She felt him shift beneath her, and knew it was her signal to rise, to break the bond of intimacy. The pain she now felt was far greater than anything done to her with the whip, much more cruel than all of Senelek’s heartless words combined. There was in him no sign of similar anguish, though she’d learned from certain quarters that men were like this, given to sudden shifts and proclamations of readiness for cataclysmic change.
Best to bear up, then. Varik was right, the hour was late and there was much to be done at home. By her calculations, if she guessed correctly the time they’d travelled so far, the ride would be a short one, a half hour at most. The only difficulty would be in having to touch him, to feel his heat against her, as though they were still lovers. Anxiously she waited while he dressed, so he could lift her back upon the horse.
It occurred to her now that the animal would have seen everything between them. What an odd thing to think! Although everything seemed odd now to her still benighted eyes: the buzzing of the mosquitoes, the call of a hawk in the sky. Real, and yet somehow not real. Varik dug his booted heels into the sides of the horse and they were off again. The wind was picking up and it blew her hair, tugging the roots from her scalp ever so slightly.
Clamping her eyes shut, guarding against the risk of even a tiny bit of light which might break into her dark horizon spoiling her reverie, she willed herself home, not relying upon the steed, but upon her own wits. Under her own power, unto her own fate she would go. Alone. Strong. Invincible, in fact.
The cobblestones were tinier, sharper now. By the clomping of the horse she knew she was quite close, in full view of the castle. Varik slowed accordingly. It was an act of tremendous daring for him to come so close to an enemy, a people as yet un-subdued. And to do so alone, that enemy’s queen upon the back of his horse was even more amazing. Was it bravery or foolishness? Perhaps even some mad death wish? It chilled her when ideas of this sort popped into her head. Almost as if she could read things in him no one else knew, things he himself would prefer not to view in the light of day.
The horse stopped, giving a wary nay. Perhaps her guards were surrounding them by now. If there were trouble she would issue the order for him to be released. He’d conducted her safely thus far and she would return the favour, insuring his security back across her frontiers. The hands that helped her down this time were not Varik’s. They were armoured hands, and the chinks of the riveted links sent tingles up and down her spine. It was not till she was on her feet, her hand clutching the cloak tightly, possessively, that her blindfold was removed.
Varik was behind her, already galloping away. She wanted to turn and call out to him, but she knew that would be a betrayal of what they’d gone through, a betrayal of the carefully orchestrated journey home. Besides, there was another matter in front of her, more pressing.
Caralissa looked at the two men, their unfamiliar uniforms and faces. She frowned. These guards were not her own personal soldiers, nor even those of the kingdom’s army. They were foreigners, with the colours of two distinct kingdoms, neighbours in the valley.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, straightening confidently even as they drew their swords. ‘And why do you bear arms in this land?’
‘We are authorised, royal majesty,’ said the taller of the two. ‘By the League of Seven Kingdoms.’
‘What league is this? I know nothing of it.’
The men cast a glance at one another. ‘The League exists to secure the peace of the Valley,’ said the shorter one. ‘We have come to determine the rightful ruler of Orencia.’
Caralissa’s jaw locked fiercely, though she dared not show any emotion at this juncture. ‘Take me to my sister,’ she commanded. ‘And we shall see about this. In the meantime, assemble the council.’
‘Perhaps her majesty would prefer to bathe first and dress,’ suggested the taller of the two, clean-shaven, his disturbing eyes set at cross angles.
‘Yes,’ agreed the other, relaxing visibly at the possibility of a non-confrontational solution. ‘That might be best.’
Caralissa shook out her hair. ‘Very well,’ she conceded. ‘Take me to my room. I shall prepare myself, and then you shall summon my sister. And my guards, as well. I demand to see my own palace guards.’
The taller man bowed, neither confirming nor denying the bulk of her request. ‘A bath shall be drawn,’ he said. ‘At once.’
Chapter Six
Caralissa slammed her fists in fury against the thick oaken door. It was her own door, the portal to her bedroom where she’d just finished her bath and been dressed by one of the servants in a gown of exquisite green silk. At present the fool of a woman - a stranger, like the guards who’d brought her here - was standing behind her, hands clasped at her waist.
‘Who has dared to lock my door?’ she demanded, whirling around to confront her. ‘I shall have their head. And yours, too, if you presume to detain me!’
The woman, who was old enough to be her mother, turned very pale. ‘Forgive me,’ she said gravely, falling to her knees. ‘I only do as I am told.’
Caralissa reddened, realising the brutality of her words. ‘Rise,’ she said, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘It is not your fault. I too have known what it is like to be under the command of others. Forgive me.’
There were tears in her blue eyes as she stood. ‘No one has ever asked my forgiveness,’ she marvelled.
Caralissa smiled. ‘I am honoured to be the first. So tell me, who is in command here?’
‘I do not know, majesty. I am only Deelia, the servant of King Norod of Relacia.’
Norod of Relacia. Of course. Orencia’s chief rival in the valley and a miserable old busybody to boot. No doubt he was seeking to capitalise on the turmoil introduced by the now pre-empted Rashal invasion. Perhaps it was he who was behind the most unexpected treason of Romila and the coward Telos, although it was hard to imagine the old fool ever hatching so grand a plot. More likely he was a dupe himself, for Telos or Romila, or some other parties within the nobility.
‘I see,’ she nodded. ‘So it seems my enemies are gathering close at hand. Just as well. Better to have them in plain sight, don’t you think?’ She winked.
‘As you say,’ the woman agreed meekly.
Caralissa snapped her fingers, sudden insight flashing into her tired mind. ‘The bed sheets! Of course! We can fashion a rope and escape out the window. It’s only three stories down. Help me, Deelia; we must gather as many sheets as we can.’
‘Yes, majesty,’ she bowed, though it was clear she thought the plan folly.
In short order Caralissa made a pile, consisting of nearly a dozen sheets in all, from the bed and from her linen closet. She was thick into the knotting process when a key was heard in the lock. A moment later the door opened revealing Telos, dressed in a gold-buttoned uniform of red and green, a sash across his chest.
Caralissa resisted the urge to lunge at him outright. ‘How dare you enter my chambers,’ she hissed. ‘You sorry excuse for a human being! You despicable cowardly traitor! Leave at once! Leave this room, this castle, this kingdom!’
Telos bent at the waist. ‘May I simply say,’ he offered glibly, ‘that you look most radiant tonight, my dear Caralissa?’
She looked at him with daggers in her eyes. He’d dared to use her name, as though she were a commoner. Recovering from the momentary shock, she searched for a suitable weapon. Quickly she settled upon a fluted vase from off her dresser. Telos ducked, barely avoiding having his skull impacted. ‘You may say nothing to me!’ she fumed. ‘Unless it be an abject apology upon your knees. Although, I promise even that would do nothing to take the edge off my rage!’
Telos sat on the edge of her bed. ‘I can see you are upset,’ he noted. ‘Perhaps if you allowed me to explain?’
‘Explain?’ she laughed contemptuously. ‘What is there to explain? You denounced me to our enemy
as a tyrant and you have the nerve to want to explain it?’
‘I did it to spare you, Caralissa.’ He held up his hands beseechingly. ‘Is it not obvious? If the Rashal thought you of great value to us, they would have slain you, or extorted ransom. As it was, they sent you home free of charge. Intact, too - relatively speaking.’
Caralissa smacked him across his sallow, pockmarked face, leaving a bright red palm mark. ‘Do not cast innuendoes, Telos, nor should you presume to speak to the details of my captivity. Not now, not ever.’
Telos touched his cheek, a sickly smile on his face. ‘Of course,’ he agreed, ‘Caralissa.’
‘And stop using my name!’ she cried. ‘Address me properly or not at all!’
He pursed his lips, saying nothing.
‘Give me the key,’ she demanded, grabbing him by the collar with her clenched fists. ‘I will get out of here now!’
‘I haven’t a key,’ he said, offering no resistance. ‘The guards let me in.’
She released him. There was no point in dealing with this man, or even acknowledging his existence for that matter. He was a worm, and that was that. She thought of throwing him to the floor, but that would only give him the satisfaction of revealing how disgusted she was to have him on her very bed, and that was something she would never allow him. Leaving him be, she turned to her pile of sheets.
‘Help me with these,’ she bid Deelia, tossing the cowering maid several of the silk sheets.
As Caralissa worked she tried to ignore the interloper. Unfortunately Telos could still be heard breathing - a sound that filled her with nearly as much disgust as the hoof beats of foreign troops that she could hear even now outside her window.
‘Telos, is there some reason you are still here?’ she demanded at last, not bothering to look up from her accumulated pile of knots.
‘Not really,’ he sighed, reclining his miserable body on her bed as though he were her lover. ‘It merely occurred to me, your majesty, that you might wish to share with someone the story of what you have been through. With the Rashal, I mean.’ He folded his hands behind his head, crushing her pillows beneath him. ‘Surely it was quite an ordeal.’
‘No, Telos,’ she snapped, ‘it was a jolly picnic.’
‘They tell me you have marks,’ he said, crossing his legs, his head turning towards her nightstand from which he picked up a glass ornament, a swan. ‘Were you whipped, then?’ he enquired, turning the object over and over in his hands.
‘I was a prisoner, Telos. What do you think? And stop touching my things.’
He examined the swan a minute longer. ‘Sorry,’ he said, putting it back, ‘highness.’
Caralissa left off her growing rope of sheets to consider the face of her tormentor. With each mention of her title Telos seemed to be employing still higher levels of sarcasm. ‘If you are that curious about whips, Lord Telos, I can arrange for you to experience one for yourself.’
He laughed politely. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ A moment later he added, ‘Did it hurt very much, to be whipped? I would assume you were naked at the time.’
She chose to ignore him. The far corner of her four-poster bed seemed like the best anchor for her escape rope. Taking one end of the collection of sheets, she affixed it with a triple knot.
‘Is it true, then,’ he went on as though they were having an actual conversation, ‘that you were in no way compromised?’
‘Do you mean raped, Telos?’ she shot back. ‘Is that the word you cannot bring yourself to say, for all your obvious manliness?’
He covered his hands over his ears. ‘I shall not hear such language, your majesty. Not in the royal bedchambers.’
With almost gleeful spite, Caralissa strode to the side of the bed and said the word again and again, shouting it into his ears. When she was satisfied she’d made an ass of him, she said, ‘There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? And to answer your question, little man, I wasn’t raped at all. Everything that happened was consensual. How does that sound in your prim and proper little ears?’
She was pulling on his sleeve, forcing him to look into her eyes. Leaning over him, her silk-covered breasts dangling in his face, she let him have it with full force, unleashing the sum of her turgid emotions - the despair, the misery of losing the man she loved, of finding traitors in her own castle, of being sentenced to a life of loneliness without the impetuous Rashal chieftain by her side.
‘Do you want to hear more, Telos? You’d like the sordid details, is that it? Would you like a vicarious thrill from someone else’s sex life to make up for your own pathetic lack of even an iota of manhood? Very well, Lord Telos, I shall tell you what you are dying to know. To begin with, I laid for them. For their leader and a large number of his officers. They compelled me to, though not by force. They are men, Telos, which is something you will never understand. They needed only to lay hands upon me, to command me with their stern voices, to fix me in their searing gazes and I was left no option but to surrender. They made me wet and helpless between my legs with their merest glances, Telos. Can you imagine such a thing? I, a queen, reduced to naked servitude like a common slave, and at the hands of barbarians, no less. And I would probably do so again if forced to choose between them or some of our own men; for the ugliest most pathetic of their warriors possessed twice the masculinity of anyone in our land.
‘What’s the matter, Telos? Too much information for you? Then I guess I shouldn’t tell you the rest - what it felt like to be tied naked between two poles and beaten in front of thousands of soldiers, the stripes of the whip being interspersed with unspeakable intrusions into my intimate openings with the thick leather handle. Nor should I share with you the story of how your queen danced naked for a barbarian warlord, touching herself under the influence of stinging cords while the men whipping her competed to have her body. No, Telos, have no fear. I shall spare you those things, for they represent experiences of me which you shall never have, nor will you ever even have the courage to dream of them.’
Telos’ bland face contorted into a smirk. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said, looking up at her, her breath ragged from her long harangue. ‘Don’t be so sure.’
Caralissa bared her teeth. He’d managed to push her over the edge. Leaping onto the bed she straddled him, commencing to pummel him with her balled fists. Keeping to his character Telos did not fight back, but only sought to cover his face.
Her fists fell like rain, doing little damage but easing her tensions nonetheless. She was on the verge of releasing him when she heard the door opening for a second time. It was her sister Romila with several guards, along with none other than King Norod, who looked much more feeble than ever, with his long beard and stooped shoulders, his robes covering him like a scarecrow. It was just five years since she’d seen him, yet the man seemed to have aged fifty.
‘Caralissa, what on earth?’ Romila cried, even as the guards moved unbidden to seize her by both arms, pulling her off the passive Telos.
‘This isn’t what it seems,’ Caralissa said, unable to comprehend how anyone could think this little weasel to be the victim. ‘He attacked me.’
‘Noble Telos,’ King Norod intoned sharply, ‘is this true?’
Telos was busying himself attending to non-existent bruises. ‘I never laid a finger upon her,’ he told them quite truthfully.
Norod looked at Romila, who shook her head. ‘I do not understand her current behaviour, King Norod. Nor have I understood much of anything she’s done since our father’s death. First she put us all in grave danger running off to kill Varik, and then she comes home dressed in his cloak. And now look at these sheets, and look at Telos’ face. What are we supposed to think?’
Caralissa protested noisily to her sister, drawing an immediate rebuke from the king. ‘Young lady, that is quite enough. This is a matter to be taken up at the trial.’
‘What trial?’ she
demanded, having finally succeeded in shaking the two guards off her.
‘An inquiry, I should say,’ he corrected himself, gesturing with his withered hand for the guards to leave. ‘To determine the true ruler of Orencia.’
‘I am the true ruler,’ she said, straightening her back and thrusting out her chin. ‘I am the one who saved us all from the Rashal.’
‘Not all,’ Romila said. ‘Or have you forgotten the three lost kingdoms?’
‘I have not. As a matter of fact, I was present when the Rashal chieftain decided to pull out of the valley entirely, thereby restoring their freedoms.’
‘Yes,’ Romila observed dryly, stooping to retrieve the tangle of ruined sheets so she could hand them to Norod. ‘We are well aware of your presence amongst the Rashal. The question is, are you fit now to be queen.’
Norod took the sheets and looked at them with deep distress, as though her actions were some personal offence against him. ‘Caralissa, I do not understand. Why were you trying to escape from your own room?’
‘It was the only way I could think of to get out,’ she said, feeling like a child being chastised by her elders. ‘They locked me in here.’
‘For your protection,’ Norod said. ‘There have been threats against you. Some say you collaborated with the enemy.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Lies, all lies!’
Norod handed Romila the sheets, inclining his head to indicate his desire to speak privately with her. No sooner did the two of them turn their backs on Caralissa then she felt Telos behind her, his hand snaking up the back of her leg, under her dress. When he reached her buttocks he squeezed. Shrieking in horror, Caralissa darted forward.
‘Caralissa?’ Norod asked, his wrinkled brow even more furrowed than usual. ‘What is wrong now?’
‘It’s Telos,’ she complained. ‘He - he touched me!’
Telos exchanged a glance with the king, shrugging helplessly as if to indicate to him Caralissa’s instability. From the look on Norod’s face, he needed little convincing.
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