Jack nodded. “Yes, that much I understood.”
Jarlus was pacing now, glaring at Ralley as he moved. “All I hear is prophecies and dreams and faith in this aon link,” he said. “Now, this outsider shows up in the Valley of Tombs, claiming to fulfill the so-called prophecy, and no one questions it?”
“His identity has been established,” Gaelti said. “The pattern seer Rakotis has …”
“Damn your pattern seer! How do we know that this stranger isn’t a tool of the enemy?”
Orcus Gaelti turned to Jarlus, tilting his head to one side, then another, as if looking for the root of his sudden madness. “Your paranoid suspicions have finally gotten the better of you, Xai Ashaon.”
Jarlus shook his head. “I have seen this man fight with an unholy strength! He has a hold over the Princess … We all know who else displays such might and commands such unnatural loyalty, yes?”
Gaelti laughed—though the sound was forced and humorless. “So once again we return to your old failure. Because you were blinded to her nature, you now suspect everyone of treacherous acts. That is brilliant logic.”
“I only have one question,” Jarlus said. He looked down at Ralley again. “What is your intention towards the Princess?”
Ralley rose to his feet and met the Xai Ashaon’s stare. Although he was much taller than Jarlus, the little bald man hardly seemed cowed.
“I intend to protect her,” Ralley explained, “and work with her to find the—“
“NO!” Jarlus shouted. “What is your intention towards HER? As a man to a woman? Answer!”
Ralley blinked, and took a deep breath. “If she will have me, I desire to marry her. I suppose that has always been my intention.”
Taxamia looked up, clasping his hand. “Ralley! Of course, I also had assumed we would—“
“My duty as Xai Ashaon is to protect the royal family!” Jarlus was now so agitated that Ralley could see the veins throbbing in his face, his brown skin pulled taut over his skull. “Part of that mandate is to defend the royal daughters, their reputation—and their chastity!—from those who might despoil such.”
Phaedon himself stood now, waving his huge, gold-adorned arms in fury. “Jarlus! That is the old way, but certainly you must see … for the gods’ sake, this is the Age of Oberkion!”
“I found this man lying with the Princess,” Jarlus explained, pointing to Ralley. “As if he had just possessed her body. For all we know, he broke ancient law by forcing intimacy upon an unmarried royal daughter!”
Taxamia’s face was wet with tears. “Jarlus, I tell you he did not!” she shouted. “You know that he did not.”
“If there is any doubt, the ancient ways allow me to challenge him,” Jarlus explained, his voice lowered to a hiss. “In combat.” His hand went to the hilt of his sword.
“You are mad!” Gaelti exclaimed.
“Xai Ashaon, I cannot allow this. I order you to stop this now!” The Phaedon stepped forward from his throne, his face quivering with rage.
“You must allow it, Highness!” Jarlus replied. “It is the ancient law.” He looked to Ralley, smiling ferally. “Or perhaps the stranger here would care to relinquish his claim to the Princess? Promise to leave her and never seek her company again? Then I might spare him, out of pity.”
That was impossible! The mere threat of it made Ralley’s heart pound, and he felt a tingling pulse course through his body—the onset of his fiery state.
The heat and the power settled over him, and he stopped trembling. He glared back at Jarlus.
“No.” He replied, leaning forward so that his face was only inches from the Xai Ashaon’s own sneering visage. “Never. I will fight if I must, but I will NEVER leave her.”
Jack was suddenly at his side, wielding a bronze dinner knife and looking ready to stab Jarlus with it.
“Jack, please sit down,” Ralley told his friend. “This is for me to handle.”
Jack backed up, but waved the knife in warning towards Jarlus. “If he hurts you, he’ll have one angry Dragoon to answer to. Let me know what’s happening here, Ralley. I can’t speak the language, but I can see that you need some—“
“This is my test. I must do this alone.” He turned to Phaedon. “Your Highness, I will meet his challenge.”
“What?” the Phaedon blinked, wide-eyed.
“The laws he speaks of are real, yes? And, since I am an outsider, there will doubtless be others who doubt my commitment to the Princess. I wish to prove my sincerity to all. So I will fight.”
Taxamia rose from her seat, clasping his hand. He could feel her own calm, her strength flowing hotly to him. “If you do fight, you have my strength to aid you through our link. The two-as-one is not a myth, Jarlus—as you shall see!” She turned to Phaedon. “Father, give Ralley your sword.”
The Phaedon’s mouth dropped open, and he stared at her, perplexed. “Mia! Daughter, I do not …”
“Father, it must be. Please! Support us in this way.”
Phaedon closed his eyes, and nodded with a despairing groan. He climbed the steps to his throne, took down the ornate sword which hung over it, and carried it back down to Ralley.
“The blade of my ancestors, son,” he explained, his big hand firm on Ralley’s shoulder. “Now you have my strength, too.”
Jarlus cleared his throat with a loud cough. “We agree, then? The entrance hall, in ten minutes? I will be ready.”
Ralley nodded. “As will I.”
-19-
Ed Bocke was dizzy, and his head felt like someone was pounding at it with an iron hammer from the inside of his skull. With a tremendous effort, he picked himself up from the cold stone floor and looked around.
The room was dark, the only light filtering in through the barred window set in the door. The place was damp and dirty and smelled of mildew, and he knew he was still somewhere in the cellar. Even worse, he thought could hear something scuttling and scraping inside the wall.
Rats?
Rutting hell.
Should he yell out? He didn’t think that would help. Likely all of the servants were part of this conspiracy …
Damn degenerate demon arse-kissing so-called Guardian!
Was Julea part of the plot too? Somehow that was too painful to contemplate …
He tried the door. It was locked from the outside, probably with some sort of padlock, as there was no locking hardware to be seen on the door itself. Squinting in the darkness, he searched for something to use to either pry the door open or to hack at the wood surface of it, but the room was bare save for several broken wooden chairs that had been abandoned in one corner.
There were more scraping noises now, coming from high in the rear wall, opposite the door.
Ed turned. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the shape of a narrow fireplace there, covered by deep shadow. It looked as if there might have been an iron grate fastened there at one time, but there was only stone in the bottom now, blackened by long-ago fires, and a stone ledge was set in front of it.
As Ed watched, a bit of dust and debris fell down into the fireplace from above. There was a yellow glow, growing brighter …
“Hello?” Ed whispered up the chimney.
A glass oil lamp descended into view, a length of cord tied around the middle of its base, balanced to support it. Flame sputtering, it jerked its way down and then settled on the floor at the bottom of the fireplace.
In its light, Ed could see that the “cord” attached to it was made up of brightly colored silken ribbons tied together—hair ribbons, like a young lady would wear.
Looking up the chimney shaft, he saw a pair of slender stocking-clad legs in slippers, and the frilly hem of a dress. Someone was wiggling her way down the narrow shaft …
“Julea?” he asked.
“It’s me,” she whispered. “Be quiet, so no one hears, okay?”
“Um … I’ll help you.” He reached up to grab her legs. One of his hands slid too high,
finding her bare thigh under her skirts. It was soft and warm and damp with her sweat.
“Uhh … sorry,” he mumbled.
Embarrassed, he adjusted his grip so that he wouldn’t offend her.
When Julea Crandolph emerged, crouching, from the fireplace, she was smiling, even though soot darkened her dress and streaked her golden hair. Her big eyes gleamed wetly in the lamp’s light.
“I came to help you,” she said, and her high-pitched, child-like voice didn’t contain a single note of fear.
Ed coughed in surprise, and for a moment he thought he might sob—but he choked it back down.
She came to help me? Me, the cripple?
“The fireplace in my room has loose bricks,” she explained. “I pulled more of them loose with the poker. The chimney there backs up to this one.”
“And you just climbed down?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. It was kind of tight, but I’m small, so …”
“You know a way out of here?” he asked.
“Well … no.” she said, looking down at her feet.
“Did you bring the poker?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” she shook her head. “But I brought pins.”
“Pins?”
She nodded, then reached down and removed one of her slippers. Inside were several tiny iron pins arranged on a piece of cardstock.
“They’re for my hair,” she said. “You can use them for the lock.”
“I can?”
She shook her head emphatically. “In my romantic novels, the heroes and heroines always unlock doors with pins.”
Ed shook his head. “But the lock of this door is on the other side.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip, deep in thought. “Maybe you could break the door down or something?”
“With what?”
He wanted to shout at her: Hey, I’m not a knight from one of your books! I’m a cripple who’s in deep over his head, understand? But he knew that would only upset her.
“Look,” he said. “I really am glad you came. I mean …” Well, she might be in danger herself now that she’d tried to help him—should he really tell her that he was glad she’d come?
Even if he meant it …
“I mean,” he continued, “I appreciate it. But I don’t think I can get out. Maybe you should go back up the chimney.”
“Back up?” Her big eyes quivered and her little pink mouth trembled. “I don’t think I can. I hoped that …”
She kept staring at him dumbly, bewildered, no doubt disappointed in him.
But Ed’s gut was twisted with conflicting emotions.
He did want her here with him, and yet … the thought of anything happening to her enraged him. Stefanite parents favored harsh punishments as a rule, and her own father had been responsible for the Massacre in the East, and now worshipped some insane demon master.
Krotan, Ed remembered. That thing in the pit had no great love for human men or women, and Crandolph followed its whims. What if it ordered him to kill Julea for her betrayal?
Ed felt … responsible.
“Look, this isn’t a game,” he told her. “Your father is rutting insane and powerful and I’m nobody. I can’t break down doors, I can’t climb up the chimney, and I can’t get past the servants and the Grenadiers outside. With my lame foot I can barely run. So you’d better get out of here, go back up. I’m sorry.”
“They said you fought it,” she replied, looking away from him, picking at the lacy collar of her dress. “Father was talking, when he didn’t know I was behind the cellar door. The Master went inside your head, but you beat him. He said you were strong.”
“He did?”
She stepped towards him, reaching out to him until her tiny hands were gripping his wrists. “Edwyn, something bad is going to happen here soon. Really bad. Father is talking like we’re all going to join with God or something. But he listens to the Master …”
“Krotan?” Ed asked. “That demon thing?”
She nodded, and a tear ran down to streak her sooty cheek. “I hate him! I wish my mother was still alive, Father would have never have— “
Suddenly, without warning, she threw herself at Ed, burying her face in his chest. “I don’t want to die! I want to see all of the country, and read all of the books, and I want to get married to a nice man. And he promised I could!”
“Your Father promised that?”
She nodded. “But he’s gone mad now, you said. I think so too! I’ve thought so for a while now. His eyes have changed! You saw them.”
She was crying now, her sobbing muffled against his shirt. Ed wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to touch her the wrong way, hurt her somehow in his clumsiness …
He settled for slowly running his fingers through her hair. As he did, she clutched him even more tightly, her nails digging into his back through his shirt.
After a few minutes, she pulled back, her hands on his waist, looking up at him with an odd calm. “I wanted a knight to rescue me,” she said. “I dreamt about it. And then you came. I know you’re not a real knight, but … I see it inside you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“It’s deep behind your eyes, and dark and angry like a storm. A really powerful one. But when you looked at me at dinner, there was a flash of lightning. Like a brightness there.”
“Because you’re pretty,” he admitted. “And … you’re nice to me.”
“You are handsome,” she said. “And I am so glad that they didn’t hurt you. Can you kiss me?”
The question took him by surprise. “Can I … umm?”
But her eyes were closed and her pink lips were pursed and she was waiting. He bent down and pressed his mouth to hers, moved his lips. He didn’t want to press too hard …
Was he supposed to do something with his tongue? He decided against it, just kept moving his mouth, feeling the friction of her soft flesh against his. His hands were on her narrow waist and she was so soft, so fragile, so trusting of him …
A thrill ran over him, a warm tingle like he had never felt before, and he forgot his aches and pains.
When he finally pulled away, she was smiling, her pale face flushed in the lamplight.
She thinks I can actually do something, fight them, he thought. Rutting insane.
But her father had told her that she would die soon? He had to try something, for her sake.
“Okay,” he said, his mind made up. “We have to get you out of this house. And try to tell people, warn them that something dangerous is happening here.”
She nodded emphatically.
“But the first thing is to get out of this room, right?” He looked out through the tiny barred window in the door again, squinting to see if there was anything in the main cellar that might aid them.
On the far wall, he could see the glint of the silver-and-glass spheres in their iron racks, and the silver cords running in a tangled web across the floor. There were tables in the middle of the room, and papers were scattered upon them. On top of one stack of pages was a large iron key.
The key to their cell?
Ed jerked back when he saw a shadow spreading across the far wall. Someone was walking across the room out there, wearing a hooded robe, his gait almost mechanical.
“Mott,” Ed whispered, turning back to her. “Rutting hell! Julea, cover that light …” as he watched, she quickly sat down in front of the oil lamp, trying to block the glow.
“He’s down here a lot,” she said. “Father has Reverend Mott stay down here so that he doesn’t frighten the servants too much.”
Mott … he was a walking corpse, dumb and oblivious. But could they use this to their advantage?
“I have an idea,” he told her. “But I’ll need your help.”
-20-
While a small crowd of onlookers watched them, Jack helped Ralley prepare for the duel.
The gathered men and women were dwarfed by the silent and ancient limestone blocks of the high walled roy
al entry hall, and the gilded snakes and birds on the ceiling high above seemed to writhe restlessly in the firelight. Two of the little squirrel-things, chebae, chased each other around the crowd until one of the blue-clad guards bellowed something and frightened them away.
Jack tried to ignore all of this, helping Ralley to strap on the Phaedon’s scabbard and sword, fumbling a bit at the unfamiliar arrangement of the leather straps and bronze clasps.
The hooked sword itself was the real problem. The gem-festooned royal weapon looked to be more ornamental than functional, and Ralley would not be accustomed to such a heavy, slashing weapon.
But the Xai Ashaon, Ralley’s soon-to-be opponent, had confiscated Ralley’s rapier when they’d first arrived …
“Ralley,” Jack said. “You can’t fight him with that sword. I know that his Majesty meant the best by lending it to you, but your own rapier would be much more suitable. You should demand that it be returned.”
“No.” He shook his head. “My Pai Phaedon has made his choice of weapon, and I’ll accept it.”
“Damn it all!” Jack swore. “This situation is out of hand. Ralley, I should have known that little bald bastard was planning something. I should have seen it in his eyes!”
“What do you see in his eyes?” Ralley asked bluntly. It took Jack a moment to realize that Ralley wasn’t mocking him, but rather asking for his expert opinion.
“Anger, certainly,” Jack said. “Frustration. But not cruelty, not as such. Not like Aubren. He’s doing this because he thinks he must …”
Ralley nodded. “Exactly. And so I must answer his challenge.”
“Perhaps they would make allowances for your lack of experience. I could serve as your champion, fight for you?” Jack felt compelled to make this offer, though the chance of his friend accepting it now seemed nonexistent.
Ralley turned to him, that fire burning behind his green eyes. “What I need is your promise to watch over the Princess if something happens to me.”
He nodded towards Taxamia, who stood at his side, calm for the moment. “And do your best to aid her and the others. If I perish, you are the only link to Garatayne, and you have to represent our people here.”
Battle Across Worlds Page 15