Sorrows of Adoration (53 page)

“When?” I asked coldly.
“Should I have waited until you had had enough to drink that you
could forget what you had done to your son?”

“I did nothing to him,”
Kurit grumbled as he drained half of his glass in one gulp. “I just
didn’t feel like playing with the ball. Pardon me if I have more
important things to do!”

“Really. Like drowning
yourself in that glass,” I retorted.

“Aenna, that’s far
enough!” Kurit shouted, pointing a threatening finger at me. “I’ve
tolerated your little jabs to my limit. I don’t want to hear
another snide comment about the fact that I enjoy the occasional
drink.”

I could not help but
chuckle. “Occasional?” I said incredulously. “Kurit, it’s not
occasional when you’re too ill of drink to stand the sunshine and
too upset at being sober that you scream at your son for no
reason.”

Kurit’s face turned red
as he shouted, “I didn’t want the cursed ball!”

“He was trying to cheer
you up!” I shouted in return. “He’s a good little boy who saw his
papa was upset, and he was offering you something he likes as a
gift to you, as a way to make you smile. Now, if you want to
pretend that you don’t have a problem and these ‘occasional’ drinks
aren’t making you treat me with anger and disrespect, that’s one
thing, because I’m an adult and I can take it. But I will not stand
by while you hurt and confuse an innocent child for no good
reason!”

“What do you mean, you
won’t stand for it? Who do you think you are?” he yelled.

“I’m your wife!” I said
in loud exasperation. “Or have you forgotten that?”

“No, but you seem to
have forgotten your place.”

My eyes widened, and my
outstretched hands sank to my sides. I blinked at him in awe and
quietly repeated in question, “My place?”

Kurit threw back
another swallow of his drink and took an angry step towards me.
“You seem to forget that I am the man here. I am the King, my word
is law, not yours, and I was the one born into this life and
educated to properly handle it.”

I sighed and shook my
head. My hands on my hips in frustration, I said, “I see now what
is going on here. Your mother has gotten to you.” I looked at him
in earnest and asked, “Do you no longer find me as worthy as you
once did? Now you throw this in my face, that I am but a simple
peasant girl?”

“You’re twisting my
words,” he muttered. There was a hint of shame in his voice, but he
was still too angry to admit any fault.

“No, I don’t think that
I am,” I said, feeling miserable. “Your mother has poisoned you
against me.”

His fury returned and
he shouted, “Watch your tongue! I’ve had enough of the way you
treat her!”

Aghast and baffled, I
stammered, “What? How I treat her? I don’t, I can’t
understand … how can you say that?” I threw my arms in the air
again and cried out, “I have always tried to respect her, but she
despises me unfairly!”

“She does not. She’s
just trying to protect me from you. If you gave her half a
chance—”

“Give her a chance! By
the Temple, Kurit, I have tried everything I can think of to please
her! If I knew how to earn her acceptance, I would do it! I can do
nothing to please her! I run circles around myself trying to do the
right thing, to improve things—”

“Oh, yes, let’s not
forget the Great Goddess Aenna and her wonderful little peasant
market,” he said bitterly, eyes narrowed.

Again I was caught off
guard by his words. My mind reeled at his accusations and became
tangled in his absurdity. “What do you mean by that? Now you don’t
approve of what was done? I don’t understand,” I said with a
sigh.

His face took on a look
of what I can best describe as revulsion. I took a step backwards
from him, horrified at his venomous glare. In a voice dark with
fury and loathing, he said, “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it?
You don’t understand me at all.” Then he turned his back to me to
pour himself another drink. “Get out of my sight,” he snarled.

I closed my eyes for a
moment in shocked sorrow. My head pounded, my chest ached, and my
limbs felt as stone. I could not believe, even after all the other
bitter fights and angry words, that he could be so cold to me. I
turned as I walked to the door, but before opening it I asked the
dreadful question, “Do you have any love for me left in your
heart?”

I looked over my
shoulder to him. He was leaning on the table with both hands as
though he were in great pain. He said nothing. I waited a few
moments, but he neither moved nor spoke, so I left in silence.

Jarik was in the hall,
but I deliberately did not look at him. In my heart I longed for
his comfort, but I felt so despondent, and I did not wish to
inflict my misery upon him. I tried to pass him out of his reach,
but of course he would not allow it. He put his hand on my arm to
stop me as I passed. I diverted my gaze at first, hoping he would
give up and let me go. When he did not, I slowly turned my eyes
towards his, which were filled with sorrow.

I knew I was going to
break into tears soon and did not wish to do so in the corridor. I
wanted to say something to assure Jarik that I would be fine, but I
was so heartbroken that I could not conceive of the words. Instead,
I heard myself whisper, “I simply do not know what to do
anymore.”

He pressed his lips
together, though in anger or sadness I could not tell. “Go to your
chambers,” he said softly. “I shall join you there in a few
minutes.”

“No,” I whispered.
“Don’t go to him now. He’ll be furious and think that I sent you.
And he’s in no condition to understand any message of reason.”

Jarik nodded slowly and
led me instead to my chambers. Once behind the closed door, my
tears began to flow. I did not sob, though, for I was so drained by
Kurit’s horrible words that I lacked the energy to make a
sound.

Jarik led me to the
couch, where he sat with me and embraced me tenderly. I cried
silently against his shoulder for a few minutes and then, my throat
sore with grief, whispered, “I don’t know what to do. Soon the
people shall know their King to be a drunkard, and whether or not
he continues to manage his affairs well, they shall decry him. His
rule will weaken to a dangerous point.”

Jarik said nothing but
tightened his embrace slightly.

“I feel as though I
ought to know what to do,” I continued, though even whispering made
my knotted throat ache. “I keep imagining that I should have some
divine, regal knowledge as Queen that guides my hand, but it is not
there. He doesn’t listen to me. He actually denies that he has a
problem. Meanwhile, Kasha continues to speak against me,
diminishing any chance I have to get through to him.”

I sat up and dried my
cheeks with my handkerchief. “I don’t understand her. Why does she
make things worse? Why does she insist on hating me so?”

In a voice deep with
heartache, Jarik said, “Because she is not as wise as you. She was
never the Queen that you are, and she hates you for it. Her hate
grows with every person who worships you out of love when none
worshipped her but out of fear. You stole the love of her son, her
people, and even her husband adored you.”

“Tarken loved his wife.
It broke his heart that she despised me,” I muttered.

“She put him in a
position of choosing, and he chose you, Aenna. Your youth, beauty,
intelligence, and wit enchanted him. Compare that to his angry,
bitter old wife. I’m not saying he desired you in an inappropriate
fashion, for he was a good man who loved his wife, but you touched
his heart, and Kasha will never forgive you for that.”

“Kurit just accused me
of being harsh to her.”

“That’s certainly
backwards.”

“So I said.” I sighed
and stared at the grain of the wood table.

“He’s reversing it in
his own mind because it’s easier to get angry with you than her,”
Jarik explained. “Well, he does get angry with her,” he said,
correcting himself, “but it does no good. It never has. He used to
get furious with her when she would belittle his friends in their
presence. I think one of the reasons he and I grew so close was
because she held her tongue where I was concerned. I am the son of
Tarken’s sister, and Tarken would not abide her to badger me. But
all of our other friends and peers were driven away by her acid
tongue and cold wrath. It didn’t affect me because I paid her
little heed and frankly didn’t see solitude as a sorrowful
thing.”

Jarik stared into the
air before him as he recalled earlier days. “But Kurit, he has
always liked to be around friends. I think he would like to have
more grand balls, more parties, and more friendly gatherings with a
circle of friends. But she drove them away. Do you know, that’s why
we were at the outpost when we met you? Ostensibly, we went for
training, and Kurit was supposed to be working on some long-term
scholarly project for his father, but he didn’t even take the
books, and you of course know that there was no trainer with
us.

“He had just had a
terrific spat with his mother. It had been years since he’d had the
chance to make a new friend, and Kalren’s son Mardek had come to
study some of the archived texts in the palace library. Kurit and
Mardek became fast friends, and I liked him as well, but
Kasha …” Jarik sighed. “Kasha had to make it an issue. She had
to belittle Mardek on every fault, every misspoken word, everything
that ever went wrong in Estebek. At first it was just confusing.
There was no reason for it, so Mardek admirably ignored her. Then
she took to calling him the ‘travelling ruffian’, which made no
sense but grew to irritate him. It became clear that her jabs
themselves were meaningless and often incomprehensible, but the
intent was to insult. He could not go through a meal without
hearing something from Kasha. Eventually he wearied of it, received
permission to borrow the texts he needed, and left Endren.

“Kurit was
furious—bewildered, but furious. He knew that she deliberately
drove his friends away but could not understand why. He felt that
he might lose control and say something unbecoming of a son, and
certainly inappropriate to a Queen, so we concocted the need for
him to be away, far away, where she would not trouble herself to
visit. We had been at the outpost for nine days when you stumbled
into our lives.”

I sat quietly and
considered Jarik’s story. Hearing it, her behaviour towards me
began to make a twisted sense. She couldn’t abide anyone to steal
her son’s attention, except perhaps the like-minded wife she had
chosen for him in Sashken. I realized then why she despised me.

“He stormed away,
having lost yet another battle to her, and then returned with a
peasant girl to marry. I was her ultimate fear—I was everything she
could not abide,” I said. After another pensive pause, I asked,
“Jarik, do you think I was merely a convenient way to get back at
her? Did Kurit want me just to punish her?”

Jarik quickly shook his
head against the idea. “No. He wanted to avoid trouble, not court
it. I truly believe that he failed to consider Kasha’s reaction
until he was actually speaking to her again. I think he became
swept up in love for you and happily forgot about his mother.”

I rose and walked
across the room. I stood staring at a landscape painting, wishing I
could live inside its gentle fields and soft breezes, wishing to be
anywhere but where I was at that moment. “So what’s to be done
now?” I asked.

Jarik sighed and said,
“The drinking has to be curtailed, if not stopped, before he does
something regretful.”

“He doesn’t listen,
Jarik. You’ve spoken to him. I’ve spoken to him. Today he snapped
viciously at his own son. Nothing gets through to him.”

Jarik rose and came to
stand behind me, putting a hand of comfort on my shoulder. “I know
that this isn’t what you want to hear,” he said, “but I think that
it might have to get worse first. He has to do something stupid
enough to make the problem obvious to himself. Where reason
fails—”

“Suffering prevails,” I
finished, as in the very old and well-known poem. “But in that
poem, the warrior Prince knows only the folly of others, not his
own. Not until it is too late and his family is dead.”

He put his hands on my
arms and turned me to face him, but I kept my head low, not wanting
to see the pain that I knew would be upon his face. He put a gentle
hand under my chin, though, and lifted my eyes to his own. Then he
said with clear sincerity, “That’s not going to happen to you and
Raelik. I wouldn’t let it happen. Nobody in this city would let
that happen. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It just popped into my
head. I’m sorry.”

I sighed and said, “No,
I know it’s not the same. We’re not at war with our own people as
in the poem. I am more concerned for Kurit’s safety than my own. He
could fall down the stairs, lean out of a tower window and fall to
his death, or any other number of things. He could be killed, and
we can’t let that happen. I can’t wait for tragedy before I act.” I
went back to the couch and sat there listlessly. “But I don’t know
how to act. Could we have Tash speak to him?”

“I tried that. I didn’t
tell you because Tash said Kurit laughed him off. Called him a
doddering fool.”

My bitter anger came
back, and I said, “Why won’t Kasha say something? She must see that
there’s a problem. She can’t possibly want her son to be suffering
like this.”

Jarik said nothing but
turned his face away from mine in that way I had well learned meant
that he was hiding something from me.

“What is it? What
troubles you?” I asked. He did not answer but kept his face turned.
“You don’t think she deliberately guides him to the drink, do
you?”

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

He sighed and muttered,
“Aenna, really. You don’t want to know.”