“I am real, Valura. My love for you is real. As real as your love for me.”
“I do not love you!” she cried, turning her head away from him.
“Is that the truth?” he asked, his heart in his voice. He released his hold on her hand. “Tell me you do not love me. Look at me and say those words, and I will leave and never trouble you again.”
The lady stood long moments in silence, a silence that seemed to last from the beginning of time. He waited patiently, he who had never in his life waited patiently for anything. But he wanted this as he had wanted nothing else in his life.
At length, she raised her head. Her face was wan and pale in the moonlight, her eyes dark and shimmering like the water in the still ponds, her lips so pallid that they almost disappeared. “To my shame, I love you, Dagnarus,” she said, and a tear slid down her cheek.
She led him to her bed, located in a sumptuously decorated room just off the patio.
“What about the guard? The servants?” he asked in a breathless whisper.
“I have sent the servants to their rest. They will not bother us. You must be gone before the morning, however.”
He stripped off his clothes. She anointed his naked body with fragrant oil, before their lovemaking, an elven ritual that heightened his desire to burning agony, agony that was quenched and then rekindled and quenched again.
When their love was sated, he lay in her arms, his head upon her breast, his hand idly caressing her skin, not so much to reawaken desire as to renew its memory. She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead and his eyelids and shivered at his touch.
“It is almost morning, beloved,” she said. “The servants will be here to dress me. You must leave now and quickly.”
“No,” he said calmly. “I won’t.”
“What?” She paled. “What are you trying to do to me? You will be my death!”
“I will leave, but only on one condition. That you return this day to the court.”
“No!” Valura shook her head. She sighed and clasped his hands, kissed his fingers. “No. Do not ask that of me. How could I see you every day and not long to be with you? How could I endure my husband’s touch.” She shuddered. “No, it would be torture. I am better off here. I have known one night of bliss. That will sustain me.”
“But it will not sustain me,” Dagnarus said, gently shoving aside her hair so that she could not hide behind its fragrant curtain. “I want to see you every day. I want to hear your voice, to touch you, to love you. There are secret passages in the palace, places we may meet and satisfy our desire. Your husband will never know. No one will ever know.”
She shook her head again.
“Very well,” said Dagnarus, his voice harsh. “Then let your servants find me. Let your guards come and kill me. If I must live without you, then I do not want to live.”
“By the gods, I believe that you are serious,” she said, regarding him in wonder. She struggled a moment within herself, but her want, her desire was as great as his. “Very well,” she said, lowering her gaze. “This day, I will return to the court.”
“This night, we’ll be together again!” he said, kissing her.
Gently, chidingly, she pushed him away. “Go now, my love! Quickly!”
“But how do I find my way out?” he asked, putting on his clothes. He had forgotten in his transport of pleasure the garden maze he would have to traverse.
“Follow the stones that are marked with a rose. They will lead you down some stairs, through a tunnel that passes under the stockade. The tunnel leads into the boathouse. Here is the key to the lock of the door. Go through the boathouse and out its door and you will be beyond the stockade. Farewell, my dear one.”
“Until tonight,” he said, and kissed her one more time, then, seeing that the sky was brightening in the east, he left her.
The rose stones were easy to find, led him straight to the stairs. He entered the tunnel, which was cool and dank, and came to the door of the boathouse. He fit the key into the lock, opened the door cautiously to make certain it did not creak. From the safety of the boathouse, he watched the guards walk their rounds and, when they were past, he strolled out in a leisurely manner, cutting through the woods back to where he had left his horse.
Valura lay down in her bed after her lover’s departure, her thoughts walking with him every step through the garden. She started in alarm, thinking she heard the creak of the boathouse door on its rusted hinges. She realized it was only her fancy, she could not possibly hear from this distance. Tensely, she waited for the guards to discover him, but the house and the grounds were silent. The hooves of his horse drummed in her blood, and she knew he was safely away.
She snuggled down in the feather bed, wrapping the blankets close around her. His scent was in the bed, on the pillow. She clasped the pillow to her, breathed in his scent, and the remembered thrill of their lovemaking was pleasant agony.
One of the servants came in, intending to open the curtains to let in the sunshine.
“Leave me,” Valura commanded in a low voice. “I am unwell. Tell the others to stay away.”
The servant bowed, startled, and scurried out.
“What should I do?” Valura asked the shadows.
She knew well what she should do. She should leave this house, leave Vinnengael, return to her husband’s house, to her own land, her own people. Closing her eyes, she pictured her husband’s house: the rooms clean and empty, devoid of objects that might create clutter; the gardens well laid out, well tended, kept neat and orderly; the wind chimes that were muffled if the wind blew too fiercely, lest their music become wild and discordant. Valura curled her body around the pillow, huddled on herself like an animal who has escaped the snare. She could not go back. If she did, she would die.
She was one of five children, the middle child, the lonely child. The elder two were brothers, much older, and fast friends. The younger two were sisters, much younger, wholly devoted to each other, petted and pampered by her parents. The only asset her parents valued about Valura was her remarkable beauty, and then, like some prized cow, they thought only of how much they could fetch for her at market.
Valura came from a House that was noble but impoverished, a terrible combination, brought about by poor management and misplaced alliances. A family less noble could work to eke out an existence. They would not be burdened with responsibilities to those above and below, responsibilities that were costly.
Even the gods forsook them, for the Honored Ancestor had grown so enraged at the bunglings of his son-in-law that he left his daughter’s house and nothing that anyone said or did could induce him to return. Worn and worried with the constant struggle to scratch out an existence, the parents might be forgiven the fact that they waited impatiently for their children to grow and help share the burden. Valura’s brothers were to win wealth with their swords. Valura was to win wealth with her face and her body.
On the day when elven custom deemed that she had passed from girlhood to womanhood, Valura was given in marriage to Lord Balor Mabreton. His was a relatively new House with immense wealth, searching for respectability and a noble lineage for his children. Valura was the answer to his prayers. In the latter case, however, he was doomed to disappointment. Valura had no desire to bear children. Pregnancy, with its sickness and its grotesque swelling of the body, and childbirth, with its pain, were abhorrent to her.
She knew the herbs to drink to rid herself of such a burden, and this she had done three times in her first marriage. If her husband had caught her, he had the right, by elven law, to slay her. Fortunately, the first Lord Mabreton was so obtuse that he never thought to question the fact that his lovely wife was apparently barren.
Stifled by the constraints of elven society, by the strictures of duty—duty to family, duty to one’s husband, duty to the ancestors, duty to the poor, duty to the rich, duty to the Divine, duty to the Shield of the Divine, Valura saw the years of her life as a prisoner sees t
he years of his. Everywhere she turned was a wall.
She had not wanted to move to Vinnengael with her first husband, but not for the reasons she gave out. She did not like humans, that was true. She found them crude and loud, violent and capricious. And for the very reasons that she found them so distasteful, she envied them, admired them. Thus she isolated herself from them, lest they contaminate her with their twin diseases of freedom and independence.
Valura had once in her life seen her cell door open. That was with the untimely death of the first Lord Mabreton. She knew well enough that he had been assassinated, the Shield of the Divine had all but told her the truth in order that she should not cause trouble. She had no intention of causing trouble. She would have fallen on her knees and blessed the assassin, if she had known who he was. Her cell door was opened, she felt sunlight warm on her face, and then it slammed shut, trapping her inside.
The younger Lord Mabreton chose to take her as his bride.
If she had known him first, had married him instead of his elder brother, she might have grown to love him. Dalor was kind and gentle. He never forced his attentions upon her, as had her first husband. But Valura had discovered that the only way she could bear the life inside her prison cell was to make certain that if she could not get out, no one else would get in. Her husband was a good man, who loved her and constantly strove to please her, and she pitied him sometimes. Pity was the only soft emotion she could ever feel for him.
Once again, she’d been forced to live among the humans. This time, she could not isolate herself. Her husband would have been willing to allow her to stay in the house on the river, but the Shield had ordered her to serve as one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, an onerous task. Valura hated human ladies with a passion and wanted to be like them with an equal passion. The dichotomy of her conflicting emotions made her soul a frantic bird, beating its wings in frustration against the bars of its cage. Soon, it must beat itself to death.
And then Dagnarus had reached out his hand and opened the door. The bird had flown free, and it had flown straight to him.
She had heard of the young prince, heard much of him upon her arrival. The ladies of the court spoke of him constantly, talking aloud about his good looks and his regal demeanor, his stylish dress. They spoke in whispers about his reputed dalliances, seeming shocked, protesting that they should never allow his advances, but simpering and preening the moment he came into view.
Valura wasn’t interested. He was a man, and men were hot breath, clumsy fumblings in the darkness, and pain. And always the possibility of the seed taking root inside her and growing into another creature as miserable as she was.
Closing her eyes, she was once again at the banquet. The first she knew of him was his voice, melodious, low, not raucous like so many humans. His hands, she recalled his hands—clean and well kept, with long fingers, rounded at the tips. Strong hands, not soft hands, but callused from the sword. And in those hands, her gift.
Her hand clasped the pendant around her neck. No one had ever given her a gift such as that, a gift for her alone, a gift that was not meant to be shared with her family. Raising her eyes from the gift to the giver, she had seen Dagnarus for the first time. She had seen the admiration in his eyes, but she’d seen admiration in the eyes of men before, and that did not touch her. But when he had hung the pendant around her neck, when his hand had brushed against her cheek, she had seen admiration superseded by love and longing and she had known an equivalent longing, a longing and desire that surprised and frightened her.
Lying awake that night, she had imagined his hands on her body. She had imagined his breath on her lips, and the thought had thrilled her. Disgrace, ruin, death, not only for herself but for her family—such was the penalty for illicit love. She made herself think of all that might happen and, to her dismay, the thoughts did not frighten away the desire but increased it. She fled, thinking that this must end it. He would be offended, would lose interest in her, would forget.
But even far away from him, locked up in her isolated, wellguarded, and protected house, she had known the torment of loving him. Unable to sleep, she had escaped to the garden, to let the autumn wind cool her fevered body, to remonstrate with herself, to slam shut the door on her cell and keep it shut, though the lock was broken.
And then he was there, the embodiment of her dreams and desires, kneeling before her, bold and tender, daring and humble, leaving the choice, the decision to her.
She smiled, kissed the pendant, and gave herself to remembered ecstasy. She would return to Vinnengael. She would walk out the door of her cell and never look behind.
That evening, Silwyth was assisting the prince to dress for dinner. Dagnarus had dismissed the lords usually attendant upon him, bidding them go drink his health and giving them money for the purpose. He was in an excellent mood, said that his hunting had gone exceedingly well. The lordlings were only too happy to obey.
“Your Highness,” said Silwyth, “I thought perhaps you would like to know that Lady Mabreton has returned to the court.”
Dagnarus’s eyes flashed; his hand, lacing his doublet, shook slightly. “That is excellent news, Silwyth. Thank you. Is there some clever person that you know who might be able to slip a note to Her Ladyship? Manage the task in such a way that no one would see the exchange?”
“I believe I know just such a person, Your Highness,” said Silwyth, his face impassive.
“Good. Here is the note. Oh, and Silwyth, scatter some rose petals on my bed this night, will you? And see to it that I am not disturbed.”
The Dark Draught
The weather, which had been unusually warm for autumn, changed from calm placidity to howling gale in what seemed a matter of moments. Huge banks of black-green clouds obscured the sun. The leaves that had been skittering down the street in one direction were suddenly lifted in a flurry into the air, whirled about, and sent flying in a direction completely opposite. The wind rose. Rain pelted down with the force of thrown daggers, and sleet rattled on the wooden shake roofs.
The orken, who had read the omens the previous night—flights of seabirds moving inland—had not gone out in their ships at all that day. The humans, who had laughed at orken superstition and taken advantage of the clear, sunny afternoon to try their luck, found themselves in peril, with the seas running high and wild and the wind ripping sailcloth and snapping masts.
“Surely you’re not going out on a such a dreadful night as this?” A young female novice stopped to watch Gareth fasten his cloak closely about his body and lift the hood of his cowl up over his head.
“I must, I am afraid,” Gareth replied, struggling with the clasp of the large pin holding his cloak together. “The sick I tend do not find themselves better just because the weather has taken a turn for the worse.”
“How very dedicated you are,” said the novice, looking at him with an interest she had never previously shown, though the two had been together in the same classes ever since they were twelve years old. “Let me help you with that clasp.”
Gareth allowed her to take the pin from him, thrust the pointed end through the thick fabric of his heavy woolen cloak, and fasten it tightly. She was attractive in a brown-eyed, pink-cheeked, winsome way. Her hands lingered to smooth his cloak and fuss with his hood.
“You will be chilled to the bone when you return,” she continued. “I will be up late with my studies. Often I make myself a honey posset in the middle watches of the night. I could make enough for two, if you have returned by then.”
Part of Gareth wanted very much to say yes, to drink the honey posset, and perhaps to kiss the honey from those inviting lips. And then what? She would slip out of her robes and he would slip out of his. She would see his body covered with oozing sores…
“I am sorry,” he said in confusion—he had never truly grown accustomed to lying—“but I do not know when I will return. Thank you for the kind thought, but, really, it’s impossible…”
She had gone
on, shrugging, not much bothered by his refusal after all. Gareth sighed and went on his way.
The porter, who let him out the door, had to throw his body against it to force it open against the wind’s icy blast. He stared at Gareth as one stares at a madman gibbering and dancing in the street.
Outside, the wind struck Gareth a blow that held him in place, unmoving. Lowering his head, he forged on, making his cautious way down the Temple steps, which were slick with sleet and rain. He had nearly reached the bottom when he bumped into someone coming the opposite direction.
Each man put out his hands to steady the other.
“I beg pardon,” Gareth said, startled by the collision. “I trust I have not—”
“Gareth!” The man peered at Gareth, but he could not see him well through the darkness and the storm. “I know your voice. Yes”—the person turned Gareth so that his face was illuminated by the light of a torch, a torch that flared and sputtered in the driving rain—“it is you.”
“Master Ev-evaristo,” Gareth stammered.
“Just the person I wanted to see.” Evaristo shouted to be heard over the howl of the wind. “I have tried for two days to have a word with you. Didn’t you get my messages? One would think you were deliberately avoiding me!”
Gareth, who had been doing just that, endeavored to make his escape. “If you will excuse me, Master, I am wanted—”
“No,” said Evaristo, seizing hold of Gareth with a firm grasp. “I have you now, and I’m not letting you go. Come back inside. What I have to say will only take a moment, then you may be off on whatever errand draws you forth on such a raw night.”
To have fled would have looked extremely suspicious. Gareth could do nothing but accompany his former tutor back into the Temple. The porter, again forced to wrestle with the door and expose himself to the elements, received them with ungracious looks and mutterings.
Evaristo drew Gareth into a quiet alcove. The tutor removed his soaking cloak. Gareth hunched more closely into his, made certain that his hood left his face at least in partial shadow. One of the sores had erupted on his face. His fellow students mistook it for a pimple, but he feared that Evaristo might see it and guess the truth.
Well of Darkness Page 28