Robert Adams - The Death of a Legend

She flushed, then smiled. “I’ll make a note to remind you of that question whenever we two get a chance to bed together again. No, that’s not it at all, and if I thought your doubt serious, I’d feel deeply hurt, Milo.

“No, rather it’s that damned Aldora; she hates me, always has, and makes no secret of it in any company or none. I feel certain that she would prefer to see me dead, did she think she could get away with it.”

“You fear her, then, Neeka?” asked Milo.

“Not really, no. I used to, but not anymore. It’s just that I know that if I go with you, she will make us both miserable until I come back here; just as she did Tim and Gil, until Gil stopped campaigning with Tim. It seems she hates Gil, too.”

Milo sighed and set down his goblet. “Neeka, Aldora hates any woman who seems happy, not just you and Gil and Mara, but mortal women, too. Although she is extremely promiscuous—openly and deliberately—she has never loved deeply but three times in all her years. One of those men was her adoptive father, the chief who led Clan Linszee to Ehlai when the Horseclans came to Kehnooryos Ehlas, and he has been dead over a century; the other mortal she loved is this same Prince Bili, who now lies dying, downstairs; the third is me, but I never have reciprocated her passion, and she has long since given up trying to arouse any in me.

“But she still craves, must have, my approval, it seems. When I threatened to have her forcibly ejected from the Confederation proper, threatened to force her to either live on the Pirate Archipelago or leave this part of the world altogether, after she made a nearly successful attempt to drown Mara, some sixty-odd years back, she and I came to an understanding of sorts. That understanding still holds between me and Aldora, Neeka.

“So if we—you and I—campaign together, Aldora will be the very proper co-commander. Not that she’ll desist of her hate and her envy of you; that would be just too much to ask of her. But she’ll not make open display of it, for she fears to anger me. She knows that her soul needs my support, even if it can never have my love.”

One of Milo’s bodyguards knocked, then entered at the summons. “Lord Milo, Lady Neeka, the Zahrtohgahn, Master Ahkmehd, craves audience; he waits beyond the door.”

The slight, deeply wrinkled, dark-brown man who entered the portal held open for him by the bodyguard knew both Milo and Neeka of old. He had served several years in Theesispolis before becoming Prince Bili’s personal physician and trusted friend nearly forty years before. Milo arose to clasp the pink-palmed hand warmly, then assisted the aged Zahrtohgahn to a seat on one of the couches. Then the High Lord said, “I’m afraid that there’s nothing to drink here that your religion will allow you, master.”

The dark-skinned old man showed worn yellow teeth in a hint of a smile. “Thank you, my lord, it does not matter; I drink little save herb teas, anyway, these last few years. Nor do most foods any longer attract me. I only eat because I know that my body requires the sustenance.

“I come to you because you wished to know of aught of an unusual nature concerning poor old Bili… the prince, that is. I have but just come from him.” “And… ?” inquired Milo.

“I have been using a combination of drugs and hypnotism to relieve him of his agonies, while my apprentice and I seek and search and experiment in thus-far-vain attempts to come up with something, some combination, that might possibly halt these hideous infections and possibly grant my old friend down there a few more years of life.

“Because of the hypnosis, I have been able to graduate the levels of the drugs slowly, thus keeping him comfortable without endangering his life with the drugs themselves—some of them are deadly poisons, you know, in the proper combinations or proportions.

“I had dosed him again and reinforced the hypnosis a bit after dawn, which should have kept him in comfort through the most of this day. But someone, someone with a very high level of mindspeak ability, intruded into his mind and dispelled the soothing web I had woven there. In his pain, he mind-called me, and I have just had to redo my work. Worse, I have had to administer more drugs. “Can my lord see to it that this happens not again? I say not, with any certainty, that any decoction Ohmahr and I may devise will or can save Lord Bili’s life, but while still he lives there is at least the bare chance.”

Milo fiercely cracked his knuckles, cold anger on his face and in his voice. “You’re damned right I’ll see that it happens not again, Master Ahkmehd! Did you… were you able to get from Bili the name of the person responsible this time?”

The elderly man sighed and spread his hands—withered, in appearance like the rest of his body, but still as strong and as sure as those of the apprentice who was nearly fifty years his junior. “There were two names tumbling over and over in his mind and his speech, Lord Milo. Rahksahnah—that was one of them.”

The High Lord shook his head. “No, that was the name of Bili’s first wife. She’s long dead. What was the other?”

“Aldora, my lord. I presume he meant the High Lady… but she is not here, in the palace, not that I know of, anyway. One of the High Lord Tim’s guards mentioned to someone that the Illustrious Lady Aldora was far and far to the north, with the Army of the Confederation. Has she the power to do so much at such a distance, Lord Milo?”

Milo grimaced. “That much and more, master. But Til warn her off, never fear. When you leave, tell my guards to send the prairiecats that came with me up here to me; with the aid of their minds, I can range Aldora. She has no right to kill Bili with her selfishness.

“I know what she must be suffering, for she has loved him—deeply and truly—for more than seventy years. But she is not the only one put out by this tragedy. Bili the Axe was a most unusual man, well all miss him sorely, and I doubt that well ever find again such a man to hold Karaleenos for us, for the Confederation.”