Tainted (Lisen of Solsta Book 2)

by D. Hart St. Martin

  A tap from Jazel’s door retrieved him from another one of those moods. “Enter,” he ordered without further thought.

  “My Liege,” Jazel said after taking only one step into his office, “there’s a woman here to see you. She refused to give her name but asked me to tell you that a little push is sometimes all that’s needed to solve a problem.”

  Opseth, he thought, playing coy. He didn’t like it, but he suspected that if she had chosen to come here in the bright light of a sunny day, she must have a reason for exposing herself.

  “Send her in,” he said, and Jazel backed out to be immediately replaced by Opseth. The door closed behind her, and she stepped into the room, heading directly for one of the chairs facing the desk. She could have requested permission to sit, but she didn’t. She simply waited. Her patience seemed to be a crucial element of her gift, and his lack of patience would likely block him from ever being able to use this same gift which she swore he possessed. Too bad he and Lorain, with her penchant for patience, couldn’t somehow fuse their talents. What a powerful team they’d be then.

  “Sit,” he said finally. With a nod, Opseth complied.

  “Thank you, my Liege.”

  Ariel sat back, hand to his chin, studying her as he mindlessly rubbed the hint of stubble which had appeared over the last several weeks. He didn’t know what he expected to learn. Her yellow-green eyes stared back at him and revealed nothing. He shifted in his chair. “So, why are you here? You take a great risk. Anyone could walk in and find you.”

  “They all knock.”

  All but one, he thought but said nothing.

  “My Liege, I made contact with the necropath last night,” Opseth continued.

  “And?”

  “She’s grown much stronger. It makes it difficult to break through her defenses. And she seems to have moved to a place much farther away.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not sure, my Liege. Distance plays only a very small part in the reaching out. Just enough to tell me she’s not that close but not enough to tell me where or in what direction.”

  “Work on that,” he tossed off. “And on the topic of work, what did you learn from the sooth in your last encounter?”

  “She, too, is very strong. I was able to connect with her, but I was unable to do any more as she held me off for over an hour.”

  “You’re admitting failure?”

  Opseth shook her head. “No, not failure. I will find the chink in her defenses, but I’ll need more time with her.”

  “Not yet. You need to go home. Now that you’ve been seen here, you’ll have to stay away for a while.”

  “But, my Liege….”

  Ariel held up a hand. “No. I will send word when I think it’s safe. Now leave. The same way you came in. Hopefully, that will limit your exposure to only those who have already seen you.” He watched her stand up slowly, unwillingly. “And keep working on the necropath. I need to know where she is.”

  “Aye, my Liege.” And, with a nod, Opseth departed through the door to Jazel’s office.

  Oh, how the malla beckoned. He touched the second drawer where it hid and promised himself, Later. Later.

  The door from the hall burst open, and Lorain took one long stride in but stopped at the door after she’d closed it behind her. “My Liege,” she said with a nod. She may not have knocked, but in a gesture unusual for her, she awaited his invitation to move closer.

  “Come,” he said, and he felt the corners of his lips curve up ever so slightly.

  Lorain stepped forward all the way to the chairs in front of him, and there she paused again.

  “It’s good to see you, Lorain,” he ventured.

  “And you, as well, my Liege,” she replied, her blue eyes warming under his gaze, a small smile emerging on her lips.

  “Sit,” he said softly, but she remained standing. He rose to come around to join her. When he reached her, he brushed her cheek with his fingertips, and she blinked.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, my Liege, but I can’t…at the moment. I’ve…uh…been working with the Commander on your throning.” She closed her eyes for barely a second and allowed her cheek to rest momentarily in the palm of his hand. Then she pulled away, and he watched as her eyes focused once again. “I need some of the paperwork…over there.” She pointed to the conference table still awash with pieces of parchment and various scrolls.

  “Perhaps later, then,” he said and pulled his hand away.

  After one last look into his eyes, she turned from him. “Yes. Oh, yes, of course.” She stepped over to the table, moving a bit quickly—even for her—and rummaged through the mess, eventually surfacing with two scrolls and one sheet of parchment. “There. Found them,” she said, facing him and holding them up in her victory. And that was when he saw it—the ring. She wore his ring, on the middle finger of her left hand where he’d placed it.

  “Good,” he replied, making no attempt to hide the longing in his voice.

  “I’ll be going now,” she said.

  “Until later, then.”

  And out she went.

  Ariel stepped around his desk and sat down in his chair. He felt satisfied, pleased, happy even. Whatever had upset Lorain had dissolved. She was his again. He opened the second drawer of his desk and pulled out the little jar of malla. This deserved a celebration.

  He fingered the jar lovingly, its smooth, cold surface sending a thrill of anticipation down his spine. Lorain was back, and the watcher was making slow but deliberate progress with both the necropath somewhere far away and the sooth down below. Yes, celebration.

  He opened the jar, stuck his forefinger into the paste and rethought the amount. Just a little, he thought. More later. After scraping some of the paste back into the jar, he applied the remainder to his upper gums, massaging it in and then wiping the residue between one cheek and his lower teeth. His nose crinkled at the bitter taste, but he had grown adept at soothing the resulting nausea.

  He closed the jar, placed it back into the drawer, and leaned back in his chair. Lorain was pouched with his Heir and planning his throning, the sooth was in his dungeon and would soon succumb to his watcher’s powers, and that same watcher was about to dominate the wayward necropath’s mind as well. An auspicious start to a magnificent era. The Empir has passed. Long life to the Empir!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TENUOUS TRUST

  Although she was sweating and breathing heavily, Lisen felt alive, invigorated in ways she’d never felt before. This Hozia whom Korin had enlisted as her trainer accepted nothing less than perfection, and the Elder inspired Lisen to give more than she’d believed she had within her. The woman had just guided Lisen through a difficult maneuver, a defense against a lateral attack, and Lisen wiped the moisture from her upper lip with the back of her left hand. Then she smiled at the Elder. They were not alone; several others, including the often-present Ondra, had joined them for their own workouts as dawn grew close, and Korin sat apart in a small alcove and watched.

  “That was good,” Lisen said, still a little breathless.

  “It was acceptable,” the Elder amended. She spoke flawless Garlan, undoubtedly one of Korin’s reasons for choosing her. “You have a long road to travel before you get to good.”

  It had been like this all night. Lisen kept thinking she couldn’t do any better, and then Hozia would draw reserves from her she’d never tapped before. And each time they completed a move, Lisen believed she had accomplished more than she had before. Certainly she had, but Hozia remained dissatisfied. Perhaps another reason Korin had picked this particular Elder.

  Her copper-tinged hair braided down her back as usual—still with its single black ribbon—her body shielded by a set of leathers provided by Hozia, Lisen felt like a warrior for the first time. No, not the first time. The first time, she realized now, had been back in Halorin. She’d forgotten, mostly, what she’d done before she’d fallen prey to possession. I killed a man. I pushed him, then I killed
him. She stood up a little straighter, trying to shake off the cold that gripped her heart at that thought. What am I?

  At first the weeks of wrestling with madness had shielded her. Then, her immersion into the Thristan world had stressed her ability to cope to the point that she had buried the memory of how she’d compromised her soul. I pushed, she recalled. It saved me, but—.

  “All right,” Korin said, ignorant of the internal struggle he’d interrupted. He stood up, and the two—teacher and pupil both—turned to look at him. “That’s enough for her first night, I think.”

  “No,” Lisen protested. “I’m not anywhere near tired yet.” She needed to do more, work harder, anything to force the memory back down where it belonged—beyond recollection.

  “You are going to wake up tonight,” Korin said as he took his sword from her, “aware of muscles you’ve never felt before.”

  “She is a delicate thing, isn’t she, Korin.” Lisen turned to see Ondra, standing there, Rika beside her. Although they’d been sparring for the last hour or so within feet of the Elder and herself, Lisen had ignored them, tunneling her concentration to remain in the moment with her trainer. And until now, Ondra had allowed Lisen to do so unobstructed.

  “Ondra,” Korin replied. “Let it be.”

  “Not too delicate for the Farii.”

  Korin stepped over to her, grabbed her arm and spoke firmly but softly to her in Thristan. Lisen could only imagine how that conversation went. After a little quiet barking and growling back and forth, Korin released Ondra’s arm and returned to Lisen and the Elder.

  “You think I worked her too hard?” Hozia asked as the three of them left the practice chamber. They headed up the tunnel, the Elder and Korin preceding Lisen as they walked.

  “No,” Korin replied. “I think you worked her just enough. She seems to respond better to consistency than overworking.”

  “True.”

  They continued to talk as though Lisen were nowhere nearby, and she listened closely, although most of their conversation was about the small things of lives shared. At least they weren’t so rude as to revert to Thristan in her presence. Then, as they neared Korin’s chamber, Hozia said very softly, but still in Garlan so she must have been willing to allow Lisen to hear, “She has a gift. You do know that.”

  “She has a gift of focusing her concentration, yes, I know,” Korin replied, nodding slightly. He came nowhere near the nature of her secret, yet Lisen sensed that something had transpired between the two Thristans she couldn’t define.

  They reached their little rocky room, and she entered, expecting Korin to follow immediately after, but he didn’t. She waited, keeping very still, trying to catch what was transpiring out in the hall between her two trainers, but what little she could hear came across as unintelligible. She could only assume they had lapsed into Thristan.

  “What was that about?” she asked Korin when he finally stepped into the chamber.

  “We were discussing the level of your abilities and how best to proceed.”

  “She says I have a gift. What was she talking about?”

  He moved past her and set his sword down beside the blanket which hid her mother’s telltale weapon. “Like I said below, you can focus yourself on the here and now better than most. That impressed her.”

  She couldn’t stop. She thought she would explode with energy, with life. “So you think I can do it? That I can learn this fighting thing?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  She started to pace back and forth. “Because I’m not so sure. Ah, hell, I’m not sure at all. But I have to be able to do that, don’t I, or I won’t survive. And I absolutely must believe that I can, or I won’t be able to. It’s imperative, don’t you see? I must survive. For Garla’s sake.” She crossed in front of him for the third time, and he reached out and stopped her.

  “Listen to me.” He held her arms and looked directly into her eyes. She winced as she once again recognized his sacrifice. That damn patch over what was once his left eye would never release her from that obligation. So she took a deep breath and tried to find someplace calm within her. It wasn’t easy.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  “You have a long road ahead of you, and you have time to linger over each lesson right now. I’d advise that you do so and try not to rush this. Hozia and I agree that you need to take your time.”

  “I don’t have time!”

  “Shh,” he said, and she appreciated his attempts to soothe her. “You don’t have to face your brother tomorrow. Tomorrow you only have to face Hozia.”

  “How much does she know, Korin?”

  “She knows you have a task before you, but she doesn’t know what it is.” Lisen was about to interrupt him, protest this breach of security, but he put a finger to her lips. “She needed to know that much. She couldn’t train you properly without knowing it was more than just a fancy on your part.”

  Lisen pulled away. “And you trust her?” she asked, her back to him.

  “With your life.”

  Lisen nodded. If Korin was satisfied, then…well, she was, too. Trust. A tenuous thing. Easily demanded, easily promised, but fulfilled sometimes with difficulty and too often not fulfilled at all. Flandari had willingly trusted Nalin Corday. Nalin Corday had been forced to trust old Captain Cutie here. And he, in turn, had believed it necessary to trust Elder Hozia. Not to mention all those trusted along the way—Holder Tuane and Jo’s sister, Hermit Eloise, Hermit Titus. She shivered. How many people trusted with knowledge would it take before Ariel Ilazer became one of them?

  And when am I going to trust this man with that other secret? The Earth secret. No, not yet. Not quite yet.

  His desk covered with scrolls and random sheets of parchment that had no reason for being there and no relevance in his life at the moment, Nalin leaned back in his chair and yawned. He wasn’t tired, and he wasn’t bored. He was tense, and he always yawned when he couldn’t stretch the anxiety out of his muscles. Nearly two weeks had passed since his Evenday return to Avaret, and coming on a month since he’d last seen the Heir and her guard. A month yet to go before he’d know if Rosarel had remained loyal, before he could be sure the girl would even come back, much less be prepared to take on the burden they’d foisted on her.

  He stood up and went to the window to stare at the Keep. It was wrong. It was all wrong. In that building beyond the fountain and across the square, a man—not a man, a boy—resided, glorying in his triumph over his mother, and it was wrong.

  Empir Ariel Ilazer. Nalin couldn’t bring himself to speak the words out loud, much less accept the concept as reality. Yet, as he marveled at the great Keep with its white columns and massive stairway leading up to its magnificent carved wooden doors, he couldn’t deny the truth. His mentor was dead, and the one thing Flandari had fought happening had, indeed, happened. Her son, beloved by no one but himself and, perhaps, Lorain of Bedel, had claimed the throne of Garla as his own and would never relinquish it freely now that his mother could not wrest it from him.

  “Damn.”

  With a shake of his head, Nalin returned to his desk and sat down. Why had he conceded to Rosarel’s plan to take the girl out of Garla and into the desert? Was she actually safer out there with those savages? A fool of a plan, and he’d been a fool to agree. He couldn’t contact them, and they had sent no word. He had to trust that the other Ilazer twin, the unheard-of Ilazer twin, would return on time, ready to claim her birthright.

  He banged his fist on the table so hard that a couple of the scrolls took brief flight, and he looked off toward the door to his bedchamber, fingering his lightly bearded chin. What had Flandari done to him? She had taught him and coddled him and treated him like he was her own, allowing him to believe that once they had retrieved her daughter from wherever the sooth had hidden her, all would turn out well. A simple but firm explanation offered to Ariel, and the girl would step into her place as Heir-Empir. Ariel would grumble, and he might even make thr
eatening gestures, but Flandari would be there to see all settled securely into place. But then an assassin’s poisoned dagger had stuck itself into the plan, forcing everything to change, leaving Nalin in charge.

  He didn’t feel in charge. The moment Rosarel had become involved, Nalin’s control had evolved into that of a puppet leader taking orders from below. He had ever so begrudgingly agreed to Rosarel’s original plan of keeping the Heir from Avaret until she was ready. He’d fought but lost the battle over Halorin as their safe place, and in the end he’d been right. Jozan’s death was the proof of that. Now it was just the two of them, the Heir and the captain, out in the desert alone, and not only could they not lose Ariannas out there, but she couldn’t lose Rosarel. How else was she supposed to make her way back if not under his guidance?

  “Damn.”

  He spent too much time worrying, and he knew it. But somebody had to worry. The world had already begun to crumble, what with Flandari’s assassination and Jozan’s murder, Eloise’s arrest and poor Elsba’s grief. It had to end, and in a little over a month, something would change; Nalin just didn’t know what.

  He started at a knock on the door.

  “Nalin, it’s Bala,” he heard her say. “May I come in?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” He rose and straightened his tunic. Had it been anyone other than Bala or Elsba, he wouldn’t have answered and would have allowed them to leave thinking he wasn’t inside, but he owed the Tuanes more than he could ever repay.

  Bala entered, and Nalin noted the slightly swollen eyes and the absence of her usual friendly smile. He stepped around his desk, took her arm, led her around the couch and beckoned her to sit with an outstretched hand. She nodded without a word and did so, and he joined her. From here, they could see across the square. It had been his favorite place in the room to sit when Flandari had reigned.