breathed easier. Home. Even the air smelled cleaner, sweeter.
He raised his arm high in the dawn’s light, signaling his men to
halt. He then shifted the limp burden in his arms and ran a hand
across his face. His eyelids felt gritty from lack of sleep and the
dust from the road, but his body was curiously relaxed, as though
he had ridden for an hour rather than most of the night. Aside
from the warm sweetness of the woman between his thighs, it
was the stallion, of course, that made the difference. Nicholas
had never felt such an easy, ground-covering stride.
In his arms, the slave woman moaned and stirred. Nicholas
looked down. Her eyes were open but glassy with pain. She
moaned again, pushing away from him. The horse stiffened and
lunged to the side. Nicholas gave the halter a tug and prayed it
would be enough to control the skittish power carrying them.
“We need to find her a doctor,” Andre said in a worried
voice. “She’ll do herself some damage.”
“We’re miles from a doctor,” said Nicholas, fighting his
worry and the stallion. “But the lake lodge is close, and it’s our
best bet if I can get the horse to take the mountain trail without
dashing us both to our deaths. We’ll take her there and send a
few men ahead to Verso for the doctor.”
Andre nodded and called to the captain of the guard. Three
men set off down the road toward Verso. Nicholas led the rest
on the long climb up a narrow trail to the north. The stallion
moved under him in an uneasy truce.
The sun rose higher, hot already, with unusual intensity for
autumn. The woman was beginning to struggle in his arms. The
chestnut snorted and jigged. His muscles turned to iron. Nicholas
cursed beneath his breath and used his leg to push the horse
forward on the narrow trail.
The stallion’s head suddenly pulled against the halter,
causing the slave’s bandaged arm to bang against her side. She
twisted in his arms, shaking her head again and moaning low,
and the horse sidestepped the trail, perilously close to the edge.
Tension crept up Nicholas’s spine. The hell with the Hill
tongue, he thought, wrestling with the horse to keep them from
plummeting into thin air. The woman was perfectly capable of
understanding anything he said in his own language. “Be still,
no matter how much it hurts,” he said, allowing the intensity he
felt to make his voice hard and cold. “I cannot ride your horse
if he thinks I’m hurting you. A minute more of this and I’ll
leave him behind.”
She clamped her mouth together at that threat, shut her eyes
and turned her head away from him, effectively dismissing him.
“Good,” said Nicholas, as though she were still listening,
as though she didn’t make him feel like the lowest snake on the
face of the earth for threatening to abandon her impossible horse.
They crested the mountain a short time later. The horses
behind Nicholas were breathing hard, but the chestnut, now
relaxed, never faltered, and his coat gleamed with a thin sheen
compared to the runnels of sweat darkening the coats of the
other horses.
Andre must have been thinking the same, for he whistled
and said to Nicholas, “Jest all you please, my friend. The lady
has brought you two gifts already. Your life and this horse. `Tis
not too bad a night’s work, eh?”
“She is full of surprises,” said Nicholas.
“An interesting lady, I’ll agree.”
Nicholas nodded glancing down at the woman, who must
be conscious, for she kept her face resolutely turned away from
him. He remembered her body’s nestling acceptance as she slept
against him through the long night ride and missed it.
Who was she really? In the bright morning light, he could
see the delicate blue veins of her closed lids. Even wounded
and exhausted, she seemed to glow like an incandescent flame.
Nicholas caught sight of the lake, its waves sighing as they
lapped at the shore. He sighed in relief. It was cooler already in
the shade of the mountain, where the grasses before the large
wooden dacha swayed in the lake breeze.
“Dismount, then remove Tzirah’s halter.”
He shook his head struggling between amusement and
exasperation. “How can a woman’s voice be as sweet as the
scent of jasmine and, at the same time, as cutting as a sharply
honed scythe?” he asked her. “Nevertheless, I live to obey.”
When he dismounted, she slumped forward against the
horses’ neck, breathing heavily. The animal stood still as stone
while she slipped from its back. Nicholas caught her. Panting
heavily, she leaned her forehead against the horse’s barrel while
he unhooked the halter ropes.
Nicholas turned to the slave again and circled her slender
waist with his arm. He was irrationally pleased when she leaned
back against him. She might make a show of defiance, but
whenever they touched, her body clung to his. The horse nuzzled
her hair and sniffed delicately at her bandaged arm. Raising her
good hand, she rubbed his mane and breathed into his nostrils.
Then she spoke a few words in the Hill tongue too softly for
Nicholas to hear, and the stallion made for the lake in a floating
trot. Nicholas turned, hesitated, and looked back at the stallion.
“He’ll stay close to the lodge until I am ready to mount
him again,” said the woman softly. “Tell your men to refrain
from restraining him, and he’ll be as peaceful as your oldest
nag.”
Nicholas lifted her in his arms and felt that curious
satisfaction again as she laid her head against his chest. He
fought it down. The woman was stubborn, prideful, and too
damned beautiful for a king who needed all his wits about him.
“By all means, My Lady of Humble Mien,” said Nicholas,
but as he looked down, he realized that his cutting remark had
been wasted on her. She had fainted again.
***
Nicholas washed the dust from his face and rubbed it
vigorously with a towel the servant handed him. A rap at the
door announced Baron Summers, the doctor Nicholas had
summoned. He was a small, round man of middle age with a
shock of white hair, a small white pointed beard, and twinkling
blue eyes.
He shook the doctor’s hand. “How is she?”
“Our patient will mend quite well with proper rest and time,
never fear. Such a lovely young woman, Nicholas.” The doctor
produced a long tube and came closer. “Sit down for a moment.
I want to see how you do.”
Nicholas let out a whoosh of air in exasperation but obeyed
as Summers pushed aside his open shirt and held the tube to his
chest. “Hold still. You are as much of a fuss-fidget as you were
at ten. Hmm. Sounds clear.”
Nicholas didn’t know why he put up with Baron Summers’
ministrations. With the exception of Andre, the doctor was the
only person in his kingdom who had no fear of him.
“I’m perfectly
fine, Baron. I haven’t had a problem in years.”
“Still being careful at the first sign of a cold?” the doctor
asked, tapping his chest.
“Of course.”
“Good, good. All is well. I must say, the exercise regimen
you imposed upon yourself has worked beautifully. Astounding.
It’s almost as though you willed the weakness from your lungs.
If you weren’t so intent upon secrecy, you’d make a fine case
study.”
“Absolutely not.” Nicholas felt his whole body turn to stone.
“No one besides you and Minister Lironsky knows of this, and
no one will.”
In truth, Nicholas frightened himself sometimes. When he
was a boy stricken the second time with pneumonia, his father
coldly derided him for his physical imperfection. Nicholas
carefully learned the subtle signs of the disease’s approach.
Through rest and sheer force of will he kept it at bay, and his
flaw was a secret from his court and his country. To this day, he
had not had another humiliating episode.
“Tush, boy.” The doctor patted his arm as though he were
ten again. “No need for alarm. It’ll be as you say. Now, back to
our patient. Get one of the women to stay with her tonight. I
gave her laudanum, and she became quite agitated when she
learned of it. She fears visions and nightmares. I’m a little
concerned, myself, as she mustn’t become so upset that she
rips her stitches.”
“Hmm.” Nicholas rubbed his chin. “She’ll need someone
rather strong. Very well, Baron. I’ll see to it. Will you dine here
tonight? Perhaps you’ll finally reveal the secret of Vladimir’s
whereabouts. Andre and I are still eager to see him.”
“My magnificent grandfather trout? I would no sooner give
away his favorite hiding place than slide naked down a snow
bank. However, if you’ll come fishing with me while you’re
here, I’ll show you a wonderful bend in the stream where the
fish are so plentiful they leap at the hook before it hits the water.”
“Done.” Nicholas walked the doctor to the door and shook
his hand warmly. Not two minutes later, Andre Lironsky strolled
into his chamber looking fresh and neat, for once, after a cool
dip in the lake. Andre took in Nicholas’s dusty boots and
breeches and his travel-stained shirt.
He raised his brows. “Been waiting for the doctor all this
time?”
Nicholas shrugged out of his shirt and cleaned his neck
and chest. “She’ll need me tonight. There’s nobody else who
can look after her.”
“There are many who can do so, Nikki. Come have a real
bath and a decent supper. We’ve been on the road a night and a
day.”
“Perhaps tomorrow, when she’s completely out of danger.
Have them bring a tray to the woman’s room,” said Nicholas,
toweling off and reaching for the clean shirt his aide held out
for him.
Andre wore the puzzled look of a man who had suddenly
come up against a wall where none had existed for years. “Nikki,
I just spoke to the doctor in the hall. The woman will heal. It’s
beyond your responsibility, nay, it’s …improper for you as king
to act as a common nurse.”
Nicholas concentrated mightily on the buttons of his shirt.
“She put herself between me and death. I owe her this.”
“And that’s all there is to this…labor of yours?”
“What else could there possibly be?” Nicholas felt himself
redden. He had not meant to speak so sharply. Ever since the
damned disaster in Jehanna, he had been some other person,
disgustingly emotional. Like some Eastern fakir, he searched
for “signs.”
All because he felt that little shiver down his neck.
Andre shrugged and headed for the door. “I’m sure that if
you cannot imagine another motivation for your good works, I
cannot.”
***
The woman’s cries roused Nicholas from sleep. He came
awake with a start. By the light of the candelabrum, he saw the
slave writhing in her bed, her eyes open and unseeing. He rose
from the sleeping couch and dipped a cloth into a bowl of clean
water. She was muttering now, odd syllables indistinguishable
to Nicholas in his state of weariness, her eyes full of fear and
anguish.
“Shh…” he whispered, kneeling by the bed and wiping her
forehead with the cool, damp cloth. She turned toward him and
grabbed his hand.
He rolled his eyes heavenward and knelt there awkwardly.
Patting, he thought with a flash of insight. Women like that. He
patted her back a few times. “It’s just a dream—just visions
from the laudanum. It’s not real.”
But whatever the woman saw was certainly real to her. She
cried out sharply in what Nicholas now recognized as a third
language—Beaurevian.
“No, no, Mama!” she cried. “Not the closet. Small. Dark.
Terrible things—the bad men. There’s blood. No, Papa! Don’t
let her! Oh, gods! I must run, run!”
She was struggling very hard against him. He breathed a
sigh of resignation and lifted her up, holding her tightly to keep
her from straining against the wound and opening it. He felt her
heart pound out its tattoo of terror against his chest. She rubbed
her face against his shoulder, then struggled for a moment,
batting away his hands, muttering in indecipherable phrases,
deep in the nightmare.
How the hell did one soothe a woman? They were all
irrational, and this one, of course, was literally so. Perhaps, if
he could get that golden mane off her face . . ..
“Shh,” he said holding her against him, awkward at the
unaccustomed feel of a woman seeking not pleasure, but
comfort, in his arms. “No one will hurt you, as long as you’re
with me. I promise.” He smoothed back her hair, surprised at
the texture. It felt like rumpled silk. Softer, smoother even than
he’d thought it would be. “Have no fear. You’re safe.”
She sighed and turned her face into the hollow of his neck.
And then, quietly at first, the tears began to fall, warm and wet
against his skin. She cried, harder and harder, and an odd, tight
lump rose in his own throat.
Nicholas was not the kind of man to think in terms of
emotion. But here was this woman, fragile in his arms like a
bird that had been beating against the bars of her cage for who
knew how long. The room was silent and dark in the moonlight,
a place somehow out of time. He didn’t think or weigh the
consequences as he usually did. He just held her.
She let out a little hiccup and a sigh as he dried her tears.
Still deep in sleep, she snuggled closer to his body. She took
comfort.
From him.
From someplace barren and dry inside him flowed a little
spring. He felt his rigid muscles soften like parched earth beneath
drops of cool water. His body lifted with his breathing, strange
and light.
He laid her back agai
nst the pillows, hoping they were soft
enough, and stroked her cheek. “Who are you? Why am I
compelled to keep you?” he whispered. “And why are you
here?”
Two
The Outlander has the desires of a greedy child. He learns
only because of his need to possess. Thus, his historic interest
in the false science of Alchemy, which he utilizes to acquire
gold, or in witchcraft, to seize power. Ever restless, he cannot
force himself into the stillness required to understand the
essence of a thing—to see how it exists and why. That is why
he cannot blend and become a forest, a stone, or even the
familiar walls of his own city.
From the Writings of Jacob Augustus of Arkadia
Sunlight crept across Sera’s face, warming it. Very
cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked around her. She
was lying in a soft bed of clean linen, not silk, and there were
no bars of wood inlaid with tiny jeweled flowers on the window.
She was not in the harem. The room she lay in smelled of pine
trees and fresh, clean air. With its oak-paneled walls the color
of honey in sunlight, its slightly sloping floor, and its heavy,
dark ceiling beams, this room must be centuries old.
Sera jerked upright into a sitting position. The movement
set her arm aflame, and she slowly lowered herself back to the
bed and took stock of her situation. She was gowned in a long,
white linen shift. Beneath the wide embroidered sleeve, her
bandaged arm throbbed. Vaguely, she remembered the long
journey through the night, how patient and good Tzirah had
been carrying the Outlander king mounted behind her.
The brass knob turned, and the door to the chamber swung
open.
“Good morning, Mademoiselle.” The Outlander king
positively filled the doorway. Well, all right, she thought.
Perhaps he wasn’t quite the giant dear Jacob Augustus was, but
he was indeed very tall and broad of shoulder and chest. The
king was dressed simply in a pristine linen shirt draped over his
wide shoulders, lawn breeches that hugged his slim hips, and
tall boots. He wore no stock tie, and his shirt collar was open,
showing the strong cords of his neck. Even in this state of
informality, his hair was brushed to a glossy sheen and perfectly
parted.
“Good morning, Your Majesty. Is my horse settled well?”
Lennox, Mary - Heart of Fire.txt Page 3
