jumped into the stream. “Don’t stand there, Chaplain! Help me get him out!”

  His flesh was cut open, his blood was flowing. It dripped into the water and swirled away. He had no sacred cup, on his bruised knees he sucked the blood from his wounds and listened desperately for the god.

  Dexterity and Helfred godspeaker tried to drag him from the stream.

  “Wei! Wei!” he cried, shaking them loose.

  They took hold of him again, he did not break their bones. He did not want to hurt kind Dexterity or Helfred godspeaker. All he wanted was the god. Dexterity and Helfred pushed and pulled him towards the stream’s edge. He freed himself a second time and opened more bleeding wounds in his flesh.

  Where are you, god? Let me hear your voice!

  The god was silent, it was too far away. In his head he heard himself screaming.

  I am here, god! I am Zandakar! Why will you not speak?

  “Get him out of there, Jones!”

  That was Ursa, shouting. Dexterity and Helfred godspeaker seized him again, he could not defeat them, the god’s cruel silence had swallowed his strength. They hauled him from the water and flung him to the cold, damp grass. Then Ursa was there, kneeling astride him. Her hands framed his face, she was staring at him with her fierce healer’s eyes. He tried to throw her clear but her knees clamped round his heaving ribs. Her strong fingers pried his mouth open, something thick and sour poured over his tongue. Pressure on his throat meant he had to swallow.

  “Lilit … Lilit … Yuma … wei …” His voice was a whisper, its strength lost to despair. Behind Ursa stood Rhian, with tears on her face.

  The blue sky dimmed and the world went away.

  “All right, Mr Jones,” said Rhian severely. “I’ve been patient long enough. I want the truth now. All of it. Who is Zandakar? ”

  Mr Jones stared at her, still shaken, and managed a helpless little shrug. “Your Highness, I can’t tell you.”

  She felt her precarious temper stir. “Mr Jones, are you under the impression I’m giving you a choice? I assure you I’m not !”

  Sitting on the van’s bench, where she’d ordered him, Mr Jones winced. “No, Your Highness.”

  She stood with her back to the van’s closed hinged door, arms folded tightly across her chest. Zandakar lay on the bottom sleeping-shelf, breathing slowly and heavily thanks to Ursa’s potion. The ragged slashes on his arms had been smeared with green ointment and neatly bandaged. Ursa and Helfred were outside, making smoked bacon and vegetable soup. The faintest aroma seeped inside. It smelled wonderful. A pity her belly was too knotted to appreciate the thought of food.

  For the love of Rollin, how can I hope to rule this kingdom if people are forever trying to protect me? Monarchs can’t be protected! We live in the harsh glare of judgement and difficult decisions. That’s what it means to be a monarch!

  Or so her father had taught her. And he was right.

  Mr Jones was looking apologetic. “The thing is, Highness, I honestly don’t know.”

  “You said he was your friend! How can you be friends with a man you don’t know?”

  “It’s … oh dear. It’s complicated.”

  “I don’t care! Tell me!”

  Hesitantly at first, and then with more confidence, he began to speak. She listened intently.

  It was indeed an incredible story. His first visit from Hettie. The slave ship. The unspeakable filth and misery of the poor wretches it contained. The look on his face, remembering, told her more than she wanted to know about their plight.

  After I’m crowned I shall revisit the matter of slave ships in my harbour. What hypocrites we are. No slavery in Ethrea, we tell ourselves proudly, as we grow fat on the profits from those nations with less particular morals.

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” said Mr Jones, when his tale was finished. “I had to buy him. Save him. I had to bring him with me.”

  “Because Hettie said so.”

  “Yes. She says he’s important to Ethrea and I believe her.”

  Of course you do. But must I believe her too? “Important how?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. I don’t know why, but she’ll have a good reason.”

  “Oh, do you think so?”

  He winced at her sarcasm. “Please, Highness. Don’t lose faith now. She’s been right at every step. You wouldn’t be safely away from the prolate without her.”

  She gave him a look. “I’m not safe yet.”

  “No …” he admitted, reluctant. “But you are safer.”

  Brooding on Zandakar’s sleeping face, she said, “It’s not a question of faith, Mr Jones. I hold the kingdom’s future in my hands. This man … this extraordinary, mysterious man … Am I expected to trust Ethrea’s future to him ? Without explanation? Without knowing who he is ?”

  “Hettie says you must.”

  “Oh, Hettie .” It would feel so good, to stamp her foot. Releasing a harsh breath, she let her head rest against the closed door behind her. “Zandakar’s command of Ethrean improves markedly every day. If your precious Hettie won’t tell me about him, he can tell me about himself.”

  Mr Jones made a small, dubious sound. “Yes, he might.”

  She stared. “ Might? Why wouldn’t he? If he has nothing sinister to hide …”

  “It’s not about being sinister, Your Highness,” he protested, uncomfortable. “It’s about trust. After all, we’re strangers to Zandakar.”

  “Strangers who saved him from slavery and healed his hurts,” she pointed out. “He’s not stupid, Mr Jones. He knows we’re good people. If I were him I’d want to tell us everything so we could help me find my way home!”

  “And so would I,” Mr Jones agreed. “But I’m not Zandakar.”

  She pushed away from the door, suddenly suspicious. Something in the tone of his voice … “You know more of him than you’ve told me. No more secrets, Mr Jones! How can I make wise decisions if I don’t have all the facts?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call them facts, ” he muttered.

  “Well, whatever they are I want to hear them!”

  Mr Jones sighed. “When Zandakar was still so very sick, after I rescued him from the slave ship, he suffered terrible dreams. Ursa had to keep him heavily stupored, like now, so he could rest. Otherwise he just dreamed and screamed …” He shuddered. “Or wept. Raved on and on, reliving something … dreadful . You’ve never heard a man in such torment.”

  But she had. Ranald and Simon had suffered as they died. Once the first stage of the plague passed, and they were no longer infectious, she’d returned to the castle and helped to nurse them. Dreaming and screaming …

  Yes. I know what that’s like.

  “What did you learn, Mr Jones?”

  “He was married, to a woman named Lilit. And I think she was murdered by someone called Yuma.”

  “Murdered!” Shocked, she looked again at the sleeping Zandakar, folded onto his side, his knees pulled close to his chest. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mr Jones, shaking his head. “But I have been thinking about how he could’ve ended up here, in Ethrea. What if he ran away to escape being murdered himself and—and—fell into hardship and was taken by slavers!”

  “Perhaps,” she sighed. “It’s a plausible story, but I can think of three other explanations without even trying. The truth is we don’t know, Mr Jones. What if he was involved in killing his wife?”

  Mr Jones sat up, offended. “Oh, no. Hettie wouldn’t have me rescue a murderer.”

  He was so blindly certain. In his o
wn way, as frustrating as Helfred. “Mr Jones, you don’t seem to understand my dilemma.” She pointed. “For all I know this strange man could bring Ethrea to ruin! Perhaps not on purpose but—”

  “Surely not, Highness!” Mr Jones protested. “How could one man endanger a kingdom?”

  “How can I answer that? I don’t know who he is! ”

  “No, but you know Hettie says he’s important. And I trust Hettie and you trust me! So …”

  So this is the way you want me to rule? A friend of a friend says you can trust this tall dark stranger so turn him loose, Rhian! What could go wrong?

  “Mr Jones …”

  “I know, Your Highness,” he said, slumping. “I’m sorry. I only wanted to help.”

  He sounded so forlorn. His face was woebegone, oddly vulnerable without its beard. “You have helped,” she said, taking pity. “Enormously. And I don’t mean to scold or imply that I doubt you. It’s just … Zandakar gave me a fright. Seeing him hurt himself like that, it was very disconcerting. And these last long weeks …”

  Mr Jones nodded. “Of course, Your Highness. They’d try a man twice your age.”

  “Oh … call me Rhian,” she sighed. “Given our current circumstances an excess of formality seems ridiculous.”

  Taken aback, he stared at her. “That’s—why, I—Your Highness—”

  “Rhian,” she insisted, and blinked tears away. “With my father and brothers dead I’ve no-one left to say my name.” No-one but Alasdair, and I’m a long way from Linfoi . “Shall I make it a royal command?”

  “No, no, of course not,” he said, flustered. “I’m honoured. And you’ll call me Dexterity?”

  “I will,” she said, smiling. “I’d like that.”

  “Well … Rhian,” said Dexterity. “I know it seems addled to be trusting Zandakar’s no danger to us, just on the word of a dead woman. If it wasn’t Hettie …”

  “But it is.”

  He nodded. “Yes. And that’s everything. At least, it’s everything to me.”

  And without him she’d still be a prisoner in the clerica. Maybe even married to Rulf by now. Pregnant, and breeding a dynasty for Marlan.

  One way or another this keeps coming back to faith.

  “Very well,” she said. “I’ll accept Hettie’s word, for now, that Zandakar’s not sinister. But when she comes to you again, Dexterity, tell her I expect to be told what’s going on, sooner rather than later!”

  “Well, Rhian …” he said cautiously, “I’ll certainly mention it. Though it’s only fair to warn you, even when she was alive Hettie never was a biddable woman, bless her.” He cleared his throat. “I wonder. Since we’re having a chinwag …”

  “Say it,” she said. “Only a foolish queen ignores advice from her councillors.” Another lesson she’d learned from her father. See, Papa? I remember. I’ll do you proud yet .

  Dexterity took a deep breath and huffed it out. “All right, since we’re speaking of trust. It seems to me you’re putting a lot of faith in this Alasdair Linfoi. If he’s not the man you think he is …”

  No letters since he’d left the capital. No attendance at her father’s funeral; just a brief message through his uncle, Henrik. Had her father forbidden him or had she slipped from his heart?

  I don’t know. I mustn’t think it. Alasdair will help me. He’s the only hope I have.

  “I put no more faith in him than you’re putting in Hettie. And at least we’ll all be able to see Alasdair when we reach him.” Just a few days from now. Lord, she was nervous.

  “True,” Dexterity conceded, rueful. “If I might ask, Highness. What do you intend to ask of the duke when we do reach duchy Linfoi?”

  There was no easy way to say it. “Alasdair, marry me.”

  He choked. “What?”

  “I need a husband,” she said baldly. Beneath his blanket Zandakar stirred, muttered, then slid back into sleep. “Without one I can’t rule in my own right. Alasdair’s a legal man, he doesn’t need anyone’s permission to wed.”

  “But Rhian, you’re not a legal woman! As a ward of the Church you—”

  Folding her arms against his dismay, she met his worried gaze unflinching. “I have Chaplain Helfred. He can release me from Church wardship and marry me to Alasdair in five minutes. And if he knows what’s good for him that’s exactly what he’ll do.”

  Dexterity gaped like a goldfish. “But the prolate—the prolate—”

  “Won’t be able to un marry me. Not without rewriting his own precious Church laws. And if he tries that he only plays into my hands. I have no choice, Dexterity. And neither will Alasdair. I’d rather not marry anyone right now, but I must. And he’s the only man I can think of that I’d like to see as king.”

  “Well, you’ve taken my breath away,” said Dexterity. “I never—”

  But she never learned what he’d never, because the wagon’s hinged doors opened and in came Ursa and Helfred, with dinner.

  “Suppertime!” said Ursa, with a sharp, assessing glance at Zandakar. “Don’t sit there, Jones, with that look on your face. Get the bowls and the spoons, man. Rollin protect me, anyone’d think you’d never seen a pot of soup before!”

  When the sun rose next morning, Zandakar rose with it and left the van to dance his hotas . Rhian heard the hinged door’s soft closing, lay under her blanket on the wagon’s bench for a few moments fiercely arguing with herself, then got up, dressed with held breath, and followed him. No-one tried to stop her. On the floor, Helfred and Dexterity snored in harmony, while Ursa was an unmoving mound beneath her blankets on the top sleeping-shelf.

  This early in spring there was a nip in the air. She sat on the van’s bottom step to pull her shoes on over her socks, then hesitated. Zandakar always danced his hotas barefoot. She put the boots on the ground, stripped off her socks and tucked them safe and dry inside. Then she rolled her woollen leggings up to her knees, stood, and marched across the dewy grass to where Zandakar leapt and cartwheeled and spun on his hips. He’d taken the bandages off his wounded arms. Ursa’s green ointment had worked its magic, the stone-slashes in his flesh were already knitted closed.

  He was stripped to the waist, as usual. The thin, dawn light burnished his skin, sliding over the marring scars on his chest and back and belly and shoulders. Sculpted with muscle, he was aesthetically perfect. He looked like a statue by pagan Icthian artists brought miraculously to life.

  I shouldn’t be noticing that. I’m travelling north to marry Alasdair.

  But it was impossible to ignore Zandakar’s physicality. Not even her brothers or their friends, riders and fencers every one, could touch him for breathtaking elegance of movement. For the implicit violence that was his hota dance. Set beside Zandakar, Ranald and Simon and the men of their acquaintance were merely children playing at war.

  If every warrior where Zandakar comes from is as perfect and deadly as he …

  He was a warrior, of course. She didn’t need Dexterity or Zandakar to tell her that. She’d trained in swordplay with her father and brothers enough times to recognise a war dance when she saw one. Thrust and feint and disembowel with a stroke. Zandakar held no knife but still she could see one. See it severing limbs, slashing throats, spilling guts. Watering the ground with fountains of blood.

  Thousands of Zandakars …

  The thought came to her unbidden, enough to dry her mouth with fear. Ethrea had no warriors. Kingseat’s garrison, the dukes’ soldiers charged to keep their local peace, they weren’t warriors. Ethrea held the upper hand against other, warlike nations because of the treaties that bound them and because gold could blunt the sharpest sword. But against an enemy who recognised no treaty …

  And then she shook herself, because she was being silly.

  A month ago I never knew a race like Zandakar’s existed. Now I’m imagining them on the rampage. I must be overtired. Even if it’s true, which it’s not, it doesn’t affect us. We don’t need our own army or a fleet of warships. Our treatied foreign f
riends are pledged to defend us. We are their bankers. They’d die for us gladly. Well, they’d die to save their fortunes but it’s the same thing. Ten thousand Zandakars couldn’t stand against their might … or determined, greedy self-interest.

  Ethrea was safe.

  Provided I defeat Marlan.

  On that cheerful thought she shook her head and folded her arms. “Zandakar.”

  He must have known she was there, but hadn’t so much as looked at her. Now he did look, and ended a sequence mid-step. His face was calm. No outward sign of exertion, no echo of the anguished man she’d seen yesterday in the stream.

  “Good morning, Rhian,” he said. His voice was calm too, tranquil as a pond. “You want?”

  “Good morning. Yes. I want you to teach me hotas .”

  In silence he considered her, his clear blue eyes grave. “Hotas?” he said at last. “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  She shrugged. “Because why not?”

  “Tcha,” he said, unimpressed. Because he understood her, or because he didn’t? She couldn’t tell. But just in case…

  “Because I am a queen, and a queen should know how to defend herself.” And because I will know you in my own time, not Hettie’s .

  “Queen,” he said slowly.

  “Do you know that word?”

  He nodded. “Queen. Hushla .” His expression changed. “Yuma.” The word was scarcely more than a whisper.

  Yuma? The name Dexterity had mentioned last night. So, if he was right, Zandakar’s wife Lilit was murdered by his queen. But then … who did that make Zandakar?

  Dammit, I want this mystery solved!

  “Zandakar, these hotas .” She raised her hand as though it held a weapon, mimed slashing and stabbing an invisible foe. “They are for fighting. Yes?”

  Again he nodded. “ Zho. Hotas for fighting.”

  “Then I want you to teach me.”

  He glanced at the quiet peddler’s van, where nobody stirred. “Dexterity …”