Captivity (7 page)

Jana and I converged on the bowl. The smell
was almost as bad as the people. I tasted it first. Some kind of
nut-meal porridge that had fermented, whether on purpose or from
age, who could say. There were a few chunks of gristly meat,
probably goat, also past its prime, suspended in the gluey mixture.
But we would get sicker from hunger, I decided, than from eating
this slop.

There were no utensils. I licked some of the
slimy porridge off my fingers. “Delicious,” I said, then picked up
a piece of bone and gristle to see if there was anything edible on
it. Jana followed my example, hiding her nausea when she saw I was
actually eating, not just pretending.

I held some out to Val but he shook his head.
“Icky,” he said. “I don’t want any.” There was no point in forcing
him now. He was full of milk, and might feel more able to eat in
the morning.

The water looked and smelled relatively
clean. I hoped there was a stream nearby, not a well that could be
contaminated, and that the bandits had sense enough to take the
water upstream from where they bathed and watered their animals.
Then I remembered there was no evidence the bandits had ever
immersed themselves in water by choice in their entire lives. And
the poor wretched creatures penned in the hall looked as if they
rarely tasted the fresh grass of pasture, but had their meager
rations of food and water brought to them, as we did.

Well, a few days of this wouldn’t kill us. At
the moment I was completely drained, body and mind. Once I got some
of the food in me, and had a night’s sleep, my strength would be
replenished. With food and sleep, and after the morning’s eclipse,
I would be able to use my gift more effectively—and
unobtrusively—to learn about our captors’ plans, to protect my
children, and best of all, to help Dominic think of a way out.

Jana and I ate every scrap of meat and fat,
sucked the bones and licked the bowl for any stray grain of
porridge. We passed the water skin around like a jug of wine until
it was empty. The game amused Val, as I had intended, ensuring that
he drank some of it. I let Jana have more food, taking for myself
the minimum necessary. It was little enough between us, and I felt
hungrier when it was gone than before. I told myself it would do me
good, and lay down on the bare straw. Jana and Val curled in my
arms beside me. I spread my cloak over us for a blanket and
extinguished the tiny bit of wick that remained of the candle. In
the morning I would see about getting us another one.

Despite my exhaustion, or maybe because of it, sleep
wouldn’t come. The children dropped off immediately, worn out and
safe in my arms. But although the room was stuffy, it grew cold and
damp as the night’s chill seeped in through the walls and the
ground, giving me a double discomfort. The worry and fear washed
over me now that there were no more threats in front of me to make
me act brave. Tears trickled across my face, soaking into the
straw.
Oh gods
, I thought,
I hope Dominic can forgive me
for what I have done
.

There was only the grim reality to
contemplate. I was a hostage. Worse, so were my children. We were
in a castle, ruined, but with stone walls still standing and armed
men to defend them. Our captor was crazy enough to try such a
scheme, and had the
crypta
to make success a real
possibility. All because I had been angry with Dominic. All from
being upset over what now seemed like very little.

Eight years ago, before Dominic and I had
met, before I had come to Eclipsis, Dominic had had a son with a
noblewoman, Lady Melanie Ndoko. “A man in my position must have an
heir,” Dominic had explained when he told me of the relationship.
“I never expected to marry, until I met you.” Delighted to hear so
pragmatic a reason for the affair, I had thought no more about the
woman or her son for six years.

When we arrived at Stefan’s home, who should
greet us but Lady Melanie, acting as hostess to help her cousin
Drusilla in the exhausting business of new motherhood. There had
been no mistaking the look on Dominic’s face when he saw his former
mistress again, and it was not the look a man gives to mere
expedience. Every time my unruly memory ran that scene in my head
it had taken all my self-control to act with the polite unconcern
that befits ‘Gravina Aranyi. Each day in Lady Melanie’s company had
become harder for me to bear. Then, the last night at Stefan’s,
Dominic had not come to my bed, nor had he been with Niall.

I relived the beginning of these worst days
of my life: rising early yesterday from my solitary bed to see
Dominic off for Eclipsia City, inadvertently picking up Niall’s
thought as he mounted beside my husband, wondering where Dominic
had spent the night.
Not with me, not with Niall
. The
logical assumption that followed had struck me with the force of a
fist in the gut as, over and over, the images played in my memory…
Dismounting at the entrance to Stefan’s manor, the tall, slim woman
standing at the gate, Dominic’s sudden intake of breath and his
warm greeting, “Lady Melanie, it is a gift to see you again after
so long.” The stare that went on for what seemed like an eternity,
the honesty, beyond formulaic politeness, readable in Dominic’s
thoughts as he added, “I see the years have done you no harm.”

The rage I had felt then returned to me now
in full force. Surely I should not waste energy on such a useless
emotion. Yet I could feel it, ballooning out of thin air, beyond my
control, as if it were not in my own mind, not in my body. It was
disembodied, yet growing more real, more powerful in seconds, shock
waves radiating out in expanding rings, like an earthquake.

The leading edge reached me, touched me,
entered my mind.
Amalie
, Dominic breathed into my
consciousness, dispersing the thoughts of Lady Melanie, brushing
them aside like gossamer.
Oh, Amalie, my love, I prayed it was
not true
. He was with me, my husband, mind to mind. It was his
anger I had felt, his explosive wrath, as he learned of my
predicament.

It had taken the guards and Katrina and
Isobel, naked and barefoot and unsure of the way, most of the day
to reach the Ladakh estate. Lady Ladakh’s eldest son and
daughter-in-law had had to remember how to use their signal station
to send a message telepathically, something they had not needed to
do for six years, since the last time there had been trouble. Then
another delay, the message waiting in Eclipsia City, while Dominic
and Niall made the last leg of the two-day journey, only to be met
with the dreadful news and the knowledge that they must turn around
and go back, that the whole trip was wasted and had given the
bandits an advantage of time. Now Dominic’s first reaction of fury
had traveled, all the way up here from Eclipsia City, had preceded
his own coherent thoughts.

Our communion is strong, beyond that even of
most gifted couples, at times almost a merging of personalities.
The intensity of it had united us from the moment I arrived on
Eclipsis, had overcome all the extremes of difference—of sexuality,
of power, of social class and experience—that should have kept us
forever strangers, had made us as intimate as lovers before we knew
each other’s names. It does not depend, like most communion, on
physical touch, but can form when one of us exerts sufficient
psychic force, as now when Dominic, galvanized by the emergency,
established the connection over the many miles that separated
us.

My relief was so great that at first I could
only babble, clinging to him in thought, fainting into his strength
that was as tangible in mind as in body.
Oh, Dominic, can you
ever forgive me?
It’s all my fault
. I sounded more like
Val than an adult woman.
I’m so, so, sorry.

Dominic did not at first understand me.
Sorry?
he said.
It is those outlaws who will be
sorry.
His consciousness was within mine, as I had entered
Jana’s mind earlier, was looking around the dismal surroundings
through my eyes.
Where have they taken you?
He was all
practicality as soon as he saw his worst fears had been
realized.

I sat up, careful not to wake the children,
breathed deeply, tried to hold on to what remained of my sense—and
failed.
I have endangered our children
, I said.
I deserve
everything that happens, after such stupidity, but not the
children
.

Dominic comforted me as best he could.
Amalie
, he said, stern and forceful,
that doesn’t matter
now. You must not blame yourself, but think clearly and tell me
where you are, so I can rescue you.

His manner, more than the words themselves,
accomplished what only Dominic could have. It was like my first
months on Eclipsis when, an alien in my new world, a Terran
burdened by a quirk of genetics with a gift I did not understand,
my life had been made suddenly wondrous because of our communion.
Dominic’s love had been like a beacon of confidence guiding me
through unfamiliar and forbidding territory, as I learned the
techniques of telepathic control that changed my onetime curse into
the most precious of gifts.

I felt the first stirrings of hope as I tried
to form a visual memory for Dominic of the road I had traveled and
the cut in the embankment the bandits had used.
It was late
morning when they took us
, I said,
and we rode all the rest
of the day. It was full dark when we arrived.

Dominic had one bad reaction as I narrated
the events of the morning.
You were on that trail, with the
children? Without me? When I told you—
He let go of the
reproaches and accusations. He could see it in my thoughts, knew
what I had done, and he controlled his emotions, concentrating
instead on my information.
I think I know where you are. The old
Skye holding
. Then his rage erupted again.
Helios give me
strength! It will take me days to get there with any kind of
force.

I know, Dominic
, I said. I had been
counting the days myself. Two from Eclipsia City to Aranyi. At
least another full day up here. And that allowed no time to
assemble troops or make arrangements for a siege train.
But they
want you to pay ransom for us, not bring an army
.

Yes, cherie,
Dominic said.
That is
usually what bandits want.

At last I focused on what Dominic needed to
know.
More than forty armed men
, I said.
I couldn’t see
them all.
I recalled the scene on the road, when they had
forced the guards and the women to undress.
And be careful. They
have an Aranyi guard’s uniform and three Ormonde ones.

Yes, beloved
, Dominic said,
I know.
The Ladakhs told me how admirably you conducted yourself, as if I
could doubt it. How you saved the guards from death and the women
from– worse. That was a very brave and noble thing you did,
Amalie
. To himself he added something I did not understand,
Although you may receive few thanks for it.

The idea led Dominic to more sickening fears.
Have you been insulted?
The word is a euphemism for rape,
especially of ‘Graven by commoner.

There was no reason to burden him with what
had been merely a fantasy in Reynaldo’s deranged mind.
No, my
love
, I said.
Nothing like that. All they want is
payment.

What of Jana?
he asked.
And Val?
Are they with you? Are they safe?

I answered this question in the simplest way,
looking at each sleeping child in turn, letting Dominic see through
my eyes that they were unharmed, still asleep in our pallet of
straw. But the sight of the three of us, while reassuring Dominic
in one way, further enraged him.
They are fools
, he said of
our captors,
madmen, to endanger my wife and my children and
expect I will meekly bring them ransom like a spineless—

A third voice intruded on our conjugal
intimacy.
Neither mad nor foolish
, Reynaldo responded to
Dominic’s last thought.
For I have possession of the wife and
children, and it is you who must buy their freedom
.

Too late I remembered what I ought to have
told Dominic at the beginning.
Shield yourself!
I screamed
into his mind.
He has crypta!
Dominic had not thought to
screen our conversation, had made the supreme effort to communicate
with me across the entire length of the ‘Graven Realms and had not
seen any reason to expend additional energy in erecting a mental
firewall.

While Dominic and I had visited, the unusual
and unhidden mental activity had penetrated Reynaldo’s
consciousness and awakened him. The bandit had followed our
conversation while he arose, came down the stairs to the storeroom
and unlocked the door. Once inside the lightless room, unsure of
what he was confronting, Reynaldo decided not to match
crypta
with ‘Graven. He hauled me up and backhanded me
across the face, breaking the skin over my cheekbone and knocking
me to the floor.

Jana started up wide awake, her fists
clenched in readiness. Val screamed, clutching at me where I lay
dazed.

Dominic experienced the blow through my
senses, the pain almost nothing to him, inured as he is to minor
acts of violence from years of active military service, but the
shock of it far worse, like a caged tiger being poked with a stick.
I felt the surge of Dominic’s fighting reflex as he absorbed my
reactions in his own body, his frustration at being unable to
strike back physically.

“I told you not to use your gift,” Reynaldo
said, bending over me, feeling about in the darkness. He did not
understand how Dominic and I could communicate so easily, unless
Dominic was here in the storeroom with me.