Page 15 of Dark Shaman: The Lost Treasure
It must be effective, or Navuh wouldn't be trying to use it on him.
After listening to Eluheed's answer and realizing that he had nothing more to add, the warlord dismissed him with a wave of his hand and returned to his seat behind the desk.
Outside, Arnav was waiting to escort Eluheed back to the servants' quarters and ensure he didn't wander around the upper levels, peeking where he wasn't supposed to.
Destruction was coming to this place, but Eluheed hadn't lied when he said that he didn't know the when or how or even why.
5
TAMIRA
As Tamira and her companions made their way back from the gazebo, the air was already thick with humidity, promising another sweltering day in their tropical prison, but at least it hadn't rained today. The monsoon season was the worst time on the island. She still remembered the days they had lived in what was now northern Lebanon. It had been so much cooler there and not as restrictive.
The concubines had always resided in a harem, but back then, the security guards had been posted to keep them safe from unwanted intruders and not to keep them imprisoned within. She still remembered going shopping at the market, providing small charities to the local humans, and having a life that was much more well-rounded under Mortdh's rule than what it had turned into under his son's.
When she'd belonged to Mortdh, her duty had been to pleasure the god and, if the Fates willed it so, bear a child, and it hadn't been a terrible burden at all. Mortdh had been generous with his affections.
After Mortdh's demise, Navuh had taken over, installing Areana as the queen of the harem shortly thereafter. Naively, Tamira had thought that things would get better since he wasn't interested in any of his father's concubines and had given them freedom to choose human lovers as long as they resembled him so he could claim their children as his.
That illusion had been quickly shattered when they'd discovered that any sons born in the harem would be taken from their mothers and raised elsewhere in the compound. Even Areana had been subjected to the same fate. Her mate had taken the two sons she'd given him away from her and had them raised by the Dormants in the breeders' enclosure. The boys grew up with vague memories of their birth mothers, if any, and becamewarriors and commanders in Navuh's army.
The one exception was Kalugal, who had somehow remembered Areana and had managed to sneak into the harem on occasion as a little boy. He had inherited his father’s compulsion ability, which was how he was able to make the guards let him through, but Areana had feared for his life and told him not to do that.
How could she love a male whom she considered a threat to her children?
Navuh didn’t care what happened to his own sons, and he cared even less about what happened to the daughters of his so-called concubines.
Only two girls had been born to the harem ladies and taken away to the breeders’ enclosure. After that, Areana had negotiated with Navuh to let the girls remain in the harem and grow up with their mothers. Still, they were not allowed to transition, and they had lived and died as humans.
Both fates were cruel, and Tamira had a hard time hiding her deep resentment of Navuh from Areana, who loved him despite being subjected to the same cruelty.
Love was apparently not only blind but also completely misguided and misplaced.
If Tamira hadn't known better, she would have been prompted to believe that Navuh had Areana under a thrall, but that wasn't the case. The Fates must have hated Areana when they'd burdened her with a truelove mate like Navuh.
Then again, Areana was the only one on the planet who was capable of reining in Navuh's cruelty and insatiable appetite for power. If not for her, the world would have been in an even worse place than it was now.
The harem didn't have a connection to the outside world, but that didn't mean that Tamira had no idea what was going on. What she knew came from books that were lagging a few years behind current events, but at least she had that narrow window into the world, and as long as she kept her head down and pretended to be contented with her lot, she could continue to order books from the catalog approved by Navuh and get them delivered to the harem's ever-growing library.
It was a delicate balance, one she'd perfected over thousands of years.
As they passed the herb garden, she scanned it for the gardener she'd seen there at the start of their morning stroll, but he was no longer there, and she was surprised to realize that she was disappointed.
She'd caught only a brief glimpse of him earlier when he'd dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground,his wide-brimmed hat sliding forward to hide his face but revealing his sun-streaked, light brown hair. The posture of abject submission should have been pathetic, but something about the tension in his shoulders and the way his hands had splayed against the earth as if grounding himself had caught her attention.
Or maybe it was his bottom that had been sticking up in the air. It was a nice, masculine bottom, and after living for as long as she had in captivity and seclusion, even that was a source of excitement.
"Did you find anything interesting among those herbs?" Liliat asked.
Tamira realized that she'd slowed her pace and had been staring too long at the neat rows of plants. "I'm just appreciating the garden. Someone has been growing medicinal herbs for what seems like a while, and I only noticed it now because of the strong smell."
Raviki laughed from ahead of them. "Are we really reduced to admiring plant life for entertainment? What's next, placing bets on which wave will reach the highest on the cliff?"
"Don't mock," Liliat said. "Remember the time we spent cataloguing cloud formations? Or when Beulah convinced us to learn seventeen different forms of calligraphy?"
They reached the entrance to their underground palace, the temperature dropping blessedly as they descended into the climate-controlled interior. The transition never failed to remind Tamira of descending into a tomb—fitting, perhaps, since they were all buried here.
She could barely remember her life outside the harem, before she had been delivered to Mortdh as an offering by her father, but she remembered a house full of windows, with a front and back yard, and children playing outside.
