Queen of Song and Souls (37 page)

Throwing on a cloak with a deep hood, he exited the room and snuck out the back door of the boardinghouse into the alleyway.

From the darkness, a familiar voice said, "Going somewhere, Nour?"

Gethen spun, magic sparking to his fingertips, but before he could raise his shield, he felt the prick of a dart stab into his neck. His vision went dim, and his legs collapsed beneath him.

"Please, I don't know anything." Jiarine Montevero wept as the guard dragged her down the corridor of Old Castle Prison. "I've already told you everything! I don't know any more. Please! You've got to believe me!"

After Master Fellows's revelation that Lord Bolor was the Mage who had tried to kill him, Prince Dorian had convinced his mother to let him bring everyone closely related with Lord Bolor to Old Castle Prison for questioning. Since Jiarine was Dolor's most constant companion in the court, she had, of course, been among the courtiers taken and detained.

She'd spent all afternoon being questioned. How well had she known Lord Bolor? What had they spoken about? Did she know where he was? Thanks to the memory spells she'd invoked the moment she realized the guards were coming for her, she'd been able to answer all their questions with bewildered innocence.

Now it was the middle of the night, and the guards had come to take her from her cell again. She was certain this did not bode well Worse, the memory spell had long since worn off. The guards delivered her into what was clearly a torture chamber: stone walls lit by the flickering orange firelight of bare torches on the walls, a table laid out with all manner of knives and pincers, what looked to be an ancient rack to stretch limbs until bones popped from their sockets. A cloaked figure stood in the shadowy corner of the room.

The guards pressed her into a chair, locked the manacles welded to the armrests into place around her wrists, and left the room.

Alone with the cloaked man in the corner, Jiarine began to shake as genuine terror set in. "P-please. I swear to you, I've told you all I know. Call a
shei'dalin
. Truthspeak me! I've nothing to hide."

"Such a convincing liar. My dear, it really is an exceptional talent. I almost believe you myself."

Jiarine froze. She knew that voice. She knew it as well as she knew her own. "M-master?”

The man in the corner threw back the hood of his cloak to reveal a face she knew. A face she had known and loved and hated since she was a foolish teenage girl who sold her soul to a handsome Mage in exchange for wealth and power.

Kolis Manza cocked his handsome face to one side and gave her the charming, slightly quizzical smile that had won her heart so long ago. "You know, I had almost forgotten how truly beautiful you are."

"Master Manza! Thank the gods you are alive."

His expression hardened instantly. “The gods had nothing to do with it, I promise you." He took a breath and forced another small smile, but this time she realized there was something different about him. A coldness to his eyes that hadn't existed before.

"M-master? Why are you here? Why did you have me brought here?"

"As it so happens, this is one of the few rooms in the prison with privacy wards woven into the stone. With a Mage on the loose, the Fey are scanning every fingerspan of the city, looking for magic that might give away Master Nour's position. But thanks to the construction of this room, any magic woven in here is undetectable outside these walls."

He sighed and walked towards her. "You see, Jiarine, in exposing himself, Nour has cast the light of suspicion upon you as well. Given our past association . . . and my upcoming return to court, this will not do. Your integrity must be beyond reproach so that no hint of suspicion should fall on me. Unfortunately, no matter how skilled a liar you are, there are ways to elicit the truth from you. Which is why, my sweet
umagi
, as much as I regret it, I must permanently erase from your memory every delectable moment we have spent together as our true selves."

"Master?"

He leaned towards her. "Don't worry, Jiarine. This won't hurt." He smiled coldly. "That part comes later."

"Tortured?” Annoura stared in disbelief at the Dazzle kneeling before her. "You expect me to believe that Lady Montevero — a Favorite in my personal court — was tortured? You must be mistaken, Ser! She was simply taken for questioning, and to be detained until a Truthspeaker could arrive to verify her word."

The Dazzle bowed deeply and kept his eyes lowered. "I went to visit her this morning, to bring her a few trinkets to help pass the time. There isn't a fingerspan on her poor face that isn't bruised and mottled . . . and her hands, her poor hands. All her fingers were broken. She was barely conscious. All she kept saying was, 'I am innocent. Tell the queen I am innocent.'"

Annoura rose to her feet. She clenched her hands at her waist to keep them from shaking. "Get out. All of you. This instant!"

The courtiers knew that tone of voice. Every last one of them leapt to their feet and beat a hasty retreat.

Annoura began to pace, her mind a whirl. First, Master Fellows's near death, then the revelation about Lord Bolor, then the manhunt across the city that still—even a full day later—had turned up nothing.

All that had been upsetting enough, but this news... this defied all belief.

After Master Fellows had named Lord Bolor as his attacker—and an Elden Mage to boot—she had, of course, wondered if Jiarine's fervent attempts to insinuate him into Annoura's presence were part of some plot. That was why she had not objected when Dori insisted on taking Lady Montevero to Old Castle for questioning.

But torture! She never would have approved that. Not for Jiarine. At least, not without some sort of proof, beyond baseless supposition and guilt by association! After their last months of friendship, Jiarine deserved that much, at least.

Annoura marched over to the wall and yanked on the bell-pull. Her Master of Chambers arrived a few chimes later, just as she was pressing her royal seal at the bottom of a parchment. "Your Majesty?"

"Summon my son this instant. And send Lord Hewen and a carriage to Old Castle Prison with this." She held out the sealed parchment. The ink was still damp, and the handwriting her own rather than the royal calligrapher's flowing script, but that seal on the bottom made the document as legitimate and binding as any law of Celieria. "Have him deliver this royal writ of release to the prison master. I want Lady Montevero under this roof and in Lord Hewen's care before dinner this evening."

The Master of Chambers bowed. "Of course, Your Majesty. I will see to it personally."

Three bells later, she and half the court stood waiting in the courtyard as the royal carriage carrying Lord Hewen and Lady Montevero rolled across the paving stones and came to a halt at the foot of the stairs.

Her skin mottled, her blue eyes dazed with pain, Jiarine Montevero clung to Lord Hewen's strong arm as she made her trembling descent from the carriage to the courtyard.

"Lady Montevero!" Annoura swept across the remaining distance, her arms outstretched. "You poor dear. I sent the release the moment I heard." She had intended to clasp Jiarine's hand, but seeing the mangled state of her fingers, Annoura chose to grip the lady's face instead and deliver a light kiss upon her cheeks.

"Good gods!" a rich, masculine voice declared. "What's happened to her?"

Annoura's heart stilled for a moment. She turned her head to see the familiar, stunningly handsome nobleman standing beside the open door of a second coach she hadn't noticed coming in after the first. Her eyes drank in the long-missed sight of his face, his eyes, the careless tousle of his hair as it fell across his brow.

“Your Majesty," Lord Hewen murmured, "we need to get Lady Montevero inside. In her current weakened state, she could easily catch her death of cold."

The admonishment snapped her back to her senses. "Of course." Turning to the courtiers, she waved two of her current favorites to her side. "Come quickly. Help Lady Montevero to her rooms. You there ..." She caught sight of the dim-skull Dazzle. "Mairi, have the servants stoke the fire. Tell cook to send hot tea and keflee—and something warm and nourishing for the lady to eat. Quickly!"

As the courtiers carried Jiarine Montevero inside, Annoura turned to the unexpected new arrival to court, the handsome, too-long-absent Favorite who had occupied her thoughts far more than was prudent. "Ser Vale." He still had the power to make her pulse pound when he fixed his gaze so intently upon her. He looked at her as if she were the center of his universe.

"Your Majesty." He bowed deeply and lifted his eyes to smile in that slow, seductive way of his that made her heart leap into her throat. "Your beauty, my queen, still shines as brilliant as the sun, and I am but a poor, withered bloom too long absent from your radiance."

From any other courtier, such effusive, overblown compliments would sound ridiculous. But Vale spoke with such a ring of sincerity, the words fell like beautiful poetry from his lips. It was all she could do to maintain her composure and say, "We are glad you are returned to us, Ser," in a modulated voice when what she wanted to do was leap and shout for joy, as giddy as a schoolgirl deep in the throes of her first crush.

Vale was back.

Elvia ~ Deep Woods

Six days after leaving the Dreamer River, the Fey approached the heart of Deep Woods. Close-knit stands of trees vying for sunlight and rich soil gave way to fewer, much older trees, massive arboreal giants that soared so high Ellysetta thought their treetops might just pierce the clouds.

She glanced back at Rain as he rode through a shaft of sunlight, and for a moment, she saw him differently, as if a second image were superimposed atop him. Rain, but not Rain, His hair a deep bronze rather than black, his muscular body encased in gleaming silver armor, not golden war steel. The image reminded her of the man she'd seen in that strange vision she'd had in the Dreamer. The vision she and Rain had both shared.

Ellysetta was convinced they'd seen a glimpse of the life of Fellana the Bright—the tairen who had transformed herself into a Fey woman to be with the Fey king she loved. But when she'd asked Fanor about it, all he'd said was that the Dreamer showed what it liked. The vision could have been the past or the future or possibly a vision born of their own dilemma that had never truly existed, nor ever would. The point was to find meaning in the vision that they could apply to their current situation.

She blinked, and the image of the bronze-haired Fey king disappeared. What meaning was she supposed to have gained? Was she supposed to accept that her tairen would never find its wings? That she and Rain had lived before—or would again? That love was a choice and she just needed to accept it to complete their bond!

Fanor had said the Dreamer River would enlighten them, but all it had done was confuse her more.

Ellysetta ducked her head to miss a low-hanging branch that was as big around as the trunk of a hundred-year-old fire-oak. These trees are incredible," she said to Rain as they rode past the massive trunk of the colossus. They remind me of the Sentinels outside of Dharsa, only much, much larger." The Fey and the Elves were riding single file down a narrow trail that wound through the ferns carpeting the forest floor. Beams of sunlight filtered down from the canopy overhead, illuminating the rich, vivid green hues of the undergrowth and the golden tones of the smooth tree trunks so that the forest seemed to glow with radiant light.

"These
are
Sentinels," Rain said. "The ones in Dharsa came from the Elves, a gift long ago, when our two races lived as one. But these are much older even than those." His body swayed to the leisurely walking pace of his
ba'houda
mount.

"They are the watchers of the wood," Fanor said "Nothing escapes their notice—or their memory—and they live for a very long time."

"How long?" Ellysetta asked.

"Longer than any Elf or Fey." The Elf leaned left in his saddle and patted a nearby tree whose trunk was at least a full tairen length wide. He murmured a stream of lyrical Elvish to it, and the tree's branches fluttered in response. This Sentinel, for instance, has lived since the dawn of the Third Age. He is a fine young tree."

Ellysetta laughed. "Young? The Third Age began at least a hundred thousand years ago."

Fanor smiled. "It's young for a Sentinel. In Navahele, the oldest of the ancients there put down his roots in the Time Before Memory, before the First Age."

Her jaw dropped. "But that was over a million years ago."

"Bayas,
so it was. He and the other ancients of Navahele hold in their life rings many memories long since forgotten by the rest of the world."

"Do they share those memories?" Rain asked.

"Not with me." Fanor ducked his head to miss a low-hanging branch. "The ancients speak only to the king and queen of Elvia, Lord Galad and his sister Ilona Brighthand, the Lady of Silvermist,"

As they rode up the crest of a hill, Fanor's face brightened. "We are here." He spurred his mount faster, and the
ba'houda
took off. When they reached the top of the crest, Fanor reined his mount to a halt and waited for the others to catch up.

"Behold," he said when they drew near, "Navahele. City of the ancients." A smile of joy and pride spread across his face and made his skin glow with a soft golden aura.