But Geros could not speak fast enough for the master, who suddenly snapped, “You can mindspeak? Then lower your shield, man, I cannot waste more time.”
When he had scanned the contents of Geros’ mind, his scowl vanished and his tone softened. He placed a hand on the aging castellan’s shoulder and said, softly, “I grieve with you and your poor young lord, friend Geros. It was a terrible act, even for an Ehleen, and I of all men in this hall know that these Ehleenee can be beasts incarnate. But I must agree with your prognosis. A wound inflicted with a weapon like that in that area of the chest is invariably fatal.”
“I could do nothing for the woman, even were I to come, and I cannot come, nor can my apprentice, not now. I’m sorry.”
The blue-black man turned to go, shaking his shaven head. All at once, he turned back. “Sir Geros, Mistress Neeka, for whatever else she may or may not be, is a skilled and most talented apothecary. She assisted me here during the rush of battle casualties, and I found her performance most impressive. Her suite is just down the hall from here. Why don’t you go to her and open your mind as you did to me? If nothing else, she can administer the young man a draft to ease his shock and hurt and grant him restful, healing sleep.”
Mechanically, Tim arose from beside Giliahna. She lay unmoving save for the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest. Myron seemed to be still unconscious, but taking no chances, Tim retrieved his sword and ran two inches of the blade into his half-brother’s buttock. When the carcass did not even twitch, Tim was satisfied.
Gaios still sat near the corpse of his victim. Moaning, he rocked from side to side, both hands still pressing the rags to his belly. His eyelids were pressed tightly shut, but tears still managed to ooze from beneath them, joining a copious sweat to impart a glistening sheen to his face, now twisted in agony.
Turning back to the bed and Giliahna, Tim noted that her slashed face and the stab wound in her chest had ceased to bleed. Moaning louder even than Gaios, he tried not to think of the licking flames that so soon must be set about her lovely body, tried not to think of the long and bitter years he still must live without her … and he made his decision.
He lifted off his baldric, stripped off tunic and shirt and stretched himself beside his sister, his lover, she who should have been his wife. He kissed her cold lips, then reached out and took from the bedside table Myron’s blood-sticky dirk.
Softly, tenderly, he said, “We shall go to Wind together, my love, never again to be parted.”
Then Tim Sanderz grasped the wire-wound hilt in both hands and ran the full length of the blade into his own chest, skewering his broken heart.
When Sir Geros and Neeka hurried into the suite, the old soldier reeled against the doorframe in shock, but Neeka bustled over to the bed. Ignoring for the moment the man, who had obviously taken his own life since his hands were still gripped about the hilt of the knife, she set about examining the woman.
When Geros had more or less composed himself, he approached. “Dead, is she not? Poor little Giliahna.”
The answer he received then was like the crash of a war hammer against his head. “Not dead nor even dying, Sir Geros, she has only swooned.”
Hesitantly, Geros laid a trembling hand on Giliahna’s flesh. “But … she is cold as death … and she no longer bleeds … ?”
Neeka just sniffed. “You’d be cold to the touch, too, if you’d lain naked in this icy chamber for who knows how long, not to speak of the large amounts of blood she must have lost before the bleeding stopped.”
In his own state of shock, Geros at first could not understand. Even so, he proved far easier to convince than either Tim or Giliahna.
19
Arhkeethoheeks Bili, Thoheeks and chief of Morguhn, Vahrohnos Deskati, Vahrohneeskos of the Order of the Golden Cat of the Confederation, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk, was nothing if not stubborn and set in his ways. Not even the rising wrath of his supreme overlord, Milo of Morai, High Lord of the Confederation, not even the vicious temper of the High Lady, Aldora Linszee Treeah-Pohtohmahs Pahpahs, could persuade him to leave Morguhn before the harvests were all in, the archducal taxes collected and his personal affairs set in order.
To one of the Undying High Lady Aldora’s more violent outbursts, he had replied with a calmness that further infuriated her, “Aldora, I don’t want to go north and become Prince of Karaleenos, and you well know it. I only do so out of loyalty to the Confederation and willingness to serve it when and as called upon.”
“But if go I must, then I’ll do it in my own way and at my own pace. There is much my son, Djehf, must know if he is to be a good chief and thoheeks of our clan. I must be certain that all sits well in Vawn and that young Thoheeks Tahm Adaimyuhn of Sanderz is adjusting well to his new and heavier harness of duty. At the same time, I must attend the thousand and one small but important functions of my present office, entertain my distinguished guests … and often waste precious time soothing the temper tantrums of one of them.”
The small, olive-skinned woman went livid and speechless with frustration and rage. She snatched her long belt dagger free of its case and made to slash its keen edge at Bili’s maddeningly unruffled face. But suddenly she became aware of the huge, slavering hound, stalking in from the next room, stiff-legged, with tail tucked and lips wrinkled up from the bared foam-covered teeth. Whirling, she flexed her knees and held her blade ready for stab or slash.
“Quick, Bili,” she said calmly, her temper dissipated in the urgency of the moment, “get a spear. I’ll hold him here. He looks to be gone mad.”
But he moved not a muscle, he only chuckled and, in less than the blinking of an eye … the hound was gone!
Aldora spun about, shouting, “Damn you, Bili Morguhn! Ahrmehnee magic! How dare you do that to me! Do you forget who I am?” She lunged upward at his body with the long dagger.
Still chuckling, he lightly skipped from the path of the thrust and struck the hand wielding it hard enough that the weapon went clattering into a corner. Then the delicate-looking little woman went for his face with her nails, but he clasped his arms around her, easily immobilizing both arms, while his questing lips found hers, locked upon them and remained for a long, long time, before wandering downward to pay brief court to a flat, tiny ear, and then burying themselves in the hollow of her throat.
Much, much later, as both lay, tired and disheveled, upon a badly rumpled bed, Aldora’s fingers traced the scars on his smooth, fair-skinned body, recalling that she had done so thirty-odd years before when this same, marvelous man had been a boy … no, never a boy, not him, not Bili! …
She sighed and lay back down beside him, snuggling to the hard warmth of his body. “How old are you now, Bili?”
He turned his head to smile down into her upturned, heart-shaped face. “Nearly fifty summers, my love. Why? Does this old man displease you?”
She shivered with thought of the recent pleasure he had given her and briefly raised her mindshield that he might know and be forever answered. “Oh, Bili, Bili, my own Bili,” she murmured with intense feeling. “Why could it have not been you, rather than this half-brother of yours?”
“I had almost forgotten, you know? Had almost ceased to remember just how wonderful, how complete and perfect it has always been with you … and only with you.”
In another part of the archducal hall, Milo of Morai—once Undying God of the Horseclans, now Undying High Lord of the Confederation, by his own reckoning, at least eight hundred years old—sipped wine and chatted with the three newest-found of his rare, mutant strain.