Gods of Green Mountain (46 page)

His eyes he swept down over her figure, so that's why she appeared a little changed from the slim girl he remembered. "The baby--that night in the God's home?"

She nodded. "Dray-Gon, you are not going to believe this, but I could possibly be the only pregnant woman in all Far-Awndra or at least, newly pregnant. There is not a wife who will allow her husband entrance to her bed until the laws are changed. All the women are pulling for us--for you and for me! You have never seen such dour, sour faces sitting at a council table! Why the ministers and bakarets are working from sunup, to way past the last sun-downing, to change a few unjust laws! Right this minute, my father is probably pleading outside of my private chambers, begging me to let him in, pleading for me to eat, but when he's not there, he's snapping the whip in the council room. And he's got the words of the God to back him up. Oh, Dray-Gon, you should hear him! He is one magnificent, powerful speaker! He could move mountains and change the desert into the ocean with the mere spell he can create with his oratory. I have sneaked out of my rooms many times, to hide myself and listen. Why that God in his high, green home could take lessons from my father when it comes to pleading a cause."

Subdued somewhat from so much enthusiasm, Dray-Gon wondered how he could compete, when she had a father like that. But when he met her eyes, he realized that was a competition in which he had already won. "Well, seductive witch, shall I climb now and see if we can return to the palace?"

"Later," she said, "later..."

The secure little valley that had given Dray-Gon safety and beauty, but no comfort and no solace, only loneliness and remorse for all that could have been and was lost, now gave him everything. He sat relaxed and glowing before a fire he had made, and watched a princess prepare an evening meal in ways not much different from those of a servant girl--except for the glances she cast his way from time to time, not shy or timid or insecure.

To win the love of a small, fearfully shy creature was quite another variety of sensation than this love of meeting and overcoming the strong, demanding challenge of someone his equal, and better. He felt intoxicated. Drunk with wines he hadn't tasted until today. She had defied the king to steal away to him; risked her life traveling alone through the wildlands with only two puhlets and why she had brought them along still hadn't been explained.

She stirred the contents in a gleaming pot, her face flushed from the heat, and tasted of the stew. The jeweled pendant he had given a servant girl sparkled about her neck, not hidden by a covering royal crest, and on a silver chain girdling her waist dangled a miniature puhlet whittled from a block of wood--his gift to a princess.

"I have never given you anything," she said after they had eaten, just before she draped over his head a pendant of her own giving and design. Made of twenty silver links, and a glittering pendant centered with two oval jewels the exact shade of her eyes. The significance of the two oval jewels made his breath catch--for oval was the promise and symbol of perfect fidelity. Oval could rock, but it couldn't roll away like a sphere capriciously willful to obey every whim, nor could it sit solidly dull like a square trapped by its own form, and unable to leave, and oval didn't point ambiguously toward a third direction like a triangle, and oval went round and round, always meeting and changing position somewhat but true always to its symbol. "When you don't love me anymore, and want another, take this off and return it to me without any explanations...just go, and we will never meet or see each other again, but the child within me will be mine, for it is the law, since you are allowed two others."

"I will never take off this pendant!" he vowed.

She looked down at the one she wore around her neck, centered with a deep blue round stone that was valuable, but signified nothing permanent. When she lifted her eyes, he was smiling at her in an odd way. "Someday I will give you another shaped oval."

"All right. I can wait," she agreed, as his smile spread broader, as if he had scored another point.

Minutes later, he spread their blankets on the ground, under a starry plum-colored sky, so she could experience sleeping out of doors without a sheltering dome, or protecting cover of any kind: something he had done often, something she had never expected to do. While they lay there wrapped together, looking up at the stars, he told her of his boyhood, and his life in a military school that had stressed physical fitness and sent their students outside of the protective city domes to live in the old ways and test their endurance against nature's elements. "And it was fun, Sharita, believe it or not--and there really are wild puhlets! Once I met a giant horned bull, shaggy-furred and almost as fierce as any warfar, and he lowered his great head and came at me--to protect his females and young, for they don't eat meat. But I didn't kill him. You see, Far-Awn has always been a hero of mine, and I admired his big Musha, and to see a wild animal that we believed extinct was for me an uplifting thrill. So you see, we lowlanders aren't as insensitive and barbaric as you believe."

"Believed," she corrected. Yet, even so, he did have a difference that set him apart from the young men of the upperlands--and it was this very difference that was his special magnetism. "I ought to tell you," she began, "of your father's visit to my apartment tower while I was planning and preparing for my escape. And though I refuse to see my own father, I allowed yours to enter. Ron Ka seemed broken and very subdued, and so dejected when he asked me to tell him truthfully if his only son was a murderer."

"And of course, you just had to tell him the truth!" he flared.

"Of course I did! And he was so relieved--you should have seen his face brighten, and then, you know what? He took me in his arms and almost sobbed, and said he had never been prouder of you for giving your life, and saving mine, but then he really broke down, really crying because now he would never have any grandchildren."

"Did you tell him the truth about that too?"

"Oh no, for I wasn't sure then, and I had to tell you first, and then my own father." Her eyes met his, deep and troubled dark. "How fortunate we started a child before that unfeeling law took away your ability to sire children--so now at least you will be a father one time."

So...she had traveled to him alone, believing he wasn't a whole man, and still she had loved him enough.

"If you keep me as the wife of your youth only, that one child would be all we would make together anyway--so what is the difference?"

He laughed exultantly as he held her closer, this quixotic girl who changed to fit any of his moods. "My princess, don't you know your father at all? Our laws controlling exiles are very strict, so they won't breed children to live as beasts on the wildlands. But all the judges agreed that banishment alone would be enough punishment for me, a man who had killed to protect their princess--and who convinced them of this? King Ras-Far; he himself pleaded my case, and very adroitly too--though this part of my sentence was kept secret...for I believe your father has got the notion in his head that you want to bear three children by the same man and you were less likely to try and escape the palace, if you thought me so flawed..."

All about them the dark-fliers were singing, and the night crawlers hummed, and Dray-Gon even dared to speak again those same words, as he had on their first night of meeting. It made her laugh to think such a subject would start a romance like theirs. "Poor father," she said with a sigh, "I can see him now, prowling restlessly the palace halls, frustrated at every turn, by his wife, by his bullheaded daughter, by all his stiff-necked cabinet members who refuse to yield to new ways and discard old laws meant for another kind of society than what we have now...and here we are, you and I, experiencing the happiest, most fulfilling days of our lives. It hardly seems fair, does it?"

"No, Sharita, the most fulfilling days are yet to come. I wonder just what kind of children you and I will make."

"Children?"

"Did I say that?"

"Yes, you did!"

"Time will tell, princess. Can't you wait for anything?"

The New Laws

T
he queen was in her parlor, indolently popping chocolates in her mouth, her eyes on the wall news-reflector until, occasionally, she turned her attention to the tapestry she was weaving with intricate, tiny stitches, using silken threads of many shades and hues. The subject of her wall-hanging depicted the journey of twenty young men, and one young girl, to visit the Gods. When finished, it would be a work of art of impressive dimensions, and represent many years of her life. It was La Bara's tangible gift to posterity, and undaunted by the long years of labor ahead, she worked toward its completion.

After a long and tiresome day, the king strode in and made an attempt to kiss her cheek, but La Bara jerked away before his kiss could touch her flesh. And as if he weren't there at all, she unhurriedly began to gather up all her paraphernalia. He could slap her, shout at her, let her know she was really getting to him, but that was not his way.

"It's very good to see you again, dear," Ras-Far said in a pleasant, smiling way. "And I must say, you are looking exceptionally attractive--you have styled your hair in a new way, and it is so becoming."

La Bara leaned to close the lid on her box of chocolates as if she were without ears, and picking that last remaining item up, she headed toward a distant door.

The king had fallen into a chair and wearily sprawled his long legs before him, while his eyes followed his wife's leisurely, insulting departure. A scowl darkened his expression. He spoke then, not raising his voice, just changing his friendly tone to one of sharp command, and no one could speak with his authority in a voice so well modulated: "Halt! La Bara! Enough of this nonsense. I have news to report if you care to stay and hear it, good news, for a change."

She halted. But didn't turn about to face him, just waited, forcing him to issue another command. "Turn about, wife, and look at me. I have no intention of addressing your back."

When she had obediently turned, still refusing to meet his eyes, still treating him as a shadow without substance, he ordered her to sit. She sat. "Now hear this, La Bara. All has been settled. Captain Dray-Gon has been pardoned for a crime he never committed in the first place. Our daughter has been exonerated for all guilt in the accidental death of Mark-Kan. Hear that? Accidental death. We have established there are no wildlands in our country anymore--so even murderers cannot be banished to live there. What we will do with those outlaws out there, and how we will now punish murderers, is a problem for tomorrow. But that too will be resolved after long-winded discussions, while you sit here and pleasantly enjoy yourself and inwardly gloat in denying me my husbandly rights."

The box of chocolates was placed once more on a low table, opened, and a very tasty piece selected and enjoyed while the king glared hard at her. Was it only weeks ago when he would have relished a quiet, restful evening when his wife didn't prattle on incessantly, only stopping to grab a breath? He wondered how she managed it. How she could sit there unspeaking when he knew she was bursting with curiosity to hear it all.

With the help of the chocolates, and the colored threads that she began to spread about her, she managed very well to contain her silence, and seemingly, to disregard his presence. A needle was threaded with scarlet, four meticulous stitches taken, and then a needle was threaded with blue. Another chocolate entered her mouth; her fingertips were daintily wiped on a slip of silk.

If she ate just one more chocolate, and threaded one more needle, and took one more stitch, that would be it! A new law he would write, allowing a fourth wife for old,
old
age!

"Oh, did I forget?" he asked. "There was one more item decided today: A new law written down in our books--it is now a criminal offense, a serious criminal offense, punishable by imprisonment behind bars--if a man forces himself on a woman against her will. Of course, it will have to be proven a genuine case of rape, or else all our men will end up in jail or in the dungeons."

For the first time in endless days, the queen allowed her eyes to meet with his. She spoke. "How long will a man like Mark-Kan be punished--in a case like what he did to our daughter?"

"In a case of kidnapping, physical assault, with rape in mind, probably life imprisonment. All the details haven't been decided yet. We are taking one step at a time, not leaping ahead in bounds. But I have every magistrate's signature. It will now be safe for a woman to walk our streets at night alone, without a guard."

He was given a brilliant, charming smile, and La Bara sat on his lap and gave him a long, very warm kiss on the lips before she pulled away. He tried to pull her back, but she had surprising strength. "Have you told Sharita?"

"I came to tell you first," he replied, knowing this would please her. He was rewarded with another long kiss, and she whispered in his ear something he wanted to hear, and then they were both on their feet, hurrying down the long corridors to inform their daughter of the new laws before she starved herself to death.