Reluctant Concubine

by Dana Marton

  She rinsed my shoulders, then continued her kneading. “His words like dripping honey, his countenance as handsome as Rorin’s own, his dark locks fell upon shoulders as wide as—” She paused. “For truth, I believe he looked a lot like our High Lord, my lady.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. A great champion of Batumar was she, blessing his name for one thing or the other near every day.

  “Coulron’s strength drew the other warlords. They trusted his words and honor. And so the First Council decided that from among them they should choose a High Lord who would act like the head of the body, keeping the parts working together. And thus they chose Coulron over them. And he did all he promised and more, and the Kadar grew in strength and number.”

  She started into another tale, only to be interrupted by Tilia, who came in to add wood to the fire.

  “One of the servant girls ran off from the kitchen,” she told us amid much head shaking. “Fell in love with a merchant, she did. Wants to go home with him when his caravan leaves at the next moon crossing.”

  Everything within me stilled. “To which port are they headed?”

  “Some southern port, my lady. I cannot recall the name.” She ducked her head in apology.

  Southern port. That meant a Shahala town, most likely.

  My heart thrilled. I could barely sit still as Tilia left and Leena finished her story. I barely heard a word of it. Like an obsessed weaver I wove my plans of escape, hope grabbing hold of me with fervor.

  First thing the next day, I headed to the kitchen to see if I could find out more. I had not yet reached the door when the high-pitched scream of a child tore the morning’s silence. I rushed forward.

  An ashen-faced woman was pulling a little girl from a puddle of steaming soup on the floor. She had likely tipped the boiling pot on herself. The servants crowded in as the crying mother cradled the girl’s head on her lap.

  The child’s father rushed from the pantry, pale with anguish, the first to notice me. He stopped in his tracks, bowed, and apologized for the ruined meal.

  It happened so quickly my head spun. My spirit poured forth into the child before I ever touched her, her pain so sharp on my skin that I staggered. My lips opened, but I could not hear myself talking. Still, I must have, as servants moved to do my bidding.

  The father lifted the child and placed her on a cleared table where her mother began to peel off the still-steaming clothes. Two strong women had to hold me up so I could walk to them.

  I touched the girl’s forehead and drew the pain until she breathed easier. But all that pain filled me now, and I could barely stand up under the weight. How had my mother drawn such pain and worse without ever showing sign of the strain?

  My spirit moved through the child and cradled hers, even as it prepared to flee from her body. I cajoled that spirit, held its flickering light, whispered into it the will to live.

  Servants returned with my scant store of herbs, although I could not remember asking them. They made healing teas for which I could not recall giving instruction. I dripped a strong tincture between the girl’s lips, measuring carefully.

  I cooled her skin with water, over and over, then made a new potion, poked a hole in a clean leather bag, filled it, then pumped it with a rapid squeezing motion to mist the contents over the child’s injuries.

  An eternity passed before the tide seemed to turn at last, and the girl’s eyes fluttered. The power of the plants that had grown from the power of the earth, mother of all of us, worked from the outside, and my spirit and hers worked from within.

  At long last, the pain inside me ebbed, and none too soon. My spirit returned, and I could see again the girl’s face and not just the inner workings of her injury. The angry red welts on her face had disappeared, the skin near healed with no sign of infection, only a small scar remaining under her chin. I reached out to heal that too, but I collapsed summarily.

  I saw through a haze as the child sat up, hugged by the mother with more tears in her eyes, and saw the women reach for me to carry me to my chamber, as male servants could not touch a concubine. I saw the tall doors of Pleasure Hall open, but I saw nothing beyond that. Darkness enveloped me.

  I slept through the rest of the day and that whole night, not awakening until the noon meal of the following day, with Leena weeping at the foot of my bed.

  But from then on, no servant would pass me without a smile. And gifts began to show up in my chamber, little bunches of herbs, as many healing plants as they knew, until I had a fair store, although not nearly as complete as had been my mother’s.

  I had asked for those plants many times before and had always been evaded, had meant to plead with Batumar but had always been too distraught and distracted when in his presence. But now at last I had my medicines, and a good thing too, for the sick began to come, fearful at first, then more confident, in a never-ending trickle.

  So often did a servant woman come to beg for my help, I began to spend more and more time in the kitchen where I could be approached by those in need, male and female alike.

  The kitchen had an endless supply of boiling water, which I often needed. I liked the warmth of the cooking fires and the back door to the street—for the vendors who brought fresh goods to the palace each day—which could be open for fresh air as needed.

  And so the power of healing finally awakened within me. And as the days passed, I learned that like the power of the muscles that moved my body, the more I did one day, the more I could do the next and easier. I instructed the seamstress to prepare a proper healer’s veil and wore the thin linen around my shoulders like a shawl at all times to keep it at hand, so often did I have to don it.

  I often asked the servants who came to me whether they had served under the previous High Lord, Barmorid. If they had, I asked them about another Shahala healer, Chalee. Some remembered her and blessed her name. They claimed she died of a sudden illness, but none knew where she was buried.

  I wondered whether I might have more luck with the caravan. They might be the very people who had spirited away her body from the fortress city.

  I had my mind on that when Leena came for me one morning. “Lord Gilrem summons you, my lady.”

  From the servants’ whispers, I had learned he had his own House within the fortress, fit for a prince, with a Pleasure Hall of legendary proportions. He did, however, despite such comforts, spend a lot of his time at the palace, especially in Batumar’s absence. The High Lord trusted him with much responsibility.

  I thought maybe he needed my healing.

  Leena escorted me to him.

  Most of the time, she went about her affairs arranging my meals and the cleaning and renovation of Pleasure Hall, but from time to time, she attached herself to me and would not let me out of her sight.

  We walked through the door of the Great Hall, where Lord Gilrem and Shartor waited. I moved forward. Lena remained by the threshold, at a respectable distance.

  “I hope the morn finds you well, my lords.”

  “Fine well, my lady,” Lord Gilrem said without much warmth.

  Shartor cut a tall figure in his gray robe, his braided and oiled beard reaching nearly to his thin waist. But of all his features, his eyes stood out as the most unusual, moving independently of each other. He looked like a giant lizard, ready to dash his fearsome tongue out and swallow me whole.

  I shook off the fanciful notion and bowed to Lord Gilrem first, then to Shartor, and hoped I did not miss the order and give offense.

  “Your fame grows throughout the palace,” Lord Gilrem said.

  He wore rich garments as he had at the House of Tahar. When with Batumar, he dressed more simply, similar to the warriors, as the High Lord himself did.

  “And yet I wonder,” he added. “What other powers do you have?”

  Neither man seemed ill. As I tasted Lord Gilrem’s question, my shoulders tensed.

  Shahala healers indeed had powers known to few others, but to say so would have been unpardonably
rude, a crass bragging. “No powers, my lord, but some measure of skill to ease certain pains when the spirits will it.”

  Shartor sucked in his breath at my last words, and too late I remembered that some Kadar took mention of the spirits as a slight to Rorin.

  “You are modest.” Lord Gilrem examined me closely. “I do not trust that in a man or a woman. It is our nature to make the most of our abilities and make others believe we have even more.”

  “I have no great powers, my lord,” I answered truthfully. What I could do was nothing compared to my mother’s deeds.

  “You have the power to break the chains of evil women.” He hinted for the first time of remembering Kumra and her daughter and all that had happened to him at the House of Tahar. “And you have the wisdom to know I do not want to speak of it. You have not come to me for payment. Perhaps you think you hold me in debt and like the thought?”

  I said nothing, for I felt none too comfortable in his presence. Like a volatile flame he seemed, and at any moment I expected the scorch of his blaze. Although I could not understand why, my instincts said Shartor was the fuel behind the fire.

  Lord Gilrem stepped closer.

  “You did not seek the favor of the High Lord by telling him how you saved his brother. If you had done so, I would have denied it and you would have been punished swiftly for the lie. And yet, you did find favor with Batumar. Karamur is filled with the talk of you.” He watched me, his gaze thick with suspicion, his voice tinged with barely controlled anger.

  My mother had once told me that strong anger in a man with a weak spirit was a dangerous thing. I felt that danger all around me.

  “You see too much, Tera of the Shahala,” he said. “And you have power far too much for my liking, no matter how you deny it.”

  He turned to the soothsayer in a sudden move. “What say you, Shartor? Is she a sorceress?”

  I heard Leena’s faint gasp behind me in the silence.

  Shartor’s left eye focused on me, while the right one seemed to examine the smoke-stained ceiling. “She knows no respect for Rorin. Gives all her thanks to the spirits.”

  The burning torches cast dark shadows on the walls around us.

  “As is our Shahala custom, my lord,” I said respectfully. “I intended no slight to Rorin.”

  Shartor waved my words away like one would swat at bothersome summer flies. “Think of the evil, my lord, that befell you at the House of Tahar. Did she not administer the poison herself? She brought on the illness, then cured it, hoping her reward might be to return with you to Karamur as your new concubine. And when my lord proved too wise for her wiles, she worked her magic on the High Lord Batumar.”

  I glanced from one man to the other, my throat tightening, cold spreading in my chest. “My lords, I have no magic.”

  Lord Gilrem drew his body taller. “Sorcery is a most serious charge.”

  Shartor ran his knobby fingers over his beard. “I would not speak it lightly, but we must consider the welfare of our nation and that of your brother. Did he not swear he would not take another concubine?”

  Lord Gilrem nodded. “He swore.”

  “And here she is, holding the will of our High Lord and of the palace servants too, having enthralled them already.”

  My throat was so tight I could barely push the words out. “My lords, I am innocent of these charges.”

  “She rode the manyinga. All of Karamur saw her.” Shartor pronounced the words like a death sentence. And then a sudden dark light brightened his predatory eyes. He opened his mouth to say something else to Gilrem but seemed to change his mind and turned to me, instead. “Leave us now.”

  I did so with great relief and some curiosity about what he would say once I left.

  Leena followed close behind as I walked down the hall. “You made a bad enemy, my lady.”

  “Better to have a known enemy than an unknown one.” I surprised myself by repeating words I had heard from Batumar.

  “You must take care to keep out of his way.”

  I planned on following that advice. “Does he spend much time at the palace? I have only seen him at the feasts before.”

  “He lurks at the House of Gilrem these days, my lady. When Batumar became High Lord, Shartor sought to be his chief advisor. But Batumar listens to his warlords and keeps not counsel with soothsayers as Barmorid did before him.”

  So Shartor had lost much power under Batumar.

  For the first time, I felt relief when the tall doors of Pleasure Hall closed behind me.

  “Lord Gilrem puts much stock in his advice,” Leena said as we entered my chamber. “He is these days Shartor’s biggest supporter.”

  I thought of Lord Gilrem, who would forever live in Batumar’s shadow. The High Lord cast a wide shadow indeed. To be always an afterthought, the second in command, would have grated even on the most loving of brothers. And Shartor stood ready to whisper the unjustness of it all. Shartor, trying to build back his lost empire.

  “Why would Shartor be bothered by someone as unimportant as I?”

  For the true inquisitor had been Shartor and not Lord Gilrem. Lord Gilrem might have been weak and callous, but nothing I had seen of him showed a truly evil heart. Shartor’s influence on him showed, brought on a layer of darkness that sent a chill down my spine.

  “You are the favorite concubine, my lady.”

  Was I even a concubine? I had only served Batumar with my healing so far.

  In his absence, Lord Gilrem ruled as lord of the castle. If Shartor managed to convince him that in me they had a true sorceress…

  I shivered and pulled closer to the fire.

  * * *

  Three days remained until the departure of the caravan, days I had to survive and use for gathering what I needed. I could have saved food from the trays brought to my chamber every meal time, but Tilia always stayed until I finished, in case I had need of something else. And I had to eat those meals anyway. I could not weaken my body by starving it, for the journey would be long and arduous.

  My traveling supplies would have to come from the kitchen.

  I spent enough time there so the servants barely noted my presence. My elaborate gowns had room enough to hide some food, but not yet. I would collect what I needed only the day before my departure. The bread would grow stale enough on the long journey.

  Other than food, I also needed a disguise. I could not travel dressed as a concubine. The thought of that vexed me greatly, until talking with Leena about Shartor brought me the perfect solution.

  “What is the punishment for sorcery?” I asked her, regretting that I would have to leave her behind. I would miss her. Once, I had considered the two of us running away together, but by now I knew her loyalty to Batumar was steadfast.

  “A truly powerful sorceress cannot be caught, they say. But she might be tricked by a truly powerful soothsayer.” She would not meet my eyes.

  “And then?”

  She paled, wringing her hands. “The only way to kill a sorceress is to boil her in tar."

  Cold crept into my heart. The thought of dying among the Kadar and lying in my grave without the Last Blessing like my mother made me shudder. But then it made me think of a way to gain clothes for my disguise.

  “Would you summon the seamstress?” I asked with great calm. “If I am to die, I would be buried in the clothing of my own people. As my only wish, surely it would not be denied.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “The High Lord will be home soon, my lady. Then you will be safe and Shartor’s power once again reduced.”

  “I pray to the spirits that you are right, but the clothes would give me comfort in the meanwhile.”

  If I were to convince the caravan to take me on as a Shahala healer, I had to look like one. I needed a proper Shahala thudi and tunic.

  I would have loved to travel with the caravan all the way south, but our ways would have to part outside Karamur’s gate. Once my absence at the palace was discovered, the Palace Guard would be
scouring the city and the road, looking for me.

  When the caravan reached the end of the open fields, I planned on disappearing into the woods. I had less to fear of wild beasts than of men and prayed the spirits would keep the tigers away. I would follow the caravan from afar, so as not to lose my way.

  Some distance from Karamur, I might even be able to rejoin them again.

  “You need not prepare for death, my lady,” Leena protested tearfully and, as if she herself became soothsayer, predicted a long and happy life with Batumar. “You will have sons, my lady, you will see. They will be strong warriors.”

  But at long last, I convinced her to go, and soon she did return with the seamstress, still wringing her hands and bidding me not to despair.

  All I required was ready by the next day and, oh, how my heart thrilled just trying on the garments. Light I felt—so light as if I could fly—in the simple thudi and the short tunic, both made from thick, sturdy wool as I had instructed. Considering the cold spring, I would also take my fur-lined Kadar traveling cape.

  I spent the next day planning my escape, wandering the hallways—always keeping an eye out for Gilrem and Shartor—noting the position of every guard, the time of their comings and goings. I could find my way around the palace well and knew many alternate routes so I could go around any obstacles, but I feared what would happen once I left the sprawling building.

  I did not know the streets or the alleys of the covered marketplace. I had only crossed the city once, upon my arrival, but I had been exhausted from the journey and now had only a dim memory.

  I had no way of solving that problem and thought it best not to worry about it. I had plenty of other challenges, such as how to leave the palace in the first place, without the Palace Guard seeing me.