Nathiar chuckled. “Surely not. The boy’s too pretty to be a notary at all. Make him magus penultimate, and I’ll find him uses in keeping with his comely face and neat ankles.”
Theron gasped. “The regenen would never let you!”
“The regenen would never know.”
Gael bit down hard on the spear of radish he’d raised to his lips.
The regenen might never know – although Gael would not bet on that – but the secretarius was damn mad. Nathiar, with his innuendo and carnal pranks and sensual preoccupations, disgusted him.
Well.
He’d dined in the great hall for a reason: to acquire news, maybe even learn secrets from the subtleties of expression and gesture. Now he had them with a vengeance. Most unpleasantly so, and with no subtlety at all.
Tangling with the lowliest in Belzetarn today – a lunch boy, a simple sweep – he’d suspected that it was the great ones who required his scrutiny.
Here were the great ones before him now.
The castellanum and the magus certainly possessed motive enough to make mischief in Gael’s tally room. Mischief, such as a theft would produce.
Nathiar hated Gael from their enmity of old. But Nathiar was too clever to leave evidence. If it were Nathiar stealing tin and bronze, the vaults would appear to be missing no ingots at all.
Theron, on his campaign to have all Belzetarn’s strings pass through his hands to the regenen’s, dearly wanted Gael’s tally room under his aegis and Gael’s smithies under himself as well. He envisioned Gael reporting to him, not directly to Carbraes. And, if he ever gained that, Gael would then be replaced with a troll Theron found more congenial.
But possessing motives for theft didn’t make a troll a thief. And how would Theron pull off such a theft? He was not clever.
Gael’s thoughts passed on to the other great ones present.
Would Carbraes have reason to steal from himself? It seemed unlikely.
Perhaps if the regenen pursued a secret project – something that contravened one of the rules he enforced rigorously amongst his trolls, such as forbidding the manipulation of energea. Could Carbraes be experimenting with weapons forged with the dangerous energea, the energea that glowed acrid orange instead of soothing blue?
Gael shook his head. That made no sense. If Carbraes were to pursue such a course, Gael would be the first one he’d involve. No, it couldn’t be Carbraes.
What of the march?
Even more ridiculous. Dreas would never betray Carbraes, not if he died for it. Although . . . how well did one troll ever know another?
Gael would rule none of them out at this time. But the magus and the castellanum would receive the brunt of his suspicion and scrutiny. They were more likely candidates for thievery, and – besides – they’d done the most to make tonight’s feast unpleasant.
Gael suppressed a quirk of his lips at this concluding irrationalism. He would find the true thief. He scorned to make either Theron or Nathiar a scapegoat, no matter the strength of his dislike for them.
The pair certainly fed his preference for dining alone in his chambers. But he’d learned back in Hadorgol that absence from the seat of power could be deadly.
The banquet hall of Hadorgol and the great hall of Belzetarn might appear very different. Belzetarn was colossal, fashioned on bold lines. Its banners featured simplicity: a black raven on a white field for the opteogint of the Ravens in the First Cohort; three yellow swords on a red field for the opteogint of the Triple Swords of the Eighteenth Cohort; a pair of red lynxes on a black field for the Twin Lynxes of the Seventh Cohort.
Hadorgol was elegant and intimate. Its banquet hall accommodated merely one hundred – not five – and featured delicate ivory embellishments, pastel murals, and exquisite intaglios. Even the heraldry tended toward complexity: a diagonal with a rose and green trellis pattern above, a blue and silver stripe below, and a white castle tower superimposed over both; a quartered field – with violet bells on a yellow ground in two quarters and red and blue diamonds in the other two – behind a white unicorn rearing.
But in the necessity of attendance, Hadorgol and Belzetarn were alike.
A Count Irvel had been a dearest friend of Heiroc’s father. The old count grew to prefer his home to court after his king died and the king’s son assumed his crown. No harm came of it for many years, but eventually another peer brought evidence of Irvel’s treason. After his execution, proof of Irvel’s loyalty surfaced, and then there was another execution: that of the lying peer.
None of it would have happened, if Heiroc had known Irvel well. Or if Irvel had gotten wind of the treachery soon enough. If Irvel had visited court more often.
Not that Gael had ever worried for himself in Heiroc’s court. His presence there was mandated by his position as the king’s magus, but motivated because he loved Heiroc, not because of the advantages that such a friendship might bring.
Belzetarn was less gentle than Hadorgol.
But it hadn’t been absence from his king that had finished Gael seven years ago. He remembered the last time he spoke with Heiroc all too well.
* * *
He’d floated on a sea of blackness in the aftermath of the Battle of Two Rivers, the rushing sound of moving water in his ears, a pulsing sensation in his body – too large, too small, too large – and no sight in his eyes.
Were they closed all that time – seven years ago?
Someone had washed him with cloths dipped in warm liquid. Someone wrapped warm silk around him. Someone spooned bone broth into his mouth and coaxed him to swallow.
He listened to a lullaby plucked on a lute. A woman’s voice, low and sweet, sang wordlessly. The faint scent of rose petals perfumed the air.
Gael felt the touch on his skin, tasted the mellow broth, and smelled the floral aroma, but he was not there. Not really. Were they dreams? Fevered hallucinations? Visions gifted by a saint?
He drifted, aware of sensation, yet unaware of self. He was the laving cloth, the liquid sustenance, the song. He had no existence apart from touch and taste and melody. He was the darkness, the rushing waves, the pulsing in and out.
How long he strayed from himself, he did not know. Days? Deichtains? Moons?
And when he returned, it was hazily.
The blackness ebbed so slowly he noticed it not, a dim pattern of green coalescing before his unfocused gaze, increasing in clarity.
He stared at it, wondering. A forest, deep shaded? A hart, half hidden behind a smooth-barked bole? White flowers pillowed on soft mosses?
It was a tapestry, he realized. He lay on his left side, on a divan, gazing at a tapestry that cloaked the wall.
I’m alive, he thought. I survived. But not unafflicted.
Why was he here, sheltered in a lady’s boudoir? Trolls were exiled. And . . . he was a troll now. That much he remembered. The truldemagar had fallen upon him, scourging his nodes and arcs. He should not be here, amidst civilization.
He turned over.
Transparent silk curtains, pale rose in hue, screened two windows. Tapestries – smaller than the forested one behind his divan – and miniature oil paintings adorned the dark-paneled walls. A freestanding mirror occupied one corner. Delicate chairs carved of dark wood and upholstered in brocades of blue and green clustered around a low table. A lady sat in one chair, gazing at the lute on her lap.
Still returning, Gael studied her.
She was beautiful, with dark eyes and translucent skin, her lips exquisitely molded. She looked sad. Folds of pale green silk formed her gown, close-fitting, outlining her full bosom and curving hips. One lovely ankle peeped from the lower hem. A loose-fitting robe of pale blue silk covered her arms and flowed down her back. One dark blond curl of her carefully coiffured hair fell over her shoulder.
She looked up, as though she felt his observation, and then he knew her, knew more of himself.
“Damalis,” he breathed. His beloved. His wife to be.
The shadow in her
face lightened. “You know me?” Her voice was low and sweet. She had sung to him in his long eclipse, while her maid fed him, and her footman bathed him.
“I know you,” he answered. “I will always know you.”
Her smile was sad.
“How is it that I am here?” he asked. “With you.”
“Our sovereign would not cast off his loyal friend and servant so readily.”
His heart rose within him. As Gael had ever been staunch for Heiroc, so Heiroc would now be steadfast to Gael. Was it possible . . . that Gael might retain his place by the king’s side, within his court, amongst the nobility of Hadorgol? Surely not. He was truldemagar. And if Heiroc would sponsor him . . . Gael would not let him. He would guard his king even now.
Ever so slightly, Damalis shook her head. “He would not have you perish on the battlefield, in a welter of blood and mud, when you might live. And I . . . would not have it thusly either. He brought you to me.”
She seemed to be trying to tell him something other than what her words conveyed.
His heart ached for her beauty, for her sadness, for her.
A tear slid down the perfection of her cheek. “Oh, my love,” she whispered.
“I will not let him make such a sacrifice,” he said, referring to Heiroc. Or her either, though it hurt him to think it. He could not say it. He longed to draw her closer. He must set her farther away.
And, yet, she had suffered him brought here to her. Did she plan their wedding even now? Contemplate their marriage through the years? Envision children? Could she not see his affliction? Was it not visible to the outer sight? Yet?
He glanced at the mirror standing in the corner of the room, reflecting light in its perfectly polished bronze. He wasn’t sure he could rise from his divan and walk to survey himself in its surface, but a smaller mirror, made to hold in the hand, rested on a nearby shelf.
Gael gestured. “Will you bring it to me?”
Damalis’ face grew very still. What was she thinking? He’d always been able to read her thoughts on her face, but he could not read this thought. Was it a thought she’d never entertained before?
Her softly closed lips straightened, and she set aside her lute. How was it that she moved so gracefully? He loved to watch her step across a room, bend to take an item in hand, and straighten again. Her silks hushed as she knelt beside him.
“Lift it before my gaze,” he instructed her gently.
He examined his countenance in the hand mirror. The signs were slight, but present: his aquiline nose longer by a hair, his jaw longer also, and a faint tracery of new lines bracketing his eyes and mouth. The truldemagar had claimed him violently. No surprise, given the potent magery he’d worked at its onset. No surprise, given his long sojourn in darkness. He would not be one of those trolls who looked human for years, his disease visible only to the inner sight.
He girded himself to say the words that would unmake their betrothal and turned the mirror to reflect Damalis’ face, yet very still. Did he perceive resolution in her eyes? Distance?
His brows tensed.
Damalis drew in a shallow breath. “I am sorry,” she said. “I do not love you enough for this.”
Gael’s heart contracted painfully.
Damalis continued: “I rescind my promise to bind and oblige myself to you in marriage, Gael. Our betrothal is ended.”
He’d imagined her grieving her prospective loss. He’d imagined her resisting it, as did he resist it. He’d imagined her hoping for a way forward against all odds. But she didn’t; she wasn’t.
He searched her eyes.
She did grieve. But she grieved the telling of her choice more than she grieved the choice itself. And she grieved her future life at his side more than she grieved his loss of his humanity.
He’d thought she loved him. He’d thought she loved him . . . the way that he loved her, beyond all sense. The way he still loved her.
He hoped his tenderness showed in his eyes. His truldemagar-afflicted eyes. He would free her, since he could do naught else, formally – as had she – in the words he’d spoken to her in front of the priest and the altar.
“I renounce my faith and loyalty to you. I retract my aid and comfort to you in your necessities. I revoke my promise to do unto you all that a man” – he was not a man now; he was a troll – “ought do unto his betrothed.” He could not swallow down the choking ache in his throat. “Be free of me, love,” he whispered.
A shiver of heartbreak showed in her eyes. Had he misjudged her? Was there hope for him still?
Her gaze steadied. “Our king would speak with you.”
Damalis rose to her feet. “Goodbye, Gael.”
And she left the room.
* * *
Gael’s eyes felt hot and dry, his chest tight.
He’d known he must set her free. He’d not dreamed that she would set him free. That she could be brought to do so without his urging. That she would want to do so.
Losing her love was worse than losing her. Was worse than losing his life. Worse than losing his humanity.
The ache in his chest strengthened, knife-like, and blackness washed over him once again. Suffocating, hot, and clamorous this time, rather than airy and cool as before. He drowned in it, desperate for a rescue that would never come, he knew.
The click of a door latch fetched him out of the stifling darkness.
Gael’s king strode deliberately across Damalis’ boudoir – his long velvet robes, aqua threaded with gold silk tracery, swinging – and sat in the chair vacated earlier by the lady. No longer dressed for battle, he wore the royal circlet on his brow, narrow gold set with topaz, and his dual rings of office. His face was grave.
Gael struggled to rise – this was his sovereign lord! – but got only his elbow under him before Heiroc shook his head. “Stay, Magus. You are but new recovered from your injury.”
His injury? Heiroc could call it that? The truldemagar?
Gael sank back upon the slanted end of his divan. “My king,” he murmured.
“You are yourself?” questioned Heiroc. “You have your memory?”
“I do.” Bitter memory. Bitter knowledge.
Heiroc’s face grew yet more grave. “You know you suffer the truldemagar?”
“Yes.”
“You know that some of my neighboring kings execute their trolls.”
Yes, Gael knew that also.
“I shall not follow their example.” Heiroc frowned. “But neither will I forego tradition’s answer to my dilemma.”
Emotion – resentment? anger? hope? – surged in Gael’s breast. He fought it down, unidentified, but said, “Erastys forbore tradition’s answer.”
Heiroc nodded, unoffended. “And you see what came of it. Would you walk in Nathiar’s footsteps?”
The question possessed only one answer. Could only possess one answer. “No.”
“I thought not.” Heiroc sighed. “Although Erastys’ magus has now gone into exile, as he should have done some moons before. He departed via ship, to be set ashore in the Hamish wilds across the sea.”
“Shall I go thusly?” asked Gael. What exactly did Heiroc plan for him? How would his banishment be accomplished?
“No,” said Heiroc. “You will need help, my friend. Help which I cannot provide you, though your weakness calls for it.”
Gaelan’s tears. Would Heiroc banish him here and now? When his legs would surely fail to bear him?
“I cannot afford you the recovery time which my physician tells me you require.”
Seya’s son! He was being banished here and now.
“I have already pushed the decencies beyond what is reasonable.”
‘Decency,’ he called it? What could be decent about turning an invalid into the street?
Heiroc continued: “I shall push those conventions further yet by some deichtains, but it will not be enough for you, my friend.”
“Then how shall I go?” asked Gael.
“To my bor
ders, you shall have companions. That much I may command.” Heiroc swallowed. “Beyond them . . . you shall have one, the only one within my power to procure for you.”
Gael could not envision how that might be brought to pass. What man unafflicted would willingly embrace exile at Gael’s side? The idea was ludicrous. And Heiroc would never deliberately afflict one of his servants with troll-disease, condemning him unjustly for Gael’s sake.
The tightness in Gael’s throat loosened. A warmth crept into his breast.
Heiroc’s evident struggle to provide for his magus came as balm after . . . the lack of struggle shown by . . . Gael could not complete his thought. It was too painful. But Heiroc’s loyalty to his old friend was welcome, even if it must prove futile.
“You do not understand me, do you?” said Heiroc. Was that a slight smile in his eyes?
Gael shook his head.
Heiroc stood, strode back across the boudoir and around the corner towards its door. Gael heard the sound of the latch, the sharp snap of Heiroc’s fingers, followed by a low whistle. The pattering click of nails on marble started up, then hushed abruptly on carpeting.
An instant later, a massive dog – noble-headed with gentle eyes, and long-haired, white with large black patches, and a sweeping feathered tail: a landseer – trotted into Gael’s view.
He knew her, of course. Morza was Heiroc’s favorite water retriever, so much so that she was not restricted to the mews with the other hunting dogs, but walked ever at her master’s heel.
Gael stretched a hand out to her as she wove her way carefully through the delicate furnishings.
Standing beside the divan, she snuffled his knuckles, then his wrist and forearm. Uttering a contented sigh, she sat close and laid her head on his chest.
Gael scratched the base of her loosely flopped ears, both black against the black patches on either side of her head. She sighed a second time.
Heiroc returned to his seat. “Well, my friend? What think you of my provision for your companionship?”
The warmth spreading in Gael’s chest swelled to a flood. “You cannot, my lord,” he protested. “You must not.”
The Tally Master Page 11
