The girl looked up and grimaced at him.
“Why must you—”
“You know I’m thinking of your well-being.”
Mella gnawed her mouth. She pulled the tail of the kalinx and was rewarded by a dagger-thrust of claws and teeth. Leaving the victim screeching, the kitten lied past Raldnor and down the corridor to a tiny window that provided escape.
Raldnor looked on. The remaining furious creature licked its wounds. Mella was known by his men to be a young mistress brought from the estate of Ioli. She was pretty in her way, and though her breasts were small and her feet somewhat on the large side, Raldnor was entitled to his personal taste in bed-girls.
“How long must we stay here?” Mella inquired eventually.
“You’re bored? My humble apologies. You know why I brought you, and you’ve some idea, I hope, as to the sort of action I have to take to ensure Kesarh’s purpose.”
“Kesarh,” said Mella. Her reedy voice was imbued by loathing.
“Yes. For now, Kesarh’s purpose. You’ll have to be patient, as I’ve often warned you, before you can indulge your hate of him.”
“And what of my hate for you?”
“Why should you hate me?” said Raldnor calmly. “I’m your savior. You should be grateful.”
“Grateful to have this done to me?” Mella’s torn hands suddenly dragged down her bodice. Raldnor looked away. He found the sight faintly revolting, though he had once traveled in woman-hating Ommos, and been shown such things as a commonplace.
“Yes,” he said, gazing at the frescoes on the wall, “grateful. Because it’s kept you alive.”
“And will it,” said Mella with dreadful fifteen-year-old scorn, “give me my rights?”
“Keep your voice down. There are Karmian sentries beyond that window out there.”
“But will it?” Mella shrilled, and broke into a repulsive jeering laughter.
“Again, I’ve told you, such things can be managed. But your best safety lies for now in reticence. Or do you want to lose your tongue with the rest?”
Mella paled. Tears sluiced from her eyes and the paint ran. She sniveled at Raldnor’s feet. What an amalgam the thing was!
Medaci turned from the little garden and the ephemeral pale sun came in with her hair. “And must it be so?” “I think it must.”
She sat beside her husband and Yannul took her hand.
“It seems so strange,” she said.
“I promised you peace, here.”
“Is there peace anywhere?”
They stayed still awhile and remembered aloud to each other the past. Yannul understood the litany. It seemed to cry, We have survived all that and can now survive this.
But it would be hard to go away, to abandon the farm and the land, abandon Lan itself which in his youth he had abandoned cheerfully, knowing he could always come back. Fighting by Raldnor of Sar. Yannul had not been so certain of that. Yet he had lived, and taken his golden-haired girl with him at last across the sea and home. There came the first shock, then. The old farm in the hills was empty, most of the roof down, wild bis nesting in the walls. And, beyond the well, the marker of his mother’s grave. Finding one of his sisters in another valley, wed to a stranger, he heard of sickness and hard times, his two other sisters dying, one in childbirth. One of his brothers had gone to join the Lowland army, but did not get there, or if he had, was dead in Ommos or Dorthar, never having made himself known. More likely robbers or shipwreck had been responsible. The other brothers went north, hunters and seekers of the savage wilds. Yannul never found them. All this had been a series of blows across his heart. In the thick of danger himself, he had somehow never reckoned his family anything but safe. In the dark cold nights, they had beamed there for him, in Lan, a distant beacon that could never go out, his mother happily heavy with child as she seemed perpetually to be, his sisters singing and squabbling round the loom, or nursing birds fallen frozen by the door, and his brothers boasting that one day they would eat at the King’s table in Amlan. Well, Yannul had done that very thing. When he remembered remembering that, the blows had seemed to break his heart.
It was Medaci who comforted him. Not only with her words and her touch. By her presence. It came to him that though he had lost his kindred, still he had kindred. He had been enamored sexually of Medaci, fond of her, protective, but in that moment of revelation had begun to love her.
And then his country gave him riches. The villa-farm arose, clasped in the indigo hills which, as Rem had long ago concluded, seemed to hold everything of note in Lan. So there was largesse, and love; presently the boys came. Life heaped them with harvest.
When the shadow began to creep out of Free Zakoris they acknowledged it, for shadows must be acknowledged, and put it aside, for neither must shadows be allowed to drive out all the light.
The Karmian initiative was not looked for.
It was like snow in summer. The end of the world.
“Basjar’s a good man,” said Yannul now, “half Xarabian, a demon for finance and tricks, but trustworthy. He’ll keep the farm in perfect shape, if nothing happens. If the worst happens, he’ll salvage what he can and keep it by for us.” Medaci smiled. Basjar, Yannul’s agent, had always paid courtly love to her in his Xarabian way. She liked him. He was kind, lethal only to enemies. “To find Vardians to make the journey with is also a stroke of fortune,” said Yannul. “Karmiss is still careful of the yellow-haired races.” He had arranged their travel plans yesterday, as soon as he received his invitation to the palace. He had comprehended what that would mean, and had not erred. It would not take long for the blond Karmian to decide that, though Yannul might not be slain, there were other forms of coercion.
The Vardish caravan would wend southward at sun-up tomorrow, and they, Yannul, Medaci and the boy, would accompany it. She was Amanackire and his younger son, fair but for his dark eyes, could pass for it. They would be honored and protected all the way to Lanelyr. In Elyr, Karmian development was still haphazard. Once into the Shadowless Plains they were on the Middle Lands, where Karmiss dare not stake a claim. As yet.
They discussed these things and then Medaci said, “what if Lur Raldnor comes back?”
“The last letter placed him safe in Dorthar. The King would have more sense than to give him leave to return. Raldanash will have work for him.”
“But he might not listen to the King.”
“He’ll listen. Raldnor knows we’ll take care of ourselves. He’ll keep where he is and wait for news. When we reach the Plains, we can send word.”
“Yes,” she said.
She did not cry. Her eyes were only full of yearning, still fixed on her garden sweet with lilies, and shrubs which blossomed at night into fireflies.
The sudden picture came to him again, and Lowland ruin in the snow, blood on the streets and dead Dortharians, and the Amanackire passing like silent wolves with gleaming eyes. And then Yr Dakan’s house, with its own dead, Ommos this time. In the round hall, an indescribable thing hanging half-in, half-out of the Zarok god’s oven-belly. And nearer, crouched by the table, Medaci. She had stared at him, then jumped to her feet, running to the doorway, trying to escape by him. When Yannul caught her shoulders she screamed. And then she had flung herself against him. “Why was I made to kill him?” she had cried in terror, her tears burning through his clothes into his skin.
She had, with her doubt, rescued his sanity that night, and perhaps he had rescued hers.
But he knew, even in flight from the new oppressors, she was afraid to return to the Lowlands.
The army of Lan was already being formed.