The Lotus Ascension (34 page)

“Once I was convinced that my
brother never intended to marry Sillara, my thoughts turned to her with an
insurmountable passion. You must know that she is peerless, that no man can
claim her. She must deign to take up her suitor’s hand and place him beside
her. So it is with Sillara. She has accepted me, and with your permission, Lord
and Lady Itenu, I would like to make her my wife in truth.” Konas thought it
best to let Kamen go on thinking his daughter was still a virgin, because if
Kamen accepted him, then when next they met, she would not be anyway.

Kamen looked at Ajalira, and she
nodded. “If she accepts you, and your brother truly does not mean to honor his
vow,” Kamen said, “then the gods give you joy of her. You’ve known her all your
life; you’ve educated her and been with her daily. Who knows her better?”

Soren did. Konas knew that in his
heart, but he said nothing. Kamen, though he was Sunjaa, had never considered
Sillara and Soren as a match. Not only was Kamen married to an Ausir himself,
but also Sillara had been raised in the Ausir fashion to meet her destiny as
the Ausir Queen. The thought of a traditional Sunjaa brother-sister marriage
had simply never crossed his mind.

Konas rushed on with his vow before
Kamen could change his mind. “I promise to love her and keep her, honor and
protect her, and
be
faithful to her as long as I
live.”

“I accept your promise.”

Konas passed Kamen the cup, and he
drank. He took the cup back and raised it to his lips, but Kamen fell back
choking.

“What’s the matter, my love?”
Ajalira took Kamen by the arm.

Konas looked in the cup.
Beer.
Nothing more.
Perhaps the
liquid had gone down the wrong passage.

But Kamen continued to sputter and
gasp. Ajalira helped Kamen to lie back on a low divan. She then jumped to her
feet and snatched the cup out of Konas’s hands. She put her nose to the lip and
inhaled.

Ajalira’s eyes filled with tears.
“Muscarine!”
She dashed the cup aside and ran back to her
husband, wringing his hands and stroking his dreadlocks back off his brow.
“Oh, my love, my love.”

“Poison?”
Konas asked himself,
staring at the broken cup on the carpet, watching the sand drink the dark
liquid.
“Who?”

No one heard his questions. The
slaves wailed, and Ajalira sobbed. Konas knew who: Nathen. And Kamen had not
been his target, or, rather, he did not mind killing everyone in the tent that
night as long as Konas did not come out alive.

In a flash, Konas understood
everything. The little parcel Merieke had given Nathen had been the poison. He
had taken it to poison someone, but he did not know Konas was married to
Sillara until they arrived at the camp. Who then was the muscarine originally
intended for? Konas ordered the facts in his mind. Nathen wanted Sillara and
would do anything to get her. As far as Nathen knew, Konas was not a bar to him
getting what he wanted. What was the bar?
Tivanel.
Sillara was promised to Tivanel. Nathen must have learned that Tivanel loved
Ajalira once. Did he know that Tivanel still wanted her? If that were the case,
then all Nathen had to do was make Ajalira available. How? Kill Kamen. But once
Konas announced his marriage to Sillara, Nathen must have switched targets. If
the muscarine killed Ajalira and Kamen, too, then there would be two fewer
people to object to Nathen marrying Sillara.

It was the perfect crime for
Nathen, for who would ever suspect him? Kamen had many political enemies. Any
one of them could have bought Kamen’s slaves to poison him while out of the
city. Konas picked up the decanter still mostly full of beer. It was all
poisoned.

Violent coughing wracked Kamen’s
body, causing Ajalira to cry out. With tears streaming down her golden face,
she turned to Konas. “Fetch in Lord Kesandrahn and any others fit to witness my
husband’s end.”

Konas’s mind rebelled at the
request, and he stood frozen. Why would Ajalira want anyone to see Kamen choke
to death? Poison was a horrible, ignominious way to die.

“Go!” Ajalira cried.

Konas fled the tent and called for
help.
“Help!
Lord Itenu is poisoned!”

Darien and Orien came running, and
the broad-shouldered Admiral barreled his way through Konas, knocking the Ausir
from his feet. Orien stopped only long enough to help Konas up.

“What’s happened?” the captain
asked.

“Poison.”
Konas peered with keen
eyes through the dark night. Nathen was nowhere to be seen.

The tent was filled with wailing.
Darien knelt by his old friend, hugging on his shoulders and crying for hurts
that could not be healed.

“Kamen is
poisoned
,”
Ajalira said through her brave tears.
“
Perhaps if Saerileth were still alive, she might have been able to
do something.”

That was bitter to Konas, for
doubtless Saerileth had taught Merieke how to concoct poisons. The very craft
that could have saved Kamen now killed him.

“Soren, Sillara.” Kamen choked on
the names. “Wish I could … say goodbye.”

Ajalira pressed her forehead
against Kamen’s, her fair skin against his black. “I love you more than my own
life.”

And out of that love they had
created a perfect being. What would Sillara say, what would she do, when she
learned of her father’s death? She would weep, and Konas would give her his
shoulder to cry on. He would hold her and comfort her, and she would love him
all the more for his compassion.

Ajalira looked up from where she
had been kissing Kamen’s lips. “You must be our mountain, Lord Seranimesti.”

The mountain of the Tamari, that
place where the old—when the Burning came upon them—went to meet death in
battle, either against a foe or against the cruel ice of the north. Konas
understood at once. Ajalira would not let Kamen die without her, and she was
not going to sit by and let the muscarine unman him as it worked its hours-long
death through his body.

Konas stepped forward and drew his
sword.

Darien leaped to his feet. “Why do
you draw steel in this tent, Ausir?”

“To honor Lord Itenu and
his wife.
I will be their mountain.”

Darien glanced at Ajalira in
confusion.

“Peace, old friend.” Ajalira laid
her hand on his thick forearm. “It is our way, the way we always intended to go
together.”

Not you without me,
nor
I without you.

Kamen mastered his agony, rose to
his feet with Ajalira’s help, and stood bravely before his friends. No one else
dared touch him. They were performing a holy act, and even though no one was
Tamari, everyone understood on some instinctual level.

“No, Kamen.” Darien’s voice was a
mere whisper, his spirit broken within his strong frame.

Kamen grasped Darien by the
forearms and looked into his eyes. “I learned something of love from you and
Saerileth, and you helped me find my own bliss. I go to live with Ajalira
beyond the confines of this world. Think often of me.” He embraced Darien, and
the old Admiral wept. “Farewell.”

Konas looked from Kamen’s face to
Ajalira’s, for he did not know whom to kill first. But he did not have to ask.
Ajalira understood his hesitation.

“I should be first, for my lord’s
life is already over,” she said, her eyes shining with proud tears. “As I am
Tamari, be my mountain, noble Seranimesti.”

Konas nodded and stepped forward.

Ajalira turned and took both of
Kamen's hands in hers, holding them to her breast. “Not you without me.”

“Nor I without you,” Kamen said,
finishing their old vow.

Ajalira kissed her husband one
final time and then proudly faced Konas. With a quick and sudden thrust that surprised
Ajalira, he stabbed her through the heart.

Kamen grabbed her and with
heartbroken cries laid her out on the carpet.
“Oh, my life.
My love.”
A spasm rocked his withering frame. He bent
over her and kissed her lips. Closing her eyes, he struggled to his feet and
bared his naked chest to the blade.

“Take care of my children.”

Tears blinded Konas at that moment
to think that he was orphaning Sillara. But what could be done? Nathen’s
treachery had done its work. Konas could do nothing but give them an honorable
death. “Farewell.” He ran Kamen through on the sharp point of his blade,
spilling that noble man’s blood upon his wife’s body.

Darien caught Kamen and laid him
out beside Ajalira. Orien stood amazed, but Konas fell to his knees and wept at
the beauty of their deaths.

Nathen burst into the tent, then,
and when he saw the grisly scene, he moaned and tore his hair. “Cruel! That
Kamen's political enemies would strike at him in a moment of
vulnerability
!
To kill him
outside the city when he was
concerned only for his daughter's well-being.
This must be revenged.
”
He even managed to summon up tears.

Konas still held the bloody blade,
and for a moment he considered rising and slaying the murderer where he stood.
But for Sillara’s sake, he mastered himself, for he was without allies. Konas
was alone with three Kesandrahn, and he could not know how Darien and Orien
would react to what they would see only as a rash murder. Would they believe
Konas once Nathen was dead? And if Konas first accused Nathen, would they even
believe him then? And what if Nathen fled and escaped?

No, Konas swallowed his anger and
plotted his revenge. He would wait until he returned to Tambril’s City and tell
the Itenu children how Nathen had murdered their parents.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

Sillara sat up
in her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. The westering sun filled her
room with orange and red light. She buried her face in her knees, trying not to
cry.

Konas and
Nathen had left well before noon, and Nathen had promised her rescue from her
plight. She laughed bitterly, and the laughter became the tears she had tried
to avoid. Nathen could not save her from her plight, for she did not care about
leaving Tambril's City or the Desertmasters. No, she cared only about being
with Soren.

Soren, who was
at that moment in the bedroom across the
hall.

With Merieke.

Sillara bit her
lip to keep her sobs quiet. She was glad that Soren was near her, but to know
that he was so near and yet with Merieke—it twisted her insides in a nauseating
pain. The Desertmasters had, of course, been delighted to have Soren live in
the same house they had provided for her. She still marveled that the house had
been built with the advent of Abrexa's first priests here. For centuries this
house had stood here, known as the Queen's house, and it had awaited her.

But if Abrexa's
visions were so clear that these distant people had long known of her coming,
how could they think that Soren was to be the King? He was her brother only,
not her husband, too.

Low laughter
reached Sillara's ears, and she lay down on her side, gripping her pillow with
both hands and burying her face in it.

But her hearing
was too keen. She could not block out the sounds. She could hear Merieke's low,
seductive voice.

“Come, Soren,
it is the first time since you took me with Nathen as witness that we will get
to be alone. Don't get me wrong, love! I adore having you and Nathen both at
once, but he likes to have a bit too much of you sometimes. I'm glad that I can
have you to myself for a while.”

Sillara bit
into the pillow, muffling the scream that wanted to come out. She had never
been jealous of Soren's lovers in the past, but things had been different after
Merieke had opened her eyes to sex. From that moment, Sillara realized, she had
disliked the idea of any other woman giving that pleasure to Soren.

If only I
had realized that
I
wanted to be the one to
pleasure him.

The sobs that
wracked her frame shifted, taking up the nausea that coiled low in her belly,
and Sillara sat up quickly, darting to the water-basin by her bed. There she
vomited up the little she had been able to eat, for even at their table,
Merieke had run her hands up Soren's thigh and winked at Sillara.

Gentle,
calloused hands pulled Sillara's hair back from her face, and she looked up to
see Soren's anguished eyes looking down at her. Beyond, in the doorway to
Soren's bedchamber, Sillara could make out Merieke, naked and lovely, and the
nausea swept over Sillara again.

“Sister, what's
wrong?” Soren wiped her mouth with a cloth from the table.

Tears filled
Sillara's eyes, and she glanced at Merieke.

“Merieke, take
this basin downstairs.” Soren gave the vomit-filled bowl to Merieke. “And bring
up some water for my sister.”