by Lee Ramsay
Tristan glared at her from his bruised eyes and said nothing. He ignored the servant woman scouring his body with a rough bristle brush frothing with lye soap.
“Are you still playing this game? It grows tiresome,” she sighed, dropping her hair and shifting in her seat. “There is little remaining to learn of you, but I never asked your faith. To whom do you pray for this to end, I wonder?”
Soap burned a sutured cut on his hip, but he hardly reacted to the sting. Too many other hurts had been inflicted for it to be more than a minor discomfort.
“Are you a worshipper of Vastor? As I recall, Vastorians hold that every man and woman is birthed into sin and disfavor, reborn time and again until they learn the lessons necessary to ascend toward paradise.” Her lips parted, the nail of her forefinger tapping against her perfect white teeth. “Perhaps that is why you have never prayed for release. Do you believe you are suffering as Vastor intends?”
He ignored the woman scrubbing his flaccid manhood, too accustomed to the indignity to care.
“No, you are no Vastorian; you are too defiant – though I suppose, as an orphan, finding yourself at the very bottom of the ladder to redemption would cause no small amount of angst. Perhaps you follow Belegaar? She would be quite fitting for a peasant farmer to worship. What the Goddess of the Garden could do for you, though, is debatable; I believe she is concerned with the green and growing things, and you are far too far beneath her fields for her to hear your voice.”
Long familiar with such conversation, Tristan knew she would keep talking whether he answered or not. “Why do you care?”
“To be frank, you have little time left. You weaken by the day.” The grand duchess shifted on her padded cushion, her heels against her buttocks and knees falling apart as she faced him directly. “You have proven entertaining these last few months, and I am of a mind to be generous. Tell me who you worship, and I’ll have you buried in a pauper’s grave with someone to say the appropriate words.”
The young man’s eyebrows lowered as his lips pressed his lips together.
Ankara’s eyebrow twitched upward as her eyes drifted down to his manhood. “I find it unlikely you worship Siranon. You are, shall we say, inappropriately endowed for a follower of The Weeping Woman.”
“I don’t know what I believe.” He ignored the splashes as the servant woman dunked her brush in the steaming bucket and turned her attention to the filth on the floor.
“I believe that is the most honest answer you have spoken yet. Agnosticism is an uncommon trait among the peasantry of any country.”
“What do you believe in?”
“Why should I answer any of your questions?”
“You started this conversation. As you say, I don’t have much time left before I die. I will take the secret to my grave – provided you put me in one.”
The sorceress released a full-throated, genuine laugh as she extended her crossed ankles. “Oh, very well. Are you familiar with Huerst?”
“I am.”
Silence dragged out between them. “That is all you have to say? You do not shrink away, as most people outside of Anahar would.”
“Why should I? Huerst is a god of knowledge and learning.”
“Some say she is a foul deity, delighting in corrupting the souls of the innocent and pure.”
“Knowledge in itself is not evil. Logically, the god of knowledge is only as evil as those who worship it.”
“An interesting perspective.” Ankara rested her elbow on the arm of her chair and ran a fingertip along her lips. “Not one I would expect from a simple farmhand.”
Tristan clenched his teeth, cursing himself for being drawn into this conversation.
Ankara was disinterested in pursuing her curiosity. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “When I was a child, all Anahari were devotees of Culvast. There were other faiths, of course, but they were tolerated some years and persecuted in others. Culvast never appealed to me, as his faith considered women inconsequential and subject to men's rule. Worse, the priests decreed women were to remain uneducated; our purpose was to serve our husbands and breed sons to continue the family line.
“As you might imagine, I did not much like that view,” she said, the corner of her lip curling. “Among other things, I possessed of a keen mind for mathematics. The older I grew, the more I wanted to know the why of things. The Patriarchs of Culvast said the world was as the god dictated – and then beat me for my curiosity to remind me a woman’s place is not to question. I sought out members of cults devoted to other gods and posed the same questions. One faith said one thing, another religion spoke differently, and a third held wildly divergent beliefs from the others. There was no consistency.”
“I have never heard of Culvast.”
“Nor would you have unless I spoke of him. I spent decades eradicating his priesthood, destroying his temples, and hunting down the remnants of the faithful.” Ankara shifted in her seat and plucked her robe with her fingertips. “It was mere chance that I met a follower of Huerst and learned that the faith’s driving tenet is to learn. That appealed to me. The goddess is, at best, a disinterested deity; as best as any person can understand her, she dictates that knowledge is to be gathered, shared, and improved upon. How it is used is left to the individual.”
“I thought Huerst was a male.”
“He, she, it, they...what does it matter?” she asked, rolling her shoulder in a shrug. “One does not pray to Huerst for aid or comfort. One studies and learns to help themselves. In the end, belief is irrelevant.”
“So you believe in nothing?”
“I believe in myself,” Ankara corrected, her chair creaking as she leaned forward. “I am mistress of my fate. I alone control my destiny. If Huerst created my soul, to do otherwise would be to commit blasphemy.”
The sorceress’s robe swirled around her ankles as she rose and glided toward him. She laid her palm against his cheek, paying no mind to the uneven stubble. “Do you believe in me, Tristan?”
Uncertain what she asked, the young man wrinkled his brow. Her robe's unadorned spaces were slick and supple against his chest, the embroidered sections stiff and scratchy. He felt the warmth of her body through the cool silk, her breasts firm yet yielding as her nipples stiffened between them. Despite his hatred, his body responded; heat washed through his skin as his flesh stirred against her belly.
“Would you worship me?” Ankara asked, her voice little more than a whisper of hot breath against his ear. “I feel your desire, Tristan. I have held your life in my hand, showed you the path to your true self, and you have followed it. The wings of your death have fluttered against my palm, and I have driven them away. Give yourself to me willingly, and I will bring you back from the brink of death.”
Cardamon’s smoky scent cloyed his nose, and his caged heart fluttered. “I don’t understand.”
The sorceress’s tongue slipped through parted lips, catching a bead of sweat as it trickled from his hairline toward the line of his jaw. “The Dushken are a fine creation, but they are more animal than man. They will forever be less than we, who have tamed the beast within ourselves. I can teach you how to harness it in ways you could not believe.
“Long have I sought to refine the bloodlines of the Anahari, but there is an intrinsic weakness I cannot solve,” she said, trapping his swelling manhood against her belly by pressing herself against him. “It has become clear that my people require an infusion of something new. Give yourself to me, Tristan. Worship me, and become the progenitor of a new breed who will rival the myths of gods.”
The stones against which he was chained dug into his spine as he cringed away.
Ankara’s eyes grew heavy-lidded, the sapphire of her irises deepening as she looked up at him through thick lashes. Her forefinger traced the line of his collarbone before moving across the scar tissue where his nipple had been.
“Have you not discerned the purpose behind this, the reason I bring orphans here when I could as easily ha
ve them killed?” she asked, circling her hand to encompass the whole of the dungeons. “You have astonished me with your intellect before. Impress me again.”
“We are an experiment.”
“Too easy. Try again.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
Lustrous hair spilled across her shoulder as she tilted her head. “Allow me to provide a suggestion. Do you recall the discussion we had with your lord prince over dinner? More specifically, do you recall what was said about a certain warlord?”
“The Horned Knight.”
“Do you recall my denial over having anything to do with him?”
“Are you saying you lied about that?”
Ankara gave a disgusted snort. “Quite the opposite. I can make a lie seem like the truth, but I have no need to lie about that. There is a crudeness to Seban Terador’s work that I eschew. What I do is far more elegant.”
She resumed tracing his muscles, her fingers stroking the nest of rusty hair downing his lower abdomen before cradling his swollen manhood. “The Dushken are but one of my experiments. Centuries of work refined their natural talents. The Anahari are much the same. The genealogies I created were exhausting in their extensiveness but necessary to eliminate undesirable traits. Anahar was once part of a much larger whole.
“Bayeren collapsed in part due to my, shall we say, pruning of the tree. I reorganized the survivors based on traits I most desired, and all else flowed from them,” she said, feathering his turgid member. “The marchionesses and their Houses were those with the purest of the bloodlines originating in the Distant East. Those with more questionable bloodlines were reorganized based on their purity and desirable attributes. As you might imagine, marriages were arranged with meticulous care to develop the most desirable offspring, and I continue the practice now. I do not care how many children a couple has, but unsanctioned offspring are problematic to the greater goal. They have their uses, of course, for additional research.”
“Then some of the others down here—"
“—are the scions of illegal unions,” Ankara said with a nod. “They are being studied to determine what, if any, inherited qualities might be useful. The only way to ascertain those traits is to test them thoroughly, hence the torments to which I have subjected you. They will die to protect the secret, but if the traits they exhibit are useful, their families will be arranged to intermarry.”
Tristan ignored the hand stroking his member. “Then why keep the orphans? Gwistain told me you despise them.”
“I pity them. Living in this world bereft of blood ties is all but impossible, short of a fortunate happenstance of living within a supportive community. Some prove to be survivors, eking out a tolerable existence on society’s fringe.” She slipped her hand from his flesh and backed away. “Those who settle for scraps are worthless. What interests me are those who possess an indescribable quality that keeps them alive and hungry for more. These are qualities that cannot be controlled for and have vanished from the Houses of Anahar. If I can identify them, perhaps I can reintroduce them.”
“You are mad.”
Ankara arched a brow. “Have you eaten a wild apple, Tristan? They are small things, sweet but with little meat. Farmers have spent centuries cultivating the domesticated apple for cross-pollination, selecting this tree or that for size, color, sweetness, and other factors. Trees producing undesirable fruit are eliminated, while desirable ones are tended. Generations later, the domesticated apple is larger and far juicier; however, it lacks its wild cousin's sweetness and is far less hardy.”
“That is an apple. People are not fruit.”
“You really must associate with more people,” she snorted as she circled behind her chair. “The principles are essentially the same, though a little more complicated. Occasionally, wilder traits must be introduced to strengthen the cultivated lines.”
“Then why keep me? Gwistain told me you prize the purity of the Anahari blood. I am of no use to you.”
“I disagree. You are far more interesting than you have any right to be,” she said as she draped her wrist over the chair’s back. “I did not think much of you at first glance, but I soon suspected there might be something I was not seeing. Your surviving this long proves my theory that there are, in some orphans, qualities worth preserving.”
“You want to turn me into breeding stock.”
“My dear boy, what makes you think I have not done so already?”
Tristan stared at her in confusion. “You said you were infertile.”
“I am.” Ankara smirked as she glided toward the cell door and opened the oaken portal before returning to stand beside her chair. “The Dushken have a saying – ‘Know your prey.’ I could have brought maidens into the castle, fed you rishka, and bid you bed them. Questions would have arisen as to the paternity of their children, however. I have no desire to overturn centuries of legal precedent and cultural conditioning, which would have happened had I brought the daughters of noble Houses to my castle and returned them unwed and gravid.”
“Sorry to be such a complication,” the young man said with a humorless snort.
“You are an opportunity in the most unlikely of disguises,” the sorceress said, ignoring his sarcasm. “With superior gifts comes superior ambition, and I have spent centuries cultivating both. The Houses of Anahar would not be what they are today without my manipulations; this is even truer of those Houses derived from my bloodline.”
Tristan’s eyes flicked to the doorway, the darkness beyond thick despite the torch burning in a sconce on the far side of the passageway.
“Sometimes, my forethought amazes even me.” Ankara rested her elbows on the chair’s back and gestured at the near-perfect youthfulness of her face with a wry smile. “To preserve the illusion that my bloodline continued to rule, I was forced to allow myself to age. As I have no desire to see my throne stolen by a presumptuous husband, I created a law by which the Grand Duchess of Anahar and her heiresses are not required to marry. They alone are exempt from disclosing their children’s parentage – who, as you may have guessed, are always daughters.
“In the past, I have taken kinfolk into my House, training them to act as my proxy when I tire of ruling directly. It is explained that the grand duchess is sickly following the birth of a daughter, and a kinswoman is appointed regent,” she added. Her smirk grew lopsided and somewhat bitter. “This time, I took to my bosom a viper with ambitions for herself rather than her House. I thought she might have learned the benefit of working with me, but I was mistaken. So, I designed a test to determine if she continued to plot against me. She failed quite spectacularly.”
A figure in a loose white robe stepped through the open doorway, dark hair spilling across slender shoulders. Each step was slow, hints of natural grace slurred with an unsteady gait. Torchlight glittered in icy blue eyes that burned with impotent fury.
“Ambition is why I selected House Sheranath’s eldest daughter to be my proxy. Even as a child, she was hungry for the trappings of power,” Ankara said, pacing around Sathra with the liquid grace of a stalking cat. “But ambition alone is not enough; it must be paired with an intellect able to adapt to the plots and schemes she would face as my regent. Though she lacks subtlety, she can be quite cunning.”
The sorceress stopped in front of her young kinswoman. Her slender fingers undid the toggles running from the hollow in Sathra’s throat down to the knees before pushing the soft robe from the younger woman’s shoulders. Fine fabric pooled around the younger woman’s bare feet, leaving her bereft of clothing or jewelry.
Tristan had seen Sathra nude before, but could not pull his eyes away. Her lissom body changed since he had last seen her, growing fuller through the cheeks as her flesh acquired a layer of fat. Her breasts were larger, the thin skin of her nipples darkened and broader. The plane of her belly had lost fine muscle tone, rounded above the dark triangle of hair crowning her sex.
His mind wrestled with the reality of compr
ehension as he stared at her.
“I always get what I want,” Ankara said as she moved behind the younger woman. Her breath stirred the fall of mahogany hair across her kinswoman’s cheek as she slid her hands beneath Sathra’s arms to cradle the swell of her stomach. “A pity she did not stop to think before bedding you that last time. The infusion of a stolen essence rejuvenates the body but does not lock it in a preserved state; all processes continue, albeit at a much slower rate. Had she been more mindful, she would have realized she was at her most fertile when I conveniently paid an extended visit to one of the noble Houses.”
“Is that...is she...”
“Yes, she carries your child – much as she might wish otherwise,” she said, issuing a throaty laugh as her long slender fingers caressed the swollen belly. “Worry not; there is nothing she can do to terminate this pregnancy. She will be maintained on rishka until the child is birthed, tended by Anahar’s finest physicians. As my heiress, she will be spared the shame of explaining the child’s parentage, and thus there will be no complications from the peerage.”
The sorceress’s lips curved in a chilling smile. “Consider this, Tristan – you may be nothing more than a peasant, but your offspring will be the royal font from which a new Anahar will rise.”
The noblewoman stepped away and paused in the doorway. She half-turned, a look on her face as though struck with a brilliant thought. “Sathra, this is a moment worth celebrating. You and the father of your child ought to celebrate the act which quickened your womb.”
Infuriated and rishka-imprisoned, the young noblewoman moved forward to do as she had been bid as the grand duchess closed the door with a mocking laugh.
Chapter 42
Grinding stone woke Tristan from fitful slumber, and he squinted toward the hidden doorway. Brenna’s shape momentarily blocked the candlelight as she crawled through the opening, but the brightness stung eyes accustomed to the cell’s lightlessness.
