Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (14 page)

Paglia’s face
tightened.

“Such impudence,
to speak so to the Shallan –”

“I regret that you
find honesty impudent, Paglia.” Osane’s backbone stiffened. “For I was
addressing you, not his Excellency. But indeed, you are right. What is a little
feminine hysteria and blood compared to a summons from the Shallan’s
chancellor, whose spies have no doubt already told him more than I would ever
presume to?”

“Osane, one day
you will push me too far—”

Varden opened his
eyes. “Cease your infernal bickering. Paglia, you forget your station. Osane,
tell me what happened.”

Osane related the
mornings’ events without sentimentality. Varden lay motionless on the couch
with one arm draped over his face.

“Paglia....” His
voice came at barely a whisper.

“Yes, my lord
shallan?”

“Get out.”

“But my
lord—”

“I have no further
need of you. Get out!
Now!
”

Paglia allowed
himself to meet Osane’s expressionless eyes for a brief moment. Any longer and
the cadia-dedre would have seen the hatred and shame that burned in his own.

My time will come,
he told himself.
And when it does, even Oman will not be able to help either of you.

***

Only when the door
shut with a solid thud did the shallan remove his arm from his face. Osane was
stunned to see tears on his cheeks.

She moved toward
him but he waved her away, motioning toward the door. She went to the door of
the chamber and peered into the hallway.

“He’s truly gone,
my lord.”

“Good.” He drew a
shuddering sigh. “I would not have Paglia see this weakness. It is terrible
enough that you must be a witness to it. But you are only a woman, accustomed
to the tears of the weak. I demand your oath that nothing said here and now
will ever pass outside this room.”

“My lord, not
knowing what you are to say, I cannot give such an oath—”

“The beast in
hell, woman! Do you despise me so much that you can spare me no comfort? Must
your cursed duty to the cadia always outweigh your duty to me? Oman has
forsaken me, so you see fit to do the same—”

Speech deserted
her. The Varden before her now was no shallan, only a broken old man
floundering in despair. Not knowing what else to do, she sat down beside him
and stroked his thinning hair as he cried.

“I have prayed...”
His voice wavered, rising thin and small from behind the hands that covered his
face. “I have prayed, I have fasted and meditated.... I have swallowed every
pill and powder of Soccia’s.... And still Oman denies me an heir. Why, Osane?
Why?”

“I do not know, my
lord.” She tried to comfort him as she would a child, for that is what he most
seemed. “
Ssh
, hush now. You must be strong a little
while longer.”

“I cannot. I
cannot bear it any longer.... I am so tired.”

“
Ssh
, I know. I know you are weary. You have labored longer
than any of your forefathers and have been tested further. But Oman’s will
cannot be moved by any man—”

He lifted his head
and the eyes that locked on hers were red-rimmed and wild.

“But there are ways,
Osane. You know as well as I do that there are ways—”

She snatched her
hand from his desperate grip and stood up.

“Don’t even
suggest such things, I will not hear them.”

“What I attempted
with Terred, I was wrong, I know that now! I should have consulted you and
together we could have chosen another
breda
—”

“Are you mad?” she
hissed, color rising like flame to her cheeks. “You cannot simply choose
another bride where and when you please! Would you tempt Oman with blasphemy,
attempting to bend His will to your own?”

“I am tired of
this life, Osane.” The fire left his eyes. In its place was defeat. “Every day
when I open my eyes, my heart shudders to know that I must somehow live another
day.”

His words wrung
her heart and she tried to block out the despair that seeped from him. It was
the most painful gift of the cadia, the honing of even the faintest glint of
tadomani.
She had very little of the
talent, but enough that she could feel
Varden’s
aches
seep into her own body, could feel the pain of so many losses as if they were
her own. Not merely unborn children, but his own father and mother, long dead;
boyhood friends, teachers, priests...he’d outlived everyone who’d ever mattered
to him. Was it any wonder that he was half-mad with bitterness? She closed her
eyes and tried to push his grief away.

And still his mind
cried out to hers. He’d always had a touch of the cadia’s power; it would have
been impossible for him not to inherit a glimmer of it, coming as he did from a
long line of cadian ancestors. Now he used what little tadomani he possessed to
force his pain upon her until her own eyes were wet with tears.
Help me,
he pleaded.
Help me sire a son so that I may die.

 
“Stop it,” she cried softly, “I cannot
bear it. Take it away from me. I cannot do what you ask.”

The pain slipped
from her. She realized she was lucky that
Varden
was
too tired to push further and harder.

“Then forget
Terred,” he breathed. “There is a woman I have heard of—”

Osane’s eyes
snapped wide. “Don’t even speak the name. I know the witch of whom you speak.”

“But is her magic
so different from the powders that Soccia forces on me?”

“Soccia uses no
magic, you know that! She is a healer whose sole purpose to is to keep you
strong and healthy with Oman’s own creations, not the abominations of black
magic.”

“You will not help
me then.” He fell back onto the couch and turned his face to the wall.

“My lord, I will
do anything in Oman’s name to comfort and fortify you, but I cannot allow
either of us to commit heresy. You are distraught or you would not speak of
such desperate things.”

“Go then and leave
me to my misery.”

She bowed deeply.
“I am sorry, my lord Shallan. Truly. And you have my oath that I will not speak
of this again.”

As she left the
room, neither Osane nor Varden saw the
small carved
panel slip back into place.

Chapter 8: The Single Moon

The twin moons
began to converge in their six-summer orbits. The night before leaving,
Lillitha could not sleep. She sat at her window watching the moons, heavenly
lovers, joined at last.

She was in her
seventeenth summer now and lovelier than ever, though she had no inkling of it,
seeing herself only in the eyes of her family. She’d grown a half jackle in
height, which added to her gracefulness. Her delicate figure was
more womanly
than ever as a soft swell came to hips and
breasts.

Lillitha was
lonelier than ever as well. Her mother and Edlin were too busy to spend much
time with her; not that she had much free time anyway. Yanna kept her at her
books morning and night. She had finally committed the entire Book of Belah to
memory. Yanna could not stump her no matter how obscure a verse the cadia might
choose.

Paul was growing
up. Between working with Rowle in the fields and playing at military drills and
archery with his friends from the village, he seemed to have little time for
her. He no longer snuck up the stairs to show her his latest find of robin’s
eggs or fox teeth. Instead, he waved at her window as he hurried off towards
whatever boy-things beckoned that particular day.

Even Marta, whose
company had been sporadic and a mixed blessing at best, no longer came to see
her in the tower. She knew her sister’s visits had never had much to do with
sisterly affection, but rather with envious glances and the sly appropriation
of hair ribbons and the occasional comb. Apparently even her most precious
possessions held little interest for Marta these days. When she did see Marta,
her younger sister seemed deep into some hidden affairs of her own, like
someone hugging a secret to her bosom yet unable to hide a satisfied smile.

The first breezes
of summer stirred an ache in her bones so strong she sometimes woke in the
night to find tears on her pillow. She sighed often for no reason she could
name, yearning for something that lay just beyond her grasp.

Had she been an
ordinary girl she might have laid her head on her mother’s lap and poured her
heart out. Her mother would have told her that all her shapeless longing was
merely a symptom of youth. But Lillitha was
consecratia
,
not an ordinary girl at all. And her mother was too tired, stretched thin with
exhaustion and worry over other matters, large and small, to see anything other
than the quiet, dutiful face Lillitha wore with great care.

Lillitha would
have died rather than confess the confusion in her heart. Every day she felt
more and more like a caged animal. All her summers of study and preparation had
been pleasant and simple until the reality of its purpose suddenly loomed
before her. How easy to think of becoming shallana when the day of reckoning
was so far away! Now it was really happening and she was afraid. The bird in
her chest had grown larger, more painful.

She huddled on the
window seat with her knees drawn up under her chin and her shift tucked down
around her cold feet. She carefully refolded a ragged letter and put it back
with the twenty-odd others. They all bore the same fierce handwriting, a
childish but somehow masculine scrawl. She hadn’t looked at them in a very long
time, but then she’d memorized most of them long ago. They contained nothing
remarkable, just the rambling news of studies, which teachers he loathed and
which he adored, accounts of market days and the latest escapades of the hounds
he was training to hunt. The letters comforted her whenever she was feeling blue.
Tonight was certainly one of those times.

She retied a
ribbon around the packet of letters and tucked them under her pillow. She
wanted to be sure to pack them where Yanna or her mother would not find them.

The night was so
still that she was sure she could hear the sea two parsecs away if only she
listened closely enough. When she closed her eyes she heard instead Edlin’s
footsteps approaching stealthily.

She turned to the
door and smiled as her best friend crept inside, closing the door gently behind
her. Edlin was no longer surprised that Lillitha always seemed to be expecting
her, but merely stepped gingerly to the window and climbed up beside her.

They cuddled
together as they had since infancy. Edlin’s arms wrapped around Lillitha’s
shoulders and her head rested in the crook of her neck.

“Ooh, your hands
are cold,”
Edlin
whispered.

“And your nose is
like a puppy’s. It’s wet too.”

“Is not! What a
rotten thing to say!”

“
Sssh
, you’ll wake her up.” Lillitha nodded her head towards
the antechamber where Yanna slept. Whenever Yanna discovered her out of bed at
such hours, the cadia put a book in her hands and told her to study if she
could not sleep. Lillitha was tired of studying. She snuggled closer, warming
with the combined body heat against the cool night air. She drank in the
comforting scent of kitchen fires that clung to Edlin’s curly hair. “Umm.
That’s better. You make a lovely pillow.”

“Why, thank you
ever so kindly, milady!”

“Oh, don’t even
call me that in jest. Not tonight. Tonight I just want to be plain old Lilli.”

The promise of the
dawn and all it would bring hung between them.

“I shall miss you
so,” Edlin finally whispered.

“Please, don’t. I
don’t want to cry. Not tonight. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time for tears
on the way to Shamonoza.”

“Tell me a story
then.” Edlin nodded towards the twin moons. “Tell me about Pattia and
Tatrahayna.”

Lillitha wiped her
eyes and took a calming breath. She bent with her lips close to Edlin’s ear.

“Long ago, long
before the Realm was even a passing thought in Oman’s great plan, there lived
in ancient Kirrisian a mighty warrior named Tatrahayna. Now, Tatrahayna was
betrothed to a great lady named Dubriel, a princess who was as jealous as she
was beautiful. Dubriel knew that Tatrahayna did not love her and was only
betrothed to her because her father the king had commanded it. But Dubriel
loved Tatrahayna to distraction. She did not care that he had loved another
since childhood, a poor girl from his own village named Pattia.

“Tatrahayna was a
good man and an honorable one. He did as his king commanded and married the
princess. In body and deed he was always faithful and did his best to be a kind
and decent husband to Dubriel. But he could not change the direction of his
heart.