Linsha felt a cold feeling of dread and worry squirm in her stomach. Gods above, tonight was the last night she would be free to stay away from Lanther. They had to escape. Somehow, they had to get away from the guards, climb down to Sirenfal’s cave, and get the dragon out of there. By Kiri-Jolith, she missed Varia. She hadn’t realized until this separation how much she had come to depend on the owl for her courage, her intelligence, and her willingness to spy. She could really use the owl this night.

Instead of an owl, she had a feisty courtesan and stubborn old eunuch. They were doing their best; it just took a little getting used to. “I will feign illness and try to convince them to allow you to stay with me, so you won’t have to sneak out of the servants’ quarters,” she said. “Maybe they’ll find Afec, too.”

Callista nodded and went to fetch the basin of water for Linsha’s washing while she went outside for her run. As Linsha feared, two Tarmak guards fell in behind her, and this time they followed her around the path of the garden for her entire run. They stayed with her through the day, from the morning meal through the exercise schedules and her swim in the lake, to her evening meal and the quiet time before the women retired to bed. Linsha refused to eat her dinner and dragged herself to her quarters where she planned to have Callista inform the Empress that she was ill and would someone please summon Afec.

Instead she was met at her cubicle door by a Keena priest in a sleeveless black robe. Callista stood behind him looking pale and sick with fear.

“Drathkin’kela,” the priest addressed her with a bow. “If you will accompany me, the priestesses are waiting for you.”

“Why?” Linsha cried. Her most basic instincts wanted to back up and make a break for the wall, but the two armed guards stood directly behind, blocking her path.

“If you will come with me,” the Keena said, and he took her arm and pulled her toward the hall.

Linsha cast one agonized look back at Callista and was forced to follow.

There would be no escape that night.

Marrying the Enemy

12

Linsha couldn’t decide whether to be intensely irritated or very relieved when the Keena took her to another room in the palace and left her in the care of four priestesses. The women, dressed in black robes, wore their hair cut very short and hid their fair skin with a dark red cosmetic powder. Talking among themselves, they led Linsha to another room on a subterranean level where a deep pool of water formed a small underground grotto. To the music of drums and cymbals, the priestesses stripped Linsha, tossed her clothes away, and made her soak in the pool. They scrubbed her several times with a granular soap until her skin burned and then washed her hair with scented cleansers. When she was thoroughly clean, she was asked to step out, and in front of a roaring fire the priestesses rubbed her skin with oils and flailed her with branches from a tree that grew on the island.

It was the branches that finally triggered a vague memory in Linsha’s mind of something Afec had said during one of her momentary lapses of attention. Ritual purification. The chosen of a high-ranking Tarmak warrior had to be purified and prepared the night before the marriage ceremony. She had not listened to most of his description of the rites, for she had hoped to be gone by that night, but the Tarmaks-or Lanther-had apparently not trusted her and put a guard on her to insure she stay.

As soon as the flailing was completed, the priestesses braided her shaggy curls as best they could, then they draped her in a clean blue cloth and the head priestess blessed her in Tarmakian in the name of Berkrath, a goddess Linsha did not recognize. Finally she was given a glass of wine and the traditional meal of cooked meat for energy, bread for fidelity, and eggs for fertility. As soon as she was finished, the priestesses led her to a small room and told her to sleep. She would need her strength the next day.

Linsha vowed she would not sleep-she had to find some way to get out. But the priestesses must have put something in her food, for the next thing she realized hours had passed and the women were waking her for the next step of her preparation for marriage. A sick certainty chilled her to the bone. She would have to go through with this. There would be no escape from the island in time. She would have to marry Lanther and possibly submit to him if she wanted to live through the next night and keep the eggs safe.

The dressing and the morning preparations took a mind-numbing eternity. Linsha, who was not used to primping or taking more than five minutes to put on a dress, was cleaned again and rubbed with more scented lotions. Priestesses painted a geometric design of blue dots on her face-probably in lieu of cosmetics she guessed. Her hair was decorated with beads and white feathers. Her nails were cleaned and stained with a golden brown powder that made them gleam like polished wood. Even her dragon scales were polished and set reverently against her scrubbed skin. Then the Empress brought the green dress and the dragon robe, and Linsha was carefully dressed.

The entire operation reminded Linsha of the one doll her parents had given her before they accepted the fact that she was determined to join the Knighthood. She had played with the doll for one day, dressing it and playing with the wool hair until she had it just to her liking, then she propped it in the corner and never played with it again. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the Tarmak women propped her in the corner and left her there.

Unfortunately they didn’t. To the beating of drums and clanging of cymbals, they escorted her upstairs and took her outside into the hot sun where they processed out of the palace and into the large field where the warriors usually exercised and trained. Once again, the court was assembled in their finery. The black-garbed Keena priests and priestesses led her through the crowd to a large awning in front of the Emperor and his empress. The two royal Tarmaks inspected her and gave their approval.

Lanther arrived on horseback in much the same manner, escorted by shouting warriors, throbbing drums, and slaves carrying pots of burning incense. He looked particularly imposing in the Akkad’s gold mask and the dragonscale cuirass that reflected the sunlight like a polished brass mirror. His blue eyes brilliant behind his mask, he bowed to the imperial couple and then to Linsha. She was taken to Lanther’s side, and before the entire assemblage, the high priest took a silk cord and bound Linsha’s wrist to the Akkad-Dar’s. In a droning, high pitched voice, he intoned several long-winded prayers in Tarmakian.

Linsha listened and watched but said nothing. She was sweating profusely in the heavy robes, and her head ached. Beyond that she felt numb. The anger and fear that bubbled below the surface had disappeared into dark cracks, and everything else in her head erected a massive wall and hid behind it. She had nothing to do or say for a while, nothing that required a response, so she simply stared at a place far beyond Lanther’s left shoulder and wished in a silent prayer that Crucible would come winging over the wall.

A loud cheer startled her, and suddenly Lanther took her roughly in his free arm and kissed her fiercely. “Soon, my dear wife,” he hissed in her ear.

Linsha twisted out of his grasp and pulled her wrist out of the loose cord. Her face darkened with anger. “I fulfilled my part of the bargain,” she snapped in Common. “You will fulfill yours.”

To her annoyance, he laughed and held up a gold chain for her to see. On the chain hung a key about the length of her first finger. “This is my gift to you.”