Verna shrugged, as best she could with the load of reports. “Of course, Sister. Good night.”
Thankfully, they both departed without further argument. Grumbling to herself, Verna lugged the stack of reports into her office and dumped them on her desk beside the ones she had yet to get to. She eyed Millie, off in a corner scrubbing with a rag at a spot no one would ever see were it to be left there for the next hundred years.
The dimly lit office was silent but for the swishing of Millie’s rag and her mumbling to herself under her breath. Verna ambled over to the bookcase near where the woman was on her knees working and ran a finger along the volumes without really seeing the gold-leafed titles on the worn spines of the ancient leather covers.
“How are your old bones, tonight, Millie?”
“Oh, don’t get me started, Prelate, or I’ll soon have your hands all over me trying to heal what can’t be healed. Age, you know.” Her knee nudged the bucket closer as her hand moved on to scrub at another place on the carpet. “We all get old. The Creator Himself must have intended it, as no mortal can heal it. Though I’ve had more time than most are granted, working here at the palace, I mean.” Her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth as she applied more force to the rag. “Yes, the Creator has blessed me with more years than I know what to do with.”
Verna had never seen the sinewy little woman in anything other than a resolute state of movement. Even when she spoke, her rag constantly wiped at dust, or a thumb rubbed at a spot, or a nail picked at a crust of dirt no one else could see.
Verna pulled out a volume and opened it. “Well, I know that Prelate Annalina appreciated having you around all those years.”
“Oh, yes, many years, it was. My, my, many years.”
“A Prelate, I’m coming to discover, has precious little opportunity for friendship. It was good that she had yours. I’m sure I’ll find no less comfort in having you around.
Millie mumbled a curse at a reluctant bit of dirt. “Oh yes, we had many a talk late into the night. My, my, but she was a wonderful woman. Wise, and kind. Why, she would listen to anyone, even old Millie.”
Verna smiled as she absently turned a page in the book, a volume on the arcane laws of a long dead kingdom. “It was so good of you to help her, with her ring and the letter, I mean.”
Millie looked up, a grin coming to her thin lips. Her hand had actually stopped wiping. “Ah, so you’ll be wanting to know about that, like all the others.”
Verna snapped the book closed. “Others? What others?”
Millie dunked her rag in the soapy water. “The Sisters—Leoma, Dulcinia, Maren, Philippa, those others. You know them, I’m sure.” She licked the end of a finger and rubbed it on the bottom of the dark woodwork, squeaking off a spot. “There might have been a few more, I don’t recall. Age, you know. They all came to me after the funeral. Not together, mind you,” she said with a chuckle. “You know, each alone, their eyes watching the shadows as they asked the same as you.”
Verna had forgotten her pretense at the bookcase. “And what did you tell them?”
Millie rung her rag. “The truth, of course, same as I’ll tell you, if you’ve a mind to hear it.”
“Yes,” Verna said, reminding herself to keep the edge out of her voice. “Since I’m the Prelate now and all, I think I should hear about it. Why don’t you rest a bit, and tell me the story.”
With a grunt of ache, Millie struggled to her feet and turned her sharp eyes on Verna. “Why, thank you, Prelate. But I’ve got work to do, you know. I wouldn’t want you thinking I’m a slacker, seeking to work my tongue instead of my rag.”
Verna patted the wiry woman’s shoulder. “No fear of that, Millie. Tell me about Prelate Annalina.”
“Well now, she was on her deathbed when I saw her. I cleaned Nathan’s rooms, too, you know, so that’s when I saw her, when I went to Nathan’s. The Prelate trusted no one but me to go in there with that man. Can’t say as I blame her, though the Prophet was always kind to me. Except when he would go off about something or another, yelling, you know. Not at me, understand, but at his condition and all, being locked in his apartments for all those years. Takes a toll on a man, I suppose.”
Verna cleared her throat. “I imagine it was difficult for you to see the Prelate in such a condition.”
Millie put a hand to Verna’s arm. “Don’t you just know it. Broke my heart, it did. But she was in her usual kind humor, despite the pain.”
Verna was biting the inside of her lip. “You were telling me about the ring, and the letter.”
“Oh, yes.” Millie squinted, then reached out and picked a bit of lint from the shoulder of Verna’s dress. “You should let me brush this out for you. It doesn’t do to have people think . . .”
Verna took the woman’s callused hand. “Millie, this is a bit important to me. Could you please tell me about how you came to have the ring?”
Millie smiled apologetically. “Ann told me she was dying. Said it right out, she did. ‘Millie, I’m dying.’ Well, I was in tears. She had been my friend for a good long time. She smiled and took my hand, just like you have it now, and told me that she had one last task she wished me to do. She pulled her ring off her finger and handed it to me. In my other hand, she put that letter sealed with wax and imprinted with the sunburst off the ring.
“She told me how when her funeral was going on, I should put the ring on top of the letter, on the pedestal I was to take in there. She told me to be careful not to touch the ring to the letter until just at the end, or the magic she had put around it could kill me. She warned me several times to remember to be careful not to touch them together until I did it all proper. She told me just what to do, in what order. So that’s what I done. I never saw her again, after she gave me the ring.”
Verna stared off out the opened doors to the garden she had never had time to visit. “When was this?”
“That’s a question none of the others asked,” Millie mumbled to herself. She stroked a thin finger back and forth across her lower lip. “Let’s see now. Quite a while back, it was. It was way back before the winter solstice. Yes, it was right after the attack, the day you left with young Richard. Now, there was a nice boy. Kind as a sunny day, he was. Always smiled at me with a how-do-you-do. Most of the other boys don’t even see me, right there before their eyes, but young Richard always saw me, he did, and had a pleasant word for me, too.”
Verna only half listened. She remembered the day Millie spoke of. She and Warren had gone with Richard to get him through the shield that kept him bound to the palace. After they passed through the shield, they went to the Baka Ban Mana people, and took them all to the Valley of the Lost, their ancestral homeland, a homeland they had been driven from three thousand years before in order that the towers that separated the Old from the New World be put up. Richard needed their spirit woman to help him.
Richard had used unimaginable power, not only Additive Magic, but Subtractive, too, to destroy the towers, and cleanse the valley, returning it to the Baka Ban Mana before he went on his desperate mission to stop the Keeper of the dead from escaping through the gateway and into the world of die living. Winter solstice had come and gone, so she knew he had succeeded.
Suddenly, Verna turned to Millie. “That was almost a month ago. Well before she died.”
Millie nodded. “That seems about right to me.”
“You mean to say that she gave you the ring almost three weeks before she died?” Millie nodded. “Why so long?”
“She said she wanted to give it to me before she slipped any further, and wouldn’t be able to say good-bye to me, or be able to give proper instructions.”
“I see. And when you went back after that, before she died, did she slip as she thought?”
Millie shrugged as she let out a sigh. “That was the only time I saw her. When I went back to see her, and to clean, the guards said that Nathan and the Prelate had left strict orders that no one was to be allowed in. Something ab
out Nathan not being disturbed as he tried his best to heal her. I didn’t want him to fail, so I tiptoed away, quiet as I could.”
Verna sighed. “Well, thank you for telling me, Millie.” Verna glanced at her desk, and the waiting stacks of reports. “I’d best be back at my work, too, or everyone will think me lazy.”
“Oh, that’s a shame, Prelate. Such a warm, beautiful night, you should enjoy your private garden.”
Verna grunted. “I’ve so much work to do I’ve never even poked my nose out to look at the Prelate’s private garden.”
Millie started toward her bucket, but suddenly spun back. “Prelate! I just remembered something else that Ann told me.”
Verna straightened her dress at her shoulders. “She told you something else? Something you told the others that you forgot to tell me?”
“No, Prelate,” Millie whispered as he scurried closer. “No, she told me, and told me to tell none but the new Prelate. For some reason, it’s been completely out of my memory until this moment.”
“With all the rest, she may have spelled the message, to make you forget it for all but the new Prelate.”
“That could be,” Millie said as she rubbed her lip. She looked into Verna’s eyes. “Ann would do things like that, sometimes. Sometimes, she could be devious.”
Verna smiled without humor. “Yes, I know. I, too, have been on the receiving end of her manipulations. What is the message?”
“She said to tell you to be sure not to work too hard.”
Verna rested a hand on a hip. “That’s the message?”
Millie nodded as she leaned close and lowered her voice. “And she said that you should use the garden to relax. But she took my arm and pulled me close then, looking right into my eyes, and told me to tell you also to be sure to visit the Prelate’s sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary? What sanctuary?”
Millie turned and pointed through the open doors. “Out in the garden there’s a little building nestled in the trees and shrubs. She called it her sanctuary. I’ve never been in it. She never allowed me to go in there to clean. She cleaned it herself, she said, because a sanctuary was a sacrosanct place where a body could be alone, and where no one else ever set foot. She would go there, from time to time, I think to pray for guidance from the Creator, or perhaps just to be alone. She said to be sure to tell you to go there and visit it.”
Verna let out an exasperated breath. “Sounds like her way of telling me I would need the Creator’s help to get through all the paperwork. She did have a twisted sense of humor, sometimes.”
Millie chuckled. “Yes, Prelate, that she did. Twisted.” Millie put her hands to her blushing cheeks. “May the Creator forgive me. She was a kind woman. Her humor was never meant to be hurtful.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Verna rubbed her temples as she started for her desk. She was tired, and dreaded the prospect of reading more mind numbing reports. She halted and turned back to Millie. The doors to the garden were opened wide, letting in the fresh night air.
“Millie, it’s late, why don’t you go have some dinner, and get some rest. Rest is good for tired bones.”
Millie grinned. “Really, Prelate? You don’t mind your office being layered in dirt?”
Verna laughed under her breath. “Millie, I’ve been out-of-doors for so many years that I’ve grown fond of dirt. It’s fine, really. Have a good rest.”
As Verna stood in the doorway to her garden, looking out into the night, at moonlight dappled ground beneath trees and vines, Millie gathered up her rags and bucket. “A good night to you, then, Prelate. Enjoy your visit to your garden.”
She heard the door close and the room fall silent. She stood feeling the warm, moist breeze and inhaled the fragrant aroma of leaf and flower and earth.
Verna took a last look back at her office, and then stepped out into the waiting night.
Chapter 22
Verna took a deep, refreshing breath of the humid night air. It was like a tonic. She could feel her muscles relaxing as she strolled down a winding, narrow path, among beds of peeping lilies, flowering dogwood, and lush huckleberry bushes, as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the moonlight. Spreading trees reached over the dense shrubs, seeming to offer their branches for her to touch, or the sweet fragrance of their foliage and blossoms for her to inhale.
Though it was too early for most trees to be in bloom, in the Prelate’s garden there were a few rare everblossoms—squat, gnarled, outspreading trees that bloomed throughout the year, though they fruited only in season. In the New World she had come across a small forest of everblossoms, and discovered them to be a favorite haunt of the elusive night wisps—frail creatures appearing to be nothing more than sparks of light, and only visible at night.
After the night wisps had been convinced of their benign intentions, she and the two Sisters she had been with at the time had spent several nights there, talking with the wisps of simple things and learning about the benevolent nature of the wizards and Confessors who guided the alliance of the Midlands. Verna had been pleased to learn that the people of the Midlands protected places of magic, and left the creatures inhabiting them to live their lives in unmolested solitude.
While there were wild places in the Old World where magic creatures dwelled, they were nowhere near as numerous or as varied as those wondrous places in the New World. Verna had learned a bit of tolerance from some of those creatures—that the Creator had sprinkled the world with many fragile wonders, and sometimes mankind’s highest calling was to simply let them be.
In the Old World that view was not widely held, and there were many places where wild magic had been brought under control lest people be injured or killed by things not amenable to reason, Magic could often be “inconvenient.” In many ways, the New World was still a wild place, as the Old World had been thousands of years ago, before man made it a safe, if somewhat sterile, place through its notions of stewardship.
Verna missed the New World. She had never felt so at home as she did there.
Ducks sleeping with their heads tucked back under their wings bobbed at the edge of a pond beside the path, while unseen frogs croaked from the reeds. Verna saw an occasional fluttermouse swoop down across the surface of the water to snatch a bug from the air. Moon shadows played across the grassy bank as the gentle breeze caressed the trees overhead.
Just beyond the pond, a small side trail turned off toward a stand of trees among a thicket of underbrush hardly touched by the moonlight. Verna somehow felt this was the place she sought, and strolled off the main path, toward the waiting shadows. The grounds here seemed to be ruled by the wildness of nature, as opposed to the cultured look of much of the garden.
Through a narrow opening in the wall of thorn glove, Verna found an enchanting little stuccoed building with four gables, the rake of each tiled roof swooping down in a gentle curve to eaves no higher than her head. A towering maidenhair tree stood off the face of each gable, its branches lacing together overhead. Sweetbriar hugged the ground close to the walls, suffusing the cozy enclosure with a fragrant scent. A round window, too high to see through, was set in the peak of each gable.
At one gabled wall, where the path ended, Verna found a rough-hewn, round-topped door with a sunburst pattern carved in its center. There was a pull handle, but no lock. A tug produced no movement, not even a wiggle. The door was shielded.
Verna ran her fingers along the edge, feeling for the nature of the shield, or its keyway. She fell only an icy chill that made her recoil at its touch.
She opened herself to her Han, letting the sweet light inundate her with its warm, familiar comfort. She nearly gasped with the glory of being just that much closer to the Creator. The air suddenly smelled of a thousand scents; against her flesh it felt of moisture, dust, pollen, and salt from the ocean; in her ears it carried the sounds of a world of insects, small animals, and fragments of words carried for miles in its airy, volatile fingers. She listened carefully for any soun
ds that might betray anyone near, at least anyone with no more than Additive Magic. She heard none.
Verna focused her Han on the door before her. Her probe told her that the entire building was encased in a web, but not one she had ever felt before: it had elements of ice woven through with spirit. She didn’t even know ice could be woven with spirit. The two fought each other like cats in a sack, but there it was, the two of them purring contentedly, as if they belonged together. She had absolutely no idea how such a shield could be breached, much less undone.
Still joined with her Han, an impulse came to her, and she reached up, touching the sunburst pattern on her ring to that on the door. The door swung silently open.
Verna stepped inside and placed the ring on the sunburst pattern carved on the inside of the door. It obediently swung closed. With her Han she could feel the shield seal tight around her. Verna had never felt so isolated, so alone, so safe.
Candles sprang to flame. She surmised that they must be tied to the shield. The light from the ten candles, five each in two candlesticks with branching arms, was more than sufficient to light the inside of the small sanctuary. The candlesticks stood to each side of a small altar draped with a white cloth trimmed in gold thread. Atop the white cloth rested a perforated bowl, probably for burning aromatic gums. A red brocade kneeling pad edged with gold tassels sat on the floor before the altar.
Each of the four alcoves formed by the gables was only large enough for the comfortable-looking chair occupying one of them. One of the others held the altar, another a tiny table with a three-legged stool, and the last, along with the door, a box bench with a neatly folded quilted comforter, probably for the lap, as lying down looked to be out of the question; the area in the center wasn’t much larger that the alcoves.
Verna turned about, wondering what it was she was supposed to do here. Prelate Annalina had left a message to make sure she visited the place, but why? What was she to accomplish here?
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