Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [135]
“Make your preparations,” he said. “Be ready for whatever comes.”
She felt her lips tremble anew. “Can’t we—”
“Remember that I love you. As long as the gods give me breath and the strength of my arm, I swear I will not fail you.”
He kissed her, grave and unhappy, and went out.
As the door shut behind him, she buried her face in her hands. She wept long and bitterly, feeling the sourness of defeat. Everything she had hoped for, everything she had planned for, was ending. She could feel the hand of Fate on her, and she hated it. What was the good of wearing a crown and having people call you Majesty, if in the end you were only a pawn in a larger political game, to be pushed here and pushed there? She would have been better off to have spent her days still doing the mending and scrubbing floors.
A faint noise brought her out of her misery. She looked up, frowning, and turned around.
She saw a large sack of coarse homespun lying on the floor. Its bulging contents shifted and moved. Another faint noise, almost like a whimper, came from within.
Elandra held her breath a moment, then approached it cautiously. Drawing her knife, she wondered if it was a trap placed here by her enemies. There had been attempts made on her life before. This sack could hold anything from a bundle of cobras to a demon.
But she thought—she hoped—it held something else. She decided to take the chance.
With her knife, she slashed across the sack, slitting the cloth, then jumped back.
Nothing happened at first; then an eye peered cautiously out. She caught a glimpse of golden skin and knew swift disappointment.
It wasn’t the jinja she’d hoped for.
She stepped back and put away her knife, intending to call Alti to take it away.
But a small hand reached through the slit and ripped it wider. A head emerged, swiveling around to reveal a triangular face, dainty pointed teeth, large defiant eyes, and pointed ears.
It was a jinja, after all, but she had never seen one that wasn’t green. This one climbed out of the sack and crouched there, clearly wild and terrified. Its gaze darted in all directions, and nothing reassured it.
There should have been handlers. There should have been some preparations, a bit of initial training to the creature to gentle it prior to the bonding. She did not know where or how Alti had managed to get one captured from the wild on such short notice, but he had.
Now that it was out in the sunlight that streamed in through her windows, she could see that its golden skin had a greenish undertone. It was much smaller than the usual jinja, not even reaching to her waist. She wondered if it was fully grown.
“Little one,” she said softly, reaching out her hand.
The jinja panicked. Screaming, it zigzagged about the room, darting madly, knocking over furniture and objects, leaping at the windows like something crazed, only to fall back into the room as the screens held.
Panting, it lay on the floor and moaned to itself.
Elandra dared not approach it, fearing it would go into another frenzy and do itself serious harm. Not knowing what else to do, she drew out her topaz and held it up so that the light could shine on it.
“Jinja,” she said softly, crooning to it, “golden like this jewel, golden in my chosen colors. Good jinja, rare and valued jinja, brought to me as an omen in this day of trial and sore need.”
The creature rose up on its haunches, its gaze fastened on the jewel, which had begun to shine. The topaz seemed to gentle it, mesmerize it, exactly as it had done to the dragon.
“I will not hurt you,” Elandra said to the creature. “I will keep you fed. I will give you pretty things. You will sense the magic for me. You will keep it from doing me harm.”
The jinja swayed, its large eyes glowing. It reached out one hand. “Give rock.”
“The topaz is mine,” Elandra said with gentle firmness. “And you will be mine. My possessions are together, close, but I am mistress of them. Come and bond with me, pretty jinja.”
She put away the topaz, and the