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

by JANRAE FRANK

  "As do I," she said. "I have often regretted my promise to her ma'aramlasah in allowing the girl to be raised among your people."

  Tehmistoclus gestured at a round table. Aejys waited until the queen had seated herself, then joined her there. "Had you planned on this child?" the priest asked.

  "No."

  "Did Tamlestari know you were pregnant when you made love?"

  Aejys squirmed. "Yes."

  "So then, as I understand you," the high priest said, steepling his fingers. "You roused the kyndi... Surprised? One of our young men who spent years in your land explained the kyndi to me last night when I pressed him. As I was saying, you roused the kyndi and shoved your child into the virgin womb of the last daughter of our greatest lineage. Isn't that rape?"

  "I did not rape Tamlestari. Is that what Laurelyanne told you?"

  "Not in so many words. She called it love. But Tamlestari is an impressionable youth, while you ... you are a hero of the war... You already have a nearly grown daughter. If it was not rape, then it was certainly undue influence. Seduction of the worst order."

  "Does Laurelyanne know who Tamlestari is?"

  "Everyone in Vallimrah knows who Tamlestari is. Except, of course, Tamlestari herself. And we are all watching you very closely. Until now we have believed you an honorable woman. But if you cannot satisfy us now that your relationship with Tamlestari is an honorable one, we will execute you for touching her."

  Aejys sighed. "May I smoke?" Tehmistoclus nodded, so she took out her pipe, filled, and lit it. Slowly she told them all that had happened since Tamlestari, Brendorn, and Cassana had arrived in Vorgensburg. She resisted the urge to point out that Sharani girls were rarely virgin past the age of twelve, for in a realm beset and besieged sexual maturity came young; that Tamlestari was more Sharani than Valdren by her rearing and half-blood; and was he going to track down everyone the girl had slept with in the last four years? No, Aejys sighed again, re-loading her pipe, Tehmistoclus would take that as tearing down Tamlestari, even though it would not be by Sharani standards. Besides, I got her pregnant. They didn't.

  Now and then Tehmistoclus interrupted with a shrewd question, probing. His face softened as he listened. When Aejys finished, he covered her hands with his.

  "So I see no dishonor here. Though perhaps it is misfortune. Or perhaps not. I can see beyond our lands no longer. Although the Great Evil in the North was defeated, it had already cast forth its seeds upon the wind. They have taken root in many places."

  Magdarien, who had listened impassively throughout the tale and questioning, spoke "You must not, Aejystrys Rowan, believe for a single moment that this relationship of yours is permanent. Tamlestari must one day wed a lord of our people."

  A ripple of impending loss raced through Aejys, she wanted to cry out against that statement, that it was unfair to take Tamlestari away from her just as they had found each other. But Aejys, raised a noble of Shaurone, knew that the state must be served. There was resignation in her voice as she said, "Yes, Your Majesty."

  "Then we understand each other. We will help you. I will ask for volunteers to go with you when you leave to guard and guide you through the wilderness. And I will send word to all our people from here to Doronar. They will look for Laeoli and aid you in any way they can."

  "I would leave Tamlestari behind, if I thought she would stay. I doubt she would. And to force her would be to dishonor her," Aejys told them. "You need not look for Laeoli, I have word that she is safe." And I would be terribly lonely without her. I left Brendorn and now he is dead. I will not leave Tamlestari behind. Not for the best or worst of reasons. If I have any choice in the matter.

  * * * *

  Tamlestari woke nauseous and ill. She tipped herself out of bed, felt her stomach rise to her throat, and vomited on the floor. Instantly Aejys was up, supporting her while she retched. When she could finally stop, Tamlestari leaned weakly against Aejys, feeling humiliated and unhappy and disgusted with herself.

  "Morning sickness. Ladonys had it." Aejys eased her back into bed and covered her. "Rest. I'll clean it up."

  "I feel awful."

  "I'll fetch a tray of tea and toast. If you have something in your stomach before you start moving around it will help a little."

  "I can't eat." She grimaced. "The mere thought of food makes me feel sick all over again."

  "Yes, you can," Aejys said sternly, "And you will. You're eating for two now." She caressed Tamlestari's stomach fondly, thinking of how in a few weeks it would begin to round and then to swell with their child. She remembered how hard Laeoli had kicked in the womb, imagining how hard this one would kick. "It will pass soon, my dearest one, the child is..." Aejys paused to count on her fingers. "Nearly three months already."

  * * * *

  Mephistis swirled the wine, red to the point of blood, in the goblet and pushed away from the mantle when he heard Margren enter. It was time to teach her a lesson. He loved her passionately, but he felt certain that she had played her part in what had happened to his young friend. Mephistis would not tolerate it. He ruled his household. Although on the surface Waejontor was a realm of laws and traditions, underneath it sheathed with treacheries, those who could not rule were ruled.

  "My love?" Margrenan brye Rowan crossed the room and ran her hands along his shoulders. He shrugged her off, walking away from her. "What is wrong?"

  "Isranon. He heals slowly and I worry about him."

  "You worry about the little half-a-mon and that is why you reject me?" Margren snapped, stalking after him.

  Mephistis spun on his heel the moment she reached him and doused her with the wine. She shrieked and went for him with her nails. He deftly imprisoned her wrists with one hand and forced her to her knees. "You played a part in this game to hurt him, because you were jealous."

  Margren's eyes filled with tears and her mouth twisted with anger. "You chose him over me. Everyone always chooses others."

  "Don't be a fool. I love you. You are my mate. But I will never see this happen again from you."

  "If you love me, then choose. Choose me and let him die."

  "Then I will have to kill you." Mephistis waited until her wordless shrieking had died down before he spoke again. "I have a policy. I always kill the one who demands the other's the death. That is how I rule. You either trust me when I say I love you or you do not trust me. The problem is not me. It is not Isranon. It is you. Do you trust me?"

  "Yes," she replied in a very small voice.

  Mephistis released her wrists. Margren started to rise, but Mephistis caught her hair and the front of her tunic. He slammed her onto her back on the thick carpets. Margren made a small sound of fright as her tunic ripped in his hands. His mouth covered hers. He continued catching hold of her clothing and tearing pieces of it away until he had exposed her.

  "I love you," Margren whimpered as soon as he withdrew his tongue and his lips lifted from hers.

  "Then prove it to me," Mephistis snarled.

  Margren opened her legs to him.

  "A beginning..." Mephistis twisted her head around until she was positioned as the lowest of the nibari beneath his weight with neck exposed. And he took her in the favored vein, before entering her as a man. When he had sated himself, he beat her. Margren curled up beneath the blows, covering her head.

  "Do I love you, Margren?" he screamed, kicking her.

  Margren huddled against the couch. "Yes."

  The prince kicked her away from the couch onto her stomach while she vainly tried to shield her face from his blows. His boot came down on her back between her shoulder blades. "Say it again."

  "You love me."

  "Again!"

  "YOU LOVE ME! YOU LOVE ME!" Margren screamed at the top of her voice. "I will never question it again."

  "That is better." Satisfied, Mephistis dragged her into the bedroom and threw her onto the bed. Then he snagged her hair again, twisting her head around. "Are you going to doubt me?"

  "No." Margr
en cringed as he struck her across the face.

  "Do I love you?" He hit her.

  "Yes! Yes, you do."

  Mephistis kept on until his rage began to fade and then he sat beside her, took her in his arms, and began kissing her tenderly. "You're not going to make me angry again by doubting my love?"

  "No. I will never doubt you." Margren snuggled against him, tears running freely down her face.

  "That's much, much better." He continued kissing and stroking her. "I am the only one who truly loves you. The only one who can protect you from your sister."

  "I know it."

  Then he made love to her.

  * * * *

  Laurelyanne and two servants came instead. They quickly cleaned the mess. Laurelyanne moved Tamlestari to a comfortable chair and changed the bedclothes as well. Aejys stood in the doorway with a sheepish grin, shrugging helplessly whenever Tamlestari looked at her.

  Aejys leaned against the door facing and took out her pipe, smoking thoughtfully. When they had finished, the Valdren mage had tucked Tamlestari into bed once more with a quick pat to her stomach, and then they left. Aejys went back in. The lapsed paladin pulled a chair and small table close to the bed, settling in with a sigh.

  "You have at least a month of this, loyal heart," Aejys told her. "Most of that we will be traveling."

  Tamlestari stuck her tongue out with a frown. "I can learn to vomit well past the side of a horse."

  "More likely you'll vomit before getting on the horse."

  "That too."

  "It might be better if you rode in the wagon with Eli."

  Tamlestari frowned angrily, "Never! I'm ha'taren!"

  Aejys pulled the pipe out of her mouth, smiling in agreement and appreciation. "I love you." She bent and gently kissed Tamlestari's stomach. "I love both of you."

  Tamlestari settled against the pillows, a look of contentment on her face. "You will be a very good ma'aram."

  Aejys moved to the bed, sitting beside Tamlestari, "I intend to be. No more riding off to war when I should be home teaching my children the arts of maturity." Aejys bent, her mouth meeting Tamlestari's, her hands reaching for her lover's breasts.

  Tamlestari moaned softly as Aejys found all the right places.

  * * * *

  Dane watched Mephistis brush his fingers across Isranon's brow lightly, not enough to waken him. His eyes were narrowed with concern as he snugged the blankets around his young friend. He worried. Any other sa'necari would have long ago been healed. For over a week since his wounding, Isranon had not been fully conscious. He would rouse to a semi-conscious state and feed when a nibari shoved their wrist in his mouth, only to slide away again. Dane had been able to get only a little of the Sanguine Rose, an extremely potent troll's blood cocktail of drugs and herbs which only the highest echelons of the vampire royals knew the secret of making, into Isranon. Sometimes he muttered, "Rose."

  The prince turned to Dane standing behind him and gestured with his head that they should withdraw. Dane took the branch of candles from the nightstand and followed Mephistis out, allowing the room to go dark behind him. The vampire set the candles down and returned to close Isranon's bedchamber door.

  Mephistis paced the room.

  "She says she did not stick him."

  Dane rubbed his chin, trying to mask his incredulity. "And you believe that?" He finally said in a flat voice. "Two of those blades were poisoned. Sa'necari do not poison their blades, they rune them. Death Lotus and hydra venom. Hard things to come by, and yet..." Not hard for someone like Bodramet and Dane had seen him and Margren talking too often together. Bodramet could have provided them to Margren.

  "No. However, there's no way to prove it without breaking her mind. I made her too strong. I will not do that." Mephistis paused, to regard Dane with eyes gone hard as stone. "I need her fully aware and in one piece. I will not make a meat puppet of her the ways you vampires do."

  Dane nodded. "The room was crowded, she could have been among them. He is strong of will. Stubborn. But someone knows what he is. Who he is. No one wants him, Mephistis. The Light does not want him. The Darkness will not have him. Not even the nethergod would allow him to live. He is anathema to all creation. What can you possibly be thinking? Let him die. It would be a kindness." Despite his words, Dane did not wish Isranon to die, only to see the youth's suffering at an end, certain that only death could bring him peace and escape – unless he could convince Isranon to come away with him, and he knew already that the youth would not.

  "I did not ask your opinion, vampire. I said, heal him."

  Dane smiled thinly. "So be it. But once he is well, my people and I are leaving. This last episode has been too much."

  * * * *

  It took two days of wheedling and teasing and talking and threatening, but Tamlestari finally got enough out of Aejys about her meeting with Tehmistoclus to become furious.

  "Who the fucking hell does that priest think he is?" Tamlestari shouted, pacing back and forth.

  Aejys, sitting in the window chair, shrugged. "Knew you'd react this way," she muttered.

  "What?"

  "I didn't want to tell you, Estari... You didn't exactly leave me many options..." Aejys said, half apologetic, half exasperated.

  "Huh! You should not have had any!"

  "Estari, it would be better if you calmed down first," Aejys suggested. "We're guests here... You can't go storming the temple."

  "Oh, can't I? If he doesn't back off I'm going to kick his High Holy Ass up between his ears," Tamlestari said, lowering her voice but still bordering on shouting. She turned her back on Aejys, stalking to the stairs. "And I mean it."

  Aejys just nodded: she had run out of words.

  Laurelyanne, who had been listening at the bottom of the stairs, jumped out of the way as Tamlestari raced past and out the door. The old mage stood shaking her head in the prince's wake. "It's been a centuries since anyone really took a swing at Tehmistoclus," she mused, mostly to herself.

  "She'll do it," Aejys said, drawing Laurelyanne's eyes to the head of the stairs. "I wanted to tell him that he was dealing with a Sharani hellion, not some sweet, innocent young girl."

  "He would not have appreciated the information..." Laurelyanne said, gravely.

  "Then let him learn the hard way," Aejys laughed suddenly and Laurelyanne joined in.

  "The hard way. Yes. Yes. Yes," Laurelyanne laughed, adding, "This time I'd say he deserves his lumps."

  * * * *

  The gardens around the temple were already beginning to brown under the chill autumn weather and the priests were scattered throughout, gathering in the last of the herbs they grew, their green robes bright against the brown. Their movements were slow and thorough, completely at peace until Tamlestari arrived. She stormed down the walk, through the browning privet hedge, and into the gardens.

  Spying the nearest young priest, she marched up to him. He stood instantly, straightening his robes with a flick. "You there!" she shouted, grabbing him by collar and pulling up on his tiptoes.

  The priest flinched, dropping his eyes in confusion and dismay. "Yes?" he queried softly.

  "Just where the hell is Tehmistoclus," she screamed in his face, "and who the hell does he think he is sticking his nose into my relationships?"

  Priests looked up from their gardening, some leaning on their baskets, others settling cross-legged with lapfuls of various herbs, to watch her. Other than that no one moved, but everyone in the courtyard heard her. It would soon be all over Vallimrah, passing from village to village, that the High Priest had blundered and endangered the Promise.

  "Please," a soft-spoken brother in brown robes touched her arm lightly to get her attention. She spun, releasing her captive with enough force to send him tumbling to hands and knees. He quickly scampered away, disappearing rapidly into the temple.

  Tamlestari glanced significantly at the hand on her arm before knocking it away when the newcomer did not move fast enough to suit her. "What d
o you want?"

  The brother winced. "To take you to Father Tehmistoclus."

  "About time!"

  * * * *

  As soon as the door opened, the brother who had brought her fled. Tehmistoclus rose from his seat in his study and greeted her. "My lady," he said softly, "You wish to speak with me?"

  "I want to know what right you have to be interrogating my lover?" Tamlestari demanded, her face still flush with anger. "Who I sleep with is my business and no one else's!"

  Tehmistoclus paled a little before her anger and straightforward speech. What he had expected the princess of Vallimrah to be like was nothing like what he found. The small, furious warrior in tunic and trousers with the steel rose of the Odarens embroidered on her shoulder, her short black tipped hair held in place by a beaded head band, was clearly a woman to be reckoned with and not the delicate young girl that most Valdren women were at her age. He realized that it had been a mistake not to become acquainted with her before taking Aejys to task about their relationship. There was no longer any question in his mind that Tamlestari would not allow anyone to take undue advantage of her, even in their speech.

  "Did Aejystrys Rowan tell you about your ma'aram?" he asked quietly, waving his hand for her to sit.

  "What does that have to do with anything?" Tamlestari reined her temper in enough to stop shouting and sat down.

  He joined her. "Perhaps you should discuss this child and your choice of mate with your ma'aram," Tehmistoclus suggested diplomatically.

  The flush faded from Tamlestari's fair skin. She felt as if reality had just dropped out from under her as the implication of his words sank in. "Kalestari? But she's dead."

  "That, my child, is a matter of definition." Tehmistoclus's expression relaxed as he re-took control of the conversation. "You know the tale of her death? Of how Aurean the Golden, Queen of the sa'necari of Waejontor, changed into a dragon before the gates of Sharatier? Of how your ma'aram put aside her mortal form and challenged her as a fireborn?"

  "Yes," she said quietly, "I have been collecting the stories of her. My amita was going to write a history of her. I intend to finish it."