by Jack Conner
Unless ...
But no, that was madness. Giorn needed another drink.
Chapter 3
She came to him in the dark.
He hadn’t expected it. He had wanted only a few hours of sleep before the hard decisions of the coming day and had been dreaming of hunting rabbits at Duke Yfrin’s manor, but when he had looked up the Duke had been covered in blood, his fingernails pulled, burn marks on his arms, strips of skin from his cheeks missing, and all the while he was saying, I tell you, I did not do it!
When Giorn felt her touch him, he lurched up gasping. One hand shot for his hunting knife.
She laid a bare hand on his sweaty chest. Instantly he calmed. In her other hand she carried a candle, and by its frail, flickering light he stared into her blue eyes.
“Niara,” he breathed.
“Giorn.” Her voice was a whisper.
Her lips were full and wide, slightly parted. He acted instinctively. He drew her to him, pressed her body against his, and met her lips with his. She melted against him, and for an endless moment, he lost himself in her. She was warm and soft and wonderful. Then reality returned to him, cold and sharp, and he broke away.
“No,” he choked.
“Why?”
“Father’s in the next tent. You must go to him. He comes first. Only then is there time for ... us.”
She tilted his face so that he was forced to look at her, and she smiled gently. She looked like an angel when she smiled.
“I already have,” she said.
He cleared his throat, suddenly nervous. “And?”
Her smile dimmed, but the light in her eyes still shone. For the first time he realized she looked tired. She must have ridden all through the night, all the way from Thiersgald. Bless her eyes! A normal person could not have done it, could not have navigated at speed through a dark forest, much less make her mount obey her. But she could. Even for her, however, it could not have been easy. It must have drained her. And then, so soon after that ordeal, to administer to Father ... It must have been painful, like tapping a dry well. He felt renewed love for her, and respect.
“I sang to him and poured into him all the Grace I could,” she said. “But while I was bonded with him, I felt something.”
“Yes?’
“A taint.” Her voice was grim. “That arrow was poisoned.”
“Masan detected nothing.”
“It was no natural poison. It was a toxin of Oslog, perhaps venom from some fell thing, I don’t know. But it was there, and it countered me. I could not drive it out, or destroy it. I’ll try again tomorrow, when I’ve had time to recover, but I ...” She lowered her gaze. “I don’t have much hope.”
Now it was his turn to reach out and raise her face so that she looked at him. He held her gaze steadily. “You’ve done more than I could have asked. Thank you.” He said it with such gravity that she did not deny her efforts, just nodded slightly. He let a moment go by, closing that subject, then: “Masan wants me to step forward. Take the reins of the barony.”
“You already have.”
“He wants to make it official.”
She considered that. “The time may have come for that, or it may come soon, but ... I see no need for it.”
“Exactly. There’s no cause, no immediate threat to Fiarth. The fighting is far away. Without cause, it would be unseemly.” And it would mean giving up on Father.
She drew closer to him. Her voice lowered as she said, “Do what you think right. You’re a good man, Gi.” Her lips brushed his. They were so soft.
He hesitated. “Niara, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” He gestured around them. “How much longer I can keep this—us—in the dark. I had planned—” He broke off suddenly. It was no good talking of what could have been.
“Tell me. What did you plan?”
He let out a breath. “Lord Ryswin is weak, dying.”
“Lord Ryswin? The ambassador to Havensrike?”
“Yes. He’s an old man and wants to return home, to die in bed surrounded by his family. King Ulea must choose a new ambassador, and I’d been petitioning Father to recommend me to the King. I think he might have done it, too, and then, after I’d been sent away, you could transfer to the temple in Glorifel, and we could be together in Havensrike, where they are not so devout as here, where a priestess is not supposed to be a saint. Just think of it. We could be together, you and I, walking hand in hand down the city streets of the most fabulous city built by Man, or riding through the canals in a gondola ... but now ...” He sagged. “Now there is no chance of that. Not unless Father recovers.”
Tears gathered behind her eyes. “Oh, Gi.”
Gently, she kissed him, and he could taste her tears on his lips. As he kissed back, a fire blazed brighter inside him. She must have felt it, too, for suddenly her kisses became more passionate, almost reckless. Then she tore at his clothes, and he at hers.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, my love, yes, this is how it should be ...”
He kissed her breasts, her nipples, and she moaned in pleasure. “Shhhh,” he said, and she quieted. He kissed her more, working his way down her slim belly, past her navel, then between her legs. He kissed her there for a while, and she gasped and breathed deeply, at times closing her thighs tightly around his head, enfolding him in softness. At last he spread her legs and entered her. She was tight and wet. She curled her delicate white fingers through the hair on his chest and rocked her hips against him as he thrust into her, at first slowly, then faster, harder.
Her breaths came more and more rapidly. Finally she reached for his hunting knife in its leather scabbard and stuck it between her teeth to keep from crying out.
Their lovemaking was desperate and all-consuming, as if to deny the horrors of the outside world. For them, for that one moment, there was only Giorn and Niara, and the hot, burning passion that engulfed them. Then, panting, he spent himself inside her, and she held him tightly. Both sweaty and exhausted, they lay together for a time, but at last he fell asleep, and it was the deepest sleep he had ever known.
When he awoke, dawn had turned the canvas sides of his tent pink.
Niara was dressing. She noticed him, smiled, and leaned over to kiss him on the lips.
“Good morning,” he said.
“’morning.” Her voice was rich and deep and soft. Her eyes shone happily, but with a tinge of sadness. She straightened her clothes, stood and moved to the tent flap. “I must go.”
“Yes.” Sudden concern made him sit up and grab her wrist. “What if somebody sees you?”
She smiled. “I’m a High Priestess of Illiana, my love. I am not without power. Added to that, well, you have probably heard the rumors ...”
“It’s true, then. You are part elf.” He had never wanted to cause her discomfort by asking about it; she would reveal it in time if she so chose. Until then he had always chosen to believe the various things she was capable of, such as healing a dying man with no surgical instruments, was accomplished through use of the elvish stones her order regularly used.
Now she revealed the truth, nodding wordlessly.
“So, what, you’ll use your magic to make you invisible?”
“No,” she said. “Easier to go as myself but plant the suggestion in the minds of any witnesses that I am simply a servant woman. I don’t actually change my shape, I just cloud their minds for a moment.”
He released her hand. Intrigued, he said, “Show me.”
“If I must.”
She seemed to shimmer, and Giorn found himself looking into the eyes of plain-faced woman with gray-brown hair. Her eyes were of the same color, and her clothing ... well, it wasn’t drab exactly. Drab might have been noticeable in that camp of nobles. No, it was simply so boring that the eye rolled off it. Indeed, the eye seemed to slide off her whole body, as though she didn’t even exist.
“Remarkable,” he said.
She shimmered again, and he found himself staring again into Niara�
��s beautiful blue eyes. “There,” she said.
“Amazing ...” He had always heard of the magic of the Light-born, but he had never seen it. Suddenly he felt deceived. “You should have told me.”
“I want to be closer to you, Gi, not farther apart. This power ...”
He nodded, and with the same sadness. “Man is fallen and without Grace.” He sighed. “It doesn’t have to separate us, though.” It will in time, he thought uneasily. I will age and die, but she will live on.
She kissed his forehead. “I’ll see you again later.” She sounded more formal now, less loverly, once again the High Priestess.
He let her go, but as soon as she was gone he felt something dark cross his soul. So: beings of power could appear to be someone else—if only for a moment or two. It was enough. Duke Yfrin had only been seen for an instant before he made his escape from the knoll. And once he was gone, away from the prying eyes of witnesses, had he then ceased to be Duke Yfrin and become someone else, perhaps the newest member of the royal family of Fiarth?
The thought was nightmarish in its implications. Fria is sleeping with a monster!
Giorn shook his head. He reached for his bottle of wine, finding it more than half empty. He uncorked it and took a swig.
No, he thought. It couldn’t be. Surely he was imagining things.
Yet could he now truly go forward with torturing Duke Yfrin?
He took another swallow.
After breakfasting with the men and seeing to his first round of tasks, including turning away the many villagers who had come from surrounding towns to pay their respects to their ailing lord, Giorn reached a decision. Raugst must be placed in custody. The problem, of course, was that Giorn had no evidence of any kind. Thus he could not hold nor try Raugst. However, Raugst was clearly far too dangerous to allow to simply walk around free. Giorn needed some proof. Perhaps Niara could help him.
At lunchtime, as she was leaving the Baron’s tent, looking exhausted and ready for nourishment, Giorn drew her aside.
“How is he?”
“No better.” Her voice sounded weary, and he noticed the skin over her face was thin and stretched. Her curly black hair was lank with perspiration.
“And neither are you. Come,” he said, “let’s take lunch. Then I have something to talk to you about.”
He didn’t dare lunch with her privately for fear of talk circulating around the camp, so once again he ate with his officers. Meril and Niara joined them. It was a tense, quiet lunch, as all brooded on the imminent death of the Baron, and the mood was not improved by the besieging well-wishers. Some of the nearby villagers had come in wagons with their whole families and had set up camps beyond the cleared circle Giorn maintained around the Baron’s camp. The well-wishers sang songs of the Baron’s great deeds, chanted prayers to the Moon Goddess Illiana and to her noble husband Brunril, Maker of the Sun.
Giorn had not allowed them to visit his father—it would be too stressful for him—but was still unsatisfied with the current state. Giorn was very tempted to drive them all away, well-wishers or no. That would only anger them and hurt them, though, and if Giorn was to assume the throne of the barony he would do well to appease the people, not molest them. He decided he would ask them to relocate farther away, where their songs and prayers would not bring down the morale of the Baron’s family and soldiery.
During lunch he received the latest reports from the south. Borchstogs had taken several fortresses along the border in Havensrike. They were minor keeps, but even so it illustrated the Borchstogs’ bloodlust. What had stirred them up to such an extent still remained a mystery. Giorn consoled himself that at least the Moonstone still guarded Hielsly and that as long as it did, Felgrad was, in theory, safe.
After lunch, Giorn was able to draw Niara aside once more into the shadow of the Tree of Kings, half hidden by one of its high gnarled roots snaking down into the dry stream. It had been here that the last King Wesrain had signed the famous peace treaty with King Raegar and become the first Baron Wesrain. Whenever Giorn’s father went hunting through these woods, he always found reason to camp at the base of the great cypress. When Giorn had been little, Harin had set him upon its thick, knotty roots and told him tales of the days when the Wesrains had been kings. Giorn remembered those times fondly. He did not think the Tree would last much longer. The creek on whose shores it had stood had dried up long ago, and it looked as though the Tree would shortly follow. Soon it would be merely a giant husk looming over the forest, dead and rotting. The thought saddened him.
Wary of his soldiers’ eyes, Giorn made sure to keep plenty of distance between him and Niara, though he longed to reach out and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. It hung down before her left eye, distracting him. Though disheveled, she looked much replenished after the lunch, if still tired.
“Take some sleep,” he suggested. “You’re straining yourself too much.” He tried to smile. “I want my father to live, but I want some of you left over when he comes back to himself.”
“Thank you, but I must give all I can if I’m to drive out that taint.”
“Have you had any success?”
She shook her head and leaned against the high root of the Tree. “It’s taken hold, I fear. I strive against it, but it’s too strong.”
Suddenly Giorn wished he had a bottle handy. He ran a hand through his hair and frowned when he saw that it was shaking.
“I’m so sorry, Gi. I thought that maybe ...”
He patted her arm as platonically as he could manage, careful still to keep at least a foot and half of distance between them.
“Perhaps that time we talked about has come,” he said. “At dinner tonight I’ll address the men. Fiarth may not be in direct peril, but these are not the times to have her leaderless, either.”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “I think you’re right.”
He knew why she was sad. He felt it, too, and he was not proud of it. If his father died, and Giorn became baron, the dream he had shared with her, of them loving each other openly in Glorifel, would wither and die. Father will be dead and I will be saddled with the throne. Niara and I will never know peace, I will have to marry someone else, some nobleman’s daughter, and sire children to ensure an heir. His days would be spent officiating, just as his father’s had, and he would likely only ever see Niara at weddings and funerals. And the only person he could ever have asked advice from would be gone.
His thirst mounted. The sun grew hotter. Even the canopy of the Tree was no shield.
He mashed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.” He opened his eyes. She was looking at him steadily. Was the world still tilting? This was all too much.
“Giorn?”
He blinked. Niara was looking at him oddly. He smacked his lips.
“Gi, you look pale.”
The world began to clear. “It’s Raugst,” he said.
“What of him?”
“I suspect he may not be what he seems.”
Concern touched her eyes, but he did not know if it was concern over Raugst being an agent of the Enemy or concern that Giorn was going insane. Possibly he was, he thought. Did he truly imagine that Rian’s avenger was some shape-changing thrall of the Great Dark? It was absurd! He had saved Meril!
“Gi, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. But I fear Raugst is an agent of the Enemy.”
“Gi, I really think you should sit down.”
“I know, I really should, but listen.” He lowered his voice, though the wind was so loud he doubted anyone nearby could hear even if they strained their ears. “Duke Yfrin could not have shot Father. I know it in my bones. But he was shot, and perhaps a spy, pretending to be the Duke, just as you demonstrated to me, is the culprit.”
“Gi, I really think ...”
He smiled tightly. “Niara, I know what you think, and you’re right, but just answer me this: can you use your arts to ... examine Ra
ugst? To find out if he is what he seems? If you can do that, then I’ll have evidence enough to place him in custody. The testimony of the High Priestess would carry more than sufficient weight.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and he did not like to imagine her thoughts.
“Trust me,” he said.
She did not blink. He tensed inwardly. But at last she let out a breath and nodded. “If I were able to touch him, and not just fleetingly, then yes, I could read him. But how could I get that close? If he’s an agent of the Dark One, and I can’t believe that he is, but if so, then why would he let me do that?”
He did not want to suggest the obvious way. “I could have some soldiers hold him down for you.”
“Without proof? I don’t think it’s a wise idea. Especially if you are to be baron soon. Do you truly want to start your rule with the torture of a duke—that’s what the people think, true or not—coupled with the harassment of the captain of the Castle Guard? Giorn, I really think you need some rest.”
What he needed was a drink. “Find a way. If you can’t read him by tonight, I’ll have some soldiers help you. I don’t care if it makes me into a monster in the eyes of the people if it will prevent a true monster from walking amongst us.”
She looked all around, as if checking to see if they were observed, then reached out and squeezed his hand tenderly. “Be well,” she said. With that, she turned and left, leaving him in the shadow of the Tree.
He watched her leave, feeling something go out of him. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was not in his right mind. And yet, he could not start questioning himself now. All he needed was a sip of wine to clear his head.
He walked back to his tent and rifled through his things. He found the bottle. Only a sip left. Disgusted, he took the sip, flung the bottle to the ground and quit his tent. He would have to ask the cook for another. Only the cook knew how much he’d been drinking of late.
Just as he quit his tent, a figure bumped into him. He flinched, momentarily thinking it was Raugst. It was Meril, blond and handsome.