Destiny of the Light: Shadow Through Time 1 (19 page)

‘T
he barbarian speaks.’

Roeg woke instantly and accepted the arm of his current bedmate to rise from his thin mattress. His voice croaked with the remnants of slumber, ‘Am I to question him?’

Queri released him and laid her arm over the growing child in her belly. ‘If you are fast enough,’ she said and grimaced in the toothless smile Roeg had yet to become accustomed to despite his years of hiding among the Raiders. ‘Would you break your fast before we begin?’

‘And torture a man on a full stomach?’ Roeg shook his head, then brushed himself down as he followed Queri from his sleeping cave to the main corridor, and from there to the room where he knew the prisoner had been taken. Roeg stopped her a few paces from the door. ‘What has he said?’ he asked, pulling his hood up over the stubble on his head. With his hair removed and ash on his skin he could pass for a Raider at a distance, but he did not have their pale eyes. With luck, this invader in their land might not know the difference.

‘He says he will speak to our leader and no other,’ Queri replied, her large innocent eyes disguising the bloodlust he knew lay within her.

‘Yet you call me and not Faldre?’

‘Faldre would kill the invader and learn nothing,’ she said belligerently, though Roeg thought he saw fear in her eyes. ‘You will discover his purpose in our lands.’

‘And I may also discover who killed my King.’ Roeg knew this was the reason Queri had woken him. ‘Yet if Faldre discovers you have come to me instead —’

‘He will not kill me. The child may be his.’

Roeg looked at her belly, then back up into her eyes. The child could be any man’s, yet she was right. It could be Faldre’s. As could any child born in the caves. There was no pair-bonding between the Raiders and no provision made for housing girls who had left childhood and were not yet mothers. Unwashed and barely clothed, they went from one man’s bed to the next until they were with child, at which time they were allowed in the mother’s quarters where children were handed around like books to be read, and the singular love of a devoted parent was unheard of. When death occurred in the Raiders’ caves it received no ceremony; the corpse was simply removed to a place where its stench would not reach them.

A crude and uncaring society, Roeg had made it his own and learned to suppress his castle-born sensibilities. Indeed, his own nights were seldom solitary and for all he knew Queri’s child could be his own, as could a great many others. Even those who had died as a result of neglect or cruelty. To all of this he had turned a blind eye and become something other than the charming King’s Champion who had made the Queen laugh with his gaily constructed ditties. Revenge was the only emotion which remained in Roeg’s heart, and he clung to it as a man to his last breath of life.

The memory of his dead King run through the back with a dagger, his royal blood stark against the pale stones of the temple floor, still haunted Roeg yet. In the next moment, he himself had been struck on the head and only regained consciousness hours later in a deep well in the forests below Volcastle Mountain. He had clearly been intended to drown but his body had snagged on a ledge and though his first thought was to return home, before he could, he heard the Castle Guard calling, searching for the traitorous Champion who had killed his own king!

Knowing that only The Dark could discern his innocence, and that he would not reach the Volcastle alive to gain that reprieve, Roeg had waited until nightfall and fled. Later he would hear that he had also been accused of leading an invasion of their kingdom from the north.

Newly outcast from Ennaen society, he had sought out the Raiders who had been outcast themselves centuries before. Knowing he must live if he wanted to avenge his King, he had used his superior swordsmanship to slay among them, until they had allowed him the right of entry. It was a haven no-one would expect him to gain, and from this place of concealment he had hoped to find the information he needed to discover who would die for the life of his King.

Once Roeg had hoped to clear his name, to prove to the White Twins and their mother — and to Talis who had been like a son — that he was no traitor. Yet the time for those sentiments had passed. The brutality of the Raiders had permeated his soul and his only ambition now was to see the true traitor dead.

‘I will hear this barbarian speak,’ Roeg said and pushed aside the crude fibre curtain to enter the room, the stench from their prisoner’s bodily emissions assailing his nostrils. The young Raider guard, who had been puncturing the invader’s eyeball with a thorn, stepped back to display his handiwork.

‘He does not scream,’ he told Roeg, who inspected the Northman from manacled wrists to staked feet. The rough-hewn wall behind him dripped with his blood.

‘They are trained thus,’ Roeg replied, waving the guard and his companion away. He stepped closer to the barbarian and noted that his strip of hair had been torn from his head.

‘Where is Faldre?’ the young guard asked, gazing at Roeg suspiciously. This was one Roeg would have to kill soon, or be killed by.

Queri stepped forward hastily. ‘He is busy and sends this one,’ gesturing towards Roeg. Though he was an outcast among the outcast, they still would not call him by name.

‘I will wait here,’ the guard said.

Roeg turned to him slowly. ‘You will leave now or die,’ he said, hand dropping to the short sword on his hip.

The guard’s close-set eyes narrowed, yet with a nod of his misshapen skull, he gestured to his companion that they would leave. Roeg watched them, waiting for a movement to indicate that their deadly confrontation had arrived. Yet it did not come. The hangings swished behind them and Roeg turned back to his prisoner. ‘They will go to Faldre,’ he said.

Queri shrugged. ‘He will not receive them. I saw to it that he was occupied with the new-women.’

Roeg smiled at her cleverness. It was Faldre’s right as leader to lie first with the new-women when they outgrew the children’s quarters. If Queri had organised for more than one to occupy his bed, interruption would not be welcomed.

‘You. Barbarian.’ Roeg lifted the Northman’s head and cracked it back against the wall. ‘Speak to me, for I am more of a leader than Faldre.’

The prisoner gurgled and blood ran from his mouth yet Roeg felt nothing. Compassion was a relic of his past which was no longer useful.

‘Tell me the name of the one who conspired with your kind,’ Roeg demanded. ‘The noble who aided your invasion.’

‘I come …’ the prisoner spat through broken teeth, ‘to meet this traitor among you.’

Roeg glanced at Queri then drew his sword, put it at the barbarian’s throat. ‘Tell me his name and you will live.’

‘I will not tell,’ the barbarian said, yet when Roeg would press the blade harder he added, ‘Let me live and you may follow me to him.’

‘It’s a trick,’ Queri said needlessly.

Roeg knew it must be. Yet, what if it were not? ‘You were taken near the Plains,’ he said. ‘On your way to Sh’hale?’

The prisoner simply continued to gaze at him, one eye focused, the other bleeding and broken, blood pooling in the diagonal cheek slashes that were the mark of his clan. He displayed no recognition of the name and Roeg felt frustration build within him. The traitor must be Sh’hale. Roeg knew Verdan had no ambition toward the throne except to offer it his best service, and a minor lord would not have enough support. It had to have been someone with a voice in the King’s ear, a member of the King’s Council — which had lately been disbanded, Roeg did not know why. It was too much to hope that the young King suspected someone else had been responsible for his father’s death. Roeg had been too cleverly implicated. Yet perhaps Mihale had found another cause to mistrust his Lords. If only Roeg had a source of information within the Volcastle.

The prisoner gurgled blood, then said, ‘The White King will die, as will his allies.’ His good eye drooped now with the weight of his injuries. ‘Yet your people need not die.’

Roeg stared at him, the heat of his anger blocking understanding. His people were in the Volcastle.

‘Our people will not die …’ came a voice from behind them, and before Roeg could counter the strike, the young guard he had evicted earlier drove his dagger into the barbarian’s heart ‘… because you will not tell them we exist.’

‘No!’ Roeg shouted, and smashed away the blade, turning on the startled guard to drive his own blade into his unprotected chest. Yet even as he fell, Roeg turned back to the prisoner, lifting his head. ‘Tell me the name. The name!’ But the Northman was dead. The name gone with him.

A howl of anger rose from Roeg and he turned on the slain guard, unable to stop himself falling on the corpse to stab it again and again, fury mingling with frustration as he covered the floor in blood.

Time passed, he knew not how long until he heard the last dull strike of his blade on the stone floor. His arm trembled and his mouth was slack and wet from lamentation. The room fell silent around him and then Queri spoke. ‘He is dead,’ she said softly. ‘You cannot kill him twice.’

‘Yet I wish I could,’ Roeg said, his heart now emptied of all emotion. ‘I would kill him a hundred times for what he has done.’

‘Perhaps you should have taken the Princess while you —’

‘No.’ Roeg stood and sheathed his sword. Queri backed away and he wondered if she feared him now. ‘Only by discovering the name of the traitor can I keep the White Twins safe. I did right to leave her with her Champion.’

‘Then why did you go near her?’ Queri asked. ‘It was a great risk.’

Roeg turned to her, surprised anew by her perception and the intelligence which was lacking in most of her peers. He had shared his past with her and knew she would understand when he said, ‘She is very like her mother’

‘Yet that can be seen from a distance.’ Queri came closer and peered up into his face, her large eyes oddly attractive in her pallid hairless head. ‘Why did you stand beside her? Did you want to smell her?’

Queri believed that evil could be scented. Roeg wondered what she’d made of their pungent prisoner. ‘I readily admit it was foolishness.’ Worse, though, was that his moment of sentimentality had revealed a weakness which a rival among the Raiders had pursued, following the Princess to attack her Champion. Thankfully that Raider now lay dead, but the lesson had been learned. Save for Queri, Roeg let no-one near him. ‘Come, let us return to our chambers,’ he said, stepping over the body of the Raider guard he had dispatched. There would be no trouble over the death. There was never trouble over any death, and if Faldre should question them about the morning’s events, Roeg would simply lie. It was another Raider trait which had proved useful.

‘The chambers are yours,’ Queri corrected as she preceded him from the room, though he saw her small smile of pleasure at his mistake. He suspected it was just this type of error which drew her to him; the fact that he had not been born into their society and occasionally forgot that women were a chattel. ‘Yet we may share them if you wish,’ she said, confirming his suspicions.

He stopped her in the corridor outside. ‘I share them today, but do not know what tomorrow may bring.’

She shrugged. ‘Tomorrow I may be dead,’ she replied, revealing in a simple sentence the entire philosophy of Raider life.

Roeg regarded her steadily, yet at the same time saw through her to the future he would reach. ‘Tomorrow I shall not be dead,’ he replied. ‘For I will not die until the traitor who killed my King lies slain. And none shall stand in my way.’

A hollow wind blew down the tunnel between them and Queri raised her nose to sniff its vapours, her eyes narrowing. ‘Grief weighs the air and the portent of much ill lies on it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘If you want to save your King you must not delay.’

Roeg nodded agreement. He needed no reading of the wind to tell him he must act. And yet how? The Raiders offered only a place of concealment. If he would save Mihale from the fate of his father, he must pray to the Great Guardian to provide him with what he had hitherto failed to acquire.

The identity of the man he must kill.

‘S
ay that again. Slowly.’ Khatrene knew she must have misunderstood.

Ghett put down the sponge she’d just taken from her Princess and sat back from the bath. ‘I did but say it will be another seven days —’

‘No.’ Khatrene shook her head. ‘I’ve already waited forty days. Today is my wedding day and tonight —’

‘It is the custom of your betrothed’s family, My Lady,’ Ghett replied in a soothing tone. ‘You may not join with your husband until you reach his home. Castle Be’uccdha.’ She turned away then and Khatrene was sure it was to hide her smile. Ghett was younger than her mistress, but appeared to be far more experienced in matters of sex.

‘Custom or not …’ Khatrene stood and snatched a towel from the marbled edge of the bath. ‘… I remember every word of our conversation about “joining” and he definitely said “the wedding night”.’

‘At Castle Be’uccdha there will be another ceremony, My Lady,’ Ghett said, and this time Khatrene definitely saw the corners of her lips twitch.

‘Do you think this is funny?’ Khatrene felt outraged. For all of five seconds. Then suddenly they were both laughing. ‘This is funny,’ Khatrene said. ‘Listen to me. So much for the timid, virgin bride.’

Ghett took the towel from her mistress and handed her a robe. ‘You are merely eager to fulfil your destiny, My Lady,’ she said diplomatically.

Khatrene laughed, ‘Right,’ and sat at the looking glass so Ghett could comb her hair. ‘I’m glad you’re coming with me,’ she told Ghett. ‘I like having someone around who can justify my lunacy.’ The syrupy scent of her morning ‘coffee’ beckoned and she wrapped her hands around the delicate glass goblet and took a sip. With its liquorice flavour and molasses consistency, Ghett’s special-formula stimulant drink was never going to outclass a good latte, but it was a relaxing way to start the day. Combined with Ghett’s fussing over her appearance, they were seldom out the door under an hour but that was all right with Khatrene. Djahr had been teaching her the art of anticipation and she now used their time apart to think about him.

That’s what was stimulating her every morning. Not the drink.

‘My Lady, shall I send for the gown?’ Ghett asked when she had finished combing her hair.

Khatrene nodded. ‘I think I’d rather not have to rush that part.’

‘I do so look forward to seeing it at last,’ Ghett said. ‘I’m sure My Lord The Dark’s good taste will prove worthy of his bride.’

‘Not that it matters.’ Khatrene would marry Djahr in a potato sack it she had to. Only she didn’t have to, because he was providing her trousseau.

Any disappointment Khatrene might have harboured about not being able to choose her own wedding gown was banished with the discovery that it would be designed by her betrothed. The thought of Djahr selecting fabrics and working out how they would fit and drape over her body was so unutterably sexual she’d barely been able to discuss the matter with anyone, much less Djahr himself. Instead she had let the delicious anticipation build inside her like bubbles in a tightly corked bottle.

‘I will send for it, My Lady,’ Ghett said and went to the door, exchanging words with a lesser maid who then scurried to obey.

‘Should I put on my “undergarments” while we’re waiting?’ Khatrene asked, gently mocking Ghett’s formality.

‘My lady, all will be provided.’

‘By Djahr?’

‘My Lady, yes.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Khatrene turned back to her reflection. He’d chosen her underwear as well. A fluttering sensation started somewhere low in her belly. She told herself it was nerves. A virgin bride certainly shouldn’t be getting all hot and bothered about a simple thing like her betrothed lingering over the selection of her intimate apparel. Should she?

Talis adjusted his cousin’s dress collar, then frowned at the result.

Pagan pushed his hand away and turned to the looking glass to fiddle with it himself. ‘You are no help,’ he declared.

For the second time in as many months they were in formal uniform, again to honour The Light.

Khatrene.

How little Talis had seen of her these past weeks, and how his heart had ached for her company which was now freely given to her betrothed. Today, her husband.

Pagan turned. ‘You look nearly handsome,’ he said, eyeing his cousin critically. ‘No doubt your betrothed will take pleasure in that.’ He reached up to straighten one of the ribbons that fell from Talis’s shoulders to his chest.

‘Speak well of her,’ Talis warned. ‘Or we will quarrel.’

‘I need say nothing,’ Pagan replied. ‘Her character reveals itself.’

Talis shook his head. ‘I wish to discuss another matter. Have you heard anything of the Elder Sh’hale? It was strange that he did not attend the lifeday celebrations to honour the arrival of The Light. But last week his son was made Champion to the King and still he did not come.’

Pagan picked up his newly polished sword belt and looped it around his hips. ‘I thought this strange myself,’ he replied, ‘and when I asked Kert his father’s whereabouts, he told me that his father was ill. A complaint of the stomach.’

‘Ill?’ Talis felt a prickle of foreboding. ‘He is of noble blood. Why does he not call for a Guardian to heal him?’

‘I asked the same of Kert, who told me the illness was nothing.’ Pagan looked up from securing his belt buckle. ‘A surfeit of ale. Nothing that would not pass with time.’ He turned to the looking glass to adjust the position of his sword, just so.

Talis pondered these words. ‘The Elder is old,’ he said, ‘And prone to intemperance. Perhaps an overindulgence has laid him low.’

‘And fearing to reveal his weakness, he does not call for a Guardian but rests in solitude.’

The explanation rang true. Yet it was still a concern that the father was not present to direct the behaviour of his son. Talis himself listened to the counsel of his uncle and was the wiser for it. What Kert might do with no senior male to direct him worried Talis.

Pagan turned back from the glass. ‘Your quarrel with Sh’hale will be put to rest when you are parted tonight,’ he said, sensing his cousin’s disquiet. ‘He remains in the Volcastle while you journey to Be’uccdha. And do not fear; as I train with him I will speak to soften his grievance and bend his heart toward friendship with you.’ Pagan’s face was set in an earnestness Talis had not often seen in his cousin.

‘I want our rivalry to end,’ he said, ‘yet I fear you will labour in vain to soften Sh’hale.’

‘Let me try,’ Pagan asked, and Talis could only agree, pleased to see this new maturity in his cousin. His willingness to ease another’s trouble would greatly please his father who had waited a long time for any sign of the man he would become.

‘Shall we go to the Great Hall?’ Pagan said, snatching up the lorthen bouquet he would gift to the bride’s maid before their procession to the altar behind The Light. ‘I dare not be late or my partner in this marriage dance may think me uninterested.’

Talis looked to his cousin, surprised by his banter. ‘Why would you try to win the favours of The Light’s maid? She leaves the Volcastle this very night as part of our wedding party to Castle Be’uccdha.’

Pagan smiled. ‘There are many hours before that departure, and surely many minutes when Ghett will not be occupied with her Lady.’

‘And the setting for this romantic tryst?’ Talis asked. ‘Will it be some dim corner or unused kitchen pantry?’

‘Nothing so crude, Cous,’ Pagan said. ‘I have secured a room near the Banquet Hall complete with soft bed, warm fire and sweet wine.’

‘I am impressed with your preparation,’ Talis admitted. ‘Although I would prefer you to enter battle with such well-laid strategies, rather than save them all for the pleasure bed.’

‘It is all practice, Cous. Wooing and warring are much alike,’ Pagan said, as though to instruct his elder. ‘The assessment of your enemy, the preliminary reconnoitre, engagement, and then …’ He smiled. ‘… battle to the death.’ Pagan lingered over this last word, savouring the taste of it in anticipation of the act.

Talis prodded his chest. ‘Have you spoken of this practice to your good father? I’ll warrant he appreciates your earnest efforts to better yourself.’

‘Mock me if you will,’ Pagan replied airily, ‘but we shall see who becomes the better warrior.’

‘The better for bedding half the realm?’ So much for maturity.

‘Only half?’ was Pagan’s reply.

Talis turned away and took up the bouquet he would gift to The Light on behalf of her royal brother. This would be before he escorted her to the Temple and her vows. The sweet ahroce blossoms reminded him of the child Princess, and for a moment he tricked his mind into thinking it was she, and not the Khatrene who filled his dreams, whom he would take to be wed.

From behind him Pagan said. ‘You have fallen quiet, Cous. Have I grieved you?’

Talis shook his head and sighed, ‘I feel a sadness, that is all,’ he said. ‘A sadness out of time with the celebrations at hand.’

‘Perhaps you are jealous,’ Pagan said. ‘I will own that I am.’

Talis felt his heart quicken in apprehension. ‘How do you mean, jealous?’ he asked.

‘Who would not want to be as happy as The Light in her chosen marriage,’ Pagan replied carelessly. ‘I’ll warrant it will not be long before Castle Be’uccdha echoes with the squalling of a babe.’

Talis nodded, and found that Pagan’s words did not wound him as he would have thought. ‘The Light already looks with love on her betrothed,’  he agreed. ‘This much is plain. Perhaps destiny plays a part in such a match.’ And perhaps Talis should dwell on her happiness, rather than his own lack of it.

Pagan sighed. ‘My father will likely foist a “good breeder” on me. Some woman of sturdy body and robust health.’ He made a face of disgust. ‘And you ask why I take my pleasure while I can.’

‘That’s a clever excuse for licentiousness,’ Talis replied.

Pagan tilted his head to accept the compliment. ‘But returning to the matter of our conversation, would you deny that you envy The Light’s good fortune?’

‘I would deny it,’ Talis said in truth. ‘For I believe I will be happier with Lae than any other woman I could marry.’

Pagan clasped his arm. ‘And there we will end our conversation, Cous, before my prejudice spoils the happy future you foresee.’

Talis shifted his bouquet to the other hand and clasped Pagan’s arm also. ‘Agreed,’ he said, and there they parted, Talis in solemn contemplation and Pagan with the happy smile of a man who is guaranteed joy.

Djahr of Be’uccdha waited in the vestry of the Volcastle temple until his bride was in position and he was called to the altar, its mullioned glass panels now sparkling with Otherworld hues. When his eyes became adjusted to the dazzle, Djahr was met by the vision of his bride, resplendent in the swathe of pale fabric he had designed to cling to her skin as tightly as a lover’s touch.

Only he, Khatrene, and perhaps her maid knew she wore nothing beneath it — a secret that would heighten his bride’s passions, even as it frightened and embarrassed her. Would she ask him how the unusual fabric was constructed? The softness of the texture, the way it warmed to the touch? Would he tell her?

The craftsman who laboured over the gown had newly lost his tongue and could not give The Light details of the Plainsmen who had offered their skin … well, their lives in fact, to have the honour of stealing a moment of time against the tender flesh of The Light. Smoothed by the buffeting of the Plains storms, it was far more suitable than the unevenly textured Cliffdwellers’ hides.

Would Khatrene find such sacrifice worthy? Or would she think him cruel?

Djahr smiled. There would be many weeks before she would discover his true nature. Time enough to anticipate the expression of her horror and add depth to an experience the Shadow Woman had already assured him would be most satisfying.