Zandru's Forge (35 page)

Varzil set off as part of Liriel’s entourage the next day. They traveled together across the Arilinn Plains and up into the Venza Hills. From here, they would descend into Thendara and the true lowlands.

Varzil remembered Liriel from his Midwinter season at Hali, tall and reserved. She wore ordinary clothing, although of superb quality, but there was no question that she was a Tower-trained
leronis.
She spoke little, and then primarily to Felicia, treating her with impeccable, if distant, courtesy. Beyond greeting Varzil with a nod and an acknowledgment of his rank, she had little to say to him. Her reticence bothered him very little. She would be a difficult coworker, should they ever find themselves at the same Tower, with her combination of Hastur arrogance and natural reserve. But there was no malice in her.

Felicia often rode at Varzil’s side, sitting easily upon the same horse she had ridden to Arilinn. The guards were all Lady Liriel’s own, having accompanied her from Tramontana. As the days stretched on, Felicia began to talk about her mother.

“I was born at Acosta and spent my childhood there,” she said in a voice so low that only Varzil could hear. “After the destruction of the two Towers—Tramontana and Neskaya, you know—my parents opened their home to the survivors. Tio Aran, who had been my father’s dearest friend, stayed with us the longest. He taught me how to ride and when I was very little, he laughed a lot. Then he stopped laughing. After that, my father died. I must have been about eight or nine, so I don’t remember much. My mother was never the same. After my brother Julian died of threshold sickness, she took me away from Acosta. It must have been too painful for her, with all those memories. I don’t know.”

She fell quiet, looking into the distance. Her mind, usually as clear as a running spring, turned opaque. After a while, she came back to herself.

She spoke again of her childhood, of the nightmares that plagued her. “... and when I woke frightened from those dreams, she would sing me back to sleep, no matter how weary or sad she felt. I always knew I was safe in her arms ... And when the time came, she blessed my leaving, so that I might never regret my own choices or fear to follow my own destiny. I think the greatest gift she gave me was the absence of her shadow.”

Once he asked about her father, and she shook her head. “His gift to me was his name, so that I could live out in the world like an ordinary person.”

“Leynier?”

“Yes, Coryn Leynier.”

The
Coryn, the Coryn of Coryn and Taniquel.

“I have never known whether to love him for the life he gave me or to hate him for taking my mother away with his death,” she said softly. “All I know is that I want to live my own life, to be Felicia, myself, and neither an echo nor a sacrifice.”

He nudged his horse closer to hers, so that he could reach out and take her free hand where it lay on the saddle pommel. Her fingers, cool through the thin gloves, closed around his.

“There is very little certain in this world of ours, except for death and next winter’s snow,” he said. “But as long as I have breath and mind, you will be only Felicia to me.”

The
rhu fead
at Hali, holiest place of the
Comyn,
lay an hour’s ride north from Thendara. The high white haze of the early hours turned into an intermittent drizzle, as if the sky could not make up its mind whether to rain or not. The horses shook beads of water from their ears and plodded on.

Felicia, like Liriel, wore the drab formal attire of the morning, but the subdued colors only served to heighten her dignity. She went veiled, a cloud of black gauze obscuring her features. Though she kept to herself and spoke little, her mind touched Varzil’s from time to time. She asked nothing of him, only his presence.

The funeral party was small, much smaller than befitted a Hastur Queen. Carolin arrived with a single attendant, but no other member of the ruling family. There were a only few people Varzil did not know, including one elderly kinsman, an Elhalyn lord, who spoke little but wept silently.

In the sight of that assembly, the body of Taniquel Hastur-Acosta was laid to rest in an unmarked grave, according to custom. Here she would join countless generations of
Comyn,
her resting place indistinguishable except for a slight mound ing of earth that would disappear in a few seasons.

Liriel Hastur walked slowly to the open grave. “I speak not only for myself, but for Lady Bronwyn Hastur, who knew and loved her. She said—” Liriel’s voice broke, though she quickly recovered her composure, “—she said that all the gifts of the mind, of
laran
itself, counted as nothing without a generous heart and a noble spirit.”

When she ended her message with the formal phrase, “Let that memory lighten grief,” her shoulders sagged in relief.

One by one, the others took her place. Each had some personal memory of Queen Taniquel to offer, not the legendary image, but the woman—human, fallible, and loved.

Can any of us ask for more, than to be remembered like this?
Varzil wondered.

Without conscious intention, he stepped forward to stand beside Taniquel’s grave. “I never had the privilege of knowing her, yet she has touched my life. In being remembered here, by the people who did know her, she has given me the knowledge that within every legend is an ordinary person who has found herself faced with extraordinary trials and has risen to them. That how the world and history see us is very different from how we see ourselves. In her memory, I am reminded it is not fame but inner truth that makes us who we are. Let that memory lighten grief.”

He moved back, to find himself at Felicia’s side. Her eyes, green like spring, like the sea he had never seen, met his own. His mind reached out to hers and for a trembling moment, there was no separation, no difference between them. Then the sounds of the funeral assembly reached him.

“Forgive me, I have been rude in staring at you,” he said, holding out his arm for her to take.

“There is no lapse of courtesy.” She placed her fingertips on his sleeve so lightly that he felt only a featherweight of pressure. “Not between
bredin.”
She used the plural form of the word which might mean
sibling
but also
beloved.

Have we not spoken mind to mind?
she asked.
And have there not been times when we have been of one mind?

He choked off the response, for Carolin had come up to him. With a nod, Felicia left them to walk in Liriel’s shadow.

“My friend,” Carolin said, “I cannot return with you to Thendara, but I would very much like to arrange a proper visit. I hope you do not need to return immediately to Arilinn?”

“I am not expected back at Arilinn for some while,” Varzil said. “We cannot return immediately, for even with fresh mounts, the ladies will need to rest.” He did not add that Felicia had business to conduct regarding her mother’s estate.

“A tenday or two, at the least, knowing Liriel,” Carolin said. “Times have changed since we could send an aircar for such a purpose.”

“Serrais has now reserved aircars for military use only,” Varzil said. “Arilinn’s airfield is closed now, did you know?”

“Yes, we’d heard.”

They walked together toward the area where servants held the reins of their mounts. Carolin said, “If you have the time, perhaps you can ride with me out to Blue Lake. It’s the coun- . try estate where I was raised. I’ve business there and I’d welcome the company for the journey. It’s been too many years since we were at Arilinn together.”

Returning to Hastur Castle, Carolin went first to his uncle’s chambers. Rakhal was there, sitting across the beautifully inlaid game table, now spread with a few scattered castles. Rakhal was clearly playing to lose, to prolong the game, to keep the King amused.

King Felix looked up. The late afternoon light fell across his features, bleaching his eyes colorless and turning his cheeks into a myriad of tiny creases. “Sit down, my boy.”

Carolin sat, exchanged a few pleasantries, and delivered Lady Liriel’s respects as she had asked. The King remembered little of the morning’s business, for the funeral had been private and quiet.

As soon as he could do so with decorum, Carolin took his leave. He would be up half the night, catching up on the day’s work which he had put aside for the funeral, not to mention this overlong and pointless interview. Blue Lake called to him; he missed its simplicity and freedom. He longed equally for time with Varzil. He had never lost the sense of connection with his friend, although their lives had taken very different directions.

He worked well into the evening, stopping only for a private dinner in his chambers, together with Alianora and their two boys. Rafael, the older, ran to him with delight. Alianora carried little Alaric with an ease which spoke of both deep affection and custom. She had long since moved to her own suite of rooms, but often met with Carolin at times like this. Carolin suspected, from the obvious attachment of the boys, that she spent as much time in the nursery as in her own sitting room. Motherhood had rounded Alianora’s curves and bestowed upon her an air of gentle contentment. She remained reserved, an essentially private person. Only her children, two fine, healthy sons and another on the way, evoked any spark of passion. She did not ask about the funeral, nor about any of Carolin’s other business; he could never be sure if she felt it improper to inquire, or simply had no curiosity. The children sufficed for her; they comprised her entire world.

Carolin sat back in his chair, finishing the last of his single cup of wine, and regarded his family. Fatherhood had surprised him; the memory of the first time he had held Rafael in his arms still brought a rush of tenderness. Watching his son play in front of the fireplace and Alaric in his mother’s arms, he tried to etch their images into his mind. Outside the fragile haven of these walls, untold dangers stalked their world. He knew it was foolish to become too attached to children who might die of any of a hundred causes, from lung fever to threshold sickness, and in the case of little princes, deliberate assault.

No, he would not think of that. He must go on as if all would be well, must hold to the dream of a world in which children like Rafael and Alaric had no need to fear being seized as a hostage or having poison slipped into their milk, face hostile armies at their gates, or
clingfire
raining from heaven.

In this world, the love which welled up in his heart was so very precious ...

He thought of other kinds of love, too. The love he had felt for his own parents. The love for his friends, for Orain and Jandria and Maura. For Varzil.

Now, a gentle sadness crept over him. Undoubtedly it was the influence of the day’s events, the intense, unexpressed emotions of the funeral, what was said and what left unsaid. He had seen the way Varzil looked at Felicia Leynier, had felt their moment of mental communion. It did not take a telepath to realize that they were in love, or would be very soon.

He would say nothing of it; some things were not discussed, and besides what would he say? That he was happy for his friend, that he feared such an alliance could never end in happiness, that against all sense, some secret part of him wished that he might have known such a love?

“You look tired,” Alianora said, “and it is time for the boys to be in bed. Shall we see you again before you leave for Blue Lake?”

Carolin roused from his melancholy; the woman before him was his lawful wife
di catenas,
the mother of his children, who had kept her own promise to be a good and dutiful wife to him. How could he insult her by wishing she were someone else?

The world went as it would, and not as any one man would have it, Carolin reminded himself of the old proverb. He would be a loyal prince, a faithful husband, a loving father. Someday, as King, he would have the chance to do more.

Two days later, Varzil and Carolin set off on horseback, leading a chervine laden with supplies, into the Venza Hills headed for Blue Lake. There really
was
a lake, Carolin assured him, and most of the time it
was
blue. If the weather cleared, as it looked likely, they would have fine fishing.