Raymond did not see how his great-uncle could extend his life until the coronation. He would never see him in the Wedded Farce, as Raymond liked to think of it. Arranged marriages were not uncommon but when he became King, it would be the first thing he did away with. Raymond was a strong believer in liberty. And forcing a person into a union that was not sought for love was some form of coercion, their freedom now gone. It was not the way the whole of the other nineteen spheres saw it, yet Raymond did.
He said none of these things. For Raymond believed his freedom, and ultimately, his life, were the price he would pay to save his people and the unborn child he would have with the savage who lived Outside. Raymond wondered how his female counterpart felt about their forced union?
He had often wondered if she wished it. Or... if she felt as he did: that they must.
Raymond looked at Ferrell, a sick old man, steeped in the culture the sphere had become and spoke his mind, “Does Princess Ada accept this union?”
Ferrell gave a low cackle. “Oh my yes! She be from the Kingdom of West Virginia.” His eyes glittered with the knowledge of the happenings of that sphere. “You remember trade days?”
Raymond did. That kingdom was known for their greed.
Ferrell sniffed a trifle contemptuously, his eyes narrowing. “They have the worst for trade while our sphere holds the meat of the waters and the gems therein.” He made a loose fist with his arthritic hands. “They need the proposed alliance, my nephew. Badly,” he said in emphasis.
His eyes took on a faraway look. “Have you readied your preparations for travel?”
Raymond nodded, a knot in his stomach.
“I am sorry, dear nephew, that the very thing the Guardians use to press us into service will sicken you.”
“Yet not for years, dear uncle.”
“No... that I could have...”
Raymond squeezed his last living relative's hand, quelling his apology neatly, “Nay, do not, uncle.” Raymond looked at King Ferrell, dying, in grief about something that had taken the pair by surprise. “It is by destiny's hand. How long did we believe that we would live in the insulation of this marvel?” Raymond said, swinging a large palm at the soft walls of the sphere, the steam-powered heat and function of their home a technology that was not fully understood. Manufactured by strangers from an even stranger place. They had thought the Guardians were their saviors. However, in retrospect, Raymond knew there had been a cost to be paid.
There always was.
He would marry a young princess he did not love so she might raise the babe that would be the product of a secret and immoral liaison between him and a female who lived Outside in the wild. From all accounts, the people of outside were barely more than animals. It would be some kind of rut. Not for love, but for genetics.
Yes, it had been very precisely and explicitly explained to Raymond: the mix of the two peoples would be the only thing that would save both groups. The genes had become thin. Without the Savage introduction to the pool of people in the spheres, they would be driven mad. It had only taken a few well-placed comments from the pair of Guardians, relaying the state of the Kingdom of Kentucky as an example for both King Ferrell and Prince Raymond to concede their point. Then the outlining of their plan began.
Raymond was their patsy, and so was the unknown Savage.
They would lay together, she would have his child, then give it to him to raise. The future monarch would be the key to the sustainability when the eventual demise of the spheres occurred. The Guardians assured them that would happen and when it did this descendant of Raymond and the female Savage would save all.
Raymond would die within the confines of a loveless marriage, sickened by the use of the evil contraption that folded distance.
And time.
Raymond stood and kissed the cool cheek of his uncle, wondering as he departed if the female felt the helplessness that he did? Did she mourn the loss of her choices? Her freedom?
Mayhap her life?
Chapter 2
Clan of Cape Cod
Rolland hung to the treeline and waited, his presence an abiding comfort to Rowenna, who, though she claimed bravery and had such, did not like to roam across borders that brought her within proximity of the Fragment.
As they moved together they slowed, an iridescent tear pierced the sky, the middle of the pastureland just beginning to bleach with the promise of autumn one month hence.
“I am scared,” Rowenna whispered and Rolland clenched his fists, closing his eyes.
He showed none of his anger, though it boiled underneath his skin, poking holes in his marrow.
Instead he answered, “I am here.”
“I know,” she answered and then slipped away.
The Guardians had assured them that she would not be harmed. Rolland could not bring himself to think of her with the false prince of the sphere. Did they have real males of honor within the senseless contraption? Did they even understand what it was to be male?
He stewed as her nutmeg-colored tunic became small in his vision and she slowed in front of the yawning mouth of the Pathway.
A male dropped out of it like spewed garbage and Rolland grunted in satisfaction, hoping he had landed on his thick head.
*
Prince Raymond had never felt so ill in his life nor so embarrassed. He had hoped to be well-met with the Savage, for though she was undoubtedly heathen, she was female and was afforded his deference as all females were.
Instead, his forearms lay planted in a stiff grass that speared his bare skin wherever it touched, his nethers kissing the sky as he poured out his breakfast into the land beneath him. He sucked in a great lungful of air and was assaulted with a dry heat that seared his lungs and caused him to roll on his side and spew more of his guts into the waiting pasture.
“Dear Lord, man!” Rowenna said, her hands on her hips, “What say you?”
Not much of anything, apparently, Raymond thought, his world spinning. Not only had the Pathway made him predictably sick, which he had been prepared for, however, he had not been prepared for Outside. The very sensory overload of the place was something he would not forget for the rest of his life.
He cracked an eyelid open, on his back with his forearm resting against his closed eye and squinted up at a very tall, half-naked female.
“Where be the Travelers, sphere-dweller?” Rowenna bit out and Raymond was taken aback.
She was not primitive at all, but assertive and well-spoken. He forced himself to sit up, his stomach giving a sick turn as he did. However, he was too distracted to pay it much mind and had nothing left to expunge.
“The Guardians?” he asked as confirmation, struggling to stand.
Her unusual eyes narrowed on him. “They guard nothing yet orchestrate our futures, foolish prince.” She straightened, gazing around at the evidence of his sickness.
He could not look away from the strange gills at her neck. Fascinating.
She scowled at his interest and thrust a canteen of some kind toward him and he spun the hammered cap, gulping some of the finest water he had ever had the pleasure of consuming and spit it out. Raymond extracted a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. Taking a second sip he studied the female and was instantly nervous.
She looked at him as a viper of the lowest intelligence and was beyond beautiful. How he had ever presumed that she was a sort of half-animal was laughable. His eyes went over the gills again at her throat and he wondered at that. Perhaps it was evolutionary? For he had heard many stories of how the sun was shadowed after the impact of the rocks, the ash had blocked out the heat of their star.
Had humans left outside developed a secondary means of respiration? Again... fascinating.
“Pray tell, why do you stare at my neck?” Rowenna accused, kicking up her chin.
“I mean no offense... I have not... seen...”
Then she pressed her hand to his mouth to halt his speech and a match lit. One he was instantly sure he could manage
. He stepped closer to her and Rowenna hissed, “No fool, I see them.”
The Travelers, or Guardians, as Raymond knew them to be-- had arrived.
They would supervise their introduction, then he and Rowenna would be left to consummate their arrangement. He took another cleansing swig of the water inside the canteen as he looked at her, a wild and passionate woman, barely more than a girl... he did not know who would be consumed.
Perhaps it would not be she.
But he.
*
The Travelers, who were really two corrupt scientists from a parallel world, had arrived to ensure the union between the two peoples came together. For they would have a daughter and she would be their Key.
A genetic anomaly that would pull the groundwork together to make a new and enhanced race of people in their world. The reasons they gave these primitive peoples were true and highly plausible so force had not been necessary. However, Gary and Joe Zondorae could not go beyond their own timeline to see the outcome, it was conjecture. Everything they did now, they executed with a faith steeped in science.
Had they known how events would culminate in their future, things might have been handled differently. But for all their scientific acumen, hindsight evaded humanity as always.
The Zondorae brothers watched the two young people of this distant world come together, young for their time and mature for this one, they hoped that their choices had not been ill-placed. They had gone over the family lines most deliberately and the young man, soon to be King Raymond, who resided in bio-sphere number three, was the direct descendant of Stella. Who was also a distant relative of the woman, Rowenna, of the Clan of Cape Cod. Their resultant offspring should marry the genetics nicely and give them a carrier of sorts, a genetic messiah. If she were female, which they had reason to presume her to be, all the better.
The brothers gave each other a significant glance and Joe stepped forward, giving awkward introductions to the pair in a parody of the language with which they were familiar.
He would see them move toward their sexual entanglement before he departed or they would not leave here.
They waited.
It was Prince Raymond who understood for what they waited and was beyond mortified.
He turned to Rowenna. “They expect some kind of...” he waffled his hand back and forth, “show of our union.”
Oh dear Lord, Rowenna thought, glaring at the Travelers. Mayhap Evil Ones was a nearer moniker to ones such as they.
Rowenna was hideously true and loyal. As Raymond leaned forward to kiss her, she felt her betrayal of Rolland like metal in her breastbone. Slick, cold and metallic, Rowenna went against those deeply ingrained feelings and pressed her body into the kiss with this strange male.
Raymond felt her meld to his body and, Guardian help him, he forgot the strangers who were but paces away from their position. He wrapped his arms around a female that was nearly his height and kissed her like a starving man.
Satisfied, the scientists from a parallel world zapped out of existence. The Pathway winking into a spot of bright light, the sounds of wildlife quieting before its abnormal presence.
They left in the certainty of the forward motion of their interference. While that wheel moved, it flowed to destiny's course, one that was much different.
*
Raymond felt the hand pick him up from behind and heave him backward. He did an airborne tumble that sent his stomach into a secondary tailspin. However, Raymond prided himself on hands calloused from his days working the pungy oars himself. He had mucked in and out of his small oyster harvesting ships for years and collected the baskets with hands that did not reflect those of the King he would be. The solid wood buckets of oysters weighed fifty pounds each and he had hoisted them day in and day out. He was almost ten and eight but had another two inches of adult height he would gain and ranged around six feet that day in the meadow of Outside.
The great hulking giant that came for him was five inches taller and forty pounds heavier.
Rowenna! Raymond thought with a speed that frightened him.
He was here this day to couple with a strange female and now he found himself in the role of protector against a male that was undoubtedly Savage.
His daily life and sparring with the guard of the sphere did not prepare him for the vigor of the surprise assault by the huge male, yet he was not as soft as this one supposed.
Raymond played smart and when the man charged again, a short sword with a deeply embedded and polished stone winked as he bore down. As he drew nearer, he simply grabbed the wrist with the weapon and, nearly embracing him, threw him over his outstretched leg.
And being the smart man he was, he rushed to Rowenna, who stood with a gaping mouth and launched his arm around her small waist, nearly picking her up.
“Let us make haste before the brute beats us,” Raymond rushed out even as he made off with Rowenna.
“Put me down!” she yelled, struggling inside his hold.
“No! Can you not see... foolish woman, that a Savage is after us?”
He was not after them, he was upon them, rolling the pair onto the ground so smoothly it had to have been orchestrated.
Raymond tried to toss the hellion, Rowenna, away from him so he might spare her a little longer and looked up into eyes so fierce they stilled his breath.
A hand raised above his head, the shadow of it encompassing his face and blotting out the summer sun of Outside.
“Rolland... no,” Rowenna said in a shaky tremor.
She knew him? Raymond asked himself in mute horror.
“'Tis not his fault, as it is not mine.”
The fist stayed raised, a fine tremor rippled through the warrior's body above Raymond's and he wondered if that great meaty hammer would fall.
Then it did not.
The warrior grabbed Raymond about the neck and slammed his head once on the ground and stood.
Raymond gathered his scattered wits, made more so by the blow and staggered to a standing posture. With the strange environs coupled with the blow and the Pathway sickness, Raymond was almost done in with it all.
“Is this your... idea of hospitality?” he asked, sweeping his hand toward the Savage who pressed Rowenna against himself as if protecting her from him.
How absurd. He was obviously deranged and violent.
Yet, the lovely Rowenna lay crying in gasping sobs against his body and the eyes which regarded him were cold.
If that were not enough, Raymond saw killing intent if he had ever in his short life. This male wished him dead.
Bones and ashes.
“What say you?” Raymond asked, his eyes shifting to Rowenna.
“I say she is my betrothed, sphere-dweller,” he snarled and Raymond took a step back as if slapped.
Good Guardian. “I am...” Raymond looked helplessly between the two. “I do not know what to say.”
They stared at each other for a few awkward and swollen moments.
“Do you understand what it is to watch your future mate lay with another?” The male's eyes blazed, his nostrils flaring.
Swollen time swirled between them. “No,” Raymond finally said in a quiet voice.
He released Rowenna and came to stand in front of Raymond and he held his ground. It was a difficult thing, the male who strode did so with a physical efficiency that was a thing of contained beauty in motion.
It was like watching a panther prowl; it was fine at a distance, up close, it was another thing entirely. That inky hair swung like a pendulum as he drew nearer and eyes to match bore twin holes of black fire on his person.
They stood toe to toe and Raymond looked up, having been very accustomed to being considered a larger man of the sphere, well-knit and quick at hand with a weapon.
This man from the Outside made him feel almost small.
He shifted his gaze to Rowenna, who stood looking every bit of the girl she was and very lost.
Raymond took a deep breath and let it
out.
“I am Prince Raymond, from the Kingdom of Ohio.” He stuck his hand out, fully anticipating being slighted.
His flesh stood untouched for a heartbeat, then was engulfed in a crushing grip, those black eyes blazing out of a face hardened with things Raymond had never seen.
“I am Rolland, from the Clan of Massachusetts, betrothed to Rowenna of the Clan of Cape Cod.”
Rolland held his hand as it went hopelessly numb. When the handshake, if one could call it such, was nearing its end, Rolland jerked Raymond kissing close and whispered, “If you hurt her, I will peel your nails from their beds like the onions in the field.” Then he added, “Slowly.” As if there could be any doubt.
Raymond did the impossible and tightened his grip against the brutal force around it. “I am not a raper of females, sir.”
Then he was released, the other male's eyes tightening.
Raymond watched him like a cobra readying for the strike and Rowenna came to him, stretching up on her tiptoes she laid a feather weight's kiss upon his jaw and whispered, “Go.”
Rolland turned and stared at Raymond, the message so clear it was as if he had spoken and Raymond nodded at him.
I will not hurt Rowenna, though I will not love her as you do. She is but mine for a season, not a lifetime.
Yet, that unspoken promise would be the lie of his life.
For he did hurt Rowenna, his existence had seen to that.
And oh... he did want her.
He always would.
Yet that day, Raymond did not know of such things as love and destiny. He knew only of duty and obligation.
Life was an apt teacher and as Rowenna and Raymond watched her future mate of the Band bleed into the shadows of the forest she turned to him, biting a lip chapped from crying and the dryness of the warm day that held its breath around them as she put her hand out.
The Savage Principle Page 2