One of the kitchen folk placed a bowl of porridge in front of her. With an effort, she made every show of eating heartily.
“Perhaps while I’m down there I’ll pick up some more herbs. Mothers showed me how to mix up some of her herbs and potions. I’ll put some of the most useful up in case she has need and sends for them.”
Her father sat silently, eating steadily, mechanically.
Tolan let her words wash over him, watching her with a disturbing level of interest. Almost hungrily.
With relief, she escaped, finally.
Once outside the doors of the castle she let out a careful sigh. She waved to Korin. Up on the parapets, Caradoc called down a greeting.
How could things be so normal? It seemed astonishing. Her mother was dead and her father had killed her. How could nothing have changed? Had it only been her imagination?
Caradoc hadn’t asked about her mother’s leaving but she doubted he knew. He would have sent guards with her, especially at night. No guards were gone. That wasn’t proof. Still, her mother wasn’t here and the truth was it was unlikely she could have prepared and been gone by morning. She would have had to make batches of the appropriate medicines, enough for an unknown number of people. That would have taken time. It was very unlike her mother to go unprepared.
Her mother’s herbarium was along the side wall of the courtyard, where all could see and the occasional stench would blow away. Not all tinctures and potions smelled good. Some of them tasted pretty bad as well. There was no sign she’d even been there or of a hasty late night departure.
Since Tolan had become chatelaine, he was kept busy a fair amount of time. That was a blessing. He’d also slowly taken on many of the duties Ailith had once done. Not going out with the Hunters as she did but the task of acting as her father’s agent. Much of her father’s duties would now fall to him, also. Whatever it was her father had become wasn’t ready yet for all else to see. That silent figure at the end of the table hadn’t even greeted her as her father always had.
Over the next few days Ailith kept quietly out of the way, working in her mother’s herbarium.
Finally, Tolan was called away on what she knew would be a long day’s ride. The thing that resembled her father was becoming more aware every day but it was also clear he wasn’t yet ready for a long trip in another’s company – not that she could tell. The lapses would be noticed, the lack of attention, the blankness of expression. Her only blessing was it couldn’t be less interested in her. That was where the resemblance ended, thankfully. To have it feign an interest in her and her affairs, knowing what had been done, would’ve driven her insane.
Once she was sure Tolan was well away and not likely to return soon, she made her way down into the tunnels. In her hand was the chain from her mother’s pendant. There had been nights lately when she’d thought she heard movement in the walls. They would be wondering where it was. The pendant itself was still thickly wrapped in her room, it’s attraction muted.
On her way down past the dungeons, she snapped off some of the links. Rats liked shiny things. There were rats down here in plenty, those she’d seen on previous excursions. The torch she carried blew a little in a breeze that hadn’t been here in on those visits. Her heart pounded wildly.
There, there was the niche where Tolan and her father had stood to await her mother. It was the exit to her father’s solar, the door now closed. Ailith’s breath came short.
A little further. The torch crackled and popped.
In her mind’s eye she saw the images from the dream. Saw the cold stones of the wall, the dripping fluids and the desperate race. Somewhere here. Of course there was no sign. No blood. No dead body of her mother. There were marks in the dirt, though. Odd ones. She followed them to the end, to the barred door to the outside. It hadn’t been closed again tightly enough. Is that what they’d done? Dumped her mother’s body in the river? Weighted it to keep it down? She left the door as it was. Going backward, she erasing the prints of her feet in the fine soil while glancing back over her shoulder and dropping bits of the chain to be buried beneath the shifted dirt. He would find them or not. She hoped he would think the chain had broken and a rat or something had taken it. So long as he didn’t turn his mind to searching other places. Like her rooms.
At last, at long last, she left, unharmed and unnoticed.
She heard Tolan come back late that night, the sound of a horse at that hour unusual. On light feet she ran to the arrowslit.
In the light of the waning moon she saw him dismount. Another reason why she would have known if her mother had gone. She would have heard. Tolan called to one of the guards. That one trotted off. Tolan waited. This was also not usual.
Caradoc came, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Why had Tolan rousted Caradoc out of his bed at this hour?
Peering through the arrowslit, she watched Tolan talk to Caradoc. Talking and talking. In plain sight. She knew that compelling voice, that soft sing-song chant.
Chilled, paralyzed, she watched helplessly.
After a moment Caradoc stopped rubbing the sleep from his eyes and his hand dropped to his side. They walked away with Tolan’s hand on Caradoc’s elbow as Caradoc bent his head to the smaller man to listen.
A cold ball of clay seemed to have taken up residence under her breastbone. After a long time waiting to see if they would return, she lay back down to sleep. That was when she heard steps come up the stair to stop outside her locked door.
Tolan. Somehow she knew it.
Would he try the door? No, he only stood there looking at it. She could sense him out there. As still as a mouse in front of a cat, she remained curled up in her bed until well after he’d gone.
How long could she bear it? There were still weeks until the day of her majority. What then? By law she would be free of her father’s will, no longer his ward. Would they allow her to go? It was unlikely. She was the Heir to Riverford. If they meant to hold this place unchallenged they dared not let her go.
That was a worry for another day, she couldn’t bear to think about it.
It had been a difficult journey, even under the best of circumstances and never had Elon been gone from Aerilann for so long a time, save that time years ago when they’d set the boundaries. There had been little need. That was a circumstance he knew to which he should best become accustomed. It had been some time, perhaps as long as a century, since he’d been so far north and east. There had been no need until now. This journey taught him one thing certainly – if he were to perform his duties as chancellor as he’d sworn to do, he needed to travel the Kingdoms more.
In truth, Elon would rather deal with the directness of the highland mountain Kings than those of the Heartland. So far away from the intrigues of the High King’s Court they were more honest in their opinions and prejudices than their brethren. They’d been the last to agree to bow to a High King. High in their mountain fastnesses, they were more dependent on each other than a High King the breadth of the country away. Honest, yes and more natural, more attuned and in harmony with the land they governed.
Folding his arms, Elon looked westward. Below him the long grasses stirred in great susurrus waves, seemingly endless and eternal. Only the wind was more constant, racing down the face of the mountains behind him to roll around and through the hills until it burst out unimpeded onto the great rolling plains. It was like and yet unlike the lands around Aerilann. There, too, the long grasses still waved, a buffer between the lands of men and those of Elves, wild still and free. Open.
Like but unlike. The land here was more rugged than the woodlands, the soil harder and more stony. As the land had risen, the thin skin of the earth had been shed to reveal the friable bones of stone beneath it.
Once, Elon remembered a time when there had been only the high grass stretching from horizon to horizon, rising so high one could only see above it if one was mounted – and so the bond between Elves and their horses.
In contrast the distant, neatly orde
red fields of men seemed forced and unnatural. He still didn’t understand this need men had to structure and control everything around them.
He’d heard some men compared that impulse to a Veil. They were different. A Veil shifted, moved. It was bound to the earth by only the lightest of bonds, a protection and a diversion, not a division, not a boundary such as the fences and walls of men were.
A narrow dark thread wove through those neatly defined squares – neatly defined in defiance of the lay, the warp and weft of the land – and strayed north, parting the grasses before it disappeared within them. The King’s road, stitching the Kingdoms together.
There was no small sense of relief, however, in returning to wilder country.
Jareth came to stand beside Colath and looked across at Elon.
Those dark enigmatic eyes were fixed on the horizon.
What was it he saw, Jareth wondered? What had he seen over his centuries of life?
“Has it changed much?” Jareth asked.
With a small nod of his head, Elon indicated the distant horizon.
“Once, these grasses stretched as far as the eye could see.”
Jareth couldn’t imagine it. “Do you ever wish it hadn’t changed?”
With a small shake of his head, Colath answered, “That’s a thing for men, Jareth. Change is constant. We know this. The past is the past. It can’t be undone. What is, is.”
Moving downwind, Jareth drew his pipe out of his pocket, filled it and lit it with a small fire spell. Drawing in the smoke with deep contentment, he nodded acceptance.
There were many times on the journey when Elon had wished he didn’t have to deal with any of the Kings, lesser or High but there was nothing for it. Some thought he wasted his time and theirs. At least, so far in the mountains, there were few who had contact with his people. He needed to speak with their Hunters and Woodsmen and couldn’t afford to waste the time seeking them out in the high reaches of the mountains. It would have been like seeking a needle in a haystack. After the first few, however, he’d learned it was better by far to determine where they were likely to be, rather than wait for them to return.
“Will we visit the Dwarves?” Jareth asked.
Elon shook his head. “They wouldn’t love us for disturbing them without good reason.”
And as yet they still didn’t have good reason, however much Elon’s foresight prickled. Concern, yes, increasingly.
There was little doubt the Hunters and Woodsman showed signs of tension and worry. Nor had it been impossible to miss the haunted fear in the eyes of the mountain people.
As Jareth had told him, those were folk not accustomed to such concerns. They were a hardy, stolid lot, inured and attuned to the harshness of the high country. Most had chosen to live on the very edge of the Kingdoms, close to the borderlands but far from the crowded clamor of the towns and cities in the lowlands. With a care for their spouses and children, they had sought out a more challenging life, fraught with danger but not daringly so. There was a certain tension now around their eyes and more caution in their actions. None went to market these days save in a caravan of two or more. It was too dangerous.
Even so, those were impressions.
More than once, someone speculated it was merely a part of a natural cycle, perhaps. Nothing more. No one denied, though, that the incursions were unusual and that some of the borderlands creatures were being found much deeper into the Kingdoms than they had in the past.
One had only to look into the weary faces of the Hunters and Woodsmen to know it was far more than that. They were tired. Not yet exhausted but very tired. Elon heard the muttering. If it kept up like this…they said, but left the consequences unsaid.
The Dwarves, with their love of contracts, would find such speculation annoying. Like their deepest, darkest Caverns, it was either dark or light., and such considerations were neither.
In its own way, it had been somewhat unsettling as they had ridden south to skirt the Dwarven lands to find folk so completely and blithely unconcerned.
“At least, we should find a warmer welcome in the next Kingdom” Jareth said, longingly, with a sigh of relief. “A bed. A real bed. Perhaps a warm bath or shower from the cistern on the roof.”
He could almost feel that water, cool enough to be refreshing, warm enough not to chill, running over his skin.
Jalila merely shook her head at him. Jareth could never find a comfortable sleeping spot on his own. Yet she sympathized, as she knew Elon and Colath did.
A bath was so much a part of Elven culture it was offered to any guest as basic hospitality. She could almost smell the scents of the bath salts and herbs that would fill the lightly steamed air, although men didn’t use such things. Even plain water, though, and the harsh soaps of men would be welcome and refreshing after these weeks on the road.
Elon looked westward, toward Aerilann, once more, Then he turned toward the fire and the simple meal that awaited them there.
Chapter Five
Ailith started across the courtyard and spotted Caradoc standing on the parapets once again for the first time in some few days. The first time, in fact, that she’d seen him since the night Tolan returned from his circuit. There’d been some talk about his absence from his customary position and rumors had flown – but very quietly. She lifted her hand to wave but this day he paid it no attention.
A soft voice, close at hand and unexpected, startled her by saying, “He’s most unlike himself of late.”
She jumped nearly a foot.
“Sorry to startle you, Ailith.”
Korin. Studying his face, she saw something old, something terrible, in his brown eyes. They were fixed on the figure on the roof. His face was pale and pasty, a mask of grief and sorrow. His fingers fretted at an old, worn piece of rein.
“Is he, Korin?” she asked, carefully.
“Yes, he is. And like not to resemble himself anytime soon, I fear.”
“So do I.”
“Ah,” he said, as he saw the understanding in her eyes.
“Go away, Korin,” she said, softly. Nearly begging.
He smiled wanly. “I can’t, my lady Ailith. I can’t leave these children. My boys and girls. The stablelads and lasses. What would they do, with no mother nor father? Nor you. Can’t leave you, I’ve watched over you all your life. Besides, where would I go? I doubt the King would give me a recommendation if I just disappear.”
Before and since the death of his wife, Korin had acted as Riverford’s orphanage, taking in children whose parents had died or abandoned them. He taught them a trade, a skill, and gave them back to the world.
“I would, in my father’s name. Don’t stay for me, take the children and go.”
“It’s too late.” His eyes went up to the parapets. “As long as we’ve been friends somehow I don’t think he’ll let me leave now.”
No, somehow she didn’t think he would either.
There was a shout from the gates. “Riders.”
Visitors. Another surprise.
Where once such things had been fairly common and unremarked, of late visitors to the castle proper were excessively rare.
Not many would dare to risk Tolan’s arbitrary and uneven judgments in Geric’s name, much less challenge him while the King himself sat brooding on his throne. Those who did often came away chastened at the very least.
Some few had taken the chance of approaching Ailith outside the castle walls, seeking her opinion in the absence of her father’s.
None questioned her father’s withdrawal. Within his borders he was the sole sovereign, his judgment undisputed. Unless there was open revolt, the High King wouldn’t interfere or intervene.
In all their eyes, however, she could see concern, although they didn’t voice that either. They dared not, for in her lay their reassurance that things would return to normal once again, somehow, someday. Their hope was nearly palpable and it lay within reach. The day of her majority.
She wished she were so c
ertain.
Even so, although they hid it, beneath that hope fear and uncertainty ran deep. She couldn’t blame them.
All of Riverford was tense these days – with one set of tensions within the castle walls and an entirely different one without.
It was difficult, then, not to feel a small glimmer of hope now herself, wondering who these visitors might be.
At Caradoc’s command a page ran into the Great Hall to fetch Tolan. The man came out, briefly giving her and Korin one of his bland yet piercing glances.
“Elves, my Lord, and a man,” Caradoc called down, giving Tolan a title to which he had no right.
For which Tolan chided him, properly, if abstractedly. “I am no Lord, Caradoc.”
He glanced over again at Ailith and Korin but she’d already taken Korin’s arm, tilting her head toward his, pretending they were deep in conversation and too far to hear. If he’d heard their words he wouldn’t have liked the conversation much.
“Lock your door at night and don’t answer if someone knocks,” Ailith said softly. “Sleep in the hayrick with the stablehands. Avoid Tolan as much as you can and don’t be alone with him.”
Korin patted her hand. “I’ll have a care. Worry about yourself, Ailith. You sleep in there.”
She smiled thinly. “With my door closed and locked and my chest against it.”
“It’s as well.”
“Ailith,” Tolan called, peremptorily.
It stunned her.
Not my lady. He’d called her by her true name, without her title. Still, she turned.
There could have been no greater indication of her change in status.
“Go to your chambers,” he said. “Stay there.”
That shocked her. Who was he to order her so? How dare he?
Looking up, she could see how he dared. There stood Caradoc on the walls. Inside was the man who resembled her father. A few days before she might have challenged Tolan, called him for his disrespect and she might have won. That Caradoc would have defended her. Today? A dozen eyes around the courtyard watched. Many were fearful.
The Coming Storm Page 13
