Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  Ellin sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “He can ‘demand’ all he wants. Do you honestly think I would send that child back to him after everything you’ve told me?”

  He looked at his hands. “I don’t think you’d want to. But the diplomatic incident would be…damaging.”

  Ellin knew he was right. She also knew that her royal council—which was a great deal more loyal now than it had been throughout her short reign so far—would balk at insulting such a powerful trade partner. However…

  “Waldmir can no longer hold our trade agreements over us,” she said. “Our alliance is signed and sealed, and he has a great deal less leverage than he once enjoyed.” Leverage he had used with ruthless efficiency in his personal vendetta against Zarsha. “If we have Elwynne here safe in Rhozinolm, there would be nothing stopping us from revealing the truth about her parentage and his need to use potency potions. Save a very practical desire not to see the principality that provides the majority of our gems and iron devolve into a civil war.”

  “So you would give her shelter here?” he asked with a fragile thread of hope in his voice.

  “Of course I would,” she said, fighting off a stab of hurt. She understood why he doubted her. When she had initially learned of his dalliance with Brontyn and the possibility that Elwynne was his child, she had taken it quite poorly indeed, and she had harbored that grievance for far longer than was logically justified. But she could honestly say that she now genuinely cared for the child, if only because Zarsha cared so much.

  “We should send word to the towns nearest the Nandel border and have them on the lookout. If Mother Leethan and the rest should arrive, we can have them brought immediately to Zinolm Well.”

  Zarsha closed his eyes in relief. “Thank you.”

  She reached over and put a hand over his. “I’ll also make sure to dispatch healers, in case their services are needed. If it is humanly possible to do so, we will bring her here safely, and she need never fear Waldmir again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Leethan had forgotten what it felt like to be comfortably warm as the days and nights passed in a welter of shivering misery and struggle. The three of them rested whenever they happened upon shelter, huddled together for some semblance of warmth. Elwynne had barely spoken a word since Laurel had “turned back,” and Leethan was certain the child knew she was being lied to. Guilt ate at her, and she wished she had worked harder to convince Laurel to stay behind in the safety of the Abbey, even while she admitted to herself that it had not been possible.

  If not for the sturdy ponies, Leethan doubted any of them would have made it out of Nandel alive. Their shaggy coats protected them in even the coldest weather, and as the rations and supplies dwindled, Leethan and Jaizal took turns riding on the baggage pony. The animal occasionally gave them baleful looks and threatened to balk, but it was apparently as eager to have the journey over with as they, for it bore its burdens and continued forward.

  Leethan had lost all track of time, days and nights blurring together as they toiled through the snow and cold. Probably the only thing that saved them was that the weather gentled after that first snowstorm. The skies remained gloomy and gray, but no further snow fell, and the winds were chilling but relatively mild.

  Leethan began to believe their impossible journey might actually succeed when she felt the occasional popping in her ears, which told her that they were finally beginning their descent. Slowly but surely, the air became warmer, the bite of the wind less sharp. The clouds parted, and on one glorious night when the temperature was almost comfortable, they spotted the lights of a settlement in the distance.

  “That will be Falcon’s Ridge,” Leethan said, her heart leaping with hope.

  “So we’ve made it,” Jaizal said, her shoulders stooped with exhaustion and her voice weak. For the last two days of travel, she had spent most of her time riding, her joints stiff and swollen and aching. Leethan was the older of the two by three years, but Jaizal’s years had been harder on her body. More than once during the journey, Leethan had feared her oldest friend would not pull through.

  “Almost,” Leethan said, studying her friend’s face in the fading twilight. The town was likely farther away than it appeared, but her soul cried out for them to keep going through the night and reach it as quickly as possible. The deep hollows in Jaizal’s cheeks and the squint of pain in her eyes persuaded her otherwise. “One more night of camping,” she said in her most cheerful voice, “and tomorrow night we will sleep on real beds with a fire to warm our bones and food to fill our bellies.”

  “Is that Rhozinolm?” Elwynne asked, startling Leethan. She could not remember the child speaking when not spoken to first, at least not since Laurel had left them.

  “Yes, child,” Leethan told her, trying to read Elwynne’s strangely inscrutable face. In all her years, she had never before met a child so young who was so skilled at hiding her feelings, and she had the unsettling certainty that Waldmir was to blame. Waldmir had never been an especially warm and loving father to any of his daughters, but Leethan had always felt there was genuine affection behind his seeming indifference. She had no such sense with poor Elwynne, and she hoped the child would blossom now that she’d escaped the shadow of his thinly veiled disapproval.

  Elwynne frowned pensively at the lights in the distance. “Papa says the people of Rhozinolm raise their children like wild animals. I don’t want to be a wild animal.”

  Leethan wondered how that topic had come up. Up until now, Elwynne had ventured no opinion one way or another about the prospect of visiting a foreign land, but Leethan saw a flash of worry in the child’s eyes in a rare, unguarded moment. Laurel had told Elwynne they were going to Rhozinolm to visit her cousin Zarsha, and the child had accepted the explanation with no questions.

  “Your father has never been to Rhozinolm,” Leethan said. “I have.” Only once, and only when she was traveling from Grunir to Nandel for her wedding, but it was more than Waldmir had ever done. “Some of the children there are well behaved, and some aren’t. Just like in Nandel. You will not become a wild animal.”

  Elwynne nodded and chewed her lip, still visibly anxious. Leethan didn’t know how to reassure her, so instead she helped the child dismount from the pony and prepared their meager camp, hopefully for the last time.

  Despite careful rationing, they were almost out of food. The ponies eyed their supper of dried meat hungrily, for their feed had run out the night before.

  “You’ll have some grass to munch on in the morning,” Leethan told the creatures, laughing at herself a little for feeling guilty about eating in front of them.

  Elwynne soon fell asleep, but Jaizal remained wide awake, though weariness showed plainly in her face.

  “You should sleep, too,” Leethan chided. She herself was too busy imagining the pleasures of a comfortable bed and a hot meal to consign herself to the misery of the bedroll yet.

  “We haven’t talked about how we’re going to present ourselves in Rhozinolm tomorrow,” Jaizal said.

  Leethan realized with a start that Jaizal was right. Perhaps a part of her had never quite expected them to make it so far.

  “Surely we will not admit our true identities,” Jaizal continued. “We might find ourselves arrested for kidnapping.”

  And sent back to Nandel to be executed for their crimes, she did not say, but both of them knew full well what would happen if Rhozinolm chose not to give them shelter.

  “No,” Leethan agreed, thinking furiously. The three of them hardly looked like dangerous or suspicious characters, and yet their arrival from Nandel at this time of year—unaccompanied by any male escorts and dressed in men’s clothing—was bound to raise questions.

  They were an odd little party, to be sure. Leethan’s dark skin and the strands of auburn hair that had not yet succumbed to gray were enough t
o mark her as not a native Nandelite, while both Jaizal and Elwynne obviously were. Elwynne bore no resemblance to either of them, and while Jaizal spoke a smattering of Continental, Elwynne was too young to have started language lessons and spoke only Mountain Tongue.

  “I think I must claim Elwynne as my granddaughter,” Leethan said. “That would probably be believed despite our lack of resemblance. And you can be her governess.”

  “And why are we traveling at this time of year—without a male escort and dressed as men?”

  Leethan groaned softly. “I’ll try to come up with a good story in the morning,” she promised. “Right now, I’m too exhausted to be creative. And besides, it’s possible we won’t be asked much of anything at all. Anyone we meet might assume we are women fleeing the oppression of life in Nandel and refrain from asking us any questions. Especially when we have a small girl with us. The prospect of raising a girl child in Nandel is not a comfortable one to those who live elsewhere in Seven Wells.”

  Jaizal’s doubt was clear in her eyes. She had lived all her life in Nandel and could not comprehend how differently women were treated elsewhere in Seven Wells. Indeed, even Leethan could hardly remember what it was like to have rights and freedom.

  “And what will we do if you are right? How will we get to Zinolm Well? How will we—?”

  “Jaizal, please,” Leethan said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “One problem at a time. When we are safely in Falcon’s Ridge, I’ll send a flier to Prince Zarsha. I have to believe the Mother of All sent us here for a reason and that Zarsha will help us.”

  “Even though doing so will risk Rhozinolm’s trade agreements with Nandel?” Jaizal asked.

  Leethan let out a long, slow sigh. “Even so.”

  * * *

  —

  The last time Delnamal had set foot in a dungeon had been more than two years ago, long before his enlightenment. Then, he had found the dungeons of Aalwell depressing and oppressive, and he remembered quite clearly how badly he had wanted to turn around and flee. He marveled now at how weak and easily swayed he had once been. Even knowing that the prisoners had been locked up in the dungeon because they had deserved it, he had felt pity for them and preferred not to be faced with their suffering.

  How different was the experience now, as he descended into the dungeons of Khalwell, flanked by two of Draios’s loyal soldiers who would ensure that his visit encountered no protests. He breathed deep the wretched smell of pain and despair, and searched his soul for a reaction, any reaction. But he entered the lair of human misery with neither pleasure nor dismay. Truth be told, he didn’t care about the dungeon one way or another. What he cared about was the reward that awaited him in the dungeon’s darkest corner.

  Delnamal leaned on his cane as he made his way down the narrow flight of stairs into the dungeon’s lowest level, where those who had been condemned to death awaited their fates. He could have managed the stairs without the cane in a pinch, but the strength that had infused him when he had killed King Khalvin and his guards was finally beginning to ebb. Draios had agreed that it was crucial to their plans that he maintain—and even grow—his strength, and the boy had invited him to partake of the condemned without ever realizing he had not come up with the idea himself.

  Delnamal smiled faintly as he reached the lowest level, pleased with the usefulness of the tool that fate had put into his hands. Draios was half-drunk on his own power already, planning the coming war with giddy excitement. His elder brother was still nominally king, and Draios a traitor, but with Parlommir and his small crew of loyalists having fled across the sea to the Midlands, there had been little to no resistance as Draios took his seat on his late father’s throne.

  Draios, Delnamal had found, was not a particularly rousing or persuasive speaker, for he had a tendency to resort too quickly to threats and intimidation. However, the man he’d appointed to the position of lord high priest was a different story. Having the young prince to thank for his unexpected elevation, the lord high priest had set to his mission of convincing first the priesthood and then the general population of the righteousness of the cause with great dedication and skill.

  Soon, Draios would declare Parlommir the traitor and name himself king outright. And because he now had a stranglehold on the clergy, no one would dare gainsay him. Already, the priests were darkly hinting at the need to provide the populace with forceful demonstrations that belief in the holy war to take back the throne of Aaltah was not optional or subject to debate. Delnamal expected there would soon be a wave of arrests of those declared heretics for opposing the war.

  Delnamal stopped by the first cell and looked at the miserable creature who resided within. A cadaverously skinny, pale man with his hair and beard matted with filth and his feet scabbed and broken with torture, stared at Delnamal with dull, suffering eyes. Eyes of a man who should welcome death. Even so, the prisoner took one look at Delnamal, then retreated to the farthest corner of the tiny cell, pressing himself hard against the cold stone walls and shaking.

  A guard made to open the cell door, but Delnamal waved him off. At first, he had always touched his victims when stealing their Rhokai, but in the king’s audience chamber, he had found he could reach the Rhokai from some distance. Now, he was inclined to test just how close he had to be.

  Licking his lips in anticipation, as if the Rhokai would actually taste good, he opened his Mindseye. The prisoner’s Rhokai shone with flashes of purple in the darkness even as the black outer shell seemed to disappear in the gloom. Delnamal reached his hand through the bars toward that Rhokai mote, beckoning it to him.

  The prisoner made a choked sound of pain, and Delnamal smiled contentedly. He backed away one step at a time, trying to see how far he could go before he lost his virtual grip on that mote. There was so much he didn’t yet understand about the nature and function of Rhokai, and he was very much looking forward to exploring its myriad mysteries. What happened to a person’s Rhokai when he or she died a natural death? Or an accidental one? And what happened when a mote of Kai made contact with a mote of Rhokai? Was Delnamal’s theory that the contact would break the Rhokai correct? Draios was just as interested in the results as he himself, and thus would allow him a shocking amount of latitude to experiment with the wretches in the dungeon.

  He made it almost all the way to the far wall of the cell block—which, granted, wasn’t terribly large—before his grip finally slipped. The prisoner gave a sob of relief, but Delnamal did not allow him that reprieve for long. Two quick strides brought him firmly back into range, and he reached for the mote again.

  With a gentle exertion of will, he urged the Rhokai to come to him. For a moment, it resisted, quivering in the man’s chest as if loath to leave him. The prisoner moaned, and behind him, Delnamal heard the uncomfortable shifting of the guards who had accompanied him. But it was important that people see his power, that people know it was a power not of this world and therefore must have been granted to him by the Creator. This series of executions would be carried out in private, but there would be more to come, and Delnamal was determined that the next set become a public spectacle. Oh, how zealots loved to smite those they declared the enemy! The people of Khalpar would soon fall to their knees and worship him!

  The prisoner gave a last sharp cry—one that set the rest of the prisoners shouting and weeping in terror—and then his Rhokai popped free and shattered. Delnamal had to bite his tongue to suppress a moan of near sexual ecstasy as the power filled him and the released mote of Kai joined the rest in his aura.

  He savored that first glorious new mote, reveling in the strength that filled his limbs, at the renewed vigorous thumping of his heart.

  Then, he moved on to the next cell.

  * * *

  —

  Alys activated first the talker that connected to Tynthanal, and then the one that connected to Ellinsoltah, watching as the imag
es of the other two rulers shimmered to life. She had never tried using two talkers at once before, but she’d seen no reason why it wouldn’t work, and her assumption proved accurate.

  Ellinsoltah looked at Alys with a smile that was half amazement, half amusement, then looked to her left. Alys could only assume she was looking at an image of Tynthanal, although thanks to the placement of Alys’s talkers, it looked like she was staring at nothing. Alys quickly rearranged her talkers just to save herself the confusion.

  “Three sovereigns meeting in one room,” Ellin said. “Who would have thought of such a thing only a year or two ago?”

  Alys and Tynthanal shared a smile, for they had invented the talkers working together, and they were by far the most sought-after magical export from Women’s Well. They received orders even from Nandel, despite that principality’s vaunted disgust at the very concept of women’s magic.

  It did not take long for Tynthanal’s smile to be replaced by a deeply troubled expression that made Alys’s hands clench in her lap. Of course he would not have requested this meeting to share good news, and Ellinsoltah was as aware of that reality as Alys.

  “I have been hearing…” Ellin frowned and hesitated. “Let’s just say worrisome reports from Khalpar. None of which I have yet been able to verify to my satisfaction.”

  Tynthanal grimaced and held up a scrolled letter for them to see. “I don’t know what you’ve heard,” he said, “but however worrisome you might have found it, the truth is almost certainly worse.”

  Alys cocked her head to the side, trying to decipher the few lines of writing that were visible on the letter. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar, although she could not immediately place it, and the image was too small for her to make out words.

  “I did not think Aaltah would have much of a spy network left in Khalpar,” she said, for Delnamal had so enraged what had once been Aaltah’s staunchest ally that King Khalvin had expelled the vast majority of Aaltah’s diplomats.