“Their encampment? Is it bivouac for a night or a place of hiding?”
“There were shelters among the rocks and pens for their horses.”
“How far?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “I escaped in the night and ran until I could not go on.”
He looked to her bloody, bare feet. “Can you lead us to them?”
She nodded slowly, a veiled look in her eye that might have been fear—or a knowing smile.
His eyes rose from her feet to where her arms crushed the black wool to her bosom. Again, he felt desire, and again, he pushed it aside. He helped the woman to her feet and signaled for an officer to bring a skin of water. Borklore was a decorated captain of kingsriders. He resolved to avenge this woman’s honor and rescue her company. He would deliver the heads of these bandits to the king as the Raven had demanded.
He felt euphoric in his sense of duty. He was flush with desire for the woman who trembled in his arms. A soothing voice whispered in his mind. He felt her power over him and felt himself relinquishing his will.
“Horse forward!” he said softly, and a sergeant repeated the order with a barking command, “Horse forward!”
“Are we getting close?” Borklore scanned the tumult of boulders and walls of stone rising on both sides of the narrow gorge where the woman had led them. The woman rode beside him on a gray courser flecked with brown. It had been more than an hour since they’d found her beaten in the road.
“I ran in the dark until I had no breath and could take the pain of my feet no more,” she said. “I hid in the woods and waited for the dawn.” She looked at him and held his eyes. “Praise the gods you found me. I hope I may find a way to show you my gratitude.”
Borklore flushed, wishing more into her meaning than she intended. “Clearly it is the gods who guided us to gather these brigand bastards.” He touched his forehead. “Pray, forgive me, m’lady, for assaulting your gracious ears with such language.”
“Wait!” She reined in her horse. Borklore stopped the column. “There!” She pointed to a sizable boulder that had been split open. The break looked like the profile of a human face. “I think . . .” she began, then, listening to something no one else could hear, she raised a silencing finger to her lips. It was impossible for a hundred men and horses to be silent, but the hum of chatter and the rattling of equipment quieted. The sound of hooves from restless horses on rock was all that was left.
The woman slipped from her saddle and walked forward. She motioned for the captain to follow. An officer started to dismount as well, but Borklore stopped him and followed the woman alone.
The canyon narrowed and turned sharply right. A small stream ran against the wall. They waded in knee-deep water for a hundred steps before she stopped and pointed to an opening half a stone’s throw ahead.
“Where did they leave the wagons?” Borklore whispered.
“There were no wagons,” the woman said.
Borklore furrowed his brow. “You said they put the woman and children in wagons and—”
“Did I?” She laughed and took a few steps forward.
A shiver of inexplicable dread sliced through the captain like a blade of ice. He turned at the rattling behind him.
Four men blocked the passage. They wore rusted iron and scuffed leather. Their helms were mismatched and plumeless. Each stood with an arrow nocked and ready. At such close range the sharpened shafts of steel would pierce Borklore’s breastplate, but the arrows were pointed at his face.
One of the bowmen sniggered.
Borklore whirled around. The woman had her hand beneath the black wool cape. Lightning struck, or so it seemed. There was an explosion of light, but it was somehow dark. The eruption of the air racked his body and clouded his mind as if something had siphoned away his very essence. He fell on the rocks and splashed backward through the water on his hands and feet. He stared in terror as the strange dark light retreated into the woman’s hand, sucked into the small black stone she held.
Borklore kept an eye on the archers as he scrambled to his feet. They stood motionless, as if nothing had happened. He kept his hand away from the hilt of his sword. He knew the archers would fire at the first sign of aggression. He looked back at the woman in time to see her transformation in the glimmer of dark light. The woman in distress was suddenly a man with skin the color of rusted iron. His face was shaven and scarred by a ragged hollow.
Drakkor closed his fist around the translucent black crystal and slipped it back to its secret pocket. The stone of fire possessed an even greater magic than he’d been told. Forged in the dragon’s breath of fire? He laughed to himself. So many tales and superstitions, but only one seemed to be the truth. A working wrought by heart and mind. As one believes and thinks it to be, so it is.
The source of the power no longer mattered. He held the magic in his hand, and his foot was on the path to a destiny of endless life.
CHAPTER 7
“Lower! No, no, lower!” the king rasped in a voice that crackled with impatience.
Maharí slid the wad of shredded wood fibers to the small of the king’s back and scrubbed in a circular motion. The concubine knew how to pleasure the aged king of Kandelaar.
Orsis-Kublan had lost his appetite for the succulent fat of wild pig in recent times. His obese body had diminished, but the stretch of his skin had not. It drooped in flaccid wrinkles the color of stale milk. His belly protruded, but his body was otherwise thin. With the slightest twist of his torso or the reach of an arm, the bones of his ribs bulged skeletal against his pallid skin.
The king’s bath was a sunken pool made of polished marble and accessed by broad steps on two sides. Water spewed from the beak of an enormous peacock carved from marble and clutching a cluster of bloody arrows in its claw. The bottom of the bath was a mosaic of inlaid tile that included the sigil of House Kublan.
The pool was in the center of an opulent oval chamber. The ornate ceiling was supported by twenty columns connected by arches. Each column was carved with thorns winding from the floor to where flowers blossomed in bas-relief to celebrate the accomplishments and exploits of the king. Seven of the pillars were untouched. In spite of his eighty-eight years, Orsis-Kublan refused to accept an end to his reign, his conquests, his greatness, or, as the mists of fear swirled in his head, his mortal life.
The old king lifted a bejeweled chalice. A harem girl hurried to him with a flagon of wine. His hand trembled as she refilled his cup. His thin skin had shriveled from the long soak in hot water. Sunlight streaming through the tall windows struck the chalice and reflected a pattern of golden light onto his face.
A grizzled beard covered his square jaw, and his hair was a tangle of wet curls that covered his head like a blanket of lumpy cotton. His deep-set eyes were the color of charcoal with a hint of brown that glinted in the sunlight. His thick brows had retained much of their original color, but the hair on his body was white with streaks of gray and as prickly as a thistle. The sour droop of his wrinkled mouth spoke of more than the number of years he had lived.
The king savored the aroma of the sweet wine and took a long draught. He closed his eyes and let the soothing sensation of the bath reassure him of his significance. Obscure his fears.
Maharí was an exotic woman with skin the color of mahogany and long black hair. Like all the girls who attended the daily ritual of the king’s bath, she wore only a swirl of thin fabric. She glistened with sweat from the steaming heat of the natural spring. A tiny eight-pointed star was tattooed around the dimple of her navel. “The star of morning,” she had cooed the first time he touched it. “The star of Venice and emblem of Ianna, the goddess of war and sensual love.”
Maharí was the second cousin of Ormmen of House Romagónian. She had come to the harem at Kingsgate eight seasons ago as a token of the delicate alliance with the Peacock Throne. She’d arrived in a g
rand cortège and was presented to the king in the primitive ritual of the goddess Ianna. She danced for him to the rhythmic chanting of twelve virgins, the symbolic giving of herself to his desires.
The king was in constant attendance by a number of wives and concubines, but he was certain that Maharí alone understood the great burden he carried as king. Where the other women complained, Maharí listened. More than once she had spent a long night with the king in conversation. Only she was allowed such intimacies. Where the other girls were innocent and unskilled, Maharí understood he was a man before he was a king. She alone truly cared for him.
Kublan knew the harem of Kingsgate was more politics than pleasure. Even the women given as his wives had been acquired by negotiations to strengthen alliances rather than any illusion of affection or love.
But there would be no queen ruling beside him on the Peacock Throne. Not even his cherished Maharí. His willingness to share the throne died when the gods of the underworld had swallowed the girl he had loved and wedded in his youth. She was the only queen he would ever acknowledge, the flower of his love and mother of his only son.
There was only one woman in the chamber who was neither wife nor concubine: Tonguelessone, was chosen as the king’s nursewoman because of her mutilations. Her tongue had been cut out and her ears punctured. Her ability to share the King’s secrets was gone, and her loyalty was never questioned. She often stood in wait where only the most trusted were allowed.
As far as anyone knew, she could neither read nor write, speak nor hear. But the absence of speech and hearing merely sharpened her other senses. What her eyes saw and her fingers touched was etched in memory. She watched and listened and remembered.
“Does that suit you, m’lord?” Maharí cooed close to the king’s ear, using both hands to caress his back and belly.
The king squirmed against the pressure of her hand and the touch of her lips on his ear. A king as great and important as he was desired much and deserved everything.
“Ahh,” the king sighed as Maharí worked her magic. His breath swirled into the dense steam that hung in the air. He breathed deeply in spite of the discomfort.
The spa at Kingsgate had been built over one of several natural springs. The hot water was filled with salts and minerals. The taste of it was bitter on his tongue, the smell brackish and stinging in his nostrils. The court physician told Kublan a daily soak in the bitter water and inhaling the briny air insured good health and long life.
Kublan was increasingly preoccupied with both. He was obsessed by the injustice of his own mortality. Did he not reign by the will of the gods? Why would the gods wish to end the reign of their choice vessel? The king’s claim to divine appointment had been spoken by so many and so often it had become as true to him as the rising of the sun.
Good health and long life? It was not enough.
He remembered the first time the Raven to the King had whispered in his ear. Surely a king so great is destined to reign forever. Is it not written in the stars? Do the heavens not speak the mind of the gods? Do they not speak to you in dreams?
No one knew the name or lineage of the astrologer who had become the Raven to the King. They knew only that he was a stargazer who could see a vision of the king’s future manifested in the heavens. Remarkably that vision was always magnificent, filled with wondrous expectations of good things ahead and the affirmation of adoring subjects who blessed the king’s name in worshipful tones.
Thus it was that the Raven to the King was increasingly responsible for the troubling problems Kublan wished to ignore, whether petty or profound. In recent days, the rumors of bandits raiding villages had come again, and Kublan could no longer push them aside. He called for his Raven. “By the gods, how dare these dogs defy the Peacock Throne? What do the stars say I must do?” he asked.
“You have a magnificent march of kingsriders for such unpleasant tasks, m’lord,” the Raven had said.
“Of course.” And with little more than a grunt, Kublan granted the Raven the authority to use his army of kingsriders to crush the bandits and end their petty defiance of the throne.
Those who harbored suspicions of the Raven whispered that he was a charlatan who seduced the aging king with honey-tongued flattery. To them it was not miraculous the Raven always found whatever the king needed to hear when he gazed into the night sky.
Kublan, though, held no such suspicions. “My Raven is the only one who truly understands my greatness. The only one who is truly loyal,” he would often say to his other counselors. “It is he and he alone who flies to the heavens and speaks to the stars. My Raven communes with the gods.”
Kublan’s eyes roamed over his frail and aged body. Then tell me, Raven, why do the gods wait to spare me? He closed his eyes. His mind ascended beyond the briny steam, and the vision of the night dream came again.
A messenger from the gods with hair and robes of flowing white, riding on the back of an enormous bird and holding a scroll in his right hand, which chronicled the glorious reign of His Greatness, Orsis-Kublan, Omnipotent Sovereign and King, through endless time . . .
Rough fiber scrubbed across shoulders and scratched beneath his chin. He opened his eyes. Was it truly a vision? Kublan knew his enemies scoffed when they heard the rumor circulating through the halls of Kingsgate, hissing their contempt.
He had overheard their whisperings that he was mad. That his dream was a vacuous illusion, nothing more than a stupor of cannabis, wine, and juice of the poppy. Their criticism incited him to anger. The loathing behind their expressions of adoration was a wound in his heart he could not heal and a burden he had to carry. In private moments of despair, he tried to push away the fear that they might be right, but it remained.
Was it not providence that he reign as an immortal king? Yes, yes, the gods agreed! Desperation clogged his thoughts. If it was the will of the gods he be immortal, why must he search for the secrets of endless life? It would come from the gods, would it not? According to legend, Tishpiin had been granted immortality by Ea for saving mankind from destruction in the great deluge.
I have been a savior to my people. Why do the gods wait? Why?
Many years had passed since Kublan had seen the messenger on the white bird. Kublan’s body was old and his memory punctured by vacant holes of swirling gray.
He could wait on the gods no longer.
CHAPTER 10
“Shh,” Maharí’s fingers rubbed the king’s temples, then gently covered his eyes and brushed them closed. “Clear your mind, precious one,” she murmured. “Let the burdens of your heart and the troubles of your mind rise with the steam and vanish.” The pressure of her fingers on his head rose and fell in a soothing massage. “Breathe,” she whispered. “Breathe.”
The king inhaled slowly. He could feel the heat of her breath on his neck, and he strove to immerse himself in the pleasures of the moment. He was desperate to escape the wretched memories that troubled his waking thoughts and stalked him in dark dreams. He should be full of joy, but the stain of blood would not wash away nor rise with the steam.
It had been fifty-six years since Orsis-Kublan and his rebel army had dragged King Omnnús-Kahn the Unconquered of House Romagónian from the Peacock Throne and executed him in the village square, ending the six-hundred-year reign of Romagónian kings.
Kublan had killed the king with his own hands, and before the sun had set, he was no longer Orsis the Rebel. He was Orsis-Kublan, His Greatness, Omnipotent Sovereign and King of Kandelaar. He claimed his place on the Peacock Throne with blood still on his hands.
His first decree as king was to order a gathering in the courtyard of Rockmire Keep, the immense castle and stronghold of House Romagónian. All came. His loyal officers and allies. His valiant army of rebels. Dissenters who rallied to his banner of freedom from tyranny. Survivors of the royal court of House Romagónian. Soldiers of the dead king who were wil
ling to submit to the sovereignty of House Kublan and the new king of Kandelaar.
To the rebel king’s great delight, commoners, peasants, and lowborns also gathered to adore him. Some traveled from great distances. It was an assembly of such numbers and diversity there was nothing that compared in the annals of the dominions of Kandelaar. So great was the assembly that criers were sent among the throng to relay and recite the oration. His speech to the vast assembly was raw and unpolished, but the people cheered.
Even with his eyes closed and his mind floating on soothing waves of pleasure, Kublan could still hear their cheering voices.
Kublan had punished the monarch with death for centuries of tyranny under the rule of Romagónian kings. He promised hope and change. An end of cruelty and oppression. A new reign of compassion. Concern for the common man.
The great throng cheered again. Barrels of the best of the aged vintage from the cellars of Rockmire Keep were tapped, and wine flowed freely. Bread and fruits were carried in baskets among the throng.
“Gifts of your benevolent king,” the couriers cried, and the cheers of the people became a chant that continued into the night. “Orsis! Orsis! Orsis! Savior of the people!”
It was when those words reached his ears that Orsis-Kublan knew he had become more than a man and more than a king.
For a time Orsis-Kublan kept his promises, but over the years, things changed. Including the king. He struggled to unite the great houses and minor dominions, but he could not overcome the hostilities of House Romagónian nor quell the ambitions of those who plotted for the throne.
Four short years later, in annum 1037, Age of Kandelaar, the earth ruptured in a calamitous upheaval, killing thousands of his subjects—and his wife.
The death of his beloved Edoora was a bitter seed that quickly blossomed into resentment, disillusionment, self-pity, and unhappiness. Charity was swallowed by greed, and kindness by callousness. Suspicion replaced compassion, and his faith in the present succumbed to his fear of the future. His mind became soaked in wine and his soul drowned by the pleasure of carnal appetites.
The Immortal Crown Page 8
