“Which is?”
“No elf can resist beauty, in any form. It was the damage to your face that won Amiel’s support, and, through her, the favor of . . . other people. Important people.”
“I think you are no nonentity yourself, ma’am.” Lia’ smiled. ”Never mind what I am. Elves revel in fancy titles and laugh at them also. What matters is that the warlock of the south is an elf. He is greatly honored by his people. We fear him, of course, but we also admire him and what he has done.”
The trail wound back into trees again, and both women twisted to take a final look at the iridescent glory that was Valdorcan. Then it had vanished.
“Lith’rian spends much time at his own enclave, Valdorian. It is on the far side of Ilrane, but still closer than Hub. If you wish, then that could be your destination.”
“He would heal me?”
“I am certain he would.” The opal eyes flickered viridian and cobalt.
“And my husband’s curse?”
The childlike face grew bleak. “It was decided that this offer would be made only to you.”
“I see.” Temptation! Was this some sort of a test? “Azak is not the sort of person who readily gains sympathy from an elf,” Lia’ remarked snidely.
“He is a remarkable man,” Inos insisted, “and a fitting ruler for a harsh land.”
“And a fitting husband for a well-born lady?”
“You presume far, ma’am.”
Lia’ laughed halfheartedly. “Forgive me, that was vulgar! But you puzzle us, Inosolan. Why did you ever marry that boor? You did not yield to manly caresses, for his lips would burn you. I do not think you are a witless child to be bewitched by muscles and ruthlessness. So why? Not merely to share a throne, for a Sultana is no more than a housekeeper.” Receiving no response, she pressed harder relentlessly. “They, say that the God of Love plays dice with our hearts: Do you love Azak ak’Azakar, Inosolan?”
No.
Inos did not speak.
She was thinking of Rap.
Why had the not seen earlier what the God’s words had meant?
Too late, too late!
“He is a barbarian, Inos.”
He tortured my lover to death, the man who loved me, who crossed the world to help me.
She gulped at the thought. “If I accept your offer and seek out Lith’rian, then what happens to Azak?”
“We shall give him the choice—he may return whence he came, or proceed to the Impire. But I suspect he would be betrayed to the Imperial military.” Inos glared at her companion. “You are ruthless yourself, my lady.”
Lia’ nodded sadly. “Elves often are. It surprises people, sometimes. Even ourselves. But we agreed to help you only. And now I want your answer.”
“One more question. Would Lith’rian restore me to my kingdom?”
“I have no idea whatsoever.” Elves cared nothing for politics outside their own convoluted affairs. Inos looked back. Azak was glaring at her. The positions of the horses suggested that he had been trying to edge forward and the three elves were deliberately blocking him.
He killed the man who loved me.
Kade was hostage for her return to Arakkaran.
She thought of a lifetime with Azak. She tried to think of what a life with Rap would have been like; her throat tightened and her eyelids burned. Too late, fool, too late!
She had a word of power. How much did that interest the warlock?
She had made solemn promises to the Gods that she would be a wife to Azak.
She had promised her father . . . but the Impire had dealt her kingdom away like an unwanted kitten. And she hoped that she had standards of her own. What would her father have said?
Or Rap, for that matter?
“I am Azak’s wife,” she said. “I will not betray him.”
Lia’ shook her head sadly. “Spoken like a fool—or an elf. Or a queen, I suppose. It is what I expected. May the Gods bless you for it.”
9
“You seem worried, Uncle!”
“Worried? No, not at all! Me worried? Absurd! Why should I be worried?” Ambassador Krushjor tossed his silver mane in the wind and folded his arms and leaned against the rail as if he had never known worry in his life. A jotunn on the helmsman’s deck of a longship was in his natural element and should be as carefree as a dwarf in a diamond mine or a gnome in the town dump.
Of course his nephew, Thane Kalkor, was utterly insane, but that was quite normal for a jotunn raider. All the truly successful thanes had been mad as rutting sea lions—sanity would distract a man when he should be concentrating on his killing and raping. Mindless cruelty and destruction were by definition done for their own sake, without logic or reason. Meanwhile fifty or so brawny jotnar were rowing Blood Wave up the languid waters of the Ambly, and Krushjor had come to make a courtesy call, which meant he must spend a few hours at least in the madman’s company. Both were large men, and the sailor holding the steering oar was even larger, and the platform was very small. Krushjor felt strongly disinclined to jostle his maniacal nephew.
And his maniacal nephew kept smiling at him with his inhumanly bright blue eyes, as if he could read every thought in Krushjor’s head. Every time he moved—to wave his contempt at the crowds on the bank, or study the position of the naval escorts—he seemed to settle back a fraction closer to his uncle. He must be doing it deliberately. What happened when the imaginary chip fell from his shoulder?
The sun shone. The silver ring wound and twisted. Two imperial war galleys kept pace ahead, four more astern. As the procession turned each bend, staying as close as possible to the inside curve where the current was least, great crowds of imps swarmed on the shore, running like ants, waving, jumping up and down and cheering. They were not cheering this impertinent intruding jotunn pirate, only the accompanying honor guard of the Imperial navy—which was polished and scrubbed and armed to the armpits, and also completely outclassed.
Kalkor was playing with them. Time and again he would snap an order to the coxswain to up the stroke. Then Blood Wave would leap forward as if to overtake. The vanguard would move frantically to cut her off, and usually become hopelessly entangled in doing so. Then Kalkor would rein in his crew and let the Imperial navy straighten itself out again. His men were barely sweating—they could have rowed figure-eights around the escorts for him had he wanted. The day before, the choleric Imperial admiral had tried putting four ships in the van and two astern. Kalkor’s feints had put half the flotilla aground within an hour.
Not in centuries had a raider progressed so far up the Ambly, perhaps never, even in the troubled times of the VIIth Dynasty, or the XIIIth.
The shores were lined with civilian traffic—barges and cargo boats, galleys and gondolas, all shooed aside to let the fleet pass by. Their crews watched the procession in sullen silence. Behind them the orchards and hopfields were golden; rows of peasants bent with their sickles, reaping corn, not looking up at all.
Krushjor had pulled an oar in a longship in his youth, as had most Nordlanders. He’d been good enough to become a thane, leading a few raiding expeditions of his own then, taking out boatloads of his more promising youngsters to season them in the ancestral traditions of rape and pillage, for all jotnar learned in their cradles that if they ever grew soft, the Impire would be all over them like fleas.
Officially, he was still Thane of Gurtwist, his realm kept safe under the aegis of the Moot while he served abroad. Thanedom came partly from birth and partly from prowess. To become a thane required three things, the wags said—bloodlines, bloodthirst, and bloody luck. He’d done all right, but he’d never intended to make a lifelong career out of rape and pillage. Indeed, he’d been returning from his farewell tour when he’d gone after a tempting merchant ship and in the skirmish had received a very ill-placed sword cut. He’d made his way home to Gurtwist before it began festering, but for a month or two thereafter the Gods had seemed very anxious to weigh his soul.
In the end his recovery had been complete except for one small detail, a lingering defect that would not interfere with pillaging but disqualified him totally for the other half of the profession. Had that disability become generally known, he would have been a ruined man, and likely a dead one soon. As a ruling thane, he would not have been able to hide his shortcoming for long, but a need for a new Nordland ambassador to the Impire had come along at the opportune moment. Krushjor had engineered his own nomination, accepted with a proper show of reluctance, and sailed away to live with the enemy. He was safer there, for no one in Hub took notice of his private life, nor cared anyway.