The Invisible Chains - Part 1: Bonds of Hate (40 page)

“That's the second time the little adder almost caught me,”
Gorth thought, once again hidden in the niche.
“Well, that's it for tonight. I'd better go. There is no chance he will be able to return now.”

Ehandar looked surprised when Anaxantis entered the room. He had been nibbling at some sweet cakes.

“I'll go to my room,” he said hastily. “You'll want to be alone.”

“No, stay,” Anaxantis said softly. “Unless you are tired and want to go to sleep.”

Ehandar looked inquisitively at him.

“If you want me to, I'll stay,” he answered cautiously, not certain what was expected of him.

Anaxantis seemed to hesitate.

“I'd like you to share my bed tonight,” he whispered. “If you want to, that is. You don't have to, of course.”

“You know I want to.”

“Good. Let me get some cups. I have brought wine.”

They sat together uneasily on the rug before the fire, sipping wine. Ehandar didn't want to presume and run the risk of disturbing the fragile situation by making a perhaps unwelcome gesture. Anaxantis didn't want to take the initiative for fear his advances would be misunderstood for orders. At long last Ehandar took his free hand and brushed it lightly with his lips. When he looked up Anaxantis responded by kissing him on the lips.

“Let's go to bed,” Anaxantis said. “I'm going to freshen up a little first.”

When he came out of the bathroom he saw that Ehandar had already undressed and lay naked upon the bed on his belly.

“Does he think that this is what I want from him?”
he wondered silently.

“Come under the covers,” he said as softly as he could, after he had taken his clothes off. “It is cold.”

Ehandar did as he was bid.

“He lies there passively, waiting for whatever will happen.”

He had no clue at all how to elicit a response, and so he let his instincts take over. He laid himself outstretched upon Ehandar's body and began kissing him, first on the mouth and then slowly working his way down, over his neck, nipples, chest and his bellybutton until finally he reached his member. At least that reacted in the desired manner. When he looked up he saw that Ehandar was more surprised than anything else. He worked his way back up and finally he felt Ehandar's hands caressing him back. He turned around, dragging Ehandar with him until their positions were reversed. His partner seemed to have understood the hint and began to take a more active role. When in his turn Ehandar kissed him all over, until he reached his member, he spread his legs to give his lover room to kneel between them. He slid his backside up Ehandar's legs and hoisted himself in an upright position, holding on to his partner's shoulders with one hand while with the other guiding Ehandar's member in his entrance. With a deep sigh he let himself slide over his partner's shaft and embraced him. Ehandar began to move rhythmically in him and Anaxantis sought his mouth and let his tongue explore it.

When he felt Ehandar come inside him, it nearly felt like a triumph, and it brought almost as much satisfaction as if he had climaxed himself. He took his lover's head between his two hands and started kissing him all over his lips and his eyes, where he tasted the wan saltiness of tears.

“Have I reduced him already to this,”
Anaxantis thought.
“Is this all it takes? And yet, I have to know. I can't stop here.”

He let himself be pushed gently backwards, and, after a while, he felt Ehandar's lips closed teasingly around the tip of his length. His partner took gradually more and more of him, until his hips began to thrust back of themselves. When he erupted and the ecstasy began slowly waning, he looked down and saw Ehandar's luscious black hair spread out all over his groin, lying quietly. He felt his shrinking member still in the warm mouth, not being stimulated anymore, but enclosed, safe.

At last Ehandar released him and looked up, with the expression of a faithful dog who knows he has just done exactly what was required of him and who now expects words of praise or a friendly pat. Anaxantis beckoned him to come and took him in his arms, caressing his hair.

“You were amazing,” he whispered in Ehandar's ear.

“It's easy. It's you.”

It was a simple statement, self-explanatory and naive, almost childlike, and Anaxantis knew that he would disappoint him immensely if he would stop his caresses now. He felt how Ehandar laid his head upon his chest, his ear above his heart and one hand resting beside it, the long, strong fingers stretched out over a nipple.

When finally Ehandar fell asleep, he moved very cautiously from under him and guided his head on the pillow. Anaxantis smiled, enchanted, when he saw him twitch in his sleep and covered him carefully with the blanket. He blew out the candles on the nightstand. Then he lay back, staring in the half dark, broken only by the dying fire in the hearth and the pale light of a quarter moon.

For a long time he lay there ruminating, his thoughts meandering, his emotions vacillating.

He tried to fight it, to reason around it, but he had learned from a very young age that it was pointless to try to deceive oneself. Pointless and fundamentally impossible. But couldn't he just, in the face of uncertainty and with all the risks that implied, take a decision? Just decide that how it should be, was how it was? Go a step further than what was right, what was just? Than what was wise?

It took a very long time, but at last his mind was made up.

“I can't afford the luxury.”

Chapter 19:

Burning Questions

Sobrathi arrived on the first of January of the year 1453 after the Ending of the Darkening in Ormidon, the capital of Ximerion. She had brought three companions. The same men who had assisted her in the liberation of Emelasuntha from the castle on Mount Taranaq.

She knew exactly where to go. The city had since long outgrown its walls. Ormidon hadn't been threatened, let alone besieged, in more than four centuries and new districts had sprawled haphazardly outside the fortifications. She guided her little party to a house surrounded by an enclosed garden at the outskirts of the district that lay the farthest away from the city center. Without dismounting she pulled a chain that hung to the right of the gates five times in succession, and minutes later a small hatch opened. Then the gate itself opened and the little group rode inside.

The house was the headquarters of the Tribe of Mekthona in Ximerion. The Tribe was a group that had formed around Emelasuntha during and after the Rebellion of the Warring Barons, more than twenty years ago. It's members were selected because they were fiercely loyal to the royal House of Mekthona and not a few were related to the reigning dynasty, albeit sometimes very tenuously.

Two years after the actual fighting had stopped, the last of the Warring Barons had been captured on the farm where he had been hiding, posing as a hired help, and had been summarily executed. His corpse was beheaded and flung on a dung heap, while his head was put on a stake and brought to Torantall where it hung, for years, from the southern gate, until the bleached skull itself disintegrated one stormy night in winter.

The Tribe had outlived the purpose for which it was formed, but Emelasuntha kept it alive. By nagging and bullying she appropriated the necessary funds, first from her father and later from her brother Kurtigaill, to keep the group operational. She acquired several remote domains cheaply all over Zyntrea, where the Tribe could exercise in relative privacy. She used the organization mainly as her personal instrument to eliminate nobles who she thought were potential risks to the throne and who her father and brother were too weak hearted or too scrupulous to tackle.

Later when she had married the high king of Ximerion, one of the first things she arranged was the acquisition of the house with the walled garden at the outskirts of Ormidon. Later a few others followed. From early on the Tribe had begun infiltrating the Royal Administration and keeping tabs on a variety of important and less important people in the kingdom of Ximerion. By now its network had become nothing less than vast, and the Tribe had agents on almost every level, except the most high, of the administration, the military and the government.

Sobrathi wasted no time. She had arrived in the late afternoon and had ordered a hot bath to be prepared. Meanwhile she went to the Master of the House. She needed no documents since she knew all the names of Anaxantis's friends, and the few things that were known about them, by heart.

The next day, shortly after midday and about an hour before Hemarchidas entered Ormidon by the northern main gate, The Master of the House came to her room with the first results of his investigations.

“We're still investigating and speaking to our contacts. Things seem to be a little more complicated than we thought they would be. There is one clear cut case however, Bortram Gronnick. His father owns a medium sized farm in Great Tracthon, a village some fifteen miles to the north west of Ormidon. He bought it twenty eight years ago with a loan. In two years the loan should be payed back in full. However, since he had no collateral at the time he couldn't get the money from a regular banking firm or the more reputable lenders. He signed a contract with some stringent clauses. Basically the land serves as collateral and payments have to be on time. Even one late payment gives the firm the right to exact the remaining sum in its entirety or, failing that, to confiscate the land.”

“Aren't such contracts illegal?”

“They are now. You see, my lady, twenty eight years ago the previous king was still on the throne, and this kind of arrangement was completely legal. In the last years of his reign the present king already managed most of the affairs of the kingdom. Corruption was rife in many sectors and the then prince Tenaxos did all he could to eradicate most of it. The rapacity and irresponsible behavior of banks and great financial firms, coupled to a virtual absence of strict legal instruments, made that a lot of the common people became the victim of absurdly stringent, even unscrupulous contracts. Tenaxos put an end to all that and had laws enforced to protect the subjects of the crown, and particularly the weaker ones, from being exploited. For Gronnick it came too late, I'm afraid.”

“The new laws were not made retroactive?”

“That was the compromise. The dynasty was — still is — very young, and he probably didn't dare antagonize the great financial institutions. Don't forget that many noble Houses are silent partners in some of the greatest banking firms. And regimes tend to fall when financial backing is withdrawn.”

“Do the Gronnicks have difficulty in honoring their financial obligations?”

“Not until recently. But since the last harvest things went downhill. They have had to dip into their reserves for months to make the payments on time because not enough money is coming in. Even with their son Bortram sending most of his pay home.”

“They had a bad harvest?”

“No, not at all. In fact, you could call it an abundant one. But so was everybody else's. Ormidon is their main area of distribution, and produce was overflowing the market in such quantities that prices plummeted. They barely broke even. As far as we can estimate, at the going rate their financial reserves will be depleted in about three to four months. At that time the firm will foreclosure. For them it's a golden opportunity. Twenty eight years ago the land wasn't developed and now it is. They received payments all those years and in a few months they will own the land and be able to sell it for at least seven times what it was worth initially.”

“No wonder banks get rich. I should tell this to my friend Merrick, but he probably would be mad at me for thinking him capable of such highway robbery.”

“Merrick, My Lady?”

“Never mind. An acquaintance of mine.”

“Is it really necessary for both of us to be here, Landemere?” Obyann grumbled. “I'm freezing my ass off.”

“Since it's the first one, I thought it best we welcomed him together. Besides the others aren't arriving for another week, so it will be just the three of us until then. Better to start off on the right foot,” Arranulf answered. “We could go wait in the sentinel house, if you want. I'm sure the guards won't mind. Or we could wait in the antechamber of the tower.”

They were standing on the inner court yard, wearing their brand new uniforms. Black boots, gray pants, dark red tunics with the dragon crest above their hearts and matching, fur lined mantles.

As luck would have it their wait was a short one. A wagon, driven by an ancient servant, entered the gates. A young man descended, looked doubtfully at his surroundings and sighed resignedly. His face was longish, with big gray eyes that gave him the look of a puppy whose food bowl has just been snatched away from him, and a sensitive mouth that seemed permanently about to quiver. The effect was reinforced by his lank, brown hair that fell upon his shoulders and his small, slender stature.

“They're sending us children, Landemere,” Obyann said. “Just look at him. He's twelve if he is day. We're not head pages, we're baby sitters.”

“He does seem a bit on the small side, doesn't he?” Arranulf assented. “Come, let's go and greet him.”

They went over to the wagon.

“Hi, I'm Arranulf, and this young man with the cheerful look on his face is Obyann. We are the head pages. Welcome at Lorseth.”

Obyann snorted loudly.

“I am Radyamirodyahendo of Eldorn,” the boy said morosely.

“Kid, what I just heard was Ra-blah-blah-blah-o,” Obyann said.

“Oh, nobody can remember that. Everybody calls me Rahendo.”

He turned to the servant who was taking a chest from the wagon.

“Tell Alanda, Volunda, Tyrenda, Chulonda and Berninda that I already miss them.”

“Now, you take care of yourself, young master,” the servant said before mounting the driver's seat.

It seemed for a moment Rahendo would start crying, when he saw the cart make a turn and driving out of the gates.

“Who were all those women you already miss?” Arranulf asked, in an honest effort to cheer up the little guy. “Your girlfriends, I bet.”

“My sisters. I have five older sisters.”

“By the Gods, I suppose we should be glad you didn't arrive in a dress then,” Obyann quipped.

Rahendo gave him a dirty, sorrowful look.

“You're mean,” he said accusingly, pointing at him with his right hand, which had a ring on each finger, the thumb included.

“Yes, he is. Yes, he is,” Arranulf laughed. “He is our local meany. But his bark is worse than his bite.”

Obyann snorted. Arranulf laid his hand on Rahendo's shoulder.

“Come, we must go notify the administration that you have arrived. Then we will help you carry your chest to the page's barracks. After that we go to the seamsters to have you measured for your uniform. I couldn't help noticing that you seem to like rings, by the way.”

“Oh, these?” Rahendo said spreading the fingers of his right hand and waving them in Arranulf's face. For the first time he smiled. “My sisters all wanted to give me a go away present. They didn't tell each other, and by accident they all happened to buy me a ring. I couldn't disappoint them, of course. We had them fitted for each finger so that I can wear them all at the same time.”

“And at the same hand?”

“Oh yes, there would be endless discussions why I wore certain rings on my left hand and some on my right hand. Besides, I told all of them that they are my favorite sister.”

“All of them? What if they talk to each other? Wouldn't you be in big trouble if they found out?”

“No, I also said to each of them that I said to all of them that they are my favorite, so as not to make the others jealous, but that they are really my favorite. See?”

“Hm. I think so.”

“So, this one on my thumb is from Alanda, the oldest, and then Volunda, Tyrenda, and Chulonda. The one from Berninda, the youngest, I wear on my pinky.”

“You're so lucky you haven't got eleven sisters.” Obyann laughed out loud at his own dubious witticism.

The two others gave him a blank stare.

“You're mean,” Rahendo stated again, accusingly, pointing a ringed finger at him and giving him a gloomy look.

“Yes, he is. Yes, he is,” Arranulf bellowed. “He is the meanest meanie there ever was. He is the king of Meanland.”

“Cut it out, you two. By the Gods, can't you take a joke, kid?” Obyann grumbled. “I'm surrounded by simpletons. By the nine horns of Zardok, you make that mean lowlife Ruldo look like a genius, and he's too stupid to find his own ass in broad daylight with both his hands.”

Hemarchidas had arrived in the early afternoon of the second of January at Ormidon. He had left most of his men in an inn at the outskirts of the city. He had also left the horses there, and with only two companions he entered the capital on foot. He made his way directly to Anaxantis's notary.