King’s Wrath (34 page)

‘All right. Tell me about Tolt.’

Reuth took another big breath. ‘Tolt is a year or so younger than she is. How old are you?’

‘Twenty and three anni,’ he replied.

‘Then you and he are the same age.’

Leo leaned forward, intent on her words; this was sounding more promising. ‘Go on.’

‘His visions come through dreams; nightmares, to tell the truth, for they are never happy. He has accurately foretold a pestilence that took a flock of sheep, one of our Vested dying from a seemingly harmless fall, that sort of thing. The older he has become, the more withdrawn he is and the fewer visions he has. In fact, I don’t remember when I last heard Tolt’s voice, and he used to be such a sunny youngster. Now he nods or shakes his head. He lives alone very much on the rim of the camp. He has no friends to speak of. I make sure he eats properly and I generally keep an eye on him but otherwise he wants nothing to do with any of us. He tolerates my intrusions, but no more.’

Marth nodded. ‘I know which lad you mean. Tall, scrawny fellow who scowls a lot.’

‘Mmm, yes, that sounds like Tolt,’ she admitted.

‘And he certainly fits,’ Leo said, determined not to rule anyone out. ‘Can I meet him?’

‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘I suppose you’ll know soon enough if he is whom you seek.’

Leo fought to control his eager expression. ‘Reuth, it’s highly unlikely but if he
is
an aegis, you did understand what I told you earlier today about the bonding process, didn’t you?’

She looked down. ‘Let’s worry about that, your highness, when you know for sure that Tolt is who you seek. Until then,
this is all just idle conversation between two prisoners and their keeper.’

He gave her a reassuring nod, thrilled by the breakthrough with her. She had accepted him; he could see it in the set of her mouth and the glimmer in her eyes. She wanted the aegis almost as much as he did. Reuth Barrow had revenge in her heart and she was going to use a Valisar king to achieve it.

Kilt had strolled the surrounding fields deep in thought; he’d sat for what felt an age in a small gully, watching water from the mountains make its way down. He’d lain in the grass and leaned against a tree. All the while he’d turned the same question over repeatedly in his mind. He didn’t think he had a choice but he was desperate to find an excuse, a way beyond what appeared to be the obvious. If anyone could find it, he could.

He’d come north to the convent hoping to find an escape from the Valisar magic but all he’d found was entrapment. And he’d lost Lily; he knew that now.

What he’d seen in the blind eyes of Kirin Felt had looked like love and what he’d heard in that poor fellow’s voice had sounded like love. He didn’t think he’d ever looked at Lily or spoken to her in that way. Or any woman, for that matter. He had known many women, slept with many women, been affectionate to perhaps far too many, and flirted shamelessly with all women, but the truth he realised was that he had loved none.

Love was a luxury he had never believed he could afford — not with the dark secret he carried in his life. The closest he had come was surely with Lily but he knew she had never felt loved and that was guilt he deserved. Perhaps the love he would only ever know was the love of his mother and that of a friend. Jewd loved him, that he knew.

Just as he was thinking how good it was to feel well again he felt his bile rise and his heart began to pound. His head snapped up as he instinctively searched for her. There she was, sitting
down on the other side of the brook, far enough away that he could barely make out her features.

‘Please. ‘ he called out, his hands out as if to shield himself. Even he could hear a plea in his voice he had never heard before.

‘No further,’ she said. ‘I promise. I just want to talk, that’s all. How are you feeling?’

A Valisar who cared.
He gave a lopsided grin. ‘I’ve had much better days,’ he admitted.

He watched her smile gently. ‘I’m really sorry about coming here. It was not my idea. Corbel said I should talk with you. He said he thinks you need to know me.’ She shrugged, looked embarrassed. ‘I’m not sure what it can achieve.’

She had a nice voice. She was still young, perhaps just into her third decade but nevertheless far older than she should be. In his estimation Leo’s sister should be ten anni. He regarded her and she didn’t seem to mind the silence; she was not tall from what he could tell and she was slim. Her hair was tied back but he’d wager if it were loose it would be that slippery shiny hair he adored in a woman. And it was dark, almost black like her father’s. Instantly he felt a stab of guilt on behalf of Lily, who had thick, coarser hair that turned wavy the longer it was allowed to grow.

‘If I told you about myself you might understand that I am feeling as frightened and as confused as perhaps you do,’ she offered.

He nodded. ‘Tell me about your life,’ he said, liking that despite her claim to fearfulness she was direct, her voice clear and calm.

‘All right.’ She looked down, seemed to gather her thoughts. ‘I grew up feeling lonely …’ she began.

And as she continued Kilt was soothed by her even tone, impressed by her candour. Her sorrows and sense of dislocation resonated strongly with his own.

‘The hospital became my haven and the quiet man I knew as Reg,’ she gave a soft shrug, ‘Corbel de Vis, I mean, became my
anchor. He made me feel steady and safe. The hospital and my one friend — they were my life.’

He didn’t interrupt as he listened, falling deeper and deeper under her spell. As her story continued he realised that Princess Genevieve was every bit a victim of the Valisar curse as he was.

Tolt refused to come to him but Leo only had to clap eyes on the young man, working quietly at his labours, to know that this fellow had no connection to the Valisars. He looked at Reuth and gave a soft shake of his head. While her expression didn’t change, the set of her shoulders drooped, telling him she was every bit as disappointed as he must appear.

She muttered something to Marth, who in turn urged forward the two men they had decided to bring in on the plot. Leo had been firmly against expanding his secret’s reach but Reuth and Marth had held firm to the belief that should one of these Vested prove to be the one he sought then they would surely need restraining beyond what the three of them could provide. And Leo had to agree. Going by Kilt’s reaction alone, there was a good chance his aegis would make a dash for freedom or fight them to the end.

It seemed Marth and Reuth were taking his idea seriously; his arrival and his challenge had obviously spoken loudly to their deep-seated hatred of the barbarians and their long disguised passion to strike back. He, on the other hand, held out little hope now that he would find his aegis here and he moved with a slightly heavier heart, following Reuth to where she said they would find the young recluse called Perl.

‘She’s on the other side of the encampment,’ Reuth warned. ‘It’s a bit of a hike.’

Leo shrugged and turned to Marth. As he was about to speak, a sensation he had not felt since he was a twelve-anni-old youth reached its tendrils around his gut and squeezed.

He stopped dead; took a steadying breath. This felt utterly unlike what he’d felt with Kilt, Greven and Roddy. In truth his
response to being in their midst had been virtually silent, certainly invisible; he’d had no physical reaction to them at all even though Kilt had admitted he had always felt repulsed in his company.

But this! It was euphoric. And very powerful.

‘What’s wrong?’ It was Reuth and he realised she’d been shaking his arm.

Leo began to retreat.

‘Where are you going?’ Marth asked, expressing a look and tone of concern to match Reuth’s.

Four steps back and the feeling of euphoria subsided. Leo let out his breath, his face breaking into a hard, tight smile. ‘I’ve found my aegis,’ he uttered.

Questions fell from his companions but he ignored them, asking his own. ‘It’s her. It’s the woman Perl. How far are we from where she lives?’

Reuth stopped her gabbling. ‘We’re now about four perhaps five hundred steps from her tiny half cottage.’

He nodded. ‘Then she already knows. She might be already preparing to flee. You had better get over there,’ he said to Reuth and Marth, whose faces were identical studies of confusion. ‘Reuth, you go in alone. She trusts you. Calm her. You must stall her while I think this through. Hurry ahead.’

‘But how do you know it’s her?’ Reuth persisted.

‘You are going to have to trust me and the Valisar magic. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so. But you’re also going to have to convince her to make the sacrifice. I’m sure you can be very persuasive, given that this is your dream coming true. I promise you, Reuth, Marth, with Perl’s help, you will be able to take your revenge. Now go. Do not let her escape.’

And Reuth was running, Marth following at a safe distance with his minders in tow. Leo did not hurry. He needed to stay back, well out of the magic’s sensitive reach, until he knew Perl was fully captive.

They had been sitting for so long he was sure her backside was as numb as his but neither moved. Her voice was beginning to lose its smoothness, was sounding vaguely gritty from her long period of storytelling, but still he was anchored to it.

In pain, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘And that troubles me. I’m a doctor, after all.’ She stopped, looked up from where she had been fiddling with the grass between her boots.

It was the pause he heard before the question filtered through the layers of thought, mesmiration, lull of false security, and joy and fear of her presence. ‘Pardon?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m a healer of pain, not a bringer of it.’

‘If it’s any consolation, it is a rapturous pain.’

Evie grinned. ‘Like an orgasm,’ she said, sounding embarrassed.

‘What’s that?’

‘Well,’ she started slowly, reassuming her physician’s countenance, ‘during sex, either or both partners may experience a euphoric rush of sensation that —’

He began to laugh. ‘I know what it is, your majesty, I just wanted to know if you did.’

She gasped and gave him a look of pure murder rimmed with embarrassed amusement too, standing and surging forward as she did so. ‘You sod!’ she said, uselessly flinging the grass in her hand at him.

He too stood, laughing, but then doubled over. ‘Oh, no closer, highness. That magical orgasmic feeling isn’t nearly as much fun as the physical.’

She stuffed her hands into her skirt pockets and stepped back a few yards. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

He blinked. ‘But from what I can see you are beautiful. What do you mean, you wouldn’t know?’

‘Kilt — may I call you that?’

‘You may.’

‘Well, Kilt, where I come from we aren’t all married off or pregnant or indeed even eligible for either by the time womanhood first shows its signs of emerging. Women choose when they will lose their virginity. Some of us wait.’

‘For what?’

‘To find the right person who is worth giving it up to.’

Kilt hesitated. ‘Are you talking about falling in love?’

She shrugged. ‘Yes. Although, not necessarily with the person you might want to spend the rest of your life with but most women want to feel very fond, even be in love, for their first time.’

‘That’s quaint.’

‘Are you making fun of me again?’

‘I’m not sure. You seem so awkward and embarrassed about something so natural. Men and women fu—’

She cleared her throat, interrupting him. ‘That’s such a typical man’s response. It’s the perfect excuse.’

‘Really?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know. My whole world is upside down, Kilt. I don’t know what I’m doing here or why you have to feel pain when you’re near me, or why I am so strongly attracted to you.’

‘Attracted to me. That’s such a gracious way to say it. It’s more like compulsion. But that’s the magic at work.’

‘Is it?’

He stared at her. ‘I … ’ He hesitated, his gaze narrowing. ‘I’m not sure what you mean, majesty.’

She sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, looking around. ‘There is no getting away from, the fact that I am drawn helplessly to you and you to me. I am resisting the urge to leap over this waterway and …’

‘And what? Eat me?’

She made a groaning sound. ‘No! Maybe. Corbel told me some ridiculous — no, outrageous — and hideous tale about how I must bond you.’

‘He is right. Every fibre of your body must want me.’

She laughed. ‘Now where I come from that sort of line would get your face slapped.’

He grinned. ‘I mean —’

‘I know what you mean. It’s true, but I have a much higher threshold of resistance than people are giving me credit for. I will not be ruled by a magic. I refuse to capitulate to it. I will show it that I am in charge of it and not the other way around.’

‘Do you feel sick?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s more of a hunger … a pang. If you got up now and walked away I would feel an intense desire to hunt you.’

He nodded. ‘That is its way; how I’ve always imagined it must feel to be Valisar. For me it is similar and yet somehow opposite. I am drawn to you but the feeling, though one of rapture, is mixed with fear and loathing. And the pain is intense and yet I can’t help myself. We are far enough away … just … that I have a smidge of resistance. I have exercised control over your brother and your uncle but they are merely men,’ he said with feigned condescension. ‘They can’t hold a candle to your power.’

‘Why is that? Chance?’

‘Not chance,’ he said, smiling crookedly. ‘Fate perhaps. Obviously no one has explained much about your magic to you.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘I’ve lived oblivious for nearly twenty-one years … er, anni, I gather I’m supposed to say.’

‘Then let me educate you swiftly and concisely.’

She smiled and although he couldn’t see her eyes, he felt the radiance and kindness in her gaze.

‘So,’ he began, ‘let us sit down again on our respective banks.’ He did so and watched as she followed suit. ‘I shall tell you everything I know about you Valisars — and especially the female power — and as much as I can about myself.’