Two To Conquer ELF Read online

  “Because,” Carlina said, “I begged my mother, and she spoke for me to my father and my lord; and he consented that I should not be married until I had completed my fifteenth year. The wedding will be a year from tonight, at Midsummer Festival.”

  “How can you bear to wait so long? Evanda bless you, child, if I had a handsome young lover like Bard, I could not wait so long…” She saw Carlina flinch and spoke more gently. “Are you afraid of the marriage bed, child? No woman ever died of it, and I have no doubt you will find it pleasurable; but it will be less frightening to you at first, since your husband is playfellow and foster brother as well.”

  Carlina shook her head. “No, it is not that, Nurse, though, as I told you, I have no mind to marriage; I would rather spend my life in chastity and good works among the priestesses of Avarra.”

  “Heavens protect us!” The woman made a shocked gesture. “Your father would never allow it!”

  “I know that, Nurse. The Goddess knows, I besought him to spare me this marriage and let me go, but he reminded me that I was a princess and that it was my duty to marry, to bring strong powerful alliances to his throne. As my sister Amalie has already been sent to wed with King Lorill of Seathfell. Beyond the Kadarin, poor girl, alone in those northern mountains, and my sister Marilla married south to Dalereuth…”

  “Are you angry that they were wedded to princes and kings, and you, only, to your father’s brother’s bastard son?”

  Carlina shook her head. “No, no,” she said impatiently. “I know what is in father’s mind; he wishes to bind Bard to him with a strong tie, so that one day Bard will be his strongest champion and protector. There was no thought for me, or for Bard; it is only one of my father’s maneuvers to protect the throne and the kingdom!”

  “Well,” said the nurse, “most marriages are made for reasons less worthy than that.”

  “But it is not necessary,” Carlina said, impatiently. “Bard would be content with any woman, and my father could have found some woman of noble rank who would satisfy Bard’s ambition! Why should I be forced to spend my life with a man who does not care whether it is me, Carlina, or another, provided she is high-born enough to satisfy his ambition, and has a pretty face and a willing body! Avarra have mercy, do you think I do not know that every servant girl in the castle has shared his bed? They brag of it after!”

  “As for that,” said Ysabet, “he is no better and no worse than any of your brothers or foster brothers. You cannot blame a young man for wenching, and at least you know from their bragging that he is neither maimed nor a lover of men! When he is wedded to you, you must simply give him enough to do in your bed to keep him out of others!”

  Carlina gestured displeasure at the vulgarity. “They are welcome to Bard and to his bed,” she said, “and I will not dispute their place there. But I have heard worse, that he will not hear a refusal; that if a girl answers him no, or if he has reason to think she might give him a no, his pride is so great that he will put a compulsion on her, a glamour, so that she cannot refuse, but will go to his bed will-less, without the power to help herself—”

  “I have heard of men who have that laran,” Ysabet grinned. “It is a useful thing, even if a young man is handsome and hearty; but I never put much stock in such tales of spellbinding. What young woman needs to be spelled to go to a young man’s bed? No doubt they use that old tale to excuse themselves if they are found big-bellied out of season—”

  “No, Nurse,” Carlina said. “At least once, I know, it is true, for my own maid Lisarda, she is a good girl, and she told me that she could not help herself—”

  Ysabet said with a coarse laugh, “Any slut says afterward that she could not help herself!”

  “But no,” Carlina interrupted angrily, “Lisarda is scarce twelve years old; she is motherless and hardly knew what he wanted of her, only that she could not choose but to do as he would. Poor child, she was hardly come into womanhood, and she cried, after, in my arms, and I was hard put to it to explain why a man could want a woman that way—”

  Ysabet frowned. She said, “I wondered what had happened to Lisarda—”

  “I find it hard to forgive Bard, that he could do that to a young girl who had never harmed him!” Carlina said, still angry-

  “Well, well,” said the nurse, sighing, “men do such things now and again, and women are expected to accept them.”

  “I don’t see why!”

  “It is the way of the world,” Ysabet said, then started, and looked at the timepiece on the wall. “Come, Carlina, my pet, you must not be late to your own handfasting!”

  Carlina rose, sighing with resignation, as her mother, Queen Ariel, came into her chamber,

  “Are you ready, my daughter?” The queen surveyed the young woman from head to foot, from the braids looped under her ears to the delicate blue slippers embroidered with pearls. “There will be no prettier bride, at least, in the Hundred Kingdoms. You have done well, Ysabet.”

  The old woman bent in a curtsy, acknowledging the compliment.

  “You need just a touch of powder on your face, Carlie, your eyes are red,” said the lady. “Bring the puff, Ysabet. Carlina, have you been crying?”

  Carlina lowered her head and did not answer.

  Her mother said firmly, “It is unseemly for a bride to shed tears, and this is only your handfasting.” With her own hands she dabbed with the powder puff at her daughter’s eyelids. “There. Now a touch of the crayon there, at the brow—” she said, pointing for Ysabet to repair the makeup. “Lovely. Come, my dear, my women are waiting…”

  There was a small chorus of cooing noises and admiration as Carlina in her bridal finery joined the women. Ariel, Queen of Asturias, attended by her ladies, held out her hand to Carlina.

  “Tonight you will sit among my ladies, and when your father calls for you, you will go forward and join Bard before the throne,” she began.

  Carlina looked at her mother’s serene face and contemplated a final appeal. She knew that her mother did not like Bard—although for the wrong reasons; she simply objected to his bastard status. She had never liked it, that he should be foster brother to Carlina and Beltran. However, it was not her mother who had made this marriage, but her father. And she knew that King Ardrin was not accustomed to listening overmuch to what his womenfolk wanted. Her mother had won this one concession, that she should not be married until she was full fifteen years old.

  When they call me forth to be handfasted I will scream and refuse to speak, I will cry out. No when they ask me to consent, I will run out of the room… But in her heart Carlina knew that she would not do any of these disgraceful things, but would go through the ceremony with the decorum befitting a princess of Asturias.

  Bard is a soldier, she thought despairing, perhaps he will die in battle before the wedding; and then she felt guilty, for there had been a time when she had loved her playmate and foster brother. Quickly she amended her thoughts: perhaps he will find some other woman he wishes to wed, perhaps my father will change his mind…

  Avarra, merciful Goddess, Great Mother, pity me, spare me this marriage somehow…

  Angry, despairing, she blinked back the tears that threatened to flood her eyes again. Her mother would be angry if she disgraced them all this way.

  In a lower room in the castle, Bard di Asturien, foster son to the king, and his banner bearer, was being dressed for his handfasting by his two comrades and foster brothers: Beltran, the king’s son, and Geremy Hastur, who, like Bard, had been reared in the king’s house, but was a younger son of the Lord of Carcosa.

  The three youths were very different. Bard was tall and heavily built, already a man’s height, with thick blond hair twisted into the warrior’s braid at the back of his head, and the strong arms and heavy thews of a swordsman and rider; he towered like a young giant over the others. Prince Beltran was tall, too, although not quite as tall as Bard; but he was still thin and coltish, bony with a boy’s roundness, and his cheeks still fuzzed w
ith a boy’s first traces of beard. His hair was cropped short and tightly curled, but as blond as Bard’s own.

  Geremy Hastur was smaller than either, red-haired and thin-faced, with sharp gray eyes and the quickness of a hawk or ferret. He wore dark, plain clothing, the dress of a scholar rather than a warrior, and his manner was quiet and unassuming.

  Now he looked up at Bard, laughing, and said, “You will have to sit down, foster brother; neither Beltran nor I can reach your head to tie the red cord about your braid! And you cannot go to a ceremonial occasion without it!”

  “No indeed,” Beltran said, hauling Bard down into a seat. “Here, Geremy, you tie it, your hands are defter than mine, or Bard’s. I remember last autumn when you stitched that guardsman’s wound—”

  Bard chuckled as he bent his head for his young friends to tie on the red cord which signified a warrior tried in battle and commended for bravery. He said, “I always thought you were cowardly, Geremy, that you did not fight in the field, and your hands as soft as Carlina’s; yet when I saw that, I decided you had more courage than I, for I wouldn’t have done it. I think it a pity there is no red cord for you!”

  Geremy said, in his muted voice, “Why, then, we should have to give a red cord to every woman in childbirth, or every messenger who slips unseen through the enemy’s lines. Courage takes many forms. I can do without warrior’s braid or red cord, I think.”

  “Perhaps, one day,” Beltran said, “when the day comes when I rule over this land—may my father’s reign be long!—perhaps we may reward courage in some other form than that we see on the battlefield. What about it, Bard? You will be my champion then, if we all live so long.” He frowned suddenly at Geremy and said, “What ails you, man?”

  Geremy Hastur shook his red head. He said, “I do not know—a sudden chill; perhaps, as they say in the hills, some wild animal pissed on the ground which will be my grave.” He finished twisting the red cord around Bard’s warrior braid, handed him sword and dagger and helped him to bind them on.

  Bard said, “I am a soldier; I know very little of other kinds of courage.” He shrugged his ceremonially embroidered cape into place, bright red to match the red cord twisted into the braid all along its length. “I tell you, it demands more courage to face this nonsense tonight; I prefer to face my enemies sword in hand!”

  “What’s this talk of enemies, foster brother?” Beltran asked, surveying his friend. “You surely have no enemies in my father’s hall! Why, how many young men your age have been given a warrior’s cord, and made the king’s banner bearer on the field of war, before they were full sixteen years old? And when you killed Dom Ruyven of Serrais and his paxman, twice saving the king’s life at Snow Glen—”

  Bard shook his head. “The Lady Ariel does not love me. She would stop this marriage to Carlina if she could. And she is angry because it was I, and not you, who won renown on the battlefield, Beltran.”

  Beltran shook his head. “Perhaps it is simply the way of a mother,” he hazarded. “It is not enough for her that I am prince, and heir to my father’s throne, I must have renown as a warrior too. Or perhaps—” he tried to make a joke of it, but Bard could tell that there was bitterness, too— “she fears that your courage and renown will cause my father to think better of you than he does of his son.”

  Bard said, “Well, Beltran, you had the same teaching as I; you too could have won a warrior’s decorations. It is the fortune of war, I suppose, or the luck of the battlefield.”

  “No,” Beltran said. “I am not a warrior born, and I have not your gift for it. It is all I can do to acquit myself honorably and keep my skin in one piece by killing anyone who wants to have a swing at it.”

  Bard laughed and said, “Well, believe me, Beltran, that is all I do.”

  But Beltran shook his head gloomily. “Some men are warriors born, and others are warriors made; I am neither.”

  Geremy broke in, trying to lighten the tone, “But you need not be a great warrior, Beltran; you must prepare yourself to rule Asturias one day, and then you can have as many warriors as you like, and if they serve you well, it will not matter whether or not you know which end of a sword to take hold by! You will be the one who rules all your warriors, and all your sorcerers, too… Will you have me, on that day, to serve you as laranzu? He used the old word for sorcerer, wizard, and Beltran grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “So I will have a wizard and a warrior for foster brothers, and we three will rule Asturias together against all its enemies, battle and sorcery both! But may that day, be the gods merciful to us, be long in coming. Geremy, send your page to the courtyard again to see if Bard’s father has come to see the handfasting of his son.”

  Geremy started to signal to the youngster who waited to run their errands, but Bard shook his head.

  “Save the child trouble.” His jaw tightened. “He will not come, and there is no need to pretend that he will, Geremy.”

  “Not even to see you married to his king’s own daughter?”

  “Perhaps he will come for the wedding, if the king makes it clear that he will be offended if he does not,” Bard said, “but not for a mere handfasting.”

  “But the handfasting is the true binding,” Beltran said. “From the moment of the handfasting, you are Carlina’s lawful husband and she cannot take another while you live! It is only that my mother thinks her too young for bedding, so that part of the ceremony is delayed for another year. But Carlina is your wife; and you, Bard, are my brother.”

  He said it with a shy smile, and Bard, for all his calm facade, was touched. He said, “That’s probably the best part of it.”

  Geremy said, “But I am astonished that Dom Rafael should not come to see your handfasting! Surely he has been sent word that you were decorated on the field for bravery, made the king’s banner bearer, killed Dom Ruyven and his paxman at a single blow—if my father heard such things of me, he would be beside himself with pride and pleasure!”

  “Oh, I have no doubt Father is proud of me,” Bard said, and his face twisted into a bitterness strange in one so young. “But he listens in all things to the Lady Jerana, his lawful wife; and she has never forgotten that he forsook her bed when she was childless for twelve years of their marriage; nor did she ever forgive my mother for giving him a son. And she was angry because my father brought me up in his own house, and had me schooled in arms and the ways of a court instead of having me nursed and fostered to follow the plow or scratch the fields farming mushrooms.”

  Beltran said, “She should have been glad that someone had given her husband a son when she could not”

  Bard shrugged. “That is not the Lady Jerana’s way! Instead she surrounded herself with leroni and sorceresses—half her ladies-in-waiting have red hair and are trained witches—until sooner or later one of them could give her a spell to cure her barrenness. Then she bore my baby brother, Alaric. And then, when my father could deny her nothing because she had given him a legitimate son and heir, she set herself to get rid of me. Oh, Jerana could not show enough kindness to me, until she had her own son; she pretended she was a true mother to me, but I could see the blow held back behind every false kiss she gave me! I think, she feared I would stand in her own son’s light, because Alaric was little and sickly and I was strong and well, and she hated me worse than ever because Alaric loved me.”

  “I would have thought,” Beltran said again, “that she would welcome a strong brother and guardian for her son, one who could care for him…”

  “I love my brother,” Bard said. “There are times when I think there is no one else in the world to whom it would matter whether I lived or died; but since Alaric was old enough to know one face from another, he smiled at me, and held up his little arms for me to carry him piggyback and begged for rides on my horse. But for Lady Jerana it was not seemly that a bastard half-brother should be her little princelet’s chosen paxman and playmate; she would have princes’ and noblemen’s sons for her child’s companions! A
nd so a time came when I saw him only by guile; and once I angered her when he was sick, because I sneaked without permission into his precious nursery. A child of four, and she was angry because his brother could sing him to sleep and he would not sleep for her coaxing.” His face was hard, bitter, closed away into memory.

  “And after that, she gave my father no peace until he sent me away. And instead of bidding her be silent, and ruling his own house, as a man should do, he chose to have peace in his bed and at his fireside by sending me away from home and brother!”

  Beltran and Geremy were, momentarily, silenced by his bitterness. Then Geremy patted his arm and said, with a half-embarrassed tenderness, “Well, you have two brothers to stand at your side tonight, Bard, and soon you will have kin here.”

  Bard’s smile was bleak, unforgiving. “Queen Ariel loves me no more than my stepmother. I am sure she will find some way to turn Carlina against me, and perhaps both of you. I do not blame my father, except for listening to a woman’s words; Zandru twist my feet if I ever listen to what a woman says!”

  Beltran laughed and said, “One would not think you a woman-hater, Bard. From what the maids say, quite the reverse—on the day you are bedded with Carlina, there will be weeping all over the kingdom of Asturias!”

  “Oh, as for that,” Bard said, making a deliberate effort to match the mood of merriment, “I listen to women only in one place, and you may guess what that place is…”

  “And yet,” said Beltran, “when we were young lads and girls all together, I remember that you always listened to Carlina; you would climb a tree no one else would hazard to fetch down her kitten, and when she and I quarreled, I soon learned I must give way or you would pummel me, taking her part!”

  “Oh—Carlina,” Bard said, and his bitter face relaxed into a smile. “Carlina is not like other women; I would not speak of her in the same breath as most of the bitches and sluts in this place! When I am wedded to her, believe me, I shall have no leisure for the rest! I assure you, she will have no need to surround herself with spells as Lady Jerana did, to keep me faithful to her. Since first I came here, she has been kind to me—”