“So that’s what this is about.” The ax’s shaft was slippery under Nora’s palms. She shifted her grip. “Just to repeat: I’m not your wife. Whatever I do, whomever I do it with—it’s none of your business. Please leave now.”
“Why? Are you afraid of me?”
“No, I’m just holding this ax because I feel like it.”
He laughed as though the answer pleased him. “I could have easily killed you this afternoon, Nora, but I didn’t. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re such a nice person?”
“I only wanted to talk to my wife. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t communicate well during the daytime, when my appearance is so . . . different. You fled, I followed. Unlike your wizard,” he went on, “I’ve never killed a girl for cheating on me.”
“I don’t know that we have much to talk about, Raclin,” Nora said. “Unless it’s about this delusion of yours that we were actually married. Let me be very clear. You enchanted me, you took my mind away and turned my body into your plaything. It wasn’t marriage, it was rape. And you never mentioned that you turn into a lizard every day. A girl likes to know little things like that before she ties the knot.
“What’s pathetic is that I don’t think you even wanted to marry me. It was all your mother’s idea. Let’s stop pretending. Leave me alone, drop the charade, and we’ll go our separate ways, all right?”
“What a lovely show of spirit,” Raclin said with a graceful smirk. “I would have liked to have seen more of that in the old days.”
“You did everything you could to crush it out of me.”
“Did I? There’s always a trade-off. At least you were beautiful then.”
The jibe shouldn’t have rankled, but it did. “So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“My dear, I have come to tell you that your little adventure is over. Running away, adultery—it’s all becoming very sordid and tiresome. I’m here to take possession of my wife again.”
“Didn’t I just explain to you that we’re not married?”
“As long as you’re wearing my ring, you’re my wife. Besides, my sweet,” he added, “it’s not as though you have anywhere else to go. Even that broken-down wizard won’t have anything to do with you, after the tongue-lashing you gave him today. You’re quite the virago when you try.”
Nora stared at him. The sickle-moon smile under his perfect cheekbones was composed, invulnerable.
“How do you know what I said to Aruendiel?” she asked. “And come to think of it, how do you know I slept with him in the first place?”
“You made no secret of it,” Raclin said.
“You were spying on us.”
“Spying? I have the right to know if my wife is sleeping with other men.”
“Aruendiel would have found you out if you were close enough to see or hear us. I know how cautious he is. The ring. It’s the ring, isn’t it?” Shuddering, Nora raised the ax slightly. “That’s how you knew.”
“Oh, yes. It told me as soon as you turned whore.”
Exactly what the ring had shown Raclin, Nora did not want to know. “You’re disgusting.” Another revelation came to her. She felt sick.
“And all those terrible things I said to Aruendiel—that was because of you, wasn’t it? You made me turn on him. I had one lovely night with this man that I gave up everything to be with, and not only do you spy on us, but you destroy his happiness, and mine. He hates me now, and it’s all your fault, you vile, inhuman, degenerate slime—you goatfucker—you—”
Nora’s voice broke. She was trying—had been trying for some time—not to remember too precisely the long litany of abuse she had hurled at Aruendiel, but now she found certain phrases were lodged like dark thorns in her memory. You did pretty well for an old man, a dead man. I fucked a corpse.
Raclin shook his head, smiling, obviously savoring her distress. “No, I only gave you the courage, let’s call it, to say those things. Much as I despise the so-called Lord Aruendiel, you know how to wound him better than I do. Although I think you were too kind to him, even so. There’s much more to say about how hideous he is.”
“Shut up.”
“But what you said to him was true enough. Most of it, anyway. Well, don’t worry about the wizard’s feelings. My mother will have dealt with him by now.”
“Your mother. Naturally she’d be around here somewhere.” Nora stared back at Raclin, hoping to hide the apprehension rising within her. “She can’t hurt Aruendiel.”
“Don’t be so sure. She’s prepared for battle, and he’s not. He’s as good as dead. And what about you, my dear? Don’t you think it’s time to come back to your husband?”
“Of course not.” Her arms were getting tired. She adjusted her grip on the ax again.
“Be sensible, Nora. Where else can you go now? And you remember what it was like before. You were blissfully happy. You were madly in love with me.”
She laughed at that. “You know that wasn’t real. And no love spell in the world could make me fall in love with you now.”
Raclin studied her for a moment. “You’re right,” he said in a careless tone. “But that doesn’t matter. You don’t have to love me to need me.”
“I don’t need you.”
“Yes, you do. Look at you, all alone. You’re terrified. You’re weak. You’re trembling so much you can hardly hold up that ax.”
“That’s because I don’t trust you.”
“But you don’t have to be afraid of me. Just give in to me, that’s all. Nora,” Raclin went on, his voice soft and rich like the humming of bees, “you know you need to be protected. Not just from the outside world. You can’t even trust yourself. You thought you loved Aruendiel, and look at how you treated him, all the poison you spewed at him. You cause pain and you feel pain, but you can’t control it.”
“Stop it,” Nora whispered. “Get back.”
Raclin had edged closer, his kindly smile overhanging her like a sun. “You’re so fragile, like a little child. Give in to me, and the pain will stop. Remember last time, Nora? How frightened you were at first, and then it was all over, and everything was easy?”
“No, I won’t,” she said, but her vision had blurred with sudden tears, because it was true—she was weak and he was strong. His words were mixing smoothly, inevitably into her thoughts, like sugar stirred into coffee.
“Poor little girl, you don’t know what to do. You swore to be mine, remember? And you’re still wearing my ring. Listen to the ring. Let it guide you. I’m the only one who can protect you from your own monsters. You can’t do it alone, Nora. You can’t do anything alone. Put down the ax, dear. It’s too heavy for you. That’s my good girl. Just close your eyes—you blood-soaked cunt!”
Raclin jumped backward, away from the blunt end of the ax blade that Nora had suddenly thrust toward him.
“I told you to shut up and get back,” Nora said, moving to keep the tree trunk between them. “Next time it will be the sharp end.”
Raclin said something in the Faitoren language. She could not understand the words, but almost instantly she knew what they signified.
Her left hand, the one with the ring, yanked at the ax handle like a wild thing. It was trying to wrest the ax away from her right hand, Nora realized. With a sense of uncanny helplessness, she felt the muscles of her left hand and arm tensing, and she could tell how tightly her fingers clung to the wooden handle, but she had no say in what they were doing.
That horrible ring again. Nora thanked her lucky stars that she was not left-handed and pulled at the ax with all the strength of her right arm, twisting her body for leverage. Slowly her left hand slipped off the handle, its fingers scrabbling with desperate energy for a fresh grip.
Next thing, that hand will go after my eyes, Nora thought. Or my throat.
She remembered something
Ramona had once said. A joke. They’d been talking about how to get the ring off.
“I believe,” Nora said through gritted teeth, “that my sister was right.”
Immediately, because with even a second’s reflection she would lose all resolve, she twitched her left shoulder hard and threw her wayward hand up against the trunk of the tree. Her fingers splayed out against the bark. She brought the sharp edge of the ax down as hard as she could on the crease where her ring finger joined her palm.
Chapter 10
Half closing the bedroom door behind him, Aruendiel stepped into the corridor. It was dimmer here than he expected; the servants must have let the wall lamps go out. He summoned up a light, but the illumination only seemed to multiply the shadows.
Two dozen paces to the right, something stirred in the obscurity.
“Halt,” he called out.
But there was another person even closer to him, touching his arm. “Aruendiel,” the woman said.
Not Lusarniev’s voice. Looking down, he saw the white flash of a smile, dark liquid eyes. Gold glinting at her ears and throat. “Hirizjahkinis?” he asked, incredulous.
“What do you think?” she asked mockingly.
“What are you doing here? How are you here? The Kavareen—”
“Oh, the Kavareen,” she said. “Don’t worry about the Kavareen.”
“But—you’re well? Unharmed?”
“Touch me! You’ll see.” She took his hand and pressed it into the soft swell of her breast. Fragrance bloomed in the air. “Aruendiel,” she said huskily. “I never thanked you properly for saving me, all those years ago, from the witch-priestesses of Tlorjika. Let me show you now how grateful I am.”
The light of the campfire flickered across her face. He remembered this place: the mountain cave where they’d taken refuge after their flight. Outside, in the sticky night, the insects of the southern jungles were chanting their raucous music.
“No,” he said, pulling his hand back. “You told me no. You said you took no pleasure in the touch of a man.”
“Bah, I was young, I was foolish. A few kisses between old friends—what is the harm, Aruendiel?”
He hesitated for an instant, then shook his head. “Something is out of joint here, Hirizjahkinis. What afflicts you?” Peeling her away as she tried to cling to his arm, he moved toward the cave’s mouth, where moonlight pooled on the rocky floor. He stepped through the gap and found himself in a small, wood-framed room. A young woman in a blue- and-brown dress sat sewing by the fire, her foot rocking a cradle. She stood up as soon as she saw Aruendiel.
“Father, you’re here, finally!”
“Blackberry?” She came toward him; he could not stop himself from returning her embrace. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Waiting for you—me and the little one.” She glanced at the cradle, and he caught a glimpse of a curled fist, a tiny yawn.
“But, Blackberry—by wood and water, what is going on? My wife. Hirizjahkinis. You. I have seen you all just now, but all of you are gone. Dead.” The last time he’d seen Blackberry alive, he remembered reluctantly, she had been considerably older, so frail and tired that she could hardly get out of bed. The cough that killed her came just a few weeks later. His magic kept him alive and vital; it could not salve the slow pain of watching Blackberry age and die. “You have come back now. For me.” Gazing down at her, Aruendiel shook his head. “What am I to think?”
She smiled at him, her cheeks pink and young as rose petals. “You are tired, Father. Don’t you wish to sleep?” Blackberry indicated the wooden bed, piled high with pillows, that occupied a corner of the room.
“To sleep?” Aruendiel stood very still. “What do you mean?”
“You have come so far, all this time, all alone. I can see from your face how exhausted you are. And you’ve been disappointed, haven’t you? Terrible disappointments.” Her brown gaze threw back nothing but warmth and concern. “But now you can rest, at last.”
“At last?” It was a perfectly ordinary-looking bed, the wool blankets woven in a simple red-and-blue pattern he remembered from his childhood, but he felt his heart begin to pound. He drew a ragged breath. “What do you mean, Blackberry? That I have finally, after all this time, come to the end?”
Was it only yesterday that he had groped for a way outside the world? I am like the young man in the story, he thought—I finally found what I sought, after I had given up the search.
“Hush, no talking. Time to sleep.” She gave him a quick but surprisingly forceful push toward the bed. “Make it a long sleep. You can dream about those fine ladies you met,” she added, chuckling, “and decide which one you’d like to take your pleasures with.”
“I am tired,” he admitted, passing his hand over his face. He looked at the bed, thinking that Blackberry jested rather more freely than he remembered.
The white linens on the bed looked very clean and inviting. Despite his fatigue, though, he felt restive, unready for sleep.
Another voice, a woman’s, spoke behind him, sounding crisp, faintly annoyed: “She got it wrong. She doesn’t know you’re not Blackberry’s father. But I’m not surprised. You never told anyone, did you?”
“Nora?” Aruendiel turned quickly.
A figure behind him also moved, keeping just out of his direct sight. He caught only a blurred glimpse of her. The woman’s hair was too dark to be Nora’s.
“Nora’s not here,” Blackberry said quickly.
“Who spoke, then?” Aruendiel demanded. “Not you. It was someone else.”
“I didn’t hear anyone. You’re mistaken, Father. You’re tired, it’s time to sleep.”
He shook his head slowly, warily. The voice was right. Blackberry had never called him Father. “Not now, child.”
“No, this is no time to sleep,” the other, unseen woman said. Aruendiel wheeled again. “You don’t need to see me,” she said, still somewhere behind him. “You know who I am.”
“Who is there?”
“You know me.”
He waited before answering. “I didn’t think I would ever hear you speak again.”
“Neither did I.”
He understood now why her voice reminded him of Nora’s. Both of them made the same grammatical slip, using the more straightforward masculine verb form when speaking of themselves. The effect was jarring but not unpleasant.
He sighed. Just one more glance at Blackberry, he thought, but when he looked for her, Blackberry was gone. He was alone with the shadowy woman at his back. For a moment, irrationally, he wished he had his sword in hand. But the blade would do him no good against a ghost.
“She’ll be back,” said the voice.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Your friend Ilissa, I mean. Not Blackberry.”
“I know.” Aruendiel grimaced. “Ilissa’s tired, all those quick transformations. But she’ll be back in a new guise soon enough.” He added gloomily: “As some other woman I have known.” Perhaps Olenan, he thought uneasily.
“She’ll come back as me, most likely.” The woman behind him laughed.
“You?”
“Why not? You buried me deep, but she’ll find some trace of me anyway. She’ll know that I’m the first woman you killed. And that you’re afraid of me.”
“Then she’ll be wrong on both counts.”
“Oh, come, Aruendiel. Admit it, you are fearful right now, listening to me, knowing that I am here. You wish that I’d never existed.”
That was true. No, half true. “It’s not so simple,” Aruendiel said. “And I have no fear of you.” He was bluffing only slightly—he’d had nightmares about her that were much worse than this. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“When your friend Ilissa started digging deep into your past, bringing back all those lovely ladies as bait for you, I woke up. I’m a dr
eam as much as those other women who were running after you just now. But I’m a dream without deception. I’m a dream that tells you what’s real.”
“You’re not being truthful, though,” he objected. “What’s this slander that I killed you?”
“It’s not a lie. I gave my life for you, that night in the sea. If not for you,” she said bitterly, “I would have grown old among my children and grandchildren, loved and honored as you have never been. Think of that, what you deprived me of—what you deprived yourself of.”
“I had no choice. It was your life or mine.” After a moment, he added: “I’m sorry”—What should he call her?—“Warigan.” The name felt strange in his mouth from long disuse. “I know what I lost. I have had plenty of time to think on it. But I could not have chosen differently. Do you understand?”
“Oh, certainly.” For the first time, he heard some kindness in her voice. “I understand. It was my choice, too, remember?”
Suddenly he wanted very much to look directly at her, even if it was impossible or—he felt this obscurely—somehow forbidden. It seemed to him that he would feel some peace if they could look into each other’s eyes for a moment.
He began to turn, but a new shape materialized in front of him. Even though he was half prepared, it was still a shock to recognize Warigan, her hair in tangled curls. She was dressed in the dirty finery that he remembered from the whores’ camp.
She advanced, her mouth hard, eyelashes fluttering. From behind him, Warigan’s voice said: “Aha! I told you so.”
“Aruendiel, it is I,” said the new Warigan, her voice throbbing with sentiment—menace or seduction, it was not clear. “Yes, the one you wronged. I haven’t forgotten how you treated me. How could you have been so cruel?”
Faitoren magic mined one’s secrets, Aruendiel reminded himself, and he wondered how deep Ilissa had burrowed and what strange artifacts she had found. He put his hands on the woman’s thin shoulders. “Yes, I was expecting you,” he said, squeezing hard. She winced a little. “I haven’t forgotten you, not at all. But perhaps you can remind me what it is that I did to you, madam. That part escapes me.”
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 12