Gods of Green Mountain (47 page)

Rushing into his daughter's apartment, Ras-Far dismissed her ladies-in-waiting with an imperial gesture of his hand. He pounded on the door of Sharita's most private chamber. "Sharita," he called, "open the door! You have won--Dray-Gon has been pardoned, we are flying a flag now to bring him back. Every one of your demands have been met and made into law this very day--so you can come out and eat before you turn into a skeleton!"

Slight movements were heard behind the locked door, the sound of water running; then it was turned off. Music began to play, and Sharita was humming.

She could be as irritating as her mother! "You have been secretly feeding her, haven't you, La Bara?" he accused, knowing damn well that girl couldn't have gone all this time without food.

"What do you mean, feeding her? Of course food is brought up to her every day--but she doesn't eat it! It sits outside that door untouched."

"Then someone else is feeding her, sneaking it in..."

La Bara gave him a look of impatience, and then she called her daughter. "Darling, please open the door. Your father has arranged everything. You don't have to marry Arth-Rin. The man you love is coming back. We will have palace guards sent out to ensure his safe return. No woman will ever again be assaulted and beaten as you were without the most severe punishment--now, darling, please come out."

From behind the door, the humming continued. Then footsteps sounded, her light ones, walking away! With growing annoyance, the king waited. He pounded on the door again, impatience booming his voice. "Sharita, I am not requesting now--I am ordering you to come out, or I will have that door torn down!"

Exactly what he had to order done. For his willful daughter didn't respond, just kept on humming or singing, or running bath water. Well, she was asking for it--even if the men battering on the door caught her in the midst of a bath! However, the door was made of the bygar material and resisted the most determined assaults of six men. The king threw up his hands in disgust. "Tear down the wall, but get in, however you have to do it!"

When there was a hole large enough in the wall for the king to step through, he glanced around the spacious room, luxuriously appointed, with colorful cushions on the floor, mirrors everywhere to reflect her beauty. She wasn't in the terrace bathing pool surrounded by living flowers and plants. Nor was she stretched out on the billowing couch sunbathing, but her voice kept right on humming, and then he heard her footsteps behind him. He spun about and saw nothing.

"By the Gods!" he roared. "That ingenious, trickster of a wench has made a fool of me! All this time I thought her locked in here--she has been playing a recording!" He shook his fist at his wife, angrier than he had ever been with Sharita. "When I get my hands on her, I am going to give that girl the thrashing of her life! Now, La Bara, where is she?"

The queen's face clouded over with anxiety. "Ras-Far, do you think she would confide in me? Between the two of us, whom does she love and trust most?" This wasn't asked in resentment, or jealousy; La Bara was just speaking of what she knew for a fact.

A worried frown creased the king's brow: that daughter of his was going to put gray in his hair yet! He said, without too much consideration: "No doubt she has gone with that young man of hers, somehow managed to follow him. And they are out there together, struggling to survive, with outlaws all around, with the warfars ready to tear them apart while they sleep. By the Gods, La Bara, we've got to send out a rescue party right away!" The king started off at a fast clip, then turned to his wife. "Now you remind me--no matter how glad I am to see her safely returned--that I am going to give her the worst spanking of her life!"

"Thrashing is what you threatened, sire," responded his wife, "and I will remind you, never fear."

Two days later the king stood on the steps of the palace, watching the patrol of palace guards as they escorted home the two refugees who had failed to check every day to see if it was safe to return. "Look at them," whispered the queen into the king's ear, "they don't look like they have suffered much. Why Sharita has even taken on some weight--but don't forget that thrashing in your pleasure at having her back."

"First thing I'll do when we're alone," the king whispered back, his smile beginning as he saw his daughter well and healthy-looking.

Outside the palace gates a mob had gathered, and cheered as they saw Dray-Gon quickly dismount, and hurry to assist the princess from her horshet. Both Sharita and Dray-Gon turned to wave to them, before they solemnly ascended the stairs, holding hands. Meekly the princess curtsied to her father, to her mother, as Dray-Gon bowed low from the waist.

Sharita raised her eyes, meeting her father's grim look of smoldering anger. Like sun and shadows, her faltering, unsure smile struggled to become confident. He had never glared at her so fiercely before. "Your majesty," she began in a humble way...

"Go immediately to your rooms and stay there!" Ras-Far ordered coldly.

Obediently Sharita entered the palace, still holding to Dray-Gon's hand. From behind them, the king spoke authoritatively again, "Just a minute, Captain, I ordered my daughter to her rooms--not you."

At that, the young man turned and looked at the king squarely. "From now on, where Sharita goes, I go."

"Then if you want to come upstairs, to her tower, and watch while she is punished, I will allow that, but then you will leave and go to your room and stay there until I send for you."

"Sire, I hate for our new relationship to start off on such a bad footing--but you are not going to punish my wife! I am not going to allow that."

The false anger on the king's face floundered and broke. "Your wife? When were you married?"

Dray-Gon's arm lifted to encircle Sharita's shoulder. "By the old laws of El Sod-a-Por, there were several marriage ceremonies. Of course I know they are outdated now and considered old-fashioned. But there was a night in the God's home when your daughter reached out and asked me to spend the night with her--that was once the most primitive marriage ceremony--especially when that night resulted in conceiving a child. I don't think that old law has been recorded down in your latest law books--but you can easily have it arranged tomorrow."

Tears were in the queen's eyes. She ran to Sharita and embraced her. "Darling, you mean...really? A baby? Oh, it's been so long since there was a baby in this palace!" She turned to the king, her round pretty face beaming. "Ras-Far, we're going to be grandparents!"

"I am thinking of the embarrassment," but nevertheless, the king went to his daughter and embraced her. He shook Dray-Gon's hand. "Congratulations," he said drily, "under the circumstances...a grandchild conceived in the God's home? Well, you're a better man than I."

It was then that Sharita went into her father's arms and shone on him her most loving smile, washing away all his problems, his anxieties, with such little effort. Her hand lifted to caress his cheek, before she stroked his hair, and then lightly kissed him. "Father, Dray-Gon and I hid away in the prettiest little green valley, and it was like a wedding holiday. And while we were there, we decided to name our son after your father. Star-Far...he is going to be the most exceptional child ever born! Just wait until you hold him, and he smiles up at you."

Inwardly Ras-Far smiled, already convinced it would be an exceptional child. No doubt it would be a boy; his daughter usually got what she wanted; she made it happen. Then he sobered, and looked toward his new son-in-law. "My son, before you decide to make this marriage officially legal, there are a few facts you have to learn about your wife's heritage." Then he hesitated and shrugged with the futility. It was already too late for warnings. As he studied the two happy faces before him, he realized it had always been too late for them. What other choice did they have--except the way they took? So he wore a smile, and told of the wedding announcement he would make today, and tomorrow they would start on the formal wedding preparations: a grand, opulent wedding, to please his people, to give them something to remember

And tomorrow could take care of itself.

The Royal Princes

A
fter the spectacular marriage of the Princess Sharita to Ron Ka's son--a nobleman of the lower borderlands--the people of all El Dorraine became as one, no Uppers, no Lowers. Just Dorrainians. There was but one land, and this they determined to blend together without even a boundary line.

The shimmering, lofty, arching doors of the domed cities were opened wide, and the residents of those cities marched out onto the unshielded, barren wasteland, risking the storms, the outlaws, the warfars, everything.

And they planted. All along they had known the simplicity of it all, and just fooled themselves into thinking it was more complex. Everything started with the seed, with the green life, with the growing life, with the giving life. From the earth to the seed to the plant that bore the flower and then the fruit.

Even the outlaws came to help, as if they too had been waiting for some miracle to give them back a meaning for living. In time, in a great deal of time, every square inch of their plains was planted. Long before that was accomplished, Sharita gave birth to her first child, a boy, just as she had known it would be. Proudly she laid her child in her father's arms. "Look, Father, he has blue eyes--really blue eyes--like the God's!"

Ras-Far couldn't be truly surprised anymore; the unprecedented became the natural, expected order of the way it was. He looked down at the beautiful child in his arms, with hair the spectacular color of his mother's and skin of saffron cream. An exceptional baby, as he would have to be. However, sadness was in his eyes as he said to Sharita in warning: "Keep in mind, daughter, that a man is allowed three children during his life span--if Dray-Gon chooses for himself a new wife for his middle years, she will give him his second child--and the new law that allows a woman three husbands in her life span may not do you any good, for men are notorious for choosing women much younger than themselves."

His daughter's violet, almost blue eyes clouded over as she looked to her husband, now with his first son in his arms. His strong bronze finger was clasped by the baby's tiny pale fist. Dray-Gon caught his wife's gaze and slowly smiled. "Yes, I have been thinking lately of that wife of my middle years. A beautiful flame-haired girl I once knew named Ray-Mon--she will give me another son, or perhaps a daughter the exact duplicate of herself--that I would like very much."

La Bara looked up from her tapestry work, thinking this the first cruel, heartless remark her son-in-law had ever made in her presence, and she felt some anger toward him. Yet, for some reason Ras-Far was smiling, as was her daughter--and she had thought Sharita and Dray-Gon still madly in love...so much so, that sometimes it was embarrassing.

"Let's see," said the king thoughtfully, "the name Ray-Mon is somewhat familiar to me. In my desk in a secret report about that servant girl--she sneaked out of the palace and met a bakaret's son. And they had a day of fun at a carnival, and there were several other meetings too. That girl really did give my security agents a run for their money and managed to cleverly evade them several times."

Both Sharita and Dray-Gon looked at the king in surprise, and some little embarrassment. "Father--you knew all the time?" whispered Sharita.

The king laughed. "I knew about that, yes, for when I was a young prince, I too often grew tired and restless with the many rules and regulations that routined my life, and I would disguise myself in plain clothes and do small things to change my appearance, so I could go out on the city streets and find out what life for a commoner was all about. And believe it or not, there were many pleasing aspects to being an average, everyday man, to do with your life as you will, to a certain degree. In fact, Sharita, that was the very way I found your mother. She was visiting in Far-Awndra with her parents and had stolen out of her home without a guardian and was sitting on a park bench, looking very young and scared, not knowing what to do with her freedom when she had it, and I came along and sat down to talk with her. Never in the least did I guess that someday she would be my third wife--and my very best wife."

Tears came into La Bara's eyes, for he had never hinted that he felt this way. But when she looked at Sharita, she knew why her husband had said what he did: She had given him Sharita, the joy of his life. She trailed behind, after the grandson now. But her hands didn't quiver as she skillfully applied the needle, and made the daintiest of stitches in the picture that was inching toward completion. To be a small part of Ras-Far's life was enough.

"Put down your work, La Bara," said the king, and came to take her hand and draw her with him to the nearest terrace balustrade, where they could see out through the transparent dome to the surrounding countryside. Sharita and Dray-Gon came too, with the baby held in his arms.

It was a far different scene that met their eyes now--the wildlands were wild no more. The star-flowers grew quickly, and worked their miracles--and soon all the city domes would be torn down, and no longer would they see a view slightly unfocused.