Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (29 page)

She wrenched her face out of his grasp. "I'll see whom I wish!"

He slapped her. She slapped him back, hard.

He went white, except where her fingers had left their red imprint on his fine skin. He pinned her back onto the table, pressing her wrists painfully against the hard wood surface, and held her there. He was pale with anger, and his breath came ragged as he glared at her.

"You will not
—" he began. His gaze shifted over her shoulder. He caught in a breath. He dragged her off the table and shoved her away. Whatever will had momentarily possessed her was already sapped. She stood numbly and watched as he brushed his palm over the tabletop. He inscribed his hand in a circle, narrowing, spiraling in, to trace the outline of a rose burned lightly into the burnished wood grain. His expression was rapt, avid. Finally he turned.

"What have you done?"

"I've done nothing."

He grabbed one of her hands and tugged her forward, placed her hand over the table where she
had
to see, although the outline was almost invisible. The lines felt like fire along her skin.

"The Rose of Healing," he said. "You have burned its shape into the table. How did you do this?"

She tried to pull her hand out of his, but his grip was too strong. "I don't know. I don't know. I didn't mean to."

He grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her.
"You don't know?"
If anything, he looked more furious than when she had slapped him. "You will tell me!"

"I don't know."

He struck her backhanded. His heavy rings scored her cheek. He struck her again. He was diving into a rare fury. "How many years have I studied to find the key to the Rose of Healing, and you
don't know!
Where is your father's book? What did he teach you?"

"No," she said, while blood trickled down her cheek.

He lifted her up bodily and carried her out of the room and into his own cell. There, he dropped her onto the bed. There she lay, staring up at him. He studied her, and all the while his left hand opened and shut to a rhythm known only to him.

Finally he knelt on the bed beside her. He wiped the thin film of blood off her skin. His touch was gentle.

"Liath." His voice was coaxing, persuasive. "What use is knowledge if it is not shared? Have we not learned well together this past winter? Can we not learn more?" He kissed her cheek, where the rings had cut it open, then her throat, then her mouth, lingering, insistent.

But the fire had woken in her, however damped down it might burn. Ever since she had drawn the rose, a thin edge of sensation burned inside her where before she had felt nothing. Fire melts ice. Each time he kissed her she shuddered away from him.

"No," she said softly, and braced herself for the blow.

"Liath," he sighed. He ran a hand along the curve of her body. His breathing came in unsteady bursts, more ragged even than it had been when he was angry. "I have never treated you ill, in my bed."

"No," she said, compelled to answer with the truth.

"You could have pleasure. But you must
trust
me. I have seen how quickly you learn. How much you
want
to learn. That you want to learn
more."
He laid his full weight on her. Even through their clothing, she felt the heat of his skin, burning off, enveloping her. "You know very well, my beauty, there is no one else you can ask. No one else you can turn to. I am the only one. There were rumors about your Da, dear old Master Bernard, but these villagers let it alone, let him alone, because they liked him. Because the biscop of Freelas has worse things to worry about than one stray sorcerer who sets hex spells to keep foxes out of henhouses."

Trapped in this tiny cell, the walls so thick, the air so still, she was already walled up, lost in a prison of Hugh's making.

"But you would not be so lucky, as young as you are, and the way you look." He stroked her hair in that way he had, running a hand up her neck and catching the hair on the back of his hand, in his fingers, stroking free. "This hair is too fine and too lovely, your skin stays dark through the winter, like the folk from the southern lands, and who in these Lady-forsaken parts has seen such folk, or even believes in them? And your eyes. As blue as the deep fire, or did you know that? I know. I have sought since I was a boy to unlock the secrets of sorcery. There are others like me, others who struggle to learn and to master. Somehow you were born with it in your blood. I know what you are, but I will never betray your secret to anyone else. Do you believe me?"

Even trapped under him, knowing he would say anything to convince her to give him the book, to tell him everything she knew, the horror of it was she
did
believe him. She had a sudden premonition he had spoken those words rashly and without thinking he might be swearing himself to them.

"I believe you," she said, but the words hurt. He knew what she was. A sorcerer makes herself, but two sorcerers must never marry. Her mother had said it once, placing a hand on Liath's brow. Because the child of two sorcerers might inherit a wild streak of magic more dangerous than the king's wrath. Except Liath had inherited a kind of deafness instead. Da taught her, but only so she could protect herself by having that knowledge.
"You cannot use them, for you are deaf to magic."

Or so she had always thought. But now she had burned the Rose of Healing into the wooden grain of the table.

Hugh would put no barrier in the way of her studying Da's book, other books, as long as she shared everything she knew and learned with him.

"I will be faithful to you, Liath," he said, cupping her face in his hands, a lover's gesture, a lover's sweetness, "as long as you are faithful to me."

Ai, Lady, but it burned, this new fire. It hurt so horribly, running out like lines burned into her flesh, long since dormant. She could no longer cloak herself in lethargy. So it was, so she felt: A momentous decision was about to be made.

He shifted, rolling slightly off of her, and made a low, contented noise in his throat. "Liath," he said, softly, gently, coaxingly, and he tightened his embrace on her.

Hanna was leaving. She herself would leave, to be alone in Firsebarg with Hugh. To go on in this fashion, always resisting him, always frozen, listless, numb. Barely able to acknowledge any human contact but his; forbidden any human contact other than with him, as he strove to isolate her.

Wouldn't it be easier to give in? To give him what he wanted? Mistress Birta had herself said that Liath's position was enviable. She would not be treated badly. She would probably be treated well.

She had burned the Rose of Healing into the table. Lady's Blood, she might even learn enough to see if she truly
was
deaf to magic. Or if Da had truly not known, and she
was
born with a mage's power. Or if Da had known all along, and lied to her.

Why would Da lie to her? Only to protect her.

Hugh ran his hands up her arms. He brushed her throat, tracing an oval there, like a jewel, and she shivered. He sucked in his breath hard and reached to unbuckle his belt. "Stop fighting me, Liath. Why should you not have pleasure? Why?"

Her skin tingled where his lips touched. Why, indeed? It had come time, at last, to choose.

"I will not be your slave," she whispered. She would have wept, it was so hard to say, but she was too terrified to weep. She placed her hands against his chest and pushed him away, locking her elbows and holding them rigid.

He went quite still. "What did you say?"

Having said it once, she knew she must hold to it as strongly as ever she might. She twisted away from him and slipped off the bed to land bruisingly on her knees, huddled on the rug, her gaze on him the way a trapped rabbit stares at a fox. But she raised her voice above a whisper. "I will not be your slave."

He sat up straight. "You
are
my slave."

"Only by the gold you paid."

His mouth pulled to a straight line. "Then it is back out with the pigs." But he smiled as he said it, knowing full well that after a winter of luxury she could never face that again.

Liath thought this over: the dirty straw, Trotter's back, the cold spring nights. "Yes," she said slowly. "Yes. I'll go back out with the pigs." She climbed stiffly to her feet, walked stiffly to the door. None of her limbs worked right.

He was off the bed in an instant. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around and hit her so hard that she staggered. Hit her again. She fell back and hit her head against the wall. She stopped her fall with a hand and shoved herself back up. With a hand shielding her face, she moved to pass him, to get to the door. Hfe struck her. Again. This time, she fell right to her knees and had to huddle there, panting. Pain flamed through her. Her ears rang. He kicked her in the side, and she gasped in pain, gagging.

"Now," he said, his voice taut with fury, "the pigs, or my bed?"

Carefully she rose to her feet. Her balance did not quite work right, and her right eye could not focus. She took an unsteady step, caught a breath, took a second step, and rested her hand on the door latch. Lifted it.

The door opening, and the blow, occurred at the same time. She fell forward into the corridor, onto her hands and knees. Another blow, along the ribs
—perhaps it was his boot. She struggled to get to her feet, but each time she rose and showed the slightest movement forward, he hit her again.

Blood hazed her right eye, but it didn't matter, because she couldn't really see out of that eye anyway.

She got a hand on the wall and pulled up, and then was flung hard into the other wall. Her head slammed into stone, and she dropped hard. When she tried to stand again, she could not. She lay there, whimpering, trying not to whimper, trying not to make any sound, trying to get her legs to work. His boot nudged her side.

"Now, Liath. Which will it be?"

"The pigs," she said. The words were hard to say, because her mouth was rilled with blood. Since she could not rise, she found purchase with her elbows and tried to crawl forward. This time, when he hit her
— whether with hands or boot she could no longer tell—a swirl of blackness flooded her. She heard her own labored breathing. She could not see. Her vision grayed, then lightened. She saw the narrow passageway as a hazy pattern of stone and shadow, but that was enough. She heaved herself up on her elbows and drew her body along after her. Forward, toward the pigs.

She heard words, a horrified exclamation, but it was not attached to her.

She hurt everywhere, stinging bruises, sharp deep pain in her bones, a fiery stabbing at her ribs; blood trickled, salty, from her mouth, and yet her mouth was dry. She was so thirsty. She could picture the pigs perfectly in her mind. They lived outside the city of memory, in pleasant comfort: Trotter, who was her favorite, and the old sow Truffling, and the piglets Hib, Nib, Jib, Bib, Gib, Rib, and Tib, some of whom she could tell apart, but she could not now recall which ones had been slaughtered and salted and which ones kept over the winter.

He hit her again, from her blind side, and she collapsed onto the cold floor. Rough stone pressed into her face, but the tiny irritating grains helped her stay conscious; she counted the grains, each one pressing into her cheek, into the open wound, like salt. She just breathed for awhile. Breathing was hard. It hurt to inhale and exhale, but eventually she had to get out with those pigs. She would be safe with the pigs. The book would be safe with the pigs.

Pain like a hot knife stabbed through her abdomen. She screamed out of stark fear. He was going to kill her rather than let her go. Kill her! That hadn't been the choice.

She opened her left eye to see Hugh standing more than a body's length away from her, staring at her, his face as cold and stubborn as the stone. But he had not touched her.

The pain lanced again. Warm liquid trickled down the inside of her thighs. Pain stabbed again. She tried to gasp out words, but she couldn't make them form on her tongue. Ai, Lady! It hurt. She curled up into a ball, and fainted.

Came half conscious when Lars picked her up. Dorit was speaking. Liath caught a glimpse of Hugh and then lost him again. Her thighs were sticky with dampness. The cool afternoon air struck her to shivering as Lars carried her outside. Pain coursed through her abdomen again. She twisted, tossing her head back. Dorit was speaking to
her,
but Liath could not understand.

Lars' jolting walk sent flares of pain up her legs. She fainted.

This time, when she recognized she was awake, she tried not to panic. She was lying on a hard surface. She couldn't open her eyes. Something cold and clammy covered her eyes, like the hand of a dead, decaying corpse. . ..

She jerked, clawed at it, but her hands were captured and held tight in another's strong grip.

"Liath, it's Hanna. Stop that. Stop it. Trust me."

Hanna. She could trust Hanna. She clung to Hanna's hands. What had happened? She was naked from the waist down, legs propped up, lying flat on her back, awash in pain.

Another voice intruded. "Can you sit, Liath? You ought to, if you can."

"Here," said Hanna in that wonderful practical voice she had. "I'll put my arms under you and hold you. Just lean on me, Liath."