Lara (25 page)

“Some day you will learn differently,” Og told her quietly. He put down the gazelle haunch that he had stripped of its meat to the bone, and picked a small bunch of grapes from the platter for himself.

“I am grateful for Prince Kaliq’s kindness in sending us this fine meal. We must share the honey cakes with Zaki and his family. Some of the fruit, too. Nothing will keep in this heat,” Lara said practically.

Og nodded. “It cannot hurt us to curry favor with the village headman,” he agreed. “But let us eat our fill first, please,” he pleaded.

Lara nodded. “My sweet tooth is not yet satisfied,” she told him, taking a peach.

When they had finished, however, they gathered up the remaining flat bread, the bowl with the cucumbers and yogurt, the dish with the grape leaves, and the one with the honey cakes, along with some of the fruit. They carried it to Zaki’s tent. His family had just sat down to their meal. Zaki was effusive in his thanks even as his younger children eyed the bounty.

“It is most kind, most kind!” he told them.

“The prince sent the food,” Lara said. “We could not eat it all, and are happy to share it with you who have been so kind to us, Zaki.” She bowed to him, and then turning, departed his dwelling.

“Why is she always veiled and muffled in shapeless robes?” Zaki asked Og.

“Because she is so beautiful that the mere sight of her causes conflict and strife,” he told the headman. “She does not wish to be surrounded by contention, and so she covers herself to protect those around her,” Og explained.

“Will she become the prince’s woman?” Zaki asked.

“I do not know,” Og replied. “She does not understand love.”

“If she will let him, he will teach her,” Zaki responded.

“Perhaps,” Og said, and then bowing he departed the headman’s tent to return to his own. He called out to Lara behind her curtain as he entered. “Zaki is delighted with the food. I believe we may have a place here as long as we desire it. But shall we remain forever, Lara?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “For now, I am content with no demands made upon me but to sew. We will get a better tent soon. The tent maker’s daughter is to be married soon, and will need a proper gown for the occasion. The gown is simple enough, but no one can embroider like I can. These Desert people know nothing of that art.”

“You are clever, and meant for more than you now have,” Og said. “Good night, dearest Lara. May your dreams be happy ones.”

“Good night, my dear Og, protector and best friend,” Lara said. She curled onto the furs, drawing a light coverlet over her. It had been an interesting day. She wondered if Prince Kaliq would call her to his presence again. He was such a beautiful man with his blue eyes and wavy black hair. When he had looked at her she had actually felt a small measure of curiosity; might he possess some magic that would put the warmth back into her soul?

Despite Og’s blessing, her dreams that night were not happy. She dreamed of Enda and Durga ravaging her body, and awakened with a gasp, trembling so violently that it was some time before she was able to regain her composure. Were they looking for her? Would they find her?

Lara reached down for the crystal and saw the flame burning steadily.
I can’t go back,
she said within her mind.

Do not fear,
Ethne’s voice reassured her.

Then why do I dream?

At the moment men are your greatest fear, Lara, but the Forest Lords will not venture far from their trees. You are safe here.

Why do men always want to possess my body, Ethne?

Because it is a beautiful body, and most men believe in love. To love a woman is to possess her body, among other things,
Ethne told her.

What other things?

That is for you to learn.
Ethne’s laughter tinkled knowingly.

I hate it when you say things like that to me,
Lara grumbled.
It is all so mysterious, and how am I to learn if you will not teach me?

You must learn from others of your kind, both human and faerie,
Ethne told her.
It is my task only to guide and protect you.

A Shadow Prince would be my lover,
Lara told her guardian.

Ahhh.
Ethne’s voice grew soft as if she were remembering something wonderful.
He will give you such pleasure, Lara. The Shadow Princes are truly the masters of tender passion and love. There are none like them anywhere but here. How I envy you!

I said no.

Ethne sighed almost irritably.
Your experience with passion to date has not been pleasant, I am the first to admit,
she said,
but you must put it behind you.

I dream of Enda and Durga, of their cruelty and brutality,
Lara said.

Foolish girl! Why did you not tell me?
Ethne demanded.
I can rid you of those dreams. You must think only of this prince who would love you. He will teach you the lessons you must learn in order to move on with your life. Do you think fate has planned for you to sit sewing in a Desert encampment for the rest of your life?

No,
Lara said, chastened.

You have a great future, Lara.

What is it?
Lara asked her excitedly.

You are not ready yet to know, but you will when the time is right,
Ethne replied.

More of your cryptic enigmas,
Lara muttered.

Ethne chuckled.
You are forever wanting to run before you have learned how to walk,
she said.
Enjoy the journey,
Ethne advised the girl.
Learn as much as you can before you reach your destination, my child. Do not waste the opportunities that are being put before you.

If my fate is already planned, I suppose I have no other choice but to go along with it,
Lara murmured.

There are always choices. The stratagem is to choose wisely.

I would not have chosen Durga and Enda,
Lara replied.

Again Ethne laughed.
Yet you have learned from them, my child.

What have I learned from those two? Brutality? Stupidity? Cruelty?

You have learned what love is not,
the guardian of the crystal said softly.
Now go and learn what it can be.

CHAPTER NINE

P
RINCE
K
ALIQ
rode into the village the next afternoon and he directed his horse to the tiny tent shared by Lara and Og. Lara sat outside beneath an awning, sewing. The giant was nowhere to be seen. The girl looked up at him. He held out his hand. “Come!” he said imperiously reaching down for her.

Lara stood and let herself be swept up onto the prince’s horse. “How masterful you are,” she teased him mischievously.

“I do not know why I want you,” he said. “You look like an old crow in your enveloping black garments. And you are ignorant beyond any I have ever known.” He moved his horse away from the tent and toward the entrance to his palace at the bottom of the cliff.

“You want me because you have seen me without my enveloping garments,” she told him. “And you want me because you desire to teach me your ways,” Lara said. “I am a mystery to you, my lord, am I not?”

“You are not stupid,” he admitted.

“Nay, not stupid, just ignorant,” she mocked him, and he laughed.

“I will probably fall in love with you,” he grumbled, “and you will break my heart, Lara, won’t you?” He guided his mount past the cliff’s entry, and onto the inner road.

“I told you yesterday, my lord, that I do not believe in love. It does not exist. But I am also now informed that for the Shadow Princes love is paramount. If you know that I will break your heart, then it is best you not fall in love with me,” Lara advised him.

“Love is not a logical emotion. It will not obey the science of reason,” Kaliq told her. “That is the first thing you must learn, Lara. Love happens. There is no rationale for it. You cannot control it, or the passions it arouses.”

She was seated before him on his stallion. One arm held her gently but firmly against him. He wore white silk trousers, and an open-necked white silk shirt. About his waist a black sash was wrapped, and his boots were black leather. She found her cheek resting against his bare chest. His skin was smooth, warm, fragrant. “I don’t understand,” Lara told him. “You speak in riddles.”

“It is because you don’t understand that I have come for you today,” he said. “Someone as beautiful as you are, Lara, should not be ignorant of the pleasures of love. What happened to you in the Forest that you encased your heart in ice?”

“I am told daughters born of faerie women have the same cold hearts as their mothers,” Lara said.

“Only if they choose to,” he responded.

“What can you know of faeries, my lord? You are not one, are you?”

“Nay, I am a Shadow Prince, but I had an ancestress who was a Peri. Faerie blood runs in my veins, though not to the extent that it does in yours, Lara. Now tell me of the Forest, and why you enclosed your heart in an icy cold. We shall not cease riding until I have learned all.”

“Surely we are almost there,” Lara said.

“We will not be there until I have learned what I need to know of you,” the prince said in a stern voice. “Tell me.”

Lara looked up into the handsome face, and began to speak. “The trader swore I was meant for a Coastal King in order to protect me from the Forest Lords. But they offered him far more than he had hoped to obtain for me. He was afraid it was a ruse, and so I advised him to accept their offer but refuse to make the trade until we were at the borders separating the Desert and the Forest. They were not pleased, but they agreed. And so it was done. I later learned it was my faerie heritage that fascinated them. They wanted to get a child on me to ease or even erase a curse placed on them by Maeve, the queen of the Forest Faeries. They thought a faerie child born of my loins and their seed would soften her heart against them. Of course it was madness on their part.”

“Why did they want a child with faerie blood? The Forest Lords do not mix their blood with that of outsiders,” Kaliq said.

“Yesterday I said it was Og’s tale to tell, but I realize now it is mine, too,” Lara told him, and so she did, beginning with the murder of Maeve’s faerie kinswoman and ending with the slaughter of all the Forest giants, but for Og. “The giants knew the Foresters’ shameful secret,” Lara continued. “Maeve’s curse had made it impossible for them to breed children upon their own women. Stealthily they mated with outsiders, giving those children to their wives, who claimed them as their own. And with each new generation born, the blood of the Forest Lords grew thinner and thinner.

“The Foresters allowed Og to live because they believed he didn’t know their secret,” she said, “but he did, for giant memory is passed on in the womb. He was trained to serve as his people had served.”

“The Forest giants were known for their gentle natures, and kind hearts,” Kaliq said softly. “They would not have known how to fight back against the Foresters.”

“If not for Og I should not have escaped, and would soon be dead,” Lara replied. “He knew what I did not. That no woman with faerie blood will give a child to a man she does not love, or at least desires, and when he told me I was terrified. Both the Head Forester and his younger brother were pumping their seed into me several times daily. They were beginning to become suspicious as to why my belly was not growing with a child of theirs. They didn’t care which one of them fathered the child on me, but they wanted that child, whom they believed would be their salvation.”

“Were you a virgin when you came to them?” he asked her.

Lara nodded. “That was the other reason I was so expensive.”

“And when their bodies joined with yours what did you feel?” he asked her.

“My body had begun to respond to the younger brother, Enda, but I hated them both,” Lara told him. “When the Head Forester would lie with me, I would slip away into the deep recesses of my mind. It was easier then to bear him.”

Prince Kaliq’s eyes filled with tears at her recitation. “That you should have suffered so, my beautiful Lara,” he said, his voice choking. “Please, I beg of you, let me show you what true passion between two friends can be like. I will not lie to you. I do desire your body, but only because it is such a beautiful body, and should be loved as only I can love it.” He bent and brushed his lips against her mouth.

“You seek me for your pleasure,” Lara said low.

“I seek to give you pleasure!” he corrected her. “Those cloddish Forest creatures know naught of pleasuring a woman of any ilk. They know only how to grunt and sweat over a woman’s body. They think nothing of the woman. She is a vessel to them in which they hope to grow their seed.” His blue eyes were stormy with his angry words. “You are meant to love and be loved.”

“And what am I to you, my lord prince?” Lara asked quietly.

“A comely woman to be admired, caressed and utterly adored,” he told her. “I would worship at the shrine of your beauty, Lara,” the prince said fervently.

“You want no child of mine then?” she asked him.

“No,” he told her quietly. “I want only you, and the pleasure we can give each other, Lara. Nothing else, I swear!”

They were suddenly at the entrance to the hallway of the palace. The stallion stopped, and a servant lifted Lara down from the saddle as the prince leapt down behind her. Taking her hand in his, he led her into the beautiful corridor she had previously been in the day before.

“Will you trust me to teach you the joys of passion?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said simply. His words had intrigued her. Was there more to two bodies uniting than just grunting and straining? “I am curious as to whether what you hint at is real, or merely a belief you refuse to give up.”

He laughed. “You will soon see, Lara. You will soon see, but first we shall watch my favorite stallion choose his mares and mate with them.”

“Did that not happen yesterday?” she asked him.

“I would not allow it without you,” he told her.

“I am not suitably garbed to be seen publicly on your balustrade, my lord,” she told him.

“There is time to prepare you,” he told her. “Come! You must be bathed. You have, I fear, the scent of the village goats on your skin, and in your hair. Hair like yours should not even hint of goat.” He led her quickly from the main corridor down a narrow hallway at the end of which was a great wooden door.

Outside the door a guard stood. Seeing the prince and Lara he turned sharply and flung open the portal so that at no time did they slow their pace. A serving woman hurried forward to greet them, bowing obsequiously to the prince. Without even being told she took Lara’s all-enveloping garments from her. Beneath, Lara was wearing a sleeveless round necked gown of a natural colored linen she had recently made for herself. She slipped from her sandals.

The serving woman next undid the ribbons at Lara’s shoulders, and her gown fell to the floor. She stepped from it not in the least embarrassed by her nudity.

“You are even lovelier than I had anticipated,” Kaliq told her, shedding his own clothing. While every bit as tall as the Foresters she had known, he was far more slender, Lara saw. His skin where the sun touched it was like bronze-colored satin, but where the sun could not reach it was like golden cream. She thought him beautiful, and smiling, told him so.

“Then we are well matched,” he replied, “but I knew it the moment I saw you at the oasis. Come now, and let me wash you.” He led her into the bath where there were several smooth depressions in the marble floor against a wall. Water fell from curved spouts in that wall. Placing her in one of the hollows the prince took up a sponge laden with soft soap, and began to wash Lara.

“I can wash myself,” she protested softly.

“But is this not much nicer?” he said. The sponge moved over her chest, neck and shoulders. Then it was swept over her breasts with great care, and down her torso. Kneeling, he washed her thighs, legs and feet then, turning her about, sponged her buttocks, stood up and did all of her back. He set her firmly beneath the curved spout and rinsed the foamy soap from her skin. Finally drawing her from beneath the water, he announced, “I will now wash your lovely hair.” And to her surprise he did. When he had finished, he wrung out the long tresses and pinned them wet atop her head, giving her a hard kiss as he did so. His hand went to her pubic mound, fingering the golden curls.

“I have been denuded there before, but in the Forest there were no such niceties. How would you have me, my lord prince?” Lara asked him.

“Your curls are charming, but I prefer a woman’s body to be smooth and free of hair but for her head,” he told her. “I will go and wash myself. The alabaster jar has what you will need, and the bath attendant will help you. When you are finished we will dress. There is no time for massage now, but later I will caress your body with scented cream.”

The bath attendant came, and there was nothing for Lara to do but stand patiently as the woman smoothed the thick paste over her legs, mons and beneath her arms. Within minutes she was being rinsed free of her superfluous hair. She stepped from the basin, and Kaliq was there, wrapping her in a towel.

“Come, we must dry your hair,” he said, and seated her upon a marble bench. With another towel he rubbed all the water from her hair, and then began to brush it with expert strokes. “I love your hair!” he said. “It is like the finest thistledown. Only Forest Faeries have such hair. What was your mother’s name?”

“Ilona,” Lara answered. She could get used to being bathed and brushed by this handsome man. And to her surprise, at no time had he made suggestive remarks, or touched her in a sensual manner. Nor had the sight of her even aroused his manhood, a slender length of flesh she had discreetly noted.

“Then you are, I believe, Maeve’s granddaughter, for Maeve had a daughter named Ilona. She was a rebellious girl for a time, but now I understand she remains by her mother’s side, for Maeve is very old and reaching the point where she will fade away into the next world,” Prince Kaliq said. “Ilona will be the next queen of the faeries, my beauty.”

“Did you know my mother?” Lara asked him.

“Only by reputation,” he answered her.

“How old are you?” she queried, suddenly curious.

He laughed. “I am older than you, of course, but I am yet young enough to be your lover, and teach you of passion, delight and desire,” Kaliq responded. He began to plait several strands of her long gilt hair, but left most of it hanging free. When he had finished he stood up. “Come, it is time for us to dress so we may view the matings between my stallion and the mares.”

Silent servants brought them comfortable white silk kaftans with the necklines embroidered in gold threads. Golden sandals were provided for their feet. When they were garbed he took her hand, leading her from the baths down the narrow hallway again and back into the wide open corridor overlooking the green valley where the large herd of mares grazed peacefully in the sunlight. There were horses of every color—black, white, gray, chestnut, bay, dun, sorrel and roan.

Prince Kaliq lifted a hand, and almost immediately a great white stallion was released into the valley. Snorting proudly, his coal-black mane and tail flying, he dashed among the mares who scattered, panic-stricken. The first mare he separated from the herd was a dainty black. She stood trembling as the stallion covered her with his large body, nuzzling at her neck and breathing heavily. When he had finished with her, servants raced out to capture the mare and lead her away.

The stallion seemed tireless. He cut one gray, two white and three chestnut mares from the herd, mounting each as he had the black mare, filling them with his foaming seed. But he was not yet satisfied. He circled the herd again and again, looking, seeking, and then Lara saw the delicately built golden mare. The stallion saw her, too. He stopped, rearing up on his hind legs as he made quick eye contact with the mare. He began to move toward her, ignoring the other mares in his desire to reach her.