Reluctant Concubine (6 page)

“Pray you do not have to.” Kumra turned back from the door before walking out. “I prefer the old ways, like Tahar.”

CHAPTER FOUR

(Keela)

I stepped closer to the bed where Keela trembled. A double-layered blanket covered her, the outer panel made of blue damask and embroidered with yellow bell flowers, the inner panel finely woven wool. I had admired the cover when I had seen it in the wash. The petals had been done by such a fine hand that the flowers seemed to dance across the material. Now, in the dim room, they looked like blossoms heaped upon a grave.

I reached inside my tunic and clutched the phial hanging on the cord around my neck, my only reminder of my mother and freedom. But even that could not bring me comfort as my fears surrounded me.

I spoke Keela’s name, but she did not respond. I checked her forehead, found it cool and damp with sweat. When I drew the cover down, her trembling increased until I had to hold her in place.

She wore only a thin sleeping robe and her charm belt. I freed her from the robe so I could fully see her pale body, but tied the charm belt back on, even though I did not believe in its powers. She believed, and that might make a difference.

I looked over her pale skin, expecting a bite mark from something poisonous, but did not find it even as I turned her over so I would not miss anything. She shook worse with each passing moment, until her body went into quick, hard convulsions.

A time comes in the progression of disease that all healers recognize, the last chance beyond which exists no return. I looked into Keela’s eyes, the tiny black spots of her pupils that did not see me, and knew I was losing her fast.

I asked my mother’s spirit for guidance and did everything she taught me. I tasted Keela’s sweat—bitter. Her breath stank like tidewater trapped in the low places on the beach, and in it I could smell the poison. I ran out to Kumra’s chamber to ask how long Keela had been suffering and what she had eaten, but Kumra had left, and I had no time to find her.

I returned to the girl, opened her mouth, and shoved my fingers down her throat as far as I could, until her stomach gave up its deadly charge. As the sour stench of vomit filled the room, I grabbed the clay jar from the corner and forced half the water down her throat, then made her give it back again. I did the same with the rest of the water, not an easy task as Keela sputtered and choked, resisting my efforts.

When at last I finished, I returned to Kumra’s chamber and dragged over another jar of water to clean Keela and her bed, then brought in one of Kumra’s throws to cover the girl, whose convulsions had diminished to weak shivers.

And with that, as little as I had done, I had done all I could. At home, I could have tried a fusion of mixed herbs, but in this strange land I would not have known where to look for them, nor did I have the freedom to leave the House of Tahar and wander into the woods.

Without true powers, I did not have the ability to send my spirit into Keela’s body to seek the illness and draw it out, to tell her spirit how to help me, what to do.

My mother used to say youth had its own healing powers, and to them I entrusted Keela. She was young, her body strong. I hoped strong enough—for both our sakes.

I held her hand, anchoring her body to life by the power of touch. I talked to her, for her spirit to hear and find the way back, should it wander. I told her the story of Lawana, the merchant and the beggar boy, the faithful wife, and by the time I got to the Guardians and the Forgotten City, her breathing had grown even.

“You would have liked the Forgotten City.” I wiped her face with a wet cloth. “The houses and towers were beautiful beyond anything that exists now in the world. In the middle of the labyrinth of streets stood a round building of wonders, topped not by a flat roof but something that looked like a giant bowl turned upside down. They called it a dome.”

She gave no indication that she heard me, but I went on with the tale.

“The outside they covered in sheets of lustrous gold. The inside of the building was one large open space, with seats enough for multitudes. They painted the ceiling blue and attached golden symbols for all the stars as they stood in the moment of the creation of the world. So exact were their measurements that scholars came from distant kingdoms to study them.”

I glanced at Keela, and although she did not look in need of clarification, I explained anyway. “Scholars were magical people who studied all things and could explain even the unexplainable.” I did not know anything more about their strange order than that.

“In exchange for seeing the Map of Eternity, they brought wondrous gifts, metals many times the strength of iron, and lamps that used less oil and burned ten times brighter than the ordinary ones. They even taught the people of the Forgotten City how to make water come to their houses, so nobody had to pull water from a well or go to the creek.”

This had always seemed the most impressive part of the tale to me, and as a child, I had often wished the secrets of the Forgotten City were still known to us.

“These scholars gladly gave any knowledge they had for a glimpse at the Map of Eternity, for when they compared it to the position of the stars of their own times, they could tell many things that passed before in the world and even predict events that were to come.”

I went on, for her sake as much as my own. I needed to think about something else than what would happen to me if I failed to restore her health.

“Other strange people came to the Forgotten City too, philosophers, the wise men of the world. They came together in the Forum—their name for the building with the dome that held the Map of Eternity—and by sharing their knowledge, they increased it a hundredfold. The three Guardians of the city asked only one thing of all these masters of knowledge—that before they left, they wrote their wisdom onto scrolls to preserve in that place. The walls of the Forum were covered in holes from floor to ceiling, like honeycomb. And these recesses held all the knowledge of the world.”

I wondered what Keela would have said to such a thing could she have talked. Many of the Shahala did not believe the myth of the Forgotten City and thought of it as another of our many tales that were but entertainment for small children. My mother, however, talked about the Forum often and with such detail as if she had been there, so it lived vividly in my memory.

“I do not know what to tell you,” I said to the pale-faced girl and squeezed her hand. “Each person must choose what they believe.”

The breeze brought the smell of baking bread from the kitchen and the sound of servant women singing. I could see the blue sky through a small window that stood open to let in fresh air. It seemed as if all life stretched out there, shut away from me, and I was already buried in the dim chamber with the listless body that lay on the bed.

My stomach clenched at the thought, the hunger of my missed morning meal replaced with nausea. I had not seen any Kadar tombs around the House of Tahar. Maybe like the Shahala, they had sacred places to rest their dead. Did they bury the spiritless bodies in the hillside as my own people did? Or did they use caves like some foreigners? Did they burn the bodies until only the bones remained?

Everything I had ever heard about funerals in distant lands flooded my terrified mind, as my thoughts circled back to the same unimaginable horror again and again—what it would be like to be buried alive.

Keela whimpered, startling me out of my anxious wonderings. I wiped her brow, frustrated that I could not do more, and tucked Kumra’s red silk coverlet around the girl’s body. I held Keela’s limp hand and whispered to her about all the good things in life, the few that I knew. And in between, I prayed to the spirits, pleaded for their favor.

When Kumra returned, she found me on my knees next to the bed.

“I will clean these.” I jumped to my feet and picked up the soiled linens from the corner, but she motioned for me to put them down.

“You will stay here.” She moved toward the sheets and wrinkled her nose at the smell of vomit. “So the illness came from her stomach.” She thought for a moment. “Is it out?”

I nodded, hoping and praying it would be so.

Kumra walked to her daughter, her dress swooshing over the stones as it swept the floor. “Will she live?”

“Yes,” I said, not because I knew so but in case Keela could hear me.

Kumra glanced toward the pile in the corner. “I will send someone.” She looked less imposing now, standing by her daughter’s bed in the middle of the sour-smelling room.

“May I ask for Onra?” I snapped my mouth shut with the last word, stunned by my own impudence.

Kumra narrowed her eyes, and I rushed on before she had a chance to come up with a punishment for my brazenness. “She helped me with my forehead when I first arrived. She is good with the sick, and she is strong. I might need to change the bed again.”

Kumra looked at her daughter one more time and left without a word. I sagged against the wall with relief but found no time to rest. Keela began thrashing again, and it required all my strength and attention to keep her from falling from the bed.

* * *

The time of the midday meal had passed when Onra finally came with a jar of fresh water and a bowl of cheese and bread from the kitchen. She looked thinner than I remembered and would not meet my eyes.

I set the bowl on the floor while she refilled Keela’s jug. When she finished, I reached for her hand to still her, unsure whether she would want me to ask about what had happened to her.

“I wish we were still together in Maiden Hall,” I said.

She looked up at last but said nothing.

“You did not cry.” I wanted to put some honor into all that was dishonorable.

She shook her head, and her short hair swayed listlessly around her hollow cheeks.

“It must be nice to be back with your family.” For my own sake as much as for hers, I needed to find something good in all that had happened.

“Mother says now that I am a woman, I will have a family of my own soon,” she spoke finally. “Children would be good.” Her lips stretched into a sad smile. “But so would be never seeing another man.”

She watched Keela while I ran out to the latrines, but she left as soon as I returned, not daring to linger. Before she rushed off, I asked her for some goat milk for Keela, hoping we would get another chance to talk. But when the small jar of goat milk came, Igril delivered it with stars in her eyes as she walked through the splendor of Pleasure Hall.

Her lips pressed into a thin line as she handed me the jar without a word, clearly displeased that I should be assigned a task there while she had to work outside. She left the chamber in a huff, but I heard her respectful greetings to the concubines on her way out.

I forced some of the milk down Keela’s throat, then waited.

She did not wake for another day, and then only to tell me she would have me beaten as soon as she felt well enough to watch. She remembered my fingers down her throat.

I cared for her as best I could, aware that each passing day brought closer Tahar’s return, after which escape would be impossible.

In the mornings, I rose early and waited for Kumra to leave to issue the day’s orders to the maidens. Keela slept a lot, oblivious to the noises of Pleasure Hall outside her chamber. She recovered a little more each day, so I had to act fast, for I did not know how much longer I would be required by her side.

I crept into Kumra’s chamber, jumping at the slightest noise. She had several chests full of garments and cloth still on the bolt in every color of the rainbow.

With trembling fingers, I searched through her treasures, listening for any noise outside. Thrice footsteps chased me back to Keela’s chamber, but they passed each time. At last I found a length of cloth suitable for a healer’s veil and not so fancy that it would be Kumra’s favorite and she would miss it too soon.

I wrapped the silk around my belly under my clothes, then tucked my tunic carefully back into place. As soon as I could leave Pleasure Hall, I would go to Talmir for food—he had also promised to find a small flask for water—and keep on going until I reached the hills.

But as the days passed, I still had to spend my nights on a blanket tossed onto the cold floor in the corner of Keela’s chamber. And as she fully recovered, her mood only grew darker.

“Do you know Rugir?” she asked one day.

I shook my head, and she huffed, her round face snapping into the icy expression her mother wore so well. “He is the bravest warrior in my father’s House.”

I nodded, unsure what she expected me to say.

“Before they left to battle, he promised to perform an act of such bravery that my father would gift him with his first concubine. He is going to ask for me.” She hesitated. “My mother forbids it.” Her face crumpled into misery then, and her shoulders sagged, making her look much younger than her age.

I wondered when Keela had the occasion to talk to Rugir. None who lived in Pleasure Hall were allowed to cross the threshold of Warrior Hall. And no man other than Tahar was permitted in Pleasure Hall except the sons of the concubines, and they only until the age of eight, when they were taken for training.

Perhaps Keela and Rugir had seen each other in the Great Hall. If so, then Rugir was already in Tahar’s favor. Only his captains and a handful of his favorite warriors attended the feast, the Great Hall not being large enough to seat the whole of Tahar’s army. The rest of the warriors ate at Warrior Hall or in the kitchen, or in their own hut if they had merited a concubine and had a family.

Of course, even with Rugir being a worthy warrior, Kumra probably wanted a better match. Another warlord, perhaps. “Is that why you drank the poison?”

Keela’s lips parted, and I could see the denial on her tongue. But then she shrugged.

“Where did you find it?”

She slipped out of bed for the first time and walked to her mother’s chamber on unsteady legs to point at the ceiling.

Near the holes that let in air and light, someone had secured a clever ledge of wood. On it stood a number of pottery bowls with various plants growing in them, some known to me, others not. The invention seemed both marvelous and horrifying.