Forget Me Not, (7 page)

The conversation went on,
High Precept asking questions the Viceroy answered as perfectly and
diplomatically as anyone could, while the rest of those on the dais
grew bored. Eventually they left to dance, leaving Lady Perr
standing with the gardener, feeling like everyone had forgotten
them both. It was strange that she hadn’t forgotten herself as
well. She watched the Viceroy through the haze of gauze and felt
irritated at the fabric for clouding her vision.

As she watched his face,
he revealed nothing besides a politely bored expression that
bothered Lady Perr. Surely if she could see better, she could catch
twitches of emotion as they crossed his face.

“
I find the relish from
the south sea preferable to incubated duck eggs of Salaam,” on
second thought, there might be a reason he sounded bored.
Apparently sheer magnificence and otherworldly beauty wasn’t
interesting to the Viceroy.

At that moment some people
brought out trays and torches. Good. Fire dancing would entertain
even an old jaded man like the Viceroy. Dolores, a distant cousin
of Lady Perr had abandoned her mint confection of a dress to take
part with a small thread of pink fire that she made grow into a
shimmering rose, flames chasing around the edges of the petals. She
spun, throwing her flower into the air, twisting into a flip as the
flower exploded in a bright pink puff. When the gardener took a
turn brandishing flames, Lady Perr stepped a little closer to the
dais. He and Delores began juggling flaming balls to each other
that came quite close to the Viceroy and the High
Precept.

The Viceroy remained
impassive. Though he smiled and nodded at appropriate places, he
appeared less than impressed. Perhaps the hardened warrior in him
made him immune to explosions. He would have seen all kinds of
fire; the Emperor loved explosives. 

Lady Perr watched him
watch the fire dancers, feeling like an observer, not a part of
either insider or outsider, not a part of anything at all as she
remembered the fireworks that filled the night celebrating the
Anniversary of the Unseen Emperor’s glorious ascension to
power.

___

Visits with Balthaar had
become successively more enjoyable. Her days were filled speaking
with tradesmen and statesmen who wished to enhance their relations
with the fabled yet aloof Elsyrian Empire. After a long day she
would find him waiting to show her a hidden gem in the city, a
building, a fountain, or a walled garden where they could debate
various points of cultural differences.

That night, the first time
she’d seen the Emperor’s fireworks, they’d stood on the balcony of
the emperor’s palace, her rooms overlooking bonfires that filled
the courtyard along with the commoners who laughed and sang while
the sky exploded.

Her heart pounded as he
brought her a goblet of the rich pomegranate wine, their fingers
brushing as she’d taken it from him. The electricity that passed
through her filled her senses more than the sound that shook the
ground. The awe-inspiring display had trouble competing with the
man beside her, his solid warmth, a shadow that brushed her arm
before he turned to move away.

___

Lady Perr frowned at the
firedancers, Balthaar above her on the dais when they had so much
to speak of, if only her mind could stay clear for long enough. She
had to know what had happened, the events she couldn’t recall. He
must know the cause of her scars. She took two steps towards him,
determined to use whatever excuse necessary to draw him away from
the High Precept, but before she could reach him, her veil caught
on fire.

Chapter 15

The flames wrapped around
Lady Perr’s face, the fire bringing back another memory
full-force.

Fire. Tongs. Screaming
through a throat raw on the inside and outside as the men with
their faces streaked black and red applied their skills to her
body, torturing her as they removed strips of pale blue flesh,
burning her skin as they did her mind. The flames flickered as she
stared through the sheets of red at Balthaar, the barbarian whose
eyes caught hers as she stood wrapped in flame, stared at her as he
had in the moonlight the last time she’d seen him seeming to run
towards her from too far away.

___

He’d stood close, but not
touching. She’d felt his presence wrap around her heart, warming
her from the inside, as his brief touch always did, like the kiss
of the sun on a cold winter’s day.

She remembered his low
voice as he’d spoken to her of names, whispered his own name,
Harrin, hidden from the world, but a gift to her. His glance felt
like a caress on her face, her lips, her own awareness of the
Barbarian defying reason, logic, nature. She’d left with the
irrational knowledge that she would see him the next day, and the
next, and the one after as though all their days would pass tangled
as growing vines from the rich soil of their mutual
contentment.

That same night she’d
awoken to pounding on her door. When she’d opened it, an Elsyrian
face peered in, his golden eyes alight with concern.

“
Balthaar the viceroy is
petitioning the emperor for your hand. He’s going to be
executed.”

The emotions swirled
through her. Shock and horror replaced the slight euphoria, that
Balthaar, her Barbarian would desire her as his. She could not
allow him to sacrifice himself, his position for something that
could not be. Elves and Barbarians did not, could not, intermarry.
And yet she cared neither for reason nor law. If he were to die,
she would take her place beside him.

“
Take me to him.” She
threw a gauzy wrap around her shoulders as she followed the
Elsyrian into the darkness down the steps. He held a torch above
his head that made his ygolden eyes fierce when he turned to glance
back at her before he led her to the shadows, to the priests of the
Emperor, the Bashai instead of Balthaar.

Chapter 16

Balthaar saw the arc of
flame from the gardener’s hands and moved before it spread from the
flimsy gauze of Lady Perr. Balthaar ripped the flaming sheet off
her head, ignoring the pain in his fingers. She stared at him
blankly, her skin flushed from the heat, but unsinged.

He cupped her face in his
palm as his other hand encircled her waist. “Lady Perr, Hatia, are
you all right?”

“
You weren’t executed,”
she whispered, touching his cheek with trembling fingers. “I
thought they killed you. Of all that they did to me, they could do
nothing worse than tell me of your own tortured death. You’re
real?” she asked, gazing up at him with her soul in her
eyes.

He closed his eyes, lips
tightening before he looked at her, a fierce expression in his eyes
she’d never seen but that the two Rasha recognized from battling
the terrifying Barabbas general.

He ripped her dress in one
quick motion, the aged fibers giving way easily from her throat to
her shoulder revealing pale blue skin in layers of silver, strips
of skin removed in the patterns Balthaar knew. He closed his eyes
as his heart ached, his anger and fury blending with his
overwhelming helplessness. He had not protected her from his
own.

His hand slid from her
face to her neck, feeling the marks beneath his calloused fingers.
The Bashai must have had her for months to leave these layers of
pain without killing her. Scars dipped below the edge of the dress
where he could not see, but he could feel the pain in her, the ache
as sweet and singing as a blade before it separated joint and
limb.

She gasped and pulled
away, futilely trying to put the pieces of her dress back together.
The room was hushed as everyone stared at her, the spectacle of the
ruined, mad daughter of Elsyria. None moved but one. The gardener
slid away from the celebration, his golden eyes baleful above his
frown, catching her attention.

She pointed at him,
staring at him in dawning horror. “You told me that he was being
executed. You took me to them, an Elsyrian. Why would you betray
your own kind?”

Her soft voice carried
through the silent crowd. The Rasha leapt to stop the gardener,
silver swords drawn and at the ready as they halted his escape. He
backed towards Balthaar, hands raised in surrender.

Balthaar frowned at the
gardener, the man who would betray his own. He wanted his own
sword, knives, flames, to inflict the pain Hatia had suffered until
the gardener’s mind was as broken as his already black
soul.

“
To cause the fury,” the
green-skinned Rasha replied in a low voice like the murmuring of
water. “The creature was a traitor out of hate. He wanted to see
Elsyria at war. I was there when he brought you to the camp. I
fought alongside the Dwarven outside of Elsyrian law. I saw you, an
Elsyrian maiden clothed in rags, wandering over corpses as though
they were stepping stones in a stream. I will never forget. Madness
has never been paired with such heartbreaking beauty. Balthaar was
at that battle, already making a mark for his ferocity, resistance
to the small magics, and apparent immortality, but we won the day.
We brought you back to Elsyria, broken and burned by the
Barbarians. I’ve watched Balthaar over the years fighting war after
war where he ages as little as our Rasha brothers, growing in skill
with the small mystics he doesn’t know he’s using. He has the heart
of Elves in him. I saw it when he greeted the Wind Spinner. He has
the heart of an Elsyrian and the blood of a Barbarian. How can this
be so?” he asked, turning to the High Precept as a student to a
teacher.

Lady Perr knew him,
Maltha, the best student of the high precept, an older Elsyrian
she’d looked up to when she was younger, playing at the elder’s
feet while Maltha looked on her antics with a soft smile. She knew
the other as well, the blue-skinned Rasha who had spent time at
House Perr when she’d been a student obsessed with languages of
many countries. She’d plied Hortham with thousands of questions
that he’d answered as well as he could. She knew others, memories
of days long past, before the hundred years of war when she’d been
broken by the Bashai, her memory stripped with the dark magics
etched in her skin, betrayed by her own and ruined above all by
Balthaar’s supposed death.

“
You never…” she
whispered, gazing up at Balthaar, resting her fingertips lightly
against his face as she felt the pulse that throbbed in
him.

He frowned down at her,
swallowing hard as he caught her fingers in his and turned his
face, pressing his lips to her palm. He moved, holding her close to
his side, arm around her waist as he stared down the
gardener.

“
He must pay.”

“
We are not barbarians,”
the High Precept said in his dry voice, stepping down from the
dais. “We could never harm our own. The most we could do is exile
the creature. I fear we’ve already done that. Greetings Tharmul. It
has been an age,” the High Precept said, bowing to the gardener who
smiled cruelly back at him, showing sharp and glistening teeth
beneath a face that suddenly appeared darker, much darker than it
had been before.

“
The Elves are passing
on,” Tharmul replied, his voice low with an undercurrent that
filled the room with awareness of him, his power, his inherent
worthiness over all others.

“
Yes. With your
assistance, they are. Are you the cause of the Emperor and his
Bashai’s long lives? At what price?” the High Precept demanded,
eyes narrowing on the other man.

“
You pay the price for
allowing the barbarians to grow in strength over the centuries,
allowing them to desecrate the earth.”

“
You told me that
Elsyrians were meant to rule the earth, to subjugate all man. I
disagreed.”

“
You were right,” Tharmul
said with a terrifying smile. “Elsyrians were not meant to rule.
One man who understands destiny will hold the earth in his fist
until peace finally reigns. Harrin, guard, protect, defend,” he
snarled, these last words in a guttural Barabbas that went straight
to Balthaar’s soul.

Balthaar’s met Tharmul’s
eyes with a gasp. The marks etched in his flesh, his name, his bond
with the Emperor ached with a power that could not be
denied.

“
Harrin,” Hatia whispered,
a breath that none other could hear.

Balthaar took one moment
to breathe in her scent before he shoved Hatia away from him and
into the High Precept. He moved with greater speed than an Elsyrian
to take his place between his liege, the Emperor and the two
Rasha.

“
Son of the Emperor,”
Tharmul murmured, resting a hand on the back of Balthaar’s neck
where the designs had been burned into him, stirring the call of
war and blood. The emperor’s strength, energy, life force filled
Balthaar until he was dizzy with euphoria, strength, superhuman
capacity and blood lust.

With merely a sliver of
bronze in his hand, he engaged the blue-skinned Rasha, an enormous
silver sword against a thread of bronze and yet Balthaar easily
slid inside Hathrom’s guard, slashing his arm until Balthaar held
the Rasha’s sword in both of his hands. He raised it to strike the
killing blow then spun, slicing the blade through the neck and
shoulder of the Emperor, Tharmul Elsyrian traitor, his
father.

The pleased expression on
Tharmul’s face did not fade as the head spun across the floor
leaving a spray of silver over the pink stone.