The Seekers of Fire (23 page)

Or because here he was
supposed
to be alone. How on Mierenthia had she entered? This was a place that only the High Ruler of a House could access. Had to access, sometimes. Rianor glanced at the throbbing Aetarx, uneasy with both the artifact and her presence. He had underestimated the extent of her abilities, and he did not know her nearly well enough to determine her intentions.

She made a step, separating her clenched hands in a determined manner. The light followed her.

"If I knew where I was, I wouldn't be wasting breath in asking you,
my lord!
"

The title sounded biting, in an intriguing way that had his eyes linger at her alluring, parted lips. Witch, in more than one aspect, but he was not usually prone to losing his judgement because of female beauty. Maybe now it was because of the Aetarx—or because he had also seen her intelligent and rebellious, clutching at the right to make choices in a world that did not let her; because she had no respect whatsoever for social authority and systems that did not make sense to her. She was like him, a rare someone he could talk to. Still, no one but a conqueror could desecrate a House's Inner Sanctum against the High Ruler's wishes.

So was there a chance of her plotting to become a High Lady? Or was this beautiful vision of a witch really here against his wishes?

"Why are you looking at me in this way!"

The Aetarx's light bubbled and made waves, and she shivered, but her anger seemed stronger than fear. She spoke again before he had time to answer.

"Yours? Witch? What is it—rape, torture, or burning that you are planning? Now, or when this place had possibly been more successful in shattering my mind and body? What is it that you keep here, anyway? The suffering quintessences of other, long-perished prisoners? Other
enticing witches?
"

"I do not know what I keep here, to tell you the truth."

It was not a reply she expected. She stared at him, and slowly he extended a hand towards her, taking care to not touch her yet. Touching her right now was not a good idea. "Come here."

She looked at him in a way that seemed to ask "
Are you a fool or do you think I am one?
" and Rianor sighed, wondering exactly what he had brought upon himself. Everything concerning her was, mildly said, interesting.

"Give me your hand, Linde," he said, half-soothingly. "I promise to not rape you before I have at least taken a shower. I won't burn or torture you, either, so let me get rid of this light and disconnect you from the Aetarx."

She did not plot anything, it was clear now. She did not even know what she had done. The thoughts were transparent on her tired, frightened, but determined face. The silly girl behaved as if she had stumbled upon this room and been surprised unpleasantly. Which, come to think of it, she might as well have done—if the entrance to the Aetarx corridor had not imperceptibly rejected her, if it had not hidden itself from her like it would hide from anyone else climbing the tower stairs. Why not that, too, if a whip would not hit her? Rianor had allowed her to explore Qynnsent.

Hesitantly, she reached a hand towards him, staying silent while he pulled her towards himself, stroking her hair and shoulders. Her dress was slightly torn at the back. What had she been doing exactly?

"Calm down and let's take you out of here," he murmured in her ear, the light lingering around his fingers, tickling and warming him, penetrating his skin, reaching into his mind, calling.

The Aetarx should leave her alone. She was not a High Lady; she did not belong to it.

She could belong to him, though, this exquisite, rebellious witch who did not know her place. She was in his place now and he could enjoy taming her.

Deepest fears, inmost desires, the Aetarx could dig them all out if you let it. Could make you act on them, sometimes, and you could never be sure if they were your true fears or desires, or if you had become somehow ... confused. The High Ruler archives in Rianor's suite had records of High Lords or Ladies who had achieved various degrees of Aetarx madness. Rianor liked to think that he had not, himself. He did not belong to the Aetarx, even if it was only because of his own personal rebellions.

He blinked, then focused on his High Lord's wristwatch, on making the device absorb the Aetarx's light and let his witch exit the Inner Sanctum freely.

Then she grabbed his left wrist and the flow of light stopped abruptly.

"Rianor, don't do this, please." Her fingers were very, very cold. "I don't feel that this is right."

He blinked again, to clear the temporary disorientation that sometimes occurred as a result of him using the watch. The maddening woman had disrupted the Inner Sanctum's unlocking process. Now he would have to start anew, enduring some more images and becoming even more exhausted than he already was tonight. Would this night ever end?

For a moment Rianor watched the Aetarx, the silvery ovoid artifact that was the utmost symbol of his status in the world and—at least this was what the Bers claimed—his greatest responsibility. His bane, if he was not careful. It stood on its tray beside the stone wall across the entrance, beneath the banner, between the potted plants. Dry old bread, from last year's Day of the Master, was set on a plate before it. Fire burned in a lidded stone cup to its left, beneath the wide-leaved plant. It was the only fire Rianor knew that could burn for a whole year without connecting to the fire network. There was water in another lidded cup to the right, beneath the conifer. Both plants were green, even in winter, and their branches reached out away from the banner-wall and towards the two walls of glass. The eastern wall, to the left, let him watch the morning Sun when it floated from behind the faraway mountains; the western wall let the afternoon Sun bathe the room in bright light.

Many rooms in Qynnsent were designed with eastern and western windows or even glass walls, but in this circular room somehow the walls seemed to get more of the Sun. The light of the Aetarx itself, some documents said, was of the same nature as sunlight.

Rianor had to periodically access the Aetarx because he was the High Lord. An Aetarx needed a High Lord or Lady to take care if it, and supposedly Mierenthia needed all of the Aetarx to take care of it in turn. He did not know if it was true, and perhaps that was why he accessed the Aetarx and took care of it despite everything. He wanted to find out.

And, for someone who had learned to close himself to the Aetarx's emissions of turbulence and sadness, there was still a certain feeling of beauty to be found in the artifact and the Inner Sanctum.

Linden's hair brushed his hand as she turned her head to follow his gaze, and Rianor suddenly realized that he was no longer angry with her, but with the Aetarx for frightening her. The realization made him angry with her once again. He abruptly wrapped his arm around her waist and walked her towards the Aetarx, ignoring her fastened heartbeat.

"So you did not feel that what I was doing was right?" he said with forced calmness when they were so close to the Aetarx that if she extended her arm she could touch it. She turned to look at him but said nothing, and he gently caught her chin and turned her head back to the Aetarx.

"Look at the Aetarx, my witch, look at it carefully. It is a beautiful artifact and one that makes people perform deeds they might later regret."

"I understand." Her look interrupted him even before her exquisite, impertinent mouth had shaped a word. Her eyes looked like a storm, then settled in a hard, glass-like appearance that was especially fetching on her.

"So
this
is one of the celebrated elements," she said, "of the great whole that is the quintessence of the Master's world. This is one of the Master's gifts to humankind." She turned in his arms to face him fully. "If this is the quintessence of the Master's world, I want out of the Master's world right now! If the Master exists and this is what he would do to us, the Master should be unmade! What the books say about it is a lie—at least the books available to commoners lie. It reeks of sadness and fear, and it talked to me. Drew images in my mind, more accurately! What is the problem with you, Rianor? Wretched sorrowful things that should not be able to talk or act seem to talk to me and try to imprison me ever since I met you!"

"I am glad I am making your life interesting. Mine has not been too peaceful with you, either."

That shut her up, but he was not finished with her. "Yes, I know the Aetarx drew images in your mind. It has the habit of doing so, and I would have expected a woman as smart as you are to have realized that it affects feelings. I hope, thus, that you can later explain to me why you acted only because you
felt
something was or was not right, without thinking."

She fixed his eyes with hers. "You would have expected? Well, I would have expected a man as smart as you are to have realized that it does not affect the feelings themselves. It gives you thoughts—images. What feelings you allow based on those thoughts depends only on you."

He fixed her eyes back. "I said that you could explain to me
later.
Now, I am taking you to my suite."

For a moment he left the sentence at that, despite her sudden rigidness. The woman really had no idea of the consequences of breaking into a House's Inner Sanctum, proceeding to even interfere with the High Lord's interaction with the Aetarx because she "
felt it was not right.
" In any other House, the best that could happen to her now was Bers. She was too complex for a mere lady and apprentice, too dangerous. And damn inquisitive fool that he was, always poking and tinkering with what he was not supposed to poke and tinker with, Rianor liked it.

"We are only going there because after this stunt we need to talk, and there are documents you need to see—documents that never leave the High Ruler's rooms, which, actually, you are not supposed to see. So stop looking at me as if I were some sex maniac who needed to be clubbed on the head because his ideas of a good time consisted of taking his victim on a stroll amongst the foulest places, creatures, and artifacts."

She awarded him with an unreadable look, then smiled, but it was a neurotic smile, as if now she would do something else reckless. How did the Aetarx affect a woman who was not a High Lady? Was it a better choice now to take her to bed, postponing all conversations until she had slept through her emotions? Rianor gritted his teeth, angry with Linden for heedlessly doing deeds of possible enormity, and angry with himself for neglecting to warn her and failing to predict her. She was so much more perplexing than a Scientific experiment—a nuisance, which on the other hand finally provided him with a conversation partner.

"I would have never guessed that you were not such a maniac, Rianor."

So she was teasing him now. He was too affected to resist slowly stroking her nape, leaning to whisper into her ear.

"Trust me, my lady, I can do better than that with you."

Like going to bed now, alone, forcing
himself
to sleep through desires and emotions. This girl had the potential to help him—to understand him—just how fast could some sexual trifling between the two of them waste it?

She ran the fingers of one hand against his cheek, as if testing his resolve, murmuring something like, " '
My lady
' is not correct, I do not yet have the status of a lady."

"I can easily fix that." He caught her wrist to stop her, but then caressed her palm, mustering all self-control available when this small motion made her tremble.

"Can you, my lord?" Her other hand slipped along his shoulder and down his arm, teasing until the moment she grabbed his sleeve and hauled him to herself. The eyes staring at his were furious albeit deceivingly beautiful.

"And what, my lord, is your price? I may not be willing to pay it!"

Rianor did not give her a reply. A part of him knew that he had teased her, too, his own behavior feeding quite some of the misunderstanding. But it was only a part of him amongst many. Others urged him to grab her pretty throat and squeeze, or grab her pretty dress and tear it. And her sharp, accusing, exquisite eyes made him even angrier.

Silently, he gripped her left hand and thrust her sleeve up, snatching the new wristwatch from his pocket and clasping it to her wrist in a single motion. She paled as the watch faded into her skin, the inside of her wrist flashing with a scarlet, exquisitely drawn Qynnsent symbol.

"Fixed,
my lady.
We should have had a ceremony, but this is the part that matters. Now do you want to come and talk to me, or would you prefer me to come up with a price? "

Linden

Night 78 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

Linden did not cry out as what felt like iodine-coated daggers cut into her flesh, but she did not dare look at her wrist, either. The hand must still be there. It must. She would have heard it fall if it had been severed. It must be there, but as for whether it was still fully attached to the wrist ...

A shiver shook her body and did not stop. Light was again gathering around her.

The light of the hated Aetarx artifact that she had not even seen when she was first trapped in this room. The room had been dark before, not fully dark like the Passage, and yet too dark and cold. So, what was real, light or darkness?

It did not matter; she hated both. She hated the handsome, steely-eyed face of Rianor of Qynnsent before her, and she especially hated the silent tears that started creeping down her own face. Has it been a second, a minute, or a day since the man had mutilated her? She did not know.

Her hand turned out to be safely attached to her wrist when, after another indefinable period of time, she dared look. There was no wound, only a symbol on her skin. Only. Like merchant Pierre's perfume bottles, her hand was marked. She was.

Linden tried to flex her fingers, but they would not obey, and a feeling of simultaneous freezing and burning shot up to her elbow. The burning felt just like it had in the visions. She did not scream. The man was urgently talking to her, but she could not hear his words. She could only hear the light itself, gurgling like rain-water in a gutter.