by Janny Wurts
Daliana captured the crisp impression of disciplined fitness beneath his tailored sleeve. His clothes had no scent. The flat belly, blundered briefly against her, recoiled with a tiger’s self-aware reflex.
Lysaer, in turn, met youthful effrontery with nettled annoyance. As he disentangled his long legs from her skirts and withdrew the ring snagged in her hair, he identified her for the under-age girl that his word once had dismissed from his court.
That signal displeasure caused him to snap, ‘What are you doing here?’ while the gentleman’s manners that were second nature clasped her waist and more graciously steadied her.
Daliana looked up. Subject to a frown that brave men could, and had, sacrificed their lives to appease, she cringed, almost cowed.
Nothing in life prepared her for the impact of him at close quarters. Nor had the women tumbled to captivation been the dizzy fools unkind gossip assumed. Before thought, all but fatally moved by attraction, Daliana clung to his arm as if loath to relinquish the beguiling contact.
His expert touch moved. Masterful at avoidance, he would smooth her mussed dress. Truesighted instinct forecast his recovery: in the breath-stopped instant while her knees weakened, he would draw her nerveless hand free, clasp her elbow, and assert seamless charge to be quit of her. Daliana forestalled him and tightened her grip. To free himself, Lysaer risked tearing his sleeve. He knew as much. The massive seal ring upon his right hand flashed to the tension of his checked gesture.
‘Why should you defy me?’ he demanded, annoyed.
Against the regal sting of reproof that bid for capitulation, Daliana rebuked, ‘Because, picked to stand in my forefather’s shoes, I’ve been acknowledged by a Fellowship Sorcerer.’
Lysaer lost wind as though struck in the face. For an unchoreographed instant, his eyes locked with hers. Daliana saw through his ironclad poise. For that stopped moment, she glimpsed the desolate turmoil clamped behind his controlled isolation.
How many ever saw past the mask or the beauty? Who guessed that such towering equanimity might break, or that the harsh vigilance of supreme will might be made to mis-step or falter? Behind the buttress of cool self-reliance, Lysaer was human, and fallible. Yet who lived in these times that he trusted? Or did he let no one perceive the vulnerable core underneath the fierce trappings of statesmanship?
Then the opening fled. The visceral force of his repudiation resurged like a fist in the gut.
Daliana stayed staunch.
‘You should not be alone, Lord!’ Low and fast, she accosted him with a forthright certainty, sprung intact across generations. ‘What’s more, you’re aware of the danger you court. By all means don’t waste my time or yours if you are too prideful to listen.’
His dismissive laugh reclothed stifled bitterness with mockery. ‘Daliana sen Evend.’ The hand she had not possessed with a death grip closed over hers, stroked her knuckles, then tightened down with a warning, near-cruel sensuality. ‘What value do you stake on your reputation, girl? Are you so hot to become just another sweet face in the love-nest?’
Experienced, bored, Lysaer’s glance assessed her, until every cover of silk and chemise felt stripped to the innocent flesh underneath. ‘My taste has palled for simpering virgins. How do you think you are different?’
Mistresses, he enjoyed in abundance, but of their liaison, no warmth and no children. He possessed deadly enemies, ones too viciously unscrupulous to risk the collateral target posed by a cherished associate. The bold female who vied to be more than a trinket and the forward few who played him for ambition invited the fall that bundled them off to oblivion. No matter which woman pressed her brazen claim, or angled to snag his affection, he sent her away endowed with a pension and refused the sight of her forever after.
Some women died pining, subject to Lysaer’s quittance.
Exposed to the ruinous draw of his magnetism, Daliana threw the challenge back into his teeth. ‘You haven’t much choice, except to trust someone. If not me, who else would stay by you? My reputation,’ she added, ‘will surely be measured by how well I carry the name of my forebear.’
Hard breathing, she suffered his furious glare. When he did not speak, for her gall, she dared him to bald confrontation. ‘Either choose cowardice and ask me to dance. Or else pluck the rose and retire.’
The terrible truth stared him down, either way. The bane of the curse, left dormant for centuries, stirred towards an aggressive awakening: despite the harsh clasp of his hand, upon hers, he could not quite subdue his onset of trembling.
‘My dear,’ he cracked, smiling. ‘How could I refuse?’
Between them, no secret, he did not capitulate. His grasp was the opening throw of a wrestling match as he tugged her into the curve of his arm, then advanced through the envious, riveted crowd of socialites and trumped rivals. Marched past the snake’s glare of the by-passed harpy, Daliana allowed the most prominent prize in Etarra to escort her away.
Every step of that public retreat was remarked. The sensation of Lysaer’s untoward new partner would fly far and wide before the evening ended. The grand doubled doors of the salon swept open with salacious deference before the Lord Mayor that history named as the Light’s fallen avatar. Then the panels closed behind with an irrevocable click, with Daliana granted the perilous gift of his privacy.
Lysaer did not speak throughout the brisk walk that paraded the upstart chit down the polished corridors of Etarra’s state palace. Dizzied in waves by the prick of Desh-thiere’s curse, and hounded by the acute awareness that somewhere, an old enemy had wielded Shadow – Lysaer clung to the immediate sensation of his virile impact.
The girl who stretched to match his longer strides would smell the spiced oils his valet used to finish his immaculate shave. She would squint against the raw blaze of his jewels as he passed the crystal-paned lamps, and be exposed, if not broken, by the lewd stares of the guardsmen on vigil within the echoing chill of his marble antechamber. Lysaer felt her slight stiffness as he rushed her steps towards the carved doors that separated the palatial state chambers from his personal suite. Paired with him, she broached that intimate threshold. The door porter who tended his inner quarters and the awkward young body-servant who minded his wardrobe sprang forward to meet them.
Lysaer wrestled the spin of his unmoored senses. Fast-breathing, he gauged the effect on the decorous partner latched on his arm. Daliana appeared no more shaken than she had been throughout the rush that swept her from safe company. Her pert chin perhaps rode a notch higher. Her flush suggested a tinge of defiance, or else betrayed the healthy alarm sparked off by regretful discomfort.
He wanted the innocent idiot gone, the quicker the better. Through the bite of his wire-strung nerves, Lysaer realized his grip on her arm might in fact strangle her circulation.
‘Shut the door,’ he rebuked.
The poleaxed chamber steward leaped at his tone. As the panel swung closed, Lysaer released the young woman’s trapped wrist.
The valet still reeled, his jaw dropped with astonishment. ‘Lordship! No one mentioned—’
The shaken steward intervened, stammering, ‘If you’d sent word ahead, I’d have arranged for the usual urns of fresh flowers and—’
‘No one’s been remiss,’ Lysaer snapped. ‘Carry on!’
Which made the valet jump, heels together, to resume proper service. ‘Your Lordship! Lady.’
Brisk rebuff made no headway. The thunderbolt loosed by Daliana’s surprise presence still caused the servants to miss every blatant cue.
‘Do you think tonight’s trollop too tenderly young?’ Lysaer goaded, his polite inflection a mockery.
The boy lackey flamed pink. His shocked deportment avoided the girl, who stayed silent, as the servant’s uncertain fingers scrambled to accept the linked collar of state, then the braid-edged sash and emblazoned doublet, which Lysaer impatiently ripped off his shoulders. The silk waistcoat beneath became bundled aside with the same crisp exasperation.
Measu
red by the frozen stillness beside him – he deigned not to look – Daliana never once moved.
Lysaer was informally stripped down to shirtsleeves and breeches, before the chamber steward bobbed the neglectful bow due upon his Lord Mayor’s precipitous entry. Still shaken, the fellow tripped over his own feet to turn down the coverlet on the lavish bed. Lysaer paid the lackeys’ frothed upset no mind. Ears taut for the light scrape of female slippers, retreating, and as expectantly poised to accept her plea for release through the firmly locked door, Lysaer plucked the jewelled studs from his cuffs and high collar. He jerked off the ruby seal ring with Etarra’s incised cartouche, then tossed the state baubles with a contemptuous clash onto the tray by his razor and basin.
While the servants scrambled to keep pace with what looked like a conflagration of indulgent lust, Daliana side-stepped the furor surrounding the mattress. At long last, she seized the reins of autonomy.
But not to flee: she packed quite enough of her forefather’s courage to touch off blistering mayhem.
‘Bring tea for us both,’ her cool voice instructed his flustered chamberlain. Then she breezed ahead. Uninvited, she flung wide the only interior doorway. From the intimidation of the bedchamber, all polished marble, gilt trim, and swagged curtains, she stormed, uninvited, into the sanctum of Lysaer’s private study. Barged inside before anyone stopped her, she made for the hearth and installed herself on the comfortable, stuffed chair kept aside as his favourite.
Which effrontery left him the one spartan stool, the naked sill of the casement, or worse, the upright wooden seat used to keep him wakeful in the late hours when administrative business demanded his forced concentration. Tonight’s stacked documents were weighted in piles by the only visible ornaments: a ghastly array of expensive jade animals, gifted by tasteless ambassadors and kept on the desk to remind him of the ugliness too often masqueraded in unctuous finery.
Lysaer strode in the wake of her female intrusion, teeth clenched as the latent seethe of the curse stirred him to mild nausea.
‘I beg your pardon, girl!’ Even while distraught, his caustic stare burned. ‘Tea is not required for an assignation. Or other delays for society manners, that I was ever aware of.’
Daliana finished her survey of the room: a cold space, as ruthlessly bare of intimacy as his suppressed personality. She met his jab with a sparkle of mischief. ‘You’re going to throw something, other than me. Why not pick the piece that will smash with extravagance?’
The clay crock on the desk, nestled with quill pens, raised her impudent ante. Lysaer dumped the feathers and pitched with a vengeance.
Bracelets chinged and lace fluttered: Daliana caught the aimed missile with the reflex of a trained swordsman. ‘While the Mistwraith’s gall rides you, do you always indulge in petty violence?’ She set the rescued flask down beside her stitched-velvet shoes. Then placed her pert chin into cupped hands with her elbows propped on her tucked knees. There, with astonishing nerve, she regarded him, tawny eyes wide and dark lashes too bold, and her extravagant tassel of hair draped across her decorative shoulder. The artless strands glinted a rich walnut brown.
Lysaer shoved back the savage sting of old pain: hateful memories resurged, too powerful to smother into forgetfulness.
‘I will see you damned as my next cast-off whore,’ he promised, controlled frost laid against desperation.
Daliana did not have Sulfin Evend’s pale eyes. Or his martial prowess and seal-dark colouring. Yet her style, gloved in skirts, proved just as ferocious as she invited, ‘You’ll try.’
Only a blinkered fool disregarded such a tenacious independence. Lysaer understood he could not fence with morals. Not against the rare woman who rejected conformity. This one did not fear to be ostracized. Threat of gossip found her unflinching. With social pretence already shredded, Lysaer drew breath and addressed her again with the note of respect she had earned. ‘Sulfin Evend slept across the threshold to my chamber throughout the worst of the bad times. He fought me hand to hand time and again, often to the edge of survival. Every harrowing day in the battle-field and in council, I risked his death on my conscience.’
Still, the vixen gave up no ground. ‘I was well warned of the perils I’d face.’
‘But I did not sanction the consensual risks!’ Lysaer slammed the door. He paced as the old, dreaded restlessness quickened his blood to the drum-beat of violence. ‘I was never consulted! Did you or that Sorcerer pause to imagine? This matters! I might wring your neck in the throes of the curse. Why should I shoulder the chance of a murder that undermines all self-respect? What if I tell you that such a pitfall would hasten my certain destruction?’
‘The whole world stands as naked before your cursed might,’ Daliana agreed in riposte.
Sweated by the fact she laid bare his worst fear, Lysaer slashed back with as brutal an honesty. ‘Sulfin Evend was a trained man-at-arms. He started with the fit strength and the weight of advantage required to outface me.’
‘I should blink?’ She scoffed, ‘Is brute male prowess the only weapon?’
Lysaer turned his back. Innuendo that struck at his manhood never scored in the way she might think. He battled against a fresh onslaught of vertigo. Those intense golden eyes, the satin sheen on that particular shade of brown hair – Ath forbid Daliana should ever discover that she herself was the weapon, incarnate. She embodied the most hideous of his regrets. Past reprieve the instant she first crossed his sight, her presence woke memories that pierced him too deeply. Lysaer steeled his frayed nerves. Sick inside, crushed to bloodless authority, he stared through the dark panes of the casement. ‘Child, you can’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’
Not a rustle of cloth betrayed her uncertainty. ‘We are discussing your last line of defense on the hope to outmatch Desh-thiere’s curse.’
The yawning silence that followed exposed all of his horrified distress. She would hear his uneven breathing.
Kindness, not victory, tempered her calm. ‘Look at me, Lysaer. Then tell me whether the stir of that geas isn’t what drove you to flee from the ball in the first place.’
He did turn then. Glacial blue, his eyes turned on her were furious. ‘Nobody dares to address me this way!’
He possessed a ruler’s merciless poise, honed by centuries of vicious politics. Against her tender innocence, his experience knew just how to stab to intimidate. Aware how much of her front was bravado, he watched her gather the will to defy him.
‘Then go on,’ she urged. Her pupils were widened and black under strain. ‘Take the next step. Resort to brute handling and be rid of me.’
He felt as though kicked in the belly. Touch her now, he was lost, and to far more than the back-lash response to his half brother’s Shadow. ‘I have come to regret every moment of trust I was fool enough to place in a woman. Can you claim the impossible fallacy that you also won’t come to betray me?’
‘No one could.’ Her smile was open. ‘Can you rest your case? That, under the curse, you won’t come to betray yourself far worse, and sooner?’
At heart, like his, her concern was genuine. His immaculate gold hair became jabbed into tangles as he gave way at last and raked distraught hands at his temples. ‘Either you are arrogant beyond all belief or else suicidally stupid!’
‘Then let dare-devil cleverness stand in the breach. You can’t truly be fond of those disgusting ornaments?’ Without pause for answer, Daliana seized the impetuous initiative and dragged her chair forward across the carpet.
An irreverent sweep of her arm raked the weighted stacks of state papers off his desk. ‘Nothing else in your life is important as this!’
While the hideous jades bounced and cracked underfoot, she dug inside the silk purse at her waist and deployed a dog-eared pack of cards tied with string. Her deft touch dealt out two hands on the sanctimonious gloss of his furnishing. The patterned cloth backs were beer-stained from past play in shark’s dives and barracks taverns. A hoyden in silk, Daliana lace
d into his speechless shock for the effrontery, ‘We’ll play Ten Jack. Five bouts should allow you the time to explain how the rise of the curse will bedevil you. Counter-measures can be strategized, later. For now, who gains the top three scores takes all. I’ll bid to win any jewel worn on your person. Choose what stake you’d wrest from me in return. The door’s shut, and I’m not particular.’
Lysaer sat opposite in the hard, wooden chair. He would call for strong wine, let the drink spin her head, then seal the document for her immediate banishment. Forward women had been summarily dispatched, before. His facade of amiable acquiescence should smooth even this rank embarrassment with a semblance of decency.
‘I’ll unveil my stake at the victory,’ he agreed with suave charm. ‘Promise me now you’ll abide by the consequence?’
She flashed even teeth in a blood-letting grin. ‘Call the first card. I will declare the matched pearls on your points as my jeopardy for the first round.’
Lysaer took up the cards. His fingers trembled as he ordered the suits. But as he indulged in her offered strategy, the dizzy aggression raised by the curse faded into retreat. The flood of relief cooled down his clammy skin. Forced to acknowledge Daliana’s madcap ingenuity, he ventured his first card, then realized, as clarity settled and steadied, that he would be able to think. Perhaps, even, he might be empowered to speak with clear-mindedness while the acuity required to tally the game of numbers absorbed him. With the pull of the geas thrown into eclipse, he might safely consider whether he could risk the unthinkable shame and one day entrust his deadly weakness to another confidante.
Winter 5923
Shadow of Calumny
On the same windy night, the fishing lugger from Lorn that granted passage to the Fellowship’s ousted spellbinder made a safe anchorage across Instrell Bay. Green from more than his habitual seasickness, Dakar fretted through each stroke of the oars that rowed him ashore in the boat’s rocking tender. The boat’s crewman let him off in the protected shallows of a wooded cove. His reluctant first step plunged him groin deep in the ghastly chill of the winter surf.
