The Darkling Hills

by Lori Martin

  “Almost. The sash is catching. It’s too big all over. Where did you get them?”

  “From the washrooms. They’re both stained. Some laundry boy will be in trouble if we don’t get them back tomorrow.”

  Rendell grunted. A small sin on a Hill before the temple, then a crime beyond crimes, and now he was a petty thief. “Now what?”

  “This way. If we meet anyone, stay in front and hide me. Will anyone here know you?”

  “No.”

  A murmur of voices, two more passageways, a passing couple, a knot of servants sharing a joke.

  “Oh no, I know that councilor. No, don’t, he’s seen you. I’ll go this way. Go left, left, right, and then left again to the doors. I’ll meet you there. Pray you don’t meet Ahnii – that’s his family’s colors you’ve got on.”

  The councilor’s eyes flickered at him as he went by. Rendell nodded. I’m just a younger son, new and unknown at court, don’t notice me. And don’t tell old Ahnii he’s got an addition to the family ranks. Left, left – right – where are the doors? There. “Lilli?”

  “Shhh! Here. Over here.”

  It was even darker; Lilli knew the labyrinth well. “But it’s foolhardy,” he said out loud.

  “Will you hush! We’re just a loving couple, strolling – take my arm. This way.”

  They turned the corner too fast. The hallway was guarded. The man paced up and down, with a serving girl who had fallen into step beside him. At first they turned their backs to Lilli and Rendell, but then they started to turn again. The girl was giggling.

  “Ohhh,” Lilli whistled between her teeth and flung her arms around Rendell’s neck. He staggered back against the wall, his face in her hair.

  “Here now!” the guard called gruffly. “This is no place for that. This is the palace, you fools.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Rendell said, breathless.

  “Take yourselves off!”

  They disentangled, Lilli keeping her face averted in assumed embarrassment. She knew the voice. She prodded Rendell down the corridor.

  “Not that way, you halfwits – you’ll be blundering into the relas’s apartments in a minute!”

  Lilli whispered something. “I’m sorry,” Rendell flung back over his shoulder. “Is there another door here?”

  “Yes, but you shouldn’t be –”

  “Thank you so much!” They turned again, out of sight if not out of hearing. The girl’s voice floated to them. “Don’t be so cross, Kar. Let them go.”

  “One more, I think,” Lilli said. “And the worst.”

  They peered out, to the wide staircase leading up to Dalleena’s rooms. At the bottom stood another guard, straight and alert. Ten torches glowed brightly.

  “I’m not going to knock a conscientious man on the head for doing his duty.”

  “Of course not. As if there wasn’t enough commotion without an unknown man breaking into the relas’s apartments! I think I can distract him.”

  “I don’t understand it,” Rendell said in indignation. “It’s too easy to get this close. The security’s almost worthless. What if we were assassins?’

  “It’s been so quiet for so long, I guess we’re all getting lax. I was counting on it. But we’re not there yet – he knows me very well, but what can I say about my robe?”

  Before he could answer she had vanished. He looked around, mystified. Directly across from him, to the left of the guard, was a second passage. She appeared in it suddenly, and called to the guard.

  At first the man stiffened, then he saw who it was. He took his hand from his sword belt.

  “My robe’s caught. Can you see what it is?

  He left his position to go to her. “Something on the bottom? I’m stuck.” The man knelt.

  Rendell slid quickly out of the shadows and headed as soundlessly as possible for the stairs.

  “Thank you so much.”

  He reached the first step and started up, as Lilli’s voice grew louder. “Yes, I know, so ridiculous –” Two doors faced him. He had never been in her apartments. If she had a servant around, sleeping nearby –

  Lilli had embarked on a complicated story of a servant’s mistake and the switching of her robe with someone else’s. The guard was having trouble making sense of it. Her voice pitched upward in loud agreement. “But you’re right! That’s right, it’s right!”

  With his hand on the left-hand door, Rendell stopped.

  “Absolutely right –”

  He went straight in the right-hand door, feeling reckless.

  Dalleena lay stretched out across her bed, the coverlet in a heap at her feet. There was little moonlight, but someone had left three small candles burning. One flickered beside the bed. Rendell paused, looking down at her.

  Her hair floated among the sheets, dark night sky with a few summer stars twinkling in the glow of the candle’s flame. With a knife-edged pang he realized he had never before seen her sleeping.

  “What else have I missed of you,” he whispered, “and now may never know?”

  With great tenderness he leaned over the bed, mouthing her name. The thin strap of her sleeping gown had fallen to the curve of her elbow.

  “Dalleena?”

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she blinked up at him, trying to see the face in the darkness. For a moment she was incredulous; then a rush of joy came up in her and she said radiantly, “Rendell! You’re here!”

  She threw her arms around him, and they held each other. With his mouth buried in her hair and neck he murmured, “Lilli managed it, but never mind how.”

  “I needed you so much,” she choked.

  He pulled away just enough to sit beside her on the sheets. “It’s been terrible for you.”

  Dalleena shook her head. “I think it’s worse for you.”

  “Not likely,” he said with bitterness. “No one’s bothering me. No one’s criticizing me or questioning me. I’m not sick and frightened and hiding in my rooms, without any support or help from the person equally responsible.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” she scolded, but clung to him. “It proves what I said; it’s worse for you.” She pushed a lock of his hair from his eyes, stroking his forehead. “You must be so lonely. I’m not alone.”

  “You mean Lilli –”

  “No. I mean the child.”

  Rendell reached out a tentative hand to her slightly rounded stomach. Suddenly he collapsed against her.

  “Is it going to be all right? Are you certain it’ll be all right?”

  “Oh, I’m not certain of much anymore, the gods know it. But there are still two things I’m sure about. And one of them is that this child is the will of Nialia.” She held him. “And that means it has to be all right.”

  They slid down, lying across the bed, still clutching each other. Dalleena rested her cheek against his chest. He played with her hair.

  “Dalleena? What’s the second thing you’re certain about?”

  She lifted her face to him, laughing. “You say it to me.”

  “I love you.”

  They kissed.

  Dalleena entered the Council Room, a look of wariness in her eyes. She had dressed carefully, her Nialian robe sashed in at the waist, her hair pulled back from her face and braided down her back. The effect was to make her look poised, a little older, comfortable. The room was crowded. The long wood table had never really been adequate for a full council; they were banging elbows. Pages were setting out the goblets. One step behind came the serving girls, pouring the sweet wine.

  At the head of the table the king cleared his throat. Dalleena slipped into the extra chair that had been placed for her, a little to the side and pulled back from the table, because she was not a councilor.

  The court herald blew a few short taps and announced, “The meeting of full council: in this midsummer: of the first year: of the Sixth Hold of the King: will now begin!”

  “This meeting has been summoned at the request of senior Councilor Sillus, granted by t
he king’s grace,” recited the queen, opposite the king at the foot of the table. “May the gods bless our work.”

  The councilors lifted their goblets in unison and toasted, tasting the first swallow. A page, a little late, offered a goblet to Dalleena. She shook her head.

  Council meetings appeared informal and often unorganized, but she had learned at an early age that this impression was a mistake. The senior councilors, grouped at the head by the king, would drink their wine and settle back in their chairs, as if they sat at a friend’s fire. Several of the older men smoked pipes, and by the end of an afternoon the room would be filled with tangy, spiced scents. One of the seniors, a woman named Seani, often provided Dalleena rich entertainment. Seani would slide down to an impossibly low level in her seat and tilt her head over the chair’s back, pointing her chin at the ceiling. If the speeches and discussions went on too long her eyes would close; the only hint that she was not actually sleeping was the slight smile of derision that appeared on her face whenever a councilor began to sound like a fool. On rare occasions she would rouse herself enough to speak. She would sink both hands into her ragged mop of gray hair and riffle through it as she spoke, disordering it further. The younger councilors would hold their breaths, fearing that she would turn her quick intelligence and quicker sarcasm on them, shredding whatever arguments they had built up just as she was shredding her hairstyle. Usually, however, she confined her criticisms to the other seniors, who respected her and wished fervently that she would go away. Most important, she was king-loyal to the bone; she had a deep respect for Raynii and loved Ayenna as if she were blood kin.

  The king nodded to his brother. “Councilor, if you will begin?”

  Sillus’s rank could have gotten him a seat at the king’s right hand; instead he always chose a point midway down, where he could smile on the younger councilors. “Before I do so, Sire, I would like to request that this be a closed council.”

  There was a small pause. The councilors glanced at one another.

  “Granted.”

  The king motioned. The pages, the serving girls, and the pacers who carried written notes up and down the table suddenly appeared from wherever they had hidden themselves, and just as suddenly melted from the room. The guards followed, swinging the doors shut. As they clanged, Dalleena felt the beginnings of emotion. A closed council should also have excluded her. Why had he asked for her?

  “Thank you, Sire. My lords and ladies and esteemed fellow councilors, most royal relas, my gracious queen, and my king and brother, I ask humbly that you hear what I have to say. My task is not an easy one.” Sillus put one hand over his dangling chain of office, holding it against his heart. “I have in my possession information important to us all, but it is a hard duty to bring it before you.”

  There was a loud creak from one of the chairs. Councilor Seani had taken her favorite position, jaw skyward.

  “To make it clear to you, I ask that you allow me to refresh your memories.” Sillus then embarked on a careful accounting of everything that had happened, beginning with the last council of the Queen’s Hold, when the priest of Armas had been brought in to testify. He touched on the signs and omens and the festival – not mentioning Dalleena but skirting just close enough to her strange behavior that evening to awaken the councilors’ memories – and their possible meanings. He reflected on the purpose of the gods in sending such signs (“a divine gift in the form of a warning, telling us there is blackness in the Hills”) and praised the queen for traveling to see them (“a great comfort to our people”). His flattery of her normal performance of her duties was lengthy and picturesque. At the end of the table Ayenna made a movement of impatience. Dalleena could almost see the thought pass across her mother’s face, as she reminded herself that she was no longer in Chair. The first year of the change was always the hardest. Ayenna refrained from speaking.

  Pipes were lit up.

  “... for we must heed such warnings, we must seek out their cause and discover the immortal will ...”

  Near the bottom of the table a junior councilor rapped. Every council member wore a heavy ring on the second finger above the first joint, a wood bead that produced a sharp snapping noise against the table. The ancient tabletop was scarred.

  “The councilor will speak,” the king said. He was glad someone else had gotten impatient before he had had to speak himself.

  “Thank you, Sire. Councilor, do I understand you to mean that you have in fact discovered the reason behind these things?”

  Sillus nodded gravely. “Yes, Councilor. I believe that I have. And I know that it will be a shock to everyone in this room. Everyone, that is, save one.” He turned his head and looked pointedly at Dalleena. She gave no sign of noticing it. Inwardly the vague emotion was crystallizing into fear. She had never thought him important, never bothered to protect herself from his plots, deeming it beneath her. The growing fear was for Rendell, and the child within her.

  “Another incident has disturbed us in this year,” Sillus continued. He had lulled them, bored them. Now he would drive it home before they realized it. “There has been a great deal of talk and speculation throughout our palace, even throughout our Hills. This talk centers, unhappily, upon the relas. It has become known, and indeed is becoming clear, that the relas is carrying a child. And any child of royal blood is of great interest to our people.”

  A Council Room is not a kitchen or the servants’ quarters, and so this was the first time anyone had mentioned the pregnancy aloud since the dismissal of the young councilor.

  Watch yourself, brother, the king thought. I wouldn’t have believed you’d be fool enough to follow along that path.

  “Sillus,” he said, not using his title, “what is your point, if you have one?”

  “My point, Sire, is that when two events occur together it is not unreasonable to wonder if they are in some way connected. Indeed, I believe one is the direct result of the other. It is my belief – founded on conclusive evidence – that the relas’s child is the cause of these omens.”

  Above the murmuring, Councilor Seani shifted noisily upright and rapped the table, suppressing a yawn.

  “The councilor will speak.”

  “Thank you, Sire.” Seani fixed a speculative eye on Sillus, as if he were a horse gone lame who might have to be destroyed. “Let me understand you, Councilor. You are saying that the relas’s pregnancy is bringing down a storm from the gods on us?”

  “Yes, Councilor. It is increasingly clear.”

  “Maybe,” Seani said. One of her hands went up and began to tug at her piled-up hair. “Maybe to you. Somehow I don’t quite see it. I’ve had four pregnancies myself, if I might say so.”

  Several of the women laughed.

  “But this is not an ordinary matter, Councilor. I think you’ll understand when I –”

  “Sillus,” Raynii spat out the name. “I am now warning you: watch where you tread!”

  Dalleena heard a general inhalation of breath, as if a new and strange scent had come into the air.

  “I have proof.” Sillus leaned over. His silken voice came out in a slow hiss. “I have proof that this child – if a child it is, and not something beyond imagining – is an abomination!”

  “How dare you!” Raynii shouted. “How dare you! By Mother Nialia, I’ve had more than enough from you!”

  The councilors were all speaking at once. Someone next to Sillus tugged at his sleeve. “Don’t be a fool, Councilor! Hold your tongue!”

  “Ask her!” Sillus shouted back. “Ask her who fathered it!”

  If a plague, the first symptom of which was complete paralysis, had suddenly infected everyone in the room, the effect would have been the same.

  “Sillus, shut your mouth.” It was the queen. “You’ve over stepped yourself this time!”

  Suddenly a dozen councilors were rapping their rings. Ayenna looked at her husband, flushed and glaring at his brother. “No,” she said. It was the king’s place, but he seemed s
peechless. “No,” she said again, and the rapping stopped.

  “Councilors,” she began. “It is true, as we all know, that the relas my daughter is with child.” With care she made her voice light, reasonable. “She has chosen to keep the name of the father of this child to herself. Were she a private citizen, this would be only her common right. However, she is a royal heir, and both the king and I myself have tried to impress upon her that her obligations might demand the disclosure of the child’s parentage.” She paused. “She assures us the child has noble blood, a pure line on both sides. The exact identity of the father, she tells us, does not matter. I trust her judgment implicitly. So does the king. The matter is therefore to be considered closed.” They heard the note of finality and were quiet. Very slightly, the atmosphere in the Council Room relaxed.

  Sillus rapped.

  Ayenna looked at the king. He was still staring at his brother.

  Sillus rapped again.

  The councilors waited. Dalleena rubbed her swollen fingers together fitfully, watching her uncle’s face, recalling a puff of smoke and the smooth voice: “His name is Rendell. Rendell Armasii.” And an echoing worry: Temhas’s face, as he stood before her at the Introduction Ceremony. In swift waves she heard Rendell saying he and his brother had never gotten along, that he never knew where Temhas was or what he was doing, and Sillus smiling and saying, “I would like to present Temhas – he’s a friend of Carden’s,” and a sound, a rustling and a footfall, late at night in an orchard, and Lilli’s voice in answer to a question: “I’ve never seen the brother, any night, thank Nialia. What do you suppose he can be doing?” Temhas and Sillus. Temhas and Sillus, welcome to court. I should have known, Dalleena thought. How could I not have known?

  Sillus rapped.

  “The councilor will speak,” the queen said.

  Once more he stood up. He lifted a heavy bundle of scrolls from the table before him, showing it to them. “This is documentation. This is my proof that what I say is only the truth, before the gods. I am telling you this. The relas will not identify the man because she knows that the very sound of his name would tell each and every one of you that this – this ‘child’ – is an intolerable evil!”