JOURNEY OF THE SACRED KING II

by JANRAE FRANK

  * * * *

  Josiah climbed the stairs at the Cock and Boar, heading for Aejys' rooms, while running through his mind how he would tell her about all that had transpired, both the good and the bad. He hoped to find her awake so that he could tell her immediately. Skree walked behind him. Aejys' forces had suffered no deaths and only a few minor wounds. The assault had been over quickly, mostly because Josiah led the way in, cutting down everything and everyone who tried to hold him back. The aftermath had delayed their return for several hours as Josiah made certain that the grounds and house would not be looted and burned as he had promised Cedarbird.

  They found Taun sitting beside the bed. The first thing that Josiah noticed was how terribly sad Taun looked and his heart skipped a beat. The joy of victory drained out of him. "Is she–"

  Taun shook his head. "She's gotten so weak. She's nearly gone."

  Skree pushed past Josiah. Taun moved away, leaving the chair to the triton. Skree sat down, took her wrist and Read. His expression grew dark. Then he looked up at Josiah who had come to stand beside him. "I'm sorry. She seemed to be holding her own when we left. I believed – I..." He broke off.

  "Everyone leave," Josiah said, his voice taking on an odd note as he struggled not to let it break. "I want to be alone with her. Please."

  Skree rose and shepherded everyone out, going with them, and closing the door behind him.

  "I'm all out of magical solutions," Josiah said as he took the chair. "You have to do this one on your own. You died first last time too." Josiah sat down in the chair, leaning forward so that his elbow rested on the bed and his left hand was free to stroke her face and hair. "I've pulled you back from death twice, damn it. I'm supposed to get to keep you this time. Third time's a charm – or a curse, depends, I guess. We were so young. You never would delegate. If the mission was dangerous, you took it. But you always seemed to come back. Everyone started saying you had a charmed life. Maybe that's what jinxed it.

  "What is it with you stubborn, pig-headed Sharani anyway? We had a loving triad, Nariya was nearly to term with our first children, and then you had to take one more mission. You just had to go after Hoon. I will always believe that Nariya died of grief when you didn't come back. I raised the twins alone. Never remarried..."

  He struggled to maintain his indignation and anger, but it was fading. He was tired and losing it badly. Aejys Rowan could not hear him. She would not have been able to make sense of it even if she could hear him. She did not remember her past life the way he did. He kissed her lips, pressed his face into her hair. "I'll be here when Tamlestari returns. I'll protect her and your children, dearest. That I swear."

  Josiah took two more swigs of whiskey, laid his head over on her shoulder, and passed out.

  * * * *

  "Idiot god! He called me an idiot god!" Dynanna paced back and forth in the little courtyard, muttering and exclaiming at intervals. The godling had light red hair, almost red-blond. She was boyishly slender with modest well-shaped breasts. She wore an oversized longshoremyn's shirt that tended to slip off her shoulder, revealing the top of her breasts and soft black knee pants. Her face with its delicate structure could be very waif like at times, which was often the only thing that saved her on those rare occasions that one of the elder gods managed to catch her. She hated getting caught because they always extracted payment in some way, some pleasant, some not. And then there were a couple of elder gods who simply wanted to seal her up in a cave and forget about her, luckily they had never even gotten close to her.

  "Idiot god," she screamed at the top of her lungs, making her twin brother flinch.

  "Will you please stop fuming? Or take it somewhere else, I'm trying to scry." Dynarien bent over a mossy rock-lined artificial pool. He held up a small bottle containing a tiny bit of sapphire liquid, just barely enough to cover the bottom of the bottle. He could see Josiah fall asleep, still weeping about Aejys. "You need to pillage Kalirion's garden again. This is the last of the Sapphire Elixir. There isn't enough to heal a rat."

  The thought of the sun god's garden yanked Dynanna from her rant. She and her paladins had gotten away with everything they needed and would have gotten away clean, except that at the last minute she decided to go back alone after a lovely red flower she had seen but did not know what it did. Kalirion caught her. She never told her brother, but that was why her youngest son, LorenRain, had such beautiful white-blond hair. She always told Dynarien that she was not sure who the father was – she was in a promiscuous phase at the time – but she knew quite well who he belonged to: He was Kalirion's. Kalirion knew it too. He had sent her notes and presents for a long time afterwards, nearly two centuries, as well as taking an active interest in his child. LorenRain saw his father regularly, wheedling from him the things that Dynanna could not get. She stopped to peer over Dynarien's shoulder. "Still watching Vorgensburg?"

  "Yes." He waggled the bottle at her to point out again, in an annoyingly repetitive manner, that this was the last of it. "We owe Josiah big time for screwing his life up."

  "We did not screw his life up. It just happened."

  "Sis. He was our first effort. We should have kept a closer eye on him when he was a child or put a paladin down there with him."

  She ignored that and tried to change the direction of the conversation. "You going down there?"

  "Yes. I think you ought to help too. After all the one that did this to Aejys called you an idiot god."

  Dynanna looked annoyed. It was bad enough that most of the Big Nine regarded her as an idiot, hearing it from a mortal, a bloodmage like that stupid sa'necari, was even worse. Furthermore, although Dynarien had never said it, she frequently suspected him of thinking it. She definitely was not getting any respect from anyone or anything and she had no idea how to change it. "What do you want me to do?" she asked crossly.

  "Find an oracle. Find out what the images meant when Aejys scryed more than a month ago. I have come up with absolutely no clues. Find out what we can do to help get things moving. And don't forget that in three days we are meeting Hadjys and Talons in Creeya to divvy up the take from that last soul vault. I promised her you know."

  Dynanna turned to reply, but her twin was already fading out. She sighed a bit, and then mustered her resolve. Dynarien would not like it if he knew where and to whom she would have to go for answers, but she would not tell him this time either.

  * * * *

  "Aejys!" Dynarien covertly watched Josiah, sleeping in the chair with his forehead pressed against the bed. He did not want to wake him if he could avoid it. "Aejys."

  Dynarien frowned at the lack of response. He touched her neck, reading her carefully. She was too far gone to awaken by any natural means. "Damn, this is going to get me in trouble ... this is going to get me in soooo much trouble." Bad enough the Nine were always chasing his sister – if he did this they would be chasing him too; or at least one of them would.

  "Oh, well," he sighed, taking the elixir bottle from his belt pouch. There was not enough left to do serious healing, but even a few drops would pull her back from the edge. The problem was forcing her back to consciousness and the means would bring Aroana screaming in hot pursuit. The idea of spending the rest of his existence hiding from an enraged elder god made his stomach queasy. He would have to hope that his grandsire could calm her down.

  Dynarien opened Aejys' shirt, stared for a second at all the scars, then put his fingers between her breasts and godmarked her. It was a very serious offense to mark another deity's paladins; but the mark would allow him to call her back.

  * * * *

  Aejys could see them standing there: Brendorn, Ladonys and Laeoli. She knew it was them, though she could not see their faces clearly through the swirling mists. Her heart recognized her family. If she just reached out her hands she knew she could touch them. She had been so lonely without them. Now they were close – so very close.

  "Aejys!" A voice echoed through the stillness. "I command you, return."r />
  "No!" She could feel herself being forced backwards. A gap widened between her and her family. "No, please. Let me go."

  The mists vanished and she lay in darkness, feeling the warm wetness of her tears rolling down her face. She smelled the intense sweetness of roses. "Let me go. Let me go."

  "I can't. It would break his heart."

  The voice was male, a tenor. Aejys suddenly wished she could see him. She felt something cool touch her lips. Several drops of liquid slipped into her mouth. She swallowed automatically and her vision cleared, revealing a fair-skinned face and a long wealth of red-gold hair. "Who are you?"

  "Dynarien," he said, adding before he could stop himself, "and I am in sooo much trouble."

  * * * *

  "Josiah."

  The voice was soft and weak, but somehow it penetrated the fog of exhaustion and grief. Josiah lifted his head, looking around.

  "Josiah. I'm so thirsty. Can you help me? I don't think I can sit up."

  Josiah looked down and met Aejys' eyes, completely clear and without fever. "Thank the gods." He hugged her, eliciting a small moan.

  "Careful. Every bit of me hurts. Can I have some water?"

  Josiah poured her a glass from the pitcher on the table, and then raised her head and shoulders, cradling her against his chest in the curve of his arm, holding the glass to her lips while she drank. The room smelled of roses out of season, but Josiah failed to notice, nor would he have connected it to the Rose Warrior if he had. He settled her again, "Rest. I'm going for Taun. He'll want to Read you again now that you are awake."

  * * * *

  Josiah knocked on Taun's door. The little nerien opened it, blinking sleepily. Then he realized through the fog that it was Josiah and snapped out of it. "Aejys?"

  "She's awake. She says she hurts all over. Will you come?"

  "Awake?" Taun, expecting to hear that she had died, was startled by a surge of hope.

  "Yes. She needs you."

  "Let me get my bag." Taun disappeared, returning quickly to follow Josiah down the hall.

  "I fell asleep trying to think of a spell, any spell, that might help. But I was never much of a student of life magic anymore than I was of the arts of the sa'necari. Life magic is one of those forms I could not master anyway – I never had the gift. I simply could not find anything that would help. Then I fell asleep."

  Taun gave him an odd look as they entered Aejys' rooms. "You're sober."

  It was a statement, not a question, and that puzzled Josiah. "Yes, I'm sober. Why?"

  Taun moved to the chair, casting frequent glances over his shoulder at Josiah. "You're sober," Taun muttered, repeating it several times.

  Aejys opened her eyes at the touch of Taun's fingers on her wrist. "Every joint and muscle hurts. I can't move anything except my head."

  Taun smiled at her, and then brushed his finger curiously at a spot of something blue in the corner of her mouth. It vanished. "There is no trace of the venom in your system. I don't know how this happened, but it did. However, it will probably be a few days, maybe even a few weeks, before all the effects of the venom are gone." Unless the damage is permanent. I've never dealt with this venom before.

  "What is wrong with my being sober?" Josiah interrupted. "You wanted me to stop drinking. Now you are giving me a hard time for being sober?"

  Taun did not answer right away, because what he had was an inarticulate instinct. So when a question popped into his mind he just asked it for lack of anything else and felt he had just said something stupid afterward. "Where did you hide your spellbook? The one no one could ever find?"

  "Why?" Josiah had never told anyone where he kept it – too much temptation to others, even the best of them.

  Taun was starting to feel like an idiot, but Josiah's answer set him on a course he felt compelled to continue on. After all Josiah had asked 'why' and not 'what'. Taun would never be able to explain it later. "Because Skree needs to learn the spells so he can help protect Aejys better."

  Josiah remembered promising Skree as much before he even knew that the triton was his godfather, so he answered freely. "There is a spirit panel in the library of my Dawnlight Tower and I..." Then it hit him. "And I'm sober."

  Taun reached out frowning and touched Josiah's mouth, wiping at a spot of something blue. Like the one on Aejys' mouth, it vanished.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know," Taun answered. "I thought something was there, but there wasn't. I better get Skree. I don't understand what has happened here at all."

  * * * *

  Becca let the vigilantes' rage spend itself for a day before sending Skree and several of the guards to drag the syndics and guildmasters to a meeting the morning after. Darlbret, accompanied by Omer and Raim, went around town, identifying all of Cedarbird's holdings and informing them they were under new ownership. They also informed the denizens of each establishment that if they wanted to testify to Cedarbird's misdeeds to come to the town hall at noon. Becca, along with Cook, commandeered the town hall for the meeting. It would take months to sort everything out; however, she was off to a roaring start.

  Janine came with some of her girls; all dressed in the most conservative outfits she could dig up but still gaudily gorgeous. They shepherded a group of Cedarbird's terrified prostitutes into the hall to testify. Janine wore the necklace Omer had given her, winking at him as she passed. Ash came to give his grandfather's account of the attack on his village. The tavern's servants had dressed him in buckskins as close to that of a Kwaklahmyn noble as they could get, including the eagle feathers in his hair. Ash had protested that he had no right to the feathers since he had to earn them; Becca responded by knighting him in Aejys' name, which shut him up. The young Kwaklahmyn had just become the first knight of Vorgensburg under the change of rulers – Becca having decided to declare Aejys king. No more wussy guardsmyn, they were going to have some real knights. Since Josiah would not leave Aejys' side, Skree was designated to speak in their place.

  Becca started the event by presenting them with Dinger and since he could no longer cloak his visage in illusion his sa'necari nature was proven immediately. Dinger, clutching to a vain hope that someone would pardon him and heavily spelled to truth by Skree, poured out a long litany of horror going back twenty years and all done with the approval of Cedarbird. The syndics and guildmasters were looking sick by the time he finished, so she brought Darlbret up next to give them time to recover. Ash followed, then Skree.

  Janine brought the prostitutes to the box. By the time their testimony ended it was very late. Becca announced then that they would reconvene the next day and keep on until everyone who wished to testify had had their say. The process would take nearly four weeks to wind down and Cedarbird to be posthumously convicted of his numerous crimes.

  * * * *

  It was night in the world below, but it was always daylight in the garden of Kalirion in a wondrous eternal springtime. Trees bloomed and fruited all year round. Dynanna entered the garden in a blue dress of sheerest gossamer and spider silk. Last time she had come sneaking in wearing knee pants and her favorite over-sized shirt. Kalirion, initially mistaking her for a boy, had grabbed and wrestled her down before discovering what charms lay beneath the clothing. The result of that discovery had been LorenRain, her favorite child. After nearly two centuries of gifts flooding in, then drying to a trickle, Dynanna knew that trying to wheedle him from a distance would no longer work. LorenRain had told her as much a few decades ago. So she dressed to please with nothing underneath so he could get directly to the point, which was how he liked it.

  "So what have you come to trade me your kisses for this time?" Kalirion's voice startled the little yuwenghau. She had not expected to come face to face with him so soon. Last time it had taken him several tries to catch her, this time it was almost as if he were lying in wait and that made her nervous, wondering if she had finally become predictable. But then, she reminded herself, Kalirion was the god of prophecy as well as h
ealing and sunlight. So maybe he saw her coming. If he scryed in her direction with any frequency it would make stealing from his garden difficult in the future.

  That made her still more nervous. Nervousness made her babble. She knew it, but could not stop herself. "One of your apostate priests called me an idiot god." She settled on one of the benches, which caused her dress to rise just enough for him to glimpse a well-turned ankle.

  Kalirion yawned. "That would be Dingarim. He betrayed me and became sa'necari because he was afraid of death. But that isn't what brings you here."

  Dynanna shook her head. "The calico cat with two kittens–"

  "That would be your brother's newest catkin. He does not know he has her yet. Her name is Juldrid, a minstrel, na'halaef to Margren."

  Shit. "And the sword?"

  "The Spiritdancer. Juldrid can lead Aejys to the sword."

  "Why should she?"

  "Because Margren and Mephistis intend to take her children away. Bring them into the darkness. Juldrid now hates Margren. It fascinates me how quickly a deep abiding love can turn into the most roaring hate once it starts to change."

  Kalirion moved beside her on the bench. "Prophecy is not a science. There can be many turnings in the path. There is a fog rolling into my vision of the future. But I will tell you this much more. Then we must begin the kissing. You will owe me many, many kisses and maybe a few more visits. The Valley of Carliff the Mad Lich must become a protectorate of Vallimrah. Aejystrys Rowan must agree to take Juldrid and her sons into her home as her wards. And Aejystrys Rowan must forgive Carliff, putting an end to his curse."

  "Why? She doesn't even know him."

  "I've said all I intend to," he answered, grabbing her, taking her down on the thick, sweet grass.

  Dynanna sighed: Seduction was definitely not one of his strong suits, especially the second time around. Every time she had intercourse with another god she ended up pregnant, which was why she preferred mortals. Gods were not supposed to be that fecund with each other and the fact that she was the exception was an unending source of aggravation – especially since gods were much more fun in bed than mortals as a general rule. Maybe that was why the males were all so eager: knowing she could give them a child.