Forget Me Not, (2 page)

As an ambassador, Balthaar would be
seeking peace and trust between the two races. As a general, he
would strike while the man was weak.

“
The emperor’s will be my
own,” he whispered, a prayer of sorts before he walked across the
ship, dodging a seaman carrying a coil of rope on his path to the
sick Rasha.

“
Ambassador,” the
blue-tinted Rasha said with a hint of a bow, his silver eyebrow
rising as he looked over Balthaar.

“
Noble warrior,” Balthaar
said with his own slightly more respectful nod. “I have noticed
that your friend requires some assistance. I have,” Balthaar
struggled to keep his voice smooth and silky, the voice of an
ambassador instead of the bellow of a general, “a blend of herbs
that should soothe his ailment.” He took out the small packet of
valerian and charcoal while holding onto a smile to cover his
discomfort. Facing two Rasha without armor or weapon was enough to
make the bravest barbarian shrink.

“
Blessings,” the
blue-skinned man said, bowing and taking the packet without a
smile. Of course the smile of a Rasha would be more of a threat
than the smooth mask of indifference.

Balthaar bowed again and turned back
towards his place on the boat. The wind shifted as he stood at the
prow, the wind carrying a flavor he could almost taste as he raised
his face to the wind and leaned back, his calloused hands gripping
the wood. He closed his eyes and the flavor of cimarron, slightly
sweet with a musky undertone matched the warmth of the wind,
blowing south from the deserts of Barabbas. Balthaar sighed and
shook the bittersweet longing out of his heart. He hadn’t been back
to the Emperor’s city for years, not for a hundred years. Odd how
he could still remember the scent of cimarron, still remember the
exact shade of her eyes.

Chapter 3

In the High City of Elsyria, Hatia
Locentia Duramdive of the house of Perr, or as she was called
beneath whispered breaths The Wind Spinner, walked the gardens
around the ancient lake with its knotted, knobby trees half
submerged along the shore. The beds were weed-filled, the paths
overgrown, but Wind Spinner didn’t notice such trivialities. She
greeted the crumbling statues like old friends.

“
Arden, how charming to
see you. What’s that? You heard that Barbarians are enslaving
Elsyrians and teaching them their own lore? What an interesting
idea. Nonsense. As for barbarians building schools, perhaps we can
hope for them civilizing themselves and us along with
them.”

The old, crumbling statue
of Arden the prophet gazed over her head silently as she chattered.
Her voice began strong but faded as she gazed above the stone
statue to the branches above his head, heavy with pears. Insects
chased delectable notes floating through the air. She smiled
blissfully as she lost herself between the scent of the sun and the
flowers.

She started as someone
jerked on her arm. She looked at the sandy-haired tall Elsyrian
with pale apricot skin, trying to remember who he was.

“
Head Precept requests
your presence, lady,” he said twisting his hands beneath the fine
lace at his cuffs. He tried not to stare at her in her two
different kinds of shoes, a scarf wrapped around her torso and
secured with twine while her pants were frayed at the hem above her
pale blue calves. He wouldn’t call her Wind Spinner to her face,
not when he had a respectable position as the High Precept’s errand
boy, but everyone knew the mad tenant of Perr Hall. However lovely
she was with amethyst eyes and wisps of white hair, her eyes were
always a bit too wide, her hands too anxious, fluttering instead of
still and steady.

She bowed elaborately to
the statues, green scarf fluttering before she smiled and followed
the boy through the overgrown and untenanted lower garden towards
the more populated green spaces.

The war had decreased the
numbers of Elsyrians so substantially that there wasn’t the
manpower to maintain the many gardens and buildings in High City.
Everywhere you looked was crumbling stone, untended gardens, and a
sense of abandonment.

Lady Perr followed him
down the wide marble steps, its pale golden veins sparkling under
the sun.  The city’s beauty made her pause, hesitating as she
felt something that brought her hand to her heart. For a moment she
remembered a different world with white blossoms richer, heavier
than the scent of cimarron.

She shook her head and
focused on the blossoms beside her. The errand boy forgotten, she
left the path, wandering towards the flowers, purple-blue buds that
dangled like miniature grapes but smelled like sweetness and clear
blue sky. The color was close to her own eyes, purple-blue rare for
an Elsyrian. She knelt among the flowers, trailing her fingers over
the blossoms until a shadow threw the blue into a deeper
hue.

The High Precept stood
above her, his aura of power that had burnt a long time and was
coming near its end.

“
Hatia,” he said, his
voice of wisdom, age, and a slightly creaky door.

She stood to her full
height, looking him in his pale green eyes before she bowed, hands
outstretched as she performed the proper obeisance.

“
How may I serve the
people?” she asked, her voice thin, like a note played on an
improperly cured reed pipe.

He turned, still spry
enough and began walking, catching hold of her arm to keep her at
his side instead of wandering along with her mind. His skin felt
papery but unwrinkled, his grip still strong and firm in spite of
his antiquity.

“
The people call you as
host to the ambassador of Barabbas,” he said holding tightly to her
arm so that when she tried to run she only tugged him a few steps.
“It’s a high honor,” he reminded her sternly as she gazed at him
like a deer staring down a hunter.

“
Barabbas and Elsyria are
at war,” she said unsteadily, as though she weren’t
certain.

“
Aye. For the past hundred
years, blood has stained our countries,” the High Precept
acknowledged with a frown. “Too long for a war no matter how noble
it seemed at the beginning.”

“
A hundred years?” Lady
Perr whispered. She bit her lips until a trail of silver blood
welled up on her mouth. She wiped it away on the back of her hand,
the silver smear against her skin. “War is an ugly thing,” she said
slowly. “But I don’t understand why such an honor should be
bestowed to the humble house of Perr,” she added looking up at the
High Precept through her pale lashes.

He shook his head and
stared off in the distance. “You are the one. You understand the
people, the customs, their world and were the last Elsyrian to make
contact with Barabbas before the war. I understand that this is
difficult for you, but I believe it might be the key to unlocking
your own sanity.” He brushed his fingers across her forehead
lightly as he met her eyes.

She glared at him for a
moment with her teeth bared before the anger faded and her fists
unclenched until she folded her arms, head bowed in
defeat.

He studied her before he
nodded slightly. “I see you understand the honor.”

“
You ask too much,” she
whispered, a breath, but the words made the High Precept flinch as
though he’d been gutted by a barbarian sword.

He turned away, rubbing
his jaw with ordinarily still fingers. “Aye. The last of your line,
House of Perr, whose family has served loyal to the people ‘til the
end. Hatia of Perr, I can trust no other with this task. That’s the
simple truth. You can do what none else can, and so you
must.”

“
I don’t suppose the
ambassador could stay by himself in one of the crumbling manse
along the river. Hopefully it wouldn’t collapse on him as he
slept,” she said, glancing up at him with wild eyes and a tilted
smile.

“
Hatia, you are the best
chance.” His voice was gentle.

For some reason she
thought of all the other daughters of the city who could be used to
host the foreigner, as graceful and beautiful as a fountain. Who
could resist those pearly teeth, soft pointed ears, the wrists, so
thin and breakable? She glanced down at her own wrists, covered in
long strips of fabric the color of falling leaves. Beneath the
layers were scars, unseen but not unfelt. The scars would never
completely fade. Her eyes filled with tears even as she
laughed.

“
Then there is no
chance.”

She threw her head back
and swayed back and forth with the clouds and the wind while the
Head Precept blinked away the moisture in his own eyes. Even after
she’d returned from Barabbas mad, scarred from torture at the hands
of the Bashai, she would stand between her people and the
barbarians, she would stand as well as she could.

Chapter 4

Along the river, old stone
mansions stood veiled in green moss. The House of Perr was one
such, crumbling more than most, for the House of Perr had seen its
finest days many hundred years before. Buzzing activity filled the
halls and grounds as Elsyrians moved in their efforts to regain
some of the glory, or at least the stability of the near ruin in
preparation for the honored guest, the Ambassador of
Barabbas.

Lady Perr retreated to the
library, finding comfort in the familiar hush of dust-shrouded
books. Her conversation with the High Precept had awakened a rare
awareness of her surroundings, some memories that left her feeling
unsettled and uncertain.

She went to the wall of
books beside the old bay window that overlooked the river and found
a tome as heavy as she was that she carried to the window seat with
a particular tenderness. Her uncle had shown her the book when she
was a child, wide-eyed, eager for a new word or phrase from one of
the far away lands he’d travelled in his younger days.

“
It feels much heavier
without you,” she addressed the air, aware that she was speaking to
herself before she shook her head and turned the thick pages that
described the desert. The author had bound maps, descriptions, but
best of all, beautiful, pale paintings of red rock and white
buildings, round roofs glittering in the sun that shone with a
blistering intensity.

She closed her eyes and
could feel the sun, the first time she’d stepped out of the shadows
of the valley and into the heat that waited with an awareness that
while almost unpleasant, certainly filled her senses like nothing
had before or since.

She’d let the veil slide
off her pale hair around her shoulders while she lifted her face to
the sun, curious at its touch while the red rocks spread around her
as far as she could see, an ocean of emptiness.

“
You’ll burn to a crisp,”
a voice said in her own Elsyrian tongue while she felt a tug on her
veil.

She squinted up at the man
on horseback who had leaned down to pull her veil back into place.
She stared into the golden eyes beneath the black head covering,
fascinated by the heat and life in them. She’d met Barbarians on
her journey so far, in fact, she was entirely surrounded by them,
but this Barbarian seemed different somehow, more familiar and
exotic in the same breath.

“
I wonder if I would,”
she’d replied in Barabbas, struggling with some of the guttural
sounds. She wanted very much to impress this stranger whose hand
moved deftly and gracefully adjusting the fabric.

“
Your curiosity should
wait until you’re in the city where you can be tended while you
fever from sunstroke,” he’d replied, still in her language but with
laughter in his honeyed voice before he turned and urged his horse
into a gallop away from her, raising a cloud of dust that made her
grateful for the fabric covering her mouth.

It was only later that she
realized that the real danger of leaving her head bare had little
to do with the sun and much more to do with the Barbarians who
watched her with an appraising eye.

She blinked the library
back into focus. When she looked down at the book in her hands, it
was freshly stained with tears. She let it slide onto the rug,
faded amber and maroon symbols that would have meant something to
her at another time, another world.

Chapter 5

The day came for The Wind
Spinner to receive her honored guest. She hid in her chambers as
long as possible until finally she emerged dressed in clothing that
made several young elven girls giggle.

She wore a combination of
her long departed great Aunt Mathilda’s formerly white gown, with
long sleeves and billowing layers, and uncle Oldwell’s bee tending
hat. Other gowns had been brought to her chamber from the finest
tailor in High City, close cut and fashionable but none had veils.
One must always be veiled when dealing with Barbarians.

The house, the formerly
glorious house of Perr had attained a nearly honorable visage,
instead of simply a decrepit one. She frowned at the comfortably
ruined garden pruned into order, the tattered drapes carefully
cleaned and mended. The House of Perr was dying, had died. There
was no sense in resurrecting something that had already
passed.

“
Lady Perr,” a melodic
voice interrupted her musings as she stared at the tapestry that
depicted the origins of Perr. She frowned at the interruption, but
her irritation was lost beneath the billows of net.