When my dead mother was dragged into it, it was very much about ‘us’. “It’s obviously not a nice one. That’s more than enough reason to leave it alone.”
“It’s very convenient to you that Marden and the others are not here to corroborate what Aerik says.”
That accusation left me open-mouthed. “I would hardly call their deaths convenient.”
“I have so far not interfered with what you have been doing, but four deaths—”
“Interference?” He had a strange definition of interference. “And what do you call Crowndan, exactly? What is that?”
“What do you mean?”
“He is too forward with me. Considering his subservience to you, Sir Aros, and others above his station, I have to assume that he behaves so towards me because you have either ordered him or encouraged him. You will not let me to go home, to Port Darad, and you want for Crowndan to court me. You claim you give me freedom but I think you would like me on a tighter leash.”
“That’s enough, Eva.”
“No, it’s not. You stay away for seven years and then expect me to be happily under your thumb?”
“You are heir to my house as well as your mother’s.”
“So you get to control me? Or are you watching me? It is not as if there is another heir that you can shape to what you want. Or is there? Do you have a few bastards running around that I need to worry about when you’re dead and I try to claim my inheritance? Is that Crowndan’s purpose, to get me under control—”
“That’s enough!” He slammed his fists on the desk and stood, but then there was a knock at the door.
My father took a breath and sat down again. “Enter, Captain.”
My hands were clenched hard; I had been ready to meet my father’s outburst with one of my own. I forced myself to unclench my fingers one by one.
Crowndan slipped in and handed my father my leather portfolio containing all of my notes and drawings.
“Dismissed.”
“My lord.” He saluted, glanced at me one more time, and left. After the heavy thud of the door there was only the whistle of the wind against the window.
My father opened the portfolio and pulled out my papers and tracings. My maps were a jigsaw of perfectly measured and inked floor plans, and rough sketches of tunnels and rooms I had only glimpsed but not measured. He arranged them on this desk. He managed to match up the ones that belonged together, setting aside only a few of them.
“Did you make any maps of today’s area?” It wasn’t wonder in his voice, but the smallest hint of unease.
“No, sir.” Thankfully.
“Are there really this many hidden places in our mountains?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, though his expression “Why did our surveyors never find these?”
They didn’t want to be found. Not by surveyors. The words entered my head and stuck there. No, the surveyors hadn’t found them, and none of the mines had even accidentally touched them. Only I had found them.
But why me? I had ignored that feeling for too long; now it was beginning to bother me. A little too late, it seemed.
My father unfolded the tracings, and paused. His eyes widened, almost indiscernibly. It was such a subtle thing, and then all expression left his face. I could not even hazard what he was thinking as he looked through tracing after tracing, unfolding their pages. “There are notes here. Words.”
“Yes.”
“Words in their alphabet, and in ours, but not in our tongue.” He held up a page. “How did you learn to translate these?”
“I…” How could I explain this, to him? How could I explain that I woke up one day, had the urge to go wandering, stumbled over a stone with an inscription, and knew? I could have told my mother that. I could have trusted her to believe me, to keep it secret. I still hadn’t decided whether I could trust Aerik with that. And if I couldn’t trust Aerik, then my father was out of the question.
“I’ve given you too much free rein. That is my mistake. You will not go to the ruins again.”
I had to. But no, it was too dangerous, not with the cave-in and that…apparition. But I was the only one who knew the ruins. Even Aerik didn’t know them like I did. They were mine. And, whether I liked it or not, the apparition was mine. I hadn’t unleashed it, but it knew I existed. It brought my dead mother into it.
That I was not going to forgive, not when I could still smell the salt air and see her bittersweet smile.
But I didn’t even know what the apparition was, or what it wanted. How could I find out without going back down there?
“I…I have to go again. One more time.”
“And how do you think to get down there with the condition it’s in, when my men can’t manage it?””
“I just need to check…something. If I truly can’t get in, then it’s for the best.”
“My men will check, not you.”
“You and your men do not know what happened down there. You didn’t experience it.”
“Your mother would not appreciate her only child getting herself and her friends killed just to spite her father.”
I stared at him, until I could find the strength to draw breath. “Don’t mention my mother.” My voice shook. “Don’t ever mention my mother. I’ve had enough of that today, and I don’t need it from you. And I don’t do anything to spite you. You are not that important to me.”
He gathered my papers and stood. He walked over to the fireplace, and tossed it all onto the flames. The tracing caught quickly, billowing smoke and curling over themselves, charred and black. The paper burned slowly, the edges turning brown and flaking into ashes. “You will forget this, Eva,” he said quietly. “You will forget your caves. I say this not as governor of this place, but as your father.”
“You are seven years too late to play father to me.”
He was silent as he watched the flames burn my work. I waited—for what, I didn’t know. Then he went back to his desk. “I say this out of love, not as an order: forget all you’ve seen. I’m not attempting to punish you. I should have been more careful. But it’’s done now. In another six months you may return to your beloved Port Darad and the sea. For the time being, you may not leave the Fort or the town. Go.”
I was shaking hard now. I couldn’t control it. I barely managed to open the door; I didn’t dare reach for the handle to close it behind me. My father would have heard the rattle of metal as my hands trembled, and I didn’’t want him to see my weakness. I kept my head high as I walked past the guards on station to the Lord Governor’s private rooms. My own was small, built into one of the towers with arrow slits for windows. My father had offered a larger one, but the cramped space—just enough room for the bed and desk and a hutch—suited my needs. And was as far from my father as I could get.
I shut my door behind me.
Had I really seen my mother?
I sank to the floor at the foot of my bed, and fumbled at the latch on the clothes chest. I pulled out all of my cooler southern clothes until I found my spare notebook. I released a breath I didn’t know I had held in. Not everything was lost in my father’s hearth.
I replaced the clothes and grasped the lid. My fingers touched the metal straps, and I felt the subtle embossing that decorated their length. I had never paid much attention to the design before but I paused now. The curl and loops weren’t merely decorative, but the same letters that could be found around the ruins.
I could only make out some of them, not enough to form words. I twisted the chest around until I could examine all of the straps. The lettering covered the entire surface. But time and use had worn it down. The embossing had been subtle to begin with, but now there were dents where the metal had gotten banged up, and the hinges had rusted in their age.
I closed the cover, and looked at the lock.
It was a seal. The circle had the same thickness of line, but there was no dragon carved in the center. Instead, there were many indentations, as i
f someone had taken a small hammer to it and pounded an image away.
Why would the seal on a ruin door also be on a chest that belonged to my mother?
No. I closed my eyes. No, I was imagining too much. It was all getting to me.
“Eva.”
I turned, and Aerik was in my doorway. I hadn’t even heard him enter. “How are you?”
He lifted up his splinted arm. “I’ll survive. What did your father say?”
“I am banned from the caves. You told him about the apparition?”
“I’m sorry, my girl.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine. But it’s all done now.” The exploration, at least. But the spirit was still there. I had to find out what he was. A ghost of a man—or an elf—who wore a five-pronged crown. There had been a few crowns in the spoken of in the inscriptions. There had certainly been tales of great leaders. It would take a while to search through my notes. And I couldn’t ask Aerik to be involved. I didn’t blame him for telling my father——but I couldn’t allow it to happen again. And Aerik hadn’t seen my mother as I had—the apparition had spoken to me, not him.
“Forget all about it, Aerik.” I looked at him. “Promise me.”
He nodded. “If you wish.”
“Forget all of it, Aerik. No more tunnels, no more maps and tracings.”
“You’re just going to give it up?”
“Yes.”
He fell silent. I found it hard to look at him. It was over for him, but not for me. Not with the spirit still there.
“I guess,” he said at last. “We will have to find something else to occupy our time.”
I managed to give him a smile, and he relaxed. It was what I had hoped for. “I’m sure there’s some sort of trouble we can get ourselves into,” I said, but my heart wasn’t quite in it. We had found trouble enough.
CHAPTER THREE
I dreamed of salt air and a storm on the sea, which crashed our ship onto the reef and splintered it into hundreds of pieces. Pounding interrupted the nightmare, and I was dragged into consciousness.
“Eva, get up!” It was Zarah. If she had suffered any punishment for yesterday’s catastrophe, it did not show in her voice.
I let her hammer on the door as my heart slowed and my breathing calmed. My nightgown was plastered to me with sweat, and I had become tangled in the sheets and blankets.
“Eva!”
“Wait a moment.” I untangled myself and stood up. I grabbed my long underwear and britches from where they hung over my chair, and slipped them on under my nightgown before unbolting the door.
Zarah closed it behind her as I pulled off my nightgown. She searched through my hutch and tossed me an undershirt. “You have to come now.”
“Right now?” Was it my caves? Had the looters been discovered? Had my father gone down there himself, or sent an expedition that had disappeared? “What’s happened?”
She handed me the tunic and vest I had draped over my desk chair. “There’s been some talk between my father’s men about you.”
“I’m sure.” Dressing for the cold was a trial I hadn’t gotten used to. I got my elk fur boots on, a woolen undershirt, and a tunic, and managed to grab my coat before Zarah dragged me outside the fortress.
The sky had cleared and the faint wisps of cloud showed no sign of a storm, though the icy bite hadn’t left the air. It never did, really, though I had hoped for some small relief from it today. The snow of yesterday’s storm had been scraped from the stone walkways and taken away before it could compact into ice. The first few hours after a snowfall was almost beautiful, with the snow was still pure and white. But once you scraped it away all that was left was dirty slush, as the missed snow mixed with the mud tracked in by the soldiers and miners. It found its way into every crevice and stayed there. Whoever had named the settlement Winter’s Crown had never seen winter’s slush.
We passed out of the walls of the Fort and down the main road of the town. Like the fortress, everything in the town was built of stone. The mining was the main purpose of this place, but there was much that went into supporting it. There were living quarters and food halls and blacksmiths and leatherworkers and clothiers. There were stonemasons to repair the damage the ice did. There were stables for horses and stables for the shaggy beasts bred for living and working in the cold. There were brothels and family quarters. All of it was tightly packed into a small area at the highest point of a valley, and heavily defended with both cannon and sword.
But as we approached the gate, one of the guards stopped us. “Apologies,” he said, but not Lady Eva.”
“Just out to the road,” Zarah protested.
“I’m sorry, m’ladies,” the man said a bit bashfully. “We’ve all got our orders about that.”
“Come on then,” Zarah headed for the stairs. I followed her up to the wall-walk. The freezing wind stung my cheeks as we emerged from the shelter of the wall. The snow-covered valley stretched out in front of us, surrounded by the high peaks of the Monarch Mountains. The roads that crisscrossed the valley were not built out of stone but carved out of the snow and ice by wagon wheels and hooves. They were always busy, with wagons coming up from the south with supplies and leaving with the spoils of the mines.
I wrapped my coat tighter around me. “What are we looking for?”
Zarah leaned over the parapets. “I don’t see them yet. Wait—over there, right down the middle.”
I looked where she pointed, but I didn’t see anything except for the wagon traffic and the soldiers out on their patrols.
Then I spotted three figures coming up the main road towards the fort.
“They walked? From where? There’s nothing for miles.”
Zarah smiled. “They always walk.”
Fur cloaks, walking sticks, snowshoes: they were prepared. Our people trudged along the roads but these three seemed to glide across the snow.
“Zarah, this is not a day when I want surprises.”
“Keep watching them.”
The three moved faster than everyone else, bypassing the carts and their escorts at a brisk pace. As they passed by a cart or soldier, heads turned to follow them. I could make out more details as they came closer—they were all very pale, with white-blond hair. Their fur-lined coats were white, too. All of their clothes were, down to the leather on their belts and boots. It would be easy to lose them against the snow. I might not have noticed them at this distance if I wasn’t looking for them. They were tall as well, a foot taller than everybody else on the road. And as they came closer, it seemed as if their skin had a sheen to it, a certain luster that came and went with the sun between the clouds.
“They’re elves,” I said at last, grinning.
Zarah laughed. “I thought you’d want to see them.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe it. I was starting to think they were myths. I didn’t think they ever emerged from their mountains.”
“I saw one of them last week – the one on the left, that’s a woman, the ambassador to our little human operations up here. They’re here to have some sort of informal chat with your father.” Zarah paused. “I got the impression they’re here to talk about you.”
It had to be about my caves. “And how did you get that impression?”
“The rumor’s been making its way around the town.”
“Did they discuss me with my father?”
“Not as I can tell, but it’s quite a coincidence that you have trouble with your explorations, and then they arrive with questions about the ruins around Winter’s Crown.”
Well that was going to be a lovely subject to talk about with my father. “I can’t imagine why they would want to talk to me about my little adventures.”
“Maybe they want you to leave the ruins alone? Maybe they’re elf ruins.”
“They’re not,” I said with certainty. “Not completely, anyway.”
The three of them approached the gate, coming in nearly below us. The soldiers stopped them fro
m entering when they didn’t produce identity papers, and after a moment of uncomfortable shifting on the part of the soldiers, they were waved through the gate.
The man in the center looked up, and met my eyes. His white hair was held back from his face with braids. His gaze was sharp; he didn’t blink, but stared at me. I felt my face flush, but I couldn’t look away from him. A moment passed, then two. Finally he looked away, and followed his two friends.
“Oh, they definitely know who you are,” Zarah said.
I crossed to the other side of the wall. Crowndan and a several of his men hurried through the courtyard to receive the elves. Usually the model of servitude, Crowndan greeted them with the stiffest of bows and what seemed from this distance to be a few curt words. Instead of escorting them himself to my father himself, he allowed his men to lead them onward to the fort.
Crowndan spotted us on the wall and came toward us.
“I’m about to be summoned,” I told Zarah, and headed back down the stairs.
“My lady,” Crowndan met me as I stepped back onto the road, Zarah trailing behind. “Your father wishes to see you. Only you. Lady Zarah,”” Crowndan nodded at my companion. “You cannot come.”
“Good luck,” Zarah said as I followed Crowndan back to the Fortress.
“Do you know what this is all about then?” I asked.
“Only that they’ve requested to speak with you,” Crowndan replied.
“You didn’t tell me this last week, when the messenger was here?”
“They didn’t mention you last week. They only informed us, as a courtesy, to expect a visit, and that your father would be expected to receive them.”” There was a sneer in his voice, a disdain that I hadn’t heard before, at least not when it came to his involvement in my father’s business.
“You don’t like them, then?” I remembered the deep blue eyes of the one man. “They certainly don’t come out into the world too much.”
“They only come out to meddle.”
“You’ve had problems with them before?”
“Every few years they find an excuse to curtail our activities here.”
Winter's Crown Page 3
