Princess of Wisdom: An Epic Fantasy Series (Wisdom Saga Book 2)

by W. C. Conner

  It is strange, Caron thought as she stared into the darkness. I feel as much at home here as I do at Confirth, and yet, the two could not be more different.

  In Confirth, she was Roland’s duchess as well as Princess Caron of Gleneagle. Here, she was simply “mommy”.

  In Confirth, she was surrounded by fine furnishings, silver plates and goblets and finely appointed rooms wherever she went in the palace. Here, there was a serviceable bed, a small table in the kitchen which was also the main living space, and two rough, hand-made chairs.

  In Confirth, she was waited on hand and foot by servants who prepared and served her food, made and cleaned and mended her clothing, tended her dogs and horses, and stood to the side, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to pounce on whatever need might come to her mind. Here, she was just a person who sat and talked and helped with the cleaning and cooking, and with fetching and chopping the firewood.

  She smiled at the ceiling. They were both lovely homes, she realized, and she felt equally at home in both. She looked toward Wil who had made no sound but whose breathing told her he was still awake and staring into the darkness as she was.

  “Wil?” she whispered.

  “Yes?” he replied softly.

  “Shortly before I was taken before Styxis the second time, I received a plea for help from the avatar. He seemed beaten. It seemed as if he was in despair. As I was trying to figure out what I could possibly do to help, I heard the barest whisper of hope in my head. It sounded like you, but it was as if you were far, far away. Was it you, or was it my mind playing tricks on itself in its despair?”

  “It was me,” he said. “The avatar was, indeed, discouraged after he learned the demon had gotten my daughter. He felt he had failed. In truth, I was discouraged myself about the loss of the child, but I could not abandon you. My sending to you was the mental equivalent of a scream and I suffered an acute headache for hours afterward, but I knew you had heard it and I rejoiced that I had been able to send even that tiny thought through the boundary. It felt like you received some hope from it.” He laughed softly. “Aimee thought my tears were those of despair, but they were tears of joy. ‘Don’t cry, Daddy,’ she said. ‘Don’t cry’.”

  “I knew it had to be you,” Caron said. “It just had to be you.”

  Caron yawned widely and rolled onto her stomach, still holding tightly to Wil’s restored hand. All conversation stopped after that and they finally fell asleep as Aimee dreamed of the fawn she had been petting when her mommy had come home.

  Once again, it was Allen who waited across the road as Caron emerged from the Old Forest. He jumped to his feet and trotted over to her through a heavy mist that hung on the land.

  “Roland awaits you in the meeting hall at the compound, Highness,” he said as he helped her step over a large puddle left behind by a rain storm that had blown through the previous day.

  “She will be staying to help Thisbe with the baby, Allen,” Caron said, enjoying the sudden flush of color that mounted his cheeks. She knew that Allen understood exactly who it was she spoke of, and she knew that he had desperately wanted to ask her the question as soon as she emerged, but he was too polite and too shy to do so.

  Allen looked up at her and smiled self-consciously, then turned and started off toward the Wisdom wizards’ compound. “Thank you, Highness,” he murmured so softly she almost missed it. “I’m certain that will make her most happy.”

  Someone had apparently seen them coming and run to tell Roland, for they were less than halfway to Wisdom when the sound of a galloping horse could be heard coming toward them. They stepped to the side as Roland’s horse emerged from the mist and skidded to a halt beside them. He vaulted off the horse before it had completely stopped and swept Caron off her feet, then kissed her forehead, her nose and her lips before setting her back upon the ground. “I’m pleased to see you back,” he said.

  Caron laughed. “If you were any more pleased, we would have had to meet in a private room at Three Oaks.”

  Roland took her hand in his, then picked up the reins of his horse and started walking toward the wizards’ compound. They walked along in silence, the crunch of gravel under their feet and the clip clop of the horse’s hooves following along behind them was the only thing that could be heard in the heavy mist.

  Caron could sense his need for her in his touch. “I will never be able to bear you another child, you know,” she said quietly.

  Roland said nothing.

  “She burned it out of me at Blackstone.” He squeezed her hand reassuringly, but still kept silent. “I have known it for some time, and Wil confirmed it.”

  “You have already given me an heir,” Roland said after a bit, “and you are still alive and mine. I would be a selfish man indeed if I asked for more than that.”

  “I’m ready to go home now, Roland,” Caron said.

  “I think we all are, my love,” Roland replied.

  52

  The walls of Confirth loomed larger and larger before them as Caron and Roland rode side-by-side toward the castle. Caron was once again wearing her closely tailored riding breeches and luxuriating in the freedom they gave her.

  To her other side, Mitchal rode astride his great horse, doing his best to hide the difficulty he was having keeping his mount under control with only one good leg. He had finally given up trying to make the entire distance between Wisdom and Confirth on horseback and had ridden most of the way back in the carriage which had carried Angela on the outward journey. His mood had soured when it became clear to him that he would have to ride in the coach, and Caron and Roland had stayed well clear of him each day when it was time to break camp.

  But this morning Mitchal had refused to board the coach. “I’ll not return to the city looking like some sort of cripple,” he declared. “By the powers, I’ll ride in like a man or die in the attempt.” And ride he did, and manfully at that.

  A large crowd of Roland’s subjects had gathered outside the gates of the castle to welcome them back after they had been gone for almost three months. Amid the cries of welcome, a woman’s voice called to Caron from the crowd. “Would you bless my baby, Highness?” it asked.

  The voice had not been the loudest of those calling their welcomes, but it had a quality which caused Caron to slow her horse and scan the upturned faces to see if she could determine whose call had so arrested her attention.

  There, near the front of a group of peasants, a pretty young woman with brown hair and brown eyes stood smiling up at her. What is it about the eyes? Caron thought. There was something about them, about the way they smiled at her, regarded her, and then she knew and her breath caught in her throat.

  Hello, Caron, Plaisir sent to her. I brought the baby for you to bless.

  Oh, Plaisir, Caron responded, I was so afraid for you; so afraid I would never see you again. And you brought the baby. Caron had stopped her horse as soon as she realized there was something about the peasant woman’s eyes. She now slid from the saddle and walked over to the changeling.

  How is it that you have this face and body? Caron sent. Why do you not look like the Plaisir I knew in the other world?

  Because it is not that other world. I am free now to look how I want to look. You were right, Caron, this world of yours is a world of color and light and love everywhere you look.

  It is not without its problems, however, Caron replied, but now I want to see the child. Plaisir held the baby up to her.

  Cornflower blue eyes in a peaches and cream complexion surmounted by white gold hair looked up at her. She was speechless for several moments as she looked at Wil’s other daughter.

  She is breathtakingly beautiful, Plaisir, she sent, but she looks nothing like either of her parents. She finally took the baby from Plaisir and found herself being drawn into the child by its beauty as she looked into the trusting, curious, otherworldly eyes of the infant cradled in her arms.

  She was conceived by the joining of two powers, Plaisir sent, not by the
joining of seed and pollen. She is what the joining of those powers created.

  Caron lifted the baby and kissed her gently on the forehead before handing her back to Plaisir.

  “May you and your beautiful child live long and happy lives,” she said aloud. And take good care of her, Plaisir. She is very, very special. They smiled at one another as Plaisir bowed and backed away from Caron before turning and disappearing into the crowd.

  “What was that about?” Roland asked as Caron remounted her horse.

  “That woman asked me to bless her child,” she replied, “and I did. I would bless every child born if it would help make this world better for them.”

  The mounted procession clattered through the gates of the city as they were cheered and welcomed on all sides.

  Wil, Caron sent as she rode slowly through the gates, not hearing the calls around her, I have seen your daughter and she is beautiful.

  I saw her through your eyes, Caron, and she takes my breath away, Wil replied.

  But I did not call you, Caron said.

  Oh, but you did, he sent. In fact, your call was so loud in my head I almost dropped the load of kindling I was carrying. Was that the changeling that held her?

  Yes. That was Plaisir, but how did you know?

  Your mind became blank to me while you communed with her just as it did when you were inside the boundary.

  She will take better care of her than either of us ever could, Caron sent. Your daughter will grow up not knowing who she is or who her parents are, and that is for the best in her case, I believe.

  I am of the same opinion as you, came Wil’s reply. I could ask no more for her than to be raised by a mother who loves her, and the changeling clearly does. It is likely that I will meet her one day, but until that time, I am content now that I know she is healthy and well taken care of.

  Caron looked up as the door of the palace opened upon their approach. There, framed in the doorway, was her father, smiling out at the group as they dismounted and bowed to him. Gleneagle had left his own home immediately upon learning from a rider sent by Roland that his daughter had emerged unscathed from her second confrontation with the demoness and would soon be returning to Confirth. He had come both to see Caron and his grandson and to bring back Mertine who had become increasingly irritating as time had passed with no word from Caron or Roland.

  “Where’s that baby?” Mertine scolded, barging past the prince in her eagerness to get her hands on Alexander.

  She stopped short when Mitchal stumped around the front of his horse and stopped facing her. She looked only once at the peg where his leg had been. Abandoning her search for the baby, she went to him and kissed him full on the mouth.

  “You won’t be able to back out of marrying me because of that,” she said gently. “Roland promised you to me, and I won’t let him go back on his word.”

  Caron looked up to the window of the bedroom she shared with Roland that looked out over the city.

  I’m home, she thought contentedly, smiling at the recognition of all that it meant.

  Epilogue

  Caron sat at her vanity with its tall looking glass, examining her face as she brushed out her long hair. She had been waiting for the day the gray strands would begin showing among the dark, but none had appeared. More and more she marveled that she had no lines around her lips or eyes, no loss of clarity or firmness of her skin despite the passing years.

  I’m beginning to understand how Wil felt, she thought, for her unchanged appearance had come to be a subject of whispered comment within both the palace and the city.

  Her eye was drawn to the movement behind her as Alexander galloped around the room on the broomstick hobby horse Mitchal had made for him, whacking at the bed with his little wooden sword every time he passed it.

  Mertine fussed at him in the background. “Come along, Alexander,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Just because it’s your eighth birthday doesn’t mean you can act like a barbarian. You settle down right now or I’ll tell your father you won’t be allowed to go hunting with him tomorrow.”

  Alexander slowed a bit and took one last whack at the bed before stopping and letting his sword and horse fall to the floor.

  “Yes, Mertine,” he said, “but I’m never going to be eight again and I want to have fun while I still can.”

  Mertine laughed. “All right then, young man. Let’s go see what kind of fun Mitchal can find for you while you’re still able.”

  Caron smiled and continued brushing out her hair as she watched Mertine’s reflection in the looking glass dragging Alexander from the room. Roland arrived and stood aside to allow the two of them to pass before coming through the door to stand behind her.

  She stopped brushing when he entered and leaned her head into his touch as he caressed her face in a manner that reminded her of the way Plaisir had caressed it almost eight years earlier. She had neither seen nor heard from Plaisir following their meeting in front of the castle on her return after her second confrontation with Styxis.

  Caron reached back with one hand and placed it fondly over Roland’s where it had come to rest on her shoulder.

  “You are amazing,” he said softly. “You look exactly as you did the day I first saw you upon the road to Blackstone.”

  Caron looked up at his reflection and realized for the first time that there was a liberal sprinkling of gray in his hair now, and wrinkles here and there that she had never noticed before.

  She blinked her eyes as they unfocused, then looked back up to find Roland’s handsome, sensitive face looking exactly as it had the day she had been brought before him a prisoner more than twelve years before. As she watched, his face changed, with lines appearing on his forehead and his hair becoming grayer and thinner. As the aging continued, his face became care worn, though still handsome. Then the eyes began to dull and his skin to sag and show the spots of advancing age until, finally, his image faded altogether and she saw another man standing near the door – a man she had loved even longer than Roland.

  Just as her appearance was unchanged from when she had first met him in Scrubby’s little house, the man near the door also looked exactly as he had then. Wil held out his hand to her in invitation and her image in the mirror stood and went to him.

  As the vision faded, she pulled Roland down to her and kissed him warmly before returning to brushing her hair with a contented smile on her face.

  Thank you for reading Princess of Wisdom

  We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. We just wanted to take a moment to encourage you to review the book. Follow this link: Princess of Wisdom to be directed to the book’s Amazon product page to leave your review.

  Every review helps further the author’s reach and, ultimately, helps them continue writing fantastic books for us all to enjoy.

  You can also join our non-spam mailing list by visiting www.subscribepage.com/AethonReadersGroup and never miss out on future releases. You'll also receive three full books completely Free as our thanks to you.

  Facebook

  Instagram

  Twitter

  Website

  Want to discuss our books with other readers and even the authors? Join our Discord server today and be a part of the Aethon community.

  ALSO IN SERIES

  THE WISDOM SAGA

  WIZARD OF WISDOM

  PRINCESS OF WISDOM

  CHILDREN OF WISDOM

  Looking for more great Fantasy?

  A rotten thief. A disgraced knight. Only together can they save the kingdom.

  GET BOOK ONE OF THE BURIED GODDESS SAGA NOW!

  Cursed from birth. Forced into slavery. It's time to fight back.

  GET A TRIBUTE AT THE GATES TODAY!

  Everyone knows the gods are long dead. But what if one of them survived?

  GET THE PRIEST NOW!

  The barrier between worlds is broken. Only he knows the truth...

  GET RANGER’S OATH NOW!

  F
or all our Fantasy books, visit our website.