The Rose of the World (44 page)

‘I am quite well,’ she said softly, though her mind was racing. What to do? Raise a hue and cry and bring violence crashing about them all? It was the third of the men that made her keep her counsel, the one from whom sorcery leaked like water from a sieve. The closer he came, the more powerful was her sense of him: afraid but compelled, and more dangerous than either of his companions could know. They were coming for her: of that she was sure. ‘Take little Ulf into the nursery,’ she said aloud. ‘Go in there with him and close the door, be quiet as mice. Do not come out no matter what you may see or hear. Do you understand me?’

She used the Voice. Blank-eyed, the girl gathered up the child, who swivelled in her arms and fixed his supposed mother with a dark and venemous stare. Then Leta opened the door to the nursery and took him away.

The Rosa Eldi let out a sigh, but whether it was of relief or fear, or a determined centring of all her power, it would have been impossible for any observer to know.

Moments later, the door to her chamber opened and two men entered.

Tycho gripped the stempost of the ship and gazed into the blizzard as if by the very power of his will he could burn light into the scene he so desperately wished to view. Damn Rui Finco for leaving him behind. The man was a libertine, a sensualist; a sinner of the first order. How could he possibly be trusted to keep his hands off such a rose? He pushed the thought away irritably before too disturbing an image could form. Even though each breath he exhaled clouded visibly before him, he found that he had begun to sweat, a runnel of salty liquid running down his temple into the corner of his eye. It stung like hell. Furiously, he wiped it away. His tunic was sticking to him, too. He had not washed properly in the best part of a month. When he raised an arm to catch hold of a line as the ship pitched forward on a roller, the pit stank like an old dog.

Disgusted, he staggered back to his flapping canvas shelter, grabbing a pail of seawater on the way, and despite the freezing air stripped naked and scrubbed his skin till it was red and raw. He could not present himself to the Rose in this foul state: he must purify himself. Easier said than done. Glancing down, he found his erection standing out from his belly, stiff and ruby-tight. Where other men complained of their balls withering in the cold and their pricks entirely vanishing from sight, still he was afflicted as he had been since first laying eyes on the Rosa Eldi.

Again the thought insinuated itself:
how can Rui fail to be affected? He left me behind because he thought I would lose my head; but I have been dealing with this desire for the better part of a year, and he has no experience of her seductive gift, no expectation, no defences: it will knock him flat.

The image came, no matter how hard he tried to block it: the Rose of the World spread-eagled on a fur-strewn bed beneath the taut, pumping buttocks of the Lord of Forent.

No!

The force of his denial made the word echo out around the ship so that men stopped what they were doing and stared at the candlelit tent, wherein the Lord of Cantara was clearly silhouetted in all his priapic glory. Already amazed by the falling snow – for some their first experience of this strange northern phenomenon – they stared; and then they shook their heads and carried on their tasks – bailing, mainly: the timber had not had sufficient time to soak and swell its seams full shut – and muttered to each other.

‘Nutter,’ declared one of the Farem slaves to his oar-partner, who nodded in agreement.

‘Pulling his daisy again,’ observed the man behind sagely.

‘Got to be mad to be bollock-naked in this weather,’ said a north-coaster, shaking his head. ‘Though you have to admire his resilience. Mine’s the size of a walnut.’

‘An acorn, more like!’

Tycho heard them laughing and clenched his jaw. He took a new length of clean linen and began the laborious job of binding himself flat. The piece he had removed reeked. Having to piss over the side in a high wind was a messy business at the best of times. He resolved to curb his appetite for the woman until they were safely back on Istrian soil. It would be too sordid to consummate their passion here, amid all this filth and discomfort, and with only a thin sheet of fabric between them and the prying eyes and ears of the bawdy crew. He had survived these many months; he could surely last another two weeks.

Or could he? The thought of the barbarian king rutting with her, constantly, productively, planting his filthy seed in her was more than he could bear. The urge to claim her, to scour Ravn’s memory and his presence from her was aching-hot. Stallion of the North! Even the monicker was an insult, a slur upon her, and all women. That such a savage had stolen a vision and made her his mare was revolting, beyond words.

Now it was Ravn Asharson’s face which sprang up before him. Young and handsome and chiselled, with a triumphant, laughing light in his eye. The whelp! Loathing rose in him like bile.

How dared Rui deny him his due revenge! He had purchased the woman fair and square. Or if not purchased, exactly, he had certainly agreed a deal for her, only to lose her to a barbarian’s whim. It was insupportable that he should not sever the thief’s head from his strutting, lustful body. Instead here he was, bobbing uselessly on the waves with the rest of the fleet, waiting, waiting, waiting.

‘You’ll get your chance, believe me, Tycho,’ Rui had assured him as the skiff was lowered. ‘When we take the Rose, Bardson will raise the alarum at the due time and they’ll pursue us out of the harbour and slam right into your tender embrace. It’ll be a slaughter: we’ll grapple their ships and fire them: then you can kill as many of the heretical bastards as you want.’

It was not enough; nothing could ever be enough, and the waiting was just too hard.

He fell to his knees in anguish. ‘Falla, hear my plea. Give me my enemy so I may exact retribution from him. Grant me the grace to put out those eyes which have feasted on her naked form; let me rip out at the root the sacrilegious member which has dared to penetrate her mysteries.’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘O, Falla, look kindly on your chief advocate and defender: deliver my love to me and I shall be your slave for the rest of my life.’

The candles guttered. Then it was as if a soft breeze caressed his face. Deep inside his skull he thought he caught the whisper of a reply. It told him what to do and moments later he strode out onto the deck, half-dressed and radiant with knowledge.

The first of the two men wore her husband’s face; but she could see his own beneath, as if floating beneath a scummy pool. He was not dissimilar to Ravn, she thought, with his high cheekbones, his angularity and dark eyes; but there was no beard beneath the illusion, and he was older by far, his cheeks etched by years of dissatisfaction, dissolution and cynicism. Here was a man who believed in nothing, loved nothing, cherished nothing; was nothing, for all his confidence and his daring, and not worth her husband’s shadow.

She looked through him to the second intruder.

Waves of terror emanated off this man, interfering with the fine trickery he had woven to hide himself from view. He had, she saw at once, tried to throw a glamour in front of any onlooker, so that their gaze would slide harmlessly away from him to alight on some other thing. The shimmer which surrounded him was annoying, hard to focus on. She could feel the essence of him more than see his true appearance; but what she felt evoked something nameless in her: a kind of painful yearning.

The first man strode forward, and she transferred her scrutiny to him. His gaze was lambent, the pupils as wide and black as an owl’s. She felt his desire like a heat and smiled, her coral mouth twisting upwards contemptuously.

‘You are not my husband,’ she said softly and watched the dismay settle over the blur of his features. She put out her hand, fingers splayed, and time itself slowed, the man halting in mid-stride; his accomplice shimmering at his shoulder.

It was hard to think: there was a distant background hum of folk calling out in desperation to her – people starving, dying, their land dying with them, far away, far away; then other voices came leaping out at her from the sea much closer at hand; men invoking her name in curse, in prayer, or in casual, careless reference. One, more intense than all the rest, snagged her attention. She felt his vitriol, his murderous spirit questing out, seeking justification, divine reinforcement.

I know you
, she thought. The signature of his mind was unmistakable, vile.
I remember you
. He had come for her, driven a thousand miles and more by the depths of his obsession.
All this way
, she marvelled. A mortal woman might have been flattered by such devotion; but even at her weakest and most disempowered, the Rose of the World had never been mortal.

Thoughts crowded in on her.

They have come from the south.

They lie in wait. For Ravn . . .

They will mutilate his beautiful body.

They will kill him.

But then they will sail south.

Across the whole wide ocean . . . home . . .

She lifted her hand and time came flooding back. She felt the disruption to the natural world she had caused by even this tiny holding back of the inexorable.
There are so many disruptions out there
, she thought distractedly.
Yet all will be chaos if I make the wrong choice
.

It was an impossible decision. The woman in her warred with the goddess for fleeting, eternal moments.

A tiny boat rocked on a dark sea. Inside were two figures. Sailing out of the west, the moonlight limned them in ice, picking out the haggard face of one and the eager craftiness of his older companion. The haggard one was rowing, but the vessel seemed to skim the waves faster than any man-powered boat should move, and despite the light wind – which elsewhere blew from an entirely different direction – the vessel’s sail was full and taut. The blizzard swirled around and above them, but kept its distance.

Hollow-eyed and hollow-souled, the other was easier to control now. Something had gone out of him at Rockfall: he was a defeated man, a shadow of himself: he had, as the old women of Eyra would say ‘had the stuffing knocked out of him’. What was it Ilyina had called him? A luckless man. That was it. A man whom Fate had marked out for special attention, sorting through the tangled threads of his dreams with her wicked fingers, allowing him the privilege of choosing which coloured string he would pull – gold, for greed? blue, for ambition? red, for passion? – and see what part of the careful tapestry of his life would unravel fastest.

His current walking death should surely prove a perfect foil to the Rosa Eldi’s peculiar persuasiveness: his grief for the predicament of his wife and daughter and his own part in leaving them defenceless rendered him a perfect, empty vessel for the Master’s use. Rahay had the necessary spell ready to return the goddess to her prior compliance. Now all he had to do was to slip into Halbo in the guises he had prepared for them and let the fool do his work . . .

Twenty-eight

The Rose of Elda

The Rose of the World felt the weight of his gaze on her once more, like the brush of a dirty rag. So she reached out and touched him, letting loose the full force of her seductive power, and watched as he was buffeted by it, as by a great wind.

For a long moment, all volition fell away from him. He could not remember what he was here to do, even who he truly was: for in those mesmeric sea-green eyes all he saw reflected was the image of Ravn Asharson, King of the North. When she touched his arm, his whole skin felt inflamed with passion. He wanted nothing now other than to shed not only his clothing, but that sheath of skin as well, to meld himself with her astonishing presence as wholly as he could. He found he was trembling from top to toe.

Again, the Rose of Elda smiled. The glamour was too strong for such a weak man to withstand. She called some of its power back into herself and waited for the intruder to make clear his purpose.

Rui Finco shook his head, blinked. He felt as though he had just wakened from the most blissful dream. He dreamt he had stood before the Goddess, that she had smiled upon him and taken him into her fires. Never a religious man, the ecstasy he experienced in the wake of this vision stunned him.
Perhaps Tycho Issian is right
, he thought.
Perhaps we are here on a sacred mission
. His own reason for leading the invasion force north had been entirely venal: now he felt abruptly ashamed.

This precious lady must be rescued from the barbarians and returned to the land of faith and righteousness: that was the key. It was all that mattered.

‘Take me, then,’ the Rose of the World said simply. ‘Now.’ She turned to pick up from the bed the hooded ermine-lined cloak her husband had given her to keep the Eyran winter out of her bones, and felt hot tears burning her eyes: and that in itself was some kind of miracle.
I do not understand
, she thought desperately.
I am the Goddess, so this parting should not touch me; but leaving this mortal man makes my heart feel as if it will break. Yet the people of my world cry out for me, they need the Three to be together once more, so their lives may be cradled in our care. Who can
I
turn to for aid and direction? It seems there is no one to listen to
my
prayers.

She had never felt so alone.

As if sensing the turmoil in the room beyond, Ulf twisted suddenly in Leta Gullwing’s arms, evading her muffling hand. A monstrous bellow of outrage emanated from behind the panelled door to the nursery.

The shimmering man moved before anyone else had time to react. He wrenched open the door, revealing the occupants to his companion. His gaze distracted from the mazing power of the Rosa Eldi, Rui Finco smiled delightedly. ‘Ah, the son and heir,’ he breathed. He walked past Virelai into the hidden room. Still lustful from the nomad woman’s magic, his eyes roved appreciatively across the girl in whose arms the howling child writhed. ‘And his
very
lovely nurse . . . It seems your ladyship will have company on our voyage back to the motherland,’ he declared cheerfully over his shoulder.