Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) (25 page)

Julen answered the door when Lance knocked. His wary expression changed to one of relief. “Sara! Iorweth, Lance and Sara are here. Come in, come in.”

It was the first time Sara could remember him not using her title.

Iorweth looked awful, as if she’d been crying all night. She offered them cider, and then they sat at the small wooden table to drink it. An awkward silence fell.

Lance turned concerned eyes on Iorweth. “You’re overtiring yourself. Let me check on the babe.”

Sara seized the opportunity. “I’ll wait outside.” She gave Julen a meaningful glance, and he took the hint, getting to his feet too. Lance scowled after them.

“Well,” Sara said, after making sure they had the street to themselves, “you seem to be leaving my service.”

Julen’s jaw set. “I swore to be Iorweth’s husband. I never swore to be a cursed farmer. But I’m going to be stuck here for at least two months waiting for the babe to be born before I can rejoin you at the Slave King’s court.”

Sara was startled, though she realized she shouldn’t have been. “Do you think Iorweth will agree to come with you ?”

“She wanted a husband, and it’s a wife’s duty to follow where her husband goes,” Julen said callously. “Besides, by then I ought to have her wrapped around my finger.” He sounded confident he could get around Iorweth’s stipulation that the marriage be unconsummated for a year.

Sara wondered about that. It was one thing to be charming for an evening at a feast; being charming after a day’s sweaty labor in the fields might be something else entirely. And Iorweth, whose husband’s death Julen was partly responsible for, would not be his usual gullible audience. Still…

“I would be happy to have your assistance again,” she said. Even if she succeeded in sending the message off to her father, she would need all the help she could get to survive in Kandrith’s strange waters.

“Be careful who you approach to send the message to your father,” Julen warned. “Spying is a dangerous profession.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Her smile felt brittle. “Worry about keeping Iorweth’s favor. The rest of the village still wants to hang you. And stay out of other women’s beds. I don’t think you even want to know what the penalty for adultery is here.”

“Vez’s Malice, no.” Julen blanched. “It’s probably castration.”

Sara felt little sympathy for him. “It will do you good to deal with a woman who isn’t knocked off her feet by your good looks.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized she’d opened herself up for a similar taunt, but Julen only snorted. “I learned early on that a handsome face can only get you so far if you’re a member of the equitain. After that, the door gets slammed in your face.”

His bitterness startled Sara. She often resented her own beauty, but she’d never considered that Julen, her male opposite, might feel the same way.

“Iorweth bears the unique distinction of being the only woman who’s ever wanted me for a husband and not just a three-month lover.” His tone was mocking, but there was something underneath…a hint of wonder.

Sara realized he was right. Aunt Evina and Lady Pallax had both drooled over Julen, but neither of them would have dreamed of marrying him. “I’m sorry.”

Julen made a throw-away gesture. “What for?” He hesitated. “Though, while we’re clearing the air, there’s something I’d like to apologize for—it’s left a nasty taste in my mouth for years.”

Sara felt her face turn to stone. There was only one thing Julen could need to beg forgiveness for.

“It was supposed to be for your own good.” Julen’s lips twisted with self-derision. “It was the first year you’d come to the city and whatever your father asked of you, you did the opposite. He worried that your naiveté would make you an easy target for his enemies. I told him I could cure you. I deliberately flirted with you. Though you were only supposed to catch me kissing Lady Jemini, not the rest. Will you accept my apology? I meant to make you less trusting, not hurt you.”

Sara stared at him. She had been hurt—a young girl’s hurt. She’d been over that for years. What had made her loathe him had been what had followed. But that had been bad luck, not Julen’s doing. The hate she’d held in her heart for so long loosened. “Of course. It’s not your fault I was stupid enough to rush out of the city and leave my father open to false ransom demands.”

Julen’s forehead creased. “What ransom?”

Sara studied him sharply, but he seemed genuinely confused. She explained about the demands that had led to the beggaring of House Remillus.

Julen shook his head in disbelief. “I never knew.”

Sara felt uneasy until she realized that, although Julen had been her father’s right hand for the past few years, he hadn’t necessarily been so six years ago. At the time of her fake kidnapping, Julen must have still been rising in the ranks and not privy to all secrets.

“Well, now you know why House Remillus’s fortunes fell so low.”

Julen looked troubled. “I didn’t realize they were low. If you had asked me, I would have sworn House Remillus was quite wealthy.”

Sara shrugged. “Borrowed money to keep up appearances. You know how any scent of weakness can lead to other Houses moving in for the kill.”

“Yes, but—” Julen forced a smile. “I suppose I just don’t want to admit that your father could have fooled me. We should go back in.”

Iorweth and Lance were sitting at the table, waiting for them.

“Is all well?” Julen asked. Sara thought him truly anxious and not just faking it. Of course, if Iorweth and the babe died, his future might become very precarious indeed.

“Both babe and mother are well,” Lance reassured him. “If her skin begins to swell anywhere other than her ankles, send a message to me.” He got to his feet. “Sara and I must be going. Julen, Iorweth,” he nodded to both of them. “I hope to see you again—with a healthy babe in your arms.” He smiled at Iorweth.

She smiled tearfully back.

Sara said farewell, and then she and Lance set off down the dusty road. Despite Lance’s cheerful company, she felt horribly alone.

She missed Felicia, but leaving Julen behind was in some ways worse. Now she had no one to rely on but herself. And no one to blame if she failed her task.

The second day after leaving the village Sara woke with a familiar pressing pain behind her eyes. Like an unwanted guest, her headache had returned.

She was dimly aware of Lance packing up camp and filling their water bags at the stream, but even sitting up by herself seemed like a heroic feat. Vez’s Malice, but she was sick of headaches. It felt like she’d been plagued with one every other day since leaving Temborium.

Sara counted back. The combination of sleeping draught and jazoria had given her a vile one the day she’d left, the stuffy carriage and Julen together had provoked several. The full-throated roar of Vaga Falls would have given anyone a headache. The aggravation of passing through the Gate into Kandrith had brought on another one, which had lingered due to her argument with Felicia. Her stoning and the subsequent lump on her forehead had caused the worst headache yet.

What excuse for today’s? Her anxiety over meeting the Kandrith? The night spent in screaming awareness of how close Lance lay and how much she wanted to throw caution to the winds and make love to him a second time?

Only now it seemed to Sara that they were all excuses. She was having too many headaches. Something was wrong—

Across the clearing, Lance cursed.

“What is it?” Sara rasped.

Lance cradled the little finger on his left hand. “It’s broken,” he said tersely. “Praise Loma.”

It took Sara’s pounding head a moment to follow his thinking. She hadn’t realized “ill health” included broken bones.

Following Lance’s instructions, Sara found a straight stick and bandages in his knapsack. She splinted the finger, but when she wanted to wrap it in a cool cloth, Lance put his good hand on her shoulder. “Don’t bother.”

“But the swelling,” Sara said uncertainly. His touch eased her headache, and she leaned into him.

“The faster the swelling goes down, the sooner I’ll receive another ailment,” Lance said steadily. “Next time it might be something more inconvenient, like another fever or a broken leg.”

His fingers brushed her neck, then, as Sara’s breath caught, he seemed to realize what he’d done. He quickly lifted his hand, and Sara bit her lip as her headache flooded back.

“If we keep up a brisk pace, we can be at the Hall by early afternoon,” Lance said after they’d each washed down one of the crumbly grain cakes Valda had pressed on them the day before and watched the refetti feast on the crumbs.

Their arrival at the Hall would mean no more traveling, a soft bed and a hot bath, so why wasn’t she looking forward to it? Sara tried to puzzle out the answer while they walked through the forest. Perhaps because she thought of the journey’s end as the beginning of becoming a hostage.

She studied Lance’s broad back as he walked up yet another hill. The recent rain had turned the track into muddy ruts, so they picked their way alongside, weaving through trees and snagging on thornbushes instead. “May I ask, what is expected of the Child of Peace?”

As she’d hoped, he stopped, giving her a chance to catch her breath. “Do I have social obligations?”

“Not really. You’ll sup with the Kandrith and his Protector most nights, but it won’t be what you’re used to. No fancy feasts.”

Sara widened her eyes in mock horror. “No roasted giraffes? No songbirds’ tongues?” She wouldn’t have minded eating the one trilling overhead right now; its call pierced her head.

Lance’s lips quirked. “No.”

“What about ambassadorial duties? I mean,” Sara tried to make a joke of her fear, “I’m not just going to be locked up for years, am I?” And would she be allowed correspondence?

“Of course not,” Lance said. “You’ll have the freedom of the Hall. You just won’t be allowed out without an escort.”

The restriction made sense, but Sara’s heart sank all the same. She’d been enjoying the freedom of travelling and the surprise of new sights every day. Staying inside the Hall would feel like being put in a cage.

“I hope you’ll find the time to take me on a few excursions.” Sara made an effort to speak lightly.

Lance was silent, and sudden anxiety struck Sara. “You do live at the Hall, don’t you?”

“I’m often called away to heal,” Lance said, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “There are few enough healers—only a half dozen in the whole of Kandrith—that it seems wrong to stay in any one place for very long.”

Sara was silent for a moment, then said brittlely, “You need not avoid your home on my account. I’m aware that our liaison has ended.”

“Yes,” he agreed heavily. “And since we can’t be lovers, it will be…easier if I don’t have to see you every day.”

Sara blinked back tears. At least he hadn’t lied to her. “I see.”

Lance sighed. “The truth is, I’ve avoided the Hall for years.”

Sara waited.

He stared off into the distance. “It’s too painful to see my father as he is now. Every time I come home, it seems like he’s sacrificed something more. He’s been blind for years. He has no hands. He only hears the truth. I wonder sometimes if he would even know it was me if I didn’t identify myself when I spoke to him.” Lance’s voice was raw.

“Oh, Lance.” Impulsively, Sara hugged him from behind, offering silent comfort. “It must break your mother’s heart.”

“Yes,” Lance said bleakly. He cleared his throat and stepped out of her embrace. “Not that she shows it. Mother was strong even before she became Protector.”

“Protector?” Sara asked, pretending she didn’t feel the sting of rejection.

“Her title. The Protector sees to all the practical details, all the things father can no longer do. Like organizing work parties to build a road or a school.”

“The Protector is a woman?” Sara asked slowly, trying to grasp the idea while the headache dulled her mind.

“Traditionally, the Protector is the Kandrith’s wife. Unless the Kandrith is a woman,” Lance said off-handedly. “Then it’s her husband.”

Lance started climbing the hill again, leaving Sara to stare at his back. The Kandrith—the King—could be a woman?

Was this known? It must be—the Children of Peace went back decades—but she doubted it was understood. Lord Giles and his ilk would see a woman ruler as a weakness or regard her as a figurehead.

She wondered if she could make her father understand. Not just that a woman could rule, but everything she’d learned since starting her journey. That a beast could talk and be a person. The incredible sacrifices people were capable of making. That more and more she doubted the ‘King of Slaves’ had caused the massacre. That slaves, no matter how well treated, not only yearned for freedom, but
deserved
it.

Sara followed Lance blindly, no longer seeing the steep hillside and valley of purple flowers below, as she marshalled the arguments she needed to make. In her imagination, her father listened gravely.

Only somehow, even in her daydreams, she could never quite convince him. Again and again, he grew impatient and called her soft-hearted and foolish. Sara argued harder, passionately, even begged, but he always turned away.

And then in her mind, Aleron Remillus turned into Lance’s faceless father, sitting in grim judgement over her. “You did this,” he said, “you told Nir how to get his Legions through the Gate.” And he ordered his guards to lock her away forever.

Shut up. Locked in. Helpless.

As her thoughts grew darker, the world darkened too.

Sara barely noticed. An overcast sky, or falling night—she didn’t care which. Her gaze remained fixed straight ahead.

Her headache worsened. Sara had been to the Kunal Sea once and seen waves crash endlessly against a cliff, over and over. Her headache did the same until she spent every moment either in pain or anticipating the next throb, the next knife-thrust.

A stumble on the path brought her eyes back into focus, and she suddenly realized something was horribly wrong. Her range of vision had narrowed, converging from all sides as if she now looked down a long tunnel.

Blood pounded in her ears. This was no ordinary gloom. She walked faster, hoping to walk out of the tunnel.

Sara thought back desperately, but could not remember the last time she had heard or seen Lance. Had she fallen behind? Reason said Lance walked a bit to one side ahead of her, that if she but turned her head she would see him.

“Lance?” she said, but the word came out a whisper from her dry throat. She couldn’t bring herself to turn her head. What if, when she took her eyes off it, the light vanished entirely, swallowed up by this unnatural blackness?

Already the tunnel had shrunk to a tiny window in pitch darkness.

This was madness. Sara could hear something keeping pace beside her. She should turn her head and look, but she feared what she might see. Olwydd or some other shandy with sharp claws and a huge gaping maw of a mouth ready to rend her to pieces.

Sweating, Sara held her head rigidly still and looked only forward as she hurried desperately toward the light. But now the window began to gray over like a fine mist, fading…

In the dark, her headache pulsed, pain-bright behind her eyes—

* * *

The voices of the dead yanked Esam out of his doze. They cried out that evil was happening, that he must stop it.

Esam tried to tell the dead that he was only a refetti, that he could do nothing. But they would not listen, only screamed louder, their voices like a flail against his flesh. Maddened, Esam squirmed out of the Defiled One’s pocket and bit her hand as hard as he could with his sharp little teeth.

The Defiled One cried out and flung him onto the path where he lay stunned, but grateful. The voices of the dead subsided into their usual murmur.

* * *

Sudden pain made Sara cry out in shock. The throbbing in her head was expected and dreaded. The one in her hand was fresh and new. Her head jerked, and the trance broke. She could see again. The horrible gray tunnel vanished.

“What happened?” Lance reached her side within seconds. It had been his steps on the path, not Olwydd’s, not a monster’s. Sara felt both foolish and relieved.

“You’re hurt.”

Sara looked down and saw a smear of bright red blood on her palm.

Her stomach contracted with nausea. “The refetti!” She remembered it biting her.
I’ve killed it.

She looked around wildly for its body and saw the refetti licking its paw on a mossy log. Its black eyes were open and alert.

It was alive. She hadn’t killed it. Sara drew in a shaky breath, trying to gain control of her emotions.

Lance held her cold hands in his large warm ones. “Goddess of Mercy,” he prayed. The red glow enveloped his hands, tingling on her skin.

Instinctively, Sara yanked her hand away.

“Sara?” Lance frowned.

“There’s no need,” Sara said quickly. “It’s just a small nip, see?” She held up her hand, showing the two puncture marks below the knuckle. “No need to bother your goddess.”

“Bites often get infected.” He waited. When she still didn’t offer her hand, he crossed his arms. “Why don’t you tell me the real reason you don’t want me to heal you?”

Sara had acted on instinct; she didn’t have a reason. But when she opened her mouth, unplanned words came out. “My headache’s back.”

“When?” he growled.

“Since I woke this morning, and it’s gotten worse all day,” Sara said flatly. Even now pain pounded in her temples, blackening thought.

“And?”

“You already healed me several times today, but every time you lift your hand the pain comes crashing back.” And he would have to lift it eventually. She could not be presented to the Kandrith with his son’s hand attached to her head like a leech. “I don’t think I could bear to do it again.” She thought it would, quite frankly, kill her. “It’s better if I just…endure.”

Lance didn’t argue with her, only asked, “Why do you think the pain will come back?”

Sara didn’t think it; she knew it in her bones. “Because of what you said before. The only two things you cannot cure are death—and madness.”

* * *

“You’re not mad,” Lance said roughly. He tried to put his arms around Sara—and she jumped back. His mouth set, but he knew she was right. He couldn’t touch her and not heal. It was also getting harder and harder to keep his hands off her. The last two days had to count as the most frustrating of his life.

“You’re not mad,” he repeated.

“No?” Sara looked away, but not before he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I told you about my mother’s illness, but I didn’t tell you she went mad before she died.”

Lance went cold. Insanity sometimes ran in families— No. Sara was sane. He wouldn’t permit her to be otherwise.

Permit? Where had that come from?

“The madness came and went in cycles,” Sara continued. “But the last time…she killed a cuorelle. One of her maids, who’d been in her service for years. My mother asked for another blanket, and her maid wasn’t quick enough… She grabbed a pitcher and smashed it down on Maura’s head. Afterward, she didn’t seem to know what she’d done. For days, while she was dying, she kept asking for Maura, saying the rest of the slaves were useless, only Maura would do.”

Lance ached to comfort her. He clenched his fists against the impulse. Because if he took her in his arms, he didn’t trust himself to stop at an embrace. Instinct urged him to lay her down and banish her doubts in the most basic way possible: by driving out all thought of anything but the heat between them.

“You’re not your mother,” he said instead.

Sara shook her head. “I’m just like her,” she whispered. “Too passionate. Selfish.”

“Sheep dung,” Lance said bluntly. “You are not selfish.
You
would never loll about in bed while your child needed attention. Valda told me how you stayed up half the night when I lay ill. And who says you’re too passionate? No man would ever say that.”

Sara blinked. “Do you really think so?”

But before he could reply, her refetti nosed her foot, and Sara recoiled. “Keep it away from me!”

Lance’s heart twisted. He scooped up the small creature. He knew that Sara didn’t fear its bite; she feared she would kill it in a mindless rage. The refetti squirmed in his hands, wanting its mistress. “Enough of that, or I’ll stuff you in a sack and tie it closed.”