A Magic King (36 page)

Suddenly Jane stood up, clutching Daken's arm. "Why not take the book? Use it as a negotiating weapon. Offer it to them in return for a stable border. Economic realities, trade arrangements and the like will take care of the rest. In three generations, you guys may be best pals."

"Never!" Daken grabbed her arms, shaking her slightly in his effort to make her understand. "There will never be friendship with the Tarveen. Don't you understand? Not every merging of the Old Ones went well. Some of them became evil horrors, festering animals that must be destroyed."

"They are people—"

"No, they aren't. They don't even walk upright. They scramble like spiders and poison drips from their claws." He pushed her away, angrily strapping on his bastard sword. "Don't you have knowledge of this?" he demanded over her shoulder. "You are the Keeper. You should know this."

He finished dressing, cinching his weapons in place with an angry tug. Then he took a deep breath to calm himself, but it was already unnecessary. He felt better with his weapons on. He always did. As the younger son, his place in the world was often confused and awkward. A powerless prince, he had the royalty to uphold, yet no place in its structure. Weapon play was the one place he felt in complete control. On the practice field or in battle, a man made his own destiny regardless of birth order or pedigree.

He glanced back at the too-silent Jane. She sat on the bed, her face composed, her gaze abstract, as though she were in a trance. He recognized the look. Her thoughts were turned inward as she drew on the knowledge of the Keeper.

He pulled a chair opposite her and settled into it, waiting for her. Now she would understand, he thought with satisfaction. She looked at the Tarveen now, learning what the Keeper's Knowledge had to say about the monsters. When she emerged from her thoughts, she would agree with him.

With their silly argument resolved in his mind, he let his thoughts wander. Or rather he let his gaze wander. With her tunic draped loosely over her nakedness, Daken had the time to admire her body in the rosy dawn light. She was beautiful. As always when he looked at her, he felt his groin tighten with hunger while his arms ached to pull her close. Even that first morning in the meadow, he'd felt a fierce need to protect such beauty. Later, after his first taste of her passion and her innocence, the need had mixed with other hungers—lust, possessiveness, admiration—and all of it grew into a blazing inferno within his blood.

He let his gaze roam over her body, remembering the sweet torment of last night. Her legs were his favorite part. They were long and sleek, like the pantar's, and had such strength in them when she wrapped herself around him. He knew men who would pay much for such gripping stamina in their partners.

But that was not all he adored. Her entire body was one compact center of energy and passion. From the rosy fullness of her lips to the tight buds of her breasts—

Jane cried out, a small exclamation of alarm that abruptly ripped him from his pleasant fantasies. He watched her pale face, her eyes huge with surprise and horror. Remorse hit him. He should not have asked her, a woman, to comprehend the Tarveen abomination.

He went to her, gathering her into his arms, holding her trembling hands as he would a newborn babe. He couldn't stop the knowledge. As Keeper and Council Member, it was information she needed. Still, it was hard for him to wait beside her while her innocence shattered.

He waited an eternity, and still she didn't move.

And then, when he began to fear for her sanity, she took a deep shuddering breath and came out of her trance. He watched her blink the tears from her eyes as she focused once again on her surroundings. He drew her tighter into his arms, and she went willingly to him. He kissed her forehead, whispering his remorse into her ears.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to see that." But even as he said the words, he wondered what she'd learned. Had she seen the raids on his lands? The brutality and horror of a man cut to shreds? Or did she know more? Had she gone into their caves and witnessed their strange rituals? He had tried to get more information on his enemy, but the one spy he'd sent never came back.

"Oh, Daken." He heard the apology in her voice, felt it in the way she gripped his tunic and tried to burrow deeper into his embrace. "It's so horrible."

"I know," he said, his words another vow in his heart. "But rest assured I will take care of it. I will eradicate this scourge from our world."

She shook her head. "No. You don't understand. Dr. Beavesly only went there once, maybe twice. The memories are so vague, so unlike his usual..." Her voice trailed off as he tried to understand her strange words.

"Who is Dr. Beavesly?"

She shook her head, continuing as if she hadn't heard him. "The Tarveen live in an old automobile factory. He could wander about at will. But even so, he couldn't stomach it more than once."

She pushed away from him, twisting her hands together as she struggled to put her horror into words. "They're cannibals, Daken. They eat people. They like the taste of..."

He nodded, his thoughts grim. "I have long suspected as much."

She turned her stricken gaze on him. "You knew?"

"Some of the bodies we found were not completely whole. They..."

"No. Do you know about the herd?"

He felt his insides tense, as though preparing for battle. His stomach knotted and the bile rose in his throat, but his senses were keen and his thoughts razor sharp. "What herd?"

"The Tarveen don't kill everyone. They scavenge. And sometimes they scavenge people."

Daken drew a slow breath and kept his voice low and even. "What happened to the people?"

"Have your people been disappearing for years? Perhaps a child who strayed too far? A couple at a secret rendezvous?"

A catalog of names and faces rolled through Daken's mind. People from his earliest childhood on, friends who disappeared without a trace. The children were thought to have been killed by wild animals. The adults were believed to have run away, despite what their families said.

The churning within his gut intensified, and he stood up, knowing action was the only way to relieve this pain. Action and violence.

"What happened to the people, Jane?"

She followed him, placing her hand on his arm as both reassurance and restraint. He shook it off, wanting neither.

'Tell me!" he demanded.

She swallowed. "The Tarveen keep a herd of humans. To eat. They raid your people to replenish their stock."

Chapter 14

"Where are they?" His voice was hoarse with iron self-control. If he allowed himself to feel the full horror of her words, there would be nothing left alive in a five mile area. He'd kill everything in sight before the anger receded enough for him to think.

"They are kept in an off-shoot of the main factory floor. In sort of a storeroom. They have food and shelter. Then when a Tarvite gets hungry, he..." She swallowed her horror. "He goes into the storeroom."

"And eats someone," Daken finished for her.

Jane nodded. "Your grandfather was their healer."

"My grandfather is still alive?" He was becoming numb. He barely felt the pain in his fists where he gripped the hilt of his grandfather's sword.

"No. When Dr. Beavesly saw him—long before you were born—the man was old and ill. But what about your parents? Your brother? Did you ever find their bodies?'

Daken shook his head, remembering the empty caskets they'd buried. It was inconceivable that his family was still alive as food stock. He sheathed the sword he didn't remember drawing, knowing now what he had to do.

"Get dressed," he ordered.

She hovered in front of him. "What are you going to do?"

"Get dressed," he repeated again. "We will go to the Council Meeting."

He saw her jaw go slack for a moment. Clearly she'd forgotten the closed door debate over whether or not to give him the army he needed.

"With this new information," he spoke with icy precision, each word a mental sword thrust into a Tarvite gut, "the Council will have to give me weapons and an army." He smiled down at her, his insides softening just a touch. "Thank you, Oracle. Now, I will be victorious."

"No!" She stood up. Her leggings were slightly askew, but neither of them had time to bother with it.

He looked at her startled face, and her fears about the guns came back to him. He smiled, a grim pull to his cheeks, but it was a smile nonetheless. By the Father, love had made him weak.

"It is all right, Oracle. You need not give me the guns. I feared even if the Council gave me an army, it would not be many and certainly not very skilled. But with this new knowledge..." His body still clenched with hatred as he fought to again understand the horrors his family and his people endured. Were even now enduring, if they still lived. "With this new urgency, the Council will have to give me the money to hire a mercenary group."

"Mercenaries?" Her voice was an almost inaudible whisper.

"The Bloodmen. I spent a year with them training. Although not quite as deadly as your guns, they are quick and efficient. The Tarveen will be obliterated." That thought alone brought a grim relief to the coiling hatred that snaked within him, longing for a victim. "Ginsen will use his crystal to speak with their leader. If we leave tomorrow, they will be in Chigan as we arrive. We will fight the next day."

"No..." she repeated, her voice still unsteady.

He shifted his focus off of his murderous, thoughts to the pale, shaking woman before him. He reached out a hand, caressing her cheek. "Do not worry, sweeting. The Bloodmen know their business, as do I. I will not be harmed."

He smiled to reassure her, but his expression faded as he watched her absorb his words. He expected her to be relieved, sweetly loving as she worried for her man, yet striving to hide it for his sake. He knew her fears were as firmly held as her loves, and she would be passionate in both. Despite the urgency of his mission, his groin stiffened in anticipation.

But the Jane before him was not the woman he expected. Instead of her desperate love, he faced a blazing fury practically seething from her every pore.

She slapped away his caress and planted herself in front of him. "You won't be harmed because you're not going to get your army."

"What?" Her reaction was so different from what he expected, her words sounded like gibberish to him.

She ran a hand through her hair, pulling at her locks with desperation. "Damn it, Daken. This wasn't how I meant to tell you."

"Tell me what?" His anger, hardly banked, surged within him again.

She took a deep breath. "I won't support an army."

"What?" he roared.

"I don't believe in violence, Daken, and certainly not in genocide, no matter how loathsome the Tarveen are. There's got to be another way."

Daken found it hard to control his temper. By the time his words exploded out of him, he was bellowing at her. "Kyree was my only other supporter. With him dead, I need you more than ever."

"I won't do it. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? That's it? You condemn my family, my people to a slow extinction as cattle, and you're sorry? By the Father, woman, I could kill you myself."

He towered over her in his rage, but she didn't retreat. If anything, she matched him in fury. "I know about your family and people," she screamed back. "But if you're going to start counting bodies, how about you look at my count. You've lost your family. Maybe your lands. But I've lost my world, my people, everything. Gone. Poof." She gestured wildly with her hands. "All I ever wanted, ever knew, ever dreamed, it's all gone. Billions of people."

"They're dead, Jane. My people are alive."

"That's right," she shot back. "They're dead. And why? Because men like you started killing. Maybe some of it was necessary, but mostly they were just too arrogant, too stupid, or too lazy to find another way. In the end, my world was obliterated."

"That has nothing to do with me—"

"It has everything to do with you. I won't let you wage a genocidal war."

"But my people, maybe my family—"