by Janny Wurts
“It is an island kingdom,” explained the maid. “The Regent took pity on them during a diplomatic visit and bought their freedom. They have served out of gratitude since.”
“That was a kind act.” Glad she had not trusted the guardswomen, Elienne bent and began to wrestle with an immense potted plant. “Is his Excellency often moved to charity?”
“I wouldn’t know.” The maid sighed. “Lady, must you move that?”
Elienne gave the plant a determined shove. Branches swayed, bobbing small pink fruits precariously against stem moorings. The tree was top-heavy, and would likely upset if she disturbed it further.
“I suppose the thing will do well enough where it is.” Elienne critically surveyed the room and finally nodded in satisfaction. “That will do. And thank you.”
The maid’s reddened face reflected little appreciation for Elienne’s taste. “I’ll send a girl up to help tidy your hair and dress, with permission, Lady.”
Elienne hesitated. She disliked personal fuss. As Duchess of Trathmere, she had often declined the services of a maid, and since her arrival in Pendaire she wanted nothing better than to be left alone. “I’d rather manage myself.”
The maid pursed her lips with evident disapproval. Elienne’s labors with the furniture had badly mussed her dress, and her dark, copper-brown hair sported loosened wisps like a peasant woman’s. Should she appear in that state before Pendaire’s best blood, she would disgrace her royal partner.
Elienne sighed and tilted her head toward the reddened slice of sky visible through the nearest arrowslit. “It’s only sunset.” She smiled with girlish innocence. “I have until the ninth hour of the evening before the banquet, and nothing at all to do between. If I have to sit idle, I think the excitement will ruin me.”
“Very well, my Lady.” Dubious still, the maid curtsied and departed, weaving her way through a tortuous maze of tables, chairs, and hassocks toward the door.
Elienne sank into the nearest chair the moment the heavy, inlaid panel closed and left her solitary. She was hot and tired, and the excuse she had just uttered had been an outright lie. The necessity of acting and reacting with strangers who had no awareness of her recent loss strained her. Not even in Trathmere, as prisoner of the Khadrach, had she felt so bereft, and until now Darion’s difficulties had denied her the rest and quiet she needed to reach acceptance of foreign surroundings and the role she had agreed to play through.
Unbidden, Cinndel’s face arose in her mind as he had appeared the night his son was conceived. Elienne thrust the memory forcibly away. Darion’s uncertain succession endangered her own safety, and only the Prince’s enemies would gain advantage if she indulged grief to the exclusion of caution.
Reluctantly Elienne rose, pulled a stick of kindling from the bin by the fireside, and wedged it beneath the fruit tree. She gave the ornate pot an experimental shove. It tottered unsteadily. Satisfied that an easy push would topple the ungainly plant, Elienne crossed the chamber and sat down before the lady’s dresser. Brushes, combs, hairpins, and a manicure kit gleamed in neat array beneath a gilt-framed mirror.
Elienne sorted the items until she located a cuticle knife. Though the wrought gold haft was delicately set with pearls, the blade was tempered steel. Elienne experimentally pared a broken thumbnail. The knife parted it like butter. Nothing but the best would serve for one who might become Queen of Pendaire. Thoughtfully Elienne returned the instrument to a tooled leather sheath. Faisix would hardly have troubled to see her legally locked in a remote palace keep without devising a threat to match that advantage. She tucked the knife beneath the cuff of her dress and smoothed yellow silk over the lump; Darion’s enemies would not catch her entirely defenseless.
The light through the arrowslits slowly failed. Oppressed by the deepening shadows, Elienne located a flint striker and lit the candle on the dresser, then busied herself with the pins that held her hair. Freed, the locks tumbled down her back, rich as dark mahogany. Fanned in wide, curling waves over her shoulders, the hair provided a perfect screen for her hands should the guardswomen look unexpectedly through the door.
Elienne drew the mirrowstone from her collar. Silver highlights gleamed coldly over its polished face, eerie against the warm yellows of the candle flame, yet Elienne noticed little beyond the image beneath.
Darion lay still, exactly as she had last observed him. But now the dribbled stalk of the candle had burned out. Elienne observed a scene carved into clarity by the frosty glow of a Sorcerer’s soulfocus. Even as she watched, Taroith’s veined fingers entered into view and gently unfastened the Prince’s shirt. The Sorcerer bared a tautly muscled chest adorned by a pendant wrought with the golden stag device of Pendaire’s royal house. Elienne held still. The mirrowstone transmitted sound along with its image, but only faintly.
“Can you rouse him?” said a voice to one side—Kennaird’s, surely, by the impatient inflection.
“Not here.” Taroith leaned forward and placed his ear against Darion’s ribs. The soulfocus drifted lower, hovered closely over the Prince‘s forehead. A long moment passed. Then Taroith sighed. As he moved to rise, his hair snagged in the Prince’s pendant. He freed the lock with an abrupt gesture that roused a flickering sparkle of reflection from the mirrowstone’s depths. “Not here,” he repeated. “I fear Nairgen overdid himself. The Prince suffers severe overdose. To heal him now would require deeper trance than I wish to risk in this place.”
“He must appear at the banquet in three hours.” Kennaird sounded frantic.
“Then we must move,” Taroith said.
The image in the mirrowstone dipped and spun as hands lifted the unconscious Prince from the pallet. Elienne caught a blurred glimpse of shelves stacked with glass jars, a shuttered window, and the supine figure of a woman on the floor. Then a sound beyond her own door recalled all her attention.
She thrust the mirrowstone back under her collar. Someone climbed the stair without, and by the weight of the tread, sharply punctuated by the ring of booted heels, her visitor was male. Without protest from the guards, the latch tripped sharply. Elienne whirled as the door swung open.
Over the threshold stepped a man of medium build, resplendently dressed in a white tabard blazoned in gold with the royal stag device. Through the blurred shadow of twilight, Elienne saw a polite smile of welcome spread across Darion’s features.
“Good evening, my Lady Consort,” said the man in a light, pleasant voice. “I have waited long for this day. Permit me to express admiration for Ielond’s choice. He has sent a true beauty, far finer than my most fanciful dream. I hope you shall find happiness with me.”
Elienne barely noticed the compliment. Faisix had aptly demonstrated the powers of Pendaire’s masters to alter faces with illusion; the man was surely an impostor, shape-changed by sorcery to the Prince’s image. If she trusted that the mirrowstone from Ielond had reflected the real Darion, this one was surely a stranger and a threat.
“Come here, Elienne.” The man politely offered his hand. “Let me have a closer look at you.”
Elienne’s heart pounded with leaden strokes against her breast. The guardswomen were deaf. She could expect no help from them.
“My Lady?”
Elienne curtsied and forced a smile. Her lips responded woodenly. “There is better light here, your Grace.”
Her only choice was to play along, delay the man with coyness until she could catch him off guard. There was risk no such chance would present itself, but Elienne shied from the conclusion of that possibility. As the man wound his way between the furnishings, she rose warily, left her stool placed in his path, and rested one slippered foot on its embroidered cushion.
“I thought I was not to see you until this evening’s banquet.” Her voice, maddeningly, reflected false bravado rather than surprised nonchalance.
The man stopped before her. His smile brightened. Animate
d with life and spirit, the Prince’s face was handsome—not so gentle as Cinndel’s, but certainly not unpleasant. “I was impatient.” He studied her with frank admiration. “Can you blame me? And having stolen this glimpse of you, I become all the more so, Lady.”
He reached out as if to touch her fallen hair. Elienne kicked the stool at his shin and stepped back, but the man dodged lightly to one side.
“Minx.” With easy good humor, he moved again in pursuit. “You’ll not escape me. You are my Consort, by the seals of the Grand Council, and by Ielond’s writ. Do you play games with me for sport?”
“You’re a stranger.” Elienne paused, taut with alarm, behind a table. Her hands left sweaty prints on the rare wood, vividly betraying her fear. Yet subbornly she resumed her charade. “I would like to know you better. I cannot please a man I’ve only just met.”
“But you have.” The impostor stopped and leaned expectantly toward Elienne across a spread of ornaments on the tabletop. “You have pleased my eyes past bearing. I have but seven days to establish my right of succession. We’ll have time enough later for talk. Years’ worth.”
His hand shot out and seized Elienne’s arm. The grip was light, almost bantering, but Elienne saw threat in the contact.
She shoved the table rim hard into the man’s groin. Glassware pitched over the brink and struck, decking the parquet with a sparkling spray of costly fragments. The man gasped. But instead of losing his hold, his fingers tightened cruelly and he yanked Elienne to him. “Lady.” The word came half-strangled from his throat. For a long moment he wrestled for breath. “That was an affront. A man in Pendaire can face execution for striking a Prince.”
Elienne went lax in the impostor’s arms, and smiled, clothing the murder she felt inside with tenderness. “But I am no man,” she said softly.
He chuckled. “Bless Ma’Diere, you certainly aren’t.” Entirely without courtesy, he brushed the hair away from her face, leaned down, and kissed her mouth.
Elienne permitted him. She could do nothing effective with her arm pinned, and resistance would not entice the man to drop his guard. Though the touch of the man’s lips revolted her, she feigned response, grateful she was not the inexperienced virgin she had been made to appear. Fatigue and excessive responsibility had made Cinndel difficult to please in the last months before his death; this man’s wants were simpler, Elienne sensed, and when he raised his head at last, his face was flushed, and a light sweat shone on his brow.
“Ah, Missy, that was more polite.” But his grip on Elienne did not loosen, and his intention was evident. He wished to bed her ahead of the Prince. If he succeeded, her Consortship would be suspended until it could be proved she had sustained no pregnancy. There would be no way to avoid having Cinndel’s child ascribed to this stranger’s paternity. Should that happen, Elienne realized Darion’s chance, and her own, would be irrevocably lost.
Chapter 5
The Hand of the Healer
THE MAN easily lifted Elienne off her feet. “You’re a small thing,” he said, and stepped over the fallen glass toward the bedroom door.
Elienne leaned against his shoulder and teased his ear with her tongue. The taste was bitter, but she maintained her ruse. “Be easy with me, my Lord,” she whispered. “I beg you.”
The man squeezed her, studying her face in the firelight. “A moment ago you were willing enough to play rough.”
Elienne lowered her eyes. “Your pardon, Lord. My sister once said men prefer women who show a little spirit.”
“And did your sister teach you that kiss?” he mocked lightly.
Elienne flushed. Hoping her squirm would be mistaken for embarrassment, she buried her face in the loose satin that clothed the man’s arm, and strained to loosen her wrist from his hold. Once her hand was free to reach the knife in her sleeve, there would be no need to endure further.
The impostor’s smile returned. Reddened by firelight, his expression this time displayed wolfish eagerness.
Chilled even through the warmth of the man’s embrace, Elienne said, “Please, you’re hurting me.”
“All right, Missy.” The man became serious. “My Council members tell me that you were gently born. We’ll make that gently bred as well.” He laughed quietly to himself, as though wanting to taunt Elienne into further rebellion. Although the jest made Elienne’s pulse leap in her veins, she controlled her instinct to resist.
The man laid her on the wide bed in the darkness. The fingers that circled her wrist tightened cruelly as he brushed her forehead with his lips. But passivity could not conceal the heavy, racing pound of her own heart, loud in her ears over the distant rush of surf. The man seemed not to notice. “Shall we have light for our first time?” he said in her ear.
Elienne masked raging annoyance with complaisance. “If my Lord wishes.” The maneuver with the table had evidently warned the man off. He wanted light so he could keep an eye on her. Her only chance was to bait him until desire made him careless.
Elienne kissed the fingers that rose to caress her face. They tickled across her jawline and came to rest, heavy with implied threat, across the bared column of her throat. After a suggestive squeeze, the man released her wrist and fumbled after a striker for the unlit candlestick on the bedside table. The spark flared, gleamed whitely against a puckered scar crossing swarthy knuckles.
Fear numbed Elienne’s resolve. That same hand had drugged Darion. She reached to draw the knife then, despite the hold on her neck, but the man leaned suddenly over her, compelling her to wait. Her tenseness this time did not escape notice.
“Frightened, Missy?” he said softly.
Elienne swallowed and tried for a smile of seductive invitation. “Of what would I be frightened, my Lord?” The meek tone she intended came out sounding cowed, yet she had no other alternative. If she fought him openly, his size and weight would quickly overpower her.
Elienne threaded her arm beneath the impostor’s elbow and drew him into an embrace. His skin smelled sourly of ash soap and herbs. The odor repulsed her. But without use of her other hand she could not draw the knife, which waited cold and heavy in her sleeve. The man pressed against her and covered her lips with his mouth.
Elienne endured, and while he was occupied, explored the fine cloth of his tabard with spread fingers. What lay beneath roused a stab of warning. The man was muscled like a bull. He stretched out alongside and wound one arm under her shoulders. Elienne felt her wrist pinned helplessly beneath his weight. She tried in vain to shift position. The man kissed her again, demandingly. His free hand roved from her throat, across her breast, and downward. Overwhelmingly conscious her move must be made quickly, Elienne leaned into his embrace with a show of sudden passion. The man sought the fastening of her bodice. She rolled and managed to block him.
Undetered, he pulled clear and ran his palm, hard, down her leg. Though she had not planned to kick, he must have thought she might try. His booted foot ground her ankle into the coverlet. Elienne started in pain. Her show of acquiescence had not convinced him. She felt the limp silk of her chemise slide inexorably upward. Cold air raised gooseflesh on her exposed thighs.
With lips and tongue, she strove to delay him. But panic caused her to shape her response too thoroughly. The man broke into hot sweat, and a deep quiver shook his frame. Elienne immediately realized her mistake. The man was now inflamed enough to finish what he had started without need of further motive. His shaking fingers tore away her last, thin undergarment with a sharp jerk.
Terror exploded across Elienne’s mind. She twisted her face away from his kiss and clasped his broad back, desperate to free her pinned hand. The man rolled, half crushing her. He fumbled at the points that fastened his hose. A hard, sweaty fist yanked at knotted laces and jabbed Elienne in the stomach. She gasped. The man swore. His breath blew ragged and hot against her face. His belt buckle mashed her hip as he shifted against
her.
But in his haste, he miscalculated. Elienne seized her chance and tugged her numbed arm from beneath him. She shoved her freed hand between his shoulder and the moist flesh of his neck, the knife in her other sleeve almost within reach.
The man strained against her, intent upon conquest. He arched his back to hold her while he wrestled free of his tangled points. His shoulder quivered, dropped, and Elienne’s fingers closed at last over the knife’s pearl handle. Half-smothered by the animal heave of the man on top of her, she clawed the blade free of its sheath. Though the awkward angle of her arm prohibited a sure stroke, hesitation would place her beyond all remedy. As the man lifted himself to take her, she twisted the knife and struck.
The man felt her tense with the thrust. He jerked instinctively back. The blade’s sharpened edge glanced across bone and opened a gash in his scalp.
Blood coursed down Elienne’s wrist. Hot as tears, it splashed her face as the man flinched. His bellow of surprise stung her eardrum, and his hand closed reflexively, pinching the exposed flesh of her groin. She cried out. One fleeting, startled moment, his grip relaxed. She tore free. He cursed and pitched himself across the bed after her. Heavy fingers caught the trailing end of her hair.
Elienne lashed out. The man fell back with bloodied knuckles and a fist full of trimmed curls. His quarry withdrew, beyond reach.
“Animal,” said Elienne hoarsely as he dragged himself off the mussed coverlet and stood. The fine gold of his tabard was splashed red, and beneath, loosened points hung snarled like the frustrated remnants of a child’s thread game.
The man hitched at his hose. “I’ll have you executed.” He tossed away the severed hair.
“You’re not Prince Darion.” Elienne’s voice shook. She stood her ground behind a large wingchair, sticky fingers clenched around the little knife. “More likely you’ll face execution for laying hand on what isn’t yours.”
“Bitch.” The man reached up, felt the slice on the back of his head. “You’ll regret this.”
