Reluctant Concubine (29 page)

His shoulders grew rigid. “I’m protecting you now,” he said. “Tell me the way to the Forgotten City.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

(Escape from Karamur)

“I cannot.”

Batumar scowled and began to say something, but Leena appeared at the door, begging his forgiveness for the interruption. One of his stewards waited in the Great Hall, wanting to report a matter that needed immediate attention.

“We will settle this when I return,” he said before he left me, his tone carrying ample warning.

Leena rushed to me, paling at the sight of my ruined dress. She brought me another one at once. “Did he harm you, my lady?”

I hesitated a moment, for he had known I had been stolen from my people. He had done nothing to right that wrong, and in that he had harmed me greatly. But in the end, he brought me to Karamur and to my destiny. Could I blame him for walking the path the spirits had set out before him? Perhaps he had a choice, and perhaps he had one not. And perhaps the same stood true for me.

At my silence, Leena began to weep, and I rose to comfort her. “Truly, it is no crying matter. He is much angered, for I refuse to tell him all he wants to know.”

Leena wiped her eyes and nodded. “Forgive me, my lady.”

“You ask because you care. I never regarded you as a servant. I wish we could be friends.”

She looked so horrified at my words, I had to laugh. “Oh, fine well, then. Even if you will not accept my friendship, you are a comfort to me and a treasure.”

Tears flooded her eyes. “And you, my lady, are like the daughter I never—” She caught herself and bowed deeply. “Forgive me if I offended you. I am but a foolish old servant.”

“Have you no children?” I felt selfish and guilty for never having asked before. Had I grown so accustomed to the ways of the Kadar that I had treated her like a servant and did not even know it?

She waited a long time before she answered and spoke each word with great reluctance and visible pain. “I had a son once.”

“What happened to him?”

“When he was born, the soothsayer said on the day my son called me mother, he would die.”

My heart lurched at such a cruel prediction. “Did he?”

Leena shook her head. “I left him before he learned to talk.”

Tears rolled down her face, and I moved to hug her. And this once, she did not draw away.
Every heart has a sorrow,
as the Shahala said. 

She was the same height as I, although I had not realized it until I embraced her. I had always thought her smaller, probably because she was forever bowing before me. But now, the realization led to an idea, even as she pulled away, glancing at the floor as if embarrassed for having shown weakness and behaving so familiarly toward me.

“I would like to borrow your dress,” I said.

Her gaze snapped to me. “My lady—”

“I must leave the palace without anyone knowing.” I could not wait for Batumar’s return. I could not let him force me to reveal the Forgotten City, which he would surely do. And if I stood strong and refused… He had looked as if he would be quite content to lock me in my chamber until I was older than the Guardians.

“You must stay, Lady Tera. The High Lord will not harm you. You are safe in the palace. You do not know the dangers of being alone, a woman as beautiful as you.”

Horror filled her voice, and I wondered what had happened to her once she had left her child and run away to start another life. I thought of Shartor and his mob. If I ran away into the city and Batumar washed his hands of me, I would not fare well, for certain. But I meant to go to the Guardians, and there I knew I would be safe.

“I will leave with or without your help. If you care for me, do not try to stop me.”

At that, she sobbed aloud but pulled her simple brown dress over her head. I thanked her and donned her servant clothes quickly.

I offered her my thudi and Shahala tunic in exchange, for I knew she would not take anything finer.

“You must stay here as long as you can,” I said, and she nodded. “I do not wish you to come to harm. When they find out that I left, tell them I ordered you. Tell them I gave you herbs.”

I drew a deep breath, assuring myself that as long as I had known him, I had never seen Batumar mistreat anyone under his command.

I slipped the scroll from its hiding place and tucked it under Leena’s dress, then picked up an armload of clothes, hoping to use them to cover my face.

“Your hair, my lady,” Leena called after me as I hurried for the door.

I dropped the clothes and reached up to yank down the elaborate coils that marked me as a concubine. If she had not called me back— “Have you something sharp?”

Lena paled. “My lady…”

I remembered the emerald brooch and dug through the trunk at the foot of my bed until I found the heavy jewel.

So Lord Gilrem, after all this time, would aid my escape yet from the Kadar. I sharpened the edge of the brooch on the rough stone of the wall, then chopped my dark hair as short as I could. An uneven cut for certain, as this once, Leena refused to help and would only wring her hands and watch me tearfully.

I tossed the fallen locks into the fire, then picked up my bundle again and lifted it high in front of my face. I stooped my shoulders and shuffled out the door. Pleasure Hall stood empty, but two guards guarded the door outside. I shuffled right past them.

When I passed out of sight, I hurried toward the servants’ quarters and blended in without trouble among the men and women who bustled about, too busy to pay attention to anything else but their tasks at hand. I kept my head down and made no eye contact but hurried on like the rest.

I left the clothes by the washroom, grabbed a pinch of cold wood ash, and rubbed it into my face, then watched my complexion turn pallid in the reflective surface of a giant copper pot. I glanced around, and when no one watched, I rubbed another pinch of ash into my hair until it turned dull and streaked with gray.

I shuffled from the washroom to the kitchen, more careful here since the kitchen servants knew me best. Keeping my head bent and my gaze down, I joined a group of women carrying baskets for the market. In but a few steps, we were outside.

Two hand wagons stood abandoned nearby, a small flock of hens picking at the ground. Three empty milk pails sat outside the kitchen door. I sucked in my breath. A little farther down the street stood several guards talking. We would have to pass by them.

Their jesting and laughter carried to my ear, their carefree mood in stark contrast to my own fearful state. I worked my way into the middle of the group as we neared them, praying to the spirits to shield me from their eyes. To my chagrin, instead of passing by them quickly, one of the younger women tarried to talk to a warrior. The rest stopped to wait for her.

I stood cringing in the middle, the guards but a few steps away as they joked with the young and pretty women. I kept my head down and my back bent.

I hefted the large basket from one hip to the other—it weighed a fair load even empty. Would an aged servant so easily carry such a thing? I slid the basket to the ground at my feet.

“Old woman,” a guard called out, and my heart lurched. “You should leave this heavy work to others. Have you no daughters to go to the market for you?” He strode toward me.

I shook my head but would not look up. I had met many of Batumar’s guards as I walked through the palace every day and had even healed some of them in the back of the kitchen.

I sucked in my breath as the warrior, young to be in the Palace Guard, bent over me. I thought he had grown suspicious and meant to look at my face, and I nearly panicked, looking for a way to run, but he picked up my basket instead and started down the street.

“I will carry this for you,” he called back. “And when the market is over, I will find you and carry your purchases back to the palace.”

The spirits be praised, the group of women followed him.

The fortress city of Karamur always bustled with people, but their numbers grew twofold on market days, according to the servants. I had no trouble blending in and disappearing among them once the guard left me. I set my basket next to a merchant’s busy table and walked away.

A cacophony of noises surrounded me, loud bargaining, laughter, mothers calling for their children. I pushed through the shoppers, careful not to draw attention to myself, not daring to linger and marvel at the colorful crowd or their exotic wares.

Without the mist, I could not hope to scale the cliff, for I would be seen. I waited in an alley until the market ended; then I slipped among the traders and farmers streaming out the city gates.

The walls had been reinforced since I had last seen them, and more guards stood on duty everywhere I looked. With every step, I expected the call to ring out to seal the gate. I remembered well the strange contraption of giant bars that hung from iron chains. I scarcely dared breathe until we walked through the tunnel-like passageway into the open.

In front of me spread peasant huts too numerous to count, interspersed with fields and small groves. The great forest stretched like a dark green wall on the horizon. We were at summer’s end, the weather still warm, even here, half-way up the mountain.

I walked among the chattering traders until we reached the forest and were out of sight from the walls of Karamur, then I slipped into the woods as if to relieve myself. I watched from the shelter of a dense bush but, as I belonged to no one, no one stopped to wait for me. Crouching low, I backed away until the undergrowth became thick enough so I could be sure I would not be seen when standing.

Massive emerald giants reached to the sky and waved their smaller branches as if welcoming me. The sky was but a splatter of pale blue above. I drew a shuddering breath of freedom, then turned my attention to the ground and soon found an animal trail that led up the mountain.

I followed the trail up and up, then turned east and, under the cover of the majestic trees, made my way toward where I thought the Forgotten City lay, still walking an upward path.

Other than birds, I saw no animals, not even a stray deer. Perhaps the noise of my approach had scared them away. I had lived too long among the Kadar and forgotten the way of the woods. I walked as a visitor, not as one who belonged here.

I kept my eyes open for any sign of danger and prayed to the spirits to keep me from the path of predators. I hoped not to see a tiger and, more importantly, not to be seen by one. I fortified my spirit by convincing myself that the great beasts would not wander so close to the city. And if they did, I hoped the Guardians had placed upon the mountain some protection.

Evening approached, my stomach grumbling with hunger, by the time I considered I might be lost. I looked for anything edible and found a low-growing vine that I knew had starchy, bitter roots, suitable for eating. I kneeled and with a stick dug into the soft earth around the base of the vine, not wanting half the root to break off in the ground as I pulled.

A branch snapped somewhere to my right.

My hands froze.

The snapping of a dry branch was not unusual in any forest, but this was followed by a series of softer sounds. Something moved through the woods. Toward me.

I dared not move, for the slightest noise would betray my location. If the animal had not caught my scent yet, I still had some chance of escaping its attention, huddled low by the bushes, close to the ground.

A flash of brown moved among the trees.
A tiger.
Terror gripped my heart. A giant beast it looked to be, as tall as a man, from what little I could see. 

And then it finally stalked near enough to—

The Guardian of the Scrolls stepped into plain sight, looking mightily unhappy.

I slumped with relief.

“There you are,” he groused, squinting. “Darkness falls fast in the tall woods.”

I jumped up and ran to him, and would have hugged him if the scowl on his face did not hold me back. “How good it is to see you, grandfather. Did you know I was coming?”

He glanced at my hair and clothes but did not comment on them. “I felt the scroll.”

I pulled it from under my dress and handed it to him. “Would you read the prophecy to me again?”

He nodded and turned back the way he had come. “When we are warm by the fire.”

“Batumar knows,” I said as I walked behind him. “About the prophecy and me. He wants to see the Forgotten City.”

The Guardian shrugged. As we came out at the edge of the woods, he pointed to a gorge below us. “If he comes, this is what he will see.”

The dim light of dusk revealed a steep slope, covered with jagged rocks, a puff of cloud resting on the bottom. I saw no path as he walked down into the gorge, and yet somehow he found foothold where there had been none, and stepping in his steps, I was able to follow.

We arrived at the bottom much faster than I had expected, and once we broke through the cover of mist, the Forgotten City spread before us. The soft glow of the Forum’s golden dome shone in the middle like a great jewel. We were but a short distance from the Guardians’ cave.

“Why are the Sacred Scrolls not with the rest in the Forum?” I asked, remembering my mother’s tale about how the honeycombed walls held all the knowledge of the world. I very much wished to see that. Maybe those other scrolls, not the ones in the Sacred Cave, contained the answers to our questions.

“The Forum stood empty since before my ancestors came here, the scrolls hidden by the First People during the long decades of ancient wars. Many things they did not pass on to the Seela,” the Guardian said.

Like a blow felt his words. The thought of such a treasury of knowledge lost forever ripped through my flesh. I still struggled to comprehend that tragedy as we reached the cave.

The other two Guardians welcomed me with joy and shared their simple meal of soup and bread. The Guardian of the Cave gifted me with a hooded brown robe similar to his own. Its hem swept the floor of the cave as I walked.

It made me feel, if not renewed, then different. Not Tera, daughter of Chalee, not Tera the slave or Tera the concubine, but someone I did not yet know, someone I more and more wished to become.