The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  Charmian’s eyes narrowed, but she left us without another word.

  Maybe the older woman had some kind of special status that called for obedience.

  “There’s a supper after Bard Fallon sings,” said Danae. “It’s a good time to speak.”

  Sometimes life only offers one chance.

  “Will you help us?” I asked her. There was no time for subtle games.

  Luckily, there was no hesitation in her answer.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll do what I can.” She rose and went to the other side of the courtyard.

  Bard Fallon began tuning his lyre. He looked around nervously, although he soon became calm as he fell into a recitation of the news.

  He clearly knew his audience: the focus was on marriages and births, and there were many gasps and cries of excitement from the audience.

  Fallon then sang the little-­known lay of the Lady in the Castle.

  And that’s when I knew he knew. I didn’t know how much he knew, but someone had told him we were abroad in Shibbeth. If that someone had been Trey or the Bard, Fallon’s presence might offer hope. Only our Bard knew, after all, that the obscure lay of the Lady in the Castle was one of my favorites.

  After Bard Fallon finished the lay of the Lady in the Castle—­which left many of the women in tears, including Silky—­a light supper was brought in. I saw Danae watching me. The other women crowded around the table, and Silky looked delighted by the food. While I wanted to speak with Danae, I saw I had only one brief instant to be alone with Fallon.

  I didn’t want to look as if I were doing anything secretive, so I walked up as if to congratulate him.

  He stared at me before he spoke.

  “I knew I would be the one to find you,” he said. “Worse luck for me. Word’s abroad among the Bards. Has the day come?”

  “The day has come.”

  “Lady Angel and Lady Silky?”

  I wished Silky to my side, but she was preoccupied with the food.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Meet me at the water courtyard when the moon clears the wall. Then we’ll see.”

  “What will we see?”

  “If I can get you out.”

  I was about to say something more, when I felt, rather than heard, Charmian come up next to me. Her perfume signaled her presence.

  “You shouldn’t be talking to him,” she said sourly.

  “I was just complimenting Bard Fallon on his song,” I said.

  “You were just talking to a man you don’t even know,” she said.

  Then Danae was there.

  “Come to supper,” she said.

  “What do you want?” snapped Charmian. Danae ignored her.

  “The food is very good tonight,” said Danae and put her arm around my waist. The bard had turned away. Charmian left us to go back for the desserts.

  “How can you help us?” I whispered.

  “I’ll set my bedroom on fire. That will have the merit of getting their attention.”

  It had certainly gotten mine.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “Look around,” she said. “This courtyard, the fountain, the sleeping quarters with tapestries and embroidered sheets, the bejeweled clothes, the solicitude of your new friend Charmian—­this place is Hell.”

  “That still doesn’t answer why you’re helping me.”

  “Just be here at moonrise; the fire will be large; my life will probably be in danger. They’ll all be busy.” She made to walk away, but I grabbed her elbow with a grip strong enough that she was forced to look at me again.

  “I need to know why,” I said. “I need to know you’re not going to trap us.”

  Danae paused. “You see what that little girl Charmian has become: spoiled, pettish, dangerous, damaged. I never want to see that metamorphosis again.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Danae gave a little laugh.

  “How could you? You and your sister have the marks of courage and honor, and you’re—­you’re close to Charmian’s age. She could have been like you, in another life, in another place.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I was Garth’s wife,” she said, “when he finished with his first one. After me, he married Charmian.”

  “I see.”

  “No. You don’t. Charmian’s my daughter. My beautiful, ruined daughter.”

  Danae turned away from me.

  I never saw her again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Different Dreams

  As we walked to our room, we passed Charmian. She gave me a smile, and when I saw that smile, I realized how much she hated me. I recognized loathing.

  “Danae’s not usually social,” she said.

  “She’s pleasant,” I said.

  “Yes. Well. I’ve been thinking about you and Lord Garth.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did Lord Garth use you on your journey?” When I looked blank, she became more blunt.

  “Were you his concubine?” She switched her attention to Silky. “Or was it you? He likes them young.” For a moment she looked smug. “Like me.”

  “We journeyed together,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “I see,” said Charmian. “Well, you won’t do that again after the marking ceremony. Not after you become ‘Lidan women. The branding will change you. You’ll see.”

  “I bet it didn’t change you,” said Silky. “I bet you were always awful.”

  I almost wished Charmian would say something nasty in reply so that I could keep from feeling sorry for her, but she didn’t.

  “When I was a child,” she said, “my mother let me dream of being free. She’s a stupid woman.”

  “You’re still a child,” I said softly.

  “Just go to your room,” said Charmian, and her eyes glittered. “Soon enough you’ll dream different dreams.”

  We retired to our chamber of tapestries and great drapes and swaths of multicolored silk. Silky and I sat quietly. I drew the curtains over the opening where a door would normally be. It was stuffy, but I wanted privacy, and there was very little privacy to be had in the women’s restricted quarters.

  “We take nothing,” I said to Silky after I explained the plan to her. I didn’t know where our riding garments were; we were going to have to try to make our escape in the spectacularly useless outfits that Charmian had provided.

  Finally the quarters grew quiet; the women all went to bed, and Silky and I pretended to do the same. I predicted that the moon would be over the wall at close to midnight.

  Time went by.

  I was wondering if Danae was going to make good on her promise, when a cry of fire went up, and I could hear women running past our chamber.

  “Hurry,” a woman cried, “the whole room’s gone up.”

  “Get the guards,” called another.

  And then I heard Charmian, her panicked voice lifted over the others. “She’s trapped!” Charmian screamed. “She can’t get out. Get her out!”

  Silky and I slipped away, leaving the curtains drawn behind us. As we left the women’s quarters behind, I saw flames flickering against the sky. There was shouting and screaming from the direction of the glow, and then, abruptly, everything was still.

  We crept to the courtyard. It was midnight, and the moon looked as if it were sitting on top of the stone wall, huge, orange, portentous.

  Fallon was waiting in the shadows.

  “Come,” he said.

  “The guards?” I asked.

  “I sang to the guards. We shared wine. Theirs was drugged.” We passed the doorway, stepping over the men who had been keeping watch.

  “Are they dead?” asked Silky.

  “I don’t know,” said Fallon. “Take their weapons and come on. Do you know how to
use a crossbow?” I didn’t answer, but I took the crossbow off one of the guards and handed it to Silky.

  Fallon led us through the labyrinthine passages of the palace, and I had a fleeting impression of oversized paintings, many of battle and slaughter, statues of men and women out of bardsong, a hall of portraits. He stopped in front of the painting of a woman with a parrot on her finger.

  “We need to find the kitchen.”

  I remembered the corridor that smelled of food.

  “This way,” I said. I took us left and right and left again and down the corridor I remembered. Then we were in a huge kitchen. Once there, Bard Fallon opened a small door in the back of the pantry.

  “It’s the door for the dog,” he said. “I saw it when Cook gave me food. We’ll fit.”

  “It’s small,” I said.

  “So are you,” he said.

  We did fit—­my shoulder protested the entire time—­but Silky and I had to pull at Fallon until he popped out like a cork from a bottle.

  The air swept over us, fresh and cold, sweeter than any of Charmian’s perfumes.

  We were free.

  Or at least free of the house. We were still a long way from actual freedom. So we moved in the shadows. As I followed Fallon, I thought that the last thing Garth would expect was escape. Any idiotic notions I might have had about his kind nature, his polite demeanor or his pleasure in our conversations were gone, and I saw us as he had always seen us. Except for that brief moment of the cauterization of my wound, he had seen foolish, noisy, chattering, undisciplined women, just barely on the right side of being fit mates for his sons. He must have been disappointed that Charmian had so little success at getting us to conform to ‘Lidan ways with her baths of roses and milk.

  As if a bath could wash away our essence.

  That’s when, standing in the moonlight like a giant statue of a man, I saw Garth. He stared at us in disbelief.

  And then he roared. It was not a sound I had ever heard coming from a human being.

  It was the sound of pure rage.

  His face was contorted into a mask of anger, and I could see that in a moment he was going to come for us.

  We would never have another chance.

  He drew his sword and took a few angry strides toward us.

  Silky and I stood side by side in the moonlight. She grabbed my hand. Fallon was behind us, as if we could shield him from Garth’s wrath.

  Yet, instead of attacking, Garth spoke, and the measured calm of his words was almost worse than his roar of anger.

  “You’ll come with me,” he said. “And we won’t speak of this again. Charmian will worry if she finds you gone.”

  “Just let us go,” I said. “Please.” I hated the begging tone in my voice. “We’re useless to you. The Lord Kalo of Montrose hates us. You won’t gain an acre from him by marrying us to your sons.”

  “Why not?” he said. “A ‘Lidan match will bring Lord Montrose higher standing here,” said Garth. “And, in return, he can make me great.”

  “Ambition is not a pretty trait,” said Silky. She was foolish to speak so, but she was angry.

  And I didn’t disagree with her.

  “It’s strange talking about land and dowry matters with women,” he said. “It’s as if dogs could speak.”

  Garth raised his sword. I knew that by the time Silky had a chance to level and sight the crossbow, either she or I would be dead. But I was not ready to give up. I was angry. I let go of Silky’s hand.

  The giant Garth with his silver sword stood in the way of the outer gate. He was blocking Silky and me from freedom.

  He was keeping me from Trey. From the Bard. From life.

  I began clumsily to run, but not away. I was no longer trying to escape. The garments Charmian had given us were hopeless for running, and we were still in the walled outer area of the palace. There was no place to go that led to freedom.

  No, I didn’t run away—­I ran toward Garth. And as I came on, he actually took a step backward. This was not what he had expected.

  When I reached him, he raised his sword, but my anger had become a kind of frenzy.

  I slammed into him as hard as I could. I batted his sword away, oblivious to the deep cut that opened in my hand. He stared for a moment at his sword, and I punched it out of his hand. It lodged in the paving stones behind him, hilt down, blade up.

  I didn’t know how to fight, and that’s probably what saved me. Everything I did was unexpected. I pulled out a clump of his hair, and I began working my thumb into his eye socket. I could feel the slash in my hand now, but the pain seemed far away. Later my shoulder was going to be in agony. Now my focus was on getting his eye out.

  All this time, he just kept pushing me away, as if he could think of nothing better to do, as if one good punch from him wouldn’t have ended everything right there.

  Silky was beside me in a moment.

  “Get out of here,” I yelled at her. “Run for the gate and get into the woods.”

  “I’m not going,” she said, and she kneed him, hard, in the groin. He bent over in agony. He was off-­balance. I slammed into him.

  His fall was slow and monumental. I followed Silky’s example, and, when he hit the ground, I kicked him in the groin, but there was no need—­the silver length of his sword poked through his abdomen. The blood began to flow.

  Now I could hear noises coming from the guardhouse at the palace gate. There were lights and the crashing sound of armor on armor. The noise of Garth’s shouting and our fight had roused the guard, but they couldn’t possibly have an idea of where the sound had come from.

  We had time. Perhaps not enough. But we had a chance.

  Suddenly I realized that Bard Fallon was gone. Sometime during the scuffle with Garth, he had found a way to disappear.

  We were alone. We would have to do this by ourselves.

  I looked at Silky; she looked back, trustingly, hopefully.

  Despair coursed through me like poison.

  When I heard the sound of hooves on cobblestones, I thought Garth’s troops were here. But a moment later, in a moment of disbelief, I could make out the shadows of three horses—­one with a man already mounted on it, the other two saddled up.

  Even in the dark I recognized Jasmine’s silhouette. Bard Fallon had been true to us all along.

  “Get on,” he whispered. “We may actually come out of this alive.”

  Silky and I were mounted in a second. She had the crossbow we had taken from the drugged guards, and she held it in her right hand and the reins in her left.

  We could see the great gate was not yet closed, and we rode for it, hooves sparking on stone. As we passed the gatehouse, the first guards tumbled out, still fastening their armor.

  “Master Garth is down,” I yelled. “And there’s a fire in the women’s quarters.”

  They stood and stared. I had hoped to gain time by sending the guards back to the chaos behind us, but it was soon obvious that I couldn’t conquer the suspicions aroused by two women in gauzy nightclothes riding hard out of the palace in the middle of the night.

  The gate began to close. I didn’t even know if they were trying to keep us in or if they feared a threat from the outside. Silky and I just barely slipped through, but I didn’t think the Bard was going to make it. Yet he did, grazing his legs against the monumental gate.

  We galloped until we were under the trees, then we stopped and looked back at the palace. No pursuit, and plenty of fire and smoke. A moment later, we heard a high-­pitched wailing—­the women must have found Garth, and the keening for him had begun. I didn’t think the cries would be for Danae.

  I wondered, fleetingly, what would happen to Charmian now that the palace would have a new master. I suspected she would be seeing a lot more of the restricted women’s quarters.

  As we s
tood there, catching our breath, we saw the gate begin to open again. The first men were out, some of them buckling on breast plates, others leading horses and carrying saddles.

  “We ride for it,” said Fallon. “There’s a trail to the left of the main road. Maybe they won’t take it.”

  I could now hear the clash of swords and light armor. The nervous movements of the troops’ horses.

  “Will you take us to Parlay?” I asked Fallon. My voice was high-­pitched with tension. “We need to get to Parlay.”

  “Be quiet,” he said. “I’m taking you to Niamh.”

  I knew of no city called Niamh. Silky, meanwhile, was indignant on my behalf. “But the Lady Angel wants—­” she began. Fallon cut her off.

  “What you want is your business,” he said. “Niamh will decide what you need.”

  At least now I knew Niamh was a person.

  “And how will he know what we need?” I asked.

  “Niamh is a woman,” he said. And it was clear the subject was closed.

  We came out from under the trees, and there was a swath of open space before us. We galloped, hoping to reach the trees on the far side before we were discovered.

  In bardsong the moon was indifferent, but tonight it seemed malevolent; the clearing was so filled with moonlight that Garth’s troops would be able to see every spangle on our ridiculous garments. The stars were insignificant in the light of that awful moon.

  Then we were on the far side of the clearing, galloping on the trail among the trees, but I knew that the trail would lead Garth’s men directly to us.

  I pulled up Jasmine. Silky came alongside.

  “We have to get off the path,” I said to Silky. It took Fallon a moment to realize we were no longer with him, and when he came back to us, he looked angry.

  “We have to keep going,” he hissed.

  “They will find us on the trail,” I said. “They will. Silky and I may be forced back to the palace, but you’ll die here like a thing of no consequence. We have to get off the road. We have to let them go by.”

  Bard Fallon paused, his face in a deep frown. “They’ll see our tracks.”

  “They’ll be making too many tracks of their own,” I said. “And it’s dark. They won’t even look.” I hoped. Garth had underestimated us because we were women, and I assumed his men would, too. Silky was watching us. In her mind I knew there was no decision to be made; she was only waiting to see if Fallon would come with us.