THE SHADOWLORD (3 page)

"Orithia is a beautiful girl, and gentle. I am praying she does not fight and wind up brutalized."

Phillipa smiled. "At least we don't have to worry about her in that regard. She'll be too frightened to cause trouble."

"Kneel."

The imperious voice was like a whiplash laid across her back, but she did not flinch, and did not obey the strident command.

"Kneel!"

Orithia Valsca's blue eyes narrowed. Her jaw clenched tightly, the muscle in her right cheek jumping with impotent fury.

"Kneel!"

That one word was a shriek of outrage at her stubborn refusal to bow to an authority she did not deign to recognize.

Jaelan Ben-Ashaman stood with his arms folded and watched as their prisoner--standing so rigidly immobile before the Tribunal--was hit from behind, the heavy pike slamming viciously into the backs of her legs to send her crashing to her knees on the marble floor. He tensed, but he knew better than to interfere. It would make the Amazeen's punishment that much more severe.

Orithia fell. The jolt made her teeth click together over the inside of her lower lip, and brought a grunt of annoyance as she tasted her own blood.

"If you will not comply on your own, woman, you will be made to do so!" the Chief Tribunalist promised.

Orithia's angry glower lifted to the man. Incapable of pushing herself up from the floor, for her wrists were chained behind her back and her ankles likewise heavily manacled with thick argentine links, she was compelled to do as ordered. But her expression left no doubt of her contempt.

"You would be well advised to show respect for your betters, woman," another Tribunalist warned, "else you will regret it."

Orithia's venomous stare shifted to the elderly speaker. For the first time since being dragged before the Tribunal, she spoke. "I'll not show one ounce of respect for this so-called Tribunal. You bastards have no dominion over me! I am an Amazeen princess!"

His dark eyes wide, Chief Tribunalist Abasi Ksathra pushed back from the Tribunal bench and stood. He adjusted the sleeves of his long red robe, then passed behind the three Tribunalists on his left to descend the dais steps. With a tight smile on his thin lips, he walked to where Orithia was forced to kneel. "You dare to call us bastards?"

"Aye," Orithia spat, the one word a vile insult in itself. "You are nothing more than that to me!" She started to say something else, but Ksathra's savage slap stunned Orithia, almost knocking her down.

"Open your mouth once more to insult us, woman," he sneered, "and I will have your tongue removed. King Hasani might well thank us in the long run, though I am sure you can be taught how to pleasure him with that wickedly sharp tool!"

"Shall I try her first?" Tribunalist Sefu Yazid quipped.

A wave of laughter came from those gathered. Heads moved together as the men joked among themselves.

Orithia turned her face from the man standing over her and spat a mouthful of blood. When she looked up at her tormentor, she saw wry amusement on his wrinkled face. That look did nothing to calm her raging fury. She growled with frustration, which seemed to amuse the Chief Tribunalist.

"You would tear out my throat if you could, wouldn't you?" Ksathra asked.

"With the greatest of pleasures," Orithia swore through clenched teeth. "Hang you by your worthless heels and drain you dry!" She swept her eyes over the other six Tribunalists. "Every last one of you black-hearted heathens!"

Ksathra grinned. "Fortunately, you will never be given the chance." He cupped Aradia's chin, anchoring her face so he could look into her hostile eyes. "After all, you are at our mercy here, Amazeen."

Despite her subservient position at his feet and the bonds that impeded her, Orithia's mindless fury felt like a red-hot poker prodding her common sense. She snarled, then lunged forward, struggling to throw herself on the Chief Tribunalist, wanting nothing more than to wipe that self-satisfied smirk from his twitching lips.

"Oh, hell," Jaelan Ben-Ashaman sighed as he motioned two of the palace guards to stop the enraged woman warrior.

The guards moved in tandem like flowing liquid silver and caught their prisoner by the arms to keep her from falling face down. They jerked her away from the Chief Tribunalist, although her thrashing about proved to be more violent and effective than the men could have anticipated. It was all they could do to keep her at bay.

Jaelan sighed again, rolled his eyes to the heavens, and stepped forward, bending over their captive. "Be still or the lash will be brought, woman!" he warned in a low voice meant for only her ears.

His words, however, acted as a goad to Orithia's injured pride. Her bellow shook the crystal chandeliers. "Lash me, then, you craven Rysalian bully!" she snarled, struggling uselessly between the two seven-foot-tall muscular Hasdu who held her. Blood-streaked saliva dribbled down her chin as she cursed. "Let your precious Hasani Jaleem know I do not come willingly to his bed! He will have to hog tie me and mount me, for I will
never
lay a hand to his ugly ass of my own accord!"

A gasp of indignation moved through the crowd. Angry eyes turned to the Chief Tribunalist. "Can you not curb her, Ksathra?" an older Tribunalist drawled. "If she were mine, I would know how to break her of this nasty habit of insulting her betters."

The men in the Tribunal Hall nodded.

"Lash her, Ksathra," another suggested. "She needs to be taught a lesson in manners. Let her understand who owns her and to whom she owes her obedience!"

"You do
not
own me!" Orithia shouted, struggling savagely with the two men whose combined strengths far surpassed her own. "You are nothing more than thieves! Rapists and murderers and--" She would have flung another insult had Jaelan not slapped her mouth.

Dragging her against him, he anchored her to his hip with his free hand. "Be quiet!"

Her pale eyes shot sparks of molten fire at the man hunkered beside her. So potent was her fury, a red haze of insanity had begun to tint her vision. She mumbled dire threats beneath the constriction of Jaelan's callused hand. She bucked against her captors in an effort to free her mouth, and sought to sink her teeth into the palm.

"Stop this!" Jaelan hissed. His hand tightened cruelly over Orithia's lips, savagely pressing her teeth into the tender flesh of her lips. "You are trying my patience."

"She would try the patience of a saint if Rysalia had any," someone joked. Laughter moved over the crowd.

"I told you, you should not have allowed this one to live, Ksathra," Rashidi Thole, the eldest Tribunalist, injected. "You should have executed her as you did the other one."

"She had no hand in killing the Chief Procurer," Ksathra reminded them. "It was not her hand on the dagger."

"No, but she is no less savage than her Amazeen sister," Thole said. "She sports the tattoo on her ankle for a reason, Lord Ksathra. She has killed. Do we really want to send such a viper to the King's seraglio? Send her to the chopping block and be done with it. She will trouble us no more."

Jaelan glanced at the woman's legs, bent to the side as she leaned rigidly against him. The tattoo on her right ankle was of a nocked crossbow, the head of the quarrel tipped in vermeil. Legend stated that only an Amazeen who had killed her first man had the privilege of sporting such a wicked symbol.

"Give me her head for my collection, Milord. I have many Amazeen pretties on a shelf in my bath house where they watch me relieve myself each morning!"

Hoots of merriment followed the unknown speaker's grizzly words.

Ksathra glanced uneasily at the men and felt their annoyance. The wrong word, the wrong action, and the woman's life might well be forfeit.

Jaelan felt the same way, for he lowered his voice and spoke to the Chief Tribunalist. "This is getting dangerous, Your Grace. Perhaps she should be drugged. They will be coming for her this eve, and we do not want her battered when she is to be presented to King Hasani."

Ksathra watched the Amazeen's brows collide, saw her try to shake her head. "I think you may be right, Commander."

To be drugged was something Orithia feared. Not to be able to have free thought and movement cut a deep swath of horror through her being. These men could do anything to her while she was under the influence of the Rysalian Keeper's hellish pharmacoepia of mind-altering brews, and she would have no way to protect herself. She stilled, pleading the only way she could with the man keeping her silent to spare her the ordeal of the Keeper's needles--with her eyes.

Jaelan looked into that frightened blue gaze. "What choice have you given us?" he asked, hardening his heart to the fear he saw building in her pretty face. He removed his hand from her mouth. "You brought this on yourself."

"Don't..." Orithia began, only to be cut off as a squat man in a dark blue robe stepped up to her. She glared hotly at the Keeper and started to curse him, too, but she didn't get the chance.

From out of nowhere, it seemed, the Keeper produced a gleaming steel needle, its end dripping with amber fluid. Aradia's throat closed against the sight. Without speaking, the Keeper wrapped his left hand around her right arm and jabbed the needle into the thick muscle.

"Sleep soundly," Jaelan said as she turned accusing eyes to him.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" she managed to ask before the fiery payload from the hollow needle rushed through her shoulder and spread insidiously up her neck and into the neuropath ways of her brain, burning a painful trail as it went.

Jaelan shrugged as he stepped back. "No,
Anide
, I am not."

Heat washed throughout Orithia body. "Damn," she mumbled as her legs turned to rubber. Vaguely she wondered what the Rysalian word
anide
meant. Had he cursed her again? The guards tightened their grip as she sagged like a rag doll between them.

Her vision began to waver, and she stared unseeingly at Ksathra's ruddy face. The undulating blackness crept along the periphery of her vision, expanding toward the center as her hearing became hollow and tinny and the faces of her abusers moved far, far away.

"No woman will be allowed to challenge the authority of the Tribunal," Ksathra said in that stern voice she had come to hate.

Lassitude set in, a calm, tranquil peace that made Orithia smile despite the nagging fear that things had gone irretrievably wrong in her world, that she was in deep trouble.

She shrugged. What difference did it make now?

Kathleen McGregor looked up as a sound broke her concentration. Laying aside the shirt she was mending, she got up from her chair and walked to the double doors of the solarium. She opened the portals and ventured onto the narrow balcony that jutted out over the gardens. The balcony, enclosed from top to bottom with ornate scrolled ironwork resembling a fancy cage, allowed a cooling breeze to waft into Kathleen's chamber. So close were the intertwined scrolls, not even her slender hand could be wedged between them.

The intruding sound came again. She raised her head toward the heavens to watch her pet raven soar on the thermals. His angry caw warned her that visitors approached.

"From Asaraba?" she asked, though her lips never moved.

"Nay, Lady. They are from Dahrenia,"
the raptor answered.
"They bring the Prince's new concubine."

Kathleen frowned. She put a hand on the iron rail. "Is Lord Jaelan accompanying them?"

"Aye."

Sorrow sent a shaft of pain through Kathleen's heart. She turned from the balcony and entered her room. After closing the doors behind her, she returned to her chair, took up her sewing, and sat down. But with the next stitch she made, tears filled her vision and blurred the fabric. With a sigh, she laid the sewing in her lap and bowed her head.

"You are still having the dreams?"

Kathleen nodded.

"His destiny is entwined with that of the Amazeen."

Kathleen did not reply, nor did she look up as her companion came to stand beside her.

"Sometimes dreams are only dreams, Milady."

"Not mine."

The high priest placed a gnarled hand on the young woman's clasped fingers. "Put him out of your mind, child." He flinched as two of her tears fell on his mottled flesh.

"She will make his life miserable," Kathleen said.

"She will make everyone's life miserable." The priest sighed. "Mine more than most."

Kathleen looked up, her eyes full of hurt. "Yet your misery will be like a drop in a well compared to the sea of despair he will know at her hands, Your Grace."

High Priest Rajkon Xanth watched with pity welling in his aged heart as the girl covered her face with her hands and gave in to her grief. Clumsily, he patted her shoulder, not knowing what else to do. He looked around, wishing someone else were in the room with them, someone who could help ease the burden of her hopelessness. As Kathleen's confessor, he was the only male allowed to be alone with her, and she was the only female at the Monastery of the Sands at Alladoni. He was about to offer her another word of consolation, but a knock at the door saved him. Closing his eyes in gratitude for the interruption, he answered the summons.

Sekhem Neter, the Chief Guard, looked past the priest and settled his hawk-like glare on the sobbing girl. He grunted with displeasure, then turned his attention to Xanth. "The entourage from Dahrenia is here, Your Grace. The Master wishes for that one to be brought to the assembly hall."

Rajkon nodded. "I will bring her shortly, Captain."

Neter's jaw tightened. "See she is properly veiled," he snapped.

"All will be as it should be, Captain." The priest moved to the shut the door, but the Chief Guard clasped the wooden panel to stay its closing.

He locked gazes with Rajkon. "And make equally sure she does not speak unless spoken to."

Rajkon raised his chin. "Are these commands from the Master, or are these your suggestions, Captain?"

"They are
not
suggestions, Your Grace," the Chief Guard sneered. "They are my
orders
to you!"