Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (34 page)

Twenty-Five

The Palace of Tar Vangr—Ruin’s Night, 981 Sorcerus Annis

S
emana!

The world came back in a rush. Ovelia woke coughing, her eyes streaming, and she had one shuddering breath to peer around at dark stone walls dancing with firelight. Her insides were on fire and she wanted to void herself or vomit up her guts. Then she felt pressure on her head as of two shields crushing her skull between them, and she lost the world again.

When light returned a moment later, it came around the edges of a cool cloth pressed to her forehead. She tried by instinct to pluck it away, but her hand wouldn’t move. All she could do was moan.

“Peace, lass,” said a quavering voice, and Ovelia relaxed.

The cloth drew away, and the light blinded Ovelia. After a moment, she could see well enough to make out the diminutive woman who sat beside her. A frown wrinkled the craggy face—one that held disappointment and pity in equal measure. Ovelia knew that face.

“Maure,” she said. “So it was not a dream.”

“Alas, no.” Maure took the cloth from Ovelia’s brow and wet it anew in a chipped basin. “Master would have you cleaned and mended. I’m to do both.”

“Master?” But Ovelia already knew. “Lan Ravalis, you mean.”

The old woman shrugged. “I serve him or her what sits upon the Winter throne, whoever they killed to climb it,” she said. “However much blood is spilled, there’s always babes to be birthed and sick tended.” She made a sucking sound with her tongue between her teeth. “You’ve been both in your time.”

Ovelia felt cold. Pain twisted like a knife in her stomach. She shivered with the need to eat, but the thought of food made her ill. She lay in the same inner chamber where they had fought Lan and Davargorn: Paeter’s old bedchamber, where she had met him so many nights for years. She felt unstuck in time, drifting between then and now, uncertain if she was awake or dreaming. The furniture stood just as it always had, and the whole place reeked of death. The chamber showed signs of fresh violence: blood spatters and gouges in the stone. She focused on the blood: Serris’s blood. Regel’s blood.

“Lan Ravalis,” Ovelia managed. “He is a good master?”

“No, but few are.” As ever, Maure’s face seemed compassionate and judgmental both at once. “I’ve had but one good master, and you killed him.”

She couldn’t deny that. It made her want to weep.

“I’ve served many a master,” Maure went on, wringing a cloth in a copper basin. “Lan is better than some and worse than others. At least I am an old nursemaid and hardly prey for his lusts. I am neither young”—she traced her fingers down Ovelia’s cheek—“nor pretty.”

“I guess we have that in common.”

“Alas. You’re still cursed with a good face.” Maure clucked at her. “I remember birthing you of bright little Aniset as though ‘twere yesterday, though it were nigh forty winters past. Aye?”

Ovelia flushed despite herself. “I’d not say, if it please you.”

“Spare my feelings, I see.” Maure grimaced. “Lass, I’ve seen you naked and held you weeping, so you need keep no secrets from me. I remember your
own
child—”

When Ovelia heard those words, her awareness sharpened. She grasped the old woman’s hand, caught her gaze with a warning glance, and shook her head.

Maure patted her hand. “The murmurs of an old crone mean less than nothing.” She laid the cloth back on Ovelia’s eyes. “You should rest. He comes soon.”

For the first time, Ovelia looked down at her heavy body, lying still as death upon the sheets. Maure or someone—she hoped it had been Maure—had dressed her in a silk slip of Ravalis crimson, trimmed with azure lace. Something a blooded courtesan might wear or—she realized with a shiver—something the would-be wife of a Ravalis lordling. She felt the cool weight of her carven necklace against her throat—at least that was her own. She willed her legs to move, and pain seared through her. Every muscle ached. Her body felt like rotting wood, with an unquenchable hunger in her middle.

“What of the others?” she asked. “When I was taken, there was a man with me, and—” She stopped herself. Clearly, Maure knew nothing of Semana, or she’d have asked earlier.

Maure scowled as though cursing inwardly. “I know of the man, and—”

“And?” Ovelia pressed, heart pounding in her throat.

“Nothing.”

Lan Ravalis stood at the door, sheathed in a rich tunic of red and blue. Ovelia had seen no finer garments outside of court rituals. The triumph on his face glowed almost as hotly as his fiery hair and beard, and it made his handsome face look like a terrible caricature. Ovelia’s world grew darker.

“Of Regel the Oathbreaker,” Lan Ravalis said. “There is nothing.”

Twenty-Six

A
t first, there was
nothing.

Then he became aware of a long, long darkness.

From time to time, blue candles passed from above his head down toward his feet, then disappeared gradually. The world faded again, and he only woke fully when his bearers dropped him unceremoniously on the hard stone. Only then did he remember himself.

Regel was his name, and he was dying.

His head thumped against a stone surface. The soldiers who had dragged him down this long corridor left him to lie while they pawed at the wall.

“Around here—ah!” One of the soldiers found a seam around a door that looked just like the wall. He knocked on the seeming stone, which rang like metal. “Right here. Let’s get the others.”

“Hrm.” The second man was smoking what smelled like cheap summerweed. Regel could see his dull features by the light of the glowing embers. “Why not just take the bodies to the furnace?”

“Orders, sodder. Prince Lan don’t want these three to rest easy. Wants ‘em buried as traitors.”

“He’s a harsh man, the prince.” The man tapped his pipe on the wall a thumb’s length from Regel’s face. Ash sprinkled his cheek. “But well. Not like it matters to them where their bodies lie.”

“Sure it do,” the other man argued. His accent and piety marked him as winterborn, whereas the first man was clearly a summerborn atheist by his speech and indifference. “Don’t give the body to the fire, and the spirit can’t join the Nar. Its torment never ends.”

“Will you forget that superstitious refuse and help me? These bodies are heavy.”

Bodies, Regel thought. They thought he was already dead. And
three
bodies meant...

Something heavy landed on the floor to his left, and the men headed back up the hall. Confident they weren’t looking, Regel risked a glance. Not a hand’s length away, Serris’s dead face was staring at him, her dull eyes wide. Below her chin was a mass of black, dried blood. It left a cold hollow in Regel’s chest. The remarkable woman he had sculpted from a nameless girl into an angel of vengeance was gone, leaving only a cold husk. She had wanted to tell him something important. Now she never would.

The guards returned and let something fall with a sickly thud. “This all of them, true?”

“Aye, just the three.”

As they labored at the door, Regel looked the other way, and there lay a distorted face he recognized as well: Davargorn. The features had a kind of nobility to them, as though death had finally brought the ugly man peace. The splintered ends of spent casterbolts still protruded from his chest.

“Ah,” said one of the guards. Regel heard stone rattle. “Here it comes.”

A whir of ancient gears made a door slide out of stone wall, then across. A scent of decay wafted into the corridor from the chamber, which Regel realized must be used for disposal. How many foes of Tar Vangr lay moldering in this charnel crypt, their spirits unable to rest easy?

The smoking man tossed his weed-ashes away—they fell burning on Regel’s belly—and grasped Serris under the armpits. “Too bad they didn’t leave this one alive, eh?”

“Don’t matter,” said the other. “Clean her up a bit as she is, and she’d do.”

“Burn you!” The man sniffed. “Teats out of legend, though. Shame is what it is.”

Regel felt something swell in his chest he recognized as grief and anger. Their callous words gave birth to rage, merely thinking of the dishonor they did to both Serris and Davargorn. Indeed, he wept for the boy. He had been a foe, yes, but Regel did not hate him. He had given his life to protect Semana.

Semana.

It happened without his knowing. A tiny whine clawed up his windpipe and rattled between his teeth. The sound was no louder than a rat’s squeak, but it was there.

The men paused. “What was that?” said the one holding Serris by the shoulders.

“Silver Fire, that one isn’t dead! See to him.”

The soldier dropped Serris with a dead thump and bent low. His rancid, smoky breath beat on Regel’s cheek as he drew his dagger with a scrape of steel on leather.

Davargorn’s eyes opened—the one black, the other luminous white.

Steel flashed and the back of the guard’s calf split open. The man was too surprised even to cry out, and he lost his breath when he fell. When he was down, Davargorn pounced. He landed on the guard chest to chest, and Regel heard the two bolts squish into the man’s flesh. Davargorn smashed his forehead into the guard’s nose, cutting off the man’s scream of surprise in an eruption of blood between their faces.

The other guard staggered away from Serris’s corpse, leaped past them, and ran.

Davargorn pulled away from the bleeding, sobbing man to snarl at Regel. “Strike!”

The guard’s dagger gleamed as Davargorn tossed it skittering across the space separating them, and Regel caught it by the hilt. He forced his body up and almost fainted at the strain. Weakness filled him, but he did not care. He sighted after the fleeing man.

Semana, he thought. Ovelia—

“Strike!” Davargorn spat.

Regel threw. The blade scythed end over end after the stumbling guard. The man had the misfortune to look back at just the wrong instant, and the blade sank into his eye. He jerked up, erect as a lightning rod, and his hands flinched toward the blade. Then he fell to his knees and crashed to the floor.

Davargorn slammed his head into his own guard’s face again, then put his arms around the man’s head and twisted viciously. Regel distantly heard the guard’s neck crack as the world turned to shades of gray and he sank to the floor. That was the last of his energy.

Davargorn knelt over him, his face smeared with hot blood. His white eye gleamed.

“You were dead,” Regel murmured, or though he did. “I saw.”

“Yes,” Davargorn said. “Now, so are you.”

“Can’t—” Death was coming, and he could not fight it.

“Not yet, Lord of Tears.” Then Davargorn put his hands on Regel’s chest, and a silvery glow suffused his fingers. “You don’t get to die yet.”

Twenty-Seven

O
velia looked upon her
death standing in the door to the chamber, the grin on his face irrepressibly satisfied and cruel. She earnestly wished for the dark to return, if only to spare her those terrible eyes.They were like hands touching and burning her all over.

Maure rose immediately, wringing the wet cloth tightly. “Your Highness, she is not—”

“I know well what she is not.” Lan’s smile widened, his teeth becoming fangs. “And what she is.”

The Crown Prince was a big man with a bear’s face, its every line drawn into a powerful, slightly up-turned nose like a snout. Thick shoulders and an even thicker neck completed the image of a beast in a man’s skin. She could not look at his huge hands without imagining them on her body—grasping her, choking her. It was not pleasant, though a part of her grew warm.

Not him,
she prayed to the Old Gods.
Do not let him be as Paeter was.

Ovelia looked up at the old midwife, whose face was stormy. “Do not ask this of her,” Maure said. “Have you not hurt her enough already? She needs rest, not—”

“Please,” Ovelia said. “There is no need, Maure.”

She tensed herself to rise, but the midwife put her wrinkly hand on her shoulder. “Highness, I forbid this woman to rise. Do you understand? If she dies on her feet, what use is she to you?”

“What use indeed?” said the prince. “What do you know of it, hag?”

“Don’t think my age makes me forget what men and women do,” Maure said, her old voice burning with indignation. “I know what you want and why she’s here. So listen to wisdom or be denied your spoils, prince.”

“You amuse me, old woman,” Lan said. “Very well. I will ask of her nothing but what she gives of her own will. Satisfied? On your way, now.”

The midwife bent low to check Ovelia one last time. “Ward yourself, lass.” Maure pressed her lips to Ovelia’s forehead, and tears leaked down onto the younger woman’s face, below her own, dry eyes. “Ward yourself.”

Ovelia swallowed rising despair tinged with loathsome desire. “Yes.”

Then Maure—midwife, wetnurse, teacher, Ovelia’s oldest friend and mother to many—hobbled under Lan’s arm as he leaned against the doorframe and was gone down the corridor. Lan peered after her as a lion at an elderly ewe that might fall behind the flock any moment.

“She knows naught of this business,” Ovelia said. “Spare her.”

“Spare her?” Lan laughed. “Why would I harm her? She is a good servant and loyal. You, however...” He let the words trail away and chuckled. “Well, I kept my word. I will ask of you nothing you would not offer. Willingly.”

Ovelia’s heart had slowed in its pace, as though her body accepted the inevitability of it all. “What I have done, I have done for love,” she said. “Remember that.”

Lan put his hand to his chest in mock offense. “My lady, you wrong me,” he said. “I am motivated by much the same impulse.”

“Love.” Ovelia closed her eyes. She understood.

“For love of you, Lady Dracaris, last of your Blood,” he said. “Or at least desire.”

Ovelia touched her fingers to her brow and hid a mournful smile behind her hand. “No,” she said. “No. It is not love or desire, Bear of Luether, but jealousy.”

“Jealousy?” Lan sounded intrigued. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Paeter,” Ovelia said. “You always hated your brother for having what you could not.”

“As you say.” Lan’s face twisted. “Whether for love or hate, I have risked treason in allowing you traitors to live. The least you could do is offer me a kind word.”

“Slayers—” Ovelia’s heart leaped. “I am not the only survivor, then.”

Confusion flashed across his eyes, then dawning realization, and she knew she had won a minor victory. “Indeed,” Lan said, displeased to be caught in the truth. “I have spared Semana as well, of course. You did not think I’d throw away such a lovely thing—and so valuable.”

Ovelia’s blood cooled, and her mind turned back five years to another Ravalis speaking much the same words to her. She understood only too well. They would play the same game then as now, but would this Ravalis know it as well as Paeter?

“Am I to be your bride then?” Ovelia gestured to the Ravalis colors she wore. They were barely clothes—only bedchamber silks such as a courtesan might wear under her proper attire. “I think you are already married.”

“I am.” Lan stepped forward, eyes on Ovelia. “To a dried up old husk of a Vargaen who needs help sucking my blade. That thinblood creature has never been worthy of the Ravalis. But you.” He held his hand just over her breast, fingers flexing. “Ah. You are more worthy of this honor than she.”

If Ovelia had harbored any doubt, it vanished now. “What must I do?” she whispered.

“You
must
do nothing. But perhaps you
wish
to.” Lan stood tall, his smile spreading ear to ear. “First, I should like to see what I’ve spared. Perhaps you wish to stand? I would enjoy that ever so much.”

Ovelia tried, but her body screamed against her movement. Her stomach assured her it would kill her if she tried again. She managed to raise her head a hand’s length before pain swept her and laid her flat once more. She lay back, gasping.

“I would stand, Shield-Whore,” said Lan, “for Semana’s sake.”

“You’d not harm her,” Ovelia said. “Surely you wouldn’t be so stupid. She is the heir to Tar Vangr. The true heir. You cannot use her if she is dead.”

“Nay,” Lan said. “But she does not need all her fingers to sit the Winter throne—or such a pretty face. Who knows?” He gestured to the bearskin rug beneath his feet. “The pelt of a Winter pup might look as well as that of a Summer bear, and feel softer.”

Ovelia closed her eyes.

“You’ve reconsidered, mayhap?” Lan asked. “Stand.”

Her neck tensed and her shoulders heaved. Every muscle, bone, and sinew in Ovelia’s body ground together. She felt like she was being pulled apart. She pushed.

She imagined Semana weeping alone in a dark cell. She saw Semana screaming as men forced her down and drew apart the fingers of her hand. She pushed.

She thought of the last vow she had sworn to Orbrin. She pushed.

And then she stood. The world shivered, but she had climbed to her feet.

“Excellent.” Lan nodded, something like respect on his face. He put a hand to his chin, considering. “I see you’ve not forsaken your body these five years. I would see it fully, if you wish.”

Under his cruel scrutiny, the darkest part of her stirred—the part of her that desired this.
Longed
for this. She had spent her life hating herself for it, but now she had no choice but to embrace it.

Trying to ignore his eyes—to distract herself from his desire and her need—Ovelia looked down at the bed. The sheets were still heavy with blood—Serris’s blood—and there was no desire in that. Her stomach had merely hurt when she woke up, but now it contorted as though Lan had thrust an iron gauntlet into her guts and squeezed. Also, the bearskin beneath her bare feet was sticky with a dark stain: Regel’s blood, shed for her and for Semana. They had given of themselves that she might live—would not Ovelia do the same?

But to surrender to that darkness—the scraping, creaking hollow that made her a monster among women—would that be death or would it be worse?

Lan saw the hesitation on her face and misjudged it. “Your choice is simple, Whore of Dracaris,” he said, using Paeter’s words in almost his own voice. “Do as I command, or your princess dies.”

She almost pitied the poor man in that moment. She was not considering whether to rut him. She was considering if she would revel in it, and what that would make her.

Lan was right in one respect: the choice was simple. To resist would be to die, and to die was to let Semana die, and that she could not do.

“First,” Ovelia said. With all her strength bent to standing, it was a bare whisper. “First, assure me that she is safe. Give me your word.”

“You have it.” Lan gestured to her crimson slip. “Now take that off. Slowly.”

As she reached up to the laces of the silky gown, he drew from behind his back a set of red-stained manacles. Serris’s blood, still fresh.

“My favorites,” he said with a grin. “Can’t let a little stain bother us, can we?”

Ovelia did her best to suppress a shiver.

“Best accept it, Lady,” Lan said, chilling her. “Unless you believe in miracles.”

She did not.