by P. J. Fox
Tristan didn’t acknowledge the guards. The door swung shut behind him, leaving him alone. Well, not quite alone.
Stripping off his gloves, he tossed them onto the table. A different table than he’d had so long ago, and this one laid with a fine eastern carpet. Carpets also covered the floor, an almost unheard-of extravagance in a kingdom where such costly things were saved for display only. But Tristan had lived in the East long enough to have developed a taste for certain things and the soft, almost grass-like feel of wool beneath his feet was one.
Another was bathing. He insisted that all the women who shared his bed bathe, a requirement the less practiced ones admitted to finding odd. He didn’t care, they could think what they wanted. He wasn’t inviting them to his bedchamber to think.
His cloak came next, tossed over the back of the chair, and then he turned and crossed the room. Pushing open another door, this one unguarded, he stepped inside. This room was warm, warmer than the other. Too warm, he thought. But then again the bed’s occupant, being naked, had probably been cold.
She was a beautiful specimen, reclining luxuriantly on the bed where generations of his House had been conceived. Where he himself had been conceived, lifetimes ago. The age-blackened wood had been carved by an expert hand: each of the four posters was a maiden sinuously intertwined with a gryphon. Branches and leaves formed the canopy above their heads. The bed was large enough to sleep several comfortably, as he himself could attest. Sometimes—usually—one woman bored him.
This woman had been with him now for some time, a diversion who shared his bed and occasionally his meals. She’d come to him from the capital, the daughter of a man who sat on Barghast’s merchant council. And although Tristan doubted very much that her father had approved of the arrangement, he’d had better sense than to voice his concerns.
The girl had come to him of her own free will. That, as far as Tristan understood the situation, absolved him of any responsibility for her welfare. She’d claimed to be a woman of the world, seeking a woman’s arrangement. Well, she could suffer the consequences of said arrangement. Any woman, in his opinion, who was foolish enough to share a man’s bed without benefit of love or marriage deserved what she got.
This woman…Beatrix was her name. A royal-sounding name for a very common girl. She thought herself stylish because she aped her betters; a woman of the world because she was jaded. She’d made herself a nest in his expensive bedding. He wondered how long she’d had to hold this pose, waiting for his return to look as though she’d just now decided to stretch and, while so doing, been surprised by his arrival.
All but the richest men slept on mattresses stuffed with straw. Tristan’s bed was an oasis of eiderdown draped with a richly embroidered coverlet. The beading and thread of gold was beautiful to look at, but uncomfortable to lie on. Briefly, he envisioned pinning Isla down and taking her there. The hiss of pain, the faint contortion of her features as the beads bit into her tender flesh.
She didn’t know it but that afternoon they’d spent, after the unfortunate incident with Father Justin…watching her throw herself down onto the grass with such simple, childlike abandon, the expression on her face as she’d absorbed her surroundings…it had been all he could do not to take her right there. He’d never wanted anything so much.
His eyes flickered from the coverlet to Beatrix. She responded with a slow, lazy smile. Tristan had kept her for some time now, almost since the previous harvest, but he was almost never home. The actual time he’d spent with her had been minimal.
When he was home, she was demanding on his time. But far more so on his wallet. And he’d obliged her, to a point.
She shifted, the position artfully calculated to exhibit her best curves. She had the milk white skin of the North and blonde, almost colorless hair. A true beauty, judged by even the harshest standard. A woman that, he thought, would have made some merchant blissfully happy. Unfortunately for him, however, he’d have thinning hair and a paunch and books of account. And probably expectations, such as conversation.
Decent, hardworking men, unlike their betters, wanted an equal—not an ornament. Oh, they might find their wives lovely as virginal young lasses but they’d find them more lovely as time and children did their work. It was men like Tristan, rather, who used women and discarded them—and to whom women, inexplicably, flocked.
Her nipples had stiffened, from the draft.
He wondered if she practiced that expression in front of the mirror.
“My Lord,” she said. Her voice was slow and rich, like honey. Full of invitation.
Tristan remained unmoved.
The girl’s expression grew troubled. “Is all…well?”
“Yes,” he replied. “All is quite well. Delightful, indeed.”
“Then,” she said, regaining some of her composure, “tell me your good news and let us celebrate.”
“If you wish.” His tone was bland. He still hadn’t moved from the foot of the bed. His eyes were blacker than usual in the low light. “I’m getting married,” he told her.
She sat up, all pretense forgotten. “Married?” she echoed, blinking. “To whom?” Clearly, whatever news she’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. The smoldering vixen had become, once again, the petulant child. “And when?” she demanded. As though these answers were even remotely within the realm of her concern.
“A lady of my acquaintance,” he replied. “To whom I wish to be married.”
“A man of your station marries for complex reasons,” she allowed.
“Yes. Well.” His lip twisted in a faint, fleeting grimace of distaste. “Regardless, I’m certain you understand why, given the fact of her imminent arrival, neither my home nor my bed can be otherwise occupied. I’ll expect you out,” he continued, “by tomorrow noon.”
“What?” And then, making no move to rise, “the other marriages didn’t last long. Why should this be any different? I can remain here, surely, perhaps in a different room but—”
“No, you cannot.”
“Should I take apartments in the city? My Lord, when will you visit me?”
Tristan moved to the sideboard, where he poured himself a cup of wine that he did not need. “Where you take apartments is none of my concern. You’re a grown woman, as you’ve worked so hard to show me.” With himself cods deep in her ass and her begging for more. He reminded her of as much, the vulgarity like a slap as she recoiled into the pillows. Well, he’d never lied to her about what he was, or what he needed.
Or didn’t need.
“My Lord,” she breathed, “you wrong me.”
“Do I?” He turned, gazing out the window. Morning would come within hours, and he had things to do before then. “And as to the latter, I have no intention of visiting you. There or elsewhere. You’ve served your purpose adequately and for that I thank you, but I have more than enough women to amuse me and a young bride who’ll require my attention. And who won’t welcome your presence.”
“But what of your feelings, My Lord?” she asked, in a desperate bid to keep his attention.
“I have none,” he said truthfully. “But my thoughts are that I wish you gone.”
“You’ll want me back again,” she replied. “No one will be able to please you as I can. Will be willing to do the things I do—to let you do the things you do,” she insisted, her voice rising. She sounded shrill, like a fishwife at market. Haggling, but over the price—and cost—of his affections. He didn’t know what she was so upset about; surely she hadn’t thought that she was his first? That he’d exchanged his heart, along with his coin?
“The whips, the—”
He held up his hand slightly. “Enough.”
“She’ll never give you what I have—what I can.”
“Jealousy is unbecoming in a whore,” he said mildly.
“A what? What did you just call me? How dare you—”
“You’ve given me nothing that any natural born woman couldn’t give. Or,” he added cuttingly,
“in the case of certain activities, man. You sold your virtue to me for gold, and furs. Your job here was to service me and now that term of service has ended. I expect you, therefore, to depart. Like any other tradesperson.”
“But I—I have no gold.”
“I paid you more than enough.”
“I—spent it all,” she said softly.
“That, while unfortunate, is hardly my concern. Any more than it’s my concern how the farrier, or the butcher spends his coin. Moreover,” he added, “you have your gowns, and your jewels. Your furs, indeed. Sell those.” He was growing impatient with this conversation, as stupid as it was.
“But my—my future!”
“Your future is your own.”
“I sold my soul to you and you’re just—just throwing me out!”
He turned and, replacing his cup on the sideboard, strode toward the door. “Yes, darling, I am. You chose to come here of your own free will. You shared my bed of your own free will. I can hardly be held responsible for the fact that, now, whatever secret dreams you harbored of ensnaring me having not transpired, you’re wracked with buyer’s remorse.”
He opened the door and then, almost as an afterthought, continued.
“I told you on the night we met that I had no interest in you—or any woman—beyond the companionship of the moment. I would just as soon have fucked your groom, hay and shit and all. You were a release. I let you come here, and entertain me, because doing so was convenient—to me. A man of my stature hardly has time to visit a whorehouse.”
And then, turning on his heel, he strode out and slammed the door behind him.
FORTY
“Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East! Powers of air and invention! Hear me!”
In the church’s scripture—the southern church, a church of weaklings—there was a curious passage. One of the great kings of old, a king of the deserts in the time before time, summoned a demon. And the demon came to him and said, so ask me not many things; for thy kingdom also after a little time is to be disrupted and thy glory is for but a season, and short will be thy tyranny over us. A demon was, in human terms, all but immortal; man’s glory, man’s entire span on this earth, had so far been but a season to creatures who remembered a time before man.
Tristan didn’t. He was still young, by the reckoning of his own kind. Little more than an infant. The demon had gone on to tell Solomon, during that same interview, that its purpose was to estrange lovers from one another. To waste the beauty of virgin women, and estrange their hearts. But in Tristan’s experience, these people he lived among needed no help from demons. Rowena had allowed her jealousy of Isla to grow, and to harden into a resentment so all-encompassing that it informed every aspect of her life.
Hart had let his anger at his father lead him to, as the demon said, go off by day and night to others that belonged to other men.
There was wisdom in these words, although Isla wouldn’t like to hear them. She’d balk at the notion that a woman belonged to a man, and that the trespass against her wasn’t truly against her but against her consort. Isla, who hadn’t understood that his rage against Father Justin had been because that man had dared to touch what was his. The concept of ownership, to a man, was complex. Women tended to think that men loved them like they loved their horses, or their falcons, only maybe a little more. But in truth, the notion of ownership to a man represented commitment. Responsibility. If another man came and caused harm, in his absence, he’d failed.
This was why a man would die to protect a woman he loved; because, in choosing to love her, to be with her, he’d accepted responsibility for her wellbeing—whether she wished it or no. So when he talked in terms of ownership, what he really spoke of was the duty he owed toward her. How she, in effect, owned him, in that consciousness of her existence directed his movements. And yes, sometimes men resented the powerlessness they felt, in the face of such an all-encompassing obsession.
But mostly, they allowed themselves to sleep at night by guarding their women as they guarded nothing else.
He turned a quarter turn and, facing south, raised his arms again. “Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtowers of the South. Powers of fire and feeling! Hear me!” And then, turning again, “Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West! Powers of water and intuition! Hear me!” And then finally, “Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North! Powers of mother and earth! Hear me!
“Aid me in this working, bitter crone of the old rock, serpent who crouches in the fissure between worlds. Aid me in this working, shepherd of wind, guardian of the inland sea. Aid me in this working, bringer of death. Aid me in this working, agent of corruption.
“Show me your power, guardians of the passage between! Show me your glory!” He spoke quietly, but with firm conviction. If anyone had been around to hear him, their blood would have run cold. Alone in his tower, he dropped any pretense of being human. The act was one he put on, not for himself but for others. He’d never, since he’d first seen Brenna after his transformation, seen her expression change as she looked at him, forgotten what he was. He never would.
“I invoke thee! I invoke thee! I invoke thee!”
He’d left a bedroom as large as a prosperous man’s cottage and a sitting room twice that size to come up here to this small garret. Occupying the topmost floor of the topmost turret at Caer Addanc, it commanded an astonishing view of both the mountains and the spreading pool of ink that was Loch Addanc.
A freshwater ocean, really, leagues across on either side. Men had died trying to cross it. Its vastness guarded the rear of the castle, a better bulwark against attack than any wall could ever be. Punishing storms were known to rise at a moment’s notice, sending fishermen racing for shore. Creatures of unknown origin, silent and massive, moved in the deep. There were rumors, among the less educated, about what awaited travelers on the other side. Gnomes, tribesmen—and worse.
Tristan held his hands above his head and then, drawing them down, described a great circle in one sweeping motion. He poured all of his will into that effort, the kind of singular force that made a man’s skin crawl and his small hairs stand out. Other, lesser practitioners used summoning aids and all sorts of other crutches: talking boards and divination cards and who knew what else. They chanted for hours, weighted down by special ceremonial robes. All of this to put them in the right mindset, to help them open up the channels of their consciousness. To lend them power that, alone, they didn’t possess.
Tristan possessed that power, in spades.
More than enough for such a simple ritual as this.
His eyes followed his hands, fixing on the single object at the center of the circle: a ring. A ring that had belonged, in life, to the spirit he was summoning. This was the best time for summoning. The hour of the wolf. The hour when he’d snatched Brenna almost from her bridegroom’s arms. The hour when a man’s spirit was at its lowest ebb, and his mind most susceptible to suggestion. The hour when the veil between worlds was at its thinnest.
As his focus grew ever sharper, thoughts drifted through his mind. About Brenna, and Beatrix, and Isla. The queen. Other women he’d possessed, in various forms. Most people, if they’d watched him speaking with Beatrix, would have been appalled. Men, especially. That was because they, unlike he, would have been taken in by her act. And they, too, would undoubtedly also be of the sort who viewed women as helpless and frail. But Tristan had lived as a woman before, inhabiting a woman’s body for various lengths of time on the order of more than one master. He knew that women were just as strong as men, after their own fashion. Perhaps not as strong of sword arm, but often far stronger of mind.
His host had, of course, summoned him in his own quarters. After possessing him and later, returning to Caer Addanc in his new form Tristan had appropriated this tower as his own. Books and scrolls of all kinds, and from all over the known world lined its walls. A small fireplace provided some degree of warmth but, far more importantly for his p
urposes, the flame he needed for his work. Ceremonially, yes, but also for the simple acts of boiling, reducing…domestic tasks that any crofter’s wife could perform, but that were also the basis of a necromancer’s work.
Medicines. Poisons. Potions meant to separate mind from body. Worse.
Opposite the fireplace, a long desk sat beneath the north window. There were four windows, all small, each representing a cardinal direction. Carpets covered the floor. Various animals, preserved and stuffed with sawdust after the manner of the East, glared down balefully from the high shelves. They kept their eternal, moldering watch between vials and caskets of which only Tristan understood the contents.
He’d returned here, to this room, to resume his studies after quitting the small keep where Piers had found him. Where he’d been waiting, indeed, for just such a boy to come. A young, innocent boy, curious about the world and too full of the joy that was experiencing his own life, his own power in that life, to be afraid.
He wondered idly, too, if Beatrix would be gone when the sun rose. Or if he’d return to his room as the sun climbed over the mountains—the sun was rising later now, and with the arrival of true winter would barely rise at all—and find her waiting there. Waiting, still naked, pouting prettily and hoping to talk him into changing his mind.
He didn’t particularly care one way or the other. Like Father Justin, she should have known him well enough by this point in their acquaintance not to overstay her welcome. But people, as he’d learned, saw what they wanted to see and heard what they wanted to hear. And everyone had blind spots. Beatrix and Father Justin, indeed, shared the same blind spot: a conviction in the absolute rightness of their own vanity.
Father Justin.
The ring, of course, had been the fat priest’s. He’d taken it from that man’s hand as he’d lain rotting in the creamery. The task had been somewhat difficult, because by then he’d begun to bloat and deform. To spread out on, and seep into, the wood plank on which he’d been laid. No guard had been posted over him; Father Justin’s jewels were, technically, the property of the church. And besides, no one could stand the smell.
