In Legend Born (65 page)

Without warning, he burst into motion, flinging a stool across the room, and came after her. "Now I know why your husband beat you!" he roared. His big hands seized her throat, his pale face suddenly red with murderous rage. "
Now I know what you can drive a man to do, you lying, whoring, traitorous BITCH!
"

He throttled her, shaking her roughly, and she flopped around like a rag doll, scrabbling frantically at his hands, struggling for air as her vision darkened and her lungs burned, barely able to hear his bellows of rage above the pounding of her own desperate heart. She saw flashes of the faces of the other two men, heard fragments of their shouts. They didn't want him to kill her, not yet. They wanted to know what she knew, what secrets she had shared with whom. They wanted her to talk.

Knowing Valdani methods of persuasion—
Malthenar, Morven, Garabar
—Elelar suddenly gave herself over to Borell's hatred. This would be a quicker and kinder death than the one they had planned for her. Let him choke her, let him break her neck. It would be over in a moment. She only hoped someone would burn her body. The Valdani custom of putting their dead in the ground sickened her. How could a spirit reach the Otherworld when it was covered by dirt and worms? How could it be purified while rotting in a hole in the ground?

She was so close to unconsciousness that she didn't realize Borell had let her go until she became aware of the cold, hard wood of the floor beneath her cheek. Cheated of her chance to die quickly, she hauled air into her aching lungs and rubbed her watering eyes. If she had to face Borell again now, she would face him as a
torena
, as a Hasnari, as she had promised herself a thousand times she would face this moment when it finally came. She heard him shouting at Koroll and at the other man to get out,
get out
and leave the two of them alone.

The door slammed, and then she felt Borell's hands on her. She briefly thought he had sent the two men away so he could kill her, after all—but them she felt him tugging at her tunic, brutally ripping off her pantaloons, and she knew why he had wanted to be alone with her one last time. She had lain with him so many times, but now she was flooded with even more disgust than she'd felt the time Srijan had tried to bed her. Borell had arrested her and tried to strangle her, and he thought he could have her one last time? He surely intended to have her executed, but he wanted her to pleasure him first? He knew that she had never loved him, had only slept with him to serve Sileria—and now he thought she would still give her body to him?

She fought him. She sank her teeth into the lips that sought hers, relishing the taste of this fat Valdan's blood. She clawed and scratched at the hands that ripped away her clothes and moved roughly, insultingly over her flesh. She fought for her life, fought to kill him rather than let him abase her this way.

An enormous hand slapped her, making her head snap to the side. Her vision swam. Then a big-boned, heavily-muscled forearm pressed down on her throat and shoulders, pinning her to the floor, restricting her air supply. She fought the weight of Borell's heavy, dense body as it pressed her into the unyielding wood. She struggled to breathe, trying to defeat him with the sheer force of her hatred.

"
No!
" she screamed furiously, feeling him probing between her legs. She tried to twist away, tried to evade the plunging, painful invasion, the humiliating violation, the grotesque profanity of his body forcing its way into hers.

"
Nooo!
" she screamed again as Borell heaved frantically on top of her, groaning, panting, his eyes rolling as he gritted his teeth and grunted again and again.

"No!" Elelar raged as she gasped for air.

She felt the hot torrent of his release, the sickening sensation of his seed flooding her womb, and the ecstatic shudders of his body as his hips jerked convulsively. 

Elelar wanted to kill him, and she would look for an opportunity to do so every single minute between now and the moment she died. 

He lay panting on top of her, his lungs heaving, his flesh damp, his muscles limp.

She wanted to geld him—and that, at least, she could do.

"It was no different from all the other times," she said, staring at the ceiling, blinking back tears as her body throbbed with pain. "I wanted to vomit every time you ever touched me. My skin crawled every time you put your hands on me."

Borell stiffened, his spine going rigid. He tried to control his breathing.

"You're so proud of that pathetic thing between your legs." Her voice would have chilled even Kiloran. "You don't know how the Palace servants laugh about it. Such a little weapon on such a large man."

"Stop." She felt his hand in her hair, pulling, trying to force her to look at him. "Stop, Elelar."

"Do you really think I ever felt a single moment's pleasure with it flopping around inside me?"

"Enough, woman," he snapped. "You've had your say."

"Not that it was ever in me for long. I've seen fish that last longer than you."

"I will stop your mouth!" he warned, hauling back his hand.

"Will you hit me again?" she asked venomously. "Does hitting a woman make a man of a Valdan? Is that how it works?"

He stared at her with horror-clouded eyes, his jaw slack, his expression stupid.

"You never even guessed how many other men I bedded, did you, Borell?" she taunted him. "Did you really think a woman would be satisfied with
you?
"

"Your insults don't change wh—"

"Ambassador Shir
a
j knew how to please a woman.
He
was not some fumbling, thick-waisted oaf."

"Shiraj?" Now Borell looked as if
he
wanted to vomit.

"Who do you think told him about the Imperial Council's plans to attack the Kintish Kingdoms? Who do you think—"

"
You
told him?" Borell bleated.

"How do you think the Kints knew the Empire's plans?" she said. "Why do you think the Kintish armies were expecting—"

"Three Into One!
You?
"

"Everything I ever learned from you, I told to your enemies," Elelar said stonily.

A sickly pallor was fast replacing the sexual flush on Borell's skin. He dragged one arm across his shiny forehead. His hand was shaking. "Three have mercy..." His voice was thick and slow. "Do you have any idea how many deaths you've caused, woman? Three thousand men died in the first battle against Kinto."

"How many deaths
I've
caused?" She gathered her torn clothes around her torso and sat up, glaring at him, letting him see just how much she hated him. "The Imperial Council sent tens of thousands of men to fight the Kintish Kingdoms, intending to carve a path straight to the Palace of Heaven, killing everyone who got in their way. You boasted to me that the Empire would destroy the Kintish union at last. You
gloated
about how the Valdani would seize the Throne of Heaven and vanquish a three thousand year old dynasty. And you can accuse
me
of causing deaths?"

She pulled her pantaloons up over her hips, wincing with pain, filled with revulsion by the sticky fluid between her thighs. "You've starved my people, sanctioned torture to get information, seized land and crops and livestock at your whim, and raped my country's mines. You sign papers authorizing the importation of captured women for your brothels and complain about
supply problems
when they die within a year or two. You have never once prosecuted a Valdan for rape, murder, assault, or theft when the crime was committed against a Silerian."

Her hands shook as she tried to find a way to keep her torn tunic fastened. She wanted to weep with humiliation, pain, and fear. But she would not let a Valdan see her do that, so she kept her expression hard and hate-filled as she looked again at Borell.

"And you thought I could
love
you?" Now that her life was over, she wanted him to know. She wanted him to feel his disgrace until his dying day. "I betrayed you with other men. I betrayed your secrets to Kints, to Moorlanders, and to Silerian rebels. I read your dispatches after you slept. I spied on your private meetings. I did all this because I would do
anything
to free Sileria from you and your kind." She nodded slowly. "And the one part of my work that I truly loathed was letting you touch me."

A horrible expression crossed his face, a mingling of nausea, fear, and raw hatred. He looked like he might try to kill her again. Then he surged awkwardly to his feet. For a moment she thought he intended to kick her, but then he strode to the door, yanked it open, and bellowed for some Outlookers.

"You may take the
torena
now," he said, his voice rough with emotion. Then, without looking at her again, Borell left—still disheveled from their struggle and forgetting his cloak.

She assumed the guards were taking her to the old Kintish prison across from the Outlooker headquarters. As she rose to her feet, she could tell that they had heard her screams while Borell raped her. Upon seeing her now, battered and abused, the youngest of the four men looked shocked. Another smirked and stared insultingly at the flesh exposed by her torn clothing. The other two men kept their faces impassive, their gazes impersonal.

Once she was outside, Elelar saw the bodies of her two manservants, who must have died trying to save her. She blinked back tears. She would never let the Valdani see her cry. 

There was no sign of Faradar. She longed to know if the maid had escaped, but she couldn't risk inciting pursuit by asking about her.

Elelar tried to calm herself by thinking about her mother and her grandfather Gaborian, about meeting them again in the Otherworld. But she was afraid; death by slow torture was almost certainly the fate that awaited her now.

Most of all, she thought about the mines of Alizar.

Oh, Dar, as I have been faithful and true—in my way—I beg you to help Josarian take Alizar.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

There was no day or night in the mines, no sun or moons, no dawning sky or twilight glow. There was only the obsidian maw of the earth's belly and the sickly glare of smoking lanterns. Once upon a time, employment in the mines had been an honorable trade, a hard and dangerous profession which attracted men because of the rewards they could reap. In another era, many young men came here for a few years to earn enough to pay a bride price, buy land, or establish a business. In that distant time, hope had flowered almost daily at Alizar and dreams had filled the air.

Or so they said. Najdan was always skeptical about the stories people told. If you listened to the whisperings of the mountains these days, after all, you'd learn that Tansen had slain an entire shipload of Kintish pirates in a single night, Mirabar was an immortal spirit, and Josarian was the Firebringer. There was nothing the
shallaheen
loved better than a good story.

Anyhow, whatever life at Alizar had once been like, it was now a never-ending nightmare of hellish misery. While the
shallaheen
kept their children under control by threatening to feed them to the fire-eyed and flame-haired demons that roamed the mountains, the Valdani menaced Silerians with the threat of a sentence in the mines of Alizar. The other mines in Sileria—minerals and precious metals—were small, private operations. A few were still Silerian-owned, but the majority of them belonged to wealthy Valdani, whether taken from Kints two centuries ago or stolen more recently from over-taxed and disenfranchised Silerians. When people referred to "the mines," however, they invariably meant Alizar: the huge, enormously rich mines owned and run by the Emperors of Valdania for the past two hundred years.

Alizar was where Silerians served criminal sentences for most major and minor crimes. Yes, some crimes so enraged the Valdani that they sentenced the offender to death; but most of the time, they found it more profitable to send a man to the mines, where he worked until his sentence was served or he died—whichever came first. Yes, some criminals were simply imprisoned; but they were not safe from the mines, for they were usually just being held in reserve in case the mines suffered a shortage of workers after a cave-in or accident. Almost anyone caught breaking Valdani law in Sileria could count on being condemned to servitude in the mines of Alizar. Bribery was the only way out, and most couldn't afford it.

Of course, even a law-abiding man wasn't necessarily safe.

Despite harsh laws and a disobedient populace, the Valdani didn't always have enough prisoners to keep the mines operating at their full capacity. When this happened, the Outlookers would simply raid villages, round up men, chain them like slaves, and take them to work in the mines. That was how Najdan had lost his father. Many of these men were eventually released. Sometimes, though, they died in the mines, as many convicts did. It was worst of all, of course, when a family could never even find out what had happened to a man. The Valdani seldom deigned to answer questions about their prisoners at Alizar. So the men who survived the mines and returned home were always questioned by people trying to discover if a loved one still lived. The
shallaheen
willingly walked for days to reach a village where a man was rumored to have recently returned from the mines, just to ask
: Have you seen my father? My brother? My husband? My son?