Regardless, Adria had already made some real attempts to ascertain her own lineage, requesting books or records she suspected to have such information. But even as the daughter of the king, she felt closely restricted at times, and most of these requests were summarily denied by the Temple librarian, or perhaps even Matron Taber herself.
The Sisters were generally unapproachable about such matters, though they often had little qualms about proclaiming their own parentage, not to mention anticipating the time when they would, if selected, become mothers in turn. It had never been specifically stated by Matron Taber, at least as far as Adria knew, but it was nonetheless assumed by the Sisterhood that one among them would birth, or perhaps had already birthed, the One-Who-Will-Come.
Adria, once convinced of this new Sister tutor’s unwillingness or inability to reveal Adria’s mother, decided to choose this presumption for her irreverence.
“How will we know the One-Who-Will-Come?” Adria asked, though she already knew the answer, in all its vagueness.
“We will know the One-Who-Will-Come by deed and by action, by the order he brings to the world.” It was not an exact recitation, Adria recognized. This Sister was already a little lax.
“And it is quite possible that The One is born already?”
“Well, perhaps…” the Sister said, already uncomfortable.
“Will Her Matron not recognize The One? Is this not why the Sisterhood keeps records of every birth?”
The Sister did not reply for some time, though she seemed to be framing an answer as best she could.
Adria pressed on, nonetheless. “I think that The One is not born, and this is why the Sisterhood keep their records, and why Sisters are permitted to bear children, even though they cannot marry.”
Such thoughts were discouraged, of course, much less such words. But Adria was undaunted, and again did not give pause enough for the Sister to speak.
“Perhaps you will be mother to The One,” Adria suggested. “And then she and I can play together, and learn our Tenets, so we’ll be certain not to disappoint the Matriarch and my father.”
Adria was not certain why these ideas were offensive, but she hoped so, and now could easily see discomfiture. The Sister’s face had grown taut, her mouth opened without speaking, and Adria pressed her advantage even further.
“One curiosity, though,” Adria sighed, smiling. “If Matron Taber is certain of the benefit of The One’s birth, then why does she not bear a child herself?”
That was the last day for this particular Sister to teach Adria. She had lasted three days, and her replacement was, fortunately, a better academic, a bit more inclined to allow Adria to dictate her own path through the many books and scrolls of the Temple, and far less likely to shrivel in the face of impiety.
But Adria was never shown a single image of her family tree. Sometimes its branches grew and twisted through her dreams, their white leaves falling to ashes, poison fruit shadowing the surface of the water above.
Adria sighed to herself, still staring at the faceless statue shadowing her body and her life. She pushed aside her reawakening memories, guilty from the pride of her childhood self which they revealed.
Mateko and Shísha are right, she smiled. I am still a little spoiled.
And she walked a slow full circle around the statue and into the light, examining it for any further clue to the more recent thoughts of the Matriarch and her Sisterhood. At the far side, she noticed that the folds of its robed arms fell about the form of an unsheathed sword, almost concealed by the robes about the figure’s legs.
Despite its shadowy stone concealment, the sword was unmistakably that of her father, a sword he had not wielded for many years, and which was said to be held in secret trust for his unnamed heir.
Adria shuddered, to think of it passing to Hafgrim. Or even worse, to me...
She shifted, then, so that the sword fell back into shadow, and she whispered, “Some things are better left in future, invisible.”
As Adria made her way across the field and to the keep, two Sisters approached hurriedly from the High Temple to her left. They were novices, having recently changed their green robes for black, but still wearing a green sash to mark their lesser status.
Adria stopped and awaited them, now quite certain that she was expected.
“I would speak with Her Matron,” Adria commanded, before the lead novice could open her mouth.
The girl stopped suddenly, blinked several times, and half turned to the other novice before answering, cautiously, “I am… afraid that it is impossible for you to see the Matriarch at present.”
Adria chose to dismiss the lack of formality for the moment. “Is not your Matriarch Chancellor of this citadel, this city, and indeed this nation?”
The girl nodded. She was of an age with Adria, but seemed somehow so… slight. “She… is.”
“And is she present in this citadel?”
“Yes...”
“And you know my name?”
“Of… of course,” the Sister hesitated.
Adria retorted swiftly, “Then, I would remind you that I am required, as tradition dictates, to visit the chancellor upon my arrival. Conversely, and perhaps obviously, she is obliged to attend me in turn.”
The second novice had come forward, and attempted to rescue her Sister from the situation. “You have been gone some time,” she said coolly. “You must understand that there is a protocol now. You cannot simply enter Her Holy Matron’s presence unannounced.”
“I had no such thought,” Adria smiled blandly. “I assumed you would announce me. Or has protocol changed to such degree that I must announce myself?”
“I will… make your… presence known, of course,” the novice parsed and paced her words.
Again, with the excess care, Adria thought. It is obvious that I was expected, and yet they have no idea what to expect of me. No idea what I have become.
And this gave her a thought.
“Indeed,” the girl had continued. “Your apartments remain intact, and I would be pleased if you would wait in your rooms, to be sent for if…”
“Address me,” Adria interrupted. She was being challenged for the first time, she realized — challenged by Taber, but through the curtain of her underlings. Adria would not show weakness now, not when she had fought against the Sisterhood and the Knights for three years.
The novice blinked several times, a first small break in her composure.
“Unless my memory fails,” Adria continued with a sigh. “I am the daughter of your king. Whether or not I am announced to your mistress, the councilor and Matriarch, you will address me with all due respect and formality. This is a protocol which I am certain has not changed, no matter how much or how little time I have been away.”
The novice Sisters reddened, and the stronger one opened and shut her mouth twice before producing any words.
“My… Lady….” she began finally. Adria gave her a chance to finish now, but the girl faltered.
“Novice,” Adria smiled again, with a little more warmth, but with no less resolution. “Upon the third level of the High Temple lies a scriptorium, perhaps a hundred yards from where we stand. Within it lie the records of every birth and every death known to the Sisterhood. Given this, I have no doubt that therein, should you or Her Holy Matron choose to look, is a certain record of my birth, and at least one of my parents included. I know my father yet lives, and rules this nation in name if little else, and has chosen to pass that name to me, a name which carries a title you and the Matriarch would do well to remember. Does your memory and understanding serve you thus as well?”
The novice merely nodded, mutely. She had clearly not expected such strength of resistance.
“Excellent,” Adria smiled, with all the coolness she could manage. “Then you will remember my words and my title, and will repeat
them to Matron Taber as you announce me.”
“Leave us,” Matron Taber said to both her own attendants and the young Sisters now flanking Adria. Taber’s eyes were closed, her hands folded in thought or prayer. She animated only a little when all had gone, opening her eyes directly upon Adria, who now stood within the silver inlay star at the center of the expanse of the Great Hall of the keep.
The shuffling of the Sisters’ slippers fell to silence, and Adria could now hear her own heartbeat, finding herself uncharacteristically breathless, though she bent the entirety of her will to hiding it. The confidence she had felt with the Novices had vanished utterly. Still, she would be the first to speak, but not before a count of five breaths.
“Matron Taber.” Adria inclined her head. A lock of her hair had at some point loosed from its braid and now fell before her face. She resisted the urge to tuck it behind her ear, and instead waited, for a long moment.
“Remove your clothing,” Taber commanded.
Adria remembered an earlier moment, now half forgotten. And she remembered the girl who had lost her verdant clothes and the spring of her life before the Matriarch, perhaps never knowing why.
“I shall not,” Adria refused, raising her face again to look upon her adversary. Adria knew she trembled, felt nearly naked before the woman regardless of her layered cloaks, her furs, her leather and her linen.
Robed in violet and seated not upon her father’s throne, but upon the simple wooden chair a step below, Taber seemed as she had always before. Her voice was measured and calm, as strong as Adria remembered.
“I would see how you have matured.”
Adria now tucked her hair behind her ear, but her braid of Holy and Blood beads fell in its place. “Be assured that I am not a child. I have grown well.”
Again the delay in response Taber always observed. Always… so like an Aesidhe elder, Adria realized for the first time.
“You appear strong.” Taber nodded slowly. Perhaps tilted her head, only very slightly.
“I am, Matron.” Adria had learned to give the least response possible.
“You wield your bow at last?”
Adria blinked twice, then realized the nock of bone must be visible above her shoulder, or at least the shape. “I have not yet found cause to draw it, though I believe I am well able.”
The Matriarch nodded again, slightly, seemingly in agreement. Adria’s breath had calmed at last, and she now felt another presence, somewhere behind her, a breath of air from the door, though she somehow sensed no danger. Turning back would be only a sign of weakness, and a revelation of senses she would not wish to reveal to Taber. Instead, she spoke again.
“I will see my father, and my brother, if he remains.”
“They both... remain,” Taber hesitated only the slightest calculated instant. “I would expect nothing less of your return.”
“Then by your leave...” Adria inclined her head again.
“You have it.”
Only then did Adria turn, finding the room behind her empty, the doorway closed as it had been left. Adria walked slowly, knowing how well she would be watched. And just before she reached the door, Matron Taber spoke once more.
“Táli, Menisteya zhesaya chóli hewocho nistewela.”
Adria stood transfixed, her hand halfway to the handle, as the words of an Aesidhe funeral prayer echoed across the marble. Friend, the Hunters will continue to hunt without you.
Her remaining steps were without inflection of emotion. And her hand found the door, somehow, without shaking. But beyond, as she strode between the Sisters and down the corridor, her blood raced, her ears rang, and her heart burned white with dreams of war.
One arrow… and Adria imagined just such a flight among the columns of stone, from the center of her father’s star to the heart of the Hunters’ hunter.
One arrow might have changed my destiny, and Heiland’s history, forever.
Part Three
Mobility of Pawns
The Game of Kings and Queens
When Adria was rather young, her father taught her chess. In his solar, everything seemed much too large, and the curtains turned even the day into twilight. But the fire was always warm, and he piled pillows on a chair just high enough for her to reach the Violet and gold marble squares embedded in the red wood of the table.
She had been here before, on rare occasions when she was summoned for a reprimand, her father’s voice even and low, his face mostly without expression. Still, Adria’s legs had shaken, her eyes teary and her cheeks burning. At these times, she could only ever nod, or perhaps whisper an occasional “yes, Father.”
Although these shared moments had always borne the weight of punishment, she had always regretted leaving, and in fact had begun to suspect that her only method for seeing her father might be to make mistakes. Still, she had never quite managed to anticipate what would warrant such attention, nor to craft such opportunities for reproach.
The discomfiture of Sisters, it was certain, did nothing to demand her father’s notice, and any incident involving her brother was much more likely to end in his discipline rather than hers.
So it was a wonder when she was brought into his room for nothing more or less than a game — a game for adults, she knew, or at least for older children. She felt at once that she was being given the chance to earn this time with him, to make the earlier incidents, somehow, forgiven.
And Adria took to the game well, and quickly. Once she learned the different ways the pieces moved, she formulated simple strategies readily enough, and her father rewarded her with affirmations.
“Yes…” He clasped his hands together, early into their first game. “You keep all of your pieces protected by the others. That is excellent, but… there are times when you must take risks as well, and advance more quickly. Sometimes you must even make sacrifices, allowing one piece to fall for another to advance.”
“But I don’t want any of them to… to die,” she shrugged, frowning.
“Some of them are meant to die, Adria. In every game, as soon as you make your first moves, some of your pieces are fated for death. They might be saved, but only at a greater cost, by losing those pieces dearer to you.”
He taught her many such lessons, and each game played a little differently, and this excited Adria. Still, she could never anticipate what her lessons might be, or in what way her father might choose to teach her.
Sometimes, when she lost terribly, he would grow angry, and stalk about the room afterward, and dismiss her with a wave of his hand. Often, he would merely frown darkly, grow silent, and feverishly reset the pieces, or even completely replay the entire game, move by move, to show her what mistakes she had made.
Her memory was good, she had proven, to the frustration of more than one tutor, but her father’s own ability amazed her, and she was afraid to admit when she did not follow his motions or understand his logic. He did not always seem to realize that she was a child, and it would sometimes make her forget, as well.
She wondered if she could ever learn everything he knew about the game. And although she did not always have the strength of voice she wished, more and more she spoke her thoughts aloud, hoping to impress him, or at least to convince him to teach her a little more.
Often, she would learn from the game itself, and grow overwhelmed with some new understanding.
“Some of the pieces are stronger than others,” was among the first realizations she voiced aloud. “If I lose the stronger pieces to the weaker, I begin to lose the game. Even… even if the stronger pieces are threatened by the weaker, I have to bring them back out of danger... I... lose squares.”
“Yes,” her father smiled. He always liked it when she used words or phrases he had taught her. Even when punished, she had often left his solar repeating the more unfamiliar words. “Or, you can sacrifice them, to gain time and space
.”
“Sacrifice,” she nodded. Those fated for death.
Father continued. “Time, space, power… these are the three key concepts of chess. Once you understand not only what each of these means, but how they relate to one another, your skill will advance quickly.”
They had already played several games, and Adria wasn’t sure she had played any of them better than the first. She had lost very quickly each time, and without yet understanding why. She couldn’t just repeat the games, like she repeated Kaye’s lessons, or her lessons from the Sisters. Still, she brightened at his words. Her father could not be wrong.
“The queen is strongest, of course.” She nodded, and glanced up to see his reaction.
He arched his brow. “What makes the queen strongest?” he smiled. “Her sword?”
“They don’t have weapons, Father,” Adria wrinkled her nose. She loved it when he was in a rare teasing mood. But she already had her answer and was anxious to continue her education. Still, she didn’t quite have the words she needed. “One piece is stronger than another because… she’s faster.”
“Faster?” He frowned doubtfully.
She shrugged. “She can move… around more.”
“Better put.” He nodded. “Some have greater mobility than others. The rook, for instance, can move to every square on the board, while the bishop can only move on its color, and so only reach half of the board.” He used the pieces on the board to show this to her.
“Mobility,” Adria nodded, enjoying the new word. It felt strange in her mouth. It moved her tongue and lips around much more than most words, and was also a bit longer. “…and the queen is like a rook and a bishop together. She can reach any of the squares.”
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 15
