Destiny of the Light: Shadow Through Time 1 (26 page)

‘S
omewhere over the rainbow,’ Khatrene sang, watching her aura cascade off the windows.

Another two choruses and she grew restless, flopped onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

Y
OU PERPETUATE YOUR GRIEF BY DWELLING ON IT
.

And you tricked me by not telling me I was being drugged. Let me guess: that was another life experience you wanted me to have. Like when you suggested I kill myself.

Y
OU ARE ALIVE NOW.
A
S IS YOUR CHILD
.

And I plan to stay that way.

I
F YOU ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE YOU MAY BE HARMED.

I’m getting out of here at the first opportunity and if you don’t want to help me I’d sooner you keep your mouth shut.

Y
OU WILL ESCAPE.
Y
OU ARE INTELLIGENT.
R
ESOURCEFUL
. F
EARLESS.

Fearless. Do you think so?
she asked facetiously, but liked the sound of it. Khatrene the Fearless. It certainly sounded better than The Light, a title she had come to hate. But not the child. Never the child.

T
ODAY YOU ARE FEARLESS
, the voice said.

So today is a good day to escape.

Long pause. P
ERHAPS.

I hate it when you’re obscure.

Y
OU HATE MANY THINGS.

I hate Djahr.
No hesitation in making that statement. When she’d gotten over her initial terror, anger had begun to set in. He’d manipulated her from the start, flattering her, seducing her with his eyes. She hated those eyes now. Hated everything about him from his beautiful robes to his perfectly manicured fingernails. And she particularly hated the memory of their joinings. Especially the one in the Altar Caves.

No, if she starting thinking about the Altar Caves she’d cry. She wasn’t going to do that again. Talis must have found a way to get news to Mihale and perhaps even now he was on his way to rescue her. The sensible thing to do would be to wait, but if an opportunity to escape presented itself, Khatrene knew she would take it.

H
E IS COMING.

She tensed, sat up on the bed.
Djahr
?

T
ALIS.

In a second she was at the door, her cheek pressed to the smooth timber panel. Tense seconds passed as she waited.

‘My Lady?’

Her shoulders sagged with relief. ‘I knew you’d come back,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve heard from Mihale. He’s on his way?’

The pause that followed her question made breathing difficult.

‘Talis?’

‘My Lady …’ He paused again and Khatrene pulled back from the door.

What’s wrong?

No reply.

‘My Lady,’ Talis began again, his voice so soft she had to strain to hear it. ‘Pagan came today from the Volcastle with blessings and good wishes from your royal brother.’

Khatrene stared at the door. ‘Good wishes?’

‘These blessings are given as tradition requires to your husband and the father of your child. Graciously received by The Dark, Pagan will return to the Volcastle with gratitude and good wishes from Be’uccdha.’

‘But —’ It was beyond anything Khatrene could have imagined. ‘Mihale knows I’m locked up here? You got a message to him?’

‘I asked the same of my cousin who tells me that his Lord and King knows of The Dark’s protective care of his wife and finds no pain in it.’

‘I don’t believe it. I just… don’t.’ She sat heavily on the floor. Despite her bravado about finding her own escape she’d expected at least sanctuary from Mihale. ‘Where will I go?’

Y
OU ARE ALIVE
.

Khatrene could only shake her head.

‘Do not despair, My Lady,’ Talis said.

‘Khatrene,’ she corrected automatically.

‘Khatrene …’

‘I can’t believe he’d just abandon me.’ She put her hands up to cover her face, then dropped them to her lips, thinking. ‘Maybe he’s not responding because I told him I belonged with Djahr now. Maybe he thinks I don’t want him to interfere. Did you tell him —’

Talis interrupted her. ‘The dispatch I sent made your situation clear. The King knows you are in distress and begging his aid.’

‘Yet he sends “good wishes” to my captor.’ Khatrene felt a growing numbness in her mind. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that you are temporarily without the aid of your brother, but all is not lost.’

Talis’s words were full of calm reassurance and Khatrene took the time to convince herself she could believe in them. ‘What will we do?’ she asked.

Talis’s reply came immediately. ‘If you are prepared to live in exile, I will release you from imprisonment and lead you from your husband’s lands. The way will be dangerous but I will not leave your side, and together we will find a way to keep your child safe.’

Safe.
The room suddenly blurred and Khatrene felt silent, hot tears flooding her cheeks. She couldn’t speak but that didn’t matter. No reply would have adequately expressed her emotions at that moment. Gratitude was so weak a word to repay what Talis had given her. Continued to give her.

He must have heard her crying yet he said nothing. Eventually she pulled herself together and cleared her throat. ‘If we do this, Mihale will be angry with you as well, won’t he?’

‘I must do what I feel to be right,’ he said.

Despite the tears on her cheeks, Khatrene smiled. ‘And I’m so very glad that you are.’ But she had to ask, ‘What about Lae? When we were talking on the battlements that day …’ immediately she felt a sickness in her stomach at the way Djahr’s blatant sexuality had lured her from the safety of her Champion’s presence. ‘… You didn’t sound eager to marry her. I guess breaking me out of here will settle that problem decisively.’ The moment the words were out Khatrene realised how they might sound. ‘Not that I’m suggesting that’s why you’re helping me.’

A long pause followed.

‘When you disappeared,’ Talis said at last, ‘and The Dark told us that you had retired from company until the child was born, I believed I had made you angry and that you sought seclusion only to avoid me.’ He paused again and Khatrene chewed her lip. ‘I had thought my betrothal to Lae appeared dishonourable in your eyes and —’

Khatrene couldn’t let him go on. ‘Nothing you do would seem dishonourable in my eyes, Talis,’ she said. ‘You’re the most honourable man I’ve ever met. They probably invented the word “honourable” the day you were born.’ He said nothing, so she went on. ‘Now that I know what Djahr is like, I assume he coerced you —’

‘The Dark gave only his blessing and no further incentive towards my marriage to Lae,’ Talis told her. ‘I believed I would be happier with Lae than any other … until the White Princess returned to Ennae. That day, I knew I would never be happy.’

‘I make you unhappy?’

Pause. ‘Your presence hastened the realisation that I would never be happy with Lae.’

Silence sat on both sides of the door.

‘But you told me you were in love,’ she said at last. ‘I remember distinctly. We were talking about Lae and —’

‘I am in love,’ he said softly.

Khatrene felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. ‘Talis …’ She closed her eyes and rested her head against the door. A hundred conversations, a thousand tiny exchanges between them fell into place. The way he looked at her. His reluctance to touch her any more than was absolutely necessary. His stilted manner towards Djahr. His inexplicable sadness when she’d first spoken to him of ‘the tattooed man’.

‘It was not my place to love,’ he said, ‘Yet I could not — cannot stay my heart.’

‘I wish I’d known,’ she said softly. She couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to watch her fall in love with someone else. Fall in lust, rather. And that probably caused by drugs.

‘I wish there wasn’t a door between us,’ she said.

‘I am glad for it,’ Talis replied, and Khatrene felt a breathless flush sweep over her. She had a sudden, very clear image of herself in Talis’s arms. Kissing Talis. Being kissed by Talis. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought of before. Of Talis being a man who desired her as a woman. The more she thought about it, the dizzier she felt. She was suddenly grateful to be sitting on the floor. Something big and wonderful was happening inside of her. But this wasn’t the head-rush she’d felt with Djahr. This was steady and strong, like Talis’s own heartbeat.

‘I must leave now,’ he said, his voice strained.

‘All right.’ Khatrene didn’t know what else to say. ‘Talis … thanks for what you’ve done for me.’ It sounded lame in the face of his confession.

‘I will be three days on the Plains scouting for an escape path, then I will return and find a way out of the Castle.’

‘I’ll be here.’ She tried to smile. Couldn’t.

There was a long pause, and then, ‘Farewell.’

‘Goodbye, Talis.’

She heard nothing for a moment, as though he simply stood at the door unable to leave. Then came the sound of his quiet footsteps on the stone stairs. She listened until she could hear them no more, then rose and walked to the window. The sun appeared from behind a cloud and it spread her aura around the room and out onto the air beyond the tower. Khatrene felt suddenly light, as though the rainbow of colours was her heart radiating outwards, light as air, brilliantly beautiful.

‘Talis.’ She said his name aloud, and although she was completely alone in the room, a part of him still seemed to be with her.

‘W
ho is it? Who goes there?’ Ellega of Verdan, sister of Barrion, sat up in bed clutching her bedsheets about her, straining her eyes to see who stood in her doorway. Her brother had given her to understand she would be safer at the Volcastle than in her own rooms in the Verdan Hold, yet here an intruder came upon her in the night. Where were her guards?

‘Shhhh,’ a man said and closed the door. He in her room, and she clad in only the thinnest night gown.

‘I am a daughter of the House of Verdan,’ she said in her most imperious voice, and cursed the fear which wrought tremors in it. ‘If you do not leave at once I will call on the King to —’

‘I am the King.’

Ellega blinked in the darkness. ‘Mihale …?’ She said his name, then brought a hand to cover her mouth which had spoken so familiarly to her sovereign. Never mind that she dreamt of lying in his arms to whisper his name in a lover’s voice. This was no dream.

‘I am he,’ her King said, not sounding offended. ‘I know it is late but Bhoo has caught me taking some air and sent me to speak with you.’

Ellega recovered herself and said quickly, ‘Do not think about the hour, Your Majesty, but that I am your servant at any time. Please, come and speak. Shall I retire and dress more fittingly?’

A scratching was followed by the lighting of a candle on her book table. Ellega saw her King straighten and turn towards her, yet rather than invite his conversation, accursed modesty saw her raise the bedsheets to cover herself more demurely.

‘I have no interest in your clothing.’ He stepped up to the bed and reached for her hand, ‘Come, sit with me and speak,’ he said.

She hesitated only a heartbeat before pushing back the covers and taking his hand, feeling the warmth of it as it closed over her own. Her breath caught in her throat as he pulled her away and strode towards the light he had made.

‘Sit,’ he said, and watched her slide onto the couch, where she felt the sharp need to cover what would otherwise be easily observed through her thin gown. Yet to do so would be to insult the King’s honour. She raised her chin and rested her hands on her lap. He smiled and sat beside her. ‘Are you truly my servant, Ellega?’ he asked, and her given name on his lips was the sweetest sound she had ever heard.

‘I am, Majesty,’ she said without hesitation. For why else had she convinced her brother Barrion to let her stay at the Volcastle without him at her tender age, but in the hope of finding favour with their Lord and King who must one day choose a wife?

He smiled at her and Ellega thought her heart would stop, such was the longing he awoke in her. His royal-hued eyes were softer than any other in the realm and the pale hair that fell from his noble head shone in the candlelight, making her fingers ache to touch it.

‘Though I am your sovereign Lord,’ he said to her, ‘I would rather you call me Mihale,’ and the glance that accompanied these words was hesitant and showed none of the cool command she had hitherto witnessed in her King. ‘Bhoo tells me I should marry,’ he said and glanced away, frowning. ‘Yet there is much confusion in my heart and I cannot choose.’

Ellega heard these words over the heavy pounding of blood in her temples. She could only gaze upon him and nod stiffly.

‘I want a wife,’ he said, and looked back to her, ‘yet I doubt I can find a woman who will see me as worthy, who will … forgive my strange desires, who will tolerate my whims, my needs —’

Ellega could hear no more. She fell to her knees before him and did not care that her virtues lay all but naked before his eyes. ‘Majesty, I am she. I have loved you long and hard and you will find no other to forgive as much as I. You could kill my kin and I would find it in my heart to forgive you, so steadfast is my love. Please, do not doubt that I can be the wife you desire. In all things I will serve My Lord and King. In all ways. For all time.’

Ellega finished this speech with tears of passion in her eyes and Mihale pulled her up into his arms to cry against his chest. She found such sanctuary, such paradise there that she could have cried for days. Yet soon her tears subsided and she raised her head and look upon the face of the man she had loved all her life. They were so close that Ellega could taste his breath against her lips and felt faint from longing. She knew she could marry no other man.

‘I do believe you love me,’ he said, and though he held her like a brother — his hands far from those places a lover would touch — to look at him compelled Ellega to imagine the intimacies they might share as husband and wife. She could not help trembling. ‘If I should ask you,’ he said, ‘would you marry me?’

Ellega struggled to keep her voice calm. ‘I would, Your Majesty, if you should honour me with such a proposal.’

‘Good.’ He smiled and her heart turned over. To be so close, to have him look at her with such favour made joy so wide and deep inside of her she wondered if she had even been alive before this moment. ‘I will leave you to your sleep,’ he said, but made no motion to remove her from his lap.

Ellega smiled innocently in return. ‘I will not sleep tonight, Your Majesty, for thinking about our conversation.’

‘Then should I stay?’ he asked, and glanced away from her to the bed beyond.

‘I am a maid, Majesty,’ she said softly. Not to chide him, but to remind him of her inexperience.

‘There was another who was a maid,’ he said, his eyes lowering to stare blindly at her small breasts. ‘Yet she is a maid no more, but a woman with a child in her belly.’ He nodded to himself and Ellega felt his hands against her begin to tremble. She wondered if he was ill. ‘I know how she became with child,’ he said, raising his eyes to meet Ellega’s, which had begun to grow troubled.

‘I … Is this your royal sister of whom you speak, Majesty?’

‘I am not the man who lay between her legs,’ he said, and once more his gaze became distant. ‘Though I had hoped to be.’

Ellega bit her lip. Pain at this knowledge that her Lord desired another and spoke of it so freely came hard on the embarrassment she felt at speaking out of turn. It was not The Light of whom he spoke. Her conjecture had been premature, and she wondered if the King would take offence. Yet even as she feared his anger, she loved him.

‘You are my servant,’ he said, repeating her earlier words, and she nodded to show her agreement. ‘Yet I have already a servant, who was once a maid.’ He frowned. ‘She sees to my pleasure … but alas, she does not satisfy my soul.’

Ellega’s excited heart slowed. ‘Your Majesty?’ She had heard whispers of a mistress, yet for the King to speak of such matters openly confused Ellega more. Was he insulting her with this blatant admission of his bedchamber conquests, or inviting her to confidences, the better to win her as wife?

Mihale’s eyes drifted to her lips and Ellega felt herself swoon, yet the kiss she had dreamt of did not come. Instead, her Lord and King closed his eyes and proceeded to touch her unbound hair, her narrow face, and more strangely, her shoulders and neck. Then, before she could prepare herself for the shock, his hands fell to caressing her newly budded breasts, her waist and the curve of her hips. Blood pounded in her ears and again her mouth went dry. ‘Stand up,’ he commanded, and she obeyed, her limbs trembling with agitation. Again, with eyes closed as though pretending to be blind, he traced the curves and hollows of her body.

Ellega swallowed several times and was forced to press her lips tightly together to stop herself gasping at his intimate exploration.

At last his hands dropped and he opened his eyes to meet her gaze, his expression completely devoid of any emotion Ellega recognised. She felt fear as she looked upon him, and growing trepidation as his hands continued to shake. Was he drunk?

‘Speak,’ he said, yet Ellega did not know what to say. The liberties he had taken with her would be reviled if they became known. Yet Ellega could not find it in herself to voice harsh matters when love sang loud her heart.

‘I … know only that I am your humble servant, Majesty,’ she said, ‘and will do your bidding always.’

‘Yet you cannot remember my name.’ Mihale stood and looked at her as though she were an obstacle in his path.

Her lips tried to move.
Mihale
, she wanted to say,
your name is Mihale
, yet his expression had grown so distant she could find no courage to voice these words.

‘Bhoo was wrong,’ he said. ‘You are not the one.’ And with these dread words spoken he departed, the dull thump of the door closing behind him the most final sound Ellega had ever heard.

For a moment she simply stood mute, staring at the unyielding panel of wood he had touched last. Then she threw herself onto the bed and cried until she was sick.