Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  Leethan watched from her tower window as a single carriage with the royal crest on its door entered the gates of the Abbey below. She had, of course, never met Waldmir’s youngest. Even so, she knew exactly what the girl would look like. It could not be a coincidence that the Mother of All had sent her a vision of herself and Jaizal struggling through the mountains with a small girl child and that Waldmir would then send his five-year-old daughter to the Abbey. Clearly this was the girl the Mother of All meant for her to spirit away.

  Leethan dragged herself away from the window, trying not to worry about the desultory smattering of snow that drifted on the wind. The vision had shown the three of them on the road in the snow, but Leethan had judged that it was not the snows of the heart of winter. Waldmir had said the girl would be staying at the Abbey for no more than a month.

  That did not leave a lot of time for planning, and Leethan cursed herself for not having put more effort into working out an escape. Somehow, it had seemed that she would have plenty of time to make plans once the child arrived, having never thought the child would be Waldmir’s daughter and therefore bound to leave in short order.

  Leethan descended the three flights of stairs from her tower office to the Abbey’s main entrance and opened the heavy wooden door, letting in a gust of frigid wind and a swirl of snow. The royal carriage stood unattended in the courtyard, the cheval that had drawn it inert with the removal of its Rho. A short woman in a serviceable but well-worn cloak stood at the carriage’s door, one hand grasping the hood the wind kept wanting to whip away, the other reaching imploringly toward the carriage’s interior. As Leethan approached, she could hear the brusque sounds of an impatient male voice from within, and moments later a little girl appeared in the doorway. She was crying miserably, a man—presumably the coachman—practically shoving her out the door.

  The short woman—Elwynne’s governess, obviously—let out a cry of dismay and tried to gentle the child’s fall. Elwynne tumbled to her knees anyway, and the coachman glowered down at her.

  “If you’d just stop carrying on,” he complained, “you’d be inside and warmed up already.” He jumped down from the carriage—his boot barely missing one of Elwynne’s gloved hands—and slammed the carriage door shut as the governess gathered the girl in her arms.

  Looking up, the coachman caught sight of Leethan approaching and offered her a sneer in lieu of a greeting. Without a word, he clomped to the back of the carriage and unlashed a small trunk and a satchel, letting both fall to the courtyard floor with a thump. Leethan bit her tongue to stop herself from issuing a scathing reprimand at this behavior that was so inappropriate for a servant. But if the brute had no respect for his sovereign prince’s daughter, then he certainly would have none for an Unwanted Woman. The faster he was gone, the better.

  The governess, having helped her charge to her feet, turned and saw Leethan approaching. The wind caught at her hood once more, this time succeeding in ripping it from her fingers and revealing a round, cheerful face framed by snowy white hair.

  Leethan gasped with recognition. “Laurel!” she nearly shrieked, forgetting all semblance of dignity as she crossed the short distance between them and hugged the woman who had been governess for all three of her own daughters, many years ago.

  The old woman returned the hug with a strength that belied her years—she had to be nearly eighty by now. By all rights she should be enjoying a comfortable retirement, and yet here she was not only acting as governess for a five-year-old, but also accompanying that five-year-old to the Abbey.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Leethan said, her voice choking with emotion. In all her years in the Abbey, Leethan had seen no one from her former life save Waldmir and the occasional noblewoman who found herself repudiated and discarded. It would not have entirely surprised her if even warm and kindly Laurel had disdained to hug her now that she was an Unwanted Woman, and the embrace felt far better than it had any right to.

  “And you,” Laurel said, her voice quavering with a combination of age and emotion. And possibly cold. The wind was slicing through Leethan’s robes, and the snow was falling with more vigor.

  “Let’s get you both inside,” Leethan said. She noted that after having unceremoniously dumped the baggage onto the flagstones, the coachman was climbing back onto the driver’s seat. Clearly, he had no intention of sullying himself by carrying the baggage into the Abbey. Leethan had half a mind to remonstrate, but figured that would only delay getting everyone out of the cold.

  Unperturbed by the coachman’s rudeness, Laurel stepped up to the baggage and perched the satchel on top of the chest. Then she took hold of the leather handle on one side of the trunk.

  “If you’ll take the other side,” Laurel said, “we can carry it in ourselves. It isn’t especially heavy.”

  Once again, it was on the tip of Leethan’s tongue to protest. Laurel was far too old to be carrying her own baggage around, and Leethan was not exactly in the prime of youth, either. But little Elwynne—who had yet to say a word and had made no eye contact with Leethan—was shivering violently, and her lips were tinted blue. There was no point in wasting time with an argument.

  As Laurel had promised, the trunk was not terribly heavy, but it was unwieldy, especially with the satchel on top. The snow made the flagstones of the courtyard slippery, and Leethan couldn’t help watching the elderly governess with concern. Luckily, the carriage’s arrival had not gone unremarked, and before they’d made it halfway to the door, several younger, more able-bodied abigails emerged and took the trunk from them.

  There were no bedrooms suitable for visiting princesses in the Abbey, only dormitories and lurid playrooms. The playrooms were far more comfortable—meant to appeal to the noble clientele of the Abbey—and therefore Leethan had appropriated one of them for Elwynne and her governess. She’d had all the erotic art and toys removed, but there was no disguising the red-draped canopy bed. Elwynne—far too young to understand exactly what the Abbey was or what the red fabric signified, was delighted with the unexpected color—but Laurel blushed and looked down at her feet.

  “Forgive me,” Leethan murmured. “The dormitories are far less comfortable, so I thought…” She let her voice trail off, embarrassed at putting a five-year-old in a bed that had never been intended for sleeping.

  “I understand,” Laurel said, still blushing, “and there’s no need to apologize. I must admit that I was rather…concerned about the accommodations we might find.” She glanced at her charge with obvious affection as Elwynne explored the room in wide-eyed wonder, fingering the soft red linens. She climbed onto the massive bed and flopped into the nest of pillows at its head, smiling.

  “Here now,” Laurel scolded gently, “let’s get that headdress off you first.”

  Elwynne lifted her head so that Laurel might remove the pins holding her headdress in place. Leethan noticed that the poor child had a scar marring her forehead just above her right eye. Anywhere but in Nandel, the wound that caused that scar would have been treated with women’s magic so that the child might not be disfigured.

  When Laurel laid the headdress aside, Elwynne lay back down, clutching a silken pillow to her chest and closing her eyes. Her small body still shivered with cold, and Leethan hastily threw another log on the fire, knowing she would have to be frugal herself to compensate. Waldmir had made no mention of providing any additional funding to cover the expenses of housing his daughter and her governess, and the Abbey barely scraped by on the pittance that was left to them after they’d turned over most of their profits to the Crown.

  Laurel removed her hooded cloak and laid it over the already-sleeping child. “I should have dressed her more warmly,” she fretted. “I hope she doesn’t come down with an ague.” Elwynne huddled into the cloak, soaking in the residual body heat, and stuck her thumb in her mouth without appearing to wake.

  Leethan grimaced at the
sight, remembering Waldmir’s adamance that his daughters must not suck their thumbs. When snapping and snarling at them hadn’t been enough to stop them, he’d had them fitted with locked metal gauntlets that had chafed their skin raw. It was not an uncommon practice in Nandel, Leethan had been dismayed to find, and her insistence that elsewhere in the world, children grew out of the habit naturally had fallen on deaf ears.

  Laurel read her thoughts easily and flashed her a sharp-edged grin. “One thing Elwynne does not lack is spirit. After one day wearing Prince Waldmir’s gauntlets, she learned that the way to avoid wearing them was not to stop sucking her thumb, but merely to not let anyone who might report it to her father catch her in the act.”

  Leethan shook her head. “No child of that age can be cautious all the time.”

  Laurel stroked Elwynne’s hair gently. “This child can. She is very possibly the most stubborn creature I’ve ever met.” It was said fondly and with a smile, but Leethan could hear the worry behind the words. Stubbornness was a dangerous trait for a girl of Nandel.

  “Is that why Waldmir sent her to us?” Leethan asked.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Laurel said, tears filming her eyes. “As far as I know, the prince has not laid eyes on her for weeks. Neither I nor anyone else who is charged with her care has had any cause to complain of her behavior.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, no special cause. Certainly nothing that would move us to lodge a complaint with His Royal Highness.”

  Leethan frowned as the unpleasant rumor about Elwynne’s parentage took on a new air of plausibility. “But there must have been something!” she protested. “He would not send her here for no reason.”

  “Not for no reason, no,” Laurel agreed. “But the reason may have little or nothing to do with Elwynne.” She gave Leethan a speculative look. “Do you know why he divorced his last wife?”

  Leethan blinked, surprised by the question. “I assumed it was because she did not give him a son and he was growing desperate.”

  She had made that assumption because Brontyn had somehow never arrived at the Abbey after her divorce. There were only two ways she could imagine a divorced woman being sent to the Abbey and never arriving. Either she had experienced an “accident” along the way, or she had left Nandel altogether, which she could not do without Waldmir’s approval. He’d already put one of his wives to death, so Leethan had no reason to think he’d have tried to hide Brontyn’s death. Therefore, she deduced that Brontyn had been quietly and mercifully sent away. It was the same reason she’d discredited the rumors that Elwynne might not be Waldmir’s daughter. She couldn’t imagine Waldmir meekly accepting the insult of one of his wives cuckolding him.

  “Maybe,” Laurel said with a shrug.

  “But you have your doubts.”

  “I do. I don’t have to tell you that Prince Waldmir has never doted on his daughters. However, I couldn’t help noticing that after the divorce, he stopped coming by the nursery to see Elwynne. He occasionally showed flashes of paternal affection for Princess Shelvon when she was a little girl, even after he’d had her mother beheaded. And yet Elwynne he has cut off almost completely.”

  Leethan gasped softly as she realized the rumor—or at least the suspicion—was not confined to the Abbey, after all. “You think she is not his.”

  Laurel shrugged again. “I think it is a possibility, though of course I would never say such a thing to anyone but you. One can only imagine how terrible it would be if word of such a suspicion should ever reach the prince’s ears.”

  Leethan shuddered, having no desire to imagine it at all. No man of Nandel could easily withstand the shame of being cuckolded, but the sovereign prince least of all. Oh, how his nephews would salivate at such a show of weakness! There was a reason Leethan had silenced the rumors in the Abbey so harshly.

  Elwynne made a sleepy murmur and turned over onto her side, snuggling deeper into Laurel’s cloak. There had never been any question in Leethan’s mind that she would do the Mother of All’s bidding and spirit the child away from the Abbey. But with what she knew now, perhaps she would have wanted to do so even without the aid of the vision. Whether he had sent Elwynne to the Abbey out of bitterness because he was destined not to have a son, or whether because he believed the child was not his, her future in Nandel looked bleak indeed.

  Glancing out the window at the snow that was falling more steadily by the minute, Leethan knew that it was past time she start planning her daring escape from the Abbey of Nandel.

  * * *

  —

  Draios had eschewed sleep for yet another night of prayer and reflection. The challenge of making sense out of everything Delnamal had told him was more than a mere mortal could face, and more than ever, Draios hungered for the guidance of the Creator.

  On its face, Delnamal’s claim to be carrying a part of the Destroyer within him seemed like nothing but boastful arrogance, and if Draios had not seen with his own eyes what the former king of Aaltah was capable of, he would have dismissed it as the ravings of a lunatic. Certainly that was what his father had done, why Draios had only learned of Delnamal’s residence in Khalpar because his spy had rescued that letter from the flames. Draios could hardly blame his father for the assumption, and yet…

  Draios had read the same letter his father had—the parts of it he could make out, at least—and he had been intrigued enough by what he’d read to investigate. So why hadn’t his father tried to learn more? It was his job as king to be a defender of the faith. Even if he thought Delnamal was mad, he should have investigated what was clearly a heresy if it was not the truth.

  One thing was certain: Delnamal was in possession of a unique and terrifying power. Draios would never forget the sight of the honor guardsman’s terrified face as Delnamal stole his Rhokai and his life, and it was hard to deny that such a power did not belong in the hands of a mortal man.

  If the power was divine in origin, then how had it come to be housed within the weak mortal flesh of an impious and venal man, as the former King of Aaltah was reputed to be? Why would the Creator choose Delnamal, of all people, upon whom to bestow this gift? Should it not rather have been given to a man of piety and devotion who could be counted on to use it wisely?

  It was nearly dawn when the answer to his litany of questions suddenly became clear, eliciting a startled and excited “Huh!” from his throat.

  The power had been granted to a man of piety and devotion: himself! Delnamal was merely the fleshly housing of that power, a vessel that would eventually be used up and destroyed. Had not Delnamal said that the Rhokai he had absorbed needed to be returned to the Well of Aaltah? And how could that cadaverous wreck of a body be expected to survive the loss of that Rhokai? The man could already easily be mistaken for a days-old corpse if he lay still too long.

  It was through the Creator’s will that the letters King Khalvin had tried to destroy had been saved from the flames and delivered into Draios’s hands. And it was through the Creator’s will that the words he’d been able to make out had stirred Draios’s soul enough to drag him out here to investigate. He was ashamed of himself for allowing any hint of doubt to creep in.

  As the first morning light began to seep in around the edges of the curtains, Draios stretched his sore and weary limbs. His bed called to him, and his body urged him to answer that call. But his soul was soaring with wonder and joy and awe.

  The Creator had infused Delnamal with unholy power and then led Draios to him. There was no reason He would have done so except that He wished Draios to make use of that power to set the world back to rights. His father was the King of Khalpar and renowned the world over for his piety, and yet it was Draios who’d had the wisdom and insight and instincts to hear the Creator’s call!

  “I will not fail you,” he whispered to the empty room, sure the Creator heard his every thought and word and approved.

  CHAPTE
R TWENTY

  Jaizal plucked nervously at her robes as a soft tap sounded on the door. Leethan smiled at her fondly. Jaizal was capable of displaying a bland, unconcerned face to the world, but her restless hands always gave her away when she was distressed. She had taken Leethan’s pronouncement that the two of them needed to flee the Abbey of Nandel with Princess Elwynne in tow with her customary calm and trust—until she’d met Elwynne the first time and recognized the difficulty Leethan had failed to consider.

  It had not taken long for either of them to realize that even at five years old, little Elwynne possessed a steel backbone and a sharp mind. Quiet and generally soft-spoken as befitted a Nandel-born girl, Elwynne was frightfully observant, and though she might not understand why the women of the Abbey were disgraced and why there was a steady stream of men flowing in and out of the Abbey’s front door, she had clearly formed the impression that Unwanted Women were not to be trusted.

  She was not discourteous in the least, but she spoke almost exclusively to her governess and had regarded Leethan’s attempts to befriend her with something very like suspicion. It had quickly become apparent that the child would not simply come away from the Abbey with two virtual strangers, and Leethan would not have abducted the poor girl by force even if she thought it possible to do so quietly and discreetly. Which left only one possibility that Leethan could imagine.

  “Are you ready for this?” Leethan asked Jaizal as she moved to open the door.

  “Are you?” Jaizal countered, and Leethan sighed.