Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [106]
Sickening anger at their caprice and cruelty filled her, but she wasted no time indulging her emotions. She could be disgusted with them later; it was more important now to stop them.
How?
If she ran outside to the courtyard, she might be able to shame them into stopping the flogging. But she might not. Dear Gault, if her own father perceived Caelan as no more than a lover tagging along in her wake, these dolts of his court must think exactly the same.
She could wait, gather allies from within the troops, and reprimand them later.
That would be very dignified, but it would not save Caelan’s back. She needed Caelan to go to her father now. She hoped he might even know how to heal Albain. Caelan’s father had been a healer. Caelan himself had studied the arts for a time. He must know something.
Beyond that, she could not bear to think what a public flogging would do to Caelan’s spirit. He was just now beginning to believe in himself, just now beginning to reach out to all the possibilities before him. Being whipped would knock him back to his days as a slave, would bring back all the shame and humiliation he had endured before.
She would rather they whipped her than have Caelan go through something like that again.
Her hesitation lasted no more than a few seconds. Faintly from outside, she could hear people shouting and cheering in the mindless way of a mob.
“Fools,” she said angrily, and headed for the portico.
Before she reached it, however, a woman stepped into the doorway to block her path.
She was a tall, fierce-eyed woman, slender despite her middle years. Her henna-streaked hair was expertly plaited and coiffed. Expensive rings glittered on her long fingers. Her gown was of straw-colored silk, full-skirted with a sheer green gauze overlay. She smelled of costly ambergris perfume.
Elandra stopped in her tracks, jolted by a sense of recognition although this woman was unknown to her. “Let me pass,” she said with scant courtesy.
The woman did not step aside. “We will talk, you and I.” Her gaze flickered past Elandra to Alti and Sumal. “Dismiss your dogs, and let us go the balcony gardens where we can be private.”
Another, more boisterous roar rose from the crowd. Elandra glanced at her guards. “Move this woman out of my way.”
They stepped forward, and alarm flickered briefly in the woman’s face.
“Elandra!” she said. “I am your mother.”
It was yet another shock, coming on top of too many. Elandra refused to deal with it. She couldn’t. Caelan needed her more.
“Stand aside,” Elandra said. “This isn’t the time.”
The guards gently moved the woman out of her path, and Elandra hastened on, fearing already from the jeering laughs and catcalls from the crowd that she was too late.
For Caelan, struggling with all his might to keep himself from being strangled, humiliation warred with his pride. All his tremendous strength and fighting skills availed him nothing as long as the air kept being shut off from his lungs. One quick twist of the noose, and his vision would fade. Then he would be helpless, gasping on his knees, sweat pouring off him, his strength gone from his limbs.
Each time he was allowed to draw in air until he could stand again. Then they would propel him forward in a halting, awkward progress down the innumerable steps. Whenever he felt stronger and started to think about what he might try, the man controlling the noose about his throat would jerk it hard, and the world would go black on him again.
The courtiers followed them in a stream, calling out merrily and laughing at the entertainment he provided. They seemed oblivious to the rain soaking their finery.
Caelan despised them, and wondered how Gialta had ever gotten its reputation for powerful armies when it had an aristocracy such as this.
But then, he would have despised anyone who came to laugh at his shame.
The noose around his neck reminded him of the slave chain he had worn for so many years. The public humiliation was like being marched to the auction block all over