Treason Keep (8 page)

“I claim no wisdom, your Highness. I am a simple man, but moderately well read.”

“Finding anyone who can read at all in Karien is a surprise,” she remarked, watching for his reaction. The Kariens she had met so far were a universally dour and humourless lot. And they were insulted by the slightest hint of criticism. But not Vonulus. He met her eye unblinkingly, accepting her unspoken challenge.

“Your Highness, I hope you receive many surprises in your new home.”

“I’m sure I will, sir.”

“My first official duty will be to prepare you to accept the Karien wedding vows,” he told her. “The ceremony will take place in Xaphista’s Temple, as soon as we reach Yarnarrow. Lady Madren will advise you on matters of dress and protocol. I will, if the Overlord wills it, assist you to steer an easy course through the many intricacies of our religion.”

“Tell me, Vonulus,” she asked. “Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if I chose not to embrace your god?”

Madren hissed, shocked at the mere suggestion. Vonulus was less easily roused. “You will be the Crown Princess of Karien, your Highness. To worship another god would be considered treason. I imagine Fardohnya treats traitors much the same as we do.”

She patted Madren’s hand comfortingly. “I was simply asking out of curiosity, my Lady. Never fear.”

“Of course, your Highness,” Madren agreed. “I knew that.”

“And will you be joining us for lunch, Vonulus? It is a pleasure to hear my native tongue spoken so fluently.”

“I would be honoured, your Highness.”

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable dressed in something more…appropriate?” Madren suggested, waving the silent ladies-in-waiting to her. “I shall have your ladies escort you to the chamber put aside for you.”

Hoping that the chamber would be warmer than the draughty, cavernous hall, Adrina acquiesced
graciously to the suggestion. Surrounded by the Ladies Grace, Hope, Pacifica and Chastity, she walked the length of the hall to the entrance where, not surprisingly, the five-pointed star and lightning bolt was carved into the large wooden doors. They opened as she approached to reveal Cratyn and a young knight entering the hall. The men stopped as they neared them. Cratyn’s eyes flickered over Adrina then fixed on the Lady Chastity, who walked on her right. The look he gave the young woman was filled with remorse. Adrina glanced at Chastity, startled to see her soft brown eyes misted with unshed tears and unmistakable longing.

“Prince Cretin, I thought you were lost,” she said brightly. Was the pale and insipid Chastity the reason Cratyn was so unhappy about being forced to take a Fardohnyan bride?

“It’s
Cratyn
, your Highness,” Lady Pacifica corrected her, rather crossly.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Adrina asked innocently. “Cretin.” It was an unfortunate, if rather delightful, result of her accent, that she mispronounced his name. It was also quite deliberate. Adrina spoke Karien fluently. Much more fluently than her somewhat contrived accent led her hosts to believe. Her first
court’esa
had been a linguist of some note and he had taught Adrina to speak a number of languages fluently. Another thing better kept from the Kariens. She had not thought of the
court’esa
in years—a slender, gentle young man with dark eyes and long, graceful limbs.

“It’s nothing to worry about, my Lady,” Cratyn assured Pacifica, not wishing to make an issue of it.
“Your Highness, this is my cousin, Drendyn, Earl of Tiler’s Pass. Drendyn, this is Her Serene Highness, Princess Adrina of Fardohnya.”

The young Earl bowed inelegantly, smiling like a child confronted with a new and exotic toy. Adrina took an instant liking to him. He was the first Karien she had met who didn’t feel the need to mope about as if they were perpetually in mourning.

“Welcome to Karien!” he gushed. “I do hope you’ll be happy here. After the wedding, you should come to Tiler’s Pass. We have the best wines in Karien and the hunting is just marvellous. You do hunt, don’t you?”

“Every chance I can get. I shall look forward to your hospitality, my Lord.”

“This way, your Highness,” Pacifica interrupted stiffly, with a frown at the Earl. She didn’t seem to like the idea of Adrina getting too friendly with him.

“If you will excuse me, my Lord, Prince Cretin.” She curtsied gracefully and followed her ladies-in waiting into the hall.

As the door closed behind them she stopped and called the women to her. They all turned to face her expectantly. Pacifica was tall and plain, with protruding pale eyes and pockmarked skin. Hope was a pleasant looking girl with rich brown hair and a vacant expression. Grace was a plump brunette with a button nose and a receding chin. Chastity was pale and fair and by far the beauty of the group. “Ladies, I’d like to make sure we understand each other.”

“Your Highness?” Pacifica asked, still a little put out, she thought, by Drendyn’s enthusiastic welcome.

“As my ladies-in-waiting, your actions reflect on me. If I ever see
you
, Pacifica, acting like a jealous fishwife again, or
you
Chastity, lusting after my fiancé, I shall have you both whipped. Is that clear?”

Pacifica turned a brilliant shade of red. Chastity burst into tears. Grace and Hope simply stood there, dumbstruck. Adrina marched on ahead, not waiting for them to catch up. That way, they couldn’t see her laughing.

The Harshini were the strangest creatures R’shiel had ever encountered. All she had been taught to believe about them, since her earliest childhood, was proving to be wrong. They were not evil or wicked or even particularly threatening. They were a gentle, happy people who seemed to want nothing more than the same happiness for all living things.

For R’shiel, raised in an atmosphere of political intrigue and ambition, she found it hard to believe that the Harshini could be so innocent. She questioned them constantly, looking for the crack in their serene complacency, but found none. In fact, she suspected there were even some of the Harshini who deliberately avoided her, for fear of being asked questions they simply didn’t understand. They had no ambition beyond that which the gods had created them for. They were the guardians of the gods’ power. That was all they needed to know.

The demons were a different matter, however, and R’shiel found herself enjoying their company much more than the placid Harshini. Lord Dranymire was a bit of a bore, but she supposed that came from
being older than time itself. The other demons, the younger ones, were much more interesting.

Korandellan had tried to explain the bond between the Harshini and the demons in some depth, but R’shiel understood so little about the gods that she had trouble grasping the concept. She could feel the bond, though, like an invisible cord that tied her to the demons. She only needed to think of them, and they were there, eager to show her Sanctuary, or have her tell them something of the outside world. Their hunger for new things was insatiable, particularly in the younger demons, although “young” was a relative term among the demonkind. “Young”, when compared to Lord Dranymire, the prime demon in the brethren bonded to the té Ortyn family, might be anything less than a thousand years.

“We are all one,” Korandellan explained patiently. “The gods, the Harshini and the demons. We are all made of the same stuff.”

“Then why aren’t the Harshini gods?” she asked.

“We are a part of the gods.”

“And the demons?”

“They are also a part of the gods.”

“So gods created the Harshini and the demons, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Why?”

“Because they feared that without some way of limiting their power, they would destroy each other.”

“So the gods gave you their power? That’s a pretty dumb thing to do. What happens if they want to use it?”

Korandellan sighed. “They did not give us their power, R’shiel, they share it. The power you feel is the same source of power that the gods draw on.”

“Then that makes you gods, too, doesn’t it?”

“Think of it as a rope made up of many strands,” the king said, trying to put his explanation into words she could grasp. “Each of the Primal Gods has divinity over a different aspect of life. Each god draws on their own strand. Depending on what is happening in the world, the strands grow thicker and stronger, or weaker and thinner.”

R’shiel thought on that for a moment. “You mean if everyone started stealing, then Dacendaran’s strand would grow and the others would diminish, because he’s the God of Thieves?”

Korandellan nodded happily. “Yes! Now you are beginning to understand!”

“Don’t count on it,” she warned.

“The Harshini use the gods’ power, R’shiel; they use it constantly.”

“So they drain off the excess?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“But how can that work? You can’t abide violence, so you would only draw on the power of some of the gods, wouldn’t you?”

“That is what the demons are for,” he replied. “To maintain the balance.”

She nodded as it finally began to make sense. The demons were childlike and innocent and took thousands of years to reach maturity. They embodied all the violence, mischief and destructive capabilities of the power the Harshini could not draw on, but their childlike innocence and their
blood bond to the gentle Harshini prevented them from causing harm.

“And only the té Ortyn family can draw on all the power at once, can’t they? That’s what makes me so dangerous?”

The king smiled, as he usually did when she asked such blunt questions. Then again, he would probably smile if someone chopped his leg off. No wonder Brak spent so much time out in the human world. Eternal happiness could be rather wearing at times.

“Your human blood allows you to circumvent our instincts against violence, yes,” he agreed.

“Is that why they call me the demon child? Because I’m human, with the same ability for causing violence as a demon?”

This time the king laughed out loud. “I never really thought of it like that, R’shiel. The name ‘demon child’ is a human one, but now that you mention it, yes, I suppose that’s exactly what you are.”

It made sense now. She wasn’t sure she actually believed it, but it did make sense.

“So tell me about Xaphista? How did he get to be a god?”

For the first time since she met him, Korandellan’s smile faded. “Xaphista learnt too much, too quickly, I fear. The family he was bonded to were travellers. They roamed the world seeking knowledge, and in time too much human blood became mingled with the Harshini line. The restraint on violence broke down and Xaphista learnt that if he could gather followers to believe in
him
, his power would grow to rival the Primal Gods.”

“And how am I supposed to destroy him?”

“I have no idea, child. I cannot contemplate destruction. That is a human quality. You must find the answer within yourself.”

Find the answer within yourself.

R’shiel didn’t even try. She liked the Harshini—it was impossible to dislike them—but she had no desire to become embroiled in some divine conflict. She accepted that there were gods. She had even met a few of them since coming here, but they didn’t impress her, and she certainly felt no desire to worship them. If the gods didn’t like one of their underlings getting above his station, then they should have thought about that before creating the problem in the first place.

She didn’t share her opinion with Korandellan. He was willing to answer any question she asked and teach her anything she wanted to know, but his aversion to violence made the subject of Xaphista an awkward one. That suited R’shiel just fine—she had no desire to discuss the matter anyway.

Time was a fluid quantity in Sanctuary, so R’shiel had no way of gauging how long she had been here. It seemed as if everyday she learnt something new, but if each day was a new one, or simply the same day repeated over and over, she couldn’t tell. She regained her strength and then grew even stronger, exploring the vast network of halls that made up the Harshini settlement.

There were rooms here that were so like the Citadel she sometimes had to remind herself where
she was. The artwork that was so determinedly concealed in the Citadel was exposed here, in all its glory. Although the walls were generally white, there wasn’t a flat surface in the place that was not adorned with some type of artwork, large or small. It seemed every Harshini was an artist of some description. There were delicately painted friezes lining the halls and crystal statues in every corner. There were galleries full of paintings depicting everything from broad sweeping landscapes to tiny, exquisitely detailed paintings of insects and birds. The Harshini studied life and then captured its essence in their art.

Curiously, the one thing she expected didn’t happen here. The walls did not glow with the coming of each new day and fade with the onset of night. The Brightening and Dimming that characterised the Citadel was missing. The Harshini used candles and lanterns like any normal human, although admittedly they could light them with a thought and extinguish them just as easily.

The valley floor, which looked so wild and untended from the balconies, proved to be a complex series of connecting gardens and the source for much of the Harshini food in the settlement. At least it should have been, Korandellan had explained, with a slight frown. The abundant gardens were trapped in time, as was the whole settlement. The vines never wilted, the flowers never faded. Bees buzzed between the bushes, crickets chirruped happily, worms wiggled their way through the fertile soil—but a picked berry was gone forever. Like the Harshini, and every animal in Sanctuary, they could not reproduce. The issue of food was becoming critical, so much so, that
Korandellan had allowed a number of Harshini to leave the settlement. Some of them went openly, like Glenanaran, who had returned to Hythria to teach at the Sorcerers’ Collective. Others went out into the human world, disguised and cautious, to barter or trade for some badly needed supplies. Although he never said it aloud, R’shiel guessed it was fear of Xaphista and the Karien priests that kept them hidden.

They were performers, too, R’shiel discovered soon after she was allowed the freedom of Sanctuary. In the amphitheatre in the hollow centre of the gardens, against the permanent rainbow that hovered over the tinkling cascade, they held concerts in the twilight as the sun settled behind the mountains. The first time R’shiel heard the Harshini sing she had cried. Nothing had prepared her for the beauty of their voices or their skill with instruments she had never seen in the human world.

Sometimes the concerts were impromptu affairs, where members of the audience would step forward, either alone or in groups, to perform for their friends. Other times the concerts were as well organised as any Founder’s Day Parade, and then the massed choir of the Harshini would transport R’shiel to a place she had never even glimpsed before. “The Song of Gimlorie”, the Harshini called it. The gift of the God of Music. A prayer in its own right, it had the power to devour one’s soul. The cadence of the song, the subtle harmonies, and the pure, crystalline voices of the Harshini, combined to create images in the mind that could be as euphoric as they were dangerous. The demons would appear in the amphitheatre
whenever they sang for Gimlorie, their eyes wide, their bodies uncharacteristically still as they listened to the music with rapt expressions. R’shiel understood their fascination with the music and lamented its loss to the human world.

It was following the last concert she attended that R’shiel came to an important decision. Tarja was a pleasant, fading memory. Joyhinia and Loclon were so far buried in the back of her mind that she barely even acknowledged their existence. Xaphista was the gods’ problem, not hers. There was supposed to be a war going on, but it did not intrude on the serenity of this other-worldly realm. Sanctuary was peaceful, and the troubles of the outside world couldn’t touch her in this magical place. She was half-Harshini after all, and welcome here.

R’shiel decided that she didn’t really care if she never returned to the outside world at all.