Read Online The Golden Key by Kate Elliott, Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson - Free Book Online

years at all.” He paused. “Tell me, Tomaz, and I will do whatever you ask.”
    “Mercy. That is what I ask. That you would release me from this horror to the Matra’s sweet mercy.” Tomaz’s face, painted into a chiaroscuro of light and shadow by Sario’s candle flame, was overpainted now by a torturous knowledge and helpless grief into grotesque
caricaturro
of the handsome young man he had been but hours before. “Yes, I will tell you—and then you must kill me!”
    Sario’s need for a comprehension of his own talent and gifts did not lead him to a knowledge of how to undertake such a thing as that. The thought and its conception stunned him. “You said—you said ‘
release
‘… not ‘kill’!”
    Tomaz’s desperate laughter cracked. “Are you so young, then? So very young, that death is unknown to you?”
    Stung, Sario retorted swiftly. “I know death! The Summer Fever took both my mother and my father three seasons ago!”
    “And so they have had you since, the moualimos? Eiha, then I cry your pardon.” Tomaz sighed. “It begins as it always begins, for Gifted Grijalvas, even for
you
, one day: with the
Peintraddo Chieva.
And so it ends as well. Destroy it, mennino moronno, my fellow Neosso Irrado, and you grant me my release.”
    “En verro?”
    Tomaz barked a brief, bitter laugh. “En verro. By my very soul.”
    Matra Dolcha!—here, then, was the first of the real truths, the incandescent Luza do’Orro of the Grijalva Gift.
    Sario’s hungry inhalation hissed. “Tell me!”

  THREE  
    “ So ,” the woman said, “will you leave me now? Set me aside?”
    The man smiled. “Never.”
    “You have a son. You have a daughter.”
    “Having legitimate children does not predispose me to set aside a woman who brings me contentment, even if the relationship is not properly sanctioned by the Ecclesia.” Beside her, in the massive, draperied bed—her bed, his bed; one and the same for two years—he stretched prodigiously. “Matra Dolcha!—but this pleases me! She is healthy, they say, and like to thrive;
this
time the Matra ei Filho have blessed us.”
    “‘Us?”’
    His spine felt younger already, though it cracked alarmingly. “Tira Virte. Me. The Duchess. And you, viva meya; if I am blessed, you are blessed.”
    Silence. She lay curled beside him, feet intertwined with his own, but she was not much given to silence; if she held it, she was not pleased.
    He levered himself up on one elbow. Her back was to him; he could see the long curve of her delicate spine lying so shallowly beneath smooth young flesh.
So young—so much younger than I.
With gentle fingers he traced the line of the spine from neck to waist, counting idly: —
premo—duo—treo
— “What is it? Have I not put your fears to rest?”
    An elegant shrug of a single pearlescent shoulder, once dusted with costly scented Ghillasian powder, now drying after their exertions. The bed linens drooped; she was modest only in a curtain of rich brown hair, and the fall of silk across her hips.
    “Viva meya, what is it? Do you require further proof of my affection? My devotion?” He sighed, letting his hand fall away. “Have I not presented you with the deed to this manor? You are a wealthy woman, suitably honored … and your future is secured. What more could you want?”
    She shifted now, turning to face him. Tendrils of hair, seduced by the dampness of recent lovemaking, coiled against her hairline. “Security for my family.”
    He laughed, then silenced his mirth as he saw she was serious.“Your brother is Lord Limner at Palasso Verrada. Others of your family inhabit Court. You inhabit my bed more often than the Duchess. What more security is there, Gitanna?”
    Her lush mouth, blushed by his attentions, was eloquent, though what it issued was not—quite—a plea. “There is one small thing, Baltran …”
    He could not help but touch her again, to claim the flesh of her breast as his and only his, cradled against his