She had earned it. Soon enough she would pick up her responsibilities as Domina of Terah, as Magnus Hauk’s wife, as a mother and as the daughter of Ilona, queen of the Forest Faeries. But now that she had fulfilled a part of her destiny, did she have any other purpose, Lara wondered? She must remember to ask Kaliq.
8
LARA REMAINED in Kaliq’s palace at Shunnar for several days. The desert sun warmed the chill of the Dark Lands from her bones, her mind and her heart. She spent the days being pampered by Kaliq and his servants. She and Og enjoyed several hours renewing their acquaintance. Lara told him of the giants who lived in the Dark Lands. “I did not see them a great deal, but Kol spoke of them, for they are bound to him in fealty. I recall he told me the name of the giant lord was Skrymir.”
When she said this Og grew pale. “Did you say Skrymir?” he said.
“Aye. The giant lord was Skrymir,” Lara repeated. “Kol told me that the giant race was a small group of about fifty-and more men than women. Why?”
“Where do they live in the Dark Lands?” Og asked.
“One mountain with its forests belongs to them,” Lara explained.
“My father’s name was Skrymir,” Og said. “He was not there the day the Forest Lords came to slaughter my kind. He and a party of hunters, both male and female, had gone hunting several days prior. My mother, although she was a fine huntress, did not accompany them that day, for her belly had begun to show. They never returned to the forest or my mother would have been saved. Or if they did return, they did not come near where my mother hid herself and so she did not know.” Og sighed. “Skrymir is not a common name among giants and is only used among the Forest Giants. How odd that in a forest so far from Hetar there should be another giant race and a lord who is called Skrymir as my father once was.”
“If your father and some of your people were not there the day the Forest Lords came, perhaps this giant lord who is called Skrymir is your father, Og. If your mother told you that the hunting party did not return, then perhaps they did, saw the murder done and fled Hetar. Giants can possess magic, too, Og. Who knows how they reached the Dark Lands? But it is possible these giants are your own race.”
“I shall never know,” Og replied sadly. “I would not go there, Lara. It is too dangerous and I am a small giant who is not very brave. I will live out my days here in the desert of the Shadow Princes with the horses I care for, and with my wife and my children. It is a better fate than I ever anticipated,” he said with a little smile. “I never knew the Skrymir who fathered me on my mother. I know of him only through what my mother told me. She always said he was a good man. It is a better memory to hold on to to than that of a giant lord who gives his loyalty to the Twilight Lord of the Dark Lands.”
“I never met him, so other than a name I can offer you no information,” Lara said. Nay, she had met none of Kol’s people but for the servants. Alfrigg, Skrymir, Dain and Hrolleif were but names to her. She had never seen them except at the Completion Ceremony. Lara shuddered at the potent memory and understood why Kaliq was keeping her in Shunnar and had become her lover once again. He wanted to soften those memories for her before he had them entirely erased from her mind and her heart. Lara doubted that she would ever truly forget. But to her surprise, as the next few days passed, the trauma of her sojourn in the Dark Lands did begin to fade.
“It will soon be time for you to return home to Terah,” Kaliq told her one evening as they sat together across a game board playing Herder. “Your husband grows anxious for you.”
“How will you erase what has happened, Kaliq? You can let the Munin take those memories away from me but what of the rest of Terah?”
“It is as simple as I have already told you,” he began. “For all of you, all of Terah, there will be no definitive memories held by anyone of the year that has just passed. There will be nothing you can quite put your finger upon and say, ‘last month when we went to…’ Nothing will seem out of the ordinary, Lara, for any of you. You will pick up your life where you left off. As for Hetar their memories of your disappearance will be taken from them, too. It was never public knowledge to begin with.”
“And what of the threat Hetar poses to Terah?” Lara wanted to know. “What reason will Gaius Prospero give his subjects for wanting to invade Terah?”
“You are still the reason,” Kaliq said with an amused smile. “Your magic has grown to such an extent that Terah now poses a danger to Hetar. You must be captured and stopped before you can conquer or destroy Hetar’s independence.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Lara cried. “Terah wants nothing to do with Hetar, and nor do I. They are a decadent and decaying society whose legendary greed has brought them to the brink of their own destruction. How can Hetarians believe such babble?”
“Since you led the Outlands to their victory over Hetar in the Winter War nothing has really been the same for them. There was already too much poverty and unemployment, not just in The City, but in the surrounding provinces, as well. It was you, Lara, who marshaled the Outland clan families into fighting back. It took Gaius Prospero over five years to regain his people’s favor and another two years to get himself declared emperor, thus weakening the High Council. But even acquiring the territory that had belonged to the Outlands did not solve the problems that beset Hetar. The magnates and merchants have gotten more wealthy. The poor suffer worse than before.
“Until almost two years ago when it was announced that no more mercenaries were required for the interim, every farmer’s son who chose not to farm came to The City to make his fortune. And once they discovered there were no fortunes to be made, each of those young men joined the Mercenaries. Their ranks have grown over the years, but there was no work for them until the Outlands were opened up for settlement. The mercenary ranks thinned a little then. And they are the constabulary of the Outlands which has taken some pressure off Gaius Prospero.
“But there are the Crusader Knights to consider. With no wars to fight there has been no tournament to select new candidates for seven years now. The tournament where your father won his place was the last one held. Their income grows scarce. Too many in their ranks are aging and need care. The upkeep of their homes in the Garden District is not what it once was for there are more important needs to consider now. And the Crusader Knights, like the Mercenaries, sit idle for the most part.
“The City decays around them all, Lara. The wealthy do what little business they can and continue to play. The poor drink Razi from Lord Jonah’s insidious kiosks in order to forget their troubles, and the fact that their bellies are empty and their children are crying. They steal from whoever they can, even each other,” Kaliq said. “The Hetarians are beginning to murmur against their emperor, but even ridding themselves of Gaius Prospero will not solve their problems.”
“People always believe that changing the government will bring them a change of fortune,” Lara pointed out. “Yet it rarely does because it is the people themselves who need to change first.”
“Exactly!” Kaliq declared. “But people don’t want to change, don’t want to make the effort. What they want is the
“It is no secret that your powers have grown over the last few years. Gaius Prospero has most Hetarians believing that unless you are
“That is the most convoluted reasoning I have ever heard,” Lara responded. “Terah has not threatened Hetar, nor is it a danger to Hetar. The problems facing Hetar have been created by their society and by their emperor. Even taking the Outlands territory has not solved Hetar’s problems, although it might have had it been managed properly. There is more than enough land in the Outlands for generations to come. But Gaius Prospero and his friends were greedy as ever. The poor might have been easily resettled with farms large enough to earn their living and there would still have been much land left for the rich. But of course that wasn’t what happened. And now the
