He is silent again for some while, and I begin to hope he will leave without saying more. But, damnably, he continues: “I wish you the best,luinar. I hope you will have another go at the citadel now that the Shadow King has gone. I would dearly love to see those Miphates skewered on unicorn horns.”
He steps close behind me and drops something at my feet. It rolls into my line of vision, and I look down to see the talisman: the mage-wrought instrument I’d taken off Artoris back in the Temple of Lamruil, what feels like a lifetime ago. Magic fire has burnt it black, and the spellwork once inscribed on the rotating sphere in its center is all but indiscernible. Useless, no doubt. As useless as every other aspect of this pitiful venture.
“I’m sorry, Taar,” Ruvaen says again.
Then he leaves mydakath.While the door flap is swept back to let him through, sounds of a makeshift camp clamor in my ears. The flap closes behind him, however, and I am once more cut off from the world, back in my blessed darkness, with only Elydark’s song to sustain me.
I close my eyes, let my soul sink deep. “Ilsevel,” I whisper.
Far away, from an impossible distance, beyond all the Unformed Lands and in some remote heaven, I could almost swear I hear her voice reply in that insolent, indomitable tone of hers:“Well, warlord? What have you to say for yourself?”
I cannot weep. That would be too great a relief, far more than I deserve.
Instead I draw a knife from my belt. The very knife with the gold jewel at its hilt which is a match to the blade I once gifted to my warbride for her protection. I study it a moment, hefting its weight in my palm. Then, with a flick of my wrist, I angle the sharp point against my sternum. One swift plunge and I can sendit up under bone, straight to my heart.
Vellar,Elydark sings, his voice more real in my mind than anything else in all this world.Vellar,I know you suffer. But have you no love left for me? Would you abandon me tovelrhoar?
A sharp breath rips through my teeth, down into my lungs. “Damn,” I whisper. “Damn me to the depths of hell.”
But the blade falls insensibly from my hands, landing with a thud at my feet.
5
ILSEVEL
I open my eyes, blinking up at the canopy of my bed. A familiar sight, so familiar, one almost does not notice it, any more than one notices the color of grass or the presence of servants lurking on the fringes of a banquet hall. I’ve opened my eyes to this same sight innumerable times and expect I will continue to do so for innumerable wakings to come.
And yet something about the image picked out in silk overhead strikes me with sudden interest. Bathed in early morning light slipping through a long crack in the heavy window drapes, it depicts a pattern of pale unicorns in a field of purple flowers, simultaneously exaggerated and simplistic. The unicorn, repeated again and again in slightly different configurations, turns its head back over its shoulder, its neck arched, its tale a long, skinny whip of flesh with a tassel offur at the end of it.
That’s not right,I think dully. Where that thought comes from, I cannot say; it’s a nagging feeling, a discomfort. I drag my eyes from the unicorns to the flowers instead. These I like better. Their petals unfurl from golden centers, and, despite the flattened colors, whoever worked this wonder of stitchery managed to capture a sense of glowing aura in that contrast of gold and purple threads.
Ilsevels,I think, again without certainty why.Ilsevel blossoms.
It occurs to me that I’ve slept under this same canopy every night of my life since I was little more than a toddling babe. Why have I not had it replaced long ago? It’s much too childish for a woman’s boudoir.
I try to move, a simple shift of shoulders and hips. My muscles cry out in a protest of pain which shocks me so hard, I close my eyes again and draw a sharp breath. Why do I ache so? I cannot recall. Did I go for a particularly long ride yesterday? A foxhunt, perhaps? Though I try to conjure some image, no clear memory will form. I cast back further, the day before, or the day before that, perhaps. It’s all a shadowy blur. The only thing that comes to mind with any clarity is the vision of my father, standing before his gathered court, arms upraised, declaring in a loud voice that terms had at last been agreed upon and a marriage bargain struck. That I, his second and most-favored daughter, should wed the Shadow King.
Soon after the Shadow King himself had taken my hand, leadingme in a dance before the watchful eyes of both his troll entourage and my father’s favored lackeys. As he guided me through a turn, his deep voice had rumbled close to my ear, “I feel I should officially ask you: will you accept my hand in marriage, Princess?”
“Do I have any choice in the matter?” I’d replied furiously, flicking my gaze to meet his.
“Yes,” he’d answered with great solemnity, his strange, rock-hewn face difficult to read. “You have a choice. Say the word, and I will gather my people and leave your father’s house at once.”
I wanted to believe him; but I knew better. My wishes were never forefront in the mind of any man who wished to use me as a playing piece in his life’s ambitious game. I glanced sideways at my father, seated in his place at the head of the banquet table, watching me intently with his single eye. He loved me, to be sure; everyone knew I was his favorite little darling. That didn’t mean I dared put a hair out of line.
The dance ended. I looked the Shadow King straight in the eye. “I will accept your hand, King Vor,” I said.
From there everything else fades into confusion. Did that memory take place only last night? It must have, for no further memory will unfold in my mind. My stomach knots with dread, even as my body aches. So this is truly to be my fate—married off to a monstrous bridegroom, sent away to some dark, shadowed realm without sky, without wind, without sun. My father had better have buried me alive in the family crypt. At least then Iwould have met my end among my own kind.
Again I try to gather my strength, to sit up in bed. I can’t just lie here, after all, and let fate swallow me whole! I must do something, take action. Plead with my father or . . . or perhaps run away. Yes! That’s what I’ll do. I’m not going to lie here, passive and meek, while hard-hearted men dispose of my life as they will. I’ll sneak out to the stables, find a horse, and ride for the horizon. Only . . .
Only every slight movement of my limbs sends bolts of agony shooting through each muscle. When I stop moving, and the pain recedes, a sluggish fog comes over me, filling my head and trickling down my spine.
“You’d better lie still. It’ll be easier for your recovery in the end.”
My heart quickens. That voice—I know that voice. And it’s the last one I would have hoped to hear, speaking from the shadowed place close to my head. I try to turn toward it, but my body simply won’t answer. My eyes swivel in their sockets, however, and then, very slowly, as though responding to a command from miles away, my head turns as well. Even this slight movement causes pain, and I bite down hard on a breath.
Lyria. My bastard half-sister. She sits in a low chair close to the bed, her knees drawn up so that she looks like a cat curled up in the seat. She’s a beautiful woman, like her blighted mother, my father’s mistress, Lady Fyndra. Golden hair, pale eyes, delicate features, watchful expression. Yet somehow there’s somethingunmistakably like Larongar in the line of her jaw, her brow. His brutish features have no place in so fine a face, and yet he is there, more prominent now that she is of age. There had been some effort to cover up the king’s indiscretion by marrying his mistress off to Lord Arakian, but as time went on, and Lyria matured, there was no hiding the truth. So they shipped Lyria away to Cornaith, where she could no longer be a reminder to Queen Mereth of her husband’s faithlessness.
