Love and Sacrifice: Book Two of the Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  At first taking long walks around Lemhos had been enough to keep her mind occupied. She loved exploring the small side streets, seeing how the people lived, enjoying a freedom and leisure she had never known. She didn’t have to small talk or curtail her wandering for anyone else’s wishes. The Surelians were friendly but polite and could tell she wanted to keep her distance. They went about their business without feeling impelled to engage her in conversation.

  In time, she was familiar with the area and her walks didn’t satisfy her active mind any longer. She began visiting the famous museums, but found herself at a loss, as she was unable to read the Surelian exhibit plaques. Her knowledge of art was limited, so other than a general appreciation of what she considered pretty paintings, she felt confused.

  One afternoon she ventured into the villa’s library, hoping to find a book that would occupy her interest. She had seen the even larger library at The Shadows, of course, but had never ventured to look into the books – she always had far too much to do. Now she found this library daunting. She had no idea how the books were arranged. Many were on subjects she knew nothing about – others were in languages she did not know. Entirely humbled, she left the room packed floor to ceiling with books behind.

  The next day, Menders saw her sitting on the patio, raising the hem of one of her dresses to the shorter Surelian style, which was much cooler and more comfortable. He came over, complimented her work and then took a seat opposite her.

  “I ran across a couple of books that might be of interest to you,” he said quietly. “I’ve put them on the table in the hallway outside your room, if you’d be interested in having a look at them.”

  Varnia nodded silently, indicating permission when he asked if he could smoke a cigar. They sat together without speaking, she stitching, he puffing – both of them comfortable with silence.

  Menders had left her a simple travel guide to Lemhos and a novel based in Surelia. She’d already scanned a few pages of the novel and was anxious to read it. The travel guide was the sort of book to carry with her when she was rambling around the town.

  She opened the novel and became absorbed immediately. The late afternoon air was cooling and the patio became even more shadowy as the sun began to set.

  Varnia dropped the book as someone withdrew the pins from her coiled up hair, letting the long locks drop to the ground. She was so frightened her breath came short as someone stroked the long fall of her hair.

  “Mina, I’m so glad I found you,” a man’s voice whispered. “You stayed away for so long, I thought I would never see you again. Darling Mina.”

  Movement behind her, then one of the five permanent residents of the villa walked around in front of her. Varnia was frozen in place as the man smiled – and then the smile faded.

  He blinked and then stepped back.

  “I’m very sorry, young lady,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I thought – I thought you were my Mina. Your hair is so like hers. I’m very sorry.”

  Varnia forced herself to smile, but was unable to speak. She had never heard him coming up behind her – and though he was quiet and seemed gentle, he was mad.

  She was used to Kaymar, who was also mad – but his madness was under his control almost all the time. The five unfortunate men who lived here at Menders’ villa were not under control and needed very careful handling.

  “Good evening, Starnor.”

  Varnia had never been so glad to hear Menders’ voice. He stepped through the glass double doors from the villa dining room just as if he was having a casual look around his domain. The mad ex-assassin smiled suddenly and turned away from staring at Varnia as if he couldn’t really understand why she wasn’t someone else.

  “Menders!” he exclaimed, as if he hadn’t seen Menders in years, though Varnia had seen them speaking in the vineyard earlier that afternoon. “So good to see you! I was just speaking with this young lady. I thought she was someone else.”

  “This is Varnia Polzen,” Menders said conversationally, but with a firm note beneath the polished courtesy. “She is traveling with us.”

  “Oh yes. Miss Varnia, I’m very pleased to meet you,” Starnor said, smiling at her just a little too enthusiastically. He seemed agitated and worried. “Menders, have you seen Mina? It’s been a long while since I’ve seen her. It’s very late for her to still be away from home.”

  “I believe she’ll be coming in by the side gate,” Menders answered conversationally. “I saw her in town only a little while ago and she was coming this way.”

  “Please excuse me, I have to meet her,” Starnor said breathlessly, then rushed away across the darkening vineyard toward a gate on the far wall.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Menders said gently, sitting across from Varnia. “I never thought… Mina was his wife. She died years ago. She had raven black hair like yours, very long – like yours. Seeing you from behind must have reminded him. He had that trick of pulling out her hairpins. Drove her to distraction with it sometimes.”

  “He startled me,” Varnia said, dusting off the end of her long tail of hair before she began to coil it up again.

  “Yes,” Menders answered. “He’s harmless, has been known to do it to other women with black hair. It’s easy to distract him – he won’t even make it to the gate before he forgets why he’s going there. Watch him – see? The moment something catches his attention, he forgets what he was doing. Poor Starnor. He was such a bright and funny fellow.”

  “What happened to her – to Mina?”

  Varnia was startled to find herself asking the question. She was accustomed to a strict code of minding her own business. Menders didn’t seem at all surprised or displeased.

  “It’s an ugly story, so I’ll make it brief,” he answered. “Someone Starnor was assigned to shadow and assassinate discovered that plan and arranged for a group of Surelian assassins to enter Starnor’s home. Mina was there, alone. They killed her. It wasn’t a swift or merciful death. Poor Starnor came home and found her. His mind broke entirely and he’s never recovered.”

  Varnia said nothing, images flooding her mind, no matter how brief Menders’ story was.

  “If I believed he was a threat to you, I would take action immediately,” Menders told her after a moment. “If you’re uncomfortable about him, please tell me and I will make arrangements to have him watched when you’re out here.”

  Varnia thought for a moment.

  “I’m not afraid, now that I know,” she replied. “I see how you distracted him. You don’t need to do anything.”

  “You’ll let me know if that changes – if you feel frightened or worried?”

  Varnia nodded. She was watching Starnor, who had been distracted by the evening’s first fireflies. He was holding out his hand to them.

  “Some of us don’t seem to break,” Menders said quietly. “There have been times when I thought breaking like Starnor would be so much easier than enduring. Escape from some things would have been most welcome. I wonder what makes people different in that way.”

  Varnia was startled. She’d always seen Menders as extremely competent and controlled, able to rise to any challenge, always calm in the face of crisis. Was he admitting that he had his own troubles, his own memories that he buried and avoided – as she did?

  Menders rose after another moment.

  “I’ll leave you to your book,” he smiled, walking away in Starnor’s direction

  ***

  “It’s coming along,” Doctor Franz said enthusiastically, flexing Varnia’s right arm gently. She saw him regularly when he was with them in Surelia. It seemed that stopping work could cause a formerly active joint to protest. For her, it had been her right elbow. When they first left The Shadows, she could hardly sleep because of the pain. Her elbow had swelled suddenly, stiffening so badly she could hardly bend it.

  She’d followed Franz’s recommendations to the letter and now had very little pain. It would take time, he said, but time was something she had i
n abundance.

  “Continue as you have and I think you’ll have no more pain after another couple of weeks,” Franz smiled. “Anything else giving you the miseries?”

  Varnia shook her head. Then she looked right at him.

  “Yes? The piercing eyes look right into my soul,” he teased.

  “Starnor – he came up behind me the other day and pulled out my hairpins. I wanted to know if there is any special way I should treat him.”

  “Hmm. Yes, Menders told me about that. Now you know he might play that little trick, you won’t be likely to startle or scream – those are things that could frighten him and set him off. He isn’t violent, but he can get into crying fits that go for days if he isn’t given ramplane to calm him.”

  “Should I tell him that I’m not his wife?”

  “Just turn your face to him if he does it again. She had blue eyes – yours are gray. He’ll see that right away. That gives him a chance to understand that you aren’t Mina.” The doctor rearranged his instruments for a moment.

  “What you need to understand, Varnia, is that Starnor can’t come back into our world but we’re able to step into his. When he becomes fixated on finding his wife, it’s best to go along as if she will be coming through one of the gates – just as Menders did.”

  “But isn’t that like teasing him?” she ventured.

  “It would seem so, but to him, she is still alive, just beyond his range of sight. She’s out for a few minutes, or she’s late coming home. We used to try to explain to him that she was dead, but every time it was like he was finding her dead for the first time. He would be in agony. We know now that he will never be well again. His sickness is far too deep for anything we can do for him. So we go to where he is for a while, where Mina is just on her way home or will be here soon. He starts to go to the gate, gets distracted and forgets about finding her for a while.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Perhaps he gets distracted because he really knows she’s dead and not coming back,” Varnia said suddenly.

  Doctor Franz raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised,” he replied. “He knows, deep down, that Mina is dead. He found her body. But over the years, no-one has been able to help him accept it or live with that knowledge. Perhaps he simply can’t. When a man is devoted as he was and his line of work leads to his wife’s murder – that is a guilt that can destroy. His mind has found a way for him to avoid that knowledge.”

  Varnia thought about that for a while.

  “If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I have some books you can read,” Doctor Franz offered.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I would like to know more about this kind of sickness.”

  “We don’t know much,” Franz said. “Illness of the mind is a very new science. I’ll be off to The Shadows within a couple of weeks – the books I’m thinking of are in my office there. I’ll bring them back for you. You might also think of taking some classes here at the University next term – there are some that deal with this subject. You might have to scurry to keep up, but it would be of interest, I’m sure.”

  She smiled and rose.

  “Run on with you,” Doctor Franz laughed. He was the only person here in Surelia who knew that Varnia absolutely despised school. Though she knew he’d like to see her at the University, she also knew he would bring her those books.

  Lemhos, Surelia

  10

  Many Voices Whisper in a Shout

  “I

  truly believe she’s deaf,” Eiren said disgustedly.

  “Stupid is more like it,” Hemmett grumbled, thumping down his beer mug.

  The topic, once again, was Madame Spinta and her treatment of Borsen, who was absent from the table, which was set out under the grapevine shaded patio that evening. He’d endured an insulting diatribe from the housekeeper, who accused him of everything from having weaseled his way into the family to having lewd designs on Katrin. When she called him trash from the streets Borsen finally lost his temper and stormed off, even avoiding Menders’ attempt to stop him. That meant it was really bad, Katrin thought, because Borsen adored Menders.

  “She absolutely refuses to hear,” Menders sighed, his jaw tense. “I’m considering taking a house elsewhere.”

  “It might be the best thing to do,” Eiren agreed. “I’m appalled at her viciousness toward Borsen.”

  “This is absurd,” Katrin snapped abruptly.

  Everyone at the table fell silent, staring at her. She tossed her head.

  “Well, it is,” she asserted. “Here you are, in your own villa, Menders, considering moving to a house that isn’t yours because of her madness. We’re all sitting around fussing about this woman’s terrible behavior and Borsen’s out somewhere frying his skull in the sun when he should be here with us! Who does she think she is?”

  Menders was obviously squelching a smile.

  “That question has crossed my mind, little princess. Madame Spinta is very inflexible and unfortunately, Borsen has become her target.”

  “Oh, stop trying to analyze her nonsense,” Katrin interrupted heatedly.

  Hemmett grinned to himself and poured a glass of beer for her, pushing it across the table. “Have this, Willow, it’s cold.”

  Katrin sipped it slowly, but her temper didn’t cool. She was not going to let some old vulture of a housekeeper ruin this trip. She glanced over at Varnia, who was also furious. The older girl met her gaze.

  The foundation of Madam Spinta’s prejudice against Borsen was the annual diaspora of Mordanian City Thrun into Surelia. City Thrun had left their traditional nomadic lifestyle to pursue what they believed would be easy living in Mordanian cities. When they encountered the almost universal Mordanian hatred of their race and found no-one would employ them, they turned to theft, begging and prostitution out of desperation.

  City Thrun kept one Thrun tradition – migration to greener pastures with the seasons. Any City Thrun who could scrape passage on a ferry made his way to Surelia in late autumn, escaping the bitter Mordanian winter, much to the consternation of the Surelians. The Surelian crime rate skyrocketed in the winter months, until springtime, when the City Thrun returned to Mordania.

  “I know it’s frustrating and that it seems as if I’m doing nothing, Katrin,” Menders explained. “In other circumstances, I would just go and have it out with Madame Spinta – you know I would. But that would upset the men who live here.”

  “I’ve tried talking to her too, darling,” Eiren added gently. “She does not hear that Borsen is no threat to you and very dear to us all. It would be best for everyone if we left.”

  Katrin nodded – and then stood up very suddenly.

  “No, it wouldn’t. I’m going to have a word with her myself.”

  “Katrin, it’s probably best not to,” Menders began.

  “Is she a Mordanian citizen?”

  “Yes she is,” Menders answered, looking puzzled. “Her Surelian name is from her late husband.”

  “If I’ve got to be a damn princess, at least I can have the comfort of being able to issue a command,” Katrin declared. “I won’t scream or shout. No-one will hear me. This is going to stop.”

  “Yes.” Varnia’s voice was low, but intense. Katrin looked at her again. Varnia nodded back.

  Not waiting for anyone to tell her otherwise, Katrin turned and walked quickly into the house, making a beeline to the room Madame Spinta used as an office.

  She rapped briskly at the door and entered. Madame Spinta looked up, startled. She scrambled to her feet and managed an awkward curtsey.

  “Yes, Your Royal Highness?” she asked unctuously.

  “Madame, I am very angry and disturbed by the way you have been treating my cousin, Borsen,” Katrin said as majestically as she could, keeping her voice icy and drawing herself up to her full height. “You will treat him with the respect that he deserves.”

  “I only look to your welfare,
Your Highness,” Madame Spinta oozed. “In such a matter, someone who is your elder is a better judge...”

  “Perhaps you forget I’m a Princess of Mordania,” Katrin interrupted, feeling her eyes burning into Madame Spinta’s. The housekeeper tried to maintain her place in their staredown but failed, letting her eyes drop.

  “You’re in danger of being taken advantage of by that piece of trash,” the woman muttered.

  “You live in your own world, Madame,” Katrin replied harshly. Stunned, the woman looked directly at her for the first time. “Borsen is not interested in women. Borsen is interested in men. He’s a nancyboy. He would not sleep with me if I paid him to!”

  “Wh… Why didn’t anyone tell me that?” Madame Spinta gasped.

  “For the gods’ sakes, you’ve been told dozens of times! You’ve upset my cousin and made accusations against him that are completely unfair and that show how small and mean your mind is.” Katrin was infuriated. She kept it in check, channeling her rage as quickly as she could to come up with words that would work with this obtuse woman.

  Madame Spinta stared up at Katrin, who suddenly felt ten feet tall.

  “Menders is considering moving from this house, but he’s forgetting just whose house it is and that you are here as his employee,” Katrin drove on. “I’m sure he could find a housekeeper who would be more polite to members of his family. Borsen is his nephew. There is no doubt about it. The Highest Chieftain of the Thrun has confirmed it.”

  “A savage?” Madame Spinta blurted, her tone snide. She’d found her foothold. Her prejudices made her bold.

  Suddenly Katrin understood why Menders and Eiren wanted to retreat. Talking to the woman was like trying to carry water in a sieve. No matter how hard you tried, you accomplished nothing and became exhausted in doing so.