Forget Me Not,

by Juliann Whicker

  “Quite,” High Precept said as though there were nothing odd in Balthaar’s words. The High Precept nodded to the musicians at the side to resume their playing. “Lady Perr is noted for her ability to make people feel at home.”

  The mint pouf choked on her laughter, lifting her drink to camouflage her flagrant disrespect.

  “How do you like High City?” High Precept asked gesturing beside him for Balthaar to sit, waving for someone to bring them food and drink, while the two Rasha hovered close behind.

  Lady Perr stood at the edge of the dancers who'd resumed their graceful cavorting with most of their attention clearly towards the dais. Balthaar could have killed the High Precept with his hands, but he immediately dismissed the idea. Elves were not Barbarians. If the Emperor were killed, Barabbas would fall into civil war as the Viceroys struggled for position as the next Emperor. If the High Precept died, Elsyria would continue indefinitely until they got around to electing a new one to the position. At any rate, Balthaar hadn't been directed to do anything other than spy out the lay of the land. He would continue in his pretend role even though he’d been hand-fed to the lions, with their well-polished teeth.

  Chapter 14

  Lady Perr felt awkward, standing at attention while her ankle throbbed. The fog of earlier had faded leaving her with stark awareness of her position as host to the ambassador who had to be the same Balthaar from her youth, a man who should be resting beneath the earth with his ancestors, not sitting beside the High Precept who gestured with overlarge movements while his voice keyed up in barely checked excitement.

  “How’s your ankle,” the gardener asked, leaning close. She fought to maintain her position instead of shrinking away from him. She could feel his concern, read it in his eyes, his intent, but it seemed her mind clouded the closer he leaned towards her.

  “What interest does a gardener have in a Convotion?” she asked, stepping away from him.

  He smiled at her passively. “I wasn’t always a gardener, but isn’t any citizen of Elsyria welcome at any public functions?”

  Lady Perr shrugged and turned away from him, dissatisfied with his answer. She focused on the conversation on the dais, trying to block out the Elsyrian.

  The Barbarian spoke in smooth High Elsyrian with barely a trace of accent. “High City is as beautiful as it was fabled to be, which I hadn’t thought possible. I haven’t had the chance to foray much, but as far as I can tell, there isn’t more beautiful architecture populated by a lovelier people.” He kept a smile on his mouth as he spoke. Lady Perr had expected more grunting.

  “I admit that it has a certain grandeur, which is to be expected when the rich heritage of our people spans millennia, but of course, it lacks charm of simplicity, as well as the wonder of modern architectural feats. From what I hear the Emperor has changed the face of his city dramatically.”

  The Viceroy shrugged. “I haven’t been to the Emperor’s city for years. From what I hear the improvements have made it one of the most hygienic cities known to man.”

  “Very good. How do you like the wine?”

  The conversation went on, High Precept asking questions the Viceroy answered as perfectly and diplomatically as anyone could, while the rest of those on the dais grew bored. Eventually they left to dance, leaving Lady Perr standing with the gardener, feeling like everyone had forgotten them both. It was strange that she hadn’t forgotten herself as well. She watched the Viceroy through the haze of gauze and felt irritated at the fabric for clouding her vision.

  As she watched his face, he revealed nothing besides a politely bored expression that bothered Lady Perr. Surely if she could see better, she could catch twitches of emotion as they crossed his face.

  “I find the relish from the south sea preferable to incubated duck eggs of Salaam,” on second thought, there might be a reason he sounded bored. Apparently sheer magnificence and otherworldly beauty wasn’t interesting to the Viceroy.

  At that moment some people brought out trays and torches. Good. Fire dancing would entertain even an old jaded man like the Viceroy. Dolores, a distant cousin of Lady Perr had abandoned her mint confection of a dress to take part with a small thread of pink fire that she made grow into a shimmering rose, flames chasing around the edges of the petals. She spun, throwing her flower into the air, twisting into a flip as the flower exploded in a bright pink puff. When the gardener took a turn brandishing flames, Lady Perr stepped a little closer to the dais. He and Delores began juggling flaming balls to each other that came quite close to the Viceroy and the High Precept.

  The Viceroy remained impassive. Though he smiled and nodded at appropriate places, he appeared less than impressed. Perhaps the hardened warrior in him made him immune to explosions. He would have seen all kinds of fire; the Emperor loved explosives.

  Lady Perr watched him watch the fire dancers, feeling like an observer, not a part of either insider or outsider, not a part of anything at all as she remembered the fireworks that filled the night celebrating the Anniversary of the Unseen Emperor’s glorious ascension to power.

  ___

  Visits with Balthaar had become successively more enjoyable. Her days were filled speaking with tradesmen and statesmen who wished to enhance their relations with the fabled yet aloof Elsyrian Empire. After a long day she would find him waiting to show her a hidden gem in the city, a building, a fountain, or a walled garden where they could debate various points of cultural differences.

  That night, the first time she’d seen the Emperor’s fireworks, they’d stood on the balcony of the emperor’s palace, her rooms overlooking bonfires that filled the courtyard along with the commoners who laughed and sang while the sky exploded.

  Her heart pounded as he brought her a goblet of the rich pomegranate wine, their fingers brushing as she’d taken it from him. The electricity that passed through her filled her senses more than the sound that shook the ground. The awe-inspiring display had trouble competing with the man beside her, his solid warmth, a shadow that brushed her arm before he turned to move away.

  ___

  Lady Perr frowned at the firedancers, Balthaar above her on the dais when they had so much to speak of, if only her mind could stay clear for long enough. She had to know what had happened, the events she couldn’t recall. He must know the cause of her scars. She took two steps towards him, determined to use whatever excuse necessary to draw him away from the High Precept, but before she could reach him, her veil caught on fire.

  Chapter 15

  The flames wrapped around Lady Perr’s face, the fire bringing back another memory full-force.

  Fire. Tongs. Screaming through a throat raw on the inside and outside as the men with their faces streaked black and red applied their skills to her body, torturing her as they removed strips of pale blue flesh, burning her skin as they did her mind. The flames flickered as she stared through the sheets of red at Balthaar, the barbarian whose eyes caught hers as she stood wrapped in flame, stared at her as he had in the moonlight the last time she’d seen him seeming to run towards her from too far away.

  ___

  He’d stood close, but not touching. She’d felt his presence wrap around her heart, warming her from the inside, as his brief touch always did, like the kiss of the sun on a cold winter’s day.

  She remembered his low voice as he’d spoken to her of names, whispered his own name, Harrin, hidden from the world, but a gift to her. His glance felt like a caress on her face, her lips, her own awareness of the Barbarian defying reason, logic, nature. She’d left with the irrational knowledge that she would see him the next day, and the next, and the one after as though all their days would pass tangled as growing vines from the rich soil of their mutual contentment.

  That same night she’d awoken to pounding on her door. When she’d opened it, an Elsyrian face peered in, his golden eyes alight with concern.

  “Balthaar the viceroy is petitioning the emperor for your hand. He’s going to be executed.”

  The em
otions swirled through her. Shock and horror replaced the slight euphoria, that Balthaar, her Barbarian would desire her as his. She could not allow him to sacrifice himself, his position for something that could not be. Elves and Barbarians did not, could not, intermarry. And yet she cared neither for reason nor law. If he were to die, she would take her place beside him.

  “Take me to him.” She threw a gauzy wrap around her shoulders as she followed the Elsyrian into the darkness down the steps. He held a torch above his head that made his ygolden eyes fierce when he turned to glance back at her before he led her to the shadows, to the priests of the Emperor, the Bashai instead of Balthaar.

  Chapter 16

  Balthaar saw the arc of flame from the gardener’s hands and moved before it spread from the flimsy gauze of Lady Perr. Balthaar ripped the flaming sheet off her head, ignoring the pain in his fingers. She stared at him blankly, her skin flushed from the heat, but unsinged.

  He cupped her face in his palm as his other hand encircled her waist. “Lady Perr, Hatia, are you all right?”

  “You weren’t executed,” she whispered, touching his cheek with trembling fingers. “I thought they killed you. Of all that they did to me, they could do nothing worse than tell me of your own tortured death. You’re real?” she asked, gazing up at him with her soul in her eyes.

  He closed his eyes, lips tightening before he looked at her, a fierce expression in his eyes she’d never seen but that the two Rasha recognized from battling the terrifying Barabbas general.

  He ripped her dress in one quick motion, the aged fibers giving way easily from her throat to her shoulder revealing pale blue skin in layers of silver, strips of skin removed in the patterns Balthaar knew. He closed his eyes as his heart ached, his anger and fury blending with his overwhelming helplessness. He had not protected her from his own.

  His hand slid from her face to her neck, feeling the marks beneath his calloused fingers. The Bashai must have had her for months to leave these layers of pain without killing her. Scars dipped below the edge of the dress where he could not see, but he could feel the pain in her, the ache as sweet and singing as a blade before it separated joint and limb.

  She gasped and pulled away, futilely trying to put the pieces of her dress back together. The room was hushed as everyone stared at her, the spectacle of the ruined, mad daughter of Elsyria. None moved but one. The gardener slid away from the celebration, his golden eyes baleful above his frown, catching her attention.

  She pointed at him, staring at him in dawning horror. “You told me that he was being executed. You took me to them, an Elsyrian. Why would you betray your own kind?”

  Her soft voice carried through the silent crowd. The Rasha leapt to stop the gardener, silver swords drawn and at the ready as they halted his escape. He backed towards Balthaar, hands raised in surrender.

  Balthaar frowned at the gardener, the man who would betray his own. He wanted his own sword, knives, flames, to inflict the pain Hatia had suffered until the gardener’s mind was as broken as his already black soul.

  “To cause the fury,” the green-skinned Rasha replied in a low voice like the murmuring of water. “The creature was a traitor out of hate. He wanted to see Elsyria at war. I was there when he brought you to the camp. I fought alongside the Dwarven outside of Elsyrian law. I saw you, an Elsyrian maiden clothed in rags, wandering over corpses as though they were stepping stones in a stream. I will never forget. Madness has never been paired with such heartbreaking beauty. Balthaar was at that battle, already making a mark for his ferocity, resistance to the small magics, and apparent immortality, but we won the day. We brought you back to Elsyria, broken and burned by the Barbarians. I’ve watched Balthaar over the years fighting war after war where he ages as little as our Rasha brothers, growing in skill with the small mystics he doesn’t know he’s using. He has the heart of Elves in him. I saw it when he greeted the Wind Spinner. He has the heart of an Elsyrian and the blood of a Barbarian. How can this be so?” he asked, turning to the High Precept as a student to a teacher.

  Lady Perr knew him, Maltha, the best student of the high precept, an older Elsyrian she’d looked up to when she was younger, playing at the elder’s feet while Maltha looked on her antics with a soft smile. She knew the other as well, the blue-skinned Rasha who had spent time at House Perr when she’d been a student obsessed with languages of many countries. She’d plied Hortham with thousands of questions that he’d answered as well as he could. She knew others, memories of days long past, before the hundred years of war when she’d been broken by the Bashai, her memory stripped with the dark magics etched in her skin, betrayed by her own and ruined above all by Balthaar’s supposed death.

  “You never…” she whispered, gazing up at Balthaar, resting her fingertips lightly against his face as she felt the pulse that throbbed in him.

  He frowned down at her, swallowing hard as he caught her fingers in his and turned his face, pressing his lips to her palm. He moved, holding her close to his side, arm around her waist as he stared down the gardener.

  “He must pay.”

  “We are not barbarians,” the High Precept said in his dry voice, stepping down from the dais. “We could never harm our own. The most we could do is exile the creature. I fear we’ve already done that. Greetings Tharmul. It has been an age,” the High Precept said, bowing to the gardener who smiled cruelly back at him, showing sharp and glistening teeth beneath a face that suddenly appeared darker, much darker than it had been before.

  “The Elves are passing on,” Tharmul replied, his voice low with an undercurrent that filled the room with awareness of him, his power, his inherent worthiness over all others.

  “Yes. With your assistance, they are. Are you the cause of the Emperor and his Bashai’s long lives? At what price?” the High Precept demanded, eyes narrowing on the other man.

  “You pay the price for allowing the barbarians to grow in strength over the centuries, allowing them to desecrate the earth.”

  “You told me that Elsyrians were meant to rule the earth, to subjugate all man. I disagreed.”

  “You were right,” Tharmul said with a terrifying smile. “Elsyrians were not meant to rule. One man who understands destiny will hold the earth in his fist until peace finally reigns. Harrin, guard, protect, defend,” he snarled, these last words in a guttural Barabbas that went straight to Balthaar’s soul.

  Balthaar’s met Tharmul’s eyes with a gasp. The marks etched in his flesh, his name, his bond with the Emperor ached with a power that could not be denied.

  “Harrin,” Hatia whispered, a breath that none other could hear.

  Balthaar took one moment to breathe in her scent before he shoved Hatia away from him and into the High Precept. He moved with greater speed than an Elsyrian to take his place between his liege, the Emperor and the two Rasha.

  “Son of the Emperor,” Tharmul murmured, resting a hand on the back of Balthaar’s neck where the designs had been burned into him, stirring the call of war and blood. The emperor’s strength, energy, life force filled Balthaar until he was dizzy with euphoria, strength, superhuman capacity and blood lust.

  With merely a sliver of bronze in his hand, he engaged the blue-skinned Rasha, an enormous silver sword against a thread of bronze and yet Balthaar easily slid inside Hathrom’s guard, slashing his arm until Balthaar held the Rasha’s sword in both of his hands. He raised it to strike the killing blow then spun, slicing the blade through the neck and shoulder of the Emperor, Tharmul Elsyrian traitor, his father.

  The pleased expression on Tharmul’s face did not fade as the head spun across the floor leaving a spray of silver over the pink stone.

  The gasps, the shrieks and screams meant nothing to Balthaar as he turned and looked at Lady Perr where she knelt beside the High Precept, hand outstretched as if to stop him, the look in her eyes a peculiar mix of fear and faith.

  He dropped the sword from his fingers as hands grabbed him, holding him tightly as he smiled at her, b
owing his head to his lady, now avenged.

  Chapter 17

  Balthaar looked up from his place on the stone bench, circles of iron binding his wrists to chains secured to the stone floor. Instead of being in a dungeon, he was held in a tower with windows facing east and west so he could always feel the sun’s rays in the small room.

  “Welcome, High Precept. I’d offer you refreshments, but the manacles make pouring wine difficult.”

  The figure beneath the deeply cowled cloak straightened, pushing back the hood. “I have no doubt in your capabilities,” the High Precept said with a slight smile. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Balthaar shrugged. “I assume you are deciding what to do with me,” he said with an indifferent air that shifted as he leaned forward, his hands tightening into fists. “Tell me, is she well? Is her mind…” His jaw clenched as he searched the High Precept’s face.

  “She is well,” the ancient Elsyrian answered. “She has so many questions, demanding answers that she barely has time to hear before she’s on to the next unknown. Of course, she’s visited me three times a day, practically camps outside my door petitioning for your release. Her arguments in your defense are as thorough and varied as they are passionate. I believe we have succeeded in breaking her curse.”

  Balthaar frowned at him. “We?”

  The ancient sighed as he sat down on the stone beside Balthaar, studying the sun warmed stone beneath his feet. “You don’t think that the Emperor would ever send you here to her, where both of your vulnerability would be revealed and possibly undone?”

  Balthaar nodded stiffly. “How did you convince Targen, the Emperor’s high priest to release me as general and send me here?”

  “Targen, it seems, was planning to depose of the Emperor. He has been in the shadows planning for a long time. Of course it’s difficult, some would say impossible to oppose the Emperor after he’s written on your flesh. Treason is an inevitable result for one who uses pain and fear to subjugate. Persuading Targen to send you to your death was easy enough to do. All I had to do was provide him with the possibility. Once the Emperor realized that you had left for Elsyria, he came to undo the mistake. I didn’t think he would come himself. Perhaps he was bored ruling a people unquestioningly. Perhaps he wanted to see Hatia for himself, to gloat at the work of his hands.” He shook his head and frowned. “I didn’t expect you to be his actual son with the blood of Elsyrians mixed in your veins.”