by L. K. Rigel
Ach, no use entertaining such vanity. He turned to thank the tailors for the clothes, but they had gone.
Ross searched the room for quill and parchment. The gift of clothes fit for court was no trifle. Sarumen wasn’t ready to grant him leave to go home. He wrote to his father.
My lord, I am home. At all events, in Sarumos…
No. Ross tore off the line he’d started and threw it into the fire. It would not do if the letter fell into the wrong hands. He started again.
My lord, I am home. At all events, in London, at Windsor with Lord Sarumen. The earl has brought news to King Henry that William Aethelos, the king’s son and heir, has been drowned at sea. I’ve assured the bearer of this message he’d be well paid and given a meal upon its safe delivery.
I hope to be home soon and to find you well. I send you my love and my highest regards.
Your son, Ross.
If Braedon were there, Ross could have sent him home with the letter, but it shouldn’t be difficult to find a courier at Windsor Castle.
On the third day, Ross received a note from Sarumen, summoning him to court. Wear your sword, the note said.
Ross went to the great hall on the alert for trouble and saw the earl there, relaxed and dressed resplendently. His striking beauty drew admiration from all quarters, male and female. Ross discerned no threat in the attentions.
“Come with me, Sir Ross,” Sarumen said. “You’re to be presented. Henry’s grateful you tried to save his son.”
“I appreciate the proper clothes, my lord,” Ross said. “Thank you.”
“Not at all.” Sarumen winced. “Perhaps you’ll do me another favor one day.”
“Another favor, my lord?”
“Well, you did save my life.”
The look of disdain that passed over Sarumen’s face came and went so quickly Ross doubted his own eyes. There was no time to ask if he’d somehow given insult, however, for in the next moment he found himself face-to-face with the king of England.
Ross dropped to one knee before Henry, seated on a raised dais.
“Your father is baron of Tintagos,” the king said when Ross was on his feet again.
“He is, sire.”
“Aethelos is gone, but my daughter Mathilde remains. You understand a smooth succession is imperative to the stability of the realm. Will Lord Tintagos swear allegiance to Mathilde in the event of my death?”
Ross understood the urgency in Henry’s request. The king could marry again and hope to father another son, but he was an old man. It was unlikely he’d live to see that theoretical son safely come of age. Mathilde was his best hope to ensure continuance of the Normandum House dynasty. But would the barons swear fealty to a woman?
“I haven’t seen my father in almost four years, and I can’t claim to know what’s in his mind,” Ross answered truthfully. “But he’s an honorable man.”
“A neat answer, Sir Ross.” Henry crooked a hand at the crush of courtiers.
The crowd parted, and a man dressed in priest’s robes of fine quality stepped forward. He had the look of a Sarumen. His hair was cut in the traditional tonsured manner meant to be unfashionable and humbling, but the thick black frame enhanced rather than obscured his dark looks—strong cheekbones and jaw, straight nose, and piercing, intelligent eyes.
“Bishop Quinn will accompany you on your journey home. He’ll present the oath to the baron for his signature.”
Quinn gave Ross an unctuous nod. He opened his mouth to speak, but the king waved him off, and he blended back into the crowd.
Ross bowed and retreated from the dais, hoping he was included in the king’s dismissal, but Henry wasn’t finished with him.
“That’s an interesting sword, Sir Ross.”
“It’s no beauty, Majesty, but it has served me well,” Ross said.
“Made of Dumnos steel, I’m told?”
And there it was. The monarch’s face betrayed the same desire as the captain of the Vengeance had for the scoping glass. Ross keenly felt pressured to make a gift of his sword, and resentment welled within him like bile. He could pretend ignorance, but of course Sarumen had asked him to bring the sword for a reason.
It would be petty to resist—and what did it matter? Hadn’t he prayed to the gods high and low for peace? Perhaps the sacrifice of his own sword would prove his sincerity.
“My king.” The words came surprisingly easy. He found that he wanted to give it up—the sword and all it represented. “It would honor my house and all Tintagos if you’d accept this plain and unworthy gift.” When he returned home he’d have the smithy make him a new sword, free of the ghosts of unwanted memories.
Henry nodded and gestured but never smiled. A page took the weapon away, and as it left Ross’s hand, a sick feeling came over him. Mistake! The word rang in his head. The page added the sword to a pile of other gifts, and the next supplicant was called before the throne.
Leaving the hall, Sarumen said, “I never thought you’d do it—give up your sword. Not even to a king.”
The king’s lack of respect for the gift was irritating, and Sarumen’s patronizing, slightly insulting air was worse. Ross felt used. In turning over the sword, he’d felt something in the universe turn. As if he’d been caught up in some dark magic that he didn’t understand.
“Never mind.” Sarumen put a hand on his shoulder. “Politics is a confounding business. You’re learning.”
Sun and moon forbid I learn much more.
« Chapter 9 »
In the Glimmering
THE RED MONSTERlunged for the goose, who veered sideways and yelled Help! Help! but all that came out was a caustic Hyonke! Hyonke!… ear-splitting and ugly. She had to hide somewhere. If only she could get to the apple grove at the top of the rise.
“Goosie! Goosie!” The monster launched another run, chubby hands outstretched, fat fingers kneading the air. “Goosie!”
Monster eyes, blue and green and brown all at once, sparkled with fascinated greed. A beam of sunlight seemed to set its writhing red hair aflame.
It was terrifying. The goose dodged and ran.
Lurched and waddled, rather. Her legs were so short, the grass so close to her chest, and the blossoms in the trees were so unnaturally far away, high up in the sky. As if she’d somehow shrunk to a fraction of her usual height. She flapped her arms, and her bottom bounced side to side as she fled.
It was all very disconcerting and wrong.
She tried to scream Aaiiee!
What came out was Hyonke! Hyonke!
The red monster was quick. Enthusiastic. And gaining ground. The goose parried and dipped and ran, ended up making a circle, and went the wrong way.
“Wennie, stop.”
That voice. Familiar. Commanding. Safe.
The monster paused—but only to say, “Auntie Zoelyn, I want goosie!”—then it leapt.
The goose stumbled and rolled and braced to be crushed.
“Igraine reditum!”
The words were a wyrd. Vibrations permeated the goose’s body, flooding her with relief and a sense of being righted with the world. The red monster shrank, even as it kept coming, and the goose grew larger… larger… and became human again.
She lay on the ground near a small lake, her bare legs and hips on a silk carpet and her arms and face on the grass. The cool green blades felt different against this skin, this human skin, but the world sounded the same—wind in the trees, ducks splashing.
Black swans floated under the arching bridge to the island at the lake’s center. At the shore two geese stared indignantly. Had she betrayed her own kind?
Was she woman or goose?
“Grainie!” With a raucous belly laugh, the monster fell against her. Not a monster at all but a ginger-haired little girl with merry hazel eyes.
“Wennie!” Speaking burst a dam in the woman’s brain. I am Igraine. I'm twenty-three years old, a wyrding woman of Tintagos. I live in Kaelyn’s cave near the Small Wood north of the castle ke
ep.
Today she was visiting her childhood home, Avalos, the island sacred to the wyrd. She and Lowenwyn were having a picnic. It was the last day of November, Wennie’s third birthday.
That’s it. To entertain the child, she had transmogrified into a goose.
“You lose yourself to the creature’s animus, Igraine.” The commanding voice belonged to Zoelyn, abbess of Avalos. “Still. After all this time.”
The abbess wore a pale pink tunic and sleeveless mantle embroidered with apple blossoms in silver, gold, and green thread. Her blue-gray eyes were kind but reserved, full of love and responsibility and secrets. A silver and gold circlet of willow branches and apple blossoms rested above her brow over her braided, gray-streaked hair.
She tossed Igraine a length of light silk the color of the sky and helped herself to a strawberry from the platter of fruit and cakes on the carpet.
“Get up.” Igraine nudged the little girl off her lap. “Let me get dressed.” She pulled the loose tunic over her head and ran her fingers through her tangled hair, wishing she’d secured it in a net.
“Velyn is here, Lowenwyn.” Zoelyn never called anyone by their nicknames. “He’s come to take you out on the lake.”
“My boat!” Wennie scrambled to her feet and ran to the water, passing up unenchanted geese for the boatman, who lifted her into a rowboat just big enough for two.
The day was warm, as ever, and Velyn was shirtless, as usual. His dark hair fell over the tattooed crosses—Druid, Celtic, and Christian—on his arms and shoulders. He pushed the boat off, and his muscles expanded as he rowed.
“You’re right,” Igraine said. “Sometimes the animal feeling is too much. The excitement. The hunger.”
Zoelyn followed Igraine’s gaze to the boatman. “The uncomplicated lust?”
Igraine looked down and studied the peonies woven in the carpet. “Velyn and I ended years ago.”
“Good.”
“Do you think so? It always seemed too neat,” Igraine said. “I spent that summer on fire for him and then woke up the first day of winter feeling nothing more than friendship. Did you… Zoelyn, did you end it between Velyn and me?”
Zoelyn seemed to think it over before saying, “Velyn isn’t of the wyrd, but he is of Avalos.”
It wasn’t an answer… but it was.
“You’ve never been satisfied with the island alone,” the abbess continued. “Not even then when you were with Velyn. If you had truly loved him, love would have prevailed.”
Resentment quickly gave way to acceptance. In the end, it didn’t matter. There was truth in the abbess’s words. Igraine didn’t love Velyn. Never had. She wasn’t sure she could love anyone that way, romantically.
But then, who did? Velyn was a friend—and a man; someone to have sex with—but he wasn’t as dear to her as Kaelyn or Wennie. Marriage wasn’t for the wyrding women of Avalos. Most were daughters of the high gods. Had Igraine’s mother and father even loved each other?
“Will you tell me about my parents?”
“Sun and moon,” Zoelyn said. “Where did that come from?”
Apparently not. “I don’t know,” Igraine said. “Sir Ross has returned to Tintagos. On the road this morning, I spoke to one of his entourage. I dread telling him about Wennie. I guess it made me think of my own parents.”
“You know what I know, my dear. Kaelyn came upon you as a newborn, abandoned at the foot of a yew tree near the fae troop trail. She brought you to us, just as you later brought Lowenwyn. A daughter of the high gods—”
“—is always welcome at Avalos.”
“When your power came in so strong, I took it as a sign you belonged here. I hoped you’d settle permanently, become truly one of us. But eternal spring has never been enough for you. Your nature compels you to live in the mists and rain of the mundane world in a dirty cave with a second-rate wyrding woman.”
“It’s a clean and well-appointed cave,” Igraine said. “And that’s an unkind thing to say about your sister.”
“But true.” Zoelyn picked the blackberries out of a cake and ate the fruit first. “Kaelyn’s powers rarely equal the task before her. Though I’ve heard her healing potions are in great demand since you’ve been mixing them.”
“But she taught me the steps,” Igraine said. “And her book is wonderful.”
One of the abbess’s eyebrows shot up. “Her book?”
“You know how forgetful Kaelyn is. Every so often she has a moment of clarity, as she calls it, when she remembers a potion or a spell. She’s started to write them down because…” Unexpected tears filled Igraine’s eyes.
“What is it, dear?”
“She says she’s making the book for me. She calls it her legacy.” A warm streak of wet spilled down Igraine’s cheek. “I don’t think she’s well. I asked her to come with me today, but she refused.”
“She should come home for good,” Zoelyn said. “She’s always had a stubborn streak. Like someone else I won’t name.”
“You were forty when you joined the abbey,” Igraine said. “There’s still plenty of time for me.”
A sad smile was Zoelyn’s only reply.
“And I do love Avalos. I’ve learned so much here. The way of wyrding. Transmogrification.”
“Now that you must curb. I mean it, Igraine, for your own good.”
“When I’m a falcon and I catch a current just so and ride the wind, the happiness in being alive grows bigger than anything. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll lose the shape I’ve taken and blend into the mystic. Become pure joy.”
“Pray sun and moon you never lose that fear. Fear is your anchor to the world, the opposite of bliss. I do wish you’d stop entirely. Transmogrification is a teaching tool, not a long-term indulgence.”
“I know it’s dangerous.”
“No, you don’t. Turn around.”
The abbess flicked her wrist, and a comb appeared in her hand. She untangled Igraine’s hair and continued her lecture.
“You know, it was my great aunt Morwenna—not Merlyn—who taught transmogrification to Artros. Artros was an obtuse boy with a desperate need for empathy, and the lessons made him a better king. But you seem to have been born with a profoundly empathetic soul.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not in this. Your natural empathy leaves you open to possession. When you transform, you take on more than the shape of a thing. You take on its essence—and risk being lost to your own.”
“I don’t think so.” Igraine scoffed. “Could a rabbit or an eagle replace my true self?”
“Not rabbit, not eagle. Not fish or fowl or any four-legged beast,” Zoelyn said. “But feed your empathetic impulses, and they will grow. They’ll become more fluid and accessible to a human looking for a way into your mind. Someone with conviction of purpose and an unyielding will.”
Zoelyn’s words conjured the image of Prior Quinn, the horrible monk at Rozenwyn’s deathbed. The memory made Igraine sick to her stomach, and she regretted laughing.
Why couldn’t she ever think first, before expressing her feelings?
“Or worse, a creature of the Dark,” Zoelyn continued. “Brienne has lost control of the Sarumos court. Her fae have gone dark, and the Dark has found purchase in the west. The Dumnos fae are especially vulnerable with that pretender on the Moonstick Throne.”
“For someone who shuns the fae, you seem to know a lot about them.”
“Obey me in this, Igraine. Tell Sir Ross nothing about Lowenwyn. I’m not saying you should lie, but don’t seek him out.” It was the abbess of Avalos speaking, not Zoelyn. “At least wait until we know more.”
“But he has the right—”
“The baron is an honorable man. He prays to the high gods. He reveres Igdrasil. But his son has spent years with Lord Sarumen. If Sir Ross has aligned with the monasteries, we could lose Lowenwyn forever. Worse, when he becomes Lord Tintagos, we could lose Dumnos forever.”
“Ross’s traveling companion is Pr
ior Quinn.” Igraine shuddered to say the name, as she’d shuddered to hear it this morning on the road. “He’s a bishop now. He’s come to see the baron.”
“Prior to bishop in three years,” Zoelyn said. “But then Quinn has the right connections for rapid advancement.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s Sarumen’s nephew,” Zoelyn said. “I’ll wager he’s come not to see the baron but with questions for the baron’s son. Is Sir Ross still my lord’s creature, now that he’s home safe in his bed? Sarumen wants assurance that Tintagos will support Stephen against Mathilde, now that Aethelos is dead.”
Igraine hadn’t seen Quinn since the day Wennie was born, and she’d hoped at the time never to see him again. “Zoelyn, when Quinn was here last, he asked Marrek about the faewood and if Marrek knew where there was a portal.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“It seemed unimportant, that he only wanted to avoid the fae. But… do you think he actually wanted to find them? Enlist the regent to help destroy us?”
“I do, and I think Idris would jump at the chance. Since Queen Sifae died, the fae have mistrusted the wyrd.”
“I don’t like that man,” Igraine said. “Quinn. He’s evil.”
“Evil is a strong word,” Zoelyn said. “But he does sound damaged. And he might well enlist the regent in his cause. Thank the high gods for the goblins.”
“Goblins.” Igraine felt the grimace carve into her face—despite having never seen a goblin. Or any fae, for that matter—as far as she knew.
“Don’t be confused by a goblin’s ugliness,” Zoelyn said. “They are the highest and best of the fae, true at heart, builders and craftsmen and bakers and jewelers—their every endeavor pursued as art.”
Aha! Some goblin must be the source of Zoelyn’s fae intelligence. “But a goblin made the quarrels that killed the fae queen.”
“No goblin fired the crossbow,” Zoelyn countered. “A goblin created glimmermist. And that same goblin forged Mistcutter, the Sword of Mist and Rain. A goblin devised summoning candles. And joy in life? You’ve never witnessed joy in life until you’ve seen a goblin dance.”