I began to forget the religious upheaval I’d set in motion, as I focused on developing the tiny Village of Lareem, enticing the best trades people from all over Nogeland with the offer of beautiful shop spaces and monetary incentives, and of course, my patronage. In this way, gradually the population grew in the new capital. The Noge winter was not at all similar to the balmy Faeland ones I’d grown accustomed to over the past few years. The climate was harsher even than that of Vilkerland. The winters I remembered from my boyhood, with all the ice and snow, were nothing to the deep freezes of Saranedam. Not long into winter, the entirety of Sweet Lake turned to ice, and the villagers began a pastime of skating across the lake.
M’Tek had spent her many years in balmy Lareem, and so had never seen such a diversion. For the first few days she watched the villagers with a mixture of fascination and concern, certain someone would break through the ice and drown in the frigid water beneath. After a week of witnessing no such mishap, she could contain herself no longer. She bought skates for both of us, and convinced me to try them on the ice. For the next few days we did nothing but skate on the frozen lake in front of the palace, until M’Tek learned of another diversion.
She heard that groups of people were being carried up the snow-covered Pale Mountains in large sleds so that they could slide down them on smaller wood sleds. M’Tek was again captivated. She commissioned sleds for the two of us, and arranged a horse drawn sleigh to deliver us. We spent the remainder of the day between exhilaration and misery as we learned, through trial and error, how to slide down the mountain without falling or getting bogged down in the waist deep snow. M’Tek was hooked on her new amusement, and soon we were bringing along the girls to join us.
For the remainder of the winter, we were either skating on the frozen lake, or sliding down the mountains most days. When the snow and ice began melting in early spring, making the landscape a mucky mess, M’Tek became slightly depressed. She tried to hide her changing mood, but I could feel it. That winter had been a second childhood for her, if her first could be counted as such. It was the only time either of us had spent in uncomplicated joy. She was disappointed at its end.
As spring turned the valley green, and the snow retreated to only the highest peaks of the Pale Mountains, M’Tek focused on finishing the stable. The horses had been housed in a temporary wood structure all winter, and as a result grown thick, wooly, winter coats. My beautiful sleek Sabea resembled a long legged, golden, goat, with her shaggy coat. M’Tek was determined the stable would be built before the fall, and focused hours every day on helping with the construction. I suspected her newly found interest in manual labor was more about staving off her homesickness for Lareem, than our need for a completed stable, but M’Tek denied such assertions.
I’d remained in contact with the High Priest of the Temple of Fae over the course of the year, and periodically checked in on the religious upheaval I’d inadvertently generated in Faeland. M’Tek had been correct in her assessment. The vast majority of the Fae Temple hierarchy deemed me the incarnation of Deus, sighting my performance of many miracles as proof. I was therefore deemed not only Deus, but the head of the Temple of Fae. After receiving my laud, the High Priest was possibly the most fervent celebrant in his belief in my divinity, debating my holiness with those few fundamentalists who held to the old ways, and still took the teachings of the Fae Tome of Rebirth literally. I had to intervene to avoid the imprisonment and execution of my detractors.
From time to time letters filled with questions about doctrine, and my divine will, arrived from various priests. Since I understood very little about the Temple of Fae, I always handed those queries off to M’Tek, asking her to answer them. I signed what she placed in front of me, hoping that at some point the fanatic zeal surrounding me would die down.
Meanwhile, M’Tek worked through the seasons, enlisting her guards for assistance, and the new stable was completed before the first frost of fall. The girls were agile on their feet by then, and actually beginning to talk. M’Tek and I spoke Noge, mostly, around our daughters. Noge was actually M’Tek’s first language, and she had fallen back into the habit of speaking it while working with the builders. For this reason, the first word Ania spoke was very close to the Noge word for mother, which is Mata. To my dismay, this word was addressed to M’Tek rather than me.
Lia was the more physical of the two girls, climbing the furniture, and magically appearing on tables she should not have been able to reach, but Ania was the talker. She could communicate with her sister easily, and occasionally translate Lia’s wishes into comprehensible words for me. We were all of us delighted with her vocal talents, except Aunt Kessa. The older woman was beside herself, speaking Vilken constantly to the child, in the hope of undoing our year in Saranedam Palace surrounded by our kind Noge servants.
After I accepted my new home as likely permanent, I sent Shiroane and a few of our guards down to Vilkerland with instructions on collecting all of the old paintings of previous Noge inhabitants stored in the hidden rooms within the walls, as well as my Vilken jewels. While perusing through those crates delivered from Vilkerdam, I came across a very old painting wrapped in cloth. It was smaller than the others, and the style was slightly less ornate, more simplistic, and yet highly realistic. I stared at the painting, for a moment trying to comprehend how an artist could manage such a lifelike depiction. Still, the extreme realism wasn’t what held my attention. The placard on the back of the painting identified the subject as the first Noge Queen, Katryne. This woman was my identical twin.
I looked through the remaining paintings carefully, and found other Queens among them that looked exactly like me, taking into consideration the painting styles of their day. I read through books on the Noge royal family lineage in order to place these Queens in the timeline, and found that approximately every five hundred years one of my twins was born and bore at least four children in her life. Sarane was the first interruption in this pattern, and then I had been born out of sequence. This meant the Noge nobility truly was my family, or rather in a strange way, they were my sisters’ descendants, and therefore my nieces and nephews. I decided to hang the portraits of my sisters, even Sarane, in the entry hall. As for my own portrait, the one painted the year I reclaimed the Vilken throne, it remained hanging in the main hall at Vilkerdam Palace.
Shiroane delivered far more jewelry than I was previously aware I owned. I spent an afternoon pilfering through the strange ancient jewels, wondering at the workmanship. I discovered the first Noge Queen’s delicate crown. It was platinum, and encrusted with brilliant, almost blue, diamonds. I decided I preferred it to my heavy Vilken crown, as well as to my subsequent Noge and Fae crowns, and wore it while I continued my perusal.
My heart started racing when my gaze fell on a locket encrusted with blood red rubies. I recognized the style as identical to the sapphire locket M’Tek had always worn when I first knew her, the one she had thrown over the cliff and into the Luminous Gulf. I quickly seized the locket in my hand and pried the time stiffened hinge open. A lock of dark hair rested inside. I lifted the hair to my lips and gazed into the eyes of the young M’Tek, confirming that I was holding Sarane’s locket. A feeling of longing swept through me as I studied those innocent grey eyes. In that moment I felt I understood Sarane for the first time. I placed the lock of hair back inside, closed it, and lifted the delicate chain over my head, abandoning the other jewels in the chest to some later date.
At our evening meal I still wore the locket. I thought it striking, the deep red of the jewels against the crisp white of my dress. M’Tek had been working all afternoon, struggling to effectively govern Faeland from that inconvenient distance. She looked tired, but pleased to see me, offering a light kiss in greeting, and smiling easily, until her glance fell upon my locket.
Throughout dinner, M’Tek behaved as if she hadn’t noticed the locket, her gaze carefully avoiding it. Pet noticed my new bauble though, and asked me where I had acquired it. Wh
en I told her it was among the chest of Vilken jewels, she and Aunt Kessa began an intense debate over whether the Fae or Vilkerlings had the superior jewel smiths, and the locket was forgotten.
After our meal, M’Tek asked Pet and Aunt Kessa to take the girls to bed. She then came to where I sat at the table and claimed my hand, leading me out through the garden for a walk along the lake, which was shining purple in the setting sun.
“Where did you find that?” she asked, once we reached the bank of the lake.
“It was among the jewelry Shiroane brought back from Vilkerdam Palace,” I explained. “It was Sarane’s.”
“Of course it was,” M’Tek replied with a sort of tension in her tone.
She lifted the locket in her hand and carefully opened it to find the lock of her own hair, preserved from so long ago. She took the lock of hair between her fingers and raised her gaze to mine, that little crinkle appearing between her eyebrows.
“You can’t be thinking of keeping this locket,” M’Tek said.
“Of course I’m keeping it,” I said gently. “It’s a portrait of the woman I love,” I added.
“No, it’s not, Lore. I haven’t been that girl for more than two centuries. And you detest Sarane,” M’Tek reminded me. I shook my head.
“I never knew her. Why should I hate her?” I asked.
“Because you’ve always hated her,” M’Tek replied. “Your hatred burned the birthmark from your shoulder.”
“I was younger then, and less tolerant,” I said softly. “I didn’t understand her.”
“What is it you understand now?” she asked in a sharp tone. M’Tek didn’t like what I was saying.
“Sarane was me, or at least who I might have been if my circumstances were different,” I said. “They were all me. I would have bashed in Svenar’s head to protect you from him. I would have fallen in love with you when you were a little Fae girl. I would have claimed you as mine,” I added.
“Would you have joined with that Vilken Warlord after I begged you not to?” she asked cagily.
“No, but I doubt she had a choice,” I replied. “As you have mentioned before, I had no family with which to contend. I have had the luxury of following my heart. Perhaps Sarane did not.”
“Sarane had a choice, Lore. She could have chosen me. I would have been anything she wanted, her consort, her mistress, anything, if she had simply chosen me,” M’Tek said. “She chose him because she wanted Vilkerland. I was nothing more than an afterthought. She was driven by a desire for power.”
“Pet said something similar about me once,” I replied. “She pointed out that I was nothing when I met you, unlikely to survive the next year, and now I’m the Queen of three nations, and could rightly be called an Empress. From the outside it may appear I’m only interested in power,” I observed.
“But that’s absurd, Lore,” M’Tek scoffed. “I know what’s in your mind, and your heart. I know exactly how you feel about me. Power means nothing to you, accept that it gives you the freedom to be with me,” she observed, smiling.
“Sarane loved you, too,” I said gently. “It’s why she kept your likeness, and a lock of your hair close to her heart.”
I reached my hand to my shoulder, to the place my birthmark had been, and for the first time felt sorry for the loss of it. I ran my thumb across that pale scar and M’Tek wrapped her arms around my shoulders. She kissed my forehead, and then I tilted my head back seeking her lips. Her mouth was gentle, her kiss soothing.
“There were more of us,” I said, as her lips trailed along my jaw. “If you check the entry hall you’ll see my other sisters. I’ve had their portraits hung. Every five hundred years one of us was born. Sarane was the last,” I said. “That’s the order Sim’Nu was trying to restore. We’re like breeding animals to her,” I added. “My blood is introduced periodically to maintain the Noge royal line.”
“None of that matters now,” M’Tek replied. “Everything is changed. You’re different from the ones before. You’re Lemu. There never needs to be another of your sisters born.”
“You think I’ll be the last one?” I asked, smiling at her certainty.
“I know you will,” M’Tek replied. “You’re my Noge Queen. We have daughters of mixed Noge and Fae blood who will inherit from us.”
It was the first mention M’Tek had ever made of relinquishing her role as Queen of Faeland. I entwined my fingers with hers and started us walking again. M’Tek seemed more relaxed than she had been in months. The softness of her mood made me feel lighter, more optimistic.
“You want to step aside, to give up Faeland?” I asked, surprised by the idea.
“When Lia is old enough,” M’Tek replied.
“Why Lia and not Ania?” I asked, curious about her choice.
“Ania is destined for Vilkerland. Dame Kessa is already filling her head with the noble deeds of that great culture,” M’Tek said sarcastically.
“And Nogeland?” I asked.
“Well, we have to live somewhere,” she said, smiling. “I grew up speaking Noge, was educated as Noge nobility. I’m comfortable with your people.”
“But I prefer the Fae,” I admitted in a near whisper. “And what about Lareem Palace? I love Saranedam. It’s been peaceful, and easy, this past year and a half, but Lareem is my home. No place has ever really been home to me before Lareem. I miss the Luminous Gulf, the scent of it wafting through the halls of the palace. I miss holding you in my arms at our little hideaway in the cliffs, while staring at the impossibly blue water. My eyes seek the headlands constantly.”
“You don’t miss the redwoods and Eponymous Mountains around Vilkerdam?” she asked.
“My mother was raped and murdered in that palace,” I replied. “Lately I’ve been thinking about that more, maybe because I know how much she must have loved me, now that we have Lia and Ania. Sometimes I even think I remember the attack. I can sense the anxiety, and hear my mother’s screams echoing from somewhere above me. I feel Aunt Kessa’s tears falling on my cheek as she stumbles through the dark stairway, gripping me too tightly.” I took a deep breath, clearing the memory from my mind. M’Tek was quiet beside me, probably comparing my description of the experience to the facts she already knew of my mother’s death.
“You never should have been there,” she replied. “My spies knew of the attack a couple of days before it happened, but by the time I learned of it, it was too late to stop it. I rode for Vilkerdam, but you had already vanished when I arrived. It took over a decade to locate you again.”
“I don’t like to think of it,” I replied, squeezing M’Tek’s hand.
“All right, then. We’ll talk of something else,” M’Tek agreed.
“It’s funny. You seem to prefer the Noge, while I feel more comfortable among the Fae,” I started. “The Noge are colder, more pragmatic in their manner. The Fae are more lively and in the moment,” I said wistfully. “I’ve been dreaming of that view from Cliffside lately.”
“We’ll be able to visit Lareem, eventually, when you’ve adjusted to your role as Deus,” M’Tek said, teasing me. “We should consider a visit to Vilkerdam Palace, too. Your council needs more guidance than you’re giving them. I sense unrest growing there, steadily. If you keep fawning attention on Nogeland, and ignoring Vilkerland, the Vilkerlings will grow to resent you. We should probably travel south soon.”
“I can’t, at least not soon,” I replied. “I’ll have to work myself up to returning, M’Tek. I have an absolute dread of that dark palace. I can’t seem to shake it.”
“They’re your people, not mine, so I’ll leave it up to you,” M’Tek observed. “Don’t put it off for too long, though. These situations unravel quickly.”
“I don’t think we should bring the girls with us if we go,” I observed quietly. “It doesn’t feel safe anymore. I wouldn’t be able to let the girls out of my sight for a moment.”
“I’ll not be the one to explain that to Dame Kessa,” M’Tek said, grinning. “Sh
e’s been homesick since before the girls were born, and she’s dying to show off her new charge, the future Vilken Queen.”
“I know. I’ll put some thought into it. I promise,” I said, becoming frustrated.
“As I said, my love, I’ll leave that decision to you,” M’Tek replied cautiously.
****
The more I thought about it, the more I realized M’Tek was correct, as usual. I needed to return to Vilkerdam to attend to the many problems festering there. Nogeland was well in hand, at the beginning of what would later be described as a golden age, and even the Fae were responding to our absentee governing relatively well, but Vilkerland was coming apart. If I ignored my responsibilities much longer, my throne would be at risk. More importantly, the tenuous peace M’Tek and I had worked hard establishing and maintaining, between our three countries, might fracture.
We spent the winter, and spring at Saranedam, as I worked to convince myself to return to Vilkerdam. We held an enormous celebration for summer solstice in the traditional Noge manner, with red and gold lanterns, pyrotechnics, and the addition of a very colorful bonfire, to Pet’s delight. Pet went to extremes decorating for the celebration, because she was to part from us soon after. The solstice celebration served as a going away party in a sense, and therefore had to be more impressive than anything Pet had thus far achieved. It would be the first time Pet and I were apart, for more than a few weeks, since M’Tek sent her to me those seven years earlier. I was nervous about the impending separation, and so, I believe, was Pet. For that reason I was sending Shiroane to watch over her, and assure her safety.
In late summer, we set off for Vilkerdam Palace. The girls were just four, and had their own short-limbed ponies to ride on the journey, so our progress was slow. We rode only a few hours every day before setting up camp. For this reason a trip that should have taken two to three days spanned close to a week.
The Changeling Page 39
