Beneath the Thirteen Moons (16 page)

I
MAGES FLASHED THROUGH
M
AHRI’S MIND. KORL
… surrounded by white petals, dripping wet after he’d saved her from the water monster… his mind melded with hers, pulling her back from the brink of madness… feeding her Power to fight the birdshark, his eyes hungry as they danced in the village circle… prisms of color glittering across his skin as he stood vulnerable before her in a pool of warm water.

If I leave now, she thought, I might never see him again. Is that truly what I want?

How dare he make her question herself! If only they hadn’t all this history between them now, these ties that seemed almost visible to her, linking them mind, body and soul. If he’d been a cowardly selfish man, she wouldn’t be having this problem. For her attraction for him now went beyond the physical, she knew it. It terrified her. And ultimately, it’s what made her decide to run.

But she’d hesitated too long, trapped in his gaze. The guards had reached her position on the stairs.

Korl knew what she’d just decided and still, she could tell, the stubborn man wouldn’t let her go. He struck quickly, sucking what little Power she had from her system so she couldn’t use it in her attempt to escape. Mahri recouped and fought back, in a silent tug-of-war, the Power flowing back and forth between them so that she couldn’t use it.

So be it. She flicked her staff, made it longer, ready to fight the guards with her skill alone.

“If any man hurts her,” snarled Korl, “I’ll have his head in exchange.”

The guards hesitated on the stairs, looking at each other in confusion, from their drawn bone swords to her staff. Mahri almost laughed at their expressions. How to catch her unharmed? Korl had just made her escape possible.

She swung her staff in an arc and they ducked, allowing her to turn and advance up another stair. She did it thrice before they caught on, that eventually she’d reach the top and they’d lose her. On the fourth swing she caught the man closest to her across the temple and he went down like a tree in a storm.

Since the stairs were only wide enough for one man abreast they stepped over their fallen comrade to advance. Mahri felled another. And another. Her arms began to ache from the blows.

“What in the blazes is going on?” shouted the tavern keeper. His hand rubbed his head, he swayed unsteadily, but managed to stay upright, watching Mahri on the stairs. She thunked another guard upside the head. “Ach, what a swing! You’ve always been a woman after me own heart.”

Then Vissa turned and sucker-punched Korl.

Mahri heard a screech from the doorway. Jaja hunkered there, his tail fanned out, silhouetted against the dark outside. Her pet looked from Korl to her then scampered up the stairs, shoulder-hopping, occasionally biting a guard’s hand if he was foolish enough to try and stop him.

She knew that although he’d fight to the death, he’d still be little help against such numbers, and opened her
mouth to tell him to run when another movement from the doorway stopped her. A native stood there, with the black band of a dock worker tied around its neck, watching the scene with a curious detachment.

Then Mahri had no time for anything below, for she’d reached the landing and kept trying to turn to flee but she wasn’t fast enough to do it before the guards could spread. She now faced five abreast and knew she was outnumbered. Her arms felt like they had weights pulling them down and her fingers ached where they gripped her staff. And the guards realized that not only did their prince no longer watch them with threatening looks, but that too many of their comrades lay strewn along the stairs from the blows of one filthy water-rat.

One of her enemies grinned, revealing a large gap between crooked front teeth, and lunged at her. Quickly she flicked her wrist and her staff shortened barely in time to deflect his sword. She half-spun, using the weight of her body to slam her bone into his side where something crunched sickeningly before he fell to his knees.

“Hold steady men,” ordered a voice, and Mahri looked up into the face of the man she’d beat to the ground at the Healer’s Tree. Admiration and anger etched his harsh features. “Don’t underestimate her—on my count, one, two, three, now.”

And the rest of them closed in on her. Hands clutched at her staff, held firm, and she had no strength left to fight so many off. The guard she’d recognized smiled while she struggled against so many hands, then lowered his voice when next he spoke.

“If you struggle, we might hurt you, so in your best interest,” he took her staff and butted it against her head.
As blackness closed around Mahri’s vision she heard him finish, “time to sleep. I owed you one, love.”

And then faintly, “Now we’re even.”

Mahri awoke half-smothered. She tried to sit up, but the thing she lay buried in the middle of wrapped around her and foiled every attempt she made to crawl out of it. She tucked her arms to her side and rolled out, fell onto a polished floor and stayed in a half-crouch as she looked around the room.

Her mouth fell open. Couches of carved wood with silk cushions, chests of sculpted bone so old it had yellowed, fur rugs combed to fluffy softness, tapestries so painstakingly woven that it would take her days to discover every detail of the artist’s skill. All of these riches lay around her with wear indicating everyday use. Who would dare even touch such masterpieces?

Mahri rubbed the bump on her head and looked over her shoulder. It had been a bed that had near smothered her, the headboard inlaid with a mosaic of pearls—a black dolphin cresting a wave—and the mattress a huge bag of something soft and light. She yanked a feather out of the loose weave and marveled.

She felt afraid to move amongst such treasures, but not so Jaja. Her pet sat perched upon a pink shell table, polished to such a gleam that she could see his little behind in the reflection, and picked out tidbits from among an array of dishes spread out before him.

His belly bulged from his gluttony.

“Where are we?”

Jaja’s chirrup exploded into a belch.

Palace?
she thought at him.

His little scaled head nodded enthusiastically. She rose, strode across the room, somehow feeling that she disgraced the very floor with her dirty bare feet, and tried the handle of a double door. Then shook it. Then pounded on the relief engraved in it; a man fighting a swordfish, with his own sword of inlaid bone.

“Let me out!” she screamed, knowing the futility of it. If they’d wanted her out the door wouldn’t be locked. “I demand to see that rotten, no-good, son-of-a-king!”

Mahri thought she detected muffled laughter but couldn’t be sure. Belatedly, she reached down and felt for her pouch. No zabba to help her See anything and no dregs of Power left after that tug-of-war with Korl.

She decided further screaming wouldn’t accomplish anything, and besides, it made her head ache even more. So when Jaja yanked at her legging and held up a half-eaten piece of fruit, she shrugged and took the offering, wondering what it was as it dissolved in her mouth with a spicy-sweet flavor. Mahri stifled a sound of delight, followed Jaja back to the pink table like one in a trance, and began to sample one delicacy after another.

I’m starving, she thought. All that fighting made me hungry. And sore, I can barely lift my hands to my mouth.

But she managed, then curled up on one of the floor furs and slept again. The next time she woke she felt much better, rested and alert. And allowed herself to remember his betrayal.

Of course, she’d never trusted Korl, she told herself. Not really. But still she’d thought him to be honorable. A prince, after all, should be a man of honor. Yet, she’d kidnapped him—the Royal’s couldn’t allow such
impunity to go unpunished, whatever the reason—and had allowed herself to get caught. He didn’t have much choice but to arrest her.

Mahri shook her head. Don’t make excuses for him, she scolded herself. A part of you had believed that he could be as attracted to you as you were to him. Not just the body but also the soul. That his mind had revealed the truth when she’d glimpsed that he loved her.

She fought an empty feeling, the sense that her world had again crumbled around her, and began to pace the room. She’d felt this way once before, when Brez and her son had died. Her lifemate had betrayed her by his leaving, for he’d sworn he never would, and thus proven to her that no man’s word could be trusted.

Mahri shook her head and winced from the pain of it. Brez had no control over his death—she had. If it’d been up to him, perhaps he would’ve managed to bring a Healer to the village. She’d failed him, not the other way around.

Jaja hopped to her shoulder and stroked a webbed hand across her cheek, crooning tiny syllables of sound at her.

“See what that man’s done to me?” she murmured to her pet. “All the agonies I’ve buried now rise to haunt me.” She couldn’t let grief overwhelm her. With a mental shrug Mahri focused on her one weapon: anger.

So, he half-convinced me that he did love me, using his bravery and good looks to sway my mind. How many other women had he used that irresistible charm on? Did he laugh at my doe-eyed looks at his incredible physical beauty? Did he grin with triumph when I wasn’t looking whenever I melted at his touch? Oh, how I hate him!

Mahri cursed and raved until she remembered her saving grace. She’d not wholly given him her heart. Her mind, yes, but only until Jaja had created that barrier around it, and her Power with the Bond, but only because she had to in order to save the village. The important thing, the one that truly mattered, she’d not given him.

Why then did she still feel like a fool?

And soon to be a dead fool.

She stopped pacing and Jaja hopped down from her shoulder to pick at the food. So this is prison, she mused, looking around again at her elegant surroundings. And the feast on the pink table, is that my last meal? Before they… what? Hang me? How far would Korl’s betrayal go? Did he tell them she’s a Wilding? By-the-moons, what did they really do to a captured Wilding? It’d be worse than a hanging, she felt sure.

Mahri fought the weakness of panic as it rose in her chest.

She cursed him again, this time leaning out the only window while she screamed her rage. Then hastily withdrew inside when she looked down. Not particularly afraid of heights, the abyss that lay below her was another matter. How high up in the tree were they? How would she ever escape?

With unthinking fear and rage she began to tie together tapestries, bedding, rugs—only cringing a little as she ruined some of the beautiful fabric with the making of her rope. Mahri knew it wouldn’t be long enough but the window was her one avenue of escape. Perhaps she’d hit a branch… or something.

A knock on the door and she spun, for the moment saved from what she knew to be folly.

Did one knock on the door of a prisoner?

Jaja quit ripping apart the cushions, dismayed at the interruption of this new game, and chirruped at the door. An impossibly old man entered, long hair and beard that merged into a mass of white, a beaked nose that hovered beneath intelligent faded-green eyes that sparkled with cunning and shot sparks of green Power. Behind him hid the most graceful delicate women Mahri had ever seen, decked in cloth that billowed and swayed with every nervous movement they made.

Mahri became aware of her bare feet and tangled hair. She dropped the cloth in her hands and almost smoothed it before she caught herself, lifted her chin, and planted hands on hips. A Master Seer, she thought. Korl overestimated her abilities. Or perhaps he just wanted to humble her.

He betrayed you. Who cares what he thinks?

The old man assessed the damage she’d done to the room, settled an almost amused gaze on her flushed face. The women tittered and Mahri caught whispers of “water-rat” and “savage.”

She scowled.

“I’m tempted,” said the old man, “to give you zabba, and then see what you’d accomplish.” He sighed and shook his head regretfully. “A Wilding. Hmm. Well, we haven’t the time. His Highness is most impatient.”

Mahri swallowed. To see her hang? If she hadn’t been so enraged she would’ve drowned in this grief Korl made her feel. Her face tightened with anger and the old man didn’t miss it.

“My name’s Master R’in. You can cooperate on your own,” he paused and Mahri could feel the promise of his threat. “Or I’ll control you completely.”

She felt his Touch in the muscles of her arms just as her hand flew up and slapped her face a stinging blow.

“Do we have an understanding?”

Mahri nodded. She understood completely; he didn’t mess around. But what did he want of her?

Master R’in hobbled across the room and pressed a panel. A door sprang open and Mahri silently cursed that she hadn’t discovered it herself. But even if she’d found it earlier it only opened on another small room, this one without windows.

The three women scurried past her and into the room, pulled some levers and the sound of running water made Mahri follow them. She gasped in surprise. A miniature waterfall poured into a large basin of mosaic shell, steam rising from it upon contact. The women looked at her bemused expression and tittered.