“Yes, Your Holiness,” Fundreg said again and then the two of them turned to go, taking the light with them and leaving Ty in darkness and despair. Everyone he loved was in danger and there was no way he could save them.
No way at all.
Forty
“Dying? You can’t mean it!” Ellina was already scrambling to her feet and fumbling for her slippers. “Grandmamma, please—say it isn’t so!”
“I didn’t want to upset you, my child,” her grandmother said, speaking through Lor. “But I fear that my time is near. I wanted to speak to you one last time and tell you how much I love you—how much I have always loved you.”
“Oh Grandmamma no—please don’t leave me! Not…not now. Not you, too…” Ellina’s voice broke on the last word, turning into a sob.
“My dear, I must go when Thufar calls me,” her grandmother said. “At least I have the comfort of knowing that you are well settled on the throne with a strong protector at your side. And so I bid you goodbye. Soon I shall be gone.”
“Good…goodbye, Grandmamma. I love you!” Ellina choked on the words, feeling her eyes sting with tears.
She knew her grandmother had been talking about Ty when she mentioned Ellina’s “protector” but she couldn’t bear to explain that the big Kindred had left her and wasn’t returning.
But she also couldn’t bear to just sit here while her grandmother died, she suddenly realized. Despite the law which forbid the old and new Potentates to be in the same place at the same time, she knew she was going.
Of course, she couldn’t go out the front door of her royal apartments—the loyal Captain Kiyda would never sanction such a foolhardy quest. He was a good guard, but a rather unimaginative one, she had found. He went strictly by the book and wouldn’t at all approve of her going to see her grandmother, no matter what the circumstances.
But there was another way.
Do I dare? Ellina hadn’t used the secret passage since she was a little girl and her mother occupied these apartments, shortly after she’d been crowned and before she was assassinated. Ellina had used the passage to run the long, dark stretch between the royal apartments and her grandmother’s suite. She’d been much smaller then—and faster. But maybe she would still fit.
Going to her bed chamber, she went to the back of the deep closet and pulled up a thick swath of the moss carpet which grew there. Under it, was a trapdoor which led down into darkness.
For a long moment, Ellina sat there staring down into the empty void. She would be breaking the law and she knew it. But her grandmamma was on the other side, she reminded herself, and this might be Ellina’s last chance to see her.
Making certain that Lor and Tisa were securely perched on her head, she lowered herself down into the hole.
Hang on, Grandmamma—here I come! Please still be alive when I get there!
And she dropped into darkness.
Forty-One
Oh Goddess, forgive me. I’ve been so blind—such a damn fool!
Ty could move a little now—he was beginning to get the feeling back in his arms and legs, which was a relief. After hearing the plans the High Priest had for Ellina and Tisa, he was wild to get free. His body kept wanting to go into Rage—the state of berserker fury all Kindred enter when their loved ones are threatened—and Ty kept having to take deep breaths to fend off the fury.
But to be honest, he wasn’t completely sure that even going into Rage would help him get out of here and rescue Ellina and his new chewchie.
He’d studied the bars of the cage he found himself in, as well as the lock, while Kikbax and Fundreg had been standing there with a light. The bars were as thick as his bicep and apparently made of solid plasti-steel. The locking mechanism was old and rusted but it looked solid—too solid, perhaps, to break or pry open.
What if the drug wore off completely and all he could do was rant and rage and pull at the bars? What if he couldn’t get out to save Ellina and Tisa in time?
What if he was a Goddess damned fool?
That’s exactly what you are, whispered a nasty, mocking voice in his head. A damn fool for leaving the woman you loved unprotected. A fool for believing you couldn’t really be in love with her, because of your own sordid past.
It was true and Ty knew it. He’d been deluding himself—doubting his love for the curvy little Potentate. Telling himself that he couldn’t truly care for her and his emotions were only the result of his altered DNA and early conditioning.
“Your emotions are not the results of these things, warrior—though they are enhanced by your past.”
The powerful feminine voice caught him by surprise.
“What…where…?” Ty looked around, completely blind in the blackness of the dungeon. Kindred had excellent night vision but even they had to have some light to see by. There was none here and so he couldn’t tell who was speaking to him—or where the voice was coming from. It seemed to surround him, as though the speaker was everywhere at once.
“It is I, the Mother of All Life,” the voice told him. “You must not be frightened, warrior—I have come to help you understand yourself.”
“Under…understand myself?” Ty croaked, scarcely believing what was happening. He had heard of other warriors speaking to the Goddess, but he had never thought to be so blessed and singled out himself.
“I singled you out to help correct your misconceptions of yourself,” the Goddess assured him. “For deep down, you despise yourself. You hate what you are because someone else made you that—someone else genetically engineered you to be the perfect bodyguard and companion—and then they trained you to serve a female in power and love her passionately. For these reasons, you feel that your emotions for Ellina cannot be real.”
“Well…yes,” Ty admitted, somewhat bewildered. “That’s exactly what I feel.”
“But do you not see, my son, that though your creators meant the changes they made in you for bad, I have turned them to good?” the Goddess asked. “For I was there at your conception—when they manipulated your DNA to make you stronger, faster, and resistant to poisons. I guided you all through your training and I approved.”
“But…how could you?” Ty asked, surprised into questioning the Goddess’s judgment. “I mean, how could you approve those bastards taking one of your own children and turning him into a freak?”
“You are not a freak—you are my creation just as surely as those who are born in the natural way are,” she exclaimed “Do you not think that I could see into the future and know what awaited you? For you were not born and raised to serve some spoiled Mistress of Yonnie Six. Your special skills and your ardent devotion have always been meant to serve Y’res the Fourth. She needs you, Ty’rial—needs you desperately. And serving her—loving her—is your destiny. Embrace it.”
Understanding flooded Ty. The Goddess was right—he must concentrate on loving and serving Ellina—he had been made to love and serve her—made to devote his life to her.
If he could only get to her.
“I perceive that at last you understand,” the Goddess said smoothly. “And so I take my leave of you, warrior.”
“Wait!” Ty roared, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “Wait, Goddess-aren’t you going to help me get free? Aren’t you going to break the lock and help me get to Ellina?”
“Alas, warrior, I do not work in such overt ways.” She sounded very far away now and Ty began to despair again. “But never fear—you will have help. And if you love your lady with all your heart, all may yet be well.”
And then the voice was gone as suddenly as it had appeared and there was no sound but Ty panting in the dark as he struggled to get up and go find Ellina.
Forty-Two
“Oh Grandmamma—how tired you look!” Ellina wanted to cry as she sat by her grandmother’s bedside and held the frail old hand in hers.
“My child…you should not be here.” Her grandmother sighed wearily. Her third eye was sunken deep in her forehead—a bad sign.
When the umlu retreated, the life force went with it. “But I cannot be sorry you have come. I confess, though I know it is wrong for us to be together in the same place, I wanted to see you one last time.”
“Please don’t say it’s the last time!” Ellina begged, her voice choked with repressed sobs. “Please, Grandmamma—you haven’t been sick that long. Surely you’ll get better soon.”
“I would if I could, child—if only for your sake.” The old Potentate shook her head. “But when Thufar calls, I must go.”
“But I’m not ready to lose you yet!” Ellina whispered. “Not nearly ready, Grandmamma!”
“We are never ready to lose the ones we love, my dear,” her grandmother said gently. “But lose them we must. Do not fear—we shall meet again on the other side if Thufar wills it.”
Ellina wanted to say she didn’t want to do that—to wait so long to see her grandmother again. But it was clear the old Potentate was slipping away and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“As I said, I’m glad you’re here,” her grandmother said. She frowned in concentration. “There was something I wanted to tell you…something important. Now what was it?”
“I…I don’t know.” Ellina shook her head, thinking that her grandmother’s mind must be wandering.
But suddenly the old woman’s faded blue eyes were blazing brightly.
“I remember now!” she exclaimed, squeezing Ellina’s hand. “You were asking me about your Heat Cycle and I couldn’t talk to you—there were others in the room, you know.”
“None of that matters now,” Ellina protested. Nothing mattered if her grandmother was going to die.
“Yes—yes, it does.” The old Potentate nodded firmly. “You asked me about your cycle—well here is what I have to tell you about that: when your cycle comes on you, you must choose your consort.”
Ellina thought the old woman’s mind must be wandering again.
“Yes, Grandmamma, I know,” she said gently.
“No—no, you don’t understand!” her grandmother exclaimed. “You must choose your consort. Don’t let anyone else choose for you and don’t let yourself be bullied into picking a male you don’t want or love. Because once he breeds you, you’re stuck with him for life!”
“I…I am?” Ellina looked at her, wide-eyed.
Her grandmother nodded. “So you must be certain to get the male you want to spend your life with.”
“But what if I want someone unsuitable?” Ellina dared to ask. “A commoner? Or even…even an off-worlder?”
The old woman looked at her sharply, a little smile playing around the corners of her wrinkled mouth.
“You want that handsome Kindred guard of yours, don’t you my dear?”
“Oh, well…” Ellina looked down at the blanket which covered her grandmother, plucking aimlessly at the fuzzy blue fabric without answering.
“Yes, you do. You want him,” her grandmother declared. “Well, that’s all right my dear—if he is the one you want, then you must have him.”
“What?” Ellina looked up at her, wide-eyed. “But Grandmamma, he’s an off-worlder—not even of our species! And his skin isn’t even blue—let alone Sacred Blue.”
“Doesn’t matter.” The old Potentate shook her head firmly.
Doesn’t matter who he is, my dear. For Sacred Blue always breeds true.”
“Are you sure?” Ellina frowned. “But I’ve always thought that I must have a consort with blue skin—the nearer Sacred Blue the better.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” her grandmother said, shaking one wrinkled finger in Ellina’ face. “Especially the Priests of Thufar. Very tricky, they are,” she went on, still shaking her finger. “Especially that Lord Kikbax—I never liked him, you know. You mustn’t let him choose your consort, whatever you do. He doesn’t want what’s best for Helios Beta—he wants what’s best for himself. And when a trusted official puts his own interests before those of the nation he serves, that is treason—plain and simple.”
“I agree.” Ellina nodded. “But Grandmamma, he’s already tried to choose my consort.” And she was more than a little afraid that the High Priest of Thufar might try again.
The old Potentate narrowed her eyes.
“Don’t you let him, child!” she exclaimed. “Don’t let him pick your consort or run your life. He tried that with your mother, you know, but I told her the same thing I’m telling you—do what feels right for you.”
“Yes, Grandmamma.” Ellina nodded but inside she felt like dying. Too late—she was learning all this too late. For Ty had already gone and she knew he was never coming back. If only her grandmother had told her this information just a few days ago! If only…
“My dear, I fear I am hearing the call of Thufar.”
Her grandmother’s words snapped her back to the here and now. The old Potentate’s face—so animated just a moment before—was now sunken and gray. Her umlu had closed completely and her breath was coming fast and short.
“No, Grandmamma,” Ellina begged, holding onto the frail hand, which was already growing colder in her own. “No, please—please don’t leave me!”
“I must…dear child. But I will…be with you…in spirit…always. Love…you.”
And the old Potentate’s other eyes closed as her breathing stopped completely.
“Grandmamma, no—no, please!”
The anguished cry was wrung from Ellina’s lips though she knew it would bring her grandmother’s nurse running. Indeed, in a moment the door to the old Potentate’s bed chamber was flung open and Lullabella stood there, wide-eyed and frantic.
She took in the old Potentate’s still, gray face and then Ellina’s anguished one and seemed to understand at once what had happened.
“Oh dear!” she cried and rushed to her old mistress’s side. “Oh my dear sweet Potentate! Oh, no!”
“She’s gone.” Ellina could hardly speak for sobbing. “She…she told me she loved me and then…and then she was…was gone.”
She broke down completely then, pressing her forehead to her grandmother’s cold hand as the sobs wracked her entire body.
It was Lullabella’s firm hand on her shoulder that finally brought her back.
“My Potentate,” she said sadly. “You know you should not be here. I understand your reasons and I do not blame you, but others would. You must not be here where the old Potentate’s death is announced.”
Ellina sat up and swiped at her eyes.
“I know,” she whispered in a hoarse voice. “I know we weren’t supposed to be in the same place at the same time. But I had to see her, Lullabella. I had to say goodbye!”
“Of course you did, my sweet.” Her grandmother’s maid stroked her shoulder gently. “But now you must go. If anyone found out that the new Potentate risked the safety of the planet by coming to see the old Potentate…”
“You’re right.” Ellina sat up straighter and sniffed. “Of course you’re right. I…I must go.”
Standing up, she groped blindly for the door to the bedroom. Away from here—she had to get away, she told herself. And, forgetting all about the secret passageway, she left through the front entrance, wanting only to get as far from her grief as she could.
Forty-Three
“Well, well, Your Highness—so here you are outside your royal apartments, just when I had despaired of getting into them to get to you. How very obliging of you to come to me.”
“What?” Ellina looked up uncertainly to see a familiar face staring down into her own. She frowned when she saw who it was.
“Captain Fundreg? What are you doing here in the palace? You were dismissed.”
The old captain of the Royal Guard glared at her, his face growing cold.
“Yes, I was indeed. I was blamed for not keeping Your Highness safe during the Feast of All Feelings at the coronation ceremony.”
“Well, the assassination attempt…” Ellina became suddenly aware that her old captain was not alone—in fact,
he had a whole company of guards with him—most of them who had been dismissed and discredited after the coronation. Also, he had a firm grip on her arm.
Her feelings of overwhelming grief for her grandmother began to turn to fear and uncertainty. What was Fundreg doing here in the palace? And for that matter, what was she doing wandering the halls and passages at night? She should have gone back the way she’d come—should have taken the secret passageway. Why hadn’t she? Probably because she’d been too upset to think of it—too upset to think of anything but Grandmamma’s death.
The thought made her want to dissolve into tears again but she forced herself to consider the matter at hand.
“Let me go,” she said to Fundreg coldly, looking pointedly at his hand on her arm. “We are the Potentate—unhand us at once!”
But Fundreg only sneered at her.
“I don’t think so, Your Highness. You see, I obey orders from a different master now. And at the moment, his orders are to bring you down to the dungeons.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Ellina looked around wildly. How far was she from her royal apartments? Where was her new royal guard? Oh, why had she let herself be so distracted by grief and gone wandering around the palace at night? “Kiyda!” she called, raising her voice to a shout. “Captain Kiyda—your Potentate needs you!”
“None of that now!” Fundreg clapped one clammy hand over her mouth and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I’ve got her,” he said to one of the other men he’d brought with him, “Now we have to find the chewchie that belonged to the Kindred. Search her—maybe it went back to the Potentate when it left him.”
Ellina was looked over but the only chewchie they found was Lor, who was clearly not Tisa because he was so much bigger than her. He hissed at them angrily and hid himself in Ellina’s gown which not even the traitorous guards dared to extract him from.
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