The Lyre Thief

by Jennifer Fallon

  Rakaia smiled and leaned forward, offering him her breast. Mica took her nipple in his mouth through the drenched shirt and sucked the moisture from it. The combination of the rough cold fabric and Mica’s hot mouth against her nipple almost drove her insane. Rakaia cried out, wondering why, with all her training, no court’esa in the employ of her father had made her feel so ravenous for the touch of another human being. Before she went mad with the torment, she pulled her breast from Mica’s gasp and sat up so she could remove her sodden shirt.

  She tossed her shirt aside. She could feel him growing hard beneath her. Mica stared up at her in wonder, and then moaned as she rotated her hips against him. He took her breast in his hands again as she lifted her skirts so she could reach the laces of the front of his trousers. Mica didn’t try to help. Perhaps he didn’t notice what she was doing, so entranced was he by the feel of her breasts. With a deftness wrought of years of court’esa training, Rakaia managed to undo the laces of his trousers with one hand. She leaned forward so he could take her nipple into his mouth again, then rose up slightly and guided Mica into her. The young minstrel cried out with shock, pleasure, and surprise as Rakaia began to move up and down.

  And then he did something completely unexpected. He began to sing.

  The rhythm of his song perfectly matched the rhythm of their bodies, but the song he sang reached in to caress Rakaia’s soul. She didn’t hear the words, didn’t even know what language in which he sang, but the song amplified her pleasure to incomprehensible heights. Soon she was so lost in it, she forgot the world around them . . . the messy wet floor with its foul-smelling dye, the fact that it was the middle of the afternoon and someone might walk in on them at any moment—it all seemed irrelevant as the song transported Rakaia from somewhere in the mundane world to some place she had never even glimpsed in her dreams.

  And then it faded as Mica’s song turned to cries of a much more primal kind as he arched his back and then collapsed, spent and stunned by the sheer insanity of their coupling. Her body still throbbing from the power of their shared experience, she collapsed on top of him, utterly drained, utterly exhausted, unable to do anything as Mica held her while he cried silent tears for the void left behind by the loss of whatever the magical thing they had just shared was.

  Chapter

  40

  SANCTUARY WAS A lonely place with the Harshini gone. R’shiel preferred to remember the magnificent fortress city when it was full of life, full of music and full of smiling Harshini in their long white robes who didn’t know how to be anything else but happy, even when they were trapped here and dying, because the outside world was too dangerous for them.

  R’shiel tried not to think of the purges that had all but eradicated the Harshini. She preferred to remember the times when she was happy here, after Joyhinia had tried to kill her and Brak made the gods bring her to Sanctuary to be healed. She didn’t have any memories for a while after that. For a few idyllic months, she was as ignorant and blissfully contented as a newborn babe in this place.

  It remained the happiest time of her life.

  Then Brak arrived and her memories came back . . . and nothing was ever quite so wonderful again.

  With the memories had come the pain and the realization that she wasn’t just R’shiel Tenragan, rebellious but unimportant daughter of the First Sister of Medalon—she was R’shiel té Ortyn. Harshini royalty. Heir to the Harshini crown. A halfbreed capable of wielding an unthinkable magical power. A tool of the gods.

  A demon child.

  The gatekeeper was no longer watching over the gate. With Sanctuary sent out of time, there was no need to supervise the comings and goings of any beings, real or corporeal. The scrying bowl used to watch the surrounding forest was still, showing nothing more than silent trees and the occasional drip of water as the last remaining pockets of snow succumbed to the onset of summer.

  R’shiel wandered the empty halls, her heart aching as she recalled the last time she’d wandered them with Brak. It was just as still and silent then. They’d made love here, that time, just before they threw Sanctuary out of reach. That moment was one R’shiel had never forgotten.

  The only other moment in her life she could truly call happiness.

  The moment she discovered the true magic of being even half-Harshini and sharing that bond with another of her kind.

  Pushing the memories away to concentrate on more immediate concerns, she walked ever downward through Sanctuary’s perpetual twilight into the valley around which Sanctuary was constructed. R’shiel sometimes caught a movement out of the corner of her eye as she walked. Occasionally she imagined a sound, like a leaf being swept past on the wind, but there was nothing to see. Once she felt something akin to butterfly wings brush her cheek, but when she swatted the irritation away, there was nothing there.

  As she walked through the wide, glowing halls taking the winding stairs to the lower levels, she ran her hands over the smooth white walls, hoping to feel the essence of Sanctuary; to connect with the living presence that imbued this place and others like it built by the Harshini. If Sanctuary was still here—if she could wake him from his slumber—she had a much better chance of finding the entrance to the underworld.

  Surely, if Sanctuary wasn’t one of the Seven Hells, then it was the entrance to them. Both Kalianah and Death had told her as much.

  Perhaps the gatekeeper was watching over more than the Harshini, she mused, when they were hiding from the Sisterhood’s purges.

  Perhaps he marshaled other souls through this place and into the underworld, as well as stopping mortal beings with evil intent.

  Perhaps that was the other reason Sanctuary had to reappear each year—to allow new souls through the gate.

  No wonder people thought the Sanctuary Mountains were haunted.

  R’shiel stopped, tempted to retrace her steps and head back to the entrance, to see if there was any clue to what she was looking for back there. She never remembered seeing any souls pass through Sanctuary on their way to the next life when she lived here. Did they enter the halls and delightfully decorated chambers, and pause to have a look around on their way through? Did they hover about the amphitheater and listen to the unearthly Harshini songs as the magical race acknowledged the gods who brought them into being?

  She was about to turn back when she heard a sound below her. It wasn’t a figment of her imagination this time, but a definite sound of banging. R’shiel ran to the balcony and looked down into the valley. The terraced levels with their glowing balustrades and wildflowers climbing over them did strange things to sound here. At the far end of the valley, the waterfall still tinkled musically down the rocks, spraying rainbow-colored light over the lush clearing surrounding the deep pool at its base.

  R’shiel waited, wondering if the sound would come again. A few moments later her patience was rewarded—the unmistakable sound of banging on something wooden, followed by a distinctly female cry of frustration.

  And then she caught a movement in the trees near the amphitheater. R’shiel pushed off the balustrade and broke into a run, taking the remaining ten flights of stairs to the floor of the valley in record time. She burst through into the garden and ran along the graveled path toward the amphitheater, hoping to catch whoever it was down there before they could vanish into the ether, something more than likely in this place stuck between here and now.

  “Is anybody there?” she called, wondering if she was chasing a ghost and, if she was, how she expected them to hear her. Sanctuary had been locked away for a decade, accessible only to Death and the Primal Gods. There could be no living being here other than one sent here by the gods.

  “Hello!”

  “R’shiel?”

  She stopped and turned, stunned to find a fair-haired woman with pale green eyes standing behind her. The woman was dressed in a green, Medalonian-style robe—high-necked and gathered just below the bust, and she carried what seemed to be a broken-off branch. She was surrounded by an
aura of crimson light and although she was solid enough, there was something incorporeal about her. The woman was older than R’shiel remembered, but then, she hadn’t seen her for a decade and she’d borne several children in that time by all accounts.

  “Mandah?”

  “I might have known it would be you. I suppose it’s your fault I’m trapped in this wretched place.”

  The bitterness in her tone was not just over being trapped here, R’shiel guessed. They had both loved the same man for a long time, and thanks to the interference of the Goddess of Love, Tarja had loved R’shiel back for much of that time rather than Mandah—the woman he ultimately settled down with; the woman who bore his children.

  “Have you to come to rescue me, demon child?” she asked. “Come to take me back to Tarja and earn his undying gratitude for saving the mother of his children?”

  “How did you get here, Mandah?”

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  “Truly, I have no idea.”

  “I went to bed feeling poorly.” She glanced around at the empty fortress and then fixed her gaze on R’shiel. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “The next thing I knew I was here and I couldn’t find a way out of this place.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know. Time seems to stand still here. I might have been here a few days or my children might be all grown by now.”

  R’shiel recalled what Kalianah had told her about Mandah’s life being held in trust by Death, to ensure she would not renege on their deal. She felt a momentary spasm of guilt, but it was easily overcome by the thought this really was the right place to enter the Seven Hells, if Death had trapped Mandah here while he waited for R’shiel to find Brak.

  It also meant Mandah wasn’t the only one here. Death held Mandah’s life in trust for the moral dilemma R’shiel faced if she chose to trade Brak’s life for this woman’s. The other life he held—at least according to Kalianah—was someone R’shiel counted as a true friend.

  “Are you alone here?”

  “I don’t know. This place is huge. I hear things sometimes, but . . .”

  “Where? Where do you hear things?”

  “I don’t know . . . by the waterfall . . . the library . . . not that I’ve been in there much. I’m afraid if I enter that rabbit warren of a place, I’ll never find my way out.”

  The library. Mandah was right about it being a rabbit warren, but the Damin she remembered was a man of action, not learning. Would he be there, or somewhere else? Not that there was much to entertain a man like Damin in this place of no weapons and no hint of violence.

  But even if I can find him, how much help could he be?

  And then another thought occurred to her and she looked at the branch Mandah was still holding. “What were you banging on, by the way?”

  Mandah pointed behind her. “There’s a door in that cliff over there. It’s recently started opening for a moment or two with a blaze of blinding light, and then it closes before I can get to it. I’ve tried leaving by the entrance at the top of this place, but I keep running into some sort of invisible wall. I was hoping it might be a way out of here.”

  “Show me.”

  Mandah shrugged and led R’shiel the short distance to the cliff wall. Sure enough there was a simple, arched wooden door set into the cliff. R’shiel must have passed it a hundred times on her way to the amphitheater when she lived here.

  Not once had she seen it open. But then, when she lived here, Sanctuary was hidden out of time. Kalianah had brought it back for her. Did that mean all the souls waiting to enter the Seven Hells were finally able to do so now that it was back?

  It also made her wonder if Brak had known about the door when he helped her throw Sanctuary out of time. The notion raised a disturbing thought. Had Brak helped her, knowing then he was going to die in the quest to destroy the god, Xaphista, and locked Sanctuary away to expressly prevent R’shiel coming to find him after it was done?

  She pushed the thought away. Brak loved her. He would never do such a thing. He was probably as ignorant of Sanctuary’s true purpose as she was.

  “How often does it open?”

  “Who can tell? There’s no way to keep time in this place.”

  R’shiel studied the door for a moment longer, and then decided it could wait until she found Damin. After all, if it opened regularly, she could afford to miss a time or two.

  “Can you open it?” Mandah asked.

  R’shiel shook her head. “I doubt it. But I’m pretty sure I can go through it. Have you seen Damin around since you arrived?”

  “Damin Wolfblade? Founders, R’shiel, do your schemes and machinations involve the High Prince of Hythria as well?”

  “Not on purpose.” She didn’t mean to sound quite so defensive. Mandah just always seemed to have that effect on her.

  “It never is on purpose with you.”

  “I need to find him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that door is the gateway to the Seven Hells, Mandah, and if I’m going in there, I’d like someone I trust at my back.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Mandah tossed the branch aside and shrugged. “I trust you to do what you set out to do, R’shiel. Whether that is good for the rest of mankind remains to be seen.”

  “Then help me find Damin,” R’shiel said, “so we can find out.”

  Chapter

  41

  “HOW DID YOU meet the demon child?”

  Mica asked the question as they walked, hand in hand, toward the docks and their appointment to entertain the king of Fardohnya. Mica held Rakaia’s hand fast, as if he were afraid to let it go. The Glass River on their left was painted red by the setting sun, and the temperature had dropped enough for her to be glad of the cloak Mica had bought her in Vanahiem.

  Mica bounded along beside her like an excited child. He hadn’t stopped grinning since they left the bathhouse.

  His question irritated Rakaia a little. After what they had just shared—and Mica’s reaction to it—she expected to be the only woman in his thoughts. “I thought you wanted to know everything about me.”

  “I know about you now,” he said, his strong musician’s fingers holding her hand tight. “You used to be a princess and now you’re not. That doesn’t explain how you came to be in the demon child’s company.”

  She placed her head on his shoulder as they walked, the leather strap of his lyre case so old and supple it felt like velvet against her cheek. “Who cares about the demon child? You do understand that Hablet will kill me tonight as soon as he realizes who I am, don’t you?”

  Mica brought her hand up and kissed it, and then he hurried her over to the window of a milliner’s shop, displaying an array of finely crafted felt and feather hats. He made her face the window for a moment, so she could see her reflection.

  A stranger stared back at her. Rakaia’s once waist-length, light brown hair was cut off just below her shoulders and golden honey in color. Now it was dry and much shorter than before, the natural wave in her hair was allowed some freedom, and her face was scrubbed clean of the heavy eye makeup she usually wore.

  “Couldn’t we just run away, Mica?” she asked, refusing to acknowledge how different she looked. “Why even stay here in Bordertown? We could head south for Krakandar and be miles from here by the time they realize we’re not coming if you sing someone into giving us a couple of horses. You said Krakandar is where we’re going. Why delay that just to entertain a bored child?”

  “The king won’t have a clue who you are.”

  Reluctantly, Rakaia conceded he might be right. She barely recognized herself. “You are going to sing away his suspicions, aren’t you?” Although she had seen him make people do some remarkable things with his songs, the idea that her own father—or at least the man she’d grown up believing was her father—would not know her when she was standing right in front of him was still a
hard pill to swallow.

  “I hardly need to, but of course. I told you. He won’t have the foggiest idea who you are.”

  “What about Alaric?”

  “Who is Alaric?”

  “My brother. Well . . . the king’s son, at any rate. He knows me. And he’s a brat. He’ll say something even if he only suspects something is awry.”

  That’s how her real father had been arrested and tortured. Thanks to Alaric.

  “Then I will make him forget you, too.”

  She smiled. “Can you make him less of a brat while you’re at it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Suppose someone else on the ship recognizes me?”

  “I promise you. They won’t.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “Because even if you stood in front of them without a disguise, my lovely, they believe Princess Rakaia is a thousand miles from here, getting ready for her wedding to Lord Lecherous the Leering. They are not expecting you. So they won’t see you.” He stood behind her, holding her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at her reflection. “Look at yourself, Rakaia. You are nothing like you used to be.”

  “Then you’d better not call me Rakaia when we get there. That might be pushing our luck.”

  He spun her around, kissed her on the lips, and then took her hand again. “Come then, wife Aja. We have a king to entertain.”

  AS THE WEATHER was clear, and there really wasn’t room below deck, Mica’s impromptu concert was held on Wave Dancer’s foredeck. Mica and Rakaia were shown to a small circle of three chairs, for the king and his family, already set up and waiting. The sailor who told them where to stand informed them the king was currently having his dinner with his family and would be out when he was ready. Around them, other sailors lit the deck with lamps against the closing darkness.

  Rakaia’s heart was pounding. Mica calmly removed his lyre from its case and began to tune it, strumming a few notes, his eyes closed, as he checked the instrument’s pitch and tone. Rakaia stood behind him, her palms sweating as she tried to find a space in the shadows between the lanterns where nobody would notice her.