The Devil's Concubine

by Jaide Fox

  “It would be very small,” he added uncomfortably, “at least at first, but if it does as well as I hope and you are happy with it, we can always enlarge it later and there would be room even in the small area to erect a small sitting area with an arbor as you have drawn here,” he ended, tapping at the picture.

  From out of no where tears arose, flooding Aliya’s eyes and making the drawing waver. “He asked you to build a garden for me?” she asked disbelievingly. “When?”

  Silo stared at her in dismay for several moments and scratched his chin uneasily. “Not long after you came. He was very anxious to make you feel comfortable. He said that he knew it was very different for you here and that you missed the things familiar. Uh--you are not pleased with the drawings?”

  Aliya sniffed, brushed away the tears that were blinding her and nodded. “Yes. That is, I am not sure what this is, but I would love to have a garden.”

  When he had explained that he would erect high walls and then form a frame above them that would be a roof made up of windows to allow light and air in, Aliya was impressed. “This is a wonderful notion! They will have light and air and rain to nurture them and the braziers here and here should keep the plants warm. I am sure this will work!”

  She frowned after a moment. “I will look forward to this, but I am not at all certain that this is something you should be devoting time to just now. Soon there will be war,” she finished uncomfortably wondering what the castle folk thought of her when they must know she was the reason they were going to war.

  Silo nodded. “I will speak with the king when he returns and tell him you have approved the drawings and we can begin whenever he likes.”

  When Silo had gone, she wandered around the room listlessly for a time and finally stopped to peer at the sliver of view she had of the practice field, fighting the urge to weep and wondering why in the world she even felt like weeping.

  Talin’s thoughtfulness pleased her. She couldn’t imagine why it also made her want to cry.

  After dwelling rather fondly over his thoughtfulness for some time, though, it dawned on her that Talin had spoke with her father and yet he had said nothing about the animosity her father felt toward her now. Had her father said nothing to him about it, she wondered?

  He would not have refrained, she realized after a little thought. When faced with the man he despised for taking his daughter, she knew her father would not have even tried to refrain from venting his spleen.

  That was why Talin had looked at her with such pity when she had been trying to defend her father’s actions. That was why he had refused to allow her to speak to her father, refused even to explain why he wouldn’t allow it.

  He had been trying to protect her from the hurt he had known she would feel if she learned her father had denounced her!

  She burst into tears then, allowing herself the luxury of mourning the loss of her home and father as she had not since she had been taken captive. They were well and truly lost to her now. She had not really accepted that before. Even when she had realized that her father would not be able to rescue her, in the back of her mind she had not really believed she would never see him or her home ever again.

  Now she knew she wouldn’t. He hated her only because he thought she had lain with Talin. Once he discovered that she had accepted Talin, welcomed him, he would never forgive her.

  After a time, she dried her tears and washed her face. It would be hard, but she would learn to live with it. It would be harder still to live with the war on her conscience. She must try to reason with Talin when he returned, she decided. If her father had disowned her, she couldn’t change that, but if he had, then he had no reason that she could see to make war either.

  * * * *

  Talin did not linger at Janpur, the smallest of his holdings. The keep was in good repair and already as ready as it could be to withstand an attack--which was to say hardly prepared. It was manned by only a handful and although built of stone, it had no inner ward, no battlement walls. It would not withstand much of an assault and could not be prepared for one in the little time available to them. Leaving orders that they were not to perform in any manner save as an outpost to alert him if the army moved upon this side of his holdings, Talin left to examine Kainrn, which guarded his northern boundary.

  Built originally as the primary residence of his father, it was almost as large, and nearly as well fortified as the royal palace he had built for himself at his southern boundary, Tetan. Here he lingered for several days, spending the first examining the structure itself, the second overseeing the laying in of weapons and supplies, and the third running his men through their paces to see how well they performed in the armor he had sent men out to collect from the battlefields.

  The results were disheartening. They were not accustomed to fighting in armor, even in their human form, and they were slow and clumsy. Deciding that, perhaps, it was only a matter of adjusting the armor to better fit them and practice, he ordered them to continue practicing until they could fight as well with the armor as without. Since he considered the possibility was not particularly remote that they would find themselves fighting hand to hand whether they liked it or not, he sent scouts to study the battle tactics of the man children.

  One of the couriers he had sent out to warn the other clans arrived at Kainrn as he was preparing to return to Tetan with the news that Maxim, the King of the clan of the bears, had requested a meeting at the temple of the old gods in the land of Memnon. Talin frowned. “King Blain is agreeable to this?”

  The courier nodded. “It was he who summoned everyone”

  Talin lifted his head and stared into the distance. “The Wyvern?” he asked.

  “The Wyvern themselves are under attack now. The man children marched through the lands of the dragon clan two days ago.”

  Talin looked at the man sharply. “You are certain?”

  The courier’s expression grew more grim. “As certain as I can be, sire. The land is in ruins. The old king’s palace is burning.”

  Talin uttered a curse. “They are mad! Why destroy Memnon when the Wyvern had already wiped out most of the dragon clan in the war they have waged these many years? And how could they have reached Memnon anyway? The army was many days west and south of there when I last saw them. They could not move so great an army so fast on foot.”

  “This army came from across the sea and marches to join the other.”

  Talin gazed toward Tetan although he could not see the towers in the distance. “When is this meeting to take place?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Near the place where once had stood an altar to the old gods, in the ruin of the great temple near the summit of Mount Carceras, a great fire blazed. Torches had been lit, as well, and created a wide ring of light around the central blaze. As Talin circled, drifting lower and lower, he saw that Maxim had not come alone to the meeting place.

  He was the last to arrive.

  Mentally, he shrugged. He had had things of great importance to attend to first and, in any case, he had not felt his presence was necessary while the others argued and slowly came to the same conclusion that he had--the time had come to set their differences aside and unite against a common foe.

  The fact that they were still here seemed to indicate that they had finally agreed on that much anyway.

  Alighting, he shifted, making his way toward the circle of stones and passing beneath the stone arch that had once formed the entrance to the old temple.

  Most of the faces he recognized--the rulers of the clans of the Great Bear, the Panther, the Lynx, the Leopard, the Fox, and the Wyvern, and his closest brothers, and enemies, clans of the Eagle and the Condor. Some, he did not, but he sensed the presence of their beasts.

  The high king, Balian, the last of his kind, stood apart from all the others.

  Never in memory had all of the clans of man beasts come together in one place before now.

  “You are late,” Balian growled, his voice low, g
ravelly.

  Talin sent him a speculative glance. “And yet, you are all here.”

  “We have been waiting many hours, and none of us particularly easy in our minds about this meeting,” Blasien, king of the Leopard clan said irritably. “The man children would rejoice to find us all here together.”

  “They are still far from this place. I thought it wise to reconnoiter before I came.”

  “And you think we did not?” Raphael, of the clan of the wolf snarled.

  Talin shrugged. “Like you, I prefer to know myself rather than only to accept what I am told. I had not thought that I would see you here.”

  Raphael scowled. “I make no apology for surviving, if that is what you are getting at.”

  “Do not take me up. I did not say that to start a quarrel between us.” Talin glanced around the circle. “As it happens, I am glad to see your ugly face among those gathered here. I assume that is why we have all come? Because we all know that our chances of survival depend upon our unity?”

  “Assumptions can easily lead to misconceptions,” the king of the Wyvern purred. “I am only come because I am curious to see what has you all quaking.”

  Talin sent Vattin a cold stare. He respected Balian as the most powerful among them, the high king, but he had not been particularly fond of the folk of the dragon clan. Regardless, he felt sickened to find himself in the company of one so cold blooded as to hound an entire clan to the grave. To make war was one thing, but no dispute was excuse enough to warrant that much vindictiveness.

  For that matter, he wasn’t completely comfortable with most of those he meant to ally himself with--but he would, for his people. “By all means, meet the man children alone on the battle field. No one here will try to persuade you otherwise,” he retorted coldly. “You have a wizard, have you not? With him, and your brave troops, perhaps you can chase off the man children for the rest of us and we can all go home?”

  Vattin reddened as the mark struck home, for he was well aware that he was almost universally despised for having brought in a wizard to stack the odds in his favor in his war against the dragon clan. “Mortiver is dying.”

  Talin’s brows rose. “So it is a little more than curiosity that brings you.”

  Vattin surged to his feet with a growl of rage.

  “Settle!” Balian roared. “If we begin to fight among ourselves we are doomed.”

  Talin and Vattin glared at each other for many moments. Finally, Vattin settled again. When he did, Talin turned his back on him and moved to an opening in the circle.

  “I believe their intent is to converge upon the great plain,” he said, glancing around at the others. “Once the two armies join, I believe our chances of beating them will be diminished.”

  “How many days?” Raphael demanded.

  Talin shrugged. “You could answer that better than I. My army moves through sky.” After looking around, he pulled a branch from the fire and used the charred tip to draw a crude map upon the stones beneath their feet. “King Andor is here. My guess is that he has caught the blood lust and deviated from the original plan, for he has moved his army more west than north and east. The other army landed here on the coast and is traveling almost due west.

  “There is only one kingdom of man beast near King Andor’s position at this time, though, and his army is poised near their border. Unless the clan of the Fox manage to put up more of a fight than those who have already fallen, the army will be on the march again in two days time. So … two days, plus however many days it would take to move an army of that size overland.”

  One of those present that Talin hadn’t recognized, spoke. “I am Sylvan, of the clan of the Fox,” he introduced himself. “The man children will meet no resistance in the land of Modictia for, upon the advice of Raphael and Maxim, I have removed my army and my people from their path. A handful, only, remain to give the appearance that there is prey for them there. I do not think we can count upon them remaining there for more than a day.”

  Raphael, Maxim of the Great Bear clan, and Blasien moved closer, studying the map intently.

  “If they continue on that path, they will crush Croaten between them in a week at the most,” Blasien said. He glanced at one of the men gathered that was unknown to Talin. “Hadrian, these are your lands, what think you?”

  “The terrain will slow foot soldiers and wagons, I am sure. And much of it is wasteland--they will find little food or water. I am condor, however, and know no more about the time it would take to move an army across than King Talin.”

  “Andor is not heading west,” Vattin put in, giving Talin a hard look. “He is heading directly toward Goldone. Is that not so, Talin?”

  Talin glared at the man. “It is not,” he said coldly. “If it were, I would certainly have said so as it would not be in the best interests of my clan to do otherwise.”

  The men around the fire all exchanged glances, but it was Raphael who spoke. “You must learn not to judge others by yourself,” he growled. “It leads one to misconceptions.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” Vattin snarled.

  “The woman means nothing to them,” Balian said coldly. “If all of this was only about the Princess Aliya, there would have been no need to gather all of their armies together and there certainly would not have been any reason to attack the clan of the wolf, or the Wyvern. The people of the man beast clans need your army, Vattin. They are seasoned from countless years of war, more so than many others who have done little more than skirmishing for years. Set aside your differences. There will be time, later, for us to fight among ourselves--if we fight together now. If not....” He shrugged. “Talin is right. We may all join my ancestors and live on only in memory.”

  * * * *

  Aliya had run the gamut of emotions several times before she at last heard the sounds she had been waiting for that told of Talin’s return. She had not been idle. Partly this was because she had been far too restless to remain so without feeling as if hysteria was closing in upon her. Most of it, though, was because she had convinced herself that the best way to assure Talin that she had accepted her role in his life was to show him she thought of the palace at Tetan as her home.

  When she had done what she could with the royal suite, which no longer included a bed chamber for the master and a separate one for the mistress, but rather a single sleeping chamber for them both and a solar that they could use as a private retreat, she tracked down the chamberlain. They needed rich fabrics to soften the harshness of stone walls, floors, and ceilings. Almost reluctantly, he had led her to the king’s storerooms.

  The cavernous room, she discovered, was filled almost from floor to ceiling with more riches than she had seen in her lifetime--all collecting dust.

  Ignoring the man’s protests that most of it had been stored since Talin’s mother’s time and that the king had no interest in such frivolities, she had promptly begun emptying the room of paintings, wall hangings, and carpets; goblets, plate, pitchers, and platters of silver and gold, encrusted with bright gems; and ornately carved and crafted, tables, chairs, chests and armoires, working the palace servants from daylight till dusk.

  In the back of her mind, she spent much of that time castigating herself for focusing on something so inconsequential and unnecessary as beautifying the palace when they were on the brink of war. She realized after a little time, though, that it had as bracing an effect on the nerves of the castle folk as it did hers. They found comfort in the very fact that it was so completely frivolous. They had less time to think and worry about the threat looming over them, and the brightening and beautification of their immediate surroundings lightened their spirits.

  Unable to remain suitably dignified and wait in her suite for Talin to come to her, and fearful, truth be told, that he might not linger but instead leave again almost at once, Aliya hurried down the tower stairs to the great room as soon as she was certain that it was Talin who had arrived and not someone else. She arrived at one entr
ance to the great hall, breathless, at almost the same moment that Talin entered the great hall from the courtyard entrance.

  Plainly distracted, he was half way across the great hall when he came to an abrupt halt as if he had only then noticed that something was different. A twinge of uneasiness went through Aliya as he began to look around the great hall as if he had never seen it before and wondered if he had wandered into the wrong place. It occurred to her forcefully for the first time that she had not even asked his permission to make the changes she had, or asked if Talin would mind her removing his treasures from storage. She had, in fact, ignored the chamberlain when he had suggested that Talin might not like it and behaved as if she had every right to do whatever she pleased.

  When Talin at last met her gaze across the distance that still separated them, she felt guilt creep into her face, though she tried her best to appear unconcerned.

  She could tell nothing about his expression, but after a moment, he headed directly toward her.

  She was still trying to decide whether to race back up the stairs and bar the door to the solar or stand her ground when Talin stopped in front of her. “I have missed you,” she said a little weakly.

  Some of the tension seemed to leave him. A faint smile curled his lips. “I can not imagine where you found the time.”

  That was not precisely the reaction she had been hoping for, but at least he did not seem angry. “Even so.”

  Slipping his arms around her, he pulled her close. “I have missed you more,” he murmured, nudging her chin up with his hand and covering her lips hungrily.

  As acutely self-conscious as she was of the audience they had in the great hall, Aliya discovered her shyness did not outlast the heat of that kiss. Warmth flowed through her veins like honeyed wine, stirring her senses to a sharpness that detected the faintest of touches with every labored breath they took. When he broke the kiss and swept her into his arms in a dizzying swirl of motion and started up the stairs, she could only cling to him, resting her head against his shoulder.