He turned away, shutting his eyes against the painful light, but her relentless voice followed him down the black corridors of his brain.
“Surely, Amrek, you’d rather discover before your marriage than after it what a whore your princess is. Do you want a slut in your bed, coming to you every night from the couch of one of your soldiers?”
Her eyes glittered, yet something in her flinched slightly, waiting for the lash of his anger, at her spite. She remembered how he had flung himself at her once, when he was a child and she had thwarted some desire of his; he would have killed her then if he had had any weapon to hand. Yet now there was nothing. A sense of the ultimate victory braced her.
“Did you prefer, Amrek, to be deceived?”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was toneless.
“It seems then that others are more sensible of your honor and the honor of your rank than you. Perhaps, had you taken your betrothal rights, Amrek, she might have been satisfied and not turned her eyes elsewhere. It was a woman they gave you, not a piece of glass.”
He had moved beyond the light of the lamp. She heard his silence in the darkness.
“You fool,” she hissed, “think how this Karmian has slighted your throne. Make sure she suffers for it.”
He came through the palace, half blinded by the soft light of the lamps. In the anteroom of her apartments, her women, having seen his face, curtsied in terror and fled. He threw open the inner doors and found her facing him, as if she had been waiting for his coming.
He thrust the doors shut after him and stood staring at her.
“I was betrothed to you at Lin Abissa, madam. I’ve come for my betrothal rights.”
“As you wish, my lord,” she said, without either reluctance or readiness. Whatever he did to her now she would accept, for he was superfluous to her existence. The fury rose into his throat like bile. He felt impotent, sexually and in all other ways, before her insane serenity.
“Did he force you?” he said to her.
There was the moment’s briefest response. As once before, he saw a stirring in the depths of her eyes, yet no fear. It was distress for him. She pitied him—she pitied—Did she know what would be done to her?
“No, my lord. I was willing. I’m sorry to cause you pain.”
“Pain? I think you need instruction, Astaris. By the laws of Dorthar you’ll go to the stake for this, and burn.”
“And Raldnor?” she asked, as if not noticing her own fate.
The congestion in Amrek’s throat almost choked him.
“Whatever I order. At least, castration and the gallows.”
She looked at him, but there was no sort of entreaty in her face. She was resigned for both of them. He thought of the men pinning her against the wooden pillar, and the flames eating upward through her feet, cracking her ivory bones like tinder, the uncurling leaves of her golden flesh and the black petals blowing on the morning wind, and the cloud of her hair on fire, which was fire, and he shouted aloud, a great hoarse scream, his hands across his eyes to shut out the million little separate flames of the lamps.
“I can do nothing,” he cried out, “nothing!” and found that he was weeping. Blindly he took hold of her, but could not bear to touch her hair. “No,” he whispered, “I won’t let you die because of a tradition. I’ll find some way.”
Dimly, as if far off, he felt the soft touch of her hand, the bitter aloe of her consolation, this woman who had betrayed him, who should expect only death in return. And the thought came then of Raldnor, hunted now through Koramvis, the man he had chosen to serve him. Would he die on the knives of the impatient guard, or be left for the rope he had evaded in the garden at Abissa? Amrek kept still a moment, accepting her touch, then drew back.
“I’ll send someone here,” he said. “Go with them. I can offer you nothing but your life. Take nothing with you.”
“Am I to go alone?” she asked.
He felt the armoring of years creep over him.
“Madam,” he said, “don’t ask too much of me. The mob will expect something. Besides, your lover is most probably already dead.”
He did not know if she meant to say more. He turned and left her in the lamplit room. It would be easy after all to cheat the flames and still to lose her. He felt a terrible lightness. He could never have been meant to have her, he had always guessed it; his body, holding back, had known. Now he was returned to a point in time before her coming. He was himself again, the powerful madman, the monster, the cripple. He had reentered his own legend. All he could do now was to live there in the rabid dark.
“I must be true to myself,” he decided.
Near dawn a man came, a nervous hurrying man, who led her through the lower corridors of the palace, having first wrapped her in a patched and musty cloak.
The gardens were gray and deserted, and a little boat bobbed below the steps at the river’s edge. She passed between two stone dragons to get to it and among half-rotten lilies. There were no guards. There had been no guards at her door.
The sun rose and flooded the Okris with gold as the sweating man rowed them untidily downstream. The white morning city slid by on either bank. She did not ask where they were going. Destination had no meaning for her.
Since their coming together, she had felt Raldnor in her brain, however faintly, always somehow there, not a definite thing, yet conclusive, unobtrusive as a memory. And before ever Amrek came to her, she felt that presence snuff out. There had been death; she had already known it. His Anici had taught her too.
Now she also returned to what she was, that inner core, with all about it the empty vistas of her life. She did not weep. Her sorrow was not separate enough that she could analyze and be moved by it. Sorrow had become her flesh.
The nervous man rowed on, carrying his dangerous cargo. By the banks men were cutting reeds. It was a day like any other.
Five days passed after it.
With great secrecy, the lord Kathaos, cloaked and reticent, came to the River Garrison on the sixth. The seal he had shown at the gate had been Val Mala’s, but once inside, he pushed back the hood and put the seal away. Certainly the Queen had no notion that he was there.
Kren came in and bowed to him, showing no particular surprise—but then that was not this Dragon Lord’s way, so Kathaos had heard. The man had been a commander in Rehdon’s time, but kept his rank all the years since, which required some cleverness.
“I am honored, lord Councilor, by this visit. My soldier didn’t know you.”
“Yes. Well, we must all employ caution occasionally. The city’s in an uproar.”
“So I heard,” Kren said.
“The Princess Astaris is believed to have taken poison,” Kathaos murmured. “Certainly there’ll be no public execution after all this time, though I gather an effigy was burned yesterday in the lower quarters. The mob are always hungry for a spectacle. They lost the Sarite, too. At your very gates, so I hear.”
“The Queen’s men were impatient and stabbed the man in the back. My own physician saw to him, but it was far too late.”
“And you had the body buried here?” Kathaos allowed himself the most inoffensive of smiles. “Of course. That would be prudent in this heat. I believe the Queen sent someone to inspect the grave.” Kathaos paused. “There’s the strangest rumor abroad, Lord Kren, that the Sarite may still be alive.”
Kren looked him in the face and said with matchless courtesy: “Your lordship is kind to tell me of these unfounded stories. Naturally the rabble will believe anything.”
Kathaos acknowledged the man’s wit. He saw he must fall back, at least in part, on the truth, though it did not please him.