“Ah, those were exciting days.” The older man’s blue eyes clouded over with memory. “In the wake of the Great Rebellion, the High Lord had dissolved the Ehleen Old Religion throughout the realm—lest it spawn or be the spawning ground for other insurrections. The clergy had been proscribed and all their lands and treasures had been seized in the name of the Confederation, so there was much wealth at the disposal of the Undying, and this was quite evident at the court in those days.”
“That was when the New Palace was begun, and the Western Palace at Theesispolis, as well. Old roads were improved and new ones laid. There were official feasts four or five times each week and colorful processions, horse races, warcart races, galley races on the river from the capital to Ehlai and back, parties and music and dancing somewhere every night—and it was at one such that I first met your stepmother, Mahlee. I— What is it, Flopears?”
The prairie cat who had been scouting ahead of the column mindspoke, “Chief Bili, I think that those you seek are just ahead of you. 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.” Arhkeethoheeks 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 arhkeethoheeks, “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, Djehf, just down from Goohm, taking his accrued leave time after three years of campaigning in the west. Mayhap he’ll 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.”
6
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 bard songs 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 semi-barbaric 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.