9. Damon

9

DAMON

D amon runs through the orchard after Inez, She moves surprisingly fast, but Damon is faster. He catches up with her in the herb garden, grasping her shoulder and swinging her around to face him with a force he instantly regrets.

She looks at him, face pale with shock, eyes burning.

"Inez," he says. "Inez, please."

She pulls out of his grasp. "Do not touch me, luxorite."

Damon takes his hand from her shoulder, bare above her delicate green gown. "Please," he says, "let me explain."

"Explain what?" Inez snaps. "Do you think I don't hear what they say about you? Do you think I don't know why you have still not come to my bed? I know you took a love draught on our wedding night. What is there to explain? I am no blushing fool. I know what you are. "

Damon's heart aches. There are tears in Inez's eyes. She didn't ask for this. For any of it. "Please," he says. "You are correct, there is nothing to explain. But can we speak? In private? "

"I suppose," says Inez. "You are my husband." She makes this fact sound like something truly dreadful.

She leads him back into the manor and up into her solar, with its wide, glazed, south-facing windows. The heat feels good on Damon's skin. One handmaiden sits there, winding a ball of yarn. Three more balls rest in a basket at her feet. "Leave us, Hetta," Inez says to her and the small woman scuttles from the room.

Inez turns to Damon. She does not sit. She clasps her pale hands in front of her slender body. "Well?" she says. "What do you wish to say to me?"

"Inez, you are correct, there is nothing to explain. I am as you have seen. My nature is what it is. I cannot change it. I will never shame you. Whatever you choose to do now, you are my wife and I will protect you from dishonour with all that I have."

Inez looks slightly shocked by this declaration. "Whatever I choose? You think I have a choice? You think I will go to Doroth Zain and accuse you?"

"You ought to. The law of Zai is clear."

"It would shame me too — if you were publicly accused of sins of the body."

"You would prefer to avoid that shame?"

"Damon." Inez sighs "I cannot avoid the shame of being your wife. The rumours about you already shame me. People say things to me that they'd never dare say to you. They come to me in a cloak of pretence that they simply worry for me and my soul. But then the things they say are cruel. It has been said to me that the only way you would share my bed would be if I cut my hair and let you take me on all fours like a sly whore."

Damon swallows, the pain in Inez's voice slices his heart like a knife.

"But," says Inez, "it would do me no good to add my voice to those who wish to undermine your status by speaking of your nature. It would only make things worse. If you were found guilty of sins of the body you would be exiled and our marriage dissolved. I would be left with nothing. I have no real choice. I will forget what I saw, but it must not happen again. I can keep silent, but next time it might not be me who came upon you."

Damon nods. Inez is right. What had he been thinking? He had been behaving like a man possessed by a demon. His voice sounds thick when he speaks. "You are right. Dear wife, I am sorry. I will do everything in my power to dispel the rumours about me and protect us both." He goes to his knees in front of Inez. He takes both her hands in his. "Selim gifted me a great treasure when he gave you to me as wife," he says. He means it.

Inez looks down at him. Her face is still hard. "You mean that? I am not merely an encumbrance to your desires?"

Damon shakes his head. "No, fair Inez, you are my wife. I vowed myself to you. I will do everything in my power to make you happy."

"Then will you come to my bed? Your refusal to do so since you returned from war has been noticed."

"I could lie in your bed and sleep, but more than that, I do not think my heart would allow."

Inez's eyes look glassy. Her voice crackles with unshed tears. "I must give you a son, Damon. You know I must."

Damon knows Inez is right. If he does not produce a son within a year the Rose Court will want to know why. "I am aware. I will find a way."

"Damon," Inez says sweetly. "Have you done penance since you returned from Jur-Mattan?"

Damon shakes his head .

"Perhaps you should go and seek an audience with the Immurite and ask her advice. She will give you strength."

Damon leans forward from his knees and kisses each of his wife's pale hands. "If you wish it, wife, I will go today."

The sun is well past its zenith when Damon arrives at the Rose Palace and makes himself known to the Imperial Guards.

His horse is taken to stable and he makes his way through the huge carved doors into the wide courtyard at the front of the Rose Palace. His childhood home.

The enormous palace square is bustling with the wealthiest people of Attar. Merchants do business, the highest nobles meet each other, minstrels play sweet music. Inside the walls of the Rose Palace is a city inside a city. A brilliant, glittering citadel. The turrets of the palace rise up, sparkling in the Azurian sun. The old Rose Temple, destroyed by Sarelik Darek two hundred years ago, was built of a strange pink stone. The origin of that stone is unknown. No one knows where it came from. It has never been mined anywhere in the empire, there are stories it came all the way from The Cradle. Others say it came from the frozen lands beyond the sea north of Ismagaar, where the fae still dwell.

When the Rose Palace was built the structure was far larger than the temple it replaced. It took almost all of Sarelik's life to complete. The Azurians claimed, and claim still, that it is the largest building in the world.

The stone recovered from the destruction of the temple was not enough to build the palace. So the pink stone was mixed with the more common white and brown stone that forms the majority of the buildings of Attar .

The combination is very beautiful, but Damon wonders how beautiful the Rose Temple must have been.

Damon crosses the square, past fountains that sparkle with waters brought from the Gleam on aqueducts, and an elegant rose garden. The blooms are fading now summer is almost over.

All the roses die.

Damon has heard that somewhere in the Rose Palace is a stone maze large enough that a hundred men could be lost in it, and that it has a beast in the centre that eats the hearts of sinners. Somewhere else there is an entire forest that is home to a thousand calcis birds. These stories could be true. No one knows the entirety of the palace. Not Emperor Selim, not Doroth Zain, not even Chancellor Vindar, the Thousand Eyes.

He turns left towards the Temple of Sarelik, a huge wing of the Rose Palace. The home of Zai and all who are devoted to him.

Damon removes the Amber Blade from the belt at his waist and gives it to the Guardian of Weapons who sits at the temple entrance. He places it in a basket and nods to Damon as he takes the steps that lead down to the lower levels of the Temple. Below the ground, many of the structures are unchanged from the Rose Temple of two hundred years ago. As Damon descends, ornate carvings are everywhere. The Sidusia. The twelve Sidu of Artemia are still worshipped in Azuria, but not as Mother Greyheart's twelve Gods, but as the twelve prophets of Zai.

The air is cooler at the bottom of the steps. Two women wait on the last one, Zai Brides in robes of yellow linen. Damon nods to them. Another woman, an older bride steps forward.

"State your business in the inner temple, sinner," she says plainly .

"I am Damon Darekul," Damon says, "Bastard son of Prince Rafus Darek, Crown Prince of the Empire. I seek an audience with the Immurite."

"Very well." She looks past Damon to one of the women behind him. "Give him a white stone."

Damon places his hands behind his back, ready.

The white stone is not really a stone at all. It's a piece of carved bone belonging to some long-dead creature. Damon has heard it said the white stones are daedon bones. It is placed in his hands as he holds them behind his back. A cool smooth cylinder.

"Welcome Damon Darekul," says the woman. "Zai, hold your heart."

"Zai, hold your heart," echo the brides behind Damon.

Damon nods and steps forward. The doors to the inner temple, black inlaid with gold, are swung open by two of the temple guards in their gold breastplates. Beyond is a passageway with pink glittering walls, lit by candles. Damon's sandals make a soft sound on the stone floor as he walks alone, holding the white stone behind his back. There are many sacred spaces in the inner temple. Pools and shrines. This, he suspects, is where the rumoured labyrinth must be, if it exists, and many more hidden spaces besides. Much of the inner temple is only open to Doroth Zain and his council. Other places are hidden from all but the Brides. Damon follows the corridors of the inner temple. He passes guards and servants and more brides. He passes other temple visitors who hold a white stone behind themselves as he does. Eventually, he reaches the entranceway to the Temple of the Immurite.

There are twelve small chambers that every petitioner of the Immurite must pass through, each with a shrine to a different Sidu. Damon walks through them, paying them little heed .

The thirteenth chamber is a plain circular room lit by flickering candles. The walls are black, lined with a low bench all around the circumference, with a single gap for the single door. The door is guarded by one temple guard. In the centre of the hall is the sanctum of the Immurite. A low structure, also black. The Immurite never leaves the sanctum. Damon has no idea what is inside. Like every aspect of the Immurite's existence, its details are sacred.

Approaching the sanctum, he kneels at the petitioner's window, rings the bell and waits.

The Immurite has been one of the great pillars of Zai since the time of Damon's namesake king. There must always be an Immurite in this chamber, giving thanks to Zai with her life of prayer and silence and solitude. She gives her life in this way to save the souls of all the virgin brides who are dedicated to Zai.

Damon doesn't know where the Immurites come from, how they are selected. Who they were before being walled up in this chamber. No one does. The secret is one kept closely by the inner heart of the faith.

He has heard rumours. Zai Brides must swear to remain pure. For them to lie with men is a great sin in the eyes of Zai. If a Zai Bride is discovered to be pregnant she is executed as soon as her babe is birthed. Those babes are then raised as temple acolytes, sold as slaves or perhaps given to noble families who need heirs. But many people think that some of them are selected to be raised as potential Immurites. Female babes who are kept in peace, separated from the world all their lives.

But it seems unlikely that the Immurites could be children of such great sin. Bastards like him.

After a few moments of waiting, a hatch in the wall of the cell in front of him slides open. Behind it is an iron grill. Behind that, the mostly obscured shape of a human face.

Damon says, "Holy Immurite of Zai, I am Damon Darekul."

"Welcome Damon Darekul," says the Immurite's familiar voice from the other side of the metal grill.

"I have returned from holy war. I have liberated Jur-Mattan from the heretical faith of Artemia. I have driven the last Hevelikar further from our borders."

"Zai sends much glory to you."

Damon takes a breath. He is not here to have the Immurite praise his deeds in battle. He is here to confess. Audiences with the Immurite are private. The Immurite speaks to no one of the things she is told. As a boy Damon was taught that the Immurite should know every secret of a petitioner's heart. The Immurite does not punish sinners. That is the job of the Order of the Enforcers. The Immurite simply listens, simply knows. And it is not the first time Damon has been here, with the same sins weighing on him.

"My old sins of the body have returned," Damon says, words he cannot imagine saying aloud anywhere else.

"How have those feelings troubled you, Damon Darekul?"

"There is a man. A pleasure slave. We divided the spoils of Blackstone Castle in Pellex. I took him."

"Did you ask for him?"

"No. I refused him, but then I realised he would be killed if I didn't take him."

"Why not let him be killed? You are a soldier, are you not?"

Damon notices his breath coming in heavy. "Because I desired him. I did not want him killed because I desired him. "

"Have you bedded him?"

"I have come close to it. I have kissed him. I have touched him. I have wanted him. I want him still."

"I see." The Immurite sounds cool. She does not judge. "Where is he now?"

"In my home. I have him as a slave in my kitchens."

"You have kept him? Is that wise? Surely you know he could destroy you. You must send him away."

Damon shakes his head. "I cannot. I cannot risk his safety."

"And because you wish to lie with him?"

"Yes," Damon says, the word like an iron weight. But what else is the reason he has kept Lyr in his manor?

"You think you can resist this desire?"

"I do not know."

"Then what would you have me do for you, Damon Darekul? Do you wish me to wash you of a sin you have not yet committed?"

"Sins of the body cannot be washed away."

"They cannot. And if you have no concerns for your soul, consider this, Damon Darekul. If you weaken and bed him, if you are discovered, Zai will punish you. You will lose everything. Everything you have earned. Every land you have taken for Azuria, every man you have killed for Azuria, it will all count for nothing if you bed this slave who has bewitched you so."

"I know," Damon whispers. "Please, why would Zai torment me this way? Why would he give me such desires?"

"To test your strength. To give you more chance to honour him," the Immurite says placidly.

"And if I am not strong enough?" Damon takes a breath. "I wish only to know how to protect my wife from my shame. "

"You know the answer to that, Damon Darekul. Your wife will be safe when she is mother to your sons. Until then your marriage could be dissolved if you are discovered. Lie with her and put your seed in her belly. Let her body protect you both."

"My heart will not allow it."

The Immurite's voice is hard as she says, "Have you still not covered your wife?"

"Once. On the night of our wedding. My father gave me a love draught. I remember little about it."

"I see," the Immurite pauses, considering. "Then, if you must keep this slave, here is my advice to you. You must silence the whispers about you and make a show of covering your wife. One that cannot be denied. In less than half a turn of the moon, the sun will move from the House of Gi to the House of Surrus. Surrus is the great Mother Sidu. The blessed prophet of fertility. Ask your wife to celebrate the Feast of Surrus with you. Surrus will soothe your heart so you may find the will and cover your wife in the Coupling Grove. Zai will be honoured and give you the strength. And it is not unusual for a husband to save his seed for such an event."

Damon nods. The Feast of Surrus. Perhaps that would work. If he covered Inez at the Feast of Surrus it would quell the rumours about Lyr. If the Immurite is correct and Zai will give him the will to do it. "If Zai will bless me so, then I will do this. And what of the slave?"

"If you love your wife, you must resist him. You must stay away from him and the temptation to sin. At least until you find a way to honour your wife in the eyes of Zai. You are a great warrior, Damon Darekul. Surely you can win this battle."

Damon doesn't feel like a warrior when he looks at Lyr. He feels weak as a boy. But the only way to protect Inez from his shame is to resist Lyr. "I understand. Zai grant me the strength to resist him."

"Zai grant you that strength," the Immurite echoes back.

"Thank you holy Immurite of Zai," Damon says, "Zai, hold your heart."

"Zai, hold your heart. Please, Damon, be careful. You have many enemies in Attar."

"Yes," Damon says wearily. "Yes, I know."

The Immurite's voice drops so low, Damon can barely hear her. She says, "Powerful men plot against you, dark is coming for you, and when that darkness swallows you come back to me. There will be a great trial you must face. When it comes, petition me so I can save your life and with it the lives of all Azuria."

Back in Sanglora, Damon speaks to Inez again, alone in her solar. He tells her they will be celebrating the Feast of Surrus.

Inez looks thoughtfully at him. "The Immurite is wise," she says. "It would be a fine way to mark your triumphant return from war. For the Feast of Surrus we will open Sanglora to the great and good of Attar. We will show the wealth of this estate and you will cover me in the coupling grove. That will end the rumours and Surrus will bless us with a child."

Damon takes a steady breath. Truly, he does not know if he can do what is required. But he must. He has done more difficult things, surely. "If you wish."

"Thank you, husband. The Immurite has given you wise counsel. I will tell the servants to begin preparations. And," she looks up at Damon with big, cautious eyes, "you will keep your promise. It will not happen again, with the Juran slave?"

"It will not," Damon says, meaning it.

Damon leaves the solar, glad Inez is happy. This is the only way, he thinks. He will follow the advice of the Immurite. He will not see Lyr. He will stay away from him. He will not go down to the kitchens in a fit of weakness as he did today. He will forget the way Lyr looked, sobbing for Damon's touch on the narrow cot on the Azurian Ascendant.

He will be an honourable man. Master of Sanglora.