Realm of Light

by Deborah Chester

  Hesitating, she opened the door wider, allowing more light inside. She even looked behind the door. Caelan was not there.

  Her hand went to her throat in nameless fear. She looked at the jinja. “Is it safe?” she whispered.

  The jinja shook itself the way a dog shakes water from its coat. “Safe. No magic. No bad.”

  She could not make herself believe it. Picking up a lamp from the antechamber, she went into the room and closed the door firmly after her. She went first to her father.

  He lay so quiet and still she feared he had died. But when she touched his hand, it felt warm with life. Some color had returned to his cheeks, and she realized he was breathing normally, with none of the rasping struggle of before.

  Hope made her draw in a sharp breath. She opened his sleeping shirt and ran her fingertips delicately across his side. Much of the bruising had faded. His ribs felt whole beneath her touch.

  Albain stirred slightly, frowning, and she drew the covers higher, smoothing them and stroking his forehead. He no longer had fever. Clearly he lay in a healing sleep, already on the mend. The miracle she had asked for had been achieved.

  Tears stung her eyes, welling up through her lashes. She blinked, and twin tears ran down her cheeks. Grateful, she sank to her knees beside him and clung to his hand.

  “Oh, Father,” she whispered through her tears of relief. “Oh, Father.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Caelan did not return. No one had seen him. No one could explain how he had left Albain’s chamber without being seen.

  Frustrated and worried, Elandra retired to her apartments. By lamplight she undressed herself, wary of even the servants. She put her knife beneath her pillow and stretched out beneath the soft curtains of insect netting.

  Her dreams were troubled and restless. She moaned and tossed in the humid darkness; then a sound close by awakened her. Opening her eyes, she found herself dazzled by lamplight shining over her. a shadowy silhouette stood by her bedside, holding the lamp aloft.

  Elandra gasped and sat bolt upright with one hand on the knife under her pillow and the other gripping her jewel pouch.

  “Begone from me,” she said.

  Her voice sounded quivery and afraid, not strong like she wanted it to be.

  The figure lowered the lamp until her face was also illuminated. As she saw the features of the woman standing beside her, Elandra’s fear was replaced by anger.

  She flung aside the insect netting and scrambled out of bed. Dressed in shapeless linen that kept slipping off one shoulder, her hair flowing around her like a veil, she glared at her visitor.

  “You pick a poor time to come calling,” she said to the woman who had borne her. “Or do you always prowl in other people’s rooms in the middle of the night?”

  Her mother glared back, looking haughty and regal in robes of dark green. “Is that all the greeting you will give me? Is there no respect in you?”

  “Do you deserve more?”

  “Do you know who I am, Elandra?”

  Elandra drew in a sharp, angry breath, but her mother raised her hand.

  “I have the right to address you by your name, whether you wish it or not.”

  Slowly Elandra mastered her anger, controlled it. Her mother was correct, but she did not have to like it.

  “Do you know who I am?” her mother repeated.

  “Your name is Iaris,” Elandra said coldly. “You gave me birth.”

  “I am your mother.”

  Elandra swallowed. As a child she had dreamed of her mother, longed for her mother. Now all she felt was rage and such pent-up resentment she thought she might explode. Again, using all that the Penestricans had taught her, she struggled to control herself.

  “Yes,” she said finally, “you are my mother.”

  Iaris waited a moment. “Is that all you have to say?”

  “What should I add?”

  “A word of greeting. A smile. Perhaps a remark expressing your feelings at our reunion.”

  “Is that what this is?” Elandra asked. “A reunion? The word implies that there was a previous relationship, does it not? I don’t recall one.”

  Iaris’s nostrils flared. Even in middle age, she was beautiful. Her cheekbones had a sharp, sculpted quality that would last all her life. Her eyes were tilted ever so slightly at the corners, like Elandra’s. Their color was exotic, compelling. Her thick lashes swept down and up as her gaze locked again on Elandra.

  “So it is to be like that,” she said.

  “Yes,” Elandra said flatly. “It is to be like that.”

  Iaris frowned. “I tried to speak to you earlier. You refused me. Now we must talk.”

  “It can wait until morning.”

  “No, this privacy is better.”

  “I need my rest,” Elandra said.

  “You owe me this audience,” Iaris told her.

  Elandra shot her an angry look and raised her brows. She said nothing, but Iaris refused to be stared down.

  “I am Lady Pier,” she said harshly. “You owe me audience.”

  Surprised, Elandra studied her for a moment; then she gestured at the nearby chairs.

  They sat in the gloom, facing each other like civilized ladies, but there was something unreal about the hour of night, the quiet in the room, the utter privacy. Elandra wondered if her guards at the door had gone to sleep, to allow Iaris her surreptitious entry. Could anyone come and go as they pleased in this palace? It did not used to be so.

  She held her knife openly in her lap, and Iaris pretended not to notice it.

  Silence stretched between them. Elandra was the one who broke it.

  “You have my leave to speak,” she said.

  Iaris glared at her, obviously resenting Elandra’s superior position, but she wasted no more time. Leaning forward with her hands clamped on the arms of her chair, she said, “What manner of man have you brought to Gialta? What is he?”

  “He is the future of the empire,” Elandra replied coolly. For a moment it was almost amusing. Being questioned separately by her parents about the man she had chosen. Did they expect her to grieve publicly for Kostimon? Did they expect her to drape herself in the veil of widowhood and hide for a year of official mourning?

  She would not do it. Kostimon had been her husband in name only. Now she belonged body and soul to Caelan. She would make no pretense of it. She would not act the hypocrite.

  “The future of the empire,” Iaris repeated with a disdainful smile. “A very grand endorsement, but a vague one at best.”

  Elandra was tired. This had been a long day of shocks and worry. Her emotions had been pulled in all directions since her arrival, and she was very worried about Caelan’s disappearance. She had no patience for games and verbal sparring. She wanted to end this interview quickly.

  “Caelan is a king,” she said, “from a land you do not know. A land where Choven—”

  “Those creatures!” Iaris said scornfully.

  Elandra met her eyes, understanding that Iaris used her pride to shield her ignorance. “Caelan is both man and Choven, his lineage both of this world and of the spirit. His destiny is that he will break the world. There is more, but I will not tell you all.”

  “These words are fanciful indeed,” Iaris said. “Who could believe such stories?”

  “You asked a question. I have answered it.”

  Iaris frowned. “Will you now state the truth?”

  Elandra said nothing.

  Iaris’s frown deepened. “This is ridiculous. Pier says he is nothing but a gladiator, a former slave who was bought at auction by Prince Tirhin.”

  “Lord Pier should be grateful for what Caelan did for him today.”

  “Nonsense! That humiliation—”

  “He saved Pier from the darkness.”

  Iaris gestured this away, plainly not believing anything Elandra said. “This Caelan is no one, an upstart with ambitions who has bewitched you. Oh, I am sure it is his excellent body which attrac
ts you. He is handsome, in a brutish way. But why do you make yourself a spectacle by consorting openly with this barbarian? Can you not play with him in private and stop trying to proclaim him the next emperor?”

  Elandra’s hand tightened on her knife hilt. “I have not seen you since I was four. Prior to the day you cast me out, you were a stranger who came but occasionally to look at me and see if I thrived. You did not even suckle me at your breast, and I understand that at my birth you cried in relief that I was finally gone from your womb. Based on this, I do not accept advice from you. I do not hear your words. I grant you no right to offer them.”

  Iaris rose to her feet. “Stop playing the wounded heroine,” she said scathingly. “You were not hurt. You grew up to become empress of the land. You have fulfilled your destiny. You have prospered. There are no complaints you can offer.”

  “I am not complaining,” Elandra said through her teeth. “I know that your affair with my father came against your will, that the Penestricans forced your union so I could be born.”

  With widened eyes, Iaris stared at her.

  “Yes,” Elandra said, her tone flat and unyielding. “I also know that Albain loved you—”

  “Men are such fools,” Iaris said with a dismissive gesture. “He mistook a spell for his own emotions.”

  Anger crawled through Elandra’s veins, but she concealed it. More than anything she would have liked to shout at her mother, to accuse her and shame her into even a slight amount of contrition or regret, but she restrained herself. She could not judge her mother. She had not stood in her mother’s exact circumstances, but she had been married against her will to a man old enough to be her father, a man who was a stranger, a man who never loved her. To that extent, at least, she knew what it must be like to have others meddle with your emotions, meddle with your life. She could understand her mother’s resentment and coldness. What humiliation had her mother faced in explaining her pregnancy to her returning husband?

  Lord Pier, the man who had picked a fight with Caelan today, and lost.

  Elandra gazed up at her mother, saw the tight clamp of her lips, saw old battles still raging in her eyes.

  “Albain still loves you,” Elandra said. “He will love you to the grave.”

  Iaris was pacing back and forth behind her chair. She thumped the back of it with her fist. “That won’t be long.”

  Elandra shot to her feet. “You are wrong. He recovers.”

  “Impossible.”

  “When he calls this court to heel, you will see it is not impossible.”

  Iaris frowned at her. “Albain is finished. Everyone but you accepts that.”

  “My father will live. Already he—”

  “Don’t delude yourself! Gialta looks to new leadership even as the empire prepares to accept a new emperor. Albain has held back this province long enough, but that is over.”

  “My father will not support Tirhin on the throne,” Elandra said furiously. “Nor do I.”

  Iaris laughed scornfully. “Do you expect the warlords to support your claim? They will not do it. Nor do you have Albain to make them do it.”

  Frustration filled Elandra. “Tirhin betrayed the empire. Can your husband not see that’? Or doesn’t he care?”

  “Pier cares about avoiding a bloodbath,” Iaris said through her teeth. “He plans to give his oath of fealty to the new emperor.”

  “Tirhin is a traitor!”

  “Turn red in the face and make fists at me like a spoiled child if you wish,” Iaris said scornfully. “Your throne and your privileges have been swept away. That is what you cannot forgive. But your time is over, daughter. Whatever the Penestricans meant to accomplish with you did not come to pass. We face a new age, and a new emperor who is bold enough to take what he wants. Pier respects that, as do I. As do others. Don’t start a civil war, Elandra. You and your pet gladiator have no chance of winning.”

  Elandra met her mother’s eyes, and it was like staring at a wall. She knew further argument was futile.

  “Are you finished?” she asked through lips that felt like wood.

  “Yes, I think I have said enough.” Iaris drew up her robes and walked to the door. She paused and glanced back as though she meant to say something else, but then did not.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, Elandra threw the knife. It thunked deep into the wood panel of the door and quivered there.

  A guard peered inside, his gaze widening as he saw the knife sticking out of the door. “Is everything well, Majesty?”

  “Why did you admit that woman without my permission?” Elandra asked him.

  The man’s eyes went blank. “Admit who, Majesty?”

  Elandra frowned, and she knew then that the Gialtan balance of power was shifting into different hands. Even the guards’ loyalties were going to Lord Pier, who as the second most powerful warlord in the province after Albain was poised to seize the reins of leadership. If Pier convinced the other warlords to accept Tirhin, then Elandra’s reign would be over before it began.

  She pulled her knife from the door and held it a moment, thinking hard. There had been something strange about Iaris’s visit, something almost triumphant.

  If Albain recovered, he would not let Pier support the new emperor. There would be no shift of power, no redistribution of the Albain estates. That meant Albain’s rivals could not allow him to get well.

  Fear spiked through Elandra. She must have cried out, for the guard looked at her worriedly.

  “Is something wrong, Majesty? Are you unwell?”

  She sent him a wild look. “Am I permitted to leave my apartments?”

  His frown deepened, and he exchanged a wary look with the other guard. Neither of them were known to her. Alti and Sumal were off duty, and she realized how truly alone she was right now.

  “Answer me!” she said sharply. “Am I permitted to leave?”

  “Of course, Majesty,” the guard said with a bow. “But if you are unwell, perhaps it is better if you do not wander the corridors.”

  The answer hidden in his unctuous words was clear. She felt her face go smooth and blank.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I will retire now. See that there are no more disturbances. I may wish to sleep late into the morning.”

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  He bowed low, and she slammed the door. Whirling around, she felt frantic and unable to think for a moment.

  It would be so easy to put a pillow over Albain’s face and finish him.

  Fear gripped her, making her gasp for breath. She donned clothing and slippers hastily, then took her knife and the lamp and slipped through the servant’s door.

  Here, in the cobwebbed passageways known only to those who scrubbed, fetched, and carried, Elandra sped on her way. She knew these passages as well as anyone in the palace. She had grown up in them, working hard to avoid whippings, wearing rags whenever her father was away. She knew all the shortcuts.

  As she ran she berated herself for having left her father. Why had she not realized the danger? She was not thinking, not being sharp enough. Kostimon would have scolded her for her mistakes.

  “Strategy,” she seemed to hear his voice saying in her ears as she hurried faster. “Always know your enemy and where he will jump next. Always know where you will go after that. Be ready. Outsmart your opponent.”

  She climbed a tight spiral of stairs, hoping that Iaris’s visit had been to gloat, to anticipate what was to come and not what had already happened. Let me get there first, Elandra prayed.

  More stairs, another long passageway. She passed an alcove where servants on night duty dozed on stools beneath bells attached to various bedchambers. There was no time to be cautious, but her slippers made little sound, and no one woke up.

  She hesitated at a fork, then took the right passage, climbing up an uneven series of steps to a short hallway. There was the valet’s nook. He lay asleep on his cot, his tunic folded neatly on its stool. She slipped past and eased open the door in
to her father’s bedchamber.

  Her lamp sent a feeble ray of light into the room, pushing back the shadows that surrounded the bed. The jinja raised up on its silk cushion and stared at her, but did not protest.

  Albain slept, undisturbed.

  Elandra’s relief was intense, rolling over her in a wave that nearly pushed her to her knees. She closed the narrow door behind her without a sound, breathing hard through her mouth, and felt herself tremble with delayed reaction.

  Only now was she aware of how much her side ached from running. Her hands were shaking. She put down the lamp, afraid she might drop it.

  All was well. Her fears had been groundless. How foolish she was, dreaming up night terrors.

  Then the jinja glanced at the door. Elandra looked that way too, listening.

  She heard the soft murmurs of hushed voices in the antechamber, furtive footsteps, and the incautious sound of a dagger drawn too hastily.

  Fear clamped around her throat, and she longed intensely for Caelan. Why had he deserted her like this? What was the good of saving her father, if he was not going to stand and protect him?

  She knew she was being harsh and irrational, but she needed something to build up her courage. In a moment they would be coming through the door.

  Crossing the room, she took down a sword. It was incredibly heavy, and she nearly dropped it. Lugging it with both hands, she carried it over to the bed and slid the hilt next to her father’s hand.

  She shook his shoulder, hating to wake him but knowing she had no choice. “Father,” she said, her voice soft but insistent. “Father, wake up.”

  He frowned and snorted, his eyes dragging half open. “Wha—”

  A rattle of the door latch brought the jinja off its cushion. Ears erect and spitting, it jumped onto Albain’s bed. “Danger,” it said. “Danger!”

  Elandra ran back to the weapons display and dragged down another sword. It was of a different era from the first, not as heavy. She returned to her father’s side and shook him again.

  “Wake up!” she whispered. “Assassins come for you.”

  He coughed and rubbed his face, making groggy sounds. She gripped his shoulder hard in warning, and his good eye snapped open. He looked first at Elandra, standing at his side with a sword in her hand, then at his jinja crouched on the foot of his bed with teeth bared.