Fool's Errand (28 page)

“I
tried
to consult with you!” burst King Finnius, who immediately winced and pressed his hand against his chest as though pained by the effort of forceful speech. “I sent you two summonses, but you never came!” he gasped. “What else would you have had me do?”

Mordecai did not reply at once. Though he was loath to be reminded of it, the royal nobody
had
sent two summonses—summonses that he, Mordecai, had taken great pleasure in ignoring. Moreover, the fool had a point about the wisdom of showing an interest in his own marriage—and the potential consequences of failing to do so.

Snapping his fingers at the slattern, Mordecai called for wine. As she bustled off to fetch another goblet, he eased himself down into the king's high-backed chair and said, “I had
obviously
intended for you to play the part of the eager, involved bridegroom-to-be. My only concern was that you'd done so without my express permission. Do something like that again, and I will surprise you not with a fat finger but instead with a nose and two ears. Do you understand?”

“I do,” said King Finnius quietly.

“Good,” smiled Mordecai. “Now tell me: what did you and Lady Aurelia speak about?”

“Nothing.”

Mordecai stopped smiling at once. “Nothing?” he snapped.

“Nothing of import,” clarified King Finnius. “She giggled and told me I was handsome and clever; I told her she was beautiful and promised her expensive gifts.”

Feeling a pang at the knowledge that no young noblewoman had ever called
him
handsome and clever, Mordecai moodily asked the king what he and Lord Bartok had spoken about.

“Nothing beyond what you'd expect,” he replied. “He said his daughter had been desperately in love with me for years and would have agreed to marry me if I'd been a lowborn beggar living in a gutter; I said that no woman in the realm was more charming or beautiful or better suited to be my wife and queen.”

“Are you certain that is all you said?” said Mordecai suspiciously before taking a sip from the wine goblet that had appeared on the table before him.

“What else would I have said, Your Grace?” asked the king wearily. “Given all that I've thusfar sacrificed to save my sister, my nursemaid and the most vulnerable of my subjects, do you honestly believe that I'd have confided anything of import in a courtier who has never put anything before his own best interests?”

“No,” said Mordecai, inwardly chuckling at how dismayed the high-and-mighty lord must have been when he'd realized that the king was utterly beyond his influence—not only because he had another, better master but also because he'd taken Bartok's measure and found him wanting.

Not for the first time, Mordecai thought how ironic it was that the sickly boy king who sat wheezing in his fat nursemaid's chair actually seemed to have what it would have taken to command the great lords of the kingdom.

Well, life was full of ironies.

“Your Grace,” the king was saying now, “if I have set your mind at ease in the matter of my dealings with Lord Bartok and Lady Aurelia, may I ask if … if you've had any news of my sister and her quest for the healing pool?”

“I have,” lied Mordecai, who was, in truth, growing increasingly concerned that he'd yet to receive a single report from General Murdock. “However, I've had no news that I care to share with
you
.”

“I see,” said King Finnius, nodding as though he'd expected as much. “And. did you truly have business of the realm that you wished to discuss with me?”

Mordecai laughed so explosively that he sprayed the fool's handsome face with spittle. “No, Your Majesty,” he chortled when he was finally able. “No, I did not truly have business of the realm that I wished to discuss with you, nor will I ever have. There is a thing I would ask of you, though,” he added, sounding almost mischievous.

“Oh?” said the king guardedly. “And what is that?”

“I would ask you to beg forgiveness for the way you treated me in front of the Lady Aurelia.”

The king sighed. “Your Grace, when we are in the company of others, I cannot treat you with deference,” he said, coughing into his velvet sleeve. “As we've just now discussed, I must continue to behave as your king, else people will suspect that something is amiss.”

“Be that as it may, I did not care for your condescending behaviour, and you
will
beg forgiveness for it.”

For a moment, it looked as though the king might actually protest. Then, with a shrug that said this particular battle was not worth fighting, he rose to his feet, drew himself up to his full height and said, “Very well. My lord Regent, I beg forgiveness for—”

“No,” smirked Mordecai. “Get down on your knees and beg for it.”

After the briefest of hesitations, King Finnius got down on his knees. “Your Grace,” he said quietly and with a dignity that made Mordecai want to slap him, “I beg your forgiveness for the way I spoke to you in front of Lady Aurelia.”

Mordecai stared down at the bowed head of the kneeling king, his cold heart crying out at the irony of the fact that a fool as sick and subjugated as the one before him could yet look as shining and golden as a strapping young god.

Then, sourly muttering that he was not in a particularly forgiving mood, he turned and lurched from the room.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Eighty-eight beans left in the jar

T
HE HUGE, HAIRY HEAD
of the Khan warrior abruptly disappeared from the crack in the snow above Persephone and Azriel. The next minute, one end of a thick, swinging rope was fed down into the crevasse. It was a development that would have been considerably more comforting had the end of the rope not been tied in a noose.

Persephone shivered violently at the sight of it.

“I don't believe it is meant for our necks, Princess,” said Azriel under his breath as he eased her off his lap, got to his feet and leaned out over the abyss to reach for the rope.

“Send the wench up first,” called the Khan gruffly.

“She is no wench,” Azriel called back, “she is my wedded wife and you'll treat her—”

“Any way I please!” shouted the Khan, shoving his hairy head back into the crack, “for she is a criminal and my prisoner and so are you. So send her up at once or I'll leave you both to your deaths. And if you think I won't, think again, little man, for I tell you there is nothing the mother goddess of the mountain enjoys so much as a meal of frozen corpses. And there is nothing that I, Ghengor, enjoy so much as being the one to feed it to her!”

“Oh,” muttered Azriel. “Well, since you put it that way.”

Dropping to his knees beside Persephone, he sliced the rope that tied them together then slipped the noose of the Khan's rope over her head and under her arms. After checking the knot to make sure that it was properly tied, he cinched the noose tight under her armpits and helped her stand.

“My. pack,” said Persephone.

“I'll bring it up,” he whispered. “Do you still have your dagger?”

“Yes,” she mumbled as she swayed on her frozen feet, “but … I really don't know what good it will do me, Azriel. I … I can't seem to feel my—”

Without warning, the Khan Ghengor gave the rope a sharp tug, wrenching Persephone away from Azriel's steadying touch and pulling her off the ice ledge. Her heart lurched horribly and the next instant she was dangling over the abyss. Feeling as helpless as a ragdoll, she dimly hoped that the Khan wasn't reconsidering his decision not to feed her to his mountain goddess. Then she was ascending, farther and farther from where Azriel stood watching with his gloved hands clenched into fists. Before she knew it, she was being pulled from the womb of darkness and ice into a world of overly brilliant sunlight. Wordlessly, the Khan—who stunk of wet wool, dung fires and too few baths—deposited her into the snow beside the crevasse. Then he bent over her limp body, stripped her of weapons and was halfway through wrestling the noose up over her head when he noticed something that made him gasp aloud.

“Gods' blood, you're the very image of the villain who startled my poor sheep!”

“As I've already explained, I didn't mean to startle them,” said Rachel with exaggerated patience as she tried to edge past the Khan's great bulk to get to Persephone. “And she is not
actually
the very image of me. Her features are finer than mine, you see, and my ears stick out more than hers, and—”

Giving Rachel a sudden, one-armed shove that sent her sprawling, the Khan yanked the rope free of Persephone at last. Gesturing toward the battle-axe that hung at his waist, he advised her and Rachel not to move—advice that was really not necessary in the case of Persephone, who wasn't sure she'd ever be able to move again. Then he turned and fed the noose back down into the darkness.

Moments later, Azriel emerged from the crevasse. Upon seeing Persephone shivering and gasping in the arms of Rachel (who'd ignored the Khan's advice about not moving), he threw down his axe and his knife, shrugged off both packs and the rope and started toward her.

The Khan immediately stepped sideways to block his way. “Where do you think you're going?” he growled as he plucked the battle-axe from his belt.

Azriel stepped back and held up his hands to show that he carried no weapon. “I'm going to tend to my wife,” he said evenly. “She's sick.”

“Aye, she's sick,” agreed the Khan without sympathy. “'Tis the mountain that's made her so—sometimes it pleases the goddess to wreak vengeance upon those who do not belong here. Warmth and nourishment can improve the symptoms but the only cure is to descend to the foothills at once.”

“Then we will descend to the foothills at once,” said Azriel.

“Not until you've answered for your crimes, you won't,” said the Khan.

Before Azriel could argue, lunge for his blade or suggest to the Khan that they settle their differences by wrestling (a heroic and manly challenge that would absolutely have resulted in Azriel being mangled beyond recognition), Rachel slapped the snow beside her.

“Oh, enough about crimes and villains!” she cried. “For the last time,
I did not mean to startle your herd
. It was dark, and I lost my footing. It's not my fault that you and your infernal sheep were sleeping at the bottom of the snowdrift I happened to tumble down!”

“
MY SHEEP ARE NOT INFERNAL
!” bellowed the Khan, shaking his battle-axe at her. “And your heartless treatment of them is only one of your crimes, villain! There is also the matter of your criminal companions having violated the goddess of the mountain by having penetrated one of her private places!”

Rachel and even persephone could not help grimacing at these indelicate words, but Azriel only cleared his throat and said, “If you're referring to the crevasse, I can assure you that my wife and I never intended to ‘penetrate' it. We were running from an avalanche and a bear when we fell in—”

“A thing that would not have happened if you'd not trespassed upon the mountain in the first place,” concluded the Khan Ghengor triumphantly as he stomped over and snatched up Azriel's knife and axe.

“You … you are right,” wheezed Persephone, holding one frozen, trembling hand out to him. “But … I can explain—”

“You'd better hope for your sakes that you can and that the prince of my tribe likes what you have to say,” grunted the Khan as he shoved his handful of weapons into his belt, “or the mother goddess of the mountain shall have her meal, after all.”

With that, the Khan turned and began striding up the mountain as briskly and easily as if he was taking a pleasure stroll in the royal garden. He did not bother to look back to see if the “criminals” were following and why would he? Even if Persephone had not been gravely ill, for her, Azriel and Rachel to even
attempt
to flee would have been a folly bordering on the ridiculous. There was nothing for them to do but to follow the mute, unkempt, fur-clad figure of the Khan—and to hope that they were not following him to their doom.

Since Persephone could barely stand, let alone walk, Azriel, in addition to carrying both their packs on his back, carried her in his arms for as long as he could. As strong, sure-footed and determined as he was, however, he was no match for the mountain. And when he slipped on a hidden patch of ice and fell for the third time—not letting go of Persephone but nearly sending them both hurtling down a rock face—the Khan Ghengor had had enough. Stomping back to the spot where Azriel was struggling to get to his feet without jostling his barely conscious wife too badly, the giant ripped Persephone from his arms and flung her over his shoulder with almost as much care and tenderness as one might show toward a sack of bad potatoes.

“Don't do anything stupid, little man,” growled the Khan as he turned and continued up the mountain.