Verna and Warren, having both grown up at the Palace of the Prophets, had known each other nearly their whole lives. Her gift as a sorceress was destined to be used to help train young wizards, while his gift as a wizard destined him toward prophecy.
Their paths didn’t cross in a serious way until after Verna returned to the palace with Richard. Because of Richard and his huge impact on life at the palace, events brought Verna and Warren together, and their friendship grew. After Verna was named Prelate, during their struggle against the Sisters of the Dark she and Warren had depended on each other for their very lives. It was during that struggle that they had become more than friends. After all those years in the palace, only now had they really found each other, and found love.
At the thought of what she had to tell him, her smile faded.
“Warren,” she whispered, “are you awake?”
“Yes,” came a quiet reply.
Before he could have a chance to rise and take her into his arms and she lost her nerve, she stepped into his tent and blurted it out.
“Warren, I’ve made my decision. I’ll have no argument from you. Do you understand? This is too important.” He was silent, so she went on. “Amelia and Janet are my friends. Besides being Sisters of the Light in enemy hands, I love them. They would do the same for me, I know they would. I’m going after them, and any others I can rescue.”
“I know,” he whispered.
He knew. What did that mean? Silence dragged on in the darkness. Verna frowned. It wasn’t like Warren not to argue about such a thing. She had been ready for his argument, but not his calm acceptance.
Using her Han, the force of life and spirit through which the magic of the gift worked, Verna lit a flame in her palm and passed it to a candle. He was huddled on his blanket, his knees pulled up and his head resting in his hands.
She knelt down before him. “Warren? What’s wrong?”
His face came up. His blue eyes were rimmed with red. His face was sickly pale.
Verna clutched his arm. “Warren, you don’t look well. What’s wrong?”
“Verna,” he whispered, “I have come to realize that being a prophet is not the wonder I had imagined.”
Warren was the same age as Verna, but looked younger because he had remained at the Palace of the Prophets, under its spell that retarded aging, while she went on her twenty-odd-year journey to find Richard. Warren didn’t look so young at the moment.
Warren had only recently had his first vision as a prophet. He had told her that the prophecy came as a vision of events, accompanied by words of the prophecy. The words were what were written down, but it was the vision that was the true prophecy. That was why it took a prophet to truly understand the meaning of the words; they invoked the vision that was being passed on from another prophet.
Hardly anyone knew this; everyone tried to understand prophecy by the words. Verna now knew, from what Warren had told her, that this method was inadequate at best and dangerous at worst. Prophecy was meant to be read by other prophets.
She frowned. “Have you had a vision? Another prophecy?”
Warren ignored the question, and asked one of his own.
“Verna, do we have any Rada’Han with us?”
“The collars around the young men who escaped with us are the only ones. We didn’t have time to bring any extras. Why?”
He put his head back in his hands.
Verna shook a finger at him. “Warren, if this is some trick to try to get me to stay here with you, it won’t work. Do you hear me? It won’t work. I’m going, and I’m going alone. That’s final.”
“Verna,” he whispered, “I have to go with you.”
“No. It’s too dangerous. I love you too much. I won’t risk anyone else. If I have to, I will order you, as Prelate, to stay here. I will, Warren.”
His head rose again. “Verna, I’m dying.”
Icy goose bumps tingled across her arms and thighs.
“What? Warren—”
“I’m having the headaches. The headaches from the gift.”
Verna was choked silent with the realization of the deadly nature of what he had just said.
The whole reason the Sisters of the Light took boys born with the gift was to save their lives. Unless schooled, the gift could kill him. The headaches were a manifestation of the fatal nature of the gift going awry. Besides providing the Sisters with control over the young wizards, the most important function of the collar was its magic, which protected the life of the boy until he could learn to control his gift.
Because of all that had happened, Verna had taken Warren’s collar off long before it was customary.
“But, Warren, you’ve studied a long time. You know how to control your gift. You shouldn’t need the Rada’Han for protection any longer.”
“If I was an ordinary wizard, that may be true, but my gift is for prophecy. Nathan was the only prophet at the palace in centuries. We don’t know how the magic works in a prophet. I only recently had my first prophecy. It signifies a new level of my ability. Now, I’m having the headaches.”
Verna was suddenly in a panic. Her eyes were tearing. She threw her arms around him.
“Warren, I’ll stay. I won’t go. I’ll help you. We’ll do something. Maybe we could take a collar off one of the boys and you could share it. That might work. We’ll try that first.”
His arms pulled her tight. “That won’t work, Verna.”
A sudden thought flashed into her mind, making her gasp with relief. It was so simple.
“Warren, it’s all right. It is. I just realized what we can do. Listen to me.”
“Verna, I know what—”
She shushed him. She held him by the shoulders and looked into his blue eyes. She brushed back his wavy blond hair. “Warren, listen. It’s simple. The reason the Sisters were founded was to help boys born with the gift. We were given Rada’Han to protect them while we teach them to control their gift.”
“Verna, I know all that, but—”
“Listen. We have the collars to help them because we don’t have wizards who can do what is needed. In the past, greedy wizards refused to help those born with the gift. An experienced wizard can join with your mind and pass on the protection—show you how to put the gift right. It’s simple for a wizard to do, but not a sorceress. We need only to visit a wizard.”
Verna pried the journey book from her belt and held it before his eyes. “We have a wizard. Zedd. All we have to do is talk to Ann, and have her and Zedd meet us. Zedd can help you, and then you’ll be all right.”
Warren stared into her eyes. “Verna, it won’t work.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know. You don’t know, Warren.”
“Yes I do. I have had another prophecy.”
Verna sat back on her heels. “You have? What was it?”
Warren pressed his fingertips to his temples. She could see that he was in pain. She knew that the pain of the headaches from the gift were excruciating. In the end, if not corrected, they were fatal.
“Verna, now you listen to me for a change. I have had a prophecy. The words aren’t important. The meaning is.” He took his hands away from his head and looked her in the eye. In that moment, he looked very old to her. “You must do what you plan, and go after the Sisters. The prophecy didn’t say whether you will succeed, but I must go with you. If I do anything else, I will die. It’s a forked prophecy—an ‘either-or’ prophecy.”
She cleared her throat. “But… surely, there must be something…”
“No. If I stay, or if I try to go to Zedd, I will die. The prophecy doesn’t say that if I go with you I will live, but it does say that going with you is my only chance. End of discussion. If you make me stay, I will die. If you try to take me to Zedd, I will die. If you want me to have a chance to live, then you must take me with you. Choose, Prelate.”
Verna swallowed. As a Sister of the Light, a sorceress, she could tell by the distinctive murky cast to his eyes that
he was in the pain of a headache from the gift. She also knew that Warren would not lie to her about a prophecy. He might pull some trick to go with her, but he would not lie about a prophecy.
He was a prophet. Prophecy was his life. Maybe his death.
She took his hand up in hers. “Get some supplies together. Get two horses. I have to go tell Adie something, and then I must talk to my advisors, let them know what to do while we’re gone.”
Verna kissed his hand. “I won’t let you die, Warren. I love you too much. We’ll do this together. I’m not sleepy. Let’s not wait till morning. We can be on our way in an hour.”
Warren drew her to him in a thankful embrace.
24
From the solace of the shadows, he watched as the middle-aged man closed the door and stood in the dim hall a moment to tuck in his shirt over his potbelly. The man chortled to himself and then thumped off down the hall to disappear as he descended the stairs.
It was late. It would be several hours yet before the sun was up. With the walls painted red, the candles set before silvered reflectors at either end of the narrow hall were able to provide precious little useful light. He liked it that way—the way the comforting cloak of shadows in the pit of the night lent its mood to such nefarious needs.
Debauchery was best indulged in the night. In the darkness.
He stood awhile in the quiet obscurity of the hall, savoring his desire. It had been too long. He let his lust have rein, and felt its glorious, wanton ache fill him.
He closed his mouth and breathed through his nose to better experience the range of aromas, both transcendent and abiding. He put his shoulders back and used his abdominal muscles to draw slower, deeper breaths.
He counted a variety of scents, from the smells men carried in and took away with them back to their own lives, the smells of their work—horse, clay, grain dust, the lanolin soldiers used in the care of leather uniforms, and the oil they used for sharpening their weapons, to a redolent wisp of almond oil, and the stale dirt and wet wood of the building.
It was an afferent feast that was only just beginning.
He glanced the length of the hall again, checking. He heard no sounds of lust coming from any of the other rooms. It was late, even for an establishment like this. The fat, potbellied man was probably the last of them, except for himself.
He liked to be last. The evidence of the events before he arrived, and the lingering smells, gave him a rush of sensation. His senses were always heightened in his aroused state, and he valued all the details.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the throbbing of his need. She would help him. She would sate his desire; that was what they were here for. They offered themselves willingly.
Other men, like the potbellied man, simply threw themselves on a woman, grunted in a moment of satisfaction, and it was over. They never gave thought to what the woman was feeling, to what she needed, to giving her satisfaction. Those men were no more than rutting beasts, ignorant of all the details that could add to the climax for both. Their mind’s eye was too focused on the object of their lust; they didn’t see the integral parts of the wider setting that led to true satisfaction.
It was the fleeting, the ephemeral, that created a transcendent experience. Through uncommon perception, and his singular awareness, he could net such evanescent events and commemorate them forever in his memory, thus giving the transient nature of satisfaction permanence.
He felt fortunate that he could see such things, and that he, at least, could bring fulfillment to women.
At last, he took a settling breath and then advanced silently down the hall, marking the way the shadows and tiny rays of light mirrored off the silvered candle reflectors slipped across his body. He thought that if he was mindful, he might someday be able to feel the touch of the light, and of the dark.
Without knocking, he opened the door the potbellied man had come from and stepped into her room, gratified to see that it was nearly as dim as the hall. With a finger, he shut the door.
Behind the door, the woman was just pulling her panties up her legs. She spread her knees and squatted a bit, drawing them up tight against herself. When her sky-blue eyes finally turned up to look at him, her only reaction was to toss the sides of her robe together over the rest of her bare body and casually flip the silk belt together into a loose knot.
The air carried the odor of the hot coals in the warming pan under the bed, the weak but clean aroma of soap, the light fragrance of body powder, and the cloying scent of a sickly sweet perfume. But pervading it all, like the darkness that shaped shadows, was the lingering smack of lust, pointed with the arresting scent of semen.
The room had no windows. The bed, covered with stained, rumpled sheets, was pushed into the far corner. Even though it wasn’t large, the bed took up a good part of the room. Against the wall, beside the head of the bed, sat a small, simply made pine chest, probably for personal items. On the wall over the head of the bed hung an ink drawing of two people coupled in passion. It left nothing to the imagination.
A washbasin sat centered on a wobbly-looking cabinet beside her, behind the door. In its edge, the white washbasin had a stained, kidney-shaped chip, with a crack that looked like an artery coming from the kidney. The cloth hanging over the side of the basin still dripped. The milky water in the basin gently sloshed from side to side. She had just washed herself.
They each had their own habits. Some didn’t bother to wash, but they were usually the older, unattractive ones who were paid little, and cared little. He had noticed that the younger, prettier, more expensive women washed after each man. He preferred the ones who washed before he came to them, but in the end, his lust overrode such trivial matters.
He idly wondered if those he had been with who were not professionals ever gave thought to such things. Probably not. He doubted that others pondered such curious particulars. Others gave little thought to the texture of details.
Other women, women looking for love, satisfied him, but not in the same way. They always wanted to talk, and to be wooed. They wanted. He wanted. In the end, his want overrode what he would prefer, and he gave them some of what they wanted before his needs could be satisfied.
“I thought I was finished for the night,” she said. Her words came out silky smooth, with a pleasant, pert lilt, but bore no real interest at the prospect of another man this late.
“I think I’m the last,” he said, trying to sound apologetic so as not to anger her. It wasn’t as satisfying if they were angry. He liked nothing more than when they were eager to please.
She sighed. “All right, then.”
She showed no fear at having a man simply walk into her room without knocking, even though she was hardly wearing anything, nor did she make any demands for money. Silas Latherton, downstairs, with his cudgel and a long knife in his belt, made sure the women had nothing to fear. He also didn’t let anyone go up the stairs unless they paid in advance, so the women didn’t have to be bothered with the trouble of collecting money. It insured that he, rather than they, kept control of the income, and its distribution.
Her short, straight blond hair was disheveled, from mister potbelly, no doubt, but he found its disorder alluring. It was a suggestive indication of what she had just been doing. It lent her an erotic look—a look he very much liked.
Her body was shapely and firm, with long legs and wonderfully formed breasts, at least what he had seen of her body before she had thrown closed her robe. He would see it again, and could wait.
The anticipation added to his excitement. Unlike her other men, he was in no rush to have it over. Once it began, it would be over all too quickly. He could never stop himself, once it began. For the moment, he would relish all the little details, so that he could capture them in his memory for all time.
She was more than simply pretty, he decided. She was a creature possessed of features that would fire men’s minds with obsessive memories of her, and make them return time and time again
to try, if only for fleeting moments, to possess her. The confidence with which she carried her body told him that she knew this. The frequency with which men spent money to have her was a constant reinforcement of that confidence.
Those features, though, no matter their grace and haunting beauty, had an acidic edge to them, a harshness that betrayed her true character. No doubt other men saw only the sweet face and never noticed.
He noticed. He noticed such subtle things, and he had seen this detail often. It always looked the same. It was a baseness her fair features couldn’t hide from one such as himself.
“Are you new?” he asked, even though he knew she was.
“First day here,” she said. He knew that, too. “Aydindril is big enough to mean clients for me, but with a huge army here, it’s all the better. Blue eyes around here aren’t all that common; my blue eyes remind the D’Haran soldiers of girls from home. So many extra men mean women like me are in greater demand.”
“And it insures a better wage.”
She allowed herself a small, smug, knowing smile. “If you couldn’t afford it, you wouldn’t be up here, so cut the complaints.”
He had only meant to make an observation, and regretted the way she took it. Her voice betrayed an underlying, acerbic temperament. He sought to smooth away the ripple of her displeasure with him.
“Soldiers can sometimes get rough with a young woman as attractive as you.” The compliment didn’t register in her sky-blue eyes. She had probably heard it so often that she was numb to such praise. “I’m glad you came to Silas Latherton,” he went on. “He doesn’t let any of his clients rough up the young ladies. You’ll be safe, here, under his roof. I’m glad you came here.”
“Thanks.” Her tone carried no warmth, but the ripple, at least, had been smoothed. “I’m glad to hear his reputation is known to his clients. I got slammed around, once. I didn’t like it. Besides the pain, I couldn’t work for a month.”
“That must have been terrible. The pain, I mean.”
She tilted her head toward the bed. “You going to take off your clothes, or what?”
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