Sword of Jashan (Book 2)

by Anne Marie Lutz

  “This is real glass,” she said. Real glass was rare and expensive. She had not thought little Northgard stretched to such luxury.

  “Dria Mar,” he explained.

  “Oh.” She could indeed see the lady spending coin on expensive things. She felt Callo’s throat move as he swallowed his own wine. “Where were you earlier?”

  “Patrolling. Looking for King’s men.”

  “Of course, you found nothing.”

  “You say ‘of course’?”

  “Well, do you think he will try the same way twice? Now that the manse is on guard?”

  “I have no idea what Sharpeyes will think of. You could be right. Let us forget all the royal schemes and just relax tonight.” He drank again, and through her shoulder resting on him she felt his muscles ease. “What have you been doing?”

  “Me?” She shrugged. “Looking around. Meeting with the Healer here, who by the way was kind enough to replenish some of my supplies. I have met a few people.”

  His hand was stroking her hair, long slow movements that made her close her eyes for a moment. Then she felt his lips on hers, just a soft touch.

  “I want to stay with you tonight,” she said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” he mumbled, nuzzling her neck.

  “All night, in your bed.”

  “Lady Dria Mar will know about it before breakfast even,” he warned her.

  “I don’t mind. She has a certain opinion of me anyway, does she not? I want to fall asleep next to you.”

  “Jashan, that sounds good,” he said. “Stop your talking, woman, and come here.” She fell into another kiss with him, this one deep, filling all her senses. His hands slid under the neck of her tunic, setting off sensations in her skin. She sighed and pulled away a little despite his murmur of protest, just far enough to begin unlacing his tunic. He pulled her close again, unheeding, and she laughed as she felt her tunic being loosened from her shoulders. Cool air licked at her skin. She shivered as she felt his hands caress her breast.

  His breath grew ragged. His arms went tight about her and he stood, carrying her to the bed. In a moment she lay across the wide coverlet while his hands stripped her, stopping to caress her along the way.

  It seemed to Kirian that a door opened in her mind, and she lost track of her surroundings. All of a sudden they were together, and the fire in her body was reflected by a roar of fierce desire in her mind that she had never felt before. She made love to Callo’s body but at the same time was exquisitely aware of every inch of her own body. Warmth followed his every touch on her skin, and she was enveloped in fire, inside and out. When she looked into Callo’s amber eyes, they were blind with desire.

  She had never felt such a transformation. The rest of the world grew dim and she thought she could feel Callo’s mind as well as his body, loving her. She and Callo moved together until a tide washed over her, filling her with light. Callo, above her, was frightening and beautiful, his body illuminated by firelight and magery.

  “Gods, you are beautiful,” Callo said afterward. His voice was husky. He lay next to her, pulled her closer. “Like a white bird in a green wood.”

  She had never heard such lyrical words from him before. She flushed and held him tight.

  He smiled. She rejoiced to see it, that slow sleepy smile that she had never seen him give to anyone else. She wanted to say she loved him, but she remembered she had told him that long ago, and would not worry him with it now. After a few minutes of lazy words and lengthening pauses, she heard his breathing even out into sleep.

  Pulling herself out of her warm nest, she turned on her side to watch him. His hair was tangled on the pillow, his face turned slightly away. One hand lay on his broad chest. She admired his beauty as he slept, remembered the intensity of their passion which she had never experienced before, and then sighed as the enchantment of the night slipped away and she knew what had happened.

  The desire she had experienced was not all her own.

  She sat upright in bed and put her head in her hands. Beside her, Callo slept on. How could he have been unaware of what he had done? She remembered his eyes, almost unseeing as he was possessed by his intense desire. She remembered the overwhelming emotion, the intoxication of a lust so strong it must have been imposed upon her. No, she had never felt such before—not that her experience was wide, but it did exist. She would know if tonight’s rage of lust and pleasure was usual.

  She rolled out of the bed. Her foot caught on the blanket and she stumbled, awkward in her shock. She gathered up her clothes with shaking hands. She took one deep breath, then another, then pulled her tunic over her and sat in the chair by the wall. The first shock of her discovery began to fade, and Kirian began to feel calmer.

  In spite of her sense of violation, she knew the intrusion had been unintentional. What Callo had done tonight—all unawares, she trusted—bore no resemblance to the manner in which King Ar’ok had forced lust into Eyelinn’s emotions, turning her into his willing plaything. Kirian had come to Callo’s bed of her free will. No force, no psychic influence brought her to him—just love. If in the midst of passion Callo lost control over his ku’an talent, thus magnifying her experience—well, some might call that a good thing, even an advantage, adding to her pleasure in their lovemaking.

  She was not one of those people. She wanted her permission asked before anyone—even her loved one—influenced her mind. She shivered, still feeling shocked.

  This could not happen again.

  Kirian rose and finished dressing in the yellow glow of the single lamp they had left burning. Callo slept on, undisturbed. She lit a candle from the lamp, then blew the lamp out, leaving the room in a heavy darkness broken only by the slow rhythm of Callo’s breathing. Slipping out of the room with her candle to light her way, she pulled the door closed behind her and returned to her own room. There, unable to sleep, she lit her own lamp and sat in a chair by the tiny window, staring out at the night.

  Chapter Four

  Callo came downstairs in the morning, his head foggy from sleeping too late. Chiss had not come to awaken him, and the tea on the tray at his bedside table was as cold as well water. As he descended the last step and turned towards the breakfast room, he saw three people standing as if frozen in the center of the hall, staring at him.

  It struck him as funny. “Yes?” he said. “What’s wrong? Have you eaten all the breakfast?”

  No one smiled at that. He realized that Kirian and Chiss looked pale and sick, while the boy Ander stood beside them, his eyes huge with apprehension.

  “There was an early messenger, trying to reach Lady Dria Mar before she arrived home,” Chiss said. “It is some kind of bad news out of Seagard Castle.”

  “My lady mother and father have been locked in the breakfast parlor with the messenger and one of her guards. No one else has been allowed in,” Ander said.

  He could feel his shoulders tense. Foreboding seized him. “What news?”

  A door closed in the hallway. Balan ran Gesset, chief of Dria Mar’s guardsmen, stormed out of the breakfast room. His face was set in grim lines. He saw the group clustered in the center of the main hall and stopped short, staring at Lord Callo.

  “I’ve been sent to bring you to Lady Dria Mar,” he said. He glanced back over his shoulder at the closed door to the breakfast parlor.

  “What is the news?” asked Callo.

  “Bad news,” Balan said. His voice was strained. “A messenger has come from Sugetre. Lord Arias Alkiran was beheaded for treason the day after you escaped Seagard. The King slew him by his own hand before his family and his men. He stayed to perform the unbinding ritual and attend the burning, then left for Sugetre.”

  Callo’s mind went blank. The room seemed to sway around him. Arias, dead? Slain by the King’s hand, with brutal swiftness to punish what Sharpeyes had seen as betrayal. The fire of the color magery began to rise within him with his emotion; he could see the aura at the corner of his eyes.

  Arias, his hal
f-brother and best friend in this world, was dead. Arias who had laughed with him, defended him from the crude taunts of other boys when they were young, dragged him into his own tangled dealings with women and politics. Arias—so young, so alive just a sennight ago.

  Dead, at the hands of a royal brute.

  “Why did you leave him there, my lord?” Balan demanded. He reached out and grabbed Callo’s arm. When Callo turned to look at him he saw the warrior’s face was wet with tears. “Why did you not take him away with you?”

  Callo pulled his arm away and went back up the stairs while stunned grief and anger began to coalesce in his mind. His sword leaned in the corner of his room; he grabbed it and a cloak, checked that his knife and purse were at his belt. Then he went back down the stairs into the white faces of the four who stood there. They stood aside as he swept past and out the door. Before it closed, he heard Chiss call, “My lord! Stop!”

  He heard Kirian say to Balan, “He is going to kill the King.”

  He headed for the stables and his mare, Miri. The grooms were busy elsewhere, and the stable was quiet. He took the saddle from the tack room himself. He began preparing Miri for the ride to Sugetre, or wherever else the thrice-damned murderous King had gone to lair. Miri rolled her eyes at him, sensing his agitation.

  “My lord, you cannot go!” Chiss arrived at the stable door, panting as if he had run from the manse.

  “I damn well can. I will knock his head from his—” Callo stopped for a moment, his throat threatening to close with emotion. His hands were on the saddle, on Miri’s back; he saw red fire begin to trace them, rising from within. Miri felt it and shied.

  “My lord.” Chiss’ voice was gentle. “It is terrible news. But you cannot go. He will be waiting for you. Don’t you think he knows how you will feel?”

  “So he knows. I hope it gives him nightmares. I swear by Jashan’s hand, Chiss, I will . . .”

  “Don’t swear.” Kirian was there now too, her eyes red with tears. “Don’t swear to anything now, Callo, while this news is so fresh.”

  “I am going! Get out of my way, both of you.” He pulled the girth strap too hard, and Miri protested. She sidled away from him in the stall. He swore at her, his grief coming up to choke his voice, then stopped as he realized what he was doing. “Ah, Miri my good one, I am sorry.” His hand relaxed on her bridle.

  “My lord, will you come back with us to the house?” Chiss asked.

  “Stay away from me,” Callo said. “You have done your part to save your King once already. You won’t stop me this time, Chiss. Get back.”

  His mind threatened to white out again. He could not stand to look into Chiss’ face and remember the manservant had saved King Martan from death at Seagard. But Chiss was right about one thing. If he went now to try to tear Sharpeyes’ bloody head from his shoulders, he would never make it inside Sugetre’s gates.

  But Jashan’s eyes, hell, Som’ur’s brutal heart! How could he avenge his brother? He froze in a storm of grief, and the red tide of his color magery rose again, sparking through his fingertips, making Miri neigh, making Chiss draw back from him. He began to shake, at the mercy of the energy.

  “My lord, easy now, please,” Chiss said. But Callo could tell the man was afraid. Then a smaller hand was on his arm, drawing him away from Miri and out into the light of the late morning.

  “Callo,” Kirian said. Her voice was soft. “Stay here, until you have a chance to think.”

  He no longer had a choice. The energy that roiled within him, that he could not really control, paralyzed him. His heart cried out for Arias, and the fire roared. “Get back,” he gasped to Kirian. “I don’t think I can keep it down.”

  “Of course you can,” she said. “You have done it before.” Her hand was still on his arm. She stood right next to him, and he was afraid the fire would leap out and burn her.

  He heard shouts as people came from the manse, heard Chiss say something he could not understand.

  “Ah, gods, Arias,” Callo mourned.

  “This will not help avenge Arias,” Kirian said, still too close. He clamped down on the magery hard, trying to stifle it.

  “Please calm down, my lord,” said another voice. Balan had walked down from the house and was here, with Chiss and Kirian, trying to keep Callo here and sane. The man’s eyes were red and puffy.

  Lord Zelan and a guardsman arrived from the manor house, having been warned of the crisis. Zelan looked at him with eyes that were calculating and hard. He had not known Arias. He said: “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

  Callo drew a ragged breath and felt someone else’s hands join Kirian’s to support him as he stumbled on nothing, all his attention on crushing the color magery before it could consume him or harm someone else. After a few moments, during which his sight went white with anger or grief or color magery, he felt the energy recede.

  “Good,” Chiss said. His voice sounded as if he were at the other end of a tunnel.

  “Relax, Callo,” Kirian said. “Here, sit.” Hands guided him to a seat—he thought the mounting block. His breath rasped painfully. His vision cleared; his mind felt split in half. He heard, as if the voice were coming from a foot away, the King saying the color magery would destroy him if he were not trained. At the thought of the King, his grief flared up again.

  “That murdering bastard,” he said.

  “Yes,” Balan said. “He is.”

  “Are you any better now, my lord?” Chiss asked, anxious.

  “I will be. Thank you for coming after me.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I am sorry, Chiss. You knew him well, too.”

  Kirian said, “Will you come up to the house now, my lord?” He thought Kirian was still afraid he would leap onto Miri and be off to Sugetre to challenge the King. He wanted to do that, desperately, but now the reasonable part of his mind was coming back, telling him he must plan; he must prepare or he would not succeed. He rose, his strength returning, but he felt as if his soul had been ripped in half. He let them escort him back up the hill. Chiss’ voice, behind him, ordered a groom to see to Miri.

  The breakfast room doors were still closed, a servant waiting outside to discourage interruptions. Ander led them past the breakfast room and into his own rooms, where he waved them to chairs and sent a servant for whatever breads and tea survived the disrupted breakfast hour in the kitchen. The boy’s face was white.

  “I am so sorry, Lord Callo,” Ander said. “It sounds as if it was a brutal thing.”

  “He is a brutal man,” Chiss said. There was a thickness in his voice Callo had not heard before. “He does not deserve my oath.”

  Callo took a deep breath and tried to focus. “He deserves to be destroyed. I was a fool to let my loyalty rule my decision not to slay him in the tower. If his own color magery burns him alive, it will not be too much.”

  Ander fidgeted in his chair. “Lord Callo,” he said, “you must not let your grief blind you. He is still our King. This talk is treason.”

  “I spared him in the tower though he Collared my brother and tried to slay Kirian and me. I thought, he is my uncle and my King. I thought, I will leave and go my way, stay out of his way and come to defend you from him here in Northgard—you, the rightful heir.

  “Think of this,” Callo said. “The King wants me to succeed him—he offered the throne to me at Seagard Castle. I am the tool he wants to work some plan of his. Now that Arias is dead, Ander, only you come between me and the throne. There has already been one attempt on your life.”

  “The boy is in great danger from the King,” Chiss said.

  Balan snorted. “Lord Callo, you know as well as I that you would never be accepted as King. Not a man of illegitimate birth such as yourself. Forgive my plain speaking, but this is delusional. Did Sharpeyes really say that?”

  “There are things you do not know,” Kirian said. “My lord said he would not take the throne, however. That’s what matters to us now.”

  “If Ander were dead, he w
ould take it quickly enough,” said Balan cynically, looking at Callo. “It may be putting the fox in charge of the chicken to ask Lord Callo to defend young Ander.”

  Callo gritted, “I said I did not want it, and I meant it.” He tried to pace, found his intent frustrated by the crowded area, and ran his hands through his hair. He had to get out of this little space soon.

  “You may trust my lord’s word, Hon Balan,” Chiss said.

  “And yours, how do I trust yours? I know none of you well. Perhaps I have done a great wrong, vouching for you so you are allowed into our very heart like this.” The warrior braced his feet as if to deliver a blow, and said to Callo: “You left him there to be slain. I do not call this the act of a loyal brother.”

  Callo could not reply. Kirian said, “He tried to convince him, Hon Balan. Lord Arias was sure he could turn aside the King’s anger. He would not come with us.”

  The warrior sighed and seemed to deflate. “It sounds like Lord Arias,” he said. “Always sure he could win his way with charm alone. Jashan’s heart, I will miss him.”

  Callo thrust aside his own grief and said, “I will guard you with my life, Lord Ander, until your position is safe. I will stay here rather than riding to Sugetre to put my sword through Sharpeyes’ heart. But when it is time, even if months have passed, I now swear on Jashan himself that I will avenge my brother Arias.”

  “No!” Ander said.

  “Chiss, if you cannot live with yourself without thwarting me, go your ways.”

  “I will go where you go, my lord,” Chiss said. “I always have.”

  And turn your hand against me when it counts? Callo thought but did not say aloud. He began to be overwhelmed by the closeness of all the people, and made his excuses. Then he stalked out of the manor house and headed for the ring.

  He tried to gain Jashan’s self-discipline in the ring. For candlemarks he moved in the studied speed of the god’s ritual forms. He moved until his arms were aching, his legs weak, and still he could not sense the usual purifying rigor of the ritual. Jashan had turned his face away. He worked until he was exhausted, then went back to the fortress.