Jana could not, of course, be satisfied with my evasions. “Does Papa stick his penis in Niall’s mouth?”
I had to laugh. “You’ll have to ask Papa,” I said. Serve Dominic right, I thought, still harboring my grudge against him over Lady Melanie. It would be just about right if the first thing Dominic heard after rescuing us was Jana demanding to know if he sticks his penis in Niall’s mouth.
In the silence while Jana pondered this answer and formulated her next question we heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I struggled to my feet, not wanting to be caught in an awkward position on the floor. Val stiffened in my arms and Jana stepped back to stand beside me. The rusty lock squealed, a bandit pushed the door open and Reynaldo himself entered with a bowl of what I hoped was food in one hand and a skin of what might be water in the other. After the unrelenting siege of Jana’s uncomfortable questions, it was almost a relief to see him.
Reynaldo’s sexual interlude had left him in a good humor. He studied our little tableau complacently. “I see my fine lady is not too proud to use her tits for their purpose,” he said, his eyes lingering on my bare breasts.
I extracted my nipple from Val’s mouth and tried to close my dress over myself. Never before had I felt exposed or embarrassed while nursing my children. In my years as wife and mother I had acquired the ease of an Eclipsian woman, who thinks nothing of opening her dress to feed her child, whether alone in her room or at a feast in the great hall, surrounded by company. But this one mad, dangerous man made me feel naked and obscene.
Val whimpered as I separated myself from him, but did not otherwise protest. He had emptied both my breasts and had continued to suck more for comfort than nourishment. I spoke as politely as I could fake, hoping to divert Reynaldo’s attention from my body. “Thank you for bringing us supper.”
Reynaldo could never make things easy. “It’s not yours yet,” he said, holding the food away. “You must earn your keep.” He thought his meaning to me, all too clearly. Apparently the activity Jana had witnessed had only whetted his appetite for more.
I was still too weak to block his thoughts out, and shook my head as if to clear the disgusting image from my mind by force. “That’s not a good idea,” I said, trying to sound calm and rational. “My husband will not want me back at all, much less pay ransom for me, if I am unfaithful.” The word, that implied I would do anything with Reynaldo by choice, made me want to puke, but I dared not express what I felt.
The bandit leader took this thought well. “Nobody misses a slice off a cut loaf,” he said. He set the bowl and the water skin down and moved closer, reaching a hand toward my open dress.
I took a step back, meeting the wall behind me. There was nowhere farther to retreat. “But my lord husband will know,” I said, hoping the authority of the ‘Graven phrase would make an impression. “I can keep nothing secret from my lord husband, not with his powerful gift.”
When ‘Graven marry, we address each other respectfully as “my lord husband” and “my lady wife,” during the ceremony and afterward, at court, whenever we use formal speech. Country people rarely hear of “my lady wife,” because a nobleman does not speak of her in public. The words “my lord husband” alone, without their counterpart, have a harsher sound, a sense of the hierarchy of power, of dominance and submission, wife to husband, servant to master, that was never intended by the innocent words of loving esteem.
Reynaldo stopped and considered. I could share his thoughts, had been trapped in his mental processes, unable to disengage, since he entered the room and saw me. He weighed the possibilities, finding it, in the end, easy to make the choice. Amusing though it might be to force himself on ‘Graven, one woman more or less makes little difference. What he hoped to gain from Dominic by capturing me was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Why risk it for something he could get elsewhere?
He looked around the room, unwilling to leave us in peace without finding fault, saw the candle that was near the end of its life, a guttering wick in a puddle of wax on the ledge. “I told you not to use your gift.”
Oh gods! I hadn’t thought twice about lighting the candle. ‘Against me,’ Reynaldo had said. “I didn’t,” I said. As Reynaldo stared into my eyes, trying to initiate some sort of forced communion, I spoke slowly and firmly. “I did not use crypta to light the candle.” I felt safer engaging in semantic quibbling than challenging a madman with his own words.
Reynaldo put a rough hand on Val. “I told you if you used your gift I would take the boy.” Val broke into screams as if he were already being cut into pieces at the remembered touch of this man who had so abused him. Reynaldo, momentarily taken aback by the sound, dropped his hand.
“Leave my son alone!” I said. “I used the inner flame!”
Reynaldo shook his head; the words meant nothing to him.
I repeated the words then demonstrated, making the little blue flame and stretching my arm in his direction, the fire flickering at the tip of my thumb.
The man stepped back in fear. Had he never seen anyone make the inner flame? His mother must have killed herself while he was still a child, or perhaps his father had punished her for doing that too. There had been no one to teach Reynaldo the fundamentals of his gift, no one to explain about neurons and synapses, and the spark of electricity that jumps from axon to dendrites. I could sense no understanding in him of how prism and bent light activated the telepathic brain cells, only a vague knowledge that they did. All he had was the gift itself, the ability to read people’s thoughts, and a few self-taught tricks of manipulating the ungifted: telling them their most guarded secrets and causing a few uncomfortable sensations by stimulating their brains’ pain centers. He had thought that by taking my dagger he made us equals.
While he watched me from the far corner I pressed my advantage. “I am ‘Graven,” I said. “‘Gravina Aranyi. When my lord husband comes for me he will know how you have treated me and the children. You will not be able to hide the least little insult or oversight from him.” I saw my flame was dwindling with the last of my energy, knew I had to get him out before he saw how weak I really was. I tried for a regal, commanding tone. “Leave us. Leave us, and prepare yourself for Margrave Aranyi’s anger.”
Reynaldo took me at my word. He groped for the door, backing out and urging his man to lock it quickly in case I was in pursuit. He need not know that I could have popped the lock at any time, but had no way to escape through the crowd of people in the castle and the miles of forest beyond, or that, at this moment, I was equally grateful for the protection of the lock between us.
Jana and I converged on the bowl. The smell was almost as bad as the people. I tasted it first. Some kind of nut-meal porridge that had fermented, whether on purpose or from age, who could say. There were a few chunks of gristly meat, probably goat, also past its prime, suspended in the gluey mixture. But we would get sicker from hunger, I decided, than from eating this slop.
There were no utensils. I licked some of the slimy porridge off my fingers. “Delicious,” I said, then picked up a piece of bone and gristle to see if there was anything edible on it. Jana followed my example, hiding her nausea when she saw I was actually eating, not just pretending.
I held some out to Val but he shook his head. “Icky,” he said. “I don’t want any.” There was no point in forcing him now. He was full of milk, and might feel more able to eat in the morning.
The water looked and smelled relatively clean. I hoped there was a stream nearby, not a well that could be contaminated, and that the bandits had sense enough to take the water upstream from where they bathed and watered their animals. Then I remembered there was no evidence the bandits had ever immersed themselves in water by choice in their entire lives. And the poor wretched creatures penned in the hall looked as if they rarely tasted the fresh grass of pasture, but had their meager rations of food and water brought to them, as we did.
Well, a few days of this wouldn’t kill us. At the moment I was completely drained, body and mind. Once I go
t some of the food in me, and had a night’s sleep, my strength would be replenished. With food and sleep, and after the morning’s eclipse, I would be able to use my gift more effectively—and unobtrusively—to learn about our captors’ plans, to protect my children, and best of all, to help Dominic think of a way out.
Jana and I ate every scrap of meat and fat, sucked the bones and licked the bowl for any stray grain of porridge. We passed the water skin around like a jug of wine until it was empty. The game amused Val, as I had intended, ensuring that he drank some of it. I let Jana have more food, taking for myself the minimum necessary. It was little enough between us, and I felt hungrier when it was gone than before. I told myself it would do me good, and lay down on the bare straw. Jana and Val curled in my arms beside me. I spread my cloak over us for a blanket and extinguished the tiny bit of wick that remained of the candle. In the morning I would see about getting us another one.
CHAPTER 4
Despite my exhaustion, or maybe because of it, sleep wouldn’t come. The children dropped off immediately, worn out and safe in my arms. But although the room was stuffy, it grew cold and damp as the night’s chill seeped in through the walls and the ground, giving me a double discomfort. The worry and fear washed over me now that there were no more threats in front of me to make me act brave. Tears trickled across my face, soaking into the straw. Oh gods, I thought, I hope Dominic can forgive me for what I have done.
There was only the grim reality to contemplate. I was a hostage. Worse, so were my children. We were in a castle, ruined, but with stone walls still standing and armed men to defend them. Our captor was crazy enough to try such a scheme, and had the crypta to make success a real possibility. All because I had been angry with Dominic. All from being upset over what now seemed like very little.
Eight years ago, before Dominic and I had met, before I had come to Eclipsis, Dominic had had a son with a noblewoman, Lady Melanie Ndoko. “A man in my position must have an heir,” Dominic had explained when he told me of the relationship. “I never expected to marry, until I met you.” Delighted to hear so pragmatic a reason for the affair, I had thought no more about the woman or her son for six years.
When we arrived at Stefan’s home, who should greet us but Lady Melanie, acting as hostess to help her cousin Drusilla in the exhausting business of new motherhood. There had been no mistaking the look on Dominic’s face when he saw his former mistress again, and it was not the look a man gives to mere expedience. Every time my unruly memory ran that scene in my head it had taken all my self-control to act with the polite unconcern that befits ‘Gravina Aranyi. Each day in Lady Melanie’s company had become harder for me to bear. Then, the last night at Stefan’s, Dominic had not come to my bed, nor had he been with Niall.
I relived the beginning of these worst days of my life: rising early yesterday from my solitary bed to see Dominic off for Eclipsia City, inadvertently picking up Niall’s thought as he mounted beside my husband, wondering where Dominic had spent the night. Not with me, not with Niall. The logical assumption that followed had struck me with the force of a fist in the gut as, over and over, the images played in my memory… Dismounting at the entrance to Stefan’s manor, the tall, slim woman standing at the gate, Dominic’s sudden intake of breath and his warm greeting, “Lady Melanie, it is a gift to see you again after so long.” The stare that went on for what seemed like an eternity, the honesty, beyond formulaic politeness, readable in Dominic’s thoughts as he added, “I see the years have done you no harm.”
The rage I had felt then returned to me now in full force. Surely I should not waste energy on such a useless emotion. Yet I could feel it, ballooning out of thin air, beyond my control, as if it were not in my own mind, not in my body. It was disembodied, yet growing more real, more powerful in seconds, shock waves radiating out in expanding rings, like an earthquake.
The leading edge reached me, touched me, entered my mind. Amalie, Dominic breathed into my consciousness, dispersing the thoughts of Lady Melanie, brushing them aside like gossamer. Oh, Amalie, my love, I prayed it was not true. He was with me, my husband, mind to mind. It was his anger I had felt, his explosive wrath, as he learned of my predicament.
It had taken the guards and Katrina and Isobel, naked and barefoot and unsure of the way, most of the day to reach the Ladakh estate. Lady Ladakh’s eldest son and daughter-in-law had had to remember how to use their signal station to send a message telepathically, something they had not needed to do for six years, since the last time there had been trouble. Then another delay, the message waiting in Eclipsia City, while Dominic and Niall made the last leg of the two-day journey, only to be met with the dreadful news and the knowledge that they must turn around and go back, that the whole trip was wasted and had given the bandits an advantage of time. Now Dominic’s first reaction of fury had traveled, all the way up here from Eclipsia City, had preceded his own coherent thoughts.
Our communion is strong, beyond that even of most gifted couples, at times almost a merging of personalities. The intensity of it had united us from the moment I arrived on Eclipsis, had overcome all the extremes of difference—of sexuality, of power, of social class and experience—that should have kept us forever strangers, had made us as intimate as lovers before we knew each other’s names. It does not depend, like most communion, on physical touch, but can form when one of us exerts sufficient psychic force, as now when Dominic, galvanized by the emergency, established the connection over the many miles that separated us.
My relief was so great that at first I could only babble, clinging to him in thought, fainting into his strength that was as tangible in mind as in body. Oh, Dominic, can you ever forgive me? It’s all my fault. I sounded more like Val than an adult woman. I’m so, so, sorry.
Dominic did not at first understand me. Sorry? he said. It is those outlaws who will be sorry. His consciousness was within mine, as I had entered Jana’s mind earlier, was looking around the dismal surroundings through my eyes. Where have they taken you? He was all practicality as soon as he saw his worst fears had been realized.
I sat up, careful not to wake the children, breathed deeply, tried to hold on to what remained of my sense—and failed. I have endangered our children, I said. I deserve everything that happens, after such stupidity, but not the children.
Dominic comforted me as best he could. Amalie, he said, stern and forceful, that doesn’t matter now. You must not blame yourself, but think clearly and tell me where you are, so I can rescue you.
His manner, more than the words themselves, accomplished what only Dominic could have. It was like my first months on Eclipsis when, an alien in my new world, a Terran burdened by a quirk of genetics with a gift I did not understand, my life had been made suddenly wondrous because of our communion. Dominic’s love had been like a beacon of confidence guiding me through unfamiliar and forbidding territory, as I learned the techniques of telepathic control that changed my onetime curse into the most precious of gifts.
I felt the first stirrings of hope as I tried to form a visual memory for Dominic of the road I had traveled and the cut in the embankment the bandits had used. It was late morning when they took us, I said, and we rode all the rest of the day. It was full dark when we arrived.
Dominic had one bad reaction as I narrated the events of the morning. You were on that trail, with the children? Without me? When I told you— He let go of the reproaches and accusations. He could see it in my thoughts, knew what I had done, and he controlled his emotions, concentrating instead on my information. I think I know where you are. The old Skye holding. Then his rage erupted again. Helios give me strength! It will take me days to get there with any kind of force.
I know, Dominic, I said. I had been counting the days myself. Two from Eclipsia City to Aranyi. At least another full day up here. And that allowed no time to assemble troops or make arrangements for a siege train. But they want you to pay ransom for us, not bring an army.
Yes, cherie, Dominic said. T
hat is usually what bandits want.
At last I focused on what Dominic needed to know. More than forty armed men, I said. I couldn’t see them all. I recalled the scene on the road, when they had forced the guards and the women to undress. And be careful. They have an Aranyi guard’s uniform and three Ormonde ones.
Yes, beloved, Dominic said, I know. The Ladakhs told me how admirably you conducted yourself, as if I could doubt it. How you saved the guards from death and the women from– worse. That was a very brave and noble thing you did, Amalie. To himself he added something I did not understand, Although you may receive few thanks for it.
The idea led Dominic to more sickening fears. Have you been insulted? The word is a euphemism for rape, especially of ‘Graven by commoner.
There was no reason to burden him with what had been merely a fantasy in Reynaldo’s deranged mind. No, my love, I said. Nothing like that. All they want is payment.
What of Jana? he asked. And Val? Are they with you? Are they safe?
I answered this question in the simplest way, looking at each sleeping child in turn, letting Dominic see through my eyes that they were unharmed, still asleep in our pallet of straw. But the sight of the three of us, while reassuring Dominic in one way, further enraged him. They are fools, he said of our captors, madmen, to endanger my wife and my children and expect I will meekly bring them ransom like a spineless—
A third voice intruded on our conjugal intimacy. Neither mad nor foolish, Reynaldo responded to Dominic’s last thought. For I have possession of the wife and children, and it is you who must buy their freedom.
Too late I remembered what I ought to have told Dominic at the beginning. Shield yourself! I screamed into his mind. He has crypta! Dominic had not thought to screen our conversation, had made the supreme effort to communicate with me across the entire length of the ‘Graven Realms and had not seen any reason to expend additional energy in erecting a mental firewall.
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