Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1) (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was madness in memory, especially when the memory wasn’t yours.  Brishen lay on his pallet, eyes closed, and watched the life of young Talumey twist and entwine with recollections of his own life.  Beloved faces flickered in his mind’s eye, some his, some Talumey’s, along with emotions that accompanied them.  Father, mother, two sisters.

Brishen raised a hand to touch the older woman’s proud, lined features.  “My mother,” he whispered.

“What of your mother, Brishen?”

The voice was familiar.  Anhuset, his commander.  Brishen frowned.  No, not his commander.  He was her commander.  His cousin and lieutenant.  “My mother,” he said.  “Love her.  Her name is Tarawin.”

His commander spoke again.  “No, Brishen.  Your mother is Secmis, Queen of the Flatlands.  Shadow Queen of Bast-Haradis.”

Brishen frowned.  Another image replaced that of Tarawin, this one of a woman possessing the haughty beauty that had captured a king’s interest and hinted at the brittle soul beneath it.

“What is he saying?”

A different voice, this time speaking in the Common tongue with a Gauri’s lyrical accent.  The prince’s ugly wife with the frightening eyes.

Brishen shook his head.  “Lovely inside,” he argued with himself.  “Laughs easily.”

Anhuset answered the Gauri woman in Common.  “He’s confusing his mother Secmis with Talumey’s mother, Tarawin.  I don’t know Tarawin, but I do know Secmis.  She rarely laughs.”

He wanted to counter her comment, clarify that he’d spoken of Ildiko, not Tarawin, but his tongue felt glued to the top of his mouth.  He was hot, broiling—as if someone had staked him out beneath the sun and let it roast him alive.  “Water,” he rasped.

A cup pressed against his dry lips, and Brishen drained the water in gulps.  A hand caressed his brow, cool on his hot skin.  He opened his eyes and found Ildiko staring at him with those strange human eyes.  He instinctively jerked away and tried to sit up.  “Your Highness,” he murmured.  He was a lowly soldier and broke all protocol, lying down before a member of the royal house.

Ildiko.  She was Ildiko to him in private.  Two pairs of hands pressed him back to the pallet.  Brishen blinked at Anhuset who offered more water.  He turned his head away and sought Ildiko once more.

She stroked his arm, and her voice was soft, worried.  “Do you know me, Brishen?”

The constantly shifting patterns of combined memories clouded his vision, even with his eyes open, and his stomach roiled in protest.  Brishen closed his eyes.  “My wife,” he said.  “My Ildiko.”

“Yes, Brishen.  Your Ildiko.”  Like her touch, her voice soothed him.  “Anhuset and I will stay with you until the fever is over.”

He wanted to thank them for their vigilance—Ildiko, who’d never witnessed a mortem light’s possession of a light vessel and Anhuset who was still put out by having to eat the revolting potato thing at the wedding banquet.  An image of the steaming maggot on his plate overrode all the jumbled memories trying to cloud his mind.  Bile surged into his throat, and saliva flooded his mouth.

“I’m going to be sick,” he muttered.

The words had barely passed his lips before he was shoved to his side.  Hands held his head and lifted his hair as he emptied his stomach.  More memories surged through his mind—a week of illness when he was a child and clutched a carved wooden bowl to his chest as Tarawin crooned to him what a brave boy he was.  Another similar memory, only he huddled in a grand bed holding a silver basin while one of the royal nurses stood safely out of range and eyed him with disgust as he retched.

A cool cloth bathed his hot face, and he captured the wrist of the person wielding it.  Fragile bones in his grip.  Human bones.  Easily snapped if he exerted the smallest amount of pressure.  Brishen traced the spider network of tiny veins just beneath her skin with his thumb.  Though they were thinner than silk thread, he could feel the blood pulse through them in a steady rhythm.

He cracked his eyelids open just enough to find Ildiko holding the cloth.  Her other hand carded through his hair.  “Battle and vomit, wife.  Not what you should witness during your inaugural trip to Haradis.”  Nothing had gone quite as he planned since the moment they rode out of the Gauri capital city.  “Shall I take you home?”  He wouldn’t blame Ildiko if she said yes.

She flashed him a brief smile of her square teeth.  “You are taking me home, Brishen.  There’s nothing for me in Pricid.”

“What of your family?”

Her smile faded.  “Blood ties do not always make a family.  My family rests in a crypt overlooking the sea.  I need to make a new family now.”  She traced one of his eyebrows with her fingers.  “Can you take a little more water?  Rinse your mouth?”

Brishen nodded and this time accepted the cup Anhuset offered him.  He lay back, inhaling and exhaling slowly, willing his rebellious stomach to calm down, despite his and Talumey’s memories pitching his vision so hard, he felt like he’d spent a night emptying a wine barrel, only to have someone shove him into it, seal the lid and toss the thing into a stormy sea.  He refused to think of potatoes.

The sounds of cleaning and straightening filled his ears.  He wanted to apologize for the mess but didn’t dare open his mouth in case he ruined all their hard work.

Somehow he managed to drift into a restless sleep plagued with dreams and cluttered with two sets of memories.  He thrashed on the pallet and ripped the blanket off his body.  A surprised yelp filtered through his dreams, followed by two voices speaking in Common.

“Did he slash you?”

“Just my sleeve.  Bursin’s wings, you are fast!”

“Not fast enough.”

“It’s just my sleeve, Anhuset.”

“Lucky it wasn’t your face or your throat, Your Highness.  You shouldn’t be here.”

“This is exactly where I should be.”

“Then until he’s lucid, stay out of his way.  I might not be as quick as you need me to be a second time.”

Brishen struggled against the somnolent shackles that held him prisoner.  He’d kill whoever had tried to hurt his wife, split his skull the way he he’d done with the Beladine raider who attacked her.  She was ugly; she was beautiful, and she was his.  “My Ildiko,” he whispered.

She didn’t offer her soothing touch, but her voice calmed him.  “I’m here, Brishen.  I’m not going anywhere.”

He hoped not.

CHAPTER NINE

They were into the fourth day of their journey, and Ildiko was beginning to miss the sun.  She fiddled with her horse’s mane as she and their entourage rode ever closer to Haradis, capital of Bast-Haradis.  The moon had waned to a slivered crescent in the sky, and the night was so dark, she was virtually blind.  The black-armored Kai were no more than vague shapes with disembodied eyes that flitted like pairs of fireflies.

She relied on her mount’s sense of direction for home as well as its instinct to stay with a herd for protection.  Wagon wheels creaked behind her, accompanied by the distant howls of wolf packs and the voices of the Kai who spoke and bantered with each other.

For a moment Ildiko had the oddest sense of being set adrift alone on a vast sea in a small boat.  Her horse’s rolling gait was the tide that rocked her.  Beyond her senses lay a horizon she couldn’t see and land she couldn’t reach; the shadows of leviathans that swam the deep abyss and swallowed ships whole lurked beneath her.

The resolve she held to embrace this new life and call these people hers fractured a little.  She was an outlander with a strange face and strange habits.  Ildiko pushed back the sudden swell of terror and homesickness.  It would be difficult enough adjusting to a different household among foreign humans with their own peculiar customs.  But this was far more than culture shock.  The Kai weren’t even human.  An ancient, insular people who shunned the sun and swallowed the spirits of their dead, they were nothing like the Gauri or any other peoples Ildiko had ever encountered at court.  She would be as a babe just learning to walk as she navigated her way amongst the Kai and their royal court.  No doubt she’d make mistakes and embarrass herself—and Brishen—on more than one occasion.  That thought sent her stomach plummeting to her feet.

Her husband rode ahead of her, deep in conversation with the cavalry commander.  Mertok’s arrival during their battle with the Beladine raiders had swelled the Kai troop to formidable numbers.  Brishen had assured Ildiko that it would take far more than a band of cutthroats to defeat them now.  They remained on alert; however, and kept the day watch doubled when they stopped to camp and sleep.

As if he sensed her gaze on him, Brishen glanced over his shoulder and halted his mount.  Kai riders eddied around him as he waited for her to catch up to him.  He offered her a tired smile, and even in the suffocating darkness, Ildiko saw the weary lines etched into his features.  Recovered from the mortem light’s possession, he still bore remnants of exhaustion from the fever.

“That is a somber set to your mouth, wife.  What grim thoughts plague you?”

She hesitated in telling him.  Brishen had been even more solicitous after he’d awakened from the mortem fever and discovered her sitting nearby with Anhuset.  Ildiko had exercised her newly acquired rank and extracted a reluctant promise from the Kai woman not to say anything about her slashed sleeve unless Brishen asked directly.

“You’re asking me to lie to my cousin and my commander, Your Highness.”  Anhuset’s eyes had narrowed to glowing slits.

Ildiko had stripped out of her torn gown, aware of the Kai’s equal measure of disapproval and curiosity. She shrugged into a new gown, haphazardly tying laces.  As long as her clothes didn’t outright fall off her, she didn’t think the Kai soldiers would much care that she looked more bedraggled than a laundress on wash day.

“I’m asking no such thing.”  She ran her hands over the skirt in a futile attempt to smooth out the wrinkles.  “If he asks what happened, tell him, but there’s no reason to run tattling to him over something as trivial as a torn sleeve.”

Anhuset crossed her arms, mutinous.  “It could have been worse.”

Ildiko didn’t argue that one.  It could have been infinitely worse.  Her heart had almost leapt from her chest when Brishen suddenly lashed out in delirium, his nails slicing through her sleeve like knives.  She didn’t have time to cry out before a hard shove from Anhuset sent her flying halfway across the tent.

“Anhuset, what good will it do to tell him other than to make him worry or fill him with guilt?  What’s done is done, and I’ve come to no harm.”

“You shouldn’t keep secrets from him.”  Anhuset refused to yield.

Ildiko blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and resumed her seat near a feverish Brishen but out of striking range.  “It’s not a secret; it’s just a fact that offers no benefit in being retold.”  She mimicked Anhuset’s posture and crossed her arms.  “Do I have your promise?  Say nothing unless he asks?”

They engaged in a silent battle until Anhuset exhaled a frustrated sigh.  “I give you my promise not to say anything about this to him unless he asks.”  She scowled.  “You’ve the skill of a Kai courtier, Your Highness.  Able to twist reason to suit your purpose.”

Ildiko recognized the mild insult within the compliment but took no offense.  “Well at least, there is some commonality between our two peoples.”

The two women held an uneasy truce between them, and Ildiko’s prayers were answered when Brishen regained his lucidity without any recollection of striking out at his wife while in the throes of delirium.  There had been more than one moment when Anhuset practically vibrated with the temptation to blurt out something, but she held her tongue and busied herself with organizing the evening travel plans with Mertok.

“Ildiko?  Where are you, wife?”

Ildiko blinked, brought back to the present by Brishen waving a hand in front of her face.  “I’m sorry.  I was daydreaming.  Or would that be nightdreaming now?”  She smiled, then remembered his first question.  “Not grim thoughts.  Just a curiosity.  When you were sick with the mortem fever, you confused your mother with Talumey’s mother.  Anhuset said yours doesn’t smile often.”

She left her question unspoken, giving him an escape if he chose not to expand on Anhuset’s remark.  Instead, he leaned back in the saddle, his wide shoulders relaxed.  “My cousin is right.  The queen isn’t one to smile.  If she does, then you look for the knife wielded from the shadows.”

Ildiko gaped at Brishen.  He’d described his mother in such a mild voice, as if the murderous tendencies he hinted at were no more interesting or threatening than if she had an obsessive love for orange slippers.  “Are you serious?”

“Quite,” he said in that same neutral tone.  “I doubt my father has slept a full night with both eyes closed since he married her.”

Ildiko shuddered inwardly at the prospect of meeting her new mother-in-law.  Her aunt had been a force to be reckoned with.  Haughty, self-important and devious, Fantine had been a master strategist, manipulating the many Gauri court machinations with a skilled hand.  King Sangur; however, trusted his wife wouldn’t kill him while he slept.  Obviously, the same couldn’t be said of the Kai king and his lethal queen.

“I’m not looking forward to meeting your mother, Your Highness.”  A few soft snorts of laughter sounded from the Kai soldiers riding nearby.  Ildiko met Brishen’s wry gaze.  “Should I wear this breastplate when we’re introduced?”

Brishen’s teeth were like ivory daggers in the darkness.  “I’ll protect you.  Besides, she won’t harm you.  She’s too enamored with the idea that I’ve been forced to take a human to wife.  If there’s one thing Secmis loves more than plotting an assassination, it’s watching misery.”  He nudged his horse closer to hers and leaned in.  “Be sure to act completely disgusted with me and bitter at your fate,” he said softly.  “She’ll make sure we’re in each other’s constant company.”

Ildiko’s thoughts reeled.  One thing was certain—she wouldn’t be bored.  Staying one step ahead of her malevolent mother-in-law would take all her wits and focus.  How a viper of a woman as Brishen described managed to raise such a jovial, affectionate man flummoxed Ildiko.

“You must take after your father in temperament,” she said.

The humorous snorts from earlier turned into outright guffaws.  Brishen’s grin widened.  “Hardly.  My mother sleeps with one eye open as well.”  He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.  “Don’t worry, Ildiko.  You’ll understand more about my parents when you meet them.  I’m counting on you giving me your honest impressions afterwards.  I suspect they will be entertaining.”

Ildiko didn’t return his grin.  He might find all this quite funny; she found it terrifying.  She stiffened her back and clutched the reins in a tight grip.  Her new in-laws may be a deadly pair, but she refused to be intimidated.

“I doubt we’re much different from any other royal family out there, human or Kai.”  Brishen edged his horse closer to hers.  “We marry to strengthen our positions, hold our power, acquire more land and provide heirs for the throne.  A business arrangement in every way.”  His features sobered, the grin fading.  “If we’re lucky, we find an amiable companion in our spouses.”

His description applied perfectly to the royal family in which Ildiko was raised.  Her parents’ love for each other had been an anomaly rarely seen among the Gauri aristocracy and not witnessed at all in Sangur and Fantine’s immediate family.  Marriage was business and politics.  Affection and bedsport were usually reserved for mistresses or the occasional lover.

“And mistresses?” she said.  For some reason she chose not to dwell on, a discordant internal note thrummed inside at her at the idea of Brishen having a mistress.

One black eyebrow rose.  “What about them?”

“Do you have a dozen or so?”  Ildiko raised her chin at the twitch of laughter that played across his mouth.  It was a perfectly legitimate question.  Her cousins’ husbands each had a mistress and a bevy of bastard children.  Her uncle, the king, kept a
prima dulce
named Annais, for which Queen Fantine was eternally grateful.

Brishen lost the battle not to smile.  “A dozen?  I doubt I could deal with one.”  He shifted into a more comfortable spot on the saddle.  “Besides, I have a Gauri wife to comfort me.  Why take a mistress?”

His answer puzzled Ildiko.  “But that isn’t the role of a mistress.”

“Isn’t it?  I think we all seek companionship, wife.  Sometimes it’s physical; sometimes it’s much more.”  An odd flicker danced in his eyes, and like his grin before, his smile faded.  “Loneliness is an empty void.  We look for that friend in the light.”  His glowing eyes squinted a little, deepening the laugh lines at their corners.  “Or in the case of humans, in the dark.”

Brishen stopped his horse for a second time and tugged Ildiko’s reins to halt her mount as well.  He must have given an unseen signal because the Kai riding with them widened the space around them to afford more privacy.

“What is it?” she said.  “What’s wrong?”

His gaze pressed down on Ildiko.  Not the smothering weight of a too-heavy blanket in summer but more like an embrace that invited affection.  Not for the first time, she desperately wished she could read his eyes, see past the luminescence to the equally bright soul behind it.

“Will you be that for me, Ildiko,” he said.  “That beacon in the void?”

Ildiko’s heart cracked.  Loneliness had been her most constant companion, the silent shadow that hovered over her for years.  If there was one thing she understood, it was the emptiness of the internal void.  Her reply might not make sense to him now, but she’d explain later when they were alone.

She reached out, fingers tracing the herringbone pattern of his chainmail sleeve.  “The void is vast, like the sea at night and no land in sight.  I’ll be the beacon, Brishen.”

He captured her hand and kissed her palm.  His lips were cool on her skin.  “My parents will loathe you, wife.”  Ildiko felt all the blood drain from her face.  Brishen’s smile returned.  “Don’t be afraid.  That’s a good thing.  They’ve hated me since birth.  They only like those they can crush.”

He looked as if he’d say more but was interrupted by sharp cries and excited yips from the other Kai.  Ildiko tried to understand the rapid stream of unfamiliar words flowing between the soldiers, but all she could catch was “Haradis,” and “gate.”  She turned to Brishen.  “What are they saying?”  His reply birthed a legion of butterflies in her belly.

“Beyond that slope is Bast-Haradis and the capital.  Welcome to my kingdom, Ildiko of the Kai.”