“Each one?” Cavan squeaked. Black pearls were certainly not unheard of, but none such as this. “There must be dozens in the basket!”
“There are thirty-five more of them, Cavan.”
The sprite was in awe. “Mistress! How can you know?”
“I just know, Cavan.” Dwynwyn smiled, her brow nevertheless furrowed with puzzlement. “I have seen it in my mind.”
“There is something unnatural about this, Mistress!” Cavan said with increasing distress. “We should call in the scholars to consult.”
“No,” Dwynwyn replied, holding the exquisite pearl up to the light streaming in from the window behind him. “I need you to call the royal jeweler. I have a very special task for him that will not wait.”
27
A Private Walk
Dwynwyn fluttered hurriedly through the archway, quickly pulling her white hair back and binding it tightly. There had not been time for any more formal styling and it was still damp from the quick rinse she had given it to get out the sea salt. Dwynwyn knew she was barely presentable at court as she was: her robe was shabby, and she had forgotten her slippers entirely in her haste. It would have to do.
The Sanctuary was in more turmoil than Dwynwyn had ever seen it. Faeries, pixies, nymphs, and dryads dashed purposefully between the great trees and congregated around one or more of the central courtiers near the throne, to whom they would speak in earnest, hushed tones. There was so much activity in the enormous hall that Dwynwyn felt the air currents whip into a frenzied breeze swirling its way between the trunks of the trees.
Tatyana sat attentively at the center of this storm, leaning forward with interest, her right hand absently stroking her smooth chin. The queen’s large amber eyes were bright and alert, yet the Seeker could see weariness in the lines of her face.
Dwynwyn drifted to a halt just beyond the circle of the courtiers. She floated slightly to her right, drifting intentionally into the line of the queen’s sight. Their eyes met in recognition for a moment. It was just enough. Tatyana nodded slightly in the Seeker’s direction. It was their understood signal between them that the Seeker had need to counsel with the queen as soon as possible.
Tatyana the Glorious raised her hand slightly. Voice Newlis, who had been speaking to her in earnest, did not see her signal, however, and continued to speak hurriedly.
“Enough!”
Tatyana rarely raised her voice. When the occasion required it, however, she could give it a timbre that carried to the farthest corners of the Sanctuary. The very sound could make even the highest courtier submit. Some of the servitor class believed that if the queen was in any real distress, her voice would be heard from the highest of the royal apartments to the farthest foundations of Qestardis itself.
That same voice echoed through the coves of the Sanctuary even as she stood imperiously before her throne. Everything in the world within the view of Tatyana had frozen in its place.
“Who dares bring disorder into my Sanctuary?” Tatyana thundered. “The anarchy is what we fight; I will not submit to it in my own house. Here I will have order!”
Only the Voice of Warriors, frustrated and desperate, dared answer her. “But, Your Majesty—”
“This is still my Sanctuary, Nevis! Mine! I will have order, is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
She gazed imperiously over the assemblage, a slight disdain edging her voice as she spoke. “I will take counsel with my Seeker for a time. It is my command that the Sanctuary be cleared of all else until I command otherwise. Nevis?”
“By your will, Your Majesty!”
“Admit no one without my permission—no one!”
Tatyana glared about her. The entire court held still in uncertainty.
“Must I repeat myself? Clear the Sanctuary now!”
Suddenly, the frozen courtiers, servants, and messengers sprang to life. Color exploded with their rushed movements, desperate as they were to flee the huge hall. A new wind suddenly whipped a wet strand of Dwynwyn’s hair across her eyes, which blinked closed. As she wiped the strand away, she heard a succession of thunderous booming sounds from all parts of the hall as portals slammed closed.
When she again opened her eyes, only Tatyana and herself remained among the great trees of the tower Sanctuary.
Dwynwyn spoke quietly. “Your Majesty, I—”
Tatyana held her hand up for silence, her head cocked to one side, listening. She remained there, motionless for some time, searching for some sound among the towering ornate trunks whose branches supported the lacelike structures of the crystal domes overhead. After a time, apparently satisfied with the silence, she lowered her hand and turned to face her Seeker.
“Dwynwyn, I have been hearing a great deal about you today,” she said, sitting down and resuming her placid, regal pose on the throne of Qestardis.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Dwynwyn nodded quietly. “I would imagine that you have.”
“The captain of my guard tells me that you walked . . . just imagine it, walked back toward the city from the Estarin shore as you were apparently incapable of flight.”
“That is accurate, Your Majesty.”
“Furthermore, my chief steward tells me that you arrived at your apartments in a frightful condition, that your clothing and wings were completely wet and that you smelled strongly of fish!”
“The reasons for which, I would be most relieved to explain, Your Majesty!”
Tatyana laughed heartily, relaxing back into her throne for the first time. “Oh, please don’t, Dwynwyn—at least not yet! The Seekers constantly amaze us. You are one of the few delights that remain in this world. You are always finding things that are new and unique. These things delight us to no end. To take the facts that have been laid before me and to try to fit their pieces into some reasonable explanation of its truth is a joy to us. Oh, I know you do this all the time in your caste, Seeker, and perhaps combining truths in new ways—the discovery of further truth—no longer holds interest or mystery for you. Yet for an old royal such as myself, it is a delightful game to play, even for a short while.”
“Your pleasure is mine, Your Majesty.” Dwynwyn bowed with a slight smile. “If I may be so bold, the discovery of new truths remains my passion and joy, second only to my service to you and your court.”
“Both clever and politic, I see.” Tatyana rose from her throne. “You would have been a great courtier had life not ordained you to a different fate.* Come, Seeker, take a turn with me through my little garden.”
Tatyana stepped down from the dais, drifting slowly back across the trim grasses behind her throne. Her magnificent detailed wings barely moved as she floated among the carefully shaped flowers and shrubs. Dwynwyn quickly fell in next to her, trying as carefully as she could to gauge her distance. She wanted to hear everything her queen was quietly saying without touching the royal personage.
“It is a beautiful day, isn’t it, Dwynwyn?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, I quite agree.”
“Yet the night is coming, Dwynwyn, and an end to our day; the end to uncounted thousands of days and into a night whose end I cannot see.” Tatyana thought for a moment before she continued. “The Famadorians are pressing us harder from the north. We hold them still just north of Kien Yanish. Voice Newlis tells me our warriors could break their line with a sustained attack and perhaps even push them back into the Vendaris Hills except—”
“Except Lord Phaeon has assembled his armies to the south,” Dwynwyn finished. Such impertinence would have brought the queen’s wrath down on any other courtier’s head, but in this, as in so many things, Seekers were different.
“He has done more than assemble, Dwynwyn.” Tatyana sighed. “We have had word that his fleets have sailed. They approach our western shores, most likely landing somewhere south of Kien Magoth, or possibly at Eventide. They will then encamp and prepare for their final march on us here.”
Tatyana stopped and looked up at the beautiful tru
nks, each shaped with the history of her people.
“My courtiers can offer me no saving truth by which we may escape the fall of our will to Lord Phaeon,” the queen said as she turned to look directly at Dwynwyn. “Can you?”
Dwynwyn looked into the amber eyes of her queen. “That, Your Majesty, is why I smelled like fish this afternoon.”
Tatyana raised her eyebrows. “Now you must tell me all.”
There, beneath the towering trees of the Sanctuary, the queen of the Qestardi listened to her court Seeker. Dwynwyn rehearsed for her, from first to last, all her experiences of relevance.* How the wingless man without a gift had shown himself, and how strange circumstance had led her that very day to return from the waters of Estarin Bay with thirty-six unique and otherwise inexplicable black pearls.
And when she had finished, Tatyana turned to her in astonishment. “Is this the full truth of it?”
“It is, Your Majesty.”
“But it is incomplete!”
Dwynwyn nodded, studiously ignoring the implied insult. “Yes, Your Majesty, it is indeed incomplete. I have these thirty-six perfect and entirely inexplicable pearls that were shown to me by a wingless man who, so far as I may explain, does not exist.”
“Then perhaps you are ill or fevered,” Tatyana responded with concern. “Perhaps I have asked too much of you.”
“Seekers are often dismissed as ill or fevered,” Dwynwyn replied with a calm chill in her voice, “but mental derangement cannot explain the truth of the pearls that now reside in my chambers. No, Your Majesty!” Dwynwyn felt the truth of it resonating through all her being. “I know what I know! There is a truth here . . . a truth beyond any truth we have known before! I see only pieces of it at one time. They are like threads in a tapestry, gathering in my hands. I am weaving them together, and when I do, then a great truth will emerge, I know it!”
“This new truth you seek, Dwynwyn,” Tatyana said heavily. “Will it save us?”
Dwynwyn shook her head. “I do not know, Your Majesty . . . but I know of nothing else that will.”
The queen cocked her head to one side. “What do you need, Seeker?”
“Time. I need time.”
Tatyana looked long into Dwynwyn’s eyes and then turned, resumed her flight back across the garden. “The Famadorians press us from the north; Lord Phaeon approaches from the southwest. It seems our Argentei brother is anxious to stand my house to stud, and with about as much dignity as that implies. Time is a commodity that is in short supply in Qestardis.”
They came once more to the throne dais. Tatyana settled into her throne once more, the mantle of her authority clear in her posture. “Though your truth is incomplete, I accept it, Seeker Dwynwyn. You are charged to undertake a journey. You shall prepare with all haste and depart for Kien Werren, our tower-keep on the southeastern shore. You shall take a phalanx of my personal guard with you and such servants as you deem needful to transport whatever materials you shall require.”
“Yes, Your Majesty; at once—”
“I am not finished,” Tatyana snapped. “You will also take with you the Princess Aislynn, Daughter of the Eternal Light, and remain at Kien Werren until such time as you either discover your new truth or I send for you.”
“Your Majesty?” Dwynwyn blinked.
Tatyana’s voice suddenly softened. “I cannot protect her here, Dwynwyn. This may buy you some time, but a few days only. Protect her if you can; that is my charge to you.”
“I shall do all that is possible, Your Majesty,” Dwynwyn replied. “I accept your charge.”
“Remember,” Tatyana said, her face a mask. “If you fail, there will be no one left alive of my court to give you another charge.”
“A gift for me? Is it from Deython?”
“No, Your Highness, it is from me; a most special gift,” Dwynwyn said quietly.
“Why, it’s . . . it’s . . . what is it?”
Dwynwyn pulled out a plain box from behind her back. There had not been time enough to fashion anything more ornate. The Seeker opened the lid of the box as she presented it to the young princess. “They are pearls, Your Highness, from the waters near Qestardis. It is a necklace that I had commissioned especially for you.”
“They are rather plain, are they not?”
“Yes, Your Highness, they are indeed. I asked that they be made plain.”
“Why?”
“They are not to make you pretty, Your Highness. You are already pretty. They are to protect you.”
“Protect me? Protect me from what?”
“I do not know,” Dwynwyn replied. “Perhaps from the rigors of the road. We are leaving tomorrow as soon as preparations are complete.”
Aislynn’s face fell. “Where are we going?”
“As far as we can, Your Highness,” Dwynwyn replied.
28
Nightrunners
It was the very soul of dark morning; the bottom of the well of night. It was under its cloak that the five faery nightrunners slipped quietly from their hidden moorings near the Sanctuary and drifted out through the great eastern gate.
The nightrunners were a special type of cloudship—a common transport in Qestardis. Faery shaper artisans had discovered the truth of the cloudships nearly a thousand seasons before this tale. Crystals were first coaxed into thin, rigid spheres between fifteen and twenty hands in diameter. These transparent globes then had their breath drawn from them by the artisans until their essence sought the sky. Several of these globes were then bound under lace netting which, in turn, was bound by stay lines to gondolas suspended beneath. The result was a small ship that, when properly balanced, would drift neutrally between earth and sky.
Floating was one thing, but flight was a different matter. While the cloudships could lift great weight, they were difficult to control and required considerable strength to move over long distances. The altitude of the ship over the ground was maintained through the use of heavy ballast bags hung by ropes over the sides of the ship. These were added or discarded as the cargo required for neutral buoyancy. Horizontal control was exerted through harnesses attached to the lacework over the globes. That allowed faeries strapped into the harnesses to turn the cloudships in the desired direction.
Moving these ships, however, required great effort, and it was the dryads that provided the best solution by enlisting the aid of the forests. The dryads spoke to the trees, and the trees obliged them by pushing the crystal globes of the cloudships along with their leafy branches. For this reason the gondolas suspended under the cloudships, with some irony, normally hovered just feet above the ground, under the canopy of their powerful and protective forests.
The nightrunners were special cloudships of the royal house designed not for cargo but for speed. Three crystal globes strained against the intricate lace netting above thirty-foot-long gondolas. These gondolas were ornately decorated with the symbols of Tatyana and the histories of the Qestardi, but they were carefully inlaid into jet black hulls broken with dark green swaths. The lace netting over the spheres was also the color of night.
These were ships of the night whose passage was meant to be only in shadow and starlight.
The nightrunners, propelled by dark-cloaked members of the Queen’s Guard both in steering harness and at the push-bars on either side of the gondolas, drifted quickly over the eastern fields. Phalanxes of guards flew in formations nearly fifty feet from either side of the ships, their heads turning slightly every few moments as they kept watch over their path.
At the aft end of the central nightrunner’s gondola, two figures sat, their faces turned back to gaze once more from whence they came.
The shining towers of glorious Qestardis illuminated their faces, a beacon in a black world. The spires, impossibly thin and graceful, drove upward into the darkness, cutting it like sharp knives. It was achingly beautiful in the night, making the darkness toward which they rushed seem blacker still.
Aislynn’s tears shone in the light of her h
omeland. “Will we see the Sanctuary Trees again, Dwynwyn? Will there yet be a home to which I may return?”
Dwynwyn, too, watched the great city as it rapidly fell farther from their sight. “I cannot see that truth, Your Highness, but if my search bears fruit then we may yet again dwell with joy in the towers of Qestardis. At least I managed one convenience for you, Your Highness: your friend Deython was appointed captain of your guard for this journey.”
“Deython?” Aislynn brightened somewhat at the thought. “You are good to me, Dwynwyn!”
The city’s rays illuminated their path for a time as the nightrunners sped eastward across the River Thenis. The effort was taxing on the guards. Those who had set out from the city were exhausted by their efforts either in pushing against the long handles protruding from the gondola or from the harnesses attached to the lace netting overhead. At the river, the guards who had been patrolling exchanged places with those who had been pushing the nightrunners. The ships then pressed east once more in a new burst of speed. This was the dangerous time, for the glory of their beloved city was their enemy now, their shapes silhouetted against its brilliance.
They craved the cover and assistance of the great forests to the east. The truth of their passage needed to be kept hidden from the eyes and minds even of their own people.* So their journey was hastened this night, pressed to the limits of their endurance.
As morning twilight grew brighter over the Cendral Hills, the nightrunners passed into the western borders of the Sinash Forest. Ashi and Emli, two dryads who were part of their company, spoke urgently to the trees from the lead gondola. Though it was well into the fall season, the ancient maples responded. They awoke from their deepening slumber, their branches reaching out tenderly toward the crystal spheres of the nightrunners, shaking loose in their movement a flurry of brilliantly colored leaves. With relief, the guards posted a diminished watch and withdrew to rest on the second and fourth gondolas.
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