by Jaide Fox
* * * *
“I know you are afraid, Aliya,” Talin said gently. “But I will not allow harm to come to you. Do not argue with me on this.”
Aliya frowned. “I can not believe that I would be safer elsewhere than I am here. The palace can not be scaled by the army you are facing. The spire which holds it aloft in the sky is higher than any tree. How could they climb up even to begin an assault? They can not fly as you can.”
Talin’s face hardened. “They have magic, Aliya. They do not need to come up. I can not be certain that their magic would not bring it down, and if that happened you could not escape on your own--nor your ladies.”
Aliya felt something cold clench inside of her at the image that instantly brought into her mind. She nodded.
Talin pulled her close, his arms tightening around her. “I do not like this any more than you do. There is safety in the place we have found, but little comfort.”
Aliya smiled against his chest. “I am not so fragile as you seem to believe. I can handle the discomfort and will, gladly, if it eases your mind.” She hesitated for a moment. “It is the flight there that petrifies me.”
“Shameful,” Talin murmured with a chuckle. “You are the concubine of the king of the Golden Falcon! You should not quake only at the thought of flying.”
She pulled away and looked up at him but she found it difficult to smile.
Kissing her lightly on the forehead, he released her. “You are packed?”
She nodded, moving to the bed and lifting the strap to show him that the pack he had given her was full. He grasped the strap and tugged, pretending it was too heavy to lift and drawing a rueful smile.
“It is not that full!” she said with a chuckle.
He tapped her chin and then flicked a finger along her cheek. “That is better.
It was dark when they reached the courtyard. The moon had set long since and dark clouds skidded across the sky, obscuring even much of the stars. Aliya shivered, turning to glance at Lady Beatrice and Lady Leesa who were huddled together in fright nearby.
When she turned to look at Talin again, he stood before her as a great falcon. “This time I will carry you on my back. It will more comfortable for you, I think.”
“It could not be less,” Aliya quipped, wondering how she was supposed to climb up on his back and if she could hang on tightly enough to keep from falling. Someone touched her arm and she turned to see that Solly had come up beside her. Bowing, he grasped her around the waist and lifted her up. When she was settled against his soft, warm feathers, he handed her the satchel, which she slung across her shoulder. To her surprise, instead of walking away, he began to fiddle with some sort of leather harness, which he draped across Talin’s back and then fastened beneath his belly. Lifting a strap, he moved one over each of her shoulders.
Relief flooded her.
She should have known that Talin would take care that she was safe!
The flight was unnerving for all that she felt reasonably secure and could not see the vast emptiness beneath her. Talin had told her to dress warmly, and she had, but she was still chilled to the bone and her teeth chattering by the time they at last began to descend again.
As relieved as she was to know that their journey was ending, a terrible sense of dread began to seep into her, for she knew that Talin would leave her here, and she was not at all certain that she would see him again.
Chapter Twenty One
The place they were going, Talin had told Aliya once they were airborne, had once been a part of the temple built on Mount Carceras to the old gods. The temple had been erected on top of the caverns that, it had once been said, led to the underworld and the realm of the demons, so that the old gods could guard the gateway and prevent the evil ones from escaping into the world of man.
Aliya wasn’t certain of whether to believe him or not, for she was more than half inclined to think he had only mentioned the underworld to unnerve her. “But it isn’t … is it?”
Talin had chuckled. “No, love. It is only a labyrinth of caves, but they are deep in the earth and will offer protection from most anything. And since they lie in the land of Memnon and the dragon clan dwells there no longer, few even know of them.”
It was obvious that effort had been put forth, even in such trying times, to make the caverns as comfortable for those who would be seeking shelter there as possible, but it would have taken a good deal more to make the place truly comfortable. Aliya was too miserable emotionally to notice the discomfort at first, but after two nights of sleeping on a pallet on the uneven floor of the cavern, physical discomfort began to take the upper hand.
Beyond the painful, scattered pebbles that were everywhere, biting into tender flesh sitting, lying, or standing, the cavern was damp and chilly. They did not dare light a very large fire or keep it going for very long. The smoke had a tendency to hang like a pall above them and once there, did not dissipate appreciably. Beyond the choking smoke, there was little wood and they had been cautioned not to go out unless the situation was dire.
They had food for at least a week, water, firewood, torches for light, bedding for pallets and each other for entertainment.
Aliya’s ladies complained endlessly. By the second day, the other occupants of the cavern had begun to look at them as if they were contemplating shoving their heads beneath the water in the pool and holding them there until the water stopped bubbling.
Aliya felt the temptation herself.
“I do not see why it would hurt to go up only for a few moments to catch a breath of fresh air,” Lady Leesa grumbled as they settled on their pallet for the third night. “Surely, it is dark outside and no one would be around to see us anyway.”
“Go, if you want to,” Aliya finally snapped irritably. “But if you are lost, you will have to find your own way back.”
Leesa sniffed irritably. “We should all go.”
“No,” Aliya said firmly. “Talin brought us here because he was concerned for our safety. I am not going to jeopardize everyone’s wellbeing only because I am uncomfortable. Soon, they will return for us. I am sure of it.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lady Beatrice volunteered. “I think, perhaps, I could stand this a little better if I might have a few moments’ respite.”
“Just be quiet,” Aliya warned them.
She settled when they’d left, trying not to worry that they might inadvertently give their hiding place away. Surely, she thought, if it was not dark, they would know better than to take a chance on going out?
She shook the thought off. They were sensible. That was one of the reasons her father had chosen them for her--the fact that they could be relied upon to keep a cool head and behave responsibly.
She was almost sorry she hadn’t gone with them. There had been a coolness between them since they had argued about Talin and she had sent them to stay with the other maids. She supposed the coolness was mostly her fault and that they felt that they were in disfavor.
They had been for a while. She still did not want to listen to them speaking against Talin, but she did miss the closeness they had had between them before.
Maybe, if she made the effort to close the gap, they would also, and they would eventually come to see that Talin was a good man.
She dozed, awakening only a short time later as some grasped her arm.
“Princess!” Lady Beatrice said in a hissing whisper. “Lady Leesa has turned her ankle.”
Drunk from sleep, Aliya struggled to rouse herself and make sense of the urgency in Beatrice’s voice. “What?”
“We were walking in the ruins above, but we did not dare to take the torch and could not see. I think she has only twisted her ankle, but she is in pain and I don’t think I can help her by myself.”
Aliya threw her covers off and got to her feet unsteadily. Grasping her arm, Lady Beatrice led her quickly from the cavern and along the long, natural tunnel that climbed steeply toward the mountain top above them.
�
�I should have brought my medicines!” Aliya exclaimed in sudden irritation when they reached the stairs at the end of the tunnel that had been hewn from the rock to join the temple above them with the labyrinth of caves beneath.
“It will be best anyway to get her down here before you try to give her anything for the pain, else it might take more than the two of us to manage it.”
Nodding, Aliya lifted her skirts and hurried up the stairs. They paused at the top so that Lady Beatrice could extinguish the torch. Blinded as they were plunged abruptly into abject darkness, Aliya place a hand along the wall and very carefully felt her way up the last few stairs and along a short passage through the base of a crumbling statue.
She had just stepped into the opening when Beatrice uttered a faint gasp and slammed against her so hard they both pitched forward, plowing into the ground. Stunned by the impact and the blow that had come directly before it, it was several moments before Aliya actually grasped that the hands pulling at her weren’t the helping hands of someone trying to get her up, but the hands of someone binding her. “What are you doing?” she gasped in disbelief.
“You will thank us for this one day,” Lady Leesa whispered shakily.
“Thank you?” Aliya demanded disbelievingly as the two women hauled her to her feet. “How dare you manhandle me like this! I am your princess!”
“It is because we love you,” Lady Beatrice said briskly, shoving a cloth into Aliya’s mouth and then securing it in place with a strip of linen.
She’d been too stunned with disbelief even to think of trying to flee from them or to struggle. By the time she came to her senses enough to realize the need, it was too late. Her hands were bound tightly behind her back and she could not even scream for help. “..itch!” she snarled. “Weh go!”
“Shhh!” Lady Leesa hissed. “They will hear you!”
“Ooo?”
Ignoring her, each grasped an arm and started hauling her away from the temple ruins. It was dark, and with little light from the sky to show them the way, they stumbled over rocks and brush, nearly falling time and again. After perhaps fifteen minutes, her ladies pulled her to a halt. “Look!” Lady Beatrice whispered in excitement, pulling Aliya around until she could see, far in the distance, campfires.
“It’s your father’s army! I know it. We are saved!”
She didn’t want to be saved! She wanted to go back, but they had gagged her and she could do nothing more than make furious, unintelligible noises. Despite her struggles, they dragged her onward, finding a narrow track after a while that led down the side of the mountain to the valley below it where the army of Talin’s enemies lay waiting.
Dread dogged her every step of the way. At first, her only thoughts were that Talin would think she had betrayed him and seized the first opportunity to escape him. After a while weariness began to set in and as it did, a new, even more dreadful fear began to take hold of her.
Lady Beatrice and Lady Leesa knew where the caverns were, the caverns where Talin had hidden the children, the women who were with child, and the ancients. Her weariness vanished at that thought and a coldness washed over her that seemed to make her mind work at frantic speed, searching for something she could do to prevent her father from finding them and slaughtering them.
She felt like weeping when nothing at all came to mind. She should have struggled harder, she raged inwardly. If she had, someone might have heard. They might have at least been alerted to danger. Instead, she had crept out of the cavern quietly to keep from waking anyone, fallen right into the trap her ladies had set for her without a clue of what was going on.
If she could only get them to take the gag from her mouth perhaps she could reason with them?
She began to fake coughing and gagging. The problem was, the moment she did, she began to cough and gag in earnest. Alarmed, Lady Leesa jerked the linen away from her mouth and snatched the wad of cloth out. Aliya sucked in a wheezing breath, coughing and choking at the dryness of her mouth until she had to struggle to keep from throwing up. Finally, the spasms passed.
“Better?” Lady Beatrice asked anxiously.
Aliya swallowed with an effort. “Thirsty.”
“We did not bring any water. We did not bring anything at all,” Lady Leesa said in a distressed voice. “We are not far from the camp, now, though. I am sure of it.”
Lifting her head at the note of anxiety in Lady Leesa’s voice, Aliya looked around. “I do not see the campfires,” she said in surprise.
The three of them turned in a circle. “I do not see them either,” Lady Beatrice exclaimed in alarm, and then looked up at the sky as if she would find answers there.
“The track we followed must have wound around a hill. Or perhaps it cut back?” Lady Leesa said worriedly.
“It does not matter,” Lady Beatrice said decisively. “I am sure this is the right direction. We will find them. Or they will find us.”
Aliya was just as certain that Lady Beatrice was wrong about the direction since she had watched as the campfires disappeared behind a rise in the land, but she kept that to herself. If they wandered around in the dark long enough neither woman would be able to say for certain where the women and children of the clan were hidden and, with any luck at all, her father would not spare the time to search. She prayed fervently that he wouldn’t. Talin might never forgive her for what he saw as a betrayal of him, but she would never forgive herself if her stupidity led to the deaths of his people.
Their reception in her father’s camp was worse than Aliya had anticipated. Aside from the fact that everyone they passed along the way to her father’s tent eyed her either with contempt or thinly veiled speculation, her father received her with the coldness of a complete stranger.
“Sire!” Lady Beatrice exclaimed the moment they were escorted inside the tent, dropping into a deep curtsey. “We have rescued the princess!”
King Andor looked the three of them over as if someone had just upended a chamber pot at his feet, his gaze focusing for many long moments on the bindings. “Welcome home, daughter,” he finally said, his voice as cold as his icy pale eyes.
* * * *
To Aliya’s vast relief, there was no search for the women of the clan. Despite the fact that she had wandered for many hours trying to make certain that Lady Leesa and Lady Beatrice were thoroughly lost, they had only to mention the temple and her father knew exactly where he could find them. Fate smiled upon them, however, for he was in too great a hurry to meet and join with the army he was marching toward to spare the time to slaughter them.
He would take care of that, he assured her, once the armies of man had destroyed the unnaturals and wiped them from the face of the earth forever.
It was for the same reason, so he said, that he could not spare the time to return her to her home himself, or men to take her.
She knew better. The truth was in his eyes. He meant to see to it that he killed them all and he wanted her to be there to see her lover die.
Lady Beatrice and Lady Leesa had fallen over themselves to explain why they had ‘rescued’ her and brought her back bound and gagged. It was because, they said, that she had been enthralled by the man beast, and could not break the spell, though they were certain King Andor’s wizard could.
Perhaps they even believed that.
Her father did not and Aliya made no attempt to convince him that he was wrong.
She did not attempt to speak to him about making peace either, for he was not the man she had thought she had known and she saw that nothing she could say would sway him. She would have been willing to beg, to cry--to promise him anything he demanded, but she knew it was useless. There was nothing for her in his eyes, not regret, nor pity, no love, no understanding--just an emptiness, as if his soul had been sucked from his body and left only a husk with the fevered eyes of a fanatic.
She wondered if, perhaps, he had gone mad … or she had.
* * * *
Aliya sat stiffly erect on the palfrey at her
father’s side, trying to close her mind to the horror she had been brought to witness. It was a formidable task, for the sights and sounds and smells of battle surrounded her in a noxious haze. It was barely daylight and already her father had lost a good portion of his army. The bombardment from above had begun to rain death upon the encampment before the soldiers were even fully awake. Everyone had scrambled into the nearness garment to hand, and run to gather horses and weapons, trying to create order out of the chaos of terror, to no avail. She and her father had been hurriedly mounted on horses half crazed with fear. One of the royal guards had snatched her reins from her hands and led her horse as they had charged out of the encampment and raced toward the hill her father had chosen as his watch post for the battle--which was not to have begun before first light.
By first light, the encampment was empty of the living. The soldiers had not marched to the field chosen for battle so much as they had stampeded in the general direction of it, driven there by their commanders, and there had been no let up since to give the captains the opportunity to bring any real order to the battle.
It was melee in the truest sense of the word, a mad, fear and hate driven rampage of hacking and slashing and firing wildly, only to have the chance to draw one more breath.
As terrified as Aliya was, a fierce gladness stole over her as she saw that the army of the man beasts had surprised the armies of her father and his allies, for even she could see that they were grossly outnumbered.
It took all she could do to keep from searching the sky for a glimpse of Talin. Fear kept her eyes staring blindly straight ahead. Her father was in a rage such as she had never seen before, cursing steadily beneath his breath when he was not screaming orders at his couriers, who had already plowed a path from the hillside to the battle field carrying orders back and forth at a frantic pace. He was enraged enough to have his careful plans routed before he could even implement them. He was already furious to have his ‘tainted’ daughter beside him as a constant reminder that Talin had humiliated him by snatching his greatest treasure from beneath his nose. She did not want to chance that he might think to use her to taunt Talin, to try to draw him to his death.
