Blinded by the Sun (Erythleh Chronicles Book 4) (16 page)

Illisrya stood, her movement so sudden that her chair tumbled over. Kavrazel was more sedate as he rose, but both drew their swords, hitherto concealed, at the same time. Kavrazel had to crane his neck to look Illisrya in the eye. He backed quickly away, out of reach of her blade. His sword was but a pin in comparison to the queen's weapon, but the trick to winning a fight with a giant had nothing to do with size, it lay in speed and flexibility.

"It seems there is no trust between us," Illisrya hissed.

"There has been no trust since your father killed my parents," Kavrazel spat back. "There could never be anything other than war between us."

"Then war it will be," Illisrya agreed as she advanced.

Kavrazel could not even spare a glance for Lyssia. He had a giantess to kill before he could be concerned for his slave. If he did not win, he would be joining her at the end of the queen's leash.

~o0o~

Illisrya was dying. Her breath rattled from her punctured lungs. Her chest rose and fell erratically, all normal rhythm discarded in panic and blundering necessity. She was prone at Kavrazel's feet, felled by the slices to the tendons in her ankles. Her body was surrounded by a growing pool of her own blood.

Although Kavrazel had been focused on their bitter fight, which had demanded every iota of skill and cunning in order to defeat a foe four times his size, he had discovered that he could raise the corpses of the newly dead giants. Every successful kill by his own army became a new recruit. The giants were horrified by the notion of fighting their own brethren. Their confusion and fear was their downfall. Only the last stubborn dregs still railed.

Now Kavrazel could turn to Lyssia.

The two Aelddean warriors still held her. They had not fought; they had not needed to. Kavrazel had commanded no reanimated warriors to attack them; he had even tossed out a brief thought for some to protect the tiny group. Now that he was closer, he could see that both were male, and they had their own blades drawn. Rage and terror caused his vision to dim a little more. His corpse army responded to his change in temperament, and fought with renewed vigour.

"Let her go," Kavrazel commanded.

One of the warriors shrugged. "The queen commanded us to keep her alive."

"But the queen is close to death."

"When she stops breathing we'll decide what's best for us."

"What's best for you both is to release her now, and to return to your home. My patience wears thin this day."

The one with his hand around the back of Lyssia's neck evidently squeezed. She whimpered, although Kavrazel could see that she fought to remain stoic, she was biting her lip. He couldn't react. He had to maintain the illusion of calm. They were trying to provoke him into a careless attack.

"If you don't pay, you don't get a say."

"I had heard that your race were graceful and deadly warriors," Kavrazel said. "It seems perhaps they sent the least of their ranks to do Illisrya's dirty work for her."

At that moment, the Queen of Giants breathed her last in a retching spray of bloody foam.

Kavrazel looked from the body back to the warriors, "Your source of income has dried up. Her instructions no longer stand."

"She left one command in the event of her death." The Aelddean warrior shifted his grip so that he had Lyssia by the hair. She screamed as he yanked her head back. He laid his blade at her throat. "If she died, so did this one."

In a smooth and practiced motion, the man drew his sword across Lyssia's neck, but it caught on her collar. Metal scraped on metal with a sickening screech, but the cut was still grievous. Scarlet blood spurted from the wound. He released her hair, and she dropped limply into the churned and muddy grass before Kavrazel could catch her.

Kavrazel barely comprehended that he had dived forward. He didn't realise that he had screamed until he had Lyssia in his arms and felt the raw burn in his throat. He murmured for her to hold on, to stay alive. He was only aware of the body he was holding. The Aelddean warriors were forgotten. They could have killed him, but perhaps they were not as stupid as they first appeared. Ending the monarch of a country would have foreclosed a potential revenue stream. Instead, they made good their escape, before the distressed king sought punishment.

"You can't die. I forbid it," Kavrazel gasped desperately. He knelt, keeping Lyssia's limp body in his arms, and fumbled until he could yank his dagger from his belt. He slashed his own wrist. It was a deep gash, not at all the careful slice used for the blood toast.

"Taan help me. I forbid it," he said as he pressed his bleeding wrist to Lyssia's mouth. "Drink! You must drink," he pleaded.

He fumbled and turned until he could squeeze her jaw open with one hand, as his blood spilled into her mouth and onto her throat from the other. Her eyes were open. He could see life in them yet, but he could see pain. He could see her slipping away. He could see her giving up the fight.

"No! No! Hold on!"

He was too late. The injury was too severe. Taan had forsaken them...

Kavrazel saw a wet drop splash onto Lyssia's pallid cheek. He thought it was raining, a poor omen, until he realised that he was crying. The droplets were his tears.

"Hold on." It was a whispered, hopeless plea.

A hand landed on his shoulder. Kavrazel tore his gaze upwards to see who dared disturb him. Girogis, smudged with mud and smeared with blood, was looking down with grim sympathy.

The king felt the wound in his wrist begin to itch as it healed. The magic within him that allowed him to raise the dead, allowed him to heal his own wounds, up to a point. He could never have recovered from a dagger to the heart, or if he was beheaded, but he could heal slices and gouges. It was one of the reasons that Illisrya had failed to best him. Every time her blade struck true, the wound had begun to close immediately. Kavrazel had hoped his blood would heal Lyssia. He was still sending silent entreaties to Taan that it might.

The look in Girogis' eyes changed. He looked... scared... awed. He had not taken his gaze from the body in Kavrazel's arms, so the king turned to see what had affected his guard.

Taan was with them. Kavrazel could feel the burning presence of the Fire God. He could see Taan's power in the way that the edges of the wound in Lyssia's neck were knitting together, leaving the line of a fresh pink scar in their wake. He knew he would carry the mark of the cut on his wrist to his own grave, a matching reminder. He murmured grateful thanks, and fervent promises to make sacrifices at the temple, as he watched Lyssia's chest begin to rise and fall regularly once more. He watched the light of life and awareness return to her eyes. Her lids fluttered. Her lips, still coated with his drying blood, opened as she fought to make words.

"You didn't abandon me," Lyssia gasped, and then passed into unconsciousness.

Chapter Fifteen

She was not suited to the role of invalid. That fact was plain and indisputable. She became bored quickly, and frustrated with her own weakness. Both conditions transformed into anger and snappishness at every one and every thing.

Girogis would not train with her, nor would he allow her even to cross the threshold of the training room. She had argued the need to regain her strength through exercise, but he was adamant that she was to wait and regain more vitality. She supposed her reflection in the mirror still looked a little pallid, but she didn't see how that would improve if she didn't start moving around and doing something.

Shinu had all but tied her to the bed. He hadn't been present in that horrible place, that bleak field, but she remembered his torrent of tears when Kavrazel had carried her into the castle. She remembered Shinu trying to lift her from the king's arms, and the way that Kavrazel denied him and kept tight hold of her. If she let him, Shinu would be feeding her by hand, a morsel at a time. As it was, he attended her every morning, brushing and arranging her hair as if she were a doll. Shinu seemed to think she was not able to dress herself, and for sure her ribs had protested at much movement, but Lyssia was certain she didn't need quite so much coddling.

Through all her convalescence, the one person that she might even have wanted to see had denied her his company. Kavrazel had refused to take the blood toast from her. He had deemed her too injured, too weak. Once she had regained the ability to speak clearly, she had protested, but by that time the king was aware of the injuries to her skull and ribs. He had decreed that she was to remain at leisure, and everyone within the castle had complied with his command.

All the young servant girls scurried in and out of the room without looking at her. She knew she had been brought back from the dead, or from the brink of death, but it seemed that some of the household thought she was some sort of demon incarnate. At least they were afraid, rather than contemptuous.

By the time a full moon had circled the heavens, Lyssia had had enough. She decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. If she were to ask Shinu, he would tell her that she was not fit enough to leave her room yet. If she let him have his way, he would still be bringing her the sedative that had kept her on the hazy border between sleep and nightmares. She had argued against that tincture the moment she had been able to string more than two words together.

As the sun was risen high, she rose and dressed as she would normally have done if she was to attend the king for his midday meal. She arranged her dress, only experiencing minor difficulties when it came to fastening the clasps at her shoulders. Kavrazel had sent for a physician, a quack, who had prodded and probed beyond all reasonableness. Apparently the wound to her head was cause for a touch more concern, but after two nights of Shinu watching as she slept, she was deemed capable of solitary slumber again. Now her ribs complained as she moved, but she could breathe through the pain. Still, she took a moment to regain her composure before venturing from her room.

When she reached the dining room, she found the heavy doors closed. She wasn't sure what that meant. They were always closed when she had approached before, and Kavrazel had always been seated at his place at the head of the table when she had entered, but did this mean that there was another slave in the room with her king? She wasn't tardy, she was certain. She could tell the time by a myriad different signs and signals... and yet her confidence faltered.

With her heart skittering erratically and her pulse racing, Lyssia called on every ounce of strength she'd once possesses and rapped on the door.

"Enter!"

The imperious tone was unmistakable. Lyssia shoved at the door until it moved against the obstinacy of its own weight.

The first face that she saw when she entered the room was Kavrazel's; that was the face she had been looking for. The second was Girogis, because he was standing where she had expected him to be, to the king's left, back against the wall, scanning the room. She had not expected to see Lathriss by the king's side.

Anger, shaded by resentment, began to bubble through her. "I am here to do my duty, Sire."

"You are not strong enough."

How dare he decree such a thing. He had no idea of the pace of her recovery. Well, maybe Shinu had been making reports, but still, he had not spoken to her personally to ascertain her view on her well-being.

"I am."

"Lathriss is to stand in your stead."

Something about his words snagged her attention, but she was too irate to discern the reason. "There is no need."

Their exchange took place in a strange monotone. Lyssia felt unable to break out of the staid rhythm, and Kavrazel seemed disinclined to; it was Lathriss who interrupted the spat.

"I think I should leave."

The king looked as though he would stop her, but Lyssia stepped forward and addressed Lathriss directly. "Thank you for your assistance, but there is no need to further compromise your position as a free woman. I am able to resume my duties."

Lathriss looked as though she were caught between a crossbow and a lance. She didn't say another word, but bobbed into a curtsey before scurrying from the room.

The door boomed shut. The king tried to speak at the same time Lyssia did, but she increased the volume of her tone, and continued until his words dried up.

"I will resume my position."

"You are not yet healed."

"I am."

"The reports I receive..."

"I am," Lyssia interrupted. "I know myself, and I can spare a few drops to honour Taan. You drink from me, or not at all."

"Call Lathriss back. You can join me for the meal..."

"I said," Lyssia stated firmly, "That I am ready to resume my duties."

Kavrazel regarded her, as if trying to see a sliver of opportunity to argue against her. Lyssia knew there was none, and accordingly, he was frustrated in his search. A sharp tilt of his chin was the only sign that he had acquiesced to her argument. She approached his seat, and tried not to look smug.

The routine, the ceremony, was beautifully and reassuringly familiar. The king's blade caught the candle light, which highlighted the beauty of the workmanship and the perfect symmetry of the lines. She bit her lip at the sting of the cut, and then restrained an urgent sigh at the liquid warmth of the king's mouth as it fastened over her flesh.

Teema save her, she hadn't known how much she had missed this feeling of... connection. She had been stranded alone in a hostile country; it couldn't be strange that she'd formed an attachment to people that had had been anything other than aggressive to her, and yet she felt the need to justify the comfort she now experienced during this act.

The king eventually withdrew, leaving Lyssia bereft of that feeling of spreading warmth. He leaned back in his seat and asked, "Will you join me for this meal?"

The invitation was solicitous, maybe overly so, but Lyssia had missed his company. By way of reply, she took her usual seat at the table.

At first it seemed that there should be no appropriate topic of conversation. The air seemed oppressive with the weight of expectation. Neither person spoke. Kavrazel moved to fill a plate with food, as he usually did, and Lyssia was somewhat relieved when he placed it in front of her. She had wondered if he might not keep it for himself in some form of passive-aggressive obstinacy.

Despite the fact that the image of Lathriss by the king's elbow would feature in her dreams for nights to come, Lyssia decided that she had no foundation to be anything other than magnanimous. There was, after all, something soothing in the fact that Kavrazel had returned to the familiar, to a long standing associate, rather than casting her blood aside for that of any slave of no consequence. There was the consideration that Lathriss had been Kavrazel's blood slave for a very long time, far longer than Lyssia herself had been. A vile portion of her mind suggested that the king missed his former slave, and with that thought her appetite fled.

"Are you not hungry?"

From the consternation on Kavrazel's face Lyssia could tell that if she did not eat he would decide that she was not yet fully healed and would issue instructions for her to be further confined.

"I am well, Sire." She forced herself to take a bite of something on her plate. She didn't know what it was, nor did she care.

Girogis snorted in disbelief at exactly the same moment that the king did.

"You are not." Kavrazel offered a half smile. "But you are stubborn."

"I would not wish for Lathriss to be further compromised." Lyssia said, and tried to swallow another mouthful past her resentment. "She must be busy with her own home. It was extremely good of her to offer her time so freely this past moon."

Lyssia hoped, but doubted, that she'd kept all cattiness from her tone.

The king shifted in his seat, it was obvious that he was uncomfortable with the topic. "Lathriss has not been compromised at all."

Lyssia fought the urge to gag. She knew for herself how alluring the blood toast could feel, she didn't need to hear how Lathriss had been yearning for the king's lips and tongue against her skin. "I'm sure." The words were barely ground out.

"I mean," The king seemed to be equally discomfited, "that this was the first occasion on which I have asked Lathriss to resume her duties."

"You tired of Shinu's alternatives?"

The oath that Kavrazel spat was unfamiliar, but unmistakable in its vehemence. "Shinu offered no 'alternatives'."

The king had heaped scorn on the last word, and that Shinu had been derelict in his duties further confused Lyssia. She felt she had no idea where the conversation was headed at all. "You have tasted the other slaves?" she asked dumbly.

Kavrazel stared at her. He snared her with his icy gaze for several heartbeats. Lyssia felt her very breath freeze in her lungs under the intensity of his glare. When he thumped his fist on the table, a violent boom resounded from the impact. She jerked in her seat as though she had been stabbed.

"There have been no alternatives!" The king's temper was barely tethered. "There have been no others. I have brought my country to the brink of civil war on the matter. There. Have. Been. No. Others."

Even with his emphatic tone, Lyssia was not sure she had heard correctly. "No others? You have not honoured Taan this past moon?"

"No!" He was gripping the edge of the table now. His knuckles visibly white, even in the half-light of the room. "I have denied blood. I have denied Taan. Coupled with my inability to prevent the giants from breaching our shores, the movement to see me ousted has grown immeasurably. I do all this so that you can heal, and yet here you are, before you are ready."

"You do this so that I can heal, and yet every moment makes you weak. That is not how such a partnership should work." Lyssia rose slowly, pushing her chair away from the table, and stepped once more to Kavrazel's side. "How dare they call you weak," she said with quiet passion. "If they had been there when you called ten thousand corpses from the earth, more... an army's worth, they would not doubt you." She knelt at his elbow. "The earth trembled and gave up its memories for you. It does not matter that the giants broached our shores. What matters is that you killed the invaders, every last bastard one of them. You kept your country safe. The old hens in the marketplace could not do half so much."

"Why do you attempt to soothe my ego?"

"Because you focus your rage on me, and I have seen the damage your anger can do."

She watched as Kavrazel reached out. His hand cupped her cheek. Once, she would have flinched from his touch. Now, she inclined her head into it.

"I would never... My anger will never damage you."

"If you let me, my lord, I will fuel your power."