I also included Dara with the party. As both my apprentice and the only native Sevendori noble, I thought it was important for her to be seen at the occasion. She was growing into a striking young woman, and her reputation spanned the kingdom. But as I wanted to keep a low profile, I made her ride a horse, not a hawk. She didn’t seem to mind – she rode knee-to-knee with Festaran the entire way, Frightful on a specially-made block in front of her on the saddle.
It was a cold morning as the horses struggled over Caolan’s pass, and even in the magically-heated confines of the carriage you could still see your breath a little. The pass itself was a lot easier for the horses to make than it had been four years ago, when we had first come to Sevendor. After the Warbird’s siege we had been steadily working to improve the tiny pass as an access point to the vale, making it both more defensible and easier to manage.
The pass had been widened considerably, with large chunks of rock removed by magic and rendered into usable building stone. The Karshak laid foundations of snowstone for the new defensive work, but the rest of the labor was being done by Master Nandol, the mason from town. That meant that the work went more slowly, but it also went a lot more inexpensively for me. Nandol’s entire crew of fifty was cheaper than a dozen Karshak doing the same work.
Not that Nandol had been without clients – Sevendor’s building boom had made him a comparatively wealthy man – but there was some resentment lingering about employing Master Guri’s lodge to build the new castle.
Master Nandol, for all of his skill as a human mason, just did not have the capacity or the resources to accomplish even a tithe of the construction within his lifetime. The resentment had turned into a good-natured rivalry, with even Master Nandol himself acknowledging the debt he owed to the Karshak for teaching his men their techniques. They were content to practice them on the pass fortification, and eager to rival their nonhuman competitors even if that was fairly unlikely.
Work slowed somewhat in the winter, but by employing a hired enchanter using Bricking wands and other construction spells, the wall that would guard the gap was nearly ten feet high, now. Eventually it would be twenty, and ten feet thick at the base. Once completed it would be crenelated with machiolations – an extravagance for a normal castle, much less a frontier fortification, but I could pay for it. Four turrets would allow a second tier of archers to defend the pass above the wall. The foundations of the tower that would one day overlook the pass and provide a third tier of archers were already laid, but priority had been given to completing the wall, with possibility of war looming in the Bontal.
We made a mandatory stop at the station that the Westwoodmen ran at the pass. It was a temporary hall, until the tower complex was completed, but they had whitewashed it and laid out a receiving area for travelers, including a small shrine to Herus to welcome them to Sevendor . . . and a stark stone cell to detain them, if necessary.
The snowflake banner, white on green, flew from a half-dozen places, and the white hawk on Sevendor green was featured at least twice. That was Dara’s device, forced on her by her own people out of their pride for her. She tried to ignore it, when we stopped to use the privy and greet the captain of the guard . . . but that was hard to do when a line of Westwoodmen rangers and every other attendant to the station suddenly stopped what they were doing and bowed to Dara . . . and me and Alya.
But it was Dara they were really honoring, it was clear, when I helped Alya out of the carriage.
“My Lady Lenodara, welcome to the pass,” said the captain of the guard – who I finally recognized as her eldest brother, Kyre. He had grown a beard since the last time I saw him, and it added years to his appearance. So did the armor he wore.
“Captain,” Dara nodded, from horseback, blushing furiously at the sudden display.
“Would you like to review the guard, my lady?” he asked, smirking.
“I can see them from here,” she dismissed, embarrassed. “Really, Kyre, do you have to be such an ass?”
“They are merely paying legitimate respect to a beloved leader,” Alya called to her. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I’m his godsdamned little sister!” she fumed. “I’m not his—”
“Liege lord?” I finished. “Perhaps not technically, yet, but one day that may be true – best you both get used to the idea.”
“Me?” she asked, in disbelief. “But I’m a mage!”
“Magelord,” I corrected. “Regardless of your training status, that is still true. Who do you think I can depend upon to protect the snowstone reserves in the Westwood? That is where most of it lies. The Master of the Wood already has a great responsibility for running the estate. It would be unfair to saddle him with the additional burden of stewardship over that great resource. That is the proper responsibility of a noble . . . and a mage. Who better than Lady Lenodara the Hawkmaiden?”
“Hawklady,” corrected Alya, “or she will be soon. Have you given no thought to marriage, Dara?” she said, half-teasing.
“I’m an apprentice!” she protested. “I don’t have time for romance, I work for a living!” Frightful was glaring at us both.
“You won’t be an apprentice forever,” I reminded her. “Tyndal and Rondal passed their exams, and in truth you are nearly ready to, yourself—”
“The hells I am!” she sputtered. “By the Flame! Master, you over-estimate my abilities and my knowledge! Sure, I can fly, and wave a wand, run the Knife, and run errands, and if you want to know which hoof is bothering your horse, I’m your girl . . . but I am a long way from being ready for my exams! I barely understand thaumaturgy, all this enchantment crap is confusing as six hells, and by the Flame if I ever will be able to tell the difference between Old High Perwyneese and Middle Perwyneese, I’ll count it as a legitimate miracle from Briga, herself!”
“Don’t think I couldn’t arrange that,” I warned, half-jokingly. “My point, dear girl, is that you won’t be a dear girl forever, and your country has need of you. Yes, you will serve more of your apprenticeship, but know that you cannot be a child forever. Or even a maiden. Adult responsibilities loom,” I said, in an exaggerated voice.
Screwing with your apprentices’ heads is half of the fun of having them. The free work is the other half.
“And you are not without admirers,” Alya said, her eyes glancing toward Festaran, “and perhaps even suitors. If not yet, then soon. What then, Lady Lenodara of Westwood? A short excursion into the countryside next to a handsome gentleman has been known to kindle a spark in the heart of a maiden . . . plenty of opportunities to be alone with someone . . .”
“I . . . I . . . I’m going to go pee,” Dara said, her mood crashing down dangerously. “And while so employed, if any considerations of my future happen to occur to me, know that I will deal with them in the appropriate manner . . . in the privy!” she said, nastily. As she stomped off she glared at poor Sir Festaran angrily.
“That was . . . kind of mean,” I observed, without judgement. “But entertaining.”
My lady wife smirked. “I owed Gareth a favor. This place has certainly changed since the last time you were up here,” she said, glancing at the growing wall.
“The view has, too,” I said, nodding back toward our home. The castle glowed prettily in the distance, the stubby mass of the new gatehouse starting to loom behind it, both dwarfed by the raw, rocky expanse of snowstone that was Rundeval.
To the left, plumes of smoke from the many hearths of Sevendor Town floated in the cold wet air over the sprawling municipality. The town now filled the old Commons and every scrap of land of the old village – there was nary a trace of it left - and was spilling over into what had once been marginal farmland at its limits, within the hedgewall the town had erected.
The gleaming dome of the Temple of Briga shimmered with the heat of the Everfire escaping its open roof, and the spire to the new Temple of Huin was growing under a wooden scaffolding nearby. You could just see the towers of Mage’s Row, where the Arcan
e Orders chapterhouse, the Secret Tower, and the Enchanters Guild boldly defined the horizon, with the comparatively squat Rat Trap just visible.
It was a pretty town, particularly when it was decked with snow. I saw Alya shiver a bit, and moved behind her to enwrap her in my cloak . . . and my arms. She sagged into me, and we enjoyed a moment of quiet contemplation of all that we had built together.
“Not bad, Spellmonger,” she whispered. “It’s nice to step back and see it all at once,” she said, nodding with satisfaction.
“We’re just getting started,” I assured her. “By the time he’s old enough to care, Minalyan will have quite the legacy.”
“They all will,” she nodded. “Now, let’s see if we can keep you out of any more wars for a while so that you can watch them enjoy it.”
“I really don’t want to get involved in Sendaria’s expansion,” I agreed. “I’ve already told Arathanial no to a direct alliance, privately, and so has Trestendor. But we’re both allowing him to hire mercenaries here, if any want to march under their banner. That and a little behind-the-screen intelligence should be more than enough to pacify him.”
“He’s not going to like this acquisition of yours, if we can execute it,” she warned. “He sees all of this as Lensely territory, properly. If we go buying it up, he can’t re-conquer it himself.”
“It’s a handful of mountain domains,” I reasoned. “He’s after the big, fertile valley between Sashtalia and Rolone. He’s a Riverlord, he thinks in terms of arable land. He won’t mind losing a few marginal estates held by hill lords of dubious loyalty. They’re more trouble to conquer than they are rewarding to rule.”
“I do hope Arathanial sees it that way,” she said, sounding doubtful.
The journey down the other side of the pass and into Sashtalia was relatively uneventful. At this time of year not even the mountain bandits strayed far from their hideouts, and the peasantry and freeholders were content to stay close to their hearths.
Alya and I had a lot of time to talk on the way. Too much time.
I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping things light for the first few hours, but after that we’d exhausted the topics of business and children, political speculation and castle gossip, and things were getting dangerously close to discussing our relationship when we stopped for lunch. Dara’s antics in regards to Sir Festaran were the topic for a while that afternoon, as the girl couldn’t make up her mind to be insulted or flattered at the idea the young knight might want to get her alone, and we took the usual perverse delight in dissecting her young love in the light of our mature experience.
But that light-hearted conversation soon turned to our own first trials at the game of love. I admitted my string of affairs with the village girls back at Talry, and how I had plied my journey to the magical academy into a wave of attraction. She told me about some innocent fumblings at Boval’s late summer festival with a lad from Wynakur she had never seen again. Both recollections brought back warm memories and guilty smiles.
But that’s when her expression changed. “Min, what happened at the Magic Fair?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, at first genuinely confused.
“You’ve been different, since then,” she said, her voice heavy with concern. “Distant, even.”
“I’ve been working—”
“I know you have been working,” she said, holding up her hand. “And yes, the Snowflake is pretty, but you’re rarely down there. You’ve worked before, and not been this way. You come to bed late, or sometimes not at all, and when you do, we . . . well, you haven’t been touching me as much,” she said, guiltily.
“Alya, I—”
“Let me finish,” she said, and I held my peace. “I’m sure you have a lot going through your mind these days, with Pentandra getting married and the Alka Alon all but disappearing on us. This war certainly isn’t helping. And then there’s that big snowflake thing you’ve been sneaking off to. I know your profession is a demanding one,” she said, forestalling another interruption before I could make it, “but a wife knows when there is something troubling her husband. You know in his touch. In his kiss,” she said, with a slight hiss.
I just stared at her. I desperately wanted to confess all of it to her, to tell her the bare truth and spare her nothing, if only to unburden my conscience. But to do so would be to inflict pain on her most cruelly, I knew. Not to mention the fall in esteem I would suffer in her eyes.
A lesser man would have used it as an excuse to rebuke his wife, and quiet her questions with anger – but my father had not taught me that way.
“Alya, I do have a lot on my mind,” I agreed. “Some of it I cannot share with you, right now. That’s to protect you and the children,” I promised. “Not to keep you from knowing. There have been threats,” I offered. “I am dealing with them. Some are kind of insubstantial, at the moment, but I am taking steps to counter them.”
“Who? The Censorate? Or whatever they’ve turned into?”
“They’re the Arcane Knights of Nablus, I think we can quit worrying about them, for now,” I assured her. “They’re just trying to survive. This is more of a political problem. Kingdom-level politics.”
“Aren’t I already involved, as your wife?” she countered.
“This is more Order-related than feudal,” I decided. It couldn’t hurt to give her a peg to hang my worry upon, even if it wasn’t quite on the mark. “Dunselen. His marriage has caused waves. So has Pentandra’s resignation,” I added, which was true. “With me confined to my lands, it’s allowed a lot of smaller players to start exercising their power. It’s just complicated,” I sighed. “Not that you couldn’t understand it, but it’s banal to the point of frustration.”
“Dunselen wants to be head of the Order,” she proposed.
“The power-broker, at least. For now. His new wife has a nasty reputation as a political infighter, too – she cut her teeth on it at the Ducal court, and she was instrumental in helping establish the monarchy.”
“And Dunselen was her reward?” Alya snorted. “It sounds more like she screwed up!”
“There’s a lot more to it than that, and other players at work. But yes, it has troubled me. Worried me. The two of them are decidedly up to something. For all of their smiles, it makes me anxious that there are people in the world who would want to hurt you and the children to get at me,” I said, which was as truthful and sincere as possible.
“Just remember that I’m not some fainting flower of the Riverlands,” she reminded me, arching an eyebrow. “I am a tough Wilderlands woman who isn’t going to run shrieking to my chamber if there’s danger.”
“I know,” I said. “I just don’t want that to even be a possibility. We’ve worked too hard.”
“We’ve worked too hard to allow something like that to interfere with our happiness, too,” she reminded me. “I’m your wife. Together we can face anything.”
As grateful as I was for the validation it gave me, part of my heart cringed with guilt over lying to her – or at least not being entirely honest with her. That pained me more than the actual infidelity. I reached out and brought her hand to my mouth for a kiss.
“Not even Ishi herself could tempt me away from you,” I said. And it was the utter truth.
*
*
The Holy Mount Abbey had been founded by two sisters of Trygg two hundred years earlier, during the rise of the Lensely family. Originally it had been a simple shrine to the Mother Goddess, associated with a local legend of some divine birth or other, set among a hilltop orchard of apples. The hill was encroached by larger hills all around, and generally unsuitable for tilling, but there were near thirty acres of apples and meadows within the estate. I hear they made a smashing cider.
The Birthsisters of Trygg were granted the estate and given an endowment to build a temple by a grateful Lensely lord of nearby Fistalia, and ever since Holy Mount Abbey had been the center of training for midwives and medical issues of a femi
nine nature, as well as a place of worship.
There were fifteen priestesses in residence, now, including several who had sought retirement from the demands of midwifery here. There were thrice that number of initiates and novices, and there were also a few crones of noble houses who had taken to the abbey to live out their remaining years.
The abbey itself was a cluster of buildings in a circle around the Temple, a sturdy three-story rustic structure of painted wood, featuring symbols of the Mother Goddess everywhere.
We were somewhat late in arriving, as most of the local lords had already shown up to pay their respects. Sister Bemia was kind enough to introduce us to the sitting abbess, a wizened but plump old woman named Birthmother Salia.
“So you’re the Spellmonger everyone’s been gossiping about,” she said, peering at me cautiously over rosy cheeks. Too rosy, I realized. Mother Salia was drunk. “Birthsister Bemia writes of your generosity often. It is . . . uncommon for a lord, particularly a baron, to choose a chaplain from our order; usually they prefer Luin’s lawbrothers, or even a priest of Huin.”
“I am properly grateful of my children,” I agreed. “It would be impious of me not to show my gratitude by honoring the priestesses of the All Mother.”
“Well spoken, young man!” she said, and I caught a whiff of the fumes on her breath. Spirits – but then, it was a funeral. “Trygg’s blessings on your marriage and your children,” she said, raising her hand in benediction. “Were that there were more properly devout lords in the Bontal, these days!”
The funeral was a morose affair. One visiting local dignitary after another got up and eulogized the old crone – Mother Rathela – recounting one sharp-tongued encounter after another. Six lords she had brought into the world laid her to rest within the crypt beneath the temple. Dozens of visiting priestesses did likewise, until I nearly felt the irritated spirit of the dead nun glaring down at us for making such a fuss. Finally the last dried flowers were packed over the body, the stone lid to the sarcophagus sealed, and the crypt floor replaced. One final hymn to the glory of the All Mother and we broke for a reception.
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