by K. G. McAbee
Chapter Nine
Lord Valaren Starseeker was the center of all eyes at Queen Ffania's levee. He stood by her majesty's side, as befitted her chief counselor, his tall and heavily muscled body draped in the finest and sheerest of silks, in the burgundy that he fancied above all others and that brightened his somewhat swarthy complexion. Lord Valaren's smooth, perfect face held a perpetual smile. Glints of snowy teeth were a reward for some lucky recipients, as his smile waxed and waned according to who stood before him.
"Lord Valaren?" said Queen Ffania in an undertone, leaning sideways in her cushioned throne and pulling on her counselor's elegant sleeve.
"Majesty?" Valaren bowed, the better to hear his queen's question.
"That woman there, the tall one with the sword. That is Commander Madryn, is it not? The one who performed so well at the Rift forts?"
Lord Valaren looked across the huge chamber, pretending to seek out the one who had gained the queen's attention—even though he had been eyeing her himself for some time. "I believe that your majesty is, in this as in all things, correct," he said smoothly. "She is a fine soldier, I have heard."
"In need of a bit of appreciation from her queen, no doubt?" asked Ffania as she looked down her long nose at the remaining nobles waiting to present themselves to her. Queen Ffania IX had begun holding these levees only recently, and a great bore she found them, too. "Good soldiers are not always known for their wealth, hey?" continued her majesty with a snort of laughter. "And our throne is always in need of stalwart soldiers to protect us from our enemies. Have her brought to my private chambers tomorrow, just before the council meeting."
"She will doubtless be honored, majesty," murmured Valaren, his head cocked to one side as he eyed the tawny-haired woman who stood across the huge room.
Commander Madryn was drinking a cup of wine, a sardonic smile on her long mouth as she watched the colorful masses swirl and sway before her.
I will have to get some of that arrogance out of her. Valaren gave a secret smile at the thought. He watched her tall, lean figure. Dressed in the midnight and gold of the queen's army, she looked like some somber stork caught amongst a swirl of cackling parrots.
Or at least show her how to hide it, his thoughts continued.
"I've been thinking, you know," said Ffania, "that I need a new captain for my personal guard. This woman might perhaps be a good choice. What think you, my lord?"
"Her record is impressive," agreed Valaren, his constant smile broadening. "And she plays a good game of chess."
"Ho, my lord," said her majesty roguishly, "another of your conquests, is she? By my sword, you work quickly, sirrah. How long has she been at court, a sennight?"
Valaren looked down at his queen. The smirk on her fleshy lips, the twinkle in her deep-set eyes, spoke volumes to a man who could read them.
"You know, madam, that I cannot resist a good player," Lord Valaren said, his voice a caress that surpassed the one he stroked down his queen's plump arm. "I hope to improve my own prowess, in hopes that one day I may offer you a worthy challenge."
"Certainly you may try," yawned Ffania as the line crept forward. Her own abilities in the game of chess were legendary. One soft hand, stacked with glittering rings on each finger, slapped gently on the arm of her throne in time to the music that filled the vast room.
Lord Valaren sighed in satisfaction. His plans were beginning to come together. He shifted his position and gazed down the line of royal suppliants. His smile broadened. All of them, he thought with a secret smile, were potential tools.
***
"Val?"
Someone was calling his name.
"Val?"
Wait. Was that his name? Yes, of course it was. His name was Valaren. His closest acquaintances sometimes called him Val. So it was his name.
Satisfied, he tried to go back to sleep.
"Val, can you hear me?"
Now someone was shaking him, sending pulsating waves of agony through his head. Val opened his eyes, only to slam them shut again as piercing rays of blazing light cut into them like brittle knives. He heard a groan.
He realized it was his.
Val carefully cracked open an eye and peered through a tiny slit at the face that bent over him.
Madryn, her tawny hair stiff with salt and blood, her face scratched and bruised, looked down at him. A smile of relief and—was it joy?—raced across her face, then was gone before Val could fully decipher it.
"Damn you, Val," Madryn whispered. "I've been trying to wake you since sunrise."
Val shifted on his hard bed, irritated at Madryn. How dare she wake him without his express orders? And he had given no such orders, he knew. Well, she'd be sorry. He knew full well how to make her sorry for disobeying him.
Something pressed into his left buttock. It felt very much like a rock. Why were there rocks in his bed, he wondered idly? Shouldn't he be on his thick feather bed, with his dozens of pillows and the silken sheets?
Val opened his mouth to ask Madryn why there were rocks in his bed, and why his head was pounding so. Had he too much wine at dinner? Why had she allowed it, damn her?
Then his mouth shut with an audible snap.
Valerik. He was Valerik. Valerik the slave. Not Valaren the lord.
Then why did he remember being both?
Who was he?
Another groan issued from Val's mouth as Madryn eased his head up and fed him sips of brackish water.
"Damn you, Val," she repeated in a shaky voice, "I thought you dead. They had to pry your arms and legs from around me after we'd washed ashore."
Val struggled to sit up. At last, with Madryn's strong arms supporting him, he was able to look around him.
They were on a sandy shore and the sun was beaming down rays like copper swords. All around them lay the litter and debris of a shipwreck. Spars and ropes in Gordian knots. Barrels split and whole, lumber and bits of cargo. Women and men lying bloated and white, never to sail again, some with the chains of the galley slave still encircling their ankles. Others, passengers and crew alike, wandered amidst the wreckage, picking out useful articles, dragging split and sodden lumber to throw on a roaring fire down the beach.
Val took another sip of water, then shifted and squirmed.
There was a rock under his buttocks.
He lost consciousness again.
***
Madryn grinned across the table at Lord Valaren Starseeker.
"Checkmate, my lord," she said as she moved her queen onto a red square.
Valaren leaned back in his cushioned armchair. His dark eyes sparkled in the candlelight. He grinned in return.
"How did you learn to play chess so well, Commander?" he asked as he reached for his silver goblet and took a sip of his favorite vintage.
Madryn laughed as she slid her own chair back from the small table inset with the chessboard of red and black marble squares. Her long legs sprawled across the thick rug that carpeted the small study, glossy black boots in sharp contrast to the multicolored embroidery. "We don't have swords in our hands every second, my lord," she replied. "There are weeks, months even, when we spend all our time practicing our strokes and playing games."
"Nothing more than that?" asked Valaren smoothly, his own smile answering hers, thick with hidden meaning.
Madryn looked at him, her violet-gray eyes narrowed. This man disturbed her, those eyes said. But he attracted her even more.
"What else would we do, my lord?" she asked, the smile gone from her narrow brown face. She sat up straighter in her hard chair.
Valaren nodded at her, watched as she twisted and turned her eyes away in discomfort. His power over her was growing day by day.
Good. This one would take all his powers to subdue.
He only hoped they would be enough.
***
Val awoke again and again that long and painful day, and each time his confusion was greater than before. His memories overlay and intermingled with those of
another man, and he had great trouble, each time he awoke, deciphering just who and what he was.
He wanted to tell Madryn about his dreams. But she was in them, always; a part of every scene, every moment. Val had to find out what she felt for Lord Valaren Starseeker. He had to follow the dreams to the end…and hope that he would remain at the end.
At last Val awoke and stayed that way for some time, drinking tiny sips of water, wincing as each wave of pain shot through his battered head. By sunset he had recovered enough to walk a few steps, his muscles sore, his head still tender from the glancing blow it had received when the mainmast had broken free and landed atop them.
"You saw it coming and threw your body over mine," Madryn told him as they paced slowly up and down the beach, Val's strength returning with every step. "Not satisfied with saving my life once, you had to go and do it again. Now what am I to do with you?"
Val looked over at her face, so near to his own. They were walking—stumbling, rather, in his condition, he thought wryly—back toward the fire that had been started from the ruins of the Atria. A savory smell wafted towards them…fish sizzling on heated stones.
Madryn looked straight ahead. Val examined her profile: straight nose, firm chin, high forehead, and amber hair in a thick braid down her back. She had taken a swim earlier, washed most of the grime and blood away.
Val's mind whirled in confusion. He looked at Madryn and saw another woman overlaying her, a faint ghost of a woman in midnight blue and gold, even as his odd and fragmented memories of Valaren Starseeker overlay those of the slave Valerik.
What had happened to him after that blow to his head? Why did he have memories of a man he'd never met? Were the dreams he'd been experiencing, ever since that strange confrontation in the alley in Karleon, now simply becoming more accessible?
"Madryn," he began, hesitant, not sure if he could tell her about what was happening within his head, "when the mast hit us—"
"And you saved my life?" she interrupted with a sidelong grin. It split her profile most intriguingly from his viewpoint, and he was overcome with a brief but sharp memory of that smile in different days. He remembered her crooked grin across a table from him—from him? From Lord Valaren, surely?—after beating him at chess. It had been a hotly contested game, and Madryn had beaten him after hours of move and countermove.
But how could he remember something that had happened to another man? Had Lord Valaren Starseeker somehow come back, possessing a slave's mind as he had possessed their bodies in life? For Starseeker was dead, Val knew…
And Madryn had desired Lord Valaren Starseeker. Val was convinced of that, not only from things she had told him, but from fragments of that other man's memories that flashed like comets across his sleeping mind. Madryn had wanted him with a passion that matched the slave Valerik's for her. But Lord Valaren had not wanted her…not, at least, in that same way.
This too Val knew from the alien images that thronged in his mind, overlaying and intermingling with his own thoughts.
Why had Madryn, to Val the most incredible of women, wasted her passions on one such as Lord Valaren? How had Val gained these memories, memories of a man that he knew he never was, could never have been? Where had they come from? And what, in the names of all the gods whose names he did not know…what was he going to tell Madryn?
***
The dark voice gave a whinnying laugh. "The storm was a bit much, was it not?"
Cold answered with an invisible shrug. "It was necessary. The meeting in the alleyway taught the part. Now the stage is set for the play to be acted."
The globe floated within a thin inky mist. Tendrils of the mist wavered and fought for position, twining and twisting together like disembodied fingers of Nibiat warriors. Deep within the floating globe there was the image of two tiny figures walking along a sandy shore, their arms draped about each other.
"No suspicion as yet?" asked the dark.
"None in the least," assured cold.
"You are too sure, it seems to me," replied dark in an ebony whine. "We have waited long for our plans to come to fruition. It would be bad to lose our advantages now, when we are so close to our ultimate goal."
A frigid wind blew through the chamber, across rows of books bound in warty skin, around tall glass jars containing grinning heads. The gust rifled piles of papers on the top of a long desk, papers held secure with weights of lead-filled skulls.
Cold was laughing. "We will obtain the final pieces to our puzzle, brother dear," promised cold, when the laugh had died away at last. "What was found before shall be found again. And before all is lost forever."
Outside the tall stone tower, a sizzle and crack of lightning spat across a jet sky. Stars jostled against each other outside the open window, gathering to spy on the inhabitants of the round, sad room.
"See that it is so, then," reminded the dark voice. "I would have them suffer anew."
"Suffering, after all, is our business, brother," agreed cold.
A stone lying on the windowsill cracked wide in the icy air and split into twin sections. One piece fell out the window, tumbling for long, slow instants before it reached the sere and arid soil, where nothing dared to grow.
Chapter Ten
The stars spread over them in a canopy of glory. The sound of waves breaking on the shore was a soft and distant accompaniment to their words. Val and Madryn lay side by side on the warm sands, separated by an arm's length of sand, sheltered by a high jumble of rocks from a blazing fire and the remnants of survivors. Madryn was still, her breathing soft and gentle. Val twisted and turned, his face a mask of pain and confusion.
Five days had passed since the wreck of the Atria.
Val enjoyed every moment of every one of those sun-drenched days. He ate his fill of shellfish and regained his strength, first walking and then running up and down the sandy shale. He spent every waking moment in Madryn's company, ignoring the others as he spoke with her, watched her walk and sit and eat; waiting for that crooked smile to light up her narrow face. On the third day, she taught him to swim, laughing at his mad antics and the clumsy paddling of his thick, strong arms.
But at night…at night, there were the dreams. The first night Val slept poorly, drifting in a daze far short of true sleep. But as his bruised and battered head began to heal, he slept…and the dreams began in earnest.
Each night, as soon as his eyes closed, Val found himself in the body and in the world of Lord Valaren Starseeker. He walked through marble palaces, he ate from golden plates, he slept in feather beds, and he dressed in silks and satin. It was a life that was at once familiar and utterly alien to Valerik the slave. He had all the things in his dreams that he had ever wanted.
And he hated it all. Lord Valaren was a cruel, arrogant man, full of his own importance, viciously belittling others. Anything that he could not control infuriated him; anyone who dared to cross him irritated him; and any who did not share his desires astonished him.
Madryn infuriated, irritated and astonished Lord Valaren. To a great extent, Val could understand the man's feelings; Madryn often had the same effect on him.
But not for the same reasons.
Val began to dread sleep, to hate the man whose mind he inhabited during the long reaches of the night.
How could Madryn have wanted a man like Valaren Starseeker?
***
Captain Zenobio had survived his ship and another was sure to be on its way, he told the other survivors each morning. The ship had the great good luck to weather the storm just long enough to wreck within sight—and reach—of the shore. The captain assured the remainder of his passengers and crew that they had landed just to the south of the city of Lakazsh. A messenger had been sent to the city on a hastily rigged raft, and it was only a matter of time, the captain kept repeating, before a ship arrived to take them the rest of the way.
Many of the passengers had survived the storm, as well as a good portion of the crew. The galley slaves, naturally, had per
ished, save for a pair who had managed to slip their emaciated ankles from the manacles that bound them to their stations.
But by the second day, Madryn had given up all hope of finding Daemon alive. The great black stallion had been housed under a temporary shelter on the afterdeck, tied down to prevent him from breaking a leg on the rolling, tossing ship. After the storm struck, no one had the time or the opportunity to check on his condition. The last time any of the survivors remembered seeing the horse was just before a huge wave broke over the stern.
Val hated to think of the stallion being gone. He offered his clumsy condolences to Madryn on the third day, laying a hand on her arm.
Madryn looked at him, her violet-gray eyes heavy with unshed tears.
"Thank you, Val," she murmured.
Then she had spoken no more of Daemon.
***
A ship hove into view on the morning of the sixth day. Val awakened with the sunrise, tired and confused from his uneasy night spent as another man. He looked around at once for Madryn. She slept near him every night, within touching distance, often waking him for sips of water when his restless dreaming woke her. Once he'd had a fever raging through him, his body racked with chills; Madryn clung to him, the heat of her body soothing him in his pain.
But Madryn spoke little during the passing days. Her eyes were glued to the sea, or fixed with a calculating air on the rough, rocky cliffs that rose above their beach. Val could tell that she was counting the days left before the great yearly caravan left Lakazsh for the south; the caravan that she was determined to be a member of, at whatever cost.
So Val was very glad to see the rescue ship come into view. It was indeed the one promised by Captain Zenobio, and the survivors were loaded into the ship's boats and taken aboard before the sun was fully overhead.
Madryn and Val were in the last boat. Madryn's eyes were fixed on the shore behind them.
Val knew she still hoped for a glimpse of a huge black horse.