Melanthrix the Mage (16 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“TELL ME
ALL
THE GOSSIP”

The third building on the left housed the Dowager Queen Brisquayne, a relict of the late King Makáry, who had married her after the lingering death of his first wife, Queen Ianthë. The daughter of Rethel Comte du Qua­tremère in Neustria, the Lady Brisquayne had married the Baron du Haut-Dossory at age sixteen, and then had been widowed less than a year later. The king of Kórynthia had first met her when visiting the palace of Erastus Duke of Kyzistra, who had taken pity on the pretty young widow and had provided her with a temporary living. The lonely Makáry had been captivated by her quiet grace and stately looks.

The old queen had been watching avidly for her stepgrandchildren, and greeted them herself, opening wide the door.

“My dears,” she said, “welcome to Tamásház.” She kissed each soundly on both cheeks.

“I get so few visitors these days,” she said, breathless with anticipation, “with Adeléonore and Abyssinthe coming home so seldom. Oh, they've got their own families, you know. Can you believe Adèle's expect­ing her first grandchild in three months?”

She barely drew breath to acknowledge their amused felicitations.

“And I absolutely
must
go to Lavallière in another month. If it were summer, I'd sail downriver to the Blackish Sea—don't you just
love
sailing—but the weather is so, so uncertain at this time of the year, that I'll probably get someone to stick me through one of those awful mir­rors, as much as I dislike traveling that way. I just wonder how many folks have used one of those contraptions and wound up going nowhere at all.

“Well, don't stand about, come in, come in, now sit down, here, no, over
here!
”

Chattering away happily, she led Arkády to the deepest, most comfortable chair in her large, brightly-lit
salon
.

“And here, Arrhiána, sit over here next to me on the sofa.”

The old queen bustled about, getting them settled in front of a fire crackling away against the brisk chill quickly overtaking the afternoon. She was tall for a woman, with long gray hair braided down her back in the Neustrian style, and laugh-lines creasing her face near her dark, ex­pressive eyes.

“Emöke, where are you?” she said. “Fetch some sweets and hot tea for my guests.”

“Oh,
you
know, Arrhiána,” she whispered conspir­atorily. “It's so
difficult
to find good help these days. I could just wring my hands in utter de­spair. And as soon as you've got them trained, why, off they go to some other household. Where's the gratitude, I ask you? Emöke!” She raised her voice again. “Where
are
you, girl?”

“Do sit down, Granny,” Arrhiána said, patting the cushion beside her. “We don't need anything, really. We came to see
you
.”

“Well, that's very sweet of you, Rhie,” the older woman said, kissing her step-granddaughter on the cheek. “Now, how have you been?”

But before either of them could answer, she rattled on.

“Tell me
all
of the gossip at court. Who's courting, who's marrying, and who's having babies! And
you
, Rhie.”

She nudged the younger woman slyly.

“I hear
you've
finally come home from Arrhénë to stay. Does that mean Saint Konstantín's bells will be ring­ing soon for
you
?”

“Yes, I'm back to stay,” the princess said, ig­noring the last question. “It's not that I dislike the hills so much—it's lovely there during the summer—but I so miss being at the center of things.”

“Oh, I
do
know what you mean,” Brisquayne said quickly. “Even in Kórynthály I sometimes feel completely left out. All of the people that I knew back in the old days are either dead now or gone, Heaven knows where. I get terribly lonely with all of my old friends absent.”

“That reminds me, Granny,” Arkády said. “Rhie was telling me something about some relative of ours named Mossy who may have been at court when you were there. Neither of us knows very much about her, and we were wondering....”

“Of course I remember her!” the queen said, be­fore Arkády could even finish his thought. “Oh, I recall her very well indeed. Her name was Mösza, and she was my sister-in-law. In fact, I think I was the closest friend poor Mosie ever had. She was a strange little girl, though. I say ‘little,' even though she was my age at the time, but she always seemed much younger than her years, if you know what I mean.”

Arkády nodded.

“Yes, I've known a few people like that myself,” he said.

He thought of Humfried and his infantile behavior on the night of the banquet.

“I really think she was spoiled,” Brisquayne said. “She was the youngest of the hereditary prince's chil­dren, born not long before he died, and she was allowed to run just a bit wild. Well, you know, people felt sorry for her. And then she had all of these romantic fancies that were, they were just so unrealistic, and she loved to play-act.”

“What do you mean?” asked Arkády.

“Well, she'd make up these far-fetched stories, tales about being carried off on a white destrier by a handsome prince, or perhaps being rescued from a fire-breathing dragon by a knight of the realm, all of that folderol.”

She fluttered her eyes coyly.

“I got over those sorts of day­dreams
very
quickly, mind you, once I got married. And I imagine you did too, didn't you, Arrhiána?”

The princess made a little noise under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a snort.

The queen glanced over at her, then continued her story.

“But she didn't like the excellent matches that her brother, my Makáry, proposed for her, she refused even to consider them, and went off into hysterics at the very men­tion of marriage. I think it was just what she needed, but she never did marry.”

“Whatever became of her?” Arrhiána asked qui­etly.

“Well, that's the funny thing,” Brisquayne said, “no one really knows. During the Great War...hmmm, let me see,” she paused, tapping her cheek with one delicately-tapered finger, “that was back in '64, I believe. Well, all of our men­folk went off to battle in June of that year. We women were left behind to wait and watch in Paltyrrha. But Mosie had a premonition or something—she was al­ways having these visions—that none of the soldiers would be coming home again, and so she kept mostly to her rooms.

“And then came that terrible day in August when the news arrived that my belovèd Makáry was dead, and his two elder sons with him, and oh so many others besides.”

The old woman daubed at her eyes and noisily blew her nose into a daintily embroidered handkerchief she kept tucked away in her sleeve.

“Well, Mösza just went crazy, screaming and hol­lering out as if the whole world were coming to an end. I mean,
I
was the one who had lost the husband, and here
she
was, tearing her clothes and pulling her hair and threat­ening to throw herself off the parapet, and this and that and the other. Finally, they had to sedate her, and keep her strapped to her bed to prevent the woman from hurting her­self.”

Brisquayne shrugged her shoulders.

“Dowager Hereditary Princess Zubayda and Makáry's uncle Víktor, the Prince-Bishop of Podébrad, took over as regents for little Kipriyán, and they packed Mosie off somewhere when it became apparent that she wouldn't recover.
I
never saw her after that, and when I asked Zubayda about it, she told me never to mention her daughter's name to her again. So I didn't. I mean, I'm no fool. Once the king was dead, I had no place at court, and they all knew it. They gave me this little house with a few servants and a small income, and provided dowries for Adèle and Sinthe when they came of marrying age, and I smiled and entertained and said nothing.

“Mosie never returned from wherever it was they sent her. But I don't complain about anything, oh no, I re­ally don't. You see, God has blessed me with a long life and two beautiful daughters and a comfortable living, and that's about all that I could want in the whole wide world, other than a little company now and then.”

She patted Arrhiána's knee.

“Oh, dear,” Arrhiána said, “what a sad, sad story. You mentioned that she had dreams?”

“Well, I told you she was a bit strange, didn't I?” the queen said. “Like I said, she got all these strange notions in her head. One day, about a year before she dis­appeared, not long after Ezzö had invaded Pommerelia, I saw her at Land's End in the Hanging Garden, talking to the statue of Queen Landizábel. She hadn't seen me, so I just listened. I shouldn't have, really, but it was all so odd. She'd cock her head, as if she were listening to someone, and then she'd reply. I was frightened, let me tell you.

“I was about ready to creep away when she did something that
really
terrified me. In those days there was a small fountain at the center of the maze, running into a little pool. She pulled out a knife, cut her finger, and let the blood drip into the water. Then she started muttering some words that I couldn't hear, except that I'm sure it wasn't the common tongue, and an image formed on the pond. She blew on the water, and began sprinkling salt over the surface. Later on I learned that this was the
very
same day that it began to snow so heavily in Vorpom­mern.”

Brisquayne laughed nervously.

“I talked to her not long after the news of the great storms had come to Paltyrrha, and she was quite happy about it. She told me that it just wasn't fair that cousin Ezzö should gather all the glory just for himself.
She
thought that her brother Makáry should have his share. Poo! My husband wasn't at all interested in that kind of glory, God forbid, but he thought he had no choice but to intervene. He didn't even
like
the Forellës.”

“But were her visions real?” Arkády asked.

“Well,
she
thought they were,” the queen said. “She would spend hours telling anyone who would listen about all of the great things that her almightiness was going to do when
she
became queen, of Kórynthia, of Pommere­lia, or of someplace else. Of course, no one paid much at­tention to these fancies, which infuriated her. Every so often, though, she would go absolutely glassy-eyed, and say something in a monotone that would send chills running up and down your spine, and these things would sometimes come true. Mostly, though, I think it was just a little stale air mixed with a large measure of wishful thinking.”

“Rhie, I've got to get back to the palace,” Arkády said, before the old queen could continue.

“Granny,” Arrhiána said, “we so love talking with you. Why don't you come down and see us now that I'm home? Or perhaps I can bring little Rÿna on my next visit.”

“Would you? Oh my, that would be
so
much fun,” the older woman said. “We should get together in March, before I head south to my daughters' place in Neustria.”

She escorted them out, then stood in the doorway waving as they headed back down the road to the quay.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“JUST A LITTLE CHILL”

“She's an absolute delight,” Arkády said to Ar­rhiána as they left. “I'm sorry we had to leave so soon, but I've a dinner to attend. And what a bizarre tale she told us about Aunt Mosie. She must have been a curious crea­ture....”

And he chattered on in this fashion, very uncharac­teristically, for some moments.

But by the time they had started downriver again on their return trip to Paltyrrha, Arrhiána couldn't help notic­ing that Arkády now seemed much more subdued, staring moodily at the passing shoreline as if it might tell him something new about their future.

He assumes too much
, she thought to herself.
Please, dear God, do not let him die
too soon
, she prayed.

In the east, roiling clouds were gathering over dis­tant Arrhénë.

It's like to snow again
soon
, she mused.

And some distance further on, as her thoughts turned inward, she wondered:
Oh, Lord, I wonder where we'll all be a year from now
.

Then she was riveted to her seat as a scene suddenly seared its way through her mind, like a ray of sunshine cutting through a mass of dark clouds, and she saw stretching out before her a broad canyon with a fast river cutting through its middle, its banks filled with snow-cov­ered mounds that she knew in her heart were the graves of Kórynthi soldiers, and she shuddered violently, quickly pulling her cloak close around her against the cold that had so quickly invaded and conquered her seemingly secure in­terior fortress.

“Are you all right, sister?” Arkády asked.

“Just a little chill,” she said, knowing far better.

A line from
Proverbs
suddenly popped into her mind, and she unconsciously whispered it out loud.

“One generation passeth away,” she said, “and an­other taketh its place; but the earth abideth forever.”

“What?”

Arrhiána looked at him then with her head cocked to one side, appraising and evaluating, and she knew that he would never understand what she felt just then. She wasn't sure, truth be told, that she understood the moment herself.

I will watch everything that happens,
she thought to herself,
and everything that we do and say, both to our­selves and to others. I will carefully note down all of our sins of omission and commission, and I will record them just as they occur, without embellishment. I will become a living record of this time and of this place. I cannot stop this war, but I can surely shame the warmongers of the fu­ture.

I
can
choose
to make a difference
, she screamed to her silent muse of introspection.
No one can stop me!
No one!

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

Under the circumstance, it was the most and the least that she could say.