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 mid-thigh 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.
7
“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 boar sword 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.