Next to the chaise was a small night table, and upon it were the remains of scores of burnt candles, each one having dripped and run to the floor in independent fashion as they spent their patient lives in the presence of Nicolette. Over time, there had developed a small mountain of wax drippings beneath the table, some of them having run across the imperfect slope of the floor like tiny molten rivers. In the growing darkness of the cottage, it appeared as so many white veins on the dark floor. It was an unusual phenomenon and, in a starkly dead way, quite beautiful.
Both Moira and Moulin gazed about the small cottage. It was as though they were looking at her nakedness—that is what Moulin thought. This was Nicolette’s room, and it was veritably alive with the electricity of her.
On the arm of the chaise was a book, open and laying across the soft velvet brocade to mark its place. They could not know that this particular book was very rare, one of a kind, really. Truthfully, all books were rare, but this was one of the most rare of all, black all over and without a single mark on it. Everything within was written…in Nicolette’s hand.
Moulin wondered silently what words his mistress read, not realizing that she did not read the book at all. Nicolette had over time scratched within its pages the secrets that only her heart and mind had discovered. He and Moira would have been startled had they known that, sometimes, she scribbled even as she slept, reclined in the chaise, her hand reaching for the quill pen and ink perched within the rivulets of table wax.
Most astonishing of all was that it was the only book here. This surprised Moulin greatly as he assumed her study would be filled with stacks of volumes. True, the library—the same one that Risen had so brilliantly extricated himself from—held the substance of the Dynasty’s books. Even so, he thought there would be personal favorites of hers to be found here. And there was…only the one.
Pausing, he steadied himself, forced himself not to step to the chaise and lift the book to spy what secrets lay within its pages. When Moira glanced first at the book and then at Moulin, he shook his head saying, “We mustn’t disturb anything. We should simply do as we are told. Risen’s life may depend on it.”
“You love her, don’t you.” It was not a question.
The statement was sudden and cruel, though she’d probably not meant it to be so. Moulin’s lips creased tightly together. He did not turn to look at Moira, did not answer her, but only pinched his eyes closed very tightly.
A deep sigh barely escaped him, and he admitted, “It pains me to lose this child, more than I can say.” He looked at Moira, the torment so evident in his eyes. “It pains me even more that she should lose him, that she might suffer for the loss of her son.”
“You love her…and I love him—Ravan. And, there is not a thing more we can do about it.”
Moulin stared at her, not wishing to believe, to accept her words as true. “Yes,” he whispered, “and that is our plight for eternity.” When she said nothing, he added almost harshly, “And enough of this. We have work to do.”
Nodding dumbly, Moira heaved the two small sacks up onto the table and appeared that she might remove the items, but then decided not to. Moulin went to the char-pot next to the hearth and lifted the clay lid from it. Taking from the small pot a clump of smoldering, tightly rolled, cloth embers, he laid them on the hearth and pitched a tiny cone of wood slivers and kindle chips until he was satisfied.
Blowing softly on the char cloth, the smoldering stack sparked and lit within seconds. He fed the small flame until an appreciable fire was soon crackling on the hearth, and the chill was retreating, escaping the small room like water from a fist.
Evening was upon them, and the singular window offered very little light. Moira walked to the hearth, took up a lighting twig—a long, thin splinter of wood designed specifically for transferring fire from the hearth to candles—and lit several about the room until there was substantial enough light for them to see. The once starkly cold room, with its streaks on the floor and austere interior, was suddenly smaller and more intimate with the warm companionship of fire.
At precisely the exact moment that Moulin was about to send Moira with word that the hearth was prepared, the door opened, and in stepped Nicolette. He was immediately overwhelmed. She was so eternally engaging that it regularly took his breath away, but at times like this, with the dancing shadows and the gold wash of the firelight, she seemed as though she was not of this world. Even Moira stepped away with a soft gasp as Nicolette slipped silently past her, into the room.
Pulling her hood from her head, she undid the catch at her throat and allowed it to fall. She’d braided her long hair on one side and twined the braid around her head, effectively holding the rest of her ebony mane behind her back. Securing the braid at the nape of her neck was a simple twisted, coil of gold. It was starkly elegant and in beautiful contrast with the nearly snow white of her skin.
Nicolette passed the cloak to Moira. It was then that Moulin noticed the three scrolls tucked carefully under her arm. He’d never seen them before.
Without acknowledging them, she walked to the chaise, took up the book and closed it without marking it—laying it on the seat instead. She placed the folded scrolls carefully next to it. When they appeared as she wanted, she turned about and gazed at her two assistants as though having just seen them. They both stood unmoving, Moira with a look of expectant uncertainty on her face and Moulin with his heart in the back of his throat.
“The items?” Nicolette asked. “May I see them?”
“Yes, yes of course.” Moira hurried to the small table and opened the sack, removing the items one at a time. She didn’t seem entirely happy about it as she laid upon the table, in no particular order, a small handheld mirror, a bowl of white clay, a dead bird, a ball of twine, a smooth, immaculately white pebble, a small flask of red wine, Ravan’s and Risen’s hairbrushes in turn, and…a knife.
“Did the bird die of its own accord?” Nicolette asked.
“Yes, my Lady—flew into a window this morning it seems. So recently that it is still nearly soft, almost like it’s only sleeping.” Even so, Moira was unwilling to handle it and rolled the carcass out of the sack and onto the table with a flick of her wrist.
Nicolette approached the opposite side of the table and began to arrange the items just so. First was the small, oval mirror, laid face up on the center of the table. On the mirror she rested the dead starling, small talons curled severely, the beak gaping open, and eyes pinched shut. Taking the white clay, Nicolette carefully went to work, filling the black bird’s mouth until the beak was full of the smooth clay. She was meticulous to remove any excess. When it was to her satisfaction, the bird looked as though it was emitting a silent, white scream.
Next, she went to the scrolls, gathering them up with the peculiar book. Laying the book on the table, Nicolette passed each scroll in turn over the smooth surface of the closed book in a very deliberate fashion. When it appeared she was satisfied, she then passed them over the bird and mirror before laying the scrolls aside.
Nicolette took, what seemed to Moulin, a maddening amount of time to do this, her eyes blinking slowly as though time was unimportant, fading away from them. All at once, she arranged the three rolled parchments around the bird so that they were in the fashion of a triangle with the bird and mirror laying centermost of them.
“I-I don’t understand—” Moira began, but Moulin hushed her, and she stepped backward into the shadows next to him, allowing Nicolette to continue without interruption.
Taking the smooth, white pebble, she next held a candle at an angle and dripped the wax liberally upon it before swiftly wrapping the silk twine about it. She crisscrossed the string around the rock until it wound both ways so that the stone was securely tethered at the end of approximately two meters of twine.
Next, holding the pebble in one hand, she passed the coiled up twine to Moulin, indicating he should secure it to an overhead rafter. He did just that, crawling onto the small table and
steadying himself before passing the thread several times round the beam until the pebble was suspended from the ceiling directly over the table.
When the pebble was secured to her satisfaction, Nicolette motioned for help, and they shifted the small table very precisely, arranging it so the bird was resting directly under the dangling wax-pebble. It was an utterly bizarre process, and all the while, nobody spoke.
Next, Nicolette took a single strand of Risen’s hair, pulling it carefully from his brush. Holding it up so that she could see it waft gently in the heat of the candle’s flame, she then dropped it directly above the dead bird so that it floated down and lay carefully across the body of the starling.
Walking to the small cupboard, she removed a delicate stoneware goblet and carried it to the table, placing it precisely on one corner of the scrolls triangle—the one, Moulin noticed, that pointed west. Measuring carefully, she filled the vessel half with red wine.
He winced, had to physically stop himself from interfering, as next she took the blade and placed it flat across the palm of her hand. Moira’s hand and stump went up to cover her mouth, and Moulin clenched his fists as he willed himself to not react at what she did next.
Nicolette did not pull the blade across her palm but rather wrapped her fingers around it, narrowed her eyes, and squeezed until a tiny trickle of blood dripped from her closed hand into the goblet of wine.
Laying the blade gently aside, Nicolette murmured something unintelligible before dipping her fingers into the wine-blood mixture and flicking the sprinkles of it upon the bird and mirror. Setting the mug aside, she then rested both hands on the edge of the table, closed her eyes and stood, braced, head bowed, seemingly as unmoving as the dead fowl.
Moulin squinted to even see that she was still breathing. When he thought he could take it no longer, just when he believed he must speak, something happened…
Ever so faintly, the pebble stirred. At first it seemed like it might be an illusion, and Moira gasped softly from the shadows, but then it moved again, slanting toward one of the scrolls. It stayed this way, not swinging as a pendulum might, but pulling as though it was polarized.
Reaching for that particular scroll, Nicolette brushed the other two aside. Unrolling the map, she slid it carefully beneath the mirror and dead starling. Then, repeating the process of flicking the blood-wine droplets and bracing herself in otherworldly meditation, the strange beauty manipulated the map repeatedly until the pebble pulled no more but remained unmoving, suspended straight above the bird and Risen’s strand of hair.
Sliding the mirror and bird carefully aside, Nicolette peered at the map, intently studying the detail that had been just beneath the mirror and hanging pebble. She took a drop of her own blood and marked the spot with a delicate fingerprint.
Next, she repeated the entire process, only with Ravan’s hair instead of Risen’s. Ultimately, the same scroll was chosen, only the final fingerprint was more north and east of the Ravan Dynasty, not south and east as Risen’s mark had been. This caused the dark-haired mystic to furrow her brow softly and utter something quite unfamiliar, barely overheard by the other two within the room. Moulin wondered if it were a language he simply did not know she possessed, then decided it was not.
Moira and Moulin had been silent for some time, and they remained so, as though afraid to disturb the delicate proceedings. At length, she gently rolled up the scroll. Nicolette appeared to be done with the process.
The two of them cautiously approached the table, and just as Moulin started to help her clean up the materials, the bird suddenly twitched, gasped, and choked the white clay from its beak, hopping up as though from a nap.
They were speechless, staring first at the bird then at each other.
“It would appear our feathered friend was simply reposing,” Nicolette murmured almost playfully and reached for the bird, encircling it with one hand before walking to the doorway and releasing it into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY
†
Risen glanced over his shoulder to look for Sylvie. There she was, several horses back, and as though sensing his eye on her, she met his gaze. He tried to smile at her, to give her in some fashion the strength of hope, but his smile would not come of its own honesty, and he dropped his eyes, unable to endure the fear that he believed he saw behind hers.
They’d been taken, and he didn’t know why. He could not know that such an act was uncommon enough, but not entirely unheard of, and was most often a cruel stab by traveling mercenaries to recoup losses after failed battles. Children were taken, largely males, and sold for a decent profit, mostly to the east.
Perhaps this would not have been so commonplace except that there was, at this time, a demand for child slaves in the Ottoman Empire. There the Sultan grew an army trained of orphans—conditioned to serve the greater good of the empire, taught to fight and die.
It was necessary to have children, and preferably lost souls, to accomplish this, for their young minds were malleable where adult slaves frequently were not. The children were trained to believe their final hours would be on a battle field and that dying was the ultimate honor. And this was accomplished well, fueling the wave of triumph that one named Murad I rode as Sultan of a strange and growing nation.
That first night was exhausting. Pulled from their horses, the children were bound and tethered to a tree. The ground was soaked and, without shelter, the cold was perilous. Furthermore, they were not the only ones who’d been taken. Ten paces away, also tethered to a tree, were four more boys. Risen thought he recognized three of the four—two were boys from the village, one was completely unfamiliar, and the other one he knew very well. He knew him because it was Rowan…his friend.
Rowan, Cedric, and Tobias had been his very best friends. Days spent with them were glorious, for unlike some realms, theirs was very stable. And so, cavorting around the castle grounds, the village, and surrounding woods had been a recipe of bliss for three boys. Yes, life was good. But even so, childhood survivability was inherently with great risk. If someone was lucky enough to survive the handful of diseases that visited youth, they had a much greater chance of reaching old age. It was this pediatric demise that dragged the life expectancy curve sharply downward.
Risen knew this, was keenly aware of this on some level for he’d witnessed his mother visit failing ones, sit with them in their darkest hours. It was something that quietly disturbed him for a reason he could not identify. He never fully understood how, when a dying child suffered, Nicolette wished to lay her hands upon them. What he did not see was that although it did not mean the child would survive, it seemed the pain would leave for a span, replaced by a soft peace on the face of the suffering one. Then, she would sit however long it took, touching the afflicted one until the worse life could offer them had finally passed.
Once she spied Risen and Rowan peering into a small home during one of these instances. Later, she confronted the boys. “There is no spectacle in what you saw, no display to be seen.”
“But they died.” Rowan had been fascinated but almost fearful.
“It is a deeply personal journey, more intimate even than a birth, and a journey we will all take.” Nicolette chastised them. “But do not invade the privacy of such moments for curiosity’s sake. It is insulting, and would make you cruel.”
Rowan was a very kindhearted boy, with his doe eyes and soft, unruly mop of hair. He told Risen that he was drawn to what he’d seen that day because of the pain. He told him that he wished he could just take it away, that if he could be someone significant one day, he would want to be like Nicolette—someone who could lessen the pain.
After that, both of them had thought long and hard on the nature of death. He and Risen visited the cemetery, saw that there were as many small graves as there were adults. It was evidently just as Father had warned, that death could come at any time, especially if you were young.
Now, tethered to the trees, Risen could see Rowan’s face clearly,
except that he could not. His friend was injured, and the blood from a wound on his forehead had dripped down his face, significantly obscuring the boy’s features. He moved about least of all of them. But when he did lift his eyes, he saw Risen.
There was immediate recognition in Rowan’s eyes, but it was even more than this. He looked at Risen with such clarity, with such compassion, and what he wordlessly said was that he would keep their secret. Their captors would not know from him who the dark haired one was. Then Rowan smiled weakly. Perhaps he was remembering a time gone by, when they shared what boys will in the perfect hour of youth. That hour, however, was passed.
The others bound next to Rowan seemed taken with their own plights, and Risen never once saw them look his way. “Lean against me,” he whispered to Sylvie and twisted his wrists, searching for her hands behind him. When she did not answer him or move, he was instantly fearful. “Sylvie!” he said again, more harshly.
“I am here,” her thin voice replied.
“Sylvie, hold on. My father will come for us. I promise you this; he will find us.”
“What does this matter, Risen. My father and mother, and Tobias…”
She did not finish her thought, and he could feel her slump away from him, could hear her soft sobs.
“You cannot think of that now. You mustn’t. We need to stay strong, be brave. If we do not, we will not survive.” He tried to maintain a calm urgency for her sake, to give her words of hope, but he could not be at all sure that she was affected by them. He was met again with silence. “Sylvie…Sylvie, are you listening?”
No answer, but he could feel her allow him to take her icy finger tips into his own. He held onto her like this, and with time she leaned against him. This was very bittersweet to Risen. For months, perhaps even years, he’d hoped, wished, dreamed that he might feel her body next to his. In the muted shadows of his adolescent mind, he’d touched her face, wrapped his arms around her, held her hand, kissed her lips.
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