by P. J. Fox
The lynx killed as he did, by biting the neck and breaking the spinal cord. Or, if the prey was particularly large and tough, by biting the throat until it suffocated. It was an athletic animal, well adapted to life in the mountains. And, like Tristan, it was patient. Lynx were known to wait in trees, often for hours or even days, until their chosen prey passed beneath them. They rarely killed…just anything.
He glanced right, and then left, his eyes luminous with reflected light. Far above, the moon was full. A silvery, heatless orb, the subject of a thousand thousand tales. All featuring lovelorn men, led astray from the paths they knew.
The information he’d received from Cariad had proved quite useful, but he wasn’t ready to share it yet. Not even with Isla. He trusted her, but she was…fragile. And she had already undergone much. That her past should be in the past for now was best. She would have time enough, in the future, to learn the full and continuing extent of Cariad’s transgressions.
Isla…his beautiful, fragile Isla.
Moira, Isla’s childhood nurse, was correct: he had had more than two wives, before her. Wives he hadn’t loved. Couldn’t have loved. Hadn’t wanted to love. They’d been, in short, expedient. Two he’d married for land. One of those had been before he’d gone east, while he was still entertaining himself with Brenna. He’d killed her, a sallow and mean-spirited thing called Avis, because she’d questioned his manhood in not providing her with children. Children she scarcely wanted, to begin with.
Even so, killing her had been a mistake. Her parents had been in an uproar over the notion that he might demand back the bride price, with her not having lasted even a full year before her unfortunate fall from the battlements. He’d graciously allowed them to keep their money, and hadn’t married again until some time after he’d returned home.
His second wife, he’d been prepared to let live out her natural term. She was a pretty, quiet thing named Emoni who’d been betrothed to him through parental contract. They never spoke alone until after the wedding. Not such an unusual situation, for a bride. Emoni came with land that Tristan wanted and he offered a measure of protection, as an overlord, that her parents needed. But Emoni…wasn’t prepared for her husband.
She sobbed endlessly after their first night together, and resisted him thereafter. He, for his part, was content to treat her well if indifferently. He’d married her for her land, which he now possessed. What she did on her own time was up to her. And in this approach, he knew himself to be no different than the vast majority of human husbands. Certainly of his station, where marriage was solely a political act. One didn’t need marriage to love, a need for which one kept mistresses and which they were most suited to fill.
Had Emoni taken a lover, Tristan would have let her. Instead she hung herself in her bedroom. Her brother found her. Tristan dispensed with the evidence, allowing him to inherit. Elsewise, Emoni’s goods would have been forfeit to the crown. As the goods of all suicides were, suicide being a mortal sin in the eyes of the church.
Why the crown—or the church—should punish one’s arguably blameless relatives for one’s own actions was beyond even his ken. But Tristan had long ago accepted that men were moved by greed. He meanwhile needed…certain things to survive. And for that he was accounted evil. The man who shot a deer was feeding his family and the man who speared a boar, protecting his village. The man who hoarded gold he didn’t need, successful. What human construct was it, to place such value on one life over another?
All lives had value, did they not?
Tristan wasn’t the one who’d sent ravens, inquiring about the bride price over his daughter. He wasn’t the one who’d offered either girl in the first place. He’d accepted, and for this he bore some blame, he knew, but what man in his position would have done elsewise?
His third wife was a court beauty called Eloise. She was older than he, at least in appearance, and had taken numerous lovers. Unable to bear children after a botched abortion, she appeared to suit his purposes. Their marriage, unlike his first two, was one of mutual benefit. There was no love on either side, nor impulse that could be construed as love, but in Eloise he’d found a meeting of the minds.
She hadn’t been the first. Cariad was the first. And like Cariad’s, Eloise’s loyalty had proved fleeting. Eloise might have still been beautiful, even past thirty winters, as dewy and fresh as any virgin on her wedding night, but her heart was as black as coal. She’d come to Tristan as an ally, personal as well as political, and given him no cause to doubt her. And for awhile, things had gone smoothly enough. Tristan knew her to be cold and calculating, if not yet evil. He was looking for an ally in the war against Maeve, not a best friend.
He’d bedded her, yes, because she was lovely enough and because she was there, but theirs had been openly an arrangement of convenience from the first. And would have continued on as such, save for Eloise making one dread mistake: she’d taken money from Tristan’s enemies to rid him—and herself—of the boy.
That Asher didn’t like Eloise was apparent from the first; but children were fickle and took ill to change. Eloise, for her part, had seemed indifferent to his existence. But in assuming that Tristan, too, was indifferent she’d gravely mistaken him.
He’d stumbled across her plan quite by accident, only intercepting a message intended for her by the purest of luck. And it was then that he’d come to first truly understand how gravely Asher was in danger. He’d expected some sort of intrusion into their world, of course, eventually. But underestimating Maeve’s need to see Asher accounted for—either captured or dead—would remain one of his few miscalculations.
He’d arrested several servitors, having Callas rip them from their beds in the dead of night. Come morning they were simply…missing. He let those remaining do the rest of his work for him, speculating on where they might have gone. The bulk of rumor held that they’d been taken down into the dungeons, to be tortured. That they were there still.
In truth, Callas had, again on Tristan’s orders, taken them into the forest and cut their heads from their shoulders. Their bodies were left for the animals. They were too dangerous to be left alive, even in the dungeons.
And Tristan would have liked to believe that that purge had eradicated Maeve’s web of traitors.
But he couldn’t be certain.
He, of course, gave the impression of thinking Eloise innocent. To Asher, he said nothing. Such a secret was too great of a burden for a child to bear. Even a child so precocious as Asher. Perhaps especially for such.
And so he’d poisoned Eloise at dinner, using strychnine because it was the most painful agent he could devise. As she convulsed, their eyes met. He watched her calmly over the rim of his cup as he sipped his wine. He said nothing. But she knew. He stared into her eyes as she died and saw that she knew.
Strychnine was an interesting poison, the convulsions progressing within the body until the spine arched continually. Eloise’s finally gave with a loud snap. She twitched for another hour or so after that, but at length she was still. Tristan didn’t wait for her to finally expire before continuing his meal. Rather, he enjoyed another portion of venison while the show continued. And it was a show. A lovely show, by a lovely woman.
A fitting end for both.
The next morning he’d presented Asher with George, his longed-for horse.
They’d both been…taken aback to meet Isla. Nothing of her was anything Tristan expected from his world. She was, indeed, a lodestar: an ever-bright beacon in darkness, the means by which men found their way home. He…wasn’t capable of love, but she was the first creature he’d ever met, who made him see that as a limitation. Even, perhaps, to regret the lack of feelings he’d rejected as merely an invitation to weakness long ago.
But Asher was capable of love, and Asher loved Isla. The boy was desperately in need of a mother, something he himself seemed to recognize. And he’d found—no, chosen—that mother in Isla. The feeling, Tristan knew, was mutual. A more natural mother th
an Isla Tristan had never met. He was…gratified by their connection.
He paused, studying his surroundings.
He was near his destination now.
Somewhere, an owl screeched.
The moon overhead was bright, but Tristan blended into the depthless black of the shadows. His cloak was merely one more round, organic shape on the snow. Cast by the snow-heavy tree above, perhaps. The night was alive, but all of the denizens of the forest ignored him. They sensed no life force from him and thus he was no more significant to their comings and goings than a fallen log.
His other wives…there was no point in comparing them to Isla. Doing so would be as futile as comparing the warmth of a candle to that of the sun. And like the sun, Isla was no manmade creation to be snuffed out on a whim but a force of nature that commanded respect.
From the first moment he saw her, he’d known that he had to have her. His need…it was an ache deep within, leaving him restless. He’d watched her during that first dinner, unable to tear his eyes from her for more than a few seconds at a time. He hadn’t thought about the logistical problems this situation presented, hadn’t thought about much at all.
Only felt a new and strange hunger.
That she’d come to him, offered herself to him, seemed beyond belief. And yet losing himself in her eyes, he’d known that she was sincere. Her fear…was intoxicating. He’d wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to take her and make her his own.
She was fragile, so fragile, but she wasn’t timid. Was, indeed, the bravest creature he’d ever known. She knew what he was, or thought that she did. And yet she did not run.
He’d wanted to win her over. To make her feel a love that he could not return. And so he courted her.
Why, he couldn’t have said.
He couldn’t explain these strange and conflicting desires, even to himself.
The things he did for her, he’d never done for any other woman. His wives had been expedient, nothing more. His lovers, too, had served a single purpose. He was a man, with a man’s needs. But never had he envisioned himself finding a true partner. Wanting anything of the kind. Wanting to make her laugh, as he wanted to make Isla laugh. Wanting to see her smile. Wanting to know that when she smiled, she smiled for him. Wanting.
Merely wanting.
There had been no ritual with his other wives. No thought of one. Cariad, whom rumor at the time listed as a wife, had wanted it. But he hadn’t wanted her. And then, after Cariad, there had been no question. He’d felt no sense of possession toward them, as he did toward Isla almost from that first glance. When he’d seen her green eyes, and the defiant look flashing in them behind her calm mask, and forgotten he was engaged to her sister.
And now they were bonded.
Forever.
Isla had sacrificed more than she knew, in joining her life to his. A life outside of time, severed from the normal rhythms that dictated growth and decay. As the years stretched into decades, she’d outlive her friends. Outlive even Asher. As Tristan would. He could only hope that his companionship would be solace enough.
Isla was adapting well. The challenges before her were myriad and difficult, but he’d be there to guide her and help her as best as he could. She was…precious to him. He’d come as close as was perhaps possible for him to knowing true fear, immediately after the ritual. Whether performed correctly or no, there was always the chance that the recipient’s body wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand the strain.
Thus, the ultimate outcome was up to the Gods.
As with all sacrifices.
In time, they would truly come to think with one mind. The combination of the ring, and the ritual, was powerful. But he had to move slowly….
He’d learned about the true nature of the ring, and the spell it represented, through studying the accounts of the necromancer Barda. The man who’d, if not built Caer Addanc, then strengthened it into the stronghold it was. An evil man, who’d nonetheless loved a woman: Katrina, she of the blue eyes and flaxen hair. And ready smile, and tender disposition. A woman worthy of love, whose gifts of the spirit pierced even Barda’s cold heart.
Desires of the mind, and heart, he’d told Isla, that were neither easily explained nor understood. He’d wanted his bride to understand him, as Tristan wanted Isla to understand him. The need—no, the craving for union transcended species. No one, even a demon, could live alone. And perhaps…perhaps the more evil the man, the more difficult his desires were to fathom, the more his life depended on that union.
If Tristan could be said to feel concern, his one true concern was that he’d do as Barda had done: push too far, too fast, and so lose everything. Barda had believed that Katrina would accept him, accept all of him, if she could only understand him. If she could see inside his mind and know that, despite his depravities, he valued her above all else. That, in his increasing degeneracy—and Barda was degenerate indeed—he truly did, as Tristan had told Isla, value her all the more. That her light, to him, shone ever bright in his darkness. Such had been more than apparent, from reading his writings.
Had Barda completed the second half of the ritual, Katrina would have survived her fall. But alas, he never did. Barda, robbed of his light, had wasted into a shadow of a man. A shadow capable of terrible, terrible things that Katrina, even had she returned within a few seasons, never would have recognized.
Tristan did feel some…he supposed empathy might be the correct word for Barda. He understood the man, at least. But Barda had also been a fool, not to realize that his lover’s nature was so different from his own. There were some things that, at least until she’d been given time to adjust, to…accept, should have been hidden.
As Tristan hid things from Isla.
Tristan’s principle vexation with Barda was that, as he had been such a fool, there was no opportunity for him to record the effects of the second half of the transformation. A process about which Tristan himself knew little. Even his studies in the East had revealed only the scantest of information.
He was working blind, which…concerned him.
Demons were naturally territorial, and what few existed on this plane gave each other a wide berth. Unless they intended to fight for another demon’s land, or possessions. Tristan, in contemplating his own shortcomings, had reason to wish for the first time that this was not so. He’d suffer the presence of another, if it meant securing Isla’s health.
Desires of the mind, and heart…Tristan had done the one thing that Barda had not, in allowing Isla the chance to leave. Oh, Tristan doubted that Barda had held Katrina hostage. Although he must surely have been tempted to do so, as Tristan was tempted to tie Isla to him from that first night. But he’d known that she could never survive what was coming—not intact—if she wasn’t fully committed.
And he…loved her, he supposed, enough to let her go.
That once, at least.
He’d asked himself, in the months since, whether he would have indeed possessed the courage to uphold his word. He’d felt nothing so much as…in human terms he would have coined it relief when she’d accepted him. A relief so profound it almost brought him to his knees.
He let his mind open, traveling along their bond.
He could block her out, and did, but she remained open to him at all times. She was sitting in the upstairs gallery, curled up before the fire in a mountain of pillows, chatting with Greta as she sipped mulled wine. Greta was telling her a story, which made Isla laugh. Greta had, Tristan gathered, been the one to fetch the throw that warmed her. Dire wolf fur, as white as the snow outside. Isla’s feelings toward Greta, as she appreciated the warmth, were equally warm. Mixed with friendship and gratitude. Gratitude that Greta should be so accepting. That she should be there, to share this moment.
Isla laughed, sending another burst of sunlight through the bond. For that was what it felt like, to Tristan: sunlight. He had no other word to describe the sensation, which was reminiscent of summer days and flower-filled fields. That
reminded him of his youth, when the world was still simple and pure.
She poured more wine for Greta, smiling at her friend as the fire crackled. They had many such nights as these, while Tristan was occupied with affairs of state. He’d have liked to take Greta’s place, on this night as on all the others, but such personal indulgences were impossible.
Still, he had to forcibly restrain himself from disemboweling the girl, feeling as he did like she was stealing Isla from him.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was once again alone in the snow. Snow that seemed colder now. Snow lit only by an uncaring moon.
He continued on.
SEVENTEEN
The woman he was to meet had arrived before him.
He paused at the edge of the clearing, allowing his boot to crunch through the thin crust of ice over the snow so that she’d hear him. She, who thought herself so attuned. She turned, her eyes meeting his. She was flustered, but she covered that quickly. A veil of calm descended and, he supposed, she imagined that he’d never seen the earlier expression.
She wanted to impress him, that much was obvious. Her demeanor was one of straight-backed purpose, as though she were the master and he the supplicant. She’d worn a wool cloak that dragged in the snow, the edges crusted in ice. Black, like the shift beneath it. She’d pulled the hood up over her head. He could see just the merest hint of red curls. Under different circumstances, she might have been beautiful. Her eyes were hard.
“You’re late.”
He made no response.
She sniffed.
He waited.
She turned, scanning the clearing, as though waiting for someone else to appear. At long length, she spoke again. “I did the ritual.” Her manner of speaking was coarse. Too abrupt, her words too clipped. She acted, for all the world, like a dissatisfied customer at a market stall. “Now I want my reward.”
“Indeed.” Tristan still hadn’t moved. His own cloak hung about him in still folds, like those carved from marble, despite the wind gusts. He waited.
