Captivity

by Ann Herendeen

  I went over the steps in my head. Our hearts would slow, and our breathing, our blood barely circulating. We would hibernate, enter a kind of suspended animation, still alive, but our vital signs imperceptible to unamplified human senses. The descent must be gradual, the body adjusting to the lowered metabolism like sinking into a deep sleep. My telepathic sense would be the last to leave and the first to return.

  I had learned this procedure in La Sapienza seminary, although I had never actually done it. None of us had, not even Matilda Stranyak who was training to be the new sibyl. It was a skill from the distant past, when prisms were rare, even among ‘Graven, and situations like mine must have been common. But it was an interesting application of crypta, and Edwige Ertegun, the old sibyl, had required us to study it.

  Using the last of my telepathic electricity, I made the inner flame and started in. There was no margin for error; I was not in school. Failure would lead to real death. I held my left arm above and to the side, angling its greenish light into my eyes, slowing Val down until his heartbeat and breathing became imperceptible. They would register only on a Terran instrument, or to a trained telepathic healer. His temperature fell until he was cold to the touch—dead for the purpose of any inspection he would get here. He slackened his hold on me, lay inert in the crook of my arm.

  Now me. Reynaldo would be onto me as soon as he picked up my conversation with Dominic. He must think they were my last words. When I was down as far as I could go and still communicate, I began the search for my husband. There was a physical aspect to it, a feeling that I was scanning the horizon, running along paths, even boring through rock underground. Luckily I found him almost at once. He was closer than I had thought. It was late, the middle of the night. It had taken me hours to bring Val and myself to this imitation death.

  Dominic. I sighed with relief when the familiar mind was with me. Listen carefully, my love, I have no time. I thought in the form of Terran speech. For a telepath, foreign languages are not a complete barrier to comprehension, but they add a level of difficulty.

  Amalie, Dominic said, what is it? He thought in Terran also, following my lead.

  As I had feared, Reynaldo was alerted immediately. I doubted he had slept at all this night, watching through the small hours in fear that something would go wrong to spoil his great plan. Now his vigilance was rewarded. He heard the strange words and interjected himself into the conversation. What is that gibberish? He screamed into my head. Speak Eclipsian or— He went quiet as he realized that, although he had forgotten me, I had not obligingly disappeared after all.

  Amalie! Dominic shouted in terror at the silence. Then in Eclipsian, to Reynaldo, If she is dead, or hurt, you will live a lifetime of regret. I will keep you alive and you will die by inches every day.

  Reynaldo was up, heading for the stairs. Dominic, I thought, formulating the Terran words distinctly as pure sounds, avoiding any modulation that might assist interpretation, you must fear him, all of them, as you would Apollo.

  From outside the door, I felt Reynaldo’s mind. He had broken through the mental barrier of Terran, but was hit with a meaningless name. What is that? Ah po—

  Nothing, I said. A god of the Terrans. I was praying to him for help. To Dominic I repeated my warning. All of them. Like Apollo, Lord of the Silver—

  Reynaldo turned the key, burst into the room. There was silence, both physical and telepathic. Dominic and I had severed our connection, and what was left in the room did not stir the fetid air with so much as a sigh. Two pale white bodies, a mother and her child, lay still in death, on a pile of straw. The muted blue-green glow of the inner flame, proof of continued life, did not register to Reynaldo’s darting eyes. The flame had diminished to the gleam of a firefly, the wink of a distant star. It was concealed within the woman’s closed fist, lowered to her side and covered by a fold of her ragged dress, invisible in the illumination from the corridor’s torch. Reynaldo blinked and turned his head from side to side, wondering what, if anything, he had overheard.

  The bandit put a greasy hand on me, then on Val. Cold, as cold as the grave. The woman must have called out to her husband as she felt her life drain away. He drew his dagger from his belt. Best to be certain. He stood over the pathetic bodies, the weapon clutched in a strangely shaky fist. The woman had died with her eyes wide open; the inner eyelids stared up at him, shining silver in the flickering torchlight. Death had smoothed the lines of sickness and worry from her face. She was pretty again, as he remembered her, from the capture on the trail, or was it earlier…

  Reynaldo wiped his clammy palm on his breeches and gripped the dagger more firmly. Angry at his surrender to weakness, he knelt to his task a second time. Again the tableau stopped his arm. His empty right hand touched the boy’s bright hair, the same color as his own. The boy, too, lay staring up with blind, white inner eyelids, the mark of status that had filled Reynaldo with such pride, yet always demanded so high a price. Mama, the word was in his mind without warning. He saw clearly the memory he had thought safely buried, the young woman, prematurely aged by harsh circumstances, who had ended her own life when she could bear it no longer. Mama, don’t leave me.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, his face livid in the blackness. He stood up in terror, kicked at the woman’s body as if it threatened to disarm him. It did not react, only gave back the lifeless thud of insensate flesh. Once again he nudged the woman’s body with the toe of a boot. Emboldened by the continuing inertia, he poked at the child. That had always roused her before. This time there was nothing. Silly to be so superstitious about a skinny little woman, hardly bigger than a child herself, and her puking, whining, spoiled lordling.

  Reynaldo spat on the floor and headed for the stairs, leaving the door agape. Just as well they were dead and intact. Reynaldo had not killed them; no doubt the bitch had killed herself, and her own child, out of some ‘Graven notion of honor. They had saved Reynaldo the trouble. It was a satisfactory solution—the best. He would leave the bodies as they lay, a trophy to taunt his enemy with, should the opportunity arise. He sought out the man who was about to taste the bitter ashes of total defeat and devastating loss. Dominic Aranyi, he thought, your little wife and your son are dead. Your daughter belongs to me. Do what you will.

  Even from Margrave Aranyi there was no response. Reynaldo shrugged hopefully and mounted the stairs to the great hall, lay back down to wait for daylight. Michaela, disturbed by his hasty rising and stealthy return, whispered a question. He didn’t mind sharing the good news. “The witch and the little brat—they’re dead. I made sure of it.”

  CHAPTER 13

  As my body slowed and cooled, took on the bloodless, rigid features of death, I could still perceive Reynaldo’s thoughts, although that sense, too, would go eventually. Until it was time to reanimate myself, I would conceal my minute spark of consciousness within Jana’s mind, as before. For now, my daughter, exhausted by misery, was deep in the restorative sleep of childhood. Like her, I could dream.

  Free to wander in the realm of nothingness, I took refuge in the past. Life had been so easy and secure I could afford to invent tragedies out of words. Lying in bed with Dominic—over two years ago it was now. I was growing big with Val, would soon be wider around the middle than I was tall, or so it seemed to me. Dominic liked the physical changes of pregnancy, the swell of breast and belly. His long fingers caressed me in the lazy warmth after lovemaking as the sly question, asked too casually, pierced my heart. “Would you mind, Amalie,” he had murmured in his deepest bass register, the prelude to serious emotion, “if I were to marry again?”

  He had known I would take it wrong, I realized afterwards, had used the formal, archaic word for the union of man and woman, hoping I would react as I had, sitting up flushed and angry, ready to fight my husband or this unknown rival, whoever she was. Dominic enjoyed my possessiveness, couldn’t resist treating himself to the sight of me naked and quivering with rage. He laughed, pleased at my display of jealousy, until he
took pity on me and pulled me back down to rest in the curve of one slender, muscular arm. “To Stefan,” he said, “to Stefan. Surely you know you are the only woman for me.”

  I was so relieved I melted immediately, forgiving the pain of that first deliberate misunderstanding. Paradoxically, our marriage did not always reassure me as to Dominic’s devotion. Sometimes I worried that his preferences would continue to evolve into a version of the informal polygyny practiced by his ancestors: a mix of wives of various degrees of status, companions, and household women accustomed to providing service in the bedroom along with their other duties. As Dominic kissed me and fondled me in mock contrition I tried to let go of my anger, only telling him breathlessly between his more urgent attentions that one day he would push me too far.

  It was Dominic’s own doubts of Stefan’s answer that had prompted such treatment. Stefan had been Dominic’s companion for more than three years, was approaching his twentieth birthday, before Dominic began turning the idea over in his mind of making a formal marriage. While it is unusual for two men to marry in the ‘Graven Rule, branding their arms with the scar of an unbreakable union, it is not unheard of. Most men simply pledge their love to each other, sometimes exchanging finger rings or, most intimately between the gifted, prism-handled daggers. Dominic was unsure how his companion would interpret so belated a proposal.

  To be fair, Dominic considered himself and Stefan already married, branded or not. Stefan had saved Dominic from almost certain death from a telepathic weapon, and had helped to heal him from a crippling wound shortly before our marriage. Their love existed on the sublime level of warriors, comrades in arms, never mind how long since there had been any serious military expeditions to test it. I knew they had sworn their love in a private ceremony, a rite so sacred Dominic would not share it with any woman, even me.

  Dominic and I were both aware of the debt we owed Stefan for making our own marriage possible. Finding Stefan, and establishing a permanent masculine partnership, had given Dominic the serenity he needed to contemplate marriage to a woman. After three years of wedded life, a second child on the way, Dominic felt remiss in only now formally acknowledging the essential part his companion played in maintaining the balance of our domestic arrangement. While Stefan went home that summer on a belated family visit, Dominic looked forward to remedying what might look like neglect.

  Stefan’s first words on his return proved Dominic had missed his chance. We must be the first to know of his good fortune. “I am betrothed,” he said, in tones that left no doubt of his pleasure.

  Stefan was not the sort to play with meanings. “Betrothed” could only mean to a woman, one chosen by his family. The sons and daughters of gentry and ‘Graven rarely marry for love, or choose their spouses. Dominic refused to accept the inconvenient truth, that most Eclipsian boys outgrow the purely same-sex phase of their teenage years. While many will continue to have male lovers after heterosexual marriage, few will defer the pleasures of fatherhood and being head of their own household indefinitely.

  To me it was the name that came as a surprise. Drusilla Ladakh had made my early days at La Sapienza seminary most unpleasant. For Stefan’s sake, I hoped the past four years had softened and matured the girl’s disposition.

  Stefan could not suppress his exuberance for long, despite Dominic’s and my subdued reaction. “She says she knows you, Amalie,” he said of his intended, “so I don’t have to tell you how beautiful she is, and how gifted.” He turned to Dominic. “My dear companion,” he said, knowing that he had caused hurt, “when you meet her, you will understand.” He paused, thinking how best to explain. “After all, you are the one who convinced me, by example, of the value of a wife and family.”

  Dominic attempted to make a gallant joke of it. “Of my many faults,” he said, “you know how to put your finger on the one that hurts.”

  We had all cried and laughed eventually, congratulating the bridegroom in the way of parents whose son has become a man before they are ready to give up their image of him as a child. Dominic had offered a parcel of Aranyi land as a wedding gift, so that the new couple could live nearby. Stefan, a middle son in a large family, had no prospects besides his stipend as a lieutenant in the Royal Guards.

  Stefan had been touched by the generosity, saddened when he understood the reason behind it. “No,” he said, forced in honor to decline so valuable a present, “that’s all arranged also.” They would live on Drusilla’s land. The Ladakhs are a venerable northern family, in the top ranks of the gentry. Drusilla had brothers but no sisters, and would have a decent dowry portion. Her parents had wanted the match, uneven as it seemed, because she would be a working seminary telepath most of her life. Once she had borne Stefan some children she would no longer be the full-time stay-at-home wife that a landed and titled man would expect. Stefan must enjoy her while he had her, and make the best of things later.

  For now he was all young love. The future was very far away. And the past, his and Dominic’s love that Dominic had hoped to formalize with a burning ordeal of molten glass and fired metal, as his and mine had been, was floating away like wisps of seed fluff in a spring breeze. It was no use, Dominic saw, expecting a boy to marry his first lover. Stefan was all grace and charm, wanting everyone to be as happy as he was, and feeling only slightly, and momentarily, disappointed if he could not always succeed. “Dominic couldn’t expect me to be his sworn companion all my life,” he said to me once when Dominic was out of earshot. “Surely he knew I’d want a family of my own sometime before I’m forty.” He laughed at the absurdity of such a decrepit bridegroom, the age Dominic had been when we met.

  The last weeks with Stefan were a chaotic mix of emotions as Dominic prepared himself for the loss of a lover and the ordeal of Val’s birth. In ‘Graven practice, a man forms deep communion with his wife throughout her labor, enduring every pain, and supplementing her flagging strength with his. The life of many a ‘Gravina, mine among them, has been saved by her husband’s strength and devotion. Val’s birth was easy compared to his sister’s, but it was nevertheless a rather subdued Dominic who shared a long last night with his companion and wished him joy of his wedding. I would not be up to traveling to attend the ceremony; Dominic could have a valid excuse for staying home as well.

  When I had recovered enough to think of the outside world, I remembered with a certain discomfort the wedding gift I had been preparing for Dominic and Stefan. In one of my few forays into the marketplace in Eclipsia City, I had examined a bookseller’s wares and had found a copy of an ancient Terran epic, the Iliad, which I had read years ago. Seeing it again made me think that its story of warriors, heroic in their battles and their love, would be sure to please Dominic and his beloved. The work’s original form was perfect for Eclipsis: a long poem to be recited or sung to a simple line of musical accompaniment. Eclipsis had produced many ballads and tales designed to be presented in the same way. All it required was translation into the Eclipsian language, perhaps the archaic, court speech, as the theme was a noble one.

  There was a ‘Graven law against importing foreign literature, a law that Dominic had been principally responsible for drafting and introducing and getting passed in the Assembly. The purpose was to preserve Eclipsis’s cultural heritage from Terran contamination, but Dominic, knowing my need for reading matter, routinely waived the law for works I wanted, provided I read them only in our house and did not lend them to others, a meaningless restriction. Nobody I knew read Terran books for pleasure. This one story, I was convinced, deserved to be treated as an exception. Even Dominic admitted that laws could sometimes be broken in the letter, if the spirit was observed.

  After many inquiries I had been directed to a scholarly poet willing to take on such a daunting task of translation. Few men wished to turn down a commission, no matter how dubious, from ‘Gravina Aranyi. “Don’t worry about all the strange names,” I told him. “Just concentrate on the story.” Foolish though it seemed, I had not been able to
bring myself to cancel the project, and I had let the man toil on, unaware that his masterpiece would never have a public performance.

  When the translator had copied out the last phrase to his satisfaction, and after payment was rendered in steel ingots purchased with Terran credits from my personal account that would not leave a loss to explain in the household finances, the package was delivered to our quarters in ‘Graven Fortress in Eclipsia City. I looked despairingly at the pile of manuscript. The project had taken a full year to complete. We were back in town, where we spend half the year for Dominic’s duties in ‘Graven Assembly and the Military Academy—back where this crazy idea had originated. Stefan was long since married, and Dominic had found Niall—the answer, as it turned out, to my wifely prayers.

  Niall was more sophisticated, more complex, than his predecessor. Where Stefan Ormonde had come to Dominic a virginal boy, adoring and grateful for the favor of so superior a lover, Niall met Dominic on equal terms. If Galloway, like Ormonde, was not of Aranyi’s standing among the noble families of Eclipsis, Niall saw no need to apologize for his respectable gentry background. If Dominic was twenty-five years older, that was not Niall’s deficiency. Niall was no longer a cadet when he and Dominic became lovers, but a junior officer. If Dominic outranked him now, Niall would catch up, swiftly perhaps, given his skills as swordsman, commander and potential leader in Assembly.

  Niall was what we call a fox, which on Eclipsis, like Terra, has a double meaning of cleverness and sexuality. He had the teasing intelligence, the ambiguity, of the cunning animal, even the tawny eyes—light brown, almost amber, with deceptively white inner eyelids. His gift was strong, despite the milky color and lack of silver. Vir into manhood, Niall was, after Dominic, the most attractive man I had ever met. Were I ten years younger, or my communion with Dominic less solid, I would want him myself.