Dominic cried a little when the bishop smeared the oil on his forehead, a snuffling wail that Safire rapidly shushed away. Merius thanked the bishop with a handshake and a promise of prayers for mercy and just guidance as was the custom. After Merius bowed and Safire curtsied in the direction of the royal pew, they stepped from the altar dais and proceeded down the aisle, all of us standing and filing out in their wake.
There came a hard tap on my shoulder as I went through the doorway leading to the rest of the palace. I glanced back, only to find Cyril glowering at me. He jerked his head to the left, indicating a small alcove where we had held secret meetings in the past. I followed him there. With a quick glance behind me to ensure we had no potential eavesdroppers, I whisked the alcove curtains closed as I turned to face Cyril.
"Should I summon Merius?" I asked, cocking one brow in a wry arch.
"What?" Cyril snarled.
"He said he wanted to be present if we decided to punch each other again. He fears we'll injure each other without his mediation."
Cyril regarded me silently for a moment before he suddenly brayed hoarse laughter. "He's a good lad."
"He has his moments."
"You've done a fine job with him, you know." Cyril's voice was gruff. "There are times I thought you two would kill each other, times I thought you were being too high-handed, times I wondered if he would ever finish rebelling and settle down. That's all past, though, and it proves my ambitions for him on the council well-placed."
"Thank you."
Cyril leaned closer and lowered his voice. "I'm particularly impressed with his choice of a wife. Admittedly, her family is of little consequence or wealth, and hasty matches such as theirs rarely lead to a good outcome. I can certainly understand your initial concerns--any father would have felt the same. But despite her lacks, she's proven herself a calming influence on him."
I smiled. "That she has."
"She's enchanting, really--I've never been around a woman with such a soothing manner." Cyril scratched his bald spot, musing over Safire. "I mean, after our fight, all she did was bathe my wounds, rub my shoulders, and talk to me for a few minutes, and I felt ready to return to the ball. The pain was gone."
I clasped my hands behind my back and glanced out the window at the peaked rooftops of Corcin jagged against the sky. I could have made a sarcastic comment about an old goat feeling undone at the mere touch of a young woman but thought the better of it. After all, I didn't need him rabid with rage and at my throat again. And saying too much else might reveal more about Safire's secret abilities than Cyril needed to know. "She has a sweet temper, I'll give her that," I remarked finally. "Merius did choose well, far better than I gave him credit for when they first met."
"And the way she handled Dominic today--I've never seen a babe so calm at a blessing ceremony. I wondered at first if she'd plied him with some of your whiskey." Cyril gave a weak chuckle before he stepped closer, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. "Say, did you see how His Grace looked at her?"
I merely nodded in response and waited for him to reveal his thoughts before I committed myself further.
"I didn't like the way he looked at her, Mordric," he continued when I didn't speak. "I didn't like it at all. He's never been one of those priests who I thought would breach his vows of chastity--he's rather too austere for even my tastes actually--but the way he looked at her . . ."
"Given that the bishop's influence is the reason King Arian now views carnal passion in marriage as a sin, I don't think it was lust, Cyril, if that's what you're implying." Good God, the old goat saw erotic perversion everywhere, even from that dry stick of a bishop. I wanted to shake my head and laugh but stopped myself. I suddenly realized I pitied him. Arilea and I had had many problems, but we had never denied each other in the bedchamber--she had been a passionate woman. Eden was a passionate woman. I had been fortunate in that regard. Cyril had not been so fortunate. Although a paragon of virtue and a good wife and mother, Lady Somners didn't strike me as hot-blooded. Their marriage had been for politics and straight procreation, not love, the only kind of marriage those zealots King Arian and His Grace now approved of. No wonder poor Cyril was so eager to find sins of the flesh around every corner.
"You don't think so?" Cyril lifted his brows, as if doubtful.
"No, what I saw is fear when he looked at her, almost as if she reminded him of someone he would rather forget."
"Well, fear or lust, I didn't like it. He better leave her alone, or he'll have me to answer to," Cyril declared in his forthright way.
I blinked, surprised and moved by his pronouncement. Whatever his faults, Cyril was loyalty personified. His deepening regard for Safire was an unexpected boon of our fistfight. United, Cyril and I had a great deal of influence over the council, and now that he had vowed to protect Safire, I could worry less about what might happen if she were ever charged with witchcraft. Even the bishop and King Arian's religious fervor to burn witches had to bow to vagaries of politics on occasion.
"Thank you," I said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Thank you, old friend."
Chapter Eighteen--Safire
Corcin, Eastern Cormalen
May, 2 years ago
When we reached the bottom of the steps to the front hall, Lady Rankin's fingers fluttered over her mouth in a dainty yawn. "Forgive me, Safire," she murmured. Her shadow swooped across the wall and ceiling, a dark tidal wave as she stretched her arms over her head and then leaned backward. "Springtime makes me sleepy."
"Me too," I said, yawning myself now that she had. "That's a lovely frock--nice spring colors." She wore a cornflower blue silken creation with coral braid outlining the seams and a rustling coral underskirt that flashed through the slashes of the overskirt whenever she moved. The colors offset her silvery-blondish hair and blue eyes nicely.
"Thank you." She beamed at me and held out a fold of the underskirt. "I wager this peachy shade would compliment your skin and hair."
I wondered about a light green and coral frock for myself--Merius loved how I looked in a certain naughty gossamer shift of the same colors. My cheeks grew hot at the thought, and I grinned. "I do believe you may be right, my lady."
"Tell Artemious not to stay too late," she said with a nod upstairs toward the studio where our husbands labored over Talus's journals.
I grimaced. "Sometimes I think they would spend all night on those dusty things if we didn't insist they go to bed."
"Well, Artemious has always been a nocturnal creature--I love the man dearly, but his odd habits have been the plague of my existence these last thirty years." She shook her head. "He never listens to my nagging anymore, but he might listen to yours. Remind him that even if he doesn't have to be at council tomorrow, Merius does."
"I will, my lady." We embraced each other, her refreshing lemon and verbena scent all around. I still hadn't decided if this scent was her favorite perfume or her aura, and I hadn't asked her for fear of confusing her. If it wasn't a perfume but her aura, she would think I was smelling phantom scents.
"Now don't forget tomorrow night's the ball." She waggled her finger at me. "I expect both you and Merius there--just because you've become parents doesn't mean you can't attend a ball and enjoy yourselves. Eden's always happy to let Elsa and Bridget watch Dominic in her rooms. Who knows, I might even manage to dust off Artemious in time for a dance myself. Now good night." She descended the steps to her waiting carriage, her scent wafting back to me on the balmy air like a citrus orchard in bloom. I waved, then shut the door with a sigh. Now that she was gone, Merius wanted me to help him and Rankin with Talus's musty ravings. I trudged up the steps and wondered if I could feign a headache. Certainly, the more I thought about those horrid journals and scrolls, the more likely my imagined headache would become a reality.
*Safire . . . Merius's mental tone rose and then fell on the last syllable of my name, a note of slight reproach.
Oh no, he had heard me. No feigning a headache now. I could ha
ve sworn I had him blocked, but stray thoughts seemed to slip through more easily since Dominic's birth. Like a dam gradually wearing down under a barrage of water, the barrier between our minds had always sprung occasional leaks that had to be patched. The storm of emotion Dominic had stirred up in both of us had overwhelmed that barrier in a flood, and now it seemed permanently weakened. I understood finally why we had first become aware of the mind bond when we fought after Sewell's birth. The arrival of a child heralded such strong emotions, the most intense emotions I had ever experienced--I had never felt so raw and exposed in my life as I had following the births of my sons. In this vulnerable state, it was impossible to maintain the usual barriers between myself and others, particularly when that other was Merius. Thank God he was such a good man--I couldn't imagine being bonded like this to anyone else. What if I had given in to my father's wishes and married Peregrine? I shuddered to think of it.
I pushed open the door to the studio. Lord Rankin glanced up at the creak of the hinges, his rheumy eyes brightening at the sight of me. "My dear Safire, thank goodness you're back. We have questions for you." He removed his spectacles and wiped them on his handkerchief, then dabbed at his eyes before he again donned the spectacles. He ended this ritual by blowing his nose loudly. "Sorry," he mumbled, the handkerchief billowing over most of his face as he sneezed again. "I always seem to have a cold in the spring. My eyes won't stop watering."
"Wonder if it has something to do with all the plants blooming. That dust they make--there's so much of it this year it's turning the air yellow. I can't imagine it's good for you to breathe in that stuff," Merius offered. He sat at the table sideways, his long legs stretched out as he wrote at a frantic pace. Dominic swayed on his lap. Merius's right hand was curled around Dominic's middle, supporting him as Dominic swiveled his head this way and that and examined everything with solemn eyes. I shut the door and slid on to the chair beside Merius.
At the scrape of the chair legs against the floorboards, Dominic's face turned toward me. "La!" he yelled. "La, la, la." Then he erupted in a gurgling laugh.
"Are you trying to say mama?" I lifted him from Merius's lap and sat him on mine. Although I should have long since been accustomed to it, his sturdy weight still surprised me. He seemed to grow stronger and heavier each time I picked him up, a seeming impossibility when I held him dozens of times in a single day. "You're getting to be a big boy."
He tilted his head up. "La?" he asked, his wine-colored aura darkening to a deep burgundy as he focused on my face.
"Ga, ma, sa," I responded, smoothing his flaxen hair from his forehead. It was so soft, like corn silk against my fingers.
"I wish you wouldn't do that, Safire," Merius said as he paused to dip his quill in the ink well.
"What?"
"If you keep talking to him in nonsense words, how's he going to learn proper speech?" Merius wrinkled his brow as he concentrated on the page before him, his aura twisting into a dark thread of pewter.
"Ga, ga, ga," Dominic contributed.
"No, sweetling. Papa says we must be proper. You can't say another word until you can speak in complete sentences, preferably all in words of three syllables or more."
"You witch--that's not what I said." Merius sounded stern, but I noticed his mouth turn up at the corners.
"Papa means for you to be a great orator. Or-at-or."
Dominic frowned. "Aw?"
"See?" Merius exclaimed, seizing on a single lisped syllable as the proof he needed. "I told you--he'll learn faster if you speak to him in proper words."
I giggled. "Ar, ar, ar!" I said to Dominic. "Sounds like a grumpy bear to me. Can you say bear?"
"Aw." He opened his small mouth wide around his attempt at the R sound. "Aw."
Rankin glanced up from the unfurled scroll in his hand and watched us with narrow-eyed fascination. "Do you know SerVerinese babies make almost the same sounds that he makes? Yet they'll grow up to speak vastly different languages. I wonder what would happen if you tried to teach him two or three languages at the same time when he's this age?"
"I don't know--he'd probably get a headache. Father had me learning Sarns and SerVerinese when I was six, and that's when my headaches started." Merius set aside the foolscap and propped his chin on his palm as he looked at me and Dominic. He reached out and touched Dominic's cheek, and Dominic grabbed his index finger.
"Be-ga, be-ge," Dominic said, so seriously that both Merius and I laughed. Then he started gnawing on Merius's fingertip.
"No, Dominic. Here." I found his toy of large joined wooden rings on the table and pressed one of the rings against his palm until his fingers fisted around it. He immediately abandoned Merius's finger and became engrossed with the rings, transferring them from hand to hand. He earnestly put each ring in his mouth like someone biting gold coins to test their authenticity. "He's such a suspicious creature--look at him. He's like a little miser testing his golden rings."
"He looks like Father," Merius muttered. "Good God."
"Goo-ga," Dominic repeated.
"Did you hear that?" I demanded, torn between laughter and cursing myself. "You have the gall to lecture me about teaching him poor speech habits, and then you turn around and swear in front of him?"
Merius lifted his brows. "At least I wasn't speaking in nonsense words and confusing him."
"My dear hypocrite." I giggled again. Merius's gaze met mine, his aura so bright suddenly it sparkled, and a sweet, intense silence passed between us, a lovely flame, an instant of pure, tingling warmth. Dominic angled his head up, his lips slightly parted as his eyes slowly traveled from me to Merius and then back to me.
"He senses our auras," I murmured. "Look at him--he's watching the colors together."
"I do believe you're right, love." Merius and I looked at each other again, a sudden chill of fear pricking my skin with tiny shards of ice.
Merius cleared his throat and abruptly glanced back at the journal page he'd been translating. Dominic resumed chewing on his rings--they clunked dully together as he tugged on them.
"Pardon me," Lord Rankin said when he sneezed again. "Did I hear you right, Safire? You said something about Dominic watching your auras?"
"Yes, my lord." My hand tightened around Dominic's sturdy torso. "I've thought he was a couple times before, but tonight is the first time I'm certain of it. It's just the way his eyes went from me to Merius when we weren't saying anything to each other."
"When do you first remember seeing auras? Is there ever a time that you remember not seeing them?"
"No. My first memory of my mother--there's this lavender light around her and the scent of lilacs."
"Did you say scent? Was she wearing perfume?"
I shook my head. "No, she wasn't wearing perfume. Some auras have color, some have scent, and some have both. Lady Rankin, for instance--whenever I'm with her, there are the scents of lemon and verbena, and my mind fills with this teal light--that's her aura. Really, the proper word when you're talking about auras isn't seeing or smelling. It's sensing."
Rankin leaned forward, intent as a hound on a scent. "Lemon, did you say?"
"Yes, and verbena."
He fell back in his chair as if someone had pushed him. "Fascinating," he muttered, staring up at the ceiling. "Fascinating. Do you know I smell lemons around Narie all the time? I never say anything to her about it anymore because all she does is laugh or make some wisecrack and secretly think I'm crazy instead of just eccentric." He gave me a piercing look. "I suppose that makes me a warlock."
I smiled. "Of a sort, I suppose."
"I wonder if what Talus refers to as weir elements could be interchangeable with auras?" Merius said slowly.
"In what way?" Rankin asked.
"According to Talus, the old ones needed to be exposed to their particular weir element to shift shape. What if they were never exposed to the right conditions? How would say," Merius paused, rifling through his journal until he found the proper page, "a weirfish know sh
e was a weirfish if she never entered salt water under the crescent moon? For that matter, how did they determine the proper elements for each kind of weirfolk to shift in the first place? They had to have some way of telling if someone was a weirwolf, a weirhorse, a weirhawk, what have you, before that man or woman ever shifted shape, didn't they? Perhaps there are clues in someone's aura to tell which particular element . . ."
"Slow down, lad." Rankin chuckled. "Perhaps the old ones had trials to determine which element was the correct one? They could have exposed themselves to each element until they shifted . . ."
"But there hasn't been a word about trials so far." Merius held up the battered volume he had translated almost to the end. Dust and a few bits of parchment fluttered loose from it, giving the candlelight a momentary grimy sheen. Rankin sneezed again, and I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable. My bare arms prickled as if some of the dust had settled on them and now ate into my skin like an insidious acid. I glanced at my forearms but saw nothing; still, I longed to scratch them. Dominic seemed to feel something too--he started wiggling, a quiet huff following each breath, a sure presage to one of his rare fussy fits.
After checking the floor all around us, I set him down on his rump. He rocked from side to side and pushed with his fists against the floor, scuttling almost all the way over to Merius's chair. He touched one of the chair rungs, methodically exploring every crevice and carved feature with his fingers. He had inherited his father's curiosity, but while Merius was slapdash, Dominic was obsessively careful, pondering every detail. I wondered what Sewell had been like at this stage--from what I had noticed when he was a newborn and what I had seen in my brief visions of him, he was restless, always squirming at confinement, nowhere near as cautious as Dominic. Dominic could already entertain himself by quietly observing us for far longer than I thought was normal for a babe only six months old. In comparison, Sewell seemed social and loud, demanding interaction with the nuns at the top of his little lungs. I ached to have him here, to raise him and Dominic together. Merius had promised as soon as Dominic was weaned and I was pregnant again that he would retrieve Sewell. After consulting with Mordric, he had even somehow gotten a secret message to the abbess, informing her of our plan so that she could be prepared when the time came . . .
Phoenix Ashes (The Landers Saga Book 3) Page 44