“Jaranda,” she said again, louder, firmly. “Jaranda, my love. Do you remember your father?”
Strange, she felt no sense of loss at the man’s absence. No regret. She focused entirely on her daughter, stooping to put herself on the same level as the child.
Jaranda shook her head. Her thumb crept toward her mouth.
The woman gently restrained her from the baby habit of insecurity. “This is important, Jaranda. If I know your P’pa’s name, I might remember my own.”
“You’re M’ma. You don’t need ’nother name.” Jaranda thrust out her lower lip. A tear trembled in the corner of her eye.
“I am your M’ma, little one. But these other people need to call my by another name. I’m not their M’ma, after all.” She touched the edge of her hem to her daughter’s eyes, blotting the half-formed tears.
“I don’t remember P’pa. ’Cept he was big. He filled the doorway when he came to watch me at night. He thought I was asleep. He wouldn’t have come if he knew I was awake.” Jaranda flung her arms around her mother’s neck and hugged her tightly, nearly strangling her.
“We don’t want P’pa. He scared me. I like Zebbie better.”
“Yes, I like Zebbiah, too, Jaranda,” she choked out, fighting the pressure on her throat from the little girl’s enthusiasm. She stood up and gently held her daughter’s hands.
She turned to find the dark-eyed man watching her.
“You remember something.” His usually expressive eyes took on a hooded look, and he refused to meet her gaze.
“Where is my husband, Zebbiah? Why did he not come for us in the palace when everyone deserted me?”
“Many men died in the war.” He bent to fuss with the harness on his pack beast.
“Dead?” A huge weight seemed to lift from her chest. “I’m a widow.” She had to restrain herself from jumping in glee. “I guess the marriage was not happy,” she whispered to herself. Jaranda renewed her stranglehold, on her knees this time.
“Serves you right.” A bulky man, managing the sledge behind her spat into the dirt. “Can’t trust outlanders. Especially those with dark eyes. Brown or blue as dark as midnight, don’t matter, they’s all signs of outlanders,” he sneered. “Best you don’t remember the man what give you a child with outland hair. Best you take her and your dark-eyed lover out of SeLenicca. We don’t need no outlanders tainting our blood or telling us what to do.”
“And yet you travel outland. By the looks of the goods on your sledge, you intend to stay there a long time.” She raised an eyebrow at him in irony at his hypocrisy.
“Prejudice has to be learned, Lady,” Zebbiah said quietly.
“And I have forgotten my prejudices along with my name.”
“Common enough name,” the bulky man snarled again.
“Do you know my name, traveler?”
He turned his back on her, refusing to answer.
“Somehow I thought he’d say that. But I’ll remember eventually. I’ve started to remember. The rest will come.” She brushed Jaranda’s dress free of dust. “Let’s get started. The day is too beautiful to waste on the past and regrets and prejudices.” She whistled to the pack beast. It brayed in an obnoxious imitation of an agreement and plodded along behind her. The other steed riders and sledge drivers followed her lead.
“Your M . . . Your Ladyship, get back in line,” the caravan leader snarled, pushing ahead of her. But he kept marching, no longer finding excuses to delay.
“Excuse me, do you happen to know my name?” she asked the leader, assuming a place just behind his left shoulder.
“That ain’t your place in line, Lady. Get back with your outland lover.”
“Why did I know you’d be as evasive as the others?”
Jack stood on a promontory overlooking the vale where Margit and Katrina made camp. Even after three days, he struggled to reconcile the double nature of his vision. The massive spell to separate the queen from her cat had sapped his energies to a dangerously low point.
Amaranth balanced easily on his shoulder. Corby used to perch in much the same spot. Amaranth was heavier, but more willing to please and become an extension of Jack’s magic and personality. A friend. His rich fur brushed Jack’s face and they both leaned into the caress, needing each other.
Jack had cried the morning he could not wake Corby, but he’d accepted the loss. Corby had been his only—if somewhat reluctant—friend for a long time; much longer than jackdaws normally lived. Corby deserved his rest. Hopefully, he’d pass peacefully into his next existence, into a life without the wild adventures reserved for a magician’s familiar.
Amaranth chattered his teeth in anxious anticipation of the coming adventures.
“They’ve come a long way in so short a time,” Jack mused as he stroked Amaranth’s fur. He’d stalked the two women for three days, not daring to approach closer lest Katrina reject him. He’d also husbanded his strength. That last spell had drained him of more energy than usual. More often than not, he was so tired he saw double.
“We’re very near the border with SeLenicca. I don’t like them camping without a bubble of armor.”
But if Katrina would Sing as she had Sung in SeLenicca, she might create her own spell of invisibility that Margit couldn’t duplicate. Jack had to chuckle at how many villages and homesteads had eluded him on his quest, all because the women unconsciously Sang spells of protection for their loved ones as they went about their daily chores.
The flywacket ruffled his feathered wings, getting used to their size and the skin flap that hid them when at rest. He rubbed his cat’s muzzle against Jack’s chin, eager for more caresses.
(Steeds.) Not so much a word as an image of two fleet and one pack steed picketed beyond Margit’s fire, but sheltered by an outcropping of rock. Jack could not have seen the animals without Amaranth’s help.
“They’ve stopped early. Still hours of daylight left,” he mused. As he watched, Katrina and Margit both rubbed the insides of their thighs through their journey trews. Riding had taken its toll on unfamiliar riders.
“Is it time to let the girls know we’ve followed them?” Jack asked Amaranth, not really expecting an answer.
Amaranth purred, devoid of opinion. Jack supposed the true cat spirit he’d liberated from Queen Mikka vied with the dragon intelligence for dominance inside the flywacket. They’d compromise soon enough. Then Amaranth would reawaken his true telepathic communication with Jack.
Something alien churned inside Jack, and the base of his spine itched as if it needed to twitch. The smell of Margit’s roasting hedgehog filtered up to his nose in hundreds of component odors. He grew dizzy trying to sort them.
“I guess you are channeling your heightened senses into me without knowing it, Amaranth,” he commented.
The flywacket perked his ears and continued purring.
“Maybe I’ll stay up here one more night. I’ll join them tomorrow,” Jack mused.
“Mew,” Amaranth agreed.
The wind shifted to the east, behind Jack. It smelled of rain with a slight tang of salt. Another storm approached from the sea.
Margit sneezed three times in quick succession.
Katrina draped a blanket over the apprentice magician’s shoulders.
Jack crouched down to observe closer. Margit getting sick was not in his plans. She’d delay them. He hoped that once in her own land, Katrina would learn to trust him again, learn that he’d never hurt her, even if they must remain celibate the rest of their lives—a fate he certainly hoped to avoid.
(Not sick,) Amaranth insisted.
“Well, nice to hear you speak again, friend,” Jack murmured, stroking the flywacket’s neck and back. His fingers lingered on the slight bump of the extra skin that had rolled back to release the wings.
(Lonely for Katrina. She lonely, too.) Amaranth launched into a long glide down the rock face. He landed beside Katrina, tucked his wings neatly away and began an obligatory bath.
Both women s
quealed, Margit half-frightened, Katrina half-delighted, at their visitor. Margit shifted her bottom to a rock on the opposite side of the fire from the flywacket.
“I hate cats!” Her words came distinctly to Jack’s ears, despite the wind that blew in the opposite direction.
True to the perverse nature of all cats, Amaranth followed Margit. He rubbed up against her arm and attempted to crawl into her lap. Margit jumped up with a yelp and began walking circles around the camp. The flywacket followed her lazily.
Katrina tried luring the black cat into her lap. Amaranth crouched on the other side of the fire, shifting his front paws in hunter mode, ready to leap.
But Jack saw the cat’s trajectory in his mind and Amaranth’s. He’d land directly on Margit’s shoulder, not Katrina’s lap.
“Thanks for making my decision for me, Amaranth.” Jack climbed down to retrieve his familiar and restore order in the camp. “I just hope you haven’t created more problems than you solved.”
Chapter 24
Lanciar threaded his way along the line of march toward Zolltarn’s sledge. The stern and wily clan chieftain popped a whip just above the left ear of the lead pack steed. The animal quickened its pace a bit. The other steeds followed suit.
The tin weasel, perched on the raised front of the sledge, seemed to wink and drool at the evidence of Zolltarn’s control of the dumb beasts. Its tail lost some of its rigidity and bristled.
Lanciar quickly crossed his wrists behind his back and wiggled his fingers in an abbreviated ward against evil. The statue was inanimate. It couldn’t move. Could it?
Zolltarn smiled and so did everyone else in the caravan, including Lanciar, the tin weasel forgotten. That happened a lot. Whatever mood sat on Zolltarn’s shoulders infected the entire clan. Was this part of their connected magic; all of them subtly linked so that what one experienced the others shared? Lanciar hoped not. If that were the case, he was falling under their spell. He needed independence and privacy to steal his son. If he ever found the boy.
“You have something to ask me?” Zolltarn spoke before Lanciar could open his mouth or even frame his question.
“You lead us in a strange direction,” Lanciar said.
“The road leads us. We follow it,” Zolltarn replied in typically cryptic Rover fashion.
“The road branched three ways less than an hour ago. You could have chosen any one of those directions.”
“This road seemed more enticing.”
“This road leads to the mountains. The pass into SeLenicca is haunted by demons and ghosts as well as bandits.”
“Ghosts have no reason to trouble Rovers. Bandits have learned to leave us alone. And as for demons? Demons can be our friends.” The Rover leader smiled and squinted his eyes in an expression that looked like mischief personified.
Lanciar refused to repeat the ward behind his back. He’d have to learn to deal with Zolltarn and his smile sooner or later, hopefully later, after he left the clan with his son.
“Rovers are not welcome in SeLenicca,” Lanciar argued. “The land has been stripped of resources. Why borrow trouble, when you can roam Coronnan and live off its lush bounty?”
“My grandson travels this way. I sense that he needs me.” Zolltarn lifted his head and sniffed the air. His eyes took on a glazed expression.
“Who calls you, Zolltarn?” Lanciar asked.
“As I said, my grandson.”
“You have so few men in the clan. I’m surprised you allowed the man to leave.”
“In the way of the People, the man goes to his wife’s clan. For my grandson to marry within the clan would violate our laws against incest. He will rule his wife’s clan one day, as I rule my wife’s.”
“You have not brought in new husbands for the many women here. Instead you indulge in polygamy.”
“You have been brought into the clan. As have many orphaned children.”
“I travel with you. There is a difference.” But his senses became suddenly alert to the nuances in Zolltarn’s tone. There was only one child that interested him.
“Is there a difference? We take in the son, so must we take in the father.”
“I will leave when I have accomplished my mission.”
“Will you?”
“S’murghit, I will.”
Watch your language! He distinctly heard Maija’s reprimand in his mind.
Lanciar looked around for Zolltarn’s youngest daughter. She frowned at him from three sledges behind him. For once he did not look away and feel ashamed, but boldly held her gaze until she smiled and nodded.
Only then did Lanciar turn his attention back to the Rover Chieftain’s challenge. Inwardly he shuddered against standing in such close proximity to a dark-eyed outlander; having his son raised by outlanders. Prejudices pounded into him as a child remained firmly rooted in his gut and the back of his mind.
At one time he’d loved Rejiia. By that time, he’d spent enough time in the company of foreign soldiers and diplomats to overlook many things about outlanders. But still he resented them, felt dirty having to touch one. He’d overlooked Rejiia’s black hair because she had an incredibly lush body and an insatiable sexual appetite. True-blood women were notorious prudes. She also had piercing and beautiful blue eyes—the blue of an endless night sky in deep winter. True-bloods of SeLenicca always had blue eyes (though several shades lighter than Rejiia’s) and blond hair.
But she and her lover King Simeon, Queen Miranda’s red-haired consort, had stolen the crown from Simeon’s meek little wife. Rejiia had claimed that her son was fathered by Simeon, hoping to put the child on the throne of SeLenicca as well as Coronnan with claims to Rossemeyer and Hanassa. But Simeon had turned out to be her father’s half brother. Then she claimed the boy died at birth to avoid the taint of incest.
But Lanciar knew the child to be his, sired during a particularly passionate coven ritual when The Simeon had occupied himself exclusively with Ariiell. She’d been a simpering virgin at the time and screamed loudly enough to satisfy even The Simeon. Rejiia had never screamed during sex and always participated with all of her strength and emotions—even during her first ritual when Simeon claimed her virginity.
Lanciar wondered if she’d indeed been a virgin or merely used her magic to create that illusion.
You can’t trust a dark-eyed outlander. The oft repeated phrase burned into Lanciar’s mind.
“I’ll leave when I accomplish my mission,” he reiterated.
“You have met my daughter Maija,” Zolltarn continued as if Lanciar had not spoken. “A comely girl.”
“She’s a good cook.” Lanciar wasn’t about to admit how beautiful he found the girl with her flashing eyes, bright smile, long legs, and lush bosom. He didn’t really mind her reprimands about his soldier-bred language. From that first night when she’d asked him to abandon his campsite and join the clan, he’d admired her.
But the promise of a romp in her bed had remained an elusive taunt between them. All he wanted from her was a romp. A commitment for more would tie him to the clan and he did not want to stay with them any longer than necessary. He wanted his son free of Rover ideas and morals—or lack of morals.
He sensed a trap in Zolltarn’s words and the girl’s seduction. And he’d witnessed almost no immoral conduct or indiscretions.
“Maija has no husband. She has courted a number of suitable men from other clans but found none of them to her liking. Not all of the men are willing to follow me because I am a powerful magician and have ties to the Commune of Magicians. They know that once they mate with one of mine there is no escape. They remain part of my clan even if their bride dies.”
“I presume, then, that the choice of mate belongs to the women in your clan.” Lanciar found himself edging away from Zolltarn, off the road, away from these people and their alien customs.
“ ’Tis the way of the Rovers. Once she chooses, she must be faithful. Before she chooses, she must remain untouched. Upon occasion we have relaxed t
hat rule and met with disaster. My eldest daughter Kestra died and her child was stolen from us because we sought a different solution to our needs. Never again.”
“I’m surprised you have not pushed Maija to choose sooner, bring new blood, another man into the clan.”
“Ah, but now she has chosen. And she will take your son into her household as soon as he is weaned.” Zolltarn stared directly at Lanciar.
“I think I need a drink.”
“Maija brews the best ale of all the Rover clans.”
Eight black articulated limbs quested outward from the slime-coated, bulbous body of the spider. Vareena stared at the malevolent creature, frozen by fear.
Poison dripped from the clacking pincers on the forward limbs. Its eyes, positioned near the joint of each leg, flashed demon red. The thing could easily enclose her fist within its eight arms.
Her heart pounded as loud as festival drums. Cold sweat trickled down her back.
The spider inched forward, tasting the air with each leg-tip, glowing as redly as its eyes.
“Stargods protect me,” she whispered, trying to edge away from her stalker. The stone walls on three sides of her hard bed within the monastery stopped her retreat.
The spider moved forward faster than she could edge away from it.
Could she run for the doorway before it swung out on its web and latched onto her vulnerable neck?
Surely Robb must sense her fear, hear her thudding heartbeat, and come to her rescue.
The door remained stubbornly closed. The entire monastery was wrapped in the preternatural silence of the gloaming.
The spider came closer.
Panic propelled Vareena out of bed and across the room. She tugged at the door. It remained firmly closed and latched. She kicked it and bruised her toes. She pulled with both hands. It did not even rattle.
Something heavy and hard landed on her hair.
She screamed . . .
And awoke in bed drenched in sweat.
Cautiously, afraid to move lest she bring the spider upon her, she brought a wisp of witchlight to her fingertip.
Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III Page 60
