by Regina Watts
“I see. Take a left at the juncture,” said the guard, gesturing me up the hall. “Is this your first pass? Well, be ready to use it. We’re all on-edge after what happened with the Materna’s serpent.”
The guard really wasn’t kidding when she told me I’d have to be ready to make use of the scroll. On the way through the halls of the 51st floor I was stopped no fewer than four separate times, each by another guard. Swiftly I realized that the kind of subterfuge I had imagined—ducking around corners and sneaking behind decorative plants—was not a possibility. As I ought to have expected, the Palace of Roserpine was extraordinarily well-protected for the sake of its sovereign. Moreso than ever, I suspected, owing to the recent spate of challenges to my mistress’s life.
I was appreciative of the guards in some small way, though. For instance, even with Valeria’s instructions, I would have struggled to find the vizier’s quarters without people there to provide directions. Eventually I found myself before the light blue door of an apartment identical to all the others in the series. This one was different largely based on the palms that stood proud on either side of the doorframe.
Not that it was particularly reassuring to find myself there—with the guard watching from the corner of the hall and nowhere else to go owing to a dead-end, I was forced to knock upon the door and adjust somewhat my plans for subtlety.
Trystera’s slave took a long while to answer the door. Hope briefly stirred my heart that the standoffish vizier was elsewhere and I might be able to slip away without having to speak to her. Sadly, this was not the case, and a pretty young surface elf opened the door with a polite smile—one that grew a bit more real when she saw on the other side not one of her masters, but one of her fellows.
“Good day—ah, bloom, that is. Would your mistress happen to be in, Madame?”
Giggling to be addressed so formally despite her station, the now blushing elf glanced over her shoulder and said, “Yes, friend, come in, wait here—may I ask your name?”
“Rorke Burningsoul,” I answered, stepping just inside the brightly lit foyer. “I am Materna Valeria’s—servant. My mistress asked I come see why Trystera came by her chambers.”
“Very good,” said the agreeable elf, glancing shyly at me once more before disappearing through a curtained doorway, “one moment, please.”
Here was a chance. Left alone, I looked quickly around the room where I stood. A few stands held drawers that I quietly confirmed contained little more than scraps of note vellum, a set of keys that did me no good because I knew not what they were for, and a scroll that I glanced at and soon divined to be a pass made up for the vizier’s slave. I had just shut the drawer when a footfall alerted me. Barely containing a guilty leap of surprise, I turned to find Trystera with her arms folded before her ribs.
“I’m told my lady has returned to her chambers? I’ll go speak with her, then. Thank you for informing me.”
Her almost surprising (and perhaps accidental) gratitude notwithstanding, the vizier turned back toward her inner chamber with a dismissive wave of her hand. I cleared my throat and took a step toward her, saying delicately as I could, “Ah, well, Madame…it’s correct that the Materna is back in her chambers, but—”
The durrow turned to assess me rather sharply while I continued, “She is not interested in further visitors tonight, and sent me to inquire as to the nature of your request.”
“I do not speak to slaves,” insisted Trystera.
With a glance behind her shoulder, I pressed, “Not even your own?”
A sniff of derision flared her delicate nostrils. “What an impudent creature you are—of course I speak to my slave.”
“Well, I have heard it expressed that when a man is taken as slave to the durrow, he becomes a slave to the entire race—that the lowest-born durrow could command all unoccupied slaves whose ears could be reached by her order. Therefore, I am your slave as much as I am your lady’s.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she said with a snort, albeit a somewhat chastened one. After considering my earnest expression, the vizier continued, “The Materna is the only one who could be said to possess all slaves, no matter to whom they belong…but I suppose from a certain angle of consideration you are rather correct. Very well,” she said, waving me in one more room, “come along, we’ll make it quick.”
My heart beating with hope that I might find some clue in all this, whether it was whatever clumsily constructed lie she fed me on the spot or the contents of her home itself, I hurried after her and soon stood in the center of a small but very comfortable parlor where the elf-girl darned one of her mistress’s cloaks.
“If we are, in fact, to be throwing a banquet,” said the vizier, bending down beside the table in the center of the room to drag from beneath a hefty leather-bound volume of some kind, “and if it is to mock these would-be killers who insist on sending fool after fool to waste our time, it struck me we had ought to make it lavish as possible. I wished to consult with her on issues of decoration and guest list, but if she is in no mood to speak further this dark, I suppose I can understand. She suffered quite an ordeal yesterday.”
“She did indeed,” I agreed, accepting a tome that would have been over-sized even for an illuminated manuscript constructed in honor of Weltyr. Amazed at its weight, I took a peek inside while the durrow’s back was turned on her way to her chaise. Illustrations of all kinds lay within, mostly depicting patterns of various sorts. Shutting the book before I could be remonstrated for my curiosity, I asked the vizier, “And she will know what this volume is?”
“Of course, it’s just a catalogue…ask that she decide as soon as possible what colors she would like, and also whom she’d like to see invited to dine. Oh! Yes, and the menu, I nearly forgot.”
Somehow, though these mundanities should have relieved me, I was instead deflated. Like a naïve fool—or an arrogant one—I had settled on the likeliest suspect and assured myself that with little effort I could resolve the mystery that had kept the palace at high alert since long before my arrival. The vizier proved me wrong, or at least did not automatically reveal the evidence of guilt I’d desired. Her command struck me as too mundane and too ready to be a lie; and the catalogue, if it was a prop in deception, very close at-hand.
Chastened somewhat, I nodded at the vizier. “I will relay your message, Madame. Anything else?”
“No, that will be all.”
I delayed all the same, shifting the book in my grip to keep from dropping the unwieldy thing. “May I ask, Madame—”
She looked at me with an expression that declared I may not. I did anyway.
“Is there anyone in this palace who strikes you as being—involved, perhaps, in this conspiracy against the Materna’s life?”
“Aside from a slave that came from nowhere, caught her eye and was thereafter invited at once to her bedchambers? No.” Plucking from the surface of the table the same strange glass pane she tended to use in the throne room, the vizier busied herself by reading something upon its surface. “All the guards and staff are loyal to Valeria, or they would not be here.”
Though I waited for her to elaborate, she did not. Feeling somewhat embarrassed now, I turned to go, my mind at once awhirl with other potential leads to the end of this issue. My hand had just brushed the curtain in the doorway when, without looking up, Trystera called, “But—”
I paused and looked at her hopefully, desperate for any information I could gather. Now she did bother to glance my way, lowering the glass pane into her lap as she did.
“Though I can’t say I entirely trust you, slave, I will say I was relieved to hear you proved yourself when my lady’s poor serpent was embroiled in this foul scheme. Well done.”
This dry praise reminded me of certain very aloof members of Weltyr’s temple—the sorts of priests who seldom had a friendly word to say to anyone, but whose occasional and faintly-levied praise rang truer and deeper than anyone else’s constant warm wishes. Somehow
taken aback by this comparison, I nodded to the vizier, then excused myself with the hefty tome in my hand.
On my way back to the lift, I was forced to reflect: Why was it I really pegged Trystera as guilty of conspiracy? Had the same situation unfurled in the Temple of Weltyr, I am not convinced I would have even known where to start. Here, my suspicions alighted upon a woman who had evidently been a loyal member of El’ryh’s royal court for something in the neighborhood of six hundred years. Before my father, whoever he was, was born: before his grandfather’s father was born, and even before that. This woman—why had I noted her above all others?
Perhaps because, of all the durrow, she least fit my mind’s picture of a woman—what I had been coached to think a woman should be. Where I might have thought a man in her position professional, I took her as aloof and unfriendly. Where, in her reserved way, she did show concern, I took it with suspicion. Because Trystera did not fit my soft and shining vision of what a woman was, I was inclined to find her out-of-place among her own culture.
It was a quieting moment. I stepped into the lift and, owing to my deep thoughts and the book in my hands, almost didn’t notice the berich forgemaster waiting for doors to close and the great box to continue its ascent.
“Ah!” I shifted the book and looked down into the bearded, gray-faced fellow’s eyes, wondering if he had the least reason to remember me. “Friend, how are you?”
“Paladin,” observed the berich, stroking his beard and greeting me with a nod. “Pleased to see you. Seems like you’re settling in…finding your place in the palace.” He added this with a twinkle of his dark eyes and a glance at the book in my hand.
“Something like that.” While I hit the topmost button I had seen Valeria touch many times, the lift lurched into motion for the stop in between that was lit up with a bright yellow glow. “I just received a pass from the Materna to do a few favors for her. Is it the same with you?”
“My brand’s my pass,” said the berich, lifting his hand to show me the scarred palm I had been much too occupied to notice the first time we met. “The palace itself is my only true mistress—I spend most of my time traveling up and down in service of it.”
“Is that so!”
The dwarf gestured with the rattling box of tools he bore at his side. “Problem-solving. Keeps a man from getting bored. They call me ‘Nibel,’ by the way.”
“Rorke Burningsoul,” I answered him, leaning away from the doors as we approached his floor of departure. “So I’d imagine you’ll be assisting in some way or another with the preparation for the banquet?”
“Doubt that. I’m more a fix-it man. Fix this light, fix this window, fix this hinge. Unless the banquet requires something broken to be fixed, I can’t imagine I’ll see much of even its preparations.”
“Just as well.”
“Is it the anniversary of Valeria’s birth already?”
“Ah, no—no, she’s eager to send a message to the traitors responsible for trying so many times to take her life.”
“Oh!” With a thoughtful sort of chuckle, the berich stroked his beard again. “She’s certainly a brave woman. Most wouldn’t be particularly eager to show their face in public after so many incidents. This bad business, it’s been going on for years…frankly, were I her, I’d retire.”
With a thought of my lady’s ring, I admitted to Nibel, “I’m not sure that’s an option for her—the way she speaks of Roserpine is so close to the way I speak of Weltyr that, without service to her goddess, I suspect her life would feel very empty.”
“That’s a pity…it would be easy enough to walk away from that ring and this throne and praise her goddess in the solitude of a happier life elsewhere, if you ask me. But what do I know? My only god’s the forge. Safe travels to you always, Paladin.”
The lift jerked to a stop and the doors slid open. Hefting up his box, the berich made his way into the hall, waved his scarred hand politely at the guards who nodded back, and was around the corner just as the doors shut again to leave me in solitude.
Soon enough, I found myself in my lady’s chambers: the quiet almost frightened me after the ordeal of the night before, but upon setting down the catalogue I found her stretched out in the bed of her guest quarters and already dozing. Yet, while I undressed, she whispered, “Rorke.”
My given name was a sound so rare upon her lips that it caught my attention immediately. Had I disturbed her? No—in fact it seemed she slept far more soundly than I anticipated.
A dream, then.
Another sound pierced the air—now not a word or a name but a desperate whimper. She produced a noise, a word catching in her throat as it tried to work its way up from the depths of her sleeping body. “Ah,” she gasped, “ah, ah—Ror—Ror—ah—”
“Materna—” I hurried to her side to interrupt what seemed to be yet another nightmare, my hand fitting to the soft curve of her shoulder. The priestess winced in her sleep, jerking upright and raising an arm. Much to my surprise, a vase arranged upon a nearby stand burst in a little explosion of purple fireworks. While my head whipped in its direction she awoke with a high cry.
“Oh—” Her bosom heaving in the loose-fitting confines of her silk gown, my lady recognized me and lay a hand upon her heart. “Oh, Rorke, oh—”
“It’s all right,” I told her, daring to lay a gentle hand upon her arm now that she was fully awake and the danger of her magic had passed. “It’s all right, Valeria…I’m here.”
She was so disturbed by the contents of her dream that she did not even protest at my calling her by her first name. Covering her eyes, then rubbing her brow, the priestess said only, “Thank you.”
“I hope all your dreams about me aren’t quite so upsetting, Madame.”
“What? How did you know what I was dreaming about—was I talking in my sleep again?”
“Only softly. Only as much as you could through your sleeping body. You said my name…I thought you were speaking to me at first.”
“I see.” Hefting a sight, my lady lowered her hand, turned away from my touch, and attempted to lay back down. “Well, it’s nothing. Just a dream. Good dark, Palad—”
“Wait, now”—I caught her hand this time, and she whipped her head first in its direction and then at me, visibly shocked by my audacity—“just a minute. Don’t you suppose, if these dreams of yours are prophetic, that you’d ought to share them with me when they concern me in some way or another?”
With a dark laugh, the servant of Roserpine responded, “If you think that, Burningsoul, you clearly know nothing of the art and dangers of prophecy.”
“Perhaps there’s risk involved, yes, it’s true. But I can’t stand to see you thrash with terrors every dark and not know what they are…especially when it’s my name you’re whispering all through the hours. They may be your dreams to share or not share as you like, but if they’re about me, then the decent thing is to tell me what you see. Not to torture me with not knowing.”
“You certainly don’t speak like a slave yet, do you, Burningsoul…”
Chuckling dryly, the Materna looked down at her hand in mine—at the ring glowing brightly there amid the darkness of her rooms. “I’m frightened of telling you the things I see in my sleep. I’m frightened that, if I do, they might come true…and that other, sweeter things might not.”
“But sharing such sweet ideals is surely no different than a pair of lovers exchanging fond wishes for the future, Madame.”
“We’re lovers, are we?” Her smirk was faint and lovely as were all her expressions, a curl of white hair clinging to its edge. Glancing away again, she thought for a moment before saying, “Very well, Burningsoul…I’ll tell you something of these dreams of mine—in exchange for a beating.”
Scoffing slightly, then recalling the odd pleasure of the whipping I received at the hands of the durrow at Valeria’s orgy, I stroked my jaw and suggested, “Surely even the worst whipping is a small price to pay to be able to set your mind at ease. Share
your dreams with me, Materna, I beg you.”
“In my dreams,” she answered, pushing the blankets from her body and rising from the bed with the fabric of her gown gathered in one delicate hand, “the man with the sun tattooed upon his neck leads me to the surface. In my dreams, Rorke Burningsoul, you free me from this life. You show me the face of the sky.”
She disappeared from the guest chamber without further word. I remained, somewhat stunned, upon the edge of the bed.
Well! What did all that portend, exactly? Sweet relief for me, to be certain. If such a vision was the least bit true, it was a great comfort to think that my bondage in El’ryh might have an end after all. Better still—to reach the end of that bondage and bring Valeria with me, my prize and my pride…my heart flooded with worshipful love at the possibilities. Being partners, peers together, as we might have a chance of being on the surface—it was a kind of dream.
But what stunned me was not the rising adoration I felt for my mistress in that moment. What shocked me was the way she phrased it. You free me from this life.
Already I had noted that Valeria was, in so many ways, as much a slave as any other—but now I had to wonder just how literally to take that parallel. Certainly I had perceived that she was a slave to her goddess as much as I was to Weltyr, but I had never considered that she might be unhappy within the confines of her role. Why shouldn’t she be? The woman clearly longed for the surface; for the freedom to journey outside of her city and to explore the vast world about which she had heard little more than rumors.
She was gentler somehow than I thought she was—certainly gentler than the other durrow I had met in the city, who delighted in ownership of sapient beings and seemed to fully believe in their superiority over other races. Moreover, that sensitivity stirred in my heart a new pity: the pity we feel for those who have been, for one way or another, unable to fulfill their dreams within the course of their life.