Sorrows of Adoration (67 page)

“Something’s wrong,” I
said, almost unable to speak. My throat was tight, and I found that
I had to pant roughly just to get any air at all. I looked at Jarik
and then at Kurit, stricken by terror, and tried to tell them again
that something was wrong, but my throat closed itself entirely, and
I found that my tongue had swelled so that it filled my mouth.

I tried frantically to
breathe but could not. Kurit and Jarik eased me down to lie upon
the floor, and I gripped their sleeves in panic. I struggled to
breathe, to tell them I couldn’t breathe, but nothing worked. I saw
their eyes upon me in fear and lost consciousness as I heard them
both calling my name frantically.

I MUST SAY NOW that
this chapter of my tale is written not from my own memories but
entirely from things I have learned since my recovery. Of course,
there is no suspense to be lost in admitting that I did, in time,
recover, for clearly I could not have written the story you now
read if I had not survived to do so.

Moments after I lost
consciousness because my throat had closed, Tash ran into my
workroom. He yelled at my two beloved men to back away from me
quickly, and they did so. Then he began to cut a small hole low on
my throat, and it took Kurit and two guards to hold Jarik back.
Apparently, my good Champion was panicked and believed Tash to be
murdering me.

What Tash did do was
save my life by putting a glass dropper tube into my throat below
the swelling so that my lungs could still take in air. It seemed
this was the accepted practice for those who swelled as a result of
bee stings. Once it became apparent that I was no longer in
immediate danger of suffocation, Jarik stopped trying to attack
Tash.

Kurit ordered guards to
take his mother’s body away. He declared that she could still be
buried alongside her husband in the royal crypt outside of Endren
but gave the order that there would not be any official period of
mourning for her, nor a funeral, nor a procession. He told everyone
present that her crime of attempted regicide would cost her any
reverence that might have otherwise been due.

As Kurit spoke, Tash
washed my wound to try to clear out any remaining poison that had
yet not been worked into my system. The wound itself was not very
bad, though of course I was weakened by the blood loss. I was taken
to my chambers and placed in my own bed. Tash had someone find a
wider tube for my throat to allow me to breathe more easily, and
the open end was covered with a light gauze to prevent me from
inhaling anything but air.

It was several hours
before the swelling in my throat and tongue subsided sufficiently
to allow Tash to remove the tube and then dress the wound he had
made in my throat. Jarik and Kurit remained by my bedside the
entire time, and Leiset was there as well when not sent on an
errand by Tash.

The next morning, Tash
told them that he feared he might have only prolonged the
inevitable. He pointed out that I was not in the best physical
health to begin with—Jarik confirmed that I had neither slept nor
eaten well while I was away—and there had been sufficient poison to
kill me. He said it was a blessing of the Gods that he had arrived
quickly enough to wash some of it away, but that it might have been
too late.

“I fear that she shall
die in the next day or so,” he told Kurit grimly. Kurit says he
shall never forget the horror of those words. Tash said I was
likely too weak to recover soon enough before I would suffer from
starvation. All attempts to feed me had apparently failed.

Tash left me alone with
Jarik, Kurit, and Leiset. Leiset says she could not help but weep
to see how the men that I loved looked upon me with great anguish.
They just stared at me in silence for some time as Leiset wept
quietly in the corner of the room.

Then Kurit said, “I
need to speak with you in my chambers, Jarik.” He rose, opened the
door between our rooms, and waited until Jarik joined him a moment
later.

Leiset says that she
was able to hear most of their conversation because they left the
door partially open and instructed her to call to them immediately
if I moved at all. I have asked Kurit about this conversation many
times as well, and between the two accounts, I believe that I can
paint an accurate portrait of what was said.

When Jarik joined
Kurit, the latter was staring out of the windowed balcony doors.
Kurit did not turn around but said, “I just got her back, and again
she is being taken from me.”

“Forgive me, for I have
failed her,” Jarik said. “I should have removed either Aenna or
Kasha from the room immediately. I cannot fathom why I was so
foolish as to not keep them apart.”

Kurit did not respond
to Jarik’s apology. Instead, he asked, “Did she really suffer so
terribly, with the sleeplessness and lack of appetite? Was it
really that awful?”

Jarik replied, “She had
many difficulties to work through.”

Kurit turned finally to
face his cousin and said, “I think you had better tell me all that
occurred.”

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

“I do not wish to speak
of things that Aenna may not wish me to speak of.”

Kurit regarded Jarik in
silence for a moment and then asked, “What happened that makes you
so ashamed to speak?”

“Leave it alone, Kurit.
Go back to her now. Hold her hand and pray that she lives. Do not
ask to hear things that you will wish you did not know.”

After another long
pause, Kurit bluntly asked, “You’re in love with her, aren’t
you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you intimate with
her?” Kurit asked without anger or sadness. Leiset says he asked it
as flatly as though he were asking someone idly about the weather.
When Jarik did not respond, Kurit asked in the same flat tone, “Did
you take my wife to your bed?”

“No,” Jarik said.

“But something did
happen.”

“Kurit, just leave the
issue in the past.” Leiset says my Champion’s deep voice broke as
he said sadly, “She’s dying in there!”

“Which is why I need to
know these things,” Kurit insisted. “What happened between you and
Aenna while you were gone?”

“She loves you. She
married you, Kurit,” came Jarik’s reply.

“And you wish
otherwise.”

“No,” said Jarik
quickly. Then he paused a moment and said, “Not necessarily. I wish
many things had been otherwise. I wish that you had both been
happy.”

“And you could have
made her happy,” Kurit stated flatly.

“I did not say
that.”

“But you know it in
your heart, don’t you? You could have made Aenna happy.”

Jarik rose as if he
were about to storm out of the room but halted himself at the door.
He sighed and, without turning to face Kurit, said, “What of it?
She married you, and you are my friend, my cousin, and my
King.”

“Yet she was unhappy
with me.”

Kurit says Jarik spun
around in fury and shouted, “No, Kurit, she loved you! That’s the
problem. She loved you so dearly that your abuse broke her
heart.”

Kurit sank into a chair
and ran his hands through his hair. Then he looked at Jarik’s
accusing eyes and said, “I know. And I mean this truthfully and
without malice, cousin, that I think that you would have been a
better husband to her than I have been.”

Jarik mumbled something
so low that even Kurit did not hear it.

“What was that?” Kurit
asked.

Jarik glared at Kurit
and said, “I certainly never would have struck her.”

Kurit nodded slowly.
“You’re furious with me for that, and rightly so. I am furious with
myself.” He looked at Jarik for some time, then said, “I see the
vehemence in your eyes. Do you despise me for what I have done to
her?”

Jarik regarded Kurit
coldly for a few moments and then turned his face away, sat back
down, and said, “I did that night.”

“What would you have
done, had I come to you both as you left?”

“Kurit, why do you ask?
What good is it to hear of terrible things?”

Leiset says Kurit’s
voice was pained as he said, “Because this is entirely my fault. I
took a beautiful flower, pulled it from its home, and let it be
trampled on, even trampled it myself, and neglected it until now
there she lies dying, and I can do nothing.” Kurit has told me that
he had to fight to not weep as he spoke. “I need to know what she
suffered. I need to hear how despicable I was, that I might carry
the pain of that in my heart as punishment for my crimes against
her. So I ask again, what would you have done if I had tried to
prevent her from leaving?”

Jarik coldly replied,
“I’d have cut you down in a heartbeat.”

“So you do despise me.
I suppose I deserve that.”

Jarik sighed and said,
“Kurit, you were a different man that night. When you came to the
cottage to seek her, I saw that you were no longer that drunken
wretch but again becoming the good man we once knew. I was actually
surprised you didn’t destroy yourself once you had realized what
you had done.”

Kurit nodded slowly as
he admitted, “The thought crossed my mind, but to be truthful, I
lacked the courage to take the notion seriously.”

“Aenna did not lack
that courage.”

Kurit says his heart
froze when he realized what Jarik meant by that. “She didn’t …
are you telling me she tried to kill herself?”

“I had to forcibly
restrain her from hurling herself off the bluffs.”

In shock and horror,
Kurit said, “By the Gods themselves. I had no idea that … I
knew she was angry and guessed that she was hurt, but to go that
far …” He put his head in his hands and said sadly, “I had no
idea that I had done such damage.”

Jarik relentlessly went
on with the awful facts of what had occurred. “She almost went mad
from the attempt. For several days she could neither speak nor move
of her own accord. She was as the dead, waking from her reverie
only long enough to occasionally weep pitifully.”

“How did she come out
of that?”

“She found reason to
laugh.”

“To laugh?”

“At me,” Jarik said
bluntly. “Leiset was in danger of becoming ill with exhaustion and
worry, and so one afternoon I tried to put Aenna’s hair up myself.
We didn’t know if she was aware of anything, but if she was we
didn’t want her to feel unkempt. I couldn’t do it, though—the hair
kept falling from the pins and sticking out from her head absurdly,
and she saw it in the mirror, and it made her laugh.”

“Was she better after
that?”

“At times. When she was
with Raelik.”

“And the rest of the
time?”

“She was lonely.
Desperately sad and lonely. And she begged—” Jarik cut himself
off.

“For what?”

Kurit says Jarik looked
away and whispered sadly, “She would beg to be held.”

“Did you hold her?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“Yes.”

“While she slept?”

“Not all night. When
she asked me to hold her at night, I would until she slept, and
then I would leave, lest someone enter and suspect
impropriety.”

“So you did not make
love with her.”

“No.”

“Did she ask you
to?”

Jarik slammed his fist
on the chair and then pointed a threatening finger at Kurit. “Don’t
you dare ask that! Don’t you make her out to be some kind of
trollop!”

“I need to know if she
loved you as you loved her.”

“It doesn’t
matter!”

“It does. Did she ask
you to bed her?”

“I will not answer,”
Jarik grumbled.

“Jarik, did Aenna wish
you to love her intimately?” Kurit insisted, in his typical way of
driving people mad until they would finally just answer his
question to make him stop asking.

“Don’t ask that, Kurit.
She loved you, she was loyal to you—”

“In body, but was she
loyal in her heart?”

Kurit says Jarik rose
so quickly from the chair that it fell backwards in a clatter of
noise. Jarik then began to shout angrily, “How can you ask that?
How dare you ask that? She loved you, and you broke her heart! How
dare you ask whether or not that broken heart sought comfort
elsewhere? Have you no mercy? How dare you condemn her for desires
you left unfulfilled?”

“I don’t condemn her
for it!” Kurit cried out in anguish. “I know that I quite likely
drove her into your arms! That’s why I want to know! I want to know
if my mistakes cost me that, too. She did ask you, didn’t she?”

“Fine, then, yes! She
was so empty inside! What’s the matter with you, that you would
have such a treasure to love and you would cast her aside? She
longed for your touch, but you were too drunk or too angry to give
it.”

“And yet you say you
did not make love with her, even when she asked,” Kurit said
softly.

“I would not betray
you, nor would I take advantage of a lonely woman whom I am
forsworn to protect, who turns to me for comfort,” said Jarik,
still with an edge of anger but no longer yelling.

“Even though you loved
her.”

“Yes,” said Jarik
sadly.

“You’re a better man
than I,” Kurit grumbled.

“Are you accusing me of
lying?” Jarik snarled.

“No! I mean what I say.
I don’t know that, were I in your place, I could have been so
strong.”

“Strength had nothing
to do with it. I admit I was often weak and kissed her.” There was
another pause, and then Jarik asked, “Does that anger you?”

“I would challenge any
other man for having done so, but I cannot find it in my heart to
hate you. Not for loving her,” Kurit said sadly. “I could not
begrudge you for loving that which I also love. Not you, my dearest
friend and kin.”

“And yet I did betray
you, and that weight does not rest easily upon me,” Jarik
admitted.

“I betrayed her. You
brought her back to me anyway. Again, you have returned her to me.
I know that you loved her before all of this. I have known it for a
long time. You could have taken her for yourself when you found her
in Mikilrun. You could have taken her from me this time. But you
didn’t. I thank you for that. I owe you for that.”