by Jeff Wheeler
“Would you be quiet a moment?” he said, growing a little exasperated. He took her hands in his warm, inviting grip, and the desire to let him hold her, to let him speak, warred with the certainty that this could not be. “Now your father is gone. Some whisper he is dead. Others say he betrayed us, which we both know is an utter falsehood. But he was the most powerful lord of Ceredigion. He was your chief protector. Your father. You are now the Lady of Averanche. With your father gone, you are an even more valuable heiress. There are many men, even those as dense as a brick like Elwis, who will overlook your childhood injury now and seek you out as a bride. Trynne, your smile has never bothered me. In fact, I think it makes you especially lovely. What I’m trying to say, and mussing up badly, is that I’ve always seen myself as your protector. I had thought to wait until we were both a little older and on my part, at least, more mature—you’ve already surpassed me there—but what happened to your father has hastened the intent I’ve always had.”
His eyes burned into hers. “I want to be yours, Tryneowy Kiskaddon. And I want you always to be mine. Let there be no confusion between us. No more secrets. I hereby plight you my troth.”
Her mouth was so dry she felt like choking. Her heart buzzed with a thousand giddy emotions. Yet her head felt doubt, insecurity, and worry. She closed her eyes, wishing briefly that perhaps this was only a vision, a dream—a nightmare to be awakened from. Part of her had instinctively felt that he was just rash enough to promise to marry her. It flattered her immensely. There was a large part of her that still yearned to say yes. Her heart wanted her to. But her head prevailed. She knew she could not.
When she opened her eyes, she felt she was breathing too fast. It would hurt them both, but it needed to be said.
“I cannot marry you, Fallon Llewellyn,” she said in a strong, clear voice.
His eyes, so eager and hopeful, blinked with shock. “What?” he asked with a confused chuckle.
She shook her head no resolutely, feeling the ripping tugs on her heart even more. “I should have left earlier,” she said with a half-choking sigh. “I cannot marry you.”
The transformation of his face showed she had caught him utterly off guard. That he had been expecting a positive response.
“Oh, Fallon . . . you have always been the most impetuous, exasperating young man I know! Why speak of love now, when the kingdom is so fragile? I cannot think about love yet. I don’t want to think about love yet.” She struggled to find the right words. “I just wanted to go on as we’ve always been, as dear, dear friends.”
“And that is all I am to you? A friend?” His tone showed his disbelief.
“Fallon, this isn’t the time—”
“This absolutely is the time! I love you, Trynne. Can I speak it any plainer? Do you not care for me as well?”
He had taken things too far, like a boat rushing down the current toward the falls. There was no going back now. She knew from her mother’s vision that she wouldn’t marry him. She wanted to stop the wreckage she knew was coming.
Her cheeks were so hot. “You have been a dear friend to me, but I cannot marry you.”
He gripped both of her arms, not threateningly, but as if he were drowning in misery. “Do you love me . . . or not? Is there someone else you care for instead? Tell me the truth, Trynne. I must know, or I cannot bear it. Tell me!”
Trynne didn’t want to tell him, knowing it would break not only her heart but his as well. But all his masks had been stripped away, at least in that moment. The cocoon began to rip and tear. The secret wriggled free.
She hung her head. “Yes,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “Yes, I love you, Fallon. I always have. But please don’t make me say that again. I love you so much it causes me pain because I can’t be with you the way I desire to!” She looked into his eyes then, pleading with him to understand and believe her. “My mother had a vision about my marriage. And it was not with you. I have been tormented by that vision ever since she shared it with me. My heart has been breaking since then, and it has not stopped. Even now, my heart doesn’t want to accept it, but I have seen time and time again the truth of my mother’s visions. They come from the Fountain. And as hard as it has been for me personally, I know I must follow it.”
His hands dropped from her arms as he stared at her in wild shock, the realization hitting him like a sledge.
She rallied her courage. “But, Fallon, that is not the only reason I must reject you. It gives me great pain to tell you this, but I do not trust you. Not fully. There are events happening underground, things that you yourself have hinted at. The secrets between us are not only mine. I want to trust you, but you’ve shaken my faith in you. For so long you’ve hungered for glory. Know you not that trust is earned instance by instance, moment by moment? And it can be broken so easily. You flirt with danger like it means nothing.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “You are untrustworthy, Fallon. It pains me to say it, but I couldn’t marry someone who treats his integrity so casually.”
His look changed to one of outrage in an instant. “You have no ken what I have done to protect my brother-in-law the king. None at all. One day you’ll regret saying that you did not trust me.”
“Think on what I’ve told you,” she pleaded miserably. “I did not mean any unkindness by it. Our parents once loved each other.” Her voice throbbed with grief. “Perhaps we are doomed to repeat the same painful love. If so, we should both look to them as an example. Our lives, even if they must be spent apart, will turn out better than how it feels right now.”
She tried to reach for his arm, to comfort him with her touch, but he brushed her hand aside as if it would burn him.
“I can never accept that!” he said in anguish. The look in his eyes showed the depth of how much she’d hurt him. He was pale, his humor slit open and spilled. “I can’t believe that you and I are meant to repeat their story. We are different.”
Without another word, he whirled and stormed away from her, trampling the grass with his stride. He stalked off quickly, vanishing from the garden in moments.
She watched him go, and once he was gone, she finally released the tears that were lingering on her lashes. The sobs hurt, but there was a feeling of profound relief too, like drawing a sharp splinter trapped beneath the skin. She might have lost Fallon’s love and his friendship forever. It was possible his grief would drive him to someone else, someone like Morwenna, in retaliation. She had to prepare herself for such a possibility. But she believed she had done the right thing, despite how broken she felt.
She decided she could never go back into that garden again.
Trynne and her mother stood on the beach full of sea glass, watching the sun set. Trynne held her own slippers as well as her mother’s while Gannon knelt in the moist sand, sorting the different colors of pebbled glass as the breeze tousled his hair. The smell of the air was delicious and fragrant, a soothing balm. She had found her mother’s slippers at the foot of the steps leading down from the rock wall. It was her mother’s place of solitude and comfort. But it was also full of ghosts.
“Did I do the right thing in how I rejected him?” Trynne asked her mother, giving her a sidelong look.
Sinia smiled as she put her arm around Trynne’s back and squeezed her shoulders. She kissed Trynne’s hair. “Most people are afraid to tell others the truth about their foibles and weaknesses. We fear to offend, and for good reason. Most people are so easily offended. But you did the right thing, Tryneowy. And I’m proud of you. Fallon needed to hear it, even if he didn’t want to.”
Trynne put her arms around her mother’s waist and pressed her cheek against her bosom. “Men prefer to be flattered, I think.”
Sinia laughed softly. “’Tis true. But people generally despise where they flatter. And I don’t think you despise Fallon.”
“Not at all,” Trynne said. “He probably despises me now. But someone needed to tell him the truth about himself.”
“Indeed. Your f
ather and I have had many discussions about this,” she said as they enjoyed the sound of the crashing surf. “He was always thinking about discernment because of Ankarette, you know. How can you learn to trust someone? We all have weaknesses. Some we know about ourselves, and they are obvious to others too. Then we have faults that we are blind to ourselves, but are plain to everyone else. Some weaknesses we deliberately conceal from others. But the most rare are the ones that are both invisible to us and to others. Those we are blind to. They may be our greatest weakness of all.”
Trynne turned her head and looked up at her mother. “But how can you find out about those, Mother? I’ve never thought of that before.”
Sinia stared at the sea, her gaze a little distant. “Your father said these were the greatest threat to happiness. The blind weaknesses. We agreed when we first wed that we would be honest and helpful to each other. That we’d help each other learn to see our own weaknesses. Like me forgetting my shoes,” she added with a tender smile. “But there is only one way we can ever discover the blind ones.”
“How, then?” Trynne asked hopefully.
“Actually, it was Myrddin who helped us get to the answer. Long ago. Sometimes we can learn about them from the Fountain. Not in whispers. But by circumstances we face. Those circumstances reveal the weakness we never knew we had.”
Sinia smiled once more, gazing at the gray-green horizon. “And then we are no longer blind to them.”
Trynne swung the glaive high, and Captain Staeli caught it, jammed it down, and followed through with a knife toward her ribs. She twisted, trapping his arm, but he levered her backward, nearly making her fall. His counter was perfectly timed.
She released his hold and stepped back, feeling the sweat streak down her cheeks. Her training clothes were sodden from their lengthy practice. She twirled the glaive around as he watched her movement, preparing himself for her attack.
“Well done, Captain. This weapon can strike from either end. Be ready.”
“I’ve seen well enough what it can do,” he grunted, his eyes intense and focused.
The door of the training yard creaked open and Farnes limped into the yard with the help of a walking staff. Trynne stilled her weapon and straightened, turning to face her herald as she saw he had come with news.
“My lady,” Farnes said in his wheezy voice. “Several ladies have arrived at the castle. Some are young. Others are much older. The queen sent them. You mentioned, when you returned, that you were expecting some . . . visitors?”
Trynne gave him a broken smile. “I am. Let them come and see.”
Sometimes we put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.
Myrddin
EPILOGUE
The Hidden Vulgate
Morwenna Argentine smoothed her hand across the ancient page of the wrinkled vellum, staring at the marks and runes and feeling the overwhelming giddiness that always came when she read from it. The book was ancient, bound in fraying leather with sigils and wards on the cracked spine. Whoever had created it had been a master Wizr, one who had lived a very long life. It was a compendium of the words of power, what they did, and how they were invoked. It was a book of intrigue, of subtlety, of the machinations of power. It should never have been created. And yet it was hers.
She still remembered the day she had discovered it in the hidden vaults of the poisoner school in Pisan. It was the school’s deepest secret, and no one had really understood its significance until Morwenna came along. Only the masters of the school knew of it. But she was good at ferreting out secrets. And with the book, she had discovered an entirely new world. The book had probably been stolen again and again over the ages. It was The Hidden Vulgate. The keeper of secrets. The lore of the Wizrs. Her mastery of the craft had seemed miraculous to everyone else, but with the book, she knew information it would have taken ten lifetimes to acquire piecemeal.
Her sly smile turned into an angry frown. Yet despite all her knowledge, all her skill at intrigue, events had wobbled out of control at Guilme. The wagon cart of her destiny had crashed. She was still furious about it. So close—she had come so close to achieving her aim!
She sensed Fountain magic coming up the stairs of the poisoner’s tower. With a thought and a wave of her hand, the book vanished. It was still there, but it was invisible and insubstantial. She rose from the chair and walked to the window, gazing down at the autumn-shrouded grounds of Kingfountain from its lofty spire. It was the highest tower in the palace. If she willed it, she could cause storms to rage down on the inhabitants. The thought made her feel smug, but she silenced it. She was not invulnerable yet. Another threat loomed. Another person she had to destroy.
The door of the tower was locked, of course, but no lock was a match for Dragan.
The thief carefully opened it and stepped inside, then shut it quietly behind himself. The illusion of invisibility sloughed off him like hunks of snow. He stood at the doorway, eyeing her with satisfaction.
“Do you have the ring?” Morwenna asked, turning around and facing him.
“I do indeed, my lady,” Dragan said slyly. “It wez worth fifty thousand before, but I’m sure it is worth more now. Interest, sez I.”
“You know I despise your disguise as an illiterate,” Morwenna said. “You play the role so often I think you’ve forgotten who you truly are. Or where you come from.”
Dragan shrugged noncommittally. “How much is it worth to you, my dear?”
“A king’s ransom, certainly,” Morwenna said with a hint of mockery. “Let me see it.”
“I knew you’d be anxious, my love,” Dragan said. He made a wave of his hand, a parlor trick really, and a gold ring seemed to appear from behind his earlobe. “This is the wedding band,” he said with a growl of disgust. “On the left hand.”
“Useless, of course,” Morwenna said, waiting in anticipation.
“Aye, and then here is the other,” he continued with a flourish, producing another ring with his other hand. “This one I couldn’t see until I tugged it off. This be the one you’re truly wanting.”
Morwenna gazed hungrily at it. “Oh yes, that’s the one. You left the decoy back in the grove?”
“I did. A hand with it as . . . a treat.”
“That’s macabre.”
“If it pleases my lady to think so,” he said with a bow. Then he wrinkled his brow with a little show of ferocity. “I thought Kiskaddon’s treasure was going to come. His daughter. I had hoped to murder her in front of him. I still owe him that pleasure.”
“I thought she would as well,” Morwenna said and then shrugged. “We often want things that do not happen. I had intended to be betrothed to Gahalatine by this point. Now I must wait a year because of foolish honor.” She was still burning with anger because of it. “You’ll get your chance, Dragan. As will I.”
“So shall I hold on to this ring, then?” Dragan said with a mocking smile. “For a year? I be thinking you’ll want it now regardless.”
“Oh, I want it,” Morwenna said with a dark smile. “And you will get what you were promised now or later. The ransom. The position. The honor.”
Dragan’s eyes narrowed with a look of cruelty and desire. “No laws. No rules.”
“None at all. The kingdom you wish for already exists. You will be one of its lords. A mighty one.”
Dragan’s grin was horrifying. “I’ll wait for it a bit longer,” he said. “And I’ll be keeping this until I get it.” He waggled the ring at her. “I put the cursed ring on the hand instead. Who do you think will wear it?”
Morwenna shrugged. “I don’t really care. I know you’ll keep that safe until I come asking for it.”
“Where did you hide Kiskaddon, my love?” Dragan grinned.
Morwenna raised her eyebrows mockingly. “You mean you don’t remember?”
The thief blinked at her, startled. “Remember?”
In her mind’s eye, she saw the oak tree thick with leaves and mis
tletoe with water trickling from its roots by the plinth and silver bowl. The original story was in her ancient copy of The Hidden Vulgate. She had learned of it in her first month at the poisoner school. She had learned so much after finding that vellum tome. Sometimes she fancied the book was alive.
Morwenna gave him a cunning look as she flexed her hand, feeling once again the invisible ring that was already around her finger.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When I wrote in my note at the end of The King’s Traitor, I mentioned that I thought the children of these main characters needed a turn on stage. I saw more light farther down the tunnel. I’ve really enjoyed respinning obscure Arthurian legends into this new world. The famous Round Table of Camelot is the inspiration behind the prominent Ring Table in this book. But the idea that really ignited my imagination had to do with the character of Sir Lancelot du Lac. He was the most famous and often mysterious of the knights of the Round Table. And the thought that struck me was, What if Lancelot were a girl?
Once you tip an idea over on its head, all sorts of offshoot ideas come into play. I needed a heroine, someone who was Owen and Sinia’s daughter. She needed a weakness. She needed someone to love who couldn’t or shouldn’t love her back. The name of her character came to me as I was listening to Kate Rudd’s narration of The Queen’s Poisoner and it struck me how likely it was Owen would want to name his child after the woman who had saved his life. It all worked.
But Trynne’s character is not based on a legend. She is based on a young woman whom my wife and I have known for many years. A young woman who, through a freak accident, developed Bell’s palsy as a child. Her resiliency and courage through this trial has been a source of inspiration for me and many others. She is currently serving as a Spanish-speaking missionary for my church in Washington, DC, and won’t read this note until after she returns home again.
The world has many people who are examples and inspirations to me. And so I dedicated this book to one of them.