The Great Succession Crisis

  Chapter Six: Queen Isabelle’s Fateful Ruling

  But Corann was only down, not out; as soon as Janus and Anlei moved 20 zhang from him, he found himself out of range of the bracelet and fully functional. Corann hit the combination of buttons on his belt that allowed him to speak to palace security, “Fafiku to Lord Eisiq. Code fabku. Repeat, code fabku. House Shem, Lord Janus. Cordelia il y a Cariadoc. Vais chambre.”

  Lord Eisiq answered his alert on his communicator, “Fafiku. Code fabku acknowledged. All is ready. See you there.”

  Moving swiftly down in concert with many hidden knights of Gurun, Corann raced through hidden corridors that he had mastered thanks to the help of his friend, Lady Knight Elda. Though Janus had a head start on him, Corann navigated the palace expertly and opened Anlei’s chamber doors.

  He found Janus on the bed with her, starting to move on top of her – and his house Shem pendant of betrothal around her neck.

  But under law, no betrothal was legal until Janus had deflowered his prize. Anlei’s gown was mostly open, revealing the corset she chose to wear underneath for the ball. Janus was climbing on top of her, his tunic off, his hands starting to slide her skirt and petticoats up to claim his prize, already up to her knees. Janus’ hand seizing her inner thigh ravenously with a bruising grip. Corann knew he had to do something – and quick.

  Anlei’s arms were around his neck expectantly…Corann attacked the source of Janus’ power and grabbed the bracelet, causing a tiny cut on Anlei’s wrist as he did so and making her cry out in pain as she bled, “Corann!”

  Corann threw the bracelet out of the room. Lord Knight Eisiq recovered the bracelet, handing it over to the waiting hands of Lady Knight Elda, but knew not to interfere – yet. Immediately Lady Knight Elda gave the bracelet to a nearby analysis droid.

  With the bracelet’s effects now blocked by the shielding of the droid, the light in Anlei’s eyes returned, “Where am I…what? Lord Janus, how dare you?” Then she felt her neck and the dreaded necklace, noticing her state of undress, “Corann, help me.”

  Janus slapped Anlei vengefully, “Deny me, will you? I will show you. You are mine.”

  “Anlei, take off the necklace. Quickly!” commanded Corann.

  As she struggled with the clasp, Janus grabbed her wrist to stop her, his body pinning to the bed so tightly she could feel his readiness to claim his prize.

  “No, you don’t,” screamed Corann, grabbing Janus and wrestling him away from Anlei. Janus loosened his grip on Anlei’s wrist. Anlei tussled her hand free, immediately working at the clasp to get the house Shem pendant off her neck, rolling away from the battling Corann and Janus.

  Corann threw Janus off the bed using a well-practiced deflection technique drilled into him since childhood. Janus rolled, scrambling to his feet. Corann sprang upon him from the bed, knocking him down angrily. Janus threw a punch at Corann’s face. Corann evaded it and returned with a punch to Janus’ ribs.

  A dot of blood 0.16 cun 寸 wide seeped into Corann’s tunic as his wound reopened his wound. Janus observed the blood as a sign of vulnerability, punching the wound as hard as he could. “You have no right,” cried Janus. “She’s MINE.”

  Anlei removed the house Shem necklace and threw it across the room, “Corann – stop him.”

  “Forced betrothal? I think she has every right. How dare you try to rape the heir to the throne?” scuffled Corann, determined to keep Janus from getting near the princess again.

  “A mere WOMAN. She’s NOTHING. She doesn’t deserve to rule,” shrieked Janus.

  Corann turned to the gathered knights waiting outside Anlei’s chamber, “Knights of Gurun and Ten-ar have you heard enough?”

  As Lord Eisiq prepared to answer, the assembly bowed suddenly as Queen Isabelle stepped into the room, motioning for Corann to rise off the defeated Janus. Lord Knight Eisiq and Lady Knight Elda followed the queen, seizing Janus and binding his hands. Fury flashed on the face of the queen, “A woman is nothing is she? My only daughter is nothing? Was your sister, Lady Ecter, nothing, Lord Janus? Or are you merely trying to cover the shame that it was YOU who impregnated your own sister to prevent her from marrying my cousin, Lord Priest Adelmar, son of Princess Alicia?” Motioning for Lord Eisiq and Lady Elda to enter the room, she commanded, “Lord Knight Eisiq, Lady Knight Elda, search his person.”

  Bruised and somewhat battered Corann rose to his feet, binding Janus to prevent him from breaking free. Lord Eisiq and Lady Elda rifled through Janus’ clothes, none to gently. From Janus’ belt they recovered several strange technical devices and handed them to the queen. Queen Isabelle inspected them carefully, “Husband, do you know what these are?”

  Lord Prince Bevin stepped forward, “I do. They are portable fertility devices used to force impregnate a woman after a single episode of traditional intercourse. This particular device here stimulates ovulation, this one here collects the sperm and directs it at the ovum, and this one accelerates foetal growth so that in a few shir-ors time, one night perhaps, the pregnancy can typically be beyond undoing short of risking harm to the mother.”

  “Lord Knight Corann,” addressed Queen Isabelle, “is it your testimony that Lord Janus intended to use these devices on my daughter, that he came into this room with reasonable intent to rape and impregnate my daughter without her expressed and complete free consent to do so and without the benefit of a freely-made betrothal contract?”

  “My Queen, Princess Anlei has known Lord Janus not even two shir-ors across two brief meetings. In my experienced judgment as her protector, I can conceive of absolutely no way she could imagine consenting to anything beyond the more formal of conversations with him in Council chambers. It is inconceivable he would be invited to any private meeting, even in the presence of family or friends, and even less likely to desire to be alone with him, without protection from myself. It is a million times more likely your dear sister Princess Anyu will return to Beinan from D425E25 Tertius than this would be so,” assessed Corann.

  Isabelle smiled at Corann’s memorial to her lost sister Anyu, “Point taken, my lord knight. Well then, Janus of house Shem…, he evidence against you is clear. It is the ruling of this court that you be banished from Beinarian nobility. You shall be relocated to Xi-Nan Fang to one of the towns or cities of your choosing, I care not where, so long as you stay there for the rest of your life and never set foot in Dong-Bei again. There, in Xi-Nan Fang, you shall learn the value of hard work as you earn an honest living doing whatever labour you see fit and marrying whoever will take you. Your name and everything you have as house Shem shall be stricken from official records and taken away as you took away these things from your own sister and tried to take them from my own daughter. The child you imposed on your sister, Lady Ecter, shall receive the bounty of what is stripped from you and for your crime; we shall elevate her, giving her grace where you felt women deserve none. You are now, as of this shir-or, of no house, no name. Guards…get this filth out of my presence.”

  Three knights of Gurun seized Janus, no longer now a lord nor of house Shem. Kicking and snarling, he resisted as Isabelle’s heavily armed knights grabbed him, “Xi-Nan Fang is worse than death and everyone knows it. It’s a filthy cesspool of disease and slow death. Mercy and royalty? Blah. There’s none in you. But you’ll regret letting me live. You haven’t heard the last from me, Your Majesty. Your dynasty is still doomed, and I will be the cause. House Gurun will fall. Mark my words…maybe not this yen-ar or even in ten…but mark me well…the Gurun dynasty is DOOMED. I will have my revenge.”

  With Janus now carried out of the room, the betrothal necklace now shined golden on the floor. Sadly, Corann picked it up and offered it to Queen Isabelle, “Your Majesty…here is the dread pendant he used….”

  “Lady Elda, will you put this in the evidence file with the rest of the objects we prosecuted him with as proof of his crimes? Let no one object or appeal the wisdom of w
hat we achieved this evening. May posterity ever uphold our right judgment as just. They must know always why we did what we did tonight. This was a good and necessary thing to protect not only our crown princess, but all our daughters. And now, my lords, I ask for a private moment with my daughter; Lord Corann, you may stay.” At the queen’s command, everyone except Corann filtered out of the room. Anlei still trembled on the bed, bewildered at what had nearly happened. Isabelle the mother pulled up a chair and sat next to her, “Are you okay?”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “This is your room, Anlei, and we are in private…somehow I don’t think we need protocol around Corann. I think ‘mother’ will do right now….” answered Isabelle.

  “Thank you, Mother. I don’t think I could have without Corann. He saved me,” cried Anlei, shaking visibly.

  “I always will, Anlei. You know that. I promise you,” reassured Corann.

  “You know I have watched the two of you over these beinors; think he is a lot better to you than you give him credit for,” observed Isabelle. “He gives you everything, yet wants so little in return. There is no finer man in all of Beinan, Anlei. As a mother, I would suggest you never take him for granted. The men who are like Janus are far more numerous than those like Corann. Choose wisely, my daughter, how you wish to be treated,” hinted Isabelle.

  Catching the hint and still shaking, Anlei raised her eyes to her mother, “Mother…would you excuse Corann and I for a while? I think he and I need to talk….” Rising, Isabelle smiled and left. “Corann?” called Anlei.

  Corann bent over her from his chair next to the bed and caressed her brow with one hand while moving her skirts modestly back down to their proper positions, “I am here.”

  “I am so scared. He nearly raped me, didn’t he?”

  Corann’s heart jumped to his throat at the thought, “YES. He did -- almost.”

  “I should have listened to you. Why couldn’t I hear you?”

  “You were enspelled, Anlei, just like my father was. Janus was a predator in the fold. Your brother foresaw everything; I think even the part where he was on top of you, starting to….”

  “You weren’t fooled.”

  Corann smiled sorrowfully, trying to hold back his tears, “I was trained in the temple by mother until I was fifteen yen-ars old, remember? And then after I became Lord Knight Culain’s squire, your grandmother took me as her protégé. I’ve been well trained to spot these things…and fight them.”

  “I wish I had learned how to,” she cried, weeping and trembling.

  Uncertain what to do, Corann wept until he finally dared hold her in his arms. She threw her arms around him and clutched at him like a drowning woman, afraid to let go. “There was never a need for you to learn, my princess. You were the heiress to the throne. If you rejected your Miyoo blood, then that was your right.”

  “I’ve been a fool, Corann, a fool in every way. Only now am I starting to remember how he…touched me, he grabbed me. In my dreams I thought only my husband would…touch me in those places. He didn’t just dare…he undressed me where all of Beinarian polite society could see. I was nothing more than a whore to him.”

  “But always my princess, my queen to me…. Oh Anlei, did you hear my heart in the chaos? Do you know how I feel about you?” wept Corann.

  Anlei broke his embrace and covered her half bare breasts shamefully, “I am not worthy now. He destroyed my virtue. I am no better than some common woman selling her favours on the street.”

  Corann’s tears ended and with tender eyes he met hers assertively, “No, sweetheart. Not to me. Perhaps to them who do not know who cannot see the truth--but never to me. I know the real you. And know what he did and how. You are as pure tonight in my eyes as ever you were. My feelings for you are unchanged.”

  “Tell me your feelings, Corann.”

  “You know them well, Your Highness.”

  “PLEASE,” she begged. “I am tired of taking you for granted. Let me hear the truth, all of it. You started to say something in the garden that I was too enspelled to hear. Tell me now. I beg you. There is…a gift I want of you.”

  Corann breathed hard, understanding her meaning well, “Are you sure?”

  Anlei placed his left hand on her right side, just under her breast and breathed hard, “I am sure. I have never been so sure of anything in my life. Tell me how you feel. Hold nothing back now.”

  Corann met her eyes, “Anlei, Crown Princess of Beinan, Heiress of house Gurun, I love you. I have been in love with you since the moment I met you and felt your heart in my mind. Your heart burns in my heart. Your mind dances in my mind. In my dreams, I hear your song. In my body, I have desired but one woman for my wife for all of my life. In my heart of hearts, I have known but one truth above all others: that your soul and mine are joined in the sacred dance of the goddesses, never to be separate and never complete until we are fully joined in mind, heart, and flesh. I have needed you since the first moment I gazed into your eyes. I have been in torment every moment you have failed to love me. Anlei, sweetest Anlei, will you marry me?” With his final words he offered the Ten-Arian necklace he had tried to offer her before, holding it up so she merely needed to put her head through the chain if she accepted it.

  Smiling and trembling somewhat, Anlei leaned forward and put her head through the chain. Almost weeping, Corann laid the pendant on her upper chest as she answered, “YES, Corann…I will marry you.”

  Corann let his lips drift near hers, “May I?” Anlei nodded as Corann climbed onto the bed and began to kiss her. She softly received and returned his kisses. These kisses were different now. Now they were kisses to claim her, tender and yet tenuous, as if Corann feared she would change her mind. After a moment of two, Corann propped himself on his arm, being careful in all this time not to lay on Anlei at all, “Anlei…you know you are not truly mine until we….” Corann’s hand drifted to her knee to hint at what she needed to do.

  “I know….” she breathed hard, understanding what was required and remembering the law. “Corann, are you sure you want me?”

  Corann nodded at her and kissed her hand, “I am sure. I’ve always been sure. But what do you want? Once done, Anlei neither of us can undo it. The law is very specific regarding the conditions that can break a consummated betrothal. Once you take me, we are truly sealed.”

  Anlei breathed deeply, thinking carefully about her choice. He was right…what she said now would settle the matter of her marriage irrevocably. Once the token was accepted and once she received him physically…her life was sealed as well.

  Like a bride, weighing her options, she took the moment Corann asked of her to make absolutely sure of this. The law was strict regarding breaking such a commitment and for a woman of her stature, even after her wedding, divorce would be hard to achieve. This was the moment of decision for her life, the moment she had delayed about for yen-ars.

  Corann was right all along…she knew long ago how this night would end, what she would choose. Anlei chose to finally un-masque her heart, “Then seal me to your side forever, my love. Oh Corann…seal me with your body, make me your bride. Make me yours. With all my heart, I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Corann, sweetest Corann…I love you.”

  Slowly, carefully Corann climbed onto Anlei and let one hand drift under her skirt. Anlei smiled as she felt the weight of him and felt him start to kiss her. Tugging at his sword belt, she unfastened it. The precious sword of Ten-ar made a loud thump as it fell off her large bed. Pulling off his tunic and noticing his wound, she knew to touch him gently as she put her arms around him and let destiny seal their fate.

  In the shir-ors before morning, Anlei would feel the sweetness of Corann’s true love seal her into her new destiny. Enjoying his touch all through the night she wondered if this is what it meant to be a wife as she drifted in and out of sleep in his arms, a sealed bride at last.

&
nbsp; Anlei woke a shir-or before dawn naked in her bed and with Corann’s arms around her, his body equally naked. Was it a dream? She felt her neck, the Ten-Arian sword heraldry certainly felt real. The pile of scattered clothes around her curtained bed hinted of the previous night’s activities. No, not a dream, and she felt nice and warm where she was. Her hand drifted to Corann’s wound; it was clearly still a bit tender even after all these beinors. He had never complained about the pain. What a marvel. Had she chosen correctly? The choice was done. She could feel in her body as more and more of her body took a waking mode that certainly she felt differently physically than before. Strange sensations inside her, and yet somehow she did not mind. What was it about him that made her not mind feeling uncomfortable in odd places? Being young and inquisitive, she wondered if Corann felt uncomfortable in odd places too. No…she would not dare ask that. Instead she kissed his brow, uncertain what to do next. She had never woken up in the same bed with someone before. This was a strange, new experience.

  As she thought, she heard Corann moan awake, then open his eyes, “Good morning, my love. How is my bride?” Corann started to kiss her. So strange to kiss like this, but she yielded and accepted his kisses.

  “Did we? Did we?” she asked, almost confused.

  “Yes. Legally, in every way we are fully betrothed, Anlei. You are my bride to be. We are sealed together in this. Nothing can undo what we chose last night,” described Corann.

  “What happened?” Anlei felt somewhat confused in a way, her body sending out dizzying sensations.

  “You let yourself love me completely last night instead of thinking like a politician. You chose with your heart.” Corann held her close sweetly.

  “I can barely remember.”

  Corann propped himself up, “Would you like me to remind you how we were feeling last night?”

  Anlei simply nodded vigorously. Corann kissed her hand, drew the curtains to the bed, and then tenderly made love to her. From outside the curtains, RK6 could hear Anlei say, “I love you,” over and over again.

  After a quarter shir-or, Corann had finished. Lying next to her again and cuddling her, he kissed his bride, “Feel better?”

  Anlei caught her breath, “Much. Forgive me for doubting you.”

  Corann kissed her, “There is nothing to forgive. However, sweetheart, I think I should dress and return to my room for a bit. Our engagement has not been announced and I would not want your reputation harmed by someone finding me here before your parents know that you chose me and sealed our engagement. I can hardly have my bride looking unchaste.” Corann slide out of the bed, behind the bed curtains, and clothed his lower body discretely.

  “I don’t want you to go,” begged Anlei. “I want you hold me.”

  Reaching for his tunic, Corann climbed back onto the bed and reached for her, with a sheet and some blankets between their bodies, he held her close, caressing her bare back, “Believe me, I want nothing more than to stay with you and be close. But that wouldn’t be proper yet and I must do what is right for you.” He kissed her tenderly, “Don’t worry, my princess. Soon we will be announced and before you know it, we will be wed. I’m not content just to be your bride groom. You, young lady, are going to be a wife.” Embracing her again, he kissed her lips, then her neck, and finally let go, putting on his tunic and his sword as he left for his room.

  RK6 floated to her, “Is it true, Your Highness, did Lord Corann spend the night here in your bed? Did I over hear what I thought I overheard?”

  Anlei looked at her droid, already missing Corann’s touch, “Yes, RK6…he was here with me after the arrest and trial of Janus. He asked for my hand in marriage and I accepted. Once more, a knight of Ten-ar will marry an heiress to this throne. He and I are sealed in our betrothal. What you thought you heard was correct. Though I do ask you not share the specifics of my intimacy with others, merely that you witnessed it and that my betrothal is fully valid.”

  “Of course, Your Highness,” replied RK6, her programming being very strict on what was and was not allowed to report to others regarding these matters.

  “RK6, will you help me dress now?” asked Anlei.

  “Yes, Your Highness. Of course, Your Highness. I believe you plan on going to court this morning?’

  “I do,” she replied.

  Being a sensible droid, RK6 put her in a soft green gossamer gown. Anlei decided to go to Corann’s room to check on him before heading to the family dining room for breakfast. She rang the chime then entered. Corann had already changed clothes to a pale blue tunic and to black trousers. He belted onto his waist his Ten-Arian sword and, reverentially, lowered his Ten-Arian circlet upon his head. The sight of him in his circlet pleased Anlei. She hugged him warmly, “I missed you.”

  Corann embraced her and caressed her back, “It’s only been a quarter shir-or, my love. Am I having that kind of effect on you already?”

  “It’s been a rough past twelve shir-ors. I need my knight,” she begged, caressing his hair.

  “I’m here,” he reminded her, kissing her sweetly.

  “You know you are royal family now, Lord Corann once we are announced, you become Prince-intended Corann,” she teased seductively.

  “I don’t need a title, Anlei. I have what I want right here, right now. I have you.”

  “Yes you do. Finally, my prince,” she laughed, taking delight in giving that title. “Come, Prince-intended Corann…you get to eat at the royal table for breakfast.”