“I cannot make a vision sharper if it doesn’t want to come in that manner,” Fern bit at Lena. “And you know this for you can’t either.”
“What was the vision?” Rebecca queried.
“There is great danger in Wodell for the Nadirii,” Fern informed them. “Particularly Melisse.”
“This doesn’t surprise me. She’s too clever and even-minded for her own good. It is always those who find grave ends,” Nandra muttered.
“She must be warned,” Lena stated.
“We’ll tell Ophelia when she arrives,” Rebecca replied.
“And Elena?” Nandra asked Fern.
Fern shook her head. “All those prophesied are shadowed. But I have a sense there is another.”
“Another?” Lena inquired. “Another what?”
“Another threat.”
“Wonderful,” Nandra murmured. “And you didn’t share this either.”
“I’ve tried, but I cannot lock on it,” Fern told them. “So there was naught to share. It is simply a feeling, not a vision.”
“You must keep trying,” Rebecca urged her fellow witch.
“Of course,” Fern agreed and looked amongst them. “Have any of you felt it?”
All shook their heads.
“I wonder why it is only me,” Fern said, as if to herself.
“Let us hope we don’t discover the answer to that after it’s too late,” Nandra replied.
No one said anything further.
And because of this, they came to realize that some time after their appointed arrival had passed and Ophelia was still not there.
“Do you—?” Fern began.
“I will seek her,” Rebecca stated, and moving to a standing stone, she touched it, and in a flash of green, she disappeared.
The others shuffled around uncomfortably.
But in little time at all, Rebecca had returned.
Her face was pale in the moonlight.
“Ophelia won’t be joining us,” she said quietly.
“Bloody hell,” Lena whispered.
“How bad?” Nandra asked, her eyes sharp on the Dellish sorceress.
“She travels back to The Enchantments,” Rebecca answered. “It is onerous, and the visit to Firenze was vigorous, thus she is weak. Once she arrives home, it will be good for her to be in the lap of magic and sisterhood. She’ll be home in a week. We’ll reconvene a week after.”
“We need a replacement,” Lena said softly.
“My king asked me to remain behind to assist his captain and provide magical aid if needed due to concerns after the attack on the palace. Rebecca can ride out to meet the travelers and there, talk to Melisse who rides with them,” Nandra noted, then looked to the Airenzian witch. “Fern, you must join her in order to add your power.”
“I don’t have leave of my king to travel from Airen,” Fern reminded her.
“How a powerful witch needs bloody leave from a king, I cannot understand,” Nandra snarled.
“I have magic, but I still need breath in my body in order to use it, and a noose hinders that,” Fern spat back.
“We must not quarrel amongst ourselves,” Rebecca said quickly.
Nandra ignored her and instructed Fern, “Spirit away if they should try to detain you.”
“And spirit where?” Fern demanded. “Wodell, where, if found, they will return me on demand? Mar-el, who do not abide strangers very well? The Dome City, where, if I ask for asylum, I might be pressed into being an acolyte? Or Firenze, who is on the verge of war with just about everybody, including themselves, at any moment.”
“The Enchantments, of course,” Nandra retorted.
“And how do I help my people from The Enchantments, Nandra?” Fern asked. “There is not much I can do, but what I can do, I do it, and it is needed. A little, in a land where there is not much for the sisterhood, is a lot. I toe a line in the Airenzian soil that has not been drawn in your sand and I do it with a purpose. You are not in a position to judge for you know nothing of this. I’m glad of it for you. But in return, it would be nice, if you can’t understand, you can at least empathize.”
Nandra made no response.
Rebecca changed the subject.
“I will speak with Melisse. But for now, without a complete circle, there is naught we can do. We will meet again soon.”
“There is naught we could do even if we had a complete circle. What is taking these warriors and their women so long?” Nandra demanded to know. “It is far from hard to copulate.”
“Matters of the heart are never easy,” Rebecca returned.
“I fight the instinct every day to slip each one of them a love potion,” Nandra muttered.
“Do not do that!” three witches stated sharply.
“It must be natural, organic,” Lena remonstrated.
Nandra sighed deeply for she knew this too well.
“We have felt it in the veil, there is promise,” Lena reminded them.
They had felt it.
There was promise.
What they could not know, was if it would come to fruition.
And if it did…
If it would be enough.
45
The Game
Queen Silence
Fifty Miles Inside the Southern Border
WODELL
I stood in the opened flap of the large red tent I shared with my husband and I looked to the top of the swell of the moor where Mars stood with Farah.
His dark, handsome head was bent to her.
It was night, and although there were many torches around the expansive camp, the distance and the lack of light hid his expression from me.
But he stood very close to her, had his arm about her waist, and that spoke volumes.
My husband had spent a good deal of time with Farah during our journey.
Not to mention, he did the same before it, when we remained in Firenze as the death ceremony for Farah’s mother, Sofia, was being arranged and then carried out.
I knew they were close. She had been sitting at his side on a stack of cushions beside his throne the first moment I laid eyes on him. Their manner to each other spoke of it as well.
However, I was wondering at this closeness now for it did not seem simply close.
It seemed close.
And as was the Firenz way, a man could have a wife and be very, very close to another woman.
Indeed, as close as he could get.
I felt a presence at my side, thus I turned my head and looked up.
Kyril, one of Mars’s Trusted, one of my Trusted, our personal guard, stood beside me.
I had found, on our journey, and even before that Kyril was most often the one who was nearest to me.
I did not know if this was of my husband’s design, or happenstance.
I also did not ask.
I was just glad of it.
Kyril was the youngest of the Trusted and the most jovial. I liked them all. But I felt an affinity with Kyril.
“I’m not sure how my king will get to know my queen better, he on the rise with his childhood playmate, you skulking at the folds of your tent,” Kyril noted, his eyes, too, on the swell of the moor.
“I’m not skulking,” I retorted.
He looked down at me, but said nothing.
“I was refreshing myself after our journey,” I told him.
“We ceased moving two hours ago, and in between time, had dinner, which I will note, you took with Elena and Melisse, not your husband.”
I huffed and looked away in order to stare off into the distance.
“My queen—”
“Silence!” my father’s voice interrupted whatever Kyril was about to say and I felt my guard tense at my side as I turned my attention in my sire’s direction. “Come, sit with your mother and me in our tent for an evening sherry.”
I detested sherry.
“Heed my words, do not be in that tent when your husband returns, my queen,” Kyril said under his breath.
I looked to the rise of the moor.
The light was poor.
I could still see Farah was now fully in my husband’s arms.
She was betrothed to another. When we were but betrothed, Mars wouldn’t allow my own cousin to hold my hand, much less embrace me.
But he had no issue, in front of the whole camp, which included Farah’s intended, and Mars’s wife (that being me), holding her in his arms.
I looked again to where my father was standing, waiting for an answer.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” I called.
He smiled, nodded and moved toward his and my mother’s tent while I listened to Kyril emit a grunt of displeasure.
I tipped my head back to catch his gaze. “If my husband returns, please tell him I’m with my mother and father.”
“I’m escorting you there, my queen,” he replied.
“It’s three tents away and we’re surrounded by Dellish, Airenzian and Firenz soldiers. I’m quite safe to wander three tents down the line.”
“I’m…escorting…you there, my queen,” he repeated, mush less patiently this time, and the last time had not been all that patient.
I made a move to proceed, murmuring, “Then let us go.”
“You should leave word with someone where you are so they can tell our king when he arrives,” Kyril instructed.
I stopped and again looked to him. “You know where I’ll be. You can tell him. And if my husband wishes to find me, he can seek me.”
“I will not be leaving you,” he reminded me.
This was true. He was my escort often and when he was done escorting me somewhere, he didn’t go off to play a game of tuble.
His tone was much changed—quieter, softer—when he went on to advise, “Don’t play these games, Silence.”
“I’m not playing any games,” I denied.
“You are.”
“I am not. I’m having a sherry with my parents. We do that in Wodell, and as you know, we’re now in Wodell. Sherry or brandy or port. Though I prefer a wee dram of Benedictine.”
Kyril glowered down at me.
“My mother and father are waiting,” I prompted.
“He tires of this distance, my queen. You do not know him well. He’s very taken with you and thus has been courting you. But I advise you not to test him.”
This was not news to me.
Since our wedding night some weeks prior, a night when Mars was very thoughtful and allowed me to rest after an intensely trying time, rather than expecting me to consummate our marriage, things that had been very promising between my new husband and I had deteriorated.
And of late, Mars was letting it be known that he was not fond of it.
This was, I would admit only to myself, my doing.
For Kyril was right, I did not know Mars very well.
However, what I did know was that he was indeed taken with me and he could be very affectionate and loving.
He could also be vicious and ruthless.
He had not been these things to me, but I’d witnessed them as he’d tortured and taken men’s lives, in battle and by executing them.
I had spoken to no one of what I’d seen and how it made me feel.
I was now queen.
Queen of a land where traitors were put to death without trial.
Tortured and put to death.
My dreams were filled of these things. Remembering them and conjuring new images.
These new images included Mars torturing my father.
Mars torturing my friend and maid, Estrilda.
Mars torturing me.
This meant I woke with a start, with heart racing and skin chilled.
This I kept to myself as well, though my husband knew as I slept in his arms every night.
It was just that he had quit asking about it and cooing me back to sleep when I said it was naught but anxiety after the attack and the last quake made by the Beast.
He now, I suspected, knew it was more.
He just tired of attempting to make me talk about it.
A queen kept her chin raised, her eyes steady, her feelings hidden. I knew. I had been watching my Aunt Mercy, Queen of Wodell, and Elpis, Mars’s mother, Queen of Firenze, since it occurred to me my present might include a new husband and whatever my part was in the prophecy to defeat the Beast.
But my future and the rest of my existence included being queen.
Queens did not get squeamish.
Queens did not complain.
Queens did not have nightmares that they brought into the day.
Queens were smart, quiet, and most of all, they carried on.
I would some day, I knew, need to come to terms with this in some manner and find my way to accept my husband as he was in our lives, as my ruler, and in our bed.
It was just that now I was finding ways to…delay that.
And it must be said that as the days passed, and his attention did not divert from Farah even as it was clear True was quite determined to be the strong shoulder for her to lean on in this time of grief, this did not help matters.
For my husband was not mine.
He was not my king (not really, I was Dellish, though officially that had changed, I’d never not be Dellish even if I was Queen of Firenze).
And he had been forced to wed me.
He did not select me. He did not fall in love with me.
But even if he had, he would not ever truly be my husband.
Not after, as he said we would, we took others to our bed.
This meant I had to share him in all ways.
And I did not wish to do this.
I didn’t consider it selfish to chafe at this.
The matter of him being king obviously was not at issue. What he did at the necropolis in Firenze was something I had to come to rights with in my head…somehow.
But sharing my husband?
I wasn’t sure I could come to terms with that.
Though I had to do that too.
Because it was the Firenz way.
And I might not be of Firenze.
But I was their queen.
I just needed time in order to do it.
And my mother and father, Elena, her mentor Melisse, Tril, my pet monkey, Piccola, and any number of other things I could latch onto were giving me ample opportunity to give myself that time.
Like now.
“I told my father I would attend him,” I prompted. “We must go.”
Kyril stared at me for some time before he sighed.
He then looked right, caught someone’s attention and called, “Our queen is having a drink with her parents.”
I looked in that direction and saw Basil, another of our Trusted, nod.
He appeared disapproving too.
I really didn’t know what to say.
If I told them their ways were foreign to me, foreign and alarming and perhaps even abhorrent (in the case of torture and execution) and harmful (in the case of open infidelity in marriage), it would be insulting.
These people and these ways were of what was now my land, my people.
And I had to find it in me to live with it.
“You stayed too long,” Kyril muttered two hours later (all right, perhaps two and three quarters of an hour later), as we made our way back to the royal tent.
I did not think we stayed too long.
I had a rather lively, and shockingly interesting, discussion with my father during those two hours.
We disagreed over our liking of a book.
I liked it.
He did not.
However, in the end, I believed I swayed his thinking for he’d told me he would reread it with what I’d said in mind and we’d discuss it again.
I had never, not in my life, had a lively or interesting tête-à-tête with my father.
I had never, not in my life, swayed my father’s thinking.
And thus, I thought it’d been a rather pleasant night.
But rega
rdless, no matter how petulant it might sound, my husband knew precisely where we were in those hours.
Therefore, if he wished my company, he could have had it.
“I’m most tired, Kyril,” I replied. “Can we not have another disagreement?”
“I will grant you that, my queen,” he returned. “For you’re fatigued, so what energy you have, you’ll need for my king.”
I twisted my neck to look up at him to see his eyes aimed in the direction of the royal tent.
I aimed my eyes there as well, in time to see my husband disappearing around the corner toward the entry flaps that were hidden from my current vantage point.
Had he been coming to get me?
My heart jumped.
When we arrived at the tent, Kyril preceded me, pulled open the flap, peered inside but a scant second, then turned to me.
He made a small bow and instead of wishing me a good eve, he murmured, “Good luck.”
I did not think that boded well.
I moved through the flap Kyril still held open.
I was correct.
That did not bode well.
I stopped several feet in and heard the tent flap swish closed behind me.
“Husband,” I said tremulously to the large, dark man standing in the middle of our enormous tent.
A tent where the inside fabric was patterned in golds and greens against the reds, the ground covered in silk rugs and scattered with cushions, the soft mattress on which we slept placed on a platform and ensconced in red and gold sheers hanging from poles. Said bed was also strewn with silks, velvets, hides and patterned pillows.
There were even potted plants.
This was set up every night.
In fact, the servants’ caravan with tents and accoutrements left hours before the rest of us did as we finished up breakfast under the late-rising sun and dallied to our horses so they could be at our destination prior to us arriving in order that we could immediately refresh and rest in luxury.
This was not the Dellish way. In a caravan, we all rode together. And when the party stopped, the gentry sat atop blankets and had a wine or some cool tea to refresh while the servants saw to diner and accommodations, which were not nearly this elaborate.
It was the Firenz way, where sumptuousness and extravagance and indulgence were priority and servants existed to see to that priority without fail.
The Plan Commences Page 12