The Storm Lord by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2017-05-15T12:13:00+00:00

13.

AMREK TURNED A JEWELED collar in his hands. A beautiful thing, a fitting gift. Yet would it please her at all? She seemed never to notice what she wore. He nodded to the goldsmith and his assistant, his eyes fixed on the gems flashing in the lamp shine. He was troubled and constrained. He had seen her at the feast, at his side, and she seemed to him as remote as ever—and yet, strangely different. He could not be sure of the change, only sensed it. In the anteroom he had embraced her and found on her the hint of a most curious new physical mood, like a scent without substance. Though he had not inspired it; it was neither because of, nor meant for him. He felt he had lost anything he might have achieved with her before. Damn Thaddra. He had craved for this woman every night alone in the mountains. Where must he begin again?

The slightest of sounds came from the open doorway. Amrek glanced up and saw Val Mala standing there.

“My lady mother. An unexpected pleasure.”

“Send these men away,” she said. “What I have to say to you is not for their ears.”

He set down the collar and stood up.

“What’s the matter, madam? Has Kathaos disappointed you tonight?”

She said nothing, but there was a kind of blankness on her face, a mask she held badly; behind it he saw an impossible triumph. He stared at her, and a premonition laid its clammy fingers on his skin. He waved the two men out, and they scurried, bowing, away. He barely noticed.

“Well, madam? What’s your news?”

“My son,” she said, “what I have to tell you concerns your bride.”

He felt the dark roaring of a sea engulf him.

“What’s happened to her? What have you done?”

“A good deal has happened to her, and I’ve done nothing but discover it.”

The hate that boiled up in him disfigured her and made her very ugly. He seized her shoulder. It seemed incredible to him that once he had been curled up inside her, at her mercy—and, now he was free of her, able if he wished to choke the life out of her, still he was mewling and helpless.

“No more games, madam. Tell me what you came here to say.”

Then he saw the smile; she could not keep it back.

“Your Dragon Lord, Raldnor the Sarite, has been teaching your bride bed manners.”

He let her go as if her flesh had burned him.

“Don’t lie to me,” he got out, knowing quite well that even she would never dare lie to him on such a matter, and tasting suddenly, once more, that new, unnamed, scentless perfume on Astaris’s flesh.

Val Mala composed her face and held up the mask again as she told him everything.

While she spoke, his eyes never left her mouth. He seemed to watch the words that came out of it as if watching rats emerging from some stinking crevasse underground. By the time she had finished, his face had become quite fixed and quite empty, like the painted face of an idiot in a carnival.

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