By Slanderous Tongues

by Mercedes Lackey

  Furious and frustrated, each racked by guilt and grief, they could find no comfort in each other’s company and they parted without a word at Aurilia’s door. Rhoslyn went to the dreadful and bitter task of closing her mother’s booths in the three markets and, most painful of all, destroying the constructs that had served and protected Llanelli.

  She would have saved the constructs if she could—she did not blame them for not stopping Llanelli from killing herself; that blame she took all to herself. That Llanelli would do such a thing had never entered Rhoslyn’s mind and she had not warned the constructs to guard against it. However, the shock of finding Llanelli dead had damaged them beyond repair.

  They had one purpose in the half life Rhoslyn had created for them—protecting Llanelli. That task was complicated enough, requiring thought and judgment as well as obedience. Now their charge was, to them, inexplicably dead; and their minds could not continue beyond Llanelli’s life. They were able to tell Rhoslyn how they had dealt with Piteka in minute detail, but their minds had closed down at the moment each had seen Llanelli’s corpse.

  When she had returned the poor creatures to the formless stuff of which they had been made and reabsorbed the power that had animated them, Rhoslyn was shaken to her core. Without thinking, she twisted time to her last appearance in Mary’s household, when she had gone up to bed before the alarm Llanelli’s maids carried screamed in her mind of disaster. She was dressed for Underhill, not the mortal world, and totally disoriented. It took some time to remember who she was and what she should be doing in this small overcrowded room. By the time she descended from her attic chamber to take up her duties, it was midmorning.

  One of Mary’s ladies said, rather severely, “You are late, Rosamund.”

  The voice held no particular censure, but the words struck Rhoslyn to the heart. Late. Too late. She had known there was something wrong with Llanelli’s tale of a Bright Court Sidhe from Melusine, but Llanelli seemed so happy and she had put off any question … and then it was too late.

  She had no idea what showed on her face but saw Lady Mary make an abrupt gesture at the maid of honor who had spoken and then ask, “Rosamund, is something wrong?”

  And instead of trying to paint surprise or some other suitable emotion on her face, she found she could not hide her terrible grief and, changing one letter only told the truth. “My brother is dead, my lady.”

  “Oh Rosamund,” Mary cried softly, and rose from her seat and took Rhoslyn in her arms. “It is a great violation of the love you bore him and suffered with him in his illness, that many would say you are both better off now that he is safe in God’s arms.” Tears ran down Mary’s face. “But I know that for you, it is not better. There is a vast chasm where your purpose for living was.”

  And Rhoslyn wept aloud in Mary’s warm embrace, for what Mary said was exactly true. Llanelli was better off at peace, and she and Pasgen were certainly better off without the constant drag and danger of their mother’s weakness, but they did not want to be “better off.” They wanted Llanelli still with them.

  After a time Mary patted Rhoslyn’s shoulder and drew her along. Mary sat in her chair and gestured for a cushion to be brought so Rhoslyn could sit at her feet.

  “It will be too quiet for you here,” Mary said softly. “You will have too much time to think of your loss, to blame yourself for not being with him, to blame yourself for all kinds of impossible things. I know. When I heard my mother was dead, I tore my heart to pieces, even though the one at fault was my father, who forbid me to go to her.”

  Rhoslyn sighed heavily. She had intended to try to hide her grief or to say that her brother was worsening if Mary’s questioning grew too acute. Mary’s sympathy had undone her, and she had lost her excuse for the freedom she sometimes needed. She could not allow Mary to believe she now had no purpose but to serve her. She sought a new excuse.

  “What you say is true, my lady,” she murmured, “but there is a reason why I cannot give all my time to you—glad as I would be to do so. My brother left it all to me, all, everything. And I cannot throw it away. He so loved his lands and also the people who worked the lands. He entrusted me with their welfare and I must not fail that trust.”

  “Of course not,” Mary said. “But I hope you are not saying you will abandon me completely?”

  “No, no, my lady.” Rhoslyn uttered a sob but found a watery smile to go with it. “To leave you would make almost as large a hole in my heart.”

  Mary smiled, pleased with a mark of so much affection. And suddenly her expression lightened as if a problem had solved itself. She put a finger under Rhoslyn’s chin and lifted her face.

  “It has just come to me where I will find a busy place for you.” Mary gestured to a stern-looking, gray-haired woman beside her. “Here is Lady Catherine returned to me and weary to her soul of struggling to attend to my interests at Court and of the constant traveling. She has begged me to find a replacement for her and I was about to tell her she would have to endure yet a month or two, but if you will pick up her heavy yoke, you will have little time for brooding.”

  Now Rhoslyn looked up at Mary with the most sincere gratitude in her expression. She had not been paying proper attention. Mary had been offering her the freedom she needed, but she knew she must not seem too eager to be away.

  “I do not know whether I am fit for such a place.”

  “No, of course you are not.” Mary smiled at her. “But Lady Catherine will know and she will be able to make clear what would be required of you. Why do you not go aside with her now. There will be time enough to discuss the matter, and if you are willing, for Lady Catherine to establish you in her place at Court.”

  Pasgen, seething with rage he could not direct at any one person or thing, fled to an Unformed land, hoping to find something that would fix his attention and give him ease. He found only echoes of his grief and rage; the mists boiled and foamed, terrifying him because he could sense nothing. For a few despairing moments he thought of ending his own life, but he knew that would be condemning Rhoslyn too. Yet he could not bear the thought of seeing or speaking to Rhoslyn now.

  He turned in the Gate, blank with pain, and fell through darkness to come to rest at the simple and elegant Gate in Elfhame Elder-Elf. Gaenor was just dismounting from Nuin, her face a study of anger and anxiety.

  “What have you done?” she cried.

  “Everything wrong. Nothing right,” Pasgen replied, in utter misery.

  “Not with your life! I mean now! Did you not swear to me by the Mother that you would not go to that special Chaos Land?”

  Pasgen drew in a sharp breath. “I did not,” he protested, and then recalling that he had not consciously patterned for Elfhame Elder-Elf wondered whether he had, in his pain and confusion, sent himself to the place where the mist seemed to be awake and aware. But the mist he had encountered had been far from aware; they had been even more formless than usual, which was what frightened him. “No,” he said more surely. “I am sure I did not.”

  Gaenor stared at him. “But I have a … a caller in the Gate there and it sounded an alarm. I have just come to Gate there to see what set off that alarm.”

  “I did not,” Pasgen muttered helplessly, not even caring about his favorite puzzle just now.

  Before the words were out, Gaenor was up on the Gate platform, had seized his wrist, and they were there. Gaenor started back a half step, catching her breath. Both of the Unformed land’s creations were near the Gate, clearly visible for once. But neither of the doll-like figures looked at her. Both stared at Pasgen. Both beckoned to him and when he did not come, beckoned more eagerly. Suddenly Pasgen shuddered and shook his head violently. Then they turned together and melted into the mist.

  “What did they want?” Gaenor asked, but Pasgen only shook his head and did not answer.

  She then gestured and a plaque something like a patterning plaque appeared. She stared at it, touched it in several places and shook her head. “It has no re
cord of you being here. Did you do something to my caller?”

  “I did not know there was one,” Pasgen said. “And I did not come here.” He was certain now. The feeling of this domain was too distinct for him to dismiss, even as miserable as he felt.

  Gaenor looked about uneasily. The mists were roiling and coiling, coming nearer to the Gate, stretching tendrils as if to enter the Gate and touch them. Gaenor quickly gestured the plaque into hiding again, grasped Pasgen’s wrist, and brought them back to Elfhame Elder-Elf.

  Nuin was grazing nearby but did not approach as Gaenor stepped down from the Gate, still holding Pasgen firmly by the wrist. She turned to face him.

  “What is wrong? Something is terribly wrong. I can feel it boiling around you, and the mist felt it too. Pasgen, we must do something about that mist. It knew something was amiss with you—but how? I think the mist triggered the caller. Did the mist send you here? If you weren’t there, how did it know something is wrong?”

  Pasgen only heard the first three words of what Gaenor said. The rest was a dull mumble, muted by the pain he felt. The agony grew sharper as she spoke; it was important, but he could do nothing, think of nothing until he was rid of the shard of his life that pierced his heart.

  “My mother is dead,” Pasgen said. “She killed herself.”

  For a moment Gaenor stared at him, dumbfound. Then she gestured to Nuin. She mounted, held out a hand to assist Pasgen to mount the elvensteed.

  Another agonizing pain, but he simply shook his head. “It will not carry me,” he said.

  “If Nuin did not wish to carry you, you would know it already,” Gaenor snapped. “You would be trampled and she would not be standing here with a double saddle.”

  Pasgen blinked away the tears the expected rejection had drawn to his eyes. He had always so desired to ride the perfect beauty, perfect grace that was an elvensteed, but none, until now, had ever allowed him near. Silently, only half believing Nuin would permit it, he took Gaenor’s hand and got into the saddle.

  The joy that had broken through his pall of guilt and grief hardly lasted a moment. Before Pasgen could even feel relief they were at the door of a spare, white cottage. Knowing the moment of mercy had been withdrawn, Pasgen got down. Gaenor followed. Nuin simply disappeared. Wordlessly Pasgen stared at the place where the elvensteed had been.

  Gaenor opened the door of the cottage and urged Pasgen inside into a large, comfortable room. “Why?” she said.

  Pasgen blinked. The word made no sense. He was still thinking of the miracle of having ridden Nuin, which had somehow set the pain of Llanelli’s death at a distance.

  “Why did your mother kill herself?” Gaenor asked.

  The grief and guilt crashed down over Pasgen again. He closed his eyes. After a moment more, he said, “It is such a very long story.”

  “Not so long I hope that, aged as I am, I will not survive to the end of it.” Gaenor’s acid tone etched an opening into the pall of grief and guilt. “When did you eat last?” she asked sharply.

  “Eat?” Pasgen repeated stupidly and looked around.

  Gaenor sighed and went to sit down in a chair. “I keep forgetting how young you are,” she said, and gestured to another chair close to the one she had chosen.

  Both chairs were old and shabby, the cushions worn enough that the pattern, whatever it had been, could not be determined. They should have scored Pasgen’s tight nerves and made him furious. Instead they seemed to fit into a well established pattern that was soothing.

  Beside the chair Gaenor had chosen was a small table laden with papers and a book. A door in the back of the room opened and an old female construct stood waiting. Gaenor turned her head and addressed the construct who, Pasgen could tell, was relatively mindless, unlike most of Rhoslyn’s makings.

  “Bring two dinners,” she ordered. And then said to Pasgen, “Well? Begin this long story.”

  He had to begin at the beginning, even though it cast no good light on Llanelli. “My mother,” he said, “had two very strong desires. She wanted Kefni Deulwyn Siarl Silverhair and she wanted a child by him.”

  Pasgen expected surprise, even disbelief, but Gaenor only lifted one thick, white brow. By the time the servant brought in the dinners, he had described the means by which Llanelli had satisfied those desires. He half expected that Gaenor would silence him in disgust or say with contempt that she understood why Llanelli had killed herself; however, aside from one mild tsk she showed no reaction. Pasgen could only assume that the Sidhe had used stronger and more dire magics when she was young.

  The rest of the story came out in bits and pieces while they ate—Kefni’s failed rescue, Llanelli’s struggle to protect her children and to show them something of the way of life in the Bright Court, Vidal’s discovery of what she had done and his cruel punishment and revenge which resulted in Llanelli’s conviction that Vidal was all-powerful. Pasgen even confessed his attempts to gain instruction from Treowth and his rejection and Rhoslyn’s desire to leave the Dark Court and be accepted by the Bright.

  “Somehow Mother must have learned of that, likely she listened when we did not know she was near.” He sighed. “She did that often because she felt we hid from her anything that would cause her pain, but she was convinced she had to know to protect us. Her letter said that her death would free us to appeal to Oberon.”

  Gaenor made a sound suspiciously like a disbelieving snort which drew Pasgen’s eyes to her; he had been looking off into the distance as he described his and his sister’s seemingly hopeless desires. However, when he examined Gaenor’s face, she looked almost as bland and blank as the construct that served her.

  “This is no time to talk about how you will shape your life in the future—or lives, if as you imply, you and your sister will move together. You are too filled with rage and grief to plan a happy future. You want to kill this Vidal Dhu because you blame him for your mother’s death, but you cannot convince even yourself that he was deliberately responsible for it. Worse yet, you do not want Vidal dead because if you kill him you might be forced to rule the Dark Court.”

  Gaenor laughed as Pasgen felt himself flush. “A home truth.”

  But then she put out a hand and patted him gently. “This is no more a time for home truths than for plans for the future. Before you can deal with those, you need enough satisfaction to calm your spirit but one that will not kill Vidal. In fact, killing him would give you little satisfaction. You would always remember how he made your mother suffer. You need to make him suffer, not end all his troubles and woes.”

  Light seemed to burst in Pasgen’s head driving out the dark pall of misery. He suddenly realized that he could have his revenge of Vidal and not be in danger of being bound to the Dark Court forever.

  “That is exactly right, Gaenor.” he cried. “I need to make him suffer, to withhold from him all he holds dear …” The joyful energy drained away and he shook his head. “But there isn’t anyone or anything beside himself that Vidal does hold dear.”

  Gaenor laughed again. “Of course there is, my young and innocent one. Vidal values his preeminence. Take away his power, reduce him in—”

  “Oh, wonderful!” Pasgen interrupted, his eyes alight, his enthusiasm restored. “But I do not need to drain his personal power; that would return as he sucked misery out of the mortal world.” He laughed aloud. “I will leave him as strong as ever but make sure he can barely feed himself or the monsters of his Court.”

  “That sounds like a suitable revenge.”

  “Yes.” Pasgen nodded, his eyes distant again but bright now, not clouded with self-blame. “And I know just where to start. He has set his heart on the ruin of Elizabeth Tudor. I will see that his instrument for her ruin is ruined instead and that she is valued and cherished as the best heir to the realm of England.”

  Pasgen went west to pick up the threads he had spun almost a year earlier. Now he would weave those threads into a net that would catch and destroy Vidal’s tool and had no connecti
on to Elizabeth. He was, unfortunately, unaware of just how tangled together Thomas Seymour and Elizabeth had become.

  Rhoslyn had no trouble establishing herself as a friend and companion of the duchess of Somerset. Lady Catherine introduced her and a few small twists inserted into the duchess’ mind made Rhoslyn a trusted companion. By early December Rhoslyn was hearing tales she did not like. Just about the time Parry was asking Seymour about a house in London for Elizabeth’s Christmas visit to the king, Rhoslyn heard rumors that Seymour was plotting political mischief.

  She left a message Underhill for Aleneil that Elizabeth should avoid all contact with Seymour and should not attend Court unless she was commanded to come. Aleneil did not deliver the message herself; she had had enough of the mortal world while Elizabeth was living with Queen Catherine and was threatened by Seymour’s presence. Aleneil was taking what she felt was a deserved period of rest and recreation and was now enjoying herself Underhill mostly in Ilar’s company.

  Aleneil passed Rhoslyn’s message to Denoriel’s servants at Llachar Lle. The information was too late to prevent Parry’s meeting with Seymour, but together with the warning she had received from William Cecil, it was enough to make Elizabeth give up her hope of going to London and decide to stay quietly at Hatfield over Christmas.

  Master Ascham gauged Elizabeth’s mood and temper after this decision was made, and using the reason that no real studying would be done during the holidays, asked for leave to spend the time with his friends in Cambridge. The leave was granted, not very graciously, but Ascham felt he was well away from a storm about to break.

  The celebration of the holiday was traditional but, in view of the reprimand delivered to Kat by the duchess of Somerset, subdued. Kat’s anxiety spilled over onto Elizabeth. Although there was no overt threat of any kind, Elizabeth was not in the mood for merriment.