The prairiecat who had been scouting ahead of the column mindspoke, “Chief Bili, I think that those you seek are just ahead of yon. One male rides ahead, and then back of him two more males and a female ride. Just behind them more males, fighters by the look of them. Then wagons with both males and females.”
“Little sister.”
Ahrkeethoheeks
Bili toed his stallion close, opened his arms wide and warmly embraced the Lady Giliahna, Dowager Princess of Kuhmbuhluhn. Releasing her, he reigned about and took the hand of
Thoheeks
Bahrt in a firm grasp, smiling cordially. “Thanks for the rider, Bahrt, it gave me a good excuse for this outing. I trow, desk work gets more wearisome from one day to the next, and this is a fine day to fork a horse. But where’ve you been keeping yourself, cousin? You’ve not set foot in Morguhn since you brought in last year’s taxes.”
The
thoheeks
rumbled a laugh. “Behind my desk, Bili, where else? Trying to make sure I’ll be able to pay this year’s bite.”
“Then,” chuckled the
ahrkeethoheeks
, “guest with me at Morguhn Hall, this night, and I’ll feed you back a little of your money’s worth. Besides, that mustachioed and thoroughly distinguished looking gentleman yonder is my eldest son, Djef, just down from Goohm, taking his accrued leavetime after three years of campaigning in the west. Mayhap hell spin us a few tales if,” he chuckled again and raised his voice a few notches, “he can take his eyes off his Aunt Giliahna for longer than two heartbeats at a time.”
Giliahna was awakened by one of her servitors as the woman laid and lit a morning fire on the bedchamber hearth. It grew cold at night, even in summer, this close to the mountains, so she snuggled back under the down-filled coverlet and waited for the new-lit blaze to warm the room a bit, thinking that after the enervating, sultry nights which had marked her travel through the lowlands, this brisk and healthful coolness was almost like home.
“Now, dammit!” she snapped aloud. “This
is
home, for all that that Ehleen and her piglets are rooting and squatting here. I’m rightful chatelaine of Vawn Hall, not Mehleena!”
Eyes closed, hands pressed together between her cheek and the pillow, the snap and crackle of the resinous kindling her only distraction, she thought on the past. She thought of the last time that Giliahna Sanderz had slept in her father’s hall. She had wept herself to sleep that long-ago night, wept for poor, exiled Tim, wept for her dead mother, wept for her father whose age and infirmity had made him the tool of her scheming and thoroughly hateful stepmother, and wept for herself.
But she had steeled herself the next morning, denied her enemy, her father’s wife, the satisfaction of seeing a Sanderz woman’s tears. And though she had wept often during the long journey north, it had been in private, and when once her party had crossed the border into the Principate of Kuhmbuhluhn, her pride had refused her the luxury of more tears. Recalling the bardsongs of all her ancestors who had ridden bravely to confront danger and death, that fourteen-year-old Giliahna had squared her jaw and raised her head and, drawing the invisible blade of her inborn courage, toed her mount forward to her encounter with destiny.
Mehleena and her women had made much of the great disparity between Giliahna’s youth and the rather advanced years of her groom-to-be, Prince Djylz of Kuhmbuhluhn. They had whispered horrible anecdotes of the brutal deflowering of brides by drunken or callous husbands, spoken often of the stark cruelty of the semibarbaric northerners and of the everyday, commonplace lack of culture and general discomfort of life in the primitive land to which she would so soon be borne.’ And the harpies had dwelt at length on the fact that Prince Djylz had already buried seven wives and offered gory speculations on the causes behind the deaths of her predecessors. They had deliberately done everything within their power to terrify Giliahna—and, though she strove to keep them unaware of the fact, they had succeeded. She had entered Kuhmbuhluhnburk in mortal terror, hardly even able to hear the cheers of the townsfolk impressed alike by her beauty and her proud, noble bearing.
The wedding had been just a kaleidoscope of shifting colors and textures—the gilded and lacquered coaches which had borne her and other noble notables to the marble and granite House of the Sword, the brilliant uniforms and silvery armor of the horsemen who led and flanked the procession, the hides of carefully groomed horses flashing like gems, flashing in the rays of Sacred Sun as brightly as the gold and the silver, the polished steel and the jewels had flashed back the light of the seeming thousands of candles which had illumined the soaring, cavernous interior of the Sword Temple. She did not even feel the first kiss of her new husband, but her legs bore her down the long, long aisle and down the marble stairs and into the coach. And all the endless-seeming journey back to the palace, she had managed a smile for the joyous populace.
The hours-long nuptial feast had seemed over in bare moments, and then, to a hearty chorus of deep-voiced masculine jests and laughter, a tide of smiling, giggling ladies and maidens had swept her out of the feast hall, through a succession of corridors and up the stairs, then through other corridors and finally into the suite of her new husband.
Giliahna never knew if she slept or just fainted after the luck-wishing bevy of noblewomen had disrobed her, bathed and scented her and tucked her into the huge bed, but when she again became aware,
he
was in the chamber.
Through slitted eyes, the girl studied him as the hunted deer studies the stalking panther. The prince was still damp from his bath, and as he apparently thought her sleeping, he was completely relaxed in manner and movements.
She saw a man of average height, his body deep-chested and muscular, but not very hairy, so that the pink and white puckers and cicatrices of scars which seemed to cover every inch of him were clearly visible. The dark-brown hair that fell in soft waves almost to his thick shoulders was streaked with white, as too were his short beard and heavy mustache. His teeth were big and yellow and a little crooked, his lips full and dark-red, his nose slightly flattened and canted. As he slipped his hair into a cotton nightcap and tied its drawstrings about his head, she could see that the top half of his left ear was missing, as was the lobe of the right one, while his high forehead bore that dent which was one of the marks of a veteran soldier.
When the cap was firmly in place, the naked man padded over to both doors and shot the bolts solidly home, then made for a large chest, lifted the lid and removed a short, heavy-bladed sword and placed the unsheathed weapon in a rack attached to the bedhead. He snuffed all but one thick taper and slid into the other side of the huge bed.
His settling weight brought a creak from the leather supports and, for all her iron self-control, a shudder and a gasp from Giliahna.
“Are you awake, then, wife?”
Giliahna tried to frame an answer, but the whirling of her mind precluded such, nor could she have spoken through her chattering teeth.
“My lady?” He slid close enough to place a hand on her shoulder, rigid from the tight-clenching of her icy hands. She gasped again, starting as if touched by a hot iron.
“Why… you’re scared to death, child. There’s no need to fear
me
. I’m your husband.”
His deep voice was infinitely gentle, Giliahna could hear that. But she could only lie there stiffly, quivering like a spent horse, the sweat of terror oozing from her every pore and tears creeping from under her closed eyelids.
“Giliahna, I mean you no ill… ever. But it’s true, you do not know me, I’m a full stranger to you in most ways. If you’d prefer, I’ll bide this night upon the couch yonder. I’m an old campaigner and I’ve slept many a night alone.”
At last, she got out a few stuttering words. “No… your bed… hall… do my duty… honor of my clan… my house…
“Nonsense!” He cast off his coverings and, crossing his legs, sat facing her. “You talk as if you’re giving an excuse for leading a suicide charge. Honor was fulfilled this noon, before the Sword Altar. What takes place—or doesn’t—here in our bedchamber is between you and me, between Giliahna and Djylz. The conjugal affairs of the prince and princess of this Principate of Kuhmbuhluhn are their very private business, not open to meddling, peeking, or the proddings of ministers and high nobles; the succession of my house is assured whether you be quickened or no. Anyway, I didn’t wed you simply to get a noble broodmare.”
He shifted his legs, slowly so as not to startle her, straightened his right one and, grimacing, massaged the flesh and muscles under a jagged-edged, deeply indented scar running from midthigh to knee.
“No, little Giliahna, I first became interested in you when I saw the sketch of you made by Duke Rahn of Hwahlburk during the months he was guesting with his cousin, your half brother, the Archduke Bili of Morguhn. My dear Karohlyn was deathly ill even then and all knew it, including her.”
He gritted his teeth, spoke through them. “I’ve had bad hick with wives. Had to bury seven, but I’m hoping you’ll be the wife who outlives me. Anyhow,” he smiled once again, “Karohlyn and I both studied the duke’s sketch and had him to her chamber, where we both questioned him.
“His answers fleshed out that sketch. He told us of your faultless courtesy, of your grace, your vigor, of your soul-deep beauty. Your mother was a Zunburker, daughter of the hereditary duke of that house, so both Karohlyn and I knew that your maternal stock was good, and discreet inquiries established the facts that your father, though a duke for only a score or so of years, was a chief and the son and grandson of chiefs.
“Karohlyn and I then decided that, after a suitable period of mourning, I should wed you. Almost a year passed after that mutual decision, Giliahna, then her pain became too much for flesh to bear, so that not even huge doses of the physician’s—Master Ahkbahr’s—drugs could long ease her.
“One night she sent for me, told me that she loved me with all her heart, but that she no longer could abide a life of increasing torment. She asked for my dagger and I gave it to her. In return, she gave me one last kiss and a letter for you. Here.”
He slid his fingers along one of the woodcarvings decorating the bedhead and a small drawer slid silently open. From it he withdrew a slender roll of vellum sheets, tied with a faded bit of ribbon. He extended his hand, proffering to her the dead woman’s last message.
“I know you can read, Giliahna, and the contents are for you, not for me. Besides, your young eyes should be better than my aging ones. Here. Draw some pillows behind your shoulders and sit you up whilst I get you more light.”
Her fears lulled to some degree by the prince’s lack of lust and obviously sincere solicitude for her, and her curiosity piqued, Giliahna did as she was bade, propping herself and spreading the letter on her lap. The writing was thin, spidery and filled with blotches from an ill-controlled quill so that she found it at first all but indecipherable. But with the lighting of additional candles, she could painfully make out the words—Mehrikan, of course, as Ehleeneekos was little spoken, this far north.
My dear Giliahna,
Although we never will meet, I feel a warm friendship—nay, a real kinship—to you and there is so very much I would like to tell you, but my agony is great, unbearable, and I am anxious to end it. Therefore, I will be brief, speaking only of the most important thing: my—our—husband.
When first I came to wed Djylz, I was but a few months older than are you and I was terribly frightened. But I soon knew him to be the dearest, gentlest and most kind of men. I am much grieved to leave him, but for near three years now I have been unable to be the lover and companion and helpmate to him that I should and that he so deserves. I beg you to take my place fully, be all the things to him that I can never again be.
Djylz needs love, Giliahna, much love, but if he receives it, he will return it tenfold. You will have heard much ill of him, of course, for, to his enemies, he is stark ferocity personified. But to those who love him—as do I, as do his children, as do his people, as you will and
must
—he is only warm generosity. And last, but very important, please find a little spare love to lavish on my little son, Gy. You will not be sorry, for there is much of his dear father in him.
Oh, my dear sister, how I envy you that happiness which has been mine and now is yours.
Your true and everloving friend, Karohlyn
“And,” Giliahna reflected, burrowed under the coverlets embroidered with the White Hawk of Vawn by the skillful hands of her long-dead mother, “every word that that poor, suffering woman wrote was nothing less than pure, simple truth.”
The prince’s wish had been fulfilled—his eighth wife had outlived him. And her love for him had early become complete and soul-deep, nor could young Gy’s natural mother have shown him any more affection during the two years before he left for his war training at the court of King Sehbastyuhn of Pitzburk.
His first letters to her had expressed bitter homesickness, and Giliahna had wept for a little boy far from his home and lonely amongst strangers. But time had worked its curative powers, and soon the letters were abrim with exciting events of this richest court in all the Middle Kingdoms, as well as with pride of new skills mastered.
As boy grew into young man, the letters told of forays and of raids, of single combats and of great, crashing battles, and Sacred Sun never rose or set but that Giliahna importuned that Gy’s life be spared—for all three of Djylz’s sons by earlier marriages had been slain during their own war years, and she knew in her heart that she would not produce a son to replace Gy, for she could not seem to conceive of the prince.
But, as if possessed of arcane foreknowledge of what was to be, Prince Djylz never worried, seeming sublimely confident that this last son would live to succeed to the Principate of Kuhmbuhluhn.
Come of Horseclans stock, of ancestors who had thought nothing of arming and mounting and riding off to hunt or battle when they had seen more than fourscore summers, Giliahna never fretted that her husband, at a little less than seventy years, regularly took to horse with spear and bow and boarsword to hunt the nearby forest preserves with his foresters and his gentlemen. Sometimes she chose to ride with him, for, adhering to ancient Horseclans Law, Hwahltuh Sanderz had seen to his daughter’s war training from her twelfth year, and she early proved more proficient with the horseman’s hornbow than her husband or his gentlemen.