by JANRAE FRANK
Aejys gave a thin, small smile as much as her swollen face would allow. "I am a soldier, Marya. I never liked court politics, though I've played it with the best. Talk to your people. Any who would swear fealty to me before their god and mine, will be under my protection. Normally, I respect neutrality, but if Cedarbird turns this into a war, military or trade, I will crush him and all who traffic with him. I have a lot less patience now than I did last summer."
"And what will this cost us?"
"We can discuss it later," Aejys grimaced at the increasing pain, she was beginning to feel nauseous from it, a little dizzy and very tired. "I need to rest."
Marya and her companions started for the door.
"Just be certain that every one knows the bottom line: set yourselves against me and I will crush you along with Cedarbird."
As the door closed behind the syndics, Aejys lay back against the pillows giving in at last to the weakness of her body: her complexion had gone pale and her breathing ragged, her heart raced from the effort of fighting back the pain to present a determined face and stay far more alert to them than she actually had strength for.
Taun gently pushed past Josh to take Aejys' wrist in his hands, Reading her deeply. He laid her wrist down with a heavy sigh, turning to pour four fingers of holadil in a glass, twice what he normally recommended. He lifted it to her lips, helping her to drink.
"Josh," she said as the elixir hit her system and a warm languor slid over her, "I want you sober. Talk to Taun. I don't want to lose you."
* * * *
Tagalong sent servants for hot water and waited for them in the bathing-room of her chambers. Once in the tub, heat eased her body and soothed her spirits, pulling her from brooding. For a little while she was able to block the memories of seeing Aejys die. Aejys' battered body – it haunted her dreams and her waking moments. She had still been alive when Tagalong reached her, lifting the cloak they had wrapped her in before anyone could stop her. The enormity of the wounds and bruises Margren had inflicted on Aejys, knowing what terrible pain she died in as Tagalong watched – it was almost more than the stalwart dwarf could handle. If she could find some way to pay Margren and Mephistis back in kind, then she would. Once she got Tamlestari to Vorgensburg, it would be time to look for some serious payback.
A hand extended over the tub and poured a fragrant oil into the water: Jasmine. As the scent filled the room, Tagalong sighed. "That's nice."
"Yes. It's one of my favorites."
Tagalong turned and saw Tamlestari kneeling beside the tub, her body rounded and swollen with the children she carried. "Stari!"
"I was tired of waiting." she smiled, but it could not erase the sadness in her slanted green eyes.
"You wanted to talk?"
"About Aejys."
"I promised her I'd take care'a ya. I will."
"Including taking me back to Vorgensburg? I don't want to be left here."
"Yeah. Soon as the passes open. Take a different route though. Back through Vallimrah, then drop down ta th' trade routes and over. Ya better have a midwife along. I don't know nuthin' about birthin' babies."
"Laurelyanne does."
"Huh! Yer makin' plans behind my back?" She gave the young prince a ferocious mock glare.
"Well ... yes. I had to be certain I had an alternate way of getting there if you said no."
"Why'n Nine Hells, would I say no? There're Aejys' babies. They belong'n Vorgensburg. Not this shit-assed realm."
Tamlestari smiled again and this time it almost reached her eyes. "They are all of her I have left." She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her stomach.
"Kick'n?"
"Yes. They're lively."
"Should be."
"Tell me about it – about Dragonshead."
Tagalong's face clouded. "Ya don't wanta hear this."
"I do. I need to hear it from you."
Tagalong remembered and the memories hurt. She started slowly, telling how they had ridden hard for Dragonshead after Mephistis took Aejys. The fight had been hard once they got into the citadel. Then they broke into a chamber of hecatomb where a hundred deaths could be taken in a single rite. They found Kaethreyn, Josh, Clemmerick, Eliahu, and Sonden already there along with a small guard of ha'taren and bradae. A single death pole stood at the top. They were kneeling around something and the instant Tagalong saw that she knew it had to be Aejys. She did not know who had cut her down from the pole and did not ask; just as she did not ask who had bound her on it and stuck the blade in, that much, at least, she knew in her heart was done by Margren. She described the rest in far less detail, wanting to spare Tamlestari at least that much: how she flicked back the cloak they had covered her with to see the bloody ruin of her body. Aejys' dying breath had been given to remind Tagalong of her promise to protect her people and Tamlestari. Then she died. Sonden said she was not quite dead yet, but Tagalong knew different: she had just seen Aejys die. She was crying when she finished. So was Tamlestari.
Tagalong climbed out of the tub and wrapped her wet arms around the half-Sharani, Valdren prince, holding her, their faces pressed together as they wept. "Nuthin's gonna happen ta yer or tha babes. I swear ta GimliGloikynen. An' yer comin' home with me."
* * * *
To Becca's profound surprise, the next day Aejys sent for a solicitor of the court and made good on her threat to Cedarbird: She had Becca declared her heir should she die without issue. They sat together in Aejys' room with a small pot of tea on the little table. Aejys had settled against the pillows on the bed, her legs drawn up and crossed, giving her more purchase and easing some of the feelings of helplessness she was prone to when she laid flat.
"I simply cannot believe you did that," Becca told her.
"With Tag stuck in Shaurone until late spring at the earliest, more likely late summer, I had to make certain our people would be safe if anything happened to me. Cedarbird brought that home – the hard way."
"I still cannot believe it."
Aejys grinned with a twist of her old mischief and said, "Why? Can't bring yourself to call me 'Mother'?"
"Ohhhhhhh!" Becca groaned, then shot her a mock glare, "If there were any place on your body that wasn't already cut or bruised I'd smack you."
Aejys chuckled. "Oh there is, there is. But that would be incest."
Becca groaned again.
"Seriously, now. There's something you should know. It doesn't leave this room."
"What?" Becca sobered.
"Tamlestari is carrying my children. The reader said twins, a boy and a girl."
Becca looked dumbfounded. It took her a moment to recover, and then she quipped, "What? You mean I'm not stuck in this situation? Thank the Nine Gods!" Then she sobered again. "Babies? Brendorn's?"
"Yes."
Becca fairly glowed and stood up, reaching for Aejys before remembering she could not hug her without causing her pain. "That's wonderful."
"It does not leave this room. I don't want assassins going after them. If they must go after anyone, I'd prefer it was me."
A darkness flashed across her face with a sudden sear of memory – what it felt like to die – and she reached for that core of stubbornness and anger that was all she had left to sustain her. She let go of the breath she did not even realize she had been holding and it passed.
Becca caught the small fleeting change that swept across Aejys' face and was gone. It troubled her. She had been catching small nuances in Aejys' face, manner, and tone of voice for days now: there was more broken than her body. She wished desperately that she could fix it, but had no idea how or even if it could be fixed. "I'd rather it wasn't either of you. But I understand."
* * * *
Aejys lay in the darkness, staring at the ceiling; her expression haunted. Light glowed from the adjacent parlor and she could see Molly through the open door working on her ever-present embroidery. They did not need to sit with her, Taun had said as much. Josh had pulled her out of immediate danger. However s
he could not reach or pull on the bell rope with her splinted hands if she needed something so there was always someone in the parlor or sitting next to her bed. Her mind ran round and round with desperate, troubled thoughts like a small, frightened creature lost in a maze.
What did I do to deserve this? What did I not do that could have prevented it? Was there anything I could have done? Or not done? My daughter, my halaefs, and many old friends are dead and somehow it's my fault. I should have found a way around that vow – I should simply have violated it and taken the consequences. Better me than them. I've been wounded, beaten and killed ... only to be brought back in this broken body... What purpose is served in that? Nothing. I can't even find the strength to pray.
But prayers would probably go unanswered anyway. Aroana does not hear those whose souls are tainted with the promise of undeath, whether or not it was taken willingly. My God forgive me. The taint is there, I know it. I cannot feel it or sense it. But it must be there. Those lifemages who Josh told Taun about barely mended those gut wounds, they could not have had enough strength to take the taint from me or they would have healed more of my body.
Aejys turned her head into the pillow to press the tears of shame and terror from her face. She watched Molly embroidering again, her fingers moving deftly. The sight made Aejys ache to use her hands. Taun had been honest with her, telling her frankly that she would probably never have full, if any, use of her hands again. But at least she still had hands; he had not had to remove them. She had been freed of that crippling vow, but now she was crippled in other ways. Her freedom had come too late. Of what use was a crippled ha'taren? Especially against the tremendous powers and forces her sister and her sa'necari lover could field.
"What is the use?" She screamed before she could stop herself.
Molly quickly laid her things aside and came in. She put her hand comfortingly on Aejys' unwounded shoulder. "It's all right," she murmured as she would to a frightened child. She had seen the terror and shame in the faces and voices of others who had survived such tortures before during the years she had accompanied her dead husband's units. "You're safe."
"I am not safe! We. Are. Not. Safe," Aejys replied bitterly. She waved her splinted hands. "And I cannot do a damned thing about it!"
Molly poured two fingers of holadil and slid one hand behind Aejys to help her up enough to take the drink. "You need to rest. To sleep. You won't feel this way in the morning. Its just night-terrors."
"Can't sleep. Nightmares..."
"I know. Drink this for me, please?"
Aejys looked up at the concern in Molly's face and acquiesced.
* * * *
"I want to help them," Taun said, lying in Skree's arms in the afterglow of love play, on a large curtained four-poster bed beneath a sea-foam green canopy.
"You want me to Read her?"
Taun snuggled deeper into Skree's arms. "Both of them. I want you to Read both of them."
"She interests me. But the sot? He tried to hurt you. I want nothing to do with him. Except feed him to the sharks."
Taun winced, remembering the five sailors that had assaulted him one night walking the wharves: Skree had summoned an orca and fed the landsmyn to it one at a time. He turned to look up into his lover's face. "But he did not mean to." The half-nerien touched Skree's temple, initiating rapport, letting him see what had actually happened.
Skree's lips twisted in a wry smile. "That's not like you, little seal."
Taun's expression turned embarrassed. "Something is happening that I don't understand. I am not a mage, Skree."
Skree's face went suddenly cold and expressionless. He pushed away, rising and going to the shuttered window, his hand pausing on the latch as if to open it. Although he preferred to be warm, cold did not bother him as much as it did the land creatures: he had swum the arctic waters as a youth, learning to summon the orca, seal, and walrus. Even the great white shark hesitated to attack a triton, especially one who smelled of magic.
"When you two fought over the bottle... I smelled evil. Landsmages cannot smell auras and power the way my people do. I thought it was the sot. Until now." He pivoted sharply, staring hard at Taun. "We have never lied to each other, Taun. It is one of the things I adore about you – you tell me the truth even when it hurts. I value that. Until just now, when you showed me what happened, I fully intended to kill the sot. He likes to walk the beaches. I watched him all last summer. It would be very easy to pull him under. Keep him there until his lungs burst."
A tingle of fear raised the hairs on Taun's neck and made the fleshy pouches of his gills itch. "Josh is not evil. He meant me no harm." Taun knew well how easily Skree killed; he was after all a child of the unforgiving seas. "What did you smell?"
Skree hissed savagely. "Sa'necari. Mortgiefan was taken that night and her room stank of it. You know the law. Nerindalori has commanded: all sa'necari must die."
Taun could see rage building in the huge triton's eyes. "Neither of them are sa'necari. I've touched them both. I would know."
"Maybe. Maybe not, little seal. At some point I will read them. But understand. If either of them is dirty, I will kill them and go back to the sea."
* * * *
Cedarbird walked the streets on the southeast side of Vorgensburg, past rows of derelict houses and the winter-killed remains of abandoned gardens. That area had been hit once too often by the raiders out of Brunstrat. The people who had once lived there had either been taken as slaves, killed, or simply given up trying to defend themselves in the days before Aejys' household had taken a hand in guarding the waterfront. The whole city hailed her as a hero because of it, but no one had had the courage to move into this quarter again. That was why Dinger lived out here.
The house looked abandoned, the door hanging half off its hinges, ragged curtains waved from broken windows. Candles sat on the remains of a low table in the front room. Cedarbird struck a lucifer, lit one, and then walked to the door beneath the stairs at the end of the room and from there into the pantry just off the kitchen. He stamped on the floor three times, and then backed off. A trapdoor opened in the floor and a rogue in black leather emerged with a lantern. He held it aloft while Cedarbird descended, and then followed him down.
"The master is with his pets," the young mon said.
Cedarbird nodded. It was warmer down here. If it got too cold it would endanger Dinger's pets and the apostate priest had put too much effort into their cultivation to risk them. Cedarbird smelled magic as he followed the mon through two dusty rooms into a third.
Sixteen large glass tanks lined the walls, filled with sand, rock and a bit of naked branches. Dense wire mesh covered the tops weighted down with a stone. When he got close, he could see the hibernating serpents pressed against the glass in places. It fascinated him. He would never have had to courage to handle or work with these creatures, as Dinger did. Those that he recognized were among the most venomous on the northwest coast. Dinger stood by the last tank with one in his hands, stroking its head and murmuring words in a language that Cedarbird did not recognize. His fingers glowed with power and his touch left little lines of magic along the serpent that seeped into its skin. Dinger was enhancing his pets again.
"I need to talk to you," Cedarbird told him.
"A moment. I am nearly finished." Dinger returned the serpent to the tank, settled the mesh lid over it, and weighted it down with a rock.
"This must be important, Master Cedarbird. You rarely come to me here."
"It is." Then Cedarbird described what had occurred at the Cock and Boar earlier.
Dinger was thoughtful. So Josiah has somehow found his powers again. How interesting. I thought when I burned them out of his as a child they would never be able to return. "And what is it you wish me to do about this?"
"I want her dead," Cedarbird told Dinger. "The two mages and that infuriating whore also."
"That will take time," Dinger told him. "My resources are not what they once were. Aejys' allies wi
ped out most of my network last summer."
"But you can still do it? There are others I could hire..."
Dinger did not miss the threat and it irritated him. He knew there was no one else in the Vorgensburg who could even begin to challenge the fallen paladin: ha'taren were hard to kill, almost as hard as sa'necari, and her resources were good, even with half her key people in Shaurone. Aejys had a gift for finding and developing talent from places no one else even thought to look – it served her well. But even that had its limits and would eventually fail her. "Yes, of course," he said smoothly. "It will take me a few weeks to set up."
"It needs to be done soon. Before she recovers enough to be a threat and especially before her partner can return in the spring."
"I understand, Master Cedarbird. And it will be accomplished. But I will require two – no three times the usual price. This will be an expensive undertaking."
"So be it," Cedarbird pulled a pouch from beneath his jacket and handed it to Dinger. "If that is not enough, send someone to me with your requirements."
CHAPTER THREE
ISRANON
The surviving sa'necari, who had managed to escape from the fall of their citadel beneath Dragonshead with their wounded prince, emerged at the edge of a narrow ravine north-northeast of Castle Rowan. The freshet running down the center of the ravine spread into pools and a broadening stream there. A thicket of tamarack and hemlock concealed them from any who might be abroad in the valley below. The sa'necari, necromancers with all the appetites, powers, and needs of the undead bound up in their living bodies, gathered loosely around their prince whom they had borne on a litter to this place. They had fed him blood from their own wrists to heal his wound, which otherwise would have killed him. Their knee-length, black robes swirled in the wintry breeze. Dawn stained the snow as red as the blood they drank, a good omen to them. They wore their loose pants stuffed into boots. Only one of them did not dress as the others: Isranon, who was least among them, and wore brown as a sign that he did not follow their ways.