A Life for Kregen Read Online Free PDF Page A

hastily erected on the roof. If you looked out of the north window you saw the charred stump of the old Wersting Tower where they used to keep kenneled those fearsome hunting animals. Already green growing shoots clambered across the blackened crevices and specks of brilliant color lightened with blooms the sere gauntness of the wrack.
    Delia was not to be found in the outer rooms, and her handmaidens told me she was in the bedroom. Like me, Delia kept only a very few personal servants, and if I do not mention them overmuch it is because they were so good that they had become a part of our life. Fiona and Rosala tended Delia, and they were girls formed for the delight of the gods, smiling, bright of eye, brilliant of lip, with natures that decked the world in sunshine. No obstacle would be placed in their path when, as is the way of the world, they would wish to marry the young men of their choice. The same openness applied to Emder, a quiet-spoken, gentle, dextrous and extraordinarily competent man who looked after most of my material wants. If you wish to call him a valet, the description matches perhaps half of his duties. He was a treasure and I valued him as a friend.
    “Bedroom?” I said. Then, already stripping off the bloodstained clothing: “The empress is not ill?”
    “Oh, no, majis,” they chorused, and laughed.
    Only in the most deeply felt personal relations could the diminutive majis be substituted for majister. Nath Nazabhan would not allow himself the usage, although the offer had been made.
    “Well, then, you pretty shishis — out with it!”
    Emder, smiling, gathering the clothing, slinging my crusted clanxer harness over his shoulder, said, “The empress has never been better, praise Opaz. The bath is drawn—”
    One of my own rules is that because so many times I have presented myself to Delia in a shocking state, hairy, filthy, bleeding, almost done-for, whenever it is possible for me to bathe and change and look at least halfway respectable I will do so. I took the bath first before discovering what the laughter and the little mystery was all about.
    Feeling refreshed and still toweling my hair I went through to the bedroom. A pang struck me as no familiar and horrific form arose to check on everyone daring to enter the room where Delia, the Empress of Vallia, took her ease. Melow the Supple, that horrendous and sweet-natured Manhound, had been sorcerously sent back to her native Faol and my eldest son Drak was off there now, trying to find her, and with her her son Kardo. By Krun! A few Manhounds in our ranks would do wonders for the discomfiture of those who opposed us.
    Inside the doorway with my bare feet sinking into Walfarg weave rugs, the towel dangled over into my face. I could see nothing and gave the towel a swipe out of the way as I walked on. When the yellow toweling whisked away I stood gaping more than a trifle foolishly at Delia.
    She looked like a twisted bundle tied up ready for the laundry.
    Instinctively, for this was Kregen, I leaped forward and even half-naked straight from the bath a dagger dangled at my side. This I drew.
    Delia laughed.
    “You silly old fossil. Just stand still and let me get out of this slowly and properly.”
    “By Zair—”
    “Wait.”
    I waited.
    She sat on the rug with her right leg bent over her left, the left foot tucked in and pointed and her left arm stretched down her right foot from knee to ankle. Her upper body twisted right around from the waist, although she sat firmly on the floor, until I thought she could look back over her own shoulders. Her right arm was bent behind her back. And that rounded right knee was jammed tightly up under her left armpit. She looked — well, she looked marvelous, of course, all tied up like that of her own volition — but the power and serenity flowing from her took my breath away.
    Carefully, moving with a grace that caught at my throat, she unwound herself.
    At last she lay back, her arms at her side,