The White Queen: The Black Prince Trilogy, Book 2

by P. J. Fox

  Then, the experience had been erotic. As drugging as the opium. Now, lying on this pile of oversized pillows and surrounded by sleeping forms, it was just…he thought the word might be, in human terms, embarrassing. For whom was he meant to be embarrassed? He didn’t know. The sultan, perhaps? Himself, for having come to this state?

  He knew full well how he had.

  How he’d let himself.

  If he were being honest, forced himself.

  He’d known where the path would lead, once he’d thrown himself upon it. And that surety, after what he’d discovered, had been a balm. Tristan had come to the East to learn about his true nature. To study in the greatest libraries in the world, libraries unhindered by church-imposed restrictions. The West burned books, banned anything not deemed faith-promoting. And the West, where the church discouraged even basic literacy, had never been a bastion of scholarship to begin with. No, he’d known from the beginning that if he was going to find answers at all he’d find them here.

  And so he’d come, and so he’d studied. At first his studies had been slow, but had gone well enough. He’d learned, but nothing that surprised him. But then…he’d found a series of scrolls, and then a book. A diary of sorts. Its contents had changed everything.

  It had been written by a woman, a woman who loved a demon. In it she told, first of their meeting and then of her growing feelings. Of their eventual union, a coming together of mind and body that she’d wanted. He’d never found out what happened, because the entries ended abruptly. She might have lost interest in the journal, or she might have died. There were no clues. But what there was, was an idea that horrified him for its ramifications. For the light it cast on his past decisions: that a demon could be loved.

  The demon, in return, had appeared to love her back. Or at least give a decent impression of doing so. Whatever ulterior motives he might have held, he treated her with—the outward semblance of—love and respect. He’d shown great interest in her opinions on many matters, heady to a girl raised in a world where women were regarded by most as chattel.

  But her love…her love had been real. Of that he had no doubt.

  He’d begun to wonder, then, if a demon could…change. Grow into its nature—even expand its nature. Become something more than what it had been, before it took on human form. Without the influx of blood and flesh and life, Tristan’s body would have long ago crumbled to dust. Would crumble to dust, regaining its natural state, if and when his food supply was cut off. He wasn’t truly immortal, in that sense; nothing was, on this plane.

  And if he could die, might he also…live?

  As much as the thought unsettled him, he felt compelled to read more. To delve deeper and deeper. In the oldest scrolls he’d found writings left by other demons, or at least beings who purported to be demons. Describing the changes that they themselves had experienced, or witnessed. Most spoke with derision; some with hope. Humanity was described as a plague that, lest one take care, might prove catching.

  Tristan certainly had no desire to be human. He’d lost that a long time ago, in the clearing. But neither had he considered that, even so, he might still live in peace among them. That he and they might have use for one another. They were food. And he’d treated them as such, in his mind, showing no more care for their wellbeing than a man might for a deer in the forest.

  A sentiment that, he was forced to admit now, didn’t ring strictly true. A man might shoot a deer, and eat it, and be considered sane. But a man who disappeared into the woods to torture deer was a different creature entirely. He was viewed by his fellows, men who also shot and killed dear, as unwell. Perhaps dangerous—to them.

  Tristan didn’t merely eat his food; he played with it.

  As he’d played with Brenna.

  More and more, her face obscured his vision.

  And it was this, in the end, which had led him to lose himself in other pleasures.

  Study could wait.

  And wait it had. Tristan would come to know, later, more of other demons. He’d meet them, learn from them—although not always what they intended him to learn. He’d come, in time, to gain a deeper understanding of his own nature and of the fact that while true change wasn’t possible, in the strictest sense, a sort of…deepening was. He’d never be like them, never feel as they did or want as they wanted, but he’d come rather to gain an appreciation of human beings. Of their weaknesses, and frailties. And strengths.

  He’d find himself peculiarly invested, almost against his will and certainly against his better judgment, in their wellbeing.

  But, again, all that would come later.

  He’d never thought, until he’d found the journal, that a woman would—could—want to touch him. That any union of the flesh would involve her own free will. He might be a demon, but he had a man’s needs and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that he’d taken as he’d seen fit. Either by outright force or intimidation. Or, as he had here in this palace, the night before and all the nights before that, found pleasure with men and women who had no voice. They were slaves; they’d scarcely dare refuse him, even if they had the will.

  And yet this woman, who’d come alive for him through the brittle and yellowing pages, she’d loved.

  She hadn’t been repulsed, by her lover’s touch.

  Might Brenna have come to love him, if she’d been given the chance? Love him not as she’d imagined him to be, the lovelorn younger son she’d been able to wrap around her little finger, but the man he was? Unrepentant in his lust for power? Wasn’t that what she’d wanted all along?

  Perhaps, perhaps not. But he never had given her the chance. He’d been a monster from the beginning. To her, to the world. To himself. He’d made sure, cultivating his image as he had, that no one would ever touch him with anything but revulsion.

  You’re going to have a very different wedding night, he’d told Brenna all those years ago.

  And she had.

  He’d stolen her virtually from her bridegroom’s clutches and, over the next week or so, done exactly what he’d promised: taught her to appreciate him. Or at least made her scream. And in the weeks, months, and years that followed he’d made her scream a great deal. Until she’d given up, and submitted calmly to his…ministrations. He didn’t torture her, he supposed. Not in the accepted sense. Although he did, for one short period, keep her chained to a wall. He, rather, engaged in the slow process of turning her into exactly what he wanted: a mindless slave to love who did as she was bid. He controlled her. He made her dependent on him and, in the end, she craved his touch as surely as if she’d truly loved him. Perhaps more. He had no experience of love, and didn’t trust the emotion. Nor, when he looked around, did he see a single true example: not in the supposedly happy marriages of his friends, like Jansen. Not in the stilted chivalry that defined his age.

  In the end, though, he’d grown tired of venting his ire on a woman whose greatest crime had been a small-minded and grasping nature. Brenna was cunning after her own limited fashion, but no great intellect. And she’d done what she’d done based on a parochial sense of her own best interests. That she might…defy convention had never occurred to her.

  He’d realized this, eventually. But not until after he’d killed her. He’d expected to feel some sense of satisfaction, but he hadn’t. Any more than if he’d snared a rabbit. There was no challenge in asserting the obvious, that he was the superior being. That he’d been in control, all along. His servants had long ago learned to ignore the screams, the other…noises. More than one person, he was sure, suspected—more than suspected—what had happened. Was still happening. But they did nothing, of course.

  What was there to do?

  He should have let her live her life out with this other man, to realize in her own time that slippers and furs didn’t fill one up inside. To grow older and stouter and watch her husband lose interest. He had no doubt whatsoever that in time, Brenna would have grown to be as unhappy as if she had been chained to a wall. And that w
ould have been a far more lasting and satisfying revenge, because she would have inflicted the torments on herself.

  But instead he’d made her unfit for any man—and for what?

  He’d made sure that, given his reputation, no one would touch him with anything except revulsion, except…what reputation? Those people were all dead. Their children were all dead.

  He shifted on the pillows. The room was small but snugly appointed, a veritable bower of—the approximation of—love. It reminded him of the room where he’d kept Brenna. She’d wanted for nothing during her captivity, although he doubted very much that she’d appreciated it much. And he didn’t feel so much regret—he couldn’t, after all—but rather, the vague sense of a lost opportunity. And, for the first time, a renewed stirring of wonder. Could there, he asked himself, be a place for him among these people after all?

  Not the people of the East; his own people.

  He’d been a warrior, in his time. And in recent years, he’d learned once again to tolerate the sun. He had the wit and wisdom of lifetimes at his disposal.

  He couldn’t remember which of the slaves he’d been with, the night before. Or ever. Their bland faces, their perfect bodies blended together in one single writhing mass of flesh.

  There was a particularly lovely girl curled up next to him. Half on her side, one breast was covered and one revealed by the pillow that cradled her. She’d started the evening powdered in gold dust and sparkles that still clung to her skin. She wore nothing else, the bits of gossamer that had revealed more than they covered long gone. Reaching out with a single, lazy finger, he traced the appetizing curve. How had she felt, when he’d taken her? Which he was certain that he had, either last night or some other.

  Had he brought her pleasure? Did anyone? Or had she felt the same sense of weary resignation that he had when his long ago host had forced him to assume a woman’s role?

  In dawdling here, he’d become what he most feared: a revenant out of time, a man with no purpose. Not even a man; a creature. What defined a man, after all, but the world in which he lived and his reaction to it? Oh, his host adored him; he’d be happy to keep Tristan on indefinitely. But what then?

  What then?

  The girl shifted slightly, and sighed.

  It was at that moment that he decided, finally and irrevocably, to go home.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Although he’d gone again to the East, it hadn’t been until after he’d met Piers. He’d gone then, that second time, seeking allies and financing for what he and Piers knew then would be a bid for the throne. And he’d found both. Tristan Mountbatten had ever had a way with words, a way of steering others toward an answer that by the time they reached it seemed delightfully obvious. Moreover, House Terrowin made people nervous.

  Even its far away neighbors in the East.

  East and West were alien to one another, but still trading partners. Stability within the Kingdom of Morven meant prosperity for her allies. And House Terrowin was increasingly unstable, both in the minds of its members and in its hold on those without. Too much inbreeding, some said, for too long. Simple bad blood, said others. Or bad luck. Marriages that produced thankless, weak-willed children who’d grown up to be thankless, weak-willed men. And, later, no one—save perhaps Rowena, with her keen sense of the romantic—had been over sad to see Brandon Terrowin die.

  Had he become king after his father, the reign of terror would have been never-ending. Far from the pardons that Piers had offered, Terrowin would have gone on a quest for retribution. And those types of quests, in Tristan’s experience, never ended.

  There was always some further traitor and then, after all the traitors were dead and all their children were dead, some further threat to be wiped out. Someone who might have taken issue with his monarch’s tactics. Or might still take issue. Or whose voice, even by the sheer fact of its reason, might pose a threat to his power. The voice that said stop.

  Terrowin had been unbalanced to begin with, and a fool besides. But the war had made him worse. Had tempered his insanity as a skilled swordsmith might temper fine steel, refining all of his worst qualities into a single honed point. By the time Tristan had killed him, he’d been no good for anything except what he’d become: a mascot for greedy men who wanted to use, not follow him. A truth that Terrowin alone had not apprehended.

  And as for the son…if Asher were, indeed, Brandon’s son as had been put around by House Terrowin’s allies. The truth was, Asher’s parentage didn’t matter. In a year or so, Tristan wouldn’t put it past them to steal some other child and put him forward as the true heir to the throne. They might even claim that it was the same child and who could gainsay them? The years weighed heavily on children; a boy of ten winters might indeed look nothing the same as he had at six, with no trickery involved.

  As long as Asher lived, he was in danger of being used.

  Terrowin had claimed him as his own son, too, at least in the end. They looked alike, apart from the eyes. And while Terrowin had been imprisoned, for a time, before he escaped, Asher had been shopped around as the saving grace for the cause. A new rallying point, much like a pennant. They’d put him on the throne, if they couldn’t put his father there; and use them much the same, Tristan thought.

  He’d watched the boy at first, carefully, when the boy wasn’t looking. Studying him for signs of the insanity that had infected his line. Asher had been quiet at first, but that was to be expected. Tristan hardly discounted his own ability to inspire terror, but he suspected that Asher’s originated elsewhere. Asher flinched, when sudden movements were made toward him. He was careful not to laugh too loudly, or to share an opinion. He, in short, showed none of the carefree delight in the world around him that one might expect of a child his age. Tristan had seen other children, had been, in a sense, one himself. They, as he had done, viewed their surroundings as belonging to them and they expanded heedlessly into those surroundings, grasping and exploring.

  While Asher, silent, watched from the sidelines. He wasn’t a reticent child, nor a cowardly one. That became evident quickly. He’d watched, without flinching, as his own father was beheaded. The stories were correct on one point: Terrowin did beg. He offered up his child’s life in exchange for his own. He offered gold. The stories were incorrect, however, on the point of his execution having been botched. He’d been dead when he hit the ground. His head hadn’t rolled, as it should have. Both head and body, rather, had sunk into the mud. Perhaps that had been the source of the confusion; from a distance, he seemed as though he were still whole.

  Asher had been transferred to Tristan’s custody shortly thereafter, and they’d spent a silent dinner regarding each other across the camp table in Tristan’s tent. Tristan didn’t eat, because he was a demon. He’d eat later, picking off the camp followers as they in turn picked over the dead. Asher didn’t eat, either, although a simple plate had been provided. Simple, because these were camp rations. The leaders of this fool’s crusade might eat in better surroundings, but they ate the same.

  Asher’s eyes were pits, sunk into their sockets. Deep purple smudges ringed them. Tristan wondered if his handlers had bothered to feed their little kinglet, and felt a stab of some strange—not emotion, but sense of…proprietorship, for lack of a better term. He was responsible for this other being, now.

  He’d sent Asher on ahead with the rest of the party when he’d left Enzie. Asher was safe with Brom, scion of that long ago first Brom. Asher was not, however, safe in the woods.

  He was riding through them now, turning home toward Caer Addanc.

  He’d found his meeting with Ariadne to be…illuminating. He’d known another witch once, too. A younger, stupider, and less ambitious witch named Maeve. Asher’s mother. She, too, had sought his bed, although for less specific reasons. That had been after his appearance at Piers’ side, after he’d become known as Piers’ brother. A brother whom, for various reasons, no one at court had previously seen. They’d given it out that he’d s
pent his childhood in the East, a page—or perhaps hostage—to some potentate.

  Which explained his strange habits, at least in the minds of those around them.

  He and Piers had allowed the stories to grow, to evolve, knowing that what their subjects could come up with in their own minds would be far stranger and profoundly more terrifying than anything they themselves could invent. What the mind created, it created from the mind’s own fears. And thus Tristan again became a specter of fear.

  There were a great many women who sought out such a man. Both of Tristan’s wives had been such women. Although both of them, peculiarly enough, had thought him too dense to see it. His reputation had been the source of attraction for Maeve, most assuredly.

  He knew that there were those who at least suspected that he might be the boy’s natural father. Who, indeed, viewed such a scenario as the only logical conclusion. It would have explained a great deal: what had been described by bards the kingdom over as his implacable hatred of Terrowin, his desire to keep the child as his own. He’d set his sights on Terrowin early on, tracking him across Morven with the mindless avidity of a hound.

  But his reason hadn’t been personal vendetta. Rather, coldly, he’d known that Terrowin was the head of the fabled hydra. Cut if off, and the rest of the beast would fall. Without him, child or no child, there was no cause. The king, by that point, had been killed. Strangled in his bed by a whore hired to do the thing, although his cronies had put it out that he’d died of a bad heart. Shortly thereafter, Tristan forced the confrontation at Ullswater Ford.

  He knew that Asher, too, sometimes wondered. He’d seen the look of speculation in the boy’s eyes. Although perhaps that was wish fulfillment; no child wanted to carry the blood of a coward. And while the earl’s treatment of Hart had been dismal enough, in truth there was no shame in being what in polite terms was known as a natural child.

  He, himself, was speculated to have been born out of wedlock. A situation that would certainly explain his absence from court life. So if Asher knew that—and children knew everything, especially those who served as pages—he might well conclude that his own father had done something similar.