The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  So he drank a cup of the minty-sweet potion while Rafeyo emptied the metal basin, and after a little while he did feel better.

  “Grazzo.” Leaning back on the pillows, he cradled the warm cup between his hands. Only a twinge of the bone-fever, and only because he felt so generally dreadful. He had just turned forty-two; Dioniso’s line was strong and long-lived, for Limners; he had nothing to worry about. “Sit and talk with me. You’ve a hundred questions in your eyes.”

  There was a quick flash of a smile—charming in the child’s face, it would doubtless become more so in the grown man’s. Dioniso had never met Tazia, but if her smile were anything to compare, it was no wonder Arrigo had been reluctant to marry.

  “I’ve been dying of curiosity ever since I sneaked that vial out of the Principio’s night chamberpot! Disgusting!”

  “The youngest always gets the worst task. But you didn’t demand an explanation, which was very wise of you in foreign surroundings. Sit, Rafeyo, and I will answer your questions.” As he had answered some, but not all, of Arrigo’s. He sipped again, sighing as steam warmed his face. “Let’s begin with Principia Rosilan’s icon. Oil on wood, neither potent in themselves, but because the work was done with brushes made of her hair the icon has certain strengths—of suggestion only, but enough to the purpose. You’ll learn relative degrees of power and how to call up your own magic later. For now, tell me about the symbols.”

  Rafeyo perched on the edge of a chair, lithe young body swaying instinctively with the roll of the ship, his laced fingers clasped between bony knees. Dioniso made note of the posture for future reference as the boy answered. “The Mother sits on grass, signaling Submission. But I don’t think the Principia is the obedient type.”

  “Not in the slightest, which is why I added the plums.”

  A frown; a sudden grin. “Fidelity! And a whole orchard of them, not just the fruit in the basket—that’ll work even on her!”

  “So we may hope. What else?”

  “Rosemary for Remembrance, but what’s she supposed to remember?”

  Gulping back another twinge of seasickness, he drank more tea and replied, “The Mother wears Diettro Mareian peasant dress. I wish the Principia to recall that she herself affected that style—considerably grander, of course—in her patriotic youth. Her current taste for Tza’ab costume—”

  “—will go away!” Rafeyo interrupted.

  “No. But her former preference will now compete. And when she decides she likes her native costume more, her happiness will have nothing to do with the icon. There’s nothing a pretty woman loves more than setting a new fashion.” He nodded thanks as Rafeyo poured another cup of tea. “Tell me about the pine trees.”

  “Pine trees?”

  “Eiha, perhaps you haven’t gone that far yet. Pine signifies Magical Energy—again, note that I used an entire forest! Because I had access only to a brush made of her hair, the painting itself must compensate.”

  Rafeyo didn’t understand, but asked the right question anyway. “Why not use something stronger?”

  “She has experience of such work. Not her personally, but a relative. It was necessary to be subtle. Now, I don’t expect you to comprehend the Principio’s icon, so I’ll explain it to you.”

  “I know bluebells for Constancy, and ivy for Faith.”

  “But not, ultimately, with the Son. You’re about to interrupt me again by saying dandelions signal Male Potency. Quite true. Felisso will see the power of the masculine mind and loins—and his own fathering of those nine gruesome children. Which reminds me to remind Mequel to tell Cossimio that no do’Verrada daughter must even consider betrothal to one of those hideous little apes. I won’t have the family looks ruined.”

  Rafeyo laughed. “Weren’t they frightful? Can you imagine being Court Limner there, and having to paint nine Marriages?”

  “Spare me,” he replied with a shudder. “My stomach is delicate enough as it is. But we were speaking of the humble dandelion—which also stands for Oracular Vision. Felisso is a devout man. The vision in his dreams will be of Tza’ab sands that are no part of the civilized precincts of the Sanctia.”

  Black eyes huge, Rafeyo whispered, “You mean—will this icon make him dream things? Why? What is there in the painting that—”

  “This you’ll also learn in due course. The apple will call up a dream. The Principio will believe it a vision, and have no more to do with the Tza’ab. It’s known as the Peintraddo Sonho, the painting of a dream.”

  The boy mulled this over. Then: “There was a smell about both icons. Not oil paint or wood, but something else.”

  Dioniso smiled, very pleased. “You have a good nose. It was vervain, the scent of Enchantment, rubbed into the wood back and front before I even made up my paletto.”

  Again he was quiet. At length, and very humbly, he said, “This is much more complicated than I ever suspected.”

  “But you have suspected. It’s a poor excuse for a Grijalva who doesn’t guess much of the truth before Confirmattio.”

  “How much truth is there?”

  “More truth, and more power, and more magic, than any of us ever suspect.”

  Awed, Rafeyo breathed, “We Grijalvas are more powerful than anybody in the world!”

  He’d been expecting this—indeed, had led the boy to it. All young Limners said the same thing after their first glimpse of magic’s reality. Over the years Dioniso had learned that the answer always given them was true. He said it to Rafeyo now, wearing his most solemn face.

  “We use that power in service to the do’Verradas, who protected the chi’patros when we would have been cast out. They saved our lives when a populace crazed with terror of Nerro Lingua would have murdered every last one of us.”

  “But if we wanted to, we could be—”

  “No,” he said severely. “Never.” Pushing aside the memory of Raimon and Il-Adib and the night hours when he himself had not only thought this thing but plotted its accomplishment—before he’d learned otherwise.

  “But why?” cried Rafeyo.

  “We are of Tza’ab blood. The chi’patros had less standing than the lowliest camponesso on the poorest farm in Tira Virte. That blood can never be cleansed from us, according to the Ecclesia.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “Of course not! But others do, and if we ever tried to take power, we’d perish. Even a hundred Viehos Fratos painting a thousand paintings could not influence all the people who would oppose us. So we use the power we are given, and do not reach for power that can never be ours.”

  “But—”

  “We are a part of Tira Virte, but we are always apart from it.”

  Rafeyo bit both lips, then burst out, “All because of the Ecclesia’s self-righteous—”

  “All because it would be foolish even to try.” During his stints as a moualimo within Palasso Grijalva, he’d drilled that into his young charges. Not only was it smart politics, and simple fact, but he dreaded that one day some Neosso Irrado would ignore even more rules than he himself had done, and thereby bring the Grijalvas down with a fatal crash.

  To Rafeyo he continued, “And consider the Grand Duke, who has direct power over all Tira Virte. Even with an army of conselhos, he must squint over account books to make sure he’s not being cheated. His home is filled with scheming Courtfolk on whom he must keep constant watch. He must worry about keeping wealth and power—and extending both if possible. He marries as he is told to, and lives a life circumscribed by the most rigid compordotta.”

  He stopped, hiding a smile, for Rafeyo was imagining himself Grand Duke of Tira Virte. By the expression on his face, he was shackled to a gigantic ledger with twenty knife-wielding barons at his back—and one of the della Marei grotesques as his wife.

  Rafeyo’s eyes were huge with horror. “But—I’d never get to paint!”

  “Not often.”

  “It’s much better to be us!”

  “I’ve always though so,�
�� Dioniso said dryly. “A Grijalva Limner is honored above all the nobility by the Grand Duke. The family takes care of the money, and whatever you need is provided. Palasso Grijalva is a haven occupied only by us. You may marry whom you choose—or not marry at all, as you choose. Our compordotta is not the degenerated mockery it has become in society, all elaborate manners and mannerisms to hide vulgarity and licentiousness, but retains its truest form: a sense of honor. As for power … “ He smiled. “We are free to do what our blood commands us to do. Paint.”

  “Which is the greatest power of all,” Rafeyo said. “But—doesn’t it bother you that you had to paint what Don Arrigo told you to?”

  “It’s part of the service we owe. You’ll come to understand this, and cherish the opportunities it gives you. Although I was ordered to paint the icons, and there were certain requirements for each, the creation was mine. This is the joy of what we do, Rafeyo—to impose our own vision and talent and Gift onto a set form, to make a masterwork of the lowliest Birth or Marriage.”

  Rafeyo left soon thereafter, with much to think about. Dioniso finished off the tea, lay back in a bunk that mercifully had settled to a mild cradle-rocking, and fell asleep smiling.

  FORTY

  The new year of 1263 arrived with due celebrations from which Mechella was grateful to be excused. Through the winter she was so ill and listless that Arrigo feared for the child. Eminent physicians arrived, clucked like gossiping chickens, opined that nothing ailed her but a difficult pregnancy or perhaps the weather—and presented their bills.

  As spring neared, the bigger Mechella got, the better she felt—and she was so big that twins were indeed rumored. Her energy was such that she volunteered to oversee the planning of the children’s celebrations for Astraventa: her favorite holiday.

  Mechella’s first contribution to the religious and social life of Tira Virte—beyond rare appearances since her marriage—was to add a Ghillasian touch. Rather than simply hand out little mirrors with which to “catch” falling stars during Astraventa, children would hunt for the mirrors on the Palasso grounds. Her steward nodded enthusiasm in her presence and groaned once he left her, for not just special mirrors but repairs to the gardens would be charged to her privy purse.

  The innovation was a great success. By the last sunset glow on the day of the festival, while parents were served cider and star-shaped cakes indoors, hundreds of little boys and girls scampered laughing amid the flowers and shrubbery to seek hundreds of little wooden-handled mirrors decorated with ribbons. Prizes clutched in grubby fists, they ran to the courtyard fountain where Mechella tied the ribbons to hundreds of little wrists. Sweets were distributed as they waited in wriggling anticipation for the “starry wind.”

  Night fell; the yearly shower of sparks across the sky began, and all the mirrors turned skyward to catch a bright speck of light. The Palasso walls reverberated with joyous shrieks of success. Parents emerged from indoors to collect offspring giddy with too many sweets and the thrill of having captured a star. Mechella stood at the top of the steps, smiling as the good people of Meya Suerta bowed their respects and thanks.

  Then she saw a little girl shuffle past, crying, her mother attempting in vain to soothe her. Mechella descended the steps and knelt, awkward in her bulk, and took the sticky hand that held the mirror.

  “What’s the matter, mennina?”

  “Din’t catch’un,” the child sobbed. The mother, dumbstruck by Mechella’s notice, tried to pull her daughter away. Mechella shook her head, smiling.

  “Maybe you blinked,” she told the girl, “and didn’t see it. Let’s try to find your star.” She tilted the mirror this way and that to search, her free hand deftly unpicking a tiny Tza’ab glass bead from her spangled gown.

  The child peered earnestly into the mirror, frowning, “Issin’ there,” she whimpered.

  “Maybe if we turn it this way—oh! Here it is!” And she pretended to pluck the faceted glass bead from the girl’s hair. “No wonder you didn’t see it!”

  “Mama! Mama! My star!”

  “You know what I think?” Mechella placed it in the child’s palm. “It got lonely for the dark night sky where it used to live, and saw all your pretty black curls, and decided that’s where it wanted to be—not caught in any old mirror.”

  Clutching the “star,” the girl hurtled off to show her friends. Mechella pushed herself to her feet, breathing hard, and smiled as the young mother whispered, “Grazzo millio, Dona.” She dipped a curtsy before hurrying after her daughter.

  With children and parents gone, it was time for the formal ball. Elsewhere in Tira Virte, more than dancing would mark the festival. Astraventa celebrated procreation, the starry wind symbolizing the gift of life. Soon there would be many weddings, for on this one night even unmarried couples were licensed to “seek falling stars” in every glade and glen, and a child born of Astraventa was a great blessing. Mechella’s brother Enrei had once told her the festival was nothing but an excuse for illicit lovemaking. But Mechella preferred to believe the pretty folklore: stars found shelter in women’s wombs that night, and babies born of Astraventa had very special souls.

  Whatever might occur after the ball for the Courtfolk, the holiday’s more rustic aspects were nowhere in evidence at Palasso Verrada that evening. Scores of elegant nobles wore so many crystals and brilliants and sequins and diamonds on their black clothes in imitation of the night sky that it seemed all the constellations had descended to earth to dance.

  Mechella, who loved to dance, was mortified by her heavy-footedness. She intended to spend the evening sitting on a sofa until midnight, when fireworks would send stars upward into the sky, returning what the night had given. But Arrigo insisted she take the floor at his side. She was positive she looked absurd; when she told him so, he only laughed. And as he whirled her carefully across the ballroom, she suddenly discovered she felt light as a feather. So she danced with him, and with his father, and several of the more important noblemen, and the commander of the Shagarra Regiment. At length, pleasantly tired, she settled on her chosen sofa to recover her breath. Arrigo, having done his duty by the other ladies, brought her a cool drink and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

  “See Dirada do’Palenssia’s diamonds? Fakes.”

  “No!” she exclaimed, scandalized.

  “I swear it. And I further swear that the Countess do’Brazzina’s breath could fell a horse. Worst of all was Baron do’Esquita’s sister. She trod on my feet four times. Clumsy as you are, dolcha, at least you didn’t break my poor toes!”

  She dissolved into giggles. “Arrigo! You are a shocking gossip!”

  “Oh, but I saved the best for last. You’ve noted, I’m sure, Zandara do’Najerra’s spectacular figure? Well, she owes her waistline to iron corseting and her impressive bustline to cotton padding!”

  “Eiha, you could hardly avoid noticing that. She pushed it against your chest every chance she got!”

  “Mechella!” he scolded, mimicking her tone, and joined her in laughter.

  A murmur ran through the crowd just then. From the corner of her eye Mechella saw the conductor lift his baton with frantic haste and urge his musicians to a loud and lively tune. Couples resumed the dance floor, but necks craned as they strove to observe something happening near the ballroom doors.

  Amid the shifting dancers Mechella glimpsed a tall, distinguished man escorting a slender woman toward Cossimio and Gizella. The man’s somber black coat was spangled across the shoulders with brilliants, as if he’d been caught outside in the star-fall. The woman positively glittered, her stars in the form of a diamond necklace. White-fire gems, indubitably real, dripped across bare neck and shoulders all the way to swelling breasts that owed nothing to dressmaker’s artifice. Neither did her trim waist require breathless lacing. High-piled black hair was unadorned except by candlelight; rose-red lips wore a faint smile made challenging by the arch of her brows. Dark eyes ignored everyone in favor of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess
, as was proper—but somehow Mechella knew the woman had taken due note of every face in the room. Including hers.

  She looked up at Arrigo, intending to ask the woman’s name. But then she knew. It was in his eyes—startled, admiring, angry, briefly lit with desire. Mechella felt the sting of tears. How could he allow that woman back at Court? But when he glanced down at her, and she saw him grope for words—he who was always swift and supple of speech—his anguish melted her heart. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t known. Her hurt became fury at the Grijalva’s arrogant presumption and sheer bad manners.

  Her voice was soft and composed as she said, “I see the Count and Countess do’Alva have arrived.”

  Gratitude for her calm glowed in Arrigo’s face—and admiration, too. “And almost late enough to be insulting. My father hates tardiness, especially when he gives a party.” With hardly a pause, he finished, “Would you care to dance, ‘Chella?”

  She knew it for an offer of escape, and loved him for it. To spin gently in his arms, to forget the rapacious gaze of the Courtfolk, to postpone the inevitable meeting. …

  No. She would sit right here and wait for the woman to exhibit her shabby compordotta for all the world to see by approaching her with some paltry excuse for being late. She let the crystal-embroidered shawl drop from her shoulders, revealing her own full breasts and the exquisite circle of tiny diamonds around her own throat, and smiled up at her husband. “Only if you’re willing to carry me!”

  He grinned. “Father let Lizia stand on his boots when he was teaching her to dance. I’d do the same for you, but—”

  “But the toes broken by do’Esquita’s sister would be crushed beyond repair!”

  And so they were laughing when Tazia, Countess do’Alva, came to pay her respects with the whole Court watching. There was little to see. A curtsy, a few murmured words no one overhead, a graciously smiling Mechella, a perfectly composed Arrigo, and a coolly beautiful Tazia. Nothing more.