Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (34 page)

‘But why? He could scarcely know of my abduction yet!’

The man's strange light eyes became hooded.

‘If the King has not told you then it's not for me to say,’ he declared somewhat pompously.

Assailed with the desire to laugh, Gynevra gave him instead a haughty grimace and closed her eyes. Whatever Ahron was pursuing Taur for, if she wasn't found on his ship he couldn't be charged with her abduction. She'd calm herself, shut out foolish dreams of forever and pathetic, big-headed priests and raise the energy to apportate back to Qrazil.

‘No you won't, Princess.’

Gynevra's eyes shot open.

Aronad held her gaze with an amused smile.

‘Like I said, Princess. I'm here to guard you. We went to a lot of trouble to obtain your presence for the King and put our persons in not inconsiderable danger while we did it. T'will not go for naught. Every man on this ship would lay his life down for Taur of Nyalda.’

Sudden banging and shouting broke out topside accompanied by an ominous grating sound along the sides of the ship. Trying to keep the fear from her eyes she returned Aronad's stare with a querying one of her own.

‘Sounds like the men are being called to do just that.’

‘We're running the gates. Once clear we'll have no trouble navigating the sea canal. There's not a ship in port will engage with us. They have too much respect for King Taur.—So Princess, why don't you break your fast now before we reach the ocean. I know you've not yet eaten this day.’

There was no way she could eat now! Her stomach was churning with a curdle of conflicting emotions. Fear, excitement, longing, anxiety, love—

Some strange compulsion drew her gaze to Aronad's light eyes and she found herself rising and moving to the table where she found a bowl of thick barley broth accompanied by a platter of cheese and chunks of dark bread. It was too late to consider that Lord Aronad was obviously a very advanced ennead, that even if she'd been forewarned his power would easily have overshadowed hers and that it was probably he who'd done just that at the Needles this morning. She was suddenly quite hungry.

Her mouth tasted like ass’s breath and her brain didn't seem to want to function. Her last clear memory was of being in Taur's arms and even if it had been a dream she clung to it as the only light in a smothering darkness. Every time she began groping towards sanity someone would coerce her to eat or drink something and in her weakened state she had no will to argue. What was happening to her?

Someone was shaking her arm and calling loud enough to wake the dead. Was that the answer? Was she dead? She curled her body into a tight ball and covered her head with her arms.

‘Gyn'a! Come on. Wake up. I need to talk to you.’

Taur? Taur belonged in dreams and dreams only brought pain.

‘Go 'way.’

‘C’mon, Golden One, wake up for me!’

Strong hands pried her arms from her head and then lifted her against a hard, broad chest. A chest that felt real and familiar beneath her questing fingers, yet chilled and wet. Her nose pressed into damp ropes of hair that smelled of salt. She forced her eyes open. Black hair. She leant back a little. A hard squared chin with several days’ growth of black stubble. Leaning back a little further still she encountered smoldering green eyes that seemed to devour and repudiate her at the same time.

Taur for certain. But from his wild state and the strange light in his eyes she still wasn't sure he wasn't a dream. She struggled to free herself and he let her go. The ship lurched as if falling into a deep trough in the ocean and she fell back on the clagren and stared at him.

‘Where am I?’

Her brain didn't want to work and that was the only question she could think to ask.

‘On my ship headed for Nyalda. We've been at sea six days, running from Ahron's ragtaggle navy. They pursued us as directed but never came close enough to attack. We lost them yesterday when the weather started to deteriorate. I'm guessing they turned back. They probably figured only fools—or finwodi—would continue into such seas.’

A muscle worked in his jaw and the eyes that searched her face as if committing it to memory held some message she couldn't decipher. Gripping the back of the couch to steady herself, she sat up and pointed to the waterskin in its secure box by the door.

‘I need a drink.’

He turned and bracing himself against the violent motion of the ship, handed a pottery cup to her and siphoned some water into it with the ease and grace of a dandified piaca in a regal reception salon. Even drug-fazed and angry, Gynevra knew another blank square had been filled in the mosaic of her knowledge of Taur of Nyalda. He would be as calmly balanced whether on a tossing ship or a bucking horse.

He waited while she drank thirstily, then continued, ‘The thing is, Gyn'a, the weather has turned treacherous and unless it changes it could be another five, even six days before we reach Heceuda Harbor.’

The water was cool and faintly brackish from resting in the waterskin but it helped clear the shrouds from her mind.

‘You're taking me to Fyr Heceuda?’

A wild hope took root somewhere in her navel. Her emotions were as unpredictable as the motion of the ship. And she had no right to wild hopes.

Taur nodded.

‘You'll be safe there. You were in danger from the priests and ultimately from your own light-sire.’

She
was in danger! It was he who'd abducted a Princess of the Realm, the Archinus Elect. Suddenly, something shifted in her head. Her mind was totally clear. It was as if—

‘You've been drugging me!’

The shocked words flew out of her mouth the moment the thought formed in her head.

‘For your own safety, Gyn'a,’ he responded patiently. ‘I've just been explaining about the danger—’

The great arabo just stood there as if the ship wasn't careening under his feet like a leaf in rapids, as if her mind wasn't about to shatter like so many shards of crystal.

He broke off, but in reaction to the angry light in her eyes, he continued, ‘Every man was needed topside to keep the ship sailing swift and true. There was no one I could spare to watch you so my only recourse was to sedate you with corba. We always have it on board for a painkiller but heavier doses will keep a man sedated for days on end without any serious side effects. I won't risk you apportating back to Qrazil, Gyn'a. You're mine now and I vow to keep you safe from the breara Temples
and
your manic sire.’

Her heart beat a frantic tattoo in her breast. She had to make him understand!

‘You're the one who's in danger, Taur! You must let me go. Take me back to Qrazil. I'm safe there. I'll tell Ianthe I went with you willingly, that—’

‘I can't do that.’

His eyes were flat, almost black, and deeply watchful.

‘Why not?’ she asked, anger warring with the panicky suspicion that he'd done something irreversibly terrible.

‘I can never return to Fyr Poseidyr. I'd be handed over to the priests to be killed for finwod.’

‘Finwod?’ Gynevra stared at him, speechless for a moment. ‘Why?’ she whispered.

‘Kidnapped you for a start and defied Ahron's explicit veto on joining with you.’

‘You asked him—?’

‘Ta’a,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘He was very forceful in his refusal.—I also incited a riot in the Outer City by suggesting to a few roughnecks there are ample grain stores in the royal granary and fresh meat on the hoof in the grounds of the Royal Citadel. There was big trouble brewing in Fyr Poseidyr when we left and there's plenty to say I had a hand in inciting it and since I'd already suggested to Ahron that he open the granaries and slaughter the sacred bulls I'd be hard put to deny it—even if I felt so inclined.’

Gynevra felt her eyes widen with the enormity of the crimes stacked against him, the cold hard implacability of his stance as he recited them. She couldn't stop herself from reaching for the precious and solid reality of him, which suddenly seemed so vulnerable. She must make him see sense.

‘If I could get back to Fyr Poseidyr that would clear some of your crimes, wouldn't it?’ she asked. With a will of their own her fingers traced a ropey vein curling across the flexing muscle of one bulging biceps.

Taur shook his head.

‘There's more.’

All the blood drained from her heart. Her head ached with the after effects of the corba—or was it from her terror for Taur? She clutched his brawny forearms. The sodden state of the richly embossed leather vambraces scarcely registered.

‘What have you done?’

Fear stared back at him from Gynevra's golden eyes and a strange pain filled his chest when he realized her fear was for him. Sure, his closest and most trusted Paggi friends and advisers in Fyr Poseidyr had feared for him when he'd told them what he planned to do. But they'd feared for his sanity and the future of Nyalda, and thought nothing of his personal safety. This woman with eyes like bruised gillyflowers and her mouth soft and trembling for him alone, made him feel things that had
him
doubting his sanity.

But there was no doubt in his mind that the decision he'd made in the face of Ahron's increasingly psychotic malevolence was the right one. It would be better for them all if he kept his mind on the possible ramifications of that decision and the immediate threat of the high seas to all their lives instead of on how much he wanted to fall with this woman onto the couch she'd just risen from and forget all finwodem acts and their outcomes. Her drug-clouded eyes searched his face demandingly, waiting for his answer.

Putting her from him, he strode to a high desk in the corner of the cabin and bracing himself against it, folded his arms across his chest. He wanted to be ready for the censure he'd see in her eyes. It was alarming how her opinion mattered to him. More so when he cared naught for the opinion of anyone else. This woman was dangerous to him in so many ways and yet—he could no more imagine impounding himself in Nyalda without her than he could imagine not responding to the heat he saw in her eyes whenever they met.

Pitching his voice low, he held her gaze and said, ‘I've declared the Province of Nyalda independent of Poseidonia and Atlantis. Nyalda is now a nation in its own right.’

She opened her mouth to speak then closed it again. The tip of her tongue slid out and moistened her lips and fire of a lethal kind attacked his loins. If it weren't for the violent lurch of the floor beneath his feet and the constant need to counterbalance, he could forget where he was.

‘Independent?’ she whispered at last, eyes huge and dark, bloodless hands gripping the edge of the couch. ‘Have—Have you—declared war on my pavuon?’

War? Kurn it, he wanted her. No other woman could plunder his mind like this, merely with a look. War? He dragged a hand through the sodden tangles of his hair. What were they talking about? Cronos, he needed to get himself in hand.

‘No,’ he managed to growl, ‘but I imagine Ahron very well could declare war on Nyalda.’

Gynevra crossed her hands over her breasts, closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Ibn Ist del Alomdino, en cala suevon ara mei!’

He felt impatience rise in his breast. Why did women always fall to praying when men talked of war?

‘Because I fear for you!’ she snapped.

It seemed she could steal the thoughts from his mind as easily as he did from hers. One day they'd have to talk about that but always, it seemed, when they were together there were more pressing issues to deal with.

‘T'is done and right now we face more threat from the elements than we do from Ahron. His army will be starving right along with his people before long. Starving men can't fight. No, Gyn'a, my concern is much more immediate. The ‘Nyalda’ is the sturdiest ship afloat but she's wallowing in mountainous cross-seas and we're hard pressed to keep the pumps working and the turbines turning. We're taking on tonnes of water every time we go down into a trough. The men are getting exhausted and that's when injuries happen. I'm asking you to help, Gyn'a. I'm asking you to promise me you'll not apportate if I refrain from drugging you so you can heal any injuries. Already my captain, Hujan, has taken a blow to the head and needs attention. Will you do it?—All our lives may depend on it.’

He'd added that last shamelessly. He only hoped her concern for him in combination with her natural response as a healer would gain him the promise he needed. Even now, he'd sedate her again rather than risk losing her back to the Hyades of Fyr Poseidyr.

He'd sailed in many a gale but never had he encountered seas like those battering the sturdy planks of the `Nyalda'. The thought of her working with him to bring the ship safely home to Heceuda Harbor was a seductive one. He'd never wanted anything with such ferocity and he felt his knees start to quiver with it. When she mutely nodded her acquiescence he had to forcibly restrain himself from gathering her into his arms and kissing her until they were both weak and trembling with need of a different kind.

She'd lost track of time. It was many hours, maybe even days, since she'd given Taur her promise she'd not try to leave him. She'd treated lacerations, sprains, bruises, concussions and broken bones. There was little she could do for the exhaustion that attacked every one of the crew including Taur. It seemed their survival no longer depended on anything they themselves might do, but on the whim of a capricious sea and the almighty Gods.