by Ellyn, Court
“Well, at least you’re reaping results.” Her glance swept the fire-torn hollow.
The cork popped free, and Rhoslyn held out a small crystal glass.
Filling it, he said, “I’m not afraid of it anymore.”
She lifted the wine to her nose and smiled at him. “So is that ‘thank you’ for inviting you to come home with me?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
While they dined on cold smoked chicken, bread baked with rosemary, and sweetberry custard in earthenware cups, Rhoslyn took the opportunity to update Kieryn on news of the blockade. The ‘old girls,’ as Admiral Beryr called them, had sailed shortly after the council dismissed, to begin the stranglehold on Fiera’s ports, while the builders in Brimlad, Westport, and Windhaven raced one another to produce fifty brigs by next spring.
The Aurion had led the war galleons from Windy Coves, and Rygg continued to report faithfully with brief notes, most of which hinted at a growing admiration for the pirate-king. “I fear I’ve lost my ferrymaster forever,” Rhoslyn said. “The admiral seems to have had a change of heart as well. Listen to this.” From the basket she took the latest of Beryr’s dispatches.
“. . . When our ships surrounded the Fieran merchanter, Captain Rehaan ordered the hull searched for valuables, in keeping with your agreement with him. But only yesterday, we intercepted a vessel from Mosegi, and though Rehaan boarded—to ascertain whether the Dorelis were smuggling weapons into Fiera—he let slip through his fingers a rich cargo of wine and other finery and allowed me to order the ship to return to Doreli waters.”
The letter went on to describe yet another encounter. The ship was an odd-looking one out of Zhian, but instead of carrying cotton cloth or desert glass, the hold had contained one hundred armed men. Once discovered, the Zhiani warriors had fought with desperate rage. Beryr’s description of the foreigners made them sound more beast than human. “Though we lost several men during hand-to-hand combat,” he wrote, “the Zhiani ship was effectively sunk. We rescued no survivors.”
“Mercenaries,” Rhoslyn said, excited. “Of course, I wrote Rhorek immediately, informing him of Beryr’s discovery. I’m sure we’ve spared your father a great deal of grief by catching the bastards before they made landfall.” Tucking the letter back into the basket, she added, “I must admit, I’ve begun to feel that the part I’m playing is … well, worthwhile.”
“You finally feel comfortable in your father’s shoes then?”
“Yes. No. Well, mostly.” Color flooded her cheeks and suddenly she seemed shy or embarrassed under his gaze. She poured herself another glass of wine and turned her face into the wind. Just the faintest chill. The golden ripples of her hair brushed the blanket, and soft curls lifted from her brow. She lifted the glass to her lips, dyed soft pink to match her gown. Over the pale silk, she wore a burgundy velvet cloak, which deepened the flush in her cheeks. Mother of All, she was beautiful. Neither Aerdria nor Lyrienn with all their elven otherworldliness were as lovely to him as Rhoslyn.
But why the sudden bout of unease?
A delicate crease developed between her eyebrows, and she gnawed her lower lip. At last, she turned to him and asked, “Are you very much in love with me?”
His glass was halfway to his mouth. It hovered there a long while before he came to his senses and set it aside. Looking her straight in the eye, he said, “Yes.”
Her breath quaked as she inhaled. A fawn startled by wolves couldn’t look more eager to bolt. Kieryn regretted his candor until Rhoslyn said, “Marry me then.”
Kieryn blinked, dumbfounded. Had summoning too much fire scorched his brain?
Rhoslyn must’ve misinterpreted his silence, for she rattled quickly on, “I’d grant Father’s title to you when … you know, when he leaves us. I wouldn’t do that for anyone else.”
“It’s not … it’s not the title,” Kieryn stammered.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’d grant it to you.”
“But your father … have you asked—”
“He adores you, and he respects your family.”
“Rhoslyn, I’m avedra,” he reminded her severely. “Can you imagine how people would fear an avedra duke?”
“But I don’t fear you. And if I don’t, they won’t. Kieryn, listen. You’ve helped me more than anyone else to find my courage. Fear is something I never need face again if you consent. With you at my side, I’ll know the thoughts of my adversaries, the truth within liars, Evaronna will never have an enemy she can’t vanquish. I’d be safe, Kieryn, safe and never alone. You promised this to me. I’m just making it easier for you.”
He might kick himself later, but he argued, “Rhoslyn, I’m not invulnerable, I’m not all-powerful. I mean to travel to places you may not be permitted to go—”
“If you would decline, simply tell me.”
“I’m not declining!” he insisted. “But I must tell you these things and you must consider—”
“I’ve considered.” She smiled and sipped her wine.
Kieryn felt an illimitable joy well up from his belly. He flopped onto his back and laughed at the sky.
“Is my proposal that funny?” Rhoslyn asked.
He sobered and mused, “Imagine my brother bowing to me…. It’s preposterous. I couldn’t do that to him, Rhoslyn. I won’t do that to him. So keep the title, and I’ll gladly bow to you all the days of my life.”
“Does that mean you accept?”
“Of course.”
Rhoslyn lifted aside their empty plates, then crossed the blanket. Kieryn tried to sit up, but Rhoslyn put a hand to his shoulder. She kissed him, and he was in the garden again with the scent of night blossoms spinning inside his head. Her hair fell around them as a golden veil, shutting out everything else. He was never more certain that she was the place where he belonged.
~~~~
Once more before winter rolled down from the Glacier, Zellel and Kieryn returned to Avidanyth. The moment he was alone with Aerdria in her private parlor, Kieryn told her, “I’m to marry a duchess.”
Aerdria looked astounded by the news, then she smiled with a hint of mischief. “Ah, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re to marry the love of your life.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my darling,” she said, taking his face between her hands. “Goddess bless you, I’ve not seen you this happy.”
“I’d given up hope,” he explained. “Then all of a sudden …”
Aerdria laughed at his loss for words. “When will the event take place?”
“The first day of spring. I’ve hardly come to grips with it. Rhoslyn and her aunt are already making plans. They’re putting together terribly long lists of things to be done, and three days ago they held an announcement party. Every highborn who isn’t fighting in the south was there with all their children and servants and pets. My mum wasn’t able to make it though. Zellel was scarce enough. Wish I could’ve been.”
“I suppose you’ll have to get used to that sort of thing.”
“I suppose,” he said with a sigh.
“My dear, I think you need a drink. And I shall toast to your very good fortune.”
Clasping a goblet of andyr-nut mead to her bosom, Aerdria said, “Does this put an end to your quest for Ashdyria.”
“Not at all.” Kieryn savored the sweet liqueur. “In fact, before I left Windhaven, I told Rhoslyn, well, all I thought safe to tell her, that there was a land I wished to see, and she said as long as I promised to take her with me, she would give me a galleon upon our marriage. A galleon, can you imagine? When the seas are safe again, we mean to sail south. That’s all right, isn’t it, if Rhoslyn goes with me?”
“Of course, Kieryn. Your duchess is hardly the first mortal to lay eyes on Ashdyria. The inhabitants of Dorél see the cliffs everyday. I would, however, suggest that you tell your betrothed why Ashdyria means so much to you. Too many secrets make for bad companionship, after all.”
When the goblets were empty, Aerdria took
Kieryn down many flights of stairs, down beneath the Moon Hall, into the cool, stony depths of the island, where she introduced him to the largest library he had ever seen. Scrolls, books, maps on leather, tales woven into tapestries, knowledge from every age and every corner of Dwinóvia filled shelves reaching from the floor to the lofty ceiling. Scribes worked at tall desks, copying old rotting manuscripts onto new vellum. Farther along, Elaran children sat at a row of tables, reciting the Song of Migration for their teacher. Kieryn recognized it only because Zellel had made use of the simple rhymes to help him learn the Elaran language.
At the dim end of the library, where the chants of the children were but an echo, Aerdria paused before a worn table and took up the single scroll lying upon it. “When you left us earlier this summer, I had one of our scholars compile this for you. It’s a list of every manuscript we have concerning Ashdyria and our early years in Dwinóvia. It’s a poor wedding gift, but—”
“No,” Kieryn protested, “I shall treasure it. And make use of it.”
“I know you will. But I warn you, the answers you seek, we do not possess. I fear you will find nothing but the theories we’ve discussed.” She acquainted him with the layout of the shelves, which tested his knowledge of Elaran letters, then helped him drag down an old dusty portfolio stuffed with maps of the Ashdyrian coastline and diagrams of Elaran cities. “The circular design of our cities and castles, we brought with us from the Old World, and likely the idea of the tree towers,” she said, peering at a detailed plan of Dan Ora’as, now nothing but ruins somewhere in Dorél. “I hope it is your destiny to see all this with your own eyes.”
Kieryn detected a hint of doubt in her words. Glancing sharply up at her, he said, “My path will carry me to Ashdyria. I will make it so.”
Aerdria’s eyes, deep violet in the faint blue light of the hovering orbs, grew sad. “We can rarely force fate, Kieryn. When we try, the consequences are often disastrous. But it is my prayer that you will have the blessed fortune to live all your dreams.”
Looking at the long undulating coast of the Forbidden Land, with its wide, empty, unknown reaches, Kieryn declared with grave finality, “I will live them.”
~~~~
No, thought Lothiar, you won’t.
In the dark rear corner of the library, Lothiar pressed himself against the cold stone wall, silent, oh, so silent, listening to the avedra boy boast about his great plans and the pretty little wife he meant to take. He and Aerdria tried to decide what he ought to call the damn ship he’d sail to Ashdyria. Such conquest the boy had in mind. To discover what no one else had discovered. The arrogance of it rankled Lothiar. For more than an hour, he grit his teeth and clenched his fists, all the while worrying that Aerdria or her beloved nephew would detect him.
He’d been searching for the secret door when he heard Aerdria’s voice drawing near. Trapped, Lothiar had whispered, “Thevril,” and wove a Veil to conceal his presence. Only Veil Sight would reveal him on the far side of the last shelf, so very close.
The moment he’d learned of the avedrin’s arrival in the city, Lothiar had started searching for the hidden vault. When Dravaen failed to return and report his success, it was easy to deduce who had gained the upper hand. For several days Lothiar had worried the avedrin would run back to Aerdria with accusations and tales of assassins, but there had been only silence. It amused him to think the avedrin were so caught up in their own affairs that they had no inkling of who was behind the attack. Perhaps they thought it a matter of personal revenge. Lothiar had chosen Dravaen for that particular reason, after all.
Still, he didn’t want to underestimate the cunning old man. Surely Zellel was suspicious. Surely Aerdria would quiet those suspicions. And why not? She had no reason to distrust the captain of her guard. He couldn’t afford to give her a reason either. Sending a regiment of regulars to do the job would need Aerdria’s sanction. Finding a team of assassins willing to take on two trained avedrin—and then to keep them quiet for centuries—was not a risk Lothiar was willing to take. But he had another avenue to explore, though he wasn’t sure he possessed the means to carry out the plan. A deep understanding of magic would be necessary. Whatever method he used, the time to act was now, before the avedra boy began breeding avedra babies.
Come to think of it, Kieryn had a twin brother, hadn’t he? To eradicate Mahel the Kinslayer’s line, Lothiar would need to eliminate this brother as well. The war waging to the south might accomplish this for him; if not, the spell he sought could see to the deaths of both Sons of Ilswythe.
At long last, Aerdria left the library with the avedra on her heels like a dog fawning after his mistress. When their voices faded in the cool still air, Lothiar resumed his search. As far as he knew, Aerdria had entrusted no one with the vault’s location. He was only aware that she hid the key in an enameled jewel box on her mantelpiece, and when she had occasion to visit the vault, she proceeded always to this beshadowed corner of the library. An empty, lopsided bookshelf, unneeded stools stacked neatly, were all the corner contained. The gray-brown stone of the wall had been chiseled smooth, but a few natural-looking cracks might well be the seam of the door. No pit, hole, or crack, however, was the right shape or depth to admit the key.
Lothiar pushed and tapped at the stone. Maybe a spell word would uncover the door. “Silë,” he said. Open. Nothing. Naséthilë tayá—Reveal thyself. Nothing. Chu’am?—Please? Nothing. He knelt and ran his fingers along the base of the wall. Cobwebs and niter collected on his fingers, but they detected neither a groove nor a draft. At a loss, he started to rise, but his shoulder-plate snagged the rung of one of the stools. The stack toppled. Lothiar lunged to steady them and only one fell. The clatter echoed throughout the hall.
Lothiar peeked around a shelf. Near the library entrance, two of the scribes looked for the source of the noise, but the third was so intent on her work that she hadn’t flinched. None of them bothered leaving their desks. Relieved, Lothiar bent to pick up the stool and saw the crack in the floor. The crack led to another and that crack to another, all three forming right angles. The last was four inches out from the wall, and in a corner where two cracks met, was the keyhole. Lothiar had been standing on the door the entire time. Feeling half a fool, he plied the key to the hole. Under the stone, he heard the mechanism click. The cracks, however, were too tightly fit for him to slide in his fingers and lift the door. Neither was there room for a pry-bar, nor signs that Aerdria had ever used one.
“Silë,” he said again. The door lay still.
“Redilë.” Rise. His heart leapt when stone scraped stone, and the heavy door lifted upward, folding back on silent, oiled hinges.
A narrow stair led into a deep black hole. Lothiar descended. He soon wished he’d brought a lantern. Keeping one hand upon the wall to his left, he felt for turns or recesses, but there were none. The stair dropped down a straight monotonous shaft, dry but increasingly chill.
Eventually the light from above grew too dim to illumine the next step. Lothiar turned up his palm and said, “Sha.” A dull orange-red ball of light gathered above his hand. With a gesture, he propelled the light ahead of him. Only a dozen or so steps remained before the floor flattened out. Three rooms branched off the corridor, one room to the left, one to the right, one straight ahead. Each room, perhaps twenty by twenty, was lined with shelves carved from the rock itself, and each shelf was packed end to end with manuscripts bound in unadorned black leather. The Dark Tomes.
Containing all the spells, lore, and recipes deemed too dangerous, too potent for just anyone to peruse, the collection was far more vast than Lothiar had anticipated. He might search for days without finding the spell he needed. And yet, hidden within these musty pages were a thousand ways to make an end of the avedra boy before nightfall.
At random, he chose the room on the left and began pulling tomes off the shelves. His inspiration came from his argument with Laniel. His laughing fool of a brother had mentioned Jevaerien Blackhand, a powerful
avedra who had found his way to Linndun some two hundred years ago. When Jevaerien’s experiments with the dark magics saw him banished from the city, he was taken in by the Aralorri king, Mathonryk, as adviser and guardian. During Tallon the Unifier’s rebellion, Jevaerien made use of his dark knowledge to eliminate many of the king’s enemies. Against one in particular, Jevaerien turned to a spell of such darkness that pondering it made Lothiar’s skin crawl.
He had dared summon the most dreaded Entity in all the realms of Flesh, Magic, and Divine. As old as thought, the Entities had existed in the void before Ana-Forah lifted a hand to create the realms. While she plied her will to shape the earth and all things animate and inanimate upon it, these Entities attempted to destroy all she made.
Every Elari was taught from childhood that both chaos and order are necessary to achieve balance in the universe; one begets life, the other destroys it and makes way for the new. The storm, the flood, the liquid fires of the volcano might wreak havoc for the souls living in their path, but just as they are agents of chaos, so too do they give birth to a new order. According to the Hymn of Creation, the Mother-Father holds Order in her right hand and Chaos in her left. As tools, both are equally precious to her.
But the Entity summoned by Jevaerien Blackhand belonged to a different kind of chaos, a legion as destructive as any flood or fire, but with an awareness, a cunning, whose design was to consume all the universe. According to myth, an Entity of this vast legion sucked into itself the life force of the thing it destroyed.
In time, the Entities gained a reputation of evil among the Elarion, and with the reputation a name. Long had they been known among Lothiar’s kind as ragazethion, Soul Snatchers.
The Book of Beginnings said that Ana-Forah, angry at their meddling, banished the Soul Snatchers to Galanrim, the Great Abyss, the Veil beyond the Veil, from which nothing returns. Unless bidden.
From one of these Dark Tomes, Jevaerien Blackhand had learned how to open a door to the Abyss and call forth his dire servant. But after flipping through the volumes in the first two rooms, Lothiar began to get annoyed. He had little patience with books and their slow, tedious manner of spitting out their secrets. By now Aerdria or the Moon Guard may have missed him.