Chapter Nine
The morning was greeted by birdsong and a glittering dawn. Arturo spent most of it in the dark, musty royal bedchamber, seated beside his dying monarch. Upon his arrival in the palace two days before, the king’s wizened steward had informed him that should he seek an audience with his liege, early hours were the best. It was only this morning that he’d managed to make himself walk the familiar, wide arcade.
His admittance through the ostentatious golden doors was prompt, quite as though he were expected. And though his mind was kept carefully empty of thought, as the doors closed he still fought a base impulse to turn and demand exit. Instead he allowed a nameless servant to usher him across exotic marble tiles and to the threshold of another set of heavy doors. A soft knock revealed two men waiting just inside, physicians by their blue robes and dour expressions.
The chamber that would have gleamed gold and silver in the light was full of shadow and the stench of death. Leaden feet carried Arturo to the side of the canopied bed. There, beneath a stifling amount of fluffed quilts, lay the great king he had once loved, and over time grown to hate. The formidable Armando de la Caville was now a wasted husk. Broad, once-muscled shoulders curved sharply inward, quivering feebly. The famous countenance was gaunt and sallow, a mere echo of the power it had long evoked.
In spite of himself, Arturo felt an overwhelming rush of sorrow; it weighed him until he sank to his knees, hands clasped near his king’s head. Breath rattled laboriously from parched, slack lips. The skin of Armando’s face was pinched with pain, his eyes sunken in their sockets.
“My liege,” whispered Arturo. “What has become of you?”
The pained sound of breath paused, then released in a rush. The famous dark eyes, that once could have stopped a man or woman at twenty paces with a look, opened, milky and unfocused.
“Felipe, is that you?” he croaked.
There was a rustling of robes as a physician approached. Without looking, Arturo waved him tersely away. “It is Bellamont, my king,” he murmured. “I have come back.”
The dying man sighed, eyes closing. “Ah, not the son of my loins, but the son of my heart. You have come home to me?”
Arturo swallowed a burning sensation in his throat. “Yes, my liege.”
The eyes opened, focused on him with a glimmer of their usual power. “You’re a little late to finish me off, my boy.”
“Nature has done my work for me.”
Armando’s lips quirked in imitation of a smile. He shifted, wincing in pain, and the physician rushed forward to help him sit up against the pillows. “Water,” he rasped, and a plain wooden cup was held to his lips. After several swallows he slapped the cup away. “Get away from me, you imbecile.”
The physician bowed low and fled.
“These men are idiots,” Armando growled. He paused, fighting for breath. “They wont tell me anything.” His face grew tight with pain, though not of the physical sort. “For God’s sake, Bellamont, what is happening in my kingdom?”
“The Church fights your daughter for the throne.”
As words left his lips, Arturo allowed himself a moment’s ironic surprise that he spoke so boldly. The king’s dark eyes were steady on him, confident in their continued influence. He sighed and continued, “The thirteen Houses squabble amongst themselves, vacillating hour to hour. As far as I can tell, the people are with the princess. There is a new Constable of Vallejo. He prepares an army of commoners. I do not know his thoughts on the throne, though I know he is against the Church.”
It had been a smart move on the part of Rodrigo Vasquez, Arturo dully noted, to tell him next to nothing of his plans. It seemed that old habits were more stubborn than he had credited.
“And who is with the almighty High Cleric?” Armando croaked.
“The army of Church, of course,” he said. “Perhaps Borgetza, perhaps the entire peninsula.” He paused, feeling that his lack of information was a betrayal, and then was discomforted by the thought. “I have not been in political service for some years,” he continued wryly. “I do not know more.”
The king wheezed in silent laughter. “I am surprised you have told me this much.”
“You are dying,” he said softly.
Armando closed his eyes. “Yes, I suppose I am.” He drew a breath. “And who… are you with, Bellamont?”
He thought of Serephina, of the long, hard road between her and the throne of Tanalon. Briefly, too, he thought of Hadrian Visconte, whom he already knew would take the mantel of High Cleric if the princess became queen. And though he tried, with real passion, he could not imagine what that world would be like. There was too much blood in his memory, it seemed, for any idealism to have remained.
“Myself,” he answered finally. “I do not kill for anyone, not anymore.”
“Not even for the mysterious Lady Fiannan of Alesia?”
Arturo narrowed his eyes, a familiar sinking feeling taking hold of him, one that he’d experienced time and time again in the presence of his king. “Dying, but not dead, are you?” he whispered through his teeth.
Armando lifted a wizened hand. “Peace, my boy,” he said. “Forgive me. I am so used to manipulating people that I sometimes forget I am doing so.”
“Indeed,” he replied stiffly.
The king sighed and lowered his hand to his chest. “I met her parents once, you know, some twenty-five years ago.” He registered the surprise that Arturo could not hide, and smiled slightly. “I tried unsuccessfully to woo the Lady Fiannan away from her husband. They were… noble hearted, zealous in their negotiations.”
Foreboding fell like heavy hands onto Arturo’s shoulders. “Negotiations for what?” he murmured.
“For the removal of their precious island from all documents of state,” the king replied softly. “They sought isolation, purification of their bloodlines. It is my thought that they foresaw the coming chaos on the peninsula, and knew, if the Church grew great enough, it would turn upon them.”
Puzzle pieces of history were falling together in Arturo’s mind. He struggled to make sense of the larger picture, even as his mind shrank from the truth. In fact, there was no need, for Armando continued, voice wistful and baring a tone of regret Arturo had never imagined hearing from his king’s lips.
“I refused their proposals, again and again, just as Lady Fiannan refused my advances.” He stopped, eyes closing. Arturo knelt rigidly, waiting for more. Finally, the king roused, eyes staring sightlessly into the past. “Then one night, the Summer Solstice if memory serves, she came to me. Ah, but she was beautiful, a goddess with eyes of summer skies and skin like gold. She gave me what I wanted most, and in turn, received my seal on all formal papers eradicating Alesia from the Academe’s Vault.”
Arturo forgot to breathe, hanging suspended on the edge of the horrible truth.
“When she came to me that following night, I was drunk and weeping like a fool for loss of her. She took me in her arms and loved me as I had never been loved. She gave me her heart, promised to return in half a year’s time to be at my side.”
Not wanting to hear more, unable to tear himself away, Arturo closed his eyes and braced his being for the end of it.
“She did not come,” the king sighed. “I waited a year past the time of her commitment. My rage burned brighter as each moon passed and there was no sign of her. Your history lessons may remind you what happened next.”
Arturo looked up and said in a thin voice, “The Year of Death.”
Then, to his disbelief, a tear rolled down the king’s cheek, disappearing into his unkempt beard. “I drowned my burning heart in the blood of innocents. From the information she had given me in confidence, in my arms, as to the families of Alesia who had peacefully emigrated to Tanalon, in whose blood ran the magic of the Isle of Dusk, I took vengeance upon her.
“For a year the army of the
Church rooted them out at my command. Women and children I had beheaded, their men I burned at the stake. When I was satisfied, empty, I returned to Vianalon, chose a bride from the daughters of nobility, and spent the rest of my life trying to forget Gwendolyn, the blue eyed siren who betrayed me.”
“You are a great fool, my king,” Arturo said, rising to his feet. He did not need to locate an image of Isidora in his memory. She came to him like a wraith, the shape of her eyes, the curve of her lips. “The Lady Fiannan did not return to you because she was with child. Your daughter by that lady resides now in this very palace. A daughter that by her very bloodlines you would have executed.”
The figure in the bed jerked once in shock, eyes sparking with fervor.
“You will not see her,” Arturo heard himself say. “Not while I have breath in my body will she know you as her father.”
“Bellamont—” Armando wheezed, reaching for him.
He turned, without bowing, and left his king to the misery of truth, to die alone with the knowledge that he had not been betrayed, but had been the vehicle of his own heart’s demise.
*
She was still asleep as he moved silently into her room. One arm was flung up over her head, her lips parted slightly and her breathing even and deep. He looked down on her and saw what was so easily concealed by her coloring.
Lady of Alesia and, older by two years than Serephina, crown princess of Tanalon.
She whimpered suddenly and stirred, shifting, drawing her arms close to her chest. Her brow furrowed with some memory’s pain as she curved inward, knees moving up and head bowing. A golden curl fell across her face and slowly darkened as it absorbed her tears.
He was stunned to stillness, utterly defenseless, unable to look away from her as he knew he must. Unable to walk away, to rebuild the walls protecting his deepest self from the pain of attachment.
She did not look as though she were filled with the presence of a god, but exactly like a young woman torn by grief, wrestling the mighty giants of duty and desire.
A whisper of sound behind him broke his trance, and Arturo looked over his shoulder. Diego’s eyes scanned the naked emotion on his face and his own expression responded, becoming wary as he moved forward. Standing side by side, they watched Isidora’s body, locked in sleep, shaking with misery.
“What did that bastard say to you? Did he threaten her?” breathed Diego.
“He would not threaten his eldest child,” Arturo murmured.
The only sound was Isidora’s ragged breathing as Diego stood rigidly still beside him, accepting the truth that was plain in the lady’s face, a truth merely waiting to be seen. He released his breath finally on a long, whistling exhalation. Then, strangely, the scarred man knelt on the rug beside the bed, one knee cocked and hand fisted over his heart.
Without looking up, he said, “Arturo, you know this is right. We have been waiting years for this moment. It is time.”
The simple words descended through him like a sigh and Arturo felt some unnamed burden lift from his shoulders. He knelt soundlessly beside Diego and touched his fist to his chest, where he could feel the faster than usual rhythm of his heart.
Voices barely audible, more movement of lips than sound, the men recited the oath they’d given together, once, eleven years before. In the closed bedchamber of the Lady Fiannan, whose dreams were shifting away from darkness and toward light, the assassin and the soldier pledged their lives, their hearts, to the rightful queen of Vianalon.
It neither troubled the men that she might never rule, nor discover their oaths.
It was a simple matter of honor and loyalty, and, profoundly, of love. Love that they’d once born a king, they gave now unto his daughter.
Chapter Ten
The old woman’s gaze never left the string of beads in her lap. Gnarled fingers danced with nimbleness across the uneven surfaces, pausing to stroke a long, oblong piece before moving to another, perfect ivory sphere. There was no expression to be discerned in her heavily lined and weathered face, and if one dared to look into her eyes, they would see only blackness.
The black of a starry northern night, for around her pupils flickered wisps of light, miniscule threads of color that, depending on her disposition, would bleed outward into dark irises. Just now, if one were brave or close enough to look, there could be seen veins of gold and red, pulsing forth in varying widths to the startling whites of her eyes.
There was one, not quite brave and yet unafraid, who crouched at her feet. His figure was that of a pubescent boy, all long, awkward arms and legs. His face was narrow but not malnourished, his mop of dark hair shining with heavy curls. A small smile of apparent innocence lifted his cherubic lips, but his eyes were bright and full of knowledge as he watched the Nameless One play with her beads.
Older than the Nameless, no longer a child in years but locked forever in the body and impulses of one, he soon grew impatient for her words. With quick, darting fingers he tugged on the ragged skirt before him, made a sound of annoyance.
“I told you,” he sang in a sweet pitch, “Time. Time. It is time. The beginning ends, the ending begins.”
The ancient woman, unwanted by those who bore her and Nameless since birth, suddenly clutched the ivory beads in her fist. “Yes,” she murmured dreamily, eyelids drooping. Her other hand lifted and lightly touched his soft hair. “She comes. The queen who will never be queen.”
“Not of men, not of men,” the boy sang.
The Nameless drew her fingers across his scalp, making him shudder. With a gentleness like that of a spider spinning silk about its prey, she drew up his face. Her eyes were black, fathomless. “What does your mother say, Pandion?” she asked softly.
He blinked slowly, contemplating. “The Great Sorceress rages, and her rage is the storm above fallen Alesia. Her face will not rise in the night until the storm has broken upon all of Calabria.”
Pandion squirmed as bony fingers clenched tight on his jaw.
“And her brother?” asked the Nameless.
He pursed his lips, eyes wide and sorrowful. “The High One will not be swayed from vengeance. ‘A life for a life, a world for a world,’ he says. The Gates will open, his army will ride through.” He swallowed tears, remembering. “War is coming, coming here. Coming everywhere. There will be no life, no life left. All for nothing, and everything, will Alesia be avenged.”
The Nameless was silent for a long time, or it seemed so to Pandion, for every moment in this lightless place stretched for an eternity. Finally, her hand released his jaw, rising again to the crown of his head, where it rested softly in apology. He dared to look up and saw the black eyes closed tightly, dark, spiky eyelashes lost in the soft folds of her eyelids.
“What will we do, my old friend?” she whispered.
Pandion was perhaps the only living being who remembered her face without the age it now wore. She had been young once, as he was eternally, and might have been lovely but for the hardship she’d endured, the incredible pain of being unwanted, unnamed, and gifted with magics she did not understand.
It was he who had found her, whilst wandering in the dark haven of the Northland’s forest. A babe not more than half a day old, screaming in hunger and cold. He’d done the only thing his eternally childlike mind could fathom, and lifted her from a bed of pine needles and moss. From the dark forest he’d carried her, through a meadow of dead grass, toward the smoke of a small village settled near a stream that would never be mistaken for a river. It was hours before dawn, and though the narrow streets were empty of people, it had nevertheless been a fearful journey for him, leaving the comfort of the forest behind and venturing into the world of men.
Feeling the accomplishment of overcoming his fear, trusting that this village of soot-darkened roofs and packs of mangy dogs was where the babe belonged, he had taken her to the doorstep of the only home with a light
still burning behind cracked shutters. He’d left her on the doorstep, rapped quickly on the nearby window, and fled into the darkness, back to the wilds that called him, that had been his home for so long.
Remembering when one’s memory was endless was trying; remembering his choice, the simple, innocent error of a forever-child, was agony.
He had found the courage, once, years later, to return to that village by the stream, and to the window of her tiny bedroom. Invisible to mortal eyes, he’d watched her weep for hours, absorbed in suffering. He had not understood her tears, which he found meaningless, and so visited her no more. Not for a hundred years had their paths crossed, and when they did again, she was old as she was now and full of mystery and power.
A child’s mind is a vessel waiting to be filled with the experiences of life. His was a mind of innocence not altered by experience, a child not of man and woman, but of a Goddess who had many mortal children, and who loved them so well she’d tried to give them the gift of Time.
Pandion knew he was an accident, an experiment gone awry. But he knew, too, that his mother loved him as she loved all her children. That first shining race of men and women, and each generation after, called Alesians once, but no more.
“What is right, what is wrong,” he sang brokenly. “All that ends must have beginnings, and so in each beginning there are endings.”
Had his chin not dropped dejectedly to his chest, he would have seen the Nameless open her eyes and look down on him in sympathy. Those eyes were as they had been upon entering the world, blackest black, with a luminescent ring of gold circumscribing dilated pupils. Dragon’s eyes, they were called, in whispers in the north, where so much of life was in the retelling of the past. Very rarely in the last centuries had her eyes been in this natural state, and only when she was feeling the full span of her unnatural life.
“What has passed is done and no more,” she murmured, stroking the forever-child’s soft hair. “It is what is yet to be that concerns us, my friend.”
The Gardens of Almhain Page 9