Retribution (6 page)

Naomi lowered her eyes. She could hardly bear
to think of it. “Yes. Margrave Aranyi said he was sorry, but he
must keep this thing in the dungeon. He would not bring such filth
in the house, he assured me, but that he had unfinished
business.”

“You see,” I said, “the man used his gift
against me, against my children and me. Margrave Aranyi and I must
take our revenge.”

Naomi agreed without enthusiasm, sharing my
thoughts as I brooded on my sufferings, then withdrew from my mind
in alarm. “You must be careful! You and your lord husband both.
Tell Margrave Aranyi what you have seen.”

I stared into Naomi’s bright green eyes. The
woman made me uneasy, our encounters always leaving me feeling
inadequate. She was not ‘Graven but a genuine witch, a gifted woman
born of generations of gifted women, healers and sorceresses who
lived isolated in the forest, serving Aranyi when and if they
chose. Naomi’s manner, while necessarily kind in her role as
healer, had a self-sufficiency and aloofness that precluded
intimacy. I didn’t know what, exactly, I had “seen,” didn’t like to
ask Naomi what seemed so obvious to her that she could read it
easily from the top layer of my mind in a brief moment of shallow
communion.

There were deliberate noises from next door
as Dominic, letting me know he was awake, knocked softly on the
connecting door from the bathroom and entered. Naomi pushed the
truckle bed away and stood to greet Dominic. She is unusually tall
for a woman; like Dominic, she has the alien genetic strain that
makes people grow long and lean with superior strength. She stared
at my husband eye to eye, but he shook his head at her and her gaze
fell. Glancing back at me, she curled her fingers in the sign
against evil as she left the room.

Dominic sat in the chair beside my bed. My
husband was pale this morning, more from emotion, I suspected, than
from any physical cause. His inner eyelids were neither fully glass
nor completely silver, but a strange smoky in-between state I had
never seen before. “Are you better today, beloved?” he asked.
Unlike Naomi, he did not attempt to use
crypta
. He had
bumped around in his room rather than thinking to me, and he spoke
aloud, cautiously, watching for my every reaction.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

Dominic smiled. “It’s all right,” he said. “I
know my face looks cruel. It’s been an asset, much of the
time.”

My whole being seemed to tilt on its axis,
spin out of orbit. I remembered the “bandit” who had carried me
upstairs, who had laughed off my threats of my husband’s
vengeance—because he was my husband. Yet I had not recognized him.
And I had felt, had been certain, that the mind was Reynaldo’s,
that he had cleverly changed his appearance. How could I not know
Dominic, who is my second self, who is tied to me, and I to him, by
a mental symmetry that is unmistakable? Delirium, fever, fear, even
jealousy and anger, should make no difference. I would know Dominic
anywhere, under any conditions. His mind is distinctive.

That was it
. Reynaldo had infiltrated
my
mind, as he had at Lady Ladakh’s, when he had sent me the
ugly dreams of rape. He had worked in my mind again, here, so that
I had seen, not my husband, but a peculiar manifestation of
Reynaldo. He had placed a mask, not over Dominic, but over my
perceptions.
Was this what Naomi wanted me to tell
Dominic?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, reaching for
Dominic’s hand to initiate communion. Too risky. We must have been
in communion last night, through touch, but it had not prevented
such an appalling delusion. I drew my hand back under the covers.
“I would never consciously think such things at you.”

Dominic shook his head, the strange twisted
smile on his lips. “It’s a new experience for me,” he said, “being
called a ‘motherfucking bastard,’ and feeling only love for the
person saying it. Perhaps I can become Christian after all.”

I gasped. Surely, when I had thought those
words, they had gone to Reynaldo, not to Dominic. Even if it had
been my husband carrying me, Reynaldo had been the one trespassing
in my mind. He should have received the words, not Dominic. I
stared at Dominic’s hazy inner eyelids, watching the areas of
opacity scud across the clear irises like storm clouds in a wind.
“Tell me,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to know. “What else
happened?”

Dominic didn’t answer me immediately. He
moved to the window to gaze out at the stark mountains, deceptively
soft and green in the brief summer season. One hand crept to the
hilt of his dagger, fingering the prism on the pommel. “Amalie,” he
said, “you called me that and a great many other unpleasant things.
You fought me as if I were about to violate you, and when I held
your arms you used your gift against me, to make the insults
real.”

“I didn’t!” I said. “I couldn’t have!”

My husband turned from the window at my cry.
Those same pale eyes that had so frightened me last night watched
me now from across the room, wary and beseeching. “Not completely,”
he said. “But you nearly succeeded in filling my mouth with
shit.”

“Can you ever forgive me?” I almost wished he
hadn’t said it, hadn’t verified the ultimate insult I had inflicted
on my husband. Better to go on pretending that I had not committed
so dreadful an offense.

“Forgive you?” he said. “It is I who should—”
He walked slowly back to the side of my bed where he stared down at
me with a hungry look, part ravenous animal, part humble
petitioner. “Please, Amalie.” He spoke quietly, but with great
force. “Tell me the truth. If I have done anything to you, or if
you have perceived anything within me, that warrants such
treatment, you must not keep it to yourself. I will not be
offended. You must give me the chance to make it right. If you lock
it away inside, it will consume you.”

The tears in my eyes made his face blurry.
“Of course you haven’t ‘done anything.’ And even if I was angry
with you, I would never treat you like that.”

Again I thought of Naomi’s warning, again
rejected it. How could I voice all my fears to Dominic now? There
was nothing definite, and my suspicions were too vague to put into
words. All I knew was that somehow, in my sickness and delirium,
vulnerable and open to a psychotic telepath, I had confused my
husband’s mind with Reynaldo’s. And I would not so insult Dominic
by telling him that, not after he had worked so hard to rescue me,
risking his life and Niall’s, when it was I who had put myself in
jeopardy.

While I pondered what I could say, Dominic
had moved away again, upright and graceful, toward the door to the
bathroom. “Don’t leave,” I said. “Don’t go away afraid of me.” I
could sense it, now that I was fully awake, the fear that lurked
behind the brave front of Dominic’s soldierly bearing.

Dominic’s hand was still on his dagger. “It
is good for a man to fear his wife,” he said. “Otherwise he might
grow fat and lazy and careless.” He laughed, a harsh low sound like
a sob.

“Dominic, listen to me.” I told him of my
arrival at the bandits’ castle, explained how returning home sick
and feverish had brought on a strange kind of flashback. “I was
confused, but I swear to you, nothing like that will happen
again.”

Dominic’s hand lifted from his dagger’s hilt.
“Was that all? My love. You must stop apologizing for things that
are not your fault.” He returned to the bed, sat down on the chair.
“I forget, much of the time, that I’m living with someone who’s as
powerful a telepath as I am. You conceal it very well, flatter my
masculine pride.” His color was back, splotches of red standing out
like blemishes on cheeks and forehead. He at last dared to touch
me, cradling my head against his shoulder.

I found myself shrinking from his touch.
Dominic felt my reluctance, attributed it to my continuing sense of
contrition. “Amalie, you don’t understand.” He put a strong hand
under my chin, tilted my face up to meet his eyes. “You’re
magnificent. You’ve been my wife these six years, and mother to our
children, but I had nearly forgotten just how splendidly
temperamental and imaginative you are. Last night you reminded me
that you’re ‘Gravina, and a better match than I deserve. I’ve been
lucky to keep you all this time with so little effort.” His voice
lowered seductively. “I assure you, I’ll do better from now
on.”

Far from angering him or insulting him, now
that he thought he knew the cause, what I had done to Dominic had
impressed him, made him view me with new respect. And, typically,
it had rekindled his desire. He could be aroused so easily, by a
word or a thought. Any display of my power, however bizarre the
form, worked on him like an aphrodisiac. As at Lady Ladakh’s, he
was restraining himself with difficulty, only waiting for my signal
of readiness.

I could not give it to him; things were
different. After the battle, then at Lady Ladakh’s, I had learned
to accept Dominic’s constant torture of Reynaldo. Here, at home, it
was too much. Dominic had stepped it up a notch or two, no longer
keeping it isolated, one part of his mind for torture, another for
regular thoughts and daily life. It was all integrated now, a
seamless operation. In communion with him, every sense—sight and
hearing, smell and taste—and most of all, touch—had a double edge
for me.

I remembered my fright as the bandit-Dominic
carried me upstairs. Had there been some truth in my fears of rape?
Was it possible for such a situation to exist between Dominic and
me? Certainly his desire now partook of both love and his hidden
vice, his delight in inflicting pain. His eyes registered the
change, having become an amalgamation of the glass of anger and the
silver of serenity—a clouded mirror. My unwillingness heightened
his enjoyment, as it would have spoiled it under ordinary
circumstances, and there was a parallel mix of emotions in him, an
edgy anticipation of my volatile reactions. He was experiencing the
sadist’s greatest pleasure, most excited when he shares some of his
victim’s terror and pain. Whatever Dominic’s brave words, he was
afraid of me, and I of him.

As if to increase my fears, Dominic thought
of another bonus of my rediscovered powers. “When you’re ready, my
love,” he said in the deep, vibrant voice of arousal, “you must
show me more of your tricks. We can use them on—” he lowered his
eyes in the direction of the dungeon.

A part of my mind responded with a thrilled,
somewhat breathless fascination. With Dominic’s arm around me, in
shallow communion with a man I was beginning to fear, I felt us
sinking deeper into a quagmire of our own making and made no effort
to turn us back to solid ground. After all, I rationalized to
myself, I could never experience my husband’s emotions without
having a complementary reaction.

“When I’m stronger,” I answered Dominic’s
invitation, putting off a confrontation for a day or two. All that
mattered right now was that Dominic wasn’t angry with me, that he
hadn’t guessed the full truth, that he had forgiven the terrible
insults I had spat at him and the humiliating things I had done to
him.

“Seal the promise with a kiss.” Dominic
pressed warm lips against my dry, cracked mouth. For one
unbelievable moment my husband’s dark hair flared bright red, the
narrow beak of a nose was replaced by a gaping hole, the smooth
chin was covered with a bloodied, unkempt beard. An inner voice of
supplication, hoarse with suffering, invaded my mind:
Amalie,
let me die
here in Aranyi
,
my true home
, before I
blinked and thought with all my power for Dominic. My husband’s
face reconstituted itself; the unwelcome voice was stilled.

When we broke contact, Dominic’s face was
grave. “You need food,” he said. “You’re light-headed.” He gave no
other indication that he was aware of the disturbing sights and the
sounds that had shaken me.

“Call Katrina,” I said, acquiescing in
Dominic’s decision to avoid the obvious. “She can help me with a
bath.”

“Katrina’s away for a while,” Dominic said.
“Naomi and I have been looking after you.” He grinned. “It’s quite
an education, being a lady’s maid.”

A whole castle full of servants, and Dominic
doing Katrina’s job? “What’s wrong? You shouldn’t have to do
that.”

“I’ve enjoyed it,” Dominic said. He fingered
my lank hair. “Shall I bathe you?”

“No, Dominic,” I said. “I’m not well enough
yet for such excitement. Give me a few days to get my strength
back. Then we’ll make up for all our lost time together.”

Dominic opened the door. “I’ll get you some
food, then maybe I can convince you to trust me with the bath.”

“Why can’t Magali—” But he had gone.

I lay in quiet disappointment. It was
unusually early in the morning, but I had somehow expected a
different kind of reception when I returned to full consciousness.
I had thought that Katrina, and Magali the housekeeper, and Isobel,
and many of the cooks and maids, the laundresses and the dairy
workers—women I had come to know, to greet by name—would be eager
to welcome me home, might even be waiting outside the door so as
not to miss the moment when they could be ushered in to
congratulate ‘Gravina Aranyi on resuming her rightful place.

I listened hopefully for a few minutes, but
the silence was eerie. Even at this hour I should hear bustling
footsteps in the corridors, a few shouts from outdoors, animals
being led to pasture, workers heading to their tasks about the
castle grounds, or in the outbuildings. Most mornings I slept
through the purposeful sounds that were as regular and reliable as
the roar of waves on a beach, or traffic on a highway. Awake, it
was bizarre not to hear them. A few cowbells jangled, a horse
neighed, sheep bleated their eternal indignant complaints, but of
human sounds there was nothing.