by Susan Grant
He straightened to see Markam’s eyes dark and cold, his sword drawn and Beck marveling at the man before he turned back to Tao and smiled.
“Helmets off and weapons down,” Markam ordered Tao and Navi. Tao let his crossbow fall to the floor, and then the rest of his arsenal. Navi followed suit, tossing down his blade. Their helmets were taken by one of Markam’s guards.
Tao didn’t dare make the error of trying to catch Markam’s gaze. His friend’s survival depended on not appearing to be aligned with Tao. And Elsabeth and Navi’s lives were balanced on Tao not revealing how much he cared for them, especially Elsabeth. His true feelings for her were the one weapon he wouldn’t be able to wrest back from Beck’s control.
“General Uhr-Tao, the people’s hero,” Beck sneered. “The legend. The Butcher of the Hinterlands. I knew you’d fight to the end. I knew you’d make another run at the palace. That’s why we have the Uhr in our name. We live to fight, and we fight to live. But this is the end. I assure you.” He took a double take at Navi. “What is this? A Kurel! Uhr-Tao, have you fallen so low that you only lead Kurel now?”
Elsabeth stood quietly off to the side in her rough-hewn dress and bonnet, drawing little notice from the men. Tao wished she’d dropped the blade hidden in the waistband of her dress. True, she hadn’t been ordered to, but she was flirting with extreme danger, defying Beck. Admiration collided with his white-hot fear for her. She was a warrior, through and through. But by Uhrth, she was also his woman and deserving of his protection.
Beck picked up Tao’s bow, testing its weight, aiming it, and then glaring at him with revulsion. “This is a Rider bow. Arming Kurel, and trading with Riders? Your treachery knows no bounds, Uhr-Tao. No wonder you like to use the pipes and not the front door. You can rest assured you won’t be going out the same way you got in.”
His raspy laugh at the obvious threat of execution made Tao want to strangle the man. “I didn’t come here to harm anyone, Uhr-Beck.”
“Then why are you here, hmm?”
“To say goodbye to my sister. That is all.” Tao had no intention of giving away more and endangering Aza. “She doesn’t know. It was my idea alone. I ask you, Uhr to Uhr, allow me to leave, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“Why should I, when you forced me to come back here—and rot? You thought you didn’t need me. That I was useless—too damaged and weak to serve in your forces.” Beck’s voice was emotionally laden, hate-filled. “Now I get to repay you in kind. I’ll put you at the mercy of the king, which I assure you won’t be plentiful.” He turned to Markam and the guards. “Lock the men in wrist cuffs. Bring the wench, too. March them to the king’s private-audience room. He’ll be interested to know that this traitor had planned on paying his wife an unplanned visit.”
IN THE KING’S CHAMBERS, Elsabeth stood as still as possible to avoid notice. All through her childhood, going unnoticed was something she’d done unintentionally. Now she called upon that trait, seeing in it an unexpected value: survival. Victory. Revenge. Finally, after so long, the chance to fulfill her vow of vengeance against Xim may have arrived.
Yet, the feel of the blade tucked in her waistband horrified as much as it emboldened her. Her two ancestries collided, Tassagon and Kurel. She could kill the king and avenge her parents and all the Kurel who had died because of him. But by doing so she’d also kill the father of innocent children—Aza’s children.
Xim killed my mother. He killed my father.
At what point did the violence end?
As they waited for Markam to arrive with Xim, Tao was watching her intently. Worriedly. He always seemed to know what she was thinking. Planning. When they caught each other’s gazes for a brief second, he gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head. No, he told her.
No—what? No rescuing him and Navi? Or no attacking Xim if she had the chance?
The door banged open and Xim lurched in with Markam. Beck waved a gloating hand at her, Navi and Tao. “Look what I netted you tonight, My Liege. The traitors. It seems your intuition about that passageway was right.”
“My intuition is always right!”
Xim was drunk. Elsabeth could smell the alcohol on his breath. He’d been in the middle of washing up for bed, apparently. His hair was messy and slightly dampened, and he was clad in soft pants and a plain white shirt unbuttoned halfway down his torso. All adornment had been cast aside. Oddly, it embarrassed her to see the king of Tassagonia this way, as if he were naked without all the usual trappings of his position and power, the furs and jewels and golden crown. Standing in the shadow of Beck’s maniacal charisma worsened the effect: Xim looked even younger, and somehow vulnerable. Like a lost boy.
But his angry pout and shifty eyes reminded her who he really was. An intolerant, insufferable, incompetent king. Murderer of innocents.
“I trusted you, Tao,” Xim seethed. “You were my highest-ranking military officer. My brother-in-law. Yet, you thought nothing of criticizing my laws, speaking ill of me. Then sneaking away before you could be properly punished.”
Tao’s jaw hardened, but he gave the impression of calm, taking the full force of Xim’s tantrum with his hands cuffed behind his back. Markam, standing close to Tao under the guise of guarding him, observed with perfect military bearing, but inside she knew he must be heartsick. No doubt his sharp, tactical mind was considering countless ways out of this debacle, as was Tao’s.
“Now you bring Kurel inside this palace after I issued an expulsion order to rid our city of the damned spellmongers!”
Elsabeth’s heart lurched. My Uhrth, no. The Kurel—exiled? To where? When? Was this what the evening’s speech had been about?
“You’ve defied me on every level, Tao. Humiliated me.” Xim jammed his hands through his hair and glared ferociously at Navi, who for all his inexperience didn’t cower. Then he shifted his focus to Elsabeth and shoved her bonnet back with such force, she choked for a second on the strings around her neck. “You,” he hissed. “Aza’s sorceress.”
Her heartbeat was banging in her ears, a metronome of terror. She tried to work moisture into her mouth, tried to calm her nerves. Would she be able to remove the blade in time? Would Tao try to defend her and get killed in the process?
“I forbade you from coming here ever again, Kurel.” Xim shouted inches from her face, his alcohol-laden breath and spittle striking her with every word. “You disobeyed me. You—”
“I came to see Aza,” Tao broke in. “That is all. Aza is my only blood, the only one of my family left. She and the children. If nothing else, give me the chance to say goodbye.”
“My Liege,” Beck said. The old warrior’s eye was aglow, his lips frozen in a smirk as if he’d been hit with sudden inspiration. “I find it curious that the night they chose to say farewell to the queen is the same night you confined her to her quarters.”
Elsabeth watched from only a hand’s distance away as the king’s countenance changed. Furor froze, then gave way to doubts and dismay. Beck stepped closer to murmur in the king’s ear, whispers and insinuations that reached Elsabeth’s ears, too. What if Aza summoned them here? What if they’re all plotting against you? To leave with the queen, and leave you with a curse to make you sicken and die? Don’t forget, you caught her reading—more than once…
With a cold surge of horror, Elsabeth realized what Beck was doing. He thinks this is his big moment of triumph, and he’s going to prove to Xim that both Tao and Aza are disloyal.
Xim’s lips fluttered as he shook his head, an expression of wrenching emotion too confused to decipher. “Aza,” he whispered, shaking his head.
Beck crossed the room and yanked open the door connecting the royal couple’s private apartments. “Your Highness,” he called into the adjacent room. “The king requests the honor of your presence.”
“What has happened, Xim?” Aza stepped into the room anxiously, looking like one of Uhrth’s own angels, swaddled in a sparkling pearl-white robe, her hair soft and loo
se, her hand, as always, resting on her stomach. Taking in the scene before her, she turned so pale with shock that Elsabeth feared she’d go into early labor. She couldn’t blame the woman, being greeted by a man she neither liked nor trusted; reuniting with the tutor who for three years had been a trusted friend; then discovering the proof that her brother was alive, only to plunge almost immediately into confusion seeing him handcuffed and gripped by Markam, the man she secretly loved. But of course her gaze went to Xim first, her husband, the king, who held all the power over her, and all the answers.
“The Kurel tutor has put you under a spell,” Xim said.
“Of course not. She could not.”
Elsabeth was jerked toward the table in the center of the room by the wrist by Beck, who then held her hand up for all to see. “There’s only one way to tell,” he announced, drawing all eyes to himself.
Cuffs and all, Tao lunged for her, but Markam caught him around the waist, almost throwing them both to the floor.
No, Tao. Elsabeth willed him to be still. He was thinking of the blade in her dress, fearing she’d use it.
She couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t, but she’d be damned if she’d let him get killed over the prospect. We’re going to survive this. We’re going to be together. Elsabeth commanded him not to fight, sending the message with what she hoped was a chilling glare, trying to keep her pleading, her terror, from leaking through.
Beck yanked her hand down to the table, forcing her palm to slap the wood. His hold on her was crushing. Needles prickled her arm. “In the days of old, we’d cut off the hands of accused sorcerers.” He unsheathed his sword and raised it high, focusing his eye with maniacal intensity on her face. “Save yourself, Kurel witch,” he hissed.
Everyone froze in horror, until Tao ripped free from Markam’s hold with a warrior cry and lunged for Beck—but his sister was closer. With a screamed “no,” Aza threw herself in the path of the sword just as Beck began his downward slice.
Everything slowed down. In that second, with the queen’s arm stretching toward her, Elsabeth saw the flash of awareness on the king’s face: where the sword would fall, whose flesh it would slash and destroy, which woman would crumple with a quick, soft scream, selflessly taking the blow…
Xim hurtled forward. The sword impacted his ribs. Blood sprayed. The sound of Beck pulling the weapon free was a sound Elsabeth knew she’d never forget, to be burned into her memory along with the sight of Xim, who, taking that sword, twisted it free of Beck’s startled grip and plunged it deep into the old, one-eyed warrior’s heart.
WHEN ELSABETH OPENED the eyes she hadn’t realized she’d squeezed shut, she was being crushed in Tao’s freed arms, trying to absorb the blood-soaked scene before her, like something from a battlefield.
It was a battlefield.
“You’re safe,” Tao told her in a harsh whisper, his hand spread on the back of her head, holding her tight to his chest and the thunder of his pounding heartbeat.
Xim sat down hard on the floor, his legs splayed as blood pooled under him. With trembling fingers, he touched the gaping wound in his upper torso. His expression was one of almost childlike surprise that such a thing had happened to him. Then peace such as she’d never witnessed suffused the perpetually troubled king’s face. “You’re all right, Aza,” he told the queen.
Sobbing, Aza dropped to her knees beside him and squeezed his bloody hands in hers. “Oh, Xim, My Lord. My husband…”
He took great, hiccupping breaths. “I didn’t know it would hurt this much to die.”
Aza pressed his face between her hands. “Soon, dear, the pain will be gone.”
Xim nodded, the strange hiccups wracking his body. “It is…easier.” Then his head lolled forward. His body shuddered, and the king of Tassagonia was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE BELLS TOLLED FOR the passing of King Xim, who had become in death what he’d failed to be in life: a hero. He’d saved the queen from Beck the Madman, who now bore the blame for everything that had plagued the kingdom, from the massacre in Kurel Town to the unjust arrest of the adored General Tao and the release of the Gorr to the bloody assassination of the king.
Bells clanged in all four banner-topped spires of the palace, joined by the bell at the top of Kurel Town’s tallest power-generating windmill. It became more than a sound of mourning; it was a harmony of two previously estranged peoples, celebrating an end and also a beginning. Before the last bell stopped tolling, the gates of the ghetto were thrown open, never to be closed again.
The peals carried from the walls of Tassagonia to the sweeping grasslands of the Plains, where another people long apart paused to listen and to consider the promise of humanity’s reunion—Tassagon, Kurel and Rider—as it had been the day an ark named Discovery had set sail on a sea of stars with 3,032 colonists bound for this world.
Or so Elsabeth imagined, as she savored the bells’ melody from the open window of a guest bedchamber in the palace. Maybe the Sea Scourge and their shameless scoundrel of a leader, Commander Yarr, heard the ringing, too, as their wooden ships plied faraway, heaving seas, these bells calling out to their human sides, which perhaps longed to be welcomed into the fold.
“Daydreaming?” Tao padded up behind her. His hands landed lightly on her bare shoulders, followed by the tingling delight of his lips pressing a kiss on the side of her neck. He’d bathed, and his hair was still dripping wet, smelling of soap and man, her man.
She turned in his arms, their kiss instant, feverish. I can have you now. The danger is gone.
They fell to the bed, a huge bed, the likes of which she’d never lain upon. He was naked, but a knee-length chemise still draped her body. “That blade,” he said, kissing her in between his words. “You didn’t give it up when Navi and I were disarmed.”
“No one asked me to.”
He rolled her beneath him, trapping her between his powerful thighs. “I know. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to applaud your daring or shake some sense into you.” Another kiss. “You were playing with fire.”
“You’re fire,” she confessed against his teasing lips, and he buried his hands in her hair to kiss her fully.
Her chemise was discarded seconds later, as if they could no longer bear even the smallest bit of physical separation. They gripped each other, their mouths never parting even when he rolled her off the mattress, placing her atop him. The lovemaking was fierce. Breathless. She’d never imagined such a tempest of sensations, the intensity of the emotional bond she felt with Tao, coupled with an overpowering physical need that did not abate until they both lay sprawled and tangled together, utterly exhausted, like two shipwreck survivors washed up onshore after a storm.
Or, how she imagined it might feel being a shipwreck survivor. After reading a few fictional accounts. But Tao was better than any book—
She must have been gazing at him with the silliest of expressions, for his green-gold eyes turned as warm and sweet as honey-tea. He propped himself up on an elbow, his finger lazily drawing a circle around her belly button. “Do you love me, Elsabeth?”
“Yes. I love you.” She lifted up to kiss him. “I am besotted.”
He stretched both arms over his head with a hearty victory groan, then rolled back to her, grinning. “Well, wouldn’t you know it? I love you, too.”
ON A SUNNY AUTUMN morning, thousands crowded outside the palace to witness the official coronation of Crown-Prince Maxim and the continuation of the Tassagon dynasty.
Holding his mother’s hand, the little boy was led to the priests, who had, for the occasion, and at the request of the elders of Kurel Town, carefully carried the Seeing Bowl outside.
The relic, made of the same kind of metal as Tao’s amulet, had not seen the light of day for untold centuries. It was a piece of wreckage from an ark, something called a starship thruster cowling, Tao had learned from Farouk, and he wondered if it had been from the same vessel that had given him his amulet.
The water
filling the Seeing Bowl reflected the cloudless sky. Within those waters it was believed the rightful king of Tassagonia could be viewed and the future revealed. Perhaps it shared the same magical powers as his talisman. Or maybe, magic had nothing to do with any of it at all. Just good timing, hope, determination and the unfathomable influence of something greater than them all.
Dressed in his ceremonial dress uniform one last time before his retirement became official at midnight, Tao slipped his fingers between Elsabeth’s. The incessant breeze from the Plains ruffled her curls, tumbling them over her dress of brilliant green, the color of the grassy lawn at the vineyards, where they’d marry. Together, they watched little Max crowned king. Until he came of age, his rule would be overseen by his mother and Markam, who together would provide the guidance and education Max would need if he was to become the ruler who would sustain the peace and unity required in the Log of Uhrth before humanity could contact the birthplace of its ancestors. There was still more work to be done on that account before such a day would come, but for two of the human tribes, the journey to bridge their differences had begun.
Tassagons and Kurel—the Kurel of Tassagonia, at least. While Farouk, Gwendolyn and the other Kurel elders at the coronation looked on approvingly, their brethren in the Barrier Peaks had sent no emissaries. Prometheus had returned with a response that had said only that their message had been received and “noted.” Where those Kurel stood was still to be determined.
But going forward, Tao was confident there would be good men to lead the army in his place, forces that would be kept strong for defense of the realm, and all who were welcome to join them. It did Tao’s heart good to see his officers, Nunez, Mandalay, Pirelli and Sandoval, standing with him on this peaceful, sun-splashed morning with no murderous, mutinous colonels or stinking Gorr in sight.
His nephew, Max, kneeled to accept the blessing of the priests. Then, after some whispered coaching on Aza’s part, the child king joined her and Princess Sofia on the platform overlooking Palace Square. Tao was glad to see Markam take his place with them.