The Fall of Neskaya

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The cart lurched over the unpaved roads, jostling against wagons of hay, droves of sheep, and an immense dray of rough-cut lumber pulled laboriously by two dun horses with feet the size of dinner plates. The farmer hauled his team of chervines to a halt and held out his arms to help Taniquel get down. “Yon’s the gate to the inner city, d’msela. I must be off to sell me wares.”

  He had already made himself late for the market opening by taking her on and tempering his speed for her comfort. Taniquel slipped to the ground, fishing in the folds of her makeshift sash for the last of the copper hair clasps. She was almost ashamed to offer it to him, so battered and poor-looking, although a richer thing than he could ever afford to buy.

  The farmer lowered his head and refused at first to take it, saying he needed no payment—meaning he would not wring the last belongings from someone in such pitiful need. But she pressed it into his callused palm, saying it was not for him, but a dowry for his daughter, a bright-eyed child he had spoken of.

  Easing the empty saddlebags across one shoulder, she approached the gates to the inner city. Two City Guards in smart uniforms, sheathed swords in plain view, barred her way. The older bore the bright red hair of his caste, probably a cadet son of one of the great houses, on a tour with the Guards to fulfill his civic duty.

  Expressionlessly, with a flick of the eyes, the Guards assessed and as quickly dismissed her. She must look like an outlaw’s doxy or worse, disheveled, filthy, and travel-worn. But she lifted her head, with all the pride of a comynara, and asked admittance.

  “What business have you in the city?” Red-hair asked, omitting any more polite form of address.

  She gave him a short bow of the head, one suitable for an indispensable but recalcitrant servant. “I bear an urgent message for King Rafael Hastur, second of that name. Pray escort me to him without delay.”

  The younger Guard snorted in derision. “Give us the message, then.”

  “It is for his ears, not yours,” Taniquel said. “He will not thank for you delaying me.”

  “Now see, Missy, we can’t let just any riffraff go wandering about the streets,” the older one said. “Anyone can claim what you’re claiming and lie, or worse, be up to no good. How can we be sure His Majesty knows you from a sack of redroots?”

  Taniquel suppressed the impulse to strike the guard with the empty saddlebag across his grinning, mocking face. “You can only believe—from my speech and bearing—that I am not as I appear. I have been long on the road and under difficult circumstances. Pray take me to someone who can make a decision, if you cannot.”

  “Get on your way!” the older Guard said, gesturing. “Ply your stories down in the lower market. A few pretty speeches may get you a bed for the night, if that’s what you’re after, or a hot meal. Aldones knows you could use it.”

  “I will not be dismissed in this way!” Taniquel stamped one foot, wincing as her sore heel came down on a cobble-stone. “I demand to see my uncle, Rafael Hastur!”

  The Guards exchanged glances, grinning once more. “Oh, so it’s her uncle now, is he? You could be charged in the cortes with spreading lies like that. Better stick to your own kind.” The younger Guard took her elbow.

  “How dare you!” Taniquel whipped her arm away. “If you had the intellect of a pea-hen, you would instantly recognize I am no—no—” She could not bring herself to say the word prostitute. “Men of discernment are not blinded by fine clothes or feathers, nor deceived by their absence!”

  The younger Guard reached for her again, with the plain intent of handling her far less gently this time.

  “I am Taniquel Elinor Hastur-Acosta, daughter of Jerana, sister to King Rafael!”

  The young man dropped his hand as if burned. His face paled as he clearly considered for the first time that she might be speaking the truth and what would be his fate for mauling her.

  “Damisela,” the older Guard said, “let us try the truth of your words. Come with us.”

  With some measure of courtesy, the older Guard escorted her through the teeming streets and byways to the servants’ entrance of the castle, where they were greeted by a lower assistant coridom, a rather officious man of middle age. He offered her jaco and brown bread and asked the Guard if she had kin within the city.

  “She claims to be the King’s daughter,” the Guard said, raising one eyebrow to underscore his disbelief. Rafael Hastur had sired only sons, as everyone in Thendara knew.

  “Niece,” she said, only to be further ignored. She decided that any further mention of her uncle would get her summarily thrown out. At least she was inside the castle, which was progress.

  “I simply don’t understand why you bothered to bring her here when I must attend to so many more pressing matters than to listen to the tales of unkempt young women,” said the assistant coridom. “I am a person of importance. I have schedules, protocol meetings, arrangements to make!”

  With some persuasion, Taniquel convinced him that her present condition was due to exposure and travel, but not that she had any legitimate business inside the castle. He decided she was some servant’s child, given to dreams of grandeur as a result of her mother’s romantic stories.

  “Please,” she said, “let me speak with someone who can vouch for me.”

  Gerolamo, her uncle’s paxman and chief councillor, would surely remember her, but when she brought up his name, the assistant coridom scowled and turned impatient. Running out of time, she racked her memory for some horse-handler or cook’s assistant who might remember her from girlhood. Each name was rejected as unknown or with the comment, “Oh, Old Elfrida, she passed on three winters back,” or “What could a slip of a thing like you want with him?” and finally, “You’ve taken up enough of my day. Off with you!”

  Weariness mixed with the taste of poorly roasted jaco and the trembling in her limbs. She had not escaped from Belisar’s bed and come across all these miles, past Deslucido’s soldiers, through flood and snowstorm, to be dismissed by a headblind fool!

  “Zandru’s scorpions take the lot of you!” she snarled, near the very end of her temper. “Is there not a single person in the whole castle who can see past appearances?”

  The Guard, the red-haired one, flinched at her words, as if struck by an invisible blast. He hurried from the room after ordering that she be kept there. Taniquel was too tired to protest. She sipped the last of her jaco and wondered if she had the strength to try a dash through the kitchen and up the back stairs. The assistant coridom summoned a pair of chef’s aides, the kind of burly young men capable of turning the huge castle spits, to watch her. Then he went about his own business. Scullery maids with pans of soapy water or baskets of vegetables passed in and out, along with a page, who stared at her round-eyed before hurrying on his errand, and a number of others Taniquel took little notice of.

  After waiting what seemed like hours, Taniquel found herself in the presence of the slightly built woman whose once brilliant red hair had now faded to gray. She blinked, recognizing the leronis who had tested her for laran so many years ago. Lady Caitlin Elhalyn-Syrtis would have looked elegant in rags, but was formidable in a rich blue tabard over a flowing spider silk underdress of the same color, setting off the brilliance of the starstone which nestled at the base of her throat. The servants backed away respectfully, and the assistant coridom, who had come bustling back in, turned pale and silent at her glance.

  “This is indeed the niece of the King.” The leronis did not need to study Taniquel to recognize her. A swift, feather-light mental touch quickly gave rise to an exclamation. “My dear child, whatever has happened?”

  “Acosta has fallen to Damian of Ambervale,” Taniquel replied. Although it was rude of her, she simply did not have the energy to rise to her feet. “King Padrik has been slain and the castle taken. I alone escaped.”

  “Send word to the King at once!”

  The assistant coridom jumped into action and vanished down a hallway.

  The leronis’ ey
es flickered to Taniquel’s belly, flattened by weeks of semistarvation on the trail. “Sweet Evanda, we must lose no time! I must monitor you properly.”

  Taniquel drew breath to answer and then burst into tears, the very last thing she wanted to do. The leronis issued a string of orders and very shortly, Taniquel found herself ushered into a suite of luxuriously appointed rooms, suitable for the most highly ranked visitors.

  Lady Caitlin did not wait for Taniquel to undress or wash, but insisted on examining her right away. Taniquel, stretched out on a sheet spread over the enormous bed, winced at the psychic sensation of sand scraping over skin. By contrast, Coryn’s mental touch had been so smooth and gentle as to border on pleasure. She could not remember ever feeling so safe and so real, as if he saw all through her with those light-filled eyes and accepted whatever he found.

  Now she gritted her teeth and tried to breathe slowly.

  “Your child is alive and well, unharmed,” Lady Caitlin commented. “And your body is in surprisingly good shape. You have had some laran healing—”

  “Yes,” Taniquel said, struggling to prop herself up on her elbows. “I spent some days at a travel shelter along the Neskaya road. My fellow traveler was a laranzu.” Under Lady Caitlin’s sharp glance, she added, “Coryn, his name was.”

  “Coryn of Tramontana? Oh, yes. When I do my rotations at Hali, I sometimes encounter him over the relays. I wonder what he was doing on the road to Neskaya.”

  “Something about training as an under-Keeper.”

  “Oh, great fortune for them to have gotten him! Now, you must bathe, but not in water too hot, and then sleep as long as you like. I will have proper food brought up, and you must send for me if you suffer any stomach sickness.”

  The next thing she knew, a bevy of maids appeared to free Taniquel from her filthy dress and help her into a tub of pleasantly warm water. The mingled scents of bath herbs and rosewater eased the ache from her lungs, even as the seductive warmth melted her weary muscles.

  She stretched, examining her skin. Scratches and bruises covered her arms and legs, even the sides of her body. Her toes itched where new skin had formed under the frost-dead layer.

  A huge soft sponge, lathered with fine-milled soap, hung from her limp hand. Now that she was safe, the last of the willpower which had driven her these past few days evaporated along with the wisps of steam. Her hair, a tangle of knots and burrs, trailed in the water. In a little while, a maid or three would be along to help her wash and comb it. For now, though, it was good to rest against the smooth wooden slats of the tub, her head resting on a rolled towel. To close her eyes and drift for a moment . . . to dream . . .

  Coryn’s face floated in front of her closed eyes. Her lips curled in a smile. Which was the dream—the hours of numbing cold, the present luxury of warm, sweet-smelling water, or the memory of those light-filled eyes, those strong arms around her, the feel of his skin against hers. . . .

  She startled awake as the maids came back in, clucking at the state of her hair, and in short order she was lathered, shampooed, rinsed, dried, combed, rubbed with soothing ointments, bandaged, swathed in a downy-soft night dress, and tucked into a feather bed under several layers of comforters. Her final thoughts were that her long ordeal was at last over.

  She slept for two days, waking only to gulp down citrus-flavored water from the pitcher at her bedside. On the third morning, nausea drove her from her bed and the maids came fluttering in to find her crouched over the chamber pot, retching. She waved away both their offers of help and any sort of breakfast. A few hours later, she felt steady enough in her stomach to dress and be presented to the King.

  King Rafael Hastur II met her in the suite of rooms reserved for family. Although he had set aside the formal tokens of his kingship, his belted robe, purple brocade trimmed with royal ermine, set off his figure, still graceful as a dancer even at his age, that charismatic beauty which graced so many of the Hastur men. He bent to give her a kinsman’s embrace. The hairs of his neatly clipped beard, silver-frosted rust, prickled her cheeks. Although average in height, he seemed smaller than she remembered him as a child.

  “Dear niece, it grieves me to welcome you back under such circumstances. I hoped you would have a long and happy life in your new home. Now Caitlin says you bring news of Acosta’s defeat.”

  “Oh, Uncle!” she cried as he guided her to a padded chair. “Acosta has fallen to that son-of-a-Dry-Towns-bandit, Damian Deslucido!” She took a breath, gathered herself under control, and began her story.

  Rafael retired to his own, much more massive chair, and looked pensive as she told of the attack and battle at the gates, the trap and the spells cast by Deslucido’s laranzu. Here he broke in, making her go over each detail of the aircar bombings. In response to his probing questions, Taniquel searched her memory for each detail, the shape and number of the airships, their markings, the color of the flames.

  “At first, I feared they had dropped clingfire on us,” she said, shivering at the memory. “But the flames quickly smoldered like normal ones, given how damp the wood was.”

  Rafael’s dark brows drew together. “If Deslucido meant to rule Acosta, not destroy it, then he would not want to damage the castle if he could help it. And the compulsion—you say that everyone was affected by a terror of opening the gates?”

  “You see, the gates had to stay closed to trap Padrik.” Taniquel stumbled through her explanation. “If only I’d acted sooner, he might have won through.” She heard the bitterness in her own words.

  The King shook his head. “You must not take such a burden of guilt upon yourself. You have done more than your part in bringing us this news. I must convene the council.”

  For a moment, he looked distracted, and Taniquel recalled that, as Hastur of Hastur, he had long headed the effort to restrain the use of the more fearsome laran weapons. His concern went beyond the fate of his niece’s small realm.

  “Deslucido has been annexing weaker kingdoms for some years now,” he went on, “but we had thought he preferred peaceful means. We’d had word of an honorable marriage offer in some cases, in another, the absence of a legitimate heir claimant to the throne.”

  “That is hardly the case here!” Taniquel said with some vehemence. “Uncle, I carry the di catenas son of Padrik, lawful King of Acosta. Damian Deslucido may have seized control of Acosta Castle, but he cannot rightfully claim the throne as his. You must declare my son king, with me as regent, and restore the true line of Acosta!”

  “Tani,” he said, sighing and shaking his head, “the headstrong girl we knew has matured into an equally headstrong queen.”

  “There is no time to be lost! For all we know, Belisar Deslucido will be crowned King as we speak! Even without me as his Queen, the longer we allow him to continue without challenge, the stronger his claim will grow.”

  “Calm yourself, child.” He spoke in such a tone, with that quiet Hastur command, that even if he had not been King, she would have fallen silent. She reminded herself that he had not come lately to his own throne, and had held it against more than a handful of challengers.

  “I am listening, Uncle.”

  “Firstly, I bid you well come to Thendara and to my court. You will always find a safe home with us.” And you need not behave like an unmannered child with a pack of Yamen yammering on your track.

  She dipped her head. “I thank you, Uncle.”

  “We must have your needs attended to, and either the castle midwives or Lady Caitlin to make sure both you and your unborn child recover full health. And after that, I suppose all your aunts and cousins will want to make much of you, even those who remember you as a small, obstreperous child, one they were more than happy to pawn off on poor Lady Acosta.”

  Taniquel caught the twinkle in his eye and smiled despite herself. “I will try to do my best to bring honor upon my foster parents. Lady Acosta did manage to teach me a few manners, even if my arrival in Thendara did not give me ample opportunity to display
them.”

  A flickering smile played over the corners of King Rafael’s mouth. “You did well enough. As for the political situation, there is no immediate action which is both appropriate and prudent. The Hellers are a tinderbox ready to go up in flames.”

  “Then now is the time to stop Deslucido, before his strength has grown,” Taniquel said, too tired to back off although she already knew the answer.

  “Now,” he repeated with regal deliberation, “is the time to go slowly and thoughtfully. And most especially to not go seeking out a battle which might not otherwise be thrust upon us.”

  “It will,” she said, lowering her eyes to her lap, where her fingers had curled into fists. “On Deslucido’s terms or on ours, it will.”

  “The world goes as it will, my dear, and not as you or I would have it—or, in this case, create it out of our own fears. You have survived a difficult trial and you have borne yourself with pride. Now rest, and let wiser heads take on the world’s burdens.”

  Taniquel knew when she had been dismissed. She rose, curtsied as a nobly bred lady to an equal, and withdrew.

  20

  Spring melted into a hot, sticky summer such as came only in the lowlands. Under the watchful eye of Lady Caitlin and her royal aunts, Taniquel recovered her strength. Good food and a healthy pregnancy smoothed away the drawn look from her face and rounded her breasts and belly. She dutifully swallowed the herbal concoctions, ate the special foods urged on her by the midwives, and took the gentle exercise prescribed for her. But that was where her meekness ended.

  Taniquel had attended the first meeting of Rafael’s council by his formal invitation, as a witness rather than a participant. He wanted her first-hand testimony of the use of laran in the conquest of Acosta. But soon, she took her own place, debating the issues as freely as any of the men.

  The council included other branches of the powerful Hastur family, Hastur of Carcosa and Hastur of Elhalyn, as well as several collaterals. Taniquel didn’t know them, although the mark of kinship was plain on their features. Some followed Rafael’s lead in considering the spread of weapons like clingfire to be of paramount concern, while others regarded the use of laran mental coercion, such as the compulsion spell at the Acosta gates, a more serious threat.