by Fran Jacobs
"I wasn't hungry," I whispered. I rolled onto my side away from her, throwing her off my feet as I moved. "Feel sick." I glanced around, thankful someone had cleaned up the room and my bed.
"You look terrible, Candale. Your eyes are red." She squinted at me. "Have you been crying?"
"No," I lied.
"You always go red and blotchy when you've been crying," Aylara said. "And your nose always swells up like a tomato as well."
"I haven't been crying!" I snapped at her. "I just had a headache and wanted to sleep! I think I've been overdoing things because you and the rest of our family haven't let me be. You've all been in here every day, pestering me about things, telling me things that I don't need to know and certainly don't care about!" Aylara's eyes became very wide and her face turned a shade paler. "Now just go away and leave me alone!"
"I-I'm sorry," she whispered. "Candale, I am. I just wanted to spend time with you. I-I was afraid that you were going to die and I'm so glad that you're not, we all are. I suppose we forgot how much you like your space sometimes and ... and I'm sorry."
She was going to cry, I could see the tears filling her eyes. I felt a twinge of guilt and I sat up, catching her hand as she started to get up from the bed. She hung her head, staring down at my hand grasping hers.
"No, I'm sorry," I said gently. "I don't mean to snap. Yesterday, I became really dizzy. I thought I was well again, but I'm not. I'm sorry I took my frustrations out on you. It's just so hard, still being weak like this. Forgive me for snapping at you, please?"
"Of course," she whispered. "Of course I do." She hugged me and kissed my cheek. "I wish you'd hurry up and get well again, but I suppose we can't force this." She got up and smoothed down her skirts. "I'll leave you to rest."
"Thank you," I said. "Later, maybe, we can spend some time together?"
"Yes," she said. She brightened and smiled warmly at me. "Kal and I would love that."
A few minutes after she'd left me, I got up and dressed. I had to talk to Mayrila. My sleep had been restless, fretful, with strange dreams. I dreamed that Silnia had given birth to a real son and that neither she, nor my father had wanted me anymore. I had become forced to beg on the streets, and Kal and my sister had ridden by and hadn't seen me there in the dirt. I had woken, covered in sweat and had wept, like a child, curled up in the middle of my bed, before finally falling asleep again. I wished that curiosity hadn't gotten the better of me. I wished that, for once, I had just trusted my grandfather. Why was I such a fool?
I headed straight down to Mayrila's suite and, when I reached her door, I didn't knock, I just went straight in.
The guest suites of Carnia Castle were all fairly similar, simply decorated and comfortable. Mayrila's rooms, however, were different, opulent. The furniture was heavily carved and there were bottle-green, silk cushions on the chairs and couch that matched the heavy curtains framing the windows at the back of the room. There were fine tapestries on the walls, rugs on the floor and the shelves were filled with books and small, decorative objects. There was even a vase of heavily scented roses, which I recognised as having come from Silnia's garden. It did not look like the other guest suites or like the room of a woman new to Court. Was she planning to stay a long time? Was that why her room was so well decorated, so cosy? Or were these presents to thank her for what she had done for me? I wasn't sure and, being surrounded by so many different things, when I had expected a bland and half empty room, unsettled me. I wasn't sure what was going on here, why her rooms were so elaborate, and I didn't like it.
The woman herself, dressed in black, sat on a chair, embroidered with red and gold flowers, sewing. She got to her feet as I came in and gave me a bright smile. "I thought I would find you here today," she said.
"You didn't find me," I told her. "I found you. And I want to know what's going on. I want to know why you said that you are my mother."
She didn't seem surprised that I knew this. In fact, she smiled. "Teveriel told me that you knew the truth about who I am to you. I'm glad that you've come to see me about this."
That took me by surprise. "Teveriel came and spoke to you? He knows you?"
"Yes."
"Did he know who you are to me before yesterday?"
"Yes."
I swallowed tightly. "Did he deliberately bring me to spy on you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I hoped that you would then come and speak with me about it, as you have done. I knew that you wouldn't come to see me otherwise and that your father would never tell you what you need to know. I felt that I had no other choice but to involve Teveriel. Please, sit down, Candale. I shall explain everything to you and then you can feel free to ask me any questions that you might have."
I sat down, uncomfortably, and Mayrila returned to her own chair. "Yes, I am your mother," she said. "But Silnia is the woman who raised you and loves you. I have no feelings for you in that respect, none at all. All I have are the stretch-marks that carrying you for nine months left me with." She smiled at me, a cold smile, and I returned it, just as coldly, although inside I was shaking. "I was living in Carnia Town when Gerian came to see me. I had a small healer's shop and had been living there a good few years since I'd left White Oaks, the mage school where I had learnt to use my gifts. I was very lucky to have been born with gifts, Candale, otherwise I would have been left illiterate like the other hapless sods in the village where I grew up. Oh I know things are very different now. That, over the last few decades, thanks to your grandfather, there have been schools established throughout the kingdom so that even the children of poorer families can get an education. But, when I was a child, it was something reserved just for the rich. But even then, as now, White Oaks took in anyone with magic or psychic gifts and taught them to read and write and control their powers. And they took me, and they taught me. When I left, I quickly proved myself to be a very skilled healer, enough to catch the attention of the Prince of Carnia, at least."
"It helped," I said, "that you were in the town surrounding the castle."
She made no reply to that but I saw a faint glimmer of annoyance in her eyes before she continued with her story. "Gerian sought me out in my little shop and told me that he and Silnia had been married about five years but were still childless and getting fairly desperate. I pointed out to your father that the fact they were so desperate for a child was probably why they weren't conceiving. He said that they couldn't help that, that they wanted a child and weren't prepared to wait any longer. What if they never conceived? What if they couldn't have children at all? They needed an heir and, moreover, they wanted a child, desperately. I told him that the fault might be with him, that seeking out another woman to bear his child might be pointless if he couldn't father them at all. He gave me a cold look and told me that he knew I was a witch and that whether the problem was with him, or with his wife, it didn't matter, I could get pregnant straight away. I know my body, Candale. I have control over it and he was right. I could easily get pregnant, or not, if I so wished. He offered me money and land to have this child for him, on the condition that I would never speak of it to anyone, that I would give the child up to be his wife's and leave the castle, as soon as I was fit to, following the birth. I thought nothing of that, of giving up that child, as I never particularly wanted children, so I agreed. He lay with me and it was over in about two minutes. Neither of us enjoyed it. He didn't like being with anyone who wasn't his wife and I didn't enjoy it for the sheer fact I felt like a prostitute. Still, it was done. I made sure I had conceived and moved into the castle for the duration of the pregnancy, hidden away in a suite of rooms. Silnia pretended to be pregnant and no one was any the wiser. And then you were born." Mayrila leaned forward in her chair, her eyes suddenly intense. "There has never been a son born to my line, Candale, only daughters and only one child born to each daughter. For nearly seventeen generations, for as far back as I can chart our line, there has only been daughters born and then you came
along, a son. If you had been a girl, there wouldn't be this problem. I wouldn't be so worried for you, nor would I have minded giving you up, because, really, I didn't want a child, but you aren't a girl, and there is this problem."
"What problem?" I asked. "And why couldn't you have simply made sure that I was a girl when I was conceived?"
"I can control my body, Candale, not yours," Mayrila told me. "The moment that you were first created, I lost control over you. I could not make you a girl. I could not decide how you would look. You were an alien presence inside me and I had no control over you."
"Oh," I said. "All right. And this problem ... ?"
Mayrila rose and moved towards the heavy table standing against the back wall. She lifted three leather bound books and came back toward me. There were pieces of ribbon stuck between the pages of each book and she flipped them open at those pages. "It was said," she told me, "that if a son was ever born to my line he would be the last of the line and a seer, and his prophecies would guide the future to a place of darkness, where the kingdoms have fallen. You are the one and only son ever born to my line, Candale, and, as I have no sisters, or cousins, you are also the last of my line. You are that prophet."
"No," I said. "No, I'm not." I got to my feet. This had gone on far enough. I had sat there and listened to her describe my birth in a matter of fact way, making me out to be nothing more than the product of a transaction, something she had done for money. That had been hard enough to listen to. Now she wanted to justify why she had told me all this, and ruined my life, by blaming it all on some foolish belief she had about what she thought I was. I wasn't going to waste anymore time listening to her. She was insane, or a liar, or both!
But Mayrila caught my hands. "Look in the books, Candale," she said. "This," and she tapped the page of one of the books, "is the Shadow Seer. You." She released one of my hands so that she could hold up the book for me to look at. "Look at the picture, Candale."
"Mayrila-"
"Just look!" There was something so forceful in her voice that I let my eyes drop to the open page and the image of a boy with dark curling hair and large eyes. He was a tall, slim boy, as I was, but it wasn't that which caused my heart to skip a beat inside my chest. No, it was that the boy looked just liked me. It was like looking into a paper mirror. It was my face staring back at me from a yellowing page in a leather bound book. My face!
"And not just in this book," she said. "In these two here, and in several others that I didn't bring with me, there is a boy who looks just like you. Look at it, Candale. It is your face. There is no colour in these pictures, but the description alongside says clearly that your eyes will be violet, your hair will be black and your skin will be pale. People have dreamed of your birth for so long, other prophets and seers have seen you coming. They drew these pictures of how you would look and wrote these descriptions. They said that you would come from an ancient line of witches, my line, Candale, and now here you are, exactly as foretold!"
I shook my head. "If I was a prophet, if I had any sort of gifts at all, I would know all about it, wouldn't I!"
"Perhaps," she said. "But perhaps you do have gifts and you just shrug it off as being something else. I believe that you were poisoned because someone else found out what you are, fears what you're going to see and wanted to put a stop to it. If that is the case, well, where there was one attack, there will be others-"
I pulled away from her. "You're mad. You really are."
"No," she said. Her eyes were wide and insistent. "I'm not. Candale-"
"I have no gifts. I have nothing. I'm not anything special. I'm just Prince Candale, not a prophet, not a seer!"
"You see things," she said. "I know that you do. And hear things. Singing, you said. You heard singing. Candale-"
"No."
She opened another book. "Look at that, Candale. Your face again and here, alongside, this symbol of the three-headed dragon. What is that?"
"No," I said, feeling a sudden coldness grip my stomach as I stared down at the frightening familiar picture. My knees buckled. "No. You did this. You did this somehow!"
"I did this?" Mayrila asked, incredulously. "I don't see how! These books are old, ancient, how could I have tampered with them? Why would I tamper with them?"
She grabbed my hand reaching for my ring finger. Now that I was well again, I had taken to wearing my signet ring and I wished that I hadn't this day, because my ring bore an image of a three-headed dragon, exactly like the one in the picture. It was my seal, one that I had chosen when I was a child, caught up, as always, with stories of dragons, and I didn't want Mayrila to see it in the face of all this.
But Mayrila held tight to my hand and pulled it toward her, studied the ring and then, with a triumphant cry, she released me. "See! Just as the book said that you would, you took the three-headed dragon to be your sign!"
"No," I whispered.
"Yes!" She tapped the picture in the book. "Each head stands for something different, for the past, present and the future. You chose this for yourself, as the books said that you would. The people who drew these images are long dead. How would they have known what you were going to look like, or the seal that you would take for your own, unless this was all meant to be?" I could only shake my head in denial, my mind suddenly blank of all thoughts. "Candale, all of this is why I didn't want to give you up. I wanted to keep you. I wanted to try and help you, but your father took you from me. He even threatened me when I tried to explain to him why I had to keep you, that you needed to be raised to know the truth of who you are, of what the prophecies had said that you would be. Candale-"
"A prophecy about the coming of a prophet and his prophecies?" I whispered to myself. I shook my head again. "This is your excuse for ruining my life! It's all nonsense and you're mad." I turned away from her and I left the room before she could say another word, slamming the door as hard as I could behind me.
Outside her rooms it all suddenly hit me and, for a moment, all I could do was stand there shaking, my head reeling and my stomach twisting. I felt weak all over and my legs trembled as though they would collapse beneath me at any moment. I leaned against the wall for support, feeling the cold, rough stone pressing through my thin tunic, and took a few deep breaths.
When I finally felt calmer I pushed myself away from the wall and started to walk. I had nowhere specifically that I wanted to go, but I felt the need to keep moving, as if I could walk away from what Mayrila had said to me. But as I walked through the castle's long corridors, trying to escape what I had heard, my thoughts came with me, making my head reel.
I wasn't sure how long I wandered the corridors, lost in the haze of my own thoughts. I was vaguely aware of being spoken to a couple of times but whether I replied or not, I wasn't sure. I just recalled hearing a voice speak my name, a question being directed, but nothing that I could really identify.
Finally everything seemed to clear with the sharp realisation that I had to talk to someone about Mayrila and what she had said to me. It had to be someone who knew her better than I did, who might know why she had told me this now, someone who would help me talk this out logically, without being too angry to learn that I had spied on them.
I had to talk to my grandfather.
I found Sorron in the main council chamber in the middle of a meeting. As I slid into the room, following a polite, but impatient knock, I was greeted with thirteen sets of annoyed and disapproving eyes.
"What is it?" Sorron almost snapped at me. "And it had better be important."
I glanced around the room, relieved to see that Gerian wasn't there, as I certainly couldn't have discussed this with him present, and forced myself to stand straight and to meet my grandfather's gaze. "We have to talk," I said.
"Now? Can't it wait?"
"No." I fiddled with the ring on my finger. "No, it can't."
There must have been something in my eyes or in my voice because my grandfather looked at me strangely for a moment, then n
odded and got to his feet. "Excuse me," he told his councillors, and, without waiting for a reply, he walked towards a side door that led into an adjacent room, and held it open for me. Just briefly I paused to wonder why my 'mad' ancestor hadn't bothered to wall off this door, like he had the other one, but the impatient look in my grandfather's eyes drove that thought from my mind and I hurried to join him.
The adjoining room was almost identical to the one that Teveriel had taken me to the day before, but unlike that room, this one wasn't being used to store furniture. There were two chairs set out in front of the hearth, where a fire was burning merrily. Tapestries hung on the walls and several decanters and empty glasses sat on a table. It looked as though it was my grandfather's secret refuge, somewhere for him, and perhaps my father, to escape to when the day's meetings were over, before the pomp and ceremony of the evening meal in the Great Hall.
"What is this about?" Sorron asked me impatiently, as he took a seat.
"I know everything," I told him simply, as I sat down beside him. "I know that Mayrila is my mother and I know that she thinks I'm a prophet."
For a moment he could only stare at me, the stunned look of a man who had been suddenly hit by lightening. When he recovered it was to sigh, heavily. "Oh," he said.
"I'm sorry," I said, my composure fading. "I-I overheard the conversation you had with her, I ... I spied, and today I went to confront her about it. She told me that she believed I was a seer."
"You went to see her about this and not me?" He looked disappointed and I shrugged unhappily.
"I just wanted to confront her, demand the truth from her, hear it from her own lips that she was my mother. Why didn't you tell me about it yourself? Why did I have to overhear it like that?"
"You were not meant to 'overhear' it, Candale. You were not meant to ever know! What happened to the bard your father sent to distract you?"
"I ... I sent him away," I lied, not wanting to explain that I had been so desperate to spy on that conversation that I allowed a total stranger to help me.