Part 13 (2/2)
”Do not speak of things about which you know nothing.” She moved from his side, but he moved with her.
”How can I pretend I don't see what is plain before my eyes,” he said in a tone of dismay unusual for him. ”You're like mist, perpetually dissolving. It burdens me to see you so. This is not your choice, I know. Are you certain you do not suffer needlessly?”
Magenta cast a plaintive sidelong glance over to where her father stood, unaware of her and the officious ranger, who was smothering her with his persistent and unrequested sympathies.
”He'll never take you away from here,” said Fraomar. ”He doesn't know of your suffering. He has no care for your suffering.” Her eyes were dark and stricken when Magenta looked to Fraomar, and he grew hopeful and more anxious than ever before to secure favor in her heart. ”Come away with me,” he said. ”If not, you will continue to fade, to diminish, till youth and beauty are utterly spent, and all hope of love and happiness is unrecallably exhausted. In the midst of your darkest doubt, bound to grief and despair, there will be no beloved to hear your plaintive cries, to comfort and ease the pain which makes your heart grow so cold. You will be in darkness, and you will be alone.”
Fraomar continued in this vein. He wanted to appear sympathetic, hoping thereby to secure the elusive and ever-desired priestess, but he was not understanding or helping, only hurting. He would use fear and hopelessness in an attempt to imprison her in his own cage. She would not, however, go away with him. Should she leave with him, he would own her body, and she would merely exchange one misery for another. His mere presence hara.s.sed and provoked her. He seemed desperate to have her convinced of the grief she would endure without him.
He was perspiring. His roving, restless gaze settled on her lips, but he was so acutely aware of those who would punish him for such an action that he attempted nothing beyond taking her hand, glancing first over his shoulder to make certain they were un.o.bserved. But even her hand she withheld from him.
Every time he visited, if they were alone, he made an attempt to touch her. He had a fixed notion that sometime she would let him. Brooding over her closely, he could not make out her expression. She looked as if she were going to cry, yet her face remained composed, her lofty calm unbroken. She would not answer him, nor let him in on her thoughts. The persistent silence and impenetrability of this woman, whom his violent nature demanded, disconcerted him. He was unable to keep the silence, and said, ”No man could be more devoted to you than I am. For long years I have loved you in silence. You cannot be ignorant of this.”
”Speak not another word.” She silenced him in a voice lower even than his own.
He remained quiet only a brief moment. The conviction that she was the woman for him urged him to continue. ”You belong to me-the hope that you will come to this realization has sustained me.” Then he clenched his hands, pleading with her to renew his sentiments after she had time to pause and reconsider.
”I would rather you didn't,” she said, her words like a knife. She made a move to leave. He took a step as if he would prevent it but merely remained at her side, anger mixed in his disappointment.
”You will be brought to reason,” he said. ”It's you and I together, and I'll have you convinced before I'm through.”
To such arrogant persistence Magenta had no desire to respond. She left, silent and untouched. Fraomar watched after her vanis.h.i.+ng form as she ascended the magnificent staircase. There was something immeasurably enraging in its cold forbiddance, in the utter impossibility of getting at her once she had retreated up it. He swallowed bitterly and blinked back the pa.s.sion as he became aware of her father standing at his side, looking up also. Orsious looked angered that his daughter had disobeyed. ”Send her down,” he demanded, the moment the high priestess joined them. ”I will speak with her.”
”I shall have her see you tomorrow,” she said dismissively, for the single purpose of ensuring he remembered the abdication of all his rights the moment he had placed his daughter in her care all those years before.
”I will speak with her this night!”
Not shrinking from his anger, the high priestess remained persistent in her authority, yet accommodating for the sake of their alliance. ”I shall see that she goes to you at first light.”
”Noon,” he said, handing over a piece of parchment. ”And have her bring these things also.” His final word on the arrangement satisfied his feeling of control.
”I'll attend to it, and see that you retrieve for me what I desire,” she said smoothly, and when he parted his lips to protest, she added coldly, ”Spare no pains to acquire it.”
He relented and nodded. He could not refuse her. She provided him with things necessary for his life's work, and she had possession of his greatest treasure, this side of death, and would not turn her against him.
Chapter24.
First Attempts -ate in the night, unable to sleep, Magenta went out into the garden where black hollyhock grew in abundance, clinging to and consuming the stone walls. The air was burdened with the perfume of many flowers, some of which only bloom under moonlight. The seductions of their scent, haunting and unsettling, mingled with the stillness of the night and induced a dim sense of longing and disquiet to any unfortunate enough to inhale the bitter sweetness of their commingled perfumes, which conveyed an elusive sense of some forbidden and hidden qualities.
Magenta drifted listlessly through the lonely, enclosed garden, her quiet carriage like the slow gentle sweeping of a breeze. It was not a prim establishment with well-tended flower beds but was dark and overgrown, choked with plants that seemed to mourn and to shy from flaunting their graces. Yet the garden was of uncommon beauty, its vanities characterised by a sweetness, shaded with sorrow, and subdued by resignation rather than pa.s.sionate life.
However, not all the garden was in sedate beauty. Lurking within the melancholy was a sting of treachery. Plants were apt to seize and torment any who ventured too near. Their caustic flesh would sting and irritate and burn. Not all the perfumes which sweetened the air were kind. Many were decidedly injurious, burdening the air, verging on the excessive. Yet the very worst was not to be wholly despised. Its attributes often inspired sentiments of yearning and insufferable desire, tempting the organ of smell insatiably.
Resting in its shadow, a stranger leaned against the stone wall. The figure was hidden by darkness, but the stature and broadness of shoulder indicated it was a man. He watched the form of beauty in her every motion, eagerly, greedily.
As she approached, the unshaven, disheveled figure of the ranger languidly stepped out into view. ”Four times I sent request to have you see me,” he began, hoping at once to gain her sympathy. ”What a torment a woman can be!”
Magenta greeted him without smiling and waited for him to come forward to her, as she knew he would. She was dismayed to find herself alone with him but would not let him see. ”The hour is late,” she said with a shade of reproof.
”And yet here you are,” he said, antagonistic, ”wandering the garden, alone.” He moved toward her gradually, cautiously, so that she would not attempt an escape before he was near enough to prevent it. ”I wasn't expecting to speak with you until morning,” he said, as if addressing a long known friend.
”Perhaps I shall leave and not disappoint your expectations,” she replied but did not act upon the statement: although he made no such attempt, he positioned himself in such a way as to give her the impression that should she provoke such an action, he would lurch and seize her.
”I will not hold you here,” he said, as if her thoughts could be read plainly on her face. ”But first I will plead that you stay awhile and listen. I wish to speak on a subject important to your future happiness.” He did not allow her look of mistrust to discourage him. ”You will not ask me the nature of the subject?”
”My freedom?” she said. There was no sarcasm, but contempt and suspicion in her voice.
”Yes.” Fraomar smiled, though he was filled with a sore irritability. ”Have you given consideration to my offer?”
”There is no need. Without reflection, my answer is the same as before.”
”You gave no answer before,” he said, then added as he came closer, ”Now that we are alone, let us talk openly together.” His look urged her to mistrust him more wholly than she had previously.
”There is nothing to be said between us that has not already been spoken,” she said, removing herself from his reach and walking over to where a thick flowering vine grew, hanging down with insufferable indolence. Fraomar watched the delicate creature, feeling relaxed and calm. He felt now that he had her in the seclusion of the garden, with only himself and the plants, that he was in command of the situation. She could not put him off.
”Mind yourself,” she cautioned, ”not to brush too close by them.”
He saw the plant of which she warned him, and with a smile, moved from its grasp. For a time he left her to herself, then to renew conversation said, ”You are to see your father tomorrow?” His eyes looked to where a pretty flower hung carelessly near to her face. ”Perhaps afterwards, for a short moment, you would permit me to see you, away from here?”
As he spoke he approached near. She did not withdraw but stood constrained, untouchable, her contemptuous eyes fastened on him. In his hand he materialized a dagger, swiftly cut down the pendulous blossom and took it in his hand. Then with a languid gesture, the same insufferable ease with which he conjured it, he dismissed the weapon with a smile on his face. He knew the use of magic at the temple was forbidden and took a strange pleasure in it. To Magenta he offered the flower, which she did not take. Despite her refusal, already his heart began to beat high with the hope of success. He felt from her the clinging, faltering resistance that precedes surrender.
The refused flower he did not toss aside, but instead, lowering his face, offered himself. He would, within plain sight, taste of her lips. He no longer cared. ”They will not see,” he said, lifting his hand to caress her. She withdrew before the touch of rough fingers had chance even to brush her cheek.
”You forget yourself and the customs of my kind,” she said.
There was something that angered yet amused him about the lofty manner in which she disregarded his entreaties. With a peculiar, quivering smile, he bowed his face to the flower, caressing his lips with the soft petals. The scent made him shudder. It was hurtfully sweeter than she. From over the blossom he observed her in silence, and she remained the same elusive creature whose secret soul he could never touch. She did not meet his advances as he had hoped. She did not, however, succeed in making a man with such determination hopeless. He tossed the flower aside and said coldly, ”It might a.s.sist you a little to estimate your obligations to the priestesshood, if you knew-”
”There is nothing you can tell me I don't already know of their infamies,” she answered, equally as coldly.
”Then why remain with them? You cannot believe what is told to be anything but false. You know of what they do. Perhaps it is that your heart has turned as black as theirs?”
She did not answer, but as he looked at her it seemed to him that she was somehow defeated. Nevertheless, she did not lower her eyes.
He went up to her and, in a low voice, said, ”I can take you away from all this; just speak the word.” His face was shrewd and intelligent, rather than tender and sympathetic. He already exulted in her capture.
Magenta wondered with dismay how she had fallen prey to such a man. It was not known quite what he was capable of, but that he was a man of uncommon gifts was plain.
”Why do you look alarmed?” he said, bewildered. ”I cannot think of reasons for you to refuse.” He pa.s.sed a hand over his brow. He began to suffer mildly. The odour of the flowers was oppressive. The untended plants had abundant disregard of s.p.a.ce and the breathing of others, yet he could not have longed for s.p.a.ce around them. He felt that now, within this moment, while alone, he must get her settled upon him.
”Tell me,” he said, his voice gentler. ”What are your wishes? What aim do you pursue?” She remained before him, her dark, steady eyes fixed on his wild, excited ones. ”I wish to know and understand you. I can help, if you would speak with me.” In excitement he drew forward an inch. ”You recoil from me,” he said, almost amused. ”If I didn't know you well enough, I should think you were trying to play a game with me.”
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