R’shiel looked puzzled, uncertain. Korandellan looked decidedly unhappy.
“Is this true?” she asked the Harshini king. “Have you done something to me that stops me feeling those things?”
“It was necessary, child,” Korandellan told her, as incapable of lying as he was of causing pain.
“But it can’t be,” she insisted. “I have no holes in my memory. I remember everything. And everyone.”
“And yet you feel nothing?” the god asked. “You feel no loss for your friends, no anger at being betrayed, no fear for their safety? Take my advice, leave these walls for a time and see if you feel the same. When you wish to return to your friends, call me. I will see you delivered safely to them.”
The god was gone an instant later, leaving a very confused young woman behind. Brak glanced at the king and shook his head. “You cannot fight the inevitable, Korandellan.”
The king sighed. “I’m Harshini, Brakandaran. I cannot fight anything.”
CHAPTER 17
Adrina intended to make Cratyn pay for striking her, and pay dearly. Such an act was beyond unforgivable. In the finest traditions of mort’eda—the ancient Fardohnyan art of revenge—she quite coldly and deliberately planned to make him rue the day he ever laid eyes on her.
Her first step was acquiescing to his demands. Overnight, Adrina became the perfect Karien Princess—so perfect that it brought suspicious stares from Madren and Vonulus, both of whom viewed her transformation with suspicion. Lacking proof to the contrary, however, there was little they could do, given Adrina’s exemplary behaviour. Cratyn didn’t seem surprised. He no doubt considered it a direct result of his ultimatum, and Adrina was happy to let him think that way until she was ready to teach him otherwise.
Adrina dressed according to Karien custom, wore her hair in a snood, as was proper for married Karien Ladies, and followed Cratyn the required three paces behind him whenever they appeared in public together. She converted to the Overlord with remarkable conviction and even attended morning prayers in the chilly Temple with Queen Aringard each morning at dawn. She embroidered with her ladies and planned menus with commendable frugality. She gave alms to the poor on Fifthdays and met with the nobles of her husband’s court with eyes lowered demurely. She wore no cosmetics and trimmed her long nails to the short blunt shape the Kariens preferred. In short, she gave nobody a single excuse to fault her behaviour.
Of course, there were any number of ways to get at Cratyn, the easiest target being the hapless Lady Chastity.
Adrina suddenly decided that she preferred the Lady Chastity’s company to all others’. She began to foster a friendship with the girl that culminated some three weeks after her wedding in a long session of “girl-talk”, which centred mostly on Cratyn. A single afternoon was all it took to reduce the poor girl to tears as Adrina waxed lyrically about the prince, about how many children they would have, about how handsome he was and how lucky she was that some other woman hadn’t snatched him up before now. When Chastity had all she could stomach she excused herself hastily. Adrina could hear her sobbing from down the hall.
Teasing Chastity was poor sport, though, and it put Cratyn in a foul mood. He burst into her rooms as she bent over her needlework and ordered Tamylan out, his pale face flushed with rage.
“What did you do?”
“I wasn’t aware that I had done anything, your Highness. Could you be a little more specific?”
“The Lady Chastity is distraught! What did you say to her?”
“We were merely discussing married life. I was endeavouring to enlighten her about the joys of conjugal bliss.” She smiled at him sweetly and added, “Such that it is.”
“You are not to discuss such things with her!”
“Why ever not?” There was nothing she had said or done that he could fault her for without crossing into dangerous moral territory, and they both knew it. “Could it be that the Lady Chastity still harbours some affection for you, my dear? Now that would be awkward wouldn’t it, you being married to me…”
She let the rest of the sentence hang. The young prince stormed out of the room, muttering to himself about foreign whores.
Adrina was getting very tired of being referred to as a foreign whore.
But there were other ways to punish him. Her first real chance came when they began their preparations for their trip to the border. Adrina held Cratyn strictly to his promise to see her accommodated in a manner befitting her station, and by the time they left Yarnarrow, her entourage was almost as large as the force of knights and foot soldiers accompanying them. She would happily have beggared him, given half a chance, and it was only Jasnoff’s intervention that prevented her from doing just that. As soon as the king complained, Adrina ceased her outrageous demands, but by then the damage had been done. Adrina and her ladies were going off to war in style.
Adrina’s most subtle, and by far her most effective revenge she aimed at Cratyn’s manhood. The nuns had dutifully visited Adrina the day after her wedding to discuss her cycle in rather unpleasant detail, and they determined the most opportune time to conceive was eight days after the wedding. Adrina’s bed remained empty until that time. When the designated night finally arrived, Adrina excused herself early and spent a considerable amount of time preparing for Cratyn’s visit, including preparing a small quantity of the mixture that would ensure that in the unlikely event that Cratyn actually desired her, his body would not respond.
Getting Cratyn to accept the laced wine had been easy. She had a feeling he could only bring himself to touch her if he wasn’t entirely sober. She then waited, with an expectant look, for Cratyn to make the first move. His fumbling and ultimately futile attempts to consummate their union left her weak with ridiculing laughter. Cratyn fled the chamber in embarrassment and she did not lay eyes on him for two whole days afterwards. Altogether an entirely satisfactory outcome, she decided.
But Adrina was determined that no child would ever come from this union, so she set about making certain it never did. She knew enough herb lore to ensure she would not suffer an unwanted pregnancy—it was a necessity for any woman in a society where court’esa were the norm. But the easiest way to prevent a pregnancy was simply not to let Cratyn into her bed on the days designated by the nuns as suitable. There was also the added bonus that if the marriage remained unconsummated for a year and a day, under Karien law she would be free of Cratyn entirely.
One of the lesser-known advantages of being instructed in the arts of love by a court’esa was learning how to cool a man’s ardour as easily as arousing it. It was a skill every court’esa owned—even professional lovers needed a night off occasionally—but it was a skill rarely passed on to their masters or mistresses. If one’s paramour knew what one was up to, it was impossible to guarantee success. It only worked on an inexperienced lover, and that description fitted Cratyn better than his custom-made armour. There were drugs too, one could use, although they were a closely guarded secret among the court’esa. Adrina had extracted those secrets from Lynel, a dark-eyed court’esa from Mission Rock in southern Fardohnya, for the promise of a minor title. So grateful had she been to learn the arts and acquire the drugs, that she even kept her promise, and as far as she knew, Lynel was still happily ensconced in his own small manor near Kalinpoor on the Jalanar plains. In the days and weeks that followed her marriage to Cratyn, she often had cause to silently thank the man.
But her revenge didn’t stop there. While it was intensely satisfying to her to watch Cratyn crumble with mortification every time she glanced at him, the real fun came from making it known that the Crown Prince of Karien was impotent.
Her first step was to cry, quite convincingly, on Madren’s shoulder about her inability to arouse her husband. Madren, of all her retinue, was the most suspicious and the most watchful. Adrina blamed herself, of course and almost choked when Madren delivered her stiff and rather unimaginative suggestions on how to deal with the situation. As she had made certain that
the servants would overhear her heartbroken confession, within a day the news was all through the castle. Tamylan reported that the kitchens were abuzz with rumours and that even the stableboys had heard. By the time their vast caravan left Yarnarrow there was not a man or woman in the castle, serf or noble, who had not heard the rumour that Cratyn’s manhood was in doubt.
The effect such rumours had on Chastity was predictable. The girl was torn between horror that her love might be impotent and delight that he had not slept with Adrina. That the pale skinned blonde lusted after Cratyn was so obvious, Adrina wondered that she hadn’t been hauled off and stoned for her adulterous thoughts. On the other hand, there was many a duke who would have preferred a Karien queen, and Adrina wondered if she would survive the birth of a son, should she be so foolish as to conceive. A claimant to the Fardohnyan throne did not need a Fardohnyan mother to raise him, and everybody knew how perilous childbirth could be.
Adrina refused to give any of these fanatics an opportunity to rearrange the world to their liking. She would suffer the humiliation of Cratyn only coming to her rooms when she was likely to conceive; she would tolerate Madren’s hawk-like scrutiny and Vonulus’ pious instruction. She would bear King Jasnoff’s obvious distaste and Queen Aringard’s sour disapproval. She would even put up with the miserable Karien weather.
Until she found a way out of this mess, Adrina didn’t really have much choice.
Tristan was predictably unhappy about being ordered to the border, but as she had promised Cratyn she wouldn’t speak to him alone, she had not had the chance to explain it to him before they left Yarnarrow. In fact, getting a message to Tristan became more and more important as they drew closer to the border. She was afraid he would do something reckless. He knew the terms of the agreement under which he and his soldiers were in Karien, and knew that she was flying in the face of Hablet’s express wishes by ordering her Guard to the front.
Hablet wanted the Hythrun so involved in the Medalon conflict that they wouldn’t notice the direction his army was heading when then crossed the southern border of Medalon. Loaning her Guard to Cratyn to ensure a quick victory in the north was not liable to help her father’s cause, and she was far more concerned about his reaction than anything Cratyn might threaten her with. Hablet was not a man who took disruption of his plans well. The problem kept her awake night after night, until one morning, as she sat on a small stool in her sumptuous travelling tent, while Tamylan brushed out her long hair before she dressed for the day’s travel. She studied the former slave in the mirror thoughtfully. She really was quite a pretty young woman.
“Tam, do you like Tristan?”
The question startled her. “Tristan?”
“Yes. You know, Tristan. Tall. Fair. Golden eyes. Good looking and entirely too aware of the fact?”
Tamylan smiled. “Do I like him? I suppose.”
“Good,” Adrina announced with satisfaction. “I want you to become his lover.”
The brush halted mid-stroke as Tam stared at her in the mirror. “You want me to be Tristan’s lover?”
“Don’t act so thick, Tam. You heard me. You’re both Fardohnyan, far from home. Nobody would look twice.”
“Your Highness, I appreciate your…thoughtfulness…but somehow, I don’t think your brother is interested in the likes of me.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Tam,” Adrina told her cheerily. “You’re very pretty and there isn’t a court’esa for a thousand leagues, so Tristan can hardly afford to be choosy now, can he?” She laughed at the young woman’s expression. “Oh Tam, don’t look so horrified. Don’t you see? I can’t speak to Tristan without that vulture Vonulus around. If everyone thinks you and Tristan are lovers, they won’t question you visiting him.”
“If they think Tristan and I are lovers, I’m likely to get stoned.”
“No you won’t. The Fardohnyans have been given a special exemption by the Church. You’ll be safe enough. Far safer than me, in fact.”
Tamylan scowled unhappily. “I don’t like this place, your Highness. I’d rather you figured out a way to get us home.”
“I’m working on it, Tam,” Adrina assured her. “Believe me, I’m working on it.”
There was one bright spot in her miserable existence, and it came from the most unexpected source. The day after her wedding, Drendyn, Cratyn’s cheerful cousin, had paid her a visit carrying a large wicker basket, which he placed gently on the rug in front of the hearth before turning to her with a beaming smile.
“I have brought you a wedding gift,” he announced.
“And it’s a beautiful basket, too,” she agreed graciously.
“Basket? Oh! No! It’s what’s inside!”
Curiously Adrina lifted the lid and peered inside. A wet nose thrust itself at her and a long sloppy tongue slapped her face. Laughing delightedly, she threw back the lid and lifted the puppy out. He was tan in colour, his shaggy coat thick and soft. The pup was enormous, even at such a young age, and she struggled to lift him.
“He’s beautiful!” she cried. “What is he?”
“He’s a dog,” Drendyn explained, a little confused.
“I know he’s a dog, silly, but what sort of dog? We have nothing this big in Fardohnya. If he gets much bigger I’ll be able to saddle him!”
“He’s a Karien hunting dog,” the young Earl told her. “You said you liked hunting, so I thought you could train him now. We breed the best hounds in Karien in Tiler’s Pass. Do you like him?”
She pushed away the sloppy kisses of her new friend and laughed. “Oh Drendyn, I love him. Thank you so much.”
The Earl looked very pleased with himself. “Nothing is too good for our future queen. You will have to think of a name for him.”
“I shall call him…Tiler! In honour of your home.”
Tiler had not left her side since. The dog grew at an alarming rate, and consumed enough to keep a peasant family well fed. He was, besides Tamylan and Tristan, the only soul in Karien who seemed to love her unreservedly. Adrina found it strange that she, having been raised in excessive luxury with anything she wanted there for the asking, should find such joy in such a shaggy, clumsy beast.
CHAPTER 18
Brak could have followed R’shiel’s path through the mountains with little difficulty, even had a demon not appeared to show him the way. The little grey creature was young and it could barely speak, but it tittered with concern and kept looking over its small grey shoulder to ensure Brak was still following, as it led the way through a forest carpeted in the fiery shades of autumn.
When he finally reached her he hesitated. She was sitting on the edge of a precipice, dressed in dark riding leathers, her feet dangling over a long sheer drop that disappeared into mist.
“I’m not suicidal, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said without looking at him. The little demon scrambled up the rest of the path and climbed into her lap.
“Did you bring him here? Traitor.”
She turned to face Brak. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks tear stained. “Did they send you to find me?”
“It’s a curse. All I seem to do these days is chase after you.” When he reached the ledge he sat down beside her and admired the view silently for a moment. The steep mountains were still snow capped, even at this time of year, and the air was pleasantly cool. He could see Sanctuary’s tall spires in the distance, but only because he knew they were there. To mere human eyes, the spires looked like any other steep peaks in this vast range full of them. “Korandellan was worried about you.”
“He did this to me. It serves him right.”
“Nobody meant to hurt you, R’shiel. They did it to protect you.”
“Did they know how much it would hurt when it wore off?”
“Probably not. Harshini don’t really understand human emotions. But when you came here, you were dying. They did what they had to.”
She wiped her eyes impatiently. “I know that. That’s what makes it
so infuriating. You have no idea how hard it is to stay angry at these people.”
“I do know,” he assured her. “Better than you, girl. I’ve lived between two worlds for centuries.”
She glanced at him curiously. “Will I live as long as you?”
Brak shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose you will. Most half-humans seem to inherit Harshini longevity. You might fall off this precipice at any moment too, so don’t tie yourself into knots trying to predict the future.”
“Is that how you get by?”
“That and large quantities of mead,” he replied with a thin smile.
She looked at him sharply then smiled when she realised he was joking. “You don’t really fit in here, do you Brak?”
“No more than I fit in a human world. But don’t let my inability to find my niche in the world deter you from trying to find yours.”
“I was under the impression my niche was already carved in stone,” she pointed out sourly. “I am the demon child, am I not?”
“R’shiel, nobody is going to make you face Xaphista until you’re ready. Stop worrying about it. If you really are meant to tackle Xaphista, there will come a time when you won’t need to be asked. You’ll want to do it.”
“I can’t see that happening anytime soon.”
“As I said, don’t tie yourself into knots trying to predict the future.”
R’shiel didn’t answer him for a while. She stared out over the mountains, idly scratching the young demon behind its large wrinkled ear. Finally she turned to him, the tears under control for the time being.
“Does Tarja think I’m dead?”
The question surprised him a little. He had not expected her to be able to think things through so rationally yet. The first time he had broken through a glamour designed to suppress his emotions, he’d been incoherent for days.
“I suppose so. Nobody has told him otherwise that I’m aware of.”
“He’s done his grieving then,” she sighed. “And I will live to see him whither and die an old man. I’m not sure I can deal with that.”
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