JOURNEY OF THE SACRED KING BOOK I: MY SISTER'S KEEPER

by JANRAE FRANK

  "Who are you?" she asked gently.

  Eliahu tried to smile, but it emerged as a grimace, the lines of pain deepening in his pale face. "Eliahu Solistis," he gritted out low, "High Mage of Winter. Lord of the Iron Glacier." He closed his eyes, slipping into a drugged slumber.

  Aejys gently brushed back a strand of long yellow hair that had slipped across his face. She felt grateful that it was not the approach of death, but a secret, that had brought him to a room apart. She lifted her eyes to the brother working on his wounds. "How bad is he?"

  "His back is a mess. The flesh hangs in tatters from his shoulders to his hips. Two ribs are broken, another is cracked," the brother pronounced solemnly, then allowed a reassuring smile, "but he will live."

  "Let me speak for him," Grawl sat up. "I am Grawl, High Shaman of the blood bears of St. Tarmus."

  Aejys' eyes widened in surprise, for she had not known the bears could speak. "As you will," she replied.

  "Your mage wishes to remain your secret weapon against the darkness." Grawl related all of Eliahu's reasons for the deception, leaving out the fact that he had gotten his information, not from the mage himself, but from Josh.

  * * * *

  Aejys returned to her tent in the mid-morning, having not slept since before the battle. She found Tamlestari's medicine satchel, but no other sign that the youth had been there. She returned to the courtyard and saw Tagalong.

  "Tag! Have you seen Tamlestari?"

  "The girl's takin' it hard, Aejys. Real hard," Tagalong admitted. "They've put the dead in the chapel ta pray over them. That's where you'll find her. She just sits there weeping."

  "She needs me."

  Tagalong gave Aejys an odd, thoughtful look. "Ya know, way she looks at yuh I'd say she's got it bad."

  "I know. Now come on." Aejys started for the door with Tagalong following.

  Gwyndar and Emrindi, cantering around the north end of the sanctuary, spied Aejys and broke into an easy lope toward her. Ajandar was not with them as he would have been in earlier days: Aejys knew the missing wynderjyn had either gone feral or killed himself at Cassana's death. Her sadness returned thinking of the proud animal. At least if he had gone feral, the Valley of St. Tarmus was a good place for him.

  "Ajandar?"

  "No one knows," Tagalong said, "unless it's Tamlestari."

  Aejys paused, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes. The lapsed paladin wanted to know. If the wynderjyn had died he should be buried with his master. But Aejys did not want to ask Tamlestari. The youth was new to grief, having been too young when her ma'aram died to remember that loss. Aejys felt reluctant to remind her of her fresh loss any more than she could avoid.

  Gwyndar nuzzled Aejys. He blew in her ear. She caught him by the ears, pulled his face around, and kissed him on his broad nose. He pleaded with her to mount.

  "Not this time, my friend. I want to walk."

  * * * *

  The dead lay on the benches nearest the altar, their bodies bathed, their hair dressed and combed out. The hilts of their naked swords rested in their folded hands. They had been laid out with all honors the brothers could give. Mourners stood or knelt or sat upon the floor around their lost friends and companions.

  Jaqui of Treth, her usually cocky expression replaced by utter seriousness, her eyes distant, leaned upon her spear just beyond the doors. A slender shaft of sunlight from a high window played across a long untended slash in Jaqui's upper right arm.

  "Have you had that looked at?" Aejys asked.

  Jaqui smiled and shrugged. "It won't scar and it'll be gone tomorrow."

  Aejys' eyebrow quirked. "Oh?"

  "It's a charm cast by an old lover. She loved my 'chocolate candy skin' and didn't want it blemished. No matter how bad the wound, it heals quickly and never leaves a scar."

  "Ria Torrundarsdottir?" Another name of the dead. Aejys shivered, the touch of something chill wrapped around her and she felt as if the ghosts of lost friends were watching her.

  "Yeah." A shadow gathered around Jaqui's mouth and in the corners of her large dark eyes; she banished it with another shrug. "We all got our scars, just some of us wear them on the inside."

  "And some of us wear them in both places," Aejys replied.

  "Yeah. That too." Jaqui inclined her head at Tamlestari who knelt beside Cassana with her forehead pressed into the silken coverlet of the bier. "Stay with her. I been following her around all day just to be sure she didn't do something stupid. I got someone waiting for me."

  "How is Briarmottë?"

  Jaqui grinned. "He got himself a couple of cuts. Nothing much you understand, but I'm the only one's going to change those bandages. You understand?"

  "Go on."

  Aejys did not notice when Tagalong discretely slipped away to take care of other business. In the silence she could hear Tamlestari's muffled weeping. Aejys' hand settled lightly on Tamlestari's shoulder as she knelt beside her.

  Tamlestari looked up, her eyes red and swollen from long weeping. "Mei Amita said she heard his voice. She couldn't wait much longer. Had to go to him."

  "Colin."

  Tamlestari nodded through her tears. "It was the last thing she said to me. Before you came."

  Aejys kissed Cassana's forehead, cheeks, and lips. "She told me," she said with a catch in her voice, "that night on the bluffs at Brendorn's grave. She said she was placing her life between me and Margren." She clasped Tamlestari to her, "Come away. She is in Aroana's care now."

  Tamlestari pulled three arrowheads from her pocket, holding them by their bits of broken shaft as she got to her feet. She handled them almost casually, yet with the respect one gave a venomous snake: she did not let her bare fingers touch the points themselves. "I'll return these to Ajan Margrenan," she said darkly, "on the sticking end of new shafts."

  Aejys' stomach tightened, then did a slow roll at the sight of the death runes on the arrowheads; the same rune the sa'necari used on their baneblades. The blades that had left the criss-cross scars on her legs and right shoulder; that had almost made a slave banelich of her. She sucked in a deep breath, forcing the tension out of her stomach.

  The lapsed paladin cupped Tamlestari's chin, lifting her face up, studying it. Aejys saw there a terrible rage hungering for blood vengeance. She saw too a grief-stricken youth full of anguish; loss gnawed at Tamlestari. Cassana had filled the place in Tamlestari's heart that had been left abandoned by Kalestari's death; it was as if she had lost her ma'aram a second time. There is nothing in my vow that says I must protect Margren from her own earned fate, Aejys mused silently. I do not believe I could successfully step between this young predator and her prey even if my life depended on it. But they are both predators and what may happen to one may as easily happen to the other. "Loyal heart, walk with me for a while. We'll walk down into the valley. Its beauty will soothe your grief."

  Aejys bent and kissed her forehead. Tamlestari's expression transformed in a blink. She wiped her tears with two fingers of her right hand and, with an uncertain smile, turned her thoughts to wonder. "You are certain you want me to? Yesterday, in the bath..."

  "You would not have me walk alone, would you?"

  "Never! I will walk with you."

  They walked among the trees and settled on a small smooth shelf above a brook. Aejys remembered with a pang that the last time she had walked along a brook with someone she cared for it had been with Brendorn and they had made love. Rushes grew along the bank amid the long spiky magenta blooms of dragonstail. A million tiny outcroppings of blue streaked stones islanded the swift shallow waters.

  "I have always wondered," said Aejys, "if the ocean would look like this from the clouds."

  Tamlestari nestled against her. "If it does, then I will always wish I had wings."

  They talked until the sun zenithed. Aejys held her and filled her thoughts with stories of Brendorn and Cassana and of Kalestari, her ma'aram. She felt the sweet warmth of the young girl and kissed her head. Tamlestari snug
gled closer, her face now pressing Aejys' breast. Aejys sighed, trembling suddenly in a very special need and loneliness.

  Tamlestari rose up a little on her knees, her hand pressing the back of Aejys' neck as her lips met those of the lapsed paladin. Tired and care-worn Tamlestari's shields slipped away in the eager warmth. Her Reader's talent revealed to her the intensity of the passion Aejys held in check and the purity of the love she felt for Tamlestari. Then another presence impinged on her awareness, floating in contentment until Tamlestari touched it.

  The youth drew back, her eyes searching Aejys' face. The longer they waited the harder it would become to move the child from Aejys' body to her own. While a wide variation existed within the manifestations of the kyndi, there were also boundaries and borders it did not cross, exceptions it did not make. As a Reader and healer, Tamlestari knew that only too well. "I want your child."

  "Tamlestari, loyal heart..."

  "Shhh," Tamlestari hissed. She lifted Aejys' tunic and shoved her hand down Aejys' pants. Her palm and widespread fingers lay for a moment flat on the lapsed paladin's stomach.

  "What is wrong?"

  "Not wrong. Right," Tamlestari said so softly that Aejys could barely hear her and had to listen very closely. "You must kyndi very soon." She pulled her hand back and kissed it.

  Aejys tried to turn her head aside and not look at Tamlestari, but the youth would have none of that, catching the older woman by the chin and gently yet firmly bringing her gaze back. "We were only together for a day and a night..." Aejys shook her head, "We did not want Laeoli to be an only child. We tried hard for another. I would have carried one for Ladonys if ... but neither of us..." Aejys pressed her hands over her face, sighing into them. "Why now? With death all around me?"

  "Sometimes that is enough," replied Tamlestari. She slithered out of her tunic, lifting her young perfect breasts to Aejys' lips. "Make love to me, beloved. Give me your child."

  "You're so young..."

  "I am not a virgin to either male or female. So don't let that bother you. And there are no others. Mei Amita would have taken it, but she's dead. Ladonys is far away and too ill from her wounds to take it. You don't want to give it to strangers. Compassies, even of noble birth, are treated shamefully. If you wait until we reach Shaurone the kyndi could kill you making the transfer or cripple the child."

  "Loyal heart." She caressed Tamlestari's hair with her lips. "I love you. I promised Cassana that you would have this child. But there is so much to consider..." She picked up Tamlestari's tunic and tried to pull it back over the youth's head. Tamlestari squirmed away and with a deft twist sprawled the older warrior on her back.

  "Woof!" Aejys exhaled sharply as she landed.

  Tamlestari pressed her body down on Aejys, her sweet soft breasts in the lapsed paladin's face. Aejys closed her eyes, fighting a wave of such longing that her whole body seemed to ache. She could smell the fragrance of the youth's skin; feel the delicious softness of Tamlestari's breasts. Her lips hungered to frame the sweet rosebud nipples centered on the milk white breasts. They made a study in contrast, Aejys so very dark and Tamlestari sylvan pale.

  Tamlestari's hands moved up beneath Aejys' shirt. The older woman shuddered as the young hands found her breasts, massaging her nipples.

  It would be so easy to lift the youth away. So why was it so hard? She could feel the kyndi already rousing in the center of her being. Would it really be so wrong to pass her child to Tamlestari? Would it be wrong to give in to the fullest expression of her love?

  The soft, wind-whisper voice that had slid through her consciousness at the stream following her encounter with Johannes murmured in her mind. Let go, my paladin. Let love be, let life be. Let there always be life before death. Before loss. My blessing is in this.

  A great sensation of rightness and clarity flooded Aejys, sweeping doubt from her. Aejys cupped Tamlestari's breasts. Her lips closed on Tamlestari's left nipple sucking and tonguing it. The kyndi burned through her veins and pooled in her loins. Aejys rolled over, bearing Tamlestari back. Her knee parted the younger woman's legs. Her hand slid down into the youth's pants to fondle the pubic lips, reaching into the moist wet womanness. Tamlestari moaned beneath her, fumbling with her clothing. Soon they were both unclad on the grassy knoll, their bodies writhing together.

  The tension built in Aejys until she felt she would explode. The kyndi materialized, throbbed almost with a life of its own, a golden translucent appendage composed entirely of energy – the most common form in which it manifested. At first the kyndi hummed softly, a pleasant vibration that grew swiftly hot and hungrily throbbing. The kyndi demanded to sheath itself in the moist warm folds of Tamlestari to expend its gift. It burned through Aejys' body, tingled in the cells of her flesh, and carried her on a flaming wind of passion beyond thought. The instrument of its expression grew hard and solid. In an instant little remained of Aejys' conscious awareness save the hunger of the kyndi.

  The touch of the kyndi against her inner thigh brought a moan of intense pleasure from Tamlestari. She opened her legs wider, wrapping them around Aejys as she would have a male. The hunger of the kyndi became the hunger of Tamlestari. It burned against her inner thighs and the lips of her vagina without marking the skin, felt hard and solid as a cock although it was made of energy and not flesh. Her hand grasped it and the taste of the power heightened as Tamlestari guided it that first little ways inside her. They had crossed the gates and the kyndi would allow no going back now.

  The kyndi entered Tamlestari fully, reaching for her womb to place its gift where it could grow in safety. Aejys' pelvis moved rhythmically against Tamlestari's womanhood, spreading her thighs wider and wider with her hands, rearing back to go deeper and deeper. The kyndi's warm hardness touched the seat of Tamlestari's passion, sending its magic burning through the very fiber of the youth's being. She writhed, moaning uncontrollably, as the kyndi cut like an ethereal sword blade through the private parts of her body and her soul. Tamlestari exploded in impassioned weeping as sensation cresendoed within her body and spirit. Orgasm overwhelmed them both as part of Aejys flowed into Tamlestari, nestled in her womb and the kyndi left them, its energy expended.

  As they lay on the soft earth exhausted, Tamlestari's awareness could sense the first changes in her body. She felt slightly nauseous and dizzy. She knew from Reading pregnancies that the first one was usually hardest among her people. Tamlestari pressed her hands across her stomach. "You have given me Brendorn's child, your child," she said softly, an odd tone to her voice.

  "Our child, loyal heart," Aejys sat up, drawing Tamlestari into her arms. "I pray Aroana, that you will not regret loving me."

  Tamlestari laughed and shook her black-tipped locks, looking once more like the young hoyden who had gobbled pastries in Aejys' sitting room. "You mean regret letting you get me pregnant?" Tamlestari pulled away just enough to look full into Aejys' face, "Or are you thinking about Margren?"

  Aejys fumbled in her discarded clothing for her pipe. She smoked for a while, reluctant to answer that question. "I marched from darkness into darkness and then I ran away..."

  "No. You did not run away. You made a strategic retreat. Didn't you do that a couple of times during the Great War?"

  "I was not talking about the War."

  "I know that. Now you have given a third reason I am supposed to regret you. Which one did you mean?"

  "I don't know." Aejys relit her pipe and fell silent for a while. Tamlestari waited patiently for an answer. "Maybe all of them. I never let myself brood before and now I cannot seem to stop."

  "You cannot leave me behind if I don't allow it. I am far more stubborn than Ladonys and Brendorn." Tamlestari's mouth curved briefly into a pout that was meant to seem ferocious, but failed utterly. "When I read your wounds I looked no farther than that and it was too early to be easily noticeable. I have experienced the bi-kyndi. I took my first lover at eleven. At fourteen a friend's brother came to spend harvest week with her at the sc
hool. Three friends and I took him on a picnic ... every day for a week." Smug satisfaction came into Tamlestari's voice and a mischievous light in her green eyes. "We sent him home exhausted. He wept when I climbed him that last night," she laughed, "begged me to let him sleep. But I didn't."

  Aejys smiled at the image, remembering how she and Ladonys had kept Brendorn sleepless during the first months of their triading. But she could not let herself enjoy it, for her conscience still nagged her. "Forgive me," Aejys said again. "I cannot lie to you or to myself, loyal heart. I may simply be going back to die. You could find yourself raising this child alone."

  "I am not afraid. I can go back to Vorgensburg with Tag. Or to my ma'aramlasah who is Mar'ajan of Yarrendar."

  "Yes, there is that. And we will tell Laurelyanne," Aejys said softly. "She should know that she will have another grandchild. It will comfort her when I tell her how her son died."

  "No one else. If Margren knew, she would try to kill me." Tamlestari's slender fingers traced the multitude of scars on her lover's body: It seemed as if there were more scars than unmarked flesh. "Margren does not frighten me now. But I will choose the battleground, not Margren." She stroked the older woman's scarred left breast, slowly approaching the nipple again. "I love you, Aejys Rowan."

  "And I you, more than I ever dreamed possible." Aejys rolled onto her side, raised herself up on her elbow, and bent over the girl. "Pity the kyndi will not rouse again until the child is delivered. At least I cannot rouse it, though I hear some can."

  "The bi-kyndi raise it at will with either gender. But there will be other times after this child is born," Tamlestari said with surprising smugness. "I want a large family."

  * * * *

  "The demons will not catch us unawares again," Father Keikero told Aejys as they left the infirmary where she had been visiting her wounded.