The Forest of Peldain

To one side of the bay, the land rose steeply. Slowly, Vorduthe mounted the sweep of steps that brought him to his house, overlooking both the harbor and the shore barracks of the seaborne warriors he commanded. He pushed through the gate-screen of long, cool palm leaves, crossed the scented garden, and entered the airy interior of the flat-roofed dwelling.

“Is the Lady Vorduthe awake?” he asked of the servant girl who appeared to receive him.

Briefly the girl bent her head. “Yes, master. She is listening to music.”

He could hear the strains of a ketyr coming from his wife’s room at the end of the corridor. He removed his sword-harness from his shoulder and placed it in its niche in the wall, before padding down the passage.

Quietly, he opened the door and entered. The ketyr player was bent over his instrument, plucking and caressing the strings with rapt concentration on his no longer young face. The simple waist-cinched robe he wore was crisply white and obviously donned anew no more than an hour or two ago. Musicians visited the Lady Kirekenawe Vorduthe nearly every day. It was one pleasure still left to her.

Kirekenawe moved her face toward her husband in dreamy greeting, but did not take her attention from the music. On the other side of her bed one of the two female companions who nursed and tended her day and night sat silent and unmoving. Vorduthe moved to a cane seat, and waited.

The ketyr sang, skirled, meditated plangently. At length the player paused for long moments, as if he had finished; then he broke into a furiously fast and rhythmic dance theme, which slowed first to a lilt, and then to a languorous plodding sound. Finally, with two evenly spaced, deliberate-sounding notes, he ended.

Kirekenawe sighed, closing her eyes, and then opened them to look directly at Vorduthe. “You are home early.”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “I have something to tell you.”

Kirekenawe but glanced at her nurse, then at the musician. They rose, bowed, and left.

Vorduthe picked up the cane chair and moved closer to his wife’s bed. The form showing through the white sheet was that of a young and beautiful woman, but in respect it was deceptive. Young and beautiful it certainly was, but motionless and inert.

“The king sent for me today,” he began when he was seated once more. “I have to go away.” Concisely he told her what had taken place: of the arrival of Askon Octrago and his tale of what lay within the Forest of Peldain, and of Krassos’ orders.

“If all goes well I shall not be gone long,” he told her. “The king has promised to recall me as soon as the conquest is complete.”

“You must stay as long as is needful,” she said calmly. “A man like you should not spend all his time at home.”

“Yes, but … I do not like to be away from you.”

He avoided her eyes and gazed through the gauze of his wide window, through which the garden was blurrily visible. How often had he looked at her, and seen the thought in her mind: I should die, and then he would be free. But how can I die? No one will do it for me.

It was four years now since their happiness had ended. Once it had been her delight to run, to swim, to make love with vigor and abandon. Now she could not even feed herself, and her own wastes had to be carried away by another.

There had seemed hope when it had first happened. They had gone sea fishing together in an outrigger boat, something they did frequently. He had thought he knew the waters well, but a sandbank must have shifted—a bank that hid a barb-squid, buried beneath the sand and waiting for prey. When the outrigger struck, its tentacles had come lashing forth to seize and sting, spray and wet sand flying everywhere. Vorduthe had fought the squid, hacking its tentacles and forcing it to withdraw, but the spine of a barb, thick and green and hard as wood, was left in Kirekenawe’s neck. He had pulled it out with his own hands and sailed as quickly as he could back to Arcaiss, knowing there was a chance the physicians there could wash the poison out of her blood in time. And so they had. Days later her fever ended, and she awoke calm and collected—but paralyzed. He had believed it was but a temporary effect of the poison, until, days later still, the physicians told him the truth. The barb had severed nerves in her spine. She would never be able to move anything below the level of her neck again.

She was made as comfortable as was possible. But no amount of love could erase the frustration he knew she felt, or her sadness at knowing his sadness.

Chapter Three

Vorduthe ignored the heat that struck through the thick bark of his sandals as he waded through the glowing ashes. All the expedition’s equipment was coming on to the beach-head amid a cacophony of shouting and a groaning of timber, carried in narrow, broad-wheeled wagons designed to file through the thickness of the forest.