Fire of the Soul

by Speer, Flora

  “My fealty to King Audemer ended with his death,” Garit noted. “I pledged myself to King Henryk when he granted Castle Auremont to me. That oath still holds.”

  “And since you risked your life three years ago for King Henryk against the traitor, Walderon, Henryk cannot doubt your loyalty,” Lady Elgida added. “So, you are a Kantian no longer, eh? I don’t know whether to be proud of your good sense, or angry with you for leaving my littlest grandchildren to fend for themselves amongst barbarians. You ought to be their guardian. What news have you of young Belai and Kinen?”

  “While I was still in Calean City, I questioned the new emissary about the boys,” Garit said. “According to him, Fenella has become friendly with King Dyfrig’s queen and has used her influence in her sons’ behalf. My brothers are royal pages now.”

  “Well, I suppose that can be counted a good thing, though association with the Kantian nobles cannot improve their characters. And I do question whether they will be safe, since their mother is far from wise. Much depends on Fenella’s new husband. Who is he?”

  “My stepmother has married a Sapaudian exile who pledged his fealty to Dyfrig while he was still only Prince of the Northern Border,” Garit said. “When Dyfrig became king of Kantia, Sir Mallory traveled to Kantia with him, as did many other young nobles from several lands. Quite a few of those men have been granted estates in Kantia and some, like Sir Mallory, have wed Kantian heiresses. From the few, discreet complaints the emissary revealed to me, I gather the native Kantians resent the newcomers.”

  Stunned into immobility by this unexpected news, Calia felt the sudden, wild pounding of her heart. If only she could move her limbs so she could run from the hall. But even if her legs would carry her, she dared not flee. She must stay at the table. She owed that much to Lady Elgida.

  “I see,” Lady Elgida murmured, apparently unaware of Calia’s discomfort at Garit’s revelations. “Well, what’s done at the behest of a king is not to be questioned, only accepted. I must remember that Fenella needed to protect her lambs against those vile Kantian wolves, who think nothing of murdering children if they see a chance to seize a useful fortress. Since you say you don’t want Kinath for yourself, I suppose it’s just as well for the castle to go to young Belai.

  “What do you know of this Sir Mallory?” Lady Elgida then asked. “I would like to learn more about him. I’d be happier if I could be certain my grandsons are safe in his custody.”

  Calia was sitting still and silent beside Garit. He glanced at her before answering his grandmother, as if he wanted to be sure she hadn’t left the hall. She wished she could leave, but she remained incapable of moving. Her earlier image returned to her mind; like a bird in a snare, unable to help herself, she awaited her fate. She wondered just how much Garit knew about her and whether he was toying with her as her brother used to do.

  “I know nothing beyond what King Dyfrig’s emissary told me,” Garit said.

  “I will want to think about all of this.” Lady Elgida took a last sip of wine from her silver cup before she rose from the table. “Calia, will you see me to bed, please? No, Mairne, stay where you are and enjoy the rest of your pudding. You needn’t attend me this evening.

  “I have some particular instructions for Calia. Garit, my lad, you may sit up as long as you like, but I am an old lady and I need my rest.”

  With that, she headed for the steps to the solar and her bedchamber beyond, leaving Garit to stare after her in astonishment that she would ever admit to weariness. Unless she wasn’t tired at all, but wanted to escape from further discussion of his foolish stepmother and her new husband.

  Garit watched Calia follow in silence, with her head bowed. She hadn’t looked at him, nor bid him a good night. He saw Mairne gaping open-mouthed at her mistress’s departing back and he guessed she was as surprised by Lady Elgida’s abrupt departure as he was. Then he noticed Anders looking at him and when their glances met, Anders winked. Garit relaxed a little, knowing that Anders would question Mairne so cleverly that she’d never realize she was giving up information. Hiding a smile, certain he’d soon learn what secrets were being kept at Saumar Manor, Garit pulled his trencher closer and began to eat again.

  Chapter 3

  “Shut the door, Calia, and latch it,” Lady Elgida commanded. “I want to speak with you in private and without any interruptions.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Calia did as ordered, then stood waiting with her hands clasped at her waist.

  “Oh, do sit down, child.” With a look of impatience Lady Elgida gestured to a stool set next to the low brazier where a small fire burned. On the other side of the brazier and close to its warmth a chair with a back and wide arms awaited the mistress of Saumar. Striding past the large, blue-curtained bed that took up most of the room, Lady Elgida sank into the embroidered woolen cushions that padded the back and seat of the chair. She placed a hand on each arm and her feet on a low footstool.

  Calia thought the posture made her appear rather like a queen who was considering what punishment to decree for a recalcitrant subject. Her next words offered little comfort to Calia’s frayed emotions.

  “Sit down,” Lady Elgida repeated, “and stop wringing your hands like a martyr who’s about to be sent to the scaffold.”

  Calia sat, but her hands seemed to flutter of their own accord, so she folded them in her lap and tried not to wring them.

  “Now, what do you want to tell me?” Lady Elgida demanded.

  “Tell you? My lady, I thought you said you wanted to speak with me.”

  “I should have said that I want to listen to you.” Lady Elgida fixed her gaze on Calia’s face and Calia stared back, feeling once again like a snared bird, only this time her wings fluttered helplessly against the net as she sought a way to escape. She knew she was wringing her hands, but she could not stop the motion.

  “Speak!” Lady Elgida ordered. “Or, by the heavenly blue sky above us, I’ll turn you out of Saumar this very night, and Mairne with you.”

  “My lady, please, Mairne knows very little about my past. She is not to blame.”

  “And you are to blame? For what? What have you done, Calia?”

  “It’s not what I’ve done, but what I haven’t done. It’s who I am. Mairne had nothing to do with this. I know I should have told you everything on the first day I came to Saumar. But I liked you at once and I wanted to stay. I could see that Mairne wanted to stay, too. Neither of us could bear the thought of returning to Talier Beguinage. It’s not that anyone there was ever cruel to us, just that neither Mairne nor I belonged at Talier. Neither of us has the proper vocation for the work the lady mages do there, nor does Mairne have any Power at all.

  “So I delayed giving the explanation you deserved,” Calia went on. “I promised myself that I’d confess everything soon, in a day, or a week, after you and I knew each other better, after I’d thought of a way to make you understand. But time went on and still I kept quiet, until finally it seemed to me that if I did tell you, you’d be angry at all I’d kept from you for so long. I beg you to believe I’m sorry now that I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  “Will you stop dithering, girl? This is most unlike you. Come to the point.”

  Those exasperated words from Lady Elgida brought Calia’s floundering attempts at an apology to a halt. The time for excuses and delays was over.

  “To begin at the beginning, I am illegitimate,” she said.

  “You’ve made no secret of it,” Lady Elgida replied with some lingering exasperation. “In any case, Adana included that information in the letter she had you deliver to me when you first arrived here. I haven’t raised the subject with you because, until now, the unfortunate circumstance of your birth has made no difference to me.”

  “It would make a difference if you knew who my parents were.” Calia paused, waiting for a response. When none came, she drew a long breath and continued. “My mother was a certain Lady Casilde, wife of an elderly Sapaudian lord who was often at King He
nryk’s court at Calean City. That’s where she met my father. He told me once that she was young and very beautiful, while her husband was so old and infirm that he could barely walk.

  “According to my father, Lady Casilde was so eager for a man’s embrace that he didn’t have to seduce her. He said she threw herself at him. Considering what I now know about my father, I’m not sure that was the true version of my conception. I can’t be certain that anything he ever said to me was the truth.”

  “You knew your father, then?”

  “Barely. I used to think I was fortunate that he acknowledged me. Some fathers just abandon illegitimate children, especially girls. My mother’s husband died shortly after I was born and she quickly remarried. I’ve been told she wanted nothing to do with me.” Calia took a moment to think about that. Deciding her own emotions were irrelevant to the discussion, she continued, “When I was six years old the wet nurse who had fostered me in her own home died. That was when my father took me to his castle and left me there in the care of the seneschal’s wife.”

  “From what you’ve said so far, he seems to have been a surprisingly caring parent.”

  Calia smothered a cynical laugh. Her father hadn’t cared at all; he’d just kept her in reserve against the day when he could use her for his own purposes, the way he’d used Mallory; the same way that Mallory had used her for years as his unacknowledged chatelaine and personal spy.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Lady Elgida said as if she could hear Calia’s thoughts. “The brother who sent you to Talier Beguinage against your wishes.”

  “I begged him to keep me with him. But Mallory has his own purposes, his own ambitions. In that, he is much like our father. My tears and all my pleas meant nothing to him.”

  “Mallory,” Lady Elgida repeated. Her gaze on Calia was so alert that the younger woman knew she dared not prevaricate, though she wished she could evade this particular truth.

  “Sir Mallory of Catherstone,” Calia said. “He is six years older than I, our father’s bastard by one of the castle women. Mallory was trained and knighted by our father and kept at Catherstone as a household knight. Later, our father made him seneschal of Catherstone after the old seneschal and his wife retired to their own small holding. Fortunate old souls, to be safely away from Catherstone when the blows fell. Fortunate to escape the shame.” She fell silent then, swallowing hard, blinking away the tears.

  “Don’t stop now. Tell me all of it,” Lady Elgida said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “Every bit, every detail. You need to speak the words out loud.”

  “You know!” Sudden comprehension tore the tears from Calia’s eyes and melted the lump in her throat that threatened to stop her breath. “All this time, since I first came here, you have known. And you never said a word.”

  “Did you imagine that Adana would send you to me without revealing something so important? What do you think was in that letter you carried to me from her, if not the entire truth?”

  “All this time and you never said – never hinted-” Calia stammered her way to a confused halt.

  “I have been waiting for you to trust me enough to tell me,” Lady Elgida said.

  “I do trust you. And I love you as I would have loved my mother, if only I had known her,” Calia cried. “But lately I’ve been afraid you’d cast me out if I confessed everything.”

  “Then you do not trust me at all. You disappoint me, child, if you think no better of me than that.”

  “I have been so afraid. First my mother, then my father, and then Mallory – no one wanted me. I feared you wouldn’t want me, either.” She did not add what Lady Elgida surely already knew, that if she were forced to leave Saumar, she’d have no place to go.

  “The time has come for me to hear the rest of it from your own lips,” Lady Elgida said. “Now, Calia; this very moment. Speak your father’s name. I’ll wager you haven’t said it aloud since the terrible news reached Catherstone.”

  Calia had to draw several deep breaths before she could pronounce the hated name and admit her dreadful parentage.

  “My father was Walderon, the lord of Catherstone. Almost four years ago he abducted my two cousins – my legitimate lady cousins who were both heiresses – and ordered the murder of one of them, so he could inherit her estates. That girl’s name was Chantal and she was secretly betrothed to your grandson, Garit.”

  “I know.” Lady Elgida’s expression was inscrutable. “Go on, Calia.”

  “Walderon almost succeeded in killing the other girl, Jenia, when she learned of his traitorous scheme to assist an invasion from the Dominion. Fortunately, Jenia was rescued by Garit and his best friend. Thanks to the three of them, my father was captured, tried, and then executed for treason and murder.”

  “I am glad you finally found the courage to speak.” Lady Elgida sat looking at her, a half smile curling her lips.

  “But I haven’t told you everything yet,” Calia whispered.

  “I didn’t think you had.”

  “Catherstone was confiscated by the crown.”

  “The estates of traitors are always confiscated.”

  “Mallory and I were turned out of our home, with just the clothing on our backs, though we had known nothing of our father’s schemes.”

  “Are you sure Mallory didn’t know?”

  “I – oh, dear Lady Elgida, as heaven is my witness, I am not certain. He may have known and not told me. I’ve come to realize since we parted that Mallory always kept something from me. It was his way of holding power over me, by keeping me in ignorance.”

  “Rather like his father, I suspect.”

  “Yes, sadly.” Calia drew another long, shaky breath as she considered how to explain a relationship that was half fear and half desperate love, for she’d had no one else to love. “I do not trust Mallory. He frightens me.”

  “How?” Lady Elgida’s gaze sharpened. “Did he beat you?”

  “Occasionally, he’d slap me. I’ve seen other men do much worse to their womenfolk. But after our father was executed and word came that Catherstone was confiscated to the crown, Mallory became very cold and hard. Every bit of kindness seemed leached out of his heart – what little kindness he’d had to begin with. So, he ignored my protests and left me at Talier Beguinage. Then he hied off across the sea to the northern border of Kantia, there to insinuate himself into Prince Dyfrig’s court, knowing that Dyfrig would be the next king of Kantia. And now we learn that Mallory has wed Garit’s stepmother.”

  Calia stopped then, uncomfortably aware of Lady Elgida’s tense silence and of the way her aged hands clutched at the arms of her chair. The silence went on and on, until Calia wanted to scream at her companion to say something, anything. When the question came, it was the one she expected, and she was prepared for it.

  “Do you think he married her deliberately?” Lady Elgida asked.

  “I do not doubt it for a moment,” Calia answered. “Knowing Mallory, I think he assessed the situation and made clever, innocent-seeming suggestions. In the end, King Dyfrig probably imagined the marriage idea was his alone. I know you are not overfond of Lady Fenella, but I pity her, bound as she now is to Mallory and his ambition.”

  “She could have refused to wed your brother. Kantian women do have that right.”

  “I wonder if any woman can withstand Mallory’s will,” Calia said. “He may have convinced her that he loves her.”

  “Fenella’s mistakes are her own. Let her deal with the results of them,” Lady Elgida said. “What concerns me is the welfare of my grandsons. Could Mallory want Kinath Castle for his own? Perhaps he sees his marriage to Fenella and his holding of the castle as a form of revenge against Garit. Calia, is your brother capable of murder?”

  Calia caught her breath at the question. She started to shake her head, to deny the possibility, until she recalled unexplained deaths at Catherstone and knew that she had to be completely honest. The lives of two children could be at stake, and perhaps Lady Fenella’s lif
e, too.

  “I am sorry to say that Mallory can be vicious when he’s crossed,” she admitted. “If someone stood in the way of something he wanted very badly, then I fear he’d have no scruples at all.”

  “Someone like a boy, or two boys, whose continued existence would prevent him from claiming a large, strong fortress as his own by right of marriage?” Lady Elgida insisted.

  “Yes, my lady,” Calia whispered, thinking again of those deaths at Catherstone. “But Mallory is clever, and patient, too. He’d wait until he could make the deaths seem to be accidents, or the result of perfectly natural illness. Oh, I am ashamed to admit this about my own kin. Truly, my blood is tainted by murder and treason.” She bowed her head under the weight of that terrible heritage.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “What? I?” Calia’s head came up again until she met Lady Elgida’s gaze straight on. “No, my lady. The thought of taking a life – no! Never!”

  “Then I don’t understand why you should feel shame. You are not responsible for your brother’s secret intentions whatever they may be, or for his actions. Or for your father’s actions, either, come to that. Now, tell me, does Mallory write to you?”

  “He doesn’t know how to write. He is a knight and thinks of himself as a great warrior. To his mind, reading and writing are pastimes suitable only for mages and women.”

  “Then, he’s a great fool. Which is not to deny that he’s shrewd and could be dangerous. Thank you, Calia. You have added greatly to the information that Adana sent me. Now, I must consider all you’ve told me and decide what I ought to do.”

  “We cannot be absolutely certain about Mallory’s intentions,” Calia said, feeling that one last word in behalf of her only blood kin was called for.

  “Whatever your brother is, you are not a fool. Don’t pretend to be one,” Lady Elgida snapped. “Despite your reluctance to admit it, we do have a fair idea of what Mallory intends. I expect that he will do what his father did in a similar situation, when Walderon saw the chance of gaining land and wealth by eliminating two young and innocent souls.