by Dana Marton
“You are not Kadar.” Lalandra pronounced the words like a judgment. “You wish for Karamur to fall in the next fight.”
“I served the city during the siege with my healing,” I reminded her.
Lalandra lifted her chin, and her cold gaze turned scolding. “Kadar warriors are the best fighters in the world. I do not think they needed help from anybody. I did not see this great deed of healing that you claim.”
Of course, she hadn’t. During the siege, Lalandra and the others had been barricaded in Lord Gilrem’s palace with their children.
“You wish to rule us all,” she accused.
I wished for nothing but peace. A child’s wish, I thought with heavy heart, when the whole world was at war.
She kept her chin up as she demanded, “Where are the High Lord’s other concubines?”
“You well know where they are, Lady Lalandra.” Dead. The most dreadful story I’d ever heard, jealousy leading to the murder of innocents. None of that had anything to do with me.
“Some say you killed them.” Menace hissed in Lalandra’s words.
By some, I was certain she meant herself. I prayed to the spirits for patience.
“Strange how you always manage to live,” Lalandra went on. “During the siege, did you not fall into fire? You protect yourself with an ill-gained power,” she said the words as if she was the High Lord himself, pronouncing judgment.
Clutching their charm belts, the other concubines nodded in agreement, their elaborately arranged braids bobbing up and down like a flock of chiri birds pecking for worms.
Lalandra stepped closer to me yet—we stood but a few steps apart—and pronounced her final judgment loudly enough for her voice to fill the hall. “Sorceress.”
Even as I moved forward too—I would not yield—the small hairs rose at my nape. To be charged with sorcery was the greatest sin among the Kadar.
But before I could defend myself against Lalandra’s charge, the carved doors guarding Pleasure Hall rattled. One of the servant girls, Natta, entered and hurried to me, her twin braids flopping behind her. Her wood-bottom shoes clop-clopped on the stones, then fell silent when she reached the thick carpet.
She nearly tripped on her long linen dress, but caught herself and curtsied smartly. She looked straight into my eyes and smiled, a familiarity for which most other concubines would have slapped her. I smiled back.
Her words echoed off the walls in the sudden silence as she said, “The High Lord requests your presence, my lady.”
Hate filled the room like smoke rising, twisting, reaching every crevice.
For a moment, as Lalandra’s gaze flared with fury, I thought she might reach out to claw my face. I would have to address her burning hatred when I returned. And I would address this budding concubine rebellion with the High Lord in but a moment.
I stood my ground long enough to make sure they understood I was not fleeing, then followed Natta, knowing I was leaving smoldering embers behind me, embers that could at any moment burst into dangerous flames.
We hurried down narrow hallways lit by flickering torches. Shadows danced on the wool tapestries that depicted great Kadar battles.
Natta left me at the High Lord’s quarters with a small bow and a big smile, hurrying on to finish her evening chores. She was a happy girl through and through, quick and smart, proud to be serving in the High Lord’s palace.
Batumar kept no slaves, unlike some of the other warlords. All who served the High Lord served him of their free will.
I had seen little discord within the palace walls until the concubines had arrived. On that thought, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Chapter Two
(Batumar)
“Lady Tera.” Batumar awaited me in his antechamber.
As always, his obsidian gaze made me feel like he could see inside my heart. The color of his eyes matched his heavy mane of hair. His shaved face was sharp angled. An old scar ran from the corner of his eye to his chin, unbalancing the line of his lips. Newer scars, from the siege, broke up the pane of his cheek on the other side. Power sat on his shoulders, which were wider in his wool tunic than any other warrior’s in full battle armor.
He was a fierce warlord through and through. I used to think he was the most fearsome man I had ever seen, but now the quickening of my pulse had nothing to do with fear.
“My lord.” My heart stammered as his dark gaze slowly traveled the length of my body.
Did he like my gown of red satin? Red and gold were the High Lord’s colors. The seed pearls that decorated the bodice caught the light of the torches, giving the whole dress a soft glow. The gold-embroidered hem swept the stones beneath my feet as I stepped forward, knowing that even in my finery I was not half as beautiful as Lady Lalandra.
The High Lord’s gaze reached mine at last, and I saw hunger flare. He reached for me. I went to him and he pulled me into his strong arms, burying his scarred face in my neck and inhaling deeply, as if searching for the scent of our long-past summer.
The winds blowing across the cliffs of the fortress city had turned cold of late. Even the High Lord’s palace walls couldn’t keep out the early winter chill. But heat radiated off Batumar’s great body, his arms around me a safe haven where I gladly rested.
A long moment passed before he raised his head and brushed his lips over mine, lingering, tasting me gently. My bones were melting by the time he withdrew.
“You looked troubled just now when you came in. Is everything well, my lady?”
His voice reached straight to my heart. I wished for nothing more than his lips back on mine.
“Fine well, my lord.” But then I remembered what I had meant to talk to him about. “The concubines have...concerns.”
His forehead furrowed. I ducked my head in shame.
He carried the weight of an entire island on his shoulders. Was I really so consumed by a small power struggle among concubines that I had forgotten the whole world was burning? I would handle the Lady Lalandra.
But before I could change the course of our conversation, he said, his voice suddenly weary, “Should I send them gifts?”
Concubines gained their status from the silks and satins and jewels that their lords gifted them with for their good service.
I stifled a sigh. “That might help. Maybe some furs for the winter.”
I hated the base ugliness of jealousy, that it could so easily set up tent in my very heart. “And southern wine,” I added.
Batumar’s expression softened. He reached up and brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “And what would you wish for, my lady?”
The easiest of all questions. “Only you, my lord.”
He offered a rare smile that rearranged the scars on his face. My bruised heart responded. How could it not? His features were too stark, his scars too numerous to ever call him handsome, but he was most precious in my sight. I loved him with all my heart.
He took my hand and drew me into his bedchamber, to the bed where we lay on top of the furs, reclining on tapestry pillows against the headboard, fully clothed. We often began our evenings that way, talking in the warm glow of the fire that burned in the hearth.
To my shame, my gaze searched the chamber for signs of Lady Lalandra’s presence the day before. I did not know what I expected to find, a veil or a silk stocking, but I saw nothing and swallowed a groan that I could be so foolish as to look.
Batumar gathered me against his side, my head resting on his wide chest. His heart beat strong and steady under my ear, his chest hard with muscles under my palm. I burrowed against him, trying to find the sense of peace that had eluded me all day.
The High Lord’s quarters were as simple as any warrior’s: a wool rug warmed the stone floor, a plain wooden chest at the foot of the High Lord’s bed, a small table covered in maps. Yet I felt more at home here than in my own luxurious chamber in Pleasure Hall.
Before I could ask Batumar about the maps, he kissed my hair. “I must leave in the
morning for Ishaf.”
Had the mystical three-headed talking warthog of Morandor trotted through the door, I could not have been more startled.
I raised my head to look at him. “My lord, the Gate cannot be reclaimed. You cannot leave the island.” Even if the Gate could be reopened, Batumar could not reach it through the ring of enemy soldiers.
He caressed my cheek with a finger callused from sword fight. “I mean to go by ship across the ocean.”
That had me sitting up fully. My heart lurched hard against my ribs. No one sailed the wild ocean.
Batumar turned away from me and reached over to pull one of the tapestry maps off the table. He laid it over us like a blanket and dragged his finger along the route he planned to take. He started on Dahru, our island, the largest of the Middle Islands, charting a course across the Mirror Sea to the Strait of Ghel that led to the wild ocean.
Then he dragged his finger over a wide expanse of blue, all the way to the largest landmass on the map, Felep, called the mainland by its inhabitants that were of many nations, from the city states of Ishaf and Ker to the kingless kingdom of the Selorm, and many other countries. Most of these realms had already been taken by the enemy and were part of the Emperor Drakhar’s growing empire these days.
Batumar nodded as if satisfied with his course. “The trip must be made quickly, before the season of storms begins.”
“There is no season of storms,” I cried in distress. “The storms do not cease at all.”
Endless hardstorms ruled the wild ocean throughout the year. Some believed the storms were at their quietest at the beginning of winter, but even so… “Nobody who has ever sailed the ocean has lived.”
“They did once.”
“Not since the hardstorms have come.”
Before that, the ocean had been calmer, if legends could be believed, but that had been so long ago as to be at the very edges of human memory.
Batumar ran his large hand up my back in a gentle caress then down again, letting it settle at my waist. “I shall go with the pirates. I have it on good account that an Ishafi merchant turned pirate is even now making repairs to his ship in Barren Cove. He will be leaving to return to Ishaf within a day.”
I stared at him, speechless.
The pirates were little more than a myth—a few scraggly ships now and then in a cove possibly hidden somewhere under the cliffs of Karamur. From time to time, they supposedly circled the Middle Islands and raided smaller merchant vessels.
Some merchants swore they had heard pirates brag about having crossed the ocean. Nobody but children believed those tales.
I searched Batumar’s gaze. “Why would the Ishafi let a pirate ship come into their harbor?”
“Because this pirate doesn’t attack Ishafi merchant ships.” Then he added, “I must go. I shall hire a thousand mercenaries in the free cities of the north. The bank of Ishaf holds some gold coin for me.”
A thousand mercenaries sounded a reasonable force. Yet I still did not like Batumar’s plan in the least. From what I had heard—mostly servants’ gossip—pirate ships were small sloops, built for speed.
“A pirate ship cannot carry a thousand mercenaries back to us.” The plan was madness. All of it.
I considered the courses served for dinner, whether one of the herbs might have been accidentally switched by the cook, replaced with something that could cause this kind of loss of sanity.
I surreptitiously checked Batumar’s pupils and laid a hand over his heart to see if his heartbeat was still steady. If I could puzzle out what herb he had eaten, I could give him the antidote. What did he eat that I did not?
He covered my hand with his. “The Landrians have a navy.”
A laugh escaped me.
Dozens of small island cities made up Landria, their people living in grand isolation to protect the secrets of their dye-making industry. They produced a startling purple color—somehow with the help of sea snails—that was their prime export and the basis of their wealth. The older their king grew, the more suspicious he became of foreigners, seeing them all as spies.
“A foreigner approaching one of their city gates is as likely to be shot through with an arrow as let in.” I repeated what I had heard from a wine merchant in the kitchen.
Batumar nodded. “If a person can even reach as far as setting foot on one of their islands. They have a full fleet of warships to ensure their isolation.” Then he said, “Yet I must try.”
I wished he wouldn’t.
“Landria is far south from the free cities where you mean to hire your mercenaries.” I marshaled my next objection. “And the lands in between are held by the enemy.”
Batumar pulled another tapestry map off the table and laid it on top of the first, then pointed out the journey from Ishaf to Landria. “I mean to free the lands in between. Starting with Seberon. I pledged Lord Karnagh my assistance. He and other Selorm lords fought for us in the siege of Karamur with their battle tigers.”
“But Castle Regnor has been taken. Lord Karnagh is thought to be slain,” I said with a heavy heart. The last we’d heard of Seberon—the kingless kingdom of the Selorm—their lands had been overrun, but a warrior queen had risen in the south, a foreigner, holding their last free city.
“Last Lord Karnagh had been seen, he was on the brink of death,” Batumar corrected, “and nobody has heard of him since. But death has a fair wide brink, my lady. You and I have both been there and have managed a return journey.”
I could scarce argue with that.
Batumar said quietly, “I must help the Selorm, if I can. Our honor demands it.”
I threw my hands up in defeat. “Oh, why not then the whole world, my lord. Easily done while you and your new mercenaries stop for your midday meal.”
And from the somber look in his eyes, I could see that he was thinking it. “Not nearly enough men, and no time,” he said at last. “We must cross the ocean with the Landrian warships during the spring lull.”
The spring lull was yet another myth, a handful of days at winter’s end, at around Yullin’s Feast, when the hardstorms were thought to weaken ever so slightly.
How I wished I could make him see reason. “You cannot mean to sail the ocean, then cut a swath through enemy troops, freeing castles as you go, then negotiate with the King of Landria for use of his navy and sail across the ocean yet again, all in a few mooncrossings.”
He tugged one of my braids free and wound a dark lock of hair around his finger. “Surprise will be on our side.”
“For certain.” I huffed. The enemy would not expect such a leap of insanity. “But how will the Landrian warships cross the wild ocean? Only the pirates know the way.” If even that much was true and not a myth they themselves created.
“I shall hire the Ishafi pirate to lead the Landrian navy,” Batumar said with confidence.
I could only stare at him as I imagined what the King of Landria would say to the suggestion that he turn his navy over to a pirate.
The whole plan was preposterous from beginning to end. The distance alone that would have to be covered… Impossible.
I ran my hand over the map that usually hung with all the others in the antechamber where the High Lord sometimes worked in the evenings, writing his letters or meeting with some of his most trusted advisors. I’d noticed some days ago that the maps had moved into his bedchamber. He had been planning this trip for a while. I thought he needed to plan it a good while longer yet, but I did not want to offend him by making that suggestion.
“You do not think my plan can be accomplished.” He loosened another braid, then another, dissembling the intricate arrangement Natta had labored over that morning.
I shook my head.
Batumar’s dark eyes seemed bottomless in the flickering light of the fire. “It is our only hope.”
“And if Emperor Drakhar’s sorcerer somehow reopens our Gate from afar while you are away? If more enemies arrive, they could destroy not only Karamur but all the Ka
dar strongholds, along with the Shahala lands.”
And, the spirits forbid, what if the enemy entered the Guardians’ Forgotten City? The Seela were the few remaining descendants of the First People, the custodians of the last of the ancient wisdom. The Forgotten City was the beating heart of our island. I feared that if it was destroyed, the whole island would simply sink into the sea.
Batumar relinquished the lock of hair he’d been playing with, took my hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed my knuckles. “The Gate will not fall.”
And I heard the rest in his voice. If the Gate fell, it would not matter whether he had left or stayed. If the Gate fell, we were doomed. All of us would perish.
“You cannot go on a journey through war-torn lands as a lone warrior,” I protested as I went into his arms. “Everyone will think you a spy. You will be pursued every step of the way.”
“I mean to go in disguise.”
As what? A lonely beggar?
Short of cutting off limbs, nothing could make him look anything other than what he was, the most powerful warrior of the land.
“As a merchant,” he said.
Better than a rattle-bone beggar, but still… I looked up at him. “Without trade goods? Without servants?”
He frowned. “I cannot take trade goods. The pirates would seize them.”
I laid my head back on his chest, while he returned to running his hand up and down my back. I desperately tried to think of something I could say to convince him to take me with him, and nearly fell off the bed in surprise when Batumar said in an even tone, “I wish to take you with me.”
My gaze snapped up to his once again. “Why?”
“As perilous as the journey might be, I wish you under my own protection.” He watched me carefully. “The Emperor knows of the prophecy that you are the one who will turn back the war.”
His voice tightened. “The Guardian of the Cave told me that the Emperor knew of the prophecy even before you were born. He sent a man to your mother to kill you upon your birth. The Guardian seems to believe your mother softened the man’s heart, so he could not kill you in the end. He sold you into slavery.”