The Harshini queen suddenly smiled. “Perhaps we should consider returning to the old custom of Harshini advisers at court, Your Highness. You saw how effective it can be when scattered parties can communicate quickly with each other.”
“And that would include my court, I suppose?” he asked, admiring her quick mind—and her own blatant manipulation.
“We would not want to be seen playing favourites, Your Highness,” she replied ingenuously.
“Of course not,” he agreed with a wry smile and then turned to Tarja. “It’s not a bad idea, you know. With Xaphista gone, the Collective will move in to Karien. But with a Harshini looking over his shoulder, we should be able to keep young Drendyn out of trouble while he grows into his crown.”
“The plan has merit,” Tarja agreed hesitantly.
“I do have one condition, though, Your Majesty,” Damin added, turning to the queen.
“And what is that, Your Highness?”
“I want to be there when you break the news to Hablet,” he said with a malicious grin.
R’shiel was awake for some time before she opened her eyes. She waited, feigning sleep until she heard Mandah leave the room. Once she was certain she was alone, she swung her feet to the floor and rubbed her eyes. The remains of what must have been a mammoth headache lingered behind her eyes, but other than that she bore no obvious evidence of her battle with Xaphista.
Climbing out of the bed, she padded barefoot to the door and opened it a crack. Mandah was talking to Tarja. She could not make out what they were saying, but when he was finished telling her what he had come to say he kissed her, hard and hungrily, before letting her go. Mandah shut the door behind him with a smile and headed back towards the bedroom. R’shiel raced back to the bed and pulled the covers over herself, closing her eyes and forcing her breathing into a deep rhythm. She heard Mandah cross the room, felt a cool hand on her forehead and then heard the door open and close, followed by the fainter sound of the apartment door closing.
So Mandah had gone; perhaps to join Tarja. It hopefully meant they were going to be occupied for a while. She hunted around the room for her clothes, finally finding them pressed and folded in a drawer under the window. Typical, she thought with a frown. Not only was Mandah insufferably nice, but she was neat as well. She shook out her clothes and dressed quickly, throwing the nightgown onto the floor.
There was a hairbrush on the dresser and she picked it up, running it through her tangled hair. She glanced in the mirror and froze mid-stroke. An alien reflection stared back at her. She wasn’t drawing on her power, yet her eyes were Harshini black. The whites of her eyes were gone and her skin was as golden as a full-blooded Harshini. Whatever she had done in the Temple of the Gods had left an indelible mark on her. R’shiel slowly replaced the brush, aware that she would never be counted as human again. For some reason the thought didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would. Along with the change in her eyes came a sense of rightness, a sense that she was somehow complete.
She was Harshini.
R’shiel glanced around the room and realised there was nothing here that belonged to her. Nothing she need take. Her life was headed in a different direction and nothing here in the Citadel offered her any sense of ownership. Feeling suddenly cast adrift into an unknown future, she turned her back on the mirror and headed into the next room.
When she reached the outer door she pressed her ear against it and heard faint male voices in the hall. Tarja’s guards—there to see that she wasn’t disturbed. R’shiel reached inside herself cautiously
and drew on her power. She surprised herself with the control she now had. Perhaps being linked so closely with Shananara she had absorbed some of her cousin’s skill and knowledge. It was how the demons learnt from each other.
With a skill she hadn’t known she possessed, she drew a glamour around herself and opened the door a fraction. The guard in the hall turned towards the sound, studied the door curiously for a moment before opening it wide. When he found no one, he shrugged and pulled it closed.
R’shiel ran down the corridor, still wrapped in the glamour that hid her from the notice of anyone who happened to pass her. She didn’t remember learning how to do it so easily, but she seemed to know instinctively how to hold it in place. The last time she had tried such a thing, when she and Damin rescued Adrina from Dregian Castle, it had taken all her concentration.
R’shiel took the stairs to the ground floor and walked out into the street, amazed to find the city going about its business as if nothing was wrong. Wagons trundled down the street laden with produce and the roads were crowded with soldiers—but they wore Hythrun and Fardohnyan colours and looked more like tourists than warriors.
So the siege is over
, she thought, beginning to wonder, a little uneasily, how long she had been asleep. If there had been time for the siege to be lifted and the city to regain some semblance of normalcy, it must have been quite a while. She walked down to the end of the street and out onto the main thoroughfare. It was even more crowded here, and
there were Harshini on the streets, too. She wondered if they would notice her, or even feel the minimal power that she was drawing amidst the sights and sounds and smells of the city.
Crossing the road, R’shiel headed for the Temple of the Gods. She stopped on the corner as she saw Damin and a heavily pregnant Adrina climbing the steps. Behind them walked Tarja and Garet Warner, Shananara and a young Karien that R’shiel recognised but could not immediately name. On their heels strode a richly dressed man with a barrel chest and a greying beard. Hablet of Fardohnya.
R’shiel followed them into the Temple of the Gods, still wrapped in the glamour, and watched curiously as they took their places around the conference table.
Shananara remained standing as the others took their seats. She held a scroll in her hands and studied the others carefully for a moment before she spoke. Then she looked up, stared straight at R’shiel and smiled. Shananara knew she was watching, but she did not reveal her presence. She acknowledged R’shiel with a faint nod and turned her attention back to the table.
“It has taken quite some time, but I have here the treaty that you have all agreed to sign. If one of you breaks it, they must face the other three.”
R’shiel looked around the table curiously. Tarja and Garet looked satisfied. Adrina was positively smirking. Damin appeared relieved and a little smug. Whatever the treaty contained, it obviously hadn’t done Hythria any harm. Hablet wore a look of wounded resignation. The young Karien, who R’shiel realised was the knight who had travelled with Cratyn
to hunt down Adrina, looked caught somewhere between terror and relief.
“I won’t go into details, but it boils down to this: all of you will withdraw your troops to the borders as they were set down prior to the Karien invasion of Medalon. No nation has gained territory and no nation has lost it. You, King Drendyn, will open your borders to the Sorcerers’ Collective. Your god is dead and your people will suffer if they are not given an opportunity to find another god to believe in. King Hablet, you will also grant free access to the Collective, as will Medalon. No more arrests. No more gaols. No more persecution.”
Hablet muttered something inaudible, but he didn’t openly react to the rebuke. Tarja appeared unconcerned by the condition.
“Each monarch, and whatever government Medalon finally decides to adopt, will accept a Harshini adviser in their court,” Shananara continued. “The Harshini will act as final arbiters in case of disputes between the nations.
“The succession in each nation will remain as it is now, with two exceptions. In the event that King Hablet dies before his unborn son reaches maturity, then High Princess Adrina of Hythria will assume the role of Regent until he comes of age. The other change also concerns the Fardohnyan throne. The condition that requires a Wolfblade heir in the absence of a legitimate male heir is no longer valid. In the absence of a legitimate male heir to the Fardohnyan throne, it will fall to the eldest legitimate female.”
“Now, wait on!” Hablet objected. “I never agreed to that. If I die, Adrina only has to kill my son and she gets to be queen.”
“Just because
you
don’t think twice about eliminating members of your family, Father,” Adrina retorted frostily, “doesn’t mean I share your sentiments. I give you my word; I will
not
kill my brother. Any of them.”
“It makes no difference in any case, Your Majesty,” Shananara explained. “Adrina is excluded from the succession by virtue of her position as Regent. If anything should happen to your son, the throne would fall to your next eldest daughter.”
“Cassandra?” Hablet laughed. “Gods preserve us from such a fate! Well, at least I know that Adrina will fight to keep her brother alive. I’m sure she’d rather die than see Cassie sitting on the throne.”
Peace.
R’shiel moved away from the pillar she was leaning against with a frown, as it dawned on her how superfluous she had become. Zegarnald wouldn’t die; he was a Primal God and truly immortal. But he would not walk into Karien and step into the vacuum left by Xaphista, either. He had wanted her tempered so that she was strong enough to face Xaphista. Well, he had what he wanted, but she had also gained a measure of revenge for the suffering he had condoned. The gods would rise and fall, gain strength and weaken as life rolled on, but the God of War wouldn’t have the strength to bully the other gods into doing his bidding. The balance had been restored.
There was no need for the demon child now. No destiny awaited her. No nation needed her counsel. That they had done all this while she slept left her feeling so inconsequential that it actually hurt.
Inkwells were being brought out, along with a number of quills, for the formal signing of the treaty. She left them to it.
There was nothing more to be done.
R’shiel slipped through the doors and out into the sunlight, realising that for the first time, she had nobody to please but herself. No destiny loomed over her like a shadow. She was beholden to no one—human, Harshini or god.
The glamour still wrapped around her protectively, R’shiel turned towards the Main Gate. She walked through it unseen by the Defenders on duty and out onto the busy road. The battlefield was still being cleared and troops were piling bodies into mass graves dug by the countless Karien prisoners that had been taken after the battle, but the Saran ran clear, its shallow waters tripping happily over the rocks beneath the surface. It was a bit grand calling it a river, actually. It was not much more than a wide stream. She stopped on the bridge and glanced back at the shining Citadel. It had been her home and her prison. Her ruin and her salvation.
Impulsively, she sent out a thought to the massive fort, a farewell of sorts. She didn’t know when, or even if, she would be back. She had to find Loclon. And she had an appointment with Gimlorie. Maybe she could find a way to convince Death to release Brak, too.
The Citadel responded with a benevolent wave of of affection that washed over her gently. Smiling to herself, R’shiel glanced down and discovered she wasn’t alone. The little demon she had last seen with Mikel in Greenharbour was sitting on the ground at her feet, looking at her with its huge black eyes.
“Where have you been?” she asked, squatting down.
The creature chittered something incomprehensible and jumped into her arms.
“Is that your way of saying sorry about Mikel?” she chuckled. “It wasn’t your fault, little one. You’ll be a few hundred older before you can protect someone from the likes of Xaphista.”
Mention of the dead god’s name set the demon off again. R’shiel stood up with the demon’s skinny arms wrapped thightly around her neck. With a final glance at the Citadel, she released the glamour and crossed the bridge.
“I suppose,” she said to the demon, as she walked away without looking back, “we’d better do something about finding you a name.”
Loclon tossed and turned on the hard ground as the nightmare took him again. It haunted him in his dreams and he lived it in his waking moments. It never left him. It never gave him a moment’s respite.
It had begun as they left the Citadel. He was expecting to be smuggled into the Karien camp and treated like a hero—until they took the fortress and slaughtered everyone in it. But Mistress Heaner, her thug Lork and the chillingly beautiful boy Alladan had kept on going. They had not stopped until they reached Brodenvale, and then they had bundled him onto a small river boat and sailed downriver to Bordertown. When they reached the port town they stayed only long enough to arrange another boat, and before he could raise an objection, he found himself heading for the Isle of Slarn.
It hadn’t been too bad at first. The island was dank and miserable, and the priests were a strange bunch, but they tended his malnourished body and helped him regain his strength and even began talking of letting him travel to Yarnarrow.
He had done the Overlord a great service, the priests assured him, and his reward was waiting for him.
For a time, he had foolishly believed their promises—until he remembered that for the followers of the Overlord, the rewards for service were not to be found in this life, but the next.
His first escape attempt had been treated as an unfortunate misunderstanding. His second earnt him a savage whipping. His third and last attempt had almost succeeded. It would have, had not the island begun to tremble as if in the grip of an earthquake, and the priests suddenly gone mad.
Something drastic had happened.
Loclon had been at the back of the Karien chapel for the Restday dawn service, waiting for the chance to slip out the door, when the staff belonging to the priest conducting the service had flared with light, and a wave of intense pleasure had washed over the congregation like a warm breeze. It took hold of him for an instant and held him in a thrall. There was a promise of so much in that wave. A hint of joy. A breath of sexual fantasy. A promise of paradise. Even a glimpse of the other gods. It had taken his breath away.
It had almost destroyed the priests.
They had fled the chapel and run towards the cavern where their sacred rock was hidden, howling with terror at whatever it was it was doing. It only lasted for a few moments, then the feeling had faded abruptly and Loclon shook his head to clear it and bolted for the door.
His original plan had been to head for the small dock near the keep, but with the priests running
everywhere like lunatics, he discovered that route no longer open to him. So he ran the other way, pulled himself over the wall that faced the leeward side of the island, cursing as he fell down the long drop on the other side, and ran until he collapsed onto the boggy ground. He was terrified, and at the limit of his endurance, expecting to hear the priests coming after him, not really believing he had succeeded in getting clear of them.
It was then that the nightmare truly began.
They found him that evening, shivering and exhausted, and in the darkness he could not make out their faces. They were not priests. All he knew was that someone wrapped a blanket around him and someone else thrust a cup of cool water in his hands. He drank it greedily and grasped at the mouldy bread they offered him. They led him through the darkness to a rough hut so close to the shore that he could hear the waves crashing below him as he fell into a fitful sleep.
At some time during the night he woke to find a body pressed against his, warm and young and unmistakably female. He smiled to himself, thinking that before he left this place, he might have some fun. If he was careful, and didn’t leave any marks, they wouldn’t know he had hurt her until after he had gone. With a smile and a contented sigh, Loclon pulled the girl closer and went back to sleep.
With daylight came the horror.
He had opened his eyes slowly, enjoying the feel of the naked body pressed against him. He ran his hand over her small breasts and her slender hips and then
over her belly, reaching down between her thighs to pull her legs apart. He felt something sticky against his hand and cursed. He pulled his hand away and held it up to the light.
It wasn’t blood on his fingers—it was pus.
He screamed, leaping from the rough pallet as the girl turned over. She was grotesque. Her face was ruined, half of it eaten away by the disease that devoured a person from the inside out. Her whole left side was covered with open sores that wept pus, and a clear sticky fluid that stained the rough sheets beneath her.
“Please…” the girl cried, tears streaming from her one good eye. Her pathetic cries made him want to vomit; the idea that he had touched her made him want to die.
He had leapt the wall into the colony of Malik’s Curse sufferers.
Loclon screamed again, and he kept on screaming until a big man with a huge fist and half his face eaten away by the Curse burst into the hut and knocked him out cold.
He had been in hiding ever since. He avoided the small settlement and its disgusting inhabitants, sneaking in at night to find whatever scraps of food he could scavenge. The others knew he was out there, and the grotesque girl from the hut sometimes left scraps for him, perhaps in an attempt to coax him back into her bed. She had been pretty once, he supposed, but now she was just a husk that was being slowly consumed by a disease that had no cure. A disease that ate at the extremities and left the body
covered in ulcers, and ate through one’s internal organs until there was nothing left and the victim died an agonisingly painful death.
He peeled off his ragged clothes and checked his body every day, looking for some sign that he had contracted the disease, but so far he showed no symptoms. All he could do was prowl the island looking for a way off.
There was none.
It was the reason the victims of Malik’s Curse were confined here.
He made one attempt to get back into the Karien compound, but the wall, which had been so easy to clamber over from the inside, was much steeper on the leeward side. A deep, empty moat surrounded it that made it impossible to climb without a rope. There was no rope to be had. So he had returned to his prowling, scavenging existence and gone back to trying to find another way off the island.
Loclon tossed restlessly and then sat up, unsure what had wakened him. He looked around in the darkness but could see nothing, so he scrambled on his hands and knees to the entrance of the small cave where he sheltered and looked out over the rocky beach. He saw a figure standing in the moonlight on the beach and scuttled out to get a closer look. Whoever it was, it appeared to be a woman, but he could not make out her identity from this distance. A bubble of excitement began to build in him.
The figure saw him stumbling across the beach and began to walk towards him. He raised his hand in greeting, certain that he had been rescued.
The woman was tall and walked with an easy grace that showed no hint of the wasting disease. She wasn’t one of them.
“Hello, Loclon.”
He froze at the sound of her voice as she stepped closer.
“
R’shiel!
”
“You sound surprised, Captain. You should have known I’d come for you.”
He studied her warily. She must have been drawing on her power—her eyes burned black as the night surrounding them. Her hair had grown out and was almost on her shoulders, ruffled gently by the sea breeze. It took him a while to work out what else was different about her. It wasn’t her quiet air of confidence, or the power that radiated from her.
It was her lack of fear.
Loclon cautiously took a step back from her. “You’ve come for me?”
“Did you doubt that I would?”
Hope flared in him as he realised rescue was at hand. She would take him from this place. He would probably be dragged back to the Citadel in chains, but that was better than being here. Better than a slow, lingering death while he was eaten alive by his own body. He could escape eventually. Either along the way or once they got to the Citadel. It didn’t really matter.
He nodded and held out his hands to her. “I’ll come quietly. I won’t resist.”
R’shiel studied him for a moment and then smiled. It chilled him to the core.
“Death told me once that evil is its own reward, Loclon. I understand what he meant now.”
“What are you talking about? I’m surrendering to you. Take me!”
“I don’t want your surrender.”
“
Then what do you want
?” he screamed desperately.
“Vengeance,” she said softly.
“Then take it! Take me away from here! Take me back to the Citadel! Put me on trial! I’ll confess. I’ll tell them everything I did to you. They’ll hang me R’shiel, you know that. Rape is a capital offence. You can stand there and watch me swing! You can gloat over my corpse! Take me back!
GET ME OUT OF HERE
!” He was blubbering and didn’t care.
“No, I don’t think so, Loclon.”
She turned away from him and began to walk back along the shore. The waves shone with phosphorescence as they slapped at the pebbly beach. He fell to his knees, sobbing with despair.
“You can’t leave me here! Have mercy!”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder, her black eyes reflecting the shimmering waves. “Mercy?”
“Please, R’shiel. Take me back with you. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll suffer as much as you want.
Just get me off this damned island before the disease gets me
!”
R’shiel stood there watching him on his knees, begging her for mercy. She had done this to him before. She had made him grovel like this at the Grimfield and once they were gone from this place, he would make her pay for that insult, too. But for now…
She was wavering. He could tell. She walked back towards him. Hope burned bright in his eyes. She was
part Harshini, wasn’t she? They were supposed to be unable to kill. Deep down, she didn’t have what it took to make the killing stroke. That he was alive at all was proof of that. She’d been raised by the Sisterhood. She believed all that stuff about law and honour. She wouldn’t be able to turn her back on him.
But when he saw her face, he realised how wrong he was. There was no mercy in those alien black eyes. No pity. No compassion.
Nothing but cold, unrelenting contempt.
“I came here to send you to hell,” she said. “But I don’t have to, do I? You’re already there.”
He wasn’t sure how to answer her; he wasn’t even sure what she meant. She just stood there, staring at him with those alien black eyes…
Then the itching started. It was barely noticeable at first. He was too consumed by his fear of her to pay attention to it. It began in his fingertips, a niggling, annoying sensation that barely even distracted him. He rubbed his hands against his tattered trousers to relieve it, but it simply made the itching worse.
R’shiel didn’t move.
The itching spread up his left arm. He scratched at it with his right hand and discovered his arm covered in small hard lumps. He tore his eyes from R’shiel and glanced down. The lumps were growing larger. As he watched, one of the lumps on his forearm began to develop a puss-filled head. The itching progressed beyond annoying into true pain. The lumps were spreading. He could feel them forming on his back and across his belly. His trousers chaffed as the sores began to form in his groin. His face was
swelling with them, too. He tore at his clothing as another sore erupted, the burning itching growing more and more relentless; his breath came in gasps as he realised what was happening to him. The sores kept spreading.
“No!” he panted, as he tore at his own flesh in a futile attempt to relieve the burning. “No! No!…
Noooo
!”
R’shiel stood there watching him.
“What have you done to me?” he wailed. “Make it stop! Don’t do this to me! Not this! Kill me if you must, R’shiel, but not like this! Let me die like a man!”
That evoked a reaction from her. She laughed.
“Like a man, Loclon?”
“Stop it, R’shiel!
Please
.
I beg you
!”
“It takes years to die from Malik’s Curse, did you know that?” she asked in a conversational tone. “Of course, a few years being slowly devoured by your own body doesn’t seem sufficient to repay all you’ve done, but it will have to do, I suppose.”
“I’ll…kill myself before…I let this thing…eat me alive,” he gasped, unable to stop scratching at the spreading sores.
“No, Loclon, you won’t kill yourself. For one thing, you’re too big a coward, and for another, I won’t let you.”
“How are you…going to…stop me?”
“Magic.”
R’shiel turned and walked away, until eventually she was swallowed by the darkness. She didn’t look back.
I’ll kill myself,
he decided silently.
I won’t die this way.
He staggered to his feet and turned towards
the ocean.
That’s all it will take. Just wade into the water and let the sea take me.
The salt water stung the sores on his legs as he splashed into the foam. He plunged into the sea until it was waist high, then suddenly found he could go no further. He wanted to live, he realised with despair. Even though he had consciously made the decision to die, there was another voice in his mind that wouldn’t let him. He found himself unable to take another step.
Loclon staggered back to the beach and threw himself down on the sand, rubbing against the grains to ease the itching, but the sand merely aggravated his already inflamed skin. He was sobbing with frustration. He couldn’t relieve the itching. He couldn’t stop the pain. He couldn’t even die…
A hand reached for him and hope flared bright for a fleeting moment! He knew she couldn’t walk away from him! She had to come back! This was just a game, she was just tormenting him for revenge…
“Mister?” the voice said gently. “It’s all right, Mister. The itching goes away after a few days…”
He looked up to find the girl from the settlement with her pathetic smile and her ruined face staring down at him, her eyes filled with pity.
Loclon’s howl of despair echoed across the empty beach.