Allegiance, page 37
part #3 of River of Souls Series
She would have laughed, except she knew she must not laugh in front of the vast audience witnessing this event. She only smiled, and pressed her palm briefly against his, turning the gesture into one more formal as they clasped hands and lifted them as though to start a dance.
A dance it was, she thought, as they descended the steps. The masses of nobles and courtiers parted before them—she was dimly aware of many, many faces to either side, all of them in constant movement as the audience flowed away and to either side, to take their places in a grand procession from the vast throne room to an even more enormous hall where the first feast would commence.
The feast. The speeches given by various lords to Raul and Ilse, and theirs in return. The formal exchange of wine cups between king and queen, between the new rulers and their honored guests at the first table. The whispering of magic, like a cool stream, to relieve the sweltering summer air. The servants bearing dish after opulent dish, while musicians, placed in small groups throughout the hall, played a complicated tune upon oblique and transverse flutes, connected through part and counterpart, while a single water flute threaded its voice among them. Theirs was but one feast among others, too. A dozen more took place within the palace itself, and more yet throughout the city. Each one linked to another, Ilse thought, like a chain of words linked together, like a river of souls throughout history.
As twilight dropped over the city, Ilse and Raul stood for a last exchange of wine cups. Servants removed the tables from the hall, and the musicians took up new stations in corners and alcoves. Dancing commenced with the king and queen, a simple pattern of steps, palm against palm, circling around the center of the floor. One by one, other partners joined them, and the pattern grew to include them. Nadine and Heloïse, both shining with giddy joy. Raul’s other two sisters, Olivia and Marte. Emma and Benno Iani. Baron Mann. Klara. Baron Eckard. And off in a far corner, Kathe coaxing her husband, Gerek, to dance.
It was not until the bells rang midnight that Ilse and Raul departed from their guests, and returned with slow weary steps to the king’s chambers. As they passed through the outer rooms, a dozen attendants rose to their feet. Raul dismissed them with a silent gesture. Then he and Ilse passed through the doors into the bedchamber.
He closed the door. Ilse turned toward him and felt her heart leap high against her chest. “My king.”
“My queen.” His voice was breathless with laughter. More. Anticipation.
She thought she knew the reason.
They were not new lovers. They knew each other’s bodies, in this life and in countless others. But all had changed in that promise given each to each. Now they were husband and wife, king and queen.
Raul laid his crown upon a table, raked his fingers through his cropped hair. He glanced up, a laughing smile breaking through the gravity that had clothed him these past seven months. It was like the sun flooding a cloud-streaked sky. Her breath came easier. “My love,” she said.
“My love,” he said. “I come to you unadorned. Incomplete. Will you have me?”
“I will. And you?”
“With all my heart.” As she lifted a hand to remove her crown, he shook his head. “Not yet.”
She waited, suddenly breathless again.
He removed the diamonds from his earlobes. Laid them beside the crown. Next came the long coat of stiffened silk and its belt. Ilse watched with quick-beating pulse as he undid the buttons of his shirt, his trousers. Piece by piece, he removed all decoration, all clothing, until he stood before her bare-skinned, the candlelight painting his body with silver and gold.
“Unadorned,” he said. “Whatever I am, tonight I am nothing more than a man. Not even Stefan, because I would take nothing as a shield, not even a false name. I am only Raul. Will you have me?”
Ilse wet her lips. “I will. Tonight and forever.”
She took his hand and led him to the bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
IT WAS A day, a moment, she could not have foreseen, and yet she knew every detail in advance.
The bed was a monstrous thing, easily large enough for ten lovers, as if a monarch required a greater stage than ordinary folk. There was no canopy, just a vast open expanse of white linen, overspread by layers of indigo and emerald silk. Servants had lit five branches of candles. A chandelier hung from the high, arched ceiling. Unseen, a brazier burned incense, sending up clouds of a fragrant cedar scent. It was too, too much, Ilse thought. It was fitting, however. A chamber this overwrought was like an echo of her emotions.
She pointed to the bed. “Lie down.”
He obeyed, his mouth twitching in amusement. Long-limbed and graceful, he climbed the steps and eased himself onto his back. His bare skin gleamed in the candlelight, and he stared back at her with impossibly bright eyes.
“Not yet,” she said. “Do not move.”
“Is that your command?”
“It is.”
She ran a finger along his cheek, touched the corner of his mouth, then brushed her hand over his throat and down his chest. The pulse at his throat beat faster, but otherwise he remained motionless. Only when she pressed lightly upon his stomach did his chest rise and fall in a breath caught suddenly.
His body, so familiar, so different. As if the gods had brushed him with shadows, within and without. She missed the long fall of hair, how it would tumble over his eyes when she loosed its ribbon. Now, his hair was cropped close, and where his chest once had been as smooth as a boy’s, she could run her fingers through fine dark hair running over his chest and down to his groin.
Raul closed his eyes and whispered something unintelligible.
Ilse paused, her hand resting over his belly. Watched as his penis thickened and stood upright. She curled her fingers around it, then slowly let her hand drift downward to the still unfamiliar sacs of flesh underneath. Then she bent down and kissed Raul’s chest, breathing in the musk of his perfume, and the stronger musk of his desire.
Tonight, she thought. Tonight we make love, and if the gods will it, a child.
She straightened and withdrew her hand. Raul’s eyes fluttered open.
“Almost,” she said, setting her crown next to his on the table.
Just as he had, she undressed, item by item. The gold-embroidered slippers. The grand robes and jewels, in which she had married, accepted a crown, and vowed her life and service to her subjects. The long tunic underneath, and all the other layers, each one removed and folded and set aside, until she stood clad in her shift alone. As she reached up to her hair, Raul sat up. “Grant me this favor, please.”
One by one, he took the diamonds from her hair. When the last lay on the table beside her crown, he plucked out the pins holding her hair and let it fall in a glorious cascade over her shoulders.
“The candles?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I want them lit.”
She drew off her shift and climbed the steps to the bed. When Raul made as though to draw her into an embrace, she pressed both hands against his shoulders and pinned him against the bed. “I have always wished to do this,” she whispered.
His eyes widened. His mouth opened in a half-laughing smile. “So have I.”
He was more than willing, more than ready, as was she. She lowered herself slowly, biting her lip to keep herself from rushing. Then came the moment when she could not hold back. A sharp sudden push down. She flung back her head and a cry burst from her throat, answered by his. Already their bodies found the rhythm, its pace rising ever faster. Ilse was babbling, laughing, and weeping. Raul, speaking in old Erythandran, then suddenly in Károvín, Veraenen, and others she could not identify, as though his memories swung from this life to the past and all the way to the present again. There was no time when they had not been lovers. Each life, they would discover each other anew. It was like a dance with patterns unfolding, each one leading to the next, each step and step a reflection of the past and yet a new thing altogether.
A final surge of hips against hips, a long moment when they went still in passion complete. Another moment before the breath trickled from Ilse’s lips, and her muscles unlocked. Her blood thrummed in her temples, her body trembled, and her skin was slick with sweat.
Raul curled a hand around her neck. His gaze locked with hers as he drew her into a kiss so deep, she thought she might drown. I love you, she thought.
“I love you,” he whispered hoarsely. “I shall love you forever.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DAWN WOKE HER, the swift light touch of sun upon her eyelids, followed by the unexpected trill of birdsong outside an open window. Gentle. Persistent. Inexorable.
Ilse lay with her eyes closed, taking in each detail of this new day—the linen sheets entangled around her legs, the scent of her own perfume, of rosewater mixed with sweat and the sharper scent of sex, and the fainter ones of incense and beeswax. The familiar weight of Raul’s arm over her hip. The still unfamiliar roughness of his unshaven cheek against her back.
A warm breeze drifted through the window, carrying with it the muted noise of the city beyond the palace grounds. Duenne. At last.
She shook with silent laughter. She had come to Duenne ten months ago. And yet it was not until today that she had a sense of completion, as if the coronation and wedding signaled the end to some long-delayed endeavor.
Raul stirred. His hand slipped along her leg and he murmured something truly salacious. Ilse’s breath caught in a sudden access of desire, even as she stifled more laughter. So much had changed. So much had not.
She slid from his embrace and sat up, the better to indulge herself and stare besottedly at his sleeping face. His dark hair, shorn by the physicians and which he continued to wear in that style, was like a velvet hood over his skull. Silver shimmered among the blue-black. Scars ran in a pale network over his neck, chest, and shoulders—a remnant of his last battle with Markus Khandarr. He was still beautiful in her eyes, but she could not ignore the signs of age, of anxiety. Nor the other signs of that last battle. A shadow of beard painted his cheeks and chin, dark limned with silver. The silken cloud over his chest and belly, between his legs. Not quite a grown man’s, nor yet the sign of youth.
Whatever Khandarr intended, Raul Kosenmark would never return to his childhood, nor would he leap beyond the years to become a man like any other. He would be forever himself.
In the past few moments, the sun had lifted a few degrees. Now it poured through the openwork shutters, casting a lattice of shadows over Raul’s face. He wrinkled his nose, as if the light tickled, then breathed out a sigh.
My beloved, my king.
He had wanted kingship, had thrust it away because he feared his own ambitions. At the last, he had accepted. Emma Iani believed the victory was hers. But in the end the victory was Veraene’s, the decision Raul’s.
They had both made their choices. More and more would come, until each minute turning of each day revealed itself in the grander pattern of a life, of lives, of history.
It was this quote from Tanja Duhr that drove her from bed. Ilse washed her face in the waiting bowl of water. (Warmed with magic, scented with herbs.) By the king’s and queen’s order, given the night before, no attendant waited to help her dress. Someone had left a gown and robe waiting for her. She dressed in them and headed toward the outer chamber.
The doors swung open—as if impelled by magic, she thought. Three attendants and six guards waited outside. All of them sank into deep bows.
“Your Majesty.”
I am queen, she thought. Queen of Veraene. Her pulse beat impossibly fast. If nothing else convinced her, this one gesture did.
“I would walk,” she said at last. “Let the king know where I have gone.”
She did not need to give her destination—indeed, she did not know it yet—but she felt certain that Raul would receive word when he needed it. She set off in a flutter of robes. A moment later she heard the echo of booted feet.
They were her guards, charged with the queen’s safety.
I could order them away.
Or not. It might be a custom beyond her power, or Raul’s, to keep the guards away from Veraene’s kings and queens.
Gradually her pace slowed, as did her pulse. It was not fair for her to take out her whims on those charged to protect her. She would have to accustom herself to constant vigilance and the presence of watchers, observers, gossips, and minions.
She blew out a breath. (And wondered if someone watched and noted her behavior.)
I shall go mad if I worry about who sees what.
At the same time, she could not ignore it.
Ilse ran a hand over her face. No smile, not yet. But she knew at last where in all of Duenne’s palace she wished to go.
* * *
MIDMORNING. THE SUN poured down from the cloudless sky, inundating the city and its palace. Already heat shimmered from the stonework, reflected from the clouds of dust stirred by traffic in the streets, until the city appeared to float upon a golden haze.
Ilse sat tucked beneath an overhanging ledge, on an almost-cool patch of stone, with the shade shrinking about her. The city of Duenne spread out from her feet. South. East. West. Through the haze of dust and sunlight, she could make out the broad Gallenz River as it circled around the older districts. She could mark the progress of history by the various walls, the different colors of brick and stone, the shape of the buildings.
“Good morning, my queen.”
Raul dropped onto the sun-warmed bricks beside her. He wore a dull-brown tunic and trousers and was barefoot. He was smiling, a small smile that radiated contentment.
“My guards were dutiful and told you how to find me.”
He shrugged. “I would have guessed, no matter.”
That surprised her. “How?”
“Because I know the history of this palace.”
Of course.
She had asked the way, he had known from earlier years, where Tanja Duhr met her beloved soldier. Not her first lover, but the one she remained true to, from death to death, and if legend were correct, into life beyond.
It was a splendid place to meet one’s forever love. Tanja Duhr and Adele Visser. One the poet of the empire, the other a soldier and guardian of the realm. Of course Raul had guessed she would come here.
“Who am I?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Who was I? A pirate. A minor diplomat. A scholar in the service of Leos Dzavek. What matters now is that we are queen and king.”
The truth. She recognized it, even as she shuddered away. One story winding to its end, another beginning. Dzavek dead. Armand of Angersee, as well. So many others, who had cast their loyalty to one side or another. Others had survived and would grow into new lives and families. So and so. It was true. Seeds did sprout. New trees sprang upward to the sky, branching, arching, interweaving, like the walls of a temple summoned by the gods. Oh, yes, she remembered how the gods had visited her, and Miro Karasek, and Valara Baussay, in the far north of Károví. It would never do to forget the gods.
She thought next of Valara and Miro, who had fled to Morennioù, still hiding behind its veil of magic, and of Károví, which hovered on the edge of chaos without its immortal king.
“We are not done, are we?” she said.
Raul smiled, as if he guessed her thought. “No, and never shall be, not until our souls depart this world forever, to join the gods in their eternal delight.”
Duhr again. No, not Duhr, but a later poet that some said was Duhr reborn.
Ilse stood and held out her hand to her husband. “Come,” she said. “Let us begin the new day.”
TOR BOOKS BY BETH BERNOBICH
Passion Play
Queen’s Hunt
Allegiance
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allegiance is the third title in Beth Bernobich’s epic River of Souls series. The first novel, Passion Play, earned her a coveted Romantic Times Book Award for Best Epic Fantasy in 2010, and Publishers Weekly called the second book, Queen’s Hunt, “a masterful story of romance, honor, suspense, with plenty of history, geography, and mythology thrown in for good measure.” Bernobich lives with her husband and son in Connecticut, and you can find her on the Web at www.beth-bernobich.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ALLEGIANCE
Copyright © 2013 by Beth Bernobich
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Scott Grimando
Maps by Jennifer Hanover
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2219-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-4549-3 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781429945493
First Edition: October 2013
Beth Bernobich, Allegiance
