“We’re welcome to stay, but there’s a condition.”
“What condition, Korin? You’re dancing around this. Tell me.”
He cleared his throat and proceeded. “Here it is. We’ve arrived right before the beginning of spring.”
“Evenday. Yes, I understand, but what does that mean?”
“I should have realized what we were walking into.”
“What have we walked into, Korin?”
He’d never considered himself to be an avoider of truth, but he kept getting tangled up in its revelation. He sighed. “The beginning of spring marks the time of fertility, and a ritual is held to bring fertility to the Tribe. I should have remembered that.”
“Why should you have remembered that? You’re not Thristan. You weren’t here all that long that their rituals became part of your nature.”
“That’s…the thing. I am Thristan. I should have remembered.”
She tried to speak but coughed instead. He waited, and eventually she found her voice. “Piss and vinegar, Korin. You’re Thristan?”
“Yes,” he replied with a nod, ignoring the odd words of that damn language only she understood. “Well, half. I grew up here with my father. My mother was in the Guard.”
“So your mother was Garlan, but your father wasn’t?”
“Yes.”
“Well.” She blew air out of her mouth, then shook her head. “Does Holder Corday know?”
“No.”
“Does anyone know?”
“No one in Garla, no.”
“Creators, Korin.”
He could say nothing.
“So,” she continued when he failed to speak. “Tell me. What is this ‘condition’?”
It appeared she had accepted his duplicity, had moved right past it. Would that he could. “If I’d realized that Evenday was so close, if I’d thought to connect it—”
“Enough,” she said, interrupting him. “I’m not the only one who’s been through a great deal in the last few weeks.”
“Well, if I had connected it, I would have recommended a different story.”
“But you’ve already used the story we agreed on. Now what?”
He took a deep breath and pressed on. “Elder Tronin insists that we participate in the Farii. As a show of your willingness to become one with the Tribe.”
“Then I’ll do it,” she replied. “What’s the problem? Because clearly you think there is a problem.”
“You don’t even know what’s involved.”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me. It can’t be as bad as having to return to Garla before it’s time.”
“It’s a fertility ritual, my Liege.” He whispered the last, but he had to make sure she was very clear about this. “We’ll join many others on the top of the mesa and await the coming of Mantar in the form of a manta, a snake which lives up there. Mantar as the snake chooses one, perhaps more, and bites them. Its venom produces a stupor, and the partner of the one chosen then joins that one for a night of…fertility.” He paused. “Now do you understand?”
“It’s a fertility ritual, Korin. What’s not to understand?”
“But—”
“If this Mantar is so smart, then neither of us will be chosen, and even if one of us is, the other can maintain control. I think the risk of this is better than the risk we’ll face if we return to Garla now.”
He stared at her. Was this the little hermit he’d taken from Solsta not much more than a month ago? No, this was someone else, someone who’d killed to save her own life and survived possession by another’s soul.
“All right then,” he said finally. “When you weigh one risk against the other, this one is the lesser of the two and one we need to take.”
“Good then. Tell your Elder…Tronin, was it? Tell this Elder Tronin we accept his invitation to participate.”
He wanted to ask if she was sure, but he knew she was. He could read the resolution in her face. He nodded, stood up and left her there. A great deal could happen in nine days. Perhaps a miracle would occur that would free them of this obligation somehow. Perhaps…no, he couldn’t count on anything now, save his own instincts. And hers.
The shaking began well after he’d gone. What have I done? Lisen asked herself. What was I thinking? What the hell was I thinking? A fertility ritual? She’d made a promise to herself while still on Earth. No sex before eighteen. Well, that milestone lay only two days off, so at least she wouldn’t be breaking any promises. And she’d be over her period by Evenday, thank goodness, which should leave her relatively safe. At least she thought she would be. But with everything so turned around, so different here as opposed to Earth, she had no idea what new surprises her body might deliver.
She lay back down on her side and curled up in a ball. I have cramps and I’m cranky. But I suppose both will pass. In time. But how much time? She felt like such an idiot about so many things. And as she lay there, the shaking refused to stop.
The ritual. The ritual is a good thing, she tried to convince herself. No matter what happens, I’ll have gained the Thristans’ trust, and that could prove useful at some point.
“If ‘some point’ ever comes,” she whispered. She hugged her knees in close and shivered like an orphan lost in snow. She couldn’t stop. It’ll be fine, she told herself. I’ll be fine. Besides, what can go wrong if Captain Cutie’s up there with me? She laughed silently at that. She’d surrendered to his care multiple times over the last several weeks. And yet, when I needed him most….
She thought about it. When she’d needed him most—when she and Jozan had needed him most—he’d failed them. Bet he’ll never let that happen again, she realized. He’d left her once, and the price had been a life, an eye and the near-obliteration of their plans and hopes. If she’d read him right though, and she believed she had, he wasn’t a man to repeat his mistakes.
She sat up very straight and willed the quivering to still. Willed it and willed it until it finally surrendered to will. She’d survived the onslaught of possession; she could certainly survive Thristas and its rituals and anything else the desert might toss her way. She breathed deep and then deeper, and finally her lungs expanded fully, bringing her something resembling calm. She knew it was only a likeness, that the mental ground on which she stood still shook with possession’s aftershocks. But, like an earthquake’s aftershocks, her shaking would subside over time, and for now, when it mattered more than anything, she could continue on if she took care to balance her fears and desires and the burden of self.
CHAPTER FIVE
ONE TOO MANY HEIRS
In the interest of harmony, Lorain had stayed away from the Keep and away from her Empir, as he’d requested. It hadn’t surprised her that he’d rebuffed her as she neared time to pouch. No point in disturbing his sleep and his ability to think straight, too. Only one of them could carry this child, and he’d prevailed, as an Empir should. She would carry, and he would rule. She would have made the same decision if she had been Empir and he, the holder. A fledgling Empir should not be burdened with the occasional irrationality and the physical discomfort of a child in the pouch so early in his reign.
She sighed as she sat on the side of her bed, the hour quite late. No matter how she tried to justify it, she felt used. She was Ariel’s only true supporter. The others, those who claimed to side with him, only did so because she’d cultivated their loyalty, and that loyalty lay with her, not with him. One day she might use that fact to manipulate him, but not yet. So she would carry this child to its outcoming, and she would be the ripe one at his throning.
In preparation for her pouching, Ariel had stationed a guard just outside the door to her quarters. Someone was there for her all day and all night, ready to act on her order in an instant. Lorain had only to give the word, and the word would be carried out. The little nips of her teats within the pouch had begun to swell a few days ago, her nausea had completely subsided, and now she desired sleep more than life itself. Hibernation
, she thought. It’s time. She rose from her bed and stepped to the door to the hall. She opened it, and the lieutenant standing there straightened to full attention.
“My lord?” the lieutenant inquired, saluting with fist to chest.
Lorain smiled at the woman. “I require the healer. Bring him now.”
“And the Empir?” the guard asked.
“Let him sleep.”
The guard nodded, responded with a quick, “Aye, my lord,” then turned and smartly left.
In other words, Lorain thought bitterly as she closed the door, the Empir has no intention of even considering carrying. None of the guards assigned to this duty had been told anything other than they were to fetch the healer locked up in Ariel’s dungeon when told, but Lorain was not so self-absorbed that she believed they hadn’t figured it out on their own. The Empir’s lover exiled to the old palace? A guard on duty day and night with instructions to liberate the healer from the dungeon when asked to do so? The wonder would have been if they hadn’t come to the obvious conclusion.
Lorain returned to her bed and sat down. She would wait for the healer before retiring. Then she would leave it to him to ensure that the tiny thing made its way safely to the pouch while she herself slept through the ordeal.
In ancient times, the story went, the community would gather around the parents and wait with them, seeing to their safety while the pink, hairless worm of a baby exited the womb and made its way to the pouch. If the father had chosen to carry, he would guide the little fetus onto his own furry belly and into his pouch. It was said that fathers hadn’t carried then as often as they did now, but for Lorain the point was moot. Ariel would never carry, not this child nor any others they may conceive, but she had accepted this as a minor sacrifice given the power she gained in exchange for the inconvenience.
She yawned. Damn, she wanted to sleep, but she had to see the healer, had to question him for herself. She had this one nagging question, this one overwhelming concern, and even no answer from the hermit would tell her what she needed to know.
She waited, fighting the demand to sleep, yawning and shaking her head each time she felt herself nodding off. She could not slip off before the healer arrived. She had to be conscious because this might be her only chance to actually confront the man with no one else around. Because she needed to know…to know…? Well, something. She’d remember when it was time.
When the healer finally did arrive, the guard foregoing the formality of knocking and simply escorting him in, Lorain was still conscious, but barely. She gestured to the guard to leave.
“My lord, I was told to stay,” the lieutenant protested.
“No,” Lorain said. “This is a private matter. I want no one here but the healer.”
The guard studied her, then nodded. “Aye, my lord. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
“I won’t,” Lorain shot back. She was clearly not at her best, but the guard didn’t seem to care. She left, and Lorain waited until the door had closed behind her.
“My lord,” the healer said, “you must lie down.” He touched Lorain’s arm, then leaned down to lift her feet up onto the bed. Lorain jerked away.
“In a minute. There’s something I need to know first.”
“Please, my lord. This will go much easier for you if you just surrender to it.” The healer stood before her, hands clasped loosely over the location of his own pouch.
“You were with Flandari when she died, were you not?”
“I left the room before she passed. It is the healer’s way.” The man’s blank expression prevented any insight into his inner thoughts.
“I must know,” Lorain insisted. “The necropath learned something, something important, didn’t she.”
“I would not know. Now please, lie down. You’re jeopardizing the safe transfer of the Empir’s Heir.”
“But she learned something. From whom? From Flandari?” She paused. “Or perhaps, from the assassin?” The veil concealing the hermit’s thoughts slipped slightly at the final question. “She did learn something from the assassin.” But the hermit refused to reply. Lorain studied him, her mind clouded by the lust for sleep, the inescapable urge to slip from consciousness. She managed to make a mental note to consider what the hermit’s non-answer to the assassin question might reveal. Later, she thought, and then she conceded control to him. She brought her feet up onto the bed and lay down upon it. “Which way?” she asked.
“On one side or the other is best, my lord.”
“You think attending is a father’s duty,” Lorain commented with a yawn.
“It is my duty now,” the hermit replied as he pulled a stool up to the bed and sat down.
“You aren’t…affected by this?” she asked and marveled at her vulnerability, her inability to censor herself.
“No. Now sleep.”
Lorain closed her eyes. Attending was a father’s duty, but Ariel was no ordinary father. For thousands of years, throughout the duration of their species, the sleeping mother had relied upon the conscious father to see to the safety of the bald little infant, guiding it up the soft hair on the belly into either the mother’s pouch or his own. Occasionally, the father was not available, and then someone else would step in, relieving the mother of a responsibility she was in no condition to bear.
A good system, Lorain decided as she drifted off. By morning, she would awake and it would all be over. In a day or so she’d return to her place at Ariel’s side and resume her duties as his undesignated Will—a duty often fulfilled without official sanction or title by a spouse. Within a week he’d have no further reason to deny her his bed because by then, the subtle but powerful scent she couldn’t help but exude now would have dissipated. He would no longer be bothered by his own bodily changes brought on by her condition, and they could return to life as it was.
Yes, a good system.
It had taken one guard to fetch him, but that had been in the middle of the night. Now, three guards accompanied Titus back to the Keep of Avaret, its white walls gleaming in the morning sun, nearly blinding him, and all he could think was that he should tell someone. Someone should know that Lorain Zanlot had just taken into her pouch the next Heir of Garla. This could change everything for Lisen, and someone really should know.
He, lowly Titus of Solsta, knew it all now. Eloise had finally confided in him after she’d brought Lisen back home to Solsta, swearing him to silence so Empir Flandari could tell the girl herself. In Titus’ mind the vow of silence had been a given before Eloise had exacted it, and he would say nothing until all Garla knew. But this secret, this transfer from womb to pouch of an Heir for Ariel—someone should know.
Eloise, no doubt, already knew, but he believed she, too, was the Empir’s guest, her accommodations not unlike his own. He had no proof of this, but before they’d fetched him from Solsta for Zanlot’s purposes, the haven had hummed with the rumor that their sooth had stood on the steps of the Keep, spoken too boldly and gotten herself arrested. He’d smiled at the picture then, but now here he was, marching across the plaza in early dawn’s light, three guards escorting him back to that same dungeon. He wasn’t smiling now because someone should be told.
But it wouldn’t be him doing the telling. Last night had settled his fate. Because the Empir would want no one to know, at least not for a while, not until it could no longer be hidden, not until after his throning at least, that a new Heir had been pouched. They rounded the Keep, entered from a small side door, the one through which he’d exited last night, descended a short stairway and arrived in the dungeon. Titus sighed. He’d just seen his imprisonment here lengthen by months, and that thought did not please him. Nor did another thought. Someone should know, but I won’t be the one telling anyone anything.
Lisen looked down the long stone table, and in the light of a single torch, she watched the others eating their breakfast. This was her first communal meal, her first contact with anyone in the mesa since their arrival two days ago. Korin
had insisted that she adapt to sleeping through the day before introducing her to the mesa and its inhabitants. On Earth, they called it “adjusting your internal clock,” but this was Garla—or, rather, Thristas—and the words would seem silly to Korin. She could hear him now. “A clock inside you? That makes no sense.” But it did, and the dozen or so people who shared this level of the mesa and, hence, their meals, had clocks set to a nocturnal rhythm. She’d adjust.
Korin sat down on the stone bench beside her and placed a bowl and a mug in front of her. No utensils, just the bowl and the mug. “What’s this?” she asked. Every meal he’d brought her had consisted of some kind of not precisely tasty meat and a vegetable of undetermined origin. What faced her now was altogether different.
“Breakfast,” he replied.
Everyone else at the table looked up and stared at her. If any of them spoke Garlan, they had not attempted to converse with her. She’d only sat here for a few moments, but she doubted they’d reach out to her even if she sat here a year. She was in Thristas; they considered it her duty to learn to speak to them in their tongue.
“They don’t like me,” she whispered to Korin.
“They don’t like anyone new,” he whispered back.
She nodded, deciding it might be best to not talk at all, not remind them all of her ignorance, so she stared into her bowl. She had thought at first it was gruel, similar to what they’d eaten at Solsta, but now she could see that it was dry meal of some sort—seeds, nuts, some kind of grain. She glanced down the table to see how everyone else handled the stuff. They seemed to just pick it up in their fingers and then drop it into their mouths. They chewed for a bit and followed it down with a gulp from their mug, so she gave this method a try.
The meal tasted quite nutty and was easy to chew. It did, however, demand something wet to get it down, so she took a sip from the mug. That was not so painless. It was clear though not colorless—she couldn’t tell what color it was in the mug—and it tasted bitter. But when it mixed with the meal, something surprising occurred; combined, the meal and the liquid made for a decent, palatable breakfast.
Tainted (Lisen of Solsta Book 2) Page 5