Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (46 page)

She knew there were siring contracts pending which he'd put on hold until after the child was born, knew also there were countless other women who would gladly give their King the sexual release she was unable to offer.

She'd kill them. She just knew if she came upon him with another woman she'd kill them both. What now of all your Paggi training, Great Lady? she mocked herself. And you presume to think yourself higher than the Qeggi Foab and Moera Difleer?

It had been a typical late autumn day, with a cold brittle morning followed by bright sunshine. The moment the sun vanished behind the mountains the chill set in again. She shivered. Her back ached. Her heart ached, and her head throbbed with wanting Taur close, yet not wanting him. Difleer wrapped a blanket around her knees and gently rubbed her back.

Foab standing guard at the doorway was disinclined to move aside when Taur approached, frustrated and snarling from an encounter with a Poseidonian couple who'd travelled to Nyalda at much cost and inconvenience for him to sire their child. The woman was luscious and ripe to bear her first child and he'd found himself wondering if she might ease the peculiar ache he carried deep inside him for not having taken Gyn’a for many days now. Altar duty didn't touch it, and holding Gyn’a's swollen beauty in his arms only intensified it. He'd not take her again until the child was born. Most women slept apart from their sacred partners during the last tonni of pregnancy but he'd not been prepared to forego the joy of holding her as she slept and she hadn't suggested it. He could've taken her anyway as most other Paggi men would've done, whether she welcomed him or not, but to his confusion he found he needed her to want him just as he wanted her, to respond in her loving, giving way.

The Poseidonian was a Daughter of the Dragon and had the golden Dragon bloom, not unlike his Golden One when he'd first seen her on that long ago day in Fyr Poseidyr. Cloabad if he wasn't tempted to fulfil the contract anyway.

Foab filled the doorway and projected the thought,
`
The Queen desires to be alone.'

Taur glared at the Qeggi, shouldered him aside and stormed into the solar.

‘Out!’ he barked at Difleer, who nevertheless stopped long enough to gain the Queen’s nod of dismissal before complying.

‘Almost need a breara password to get near you,’ he growled, taking the seat Difleer had vacated. ‘I think to come to my own apartments for a bit of peace and I'm accosted and all but turned from my own door by a cloabad Qeggi! Seems to me you're happier to have that kapi around you than me!’

The dull tension across her brow became a full-blown ache in seconds and somewhere deep inside her a thread of control snapped. ‘At least he doesn't want to kurn me all the cloabad time!’ she cried and turned her back on him.

For a moment in time there was absolute stillness, a tense non-breath of unbelief. Without a word Taur stood up and stormed out again. Gynevra burst into tears as soon as he'd gone and Difleer hurried back to try and calm her mistress. Contrary in her misery, it was only Taur's presence she wanted now. With a mumbled order to send word she'd not be at dinner, she threw herself on the bed and huddled round a clagren. Why? Sacred Ist, why did she feel so miserable?

The night was black and far advanced when Taur woke her, coming clumsily and drunkenly to their bed.

‘I've sorted the problem,’ he announced fulminatively as he clambered under the blankets. ‘The Lady Pulina is anxious to return to Poseidonia and has been hassling Maden for me to honor their contract. So I'll honor it.’

Turning his back he almost instantly began to snore.

For several moments Gynevra couldn't move. She felt as if he'd stabbed her with a dagger. As movement returned to her limbs, a searing pain burned into her heart. She was going to be sick!

Without a word, she left the bed and crept out to her chair in the solar where she curled up with a rug round her shoulders. Waking much later shivering with cold, she slipped out to the ante room and huddled onto the maid's cot with Difleer and it was the housekeeper whose stern words in the morning dug down to that place where the old Gynevra lurked.

‘Lady, you're not yourself. I know you've got pride. So let's see a bit of it. Where's that woman who fought Loudmouth Gotham with a stick like a man? Or the one who stood up to old Yadu, and Lord Kah? What's eating you lately?’

‘If I knew, Diffie, I'd do something about it,’ Gynevra sniffed.

‘Well, if you was to ask me, I'd say you was still grieving for your wee Solon and you be needing some healing—from the Lady Varia, maybe? How about you have a bath and I do up your hair on top of your head how you like it and dress you in that beautiful violet and gold silk? That will make you feel better for starters. Then after you've eaten, Foab can get the bearers to take you down to see the Archinus.’

Slowly Gynevra sat up and slanting Difleer an angry determined grimace that could almost be called a grin, she said, ‘Trust you to have a strategy, Diffie. And you're right as usual. I'll be the most beautiful pregnant cloabad Queen there has ever been!’

‘That's it, Lady!’ Difleer cried, bouncing out of the cot and helping Gynevra up.

It was near three hours later when the Queen passed through the King's Presence Chamber. There seemed to be several informal meetings going on as there often was at this time of the day and Taur was in close discussion with the beautiful Lady Pulina of Poseidonia and her dark bow-shaft of a sacred partner.

Gynevra hadn't intended to linger in the Chamber but of an instant there was a burning need in her to make a point. What the point was she hadn't clearly decided for herself, but make it she would! Casting about the great room she spied Lord Dimidon, Son of the Dragon extraordinaire and half-brother to the King. In stature and muscular development Dimidon rivalled the King and for golden beauty he would almost have outshone the legendary Gotham of Trephysia, so many said. But at little more than twenty years, Dimidon was still fighting to make his mark in the lucrative world of siring contracts, thus he relished every opportunity to vaunt his desirability to the female population.

It required but the flutter of an eyelash to have him at her side. Almost before Gynevra had opened her mouth in greeting he'd launched into fulsome praise of how the color of the silk made her skin glow like a dewy rose, and how the style of her hair made her eyes seem bigger and yet more mysterious. On his arm she passed pointedly and haughtily by the King and his guests as if they'd been of less consequence than the wolf or the Qeggi servitor who dogged her heels.

Taur, preparing to introduce the Poseidonian couple to his Queen as she approached, flushed a dull red, as she swept on by as if she'd not seen him. Swinging on his heel, with a flash of pure fury in his eye, he called, ‘Lord Maden, I require you to organize me a contract with Lady Pulina and Lord Danton—for mid-day tomorrow.’

Gynevra faltered. Only momentarily, she assured herself. No one would've noticed. With a tilt of her chin and a stiffening of her spine she continued on through the Chamber to the outer courts. Here she politely disengaged herself from Lord Dimidon and called her bearers and personal guard. In moments she was being carried down the cliff road from the castle, Qerlim and the Qeggi Foab running at her side.

Leaving the bearers tossing their managon discs and settling to betting and arguing, and knowing the guards would happily while away the time with the Temple delilahs, Gynevra walked along the path to the Garden of the Ancestors, Foab and Qerlim padding silently in her wake. Sinking onto a sunny seat by a softly singing fountain, she patted the space beside her indicating Foab should sit also. Knowing his place, Foab dropped to his haunches at her feet.

Looking directly at her, he offered the thought, ‘
Great Lady is deeply troubled.’

‘Aye Foab,’ Gynevra hissed between her teeth. ‘I long to cry and scream and beat something and it's so undignified to feel so!’

‘It is because the King desires the Lady Pulina?’

Gynevra closed her eyes and ground her teeth together. She wouldn't cry.

‘He expects me to sit as witness. That's my expected role if he takes a contract. I've told him I can't do it. I
won't
do it!’

Foab nodded and his eyes took on a faraway look as he gazed at the dance of the fountain against the sun. Qerlim sat on her haunches, her deep golden eyes flickering watchfully between the two.

Foab looked back at Gynevra.

‘Great Lady needs to get away from the Castle, away from the city, a look at new scenes, maybe?’

Gynevra felt the smile start somewhere inside her. It was as if a very cold place within her heart had suddenly been exposed to the warmth of the sun.

‘I've longed to visit the green fields across the harbor. In all the time I've been here I've scarcely left the city. Get a cart, Foab. Let's go sight-seeing. I don't want to see Varia. I don't want to see anyone. I want to run away. Just you and I and Qerlim. No guards. No bearers. Take this.’ She handed him a small leather bag from the pocket of her gown. ‘There should be more than enough gold in there to buy us some food and hire some sort of conveyance. Can you do it?’

Nodding vigorously Foab was on his feet, eyes shining.

‘
I only long to see Great Lady smile. I bring horse and cart. Lady, at bottom of garden is path to little used back entrance to Temple. Lady won't be seen there. Wait for me in shade of old igdrazil tree. I go quickly.
’

‘I feel better already Foab. It will be an adventure.’

Pointing his Lady towards the path he'd mentioned, he loped away through the garden and disappeared over the wall. Scarce able to keep a silly smile from spreading all over her face, Gynevra called Qerlim who was sniffing under a flowering cozon bush, and pulling her cloak about her face, set off to wait for Foab at the appointed place.

Fuming from an encounter with his mother he desperately wanted to share with Gynevra but knew he wouldn't because she wasn't talking to him, Taur stormed into their apartments just on dusk. He'd timed it so she'd have had her evening bath and he'd have to hurry his and there'd be no time for talking, even had either of them been so inclined. He was still furious with her for disdainfully ignoring him before the whole court and he had no doubt she was furious with him for making the contract announcement in such a boorish fashion.

Gossip had to be silenced. As King he had the people's expectation to live up to and many were questioning Gynevra's influence on this. He'd made as many friends as enemies by declaring Nyalda independent of Atlantis, and probably more of the latter by deposing Nudon for Gynevra who refused to join with him in sacred partnership. Allowing himself to be seen as more of a clod than an oaf at this point in time was very foolish. An oaf he must be, virile and rampant to satisfy every woman who came to him with a contract. His creative energies must be seen to be flowing. Gynevra would have to be made to accept that.

She wasn't in the solar. Nor the bed-chamber. Nor was she in the bathing cavern. If she wanted to sulk, so be it. He yelled for Pog to come scrub his back.

‘Where's the Queen?’ he barked as soon as the little man appeared.

Pog stopped in his tracks and stared hard at Taur. When the Master was in his bath he could look down on him and he made the most of the opportunity.

‘Master is angry with Pog? Or Pog is become dog?’ he asked haughtily.

Taur seared the little man with a black stare which gradually lightened to an almost grin as he waggled one dripping finger at him.

‘Only you could get away with that—and you know it! Fortunately, you also know
where
you can get away with it. Try it in public and I'd have to punish you.’

Pog did a little dance that brought him closer to the edge of the bath.

‘I think great King has been sitting on crown instead of wearing it, and horns—or
horn
—
make him very uncomfortable! Ha! Ladies line up for little bull babies but King is suddenly content with wee bull baby growing in woman he holds in arms each night. But she, belly full of baby already, has no need of sire, which is what King does best. Oh dear! Oh dear! Puzzle it is, to be sure!’

‘Scrub my back, midget,’ Taur growled good-humoredly, ‘before I haul you in here and hold your scrawny little apology for a body under until it stops wriggling.’

‘Master-Sire! Master-Sire! It is too afraid I am to come near now!’ he cried, dancing up and down just out of reach and brandishing the long handled back-scrubber like a sword.

As always the little man had teased him into a better humor. Taur sat up.

‘All right. All right. I apologize,’ he laughed. ‘I'm just a boorish oaf as I'm sure the Queen would agree—if she were here. D'you know where she is?’

‘No Master. Pog not seen Queen since she left Castle this morning—round about same time Bull of Nyalda, greatest contract sire of all time you understand, announced intention of scrogging ve-ery beautiful Lady of Poseidonia. You want I go ask Difleer?’

‘Yes,’ Taur answered gruffly. No doubt he deserved the dwarf's censure and in such a situation he understood Pog would be hard pressed for he'd come to love Gynevra almost as much as he loved his Master-Sire. Resting his head against the edge of the pool he relished the moment of stillness and quiet. Sometimes he longed for the simple, straight-forward life of a warrior, fighting by daylight and sleeping or whoring by dark, though the thought was fleeting, hustled out of his mind by the wry admission that the only woman he wanted in his arms was Gynevra of Poseidonia.