Heart of the Wolf

by Saranne Dawson

  "We will not be parted,” he said as he lifted his mouth from hers.

  "The gods have decreed that we belong together.”

  "But how?” She felt herself beginning to soar with hope and fought it. What the gods wanted wasn’t necessarily what she wanted. She could not return with him, however much she loved him.

  "This room," he said in a wondering tone. “This room and the room at the fortress. They are the gateways."

  “Gateways? What do you mean?”

  "I’m not sure about you—but I can pass from this room to the one at the fortress and back again. I do not know how it can be—but it is."

  He took her hand and led her through the darkness to the door, and then out to where their torches had been left, in sconces at the base of the stairs. She was silent, wanting desperately to believe, but unable to accept that such a thing could happen.

  Finally, she said, “Can you test it—try it now?"

  He shook his head with a smile. "No, it is necessary for me to go back to the fortress for a time, maiza, and I will go as planned. But I will return.”

  Days merged into weeks and the weeks became a month, and then another month. And Daken did not return.

  On the cool, gray morning when they’d walked together into the courtyard to meet his remaining warriors and Hammad’s men, she had already begun to lose that faint hope that the magic of the gods would keep them together.

  Perhaps he had too, because his final words to her, as he held her one last time, had been, "A part of me remains here with you, maiza. Cherish it and keep it safe until we are together again."

  Her life was busy, and the demands upon her were incessant and at times overwhelming. Her courtiers were balky, but stopped short of outright obstruction of her plans. Once or twice, she found it necessary to invoke Daken’s name to remind them of their pledges, but for the most part, she relied on that combination of firmness and patience in which he had instructed her.

  Hammad’s men began the construction of the mirror towers, and plans were drawn up for the construction of a garrison near the Western Road at a point midway between the city and the Dark Mountains. The garrison would replace the one in Balek, now permanently handed over to the Baleks themselves. But it was designed to provide also a place where Jocelyn and Daken could meet.

  The designers brought her the finished plans, which included a small structure entirely separate from the garrison, but still within its walls, that would be for their use. With walls of its own and a small garden, it was a miniature palace.

  But Jocelyn’s enthusiasm was muted. She viewed it as a place to which she would go with eager anticipation—only to leave in great anguish. Would it not be better to remain separate than to subject herself to such pain?

  The nights were the hardest, of course—when she lay alone in her bed remembering their love- making and those quiet moments afterwards when they lay entwined in each other’s arms, sometimes talking and other times simply luxuriating in the afterglow of passion.

  Oftentimes, she would think how very ironic it was that she, who had so disdained love, had found the greatest love of all. She paid close attention to those couples she saw at court on festive occasions, and she listened carefully to the talk among her ladies about their husbands. And she knew that none of them had what she and Daken had—yet they, at least, were together.

  For Daken’s sake, she wanted to have faith in the gods and even went from time to time to the small chapel in the palace—to the very great astonishment of the priests, who were accustomed to finding only palace servants or a rare pious court lady there.

  But that faith eluded her, and had the priests been able to hear her thoughts on those occasions, they would have fallen to the floor to beg the gods' forgiveness for the blasphemy of their empress.

  Strangely enough, the one place where she had in fact felt some supernatural presence—the secret room in the cellar—became a place she avoided. She often thought about it, and a few times actually started down there, but some inner voice warned her that she should stay away. And so she did, out of fear of offending the very gods she didn’t believe in. Irrationally, she decided that they might take offense and then harm Daken if she intruded upon their place.

  Some six weeks after Daken had gone, his parting words came back to haunt her—but with a very different meaning this time.

  She’d been suffering from occasional bouts of great tiredness, but had ascribed them to her demanding schedule and ignored them. Then she awoke one morning and became violently ill only moments after getting out of bed.

  It must be something I ate, she thought with annoyance. She’d developed a ravenous appetite recently and had only the day before devoured an entire box of sweets.

  When she recovered quickly, she forgot all about it—until the next morning, when the sickness was repeated. Her maids suggested calling in the palace physicians, but Jocelyn, who never got sick, rejected their concern. She had an exceptionally busy day, and besides, whenever she saw the dark-clad physicians, it reminded her of their hovering presence at her father’s bedside.

  On the third morning, she rose and put on a dressing gown for a private breakfast with Ham- mad, who was about to depart to check on the progress of the tower construction, then go on to the Balek garrison, to see how things fared there.

  The servants had barely set the food before them when the sickness struck again and she hastily excused herself. When she returned, it was clear that the maids had informed Hammad of the previous episodes.

  "I'm fine now," she said, waving away his concern. "I think I’ve been eating too much, that’s all. I seem to have developed an excessive fondness for sweets."

  "Jocey,” he said with a faint smile, "Have you considered another possibility? I’ve thought a few times lately that you’ve seemed tired, and that, together with the increased appetite and this sickness in the morning, brings to my mind those same symptoms in my wife years ago.”

  Jocelyn frowned at him as fear began to spread its ugly tentacles through her. Hammad's wife had died many years ago, after a lingering, wasting illness.

  When he saw the look on her face, Hammad shook his head. “I was not referring to the illness that caused her death, but rather to the months preceding the birth of our daughter.”

  One fear died to be replaced by another as she continued to stare at him. "No!" she protested—but faintly. And then she wondered why she’d needed to have him, or anyone else, suggest that particular cause. She’d heard the symptoms often enough, and she knew that she’d long since passed the time for her monthly.

  Very reluctantly, she called in the midwives, then tried to echo their pleasure when they confirmed that she was indeed pregnant. But she was not happy. What kind of life could she and Daken offer a child? Certainly not the warm security of two loving parents.

  And yet, as she lay in bed that night with her hand pressed against her still-flat belly, she thought that she did truly have a part of Daken that would remain with her.

  Could he have known? She rejected that notion. Surely he too would know how unfair it would be for them to bring a child into a world where its parents couldn’t be together.

  But he trusted in the gods to keep them together—or at least he had when he left. She doubted that he believed that now, and felt a pain at what she knew must be his very great anguish. She, at least, had never truly believed it in the first place.

  For nearly a week, she sat at her writing table in the evenings, trying to formulate a message to him. But at the end of each evening, she tore it up, then burned the shreds of parchment in the fireplace. No words seemed adequate to express both her joy and her misgivings.

  But she knew she would have to write soon, before her condition became obvious and the word reached him through the Sherbas, several of whom were now at court, while the others continued as they had always done—getting their precious herbs from the Kassid and then trading them for other goods.

  One evening, af
ter she had temporarily abandoned her attempts to write to Daken, Jocelyn was strolling alone in her garden. Spring was slowly giving way to summer, and on this evening, the day’s warmth lingered in the night air. The garden was a profusion of scents beneath a pale full moon.

  She had never felt Daken’s absence as keenly as she did on this night that was so clearly made for lovers. Of course, before Daken, she had never thought of any night as being "made for lovers."

  How many nights have I walked here in the past, she wondered, without thinking of anything other than the beauty of the night? Love had changed her. She saw so many things she had never seen before.

  She pressed her hand to her belly and thought about the baby. Would it be a boy or a girl? Which did she want? Daken, in all likelihood, would want a boy; he already had Rina. But wouldn’t it be more difficult for him to have a son he saw only once a year?

  She wondered if he would insist at some point that a son join him in the Dark Mountains. He might well do so, and how could she refuse? Then she would be the one to see her child only once a year.

  She decided that she wanted a daughter. Daken would be less likely to insist that she go to live in the Dark Mountains. But then she thought about the closeness between Daken and Rina and knew that it would make no difference. The anguish they both felt would be made greater still.

  She stood there in the soft night, balling her fists in helpless anger. How could he put his faith in gods that had brought them together only to pull them apart and then add this new pain?

  But slowly, her hands relaxed and she began to stroll once more through the garden, stopping occasionally to inhale a particular fragrance. A calmness descended upon her, stealing through her so slowly that some time passed before she began to question it.

  Then she recognized it as being the same feeling she’d had in that secret room—the room she had been avoiding without quite understanding why. And she knew, as surely as she had ever known anything in her life, that she must go there now.

  She hurried from the garden through her suite and down the corridors, then nearly ran along the back hallways and flew down the stairs to the cellars. With each step, the urgency to reach that room became stronger still, completely overwhelming rationality.

  When at last she reached the carved door, she paused only long enough to set aside the torch before pulling it open. In the weak light from the torch that spilled over into the room, she saw the gold writings spring to life. Then she closed the door behind her and stood uncertainly in the utter blackness.

  Her heart pounded loudly in the deep silence of the room. That sense of peace she’d felt earlier was gone. In its place was a sense of great powers, of unimaginable forces gathering in the darkness. But they seemed to be benevolent forces; she felt no threat from them.

  Her breathing slowed, and she was no longer aware of her heart thudding noisily. Instead, she was tense with anticipation as those unseen forces gathered around her.

  "Daken,” she whispered, "come to me."

  There was a sudden rush of something—a wind that stirred nothing, but seemed nonetheless to ripple over her skin, leaving it with a tingling awareness. She called his name again, more desperately.

  And then she felt his presence—scant seconds before his arms came around her and swept her off her feet!

  She still could see nothing in the darkness, so she grasped his shoulders, touched his face and threaded her fingers through his hair.

  “Are you real?" she asked in a small, fearful voice.

  “Yes, maiza, I am real." He lifted her face to his and kissed her hungrily.

  And he was real—big and solid and hard as she pressed herself against him, still half-afraid that if she let go, he would vanish.

  They held each other, saying nothing, for a long time. And then he came slowly into focus. She gasped as she realized that the golden drawings were glowing with a light of their own.

  They both turned, still clinging to each other, and she could feel that his awe matched her own. As the gold gleamed still brighter, that wondrous feeling of peace and happiness spread through them both. Then slowly, the glow faded, until they were once again in total darkness.

  As the light dimmed, Daken had moved them closer to the doorway, and now he opened it and they stepped out into the torchlit space at the bottom of the stairs. He closed the door behind them, then drew her into his arms once more.

  "I tried to come before, maiza," he said against her mouth. “But the gateway would not open. I think the gods decided that you needed time—time to become empress."

  She turned in his arms to stare back at the closed door. “But what if it will not open again?”

  "It will," he assured her. "And it will open for you as well, when it comes time for our son to be born in the Dark Mountains."

  "H—how did you know?”

  “They told me. He is special to them. He will one day be both the leader of the Kassid and the

  Emperor of Ertria. It is the beginning of their plan for the world."

  “The beginning?" she asked in confusion.

  He nodded. "Beyond that, I know nothing." Then he kissed her again and began to lead her up the stairs.

  The magic enfolded them again as they reached her suite, but this time it was the magic of love—a magic they both understood very well.