Free Mistress of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist, Janny Wurts Page A

and pulled, tearing the cloth from her body, but unlike years before, when she had performed the ritual for her father and brother, no tears followed the violence. Her eyes remained painfully dry.
    She plunged her hand into the almost extinguished brazier. The sting of the few hot cinders remaining was not enough to focus her thoughts. Grief remained a dull ache inside her as she smeared the ashes across her breasts and down her exposed stomach, to symbolise that her heart was ashes. In truth, her flesh felt as lifeless as the spent wood of the pyre. She slowly lifted the heirloom metal dagger, kept sharp for this ceremony over the ages. For the third time in her life, she drew the blade from its sheath and cut herself across the left arm, the hot pain barely felt in the fog of her despair.
    She held the small wound over the pool, letting drops of blood fall to mix with the water, as tradition required. For more than a minute she sat motionless, until nature’s healing staunched the flow. A scab had half dried before she absently tugged at her robe, but she lacked the fiercenessof will to fully sunder the garment. In the end, she simply dragged it over her head. It fell to earth, one sleeve soaking up oil and water from the pool.
    By rote, Mara unfastened her hairpins, loosening her dark locks over her shoulders. Anger and rage, grief and sorrow should have driven her to pull upon her tresses, yanking handfuls lose. Her emotions only smoldered sullenly, like a spark smothered by lack of air. Boys should not die; to grieve for them in a fullness of passion was to abet the acceptance of their passing. Mara twisted at a few tangles, outwardly listless.
    Then she settled back upon her heels and regarded the glade. Such immaculate beauty, and only she among the living could appreciate it. Ayaki would never perform the death rite for his mother. Hot tears erupted unbidden and she felt something of the hardness wedged within break loose. Mara sobbed, abandoning herself to an outpouring of grief.
    But unlike before, when such release brought clarity, this time she found herself driven deeper into chaotic thought. When she closed her eyes, her mind whirled with images: first Ayaki running, then Kevin, the barbarian slave who had taught her of love, and who had time and again risked his life for her alien honor. She saw Buntokapi, sprawled on the red length of his sword, his great ham fists quivering closed as the life left his body. Again she acknowledged that her first husband’s death would forever be marked against her. She saw faces: her father and brother, then Nacoya, her nurse and foster mother.
    All of them offered her pain. Kevin’s return to his own world was as painful a loss as death, and not one other had died as nature intended; all had been casualties of twisted politics, and of the cruel machinations of the Great Game.
    The horrid certainty would not leave her, that Ayakiwould not be the last boy to die for the empty ambitions of the nation’s Ruling Lords.
    That reality struck her like torture: that Ayaki would not be the last. Howling in hysteria born of agony, Mara threw herself headlong into the pool.
    The wetness swallowed her tears. Her sobs were wrenched short by a gasp as cold water sucked into her nostrils, and life recalled her to its own. She crawled back on dry earth, choking. Water streamed from her mouth and hair. She dragged in a hacking breath, then reached mechanically for the robe, its whiteness marred by dirt and sweet oil.
    As if she were a spirit wearing the body of a stranger, she saw herself drag the fabric over her wet flesh. The hair she left bunched under the collar. Then the body that felt like a living prison gathered itself up and trudged back toward the entrance to the glade, where thousands waited with eyes hostile or friendly.
    Their presence took her aback. In this Lord’s fatuous smile and that Lord’s leering interest, she saw the truth confirmed: that Ayaki’s death would