The Lord-Protector's Daughter

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Good morning, Rachylana,” Feranyt added as the redhead slid into her chair.

  “Good morning, Father.”

  “I haven’t seen Jeraxylt this morning.” Salyna’s words were slightly flat.

  “Oh…Joramyl organized a hunting party for today—out in the wilder part of the Preserve to the east. Jeraxylt has already left with them.” Feranyt took a swallow of spiced tea.

  “You didn’t go?” asked Rachylana.

  “I felt a bit tired. Yesterday was a long day.”

  Had she not sensed the grayness in her father, Mykella would have thought his words a transparent excuse, since they all knew that their father only believed in hunting for game that would be used and disliked large hunts intensely.

  “I’m sure a quiet day won’t hurt you,” Mykella said, “and Jeraxylt will be most happy to tell you everything that happened.”

  “I’m certain he will.” Salyna’s words were chill.

  Feranyt looked to his youngest daughter. “You can hunt with family, Salyna, but it would not be seemly to do so with a foreign envoy in the party. Nor would it help your chances of obtaining a good match.”

  “I’m not made of fine porcelain.”

  “Salyna, dear daughter, I have allowed you the freedom to learn skills most women do not. Please do not make me regret my indulgences with you.”

  Salyna sighed. “Yes, Father.”

  “There won’t be a dinner tonight, will there?” asked Rachylana.

  “Not for you or the women in the palace. There will be a hunters’ supper after they return, a rough thing. I will join them, of course.”

  “Of course…” murmured Salyna, but so quietly that no one but Mykella heard her words, or the bitterness in them.

  “Tomorrow afternoon, Cheleyza will be holding an afternoon gathering for you and some of the Seltyrs’ wives and daughters. Did I mention that?”

  “No,” replied Rachylana, “but Berenyt did.”

  “I trust you will all have an enjoyable afternoon.” Feranyt smiled and began to eat.

  Mykella did as well, although she was not that hungry. The egg toast did seem to help in relieving her headache.

  By the time Feranyt had drunk a second mug of spiced tea, the unseen grayness in his face had almost entirely departed, and he clearly felt better. Mykella didn’t sigh in relief, but she wanted to.

  After breakfast, she walked out of the breakfast room with him.

  Feranyt continued without speaking until they were a good ten yards away from the door to the breakfast room. Then he asked, “How did you find Sheorak?”

  “He’s very shrewd, I would guess. He appraised my conversation, probably my intelligence, and looked me over like a broodmare.” Mykella kept her tone light. “I’m certain he’s looking for the best match for his cousin.”

  “You or Salyna could do far worse.”

  Much as she knew that to be true, Mykella didn’t like the idea of marrying someone because the other alternatives were far worse. She wasn’t about to say that. “I’m certain it will have to be discussed with the Landarch and his son.”

  “Yes…these things take time, but Sheorak was most impressed with your demeanor. I’m very pleased with the way you handled yourself. Your mother would have been proud of you.”

  Mykella hoped so, if not in the way her father meant it. “Thank you.” She paused, then said, “Father…I’ve been thinking about the Table in the lower level…”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you think that Mykel the Great actually could travel to other places using it?”

  “Who knows?” Feranyt’s words were close to dismissive.

  “Or see things in it?”

  “Mykella, there are always stories, and I heard the stories when I was younger than you are now.” Feranyt’s voice took on a patient, paternal, and tired tone. “Both Joramyl and I prowled around the lower levels of the palace. We poked and prodded the Table. We stood on it and imagined that we could travel to other lands. We even tried to use it as a mirror or a window that showed other places. I asked my father the same questions you have, and he told me that he’d done as I had done, and that whatever the Table might have once been, it was that no longer.” He paused. “Anyone who sees anything in polished stone is only seeing what he imagines, and not anything real.”

  “Then…why is it still there?”

  Feranyt snorted. “It’s a solid stone cube that must extend a good yard or more down. It’s like the eternastone of the high roads, and that makes it impossible to chip apart. To remove it would require taking apart the foundations and rebuilding a whole section of the palace, and we’ve got better things to do with the golds we collect in tariffs.”

  “Thank you.” Mykella had her answers, not just to the questions she’d asked, but to the ones she had not. There was no way that her father would believe anything she told him she’d seen in the Table, and from his reactions, she had strong doubts that even if she called up images that he would believe they were anything but visions she had created—and that assumed he could even see what she saw. “I hope you feel better before long.”

  “I already do.” Feranyt smiled, then reached out and patted her shoulder. “Enjoy a day without worrying about the ledgers.”

  Mykella watched as he walked toward his private study.

  28

  Novdi evening found the three sisters eating alone in the family dining room. Mykella looked down at the remnants of the rather dry fowl that the cooks had attempted to disguise with a cream sauce, then took a last bite and set her knife aside. The sauce had helped with the overcooked potatoes, but not the fowl.

  “It’s probably better than what they’re eating,” said Salyna.

  “They aren’t eating much, I’d wager,” returned Mykella, thinking of the men gathered in the long chamber at the end of the stables—the informal “hunting lodge.” “They’re drinking their supper, or a lot of it.”

  “You two are terrible.” Rachylana straightened in her chair. “They’ve been riding all day, and they’re hungry.”

  “They’re also thirsty,” rejoined Salyna, “and they’ll drink all night and either complain about it all tomorrow or look stoic, as if they’ve suffered some terrible illness that they’re too proud to complain about, when it was just stupidity.”

  “No, they won’t. Berenyt’s not like that. Besides, there’s another hunt tomorrow,” Rachylana declared.

  “Another one?” Salyna’s words dripped ice. “They’ll tear up the Preserve…” She shook her head.

  “You’re just mad because they won’t let you hunt with them,” added Rachylana.

  “No…she’s mad because she’s better than most of them, and they’re not about to let her prove it,” replied Mykella.

  “Better than many of them,” corrected Salyna. “Uncle Joramyl’s very good. So is Lord Gharyk.”

  Mykella pushed back her chair. “I can’t eat any more.” She stood. “I’m going to get something to read. I’ll be in the parlor.” With that, she turned.

  “…she’s not a hunter like you. Why is she so upset?” The words Rachylana murmured to Salyna as Mykella left the dining room stayed with Mykella as she strode to her chamber.

  Why was she so touchy?

  Because Salyna was hurt and upset? Or because it was just another example of what she and her sisters had to look forward to? Although…Mykella paused in her thought. Rachylana seemed to anticipate that life, at least if she could have it with Berenyt.

  Once she reached her chamber, Mykella had to search her room for the history she had gotten from her father’s library, finally locating it on the bottom of the short stack of books on the corner of her writing desk. She was certain it had been on the top, and Uleana would never have changed the order. Maids didn’t do that.

  At that, she looked over her chamber even more carefully, but she did not see anything else amiss.

  Finally, she walked to the parlor. Rachylana had settled into one of
the armchairs with something she was embroidering, while Salyna was on the settee with her needlework.

  “You really should practice some skill with a needle or yarn,” suggested Rachylana. “It does settle touchiness.”

  Mykella settled into the armchair she preferred for reading, the one with a slight incline to the back. “I’ve tried, you might recall. I don’t have any skill that way. So there’s no point in practicing it.” She deliberately refrained from commenting on touchiness as she opened the history and turned to the section that dealt with Southgate’s secession from Dramur two centuries earlier.

  After less than ten pages, she glanced up, but neither sister looked in her direction. The way the history read, the only reason the Seltyrs of Southgate declared their independence from Dramur was because the Seltyrs in Dramur refused to acknowledge any debt to or heritage from the vanished great Alectors. Mykella had the feeling it was far more likely that the Seltyrs in Southgate didn’t like the tariff overrides that had flowed back from Southgate’s trade across Corus to Dramuria.

  Hadn’t Mykel’s wife Rachyla originally come from Dramur? Mykella had read that somewhere. Might that have been another reason why he’d been so successful?

  As she sat in the family parlor, the history in her lap, Mykella’s thoughts continued to spin in all directions. In the end, she couldn’t help but think about her Talent, and all the things she couldn’t do, as she had on and off all day. Yet the soarer had insisted that she had the ability to save her land. At the thought of saving the world, she laughed silently. She wasn’t even having much success in avoiding a match that would send her somewhere she didn’t want to go to bear children for a man she’d never met.

  Have you met anyone whose children you’d want? She pushed away that thought with another. How many suitable men have you been allowed to meet? How could she even tell who was suitable? She shook her head. She could tell, and there weren’t that many in Tempre, or not in and around the palace, at least.

  She wasn’t getting anywhere with reading, and she didn’t want to talk.

  After several moments more, she decided that it wouldn’t hurt to be able to observe the Deforyan envoy and listen when he didn’t think she was anywhere around. Mykella glanced toward the parlor door. She supposed she could use her concealment skills and avoid the guards to go to the Table. But for what purpose? Anyone she wanted to observe in the Table would be at the hunting lodge, and the Table didn’t reveal what people said, not so far as she’d been able to discover. If she wanted to risk it, she could walk the entire way to the lodge room with a concealment shield and stand in a corner and listen. But…if anyone suspected, she’d be trapped, and trying to explain would not be pleasant at all. If she were only like the soarer, able to slip through stone walls….

  She sat up straight, wanting to beat her head against the outer stone wall of the parlor. What had she been doing every time she’d used the Table? Why had she assumed that she could only do it near the Table? The soarer hadn’t been limited in that way.

  Mykella closed the unread history and, holding it in her left hand, stood.

  “What is it?” asked Salyna.

  Mykella offered a smile. “I’ve just been thinking. It’s too hard to explain. When I get it all sorted out, I’ll let you know.”

  “What are you sorting out?” Rachylana looked almost predatory.

  “Life,” replied Mykella. “Or as much of it as I can.” She slipped the history under her arm and walked to the door.

  “Are you all right?” Concern colored both Salyna’s words…and her being.

  “I’m fine.” Mykella smiled, then hurried from the family parlor.

  When she returned to her chamber, she slid the door bolt locked, then walked to her writing table, where she rearranged the books in a different order and slipped a longer loose hair from her brush between the covers of the history and the one below. If the books were moved, she could ask Uleana if she’d touched them. If the maid hadn’t…

  She smiled wryly. And then what could she do? Make wild accusations that people were spying on her or moving her things?

  For a time, Mykella stood in her chamber, just beyond the foot of her bed, trying to recall exactly what the Ancient had done. There had been a greenish glow from the stone…and a darkness, and then the soarer had appeared. When she had left, she had seemed to slip into the gray granite.

  But…how did one start?

  With the darkness below? Mykella concentrated on reaching the green darkness that lay below the palace.

  Nothing happened. She remained standing in her chamber.

  After several moments, she walked over to the window and pressed her hand against the stone next to the casement, reaching with her thoughts, her Talent, toward the greenish blackness beneath the palace. For a time, she could sense, could almost reach, but not quite connect with the green. Then it seemed to extend upward, as if recognizing her, and she could feel it rising to her. In moments, she could feel that she was enshrouded in the green that could not be seen, but only felt. She willed herself into the stone and downward toward the Table. In moments, she was within the Table chamber.

  Grinning idiotically, she just stood there, less than a yard from the Table. Her eyes and senses traversed the Table, but there was no sign of the Ifrit’s presence in the Table, for which she was grateful.

  Could she use the same technique to travel elsewhere around the palace? Or across the courtyard to the stable’s hunting lodge? She frowned. She’d have to be careful where she emerged, because she couldn’t use the concealment shield until after she was clear of the stone or ground. Still…she might as well try.

  She let herself merge with the green and black and slide into the gray foundation walls and then northward, trying to gauge her depth belowground—by a vague sense, because she could not see. The main corridor from the auxiliary kitchen seemed to have people standing there. In the end, she had to emerge from the ground in the stables themselves, so close to a pile of hay that, once she stood in the dimness, she had to use her left hand to stifle the sneezes that racked her.

  When she finally gained control of the sneezing, she created her concealment shield. She was just grateful that none of the stableboys and ostlers had been near enough to hear or see her, because she hadn’t managed to raise the concealment shield while her body was convulsing with sneezes, muffled as she had tried to keep them.

  Mykella walked carefully to the end door of the stable, slightly ajar, and stepped into the courtyard, then along the wall and past the kitchen to the archway between the kitchen and the lodge hall. She waited until one of the servers hurried toward the double doors with a large pitcher, then followed unseen in his wake.

  Once inside the rough hall with its single long table, Mykella moved slowly and quietly along the inside north wall of the lodge, toward where her father sat with his back to the wall, with two guards behind him. Feranyt sat, not at one end of the long table, but in the middle, with Sheorak to his right and Joramyl to his left. Across from Feranyt sat Jeraxylt, with Seltyr Porofyr to Jeraxylt’s right. Berenyt sat two seats to Jeraxylt’s left, with a man between them whom Mykella did not recognize, save that he was wearing much the same hunting garb as was Sheorak, suggesting that he was an assistant to the envoy.

  She settled on standing against the wall behind Arms-Commander Nephryt, who sat to Sheorak’s right, and to the left of Lord Gharyk, the Minister of Justice. As she stood watching, her back firmly against the wall, just a fraction of a yard from one of the guards behind her father, Mykella noticed several things. Nephryt and Berenyt hardly spoke to each other, even though they were seated across from each other, and Berenyt conversed almost entirely with the Deforyan seated between himself and Jeraxylt, while Jeraxylt spent most of his efforts on Sheorak and Porofyr. Also, Lhanyr, the chief High Factor of Tempre, was seated to Berenyt’s left and as far from the Lord-Protector as physically possible, while Joramyl sat between Feranyt and Khanasyl, the First Seltyr. />
  She just tried to take in the various conversations.

  “…quite a large buck…”

  “…say that you have antelopes that can outrun the fastest mounts in Deforya…”

  “…some of the does are bigger than the smaller bucks…have to wonder how they manage…”

  A raucous laugh followed that comment.

  “…large women have their charms…”

  “…small ones, too…”

  After a quarter of a glass of such comments, Mykella began to wonder if she’d hear anything of import or interest. She had learned something from the positions of those at the table, and that had bothered her, because that positioning had been Joramyl’s doing. Still…she kept listening.

  “…keep poachers at bay…string them up with their own guts…”

  “…let commoners hunt everywhere, and you end up with ruffians like the Reillies…Squawts…might be worse…”

  “…times have shown that Lanachrona…must always have a strong Lord-Protector…”

  Mykella focused on those words from Berenyt, clearly addressed to Envoy Sheorak and his aide.

  “…of Midcoast and Northcoast respect only strength…”

  “There are many kinds of strength, young Berenyt,” Feranyt interjected firmly. “Not all problems need be solved with blades and rifles.”

  “Of course not, sir, but wouldn’t you agree that other measures work better when princes know that the blades and rifles are there to be used?”

  Mykella didn’t like the way Berenyt had phrased that.

  “One can have so many blades and rifles that one can have trouble paying the stipends of those who use them or too few men to grow the food to feed them. Everything in a land must balance.”

  “Strength must balance strength—that is so,” added Sheorak.

  At that moment, something heavy and sharp jabbed into Mykella’s right leg, throwing her into the wall. A wave of pain shot up her leg, and her eyes blurred as her head slammed into the stone wall. The server who had rammed Mykella with the end of a small cask of something staggered back into Gharyk’s chair.