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Phoenix Ashes (The Landers Saga Book 3)

Page 8

by Nilsen, Karen


  “Did he teach you the sword?”

  “He taught me everything he could--even on his sickbed, he would pick up his sword and talk me through different maneuvers. A month after his death, I turned sixteen and joined the guard. It was the best way I knew to honor him--and irritate my own father.”

  “So you rebelled?”

  “In a way.” Father scratched his jaw. “Before he died, my grandsire passed something to me that I want to pass to you, Merius. I think you’re more than ready for it.” Abruptly he veered toward the stable, and I followed.

  Once inside, he went to the hooks along the far wall and found where Boltan had hung his saddlebags. Hunter whickered from a nearby stall and pawed at the ground, likely thinking Father was preparing for the ride home. Father pulled a thick oilskin packet from one of the saddlebags and handed it to me.

  “Careful,” he said as I started to undo the leather straps that bound the packet. “I haven’t opened that in years.”

  I nodded and stepped over toward the open doorway, where a patch of sunlight illuminated the shadows. The top flap of the packet opened with a dusty smell, the dust of old leather and parchment, the dust of libraries everywhere. Instinctively I inhaled as I did when I entered any library, breathed it in as if the dust were airborne knowledge. The first thing I pulled out was a small book, the leather covers aged to a brittle black. The binding was simple, with large, crude stitches crisscrossing each other haphazardly as if someone unfamiliar with sewing, a man perhaps, had mended it long ago. I gingerly opened the top cover, the ancient parchment inside crackling and whispering, ghost writing of those dead for hundreds of years. At first I had trouble deciphering the writing within--it had been written long before the printing press, and the letters were formed in the old style, with tails and curlicues in odd places.

  Sounding out the letters to myself, I finally read aloud, “JOURNAL OF TALUS, FIRST SON OF THE LANDERS LINEAGE, SECRET WARLOCK AND KEEPER OF THE UNSEEN FLINT. What?” I looked at Father.

  A shadow resembling a smirk crossed his mouth. “First son is what they called the head of the House at that time.”

  “I know that,” I said. “What I don’t know is what the rest of this means. Warlock? Keeper of the unseen flint?”

  “I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand what a warlock is. As for the unseen flint, that’ll become clear to you as you read the journal. You‘re a better scholar than I when it comes to ancient Corcin.”

  “Was this Talus off kilter or what?”

  “Not a bit. He served on King Cainwulf the First’s privy council and led a battalion to war, all the while holding together the feuding factions of the Landers peasants.”

  “And he was a warlock, in the way that . . . that Safire is a witch?”

  “Surely you don’t think that she’s the only one in Cormalen history to possess such talents?”

  “No, but it seems farfetched that the Landers would have such a history and no one would be aware of it.”

  “I’m aware of it--you’re aware of it now. It’s a history that’s been kept secret, a secret that’s been passed from father to son in the form of these papers and journals for hundreds of years. I imagine the other ancient families--the Somners, the Casians--also possess such papers, if they weren‘t destroyed during the witch hunts. The old ones were all warlocks and witches, and their blood is still strong--just look at your wife.”

  “But I thought all the old ones had been killed when the Sarneth lords overran Cormalen. There were so many Sarneth fighters and so few natives that the Sarneth forces slaughtered them all, even the women . . .”

  “Merius, forget what you’ve been taught--common sense should tell you there is no such thing as a so-called total invasion. There are always some of the vanquished who escape the blade, either through wits or brawn or dumb luck. And according to Talus’s journal, the witch women were fair to look upon and used their talents to lure men. Do you think those Sarneth lords could resist taking witch concubines? I wager there are few men who could bring themselves to kill a woman like Safire, especially if she hid her more unnatural abilities.”

  “So that’s where it comes from,” I murmured, stirring up straw dust as I began to pace. “And that’s why Cormalen fears such talents, to the point of burning innocents at the stake. There are few conquerors who can tolerate the strengths of the vanquished and keep power.”

  “You’re in a unique position to appreciate the need for secrecy. You can imagine if this had fallen into the hands of a rogue like my father or a fool like Selwyn. Pick your heir well, Merius, when the time comes.”

  “Father, you have decades left, with your constitution. Why give this to me now?”

  “Remember what you promised Lord Rankin on the ship, about how you and Safire would help him with his studies? This is an excellent start.”

  I glanced at the packet--a strange and bloody past lived in these scraps of brittle parchment and leather, and I felt an odd power just holding them. “Thank you.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  That evening after Father left, Safire and I sat in the long front chamber. She used it for sketching and painting during the day, as the large windows lining the wall provided ample light. Now that it was dark outside, she reclined on the window seat near the hearth, one hand behind her head as she read Sirach’s Comedy by Candlelight. Her occasional chortle punctuated the silence, a welcome distraction from the parchment before me. I was supposed to be composing the rest of my letters but found my gaze wandering to the oilskin packet of journals and scrolls Father had given me. Unseen flint--what had Talus of Landers meant by that exactly? I assumed he had some warlock spell for making fire, but how did it work? Did he have to be touching whatever object he wished to set on fire? Or could he light a spark from a distance? Or did it depend on the recipient and situation, the way Safire’s talents did sometimes? She could take away my pain with her thoughts alone because of the mind bond, but she had to be physically touching others to do the same. And how would her talents work with our children? Could she soothe their crying with a mere thought? No wonder our mind bond fascinated King Rainier and Lord Rankin.

  I looked down and realized I had dripped blotches of ink all over the letter to my cousin and mentor Cyril of Somners. “Damn it,” I muttered, propping the quill pen in the ink well. I crumpled up the parchment, my frustration causing Safire to glance away from the book.

  “What is it?”

  “Just these damn letters.”

  She pulled a cushion from behind her head and tossed it to the floor before she settled back, her eyes fixed on me. “Do you really have to finish them tonight? Couldn’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  I chuckled. “You’re a bad influence.”

  She grinned and returned to her book. I reached for the oilskin packet, dust tickling my nose as I pulled out the topmost journal. The leather binding was so old that it crumbled to sticky grime at my touch. I leafed through the ragged pages. In places the script had faded to vague curlicues and flourishes, too obscure to make out by candlelight. Damn it. My curiosity thwarted, I finally set aside the journal with reluctance. I would do better to try reading it during the afternoon when Safire painted here--the sunlight that flooded this chamber then would reveal whatever could be gleaned from these words written by hands long since withered to dust in their graves.

  “That’s a grim thought, love,” Safire said, not looking up from her book.

  “You think so? It heartens me, that something I write or build might last long after I do.” I rested my chin on one palm as I toyed with my seal ring.

  “Last long after you do? The essence of you never dies, Merius, just your body.” She glanced up, then back down at the Sirach book before she flipped a page.

  “Your faith is so certain?”

  She finally gave up, setting the book down and meeting my gaze. “Isn’t yours?”

  “Sometimes. Other times, I don’t know.”

  “How can
you say that, after what we’ve experienced together, after what you’ve witnessed me do? Physical reality can be manipulated--our mind bond alone proves that.”

  “So it can be manipulated--does that make it any less real?”

  “Of course not, but the body is only the shell, not the essence. The essence can‘t be manipulated. The essence is the whole truth, not the surface half-truth of tangible things.”

  “What if you can’t separate it like that?”

  “But we have. When we sense each others’ auras, thoughts--what does that have to do with the physical realm?” She straightened, her hands lifted, fingers outstretched, as if she hoped to capture this essence she spoke of and clutch it to her.

  “We’re using our physical being when we sense those things about each other,” I retorted. “And when I dream--it feels like my body, my senses are operating in the dream world. But when I wake up, that’s reality.”

  “And where do these dreams come from, if not your essence, the essence of all living things? You sense things in these dreams that you could never sense in the waking world, places that your body has never traveled to. But your soul has, and your soul will continue to travel in the dream world long after your body dies in the waking world. Your soul will travel forever, Merius.” She settled back on the cushions with a huff, her gaze turned to the window, the reflection of the chamber broken into small diamond panes. Her thoughts were a hazy jumble of confusing images, like they were sometimes when she painted and visualized strange things, and I knew she wasn’t seeing the reflection of the chamber but what lay beyond. The future perhaps, the great-great-grandchildren we would never live to see. Or maybe she saw the past, the ancestors who now only lived in journals and scrolls. Witch.

  “You’re half there now, aren’t you? Sometimes I think you’re all there, in this dream world you speak of.” Not looking at her, I spun the seal ring, and it clattered against the table. “Sometimes I wonder if you’ll lure me away there, and neither one of us will ever come back. And other times I worry you’ll go there forever, and I won’t be able to follow.”

  A trembling silence hung in the air after my words. “That’s melancholy, dear heart,” she said finally, still staring at the window, her arms clutched tightly together. “So you believe in my essence, believe that I’ll exist after I die, but you don’t believe the same for yourself?” She turned to meet my gaze then, so suddenly I started. “I thought you were more logical than that.” She stood and stretched before heading for the door. “I’m going to prepare my bath--join me when you‘re better company,” she threw over her shoulder, the door shutting with a sharp snick behind her.

  I sighed and pushed my chair back. Hands fisted in pockets, I wandered around the chamber, considered peeking under the drape concealing Safire’s latest canvas, then thought the better of it. The witch would probably know I had touched it somehow and think I was trying to contaminate it with my melancholy aura. I snorted. What was so wrong with longing for solid reality after floating around in the wispy witch ether? She might be able to spend all her time in the clouds, but one of us had to stay rooted in the world of the here and now.

  I found myself in the corner of the chamber where I had started constructing a kite. Several days ago, I had gone out into the woods and gathered maple saplings. These I tillered until they were half inch thick staves. Then I bent the staves and tied the ends to an old bed frame so that they would curve into gentle arcs to form the ribs of the kite. Eventually I hoped to fly the kite on the parapet at court to see how my curved design worked and to test the wind currents before I built my big glider.

  The irony of my irritation at Safire’s flights of fancy when I hoped to build myself bird wings struck me, and I grinned to myself. I bent down and ran my hand lightly over the surface of one of the staves. A small, sharp pain shot through my finger. Damn, a splinter. I drew my dagger and quickly removed the miniscule sliver. Then I examined the staves again, this time being careful not to touch them. They shouldn’t be so splintery. How were bows made so smooth? Jared Rivers’s bows never cracked or splintered. Jared--I should ask him how he made his bows, perhaps even show him my kite. He might be intrigued by it--he enjoyed making things and had the skillful hands of a fifth-generation born craftsman. Too bad he was so settled on the Landers estate. He would have made an interesting steward.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “You’re still brooding,” came Safire’s whisper in the darkness as she slid back into our bed. It was midnight, and I had been pretending sleep for the last hour. Why I bothered pretending anything with her anymore was a mystery, except out of force of habit--Father had trained me to conceal my unease with a combination of clever acting and just plain stoicism, and his training died hard, even with my witch wife who knew everything. So I sighed. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t sleep, save that I had vague misgivings about returning to court. I had been in the guard for well over a year, and I was accustomed to activity and excitement. How would I manage sitting for half a day at a time in the council chamber without growing so restless and bored that I missed something? It had happened before, when I had been an apprentice councilor and had not yet rebelled against Father by joining the guard. I remembered incurring his wrath with my inability to concentrate during long debates. I would start sketching or writing verse on my council notes, only to find that I had missed whole speeches. Of course, it wasn’t like I had trouble following the gist of what was said, even when I didn‘t hear most of it--these men could talk for hours about nothing, their pompous speeches overblown canopies of rhetoric, puffed up by far too much empty air. But Father had thought I missed things, stupid little details, really, but he took pains with such details, and expected me to do the same. Well, things were different now. I was my own man now, and he could worry with his damned details himself. The muscles drew tight in my shoulders as I clutched my arms together and hunkered down into my pillow. It was going to be another one of those nights when I pursued sleep like it was an adversary to be conquered and slain.

  “Merius,” Safire whispered, her cool hands on my shoulders. “Love, what is it? You’re all closed off, even from me.”

  “Go to sleep, sweetheart--we’ll talk in the morning.”

  She ran her fingers over my skin, between my shoulder blades and down to end of my backbone. She repeated this several times, her fingernails tickling, and I swallowed when she said, “I know a cure for brooding.”

  “Do you?” I turned over suddenly and yanked her to me.

  “Can you sleep now?” she whispered some time later.

  “I love you.” I pressed my lips to her temple, her hair smelling of turpentine from her paint brushes, soap from her bath, and charred cedar, that mysterious scent that was pure Safire.

  “Oh dear heart.” She nestled against me. “I love you too.”

  There was a long pause before I said, my voice quiet, “I never dreamt of a wife like you.”

  “Really?”

  “Father’s lectures made marriage sound dull, a necessary duty.”

  “A duty?” I could hear the smile in her voice. “Is that what we share in this bed--a duty?”

  “I suppose some duties are less onerous than others, though perhaps I’m too demanding a husband.”

  “I live to be demanded by you, love.” Her voice was deep and throaty, a voice for the dark.

  I ran my hand over her shoulder and down her arm, marveling at the smooth feel of her. Her skin was so fine and translucent that she glowed, a pearl witch. After she had fallen asleep beside me, I stayed awake for awhile, staring at the monster shadows of furniture in the moonlight. Father had taught me that a man married a woman only to sire legitimate heirs, that love was a weak emotion, but I realized now that he had taught me that only because of his own fear. My love for Safire had made me more of a man, not less of one, something Father himself had said once in not so many words. I had never expected that she and I would come to this point, this marriage where we spent hours durin
g the day together and every night in each others’ arms. That such fortune could be mine had seemed impossible not too long ago. The shadows lurking in the back of my mind had whispered that if I loved her, I should expect to lose her, and soon at that. But perhaps, just maybe, that wouldn’t happen. Perhaps I could allow myself to hope without fear. So I pulled her as close as I dared, my face in the sweetness of her hair, the shadows in the chamber and the shadows in my mind fading away as I fell into pleasant dreams.

  Chapter Four--Mordric

  Landers Hall, Silmer Province, Eastern Cormalen

  March, 3 years ago

  In the event that a man is observed poaching, all gamekeepers in Silmer Province have the right--nay, the duty--to kill said man on sight. However, after the incident last month when a gamekeeper from the Sullay lands shot alleged poacher Feyril Styles on a public road, I have reflected on this matter and determined . . . I paused, set down the pen, and shook my hand, which was starting to cramp.

  Damn Sullay. A year ago, having too much coin and too little sense, he had bought half the Arlan forest in Silmer Province for a hunting lodge--he needed at least four gamekeepers just to watch the boundaries. Before this, the land had belonged to the crown. Both King Arian and I had turned a blind eye to the peasants who trapped and fished there. The king rarely visited Arlan, preferring his holdings further south for the hunt, and it would have been more trouble than it was worth to keep men there to guard game that would never grace the king‘s table.

  Since Sullay’s invasion, I had had a small war on my hands. Every month, some peasant or yeoman lost his life to Sullay’s overzealous gamekeepers. Sullay didn’t comprehend the subtleties of owning a forest. Certainly, I had ordered poachers killed who breached the boundaries of the Landers estate--but only if those poachers were unknown to the gamekeeper and took more game than they and their families could eat in a few days. As the head provincial minister, I had surreptitiously imposed this same practice across the major estates of the province. However, Sullay was too dense and greedy to understand a surreptitious imposition, so I would have to try a blunter approach.

 

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