Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (43 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Tamsanne, standing in front of the hearth, lit the mantel lamps as everyone trooped in. The room brightened, shadows fled. Gaultry was not sure if her grandmother had chosen that vantage point to conceal the contents of the grate or simply to brighten the room for her inquiry. Perhaps a little of both.
“Elisabeth Climens.” The old woman gestured for the girl to sit. “I have seen you often enough at court these last few weeks. More often than one might have expected, now that I consider the facts. But no one thought to introduce us, so this will be our first true meeting.”
Elisabeth curtsied deeply, and sat where she was told on the sofa. Somehow she managed to do it gracefully, even clutching the voluminous robe. Her cheeks were a little red, perhaps in the knowledge that no introductions had been made because she was a Duke’s daughter, and Tamsanne, save for her appearance at Melaudiere’s funeral, had presented herself at court from the marginalized position of a hedge-witch. “I’m honored—” she began, but Tamsanne, speaking over her, did not let her finish.
“You have attended many of Dame Julie’s rehearsals. Along with that silly flower shearing the Prince commanded of me. I saw you at Melaudiere’s last levee as well, before she became too ill to be seen in public.”
“I have an interest,” Elisabeth said.
“In the Common Brood, or in our magic?”
Elisabeth’s posture went subtly wary. “I am my mother’s fourth child,” she said carefully. “The fourth child of a Duke is born to little purpose, saving several siblings’ deaths. It pleased me to look upon women who have lived so long, knowing their life’s purpose so fully.”
Tamsanne smiled unkindly. “Yes,” she said. “The burdens are indeed great, where one’s birth is gentle.” Turning her back on the girl, she crossed to the terrace doors. “Yet somehow, as I suspect you have begun to discover, every door is open to you.” She pulled the doors closed and turned the latch, her wrinkled hand lingering on the metal.
Elisabeth cast Gaultry a doubtful glance, unsure what Tamsanne meant by these insults. Gaultry, confused herself by Tamsanne’s unexpected unfriendliness, shrugged. Elisabeth raised her chin, defiant. Rather than responding to Tamsanne’s cool tone, or trying to explain anything, everything—as Gaultry herself might have done—she chose to wait Tamsanne out, and see where she was leading. Gaultry did not know if she should admire the girl’s mettle or fear for the girl in her ignorance. Outfacing Tamsanne was a tricky business at the best of times. Tamsanne almost always found some way to up the stakes for the other person without raising them for herself.
A charged moment of silence stretched, then the old woman resumed her questioning. “Tell me about the weapon. Describe the weapon Dervla spoke of to your mother.”
Elisabeth looked surprised by the change of subject, and a little relieved. “I told Gaultry everything I heard.”
“Did Dervla say she had passed it to the Envoy already, or did she hold it in reserve, for future exchange?”
“She still had it,” Elisabeth said, then paused. “No. I’m not sure. The way she spoke … I can’t be sure.”
“Did the blade have a name?”
Elisabeth opened her hands helplessly. “She wouldn’t have described the blade at all, but Mama would not believe Dervla had the upper hand on Lepulio without a compelling explanation.”
“It is important,” Tamsanne said patiently. “
Ein Raku?
Did she call it that?”
“I don’t remember. She said only that it was old. Wanderer-old. Powerful enough to kill a god’s child, and cursed with the strength to draw a god’s vengeance from the hand of the one who wielded it.”
Tullier had not overheard the blade’s description as he stood outside on the terrace. His face went bleak. “No wonder Lepulio was so eager to assure me that I would hold the Bissanty Tielmaran throne for life.”
Tamsanne gave him a sharp look for interrupting, then turned back to Elisabeth and nodded encouragingly. Gaultry shifted uneasily and glanced at her young visitor, who was visibly relaxing under her grandmother’s
now gentle questioning. When Tamsanne went mild and grandmotherly like this, it was not the time to lower one’s guard. Poor Elisabeth was too inexperienced to suspect the trap. Tamsanne circled in—asking more questions about the knife, receiving the same answers. She rounded the sofa until she was almost in front of the girl.
When she struck, the transformation from grandmother to fury was irrationally alarming.
“Tell me, child.” Tamsanne stepped so close that her fusty black robes almost touched Elisabeth’s silk-swathed knees. “Do you know the name of the man your mother bedded to bear you?” Tamsanne grabbed Elisabeth’s wrists, turning the girl’s white palms upward. “Your mother bred herself like a pedigreed mare. Speculation is old and tired, trying to guess the web of power she sought to bring Vaux-Torres through these selective matings. Who do you think she chose to get you?”
Elisabeth did not know how to react. She would have taken refuge in shocked silence, but Tamsanne continued to push her back.
“I—Ido not know.” Elisabeth’s eyes were wide with dismay. She tried to free herself from Tamsanne’s grasp without struggling overtly, but the old woman’s hold was like a vise. “My mother told me it was not yet my secret to learn.”
“I could tell you,” Tamsanne said, stark and cruel. She inscribed the goddesses’ spiral on Elisabeth’s palm. There was power in that simple gesture, power thick and strong enough to drain the candle’s light, to thicken the room’s air. Tamsanne drew in upon herself, frighteningly intense. The wrinkles deepened on her face. Gaultry could tell from Elisabeth’s reaction that she felt a corresponding sharpening of power on her hand where the old woman had marked her. “You claim ignorance of your life’s purpose, of the reason you were born. That may well be true. But a duchess has no obvious need of a fourth child, and your mother is legendarily vain of her body. Why would she welcome the burden of a fourth babe in her womb, if there was nothing to be gained by it?”
Gaultry, watching the girl’s expression, was almost moved to intervene. She didn’t understand why Tamsanne would taunt Elisabeth with her mother’s infidelities, why she thought it mattered. Yet it must have been important, for Tamsanne to go to such pains to draw it out.
“I think my mother loved him,” Elisabeth offered tremulously. “That is what she told me. She would not lie about that. After politics and war, she wanted a child for herself, for her love—”
“You know your mother best,” Tamsanne said. “Perhaps it is even
true that she would not lie to you. But think, child. When has she ever done anything important for a single purpose?”
Tears began to slip from Elisabeth’s dark eyes. Embattled and silent, she made no move to brush them away.
“I could tell you your future,” Tamsanne said, her tone once again gentling. She bent conspiratorially forward. “I could show you what your mother planned.”
For a moment Elisabeth seemed hypnotized by the possibility. Then she jumped angrily to her feet, pulling even the train of her robes beyond Tamsanne’s reach. “I don’t need anything from you.” She dashed away her tears. “I would far rather keep my mother’s faith than owe anything to
you
.” She wheeled on Gaultry. From the working of her mouth, the pulse at her temple, she was near an open display of grief, but she held it back. “Twins in me! I came here tonight with no expectation that you would help me. What I said will let you help yourself—at my mother’s expense if you so desire it.” She turned again to Tamsanne and threw back her head, an unconscious echo of her mother’s arrogance. “Keep your prophecies. It is time for me to leave.”
She crossed to the terrace doors, her composure slipping just as she reached them. “Elianté!” she whispered, barely loud enough to be audible. “Emiera! I have not deserved this.” Hand on the latch, she bent forward and pressed her forehead against the cool glass panes, shoulders momentarily clenching as an unwilled sob escaped her.
Outside, the first grey light of morning touched the paving stones, the verdancy of the deer park. Today’s bright dawn anticipated another beautiful scorcher of a day. The beautiful girl, with her sorrow, bent before it like the frozen embodiment of woe.
Then there was a whispery noise like an indrawn breath, and the moment was gone. Elisabeth opened the doors with an angry jerk, walked trippingly across the terrace, and disappeared among the trees.
When Gaultry moved to follow her, Tamsanne raised a restraining hand. “Let her find her own way home. Hinder her, and she may reconsider keeping this visit hidden.”
“What was that about?” Gaultry said angrily. “Why were you so cruel? Elisabeth came here in good faith, whatever her mother’s motives.”
Tamsanne sighed. “She was your guest. You are right to resent me. Elisabeth is a good girl, and I am a foolish old woman. But the time for courtesies is fast passing. You called me here urgently. The messenger you sent stumbled across five meadows in the dark to find me. I have been
waiting for something to happen. The Midsummer moon, the stars—everything in the sky this month points to the unfolding of grave events, with the Brood, yourself included, at its center. I thought your call meant those events had begun to move forward—and perhaps they have done so, in a manner I could not have predicted.”
“What are you saying?” Gaultry asked. There was something in her grandmother’s tone. Something conscience-stricken. Gaultry’s heart jumped uneasily. Tamsanne, unlike old Melaudiere, had no inborn power of foreseeing. She had only her Rhasan deck … .
Tamsanne, reading Gaultry’s expression correctly, allowed herself a weary nod. “I pulled a Rhasan card before I came here. It puzzled me—I thought at first it regarded you, my child, and that indeed was puzzling. But now that I have seen young Climens, I understand its true meaning.”
“Did the Rhasan identify Elisabeth’s father?” Gaultry blurted. What had prompted Tamsanne to open her deck? The magic there was so strong, so dangerous. What had Tamsanne expected to find? Why had she risked it?
“Her father?” Tamsanne shook her head. “Why ask the Rhasan that? The answer is obvious, just by looking at the girl. No, the cards revealed something of higher import.”
“Obvious?” Gaultry muttered. “Only to someone as old as the hills.” She could tell from the way Tamsanne spoke that she was not going to elucidate further.
“Behold.” Tamsanne followed Elisabeth’s steps and reached for the terrace latch. “Elisabeth’s departure was more than it would seem.” As she turned the metal handle, it broke off in her hand and crumbled into a palmful of grainy ash. “Magic-embrittled. I anchored this door with a powerful spell. Elisabeth should not have been able to open it so easily. And perhaps she would not have done so, if I had not riled her with insults and pushed her to show something of herself involuntarily.” Tamsanne threw the ash outside on the paving stones and brushed her hands clean. “I’m sure she barely even knows what she’s accomplished.”
She pulled the terrace doors closed with an air of poorly suppressed excitement. “The girl who just walked out of this room will be Tielmark’s next High Priestess. Isn’t that astonishing? I’m sure it’s not what Dervla expects, or she wouldn’t be harassing the mother, setting her up to take the blame for her own covert actions.”
“What?” Gaultry said, aghast. “Elisabeth will be High Priestess? Doesn’t Dervla get to choose her own successor?”
Tamsanne shook her head. “It’s in the Goddess-Twins’ hands. It’s true, a genuinely zealous priest usually knows who to anoint, but clearly that is not the case here, or Elisabeth, long since, would have been conscripted as one of Dervla’s acolytes. Which informs me that Dervla and the girl’s mother have made many mistakes, and compounded them, each orbiting alone in their own sphere. Knowing Argat Climens, who is not overfearful of the gods, I must doubt this was the intended outcome of her intriguing.”
“Why didn’t you tell Elisabeth?” Gaultry asked, angry and confused together. “Don’t you think she should know?”
Tamsanne shook her head, still with that air of suppressed excitement. “Better she should hate me, than learn her fate out of its turn. She is clever, that one, and already knows this—look how she turned temptation aside when I offered it! Better I had done that myself, rather than opening my Rhasan deck tonight. The easy route is so often the wrong one.
“Poor Elisabeth!” Tamsanne’s face twisting in an almost smile, the hidden, deeply amused expression Gaultry recognized from the moment the old woman had arrived and learned that her granddaughter was not the room’s sole female occupant. “And what a relief it was to me to find her here. When I first saw the Rhasan’s message, I imagined for an extremely confusing moment that the next High Priestess of Tielmark was going to be
you
.”
A fragment of the fetish crown lay on the small round of paving stones
at the foot of Gaultry’s terrace. Tamsanne had surrounded it with figures scrawled in chalk. Small mounds of leaf and twig lay aligned within circles at the four cardinal points. Gaultry stood with Tullier on the terrace above, watching her grandmother work. Tamsanne made it seem like nothing, but Gaultry knew from past experience that each line, each placement, deepened the old woman’s connection with the cluster of burnt twigs. The order was not predetermined. Tamsanne constantly adjusted, reacted, as she moved deeper into the spell.
To Gaultry, her grandmother’s concentration was almost a tangible thing, as she wove an invisible basket of spell around the least corrupted twigs from the crown, working toward the moment when the first dawn light would touch the trees. Closing the spell just then would heighten its result.
To Gaultry’s annoyance—no, to her anger—her grandmother had demonstrated no surprise when she had recounted the dream attack and explained exactly where she’d found the crown. Tamsanne had merely nodded and set to pulling the crown to pieces for the sample she’d need to trace its origin. If Tamsanne had known that such a thing could happen, she should have given warning.
If Tullier had not been standing by, Gaultry would have demanded an explanation. Judging when to share information, and what to do with that information once shared, was of course a delicate business. What,
for example, was she to do with the information Elisabeth had brought her? Twist herself in circles, trying to prevent the Duchess of Vaux-Torres from doing a wrong thing? Set a trap, allowing the silly woman to act and hang herself? For all her anger and fear, she could see why Tamsanne might have hesitated to share her every suspicion. Still, if she had known something that might have protected Gaultry from the fetish-crown …
Tullier, at her side, was paying little attention to her grandmother’s preparations. In the pale predawn light, she could almost imagine that he dozed, deaf to the rousing of her grandmother’s power as he had been blind to the goddess-light in the hidden sanctuary.
Still, he wouldn’t have been blind to the subtext of recent events. She wondered if he still wanted to remain in Tielmark on the heels of Elisabeth’s revelation that Dervla claimed possession of an ancient, godcursed blade. Even if Elisabeth had not been able to name it, there was no doubt that that blade was the
Ein Raku,
the Kingmaker blade Richielle had flourished on Princess Corinne’s wedding day. Richielle must have given it to Delcora before she had departed from the Princess’s court, and Dervla, as Delcora’s heir, would have inherited the blade with the other accoutrements of the High Priestess’s office.
When Tamsanne was done with her casting, she would once again remind the boy of his options.
Dawn’s full color finally washed across the horizon, lighting the foliage of the trees and the rough masonry wall of the building at her back. Tamsanne, planted with her feet to either side of the crown’s fragment, opened her palms outward to the morning like a tree with upraised branches. Gaultry, her hands on the terrace rail, felt her grandmother’s grounding as the dawn colors melted and spread: a growing tremor in the earth, a frowning, unfriendly invocation of power. This was familiar—the course of Tamsanne’s magic ran deep into the alien life of plants and their rootings, almost unfathomable in its breadth.
But there was something more here than merely the earth-bound, unwelcoming life of plants.
As the grounding deepened, something in Tamsanne’s aspect altered. For a flickering moment, the roughness of bark, or husky fibers, swept across her skin. A suggestion only, as though the deep earth forces that were the root of Tamsanne’s strength had momentarily revealed themselves. Then the suggestion of dark transformation was gone as if it had never been, and Tamsanne stepped away from the refuse of her casting.
For one moment, Gaultry thought she had imagined it.
Then, three steps away from the circle’s center, Tamsanne stumbled and clutched at her throat.
Something had gone wrong.
Gaultry almost tripped down the stairs in her rush to catch her grandmother before she collapsed. “Tullier!” Her voice rose with fear. “Come and help me—we need to lay her on the grass.”
He stared down, caught off guard. He had not felt the magical pulse, had not understood the significance of the old woman’s stumble. Had not begun to react.
Alone, Gaultry dragged her grandmother off the chalk-marked paving stones onto the grass, pulling the cloth at Tamsanne’s throat to loosen her collar. The old woman’s face was suffused with blood, as though an apoplexy had overtaken her.
“Tullier!” She was in tears, chafing Tamsanne’s wrists, hunting for a pulse. Belatedly, he sprinted down to help.
“Roll her on her side,” he advised. “She’ll choke on her tongue if you leave her like that.”
“She needs to be touching the earth,” Gaultry said, even as she followed his instructions and rolled Tamsanne off her back and onto one shoulder. She grabbed the arm on the upward side of Tamsanne’s limp body, unfolded its fingers and raked them against the moss. “Feel that, Grandmother. Pull your strength from it!”
“What are you doing?” Tullier thumped his own palm against Tamsanne’s narrow shoulders. “We need to get her lungs moving!”
“She has to touch the ground,” Gaultry sputtered through rising tears. “She can only help herself if she’s touching the ground!” Tullier rolled his eyes and let her continue, applying himself to a more mundane stimulation of Tamsanne’s lungs and back. “Oh Goddess-Twins!” Gaultry prayed aloud. “Elianté Huntress! Do not take her! Please—not yet!”
Around them the trees brightened with sun. Tamsanne continued still and limp, defying their best efforts to recover her. “Keep going!” Gaultry cried.
The light reached the cap of the terrace rail, six feet or so above their heads, and something changed. Whether it was Tullier’s ministrations, or Gaultry’s, the old woman emitted a stuttering sigh. Her body stiffened, and she drew a short breath.
“Again,” Gaultry demanded, frantic. “Do whatever you did again! Keep going!”
Tullier put his hand over hers, calming her. “Gentle! Don’t you feel it? Whatever it was has peaked. She’s coming back to us. Let her catch her breath.”
They sat together by Tamsanne’s side, watching the old woman fight to come to herself. Gaultry gently patted her shoulder, her dry, deeply wrinkled cheek. Beneath her intense relief, she found it frightening to see the unshuttered age of her grandmother’s face, to realize the conscious will that kept the aged features animated with the appearance of vigor and strength. Looking into her grandmother’s face, Gaultry was uncomfortably reminded of her last visit to old Melaudiere. The Duchess had commanded great magical power until almost the day of her death—indeed, it was the strength of the Duchess’s final spell that had robbed her body of its last vital reserves.
The magic in the fetish-crown had been very strong. Had Gaultry unwittingly risked Tamsanne by similarly asking her to overextend herself?
Tamsanne’s eyes slitted open. She glanced woozily upward, struggling for focus, her fingers reaching to touch Gaultry’s face. “Listen to me—” she said haltingly.
“Put her on her back,” Gaultry said. “Make her comfortable.” She took Tamsanne’s head into her lap. Her grandmother struggled to speak again, but no words came out. “Give yourself a moment,” Gaultry soothed, smoothing her grandmother’s hair. Then to Tullier, “She needs some water.”
“I think she was poisoned.” Tullier rose from his knees.
“Spell-poisoned,” Gaultry answered. “I should never have let her near that thing, let alone asked her to spell it. I should have known it would be unsafe.”
Tullier shrugged. “We needed answers. Whatever it was has peaked. She overcame it. The worst is past.”
Gaultry inhaled a shuddering breath, biting back an angry response. He was too young to understand the real meaning of Tamsanne’s greatly numbered years. Beneath her power, she was old and frail. It was a relief when he left to get the water. She did not want to be angry with him simply because he was too young to understand.
There was so much that Tamsanne knew. So much that Gaultry needed to screw up her courage and ask her.
Tamsanne, with a weak fluttering movement, indicated she wanted Gaultry’s hand. Gaultry gave it to her eagerly, and then her heart spoke
for her. “Draw strength from me. Draw strength from me to heal yourself.” She bent her head and closed her eyes, picturing the flow of energy within her own body, vital and young, glowing with the green of the Goddess-Twins, the golden fire of Glamour. She pictured her grandmother’s power, darker, more mature, maintained close to her body’s core, only a weak thread extended outward to her fingers, connecting to her granddaughter’s hand. As Gaultry gently traced that thread inward, Mervion’s calm face, unbidden, came into view, Mervion back at the moment when she had bent over Tullier and recovered her power from him. Mervion had not needed elaborate incantations to pull back her strength; she had not needed incantations when she had, immediately afterward, wielded it outward like a weapon. All Mervion had needed was herself.
Gaultry pressed her grandmother’s dry hand between her palms.
Have my strength, Grandmother, the way Tullier had Mervion’s
. Even as she voiced the desire, she felt it coming true, felt power flowing from her young flesh into her grandmother’s swollen old woman’s hands.
Take it, Grandmother; take it and heal.
As her power funneled outward, something broke inside her, like a weakness in an old dam. For a breathless moment she felt giddy, weightless. Then her magic rose before her as it had never risen before, a thousand-faced beast, ready to twist and form as she willed it. She almost laughed, seeing in those faces old, constricted forms—herself puzzling to find the slenderest grasp upon power’s form. In the swell of potential that awaited her command, she realized that all along, she had been asking questions outside herself, when she had needed only to look within. This was what Mervion had known so long; this was the knowledge that had given her sister so much power.
Now Gaultry had it too.
“Gaultry.” Her grandmother’s voice interrupted her wild mental career. “Gaultry, come back. You did what you set out to accomplish.”
The colors spun, scintillating, obscuring her grandmother’s words. Gaultry saw the spirits of animal after animal: a gull, an angry cat, a fierce wild boar. Images of every creature from which she had ever spirit-taken, trapped and mirrored within. As each rose in its turn, she cat-hissed, she mantled in crow-joy, she grunted—
Amid this chaos, a point of stillness emerged: a blossoming of color, a spot of purple. As she focused, she saw it was a purple orchid flower. It began to unfurl, to open, but instead of moving itself, it was as though all else around it was moving away. Gaultry, adrift in the sea of turbulence, reached for it, opening her hand to pluck it free. It was a struggle,
but focusing her will, she seemed to slide forward … Her fingers brushed its stem.
All at once her eyes were open and the image of the flower dissipated. Above her was her grandmother’s face, and beyond, the limitless blue of the morning sky. Somehow she was the one lying on the ground, her head in Tamsanne’s lap, instead of the other way around.
“Grandmother.” Her voice cracked in her throat. “What happened?”
Tamsanne brushed her cheek. “Your power broke loose when you gave me your strength, and you weren’t quite prepared to control it. Twins be thanked, you revived me enough that I had the strength to guide you back to yourself. I sent you the image of the orchid flower—the emblem of Glamour’s power. When you reached for the flower, pushing all else aside—you focused at last on your own magic, deep in your soul’s center, and regained control.”
She helped Gaultry sit up. Tullier, a tin cup in his hand, was standing by, pale with fright. “It’s always been animals with you, my child. You’ve leaned on them, not trusting your own strength.” Tamsanne’s eyes burned down with an expression somewhere between pride and frustration. “I’ve watched you spirit-call to the beasts since you were a tiny child, never looking into yourself for that same strength. But you had to choose your own direction. What you chose gave you another kind of power. You learned that problems have many solutions, if you do not rely merely on your own capacities and strengths. That is an important thing to remember, especially for one who is flushed with power. Tyrants seldom learn it.” She took the cup from Tullier and made Gaultry drink. “Can you sit up? I want to tell you what I discovered, while it’s still sharp in my head.”
Gaultry tentatively lifted herself. A throbbing headache greeted the motion. “I’m listening,” she said faintly. “But give me a moment before I move.”
Tamsanne looked disapprovingly at Tullier. “I’d send you for more water,” she said. “But this time I doubt you’d go.”
“I have a right to know what you saw,” Tullier said. “I’m not going to let you shut me out.”
Tamsanne sighed, but did not persist. To Gaultry, she said, “Two sorcerers performed the spells of this fetish’s making. The real question that yet needs answering—how much did each know of what the other intended? The magic was tightly woven, it’s true, but contradiction lay beside contradiction as it would not have been if both practitioners were fully aware of each other’s designs.” She looked at Gaultry. “The fetish
was intended for you, my dear. Its primary purpose was to drive you so deeply inside yourself that you would have been unable to wake up, unable to play a role in the games of power at court. Had its creators not been so secretive in their cross-purposes, it might have succeeded. But one merely desired you cataleptic. She secretly coded the time of your release. The other—the other one wanted you dead. Between these conflicting intentions, they unwittingly created multiple weak points in the spell. It was that, in part, which allowed you to escape.”

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