“ I don’t care about that. All I want is to love and protect you!” Ashinji shivered with growing desperation. He could feel her slipping away from him.
“ No. One man already who I love gave up everything for me. I will not let another.” The note of finality in her voice stabbed his heart like a knife.
“ Jelena, please…don’t turn away from me,” he begged, grasping her shoulders.
“ I must go,” she sobbed quietly. “Let me go!”
Slowly, he released her. She jumped up and fled.
He sat very still for several heartbeats, his mind frozen in disbelief. Then, in an agony of perception, he threw his head back, face upturned to the cold, uncaring sky.
“
Chapter 24
Five days after fleeing Amsara, Magnes came upon a tiny monastery just outside of a hamlet called Gariglen. As he guided his horse through the simple wooden palisade, he made a decision.
He sheltered there a day and a night. When, at last, he emerged, Magnes Preseren, son and Heir of Duke Teodorus of Amsara, was no more. A lay brother named Tilo, dressed in a simple brown robe and armed with nothing more than a knife and a stout walking stick, left Gariglen Monastery that bright Uresday morning. A satchel, bulging with salves and remedies, hung across his right shoulder.
The monks of Gariglen would have their new roof this fall and a stone byre to replace their old wooden one, for Magnes had traded them the horse from his father’s stable for the robe, medicines, and the small supply of food that he now carried. The gelding would fetch a handsome price, and a poor herbalist would never have been able to afford a horse in any case. The monks had asked no questions, and they’d accepted the lopsided trade happily.
As Magnes continued to make his way south, guilt haunted his every step. At night, he feared to close his eyes, for the evil dream that plagued him allowed him no rest. His father would appear before him, face like a thundercloud, his life’s blood gushing in a scarlet stream from his head. He would raise an accusatory finger, aimed at Magnes’s heart.
He would awake, his skin clammy with sweat, fighting for breath.
For a time, he feared he would go insane.
Three weeks of steady travel brought Magnes at last to the city of the Emperors. Darguinia quickly proved itself to be two cities, existing on two very different levels. One was a place of stunning beauty, filled with gardens, fountains, and buildings made of the whitest marble.
The other city was not.
Magnes, as a poor monk with little money, soon found himself in the other Darguinia. He entered a place of narrow, twisting streets and dark alleys, of fetid, open sewers and ramshackle buildings, of crime and disease-a place where hollow-eyed beggars sat in doorways, women and children sold their bodies on the streets to survive, and murder evoked barely an eyeblink.
Magnes had landed squarely in Hell, and he felt that he deserved the place he had made for himself. Even in Hell, though, things cost money, and he was fast running out of what little he had.
The whore lifted her skirts and straddled Magnes where he sat on the shabby room’s only chair. Settling her bare rump firmly on his knees, she slid forward and pushed herself onto him. He sighed and shuddered a little. With professional efficiency, she began pumping her hips. Magnes shut his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at her face and gripped the sides of the chair, riding each successive wave of sensation, higher and higher, to a final spasm of release.
It was all quite impersonal and unsurprisingly brief.
“ There, told you so, sweet’eart,” the woman said. She stood up and carefully pulled herself free, casually wiping between her legs with a corner of her skirt. “Told you I was ten times better ‘n that tired old cunt Lorola. Worth th’ extra three coppers, right, luv?”
Magnes glanced up, then away. All of the whores in this dangerous neighborhood of tenements and warehouses were well past their primes, but this one, with her cheap red dye-job and heavy make-up, had looked a little fresher than the rest. Still…
“ I’m not your love,” he said roughly, tucking himself back into his breeches and standing. Almost immediately, he felt a stab of guilt at his harsh tone. He could in no way blame the mess of his life on this woman. “Please,” he amended more gently. “Don’t call me that.” The whore simply shrugged.
His thoughts turned to Livie. The memory of their last time together, of how they had made love and then had clung to each other as if their final night on earth had come, set up such an ache in his heart that he thought he might choke on his despair.
“ You have your money,” he said quietly. She had insisted on her half-sol fee before coming up to his room. “You need to leave now.”
“ When you need another ride, you know where t’find me, luv…oops, sorry!” She smirked and left without another word.
Magnes sat down on the edge of the narrow, musty cot and rested his head in his hands. A single tear slid from the corner of his eye, and slowly, he wiped it away with a forefinger. He chided himself, again, for wasting what little money he had left on something so tawdry, but the pain of his loneliness had been so great that the prospect of the touch of another person,
He then thought of his father.
The image of Duke Teodorus’s death-pale face, a constant, lurking presence in his mind’s eye, seemed always ready to glide into full view at any unguarded moment. He could still see the crimson of his father’s blood, leaking onto the stones from his shattered skull. The memory had lost none of its vivid horror. Magnes moaned aloud and lay down, covering his face with his hands. The little candle on the shelf by the door, the room’s only source of light, guttered and went out. He lay, sleepless and unmoving, until sunrise.
Magnes rose at first light and donned his monk’s robe. He gathered up his meager possessions-knife, satchel, a waterskin, his walking stick-and left his small room, as he had each morning since arriving in the city four days ago. This morning, though, he had a feeling he would not be returning.
Magnes had found that the brown homespun garment of a holy brother and healer afforded him a small bit of protection when he walked abroad in the squalid streets of Darguinia’s slums. Thieves and cutthroats were less likely to come after him, unless, of course, they needed a remedy; he kept several common ones on him at all times for such eventualities. Not that he really needed protection. He still carried his knife, and his training at arms would serve him well in any fight.
He took one last look around, then headed out into the street, intending to make his way to the temple district. Once there, he would inquire at as many establishments as it took for him to find one that would take him in as a novice.
The morning air already shimmered with heat. The coarse fabric of his robe chafed at neck and chest. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled in little rivulets from his underarms and down his back. His stomach rumbled.
