Shaking for a different reason now, Leilah knew she was doomed if her father found those letters. Coupled with her act of ‘spying,’ the letters would brand her a traitor in her father’s eyes.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth in a horrible moment of indecision. She’d been sent away in no uncertain terms so her father could receive Bethamin’s Ascendant and his Marquiin in his chambers, but perhaps if she was very quiet…if they’d moved to speak in the adjacent gallery instead of her father’s personal study as was Radov’s usual wont, if she didn’t so much as make a peep…perhaps they wouldn’t even notice her returning for her purse.
Leilah rushed back inside the palace and headed down the long, wide passage toward her father’s chambers. In truth, she would rather face the lash for disobedience than feel the force of her father’s wrath should he learn of her illicit love affair. If Leilah was discovered in that act of defiance, being sold to Avataren slavers would be a mercy.
The two guards on duty outside her father’s chambers eyed her dubiously as she entered, but they didn’t stop her. They’d probably enjoy watching the lashing, she thought resentfully, though what she would’ve done if they’d prevented her from entering she didn’t know.
She slipped on tiptoes close to the wall of the large anteroom toward one of two doors that opened into her father’s study. Pressing an ear to the door, she heard nothing, so she slowly turned the handle. Hope welled in pulse with her anxiety. She might just be able to slip in unnoticed…
Even as she made it inside, she saw her little purse across the way, half-concealed beneath the armchair, exactly as she’d imagined. The room was empty, but the doors to the gallery were open. She would have to pass them to reach her purse. Heart pounding loudly in her ears, Leilah rushed across the room, but just as she reached the open doors, something made her pause.
She stood transfixed an inch from the portal’s edge, her heart beating so loudly it was deafening. Waves of chill air seeped from the gallery, heavy and dense, laden with malevolence. Leilah shrank from its touch. That was when she heard the moaning. It seemed a wail not of mortal death but of a dying soul; even more frightening was the sure certainty that the horrible moan came from her father.
As if caught in a dream, Leilah felt herself drawn inexorably forward. She felt powerless to stop herself from looking. Slowly, she inched her head around the edge and saw…she saw…
She saw.
And then she ran.
Fifteen
‘If courage is the seed of conviction, then faith is its life-giving water.’
– Isabel van Gelderan, Epiphany’s Prophet
“Do you wait to see him, too?”
Franco turnedfrom the window at the sound of a woman’s voice and saw a vision framed in the archway. He blinked, but the vision remained, a tall, lithe creature of amazing beauty dressed in a desert gown of tangerine silk, her long raven hair bound at the crown by a net of firestones, her braid three times caught with citrine-crusted bands. Franco finally found his manners and bowed with a polite, “Milady.”
Her dark eyes showed the faintest surprise. “You are not the Vestal.”
“No,” he confirmed with a self-effacing smile. “I am but his humble servant.”
Her eyes swept him in assessment and then held his gaze, her lips rising in the faintest of smiles. Franco felt a thrill of desire in the contact, leaving him wanting in a way he was quite unused to. She spoke with the unmistakable accent of Avatar as she concluded, “You are his Espial then?”
Intrigued by the woman, Franco nodded and gave her a sweeping bow. “Franco Rohre, at your service. And may I be so bold as to inquire of you, my lady?”
“I am Ysolde Remalkhen.”
Of course you are. He knew now that this was no chance encounter. From everything he’d heard of Queen Errodan’s Companion, she would’ve come for a purpose, but was it her own, or her lady’s? “’Tis an honor, Princess,” Franco replied with an even deeper bow.
They both then looked to the towering double doors at the far end of the antechamber. Easily twenty paces tall, they were carved with the val Lorian eagle and barred from the inside. Beyond stretched a long corridor and a formidable host of the King’s Own Guard, red-coated and immutable. Past them lay the apartments of the king. Admiring the large eagle artfully carved with wings and talons outstretched, Franco murmured, “You asked if I waited, too, Princess.”
“Yes. I thought you were the Vestal. Now I realize he has already been admitted.”
“Only just. I was surprised the king didn’t keep us waiting longer.”
“Indeed.” Ysolde’s eyes flashed as she turned back to the doors, but Franco had the sense that her angered gaze speared well down the passage beyond. “Her Majesty has been waiting on the king’s pleasure for nigh on two cycles of the moon.”
She did not have to say, and here this Vestal gains his ear without hesitation, for Franco heard it well enough.
Her eyes shifted back to his, and he felt that thrill of contact again. The woman was simply electrifying. In all his long years, only a handful of women had such an effect upon him, and most of those encounters had turned out disastrously. Still…
Ysolde looked Franco over again as if deciding whether or not he warranted further communication. She must’ve decided so, for she said to him, “Perhaps you would accompany me to the queen’s audience, Mr. Rohre. I believe Her Majesty would have words with you instead.”
So here we go at last. Franco gave her a terse nod. “Of course, Milady.”
She spun in elegant retreat and led away.
Franco admired her as he followed. She seemed to float down the hall in her luscious silk, but it was the curve of her hip and its graceful sway that most attracted his eye.
Ysolde Remalkhen, he mused.
What did he know of her? Unfortunately little enough; his knowledge of the current royal lines was cursory at best. She hailed from Avatar, a princess from the Fourth Line of Kings. She’d apparently become companion to Errodan n’Owain when she was in her teens. She was said to be a woman of powerful intellect and unquestionable loyalty. She was also rumored to harbor lustful desires and was said to have taken many lovers. Franco was most curious about the qualifications of the latter.
The passage eventually ended in a wide stairway that opened upon a vast marble-sheathed room large enough to house a small town. Easily hundreds of people walked, talked, milled or mused among its sky-scraping columns, each demarcating another passage leading elsewhere in the vast palace complex. A crystal-domed ceiling cast a diffuse glow. Ysolde waited for him at the steps, unerringly standing in a shaft of sunlight, and Franco joined her side inquiringly.
She smiled at him, a glory to behold—truly, she looked a woman in her prime, though Franco had heard that she neared her fiftieth name day. Franco knew the intimacies of the Pattern of Life and the immortality its routine working rendered; he quite suspected that Ysolde Remalkhen was no stranger to it either. “They call this the Boulevard—informally of course,” she said, holding out a hand to the cavernous room before them. “No doubt you understand why.”
Franco had only to sweep his gaze once across the vast chamber to understand. “Indeed, Princess. I am grateful you know the way from here.”
She nodded politely, and then headed down the staircase. For all its bustling activity, the Boulevard was strangely muted once one passed within, as if the vastness of the room swallowed each conversation long before it reached another’s ears. They’d barely reached the main level when a flash of gold caught Franco’s eye, and he looked again for the source. Two men draped in white togas with gold bands at their necks and wrists stood next to three figures shrouded from head to foot in ghostly grey silks. They’d been stopped by six palace guards and seemed in heated conversation.
Ysolde caught Franco’s gaze. “Two of Bethamin’s Ascendants and their Marquiin. Would that His Majesty had seen fit to turn them away at the kingdom border. Now they have no do
ubt spread their filth as they came in and will do so again as they leave.”
One of the gold-collared Ascendants looked up as Franco was staring at him.
You don’t know I am an Adept yet, do you? Franco thought, letting his own gaze slide indifferently past the man, and if you did, would you send your ghostly goons to question me? They’d be in for quite a shock, I fear. The thought made him smile, but his eyes had strayed beyond the Ascendant, so he didn’t see the man frowning after him.
Beyond the Boulevard and down the wide hallways of the palace, Ysolde led the Espial. By the time they came to a pair of tall doors not unlike those before the king’s chambers, Franco was quite lost. He wondered how Raine would ever find him but wasn’t so naïve as to think his passing went unnoticed, being as he was in the company of the Queen’s Companion.
The doors opened inward as Ysolde approached, and Franco followed her past two green-coated guards, down a flight of steps and into the open air. The late morning was still brisk, and the sea air was fresh if slightly damp. Franco strained to listen for the sounds of the waves impaling themselves against the cliffs that formed the northernmost wall of Calgaryn Palace; he imagined he could just hear their faint whisper on the breeze.
“This is the Queen’s Garden,” Ysolde informed him as they trod down a stone-paved path. Franco was searching for something innocuous to say about the overgrown garden when Ysolde continued, “I noticed your interest in the Bethamins. Last month, another five of them came here—two Ascendants and their trained hounds. His Majesty refused to see them, thank Epiphany, and provided an escort to ensure a quick traverse back to Saldaria. Bethamin is dull-witted, however, and sends his creatures with annoying persistence.”
A smile twitched Franco’s lips. “I take it you are not a devotee of the Prophet’s teachings.”
“I am a Daughter of the Sand,” and from the way she spoke it, she clearly felt nothing more need be said in answer. She turned her dark eyes upon him as they walked side by side. “And you, Franco Rohre? What god or gods do you follow?”
The sanguine kind that come in dark bottles.
Do shut up.
“I am a practical man, Princess,” Franco managed despite the mad voice in his head. “Gods don’t interest me overmuch.”
“Khoob, that is well for the sun. There are far too many gods seeking footholds in the minds of men these days.”
Franco grinned admiringly at her. “Princess, I couldn’t agree with you more.”
As they walked beneath a promenade of apple trees trained over arching trellises, Franco heard the flinty sound of a hoe striking the earth. He soon saw the elderly gardener wielding it, and just beyond him, a woman in a servant’s blue dress bent over pulling weeds from a flower bed long gone to seed. A large section of the garden here had been recovered back from wilderness, and flowers bloomed despite the lateness of the season.
“The queen works to restore the beauty of her garden now that she has returned to court,” Ysolde explained. “It is an arduous task.”
The serving woman turned at the sound of Ysolde’s voice and straightened, pushing the back of a dirt-encrusted glove across her brow to clear fine wisps of hair from her eyes—green eyes beneath cinnamon hair woven in an elaborate crown of braids, and Franco realized he was staring upon the Queen of Dannym herself. He flushed and quickly bent a knee, adding a hasty, “Your Majesty.”
Errodan tossed the weeds she’d been holding into a pail and cast an inquiring look at her companion.
“The Espial Franco Rohre,” Ysolde supplied.
Errodan arched brows in understanding. “Ahh…then you travel with the Fourth Vestal?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty.”
“Please—please be on your feet, Mr. Rohre. There’s no sense dirtying your britches on my account.”
Franco complied, but not without surprise. The queen seemed nothing like the wild-tempered, vitriolic woman of reputation, and her companion was almost ethereal. What a curious pair.
“The Vestal is already in chambers with His Majesty,” Ysolde explained, “but I thought his Espial might prove of help.”
The queen looked back to Franco, and the hint of a smile graced her lips. She was a woman of deep beauty—not as fine-boned or as exotic as the willowy Ysolde, but sculpted honestly as if by an artist’s loving hands. They were marble and alabaster, these two.
More like onyx and obsidian, he belatedly cautioned himself—penetrating beauty that could just as easily turn into a razor-sharp spear to pierce a man’s heart.
“No doubt you’ve rarely seen a queen doing her own weeding, have you, Mr. Rohre?” the queen asked. She had lovely teeth and a mother’s warm smile; there was nothing in her figure to show she’d birthed three boys, and yet…
Franco hastily met her gaze lest she catch his eyes straying. “No, Your Majesty,” he replied with a quirk of a smile.
“I find that gardening calms me. Even when the world seems to be falling to pieces, I can find some measure of peace in my garden.” She added with a wry smile, “Sometimes it’s the only activity that quiets the noise in my head.” She removed her gloves and handed them to her gardener, who had stopped his hoeing upon their arrival and now stood attentively. She made several quick motions of her fingers as he watched, and then he nodded and shuffled off.
“Jeremiah, my gardener, lost his tongue in the War of the Lakes, about twenty years ago,” the queen said, coming toward Franco as old Jeremiah vanished beneath the apple trees. “His hearing only abandoned him in the last ten years. It’s what saved him his position, really.” She motioned Franco and Ysolde to join her and led down a path deeper into the garden.
Franco had never walked in such close proximity to a queen and a Fire Princess. He found it not at all an unpleasant experience. “And how is that, Your Majesty?”
She gave him a gentle smile. “Being that he doesn’t know the finger language, my husband found great difficulty communicating to Jeremiah that he no longer had a job, so he let him stay. Now it is up to the two of us to tame this wilderness.”
Franco let his gaze float across the vast park she called a garden and couldn’t help but remark, “That is a monumental task, Your Majesty.”
She laughed. “You speak Raine’s truth, Mr. Rohre.”
“Please call me Franco, Your Majesty.”
“Very well. But I know of your name, Franco,” she said, turning him an inquiring look. “You are quite famous among certain circles. You’re one of a number of survivors they call the Fifty Companions, are you not?”
Fifty and one, he thought, suppressing a grimace, but Markal Morrelaine will never consider himself one of us.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Ysolde had fallen behind them—much to Franco’s disappointment—and she inquired then, “You survived the fall of the Citadel, Mr. Rohre?”
“Franco,” he corrected gently.
“Franco,” she obliged.
Can you really call hiding in the Citadel’s catacombs survival? Isn’t it truer to say you ‘avoided’ the fall? Might as well have slept through it for all you did to help—
“You were at the Citadel, were you not?” the queen meanwhile inquired.
“Yes, I was.”
She shook her head. “A tragedy beyond measure; the very island of Tiern’aval lost and the Citadel and all its learned halls along with it? Tell me, how did you escape?”
Yes, tell her how you did it.
“There were a number of us who fled before the fall,” he said evasively.
“And well that you did,” Ysolde remarked, “else the entire Adept race may have had its end upon that day, as doomed as the island.”
“What did happen there?” the queen questioned and Ysolde asked, “Are the stories true? There are so many of them, and every one seems but in conflict with the others.”
Go on, tell them all about your experience hiding among the dead while Malachai rent the sky and Shades butchered your masters and Death walk
ed unhindered laughing with wild abandon. Tell them why you were really hiding there…
Over the years, the number of people who’d asked Franco these same questions outnumbered his long span of life. They always wanted to know about his past, about the true story, about the part he played in the Battle of the Citadel. Where once his face had reddened in shame, now he knew how to school his expression into impassivity, how to dissemble, how to compartmentalize his thoughts and emotions.
Now he had a renewed purpose, one he was finally coming to believe in; yet this purpose brought with it a whole new set of problems replete with their own complement of dreadful, soul-binding secrets.
Franco stopped their walk amid a path bordered in cherry trees. “I mean in no way to seem coy, Your Majesty, Princess,” he confessed as if the conversation was as innocuous as it seemed, as if he wasn’t in fact evading the subject of his life’s ruin and ultimate disgrace, “but I would you understand that the battle’s events were in fact so terrible that no retelling—no matter how artfully crafted—could do justice to the memories of those slain. I beg you, do not make me sully them further with my own inept attempt to recount the atrocities of that night.”
Both women looked slightly taken-aback. Ysolde dropped her eyes, and the queen seemed contrite as she replied, “It was most ungracious of us. We should have realized…”
“I have many times been asked,” Franco reassured her, “and many times denied to speak of it. Perhaps someday my resolve will fail me, and I will find solace in the retelling.”
“It must be an immense burden to carry the weight of so many souls,” Ysolde observed, regarding him compassionately. She cupped his cheek with soft fingers. “I would that you might find peace someday, Franco Rohre. You seem a decent man who should not have to suffer so.”
Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 22