The Shadow Within (14 page)

It lay low upon her breastbone, a perfect orb of pearlescent gray suspended on a golden chain, glowing softly against the white linen of her undergown. She did not know why she kept it after the heartbreak it had brought her. Because it truly did work against the staffid? Because it was, in its own strange way, her last connection with the brother she had loved more than anyone in the world? Because, in some part of her soul there lived the irrational desire to find what he had found in it, even though she knew it was impossible?

And it
was
impossible. That was the worst part.

Shortly before she’d left Abramm, in hopes of breeching the gulf that had opened between them, she had actually tried to take it. Even knowing it would cripple her, drive her mad, and make her despised in Kiriathan society, she had set her will and closed her hand upon it, waiting with clenched eyes, gritted teeth, and fluttering heart for the hated power to sear through her and claim her soul forever. But nothing had happened. No power had stirred in her. No voice had spoken. The stone had remained only a stone, cool and hard in her fist. Her flesh had remained unmarked, and she remained . . . outside. Denied, even by Eidon himself.

But how absurd to expect otherwise from someone who did not exist.

So why do you still wear his orb?

She stared into her own eyes and began to weep again—tears of bitterness and frustration and the deep aching need for someone somewhere to care whether she lived or died. Once the torrent was loosed, it could not be called back until it ran its course. Outside the storm blustered and raged, driving snow against the shutters, which banged and rattled under its fury, obscuring the sound of her weeping to all but herself. In time the sobs subsided and she regained herself, sniffing and snuffling with her head on folded arms and her eyes closed as she listened to the wind. Presently she heard footsteps, quick on the stair, slowing as they approached her door. A light tap preceded its creaking open. Peri peeked around its edge. Seeing Carissa was awake, she slid into the room and pressed the door shut behind her. Her glance flicked over her lady’s tearstained face and reddened eyes, and her brow creased. But all she said was, “We have visitors, ma’am.”

“Another pack of refugees?” Carissa turned back to the vanity for a kerchief to wipe her face. She recalled now what she’d heard only dimly through her turmoil—the dogs barking, voices in the wind, the boom of the fortress’s main gates closing. Visitors arrived often in the night, an occurrence she’d learned long ago to ignore, seeing as it didn’t concern her.

She found it ironic that of all the places she could have settled, she’d chosen one of the main rest stops on the underground smuggling route by which Kiriathan Terstans escaped the rising persecutions. Nearly all the holding’s original inhabitants were part of it. Had she known, she’d never have agreed to lease the place, but Laramor had said nothing. He probably didn’t know. Fortunately the smugglers themselves were as happy to have Carissa look the other way as she was to do so.

“Not Terstans, my lady,” Peri said with a dip that begged forgiveness for what she knew would be unwelcome news. “Northmen. Very tall. One of them a great lord.”

Carissa laid the kerchief on the vanity and arose. “Lord Ethan?” He’d gone to Springerlan for the meeting of the Table of Lords and shouldn’t be back for weeks.

Peri bobbed again. “I don’t think so, my lady, but they all look the same to me.”

Even if Ethan’s back,
Carissa thought,
what would he be doing here now, in
this storm? Surely he’d have sent someone over rather than come himself
.

She strode to the clothes chest for her cloak, and Peri had just helped settle it over her shoulders when Hogart, Cooper’s second in charge, stuck his head in. “My lady,” he said quietly, “riders have come seeking succor from the storm.”

“I am coming to greet them now.”

“I took the liberty of telling them you weren’t well and had retired for the night.”

Carissa stopped midway to the door, frowning at him, and he answered her unvoiced question: “Lord Rennalf leads them, my lady.”

It was as if a horse had kicked her in the chest. She stared at him, unable to breathe, feeling the blood drain out of her face.
Rennalf! How did he learn
I was here? We have been so careful
. And then,
I’ve got to leave!

Her thoughts were apparently obvious to Hogart, who along with Cooper, understood the ramifications of Rennalf’s presence and now raised his hands reassuringly. “No, my lady, I don’t think he knows. It seems he is here only to escape the storm.”

“And did not go to the manor instead?”

Hogart kept the expression of his surprise subdued. “He would never go to the manor, my lady.”

Of course. She knew that very well. It was the reason she’d approached Laramor for succor in the first place. He and Rennalf had nearly come to blood feud in their antagonism. But with Ethan in Springerlan right now, Rennalf’s appearance at his manor for any reason would be construed by clan law as both insult and challenge. In fact, Rennalf’s being on Laramor lands at all in its clanlord’s absence was seriously suspect.

“Have you told Cooper?”

Again Hogart looked surprised. “No, my lady. Lord Rennalf said not to disturb you, that he and his men would be off at first light. I thought, seeing as it’s Master’s wedding night—” He stopped. “Should I tell him anyway?”

She thought for a moment, struggling for calm. If Rennalf truly meant to leave at first light, he would be gone before Cooper was even awake. And as Hogard had pointed out, it
was
Coop’s wedding night.

“No,” she said finally. “We’ll tell him in the morning. Keep an eye on them though. They’re not to be roaming about, and I’d very much like to know what they are doing so far afield of their own lands.”

“We’ll see to it, my lady.”

The night that followed was a long one. Carissa tossed restlessly in her big bed, weighed down by her elk-hide cover. Even with Peri back in her regular place before the bedchamber’s hearth, the lady could not find sleep. Every random boom and thump startled her from slumber, mistaken as the heavy footfalls of her husband coming to reclaim her. Once awakened, she listened intently to the wind, assuring herself it was diminishing as she waited hopefully for the barking of the dogs, the horses clattering in the yard, and the gate creaking open and booming shut. But all she heard was the wind and the snow ticking against the shutters until she dozed off and started the cycle again. When morning finally came and the storm had not diminished at all, she knew she had a long day ahead of her.

Resigned to the fact that she would have to greet her guests or rouse unwanted curiosity, she set about selecting an appropriate veil. “Lady Louise” often went veiled, a habit picked up in Esurh and now part of her reputation for eccentricity. It amused her that the garment she had most hated during all her time in the south had become so useful here in Kiriath. For this occasion she selected the heaviest house veil she owned, a dark blue silk laced with sprays of white vines. She was holding it before her face to see how well it hid her features when Cooper came stomping in, Hogart in his wake.

She’d always thought Felmen Cooper a handsome man, tall and strong and leanly muscled. Now in his late forties, his swarthy face was well weathered, but he remained in excellent physical condition, age and his experiences in Esurh having imparted a new sense of command to his presence. The last four years had seen his short-cropped hair turn completely to gray, only the spiked Thilosian-style goatee retaining any of its former dark.

“Rennalf is here,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” She handed the veil to Peri.

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?” he demanded.

“It was your wedding night, Coop,” Carissa said as Peri swirled the veil over her head. “We figured he’d be gone by morning, and what could you do anyway? He’ll recognize you the moment he sees you.” She turned back to the mirror and lowered the veil over her face, Peri pulling and twitching at its folds.

His frown deepened. “What are you doing with that?”

“I am the lady of the manor. I’m going down to greet him.”

“And you think he won’t recognize your voice?Won’t demand to see your face?” Cooper had braced his hands on his hips. “He’ll take you, lass. You know he will. If for no other reason than to prove that he can.”

“What would you have me do, then?” she demanded, her voice highpitched with tension. “Go down unveiled and remove all doubt? Or stay up here and arouse his curiosity further than it must already be aroused?”

He gestured at her maid. “Let Peri go.”

The girl blanched and turned a terrified look toward Carissa, who was already seriously considering the idea. Peri’s accent would add weight to the deception. She’d have only to give greeting before pleading illness. . . . If only she wasn’t so obviously a servant. Her posture, her mien, and especially her terror would give her away.

“I’ll do it” came a voice from the now-open door. Cooper’s new wife, Elayne, stepped into the room. “I’ve watched you, mistress. I know how it’s done.”

Since Elayne was already head of the household staff and accustomed to greeting the lords who occasionally came through, she was an eminently appropriate choice. Hogart would take over Cooper’s position, while Cooper himself retired to the background as a kitchen drudge, chopping wood and hauling water.

Thus it was decided, leaving Carissa to stew in isolated ignorance. Too restless for needlework and too distracted to read, she spent the morning pacing before the hearth, battling impatience and curiosity. It had been six years since she’d left her husband. Had time changed him as much as it had her? As much as it had Cooper? When she had married Rennalf he was a strong and handsome borderman, mysterious, powerful, and immensely attractive. Perhaps some of that remained. Perhaps his own trials—she’d heard he’d lost his beloved bastard son two years ago—had softened him. It was an absurd hope, one she knew was nothing more than wishful thinking. Everything she’d heard of him told her he’d only grown more hardened and bitter. He blamed Raynen for Carissa’s disappearance and later had insulted Gillard and been insulted in turn. He had no love for the House of Kalladorne, his former wife least of all.

She’d be a fool to risk discovery simply to satisfy idle curiosity.

There was the other matter, as well, though—the question of what he was doing here. Would the servants know what to listen for? Would they recognize the crucial words of revelation when they came? Would they miss what Carissa might not?

She fought temptation for most of the day—aided by Cooper’s adamant rejection of the slightest suggestion she go down. But at last she could stand it no longer. “I’m only taking a little walk,” she told Peri late that afternoon as she donned a servant girl’s undertunic, cotte, and baggy wool leggings. “Just to get out of the room for a while.” She stripped off her rings, tied a kerchief around her braided hair and slipped a misshapen woolen sweater over the lot, then went down the back way to the stables. There she checked on the horses and dogs, looked in on the goats that were being milked, and offered to take one of the filled pails back to the kitchen.

The milkmaid waved permission, pleasing Carissa by the fact that she had no idea who had come in to ask. Cooper, of course, recognized her the moment she walked through the door, scowling at her furiously as he dumped an armload of wood beside the kitchen hearth. Maya, the cook, struggled to hide a smile and suggested Carissa wipe up the spills near the Great Room doorway lest anyone coming through slip and fall. Despite Cooper’s glares, Carissa picked up a rag and dropped to hands and knees just inside the doorway. She did an extremely thorough job, which was remarkable considering she paid no attention to what she was doing.

“Lady Louisa” sat knitting in one of the four large tree-limb chairs arranged before the hearth, shrouded in her blue veil. Her six visitors ignored her entirely, conversing quietly around the big table. Big, tall men, typical of their lineage, they wore leather and wool, with shaggy beards and long blond hair caught up in various modes.

Rennalf of Balmark presided at the table’s head, his back to the fire, face to the kitchen. Tallest and broadest of the lot, his rugged countenance was more weathered than she recalled, his crow’s feet deeper, the squint of his eyes more pronounced. He wore his frizzy blond hair long and loose, brushed back from his forehead at the crown but caught at the temples into thick, dangling braids that framed his bearded face. It was the beard that betrayed his age, white now at the sides where once it had been all golden brown.

What startled her most, though, were not the signs of age but the hardness in his manner, an intensification of the aura of superiority he’d always carried—and something more. Some indefinable sense of power that raised the hairs on her nape and made her think of men she had seen in Esurh.

Though perhaps that was only because of the green-stoned amulet he wore at his throat. Nested in a silver setting, half hidden by his beard and hair and high-collared tunic, it was not readily noticeable, yet her eyes flew to it as to light on a dark night. It was not a piece she recognized. The men’s voices were deep and heavily accented with the northerner dialect, so it was hard to discern their words above the racket Cooper was making with the kitchen fire and Maya’s pounding of the bread. They spoke of seasons and fordings, of meetings and agreements, of others unnamed who were important to them, but through it all her conviction mounted that they were up to nothing good.

Maya called her from the doorway then, pressing a rolling pin into her hands and gesturing at the dough on the counter. About that time young Rolf came bursting through the front door into the Great Room. “News from Springerlan,” he cried, waving one of the small canisters worn by homing pigeons. “Whitewing’s brought back news from Springerlan! And it’s got the royal seal on it!” He stopped, taken aback by the realization that they had guests and he shouldn’t have been shouting the news. He scanned the room, spied Carissa standing in the kitchen doorway and, in his discombobulation, started toward her.