Wolfblade (66 page)

He couldn’t say later how long it lasted. It might have been a few moments or it might have been hours. All he knew was that when it was over, he could barely breathe and his body felt like it had been wrung out and tossed aside to dry. He staggered out of the water, a little surprised he hadn’t drowned, and collapsed onto the grassy shore. Shananara followed a moment later and sat down beside him, much more in command of her faculties than Wrayan was. He tried to sit up, but she smiled and drew his head down into her lap.

“There, there, my love,” she whispered softly, stroking his damp hair. “Sleep now. You’ll feel better once you’ve rested.”

Wrayan lacked the strength to answer her. He closed his eyes and, as he let fatigue overtake him, a thought wormed its way unbidden into his consciousness. What was it Brak had told him?
You’ll be incoherent for days
.

Smiling, he let sleep steal over him, exhausted and spent in a way he had never imagined possible. Shananara held him while he fell asleep, crooning to him like a mother comforting a frightened child, and he drifted off into a world of misty veils and whispering kisses that seemed to have no end . . .

And then his dreams were rudely shattered as he was shaken roughly awake. He blinked owlishly, squinting in the harsh sunlight that had risen over the rim of the valley. Wrayan had no idea what time it was but he was cold, a rock beneath his hip had left him with a stone-bruise, his head was pounding and his mouth felt drier than a Karien nun’s beer garden.

Shananara was gone, as if she’d been nothing more than a dream.

It was Brak who had woken him. The Halfbreed loomed over him, his pale eyes furious, his whole body radiating contained rage.

“Wha—what?” Wrayan stammered in confusion.

“Get dressed,” he ordered, tossing Wrayan’s discarded robe at him.

Wrayan caught the white Harshini robe reflexively and struggled to sit up, pulling the garment self-consciously over his head. “Is something wrong?”

Brak didn’t answer him. He just stood there, waiting for Wrayan to get dressed, glowering at him.

“Brak? Is something wrong? What’s happened?”

“You happened,” Brak informed him coldly.

As soon as Wrayan was clothed and standing—albeit rather shakily—Brak pushed the young man ahead of him along the path back towards the fortress.

“What do you mean,
I
happened?” Wrayan demanded, speaking over his shoulder as he stumbled up the path. “What have I done?”

“What have you
done
?” the Halfbreed repeated incredulously. He shook his head in disgust, as if Wrayan should already know the answer.

“But I didn’t do anything!”

The Halfbreed didn’t seem impressed by his protestations of innocence. “You’re an idiot, Wrayan Lightfinger,” Brak told him unsympathetically. “A reckless, thoughtless, towering bloody idiot.”

Wrayan stopped and turned to confront the Halfbreed, determined to uncover his obviously dreadful—and completely baffling—mistake before they took another step closer to the fortress. “I don’t understand, Brak! What have I done?”

“You slept with Shananara.”

“I know, but—”

“She’s a té Ortyn.”

“I know, but—”

“Don’t you realise what that means?”

“No!”
he cried, wishing Brak would simply explain it to him.

Brak sighed heavily. “There are more than a thousand women here in Sanctuary, Wrayan, and the
only
one you shouldn’t have gone near last night was the king’s niece.”

“Is he angry?”

Brak ground his teeth in frustration. “You just don’t get it, do you? Lorandranek isn’t angry. He isn’t capable of it. But you . . . you’re about ninety per cent human, by my reckoning.”

“So?”

“Sleeping with a member of the royal family is forbidden for humans. Didn’t anybody tell you that?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t hurt her, Brak,” he protested. “Anyway . . . well, it was Shananara who started it.”

“I don’t care who started it, Wrayan. You slept with a té Ortyn Harshini, you fool.”

“How much trouble am I really in?” he asked sheepishly, remembering the friendly, but stern warning Lorandranek had delivered the first time the king noticed the way Wrayan looked at Shananara.

“Provided nothing comes of it, you’re in no trouble at all,” Brak informed him, which relieved Wrayan a great deal.

And then the Halfbreed ruined everything by adding, “But if Shananara té Ortyn is pregnant, Wrayan, well, then you’ve just fathered a demon child.”

T
he death of Laran Krakenshield caught Elezaar unawares and once again threw his future into doubt. It also left him suspicious about the circumstances of the Warlord’s unexpected death. After Marla related the details of his fall in battle, Elezaar began to wonder about the train of events that had taken Mahkas Damaran from penniless half-brother with a brother and two sisters to the wealthy sole ruler of two provinces and the only one of his siblings still alive, in the space of a little more than two years. There was an unfortunate trend emerging around the new Regent of Krakandar and Sunrise Provinces. It worried Elezaar a great deal. If there was some curse on Mahkas Damaran that placed his family under threat, Marla and her son—Mahkas’s sister-in-law and nephew—may also be in danger.

And if anything happened to them, that was the end for Elezaar, too.

Elezaar didn’t know Mahkas well. As far as possible, he avoided contact with the other members of the household, and Mahkas in particular. The dwarf was Marla’s slave and content to remain so. He had taken on the role of history tutor to Travin and Xanda because that would put him in the nursery on a daily basis. And it had paid off handsomely. Not only was Elezaar genuinely fond of Darilyn Taranger’s orphaned sons, but over the past two years he’d become so much a part of Damin Wolfblade’s world that nobody would think of taking him away from the child.

His position was—
had been
—almost secure. But Laran Krakenshield was dead and his brother, Mahkas Damaran, was going to be ruling in his place until Damin came of age, which meant they were playing a different game now and Elezaar still hadn’t figured out the new rules.

Elezaar wished Marla had consulted him before offering Mahkas the regency, although even if she had, there was little he could have done to prevent it. Marla was right about that much. There really was nobody else to take over the provinces and the only alternative was to place it in the
hands of the Sorcerers’ Collective. That meant Kagan Palenovar now, but one day it might mean Alija Eaglespike and Elezaar hadn’t come this far just to fall under her influence again by default when the old High Arrion died.

Marla had averted
that
potential disaster by insisting Mahkas assume the regency, but Elezaar still wasn’t happy about it. There was something about Mahkas Damaran that Elezaar didn’t like; some darkness in his soul lurking just beneath the surface, indefinable, vague, but somehow
wrong
. It niggled at Elezaar like a pebble in his shoe, so much so he felt compelled to raise the issue with his mistress a few days after she told him what she had done about Mahkas and the regency.

“Are you sure it was wise to appoint your brother-in-law as Damin’s regent, your highness?” he asked as she was preparing to retire one evening, a few days after the news about Laran had reached them. He was leading his mistress into her dressing room, holding the large candelabrum to light her way, when he posed the question, as if it had only just occurred to him and was not something he’d been stewing on for days.

“Even if it wasn’t wise, Elezaar,” she said, as she sat down at her dressing table to unpin her white mourning veil, “what other choice is there? Do you think I should let the Sorcerers’ Collective into Krakandar?”

“Absolutely not!” he agreed, lifting the heavy silver candelabrum onto the table so that his mistress could see her reflection in the gilded mirror. “But it’s an awfully big responsibility for one man.”

“Laran seemed to manage it quite well.”

“Your late husband was an exceptional man, your highness,” Elezaar told her, thinking it would do no harm to speak well of the dead, even though he had often questioned Laran’s decisions privately to his mistress in order to keep her believing that she needed her
court’esa
’s counsel. “While Mahkas Damaran is capable, he’s not his brother.”

“Are you saying he won’t cope?”

“I think he’ll do well enough.”

“But?” she asked, turning to face him.

She looks tired
, Elezaar thought,
even in the candlelight
. It had been a trying few days for the princess and was not likely to get any easier for a while yet. “Why do you think there’s a ‘but’ involved?”

“I can tell, Elezaar,” she told him. “You just say things like that and let them hang, like you haven’t finished speaking yet. There’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere. Tell me what it is.”

“Very well,” he said, climbing onto the stool beside her dressing table. His feet didn’t touch the floor, but with the princess sitting down, he was almost eye level with her. “I don’t think you should try to keep both provinces. And I’m not sure Mahkas will be able to, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Laran Krakenshield was the legitimate heir to Krakandar, highly respected and well thought of among his peers. His brother is none of these things. If anything, he has a reputation for being a bit reckless. The Warlords accepting Laran ruling two provinces is a world away from them accepting his half-brother.”

“But I’m going to ask Lernen to confirm it. Do you think the Warlords will defy my brother?” She began to remove the pins from her hair, dropping them into a small crystal dish on the dressing table that Laran had given her as a gift on the first anniversary of their marriage. “I can have Lernen make this a decree, you know.”

“I’m quite sure you could make the High Prince decree the sky is pink, your highness,” he informed her as the pins dropped with a metallic “plink” into the dish. “But that’s not the point. Your brother got away with confirming Laran as the heir to Sunrise because Laran was capable of doing the job. Laran held on to Sunrise Province and Krakandar because the other Warlords quickly realised he had no territorial ambitions beyond holding those two provinces. He gave Hythria the Hythrun-born heir she so desperately needed—”

“Excuse me, but
I
gave Hythria the heir she so desperately needed,” the princess corrected testily.

Elezaar smiled. “Your husband kept his word, your highness. And he kept the peace with Fardohnya which meant he kept the trade routes open.”

“And when Laran made Chaine Tollin—Gienadal’s bastard—Governor of Sunrise Province,” Marla concluded, nodding in understanding, “he also gave rise to the hope that he might one day cede the province to a Raven-spear, even an illegitimate and unacknowledged one.”

“Exactly.”

“So you’re saying I should ask Mahkas to keep Chaine Tollin on as Governor?”

“I think you need to go further than that, your highness. If the Warlords don’t like the current arrangement, they could easily step in and make their own changes. And they may not be changes that suit you. Far from remaining an ally, Sunrise could end up in the hands of a Warlord sympathetic to the Patriot Faction. The revenue from Sunrise will be lost. There will be nothing you or Mahkas, or even Lady Jeryma, can do about it, either. Glenadal Ravenspear made Laran his heir and the High Prince confirmed him as the Warlord of Sunrise. There was no provision in there for his half-brother to take his place, even as regent.”

“But that would mean giving away half Damin’s inheritance.”

“There is no inheritance for your son in death, my lady.”

“What do you mean?”

“Damin is the High Prince’s heir, your highness. You’re going to have
enough trouble convincing the Warlords he’s entitled to inherit Krakandar. You don’t seriously think they will allow a High Prince to hold direct lordship over two provinces as well, do you?”

“Rule Number Eleven,” she said suddenly, shaking her long hair free.

Elezaar nodded, pleased with her quick assessment of the situation. “Do the unexpected.”

“Mahkas won’t be happy.”

“Your job is to protect your son, your highness, not nurse your brother-in-law’s tender ego.”

“But what if Chaine Tollin can’t be trusted?” she asked, picking up the silver-backed brush.

“Has he given you any reason to believe that he can’t be?”

“No,” she replied, tipping her head to the side. She began to brush her long fair hair with slow, deliberate strokes. “But that doesn’t mean much. He may be simply biding his time and plans to make his move as soon as he thinks the way is clear for him to grab power.”

“Then perhaps you should give it to him, your highness, before he has a chance to grab it. Then he’ll be forever in your debt. That’s preferable to having an enemy in Sunrise controlling the trade routes from Fardohnya.”

“Which is all very well, Elezaar,” she said, tipping her head the other way so she could brush the left side. “But I’m not really in a position to give anybody anything.”