The Stillness of the Sky (22 page)

Unable to find words, I looked up into the Bard’s face, searching every feature as the image of the person before me lined up with the woman I remembered.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes, her hands shaking as she reached out to touch my face. “Make a wish, Jack.”

Sobbing, I collapsed on her lap, the torrent of emotion washing away thoughts of anyone or anything else but her. She held me there, her tears dampening my hair as she whispered choked apologies into my ear. What little anger I’d ever felt towards her vanished in those moments, replaced by relief and gratitude that life had seen fit to reunite us after so much time apart.

The others let us have our time, not disturbing us with so much as quiet conversation. Eventually I recovered, though I couldn’t bring myself to pull away until she lifted my face to see me again.

“You’re more beautiful and kind than I ever dreamed you’d be, Jack. And how clever are you? You found every clue I left you, pieced together every bit of information. There’s not a mother alive that could be more proud of her child.”

Smiling, I wiped away my tears to clear my vision. “I’m not so clever that I didn’t need some help.”

My mother looked behind me to where Willem sat. “Thank you for all you’ve done for her. I’m glad my songs found the right ears.”

I turned and glanced between him and my mother. “Your songs?”

She smiled softly at me then returned her attention to him. “My first visit here, do you remember it?”

Will’s face went slack and he nodded. “But you weren’t singing. In the five years you’ve come and gone, you only played and told jokes.”

My mother sighed. “My gift is more subtle, I’m afraid. I apologize for making you a pawn in this, but a mother would do nearly anything to keep her child safe. I hum as I play, so you don’t consciously hear it, but my thoughts and feelings find their way into the right minds. I was searching for someone at court with true goodness in their heart. Only such a person would’ve held on to those suggestions for so long.” Her gaze drifted back to me with a knowing grin. “Though I’d not imagined he’d dedicate himself to such an extent.”

My face burned with the heat of my blush. “How…?”

Sudam chuckled. “Bards are very observant by nature, often picking up on feelings others miss. Even had I not seen him hovering over you when your fever took, it was very clear to us when he presented you at court.”

“My father has a habit of inappropriate behavior towards young women,” Willem growled. “I despise the way he looks at any of them.”

“I’d second the concern,” Kela added. “King Ivor’s intentions for our little sister are disconcerting.”

Jī-Shae scowled. “Men granted power are often too weak to bear the privilege.”

My mother turned my face to her once more, her smile a façade on her worries. “But we have many other things to talk about, I think.”

I nodded. “We do.”

“My story is a long one, but I’d rather hear yours first,” she said. “I know you’d not have left him without any other choice, so it worries me that you did. While I’m happier than I can say to have you with me again, I can’t help the guilt that—”

Holding up a hand, I stopped her. “Don’t. Don’t feel guilty. You did what you had to far longer than most Bards could, from my understanding. And you’re right. There wasn’t a choice the day I left.”

With that, I began recounting the days since I was forced to take the cows to Breen. I spoke of my wish, discovering my father’s intentions for me, and my decision to let him go. I explained my journey from home, to Mira, to Prudence, and the wolves. I took them with me on my climb up the beanstalk, past the clouds and into a castle and a cage. I carried them along through my discoveries and disbelief and escape. I told them of the Alabaster Heart, and Ro, and Crilla, and the prince who wouldn’t let me alone. I trembled when I recalled the showdown with the Piper and entrusting Willem with all I knew. Finally, my tale came to a close, with my dearest hope sitting before me at last.

“And that is what I know,” I said, releasing a long breath. “I suppose the end of my story lies with you.”

Her cheeks wet with tears, she slid to the floor and gathered me in her arms. “My precious darling,” she said. “What I have to tell you will not be kind or fair, but I shall spend the rest of my days doing all I can to ease the burden of what you’re about to hear.”

I squeezed her tightly, already preparing myself for whatever tragedy her words would bring me. “Better to know than to guess at far worse. I need you to tell me all of it.”

An unseasonably chilly breeze drifted in from the half-open balcony doors. Sudam, eerily silent, built a fire in the hearth, and we all settled in to listen.

“I grew up in Sericea,” my mother said, smoothing my hair behind my ear, “not Litania. My mother was a daughter of lower nobility, but far from the wealth of the Benforno court. My father I never knew, and my arrival was quite the scandal, being illegitimate. Still, my family loved me well enough, and there was little reason I should’ve been as restless as I was. I ate up stories then, with an absolutely unending passion. When I’d finished with the family’s library, I explored the collections of friends, neighbors, and peddlers passing through, anyone who had a tale to tell, really. Learning that my father was a Bard, when I was around your age, I think, it explained a great deal about my urges. It didn’t take long for me to reach my own conclusions about the path my life would take, so I left.”

“Just like that?” I asked, a little stunned she’d make that decision so quickly.

She nodded. “Mmm. It was easy for me then. They thought to marry me off, but my mother knew how disastrous that would be, and she warned me. I set off in the world, on the hunt for stories with more determination than ever. I thought I might even find my father, but it was more out of curiosity for what I was than any sentimentality.”

“Did you ever find him?”

“No,” she sighed, “I never did, but I found something I thought was better.”

It was hard for me to imagine finding something better than the truth about oneself, but she’d had the benefit of knowing basically where she came from, and no two people would ever want the same thing for the same exact reason. “What did you find?”

Her eyes crinkled with her mischievous smile. “A legend.” From her pocket, she produced a small, gray pouch, carefully dumping the contents onto her palm. A single black thorn, larger than my thumbnail, tumbled out across her hand. “The story went that a handsome man, a king, was cursed into slumber, penned in by giant thorns and guarded by a hideous beast. So long had he slept, that most had forgotten the location of his castle and the details about him, but he was said to be one of the most powerful men who’d ever lived.” She held the thorn out to me. “At seventeen, you might imagine how impossible I found it to ignore. The sleeping king was my beanstalk, Jack.”

Her gaze locked on to the thorn as I examined it, but her eyes were focused somewhere far, far away.

“Did you find him, then?” I prompted.

“Hmm?” My mother blinked, clearing the haze of reminiscence from her vision. “Oh, yes. I did, but… Well, some things are hidden away for good reason.”

I handed back the thorn and she returned it to its pouch, standing and walking over to the balcony doors to stare out into the night. “We make many mistakes when we’re young, and most often where our hearts are concerned. Bard or not, I wasn’t immune to that more than anyone else ever is. What I awoke in that castle was not a man, but it took two years before I saw him for what he was. Men have hearts. Men are capable of caring for something outside of themselves and learning from their mistakes. No, what I awoke in that castle was not a man, but a monster.”

She was silent for a moment, then released the softest sigh of longing I’d ever heard another human being utter before returning to her chair. “For two years I helped him in anything he asked of me. He taught me to use my gifts far better than any Bard might have done. His knowledge was vast and old, and his books… oh, his books. I’d never seen their like, and I absorbed them as a sponge in water. He’d teach and encourage, tempt me into doing things most would never entertain, but I was hungry. His books, his words, they fed me until I thought I’d burst, yet I’d still ache for more. He laced every foul request with sweet sentiments and promises. One morning, I awoke and couldn’t even recognize myself in the mirror anymore. The restlessness I’d felt in my bones since I was young was there, but as a chained, cowering beast, addicted to the scraps the master provided. After two years, I realized the endless fountain of knowledge was a mere trickle.”

The sad smile she wore tore at my heart. The depth of pure pain within her seeped from her every pore. “When he bade me to sing for the newly widowed queen of Bern, that was when I knew. I saw his eyes for true that day, not as a mystery to be solved, but as the darkness that filled his soul. I stole away in the dead of night, scared out of my mind for what he’d do if he caught me. It took me weeks of skulking and creeping and trickery to find my way out of Bern. The mountains were the worst, but I was determined. A month free of him, and I relaxed for the first time in… Well, even now I can’t remember. It was a short-lived reprieve, however. Not long after that, maybe a week, an old woman stopped me on the road. She asked if I needed a place to go where we’d be safe.”

Air caught in my lungs, though I felt as though I hadn’t taken a breath in hours my heart pounded so fast.

My mother nodded. “She knew before I did, Jack. When she told me I was with child, I didn’t believe her at first. I think she saw plainly enough that I was alone in the world and desperate for help. She knew of a farmer, an infinitely kind soul. The man had a son with no prospects of his own. When the old woman left me with them, I used the tricks I’d learned to convince them I’d always been there, that the child I carried was that useless son’s. I hid us away from the world, Jack. If he’d known about you…” She shivered. “No. I couldn’t let that happen. I’d die first. That was why I stayed, Jack. Even for the drinking, the abuse, the torment of hiding my gift and remaining in one place so long, it was a far better fate for us than to let your true father set one finger on you.”

Through all of the information whirling in my brain, a single question clawed its way out of my constricted throat. “Mother…” The word was hoarse and cracked when I spoke. “Who was he?”

She pinched her eyes shut, as though refusing to look at the world would make the truth less real. “They know him now as King Alder Tillendale. He was killed trying to hold Sericea’s crown after taking Bern, though I’m not entirely sure of the story behind that. What most don’t know, however, is that many, many centuries ago, the world called him Liras, last king of the Dinnarian Empire.”

Everyone erupted into shouts of disbelief, hurling unanswerable questions into the air between them. Her words spun around me, twirling so fast I felt dizzy. My father was not my father. My father was dead. My father had been a king. My father was a monster. I shut my eyes against the noise, willing them all to stop, trying to think past it. If I could get one moment of quiet, perhaps I could absorb it, understand it…

“All of you stop!” Willem’s voice resounded above the others, silencing them at last. “Jack,” he said, his words soft, “are you—”

“Please leave,” I whispered, struggling to find speech.

“But—”

I stood and held up my hands, turning my face from all of them. “Everyone. Just go. I need…” I pressed my fingers against my temples. “I need time to think. Please. Leave now.”

Kela was the first to move, Jī-Shae directly behind her. Sudam glanced between me and my mother, but said nothing and followed the other Bards in retreat.

“You, too,” I said, first looking at Will, and then my mother. “Both of you.”

Her eyes pleaded with me. “Jack, I—”

“I’m not angry,” I said to her. “I just need time.”

She swallowed heavily, but nodded, reluctantly heading for the door. Only Willem remained behind. When I made to protest, he smiled at me.

“If you think this changes anything for me, you should know that I won’t release you from your promise so easily. Enchantment or no, I can’t change my heart.”

I was beyond the ability to form a reply, and he turned away before what he said fully registered.

“If you need anything,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m two doors down to the right, same side as you.”

With that, he was gone, leaving me to relive my mother’s story on my own.

Chapter 18

I wouldn’t say I slept much that night. My eyes refused to close, my mind insistent that I continue to endlessly mull over possibilities about who and what I was. True, I was a Bard, but what more than that? My father had been a man so evil that he’d turned my mother into a weapon, so reviled that he’d been sealed away in a hidden castle guarded by horrors of its own. He was a king thrice over, once lording over an empire that history painted as bloodthirsty and power-hungry, devastating any who stood in its path. What did that make me? What sort of evil might run through the blood in my veins?
 

Morning arrived with no answers and dark circles under my eyes. When the chambermaid came at dawn, I startled her with my presence on the balcony. She combed my hair and helped me dress, but otherwise remained mute in a strange, awestruck trance.

The morning meal was a dazed distraction for me. Three times the king addressed me, and I only answered because Sudam prodded me seconds before. After I’d eaten my fill, a servant came up beside me, presenting my lute.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” King Ivor said with a patronizing smile, “would you play for us a little this morning?”

After everything the day before, my thoughts were scattered, my concentration minimal at best, and my mood none too conducive to light entertainment. But, as it was the king’s request, there was little choice for me in the matter. With a silent nod, I rose from my seat, catching looks of concern from Will and my mother both, and transplanted myself in a chair at the head of the room. There’d be no dancing from me.