by Lynn Red
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Jon said with a glance around the room. “If your father can’t bother to appear, then I see no reason I should have to endure these obnoxious hobnobbers.”
In truth, Arad only came to the feast tonight to see if he could catch another glimpse of his surprise beloved. He felt silly about the whole thing – he’d never even spoken to her – but as silly as he felt, he was equally certain of his heart.
His lips had told a thousand lies.
But Arad’s heart? Not a single one.
It was almost a chronic problem, really, because when the heart never lies, ever, then it usually ends up getting its owner into a whole lot of problems. For Arad? That was definitely the case.
From one love to another, one passion to the next, he bounded through life, leaping high and crashing low.
Funny thing – that’s exactly what he did when he needed to “take the air.”
Jon was used to the transformations, but he never had – or probably ever would – get used to his old friend talking to him through the lips of an ibex.
“Does that hurt?” Crane asked as Arad’s skull seemed to disjoint on the sides as his glorious, rippled horns grew and twisted and curled. When his friend’s legs got all gangly and the knees bent backwards, he winced, but it was more out of habit than anything else.
Salomana, after all, was a kingdom of many strange things. Princes who took on the form of ibexes were one of the least bizarre, truth be told. The fact that Arad frequently locked horns – literally – with his father? Slightly stranger. Especially since the king took such powerful exception to anyone saying anything at all about his authority.
“Hurt?” Arad said, his voice twisted by the strange shape of his ibex mouth. His letters weren’t quite pronounced right, given the lack of lips, and anything with a ‘t’ in it was almost comically over pronounced. “Only for a second. And then, I can run like the wind. When you can do that, you forget a lot of pain.”
His friend blasted, rocket-like, off on muscles that were so tense and tendons so taut that they could have exploded at any second. “Sure,” Crane said as he watched the prince tear across the desert. “And then you meet someone who wants to fight.”
*
Talcum-soft quartz sand that shone with the quicksilver light of moon danced across Arad’s vision as his hooves pounded through the stuff like it was the fringe of surf on a beach at night. Stars blazed overhead, resplendent in the blessed nothingness of the desert outside of the city.
I could live out the rest of my days under these skies, he thought. But only with my Helena. Even now my heart aches, my body longs to call to her, my soul burns to embrace her and be one with her. If I could only touch her shimmering hair, smell her intoxicating scent one more time, I could die happy.
He shook his mighty head, horns reflecting the light. No, not die. I want to live with her by my side. Damn Crane and his sensibilities, damn my father and his need for a royal family… damn all of it to hell. I’m tired of the politics and the games and the sacrifice… and for what?
These runs were the way he worked through his anger, through his sadness and moods. Moods like this struck him more and more the older he got. He thought less of power and wealth and more of having a big family to surround him when he was old and feeble.
And now I’ve found her, he thought. Helena. He relished the way her name felt as he rolled it around his mouth like the finest Damascus wine. And he’d seen nothing of her but eyes behind a veil. His heart raced as much at the thought of the rest of her as it did at his cresting yet another dune. The burning in his huge thigh muscles pleased the prince, mostly because it meant he wasn’t thinking about her, at least not for the moment.
As he topped another mountainous dune, he paused to take a moment to stare at the moon. Her loving beams surrounded him, comforted him, as they always had, but there was an unease in the quicksilver shimmer that night.
And then he felt the points.
Flames of pain ripped through Arad’s body, drawing blood.
“Father?” he hissed, as he twisted to the left and hooked his horns underneath whoever had attacked him. With a swift move he snagged the aggressor and turned his head so that he could see what had assaulted him.
Two eyes caught his attention; glittering gold, flecked with ivory. “Why did you attack me?” Arad asked, gasping for breath.
“Because you’re a damn fool, boy,” his father hissed back. His voice was craggy with age, but worn a bit smooth from the shape of his mouth. “You have a duty, a tradition to uphold, and you’re willing to give it all up for some peasant? Some peasant from my harem?”
Arad shook his head. “What are you talking about? I can have anyone in the entire kingdom. Any woman in Salomana will open herself to me. Why would I bother with one of your harem girls?”
He decided that lying would be the best course of action since, admittedly, it had worked many times before.
His father answered with a snort. “Hum. I somehow doubt my army of informants is wrong. Keep your wits about you boy, I can always adopt another son.”
Before Arad could respond, his father turned, and kicked up a cloud of dust that stung the prince’s eyes as the older ibex dashed back in the direction of the palace.
Arad followed closely, but stopped at the stream where he and Crane always met on nights like this. As usual, the Englishman was waiting for him, smoking a pipe. “He found you then?” Crane asked.
“Come on,” Arad grabbed his friend, who was well past being surprised at the prince’s post-shifting nudity.
“Put this on first,” Crane said, handing over a suit of fine silks. “I might not be abashed at your glistening bottom, but I’m sure someone would.”
With a grunt that was half laugh and half scoff, Arad snatched the bundle of clothing. “We meet tonight,” he said. “Make it happen.”
Before Crane could reply, the prince was jogging – then running full tilt – back to the palace that lit the entire night sky.
“As you wish, dear friend,” Crane said, a curl of a smile playing at the left corner of his lip. “As you wish.”
-4-
“But me? I mean, I got the letter, and it set my heart and certain other parts of me aflame. But it’s real?” Helena pinned the veil that covered her nose and lips into the back of her tossed-back hair. “Me?” she asked again, as though the visitor would change his mind.
“I thought you’d take it with a bit more enthusiasm,” Crane said in his long, almost lazy tongue. “But yes, the prince wishes to see you sooner than later. The banqueting ends at what time, usually?”
Helena shrugged. “I’m new here. I just do what I’m told. And tonight I’m told I’m seeing to the king after he rides. He gets sore legs.”
“Sore legs,” Crane said flatly. “Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And he’s been riding, is it?”
“Yes, riding. Hunting, whatever you want to call it.”
The woman was plainly frustrated at her unexpected circumstance. “I thought I was to meet the king – as I was told to do, need I remind you – and then the prince. It seems safer.”
“I have to grant you that one. The prince’s way almost never seems safe. But it usually is exciting, if that’s the sort of thing that catches your fancy.” He paused for a moment. “And from the look you’re giving me right now, I’d say that it does.”
“What look?” she asked. “I’m shadowing my eyes. I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about.”
I really need to stop biting my lip every time I’m interested in something. Maret keeps telling me to stop or I’ll give myself away. And giving myself away is the last thing I want to do. I need to keep myself under control if I ever want to succeed at this whole harem business.
But even as she thought those things, Helena felt her lip curl in a snarl.
“What is it?” Crane asked. “What’s making that pretty lip look so bitter? Ba
d date?”
“More than you know,” Helena said, sideways out of her mouth.
With that, Crane stood up from the chair where he’d been sitting – really, lying down in a kind of lazy drape – and brushed off his lapel before checking the time. “Either way, it’s getting to be late. Almost eleven by my watch. If the king hasn’t summoned you yet, he might just have got too drunk to care.” He shrugged easily in a way that reminded Helena of the prince, just a bit. “Doesn’t matter,” he yawned. “Spend the night with the fat old king, or the strapping young prince who’ll make you crawl up the rafters. Makes me no difference.”
“Then why are you still here?” she asked, shrewdly. “If you just shrug your shoulders at the prince’s doings, then why devote so much of your time to making sure I get the message that he wants me?”
“He’s my friend,” Crane said simply, picking his teeth with a fingernail. “I want to see him happy, and for some reason my dear, you’ve stolen his heart completely. And he’s never even seen how pretty you are under that mask.”
“Veil,” Helena said.
“Yes, of course. Good evening to you,” Crane bowed slightly from the waist and made his exit through the back door that connected the lavishly anointed harem chambers from the main palace. It was a semi-secret door that opened into a series of hallways from where a person could reach most any room in the noble wing of the palace – again, through a secret doorway.
The power that the harem held was almost staggering. In a way, they controlled the comings and goings of Salomana’s most powerful with little more than a whisper or a kiss. Helena knew the power; she’d been trained in the ways of secret and confidence by the very best, by Maret, but she wasn’t interested in any of that.
She slipped the golden hoop through the top piercing in her right ear, completing the ring of golden, shimmering jewels. With the glittering of sapphires and rubies, if the flame from a candle or headlight hit her just right, it looked like flames licked her ears.
Anyone who saw her like this, anyone, would have been smitten, she thought as she gave herself one last look in the mirror she’d brought from home. The turquoise-rimmed memory of her mother and her sisters was almost painful to hold at times, but at others, it made her feel safe.
“Protect me,” she whispered at the looking glass, “even as I do something so monumentally stupid I can hardly believe that I’m thinking about actually doing it.”
She thought she heard a rustle in the silk curtains that separated her chambers from the common room, but she couldn’t be sure. She was too wrapped up in admiring the job she’d done with her eye shadow to think of much else. And it wasn’t that she was vain – far from it – but it was a very good job she’d done.
She turned her head first left, and then right, looking at the sparkles.
“What in the hell am I doing?” she asked the mirror. The entire rest of the harem was out at the banquet, and anyway she was whispering. No one would overhear. “Am I really going to take this idiotic chance and run with it?”
The more she thought about it, the more Crane was probably right. The king would have summoned her by now. The clock on her wall was almost at midnight. Surely he would have summoned her already if he intended to see her tonight. What harm could it do? If she was called anyway, it was so late that she’d be reprimanded, but the excuse that she had fallen asleep would likely not be questioned.
On the other hand, if she didn’t go, she would certainly be missing the one thing she’d wanted more than life itself since coming to this damn palace two months before. Helena was taken in by the glitz and the jewels and the glamor, but they soured quickly. Not so with this prince. The more she thought of those enchanting eyes, that curly, care-free hair, and the way he smiled just so at her… She felt herself blush in places she shouldn’t be blushing.
But more than the thought of some kind of carnal rendezvous with Prince Arad was the feeling that she would just be doing something. Anything besides practicing the harp or working on standing still with her back straighter and straighter; anything was more exciting than another damnable night of that, or of foot rubs, or soaks in the tub. She was just so bored.
Before she knew what was going through her head, Helena was up and she was away.
She disappeared into the doorway that led to the spider’s web of tunnels through the walls of the palace, checking behind herself to make sure no one had seen her leave without first having gotten a summons.
But Helena made the same mistake a thousand others before her had made. She didn’t bother looking up.
Overhead, in a nook known only to herself and a pair of others, Maret sat, twirling a string of pearls between her smooth, aged fingers. “I’d say don’t be stupid,” she chuckled to herself, “but I know what it is to be young. And I know you well enough to know you’re clever, even if you are given to the whimsies that go with it. Sometimes,” she exhaled a long-held breath, “sometimes I long for those days. But then I remember how much they hurt when things didn’t go the way I hoped.”
*
The tunnels were longer, darker, and more twisted than Helena remembered. She’d only been into them a handful of times, and always with someone vastly more experienced at navigating the dead ends and double-backs, but the note Crane left on her desk had a serviceable, if vague, map drawn on it.
“Four doors past the left, one to the right,” she said, stopping in the hallway underneath a lantern. “Six to the… oh damn it all! I’ll never find this place. I’m going to die in this ridiculous tunnel and I should have just waited for the king. This is all so stupid!”
Helena turned around and flattened herself against the nearest wall. The coolness of worn stone seeped through the flimsy silks she wore. The chill prickled her skin, pebbling her nipples pleasantly against the thin film covering them. She tried once again to calm herself, to quiet her nerves, but it was just no good.
Another glance at the note told her nothing more than the first had revealed. She had managed, somehow, to become so hopelessly twisted up that she’d lost even the way back to the harem. She let out another sigh.
“How do I get myself into these stupid messes?” she asked herself, and the empty hallway. “How can I not read a damn map?!”
“Because,” a voice – a smooth, calm, and unbearably rugged voice – came to her ears. “I drew gibberish, knowing it would lead you here to me. I’ve dreamed of your skin, I’ve been enraptured by your eyes, I’ve—”
Before he could finish, Helena delivered a ripping slap right to the prince’s cheek. “You terrified me!” she said in a hissed whisper. “I could have been lost! I could have died in here!”
After his shock, and the sting of her practiced blow, wore off, he couldn’t help but laugh. Gently, of course. “I knew where you’d be. How could you die in here?”
He took her hand to prevent another painful smack. “And watch that,” he said. “Your rings hurt more than you probably think.”
“I turned it backward on purpose,” Helena said.
“Even behind the veil, your eyes blaze,” Arad said, his voice a mixture of leather, chocolate and honey dripping from a freshly cracked comb. “My man gave you my message, but only I can give you what I truly want you to have.”
She went to hit him again, for freshness, but then remembered he had a fast grip on her wrist. So instead, she hit him with the other one. Or at least, she tried – the prince was as agile as he was beautiful, and intercepted that one too. “You’re a spry one,” he said with a grin that shone white in the lantern light. “The way you fight me, but still I can tell you’re smiling under that veil.”
“How?” Helena whispered, realizing that her body had drifted very close to his. She consciously shuffled backwards, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
“You say no, but at the same time you’re so close to me I can smell your perfume. I can smell the oils you put in your hair. I can smell… you.” He drew a nose full of air to demonstrate. “I’
m intoxicated, I’m beyond words for you, Helena.”
The way he spoke her name it sounded like poetry dripping from a skilled bard’s tongue. Her knees were weak, and almost immediately, her hips were right back to where they were before. The buckle of Arad’s tight-fitting leather pants was cool on Helena’s belly. The prince stood a good head and a half taller than she. Beneath the cool smoothness of the buckle she felt something decidedly more… enticing.
She pulled away again, but it was only a gesture. She didn’t want to escape his grasp any more than he was going to let her. His lips were so close to hers that she could smell his wine-sweet breath. With a tug of his hand, Arad pulled Helena close to his body, clasping her tightly against himself. For a moment, she buried her nose in his hair. He smelled of leather, of man, of the hard smells of the desert… and there was something else, too, something in the background that she couldn’t quite pick out.
“Why me?” she asked. “Of all the women in the kingdom, why—”
“Because love is impossible to understand,” Arad said, sweeping his hand down one of Helena’s veiled cheeks. “Because I can’t explain my heart, and have long since stopped trying. But I tell you this – I may be known for my appetites and my tastes, but I have never lied to get my way, you’ve heard this?”
“You lied to get me here,” she observed. “The map?”
A twinkle of insight came over Arad’s eye, like he’d found a worthy adversary and was about to do battle. “That doesn’t count,” he said.
“Why not? It was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“No, it was a map.”
“But an untrue one.”
“A lie would be if I told you that my mother was dying, and I needed your touch to stave off the sadness.”
“You drew a map purposefully to lead me astray,” Helena stuck to her guns. “That’s a lie if anything is.”
Arad cocked his head to the side. “Well, if I allow that one – then I’ve told one lie to get what I want. Can I erase it with a good deed?”
