The Gardens of Almhain

by Laura Mallory

  “Last?” Isidora questioned. “I thought there was only one.”

  “Oh no, my lady,” the woman said, aghast. “We were hired to provide you with an entire wardrobe befitting your noble rank. We were given specific instructions for three formal gowns, six causal, five pairs of appropriate shoes, one dressing gown, and…” she glanced at the fearsome soldier, “…unmentionables.”

  Isidora stared open-mouthed at the woman. “The princess ordered this for me?”

  The rotund seamstress blushed an unbecoming shade of crimson. “No, my lady. We received orders yesterday by letter from…” She glanced at her associates, who were suddenly looking in other directions.

  “Bellamont did it,” Diego said in a bored tone.

  Isidora glanced from him to the seamstress, who nodded vigorously. With alacrity, the women gathered their fabrics and various instruments of measurement, bid hasty farewells, and fled.

  “Well, that was pleasant,” Diego said blandly. The scarred soldier flopped unceremoniously into an armchair.

  “Why would Bellamont do this?” Isidora asked, following him with her eyes.

  His gaze flicked away from her searching one. “He has acquired a rather extensive wealth over the years,” he said carefully, “and you are hardly outfitted to attend court functions.”

  She thought of Arturo and his loyalty to the princess, and of Elena’s plea.

  You must help her.

  As surely as the moon refused to rise, she was being trapped into a role she did not wish to fill. She was not fit to offer guidance to a woman who wished to be queen, let alone devote herself to a cause that was beyond her, thereby moving a country toward revolution.

  She looked at Diego and saw him as he always appeared, wiry body seeming relaxed yet somewhat feral, like a wild animal tethered but not tamed. In his eyes was compassion, the depth of which surprised her.

  “I know what it is to be led, coerced even, onto paths one might wish to avoid,” he said gruffly. “Sometimes we must go willingly, if only to conserve our energies for a time when resistance is necessary.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it, frowning at him. Finally, she allowed herself a small smile. “How does it feel to be constantly underestimated, Diego?” she inquired.

  His brows lifted a fraction, thin mouth curving in amusement. “It can be an advantage,” he replied. “Especially when playing games that are not of your making.”

  She palmed her face reflectively. “Are you suggesting I pretend to be that which I am not to expedite my own plans?”

  He shrugged, but there was a devious gleam in his eyes. “I don’t think it would do any harm to feign ignorance on certain levels.”

  Isidora thought of the cleric she had met across the river, of her near abduction on the road to Vianalon. The fear of that ordeal had not entirely dissipated. “Indeed,” she murmured. “Perhaps a bereaved, suitably awed and ignorant young woman would suit my purposes well.”

  Diego nodded, expression sobering as he followed the line of her thought. “It might turn away unwanted attention, my lady. Particularly that of the Church.”

  She looked hard at the scarred soldier, at the stony features and the eyes that did not conceal well enough the emotion within. “You wish to leave Tanalon as soon as possible,” she said gently. “For Bellamont’s sake, yes?”

  He sighed, sinking deeper into the armchair. “Yes, I do.”

  “May I ask why?”

  He regarded her for a moment, then nodded crisply. “Not a month after we fled Tanalon six years ago, Arturo fell ill with fever. I stayed at his side through every hour of that dark week, tending to him, sole audience to his delirious ranting. When the sickness broke, we did not talk about what he had said. If his last night in Vianalon had not changed him wholly, that fever completed the task.”

  A chill moved over her neck. “And what did he say?” she murmured.

  He swallowed thickly. “Many things, most of it gibberish. One thing was repeated, though, every morning at dawn. Death waited for him in Vianalon if he returned.”

  “Dear Gods,” she gasped.

  You brought me back, and I came believing I would live only to see you into the Academe before I was arrested for treason and executed.

  Water in the desert, not of her making. The hatred of the Church. She thought again of the assault on the road. Spies must have been patrolling the border of the Wasteland, waiting to bring word of Arturo’s return to Tanalon. For how else would the Church soldiers have known where to find them, so far from Vianalon?

  Perhaps her abduction had merely been a ploy in the entrapment of Bellamont. Much as she wished to believe it so, she was not convinced. The eyes of the solider that had grabbed her continued to haunt her thoughts. There had been keenness in his gaze out of place with a random act. As though he’d recognized her.

  Her knees felt weak, and she walked unsteadily toward a chair, dropping gracelessly into its support. Head braced between her hands, she closed her eyes. Breath hitched in her chest. Her heart raced to match the panic she felt. Some vast truth was closing in around her, too large to glimpse in entirety, but snatches of it reached her, blazing and winking out like shooting stars in her mind.

  Arturo’s face, so much like that on the polished stone statue of the God in Almhain.

  Water in the desert, not of her making.

  There had been male devotees of the God on Alesia, but the Isle of Dusk was consecrated to the Goddess. The God’s Order on the Isle had been long cut off from Anshar’s touch, which was centered on the Calabrian peninsula. They had served not in the magically enhanced capacity that acolytes of Istar did; instead, their tasks were those of scribes, detailing Alesia’s history and keeping faith for the time when divine brother and sister joined again, God and Goddess, Dawn and Dusk, to make whole the world and bring all souls into alignment to their loving will.

  And here, on a peninsula heading fast to civil and religious war, there was a man who could overturn the corrupt authority of the Church, which upheld the principle that the God worked through clerics alone. A man whose very life those stoic priests in Alesia would rejoice as long-awaited proof of the God’s return, of the forthcoming reunion of Istar and Anshar.

  Perhaps Anshar was not as distant and uncaring as he seemed, to have placed his mark so deeply upon the heart of Arturo de Galván.

  It was too much for Isidora to continue her thoughts, for she knew they would return to herself, and to the mystery and meaning of her presence, at this pivotal time, in Tanalon’s capital. She did not care for the trials of greed and royalty, or for grand schemes of the Gods.

  It was enough, and too much itself, that the Gardens of Almhain were no more.

  *

  Arturo was waiting for her when she emerged from her chambers near dusk, clothed in the gown that had been delivered that afternoon. She did not know how the seamstresses had acquired a pattern to follow, but the dress was a replica of the one worn as she’d traveled from ruined Alesia, across ocean and desert. It was exact, down to the midnight blue hue, seams of thickly coiled golden thread, and the concealed panels of white satin that appeared with movement of her knees.

  The cut and fabrics were finer than any she’d worn, though, the measurements of her figure followed to the smallest degree. The only items missing from the ensemble were the pendant of the Gods and white sash of her authority as High Priestess. The pendant was locked safely in an iron chest beneath her bed, its key concealed on her person. The sash, torn and dirtied by travel, she’d unintentionally left across the river with Elena.

  Unwilling or unable to accept the obvious, it wasn’t until Arturo bowed and proffered a small wrapped bundle that she realized this was all of his doing. She unwrapped the paper and her sash fell across her hands. Its fine, glistening threads were mended expertly, its white restored by gentle bleaching so that i
ts touch was soft as water dripping through her fingers.

  Without speaking, she tied the sash around her hips, its long, tapered ends falling between her legs, sinuously to her calves. “Thank you,” she whispered, remembering candlelit evenings on Alesia, her mother’s graceful fingers knitting each rare, gold-touched white thread.

  “And this, my lady,” he said, lifting his hand.

  She started at the sight of her pendant resting atop his palm, but as soon as she reached for it, she realized it was not hers. A replica of great skill and beauty, the intertwined symbols of God and Goddess were etched on a smooth disc of quartz, bound in a delicate web of gold filigree. To anyone not intimately familiar with the true disc, it would be entirely convincing.

  She glanced up at Arturo. “So this is why you stole my companions away at dawn.”

  He nodded, smiling slightly. “And why we did not return until this evening. Finnéces was most adamant on certain details, especially the crest of the Fiannan family on the underside. I do not believe my favored jeweler will welcome me back anytime soon.”

  She exhaled a silent laugh. “Dear Finnéces,” she murmured, turning the disc to view the Fiannan hawk and scepters. The chain of golden links clinked melodiously over the quartz.

  “If I may?” Arturo asked.

  She hesitated, a moment that was not lost on him, before offering him the pendant and turning to lift her hair from her neck. His fingers did not once touch her skin as he deftly fixed the clasp. The weight of the disc settled at the apex of her breasts, and she gave a little sigh of contentment, having felt all too much the lack of it over the past weeks.

  When she turned, it was to find Arturo watching her, candlelight warming his eyes to amber. “Are you prepared for the game, my lady?” he inquired.

  Of course Diego would keep nothing from him.

  “What game?” she answered, affecting a blank look.

  His sensuous lips curved up at one corner as he offered his arm. She slid her arm beneath his, her fingers draped across his naked wrist. His skin was hot to the touch; she could feel each soft hair tickling against her palm. Waves of crackling heat moved up her arm and sped through her blood, the sensation flooding her with remembrance.

  The Sanctuary of the Gods on the hill of Almhain. Winter solstice the season before, four moons before the invasion, the night she had taken the mantel of High Priestess from her mother. The ceremony had commenced an hour before dawn. The gathering of white clad novices, green robed devotees, and blue robed priestesses stood in serene silence along the tiered marbled steps around the open-air Sanctuary. And from that gathering Isidora had moved forward at her mother’s command, to step across the threshold of the Gods’ birthplace and receive Istar’s mantel.

  Their cue taken from the bonds and breaths they shared, the daughters of the Goddess began a song to Istar just as the sun washed the brightest stars from the sky. Then, when the first full rays of light bathed the marble statues of Istar and Anshar, the men of Alesia, her own father among them, began to sing from where they stood unseen throughout the forest around the hill.

  And as night and day bled together and the voices of Alesians rang true, Lady Fiannan spoke softly, not as priestess to priestess, but as mother to daughter.

  “To the Goddess you belong, my daughter, as surely as the stars shine in your eyes. Remember, though, that the sun must rise. Do not forget Anshar, for as Istar is beloved to Him, so too are you.”

  Then the sun’s warm rays upon Isidora’s upturned hands, fire crackling at her fingertips and static heat throbbing up her arms and into her heart.

  She looked at her fingers, how they dug into Arturo’s wrist.

  The revelations of hours before returned with new fervor. In her grief she’d been blind to the evidence stacked before her, beginning with her revival in the desert. What a fool she had been to dismiss her awareness of the unusual heat he radiated into the space around him, the electricity that made her skin dance. She’d thought it the weakness of desire, easily disregarded.

  There was a slow building of pressure, of fullness, in the gaping space abandoned by the Goddess. It was not the cool pulse of starlight, the music of moonlit waters.

  It was the heat of the sun. It was the God.

  All at once she was overflowing with the hope and promise of each dawn since the beginning of time. And as every rising of the sun was followed by its sinking, so too did the cool embrace of night come to her, Goddess following God, never truly separate except in mortal minds.

  The beloved faces of her parents hovered before her. Her father’s kind, intelligent one, her mother’s impassioned beauty. They enfolded her in their arms, lifting her high and away from all pain.

  “Isidora!”

  Someone was shaking her. She fought them, struggling to follow her parents into the mingling of dawn and dusk, into the life beyond life, where night and day were one.

  Hot, soft pressure against her lips brought her back to herself. She gasped, flinging her head back from his kiss. Arturo was crouched above her, broad chest rising and falling with labored breath. “You stopped breathing,” he said harshly.

  The floor was cold beneath her and her head was pounding.

  Finnéces had hold of her hand, and as her eyes moved to him, he brought her fingers to his face. “You are hot to the touch, my lady, and your eyes shine unnaturally,” he said worriedly. He looked at Arturo. “She must have a fever, for her skin is never this warm.”

  Arturo sat back on his heels, absently rubbing the wrist her fingers had gripped. He seemed to deliberate for a moment before returning his attention to Isidora. His eyes were fathomless with wonder and something darker. “What happened?” he demanded softly.

  He would not believe the truth.

  “I…don’t know, exactly,” she lied.

  His lips thinned, but he did not press her, saying, “I will inform the princess of your illness, and your sincere apologies.”

  “No,” she said, stirring and rising to a sitting position. Her head swam, but the pounding was diminishing to an urgent fluttering of blood. “I must go tonight.”

  “Please, my lady,” Finnéces urged, “you must rest.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted sharply. “Please help me rise.”

  Finnéces did as she bid him, but when she gained her feet she swayed. Arturo held her upright, bracing her against his side. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.

  He would not believe.

  “You have no idea,” she snapped, pulling away from him. Once the spell of dizziness passed, the only aftereffect of the episode was a prickling sensitivity on her skin, a heightened focus of her senses.

  “My lady,” Finnéces whispered. She met his gaze, recognizing as he did what had happened. There was surprise, and a mounting awe within her, that here, now, she had been touched by a power far greater than herself. Only this time it had not been Istar alone.

  “What?” Arturo asked, watching the silent exchange.

  Finnéces answered with suppressed joy, “She is Touched.”

  His brows rose. “Touched? By what?”

  Isidora turned her gaze upon him. “I was touched by the Gods, Bellamont,” she said on a sigh. And so were you, in a way. “Until the next sunset, I’m afraid, I shall have to be very careful to avoid placing my palms on another’s skin.”

  As she’d known it would, his face immediately shuttered closed of all emotion. His only other response was a stiffening of his shoulders under the black velvet of his vest. “Supposing what you say is true, what would happen if your palms came to rest on another?” he asked evenly.

  Her chest felt tight, but she saw no way to avoid speaking the truth, not with that determined gaze upon her. “The Touch would spread, and if the person was not pure of heart and mind, they would go mad.”

  He eyed her hands as if they might rear
up like snakes and bite him. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps Finnéces is right, and you should not attend.”

  “Nay, Bellamont,” she said caustically. “It is favorable that I should meet with the leaders of Tanalon in this state. I am unusually… perceptive.”

  “The High Priestess is the body of justice on Alesia,” Finnéces added proudly. “When Touched, she sees the heart of a man, can separate truth from lie. I have witnessed it myself. It is a wondrous thing.”

  Isidora watched with sorrow the completion of Arturo’s withdrawal, though he did not move an inch. Looking at him, she saw the visage of a stranger. The beautiful assassin, the dangerous courtier who trusted no one. She realized at once that she’d never really seen this personage who was called Black Bellamont. The man who poisoned princes, who moved like a shadow with knives in his hands.

  The part of her that was a maiden still wanted to curl into a ball and weep for the loss of something she had not known was treasured. The woman within, however, honed by misery and pride, straightened her spine and gazed levelly at the man who could easily kill her where she stood. And who looked like he might be considering it.

  “We have an appointment to keep,” she said steadily. “It is uncouth to keep a princess waiting.”

  Dark amber pools locked on her face, so totally without emotion that she almost betrayed herself with a whimper. He looked inhuman, like the killer he was.

  “Yes,” he said, rich voice honeyed and void of depth. “Serephina is so looking forward to meeting you.” He offered his elbow, safely enclosed in white silk. “Shall we, Lady Fiannan?”

  She nodded shortly and placed her hand lightly in the crook of his arm, steeling herself against what his touch might spark. There was nothing to be sensed beneath his ironclad control, just tensed muscle and smooth silk.

  Finnéces watched them go, closing the door softly behind them. He took a shuddering breath and turned to see Edan standing in the doorway nearby, frail young body shaking with fear and wonder. Opposite the boy stood Diego, form rigid, hands slack on forgotten implements of knife and sharpening stone.