by T. A. Miles
His gaze traveled over his shoulder toward the bedroom door, then back to the path below as he was withdrawing from the window. The individual Lerissa had been in the company of remained on the path and was looking to the source of Lerissa’s excitement. The man was easily middle-aged and no one Korsten could say that he recognized, though there may have been some recognition in the way the man looked at Korsten.
He didn’t know how much he appreciated the idea of individuals from his childhood recognizing him while he fumbled to recall who they may have been. He retreated fully from the window and the man’s stare, turning toward the door mere moments before Lerissa let herself in. She left the door open in her rush to cross the room and get her arms around him. Returning the embrace was no difficulty at all, barring the pangs of regret for the time she’d been away from the Vassenleigh Order and the reason behind her absence.
Korsten found it remarkably easy, if not direly necessary to ask, “Is Sharlotte with you?”
Lerissa withdrew from him with an all too familiar grin. She was the most charmingly aggressive person Korsten had ever met, and she looked not quite as young as he recalled seeing her last.
Before Korsten could dwell on that overly, Lerissa said, “Shouldn’t you open this conversation with how greatly you missed me? But of course, you won’t, because you’ve always been a worrier and clearly haven’t changed at all.” She hugged him again, then kissed his jaw before drawing back once more. “Korsten, the worrier, I’ve missed you greatly. And, yes, Sharlotte is with me.”
An echo of dismay from the past radiated through him, dissipating quicker than he would have anticipated. Their differences were certainly of little importance now, and his and Sethaniel’s differences should have been rendered insignificant by time and circumstances as well. A significant part of Morenne’s strategy had been unearthed in Indhovan and whether or not either Sharlotte or Sethaniel wanted to put the past behind them and accept him and his role in all of this, he could not afford to carry the stress of their strained relations any further.
After nearly forty years, the house was as familiar as if Korsten had only left it yesterday. The innermost halls remained as exposed to the open air of the central courtyard as they ever had been. The tapestries and banners his family had collected over the years remained in their places along the walls and pillars, fluttering in the incessant ocean breeze. Birdsong resonated softly through the passages and the persistent southeastern sun made stone and iron architecture warm to the touch.
His room was on the third floor. The second story housed the conservatory and library. A wing of the house facing inland boasted a ballroom two floors high, which connected to a garden overlooking vineyards further out.
As Korsten and Lerissa traversed the open corridor surrounding the courtyard, he began to consider how he should present himself. He was a priest of the Vassenleigh Order, and in light of that fact, he was an emissary wheresoever he came to travel outside of its walls. Cenily was no different than Indhovan, and Sethaniel was no different than Irslan in his role—whether voluntary or not—as a host. Korsten determined to maintain civility and diplomacy.
“It really isn’t as awful as all that, my red-haired lovely,” Lerissa said, clearly having gained the magical ability to hear his worrying.
Sarcasm aside…
“I’m working at explaining that to myself,” Korsten said.
“Your father has been a wonderful host since we arrived here.”
“When was that?”
Lerissa looked over her shoulder at him as they rounded the bannister at the top of the stairs leading down to the courtyard. “The first time here was near twenty years ago. We’ve been in the area sporadically since and began this most recent stay not quite two years ago.”
Korsten was at a loss trying to digest that information, on top of the fact that two priests from the Vassenleigh Order—well, three, counting himself—were in Cenily at all.
“I know you have many questions,” Lerissa said. “And there are answers waiting, but let’s join Sharlotte first. She and I have questions for you also. It’s been quite nearly forever, you know.”
“It hasn’t been anywhere near forever,” Korsten countered with a small smile, which she returned in full before heading down the stairs.
He considered again that she did look older. Not much more than a decade to what she had appeared at Vassenleigh, but considering the fact that her appearance had been one of a girl still less than twenty, it was quite noticeable. He also noted the black moth, Hessath, fluttering in her wake and felt an unexpected sensation of relief that the soulkeeper was still with her, despite her distance and separation from Vassenleigh. He imagined, under the same or similar circumstance, that he would find Analee very much a comfort. He steeled himself in that thought and the butterfly’s presence—he felt her stir near his hair—then followed Lerissa down to the courtyard.
Fancifully wrought iron slats rang beneath their footsteps as they descended the spiral stair. The sounds were only slightly muted in comparison against the tiled stone at the bottom. A fountain trickled in the center of the yard, surrounded on all sides by topiary and other potted plants, some of which cast vines up the pillars in a pleasing array of richly colored leaves and blossoms.
On a very small scale comparatively, it reminded Korsten of the garden at Vassenleigh. He was still quite a distance from there, but returning would not be difficult when the time became appropriate or necessary. By the gods’ blessing, he’d been relatively uninjured and what damage he had earned from his dealings with Serawe seemed to have mostly healed. Fortunately, her nails had not gone too deep and she’d never been granted the opportunity to use her teeth. Presumably, it was Lerissa’s skill at Healing that had recovered him. He had yet to ask how long he’d been unconscious, left to his dreams of demons and the past. There had not been time to fully absorb and comprehend all that had happened since Serawe, since she and her fellow demons were rent spiritually asunder by the vast and constant energy of the sea.
Thinking about its immense power, he was reminded of the crone’s and the wave she had summoned. He dearly hoped that Merran had managed some way to counter it, and the crone herself.
There’d been a brief period during his chaotic and surreal state of dreaming when Korsten felt as if they’d brushed past each other, or rather that he’d brushed past Merran’s Eolyn on his spiritual flight. But that experience was neither solid enough nor sure enough for Korsten to be comforted by it.
Indhovan had transpired in a span tantamount to the turning of a page in a book. Korsten longed to turn it back and reread the lines, affirming to himself that all had indeed played out the way he felt it had. And of the many volumes that lay between his childhood past and his life as a priest, Korsten could not say that he had the same desire. Not with the same sense of urgency, at any rate.
But that was not what he faced at the moment. What lay immediately ahead of him was Sharlotte. He recalled with clarity, her vow to kill him should they meet again outside of Vassenleigh. As he hadn’t been murdered in his sleep—the uncharitable side of him entertained the notion that Sethaniel would allow such a thing—he presumed that she had reneged on that promise. Or maybe it was Lerissa keeping her at bay.
Knowing what he knew of himself and of Ashwin, he felt belatedly offended by Sharlotte’s stubborn insistence that he had ever conspired against her relationship with the Superior, or that he had known of their spousal arrangement at the time and behaved recklessly or thoughtlessly with that knowledge in hand, making himself even a helpless instrument in their estrangement. He and his mentor had done nothing; not then and not since Sharlotte’s stubborn leaving over an irrational jealously.
His own past situation of insecurity regarding Renmyr had inspired sympathy for Sharlotte at first, but now that he was no longer reacting to events, he found himself with little to spare. As he and Lerissa came to a small sitting room on the ground floor of his father’s house, and his
gaze sought out and landed firmly on the woman with brown hair, tempestuous green eyes, and an instantaneous frown that was all too familiar, he found himself glaring in return.
Sharlotte seemed disarmed by the expression, enough to allow a sliver of puzzlement into her own, but offense leapt to the woman’s features swiftly enough. She nearly stood, Korsten thought, but something anchored her to her seat, which was a familiar bench with an ornately embroidered cushion and carved legs. There were a few such benches arranged tactfully throughout the room. This room, in particular, had been one of his sisters’ favorite rooms and he found himself thinking about them again, and of how different they each were from Sharlotte. For that matter, they were all very different from Lerissa. He wondered what had become of them.
Sharlotte’s eyes went to Lerissa.
Korsten realized in that moment that Lerissa had probably been prompting her not to start a confrontation. If that was how the peace would be kept, then so be it. He moved away from the entrance and toward the trio of archways adorned with delicate doors of glass and iron which provided the room with the airy atmosphere his sisters had so loved. Looking out at the garden they had also adored, he could see the roses beginning to bloom. The house was beautiful. He hadn’t fully realized that as a child.
“After leaving the Vassenleigh Order we both realized that we still wanted to take part in the war,” Lerissa began, directing them immediately into a topic of greater worth than any grudges anyone may have been holding onto.
Korsten looked over his shoulder to let her know that he was listening.
From her place beside Sharlotte, the blond priest continued. “Despite everything, it was in our plans to return one day, but we found ourselves quickly caught up in things.”
“What things?” Korsten asked quietly, looking from one woman to the next, wondering helplessly how the situation may or may not have grown between them as he recalled Lerissa’s hope for Sharlotte’s heart.
Lerissa hesitated to answer his question and Sharlotte stepped in. With calm that appeared somewhat forced, she said, “The Ascendant.”
Korsten frowned with instant curiosity. “What do you mean? What about them?”
“Finding them, of course,” Sharlotte fairly snapped.
Korsten held his tongue in a moment of deliberate pause, though he cast a pointed look in Sharlotte’s direction. Again, she seemed both perplexed and irritated in expression.
Ignoring that, he asked, “What led you to believe you might find the individual here?”
“Your predecessor died in this region,” Sharlotte told him bluntly.
Korsten felt his jaw tense at the delivery, not in defeat beneath the woman’s aggression, but in sudden anger. His predecessor, as Sharlotte had so impersonally put it, had been Ashwin’s former love—predating both him and Sharlotte—and it occurred to Korsten suddenly that Sharlotte was not only jealous of him and what never happened, but of Adrea as well, and what had surely and mutually transpired between his predecessor and Ashwin. Sharlotte was possessive, he was beginning to think, and she was paranoid. He found it every bit as irritating as she had once found his weakness. She may have been somewhat justified in disagreeing with Ashwin’s ideas and practices regarding relationships, but she was wrong to expect or require him to forget a past love, particularly where separation was caused not by choice or mutual desire, but by death.
Before his thoughts could manifest vocally, Lerissa offered further explanation. “Adrea devoted some of her time serving Edrinor to tracing the Rottherlen bloodline, as you may know.”
Korsten took his eyes slowly from Sharlotte. “If such a topic came up between Ashwin and myself, I don’t recall it,” he admitted. In that moment, his mentor’s voice strummed across his senses and stirred memories of his early life at Vassenleigh to the surface of his mind. Perhaps it was Sharlotte’s presence and recalling what had made them enemies to begin with that enticed him to consider the circumstances in fuller detail just now. That included how dear Ashwin had become to him through his kindness, compassion, and wisdom. Sharlotte could think whatever she wished of Korsten, but it severely irritated him that she should criticize Ashwin in the process, with no lenience. Did she love him, or was it the idea of him that she had fallen for?
He didn’t allow that thought to finish out. Perhaps it simply was that Sharlotte and Ashwin were not for each other, that they could not mutually connect at every level. It was senseless to blame. Love was challenged enough in their world; it did not require such adversity as jealousy and contempt. He would hear no more on the topic from Sharlotte. He was decided.
“Adrea’s investigations led her to this area,” Lerissa was saying. The pause she implemented let Korsten know that she was aware his mind had been wandering.
He gave himself fully to the discussion with more direct eye contact and with words. “She would have been looking for distant relations, if all the immediate family had been murdered.”
The thought brought him to the realization that Adrea would have died after the Vassenleigh siege, then. She would have died very recently, considering the potential lifetime of priests. If Ashwin had lost her within the last century, then that would also mean his and Sharlotte’s relationship would have been relatively young by the time Korsten arrived at the Vassenleigh Order. And maybe that was part of the reason Sharlotte felt so insecure. Perhaps she felt as if Ashwin had never fully recovered from the loss, and before she could bring his heart fully around to her, a new interest had arrived. And not a random one, but none other than Adrea’s successor. What an unhappy coincidence. What a grievous error on the part of the gods. How cruel.
Lerissa’s voice drew him away from his darkening thoughts. “The blood would have been a mere trace, more than likely. Some speculated that a child may have been born outside of any traditional arrangement at some time before the murders, and that such an individual might have gone on to continue the line.”
“Did Adrea believe that?” Korsten suspected that she did, and when Lerissa nodded he felt that it was now explained—at least partly—why Ashwin held on to such faith that there was an Ascendant at all, one whose blood could make a difference.
“I convinced Ashwin to discuss the subject with me to great lengths when he was feeling particularly nostalgic one evening,” Lerissa continued. “He even let me turn through her journal a bit.”
“Nostalgia aside, if he divulged that much it was because he wanted to, I’m certain.” Korsten avoided visions of a depressed Ashwin and instead considered what Adrea might have written on the topic of an Ascendant, along with the possibility that not fighting Lerissa’s leaving with Sharlotte may have been the Superior’s way at granting her an unspoken assignment. Maybe it had been for both women. The gods knew Sharlotte had become a bit single-minded in her focus then and stepping away from the Vassenleigh Order on her own terms may have been the best way to refresh her perspective. Still, thirty-five years was a long time.
“Adrea had no more than a half-dozen lines of potential interest to work with, four of which led her to the eastern shores,” Lerissa continued. “In her writings, she determined that the precise area and family would make itself known unintentionally…that her instincts would be a compass to guiding her to that family. Also, she predicted that other powers would take notice.”
“Other powers?” Korsten inquired. “You mean the Vadryn?”
Lerissa hesitated to nod, looking him directly in the eye. “And forces beyond them, Adrea had written, though I don’t know if she meant the gods or…”
“Let’s consider,” Sharlotte put in, “your relations with the Vadryn.”
“My mind was going there,” Korsten replied, determined not to dignify her attempts to cut him. His mind was also retracing his steps getting here, and his dreams of the spirits of the sea. “The individual isn’t in my family, though. I know they aren’t.” How he knew with such certitude remained unspoken—even to himself—though he did consider Adrea’s internal c
ompass and that he may have inherited it from her. His intuition told him ‘no’ on the matter of the Ascendant being a Brierly or a relation thereof.
Lerissa agreed with him silently, her expression stating that she understood and trusted his instincts on the matter; that if Adrea had been in the room she might have come to the same determination. He wondered if Lerissa had known the woman at all in life, or if she had become familiar with her only through Ashwin’s memory and Adrea’s writing.
“We know it isn’t you,” Sharlotte bluntly stated. “Ashwin would have known immediately.”
“And he would have said something,” Korsten agreed. “You’re right.”
Sharlotte seemed somewhat perturbed by his agreement, but withheld any further aggression for the moment.
“I think what all of this means is that the Ascendant could well be or come into being somewhere near to you or your family, Korsten,” Lerissa said. “I believe that’s why Adrea chose you, and that’s why we’re here.”
“But I spent nearly a decade in Haddowyn,” Korsten pointed out. “If that’s possible, a child of distant relation could have been born up there and the gods only know what might have befallen them by now.”
Lerissa shook her head in contradiction. “You were born here, and Adrea died in this region, having already tracked possible bloodlines this far. Your point is valid, Korsten, but I feel that this area is right. We’ve spent the last several years observing and listening to people throughout the southern and coastal regions, hoping that somewhere we would brush close enough to know. In the process, we exhausted Adrea’s leads, as well as many of our own resources and a good deal of time. We have hosts, such as Master Brierly and others remaining loyal to the Old Kingdom, to thank for what hospitality we’ve been shown and additional resources we’ve accumulated. When we had no other options, we utilized our priest talents to barter for what we needed. We’ve both played healer, for example.”