The Beauty of Darkness (49 page)

She nodded. “I ripped out the last page and threw the book at the Royal Scholar. I told him to destroy it just as the Chancellor had ordered, and I ran from the room feeling like I'd been betrayed in the most wicked of ways—tricked by the very gift I had trusted.”

“Venda didn't trick you, Mother. The universe sang the name to her. She simply sang it back, and you listened. You yourself said the name seemed right. It had to be someone. Why not me?”

“Because you're my daughter. I would sacrifice my own life, but never yours.”

I reached down and squeezed her hand. “Mother, I chose to make the words true. You had to have felt it in your heart too. You gave me a special blessing on the day I left. You asked the gods to gird me with strength.”

She looked down at my bandaged hand in my lap and shook her head. “But this—” I saw all the fears she had harbored for years crystallized in her eyes.

“Why didn't you ever share this with Father?”

Her eyes shone with tears again.

“You didn't trust him?”

“I couldn't trust him not to speak to anyone else. A wedge had grown between us as far as the cabinet was concerned. It had become a contentious subject between us. He seemed as married to them as he was to me. Maybe more so. The Scholar and I both agreed it was too risky to tell him because it seemed
betrayed by her own
could mean someone in a position of power.”

“And that's when you conspired with the Royal Scholar to send me away.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “We were so close. On your wedding day, I thought you'd soon be gone from Morrighan, and if there actually was anyone here who sought to harm you, you'd be away from them too. Dalbreck was a powerful kingdom that could keep you safe. But then as I admired your kavah along with everyone else, I remembered the verse,
the one marked with claw and vine.
I had always thought it meant a different kind of mark—the scars made by an animal or whip—but there among all the heraldry and intricate designs on your back, in one small part, on your shoulder, there it was, a Dalbreck claw and a Morrighese vine. It was only an innocent kavah, I tried to tell myself, only a coincidence. It would wash away in a matter of days. I wanted to believe it meant nothing.”

“But you had the priest offer the prayer in your native tongue. Just in case.”

She nodded, exhaustion lining her face. “I wanted to believe my plan would still work, but really, I didn't know what would happen next. I could only pray for the gods to gird you with strength, but when King Jaxon laid you on your bed, and I saw what they had done to you—”

Her eyes squeezed shut.

I held her, comforting her as she had comforted me so many times. “I'm still here, Mother,” I whispered. “A few marks are nothing. I have many regrets, but being named Jezelia is not one of them. Neither should it be yours.”

My father stirred, and both of our attentions shot to him. She moved to his side, her arm cradling his head. “Branson?” I heard the hope in her voice.

Incoherent rambles were all he offered back. There was still no change. I watched her shoulders slump.

“We'll talk more later,” I said.

She shook her head absently. “I wanted to be with him. The physician forbade it, saying my presence only agitated him.” She looked up at me, her eyes sharp, fierce as she had once been. “I will see the physican executed for this, Jezelia. I will see all of them dead.”

I nodded, and she turned back to him, her lips grazing his forehead as she whispered to a man who couldn't hear her, who might never hear her again. I was ashamed I had ever called him a toad.

I lingered, staring at them together, feeling dazed, watching the desperate worry in her eyes, and remembering how my father had called for her,
my Regheena
, the tenderness in his voice, even as he lay delirious. They loved each other, and I wondered how I hadn't seen it before.

*   *   *

I looked down at the Royal Scholar still seated on the stone floor. He'd been there waiting for an hour.

“I see you still have all your toes,” I said.

He stretched out a leg and winced, rubbing his thigh. “You and your henchmen were convincing. I assume I can move now?”

“I've always loathed you,” I said, glaring down at him. “I still do.”

“Understandable. I'm not such a likable fellow.”

“And you hate me as well.”

He shook his head, his black eyes looking unapologetically into mine. “Never. You exasperated, annoyed, and defied me, but it was nothing less than I expected. I pushed you—perhaps too hard at times. Your mother wouldn't let me discuss the gift with you, so I did as she ordered. I tried to make you strong in other ways.”

I held on to my hatred, nursing it like a treasured habit, like a nail I had chewed down to the quick. I wasn't done. I wanted more, but I already sensed a truth beneath his deceptions.

“Get up,” I ordered, trying to make every one of my words sting. “We'll speak in your
former
office. My mother is resting.”

He struggled to his feet, his legs stiff, and I motioned to a guard to help him.

He adjusted his robes, smoothing out the wrinkles, trying to regain his dignity, and faced me. Waiting.

“My mother seems to think you can explain everything. I doubt that.” I put my hand on my dagger as threat. “Your lies will have to be very good to convince me.”

“Then maybe my truths would be better.”

*   *   *

I saw, once again, the Royal Scholar I had always known, the one who could snarl and spit at the slightest provocation. His ears flamed red when I accused him of sending scholars to Venda. “Never!” he shouted. When I told him about their dirty work in the caverns there, he jumped to his feet and paced his office, calling out the names of the scholars. I confirmed with a nod after each one. He whipped around to face me. Now it wasn't just anger I saw in his face but stabbing betrayal, as if each scholar had personally gutted him with a knife.

“Not Argyris too?”

“Yes,” I said. “Him too.”

His rage caved inward, and he faltered, his chin briefly trembling. I heard my mother's words again.
Of this much I'm certain. He never betrayed you.
If this was an act, it was a very convincing one. Apparently Argyris was the lowest blow. He sat down in his chair, his knuckles tapping his desk. “Argyris was one of my star pupils. We had been together for years.
Years.
” He leaned back in his chair, his lips pulled tight across his teeth. “The Chancellor claimed I kept losing my lead scholars because I was difficult. They all left with little notice for remote Sacristas in Morrighan. So they said. I went to see Argyris a month after he left, but the Sacrista said he'd stayed only a few days and then moved on. They didn't know where he had gone.”

If he was angry when I told him about the scholars, he was incensed when I questioned him about the bounty hunter sent to slit my throat. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, mumbling
stupidity
under his breath.

“I was careless,” he finally said. “When I found the books missing and your note in their place, I went about looking for them.” A single brow rose and he shot me a pointed stare. “You did say you reshelved them in their proper place. I thought they would be in the archives.” He said the Chancellor found him and his assistants tearing the shelves apart and asked what they were searching for. An assistant jumped in with an answer before the Royal Scholar could say anything. “The Chancellor was furious and searched through a few shelves himself before he stormed out of the room yelling for me to burn the book if I found it as I'd been ordered to do in the first place. After five years, I found it odd that he even remembered the text, since he had declared it barbarian jibberish. “I began wondering about him at that point. I even searched his office, but turned up nothing.”

That didn't surprise me. My results had been the same. The Royal Scholar leaned forward, the anger draining from his face. “I was required by law to sign the single warrant for your arrest and offer a bounty for your return. It was posted in the village square, but that warrant didn't include murder. I never sent a bounty hunter to kill you, nor did your father. He only sent trackers to find and retrieve you.”

I stood, walking around the room. I didn't want to believe him. I spun to face him again. “Why did you ever hide the Song of Venda away in the first place? My mother told you to destroy it too.”

“I'm a scholar, Jezelia. I don't destroy books, no matter what they contain. Such old texts are a rarity, and this appeared to be one of the oldest I had ever come across. I'd only recently placed the Testaments of Gaudrel in the drawer beside the Vendan text in what I thought was a secure hiding place. I was eager to translate it.”

I saw the energy in his eyes when he spoke of the old texts.

“I translated most of the Gaudrel text,” I said.

His attention was riveted, and I told him about the history it contained, cautiously gauging his reaction.

“So Gaudrel and Venda were sisters,” he repeated as if trying to eat a tough piece of meat, chewing on words that he couldn't quite swallow. “And Morrighan the grandchild of Gaudrel? All one family.” He rubbed his throat as if trying to coax the words down. “And Jafir de Aldrid a scavenger.”

“You don't believe me?”

His forehead furrowed. “Unfortunately, I think I do.”

He went to the bureau I had taken the text from, and I watched with surprise as he opened a drawer with a false bottom.

You have secrets.
I had known it that day, but once I had found one secret, I hadn't searched for more.

“Just how many secrets do you have, Royal Scholar?”

“I'm afraid this is the last of my surprises.” He laid a thick sheaf on his desk.

“What is it?” I asked.

He opened it and spread out multiple documents. “Letters,” he said. “They were found decades ago by the last Royal Scholar, but they contradicted certain facets of the Morrighese Holy Text. Like me, he did not destroy rare texts, but they were an anomaly we didn't understand.”

“So they were hidden away because they told a different history.”

He nodded. “These support what you just told me. It seems the revered father of our people, Jafir de Aldrid, was a scavenger who could neither read nor write when Morrighan met him. After they arrived here, he practiced his reading and writing skills by writing letters. I've translated about half of them.” He shoved the stack toward me. “These are his love letters to her.”

Love letters?
“I think you've made a mistake. They couldn't be love letters. According to Gaudrel, Morrighan was stolen by the thief Harik and sold for a sack of grain to Aldrid.”

“Yes. The letters confirm that. But somehow…” He shuffled through the pages and read from one that had been translated. “
I am yours, Morrighan, forever yours … and when the last star of the universe blinks silent, I will still be yours.
” He looked back at me. “That sounds like a love letter to me.”

The Royal Scholar had been wrong. He did have another surprise for me, and it seemed the real history of Morrighan would always hold some secrets.

 

CHAPTE
R
SEVE
N
TY-TWO

The plaza was full. They had come to see Princess Arabella hanged. Instead I had to tell them I would be leading them in the fight of their lives. I stood on the portico balcony, my mother standing on one side of me, the Royal Scholar on the other, Rafe and Kaden on either side of them. What was left of the cabinet stood behind us.

Down below, a row of fidgeting lords, discomfited that the conclave was convening with the citizenry, was afforded seats at the front of the plaza. Just behind the lords, Berdi, Gwyneth, and Pauline stood shoulder to shoulder, looking up at me, their assured gazes giving me strength. Sven, Jeb, Tavish, and Orrin, along with squads of soldiers, were poised on the perimeter, watching the crowd.

There was confusion, a murmur rippling through the plaza when my mother stepped forward to speak. She told them the king was ill after having been poisoned by traitors, the same traitors who had sent her son and his company into an ambush, and then she named the traitors. At the mention of the Viceregent, a shocked hush fell, as if he stood at the gallows and his neck had just snapped at the end of a rope. Of the cabinet, he was a favorite among the people, making it harder for them to fathom. She told them the plot had been uncovered because of Princess Arabella's loyalty to Morrighan—not betrayal—and that now it was time for them to listen to me.

I stepped forward and told them of the threat coming our way, one I had witnessed with my own eyes, a terrible greatness not unlike the devastation described in the Holy Text. “The Komizar of Venda has amassed an army and weapons that could wipe all memory of Morrighan from this world.”

Lord Gowan rose, his hands tight balls at his sides. “Beaten by a barbarian nation? Morrighan is a strong kingdom. We've stood for centuries—the oldest and most lasting realm on the continent. We are too great to fall!” Several lords rumbled agreement, rolling their eyes at the naïve princess. The crowd shifted on their feet.

“Are we greater than the Ancients, Lord Gowan?” I asked. “Did they not fall? Is the evidence not all around us? Look at the fallen temples that form our foundations, the magnificent tumbled bridges, the wondrous cities. The Ancients flew among the stars! They whispered, and their voices boomed over mountaintops! They were angry, and the ground shook with fear! Their greatness was unmatched.” I eyed the other lords. “And yet they and their world is gone. No one is too great to fall.”

Lord Gowan stood firm. “You forget that we are the chosen Remnant.”