by Lisa Lowell
First, Paget had been unfaithful to him. Granted it had been years ago, before he ever touched the Heart Stone, but he could not fathom why she would have done that and it should be the first question he asked of her. It was difficult to decide which emotion he wanted to vent with her first; sadness or anger. In the end he decided last fall's battle had been enough anger for the time being without dealing with his wife's unfaithfulness and wanted to explore something new. Maybe he had been a difficult husband and not noticed the ways he would have failed her. No, he would not have changed much. He had been himself and she could not fault him for that. It might not have been easy to be married to a man who traveled much of the time, but how else would he have made a living back then, before magic?
So how was he going to confront her? The older Paget grew the more gentle he found himself with her. He wanted to give her everything her heart desired and with his magic he had. She lived in luxury in his palace, with fine clothes and jewels he mined and polished himself. She could travel if she desired, but she never expressed that as an ambition. She had a few close friends in the village that had formed around the palace after he had broken the seal to it, and occasionally she would invite them to her home. She gardened passionately and had taken up painting at the same time Vamilion had discovered his love of sculpting, so they could work together. Was their relationship perfect? Certainly not, but he never knew she had anything to be discontented over.
However, there remained the fact that she was going to die and he was still the thirty-three year old he had been on the day he touched the Heart Stone. Her infidelity had been long before that and now Vamilion felt the anger setting in again. It made the water hotter as he thought of it. Paget had allowed him to believe both their sons were his and he had raised them as such, loving them. He would have loved them even had he known, but did the boys realize he wasn't their real father as well now? Would Paget have told them?
Oh, this was getting him nowhere. He would never know until he asked her. He couldn't imagine who she had been with and felt revolted by the thought. His love for Paget had never wavered and wouldn't now, though he wanted to be upset with her. Mostly he wanted a reason why and an opportunity to somehow forgive her.
Then there was the King of Creating to consider. Owailion had essentially thrown Gailin to the wolves, almost encouraging her to marry the Soul Eater and prove that Wise Ones could not have children in order to witness this to Vamilion. Owailion probably had other motives for this epic argument he had crafted, such as making Vamilion angry enough to break the ley lines. But why now? Gailin was so new to magic that it was not right to use her like a pawn to motivate him and that was no way to drive her into power. Was the impending invasion so alarming to him that he wanted Gailin abused and… He couldn't bear to think about that either. Surely there were better ways to prepare for an invasion.
Night descended on the island, leaving Vamilion in the dark, echoing how he felt emotionally. In the morning he would go confront Paget and hope for the best though he did not know how he could look at her the same way ever again. He pulled himself out of the pool and conjured a comfortable mat and blanket. Then he curled up on the edge of the pool and slept deeply, though he had to use magic to put himself at ease and his tortured body wasn't the only thing keeping him awake.
At dawn Vamilion rose, conjured himself a new set of clothes with less lightning singes and was thinking about shaving. Paget never liked him to wear a beard, though it helped him blend in with the miners that worked the mountains around their home and it made him look a little older, like he fit with his wife. He conjured the razor but then thought better of it. Paget's feelings about his appearance were hardly his problem, and he would go as he was. So he ate breakfast sitting on the green moss lining the pool and was just thinking about shifting to the top of the volcano so he could look before he left. Then something changed.
“Lord Vamilion, you must come home immediately.” The mind voice of Goren, his Doorkeeper echoed through Vamilion's soul. Goren rarely panicked and with magic limited to calling to his master and a long life, the man was not likely to delve into Vamilion's mind at a whim. He could count on one hand how many times Goren, a stable and almost emotionless man, had called him in the twenty-three years they had known each other.
“I'll be there in a minute,” Vamilion shot back just to reassure him and leapt to his feet and then to the mountain palace. He bolted to the polished door and burst through before Goren would have made it down the stair to the door to meet him.
Goren greeted him at the foyer. “My Lord,” he whispered in his distress. “I'm so glad you've come. It's the Lady Paget. She's fallen suddenly ill…I think…”
“Goren, where is Paget?” Vamilion demanded, feeling a sudden crushing fear. He had to speak with her. She couldn't die. Vamilion didn't wait for the older gentleman to spit out the words. He knew where Paget would be; in their bedroom near the top of the main tower of the palace. She loved that room and he shifted there without hearing Goren's explanation.
The room was dark. Goren must have come to tend the lights and found her there, remaining in bed long after her normal time to be up and about. But Paget lay in the bed, her eyes closed and breathing shallowly. She had grown pale as the pillow on which she rested. Her dark hair still lay in the braid she normally wore when she went to bed and on the nightstand stood a goblet half full of some strange, thick liquid. Vamilion lifted it to sniff the drink and almost gagged. Poison? He couldn't be sure.
All his former emotion fled as he reached out to touch her pale face where the lines of her age had deepened and a pain wrote itself in her hands. He wished, not for the first time, that his hands were more gentle, not half stone and rough, as he brushed against her cheek. He never made it a habit to go into her mind out of respect for the inherent inequality of their relationship, but not now. Vamilion used his touch to form the conduit to her sleeping mind.
Dark and pained, he sensed the poison she had taken was working its way through her system. However, more grating was her own unrest. Guilt or some other misery had driven her to this point and Vamilion could sense how she wallowed in it. No specifics leapt out at him, but he knew she had done this to herself because of her personal chaos. It burned through her dreams and drove her to end her life without resolving what truly tortured her.
“Paget,” he commanded, using name magic on her for the first and only time, “wake up and talk to me, please.” He could not bear that she would leave him and not tell him where he had gone wrong. He had always known he loved her and would lose her, but not now, not yet, not with so much unresolved.
Obediently, Paget's deep brown eyes opened and focused on him. She even managed a smile. Exhaustion wrote itself in the dark under her eyes, making them seem more alluring and mysterious. That he was there was a comfort to her and she patted the bed, inviting him to sit rather than kneel. Whatever was in the goblet moved slowly and he had time. Without daring to consider the ramifications he reached out his mind and bespoke the Queen of Healing.
“Gailin, please come to me.”
While he waited, he leaned down and kissed Paget good morning and she didn't, for once reject him. She still loved him, he realized, even as she was fleeing from this life, from him.
“Why?” he asked simply.
Paget didn't speak at first and he could feel her tremendous exhaustion. The poison would put her to sleep until she had no energy to breathe or keep her heart beating, but painless and slow nonetheless. Come on, Gailin, hurry please.
“The Queen of Healing came here yesterday,” Paget managed to say, looking away. “She's a lovely girl.”
“That's not the reason you are leaving me,” Vamilion replied, struggling mightily to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “You've been leaving me for years now, and I need to know why. The boys are….”
She knew immediately what he inferred and almost welcomed the opportunity to bare her soul. “I tried so hard not to be lonely whe
n you were away. I wanted you to have children and when I couldn't give them to you…I wanted to give you something. It was wrong, but I wanted the children too. They might not be yours but I would never tell them. I loved you and I'm sorry it hurt you. I did it for love.”
The left over stiffness in Vamilion's back shifted into stone and he felt ill, as if he too had swallowed poison. Why was hearing the words admitted so much more painful than being simply told she had been unfaithful? “Who?” Vamilion managed to ask.
The dying woman sighed with regret. “I don't know. Both…as soon as you had left so you would never know or suspect. You would think they were yours. I chose the men because they looked a little like you – dark and stormy.” She reached out her hand and with effort touched his face.
He couldn't resist, but gathered her into his arms and held her tight. He had always loved the feel of her head against his chest so that she could hear his heart beating. It had become a reminder that he was still human, despite all the changes he had undergone. A human heart could love. She fell asleep often listening to that steady rhythm over the years. Now he held her, hoping that she would hear that beat and keep her own heart going for a little longer.
Too late, Vamilion magically heard the knock at the door and Goren answering, ushering his future into his house. The doorkeeper hurried the Queen of Healing up the stairs, practically running, but it would be too late. Paget had escaped the awkwardness of her life, leaving him free and in more pain than a broken back had prepared him for. Gailin reached the doorway, and he didn't turn back to look at her. Not yet. He had an oath to keep.
Vamilion might have hoped that Gailin could do something, but it was everlastingly too late. They could both smell the poison and magical ears witnessed the silence of the woman's heart. It didn't take too much to understand what had happened. He could only hope that Gailin's coming the day before had not precipitated this decision. Vamilion's pain, as his wife's faded, rippled like an earthquake through the room and he could only pray that Gailin did not think that she had made it worse.
Goren and Gailin stood watch in the doorway, waiting until Vamilion finally lay Paget back down in the bed. Gently, he arranged her hair and folded Paget's hands gently on the cover. He studied her visage for the longest time, memorizing it for the future. He would sculpt her one day and every crease and vein within her hands would be lovingly reproduced. It was strange that neither the anger, nor the grief over her decisions won out in his heart. Instead it was the love that remained behind.
Chapter 17 – Laying the Lines
Gailin wondered privately, behind her strongest shields, if Vamilion would have been more amazing if he wasn't grieving, but something stirred in her soul as she watched him slowly, stiffly stand. Should she leave, letting him settle his fractured world before he took up new pieces and started a new life with the compulsion to love her? She had already seen him, unconscious on the plains, and felt that stirring but it would grow stronger if she let him in now, comforting him.
“Should I go?” she whispered mentally to him, looking at his stooped back and not feeling a single shard of pride at what she had done that this tall, powerful man could walk again.
“No, Goren will take you to the Truth Chamber. I'll be there briefly. I'll….I'll need your help.”
Goren must have been included in the private conversation, at least partially. The doorkeeper turned in the passageway and motioned for her to go ahead of him and he would lead the way to this Truth Chamber. Gailin walked numbly through the glorious, richly decorated halls and wondered why she was even there. She had not come in time to save Paget. She did not feel welcome when she had probably been the reason the Lady had taken the poison and out in the Land, people were suffering and she wanted to go help. She had just started her work in the village she had chosen with her candle when Vamilion's call had come, desperate for her help. And she had failed him.
“Thank you for coming,” Goren said in a flat, emotionless voice as they walked down a set of stairs. “He will need you at this painful time. It is so sad that…that she did this to herself.”
“Were you close to the lady?” Gailin asked, struggling for something to say.
Goren shrugged awkwardly. “As a door steward, it's not in my nature…you might even call it a compulsion, to connect with anyone but Lord Vamilion. It is part of the extremely long life with which I've been blessed. I've never felt any need to do anything but serve. It might seem strange but I'm actually older than he is, but with far less experience. Essentially it is my compulsion to be his friend and therefore, to take care of Lady Paget was part of that, but I wasn't close to her. I cannot imagine life without her about the house, but I'll grieve more for him than for her. Does that sound harsh, when I spent more time with her really than he could?”
Gailin looked at the non-descript, unassuming gentleman and wondered what she could say. “No, it must be a little like being a healer. I have to inflict pain and sometimes give bad news to some people and in order to do that duty, I cannot afford to have emotions that show. It's almost easier to heal people I don't know because the concern for their feelings does not interfere with worry over their grief. In a way it is a gift I must have. Perhaps it is the same for you.”
Goren stopped in the hallway, looking at her in wonder. “That is precisely what it is,” he commented. “You are truly a Wise One, Lady Honiea.”
“I don't feel very wise right now. Was my coming here the reason why she took poison?” she asked.
Goren shook his head and then unexpectedly reached for a door set into the hall across from an exquisite stained glass window of a mountain peak lined with snow. “No, my Lady. That pain was as old as the hills and the thaw is coming. The danger for avalanche is always greatest then and it was bound to happen. If I had known, I would have stopped her, but I suspect she had been dosing herself for several days before you came. She had been ill and there was little any of us could do.”
Goren motioned for her to enter the exquisite room beyond the intricately carved door and she stepped in expecting to find much the same beauty witnessed throughout the castle but as she stepped over the threshold, she shifted into her regalia, lavender and silver, but this time without the weapons. Instead she wore a veil of the thinnest gauze, held down by a crown of silver and diamond. She gasped and turned back toward Goren, looking at him as if he had cast a spell over her.
“The Truth Chamber is enchanted,” he explained from the safety of the hallway. “Any who enter are shown as their true self and you, my Lady, are a Queen. I shall bring you something to eat and Lord Vamilion will be up when he is ready. Please, make yourself at home.” Then the doorkeeper turned and left her.
Reluctantly Gailin remained in the richly appointed chamber. The walls glistened with quartz and windows cut of the stuff, thin enough to let in the bright sun, but still white with the carvings showing thicker with the familiar outline of the Great Chain Mountain range. The furnishings shone of polished bronze and cut jewels, mostly ruby and onyx on the gray velvet chairs and polished bronze table. Blood red velvet hangings adorned the spaces without windows, and she couldn't resist drawing her hands through the fabric but this exposed that behind each drapery a sculpture stood. A statue of Owailion she recognized. Behind another she found a woman in alabaster hidden away and she knew instinctively that this must be Raimi, Owailion's dead wife. With a quick look she counted sixteen hidden alcoves and she knew then what Vamilion was creating here: the meeting place of the Wise Ones, crafted in anticipation. She dare not look further, afraid she would find Vamilion or herself reproduced in stone.
With trepidation, Gailin sat at the table and tried not to feel uncomfortable in the lavender gown. At least it was fitting for such a grand place. She feared to think what she must look like. Numbness and feeling emotionally overwrought must appear on her face. Somehow honey hair and freckles with green eyes did not fit here. This was not her home, but she knew it fit perfectly as Vamilion's refuge.
He stood strong, tall and brooding, like the ceiling overhead with obsidian beams arching over marble walls. She looked at the jewels set in the table top and had to reach out to touch them, ensuring they were real. She touched a diamond frozen in the bronze and then compared it to the ones that lined her veil. The same, she realized with wonder. It was real.
Disturbed, she lifted the veil over her head so she could see more clearly. Could she be 'at home' here as Goren had advised her? No, not until she knew how Vamilion faired. Not until she knew him and he knew her. This room might show her as a Queen here, but she clashed and she still felt as an interloper, needing to be out in the Land, finding her Talismans and healing the people. It felt like a compulsion…an itch Vamilion had called it, but she could resist. If she concentrated, the King of the Mountain's need also fit in that compulsion and she knew she would have to face him and his grief before she could answer the other needs.
Goren returned momentarily with a silver tray of tea, crackers and fruit. As he came in, the doorkeeper did not change a bit, retaining his simple gray suit and solemn appearance, as if he were one of Vamilion's sculptures come to life. Unexpectedly though, he sat down at the table to keep her company and poured tea. They ate in silence at first and waited, like they were a patient's loved ones, expecting a grim diagnosis. Gailin instinctively knew that conversation would be awkward and oppressive at this dark time.
Finally, when the light had begun to fade in the stone windows, Gailin heard the door open again and turned to see Vamilion enter the room. He looked so different from how he had on the plain, crumpled and crushed, gray like stone and in pain. Now she expected much the same thing. She was wrong. The man who entered now transformed. He stood tall, at least a foot taller than her and while his dark hair and gray eyes brooded like a storm over a mountain top, she knew instinctively he would never be cold with her. His hands, strong and roughened with the stone he worked, would not harm her or suck their life from her, but he was independent and gentle with them, despite their size. And when he stepped into the room, he became a king. The striking burgundy tunic in leather, studded with gems in the outline of mountains brought out his wind tanned skin and the patent leather baldric carried a chisel, hammer, pick and even a sword, all finely polished. Vamilion, well accustomed to the shifting he made when coming into this room, lifted the baldric over his head and set it by the door, looked over at her. Gailin stood up to meet him.
