Chapter 23
Magenta

n a grove cast in subdued light, somewhere deep within the woods, Deacon sat alone. Ghostly mist drifted about the trees, and the air was sweet and thin and quiet.

An elusive fragrance, like that of a rose borne on the evening breeze, softly awaked his senses. Presently, he became conscious that a faint voice flowed through the silence. Rising slowly, he caught haunting fragments of a hymn. Almost unconsciously, like one in a dream, he followed.

And there, passing through a stream of moonlight, a dark tranquillity pervading, was the maiden whose voice had so entranced him. Her uncovered hair was smooth and black as night. With sombre despair she drifted through the trees, her head downward. Beyond the gentle murmur of her voice, an intense stillness prevailed. When she turned her dark gaze upon him, he saw that it was she! He saw now that the perfect face was stained with tears, the eyes filled with such sadness, that a deep throb in his heart urged him to go to her. But though he would, he could not. The holiness of her person put her out of reach, made her unapproachable, otherworldly, mysterious. Fain to stay where he was, he stood and watched, with the agony of mingled dread and of hope, hoping that perhaps she would come to him. Sorrowfully, she drew away, and he watched her, like a faded dream, pass from his sight.

When Magenta returned to the temple her countenance was carefully controlled, so that not one visible sign of anguish remained. It was a hollow, solitary place, with walls that seemed to lie in perpetual silence, absorbing everything that came to pass within. Here and there worshipers kneeled at prayer.

Magenta saw her father, Orsious, standing with the high priestess. They conversed in a tense and intimate fashion. Her father rarely came to the temple unless it was for a matter of great importance. He was an impressive man in stature, his features strong and distinct rather than handsome. His age could not be less than seventy. Nevertheless, he was able, and inclined, to make any who doubted his authority feel it in the cruelest fashion.

Magenta hoped to pass them by without notice, when, without turning his face, but instead pointing his finger, Orsious said, “Don’t go far.” He had the unanswerable voice of authority which keeps one fearful, obedient. “I will speak with you in a moment.”

Magenta lingered near the base of the staircase, then went to observe some flowers that were of the deepest red, almost the colour of black blood. Not far from her father stood one of the rangers who worked for him. It was not necessary to possess the power of discriminating character to judge this man as savage. His unshaven face bore a sword-cut from temple to mouth. Rangers were rough and ready men, always able and willing to do violence on Orsious’s behalf. He waited like a guard posted behind the older man, regretting that he could not smoke. He had rather long, untidy brown hair. He seemed made to endure, fit to wield a sword with the greatest of ease. In every other respect he was a weak man.

Not required at present, Fraomar wandered over to Magenta, on whom his eyes had long lingered. His air was fierce, his step strong, but he was careful always to maintain some distance. The priestesses were considered nothing short of sacred and were both venerated and feared. Magenta maintained a reserve, distant and uncommunicative. Drifting about the room, she would pause and look at pictures that lined the walls. Her long figure and absorbed expression gave her an air of unattainability. He remained at her side, haunting every step of the beloved creature, her every movement watched with worship. The forced words and trivialities of speech were equally as oppressive as the silences.

Magenta came to stand by the inviting glow created by open-flame lamps. Fraomar waited at her side, standing as near to her as possible without drawing suspicious eyes in their direction. She was exquisitely remote, something unknown. Restless inside himself, Fraomar threw his head back, looking up at the ceiling. “It feels longer than three months that I’ve been gone,” he said. “Doesn’t it?”

“I suppose,” came the neutral reply.

He seemed to meditate awhile. Then, looking down at her, with strangely communicative eyes that filled her with unease, he said, “The time away has given me an opportunity to consider many things, of what’s important and meaningful. There is so much you just don’t recognize, till it is taken. And then you realise that it was there all the time—it was always there before your eyes. And then you are never the same, if you understand what I mean.”

This was received in silence.

“I overheard that you have been asked to commit yourself to an appointed office?” said Fraomar, in some doubt.

“Yes.”

“That’s what you’ll do then, is it?”

The face of the young woman darkened, but she looked downwards at her hands, immutably. The flame illumined the ranger’s hard face with an unnatural warmth, his eyes shining as he watched her, an illicit longing burning through his veins.

“I see that you suffer,” he said in a lowered voice, wetting his lips, an urgency to express his desires in the brief time they had alone. “But it need not be,” he added as he came a step closer, leaning as near to her as he dared. As his voice became lower and grew more intimate, his intentions became clearer. “You cannot be blind to the fact that you have captured my interest more than any other woman.” Magenta cast a piercing look into his keen eyes, but said nothing. “Let me take you away from here. You’re perishing. I can see how you wither for want of affection and common society.”

“Do not speak of things about which you know nothing.” She moved from his side, but he moved with her.

“How can I pretend I don’t see what is plain before my eyes,” he said in a tone of dismay unusual for him. “You’re like mist, perpetually dissolving. It burdens me to see you so. This is not your choice, I know. Are you certain you do not suffer needlessly?”

Magenta cast a plaintive sidelong glance over to where her father stood, unaware of her and the officious ranger, who was smothering her with his persistent and unrequested sympathies.

“He’ll never take you away from here,” said Fraomar. “He doesn’t know of your suffering. He has no care for your suffering.” Her eyes were dark and stricken when Magenta looked to Fraomar, and he grew hopeful and more anxious than ever before to secure favor in her heart. “Come away with me,” he said. “If not, you will continue to fade, to diminish, till youth and beauty are utterly spent, and all hope of love and happiness is unrecallably exhausted. In the midst of your darkest doubt, bound to grief and despair, there will be no beloved to hear your plaintive cries, to comfort and ease the pain which makes your heart grow so cold. You will be in darkness, and you will be alone.”

Fraomar continued in this vein. He wanted to appear sympathetic, hoping thereby to secure the elusive and ever-desired priestess, but he was not understanding or helping, only hurting. He would use fear and hopelessness in an attempt to imprison her in his own cage. She would not, however, go away with him. Should she leave with him, he would own her body, and she would merely exchange one misery for another. His mere presence harassed and provoked her. He seemed desperate to have her convinced of the grief she would endure without him.

He was perspiring. His roving, restless gaze settled on her lips, but he was so acutely aware of those who would punish him for such an action that he attempted nothing beyond taking her hand, glancing first over his shoulder to make certain they were unobserved. But even her hand she withheld from him.

Every time he visited, if they were alone, he made an attempt to touch her. He had a fixed notion that sometime she would let him. Brooding over her closely, he could not make out her expression. She looked as if she were going to cry, yet her face remained composed, her lofty calm unbroken. She would not answer him, nor let him in on her thoughts. The persistent silence and impenetrability of this woman, whom his violent nature demanded, disconcerted him. He was unable to keep the silence, and said, “No man could be more devoted to you than I am. For long years I have loved you in silence. You cannot be ignorant of this.”

“Speak not another word.” She silenced him in a voice lower even than his own.

He remained quiet only a brief moment. The conviction that she was the woman for him urged him to continue. “You belong to me—the hope that you will come to this realization has sustained me.” Then he clenched his hands, pleading with her to renew his sentiments after she had time to pause and reconsider.

“I would rather you didn’t,” she said, her words like a knife. She made a move to leave. He took a step as if he would prevent it but merely remained at her side, anger mixed in his disappointment.

“You will be brought to reason,” he said. “It’s you and I together, and I’ll have you convinced before I’m through.”

To such arrogant persistence Magenta had no desire to respond. She left, silent and untouched. Fraomar watched after her vanishing form as she ascended the magnificent staircase. There was something immeasurably enraging in its cold forbiddance, in the utter impossibility of getting at her once she had retreated up it. He swallowed bitterly and blinked back the passion as he became aware of her father standing at his side, looking up also. Orsious looked angered that his daughter had disobeyed. “Send her down,” he demanded, the moment the high priestess joined them. “I will speak with her.”

“I shall have her see you tomorrow,” she said dismissively, for the single purpose of ensuring he remembered the abdication of all his rights the moment he had placed his daughter in her care all those years before.

“I will speak with her this night!”

Not shrinking from his anger, the high priestess remained persistent in her authority, yet accommodating for the sake of their alliance. “I shall see that she goes to you at first light.”

“Noon,” he said, handing over a piece of parchment. “And have her bring these things also.” His final word on the arrangement satisfied his feeling of control.

“I’ll attend to it, and see that you retrieve for me what I desire,” she said smoothly, and when he parted his lips to protest, she added coldly, “Spare no pains to acquire it.”

He relented and nodded. He could not refuse her. She provided him with things necessary for his life’s work, and she had possession of his greatest treasure, this side of death, and would not turn her against him.