Tangled Engagements (The Memory Stones Series Book 4) Read online

“Yes, my lady,” Theus heard the servants respond. They began to climb the stairs, Coriae silent as she helped Theus with each step.

  He was breathing hard by the time they reached the second floor, and was then surprised as Coriae released her assistance, and stepped slightly aside to escort him but not assist him walking down the hall to his room in the family quarters.

  “No help for the weary?” he asked with a smile.

  “I can smell the other woman’s perfume on you,” she replied crisply. “Let’s get along to your room.” She seemed to pick up her pace slightly, walking a step ahead of Theus all the way to the door of his designated room, where she opened the door and pushed it wide for his entry.

  “Sit down and let me take care of you,” she commanded, and moments after he thankfully took a seat on the side of the bed, she knelt and pulled first one boot off his foot, and then the other. Within minutes she had his pants off and had him under the covers of the bed, just in time as a knock came at the door.

  “The medicine is ready, my lady,” a servant entered with a tray that held a pair of pots.

  “I’ll take it,” she said kindly to the young boy, who looked at Theus with unmasked admiration.

  The boy handed the tray to Coriae, then stood transfixed by the sight of Theus lying in the bed, while Coriae carried the tray to a bedside table.

  “Will there be anything else?” she asked him pointedly, when she turned and saw the boy still in the room.

  “No, my lady,” he hastily replied with a knuckle to his forehead in a sign of obeisance, then he fled through the door.

  “You can apply the lotion to your leg yourself, after I treat your shoulder,” she said to Theus, clearly setting new boundaries in their relationship that hadn’t been mentioned the prior morning.

  “Let’s get that shirt off,” she grabbed the hem on the side of the healthy shoulder and gently worked the cloth over his head. “Now the other side,” she warned.

  “Be careful, it’s still very tender,” Theus warned.

  “Of course I’ll be careful,” she answered in a snippy tone, as she leaned in close to him to reach the top of the sleeve she intended to pull down.

  “Oh Theus!” she gasped as she removed the cover from his shoulder and arm. She backed away from him, though she still sat on the edge of the bed.

  “What is it now?” he asked irritably. He was in pain, and he was tired.

  “Your shoulder,” Coriae answered softly. She pointed, and her face displayed something that was fear or revulsion.

  Theus looked down, and choked as he saw a horrifying sight.

  The skin around the injury from the knife Donal had turned back against him was black, and lines of blackness were creeping out away from the injury, spreading across his shoulder, down into his chest and back and arm. Where the skin was already dark it appeared to be in motion, as if shades of black and purple and dark gray were swirling or creeping about beneath the skin.

  “What has happened Theus? You’ve got to heal it!” Coriae exclaimed. “It looks awful.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Theus murmured, feeling revolted himself by the appearance of the wound on his body.

  “It looks evil, like an abomination or something. How can I help you cure it?” Coriae asked with sincere concern.

  “Let me have some of the healing lotion,” Theus reached out his hand while his eyes remained focused on the darkness.

  He accepted the jar that Coriae offered, then dipped his fingers into the potion, and moved them towards the injury. They stopped and hovered just above the frightening skin, while Theus looked and tried to comprehend what he saw.

  Then he spread the lotion, pressing it directly upon the open sore in his shoulder, and spiraling his fingers around, trying to cover all the black skin in the faint hope that his standard remedy for fighting infection and encouraging healing would have some positive effect. He felt no obvious effect, but neither did he find that the skin felt any different where it was blackened.

  He dipped his fingers for more lotion, and focused on carefully rubbing a thick layer of the white potion into the terrible patch, rubbing and looking and trying to detect what was happening, and what had caused the inexplicable appearance.

  “Oh,” he said suddenly, as Coriae’s fingers reached under his sheet and pressed a cold dollop of lotion from the other pot onto the sliced wound on his thigh.

  “I didn’t think you were going to treat me there,” he said. “It’s not blackened too, is it?”

  “You appeared so absorbed in the shoulder wound, I decided I could help you down here,” the girl explained. She lifted the sheet and peeked beneath it. “There’s no blackness; it appears to be healing reasonably well; it would do better if you stayed off it, I suspect.”

  Theus wondered if she was right. He was so shaken by the ugly sight of the wound on his shoulder that he was ready to listen to any plausible suggestion on the next step to take.

  “I’ll rest this morning, I promise,” he told the girl, and their eyes locked on each other.

  She still cared for him, he was convinced. He thought he saw compassion and deep concern in her eyes. She was annoyed by his path crossing Glory’s, but her true affection for him remained strong. He would find a way to have a serious talk with her once he was healthier.

  He gave a great yawn. Coriae pulled her hand away from his leg, then smoothed the sheet over him. He ceased to rub his frightful shoulder, and yawned again.

  “Will you be here when I wake up?” he asked as he carefully rolled onto his good shoulder, and snuggled down into the soft bed. His back was to her.

  “If I’m not, they’ll come get me right away,” she promised. She leaned over and kissed his temple. “Go to sleep, my magician,” she softly whispered, and then she left the room. And minutes later, Theus was asleep.

  Chapter 2

  Theus awoke from troubled sleep in the early afternoon. There was no one in the room with him, no Coriae sitting beside his bed. Nor was Donal in the room, as he had dreamt.

  He had dreamed throughout his nap that Donal had been in the room, standing over him, whispering to him, touching his wounded shoulder, rubbing his hands together gleefully (his destroyed hand fully restored in the dreams).

  The two pots of medicine were sitting on the bedside table. Although he knew it would do no greater good to apply the dosage twice within such a short time, he dipped his fingers into the closest pot and rubbed more of the lotion upon his shoulder. The disfigured wound looked no better, nor any worse, that it had when he and Coriae had discovered it.

  When the door to his room began to unexpectedly open, he hastily pulled the sheet on his bed up to cover the terrible sight of his injured shoulder. He saw that Coriae was peering in on him, checking on his state of wakefulness. He felt both relieved that it was the one person he didn't have to hide his state from, but also a querulous irritation that she was checking in on him.

  "It still hurts,” he answered her question before she could ask. “And it's not any better so far.”

  The noble girl stared at him for just a moment, then fully entered the room, and pressed the door shut behind as she returned to the bedside.

  “Do you have any ideas about this?” She asked. “Is there someone you can ask for advice?”

  “I don't know anyone who can explain this,” he replied.

  “Except,” he suddenly considered a possibility.

  “Would you help me get dressed?” He asked.

  “Shouldn't you stay in bed and rest and heal?” Coriae asked in return,

  “There's nothing I know of that will heal this. I want to go to the temple; Limber can tell me what to do,” Theus informed her.

  She lifted his pants for him to place his legs in.

  “Would you like for me to go with you?” The girl asked.

  “Don't you think I can manage on my own?” He replied irritability.

  “Don't you want me to go?” Coriae asked in return. “Or do yo
u have some other plans? Are you going off to see Glory again?”

  “Don't be ridiculous,” Theus snapped. “I'm not going to see her.”

  “I wasn't being ridiculous, and if you don't want me with you, just say so,” Coriae heatedly replied.

  Theus wasn't sure why he was so ready to quarrel with the girl, but it seemed bound to happen. Just as he wasn't sure why he felt an internal struggle within his soul, a part of him eager to go to the temple, and a part of him opposed to the idea.

  He took a breath, and tried calm himself. Coriae's eyes were tightly clenched shut, as if she were similarly struggling to calm the confrontation.

  “I'd like for you to come with me,” he told her.

  “You don't have to take me; you don't owe me anything,” she immediately replied.

  “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. I shouldn't have tried to reopen our relationship. Some things are better left in the past, when their time is past,” she spoke philosophically.

  “You needn't say that,” Theus objected. “Let's go to the temple together. Have you even been out of the house in the past day?” He asked.

  “Not since I accompanied you back from the battle,” she admitted.

  “Help me get the rest of my clothes on, and let's go to the temple. Can you take me out a back way, so that we’re not seen?” he asked as he pulled his pants on, then awkwardly tried to put his shirt on.

  “You don’t want to be seen with me?” she asked, her hostility immediately restored by the question.

  “I don’t want to be seen by anyone; it’s not being seen with you that matters. I just want to go quietly and talk to my god and see if he can help me,” Theus answered.

  “You should know how much I wish I was seen with you, the way we were once upon a time. When I took Amelia through Stoke, every other person in the city asked me how you were or where you were,” Theus admitted, then blushed. Coriae had come to stand very close to him as he spoke, so that she might help him pull his shirt on, and their two faces were very near.

  He saw her face soften, and the pupils of her eyes widen at the revelation. For a fleeting moment, he expected her to lean into him and kiss him, but then the cloth of his shirt descended over his head and face, like a curtain dropped between them, and the moment ended.

  “Let’s get going,” she stood as he regained his vision, and her hand took his, pulling him up and off the bed. “I know a way that won’t be seen; but you knew that when you asked didn’t you?”

  “I had no idea,” Theus replied.

  “I remember Forgon telling me that when he first went back to Stoke, several people reported that they had seen you in town with another woman, and that you hadn’t mentioned that we had broken as a couple,” Coriae said as she led Theus down the back stairs.

  Theus listened, and waited for more. The comment seemed intended to lead to something. No further comments followed though, before they reached the kitchen, where servants were fixing food for the numerous guests and officials who remained in the house.

  “They’re eating like a herd of oxen,” the kitchen baker complained to Theus as he passed by with Coriae. “Can’t you do something to run them all out of the house?”

  Theus grinned and shook his head, as he briefly walked to the kitchen door. Coriae took him straight back along the familiar path that led to the family armory.

  “I don’t think we had the same thing in mind,” he spoke cautiously to her as they entered the building through the doors that Theus knew so well.

  “You only knew one of the reasons why this was one of my very favorite buildings,” Coriae explained. She kept on walking, holding his hand loosely to lead him on as she moved in front of him and crossed the room diagonally to the right, going to a corner of the room. She opened a pair of stout wooden shutters that Theus had never seen opened before, and opened a tall window, and casually stepped through it with a slightly bowed head.

  Coriae stood in a narrow alleyway outside facing back at Theus through the open window with a knowing smirk on her face. He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  “Don’t give me that expression,” she challenged him, and he smiled with satisfaction as her tone conveyed the independent personality that he knew was her soul. “I haven’t used this way out in a couple of years at least. And Forgon used it from time to time too.

  “I remember I snuck out this way the first time I kissed a boy,” she began to reminisce, before her expression changed, and she stopped. “Let’s get moving if we’re going to get you to your temple.”

  The alley was hemmed in by tall, tangled borders of impenetrable boxwood hedges; the way was shadowy and too narrow for a wagon to traverse. It led in a straight line for a hundred yards, then ended in a fence of boards.

  “These two are loose,” Coriae whispered unnecessarily over her shoulder, as she swung the two boards wide apart, each swinging on a single nail at their tops, and opening a gap that Theus twisted through, then Coriae flexibly swiveled through as well, as the two boards fell back into place, revealing no sign of the passage they hid.

  Theus was on a calm residential street, one he didn’t recognize.

  “This is the rear side of the estate,” Coriae provided an explanation. “We go this way to get to the city.

  “Are you able to walk all the way into the temple?” she asked, as it suddenly occurred to her that his wounds might hobble him.

  “My leg is feeling much better. I’ll be able to walk,” he assured her. He planted his staff in front of him and began strolling forward, just to demonstrate his ability.

  “The city is this way,” her voice sounded behind him, and he turned to see that she was still in place, and pointing the other direction.

  Minutes later, as they strolled through the merchants’ section of the city, they passed by a block of buildings that were only smoldering heaps of burnt brick and stones and ashes.

  “What will these people do to make a living until their shops are rebuilt?” Coriae asked as she and Theus walked in the center of the road, passing many others. Some were already trying to stack and organize the ruined materials.

  “Maybe your father can figure out some way to help them recover, while he rules the city,” Theus suggested, not knowing anything else to offer.

  When they reached the block of shops where the memory stone craftsmen were located, they passed the bottle shop Glory worked in.

  “Would you like to go in to see your friend, to make sure she’s alright?” Coriae asked in a careful voice.

  “She’s not here; she went back to her family farm, after the attack. She didn’t feel safe here,” Theus replied is a voice that was just as careful.

  “And since she’s gone, you decided to come back to our house?” The probing question emerged before Coriae could help it.

  “You know what?” Theus was tired of the implied jealousy. “I,” he stammered for a second, unsure as to whether he should simply allow all his bottled emotions to explode. They were standing in a street, a public place, where he didn’t want to put his emotions, his complex relationship with Coriae, and his very heart on display. But he was filled with a surfeit of feelings.

  “I told you when you accused me of being a thief that you were wrong; do you remember?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I told you the truth then, and I tell you the truth now – I would help Glory as a friend. She is a good friend. But my heart doesn’t belong to her.

  “It has belonged to you, even after you called me a thief, and heaven help me, up until this moment that you’ve said I’m a cheater and a liar about who I love. Why the gods don’t just wipe my heart clean and let me have a fresh start, I don’t know,” he wasn’t seeing clearly – his vision was blurred.

  “The very gods themselves trust me!” he declared loudly. “But you don’t.”

  Coriae’s face was very dark, her complexion suffused with the blood that flushed her cheeks, her forehead, her chin.

  “You can go back to the m
ansion, and I’ll go the temple alone, to ask for help. I’ll ask Limber to cure my wound, and maybe I’ll ask him to cure my heart too,” he blustered. Yet even as he flung the proposal out, he knew in his heart that he didn’t want to lose the passion he felt for the girl he was confronting.

  There were others in the street, people passing by. Some tried to act as though they weren’t witnessing the passionate exchange, but others stared openly, and one teenage boy even hooted from a safe distance.

  “Theus,” Coriae’s voice was strangled. She reached out with both her hands and took one of his. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound like I don’t trust you. You know – you know, you know, you must truly know – that I cannot doubt you, after all I’ve seen you do. You have such a good soul.

  “I’m sorry I sounded so terrible. I said the wrong things; the world is a stressful place,” she paused. “Why did I ever go to Thuros?” she asked herself softly.

  “What?” Theus asked in confusion. She had seemed to say all the right things up until the misplaced question.

  Her hands squeezed his.

  “Never mind. I apologize. I won’t bring up Glory again, ever. Let’s get you to the temple and make you feel better,” She told him. She stepped up against him, and strung his arm over her shoulders once again, making it in part an effort to help him, in part an effort to convey her care for him.

  A smattering of applause encircled them from the public audience. They moved forward, and entered the crumbling stone entrance to Limber’s temple.

  Chapter 3

  Theus and Coriae entered the dim interior of the temple, and climbed the short steps up to the interior foyer. The dark doors leading to the sanctuary within were open, but brooding rather than welcoming in appearance. Theus stepped forward, pulling Coriae with him more than relying on her for support at that moment. They entered the dim sanctuary.

  Inside was the monolith he remembered from his first visit to the temple, where the spirit of Limber had spoken to him and evaluated him.

  “My lord,” Theus spoke aloud when they reached the stone railing that surrounded the obelisk. He lifted Coriae’s arm off his shoulder, then knelt with his hands before him in a posture of supplication. His left shoulder hurt from the position of his arm, but he held the pose, as Coriae tentatively knelt beside him.