Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (36 page)

Katahn leaned forward eagerly. “I do not offer you your life alone, my
prince. I offer you everything you might desire. I suspect he’d even give you
Kiriath once he’s taken it from your brother.”

`And the price is merely my own treachery, is that it?”

“Treachery?” Katahn frowned. “To Kiriath? Ast! You belong with them no more than a hawk among finches. Why give your life for a realm of cowards? They betrayed you. You owe them nothing.” He leaned back, fingers
steepled beneath his beaklike nose, eyes never leaving Abramm’s. “It is our
destiny to rule the world, Pretender. I offer you the chance to ride with us, to
share in our glory.”

The girls had gone silent, listening intently for his response. He could feel
Shettai’s eyes burning upon him. And he could not deny the offer tempted
him.

“I know you for a stubborn man, Abramm Kalladorne. It has saved your
life more than once. But there comes a time when stubbornness ceases to
serve one’s best interest.”

Still Abramm said nothing.

Katahn dropped his hands and leaned forward. “You have until tomorrow
to decide.” He gestured at the waiting girls. “Perhaps the joys they can provide will convince you where words and other pleasures cannot. Choose one
to be your companion this night. Or more than one, if you wish.”

They eyed him coquettishly, fluttering their lashes, letting some of their
curves slip out from the veils. Abramm frowned and averted his eyes. “I prefer solitude.”

“If you do not choose, I will do so for you. Sabine seems especially eager
to share your bed…. But perhaps she is too aggressive for one who once
took religious vows. Lege is a quiet girl. Submissive. Gentle. She-“

“I’ll take Shettai.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized he
was going to say them, and they shocked him as much as they clearly shocked
her. He saw a flash of unadulterated astonishment on her face, followed
closely by something very like pain before the mask dropped back into place.

Katahn also drew back in surprise. “I offer you my virgin daughters and
you ask for a slave?”

“You said to choose the one I want. I want her.”

The Brogai’s eyes narrowed. Then a shrewd look came into his face, riding
a half smile that made Abramm think he wasn’t nearly so surprised as he’d
pretended. Katahn glanced at the slave woman. “Yes,” he said. “I do believe
she could persuade in ways the others would not.” He waved at Shettai to
obey. “See that he is satisfied, woman, or pay the price.”

Shettai unfolded herself expressionlessly and glided toward the beaded
curtain on the left. After a moment, Abramm followed her.

An alcove with two wooden doors-one of which Shettai had openedlay beyond the beads. Abramm stepped through it, and she closed it behind
him.

An elaborately carved wooden screen shielded the body of the room from
the doorway. To his left, a potted palm stood in the corner beside three glass
lanterns.

Shettai disappeared around the screen, and he followed reluctantly, not
surprised by what awaited in the chamber beyond. To the left, a low table
flanked by pillows held a bowl of fruit and a wine carafe and cups, gleaming
in the light of a small oil lamp. In the corner beyond it, a charcoal brazier had
been lit for warmth. To the right, a large feather-stuffed mattress lay on the
floor, tented with translucent draperies hanging from a ceiling hook. Dressed
in silken sheets and mounds of pillows, its purpose was obvious. He gulped
down a sense of rising panic.

Shettai had gone to the arched balcony opening in the far wall and loosed
the flanking swags of beaded curtain to block out the night. She turned and,
watching him intently, reached up to the back of her neck. A moment later,
her gown’s silken overlayer fluttered to the floor, and he gulped again, for the
clinging, translucent undergown hid almost nothing of her magnificent body.

Then she was standing right in front of him, unfastening the long line of
loops and buttons that kept the front of his tunic together. He watched her
breathlessly, mesmerized by her touch and the rising heat of his own desire.

This close he could smell her exotic, spicy scent and feel the warmth of her flesh. Those long, graceful fingers, working steadily downward, roused all
manner of wild thoughts. Perhaps she might cherish more than mild affection
for him after all. And even if she was simply obeying orders, she wasn’t acting
as if she detested him…. Maybe he would just let her continue.

For two years he had stuffed away this desire, believing it would never be
satisfied. Now satisfaction lay within his grasp. And it would be his last night
of pleasure-his only night of this particular pleasure, thanks to that stupid
vow he’d taken, thanks to the wasted years he’d given to a useless, uncaring
god.

The last of the loops pulled free, and she pushed the stiff tunic off his
shoulders. As it fell to the floor she turned to the ties of his undershirt. Would
it be so wrong to take what she offered, to know what he would never know
if he didn’t?

But then he remembered the look of pain that had chased the astonishment across her face when he’d chosen her. As the ties came loose, he caught
her hands in his own-they were hot and trembling. Her eyes darted up to
his.

“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured. “I’ll tell Katahn what he needs
to hear. I only chose you because…” He smiled. “Because you were the only
one who wasn’t leering at me.”

The startled look faded. Her face became stone, her eyes deep, unreadable
pools.

“I won’t do anything. I promise.”

There was no response. Not the slightest twitch or wrinkle. Except for her
eyes, gleaming with moisture, she could have been made of marble.

Clearly she didn’t believe him.

Releasing her, he stepped back. `And I do have a battle to fight tomorrow.”

He turned away, already regretting what he’d done, and strode for the
balcony, the beads rattling with his passage.

It was a relief to step into the misty night-somehow the room had grown
unbearably hot. He rested his hands on the cold iron railing and gazed at
Xorofin, its dark tumble of closely packed buildings huddled beneath the
ceiling of ever-present mist. Fish-bladder lanterns hung on posts throughout
the darkness, glowing green and lilac, amber and red, like so many evil eyes
peering out from their hidey-holes.

He took some deep breaths, and as the internal fire dissipated, his head
cleared.

A crowd milled in the plaza below, jostling between the amphitheater’s
stone perimeter fence and the merchants’ booths and tables. Their voices carried up to him on the still air, a staccato mutter punctuated by sharp bursts
of laughter and the wheedle of a piper’s song. He smelled the hot grease they
used to fry the spima worms, the fragrances of incense and baking bread, all
overlaying the faint, ubiquitous stench of burning fish oil.

Until that crowd went home-or settled for the night-he had no hope
of climbing down the amphitheater’s face. There looked to be little hope of
it, anyway. The smooth-dressed stone to either side of his balcony sported
none of the architectural details that might provide hand or footholds. Nor
would knotting the bed curtains together help-all of them together with his
tunic would not begin to reach the pavement below.

He stood there a long time, the night chill seeping through his silk shirt.
Katahn’s offer tumbled tantalizingly through his mind, powered by the forces
of fear and desire. He did not wish to die, least of all in the manner Katahn
described. He wanted the respect and admiration of others, wanted power
and justice. Wanted Shettai.

The image of her in that veil of watery silk made his pulse accelerate and
his mouth go dry all over again.

Oh yes. He wanted her.

And he thought it very likely Katahn would give her to him permanently.
If he asked.

And swore allegiance to Khrell.

A swell of agitation seized him, and he pushed himself back from the
railing, paced back into the room. Shettai sat cross-legged at the low table,
swallowed in the violet and gold of his tunic, which she’d draped over her
shoulders and which was much too large for her.

He ignored her and strode for the door. But as his hand closed on the
latch, he realized Katahn wouldn’t let him leave, and asking would only
replace Shettai with Lege or that overeager Sabine. Muttering an oath, he
strode back through the beads to the balcony, studying the wall below it
again. Nothing had changed. Smooth face, brightly lit, guards below …
There would be no escape tonight.

11
“You must be humiliated, crushed … thoroughly broken….

He had seen men thoroughly broken. Had swallowed down bile as he had
listened to their screams, watched them burned, dismembered, skinned alive.
For a wild moment, the prospect of facing such torture filled him with terror,
and he knew he couldn’t do it.

Whip and carrot. Fear and desire.

“Swear allegiance … first of your northern race to wear the Shadow’s colors … everything you might desire….”

He was gripping the rail so hard it hurt, horrified to discover he wanted
to do it. Sweet Fires aloft! What manner of despicable thing have I become? How
can I even think this way?

And yet it was there, pressing at him, throwing up reasons and rationales.
Katahn was right. His family despised him, the Mataio had betrayed him, and
his god had abandoned him. What did he owe any of them? Why should he
give up his life for them? Why should he give up Shettai for them?

He hissed another oath, then shoved away from the railing once again and
paced back into the room.

Shettai still sat at the table, unmoving, her hands clasped before her, her
head bowed. Desire flared in him, tainted with a darkness that matched the
awful thoughts in his soul. He tore his eyes from her and, consumed with
restless fire, paced to the door and back.

Then onto the balcony again and back into the room. He dropped onto
the pillows across from Shettai, poured wine into the cup, and gulped it
down, thinking Katahn was right in that, as well-perhaps the best thing was
to lose himself in drunken stupor.

He poured another cup, but a new thought intruded before he could
drink-a real man faced death and danger with his head up and his eyes clear
and did not seek to hide from it by pickling his brain with spirits. Uncle
Simon had said that. But Simon was a hero, the one real hero Abramm had
actually known. Simon would not for a moment consider what Abramm was
considering now.

He set the cup down, sick with self-loathing, and drove himself up to
stride back to the balcony-

“How many times are you going to do that?” Shettai’s voice startled him,
drew him around to look at her.

Her dark eyes watched him dispassionately. “You can’t escape. You have
only to look up to see that.”

Outside again, he did so and saw the veren on their stanchions, dark vulturine forms underlit by the glow of red lanterns. He remembered a rocky
beach, a man running for his life one moment, his headless corpse sprawled
at water’s edge the next.

Abramm went back in and dropped onto the pillows.

Shettai watched him drink, then sighed. “You’re all tense. Lie down and
I’ll rub out the knots.”

Glancing at the bed, it dawned on him that one of them-he himselfwould have to spend the night in a chair or else sleep on the floor. And
wouldn’t that make great preparation for the battle of his life?

He realized then what she’d said, what she’d suggested, and the very
thought set all that raging lust for her loose again. He took another swallow
of wine and shook his head. “I’d rather not.”

She sat silently for a moment, then said, “I had no idea you found me so
distasteful.”

Was that hurt in her voice? He looked up in surprise. She seemed very
small huddled beneath the big, heavy tunic, and for a moment, unexpectedly
vulnerable. He hardly knew what to say, particularly in light of how he felt at
the moment. It was safer to watch his cup, and so he did. “I don’t find you
distasteful at all,” he said carefully. “I just … don’t want you to think of me
as a goat.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the faint twitching of her lips.

“I’ve never thought of you as a goat, Pretender.”

“Well, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“So why did you choose me, then?”

“I told you. I didn’t relish the thought of being mauled by one of Katahn’s
daughters.”

“Mauled.” Amusement definitely colored her voice.

He studied the cup, rotating it in his hands. “I begin to understand what
you mean about goats, I think.”

The tension between them was dissipating now, all his wild thoughts settling, fading away, as if he had been insane and was finally returning to his
right mind.

The tunic rasped as she reached for her wine cup. “Katahn has made you
a remarkable offer.”