He ended, then without another word stepped down from the dais. Men and women crowded on both sides of him, some still trying to ask questions, but one bearded man, whom Ranhé recognized as Marihke, stepped in between the Guildmaster and the people, and repeated loudly that the Guildmaster will now retire to rest.
The meeting hall began to empty, while Elasirr, his gaze dull with weariness, searched out Elasand and Ranhé in the back of the room.
“Go back to the Vaeste Villa, Elas,” he said, moving a pale lock of dirty matted hair from his face. “Go back and rest, both of you. And you, Ranhé—clean your bleeding hand well, and bind it. I will have need of you and your able hand soon enough.”
“I might see you after the new day dawns—which should now be in a few hours, Elasirr,” replied Elasand, looking at his half-brother seriously. “And—I wish you luck in meeting with the Guilds. You will need it.”
“Not as much luck as you’ll need, when you again walk into the Enemy’s lair tomorrow,” said Elasirr, showing his killing smile. “Now, get out of here, out of my Quarter, Elasand-re, and take your minion with you before she breaks any more orbs.”
He turned then, without another word, leaving them both in the emptying hall.
Ranhé considered the odd fact that she was still unsure whether or not the blond man spoke in jest, when he addressed them in that tone.
Elasand sighed, also tiredly. “After all that had happened today, all that you’ve learned,” he said suddenly, “you must still not trust him, Ranhé.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but Elasand raised his hand, effectively silencing her.
“No,” he said. “Not now, not here. But sometime I will tell you why you must not trust him, ever, this brother of mine with the sweet demon tongue. Now, let’s go home.”
Ranhé awoke unreasonably late, with the bright silver day-glare coming from the window. She was back in the Vaeste Villa in Dirvan, where they had returned last night. They had first retraced their way via the underground catacombs, then emerged from the same alley where the urchin had first taken her. Their horses were being held ready by a number of ragged street boys—all obviously involved with the Guild.
And now was the noon hour. She quickly went into the bathroom, where she took a thorough shower—something she had been too tired to do last night—washing off the dirt, stink, and the essence of the forest. Shower water ran like silver down her long, heavy hair, which she had unbraided and scrubbed well with clean-smelling soap. She also scrubbed mercilessly, despite the pain, the fingers of her right hand from which she had earlier removed small bits of razor-sharp glass—remnants of yesterday’s orb. She washed her face, and with a pang of familiar self-hate, her already sore fingers ran over the stubble of her face, her chin, the hateful prickling. . . . But there was no time to remove it, or to dwell on it now, for there was too much left to do this day, and she must hurry.
Dressed and ready, her hurt hand lightly bound, and her hair once more gathered into a tight smooth braid, she came downstairs and found Elasand dressed for Court, and eating a midday meal. There was a new polish about him, a feverish brilliance in his pale eyes. His own neatly combed hair sparkled like sable silk, and the single pale streak glittered like a bolt of pale electricity.
She also noticed that a longsword leaned against the table, ready to be taken up.
“I hope you rested well, my lord, for you look better today,” she said to him, smiling.
He looked up at her, with an amused, feverish expression. “Why, thank you, Ranhé. I’m glad you approve. Although I wasn’t able to sleep at all. But a good bath and a meal can keep one going for another day at least. Now then, how shall we while away the afternoon, waiting for my appointment after sunset? I know—I will tell you more about the Guild of Light and the Rainbow.”
When the shadows were long, a convoy of black Qurthe soldiers came to the Villa to escort Lord Vaeste to the Palace.
“Stay here,” Elasand told her. “Be ready to act upon my return.” And then he went outside, straight and proud, surrounded by the dark ones. She noticed he had not taken his longsword with him—it would only have served to provoke suspicion, and would likely have been confiscated.
For once Ranhé did not obey his instructions. If I wait, my lord, you would be dead, she thought.
Instead, she took the back entrance outside, losing herself to view in the shadows of the Outer Gardens. There she tarried, while street torches were lit one by one, as the City prepared for the night.
Only then did she venture to make her way, by stealth, into the Palace.
Ranhé knew how to walk silently and, even more important, knew how to make it appear that she belonged in any given place. She also excelled at climbing—walls, trees, buildings. As she flitted about like a shadow in the dark thicket of bushes near the Inner Gates leading to the Inner Gardens and Palace, she envisioned a clear-cut visual path before her. She would scale a tree here, jump on the second floor of the colonnade balcony here, and be on the other side. The six Qurthe soldiers, like ebony statues guarding the entrance, would never imagine anyone with the audacity to climb a tree and then walk right over their heads on a precariously thin ledge of polished slippery marble. Thus, as she made her silent way, no one even looked up.
Ranhé had taken no hindering cloak or longsword with her. Instead, she had stuck two extra-long daggers in the inside folds of her boots. The still-aching fingers of her right hand would hinder her slightly, but it was only a minor hurt, and she was used to such, having put on thick gloves. On the other side of the Inner Walls, she found a pattern of stonework that would serve her well as footholds until she could jump onto another tall tree growing close to the walls.
Once on the ground she crouched low and stole across the Inner Gardens to the Palace Walls. No moon as yet tonight—good, for the darkness served to blanket her. And the difficult part was ahead. How to find Lord Vaeste, and how to be able to assist him despite a Palace full of enemy guards?
The answer was again, sneak, and climb, and pray to any and all gods.
Lord Elasand Vaeste stood before a shadowed being seated in a dark small chamber before a window open onto night.
This time, the Twilight One had chosen to receive him not in the grandeur of one of the Palace Halls, but in a small dark place, with only the vague distant torchlight of the Inner Gardens below to illuminate his silhouette.
“Vaeste. . . . Do I have your answer?” issued a hollow slither of a whisper.
“My answer to you depends on certain conditions,” responded Elasand in a measured voice, standing a little away from the entrance, with two giant black guards on each side.
In the evening darkness came a low soft sound vaguely resembling laughter. The being’s silhouette shook lightly, and then he turned, and suddenly, like a night beast, two alien eyes were trained upon Vaeste. They were hypnotic, phosphorescent.
“Conditions?” whispered Feale. “You have conditions for me? Let me hear them, then.”
“I require a guarantee of safety for certain individuals,” said Elasand. “Foremost, the Regents, brother and sister, the Chancellor Lirr, the Minister General Barsadt, and all members of the Noble Ten Families that you hold.”
“Is that all?” the hollow voice mocked him. “That is easily done, Lord Vaeste. But I will make an exception. The Regent himself must die. And so must his Heir.”
“His Heir?”
“There is a sickly young boy. He was found near the Regent’s Quarters, hidden by a nurse. They call him Lissean Grelias. I was told he is terminally ill already, so he should not be a great loss.”
“You have young Heir Lissean!” exclaimed Elasand while a wave of pity and memory came to him, images of a small silent child.
And with it came anger.
“No!” he said, his voice rising. “The Heir and the Regent must both be spared. Promise me this in writing, and only then will you have my answer!”
“If I promise you this, wil
l you be mine, Vaeste?” whispered the voice out of the darkness.
And Elasand was faced with having to answer directly at last.
Ranhé inched along a narrow latticed edge of the Palace Wall, on her way toward a third-story balcony. The moon had just come out, only a fine slither of a crescent, and its tin glow was faint upon the world.
At one point, she was drawn to listen intently, because she thought she heard a familiar female voice rising in distress from a window that she passed. But it did not matter. She could not help even if she wanted to, for she hung on precariously, and must inch forward.
She did not know then what was taking place just on the other side of these walls.
Deileala Grelias sat hunched, with her feet up, on a wide canopied bed in a chamber given her. A single candle burned in a silver holder upon a boudoir table, before a filigreed mirror.
The Regentrix was somewhat in disarray, for only a single change of clothes had been given her, a dress and a nightgown. Her full heavy hair had long since come loose from its sculptured dressing, and no serving woman had been allowed to assist her for several days now. On her own she could only brush it and bind it in back of her in a thick gathered tail.
Her meal tray stood half-eaten upon another table nearby. She was not a fool, the Regentrix, and knew it was wise to eat in order to keep her strength up, even though her appetite had long since gone, and there were perpetual snakes of nervousness crawling at her innards, chewing away at her gut.
She did not know her fate. That was the hardest part. When the incredible instantaneous invasion had happened, she had been at first ready to explode in fury at her brother’s ineffectiveness, the vitiation of the City’s infrastructure, their lack of a standing army. Not even afraid for a moment—for the audacity of anyone thinking to harm her, the Regentrix, was still beyond the realm of possibility in her mind—she was full of helpless rage. And then she recalled images of Chancellor Lirr, whom she at best despised, harping away at her and Hestiam, dropping small weak impotent suggestions. “Strengthen the Army, give power to the Guilds, participate in the Government!” he would tell them—had been telling them for years.
And yet, he was a weakling in his own right. His suggestions had fallen on deaf, self-centered ears. For, although Deileala wanted control, wanted power, wanted a hand in ruling, she was also lazy. And she had been too thickly embroiled in the fascinating daily odyssey of pleasuring her own self.
A knock sounded on the door. Startled, Deileala smoothed back her hair, straightened the diaphanous gauze nightgown upon her shoulders, and said loudly, haughtily, “Enter! And do take this tray away. I am done eating, and this is beginning to rot!”
The door opened, and then closed again, and there was silence. Deileala sat with her back to it, not even deigning to turn around. But when she sensed that someone stood within, someone different from the regular servant, she slowly forced herself to look sideways. And then, breath stilled in her throat.
Lord Vorn stood within the chamber. She had not seen him since the day of the occupation, when he had taken charge of a room full of frightened people, herself included. She remembered his threatening words to her, spoken in a steady, low voice of power.
He wore no arms today, only a tunic of dark velvet, with expensive metal bindings at the throat. His skin was swarthy, as with all the Qurthe. His face, like a chiseled giant boulder. His form gigantic. His hair, black and rich and beautiful.
For black is beautiful, sublime.
And in his strange huge grand way, he was beautiful, she realized suddenly, and unfortunately for herself. For, she did not want to think of him as anything but a foul barbarian beast which he was, had to be. . . .
“What do you want?” she said loudly, putting all her self-control into a commanding voice.
He stood, his dark bottomless eyes trained steadily, intently upon her. He disregarded her question completely.
And then, because she knew men so well, Deileala recognized the nature of that steady unflinching look in his eyes. Something akin to an instant of triumph surged through her in that moment, for she knew she had that kind of effect on him.
And the next instant, came fear.
She had never been forced before. Not that way. She had insinuated herself upon men she had desired, had seduced, cajoled, maddened, soothed, teased them all. And she had used various personal threats to get a host of men into her bed—all with the exception of a handful, the most prominent being Elasand Vaeste.
The candle flame was suddenly snuffed out.
With it, came the dark, and a surge of real terror.
She cried out, not meaning to, because she still had her pride, the Regentrix of Tronaelend-Lis.
In the semi-dark, silhouetted against the dim metallic glow of the weak moon outside the window, there was movement in the room. She felt a strength, saw a form of perfect beautiful black obscure the window, then felt a great weight upon the bed.
She was taken in a grasp of power. She struggled, but it was like beating against a wall of the dark night mountain. His hands contained in them forces of ancient stone, and they reached to destroy the thin illusory fabric of her garment, to press her vulnerability like a soft mollusk within its delicate shell.
She was surrounded, wrapped in a cocoon of inevitability from all sides, and soon felt a vaguely warm male texture of skin, the stone planes of his body, the very richness of him. . . .
And then, because he was within all her senses, a heat began to rise in her, a familiar low dark base heat, as she slid against the surface of him, the oblique volcanic darkness.
Then, the ultimate violation. He was embedded within her, and she surged in terror, moving against her own volition, for she felt her heat yet rising unto eternity, swallowing her up despite herself, while the demon was atop of her and within her, and moving within her very mind.
She died then, sank away into a terrible death of pleasure and hatred and fury, convulsing eventually, as it all ended, and for once did not call dark self-despising names upon herself, for there was no longer herself, only himself. And he, this impossible demon lover of her secret dreams had come to make her feel helpless and out of control, and terrified, and small. . . .
She lay silent, much later, against his dark giant form, her skin beaded with dew, her eyes shut tight with the final inevitability and sadness of having known, at last, such terrible fulfillment. And then, gently, she felt an utmost soft pressure upon her lips, as he came to lean over her, and drink her mouth, and breathe the scent and shadows of her thick hair.
And like the side of a mountain, the very dark living earth, she felt and heard the steady beat in his chest, a beat of a demon heart against her traitor own.
“Feale,” said Elasand, “I will swear to obey you as my liege as soon as I have a written contract that will guarantee me the safety of all your prisoners, and will spell out in detail your plans for this City. Only then will I tell you the whereabouts of the one known as the Guildmaster of the Light Guild.”
Again came a low terrible laughter.
And then, “Enough,” said the dark one. “I am done playing with you. You think you can lie to me? Tell me now if you are the one I seek, if you are the Guildmaster. And if not you, who is he? Speak!”
The voice had grown from a whisper to a booming terror. Somehow echoes of it came to resound within Elasand’s mind. And with it, for the first time in his life, came a pang of uncertainty, and the beginning of fear.
The darkness of the room served to amplify the psychic feel of confusion. Truly, for an instant, Elasand blinked, and was not even sure whether he was looking at Feale or not, for the dark silhouette seemed to double in his eyesight, waver like an image beyond a layer of hot air.
He was feeling weak, impotent. Who was he anyway, but a single puny man before this terrible lord? The Twilight One was so much stronger than he, so much greater, all-encompassing. Even to gaze upon him hurt his feeble human eyes. Another instant, and his very si
ght was gone, and he stood blind, seeing only a blot of faint glimmer where supposedly was the window of this chamber, seeing no shadows even, no movement, nothing.
Only a hypnotic pair of eyes. They alone were steady, while the whole world around him spun like a slowing carousel. They were his anchors now, they would be his source of relief, they would center him and tie him to reality.
And then a memory came to him, like a drop of pure reason, a memory of other eyes, pale, intimate, fathomless windows upon another world of indescribable true violet.
And with that memory, he was steadied suddenly, could once again see clearly in the twilight of the room before him, could see the dark very real silhouette of his Enemy.
And Elasand knew what to do. He understood suddenly by what means the Enemy could wield power against him, and by what means he could withstand the attack that came insidiously within the mind.
He focused his memory of what he loved best, his memory of her, and with that raised his hand before him, palm upward, drawing upon a deep power and knowledge within himself. As he did thus, warmth gathered in his solar plexus—rich, exhilarating—and then spread through all his extremities, focusing upon his hand. It poured forward so that his fingers bloomed with fire, and then suddenly a bolt of pure violet ignited from his fingertips, and sat like a disembodied sun upon his palm.
The room was thrown into sudden lavender brilliance, and together with violent shadows upon the walls, the dark form of his Enemy started back for an instant. Within his smooth bare skull, the Enemy’s phosphoric pupilless eyes narrowed from the light. But then, just as suddenly, he put his own ebony hand forward, with beautiful chiseled fingers of a corpse, and upon his dark palm gathered a spherical hole of blackness, of absolute vacuum.
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