Prisoner of Haven

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  “She’s passed along information she knew we’d need. She says she’ll do it again if she can, and she says she’ll keep up her association with Halgard as long as it looks like it will benefit Qui’thonas. We didn’t talk about this before. We’d said she’d keep clear. But I don’t know how you can pass this up, Aline.”

  “I have no intention of passing up Usha’s offer,” Aline said. “I hope she’s careful, though. I hope… she knows what she’s doing.”

  Aline thought of the danger, that much was clear. But Dez thought of something else, the look she saw in Usha’s eyes when she spoke of Loren Halgard—the look a woman gets when she’s feeling things she doesn’t dare think about. She glanced at Madoc, sitting quietly beside Aline. As she did, Aline’s hand moved to his, as though she weren’t even thinking about it.

  Probably, she wasn’t, Dez thought with a pang, remembering that intimate familiarity, that way of touching a man and knowing he not only welcomed the touch, he’d been waiting for it.

  “I hope she knows, too,” Dez said, and. she followed Dunbrae.

  In the corridor outside the solar, Dunbrae said, “I hate the bastard.”

  “I know,” Dez said, and she also knew he wasn’t talking about Loren Halgard. “But why?”

  The stairs were unlighted. They went carefully down. “Because he doesn’t deserve her. He brought her here, turned her over to Lir Wrackham and left, just like he was taking her to market. Then he came back, moping and skulking around until she—” He shook his head. “He’ll leave her again. He’ll break her heart. And I’ll break his head. It’s comin’, Dez. I know it.”

  Might be, Dez thought, and it might not be. For her part, she didn’t hate Madoc Diviner. She simply didn’t trust him.

  Usha looked around the edge of her easel when Loren put aside the book he’d been reading, a small volume of elven poetry.

  “You aren’t going to tell me the poems are dull, are you?”

  “No, they aren’t dull.” He chuckled. “Some even make sense to me.”

  It had surprised Usha to learn that he could read Qualinesti, until she learned that he could read Dwarvish and something of the language of the nomadic desert people who live outside of Tarsis. “People all over Krynn speak Common,” he’d said, “but they think in their own language. That’s how you want to read their poetry and hear their songs.”

  “Usha, we haven’t talked about Tamara’s portrait.”

  They hadn’t, and Usha had thought the matter forgotten—or perhaps that he’d regretted asking. Whatever the reason, he’d never brought up the subject after the day he first mentioned it. In truth, she’d come to hope the matter of the portrait was forgotten, for she’d never been able to think about it without the image of Tamara walking in the garden behind the Goat. She would not like to take that image to the easel and try to compose the kind of portrait a father would be pleased to have.

  “Do you still want a portrait?”

  “Of course,” he said, surprised. “Why would you think not?”

  Usha moved so that her shadow slipped off the white canvas. She inspected the quality of the whiteness and decided she’d scraped enough. The canvas was ready for whatever would come to it.

  She trod carefully in her reply. “You haven’t asked again, and I don’t think Tamara would have much time to sit for sketches. It seems Sir Radulf has most of her time.”

  Loren sat very still, the book open on his knee. “Yes. They’re often together.” Then, as if he’d felt a shadow of judgment over her words, he said, “He courts her openly and properly in my home, Usha.”

  Stung by his curtness, Usha almost told him that the knight courted Tamara outside Loren’s home as well. She caught herself, unwilling to explain what she’d seen at the Goat. In these days of rumor and unease, it would be foolish to remind him of her connection to Madoc.

  Thinking of Tamara with the knight gave her the same kind of chill as thinking of a child reaching out to play with a viper.

  Loren turned a page in the book, then another, not reading but occupying his hands, and Usha thought she’d gone so far down this road that she might as well go farther.

  “It still surprises me, Loren, that the knight has your blessing.”

  He turned another page, the sound a whisper. “My blessing? I don’t think that is the proper word. Sir Radulf does not have my objection.”

  Usha tossed the scraping knife onto a table. Loren looked up at the clatter.

  “You’re quibbling, Loren.” She came out from behind the easel, wiping flakes of pa’ressa from her hands, hard swipes down the sides of her skirt.

  “I am not—”

  “Then you’re rationalizing, if you like that word better. Whatever you call it, you’d best look hard at what’s going on.”

  Loren’s eyes were like winter ice, gray and hard. With the careful motions of a man controlling himself, he set his book aside. “You’re right. I am rationalizing, and it isn’t worthy of the conversation. My feelings about this should be no surprise to you at this late date. I don’t like the man—gods know I don’t—but I do what I must. For Haven and for my daughter. Let it go.”

  She could not. His stubbornness and his willingness to fool himself angered her. Her words tumbled out, long held in and urgent now.

  “No matter how much you hope it, Loren, Sir Radulf isn’t going to be your daughter’s savior. Times are changing. You hear the rumors in the city as well as I do. Of course they are only that,” she said, covering what could have become a dangerous lapse. “Just rumors, but they do suggest that people aren’t as willing to tolerate the occupation as they used to be.”

  To her surprise, he didn’t didn’t defend himself or his choice. He laughed.

  “People are fools,” he snapped. “They run after every rumor of a way out they can find. Times aren’t changing, Usha. They have already changed. The sooner people realize it, the easier their lives will be.”

  It sounded like something Sir Radulf might say. “And so you’ve changed your own survival strategy.”

  Loren’s eyes grew even colder. “What do you mean?”

  “You were willing to trade your influence to the occupation so that all could go easily and well. And now—” She stopped. His face grew pale, his eyes hard. The icy silence between them now was like a challenge and, dared, Usha spoke her heart. “Loren, you traded influence for survival, and now you’re trading your daughter.”

  Loren’s head came up with a snap, his eyes flashed warning. “You know nothing about it, Usha.”

  It was on her lips to demand why he thought that, and to tell him how much she really did know. She caught back the words, for if she once began to talk about what she’d seen at the Grinning Goat, every question he asked would lead relentlessly to the name Qui’thonas.

  Tears pricked suddenly in Usha’s eyes. In her heart a bitter voice accused her of betraying Tamara in favor of Qui’thonas. She could say no more, stayed by loyalty and betrayal. Usha went back to her easel, the canvas a wall between them.

  “Loren,” she said, her voice even and cool, “I think you’ll find more congenial conversation elsewhere today.”

  He stood with the blue leather book in his hand, his thumb absently tracing the length of the spine. From behind the easel she could see his face only if she moved. She did not.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not leaving like this, not in anger.”

  “It isn’t your choice to stay.” The canvas felt brittle under her touch, it still smelled faintly of the priming coat. “Please leave.”

  Silence spread out between them, and Usha became aware of sounds from the street below—the clop of horses, the rumble of a carriage wheel. A gull cried, and out the corner of her eye she saw it sailing, gray-winged against a small patch of blue sky.

  Then, in a mild voice, like someone curious and musing, Loren said, “You accuse your husband of running away, Usha.”

  Usha gasped, a sharp hiss, as though she’d been struck
. “You have no right to speak of that.”

  He ignored her. “You accuse him, but what are you doing now? You order me to leave, but it’s you who are running away.”

  Usha flared in anger. “Go! Leave right now.”

  But Loren was relentless, quiet and relentless. “You hide, Usha. You’re hiding now behind the canvas.”

  Her face flushed, her blood rising in anger. “How dare you? You have no right to speak of Palin to me.” With two long strides, she left the easel and put herself eye to eye with him. “You don’t know a thing about it.”

  Loren shook his head, a little rueful smile on his lips. “You’re right. I don’t know a thing about it—or about you. You veil yourself in mystery. Your glances, your sighs suggest regret for a life you won’t let go—or decide to hold onto.”

  “Loren, I warn you. Stop it.”

  What she warned him against, she didn’t know. Whatever it was, Loren didn’t seem to care. He came closer, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. “Is he truly gone, Usha? This husband of yours. Is he gone?”

  Usha wanted to back away from Loren and from what he was implying, from what he dared to ask. She lifted her chin, refusing to move even half a step.

  “You know nothing about it. How dare you speak of it!”

  He was implacable now, hunting for something, for an answer. “You say your husband is gone. I see no evidence of it.”

  “You don’t know one thing—”

  He stood so close to her now that she trembled—with anger, she thought, sheer fury that he would dare to speak of her marriage as though he knew even the smallest thing about it.

  Loren shook his head, again the small, almost regretful smile. “I do know one thing, Usha.” Soft, he said, “I know I love you.”

  Usha stood still, she heard only the rush of blood in her ears, the hammering of her heart as Loren put a hand on each shoulder, very gently.

  She said, “Loren.”

  He kissed her, first gently, then with sudden, frightening urgency. She could do nothing else but return the kiss, and she returned it fully.

  His voice rough with emotion, he asked the question she’d never adequately answered. “Who are you, Usha?”

  Over his shoulder Usha saw the easel, and the back of a white canvas waiting. Negative space. That’s what artists call the white space, that place where nothing is and something might be.

  Her throat closing tight around a surge of anger and fear and uncertainty, Usha knew she’d been like negative space since she left Solace, a stark white canvas, waiting for color and shape and her own hand, her will to begin the work. She took Loren’s hand and brought him to the easel. In face of the emptiness of negative space, the woman whose life began in mysteries without answers took a bold step.

  “I can tell you who I am not. I am not of the Irda, though they raised me. I am not a mage, though I have magic.” She laughed, the sound of it a little shaky, and she held her arms out from her sides. “I am not the young girl I seem to be. I am a mother of two grown children.”

  Silence, for a breath of time.

  “I am Palin Majere’s wife. Once I believed that his uncle, the dire mage Raistlin, was my father. Rumor said so, for a long time. Raistlin’s daughter they called me. But I’m not his child. I don’t know who my parents were. I’m told they are dead.”

  He slipped an arm around her waist, and Usha realized with a sudden pang that it had been years since a man had held her so easily, so warmly. Her throat closed. It had been too many years since she’d felt the sweep of this kind of warmth rushing through her.

  “I don’t know who I am, Loren. I never have.” She reached out and touched the white canvas, the glaze cool under her fingers, the texture only barely noticeable, like that of an egg’s smooth shell. “I’m that, I suppose. Negative space.”

  When he bent to kiss her again, Usha shook her head, pushing him gently away.

  “Go.”

  “Usha, please—”

  “Go, Loren,” she whispered. “Now.”

  That whisper was a ragged sound. In her own ears it sounded more like a plea than a command. Still, he obeyed.

  When he was gone, Usha sat in the chair he’d occupied all morning. She picked up the book of elven poetry he’d left behind and closed it. She sat with the book on her lap, keeping very still until she heard the faint sound of the inn’s door closing. Then she wept.

  15

  Usha turned into the shady lane that led to the Ivy. Heavy of heart, she also felt heavy of limb at the end of a hot, restless day. Two boys passed her, coming from the inn’s dooryard. One carried a folded piece of paper in a dirty hand. Haven’s unofficial messenger corps had dwindled to a few stalwarts who drifted between one inn and another as the travelers who’d been caught in the occupation had found places to stay with friends or relations. One or two of those had given up utterly on the hope of getting out and rented little houses on the eastern side of the city.

  The prisoners are settling in, Usha thought grimly as the boys trudged by.

  But she was not. No one was less settled than Usha. She’d done no painting for the past few days. The canvas she’d finished priming sat untouched on the easel where she’d left it. In that time, her feelings had swung between fear and elation, the memory of Loren’s kiss, his arms around her, even his gray eyes, driving her between one pole and the other. There was no middle ground. Reasoned thought seemed to be a thing of the past, as did sleep. At last, this afternoon, Usha had abandoned her studio in frustration and went out to walk.

  That had been no remedy, Haven seemed airless. Not even the slightest breeze moved, and Usha became aware of the unpleasant smell of the river. The faint odor of dead fish, the marshes up stream, horse droppings, and all the waste a city generates… a miasma of these hung in the still air. She had not walked long before giving up and turning back to the inn. Now, in the shady lane, Usha thought she would go upstairs and face the empty canvas in hope that she’d be able to begin one of the portraits that would soon be due.

  Someone called a greeting. Usha turned to see Bertie the cook’s boy at the top of the lane. She raised a hand to acknowledge and then cried out in sudden fear.

  As though the ground opened under her feet, Usha plunged into freezing, almost mindless dread. She wanted to run, to bolt down the lane toward the inn, yet her knees were so weak she could hardly stagger to the hitching post and hold herself steady. Bertie cried out again and, breathing hard, her heart hammering, Usha recognized the terror gripping her.

  Dragonfear!

  The shouts and cries of others rang out around her. She became aware of a crowd gathering, of voices rising, shouting. Bertie pointed up, and Usha saw that others did, too.

  Red dragons came in over the city, a dozen flying out of the west. Light slid along their scaled hides and glinted from the armor of the knights who rode them. Standing in the street, shading her eyes against the glare, Usha thought they looked like flames peeling away from the burning ball of the sun. On the city walls, Sir Radulf’s men cheered. From this distance, Usha couldn’t see them, but the sound of their shouts swelled as the dragons came closer.

  People poured into the street from the inn, from the shops up and down the road. Their voices swelled, some screaming in terror, some shouting one to another. A woman huddled in the arms of her husband. Two dwarves in the street cursed. One was Dougal Scree, the saddlemaker from the shop up the street, the other his apprentice. Dougal shook his fist at the sky as the shadows of the dragons slipped across the crowd, sliding up the street toward Old Keep. The impotent gesture died before the derision of a knight riding by.

  “Calm down, old father.” The knight laughed. “You’ll burst a blood vessel.

  The dwarf rounded on the knight. “Don’t you ‘old father’ me, you ruffian! Go on! Move off!”

  Still laughing, the knight pricked his mount’s sides with his spurs. The horse danced sideways, tumbling the cursing dwarf to the ground. Hoofs
flashed as the tall gelding reared, and Usha sprang into the street, grabbing Dougal’s arm before the plunging horse came down. She dragged him back, and Bertie took her sputtering charge from her. The laughter of a second knight joined the first, and Usha recognized the voice.

  Lady Mearah put her dark horse between her fellow and Usha. She spoke one word, too low for Usha to make out, and the knight put spurs to his mount, scattering people as he tore off down the street.

  “Is there a problem, Mistress Usha?”

  Usha lifted her chin, meeting the lady knight eye to eye. “There has been for some time now, milady. It doesn’t look to be getting better.”

  “Ah.” The Palanthian looked up as though counting the circling dragons. When she looked back, her chill gaze seemed to go right through Usha. “Well, some would say things should be getting better any moment now.”

  A hand touched her arm, gently. Usha turned to see Loren standing beside her. He said nothing to Lady Mearah, only holding her gaze in grim silence. She tilted her head, as though weighing something, then laughed.

  “I’ll see you later, Halgard.”

  To Usha those words didn’t sound like a reminder of an appointment. They sounded like a threat.

  Lady Mearah was gone in a clatter of hoofs, scattering the rest of the curious before her. Loren put his arm around Usha’s shoulders and turned her toward the inn where Bertie was promising Dougal Scree a tankard of ale. “To help calm your nerves, sir.”

  “And you,” Loren said, his breath warm on Usha’s cheek. “Saving old Scree from certain death and facing down a knight is a good day’s work. You don’t look like you need anything to calm your nerves, though. Perhaps something in the way of congratulation?”

  Usha almost laughed as she slipped out of his embrace, and she almost cried to feel how empty the space between them was. Oh, dear gods, I haven’t felt this way in a long time!