Dark Stallion (17 page)

“You know it wasn’t, Dresden! Merlin could see the future. He saw this time would come. You cannot simply ignore it. She’s an other-worlder, isn’t she?”

“So she claims,” Dresden said irritably.

“And she arrived with a dark stallion—just as Merlin said—and a golden stallion—her mates.”

“She may well have heard of the legend,” Dresden said pointedly.

Emma gasped indignantly. “That is completely untrue! I hadn’t even heard of the legend of the lost tribes until we saw the totems and Aydin told me! How could I know any of
your
legends when I’ve never been here before?”

The king sent her a look and she clamped her lips together.

“There! You see!” Roland said triumphantly.

“You will stir everyone up with that kind of talk! We have enough trouble with the doomsdayers as it is!”

“It isn’t doomsday, Dresden! We’ve been cut off from the world long enough! It’s time we took our place in it!
This
is the time Merlin spoke of. We need to strike!”

“What does that have to do with us?” Emma asked uneasily.

Roland turned to stare at her. “Strangers would lead the army of the hoonan king to our doorstep and when we met him with our army we would defeat him—three strangers—a flame haired woman who was an other-worlder, a dark stallion, and a golden stallion who were her mates.”

“They are not her mates!” the king said angrily.

Roland gaped at him. “The dark stallion bellowed it at the top of his lungs in the council chambers. Everyone has heard! It is spreading like wildfire!”

The king made a sound of disgust. “Go! Gods damn it, Roland! Summon the guard to bring order!”

Roland blinked at him. “You don’t mean to call the warriors?”

“Not because of a prophesy!” the king snapped. “Not on a whim! Not without considering the situation! We will discuss in council!”

The guard Dresden had summoned arrived as Roland was leaving. The king pointed to her. “Take her ….” He paused, frowning. “I am placing her under house arrest. Show her to an apartment appropriate for a lady, fit her with a monitor, and see that a guard is placed outside her door.”

The guard looked startled, but he bowed respectfully. “Yes, your highness!”

Emma rose when he approached her. She discovered she was still a little wobbly, however. The guard caught her arm and escorted her out of the king’s chambers. It was the first time she’d been manhandled that she’d actually needed the support.

Chapter Twelve

The impression was one of opulence beyond anything she’d ever experienced, and yet Emma couldn’t focus on anything but the bed. As soon as she’d been fitted with an ankle monitor, she headed toward the bed and collapsed on it. Her head was spinning so badly she couldn’t even focus on sleeping, but after she’d lain with her eyes closed for a little while her head ceased to spin quite as badly.

She dozed off and woke guilty to discover twilight had settled over the city and the room she lay in was dark. The door opened before she realized it was a knock that had awakened her. The woman entered was carrying a tray. Flipping a switch near the door, she crossed the room and set the tray down on a small table near one tall window and then turned to look at Emma curiously.

“His highness sent me to attend you. Shall I draw a bath?”

Emma stared at the woman blankly. “No, thank you,” she said finally with scant civility. “I just want to be left alone.”

The woman nodded. “As you wish. There is clothing in the chest there if you would like to dress yourself.”

Emma glared at the door through narrowed eyes after the woman left. “Snooty bitch,” she muttered. As
if
there was anything wrong with the rags she was wearing!

She wanted to ignore the tray she knew had food beneath the covered dishes, but her stomach screamed a demand and she finally got up and sat down in the chair beside the table.

The food looked delicious if unidentifiable. It tasted even better than it looked. She managed to stuff herself before it dawned on her to wonder if Aydin and Colwin had gotten anything at all to eat.

She thought for a few moments that she might throw up but she managed to fight down the nausea. Wondering if she had a mild concussion from the guard who’d hit her, she got up after a few moments and went into the room the woman had pointed out. She almost felt like crying with joy when she saw it was a real bathroom!

Aydin and Colwin didn’t have a bathroom.

Sighing, she finally shook the thought off. It wasn’t going to help them for her to refuse to have comforts. The bath, she discovered, was very much like the one she was used to—a combination tub and shower. Removing her cloths, she adjusted the water and climbed in. She knew cold water would’ve been better for the swelling, but she was sore all over from the battle with the ogres—the ones in the valley and the ones they’d met in the city of the lost tribes. She figured she could always put a cold compress when she’d finished bathing.

There was soap! There was even shampoo! She bathed when she’d stood under the hot water until she felt like melting wax. It was all she could do to climb out again when she finally turned the water off. Settling weakly on the edge of the tub, she dried herself off, waiting until the weakness passed. Her face almost looked like a fright mask, she discovered when she finally went to the mirror.

“Oh my god!” In retrospect, she supposed the knot on her forehead, now greatly diminished, probably hadn’t looked nearly as bad as the side of her face did now. It was so misshapen she looked like a monster and already turning blue and purple.

She supposed she deserved it for acting like an idiot. She didn’t know what had come over her to try to fight the bastard!

Yes, she did! She hadn’t been able to stand by and do nothing while he beat on Aydin. She should’ve expected him to be just as willing to knock her head off. She supposed she’d known he would retaliate, which made what she’d done all the more stupid. She couldn’t protect Aydin, no matter how badly she wanted to and she’d probably only made things worse because he was determined to protect her from her stupidity.

She sighed, fighting the urge to cry. It was a waste of energy and time … and as useless as her attempts to protect Aydin and Colwin.

She stood splaying cold water on her swollen cheek for a few moments and finally looked around for a cloth. Wetting the one she found, she wrung the excess water out and held it to her cheek while she wandered back into the other room. The chest the woman had pointed out held long tunics, she discovered, and skirts that very closely resembled the loincloths that Aydin and Colwin wore—except fancy.

She pulled a tunic on and stared down at it. The tunic fell half way down her thighs. If she’d had underwear, she thought that would’ve been sufficient coverage. Since she didn’t, she found a skirt-thing that seemed to go with the tunic and put that on. It hit her mid-calf, but since it was open on both sides she didn’t feel a lot more covered.

She went back into the bathroom to search for a comb and wet the cloth again. The conversation between the king and the man he’d called Roland rose in her mind. She’d been too upset and too wonky from being slugged to really follow it at the time. The longer she went over and over it in her mind, though, the more convinced she was that the prophesy Roland had been so excited about meant that they were in deep trouble.

The prophesy itself didn’t mean anything to her. It was the unrest the king mentioned that worried her—the doomsdayers. He’d told Roland not to mention the prophesy, that they already had enough trouble and Roland had said the word was spreading like wildfire that the strangers prophesied had arrived.

Her belly clenched.

Dropping the cloth and the comb, she dashed out of the bathroom and headed for nearest window. It was already full dark, but that only made it easier to see the crowds in the streets.

“Oh my god! Riots!”

She stood staring at the teaming mass below for some time, trying to jog her mind into producing some sort of plan. The council had already been disinclined to look on them favorably before there was any trouble. She knew in her gut who was going to be blamed for the riots!

Not
the people running around and screaming the prophesy was unfolding! Dragging herself from the window after a few moments, she began pacing, trying to think what to do.

Nothing, wasn’t an option. She’d seen enough since she’d arrived in this world to know that just waiting for things to turn out alright was tantamount to suicide. The city might look far more modern—and was!—but the people were just as savage as any of the people they called primitives!

She stopped pacing after a little while and looked down at her ankle monitor, wondering if it was anything like those her uncle’s company made. Sitting down on the floor, she examined it. It was actually a fairly simple mechanism, designed to sound an alarm if she moved out of range of the receiver and also if the circuit was broken by removing it.

Her uncle had shown her the defect in his company’s product. The question was, did this one have a similar defect?

She decided it certainly wouldn’t hurt to discover whether it did or not. Rising again, she looked the room over, studied the bed for a long moment, and moved to the window again to see how far down it was to the ground.

It made her belly clench, but she resolutely ignored the fear churning there. She wasn’t going to fall! She tested the window to see if she could open it and discovered the lower section moved upward easily. She leaned out for a better look, glancing around at the building to see if there was any sign of guards or people staring out the window. She could hear the people in the chanting and she paused for several moments to listen, trying to make out what they were saying.

It didn’t help her feelings any when she finally did.

She could hear some chanting ‘war!’ and others chanting ‘death to the out-worlders!’

She thought they
might
be talking about the hoonans, but she had a bad feeling they weren’t.

She closed the window again, leaning against the wall and trying to calm her racing heart.

Moving to the outer door, she flipped the light switch off and returned to the bed, then tiptoed back to listen for any sound of the guard the king had ordered posted. After a few moments, the floor creaked as if he’d shifted his weight. Whirling, she raced to the bed and climbed in.

Deciding after a little bit that he wasn’t going to open the door to check on her, she pulled the sheets off the bed and dragged them into the bathroom, closing the door. She had to use her teeth to get the tears started, but she worked feverishly until she’d managed to tear the sheet into narrow strips. She used her arms to guesstimate the distance from the window to the ground and then, since she had more than enough, began to braid the pieces in the hope it wouldn’t immediately tear and drop her the twenty or so feet to the ground.

She debated whether to hide her escape rope before she tried the ankle monitor, but she realized there was really no point in it. If she couldn’t get the monitor off, she couldn’t escape anyway.

Tiptoeing out of the bathroom, she searched for something to secure the end of her rope to. Unfortunately, that’s where her plan began to fall apart. The only thing in the room that looked heavy enough was the bed and it was too far from the window.

“Shit!” she mouthed in frustration, looking around the room a little wildly. Nothing magically appeared and after a moment, she went back to the bed and paced off the distance to the window. Her rope was going to be too short by about half the distance.

She didn’t want to drop ten feet! She didn’t think she could break anything, but she might well sprain an ankle and then she wouldn’t be able to run—maybe not even walk! Moving back to the bed, she bent down and grabbed the bottom edge of the foot and heaved it upward. She managed to lift it about a quarter of an inch of the floor.

It was still clear of the floor, though! She walked a couple of steps. The front legs squeaked. Wincing, she released her hold, listened for the guard and then studied the effect. It looked about a foot closer. Despair wafted through her but her determination was stronger. She huffed and pulled at the bed until she managed to turn it nearly sideways from its original position. She fell across it, panting for breath and trying to regain some of the energy she’d expended.

Deciding she’d shortened the drop to five feet—no more than six, she tied one end of the rope to the bed and carried the rest to set it on the window ledge. She went back into the bathroom to work on the ankle monitor.

* * * *

There was no part of his body, Aydin reflected, that wasn’t throbbing with pain. He did his best to turn his mind from it, knowing it would cease to torment him given time—and the chance to heal—which was doubtful.

It was far easier to focus his mind away from the pain when he allowed himself to think of Emma, but that only produced a different sort of torment.

“The king has an eye to keeping her for himself,” Colwin growled in a low voice.

Aydin swallowed a little sickly. The thought had occurred to him, but he didn’t see that it was of any use to think about it. The frustration and rage boiling inside of him already were making him insane.

He tried to comfort himself with the thought that the king was at least better than that beast they’d stolen her from, tried to be glad that she would be taken care of.

He wasn’t, though. He was so miserable he was sorry they had stopped pounding on him instead of finishing what they’d started.

They had promised to remedy that as soon as the council had decided how to execute them.