You may think that upon my death that this property will fall to my son, and that if you were to lend some assistance that it would profit you nothing but to have him take over the estate when its creditors are satisfied.
I write to offer you some incentive. I attest with this document and my very blood that Davon Carver is no Carver at all and that I do not recognize him as such. He is the product of an indiscretion of his mother and is a bastard. He has no right to Frostbourne or any inheritance other than what I or any Carver would give him out of charity.
He is, I am afraid, a boorish, stupid lad who would do no honor upon Frostbourne or the family name. Therefore, cousin, the title of Frostbourne rightfully belongs to you, my next of kin. If you see fit to use your resources to put Frostbourne’s creditors at ease, you can claim Frostbourne and its lands for yourself. If you are wiser than I have been, it may bring you good fortune and perhaps elevate the family of Carver to respectability once more.
I will instruct Davon to carry this sealed letter to you upon my death. You may decide what to do about Frostbourne and the boy then. My only wish is that Frostbourne remain in the family, and if it does, that it be possessed by one with a true right to the name, not an ignorant bastard. As for young Davon, give the indolent lout your charity or throw him to the wolves. I care not.
Farewell, Cousin. May the Flame watch over you with more vigilant eyes than it has watched over me,
Baron Asper Carver
Arianne found her hand at her mouth. Davon Carver was a bastard. He had slaved to build up an estate not rightfully his, one his father intended to strip from him. Did Davon know? Was that why he had shut the dead Baron up in his room?
That last conversation between a father and his wife’s bastard son held the key to everything Davon had become. Asper Carver considered the boy Davon an unrefined idiot. The man Davon was anything but. His hardships had changed him, but if Davon really was indolent before his death as his father had claimed, what had given the orphaned boy the iron to change and rescue the estate singlehandedly? More likely, the man simply hated Davon for the infidelity he represented and presented deceitful aspersions about the him to help his estranged cousin feel better about saving the estate.
She closed the letter and set it on her lap to think. Twice she pushed the paper toward the candle’s hungry flame and then pulled it away. If Davon did not know he was a bastard, then Arianne was content for him never to know. He would never elevate himself as the Queen wished if he knew of his disinherited status. But whatever her concerns for Davon’s feelings or the Queen’s plans, she knew that the real fear in her breast was that Davon would never think himself worthy of her if he knew. He already thought himself beneath her. Arianne wouldn’t have it.
Again the edges of the paper kissed the flames, and again she pulled it back. She had no right to burn the letter or to even have it. She had no right to have intruded upon that secret room which Davon had shut and locked away. But surely he would have known that after he faked his death, someone would eventually find the bones of his father. If everyone had thought the son dead, then the revelation of the father’s corpse would become just another odd story that would fade with time. With the son alive, the unburied father would become a scandal.
Sleep paid her little mind that night.
From that day forward, she kept the letter on her person at all times, not wanting any prying servant or theft to expose its sensitive contents. It took Emile Ironhorn two days to empty Frostbourne of all her possessions—all bought with Baron Carver’s money—and direct the servants to load them on the wagons that would accompany them south to Ironhorn.
Her waspish, temperamental behavior improved, and by the morning of the third day she bounced out of the house and into the carriage where they waited for her. Emile was ready to travel, hair curled to perfection, a parasol against her shoulder to shield her face from a bright morning sun. She wore a snow white dress with a red sash about her waist, appearing ready for a ball rather than a long slog south. They would drop her off at the Ironhorn estate and then make for Hightower, where Arianne hoped Davon would be waiting for her.
“I do apologize, Lady Hightower,” Emile said once they had all settled into the carriage. “I have been beastly of late, but with the shock of Davon’s return and the impending need to move, I just haven’t been myself. I do hope we can be sisters, now, considering the connection we share.”
Arianne was about to return some pleasantry when shouting inside the house pulled her up short.
“Driver!” Emile yelled. “Let’s go.”
With a sharp snap of the whip, the carriage jerked to a start. As they pulled through the gates and out onto the road, the ruckus behind them continued to build, though it quickly faded as they turned east and south. Emile smiled to herself, staring happily out the window.
She’s done something. Arianne craned her neck out the window on her side, the cool wind reddening her cheeks. As the trees slashed by, the gaps in the forest canopy revealed a column of smoke rising into the sky. Emile giggled.
“What have you done?” Arianne demanded.
Her full lips parted and she put her hand to her mouth. “Why, I think I may have been careless about my bedding getting too close to the fire. I was in such a rush! Oh dear, I hope nothing untoward has happened.”
Arianne reached out and slapped her. Hard. The smile disappeared and Orianna and Missa stared at Emile in shock.
“Back to Frostbourne,” Arianne yelled to the driver, leaning out the window. “Go back this instant.”
It took a moment for the carriage driver to acknowledge her request. Turning the carriage around on the wooded road proved difficult. A red welt bloomed on Emile’s fair cheek, her eyes stung and angry. Arianne stared right back, cowing the woman with the indignant fire of her own expression.
By the time they could see Frostbourne again, the smoke billowed into the air, the smell stinging Arianne’s nose. The house staff and a host of horrified townsfolk gathered at the gate, staring at the conflagration. Some wept. Orianna wept. The mighty trees that Emile hated burned with the house, the fire hissing through their branches as the sap boiled out.
Arianne stepped down from the carriage, Missa and Orianna following. Nothing could be done. The house and the grounds were a total loss. Servants jogged forward with the horses and the hunting dogs from the outbuildings, sparing them a miserable, burning death.
After a few minutes, the house crumbled. Some few of the walled stones fell inward as the roof collapsed. Haze thickened about them, seeping out to enclose the gathered crowd in its smoky embrace. Arianne shook her head and wiped her eyes, thinking of Davon.
A strident voice startled her. Orianna. “You wretched beast!”
Arianne glanced back to the carriage. Orianna had returned, yelling at her mistress through the window.
“I will not work for you another day! Not one more. I would rather starve to death in the hedgerows. You should drown for this. Drown and die!”
Arianne pulled her away and embraced the girl as she shook in grief. Inside the carriage, Emile stared forward, eyes firm with just the hint of a smirk on her face. The woman had no scruples, no conscience whatsoever, that Arianne thought she could appeal to. Davon had indeed paid a price for marrying the woman, and the price had just risen again.
More townspeople arrived at the scene, their fresh sighs of dismay adding to the mournful hush of sad voices. Slowly the towering flames diminished, ash falling like gray snow. The sheriff had arrived and began questioning the servants. Orianna broke from Arianne’s embrace and strode up to him immediately, anger plain upon her face.
It will do no good to accuse her, dear child, Arianne thought. Emile had been clever enough not to admit to anything other than an accident.
Horse hooves on the road turned everyone’s attention. A cadre of mounted officers, road weary and scruffy, rode toward the scene, gawking at the fallen manor house. To Arianne’s surprise, they wore th
e blue and gold of Bellshire. These were the High Sheriff’s men. Why had they come?
“We seek Lady Arianne Hightower,” the lead rider said, hushing the din.
“I am Lady Hightower,” she said, stepping forward.
The officer rode over, face severe, stopping his horse and dismounting. He unbuckled his saddlebag and dug through it, producing a sealed letter.
“Lady Arianne Hightower, you are under arrest for high treason by order of the High Sheriff of Bellshire.”
Chapter 36
Davon sucked in the clean air, trying to ignore his growling belly. He, the A’Kor, Ju’Jal, and the three other representatives of the primal forces hiked by the weak light of the luminescent blue moss, stars bright in the clear summer sky. The angular, ice-capped peaks practically glowed in the moonlight, rendering the luminescence of the moss unnecessary to Davon’s sharp eyes.
They had traveled to the far end of the lake, opposite the Pahk and the lodge on the other side, and then started their ascent up a rocky shale field that cut between two of the higher peaks. The going here was tough, though Davon fancied he possessed the greater balance and fortitude of his hiking companions, all of whom had at least twenty more years upon their heads than he did.
They stopped frequently during this part of the climb, but once they cleared the shale field and reached a grouping of trees, the A’Kor issued the unfortunate order: “Blindfold him.” For the second time that day, Davon found himself walking blind, grasping a stick Ju’Jal commandeered from the flora. And the hiking wasn’t easy. No well-defined path greeted his feet here, and they struggled upward for nearly an hour, every ascending stride bringing cooler air that bit through his coat.
Solid ground turned to a slippery, packed snow. The incline was slight, but the pace slowed to a shuffle, only increasing when a patch of rock intersected their trail. The four members of the Kai, Ju’Jal included, took turns grumbling as the air turned truly frigid and cutting. Only the A’Kor remained silent.
They walked for nearly an hour more with enough twists and turns to foil his sense of direction completely. After one last steep ascent up a snowy switchback, they stopped.
Davon heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and the A’Kor addressed him. “Listen, outsider. What you will see when we uncover your eyes is one of the sacred places of the Aua’Catan. It has been holy to our people since before Creete drove away the Primal Forces and butchered our people. If you defile this place, I will kill you and write an apology to the Primal Forces in your blood. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
The A’Kor did not remove the blindfold, but grabbed his arm. “Bring the water, Ju’Jal. The rest of you wait here.”
They walked forward for several more yards when the terrain beneath his feet changed abruptly. A solid, smooth sheet of ice challenged his balance, the A’Kor and Ju’Jal slipping and sliding along with him. They walked and slid in equal measure for about thirty paces, but still they kept him blindfolded. Wherever they had arrived, it had blocked the crisp wind, but the cold here seeped rather than cut, working its way into his tired bones.
“Kneel, outsider,” A’Kor ordered, “and turn your palms up.”
Davon knelt down, ice hard beneath his knees, and turned his palms to the sky. Water splashed down on his hands, just enough to moisten them.
“Reach up with your arms,” A’Kor continued.
When Davon complied, hands grasped each of his wrists, pulling him forward and planting the flat of his palms against a sheet of vertical ice. The moisture applied to his palms instantly adhered his skin to the ice. A painful chill bled into his hands, his fingers aching and throbbing. Davon instinctively pulled back, but the frosty hold on his palms would not release. He knew he could extricate himself, but it would peel the skin off his bones.
Ju’Jal applied more water to his hands, the cold instantly freezing it into icy manacles from which he could not escape without great pain and injury. Drips trickled down his sleeves and he shivered.
“What is the meaning of this?” Davon said, getting angry. “Release me!”
Then the blindfold was removed.
Davon blinked. His anger died, discomfort temporarily forgotten. The A’Kor and Ju’Jal had frozen his hands onto a perfectly smooth sheet of ice. It rose twenty feet and joined a curling wave of blue ice that arched over his head, a mighty mass of frozen weight threatening to crush them. He knelt on a sheer pool of ice that stretched away fifty feet to either side of him, enclosed in a shallow bowl of granite. Ice had rimed pillars of the flecked red stone that stood scattered about the pool, each a mute witness to his ordeal.
But what captured his attention was in the dark block of ice before him, ice clearer than any window. Inside it danced an ethereal light, a fire of pure white. The effect mesmerized him, defeating his senses for a moment. Something else moved inside the ice, something shadowy and human, cavorting around the light as if to smother it, but scared of it at the same time. Light and dark. Opposites at war.
“What am I to do?” Davon asked in awe.
“You are to see, outsider,” the A’Kor said. “We will wait for you at the bottom of the ravine. If you should arrive with bloody hands encrusted in ice, we will know that your courage failed you and we will kill you. Let us leave him to it, Ju’Jal.”
Ju’Jal put his hand on Davon’s shoulder. “Good luck, Davon. I can offer no assistance. You must find your own will and your own way.”
Davon nodded, transfixed by the light and the shadow locked in an eternal dance, neither able to dispel or trouble the other. Long he stared at the odd waltz until finally the numbing cold and exhaustion took their toll up on him. His head sagged, a woozy, warm feeling overcoming him. He knew he would not wake from the sleep that now invited him into its bed and he forced himself awake, lifting his head.
His eyes shot wide.
His father stared back at him from the ice, sitting as he had that horrible day in his office. The bottle of liquor sat three-quarters drained, and he had undone his cravat and the first four buttons of his shirt. He was a pale man, cheeks scraped red by the strong drink. The full jowls and stringy hair gave him a mean appearance, his blurry, beady eyes staring in anger at his son. The pistol was in his hand, cocked.
“There you are, boy,” he said with a mocking asperity.
I don’t want to see this! Davon pulled away from the ice wall until the flesh screamed, threatening to tear away from the bones.
“I want you to know that you are an idiot who will amount to nothing,” Asper Carver continued. “Know now that this estate is not rightly yours to have. I just wanted you to know that so you would understand. You can thank your whoring mother for what comes next.”
The memory was as fresh as the day it had happened, played now before him in perfect simulacrum. His mind fought to reject the vision in the ice, to squelch it, but his father’s hand rose steadily, pistol barrel turning inch by inch toward his mouth. Beady eyes fixed on his son, Asper Carver slipped the barrel into his mouth. The report of the weapon and the bloody discharge would never be erased from his memory. Not ever. His father slumped back, dead, weapon settling on his lap, finger still on the trigger.
Davon yelled into the icy night, the horror bringing fire to his veins, a cloud of steam pouring from his mouth. As his yell reverberated through the frozen chamber, the image of his father was replaced by the eyes of the sabercat, the predatory gaze fixed upon him, his primal scream of agony issuing from its open maw. Again Davon pulled back, unable to escape the beast, the icy bonds holding him fast.
He dropped his head, exhausted. Was the test over? He needed food. He needed warmth.
When his gaze turned back to the icy wall, only the white fire and the dark figure remained. Davon’s heart beat weakly in his chest. The tired weight of his body slowed his thoughts, soothing him back to the woozy blanket enveloping him. He would sleep. Even if his numb hands and aching arms wouldn’t let him slip to the groun
d, he would simply hang there like a rag doll.
A white flash of flame burned through his eyes and blasted his mind back into focus. When he looked up at the glassy ice, another unpleasant vision burst upon him—he stood hand in hand with Emile Ironhorn in her father’s house exchanging marital vows. The sabercat, a translucent overlay on top of the scene behind it, stared at him. When he groaned at the shame of the memory, the sound seemed to issue from the beast’s mouth instead of his own. Davon turned away and closed his eyes. He might be trapped, but he didn’t have to watch. He wouldn’t fight anymore.
The cold outside numbed him to the point he no longer shivered or had an ounce of will to struggle. His breath came slowly, the water droplets from the vapor having frozen on the nascent beard beneath his nose and lips. His lips felt dry, his throat coarse from the cutting air he sucked into his lungs. He sought sleep now, sought it like a friend. He knew all too well that it wasn’t just sleep that came for him, but he could pretend.
The light flashed again, jolting him into a dull wakefulness. His sluggish heart pounded back to life. Arianne. She sat by the window sill that day in Bellshire when the Queen had asked him to check up on her. He had ministered to her, his heart nearly broken at the sight of her vibrancy brought so low. He had kissed her forehead then, something he had not planned or regretted. The translucent sabercat staring back at him seemed more at ease, as content as he was.
Dearest Arianne. This was a good memory to take to his death. He closed his eyes and wrapped himself up in thoughts of her. In his mind’s eye he bid her farewell. She would think he had abandoned her, would wonder where he had gone.
I tried, Arianne, I tried.
Another flash. He could barely lift his frost-encrusted eyelids, but when the vision opened before him, he surged off his knees and stood, a rush of rage casting off the entombing cold. They had Arianne on the Drowning Bridge, a line of soldiers surrounding the platform. The executioner stood ready to lower the cage into the water, the cage where Arianne wept with fear. Was this a vision of the future? The past? Some further trick to torment him?
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