"My lady, have you never seen a field of grass?"
"In books. In dreams." She opened her mouth again, nearly asked him to tell her what it smelled like. But she wasn't sure she could bear to know. "I won't keep you waiting long, my lord."
She was true to her word. In ten minutes she was back, her hair loose again over the shoulders of a dark green dress. She carried the brandy herself.
"Our wine cellars were well stocked once. My grandfather, I'm told, was shrewd in that area. And in this one," she added, gesturing toward the books. "He enjoyed a glass of good wine and a good book."
"And your
"The books often, the wine rarely."
When she glanced toward the door, he saw her smile, fully, warmly, for the first time. He could only stare at her as his throat went dry and his heart shuddered.
"Thank you, Magda. I would have come for it."
"You've enough to do, my lady, without carting trays." The woman seemed ancient to Kylar. Her face as withered as a winter apple, her body bowed as if she carried bricks on her back. But she set the tea tray on the sideboard and curtseyed with some grace. "Should I pour for you, my lady?"
"I'll see to it. How are your hands?"
"They don't trouble me overmuch."
Deirdre took them in her own. They were knotted and swollen at the joints.
"You're using the ointment I gave you?"
"Yes, my lady, twice daily. It helps considerable."
Keeping her eyes on Magda's, Deirdre rubbed her thumbs rhythmically over the gnarled knuckles. "I have a tea that will help. I'll show you how to make it, and you'll drink a cup three times a day."
"Thank you, my lady." Magda curtseyed again before she left the room.
Kylar saw Deirdre rub her own hands as if to ease a pain before she reached for the teapot. "I'll answer your questions, Prince Kylar, and hope that you'll answer some of mine in turn." She brought him a small tray of cheese and biscuits, then settled into a chair with her tea.
"How do you survive?"
To the point, she thought. "We have the garden. Some chickens and goats for eggs and milk, and meat when meat is needed. There's the forest for fuel and, if we're lucky, for game. The young are trained in necessary skills. We live simply," she said, sipping her tea. "And well enough."
"Why do you stay?"
"Because this is my home. You risked your life in battle to protect yours."
"How do you know I didn't risk it to take what belonged to someone else?"
She watched him over the rim of her cup. Yes, he was handsome. His looks were only more striking now that he'd regained some of his strength. One of the servants had shaved him, and without the stubble of beard he looked younger. But little less dangerous. "Did you?"
"You know I didn't." His gaze narrowed on her face. "You know. How is that,
Deirdre of the Ice?" He reached out, clamped a hand on her arm. "What did you do to me during the fever?"
"Healed you."
"With witchcraft?"
"I have a gift for healing," she said evenly. "Should I have used it, or let you die? There was no dark in it, and you are not bound to me for payment."
"Then why do I feel bound to you?"
Her pulse jumped. His hand wasn't gripping her arm now. It caressed. "I did nothing to tie you. I have neither desire nor the skill for it." Cautiously, she moved out of reach. "You have my word. When you're well enough to travel, you're free to go."
"How?" It was bitter. "Where?" Pity stirred in her, swam into her eyes. She remembered the face of the woman in his mind, the love she'd felt flow between them. His mother, she thought. Even now watching for his return home.
"It won't be simple, nor without risk. But you have a horse, and we'll give you provisions. One of my men will travel with you as far as possible. I can do no more than that."
He put it aside for now. When the time came, he would find his way home. "Tell me how this came to be. This place. I've heard stories—betrayal and witchcraft and cold spells over a land that was once fruitful and at peace."
"So I am told." She rose again to stir the fire. "When my grandfather was king, there were farms and fields. The land was green and rich, the lake blue and thick with fish. Have you ever seen blue water?"
"I have, yes."
"How can it be blue?" she asked as she turned. There was puzzlement on her face, and more, he thought. An eagerness he hadn't seen before. It made her look very young.
"I haven't thought about it," he admitted. "It seems to be blue, or green, or gray. It changes, as the sky changes."
"My sky never changes." The eagerness vanished as she walked to the window.
"Well," she said, and straightened her shoulders. "Well. My grandfather had two daughters, twin-born. His wife died giving them life, and it's said he grieved for her the rest of his days. The babes were named Ernia, who was my aunt, and
Fiona, who was my mother, and on them he doted. Most parents dote on their children, don't they, my lord?"
"Most," he agreed.
"So he did. Like their mother, they were beautiful, and like their mother, they were gifted. Ernia could call the sun, the rain, the wind. Fiona could speak to the beasts and the birds. They were, I'm told, competitive, each vying for their father's favor though he loved them both. Do you have siblings, my lord?"
"A brother and a sister, both younger."
She glanced back. He had his mother's eyes, she thought. But her hair had been light. Perhaps his father had that ink-black hair that looked so silky.
"Do you love them, your brother and your sister?"
"Very much."
"That is as it should be. But Ernia and Fiona could not love each other. Perhaps it was because they shared the same face, and each wanted her own. Who can say?
They grew from girl to woman, and my grandfather grew old and ill. He wanted them married and settled before his death. Ernia he betrothed to a king in a land beyond the Elf Hills, and my mother he promised to a king whose lands marched with ours to the east. Rose Castle was to be my mother's, and the Palace of Sighs, on the border of the Elf Hills, my aunt's. In this way he divided his wealth and lands equally between them, for he was, I'm told, a wise and fair ruler and a loving father."
She came back to sit and sip at tea gone cold. "In the weeks before the weddings, a traveler came and was welcome here as all were in those days. He was handsome and clever, quick of tongue and smooth with charm. A minstrel by trade, it's said he sang like an angel. But fair looks are no mirror of the heart, are they?"
"A pleasant face is only a face." Kylar lifted a shoulder. "Deeds make a man."
"Or woman," she added. "So I have always believed, and so, in this case, it was.
In secret, this handsome man courted and seduced both twins, and both fell blindly in love with him. He came to my mother's bed, and to her sister's, bearing a single red rose and promises never meant to be kept. Why do men lie when women love?"
The question took him aback. "My lady… not all men are deceivers."
"Perhaps not." Though she was far from convinced. "But he was. One evening the sisters, of the same mind, wandered to the rose garden. Each wanted to pluck a red rose for her lover. It was there the lies were discovered. Instead of comforting each other, instead of raging against the man who had deceived them both, they fought over him. She-wolves over an unworthy badger. Ernia's temper called the wind and the hail, and Fiona's had the beasts stalking out of the forest to snarl and howl."
"Jealousy is both a flawed and a lethal weapon." She angled her head. Nodded.
"Well said. My grandfather heard the clamor and roused himself from his sickbed.
Neither marriage could take place now, as both his daughters were disgraced. The minstrel, who had not slipped away quickly enough, was locked in the dungeon until his punishment could be decided. There was weeping and wailing from the sisters, as that punishment would surely be banishment, if not death. But he was spared when it came to be known that
my mother was with child. His child, for she had lain with no other."
"You were the child."
"Yes. So, by becoming, I saved my father's life. The grief of this, the shame of this, ended my grandfather's. Before he died, he ordered Ernia to the Palace of
Sighs. Because of the child, he decreed that my mother would marry the minstrel.
It was this that drove Ernia mad, and on the day the marriage took place, the day her own father died in despair, she cast her spell.
"Winter, endless years of it. A sea of ice to lock Rose Castle away from the world. The rosebush where flowers had been plucked from lies would not bear bud.
The child her sister carried would never feel the warmth of summer sun on her face, or walk in a meadow or see a tree bear fruit. One faithless man, three selfish hearts, destroyed a world. And so became the Isle of Winter in the Sea of Ice."
"My lady." He laid a hand on hers. Her life, he thought, the whole of it had been spent without the simple comfort of sunlight. "A spell cast can be broken.
You have power."
"My gift is of healing. I cannot heal the land." Because she wanted to turn her hand over in his, link fingers, feel that connection, she drew away. "My father left my mother before I was born. Escaped. Later, as she watched her people starve, my mother sent messengers to the Palace of Sighs to ask for a truce. To beg for one. But they never came back. Perhaps they died, or lost their way. Or simply rode on into the warmth and the sun. No one who has left here has ever come back. Why would they?"
"Ernia the Witch-Queen is dead."
"Dead?" Deirdre stared into the fire. "You're sure of this?"
"She was feared, and loathed. There was great celebration when she died. It was on the Winter Solstice, and I remember it well. She's been dead for nearly ten years."
Deirdre closed her eyes. "As her sister has. So they died together. How odd, and how apt." She rose again to walk to the window. "Ten years dead, and her spell holds like a clenched fist. How bitter her heart must have been."
And the faint and secret hope she'd kept flickering inside that upon her aunt's death the spell would break, winked out. She drew herself up. "What we can't change, we learn to be content with." She stared out at the endless world of white. "There is beauty here."
"Yes." It was Deirdre that Kylar watched. "Yes. There is beauty here."
Chapter 4
He wanted to help her. More, Kylar thought, he wanted to save her. If there had been something tangible to fight—a man, a beast, an army—he would have drawn his sword and plunged into battle for her.
She moved him, attracted him, fascinated him. Her steady composure in the face of her fate stirred in him both admiration and frustration. This was not a woman to weep on a man's shoulder. It annoyed him to find himself wishing that she would, as long as the shoulder was his.
She was an extraordinary creature. He wanted to fight for her. But how did a man wage war on magic?
He'd never had any real experience with it. He was a soldier, and though he believed in luck, even in fate, he believed more in wile and skill and muscle.
He was a prince, would one day be a king. He believed in justice, in ruling with a firm touch on one hand and a merciful one on the other.
There was no justice here, where a woman who had done no wrong should be imprisoned for the crimes and follies and wickedness of those who had come before.
She was too beautiful to be shut away from the rest of the world. Too small, he mused, too fragile to work her hands raw. She should be draped in silks and ermine rather than homespun.
Already after less than a week on the Isle of Winter, he felt a restlessness, a need for color and heat. How had she stayed sane never knowing a single summer?
He wanted to bring her the sun.
She should laugh. It troubled him that he had not once heard her laugh. A smile, surprisingly warm when it was real enough to reach her eyes. That he had seen.
He would find a way to see it again.
He waded through the snow across what he supposed had once been a courtyard.
Though his wound had troubled him on waking, he was feeling stronger now. He needed to be doing, to find some work or activity to keep his blood moving and his mind sharp. Surely there was some task, some bit of work he could undertake for her here. It would repay her in some small way, and serve to keep his mind and hands busy while his body healed.
He recalled the stag he'd seen in the forest. He would hunt, then, and bring her meat. The wind that had thrashed ceaselessly for days had finally quieted.
Though the utter stillness that followed it played havoc with the nerves, it would make tracking through the forest possible.
He moved through a wide archway on the other side of the courtyard. And stopped to stare.
This, he realized with wonder, had been the rose garden. Gnarled and blackened stalks tangled out of the snow. Once, he imagined, it would have been magnificent, full of color and scent and humming bees.
Now it was a great field of snow cased in ice.
Bisecting that field were graceful paths of silver stone, and someone kept them clear. There were hundreds of bushes, all brittle with death, the stalks spearing out of their cold graves like blackened bones.
Benches, these, too, cleared of snow and ice, stood in graceful curves of deep jewel colors. Ruby, sapphire, emerald, they gleamed in the midst of the stark and merciless white. There was a small pond in the shape of an open rose, and its flower held a rippled sheet of ice. Dead branches with vicious thorns strangled iron arbors. More spindly corpses climbed up the silver stone of the walls as if they'd sought to escape before winter murdered them.
In the center, where all paths led, was a towering column of ice. Under the glassy sheen, he could see the arch of blackened branches studded with thorns, and hundreds of withered flowers trapped forever in their moment of death.
The rosebush, he thought, where the flowers of lies had been plucked. No, he corrected as he moved toward it. More a tree, for it was taller than he was and spread wider than the span of both his arms. He ran his fingertips over the ice, found it smooth. Experimentally, he took the dagger from his belt, dragged its tip over the ice. It left no mark.
"It cannot be reached with force."
Kylar turned and saw Orna standing in the archway. "What of the rest? Why haven't the dead branches been cleared and used for fire?" he asked her.
"To do so would be to give up hope." She had hope still, and more when she looked into Kylar's eyes.
She saw what she needed there. Truth, strength, and courage.
"She walks here."
"Why would she punish herself in such a way?" he demanded.
"It reminds her, I think, of what was. And what is." But not, Orna feared, of what might be. "Once, when my lady was but eight, and the last of the dogs died, breaking her heart, she took her grandfather's sword. In her grief and temper, she tried to hack through that ice into the bush. For nearly an hour she stabbed and sliced and beat at it, and could not so much as scratch the surface. In the end, she went to her knees there where you stand now and wept as if she'd die from it. Something in her did die that day, along with the last of the dogs. I have not heard her weep since. I wish she would."
"Why do you wish for your lady's tears?"
"For then she would know her heart is not dead but, like the rose, only waiting."
He sheathed his dagger. "If force can't reach it, what can?"
She smiled, for she knew he spoke of the heart as much as the rose. "You will make a good king in your time, Kylar of Mrydon, for you listen to what isn't said. What can't be vanquished with sword or might can be won with truth, with love, with selflessness. She is in the stables, what is left of them. She wouldn't ask for your company, but would enjoy it."
The stables lined three sides of another courtyard, but this one was crisscrossed with crooked paths dug through or trampled into the snow. Kylar saw the reason for it in the small troop of children
waging a lively snow battle at the far end. Even in such a world, he thought, children found a way to be children.
As he drew closer to the stables, he heard the low cackle of hens. There were men on the roof, working on a chimney. They tipped their caps to him as he passed under the eaves and into the stables.
It was warmer, thanks to carefully banked fires, and clean as a parlor. The queen, he thought, tended her goats and chickens well. Iron kettles heated over the fires. Water for the stock, he concluded, made from melted snow. He noted barrows of manure. For use in her garden, he decided. A wise and practical woman, Queen Deirdre.
Then he saw the wise and practical woman, with her red hood tossed back, her gold hair raining down as she cooed up at his warhorse.
When the horse shook its great head and blew, she laughed. The rich female sound warmed his blood more thoroughly than the fires.
"His name is Cathmor."
Startled, embarrassed, Deirdre dropped the hands she'd lifted to stroke the horse's muzzle. She knew she shouldn't have lingered, that he would come check on his horse as it had been reported he did twice daily. But she'd so wanted to see the creature herself.
"You have a light step."
"You were distracted." He walked up beside her, and to her surprise and delight, the horse bumped his shoulder in greeting.
"Does that mean he's glad to see you?"
"It means he's hoping I have an apple."
Deirdre fingered the small carrot from her garden she'd tucked in her pocket.
"Perhaps this will do." She pulled it out, started to offer it to Kylar.
"He would enjoy being fed by a lady. No, not like that." He took her hand and, opening it, laid the carrot on her palm. "Have you never fed a horse?"
"I've never seen one." She caught her breath as Cathmor dipped his head and nibbled the carrot out of her palm. "He's bigger than I imagined, and more handsome. And softer." Unable to resist, she stroked her hand down the horse's nose. "Some of the children have been keeping him company. They'd make a pet of him if they could."
"Would you like to ride him?"
Books by Nora Roberts Page 333