Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (34 page)

L
ae clutched the ladder with one hand and wiped her nose furiously with the other, then pinched it for good measure to ensure she wouldn’t sneeze again. ‘Why do you not speak? Is that you, Pagan?’ she demanded. No reply was forthcoming so she descended to the floor and turned to where she had heard the voice. ‘I know there is someone here,’ she said, then a fearful shiver ran over her hack. What if it was Vandal?

‘Are we both hiding from my son?’ he said at last.

Lae leant back against the ladder and relaxed. Safe. She was safe. ‘I do not hide,’ she said, then wondered why she was lying. To protect Vandal? ‘I merely sought a place where I would not be interrupted.’

‘I admit to hiding,’ Pagan said.

She tried to find his outline in the impenetrable darkness. Failed.

‘Do you remember when you first showed me this secret place of yours?’ he asked.

Lae nodded, then realised he couldn’t see her. ‘When The Light ran away from my father. I needed you to help me rescue her.’

He laughed. ‘Help
you
rescue her.’ Then more softly, ‘I suppose you would recall it that way. Still, I am gratified that you remember.’

At the end of that adventure Pagan had kissed her. Her first kiss. She remembered that delightful shock in perfect detail, and the recollection stirred her trust in him. ‘There are … places within me where memories should lie, yet they do not,’ she admitted. ‘You spoke of a child?’

Pagan was silent for a long time before hesitant words emerged. ‘There was a child. Yet his death grieved you so, you could not move beyond it.’

Lae felt her heartbeat quicken. ‘My child?’ she asked.

‘His name was Lenid.’

‘The old king’s name.’

‘He was Mihale’s child with a servant, Ghett.’

Lae tried to find an image in her mind to correspond with these words, but there was nothing. ‘How did he come to be in my care?’

She listened with a growing desperation as Pagan recounted all that he knew.

‘How old am I?’ Lae asked when he had finished.

‘You were fourteen when I left Ennae. You are eighteen now.’

His words echoed in the silence of their dusty sanctuary as Lae struggled to believe him. Her memory of her father was so clear, yet according to Pagan she had not seen him in four years.

Her voice trembled with apprehension, ‘Where are my memories?’

His answer was immediate. ‘I believe my son stole them from you to lighten your grieving heart, thus bending you to his will.’

‘Stole them?’ Lae shook her head, the heavy hair brushing her shoulders. ‘To what end?’

‘He seeks only to punish me,’ Pagan said. ‘Yet observing him lately I fear how far that punishment will go. There is a violence in his nature …’ He trailed off but Lae was already nodding.

‘Only an hour ago I saw it myself,’ she whispered, suddenly aware that they must not be overheard, must not be found. If Vandal knew she was with Pagan … ‘I am afraid of him,’ she said, her voice trembling again. ‘Afraid of my own husband.’

‘We are safe here,’ Pagan said, his voice closer than it had been. ‘Yet we would be safer if we ventured deeper into the tunnels.’

Again Lae nodded, forgetting that Pagan couldn’t see her. ‘Is there a brand on the wall we can light?’ She stretched her arm forward into the darkness.

‘We can feel our way,’ Pagan said and her outstretched hand touched fabric then was taken by warm fingers.

Propriety should have seen her disdain such contact, yet the longer Lae was away from Vandal, the more his attractions faded from her heart and the more she was reminded of her memories of Pagan and how she had vowed to wait for him, to be his wife. Whatever had occurred in the intervening time was no longer in her mind. But the feeling of trust had remained.

‘Do you remember the way?’ he asked, moving forward and gently tugging her hand.

‘As if it was yesterday,’ she replied, shocked to find a smile on her lips.

‘The stones are damp,’ he told her. ‘We will not venture far.’

‘To the place where I would meet Hush,’ she told him and felt a firm pressure from his fingers, as though he had squeezed her hand in reply. Warmth flooded Lae’s chest and she felt cast back in time. The darkness aided her foolish delusion. ‘Why are you down here?’ she asked him to distract herself. ‘You could not know that I would come.’

‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Yet I hoped.’

The feeling of warmth grew but Lae held her silence. At last the corridor opened and her hand fell away from the wall at her side.

‘We are here,’ Pagan said.

‘Is it safe now to light a brand?’ she asked. He made no reply but released her and Lae felt some of her warmth fade. ‘Do you prefer the darkness?’ she asked.

He was a long time answering. ‘You told me once that I was too old to be your husband.’

‘No. That’s too cruel.’ Lae tried to imagine herself being so heartless to Pagan who had shown her nothing but kindness in her memories of recent times. ‘Could you have misunderstood me?’

‘It was grief,’ he said, his voice further away from her, as though he’d gone to sit against the wall of the small cavern they’d entered. ‘Grief that is now gone. My son’s purpose may be selfish, yet his actions have eased your pain … where I could not,’ this last said softly, regretfully.

Lae felt a wave of compassion for him and she struggled to understand the change that had been wrought in her since she had left Vandal in the corridor. How had she thought so little of Pagan before, and so highly of him now?

‘Your son has a hold over me,’ she said at last. ‘I could not feel it until I was separated from him.’

‘He controls your mind with his Guardian power,’ Pagan said. ‘You have doubts. I have seen them on your face. But he takes them from your mind with a touch of his palm to your forehead.’

Again Lae nodded to herself. She had many memories of Vandal’s hand falling away from her forehead, but few of him placing it there. She wondered how else he had manipulated her. ‘I have no memory of my investiture, yet I know I am The Dark,’ she said, the responsibility for her castle and the spiritual welfare of a kingdom weighing heavily on her mind. ‘There are duties I must perform, yet I retain no memory of having done them.’

‘He kept you to himself,’ Pagan replied softly. ‘There have been no services in the Altar Caves since his arrival.’

‘I should be in robes,’ she said, suddenly repulsed by the soft fabric beneath her hands. ‘Not parading around in gowns.’

There was a pause before Pagan said, ‘I like you in gowns.’

She heard the smile in his voice and it lightened some of her distress. It was also a reminder that her attire was the least of their concerns. ‘Yet still you choose darkness,’ she retorted. Pagan made no reply. ‘Well, I will admit vanity enough to say I like wearing them also,’ she told him. ‘Yet this does nothing to solve my immediate problem, of what to do about … my situation.’

‘That very much depends on whether you love your husband.’ Pause. ‘Or not.’

Lae thought about that. ‘I am confused,’ she admitted. ‘The longer I am away from him the less I feel … attachment. Yet he is the father of my child.’

Pagan was silent, but Lae felt no apprehension. Indeed, the thought came to her that he was probably the only person she could be completely honest with. And there was no rush. They were safe here. She could think the situation through and ask Pagan for his advice. ‘The first step,’ she said, ‘must surely be to avoid further mind control, yet even to say as much makes me feel odd, as though I am conspiring against my own husband.’ Did she want reassurance from Pagan that they weren’t doing that?

‘That’s exactly what we
must
do,’ he said. ‘Vandal will destroy us both if we make no move to thwart him.’

‘Destroy us?’ Lae shook her head. How had Pagan made such a leap of conjecture? ‘He has distracted me from performing my duties but … that is only to be expected. We have only recently wed and he is the father of my child.’

‘So his theft of your memories is acceptable?’ Pagan asked, his voice losing its gentleness. ‘Life with your father has trained you to overlook that which you do not wish to see.’

Lae’s instinct was to react angrily to this, yet the truth was an irritating grain of sand under her ribs, rubbing, reminding. When Pagan started to apologise, she interrupted him. ‘No, your assumption is correct. I ignored my father’s malevolence until I was fourteen. Then when I saw his aura I ran away from it.’

‘To the Shrines. I remember,’ Pagan said.

‘Yet it was not until he killed our king that I truly acknowledged his evil.’

Pagan remained silent.

‘I should have reacted sooner,’ she said. ‘I should have warned the King that The Dark was not fit for his title.’

‘Perhaps,’ Pagan said. ‘But if you had not been believed …’

He need say no more. Lae could not begin to imagine the horrors that would have been visited upon her by her father for such a transgression. ‘The lesson is a valid one all the same,’ she said. ‘You are right to remind me that I must not ignore ill intent. Yet do you see evil in your own son?’

‘I see vengeance,’ Pagan said. ‘His mother is dead, Vandal believes, because of me.’

‘You think he will try to harm you?’ Lae felt shock at the thought, yet the memory of his recent violence with her was fresh in her mind. ‘He would not best you in a sword fight.’ Pagan did not answer immediately and her thoughts travelled further. ‘Yet if this was his purpose, why has he not challenged you before now?’

‘I fear he believes a quick death is too good for me,’ Pagan said sadly. ‘He wants me to suffer. To die a little more each day as he takes everything I have ever desired and values it not at all.’

Despite the horror of what Pagan was saying, his mention that she was all he had ever wanted brought a return of the warmth in Lae’s chest.

‘When my suffering is no longer enough for him,’ Pagan said, ‘I fear he will seek to destroy what I love.’

Silence settled on the cavern, yet over its dark surface Lae heard these words repeated again and again:
he will seek to destroy what I love.
She reached behind her with a trembling hand to rest against the stone wall. ‘He would … kill me?’

‘I thought to provoke him with my absence at dinner. To turn his anger towards me.’

‘You were successful,’ Lae replied. ‘He left me to seek you out in your quarters.’

‘Which gave you time to escape.’

‘I had no thought to escape at the time,’ Lae said, breathless with horror at how close she had come to even greater violence than Vandal had already shown her. ‘I simply came here to think.’

‘He will kill you, Lae, unless he is stopped.’ Pagan’s voice was closer in the darkness. ‘I am your Champion, responsible for your safety. I beg you to defer to my judgement in this matter.’

‘Is there more to your actions than the responsibility of a Champion for his charge?’ Lae asked softly.

She felt the air move directly in front of her face and breathed a scent that spiralled her backwards in time, tugging at her stomach — the faint sweet edge of sword oil mixed with the soft protective powder that covered the parchment books Pagan loved to read. His hands always smelt of it, like ahroce petals mixed with earth.

‘You know how I think of you, Lae,’ he said, and his voice was so tender and so sure that her fears melted into the rhythm of his words. ‘Since the moment your taunting lips first contacted mine I have been smitten.’

‘As I was also,’ she whispered, yet was she speaking of the past? Or had Pagan always been in her thoughts? The memories she still owned were full of longing for him.

‘Much has happened since that kiss,’ he said.

She heard regret in his voice and could only imagine how hard it had been for him to champion her through two marriages, when all he longed for was to have her to himself. But hadn’t he also given her cause for jealousy? His son’s presence in their life was proof of Pagan’s unfaithfulness.

Yet in Lae’s mind now, their past was as naught and Pagan’s feelings for her had not faded. It was her own that were in question. Away from Vandal’s distracting presence she felt no love, nor even desire for her husband. Yet the father? Did she truly love Pagan? That would be his dearest wish, though he did not ask her. Dared not, she supposed. And though he did not ask, she felt he deserved an answer.

‘Your love for me has proved truer than any I’ve known,’ she told him honestly. ‘Yet for my own heart I have no compass.’ Indeed she alternately swirled with excitement and apprehension. How was she to judge her feelings for Pagan? ‘I know that with you standing close to me,’ she said, ‘my husband is much distanced from my thoughts.’

‘The world is distanced from mine,’ Pagan whispered and Lae knew then that he was going to kiss her. And that she was going to let him.

She felt his hands touch her shoulders, then slide up her neck to cup her face, his warm fingers threading into her hair. Though it was dark, Lae closed her eyes, and even before his lips touched hers she knew desire. His hands were so gentle yet so confident, she could not help but raise her own to press them against his chest, finding it just as hard as it had always been. Then his lips touched hers and she felt a warm swirling deep in her belly. Pagan’s hands trembled on her cheeks yet he did not rush towards pleasure, but instead kissed her slowly, his lips and tongue coaxing her, as though desiring her trust more than her surrender.

For Lae, whose recent experience of joining had been all of pounding blood and jerking movements, Pagan’s kiss was like a deep, hot bath she could luxuriate in for as long as she desired. His hands did not move from her face and Lae’s did not move from his chest. Yet the kiss … Lae felt such sweet abandonment as to make her question whether she had ever been kissed before, so profound was her response.

At last he pulled away from her, his tongue lingering on her lips a moment. ‘Do not doubt my love,’ he said, his voice rough and low.

‘I cannot,’ she replied, her breath as ragged as his. ‘Yet if you would know my heart, you must let me look upon you, and fear not that my feelings will be swayed by such honours as age has bestowed upon you.’