The Third Scroll (26 page)

I held back a groan. Had he told me he was going to cut it, I would not have wasted time washing the mangy thing.

“Would you have denied me even that small pleasure?” he asked softly as he finished and turned to me.

I flushed, flustered that he should read my thoughts so easily.

He put away his blade before he walked to the bed and lay down on top of the covers. I did call for the servants then and waited until the women emptied the tub pail by pail; then two men came to carry it away. I walked behind them on their way out, but Batumar’s words stopped me at the door.

“I would have you stay.”

My body jerked as if lightning had cut through me.
Help me now, blessed spirits.
I turned slowly.

He slid to the middle of the great bed, looking as if he very much expected me to join him.

I clamped my hands together.
Spirit, be strong.
I had not thought he would want more of me than to heal his injury. He
had
to be too exhausted and hurt to want to… I bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling as I walked with great reluctance to lie beside him.

Heart, be brave.
I chided myself for being such a coward. Whatever pain he would cause to my body, I could heal it as fast as it began. And now that I had my full healing powers, I could never lose them. I had no need to fear the loss of my maidenhead. And I was already Batumar’s concubine. I would not be given over to others like Onra had been. All these thoughts and more rushed through my mind in a jumble.

I hesitated next to the bed until he reached for my hand and pulled me to him, my back against the hot skin of his chest as I lay down, his chin resting on the top of my head. I held my body rigid in his arms, expecting him to take me at once, and braced myself for the pain.

I had grown up in many ways since I had been taken from my home, had grown in spirit and strength, but at that moment, I felt like a young girl on the brink of her womanhood, years younger than my true age.

Batumar placed a warm hand on the hollow of my waist, his touch sending a tingling sensation across my skin, despite the thick cloth barrier of my bodice.

“Do you fear me, Tera?” He pronounced my name with a deep rumbling R, differently from the Shahala. The sound resonated inside my chest.

“Nay, my Lord,” I said after a moment, surprising myself.

He was the most powerful man on Dahru. He could do with me as he pleased, even take my life. He was a Kadar, and that alone should have given me reason for concern. And yet as I lay there, a new emotion spread through my limbs, one that sped my heartbeat just as fear would have, but this was something else.

I was not sure I liked it.

~~~***~~~

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

(The Sacred Scrolls)

“Do you fear my touch?” He spoke into my hair, his breath fanning my scalp.

I thought of the blood on Onra’s thighs, the pain of the warrior’s grip upon my flesh as he had pressed me into the frozen ground on that creek bank. I nodded, unable to speak the words, hating to be such a coward.

His grip on my waist tightened for a moment, then relaxed. He remained silent for a long time. His chest rose with each breath, pressing against my back.

“Fear not, then,” he said, and after an eternity, I heard his breathing even. The High Lord of the Kadar slept.

I sagged against him, my muscles going lax. I could feel his heartbeat through the fabric of my dress as his body heated mine. Even as spring warmed the air outside, the stone walls of the castle held the cold inside. But I did not feel any of that cold now. In all of the great castle, Batumar’s bed had to be the warmest place. Soon the anxiety seeped out of my bones, and I fell asleep in his arms.

A servant woke us sometime later, announcing from outside the door that the feast waited. Batumar rose to his elbow to look at me, blinking sleep from his dark eyes. He did not seem so fierce then, but still my heart began its race as always when he was near. In my sleep I had turned to rest on my back next to him, his hand still on my waist.

I could do naught but stare into his dark eyes.

“Shall we go to the feast, my Lady Tera?”

His sleep-heavy voice skittered across my skin. My breath caught when he leaned closer as if not wanting to miss a word of my response.

“Your people await you, my Lord,” I said in a rush and scrambled out of his arms and off the bed.

I escaped to the antechamber, and when I saw he would not be coming after me or ordering me back, I relaxed enough to think of fixing my hair, which had gotten mussed from sleep. I did this in the small mirror on the wall, watching from the corner of my eye through the open door as he dressed in a blue tunic and matching gold-stitched doublet worthy of a king. When he finished, he strode after me, offered me his arm, and led me to the feast.

I sat next to him at the table, only half listening to the tales of battles his men recounted and applauded. But still the words found their way into my ears, and I understood that although the small army of Kerghi warriors Batumar had fought had been pushed back, the enemy was far from defeated. Indeed, it seemed the Kerghi hordes were growing in number as they rolled like a wave across the lands toward us.

A chatty concubine of one the captains sat on the bench on my other side and talked of silks and fashion until I wished for Lord Karnagh and his tiger. When I inquired after him, a servant told me he had left for his home straight from the Kingdom of Orh after the last battle, with a strong agreement between Batumar and him to come to each other’s aid when the need arose.

Many people smiled at me from the long tables and inclined their heads in greeting—not only warriors but advisors and the most influential free masters of the city. No feasts were held in the High Lord’s absence and no gathering in the Great Hall, but I had met many as I roamed the palace, and some had come to me for healing. Everyone seemed to breathe easier and smile wider now that Batumar had returned to the fortress city.

His gaze strayed to me often during the meal, so when after the feast he asked me to return to his chamber with him, it did not come as a surprise. I wondered if he had reached the end of his patience with my reluctance, or if the pain of his injury had returned and he simply wished for my healing.

He sent the servants away as soon as we entered his chambers.

“Does your wound pain you still?” I asked once the door closed behind us.

When he turned to me, his face was lighter than I had ever seen it. Even his scar did not seem so fierce.

“Well worth was the injury to feel your hands upon me,” he said with a wry smile as he pulled his tunic off and prepared for bed. “Mayhap I shall seek danger for more of it.”

“You must not, my—” I stopped, embarrassed when I realized he merely jested. I stared. I had not before seen much humor in him. It made him look younger.

“Will you stay the night?” he asked, his casual tone betrayed by the intensity of his dark gaze.

My heart in my throat, I bowed. “If you wish.”

He stepped closer. “Do you wish it?”

How could I refuse the High Lord? The palace dungeon probably held people even now for lesser offenses. I was his concubine, sharing his bed my duty. Still, I could not make myself say the words.

“Let us rest together,” he said after a while.

I nodded in relief.

He drew me to the bed, then removed his clothes, save his leggings. I removed nothing. But I lay next to him and closed my eyes, willing sleep to come. After a while, when I was certain Batumar slept, I peeked from under my eyelashes and found him watching me in the light of the flames.

“I find I cannot sleep,” he said.

I could but whisper, unnerved by his gaze. “Will you watch me all night?”

Sadness shadowed his scarred face. “If you saw what I have seen in this last battle, you too would wish to look upon something beautiful to make you forget all the hideous acts of men.”

I wished I could comfort his spirit, for indeed it seemed weary within him. Only I did not know how such a feat could be accomplished. I could have comforted his body, had I been brave and brazen enough to offer mine, but I was neither. And then I remembered what he had said about liking the touch of my hands upon his skin. I could at least give him that small pleasure.

I did not dare touch his face, but I reached out to trace a faded scar on his chest with a light finger and felt a shock of heat as if I had reached into invisible flames.

I watched the path my fingers took over the hills and valleys of muscles, between the coarse hair, across ragged scars. The heat at my fingertips and the vibrations that ran up my arm did not fade but instead increased in intensity the longer I touched him. On its own, my palm flattened against his chest and soaked up his strong and steady heartbeat.

He made a low sound, not much more than a grunt, but it awakened me as if from a dream, and flushing, I snatched my hand away. I looked at him, sure I had displeased him, if not with the inexperienced caress, then with its withdrawal. And found his gaze on my lips.

My mouth felt parched, my throat as dry as the endless desert that bordered the Shahala lands.

He wants to kiss me
—the realization, like a rockslide, buried every other thought in my mind. I pressed my lips together tightly in a thin line, then grew embarrassed at my cowardice and puckered them, unsure how to proceed further, although I had seen servants do such things in the shadowed corners of the pantry.

He lifted his gaze and must have seen my bewilderment, as his lips twisted into a lopsided smile. “Not tonight, Tera. I could not stop there if I started. Even a High Lord is only human underneath all his armor.”

He pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me.

He did not touch me in any other way during the night, although he did brush a kiss over my brow when he quietly slipped from the bed at dawn.

In the days that followed, he did not send for me again, nor did I expect him to, as delegates arrived from distant lands, one after the other, and Batumar held audiences late into the night each day, the servants told me.

I did not see much of him during the days, either, as the injured began to arrive and kept me busy from sunup to sundown, keeping me from even the nightly feasts. I eased their pain and healed their injuries, using my herbs and healing skills, careful with my spirit.

Such horrible wounds I had never seen: jagged gashes inflicted by some terrible weapon the likes of which I could only imagine, crushed limbs, torn flesh. The men looked as if they had fought wild animals.

I shuddered each time I thought of that terrible enemy reaching closer and closer to our island. If even warriors as fierce as Batumar’s could not vanquish the Kerghi, what would happen to my own peaceful people?

When Batumar was not giving audience, he planned the next battle with Lord Gilrem and a handful of warlords who had arrived. Each day passed very much like the one before, until once again the mist descended and swallowed Karamur, and I could go to the Forgotten City. I did not see the Guardian of the Gate, but the other two waited for me on the path.

“He is on the other side of the mountain,” the rotund Guardian of the Cave told me after a heartfelt welcome. “Many people are coming and going these days.”

The Guardian of the Scrolls seemed ever glum, bent lower than before, as if the weight of his duty had shrunk him since our last meeting. I wondered if he still spent most of his day wishing for death.

“Today,” he pronounced out of the blue as we began walking. Displeasure doubled the wrinkles on his lined face. He scurried off toward the cave without explanation, with a speed I had never seen from him.

“What if I fail?” I asked the Guardian of the Cave, doubts like fist-size rocks sitting in my stomach.

“We all of us have been called to a purpose by the spirits, Tera. When you follow that true calling, you can accomplish the impossible if only you dare accept your true power.”

But all I had ever wanted to be was an ordinary healer. “What is the purpose of that rose bush, then?” I pointed far ahead down the road. “All alone on the path, battered by the winds?”

“To cheer those who pass it. The rose gifts us with its scent and beauty.” He looked at me with grandfatherly affection. “But a flower cannot reach its true purpose if it stays tight in a bud.”

I thought about that as we walked.

The Guardian of the Scrolls had already lit an oil lamp by the time we had caught up with him inside the cave. He looked at me sharply, then moved to the back of the cave into the darkness where the late-day sunlight could not reach. The lamp illuminated only a small circle around him, making him look like some floating ancient spirit.

He gestured to me with impatience, so I followed, unsure what he wanted me to see on the uneven rock wall.

The Guardian of the Cave shuffled after us. He stepped up to the rock and placed his hands upon its rough surface. Under his palm appeared a slight crack. Or had it been there before? I could have sworn it grew straight from his touch. The line expanded until it reached from the floor to the top of the cave; then it widened as if pulled apart by invisible hands. The Guardian of the Cave motioned for me and the Guardian of the Scrolls to enter.

I hesitated. “Will you not join us?”

“I must hold open the entry.”

I wondered what would happen if his attention wandered or he fell asleep. Would we be sealed within? Not a question I could ask without displaying complete cowardice, so I stepped forward. If this was my destiny, I could not run from it.

The Guardian of the Scrolls lifted his lamp to light the naturally formed corridor that had appeared in front of us, and muttered something about self-important old fools.

I followed him in the narrow passageway, barely seeing anything, for he held the lamp in front of him, and his body blocked out the light. I hated dark enclosures since my days in the belly of the Kadar slaver, so I stumbled after the Guardian with unease.