“You dare to bargain with me, girl?” Sita did not know whether to be angry or amused by Lara’s simple request.
“Nay, lady, I but humbly ask your permission,” Lara quickly said.
“Displease me, and you will die of your own stink, girl,” Sita said by way of acquiescence. “You know that my younger sister will wed lord Enda in autumn?”
“Aye, lady, I do.”
“And that Forest folk do not mix their blood with those of outsiders?” Sita continued.
“Aye, lady, I have been told.”
“I will tell Enda you may come to the hall, then,” Sita said, and turned to go.
“Thank you, lady,” Lara responded to the retreating figure.
The summer came to an end, and all around her the Forest grew bright with color. The trees were dazzling in their brilliant display of hues. Lara had never seen such glorious shades of reds, purples, oranges, yellows, gold and russets. In the City, the vines on the walls of the Quarter had gone red or purple. The trees about the Great Square turned a pale yellow and their leaves were quickly gone, blown away in the winds that began to come from the north. Here, however, the display seemed to go on forever.
On the last night of the year Enda married his betrothed, Tira. The following morning their bloodied bedsheet was offered as proof of Tira’s perfection. After that Enda spent part of each night with Lara, and the remainder of the night with Tira. Lara did her best to stay in the background as much as possible. Having discovered her skills at sewing, Sita saw that all mending needed by the household was brought to Lara for repair, and she was grateful to be busy.
Enda and Tira had not yet moved into their own hall. It would not be ready until the spring. Lara caught Tira staring down at her several times from her place at the high board. The look was filled with venom. After it had happened for the third time, Lara began taking her meals from the hall and retreating to the two chambers, which were now hers. One evening Durga caught Lara by the arm as she attempted to make her escape with some bread and cheese.
“Why are you departing the hall, faerie girl?” he asked her roughly.
“My lord Enda’s wife does not like me, and I would not disturb her,” Lara said.
“She hates you,” Durga said with a grin. “She is young, foolish and jealous. She knows her husband gains more pleasure between your legs than hers. Go on, then.” And he released her arm, still grinning.
That night as Enda pushed himself eagerly into her he said to Lara, “Are you not with child yet, Lara? I have seeded you almost every night for the last four months.”
“Why would you want a child with me?” she asked him candidly. “You Forest folk do not mix your blood with outsiders. I have been told it often enough. Seed your wife as vigorously as you have me, and you will have a fine son.”
“But I want you to give me a child, my faerie lover,” he murmured low in her ear. “If you do not, Durga will take you into his bed and he will seed you vigorously until his child grows in your womb.” He held her hips firmly in his two hands, and pumped her until she was crying out with the pleasure they had come to share.
“I don’t understand,” Lara moaned, wrapping her legs about him. She had come to crave the pleasures their bodies could give one another.
“You don’t have to understand. You have but to obey me,” he told her, thrusting hard and smiling wolfishly at her whimpers. The rumors had been right. Faerie women were the finest lovers on the face of Hetar.
After he had left her Lara took up her crystal. Why does he crave a child of me so badly when the Forest folk do not mix blood? she demanded of her guardian.
Ask the giant, Og, and tell him that Ethne says he may speak the truth to you, the guardian of the crystal replied in her silent voice.
In the morning Lara went to the bathhouse for her daily ablutions. She was now allowed to go alone, as she had shown no desire to escape the Forest folk. Og was expecting her and greeted her with a smile. He was her only friend now that Belda and the other slave women with whom she had come—except for Truda, alas—worked in other halls. Few spoke with her, and then rarely.
“The water is hot, Lara,” he told her.
“We must speak where we cannot be overheard,” Lara said softly.
He nodded, and led her into the bathing room. “I expect no others, for they are afraid to come when you are here,” he told her.
“They fear the faerie,” she said, resigned.
Og grinned. “Fools,” he said. He always spoke freely with Lara though with others he answered their queries but simply, or with a grunt. Many thought him a lackwit.
“You see the crystal I always wear about my neck,” she began, and he nodded again. “It was put there by my mother. See the flame within it. That is my guardian, Ethne. She says you are to speak the truth with me and answer all my questions, Og.”
“Ethne?” A smile lit his face. “Aye, I will answer as best I can, Lara.”
“How do you know her?” Lara queried him.
“She is part of my own history. I knew Ethne as a little one,” he told her.
“Why does Enda want a child of me when the Forest folk do not mix their blood with that of outsiders, Og? For that matter, why did he and Durga buy me?”
Og sighed. “It is a long and tragic tale I have to tell you, but you will understand when I have finished. Many years ago the Forest was ruled by the ancestors of these men who now people it, the giants who served them and the faeries of the Forest who were the Forest Lords’ allies in everything they did. Durga’s grandfather was Head Forester then. One day in the autumn a group of his men were out hunting. They had spent the day chasing the most beautiful roe deer any had ever seen. They should have known better, for the deer wore a jeweled collar about its neck. It was obviously magic. The day was coming to an end when the beast was finally cornered in a clearing.
“As they prepared to shoot it with their arrows it turned from a roe deer into a beautiful faerie woman. Seeing her, their lust for the hunt became a lust for the faerie woman. She laughed at them, mocking them for being so foolish as to follow her the day long. Now, she said, they would go home to their halls empty-handed. Madness ruled what happened next. The hunting party attacked the faerie woman, who was weak from having sustained another’s shape all day. She could not fight back. Each of the men had his way with her, and when they had finished they killed her, taking the beautiful jeweled collar she had worn about her neck back to their Head Forester. The faerie woman’s body they left lying where they had violated and murdered her.
“That same night as they sat in the hall of the Head Forester bragging on their day, Maeve, the faerie queen appeared. She demanded justice for the slain faerie from the Head Forester, but he refused. The faerie woman had taunted his men all day through the deep Forest in her guise as a roe deer. It was one thing, he said, for the faerie to amuse herself for a short while with the hunting party, but she teased them the day long, only revealing herself when she was finally cornered. And then she did not offer an apology, or give them another deer in exchange to take home for their trouble.
“Instead she mocked them and called them foolish. She flaunted her beauty before them. The faerie woman had gotten what she deserved, the Head Forester told Maeve, and it should be a lesson to all of Maeve’s people to cease their torment of the Forest Lords with what they called playfulness. There was no justice to be rendered.
“The faerie queen was very angry, but the faeries of the Forest had been such longtime allies of the Forest Lords she hesitated at first to destroy that alliance. ‘At least return the bejeweled collar,’ Maeve asked the Head Forester, but before she might even finish her thought the Head Forester cried out that he would not. He had given the collar to his wife. It would serve as a forfeit for his hunters’ wasted day. ‘Then give me the lives of five of your hunters in exchange for the faerie woman’s death,’ Maeve said to him, blood for blood. The faerie woman was young. She was foolish, but she has paid a terr
ible price for that foolishness, Queen Maeve reasoned, attempting to hide her anger, trying to retain the alliance between the faeries and the Forest Lords.
“But the Head Forester remained adamant, his wife by his side smirking, fingering the collar about her neck. Maeve offered the Head Forester a month’s time in which to rethink their difficulties, but he told her no amount of time would ever make him reconsider. What was done was done. The faerie queen could restrain her anger and her outrage no longer. She pronounced a curse upon the Forest Lords that has been their secret shame ever since. No one on Hetar knows it, but me, and if they knew I knew it, I should be slain like all my kind who once lived in this Forest,” Og said gravely.
“What was the curse, and why were the giants slain? I was told they died in a plague.” Lara was fascinated, but Og’s story still did not explain why Durga and Enda had paid such a high price for her, or why they even wanted her.
“You know how proud the Forest Lords are of their heritage. How they claim to be the oldest of the peoples on Hetar. How they do not mate with outsiders. Maeve’s curse on them was one that can never be lifted. She raised her hand that night and said that never again would the women of the Forest clans bear children. Neither sons nor daughters. If they wished to continue to exist they would have to mate with outsiders in order to gain the sons, and those sons would be forced also to mate with outsiders in order to reproduce. The daughters they created would be either rendered infertile, or able only to birth females. Their proud and pure bloodlines would disappear in the next centuries until all trace of who they really were would be gone from Hetar.
“And then Maeve, the faerie queen, pointed a long finger at the wife of the Head Forester. Almost immediately the collar about her neck began to tighten until the woman was strangled, and died. Maeve then stretched out her hand, and the collar flew into it even as she disappeared in a clap of thunder from the hall,” Og concluded.
“How terrible!” Lara said softly.
“It was but the beginning,” Og continued on. “All the women who had been carrying children in their wombs at the time Maeve cursed the Forest clans either miscarried or bore dead infants. And no matter how vigorously the men of the Forest seeded their women, no children of pure lineage have been born to them since. After several years the Forest Lords were forced to admit the curse was real. At first they sought for the faeries themselves in an effort to have the curse lifted, but they could not find them. The men of the Forest began to mate with outsiders, and suddenly their halls were filled with children once more.
“The mothers of these children were kept alive only until the children were weaned from their breasts. Then they were slaughtered, and buried deep in the Forest. The children were raised by the wives of their fathers, and only learned the truth when they came to manhood and needed to reproduce themselves. It has been a fearsome secret to keep, but kept it they have. No one knows. They import women as household slaves, but they are actually used for breeding purposes.”
“That is why Durga didn’t want little Noss!” Lara exclaimed. “He asked her if she had linked with the moon yet, and she said no. It was then he refused to have her, making such a great fuss, and Truda in her effort to please him exposed my existence to the Forest Lords.”
Og nodded. “Truda is growing a big belly,” he told Lara. “I overhear much, for few pay a great deal of attention to me,” he chuckled. “Now I shall tell you something else I overheard. I know the reason they insisted on purchasing you, Lara. They believe if they can get children on a faerie, they can expunge the curse Maeve put on them.”
“But I am only a halfling, and besides, there is no way I could ameliorate a curse placed on them by a faerie queen. I know nothing of magic. My faerie mother deserted my father and me when I was only a few months old. I am said to look just like her, but I know nothing of her world, Og.”
“She thought enough of you to give you a crystal guardian,” the giant noted, looking down at his young companion. “Let me tell you something of her world. As the daughter of a faerie woman, you have all her powers, although you have not known it. You are not with child yet, are you? Yet it is said that Enda comes to your bed almost every night. I know why you are not with child—you do not want his child, and a faerie woman never gives children to those she does not love.”
“They do not know this, do they?” Lara said.
“Nay, they don’t. There is much they do not know. My kind served the Forest Lords for as long as memory allows, yet they slew my people. When they could not find the faeries of the Forest they sent the giants to look for them. When we could not find them, they set about killing us, for we knew their secret and they would not have it revealed.
“I was in my mother’s belly at that time. Her name was Oona, and she managed to flee into the deepest part of the Forest where she bore me. We lived in a cave and saw no one but the beasts. It was there I met Ethne. She is not a faerie, but a faerie spirit. It was she who told me what my mother did not—that all giant memory is passed on to their unborn children in the womb. That should I ever fall into the hands of the Forest Lords I was to pretend to be innocent of all that had passed before my birth. And when I was four years of age they found us. They killed her, but me they spared for before she died she told them I had been born but four years prior.
“I was brought back here and raised in Durga’s hall, although in those days it was his grandfather’s hall. When I became too large to live in the hall I was given the bathhouse to attend, and to live in. I am small for my kind, they have told me.”
“Poor Og,” Lara said, taking his huge hand in her own two, and giving it a little squeeze. “What a terrible life it has been for you, having to pretend ignorance, and yet knowing so much. I wish there were a way in which I could help you.”
“It is I who must help you,” the giant replied. “Winter is coming, and if you are not with child by winter’s end, Durga will wonder why.”
“Perhaps he will sell me into another province? They do not know I am privy to their secret. Certainly they will want to recoup their losses as best they can,” Lara said.
“Durga, but that he is considered the eldest of his clan, would be sweeping out horse stalls,” Og said. “His family has always ruled the Forest. It is his right, but he is a stupid man. If you fail him he will be angry, and if he becomes angry he is just as apt to slay you as his grandfather’s men did that poor faerie woman seventy-five years ago.”
“But not yet,” Lara said.
“No, not yet,” Og agreed.
“I must bathe quickly now,” Lara told him. “They will wonder why I have been gone so long. Go now, and we will speak again.”
The giant nodded, and left her.
She washed herself quickly, then hurried back to the hall. Truda was seated by the fire, and seeing Lara beckoned her over. There was no way to avoid the woman and so Lara joined her, holding out her hands to warm them. Truda’s belly was very obvious, and her pride in her condition was irritating.
“Where have you been?” she demanded of Lara.
“It is not your place to question me,” Lara told her, “but you surely know I go to bathe each day at this time.”
“You were gone longer than you have been in the past,” Truda said.
“The water was very hot, and I am chilled to the bone these days. I remained to soak, and it felt wonderful. It is almost time for the Winterfest,” Lara replied. “The City was not as cold as it is here. Do you not feel it?”
“I feel nothing but the kicking of my son in my belly,” Truda responded proudly. “My lord Durga is a vigorous lover, and I am a fertile field for his potent seed. You will see soon enough, as his brother does not seem to plow as fine a furrow with you. My lord Durga says he will be visiting you soon for shortly I shall be unable to accommodate his lusty nature.” She smirked at Lara.
“It shall be as the Celestial Actuary ordains,” Lara said sweetly. “If I am meant to give one of these Forest Lords a child,
I will. But will they not favor my offspring, with its faerie blood, to that of a slave woman?”
“You are a slave, too!” Truda said angrily, her hands going to her belly.
“But I am special, being half faerie,” Lara taunted her wickedly. And then she turned, and went down the dim corridor to the sanctuary of her rooms. Stepping inside, she was shocked to find Durga there awaiting her. Her heart began to beat nervously. “My lord,” she greeted him.
He arose from the chair by the hearth where he had been sitting. “You smell sweet,” he said. “Are you just come from your bath, Lara?”
“Yes, my lord,” she replied. Her hands by her side were balled into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms.
He took a step toward her, and Lara instinctively backed away. He smiled wolfishly, and reached out for her before she might evade him again. Drawing her against his chest he said, “I desire you, faerie girl. I am a man of vast appetites, and the big-bellied bitch in the hall can no longer be mounted lest I endanger my son. You belong to me as well as to Enda, and he is gone for the next few days on a hunting trip. While he is gone you will open your legs for me.”
“Does my lord Enda know you do this?” Lara asked him.
Durga smiled, but it was a cold smile. The fingers of one large hand dug into her scalp, and he yanked her head back. “Yes!” he said. “And do not ever dare to question my actions, faerie girl. I am master in this hall, and you are my slave.” He pushed her against the door to her bedchamber. His hands reached down, sliding beneath her gown to cup her bottom. He lifted her up, commanding her, “Put your arms about my neck, and your legs about my waist, Lara,” and when she obeyed, afraid to do otherwise, he released his grip on her a moment, lifting his tunic up to release his manroot, which he then pushed into her with a smooth, hard thrust. “Now, faerie girl,” he said, his hands cupping her buttocks once more, “you are going to be well used, and thoroughly seeded by the hour of the evening meal.”
Lara: Book One of the World of Hetar Page 17