“Be that as it may.” Aslak pulled his impressive frame to a stand, arms loaded with fur. “My first concern is to get you both safely home.”
Aslak’s tone plainly implied that he felt it was not his place to make judgments, putting an end to the intimate moment. Alwen still wanted to hear what else he knew or thought, but decided not to pry.
As he passed, Aslak spoke so softly that Alwen nearly missed his words. “I am glad enough, though, that she’ll soon be Madoc’s to manage.”
* * *
A few hundred yards out of the clearing, Aslak pulled up and pointed into the shadows. “There is a path here. It leads straight through the heart of Coedwig Gwyn.”
The fabled White Woods shrouded Fane Gramarye. Alwen had no memory of the forest aside from a wild ride in the dark twenty years before. She nudged her mare closer to what should be the trailhead. “Where, Aslak?”
The scramble of spurred hooves overrode his answer as Cerrigwen inserted herself between them. Fergus grumbled loud enough for his annoyance to be heard, but pulled back to allow her horse room.
“There.” Cerrigwen waved wildly at the trees. “The temple is this way.”
Alwen’s heart skipped a beat. How had Cerrigwen known, when she had not? Forcing logic to rule, Alwen reasoned that it was due to Cerrigwen’s affinity to the land. As Mistress of the Natural Realm, her bond with earthly things was far stronger. Or perhaps it was only that Cerrigwen’s memory was stronger. Then again, perhaps it was something else.
Aslak turned his horse full round. For a fleeting moment, his face belied the same concern as he leveled a curious and somewhat suspicious gaze at Cerrigwen.
“Keep close,” he warned. “The oak trees are so dense it can be hard to see the trail even as you are upon it.” Aslak tipped his chin at Fergus. “Watch the rear.”
Aslak led them into the copse. The trail, if there actually was one, was overgrown with thistle and furze. Very little light filtered through the mass of leafless limbs overhead, and yet Aslak knew exactly where to go.
Their progress was slow. It took hours to ride but a few miles. Deep into the day, they encountered a hazy fog. The farther they rode, the thicker the fog became, and soon it muffled them so snugly that Alwen could scarcely see the hindquarters of the horse in front of her. Blind faith or fool’s folly, she thought, placing her trust in the animal’s experience and sure hooves.
“Keep pressing forward,” Aslak called. “We’re almost inside.”
A moment later, Alwen noticed a change in the fog. It tingled on her skin as it thickened, and the scents of the forest gave way to a sweet fragrance that Alwen instantly recognized. They were breaching the veil. Fane Gramarye was hidden by an impenetrable spell, a shroud of enchanted mist that enveloped the castle and shielded its existence. The fragrance she sensed was an intoxicant, a bewitchment created to disorient intruders and keep them from stumbling too far into the Stewards’ realm. There was an opening, but the secret to seeing your way through was closely guarded and revealed only to a trusted few. Aslak knew the passage, but neither she nor Cerrigwen had been given the knowledge.
And what of Cerrigwen? Alwen wondered again. She was as aloof as she was assertive — traits that Alwen had not seen in her younger days. Was her behavior evidence of something more than a roughened temperament? Certainly hardship and isolation could be to blame, but wouldn’t she then be all the more welcoming of rescue? Alwen tried again to reach beyond Cerrigwen’s defenses, but to no avail. The answers she wanted were expertly hidden. For now, Alwen would observe and, as Fergus had reminded, pay heed to her instincts.
There was also the matter of Alwen’s magic. She was beginning to experience unexpected surprises, burgeoning skills she had never had before. She had first noticed it earlier, with Aslak, when she had sensed his lost love. Alwen had come very near to seeing the countenance of the woman, as Aslak remembered her. Until that moment, Alwen had been limited to the empathy that allowed her to feel another’s emotions. Now it seemed she had developed a kind of envisioning. Curious, she decided to experiment.
Alwen focused her thoughts on Fane Gramarye. The image of the temple gates formed in her mind immediately, just a few moments before the mist thinned and peeled away to reveal the thunderstone battlements and iron stiles at the postern. Alwen’s breath caught in her throat. The great metal monstrosity was a rusty, rarely used relic from bygone days and such a welcome sight her eyes filled with tears.
Cerrigwen charged ahead, commanding the guardsman who waited to allow them passage. “What are you waiting for?”
Finn MacDonagh spurred his mount, making a valiant attempt to rein in his Mistress. “Perhaps you should allow Aslak to announce you, Cerrigwen.”
Cerrigwen ignored him, staring down the sentry, who properly waited for Aslak’s nod before throwing the gates wide. Asserting herself with even more boldness, Cerrigwen entered first and proceeded with unimpeachable confidence down the cobbled road lined with evergreen hedges.
“Audacious,” Fergus mumbled, urging Alwen to take an equal position alongside Cerrigwen.
“It’s no matter,” Alwen assured him. “She is eager, as am I. Let her have her way, for now.”
Fergus relented, though not happily. Alwen was content to ride at Cerrigwen’s right flank, preferring to take in her old surroundings as they passed the guardsman’s barracks and the stables, the forge, the feedlot and livestock pens, and then the living quarters. The apprentices were assigned to two rooming halls, segregated by gender. Novices, she recalled, were quartered in a dormitory near the temple, under the care of prefects selected from the apprentice class. The acolytes, accomplished apprentices who served the docents such as she and Cerrigwen, were roomed in the temple itself, on service porches on the lower floor.
“Aslak,” she wondered. “These lodges look deserted.”
“The Stewards are dwindling, Alwen. There haven’t been novices for years and these old outbuildings have fallen out of use. The apprentices have the dormitory now.”
Just then, the cobbles ended at the temple courtyard, where the entire order had assembled. Mere dozens awaited them, not the hundreds Alwen had expected. Excitement dulled as foreboding trilled along her spine. “So few?”
Aslak gave a halfhearted shrug. “Such is the tithe of time. In the years you’ve been gone, we’ve lost many to the new religion. We’ve not had a mage child born in the temple in nearly twenty years. And, there’ve been no new foundlings.”
“But how can that be?” Alwen was incredulous. It was true that times had brought change, but surely not extinction. In the beginning, Fane Gramarye had been the training grounds of the mageborn. The clans had proudly sent any youth who showed the signs to the Stewardry. When invaders had supplanted the old ways and driven the Ancients into the sea, the people feared persecution, and their mageborn were abandoned. As had at least two sovereigns before him, Madoc had rescued as many as he could find. Alwen herself had been one such foundling, as had the other Mistresses of the Realms.
Aslak shook his head. “Madoc says the bloodlines are dying.”
Alwen shared his deep sadness. The mighty Stewardry had dwindled to but a shadow of its former glory. She made it a point to acknowledge the somber faces that lined the courtyard, who greeted her smiles with reverent stares. The silence was heavy with the weight of desperate expectations, and failing hope.
“Well, here we are.” Aslak dismounted at the temple steps and waited for Alwen and Cerrigwen to do the same.
Alwen looked to Cerrigwen for some indication that she was also affected by the mood of the place, but Cerrigwen displayed concern only for herself. She smoothed her fine skirts and turned her imperious airs on Aslak.
“Is there no one to take my bags?”
Aslak gestured up the stone steps toward the open doors of the vestibule that gave entry to the Stewardry. “Glain will assist you.”
A delicate wisp of a girl wearing an acolyte’s white robe stepped forward at Asl
ak’s beckon.
“Thank you, Aslak.” Alwen laid a hand on his arm, half in gratitude and half in empathy. “It is good to be home.”
He returned her kindness with a smile of genuine caring. “Fergus and I will see that everyone gets settled.”
Everyone, of course, meaning Rhys and Eirlys — a thoughtful gesture that Alwen found touching, and reassuring. With that important trust in capable hands, Alwen felt free to indulge in whatever awaited her.
She could have easily made her way through the corridors blind. Alwen’s mind began remapping the temple, piecing together memories and new impressions until the soul of the keep overtook her. Every few feet some sight or sound brought her to a pause — the comforting fragrance of incense and tallow, the ancient arras and faded tapestries that decorated the walls, a familiar sculpture. Even the hewn stone walls invited her touch. Alwen felt as if the temple itself were welcoming her back.
“We’ve prepared your rooms.” Glain ushered them past the assembly hall to the main stairs.
Cerrigwen bristled and pulled to an abrupt stop at the foot of the steps. “You’ve entered my private space?”
Glain’s eyes grew wide with worry. “Only to air out the rooms and refresh the linens. I’m certain you’ll find everything just as you left it.”
“No doubt, Glain,” Alwen interjected, redirecting Cerrigwen’s focus. “How wonderful our rooms have been preserved all this time. I never expected such courtesy, and have every confidence you’ve taken great care.”
Cerrigwen narrowed her eyes at Alwen. “We shall see.”
“An apprentice has been assigned to attend to your comforts, Mistress.” Glain, though ever dutiful, was quick as a whip. She appealed to Cerrigwen’s sense of entitlement. “But if there is anything lacking or something special you need, I will see to it myself.”
This seemed to satisfy Cerrigwen, though it did not stem the tide of demand. “I expect warm water for bathing, at the very least, and someone to put up my things.”
Cerrigwen continued to tick off her requirements, step by step, until they’d nearly reached the second-floor landing.
“We’ve had no new pledges to the Stewardry in a very long while, but the apprentices still use the spell rooms for practice,” Glain explained as they continued up the stairs. “The acolytes have use of the scriptorium for research, though there haven’t been directed studies for some time now, since the last of the elders succumbed this past spring.”
Alwen remembered the unending rows of books and scrolls, centuries of innovation and knowledge. She had spent many, many days in those dusty stacks. “What happened to them?”
“The one remaining docent, other than Machreth, suffered a mysterious illness that lasted for weeks and ended in his death. We lost three others some years before, in the defection.”
“Defection?” Cerrigwen’s interest was piqued at last.
Glain was unhappy to speak of it, but she shared what she knew. “There were those in the order who lost faith. These halls are empty now, save the two of you.”
“You mean they just…left?” Alwen could not believe what she was hearing. Besides Madoc’s rooms, the third floor housed the private residential quarters of the docents — the leaders and teachers of the guild. In the days of Alwen’s youth, the rooms on this floor had been full. The docents had numbered eight — four men and four women. She and Cerrigwen had barely made this highest rank before they had gone into hiding.
“Yes, I’m afraid it’s quite true.” Glain paused at the top of the steps. “I have the quarters nearest Madoc’s, to see to his needs. And then there is Machreth, of course.”
“His rooms are on this floor?” Cerrigwen asked.
“At the far end.” Glain pointed down the hall to her left with one hand and gestured to her right with the other. “Masters in the west annex, and Mistresses in the east.”
They had arrived before the entrance to Madoc’s chambers — a recess on the third floor where the annexes joined the main hall. Here dwelled the grand mage, high priest, sovereign of the Ninth Order — who had sent Alwen and the others out into the world to fend for themselves, protecting them until they were needed. Instinctively, Alwen stepped forward and pressed her palms against the massive oak door. She trailed her hands over the planks, feeling the knots and pits in the grain that gave the wood its character. Even through the door, she could sense him. Alwen closed her eyes and opened herself to the warmth and feeling of well-being that greeted her.
“Alwen, for pity’s sake,” Cerrigwen interrupted. “Must you be so sentimental?”
Alwen smiled to herself, eyes still closed. “I keep telling myself that it is only a matter of time until you rediscover the kindness and grace I know you possess, Cerrigwen.”
Umbrage ignited, but it was little more than a flash. Cerrigwen regained her defenses quickly, but not quickly enough. Whether she knew it or not, Cerrigwen had revealed the tiniest weakness. Perhaps she could be read, after all.
Alwen opened her eyes and gestured for Glain to continue, engaging Cerrigwen’s glare with a benign but unflinching gaze. “I suppose I can wait a bit longer.”
Cerrigwen held the exchange long enough to let it be known she was not one to yield, but she did not completely ignore the point. “The summoning was long in coming.”
“So it was,” Alwen agreed, acknowledging Cerrigwen’s halfhearted attempt at conciliation. “But we are here, now.”
Cerrigwen gave a curt nod and strode after Glain. By the time they reached her quarters, first door on the right, she had completely regained whatever self-possession may have slipped from her grasp. “When will Madoc receive us?”
“He intends to receive you each, privately, in his chambers,” Glain answered. “For now, settle in, make yourselves comfortable. I will come for you in due course.”
“You are the eldest, Alwen. I expect you will be first.” Cerrigwen paused in her doorway, her tone thick with sarcasm. “Privilege is bestowed upon age.”
Glain flashed a look of apology toward Alwen. “Madoc has asked to see Cerrigwen first.”
“He has, has he?” Cerrigwen unfurled a triumphant smile. She squared her shoulders as she withdrew into her rooms and flung the door closed behind her.
Another unguarded moment, and even more revealing than the last. Finally Alwen caught a full measure of the only real emotion Cerrigwen had experienced since they had met.
Pride.
Seven
Alwen’s was the very last apartment, at the very end of the hall. It was a simple, tidy place. The sitting room was furnished with a plainly upholstered divan and two slat-backed oak armchairs facing the hearth. A small dressing table that also served as a desk stood under the shuttered double transom on the far wall, overlooking the gardens. The stone walls were bare except for the heavy draperies hung over the sash to stave off the cold, but the room was warm. Someone had left a fire burning.
“We’ve given your daughter the rooms next to yours.” Glain supervised from the doorway as a parade of attendants silently entered the room carrying plates of bread and cheese, a tea tray, and a bucket of warm water for the basin on the table. “Your son will billet in the guardhouse, with Aslak’s garrison.”
Alwen smiled at the thought of Rhys bunking in the barracks. She would have guessed he’d prefer the creature comforts of the Fane, but then he was his father’s son. Bledig would never have been happy confined by stone bulwarks.
“Thank you, Glain.” Alwen tossed her heavy riding cloak over the back of the divan and took a moment to really look at the girl. Young woman, rather, Alwen now noticed, a bit older than Eirlys. She was a wistful beauty with full lips and straight ginger-brown hair that framed an angular, aristocratic face. Thick brown lashes veiled intelligent gray eyes that offset a proud nose. She presented herself as docile and dutiful, but Alwen sensed the makings of a spitfire.
“Have I time to wash?”
“Of course.” Glain glanced down the hall and excus
ed herself. “I’ll see to Cerrigwen, and then come for you.”
Alwen rinsed her hands and face and nibbled at the bread, standing at the window. Autumn had razed the gardens, and the grounds were littered with the withered remains. The only color left was the evergreen of the bittersweet hedges that ringed the yard and the clear, ice-blue shards of sky peeking through gray clouds. She had missed this place.
“Pardon, Mistress.” Alwen turned to greet another young attendant who had arrived carrying her bags. “You’ll need your robe.”
Before Alwen could answer, Eirlys scampered through the door and wrested the satchels from the attendant’s grip. She lugged them to the bed and upended them on the crimson velvet coverlet.
“I have my own rooms, you know, just next door,” she announced, rummaging through her mother’s things until she found a gray flannel bundle tied securely with a leather thong. “Here we are.”
Eirlys lifted the indigo velvet mantle with gentle, reverent hands. She had always been enchanted with it. When she was small, Eirlys would ask to be allowed to remove the robe from its hiding place, to run her fingers over the weft and ask about her mother’s mysterious past and what wonders the future held. Alwen remembered those sentimental occasions with fondness and gratitude, especially for the pride that had shone in her daughter’s eyes. The same pride she saw now, as Eirlys held out the cloak.
“I’ve never seen it on you, but of course it will be wonderful.” Eirlys laid the robe aside with deliberate care. “What else have you to wear, beneath it?” She frowned with disappointment as she sorted through the rest of her mother’s belongings. “Surely this isn’t all you have with you.”
“The robe is enough all on its own.” Alwen smoothed the skirts of the plain gray woolen apron dress she wore. “This will do.”
“I suppose. But at least let’s do up your hair,” Eirlys insisted. “Too much fuss, Eirlys.” Alwen was not one to be overly attentive to appearances. “You are the one with the dramatic flair. Simple serves me best.”
The Well of Tears Page 5