Biondine, Shannah

by Shadow in Starlight(lit)

  "Forgive me, Your Highness, but I want Lady Preece. You did say she was late Ambassador Fa's daughter."

  "Yes."

  "Well, you see, my problem is more a social than economic question. I know the material has value. Raviners stole a fully laden cart yestermoon and have attempted raids since. They are proof of the commercial value. But it is the Far League Consortium which concerns me. They may help or hinder, and I would design some feasible arrangement whereby they are allies and see benefit from my trade activities. This is why I ask for Lady Preece."

  "Ah, madam! I, too, have a fraternal matter I would explore and discuss with you."

  "Hear ye!" Taroch suddenly roared. "Lady Preece does not have my leave to travel for the nonce. She is cousin to me by First Preece's lifemate blood bond with her. A most gracious addition to my royal emissaries, but - "

  "Will you not name her Royal Ambassador in her father's stead?" Exleigh demanded. "Glacia has been without an ambassador since Anthaal Fa's sudden demise. No one can be more qualified than Lord Fa's own daughter. We have all witnessed her rare talents. The woman has befriended firedrakes, the most feared beasts in all the known world!"

  This brought other shouts of acclaim, and Moreya turned helplessly to her monarch, clutching his hand now in desperation. He'd asked her how she summoned the dragons. She'd admitted the freakish truth. What would he do about this?

  "She will serve as Royal Ambassador, but here in my keep until I decide she may travel. Were she to venture about the unified realms now, my high chancellor would go with her, and I cannot spare him until many aspects of my rule are clarified. Look you to the gathering awaiting his verdicts."

  To Moreya's mind, she and Preece were suddenly both entirely too popular. Still, Taroch had firmly forbidden her to travel...the main consideration. "Your Highness is most benevolent. Forsooth, I am weary of travel just now, having come across Dredonia to attend the tournament and greet my husband."

  "Damn me, but my wife has never welcomed me so boldly," an elderly fellow chuckled. "Mayhap I'd yet take notice of her more often, were she to don a hauberk and point a dagger at my belly."

  "I note you well enough now, Cyrus," his lady snorted. "You make a fool of yourself before our new young majesty and his lady cousin."

  There was laughter and more toasting and merriment then. Taroch had bidden Moreya join him and his queen, so she was seated on a tufted pillow near the king's feet. Minstrels sang a long, exaggerated ballad about the Warmonger's defeat the prior afternoon on the tournament lists, by a woman-child with flowing violet hair and purple sparks bursting from her eyes.

  Moreya bent low to whisper to the king. "Did Preece help write this fable? I vow, he's the only person I've ever known to talk such flummery about sparks and a violet nimbus glowing around me."

  "Truly? Well, how much more straight-spoken would you have him be? Vulpina mentioned it earlier, and I noted it when you initially appeared before me with the clerics. I mistakenly assumed it was the aura of holiness surrounding the monks or the reflection of those garnet beads they worried upon during prayer. Have some more wine, Vulpina."

  The queen smiled and drew Moreya into a conversation about her new babe.

  Moreya gave no further thought to politics until more than an hour later, when Preece returned to the hall and Taroch abruptly announced he was retiring for the evening, leaving his high chancellor to preside over the festivities. "Lady Moreya." The king beckoned to her as he started for the exit doors. "You will come with me. We have much to yet discuss."

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Taroch led Moreya to the small solar where he'd recently questioned her. The broken door had been replaced. "Vulpina wants another babe," he sighed as Moreya closed the door behind them. "She can send me into rut merely by taunting me with her eyes. She knows it, too, my wicked queen. She kept her hand on my thigh through the meal this eve to irk me into retiring afore midnight. Despite our hall filled with guests."

  Moreya laughed. "Yes, Sire, she did tell me how fond she is of your young one and that she very much wished to birth another child soon."

  "Do you vex my cousin thus, leave him chafing with want of your flesh?"

  Thinking of their long afternoon of intense coupling and loveplay, Moreya answered as honestly as any Waniand. "There is little chance of that, Your Highness."

  He cocked his head. "I take your answer to mean you still wish him to mount you. This is good, for I've never known his eyes to linger upon any female's as they do upon you. I fear, were you to venture forth as my subjects desire, First Preece's wits would become addled."

  "Nay, Sire. He shall serve you well as high chancellor, I think. But as to becoming royal ambassador myself, I fear 'tis quite impossible. If I attempt to cross open terrain, the - "

  "The dragons might descend upon your entire party. I understand. And dragons are the reason for this private audience with you. I told you Preece's wizard instructed me how to address a firedrake, should the need arise."

  Moreya nodded.

  "I was also entrusted with a special parchment," Taroch went on. "Bourke said if your appearance and that of a dragon coincided here in the Glacian realm, I should give you a special missive. I intended to confer it when we spoke here before, but Preece arrived to batter down my door."

  He pulled a sealed parchment from a writing desk in one corner of the solar. He handed it to Moreya. "I would be remiss if I did not thank you, Lady Moreya. My cousin is very important here, to my future plans for the realm, to me as a person. I consider First Preece more brother than cousin. My mentor. It aggrieved me from the moment I first beheld him in the Ataraxian temple to see the deep sorrow within him. He was a man adrift. Until this eve. Ask whatever boon you will of me, and I shall grant it."

  Moreya swallowed as her eyes filled with tears. Another Waniand who could not speak of abiding love, but felt it for his cousin just the same. "I would ask patience, Sire. Preece needs our esteem and time. Only those things. He is a noble man and will serve you well."

  "I have never doubted it." With that Taroch left her to her reading.

  Moreya settled herself in a chair near a burning rushlight and broke the seal. The parchment was a lengthy missive from Bourke, penned in what resembled human blood.

  She read an astounding fable. Bourke admitted casting a spell of forgetfulness upon Preece, with said enchantment to be broken only by Moreya's act of will. If she was privileged to read the parchment now, the bygones spell had ended.

  Thus her first challenge had been met.

  "First challenge?" she whispered aloud. Then she quickly perused the rest of the wizard's message.

  Mere moments or several hours later she lifted her head. She was still alone in the small solar. The rushlight had burned low and would soon wink out. She'd not been reading so very long . . .

  And yet she was so profoundly affected, she couldn't possibly return to the hall and pretend naught of consequence had taken place during her audience with the king. She rolled up the parchment and shoved it into the bosom of her gown. She left the solar, found the nearest exit from the keep, and dashed into the open bailey.

  'Twas a moonless night. Waniand time, according to legend, a night when evil spirits might walk the land beside mortals. When ill fortune was said to be the lot of any hapless human who dared venture out into the deep murky darkness.

  Moreya welcomed the gloom.

  She spied a set of stairs leading up to a nearby watchtower and scaled them, announcing to the guard that she sought the keep's highest vantage point. If he found her request odd, he did naught to show it, but led her through a twisting maze of catwalks and stairs to a high parapet. "Leave me," she ordered, "but send word to the Lord High Chancellor where I can be found."

  She stood beneath the ebon skies, drinking deeply the crisp night air, pondering the distant stars and what the wizard had revealed. The sordid truth about her father's death, which Bourke had proven to be no accident, b
ut murder. Just as Preece had claimed.

  And Bourke confirmed that Preece was indeed a prince, last of a venerated ancient clan. His parents had ruled a land north of Glacia, had come to Glacia on a mission of goodwill, and were slain by a fanatic intent upon destroying all Waniands. The same fanatic who had illegitimately sired Cronel, the polydact usurper who never had legitimate claim to the throne.

  The charismatic, naturally persuasive Taroch, while suited by personality to leadership, had little more right to the crown. He was a second son, whose elder brother had perished as a sickly infant. Both males were begotten of Tal's younger brother. Another minor son.

  Preece alone truly bore the blood-stamp entitling him to a kingdom.

  His father had been firstborn male in his generation. Preece was Tal's only offspring. Preece should be king of Glacia - should have claimed the throne, not only for the Waniand race, but for himself.

  Yet Bourke had known Preece nearly all of the young Waniand's natural life. Bourke knew Preece would refuse to wear the crown. He was not a forgiving soul, not a warlord to forget old wrongs. He thirsted, not for glory, but for harmony and repose. Two things he'd known little of during his years in Glacia.

  So Bourke fabricated an elaborate presentiment. By painstakingly lettering texts and scrolls, using a wily mage's powers to alter the wording in venerated sacred tomes. He tampered with the lore of the Ataraxians, an offshoot race. The Ataraxians of the islands embraced the prophecy and gave sustenance to the legend.

  It foretold of a deliverer, a lone Waniand who had lived his life amongst the Glacians and knew its corrupt monarch. A knight who had served that monarch only to be condemned by him. This brave redeemer would lead the righteous Waniand return to the frozen lands of exile, show his brethren the way through the high mountain arête, reveal the secret weaknesses of the royal keep.

  Preece would be seen as the power beside the throne and accepted as such, while in truth he was the power steering the throne into a brighter future.

  Moreya had wondered more than once about what compelled Bourke's involvement in Glacian politics and the struggles of mortal fools. Surely a conjurer of his unquestionable skill could find myriad ways to apply his talents. Moreya knew from her father's wanderings that there were distant lands of wealth, other places where the balance of power teetered upon some narrow precipice. Why the intensely burning interest in an orphaned Waniand lad and the bloated greed of a fat polydact? What made any of this worth Bourke's vision and personal strife?

  The next line told the answer.

  He was the seventh son of the Great Be-a-re-si. Which made Bourke himself a Waniand trueblood. In his fighting youth, his eyes had been turquoise blue, not moss green. From his loins had sprung a long line of agile warriors. Though armed with occult knowledge and a full arsenal of arcane powers and spells, Bourke was doomed to live out an epoch watching his race decline.

  His various schemes and incantations had not been sufficient to hold back the tide of manic genocide that nearly destroyed the Waniands. He had foreseen disasters, tried to avert them, but had been reduced to helplessly guiding the last of his progeny into seclusion on the outer isle near Ataraxia. There, he knew, the few precious truebloods would be safe. Ataraxians naturally kept to themselves and did not encourage trade or visits from quarrelsome foreigners.

  But Bourke knew one day the Waniands must rise up and return to their rightful place. For this they would need strong leadership.

  Troubadours regaled the masses with ballads in which a benevolent redeemer rose to prominence. With forbearance and a kind heart, those who waited long years in darkness would at last be led into the light. Docile and humble people would one day be granted a just reward.

  Bourke cursed such cowardice. No saintly deliverer could restore order with words of peace and promises for the morrow. Waniands would never follow such a redeemer. They were a pale people of darkness. Both ice and fire. As nature had made them, they brought damnation with their angelic countenances.

  They needed a blade, not a branch.

  So Bourke chose the child whom cruel circumstances helped fashion into such a man.

  An implacable force, a warrior of strength and invincibility, who would be taught the ancient rituals. He would be raised alone, but raised in the ways of the oldest of his kind. He would practice the ritual cleansing essential to reinforcing his lifemate bond and siring healthy get. And he would need to choose a lifemate worthy of bonding with him, powerful of heart and mind and spirit herself.

  She would need to be as rare a creature as Kaelan Preece was.

  No magic had been involved in the choice of mate. None was needed. Preece made his choice, according to the tenets of his kind, and Bourke saw the young prince had chosen well.

  So well that Bourke had forfeited his essence, relinquished his mortal shell to become a green gemstone. The same stone Moreya had used to barter her way back to confront the man who had forgotten her. Thus proving the strength of her spirit, the perpetuity of their lifebond.

  Bourke had maintained the vigil over his bloodline for long eons. But he'd known he must eventually choose a successor. Another must take over the task, safeguarding the endurance of the precious noble race long into tomorrow.

  He chose Moreya.

  She was female, and not of the ursine clans. She had no black arts, no skill with a broadsword. But she could give the rightful king strong children. Preece's royal seed should produce forthright warriors with quick, generous minds. The sons and daughters of Moreya and Preece would be inherently tolerant; would welcome differences in people they encountered, whether the variation be in outward appearance, customs, religion, bloodline, or speculative thought. They would welcome what they did not understand and seek to gain knowledge and wholeness by embracing it.

  As Moreya had welcomed Preece and embraced him with her body, her mind, her heart.

  "Why are you out here, Moreya? Did Taroch order me thrown from the bastion? He knew I spent the day copulating with my lifemate rather than hearkening to the complaints and tales of his barons."

  Her reverie broken, Moreya turned and gazed into her husband's eyes. Glacial blue eyes that somehow looked softer on this moonless night. This Waniand night.

  "I was looking at the stars. Taroch is spending his eve in the same manner as you whiled away your afternoon, my lord."

  Preece stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. They gazed up at the dark skies together. "You seem bemused, lifemate. Or should I say, lady wife. Both roles suit you. I was surprised to learn you'd come here, out of doors. But I recalled that you're safe from the firedrakes at night. Mayhap our evening in the hall overwhelmed you. I understand. One adjusts to the sheer numbers of guests, the constant activity and bustle. But 'tis not what you bargained for, is it? I promised you a quiet life in the sun."

  "Tell me about Ataraxia," she murmured, content to snuggle within his arms and suspend the moment. To keep the astounding truths at bay yet awhile longer and just be with Preece.

  "It was all I'd been told to anticipate. The clime is warm, balmy. The seas are blue-green and full of life, the island lush and peaceful. I hated every moment there."

  She turned within the circle of his arms and touched his cheek. "You hated it? So you would not return?"

  "I hated it, first because I felt I'd been cheated and tricked into going there. Then because I'd left the best part of myself behind in Greensward. I promised Lockram I'd return one day, so mayhap we'll sail there eventually. But Tarochin needs me here now. And you. We cannot abandon this king as we did the old ruthless one."

  "Nay," she replied.

  "I heard the nobles implored Taroch to make you Royal Ambassador, to serve as your father did for many years."

  "He was rarely home. He liked strange places and foreign peoples. But you know I cannot possibly - "

  "But what they suggest is not without merit, Moreya. You have the rare ability to accept others without forejudging them. Even when
all the world condemns, you do not. An open mind is perhaps the most essential quality for an ambassador of the crown."

  She remembered the dark knight standing in the passage outside her chamber. She'd been furious that Glaryd had summoned him, been timid, but determined to try to befriend him. He'd ignored the hand she offered. Then. But it had profoundly affected him.

  Or had it all of it been naught but a wizard's sorcery? The letter also might be another subtle trick.

  Or it could be the veriest truth.

  Somehow, gazing up at her tall, ethereally-pale husband, his proud head and broad shoulders framed by the night firmament and its dusting of stars, she could believe in the future. And the past. Accept the torch. Accept that the dragons made her unique, and that, without them, she might not be standing here with the man who was true royalty.

  "I love you, Lord Chancellor. Warmonger. Preece. Kaelan. By all those names and more will I love you beyond the last beat of my heart. Until the last star falls from the sky, until the last dragon withers and dies."

  He set her back from him and stared into her eyes. "I love you, Moreya. When I lay upon the couch and surrendered myself to you utterly, I recognized the feeling within my soul as that your people had described. A deep, possessive sense of longing and belonging, wanting only your happiness, trusting that you equally seek mine. I'll not fight against it or my own Waniand nature, but seek harmony between them. That's why I introduced you as I did. You are my wife, my lifemate, my love. Every man in this keep and every visitor to it shall recognize and honor you as such, or answer to the Royal Blade."

  She'd forgotten that name. Or mayhap purposely blocked it. Her never-to-be, beautiful, proud king. "I want to go to bed, Kaelan."