Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (42 page)

He smelled strange, mossy... or perhaps it was the surroundings. She could feel the damp and the cold, and the ceiling seemed craggy, stone. 

A cave?

“Breathe slowly, and regularly, no matter the pain,” Tabashi said.

She did as he asked, and he nodded his head. “Very good. You have a strong will. You can suspend the pain, and this allows your body to keep its equilibrium. That means you will heal quickly.”

Equilibrium… Balance… Mobility…

“What am I doing?” she asked dazedly. “I don’t think I understand.”

“Most of what the body does, it does by itself, without needing your attention. Do you understand this?”

“Of course.” Adria felt a little insulted. “We still breathe while we sleep.”

“But you can hold your breath, or you can quicken it, by an act of will.”

She sighed. He was speaking the obvious, and she was in no mood for trivialities.

“If you learn how,” Tabashi continued, and his hands seemed to follow the pain of her body as it moved about, his hands just above the surface of her skin. Her skin prickled in response. “You can control many more aspects of your body. You can raise or lower a fever, just as if you were blushing. You can slow the flow of your blood, just as you do your breath. Breath and blood are, in part, the same.”

“Yes, of course,” she groaned. “The spirit enters the blood from the air, and carries life throughout the body. I know how the humours of the body flow and balance.”

“You know very little,” he said simply, again in his flat gray manner, without giving or taking offense. “What little truth lives in the concept of humours is almost entirely misused. It would be best to forget.”

She smiled sardonically. “Ah... and the Moresidhe have surpassed the best scholars of Somana and the Aeman? Paracelsus... Gawain...”

“You recite your Sisters and their books well, I have no doubt.” Where his fingers traced, pressing spaces along her neck, at the base of her throat, along the underside of her arm, her pain shifted, faded.

“A small knowledge is the scholar’s equivalent of a small faith,” he continued softly. “It blinds one to a greater understanding. A very little genius and a lot of foolishness fill tome after tome. Despite the precious cost of ink and parchment, it too often goes ill-used. The wisest of our healing cultures are mostly unknown to your Sisterhood and their vanguard of scholarly faith, to the luminaries of Somana, Kelmantium.”

Images unfolded and folded again before Adria’s eyes. Faces she seemed only to half remember. Or her eyes were closed.

“Once something is written,” Tabashi sighed, his fingers cupping the back of her head, warm… “It is far too readily assumed as Truth. Tell me, scion, how many books of Aesidhe Medicine have you read?”

Adria already knew enough of the Aesidhe to realize that the Mechushegiya knew a good deal more about healing than a Sister did. And, of course, they had no written language. She smiled, then, defeated in her obstinacy, as the pain in her head paled into a pinpoint of light.

“Very well. I take your point, Tabashi. But… I think I have more pressing worries than even this wound. You have saved the flow of my blood, but if your reason for this is what I expect, I might have been better served otherwise.”

“And what is my purpose, Royal Highness?” He asked flatly, as his hands returned to her chest and cleaned her wound again, placing a new clean white cloth upon it. She had no idea how he produced such things as needed. Her flesh looked nearly as pale as the cloth. Her breasts, unused to the cold, reacted in an uncomfortable manner. Remembering his comment about blushing, she tried to keep her body from such a response.

“I would imagine I will serve as ransom — either to my Father, or to Taber, or perhaps even to my uncle, though I don’t know what he might provide to appease your greed.”

“Then you think too little of him, Highness, and even less of me,” he said, again with little inflection. “Remember that I have at least saved your life — a life which you seem to value less than I, at this moment, even as you place low worth upon Duke Preinon Watelomoksho.”

He brings enemies and offers respect,
Adria thought.
I will determine his full faith and credit.

“Or perhaps you keep me alive merely for your own pleasures...”

And then he looked at her so sharply, and his hand slipped a little as it bound her bandage to the wound, and she cried out at the pain.

“You hurt me...” she said sharply.

He finished his task, watching her face as his hands went about their motions without his attention. Finally he covered her chest with furs that had lain beside her.

“Is there nothing you can see which would prevent me from destroying you, Your Highness? There is nothing you can imagine that would keep me from pleasuring myself with your helpless body?”

“I am not helpless,” she whispered, now truly frightened of him for the first time.

“And what is it that can help you, now, Princess?”

Even as she reached for her blade, he had caught her hand firmly between his thumb and finger, and just as she remembered her blade was not in its sheath. He had crossed a space several times what her hand had managed.

His hand could, no... 
did 
lift my who
le body.

She trembled, cold, alone, helpless at the mercy of this strangest of strangers. But she forced her gaze to remain steady upon his. She did not cry, and would not cry out again. She would suffer what she must, but resolved to not give this
Watemezi
the pleasure of knowing the extent of her suffering.

Tabashi released her hand, and rose, one of his hands raised in the Aesidhe sign of surrender. “Abandon your fear, Idonea. It has no purpose here. Your life and honor are well saved.”

After a moment, she nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

He gather her bloodied garments together, began folding them carefully.

“You call me scion and Idonea,” Adria said. “You call my uncle Duke Preinon... Why? We have abandoned such titles. My Uncle was even stripped of his.”

“Your people take up and abandon such titles with the whims of fashion. You deny the greatest among you in the want of one season or instate the same out of fear of a sword.” He shook his head. “You have not chosen who you are, child. You are an heir, for you live what roles are given to you. Preinon is a lord for he bears the same — as does your father, and as do your matriarchs... through the persistence of your ancestors and the fire of their blood.”

“I have left much of this behind, by my own choice,” Adria insisted. Her head swam, but she persisted. “My uncle gives me only what I ask of him. He is Aesidhe.”

He spoke again, after a long moment of watching her, and with surprising tenderness. “You have been kept all your life, child. Your story, your very words and actions dictated by others. You’ve borne hopes and promises out of obligation, and reacted to those you might have acted upon. You think that you have made choices, but those around you have limited you far beyond your knowledge.”

Adria considered. “I have been a child. This is what a child is. But it changes. I am changing.”

“Perhaps,” he nodded. “We shall see what you yet make of your disadvantages. How you overcome the games of others. The fear, the love.”

Adria shook her head, but he continued.

“Idonea, you are loved, even as you are feared for what you yet may be. Neither king nor Matriarch can know what you shall become — though they strain, even now, to make you in their own image. No first or second father can give you your freedom. Lord Preinon, for all he would see you be, would not give you all you ask of him. All the answers. All the promises. If you cannot make the answers for yourself, or keep the promises you make, then they have no meaning. They are bought and they are sold. This makes you hostage, not the shackles of slavers, nor the threat of violence.”

She blinked frantically and strained to follow his words, half still angry at his indignation, half amazed. He again sparked memories and images in her mind as if they had shared them.

“You do not see what prevents me from destroying you, Idonea,” Tabashi smiled. “But that does not mean it does not exist. Only a fool believes only in visibles.”

“You speak in circles,” Adria frowned.

“You live in circles,” he said, leaning over her a little to place her folded garments on her chest. “You breathe the air, and speak of spirit. You imagine, and believe in hope. You exhale words, and make promises. You feel pain, and you fear the dying. You remember violence and dream of vengeance. Are these invisibles of yours all and always faith?” He smiled, and, strangely, stroked her hair gently, as a mother might. “What is your anger and your love? The wound of an arrow, or perhaps the giving of one?”

She remained silent. Though he had done much to reduce her pain, still she hurt, all through and over, in visible and invisible places. She had spent three long days bleeding, and felt like she might just drain all away. But there was a little pride still, and she answered, “What we feel is decided by how we decide its path. Anger sends the arrow, love stays the hand.”

“Yes. You brought this arrow to you. Scion, you asked for the Hunter, and the Hunter came.”

Adria blinked, confused.

“You have been given a woman’s name, and you have made promises for it...” he shook his head when she tried to interrupt. “No, it does not matter how I know such things, and you could surmise it without the asking. Only listen now, as you would to your father or uncle, for our time together shortens, and I am not your enemy.”

He had let down his gray mask, and his face emoted. He spoke the truth, and with uncharacteristic sympathy. Adria nodded her assent, mute.

“You will in time have the chance to act for yourself,” he said slowly. “You are a woman, and an heir, and a person of will and power. In time, there will be many who will rely upon your actions, and not simply your reactions. When this time comes, you will have to make choices you will find... difficult. You may even have to break promises you have made, for the sake of deeper promises. Sometimes a law, or a trust, or a faith must be broken in order to prove it, and in order to vindicate a deeper truth. Do you understand this?”

Adria wasn’t sure. All that he had said seemed to have either deeper truths or greater lies.

“Can you remember this?” he smiled, and there was now an urgency in his tone. “That is enough...”

Adria nodded. “Yes.”

He looked nervously aside. “Do you know why I saved you?”

And she did, she believed, and answered, “You are a merchant. You trade things which you can carry upon your person, small things. A life, a spirit, a few words... You are a merchant of invisibles. You trade in... promises...”

“You understand,” he nodded. “It is no simple matter to live one’s life bound by oaths. I have fulfilled a promise today. But to fulfill this promise, I had to break another.” His head tilted, listening, his eyes calculated. One hand leaned down, and snuffed out the wick of a candle near Adria. Darkness and a strange smell filled the cave — the candle was made of something other than wax.

“I’ve heard what you have said, but... answer this,” Adria whispered. “Whose promise did you break, and whose did you keep?”

Tabashi rose, and backed to the doorway of the cave on his feet and hands, silhouetted in moonlight beyond. “Your father’s, scion, in both cases.”

And he had timed the conversation perfectly, almost absurdly so — he was gone, and even as she rose to follow, crying out at the pain, she heard her three names on the wind, in her uncle’s voice.

Without a word, and with only a brief glance at the dimly lit surroundings, Preinon lifted Adria into his arms and carried her from the cave and into sunlight. They returned quickly and in silence, Mateko scouting ahead of them to ward off any attackers.

One look at Mateko, one look at Preinon, confirmed that they were both unharmed, but the blood staining their arms and clothing told her that others had not fared as well, ally or enemy.

The pain caused by the motion of their passage was constant and great, but Adria focused now on pushing it away from her mind, and managed not to cry out, though her exhalations became somewhat more forceful now and then.

She was anxious to speak, to know more of the attack, to tell of her strange encounter with Tabashi. But she could see that Preinon’s thoughts were too full to interrupt, and Adria herself could not seem to bring even the simplest of questions to her lips.

There will be time enough later,
she hoped.
He has returned to find the war is within as well as without.
He must know more. He was warned, as I was. But… how, and why?

Perhaps she did not even want to put these pieces together. The possible answers that shimmered at the edges of her thoughts were too strange or terrible to contemplate, at least just yet.

It is just as well,
 she thought. 
We should be silent in case of danger.

But they encountered nothing but Runner sentries on their way home. Preinon set her carefully on her feet at the edge of camp, and then pressed his hand on her shoulder and gave her a grim smile. It seemed an expression she had never seen upon his face before, an odd mix of thankfulness and apology.