Reluctant Concubine (35 page)

“Run, my lady,” she implored. “They who caught me will catch you as well if you stay.”

A length of twisted vine held the net, and I traced the vine to a tree half-covered by the dense brush. I tore at the knots with my fingers to no avail. I wished for a blade, my gaze falling on the moss-covered stones at my feet. They had no sharp edges, but I crouched and smashed two together until a chunk broke off. Then I attacked the vine rope with my makeshift weapon.

Even with the sharp edge of the stone, the sawing required time, and my knuckles bloodied from scraping against the rough bark of the tree. But finally I thinned the vine to its last fibers and yanked it hard while holding on tight. I did not want to drop Leena from such a height.

“Brace,” I called up, keeping my voice as low as I could, for we did not know how close the hunters who set the trap waited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

(Mernor)

I lowered Leena to the ground and freed her, then we hurried off the path and into the woods. We moved silently and did not stop until Leena seemed ready to collapse.

“My foot tangled in the net as it pulled me up,” she told me at last, sliding to the ground.

I sat next to her to look at her ankle. The woods were quiet around us and peaceful. I thought we might be safe for the moment.

I probed the swollen purple flesh but could feel nothing broken. “Bruised.” I put my hand upon the injury, but Leena pulled back.

“No,” she said. “You will weaken yourself.”

“I can help.” I reached again.

“The High Lord forbade it.” She grabbed my hand, her gaze determined. “I forbid it,” she said, issuing an order for the first time since I had known her.

She
was
the High Lord’s mother. She would have had a seat at the high table at the feasts and a powerful position in the palace if she had revealed her identity. Her station was equal to that of the favorite concubine. 

“As you wish, Lady Leena.” The Shahala did not heal against a person’s will. The choice, even between life and death, stayed always with the sick.

“Your herbs?” She eyed my belt.

I glanced at the few stalks that hung from the rough belt I had braided from some soft tall grasses as we had walked. “We need kukuyu pulp bound around your ankle with cold wet cloth. We have neither. Shall we stay awhile?”

She shook her head as she struggled to stand. “If I slow you down, you must leave me. You have to reach him in time.”

I helped her to her feet, determined not to leave her behind in this dark place, neither her nor Batumar.

She limped forward. “Night will fall soon. We should not stay this close to the trap. We could be still in the hunters’ territory.”

I nodded. Whoever had set that net might decide to track his escaped prey. We moved on, not as silent as before but grateful for still being able to move.

“A large and strong net,” Leena said after a while as she limped alongside me.

“Probably for deer.”

“Or else,” she said, “it could have been set by the same kind we met before.”

I cringed at the thought of the women we had escaped earlier that day, and offered a silent prayer to the spirits asking them to deliver us safely from the woods.

As the night darkened around us, we found a suitable tree—one with branches that started low to the ground and a good cross-branch higher up—and I made a shelter of twigs and leaves for the night. Leena needed much help to climb, but she would not give up easily and reached our nest. We ate half of the bitter rhizomes we had, not nearly enough, and saved the rest.

Despite our exhaustion, we slept little, for at night, the forest came alive. Strange, unseen birds cried out, startling us from time to time; footsteps on the dried leaves below us made us cringe. Growls we heard, first nearing, then moving away, while eyes glowed green and narrow in the darkness.

We barely dared breathe for fear of drawing the attention of the invisible beasts that roamed the night. I must have dozed toward dawn at last, as I woke to Leena’s strong grip on my arm. She spoke only with her eyes, wide and alarmed. A small noise came from below us. I turned my head slowly, then let out a sigh of relief. The doe looked up at me, then went back to licking dew from the moss-covered trunk.

I sat up so Leena could also see. I had blocked her view when I was sleeping, and she had not dared to move to look around me.

“Can you climb down?” I checked her ankle, still bruised but less swollen. The night’s rest had been most beneficial.

She nodded with a thin smile. “If I manage to fall instead, I will arrive at the same place.” Then her expression turned sober. “Is it safe?”

I looked but saw nothing other than trees and bushes. The deer, perhaps startled by our voices, had fled. “The spirits will keep us.” The night predators, I hoped, had already returned to their lairs.

We decided to forgo our morning meal and save our meager provisions for later in the day.

Not long after we started out, we reached another path, wider than the one we had found the day before and, by the looks of it, more frequently used. As Leena could barely walk on the uneven forest floor, tripping over gnarled roots with every other step, we took the path and prayed to the spirits and the goddesses to keep us safe.

We kept our eyes open for anything strange, the slightest thing out of order so that we might escape another trap. We did not talk but listened for any noise of people coming up from behind or lying in wait in the distance ahead.

And so we heard long before we saw the small family of a man, woman, and child coming up the path behind us. The man carried his daughter in his arms, the mother bowed under a heavy bundle.

They did not look like they belonged to the tribe of starving women—different clothes, diffent features—nor did they look like hunters. They seemed as tired and as wary of the woods as we were, for I saw the man’s gaze search the forest from time to time.

The child he carried was no longer a babe but still too young to keep up with the adults on her own. A badly infected cut disfigured her face where her flesh had been split from forehead to chin by something sharp. A sword, I thought.

We halted to wait for them, but they stopped at a fair distance from us. The father shifted the child to his hip and drew a dagger from the folds of his long tunic.

“I am a healer,” I said in the merchant tongue that was spoken, in one form or the other, in most of the world. “We are looking for the road to Mernor.”

The mother grabbed for the child to free both of the man’s hands for fight. He inspected us at length, his gaze hesitating on the herbs that hung from my belt. He did not lower his weapon. Silence stretched between us, tense and full of mistrust.

“Can you help my daughter?” he asked at last.

The woman said something, too fast for me to understand, her face twisted with fear and worry. He motioned her forward, but she would not budge. He said something then in a low voice, and she took one hesitant step. I moved toward them too, even though he had probably just promised her to gut me at the first sign of trouble.

Leena threw me a look of disapproval but held her silence. I glanced at my herbs, though I already knew I had nothing suitable. But I could not pass the girl by. The infection would kill her before long. Already, she glowed with fever.

I reached for the child, and the mother shook her head.

The father shoved her forward gently. “Please, mistress, help her if you can.”

I placed one hand, palm down, onto the child’s forehead where the scar began, the other to the top of her chin where it ended. The best of healers did not need to touch the sick to heal them, but I was far from the best, and weak from lack of food and insufficient sleep.

I closed my eyes and thought of nothing but the raised edges of the wound, the sticky wet feel of pus that oozed from my gentle pressure, and the heat that burned against my skin. I could feel her pain, but she neither cried nor squirmed under my touch.

I drew the pain then and gained a better sense of the injury. The infection had gone deep. Slowly, I moved my hands toward each other, focusing my spirit on closing the wound. When my thumbs touched, I sent up a silent prayer before I removed my hands.

She was whole. My arms were trembling.

The mother cried and would not look at anything but her child. The father thanked us and told us the way to the road we sought. To reach it, we had to cut through the forest.

“But there are none there to heal who are worth the healing,” he said. “Khan Woldrom put many to the sword the day the Khergi broke through the city gate. The last who defended Mernor fled to the tower, but the Kerghi caught up with them. To the last man, their throats were cut, their bodies hurled from the height.”

I shuddered, the picture of the black tower I had seen in my vision still clear in my mind, the blood of its defenders staining the stone walls. My empty stomach rose, but I fought it back.

“We have not much, but I would pay you, mistress, for you have done us a great favor.” The man reached into the bundle on his wife’s back and offered us some bread.

This we refused as we still had a few roots, and their supply seemed hardly enough for the three of them. Then he held out a flask of water, and that we accepted with gratitude.

We went our separate ways, they on the path, Leena and I back to the forest, the shortest way to the road that led to Mernor, according to the man. No longer did I have to hold back to match Leena’s slow limp. I barely had the strength to keep up with her.

We found the road by midday, wide and well trampled by wagons, beasts, and men.

We stayed behind a clump of dense bushes and ate what little food we had left, then drank the rest of our water while we watched mercenaries and warriors pass. Going among them did not seem wise, so we walked in the woods some distance from the road, far enough not to be heard or seen.

This became our luck at the end, as in a small clearing, guided by the pungent smell, I found a few plants that appeared much like the kukuyu weed. I wasted no time to prepare a poultice for Leena’s ankle.

And our good fortune increased still further. After we left the clearing, we came upon a nut tree. We only lacked water, our canteen long empty by then. I prayed to the spirits while Leena beseeched the goddesses to lead us to a creek.

That night, we slept in the trees once again. We heard less of the frightening noises of the forest than before, perhaps because we were close to the road.

Around midday the next day, we reached the end of the woods, and in the distance, we could see the once great Mernor, its walls charred, its city gate broken. Like a giant carcass, it lay surrounded by barren fields and a village destroyed to the ground. More men hung from the parapets now than I had seen in my vision, and my heart lurched. Leena grabbed my hand and squeezed tight as we prayed none of the blackening corpses was Batumar’s.

We waited until nightfall before we moved closer, then climbed in through the cisterns that had carried water for the palace but now stood in ruin. At last we could drink, and both of us felt better than we had for some time.

We crept into the enemy stronghold with care. Our path sloped up, and the trickle on the water channel’s moss-covered bottom made the stones slippery. Rats scurried ahead, but they kept out of our way, thank the spirits.

Soon we reached an opening that led into a strange chamber below us. I saw little beyond a few rough-hewn tables and rows of water-filled buckets. I eased myself through the opening and jumped down as quietly as I could, then helped Leena.

“We must disappear among the servants and find Batumar,” I whispered, having no more than that for a plan.

“I pray we are not too late,” Leena whispered back.

But no sooner did her feet touch the floor than we heard voices outside. We could not climb back up, had no time to move tables so we could reach the opening. And we had nowhere to hide in the chamber.

Except…

A metal grate covered a hole in the floor beneath my feet. I grabbed the heavy grate and it gave way, opening for us the shaft carved into the rocks below. “Hurry.”

Leena slid in first, then I, fast after her, and replaced the cover just as the chamber door opened. We slid farther down into the sloping curve, until we were out of sight of anyone who might peer down.

The stones were so foul smelling, I had to cover my face with the hem of my dress.

“Hold on tight,” I whispered and had no time to say more than that.

Warriors filled the room above us, bragging about the number of lives they had taken and the loot they had gained.

Swords clinked against the stone as they lay their weapons down. Boots thudded as they were dropped. Then buckets clanged, and soon water poured all over us. We dared not to move or make any sound. I tried not to choke and splutter from all the filthy water running down on top of me and could feel Leena squirming below, probably doing the same.

As soon as the men left, we climbed up to leave the strange bathing chamber before others came.

I gasped as I came up into the light. My dress, much reduced and soiled during our arduous journey, had turned red. The warriors had washed blood off their bodies onto us.

I helped Leena up and watched the horror in her eyes as she discovered the same. But then she strengthened her will. “Let us find Batumar.”

I gathered my own spirit and opened the door bit by bit, then peered out into a dingy hallway. Torches stood in their brackets at uneven intervals, half of them either missing or burned out. I saw no one, so we emerged from the chamber and hurried down the corridor but hardly took a few steps when we heard men talking ahead.

Before we could turn and run back to the chamber to hide, warriors came around the corner. I froze, but Leena shuffled forward and yanked on my arm until I bent over and followed after her.

The warriors passed us without giving us any notice. My once splendid gown was torn and soiled beyond recognition; my short hair hung in filthy gnarled locks. We probably looked like those unfortunate souls forced to serve the Kerghi. The men did not seem to think it strange that we were both wet and bloody.