She thought about going to Danube to tell him of the surprising invitation, but she changed her mind. This was her problem, and she should not burden her already beleaguered husband with it. She could handle Constance Pemblebury, whatever the woman had in mind.
But she’d have to be careful.
Drink it now, the voice in Constance’s head said to her right before she entered the western sitting room, where Queen Jilseponie waited.
The woman pulled out a small vial and started to pull out the cork, but paused, staring at it.
No time for hesitation, the voice, Aydrian’s telepathic call, commanded, and a wave of images flashed through Constance’s mind. She saw Merwick and Torrence hanging in the public square, an execution presided over by Queen Jilseponie.
Before she could even consider her movements, Constance removed the cork and drained the contents in one great, burning swallow.
A wave of dizziness accompanied the flow of the liquid, a burning and disorienting sensation.
Constance steadied herself; it couldn’t be that quick.
She rushed to the nearby window, which overlooked a long drop to a ravine of stones and the small moat that surrounded Castle Ursal. It took all of her willpower, but she somehow suppressed the urge to throw up.
She wiped her lips and steadied herself again, then marched to the sitting room door.
The spirit of Aydrian entered beside her, unseen.
Jilseponie sat across the room, at a small table set by the window, basking in the long rays of the setting sun. She wore a rose-colored dress with lines of deeper purple woven in. Her blond hair was secured with a gem-studded pin.
Constance paused. She couldn’t deny Jilseponie’s beauty or the grace with which she held herself. Jilseponie looked a queen.
But she was no queen, Constance reminded herself, certainly not by breeding. They could dress her up grandly, but she truly belonged in buckskin leggings, carrying a sword. She belonged in the woods, hunting animals and goblins.
The only rouge suitable for Jilseponie’s tanned face was the blood of her prey.
Constance’s stomach tightened as she approached, and with more than nerves, but she hid the pain well and smiled warmly as she took her seat opposite the Queen.
“Tea?” Jilseponie asked, and she lifted the silver pot.
Constance smiled and pushed out her delicate cup. She knew this tea service so very well, had used it on the many occasions when she had been entertaining guests at Castle Ursal. To see Jilseponie handling it now only furthered her resolve and allowed her to smile away the next wave of pain that gripped her stomach.
Jilseponie finished pouring, then sat back, her own cup and saucer in hand. She looked out the window as much as at Constance, but the woman knew that Jilseponie, was, in fact, staring at her.
“You are surprised that I requested such an audience,” Constance remarked.
Jilseponie put down her cup and saucer. “Should I not be? Pardon my forwardness, Lady Pemblebury, but you have not welcomed me to Castle Ursal, not since my return and not in all my months here before I left.”
“Fair enough. But can you not understand my concern?”
Jilseponie relaxed visibly, and her expression softened. “I understand it all too well. Which is why I am surprised now by this meeting.”
“I seek to protect my children.”
“They need no protection—not from me, at least,” Jilseponie was quick to reply. “I have never thought to harm Merwick and Torrence, my husband’s fine sons, in any way.”
“Heirs to the throne,” Constance added, and her eyes narrowed despite her intentions.
Jilseponie lifted her teacup in toast to that. “So it would seem,” she agreed. “Unless Prince Midalis should take the throne after his brother and sire children. Even in that unlikely circumstance, I do not expect that Merwick and Torrence would be removed from the line.”
“Or unless Lady Jilseponie should bear Danube a child,” Constance remarked.
Jilseponie smiled, chuckled, and shook her head. “Nay, you need not fear that,” she said. “I understand why you perceive me as a threat to you, but never have I been one. Never have I desired to be one.”
Constance looked at her hard, and for just a moment, she regretted her attitude toward Jilseponie. Just for a moment, she wondered if perhaps things might have been different.
Again came those insidious images of Jilseponie presiding over the execution of Merwick and Torrence, and Constance knew that this was no false daydream but was, in fact, a premonition.
The softness left her expression.
“I know, too, that it upsets you to see me with your former lover,” Jilseponie admitted, and Constance knew that the Queen had recognized the change that had come over her. “As I have told you, dear Constance, there is nothing that I can do about those feelings—not Danube’s and not yours.”
Constance’s gut was churning with anger and with the poison. She started to reply, then had to cough, then stood up, her expression incredulous.
“Constance?” Queen Jilseponie asked.
Constance pushed her teacup and saucer off the table, and they shattered on the floor with a loud crash. Immediately the door swung open, the attendants peering in.
“Murderess!” Constance cried at Jilseponie, and she staggered toward the Queen and fell over her.
Jilseponie came up fast out of her chair, catching Constance firmly, though she didn’t notice that the woman tucked a small vial into the sash of Jilseponie’s dress.
“Constance!” Jilseponie called, trying to help her keep her balance.
Evidence planted, Constance shoved Jilseponie away and staggered toward the attendants and the door. “I am murdered!” she cried. “The Queen has slain me! Oh, fie! What will become of my children!”
The attendants caught her as she pitched forward, easing her down to the floor.
“Get me a soul stone,” Jilseponie cried to one of the attendants. “Be quick!”
The woman started to turn away, as her companion wiped Constance’s brow, but Constance’s hand shot out and grabbed her dress roughly. “No!” she shrieked. “Let that witch nowhere near me! The murderess!”
“Constance!” Jilseponie yelled. “I did nothing.” She looked at the confused and frightened attendant. “Go!” she commanded. “To my room and fetch my bag of gemstones! At once!”
Constance screamed again, and would not let go. She had to forcefully gulp down air then, but her grip remained one of iron, resisting all efforts by Jilseponie to pry her fingers loose from the handmaiden’s dress.
Aydrian’s spirit watched it all with amused detachment, as if he was watching a play on a stage. He hardly cared that the poison was coursing through Constance’s body now, burning at her, numbing her muscles. In fact, had the handmaiden gotten away, Aydrian would have overwhelmed her to prevent her from retrieving Jilseponie’s soul stone.
No, his dear mother wouldn’t be a hero this time.
This time, she would be denounced as a murderess.
Aydrian’s spirit flew out, then, on a sudden impulse, soared about the castle until he found Duke Kalas.
A simple suggestion had the Duke rushing to the sitting room and the fallen Constance.
“ ’Tis Lady Constance Pemblebury, me lord!” the page cried, stumbling into the throne room. “She is murdered, or is soon to be! And by the Queen herself, by the dying woman’s own words!”
King Danube tried to utter a retort to that, but the words caught in his throat. He stumbled out of his chair and staggered forward, his mind whirling.
Out in the corridor beyond his audience hall, the castle was in tumult, men and women, nobles and peasants, rushing to and fro, all screaming that Lady Pemblebury had been murdered, all screaming that the Queen was a murderess.
Danube fixed every offender with an icy stare as he passed, one that reminded the gossiper that speaking such words amounted to treason.
But in truth, Danube was ov
erwhelmed, stumbling, wondering what might be happening. But one thing he knew for certain, his wife was no murderess!
Or was she?
An image flashed through Danube’s mind then, a scene of Jilseponie pouring something evil into a goblet, then presenting it to Constance. It touched him below the conscious level, somewhere deep in his thoughts.
Aydrian’s spirit made sure that he didn’t make things too obvious to this love-struck fool.
Duke Kalas caught Jilseponie leaving the room even as he was trying to enter.
“What is it?” he yelled in her face. “What have you done?”
“Speak not the words of a fool, Kalas,” the Queen replied. “And let me go! Constance is ill, though from what, I do not know.”
“You poisoned her!” another nobleman, who had come on the scene before Kalas, yelled. “By her own words!”
“She does not know what she is speaking about!” Jilseponie yelled right back at him, then she turned to Kalas. “A soul stone, and I will have her up and well in a few moments.”
She tried to pull away, but Kalas held her tightly.
Jilseponie fixed him with a perfectly awful stare.
“Go with her,” the Duke instructed the nobleman, and he shoved into the room past Jilseponie and ran to stricken Constance’s side.
“Murderess!” Constance was saying, whispering and coughing. “The Queen has slain me.”
“Be easy,” Duke Kalas said to his dear friend. He dropped to his knees and took Constance away from the attendant, cradling her head in his hands. “Be at ease,” he said quietly. “Help will arrive. Jilseponie has gone for a soul—”
“No!” shrieked the dying woman, and she found the strength to sit up and grab Kalas by the front of his tunic. “No. She will devour my soul as she has destroyed my body. No! No. Promise me.”
King Danube entered the room then and rushed to Constance’s side.
“She says that your wife murdered her,” Kalas remarked.
“Poison … in the tea,” Constance breathed. “Oh, I am slain.” She found another burst of energy then, and grabbed Kalas hard. “Merwick and Torrence,” she begged. “The witch will take them!”
“This is foolishness!” King Danube cried.
Aydrian knew that Jilseponie was fast returning with a soul stone that she could use to defeat the poison. He went to Constance, then, speaking to her again. He showed her the Queen hanging from a gallows and showed her Merwick ascending the throne as king of Honce-the-Bear.
He put her at ease so that she would not fight the poison.
Constance lay back and died.
Jilseponie rushed into the room, bag of gemstones in hand. She skidded to an abrupt halt, seeing Kalas gently lay Constance’s head back and close her unseeing eyes.
Shaking her head, stunned and not quite knowing what to make of any of this, Jilseponie felt the weight of a dozen accusing stares fixed upon her.
“I did nothing,” she said to her husband, as he rose and turned to her.
King Danube started to say, “Of course, my love,” but the words caught in his throat, as Aydrian again whispered into his mind the suggestion that Jilseponie had murdered Constance.
His hesitation struck Jilseponie as profoundly as if he had walked over and slugged her.
“Search her!” Duke Kalas insisted, rising and motioning for two nearby guards.
“Back!” Jilseponie roared at the tentative pair, and they stopped and looked confusedly at Duke Kalas, then at King Danube.
The King, overwhelmed, looked down.
“Search her!” Kalas growled, and he put his hand to his sword, as if he meant to draw it and run Jilseponie through then and there. He reached down and grabbed the sobbing attendant, pulling her roughly to her feet. “You go and do it,” he instructed. He shoved her forward toward Jilseponie, then motioned for the guards to go to the Queen.
They did, grabbing her by the arms; and she offered no resistance, just stood there, staring at her husband, dumbstruck.
She expected them to find nothing, of course, for she had done nothing; but when the handmaiden fiddled about her sash, gasped, and produced the vial, Jilseponie was hardly surprised.
How had Constance done this to her? she wondered, for certainly this whole thing had been set up. But it made no sense, none at all!
For there lay Constance, dead on the floor, and there stood Danube, seeming broken.
As if in a dream, she felt them take the gemstones and tie her hands behind her back. She heard their words as if from afar, as one after another, the attendants insisted that the Queen had ordered the tea.
She heard the echoes down the corridor, cries that the Queen, that she, was a murderess, that she had killed the Lady Pemblebury.
Still staring at the body of Constance, she heard the sharp bark of Duke Kalas. “Away with her to the dungeons!” and felt the tug of the guards.
But then King Danube intervened, redirecting the guards to Jilseponie’s private quarters, but ordering her locked within and watched.
She looked over at her husband then, and could say nothing, for the look of sheer despair upon his face wounded her profoundly.
It was all too insane.
Chapter 35
The Whirlwind to the Gallows
THE WHIRLWIND SWEPT HER AWAY TO HER PRIVATE QUARTERS, HER ARMS BOUND behind her. Guards rushed around the room, searching for any gemstones or weapons. They took Defender and a circlet that Jilseponie kept that contained a cat’s eye that allowed the wearer to see in the dark.
“You’ll give us no trouble, my lady?” one of the guards asked her, coming up behind and grabbing the ropes that bound her wrists.
Jilseponie merely shook her head, too stunned even to respond to the insanity that had come so suddenly to Castle Ursal. What had happened? Who had murdered Constance and why?
And why had she so adamantly cried out that Jilseponie had killed her? And how—how indeed!—had that open vial gotten under Jilseponie’s sash?
It made no sense to her.
She hardly moved as the guards walked by, leaving the room. The last, the one who had untied her, paused to offer a slight bow, then departed, closing the door behind him.
How had this happened?
Then it hit her, and the reality of it seemed somehow the only explanation, and yet seemed somehow to be even more ridiculous.
Had Constance killed herself? Had she invited her rival to tea with the express purpose of incriminating Jilseponie, even at the cost of her own life? It was crazy, and who would believe such a tale?
But that was the beauty of it, was it not? From Jilseponie’s viewpoint, it all made sense, Constance’s improved mood and her request for the meeting. And then at the bitter end, Constance’s refusing aid from Jilseponie, who was as powerful a user of the healing stone as any person in all the world. From any other viewpoint, though, the tale would seem preposterous, perhaps beyond belief. Was it not likely, after all, that Queen Jilseponie might have noticed Constance’s improved mood and then decided to take action against her, her avowed enemy, simply for that reason?
Jilseponie went over to the bed and sat down. She stayed there, alone, for the remainder of the day, until a fitful sleep came over her.
Predictably, at least to Duke Kalas, Marcalo De’Unnero came to him that same night, in the guise of Bruce of Oredale.
“I am hardly surprised,” De’Unnero remarked, making himself quite at home, flopping into the comfortable chair opposite the Duke, who was reading another book, this one on the laws of the kingdom. “Ever has she been a vengeful witch. Poor Lady Constance apparently gnawed too far up Jilseponie’s arm.”
“What do you know of this?” Kalas demanded.
De’Unnero sat back and folded his hands, bringing them to his chin. What indeed did he know of it, any of it? Had Jilseponie really murdered Constance? It made no sense to De’Unnero, given what he knew of Jilseponie and of Constance. What then had brought about this thrilling and unexpe
cted event? De’Unnero could think of only two possible answers. The first was dumb luck, or misfortune, depending on how this played out. He suspected that the rumors of Jilseponie’s denial—her claim that Constance had killed herself—held more than a bit of truth. Had the woman done it of her own accord, a tragic end to a tragic and misguided figure?
Or had another variable entered the game, another source of suggestion and power that pushed Constance to the edge, and then over it?
He knew it. He knew in his heart that Aydrian had done this. Perhaps the young warrior had possessed Constance—certainly he was powerful enough with the gemstones—and then used her mortal body to damn Jilseponie.
But to what end? That, De’Unnero did not understand. Not yet, but he held faith that Aydrian would soon enough enlighten him.
“I know what everyone at court is saying,” he answered the patiently waiting Duke Kalas. “That Jilseponie poisoned Lady Pemblebury’s tea.”
Kalas pushed his chair back from his small desk. “So it would seem.”
“You have reason to doubt the claim?”
Kalas paused, then looked back at De’Unnero and shook his head. “The evidence against her is damning, and Constance proclaimed Jilseponie’s guilt before she expired,” he admitted. “But tell me, my friend, why do you seem so excited by the unexpected turn?”
De’Unnero chuckled. “I pity your lost friend—let me extend my condolences to you in this time of your grief,” he said.
Kalas didn’t blink.
“But am I upset to learn that Jilseponie finally erred in her devious and dangerous ascent?” De’Unnero went on. “Surely not! I have known the truth of the witch for many years. I only wish that I might have had some way to prevent the tragedy.”
“It should upset you,” Kalas reasoned. “Given your agenda for your young protégé.”
De’Unnero shook his head. “Not so,” he replied.
“If she is brought to trial—”
“Do so!” exclaimed the monk. “At once, I beg. Hang the witch or burn her. Surely she deserves no better!”
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 113
