Gaultry read this passage over twice, her heart pounding against her ribs. When Tamsanne and Julie had told her that Richielle and Delcora had threatened them, they had offered no specifics. She had thought they meant some nebulous menace, nothing like this deliberate plan and witness of one Brood member’s destruction. As the Prince’s sworn protector, Delcora had twisted her duty to take it as her right, if nothing more, to stand passive as Melaney was sent overseas to certain death.
This scroll—Gaultry stared down at it in horror—Dervla must have read it many times over. Did Delcora’s daughter also believe that her rights as High Priestess extended to premeditated murder? Melaney delivered into the hands of the Bissanty … It was a thing spoken of with horror still, fifty years later. Surely Dervla could not countenance that!
Following the passage about Melaney, there was another blank space. When the script began again, the writing was smaller, ragged, as though the author had written in the grasp of strong emotion:
A fever fell upon me as I recorded this day’s acts. Emiera’s cool hand swept my brow, Elianté lifted me. Empurpled clouds parted. I have seen a vision of things as they are meant to be.
Not all that comes of the Gods is made of sweetness. On the day we lifted Corinne to her Princely throne, my baby fell from my womb. This loss brought me pain beyond words—I, Delcora of Princeport, who have served the gods faithfully all my days. That child should have been my heir, the greatest Priest Tielmark has ever known. From within my womb, he witnessed Corinne’s coronation. He felt the presence of the Gods. He knew their power. He would have borne that knowledge from the hour of his birth.
But I gave all my power to the spell that day, and nothing remained to hold him in my body. I must admit my frailty here: I questioned the Great Twins’ wisdom on that day, even as I bowed to them. They, who upheld me through so many trials, seemed to have abandoned me in this.
But on this day, Emiera’s Feast 250th, despite past puling, I see that the Goddess Twins have mercy, and that even myself, flawed servant to their mercies, will be rewarded. There was purpose to my loss: my body sacrifice will receive its reward, and that in greater measure. All that we of the Brood have earned with our acts will be requited. As Melaney Sevenage paid for her faithlessness, I too shall be requited in my due turn.
In today’s fever, the balance scales of the Great Twins were revealed, and I glimpsed my reward openly. I tremble even to write here what I saw. The terrible symmetry is almost beyond my mind to fathom: if Tamsanne-bitch of Arleon Forest had only shared the secret that kept her own womb sealed, my son would have lived. In denying me this, Tamsanne killed my child, as surely as if her hands had twisted his neck.
Tonight the Great Ladies of Tielmark promised me the redemption of my loss. I will get another child. This very night I saw her face as she grew from child to woman, her rise to power like a meteor in its flight. Her name will be Dervla, and twinned Goddess-power will run through her like a river swollen in spring.
The promise the Goddess-Twins offered me showed me more. Lousielle’s prophecy will follow unto my child, and all others of the Brood, marking them for death until Tielmark has a King, until Corinne or one of her children redeems kingship’s red throne. The fates of the Brood witches are ever laced together until that throne is gained. Dervla must be made stronger even than the Great Twins have shown me, if she is not to quickly follow the Brood’s fate.
I have decided what to do. The changeling child of Tamsanne’s womb will serve to make my Dervla strong: all power that is gathered in Tamsanne’s child will pass to mine, the day that I command it. I am High Priestess. I am the Prince’s Highest Protector. The border-witch will have to bow. When stars align, when Andion’s Moon rides the night sky, Tamsanne will cede from her child all that is my due. From that day forward, Dervla’s power will shine forth like a star.
All this I foresee, and it will come to pass. I am Tielmark’s High Priestess, the true protector of the realm. I can see the future.
Gaultry stepped back from the lectern.
“Some part of this happened,” she said, disturbed. “But is any of it truth?” Dame Julie and Tamsanne had not interpreted the punishments inflicted on the dissenting Brood-members as divine retribution.
Gaultry seized the second dun-colored scroll and laid it open. It had decorated margins like the first scroll, but lacked an ornamented caption.
I am finally dying. My daughter will take my place. She will close my eyes, will don my chain of power. At last she will take into herself the strength of my magical power. Despite my fears, she has risen at last above the other acolytes, and the Goddess-Twins have granted her the just reward: she
will
be the next High Priestess. But I am not content. Though her power is strong, Dervla has yet to see the stars, lit from within by the Great Twins’ power.
She has yet to hear their voices, whispering a thousand songs of beauty and despair. The fountain that is their strength does not yet run within her. What is holding her back?
Last night I felt Great Emiera’s touch. I was too weak to receive the whole of the vision. One image remained to me only: a woman with auburn hair, dancing over a bonfire’s coals. I thought long upon this vision, trying to discover its meaning. I strained to see the woman’s face, but it was beyond my strength to bring her features into focus.
But if my vision is clouded, my mind remains clear. There is no doubt in me who the red woman must be: Tamsanne’s cursed get, twin-child to my long dead first-born. The child the border-witch held within her womb the night the Brood confirmed Corinne’s crown, and my first-born lost his life.
Tamsanne assured me her child was dead. Before we allowed her to disappear back into her forest, I examined her body and confirmed it. But somehow the border-witch deceived me. There was no miscarriage. I see now by this vision that she defied me. She defied the gods. All to preserve the monster in her womb.
Dervla will never have that child’s power. The time for her to take it has passed. Knowing that she should have had it has lessened her. Giving my daughter the freedom of my archive has lessened her …
The remainder of the writing had been rubbed away, whether at the time of writing or long after, Gaultry could not tell.
She rocked back on her heels and glanced around the chamber. Was all the paper that she could see here old Delcora’s records? Could one woman possibly have amassed so much paper and parchment in a single generation? She pulled a half dozen scrolls from a nearby rack and glanced at their contents: a description of a courtier’s marriage, a list of the officiants; the record of a moonlit hunt for herbs; a list of the members of a Princely hunting party. The contents of another rack revealed more of the same. All dating to the years Delcora had reigned as High Priestess. The dun-colored scrolls were reserved for descriptions of state ceremonies and “fevers” that Delcora ascribed to visitations from the Great Twins.
A scattered survey confirmed her suspicion. All the papers—or at least all those she looked at—were Delcora’s.
The room contained, unfiltered, the contents of a dead woman’s
mind. It was almost too much for Gaultry to take in. A dead woman, a powerful witch, who had sat for decades at the Prince of Tielmark’s right hand, maintaining meticulous, if scatty, records of her service. Why had she preserved all this? Why had her daughter preserved it?
Gaultry looked again at the scrolls that Dervla had left by the lectern. Did Dervla use her mother’s words as a touchstone, to defend or define her own actions? When had the High Priestess last viewed these two scrolls? What had been her purpose in doing so?
The third scroll, the fragile scroll, seemed to confirm that Dervla must have been the one who had most recently stood at this lectern as reader. It described the cremation preparations necessary to honor a peer of the realm—the same preparations that Dervla had performed the morning before Martin and the Prince had departed from Princeport.
The other two scrolls … had Dervla selected them after the funerary luncheon in Melaudiere’s honor, following the moment when Tamsanne had challenged her authority at the Princess’s table? Had that incident driven her to review this ancient enmity? Could Dervla possibly believe that Tamsanne had been responsible for her own mother’s miscarriage? Could Dervla possibly share Delcora’s belief that Tamsanne had been wrong to flee court in an attempt to protect her own unborn child?
Whatever the case, Gaultry did not like to think that her grandmother’s affairs, let alone her own, were occupying Dervla’s mind.
The PRINCE can have no truer protector than his HIGH PRIESTESS!
Did Dervla think that this axiom gave her the right to remove anyone who offered the prince the services of their own protection?
Did this mean that Dervla had been, indirectly, the hand guiding the attacks on her and Tullier? The signature of her power had not been there in the assault at Sizor’s Bridge, or at Martin’s house. The dark, rotted, vengeance green that had attacked her at the bridge, at Martin’s townhouse, in her own dreams—that was not the power that she had touched in Dervla, those several times their spells had crossed. But perhaps that darker magic lay hidden behind the High Priestess’s veil?
It was time to meet with Tamsanne and find out. There was nothing more for her here—a thorough investigation of the room’s contents would take weeks. She and Tullier had been lucky to have learned even this much without being discovered. She did not want to press that luck.
Tullier turned his head as she approached, alert to the small sounds of her movement. “What have you found?” he asked.
“All the paper here records things old Delcora thought were significant.
It’s like a created world, all on paper, with everything slanted from Delcora’s view.” Gaultry paused, not sure what she should share with him of her discoveries. “The scroll Dervla left on the lectern described a grudge Delcora held against my grandmother. Maybe Dervla has held on to that feeling.”
“Fifty years is not a long time to nurture a grudge.”
“I know,” Gaultry said wryly. “Where the gods stand watch, fifty years is nothing. But it feels strange: It’s clear enough what old Delcora thought, but what does Dervla believe? She’s a grown woman at the height of her powers. Delcora’s been dead for decades, but her anger—the way she wrote about it—it seems so fresh. What does it seem like to Dervla?”
“Who knows?” Tullier looked stressed. Waiting for her in blind darkness was taking its toll. “But if she left that scroll out, obviously she’s still interested.”
“Let’s go find Tamsanne,” Gaultry said. “I don’t know what else can be gleaned from this dumping ground.”
Taking the lead, she once again helped him on the narrow steps. The goddess-light faded as they climbed. By the time they reached the funeral chapel, her eyes had adjusted so well to the lack of illumination that even the dim light from the window extinguished the last she was able to see of the faint green glow.
Tullier relit their lantern. When she tapped on the altar by the light of its flame, it had regained the substance of stone. The stairs below were once more blocked.
“I wonder how Heiratikus got hold of this ring,” she said, pulling it from her finger, “or whether he ever discovered the secret it unlocked.” She retied it to its string, and once again hid it under her shirt. “It seems unlikely. Surely he would have been blind to the goddess-light, and lighting a lamp—I think that would have invoked magic against an intruder. But Dervla must always have feared it.”
Tullier shrugged. “What was there to fear? Her mother was long dead.”
Gaultry shook her head. “Something is not right about the fact that Dervla’s kept all that paper together in one place. As if something would be lost by dispersing it. I don’t believe it’s something Dervla would have wanted him to see, let alone to have had opportunity to rifle through at his leisure.”
“Nor you neither.”
“Let’s get out of here then, before she finds out.”
Outside the temple, the sloped amphitheater lawn was wet with dew.
From over the seaward wall, a gentle breeze lapped in off the water, though as yet the sky bore no sign of dawn. Elsewhere in the palace, movement had begun to stir. The quiet noises of people waking early to their morning’s business drifted gently, distantly, in the predawn air.
“We were lucky no one caught us,” Tullier said. “Someone will surely be up soon to tend the temple fire.” Something unhappy in his tone made Gaultry glance his way.
The boy had been trained to follow a single bondmaster’s orders unquestioningly, a master to whom he had pledged his life and trust. Though Gaultry had broken that bond, at times aspects of their own relationship unpleasantly mimicked that apprentice-master mold. She sensed a question behind his words, a question he didn’t feel he could ask her directly. Surely he was not concerned about the danger of discovery. That sort of excitement was food to him. Was he angry because she had not detailed all she had discovered in the High Priestess’s secret chamber?
“Tullier.” She paused before they entered the Summer Palace’s tiled foyer. “You have been a great support tonight. I wouldn’t have been able to get past that first lock without you. But the information I found in that hidden room—it touches on my family history. On the forces that tore apart the Common Brood. It’s information that could endanger you without offering you any real advantage.”
“Gaultry, do you know what Sciuttarus’s Envoy offered me at yesterday’s meeting?”
Gaultry could hardly conceal her frustration that he should choose this moment to reopen that subject. Yesterday he had refused to discuss it entirely. “Beyond the offer I could see on the table?” An image of the great chain of office rose in her mind’s eye, the time-burnished wirework images of Bissanty’s long-past triumph over Tielmark’s people. Envoy Lepulio’s saturnine face, as he held the great chain out to Tullier, the golden links heavy on his palms, followed in another flash. She shook her head. “I don’t pretend to understand the powers that Bissanty’s Tielmaran crown confers. The Bissanty Prince of Tielmark is cut off from Tielmark’s soil, so he can’t take strength from that, as Benet does. What’s left? Holding a symbolic seat at time-worn rituals? Ceremony?”
“It’s far more than ceremony,” Tullier said seriously. “Bissanty’s Princes are the acknowledged sons of Llara. Those who die as Imperial Princes are worshipped alongside the gods. A minor cult, perhaps, but one which promises a modicum of immortality. So long as I held the Bissanty crown of Tielmark, Great Mother Llara would smile on me as her own son. If I died with that crown on my head, I could expect my soul to rise straight into her bosom. It would be guaranteed that I would receive her eternal blessing.” He glanced back at the temple. “I spent my life as a Sha Muira fearing the fall from Llara’s divine approval. Now, when her divine love is offered me unconditionally—I can’t accept it, without conditions of my own in return.
“Lepulio said I should come home to Bissanty, where I could count my enemies on the fingers of one hand. Those enemies—he meant my family. Imperial Sciuttarus and his three sons. Maybe Siri Caviedo too—my father. That makes five, doesn’t it?” He laughed, a miserable bubbling cough of a laugh. “I would have power in Bissanty, but I would never be loved there. My family would strike down anyone fool enough to stand by me. All I would be able to count on would be my land-tie-defunct, while Benet reigns as Tielmark’s Prince—and Great Llara’s blessing. For a real Sha Muira soldier, that would be enough.” He brushed his brow tiredly.
“The Emperor wants me close by until he can find a means of removing me without provoking Llara’s wrath—and once he finds the means, he will remove me. By this thinking, elevating me to Prince, guaranteeing me Llara’s blessing, is all that is needed to bring me to heel. Why should I fear death, even at Sciuttarus’s hands, knowing that Llara will love me in the after-realm? That was what I lived for as a Sha Muira.
“The Emperor sent Lepulio as Envoy because Lepulio knows the Sha
Muira. He doesn’t understand—it must be beyond his comprehension—that the Glamour you and your sister wielded released me from that bondage. Llara is my goddess still, but I see now that there are many ways to please her.”
Tullier’s eyes were melancholy. “Once I would have welcomed the crown, and death—even if the land, held by Benet, did not acknowledge me. But—” the look in his eyes sharpened, “but to make that sacrifice of self, that my reward in this life should be the ties of a family who will always hate me …” Tullier made an angry gesture. “I don’t want to do it. I am no longer a Sha Muira warrior. I won’t court that pain.”
“There’s hate in what I discovered tonight,” Gaultry said tentatively. She did not want to believe that hate was doomed to descend through the generations of a family, but it was hard to imagine another reason that the High Priestess would keep Delcora’s bileful records so close to her heart.
“I’ll protect you from it.” Tullier was utterly serious. She could see in his eyes that he wanted to protect her—that he yearned for the right to do it.
“You can’t. Everything I learned tonight could put you in danger too.”
“You can’t send me away to Bissanty right now, and keeping me in ignorance while I remain in Tielmark won’t help me either. Your enemies are my enemies. You
must
tell me their names.”
She sighed. She did not know how to manage the boyish passions that were awakening in him now that the painful shadow of the Sha Muira’s poison had been purged. He was like dry tinder, eager for the touch of fire. Notwithstanding his many adult competencies, she did not trust the hot-headed boy in him not to overreact—possibly with killing rage. “I wish I knew who it was most important for me to protect you from,” she sighed. “Your family is at the top of the list, of course. But who is your most dangerous enemy here in Princeport?”
“You know,” Tullier insisted. “Those papers you read—”
“The papers didn’t tell me who put the fetish crown in my bed this night. They didn’t tell me who attacked us at Martin’s town house. What I read in those papers … It was all Dervla’s mother, nothing about Dervla. I have suspicions about the High Priestess’s motives, but I don’t have proof.”
“I have suspicions too.”
“Be patient a little longer. Tamsanne will give us some sort of definite answer about that crown.”
“I want to know what you found out in those scrolls.” He had reversed himself from doubtful reticence to stubborn obduracy. Less Sha Muira–apprenticelike, but equally annoying. She could not think how to answer him.
“Let’s go back to my rooms,” she said, after an uncomfortable pause. “We’ve been gone so long, we might even find Tamsanne waiting.”
That thought, as much as the boy’s frown, sped her on her way.
T
he scrap of paper bearing their message for Tamsanne was still attached to the knocker where Gaultry had tied it. Gaultry took it down, fumbled for her keys, and pushed the door open.
“Unshutter the lamp,” she told Tullier, “and get the candles …” The words died in her throat as the light touched something that should not have been there—glistening white silk that trailed down from the threadbare divan. For one light-headed moment, she thought Mervion had come to make peace, then she realized—“What in Elianté’s name!”
It was Elisabeth Climens. She was bundled in a ridiculously luxuriant robe, too long for her body, huddled small on a corner of the sofa. Grass stains and pieces of leaf dirtied the robe’s hem. She must have come, and in a hurry, through the deer park. There was nothing beneath the robe except a thin shift. Even her feet were naked. A delicate gold chain glinted against the bare skin at her throat, plunging downward. At her side, Gaultry sensed the flashing focus of Tullier’s interest at the glimpse of the girl’s uncovered shoulders, hastily suppressed.
“Please,” Elisabeth said. Her hair was tied, night-fashion, in two loose plaits, in childish contrast to the shapely shoulders, the robe of silk. Her eyes looked huge and frightened in the whiteness of her face. “I didn’t know where else to come.”
“How did you get in?” Tullier said sharply.
She nodded toward the terrace doors. “The door was open there. I did not want to wait outside.”
Gaultry and Tullier exchanged a glance. Tullier shook his head. He’d secured the room before they’d left it. Elisabeth should not have been able to walk in.
“Why are you here?” Gaultry asked, hard put to modulate her voice to an encouraging tone. She glanced at the grate, hurriedly concealing her relief when it appeared that the fetish-crown remained untouched. Gaultry had had enough confusion and interruptions for one night. Elisabeth
was a nice girl—but what she was doing here in the stray hours of the morning was almost more than Gaultry wanted to face. She could only pray that she’d be able to resolve whatever silly urge had brought the girl and send her safely on her way before Tamsanne arrived. She glanced at Tullier, willing him to get out of the way so she could question Elisabeth more closely. The boy, nodding as he took her cue, went over to examine the terrace doors, taking himself away from Elisabeth’s line of vision.
“It’s an ungodly hour,” Gaultry said. “What is it that you want?”
“My mother needs your help.”
Argat Climens!? An image of the archly confident Duchess of Vaux-Torres flashed before her. Gaultry could hardly imagine another person less likely to need her assistance. Besides, why should Elisabeth imagine that Gaultry would want to entangle herself with the affairs of a reputed traitor? “Why would I want to help your mother?”
“She’s in trouble.”
“Is that news?” At the terrace doors, Tullier bent to examine the latch, then, tension running in him like a dog called to point, he slipped out onto the terrace. “Your mother seems perfectly capable of making all the trouble she needs for herself. And of getting herself out of it.”
“That’s all true,” Elisabeth blurted. “I know how she must seem to you. But she is not a traitor. Not,” the girl faltered, “never against the Prince. But all her past is rising to haunt her now. Without your help she’s going to do something unforgivable.”
Gaultry, itching to know what Tullier was after, instead sat wearily next to the girl on the divan. “Start from the beginning. Why are you here?”
Elisabeth fidgeted, twisting the edge of her robe. “Mama said you were the only one the Prince could trust.”
Gaultry snorted, disbelieving.
“No!” Elisabeth said vehemently. “It’s true! She told me that the very night you returned to Princeport, right after Dame Julie’s concert. I had to report about everything I’d seen, and she thought it was funny when I told her about Ronsars putting us together. That’s when she said what she did about the Prince being able to trust you. The way she said it—mocking—I could tell she really believed it was true. That,” she faltered again, “that’s why I’m here. Whatever you choose to do, after I have told you things—I know it will be right.”
This, Gaultry thought grimly, staring at the frightened girl, was a
predictably Climens-convoluted scenario. Should she believe that the Duchess of Vaux-Torres had complimented her genuinely, or did the Duchess think that Gaultry was an unworldly rustic who could be counted on to step the wrong way and obscure some more subtle treachery? She instinctively found herself trusting young Elisabeth—but what if Vaux-Torres had consciously contrived it that the girl would come here tonight to confide in her? The woman’s feline smile rose before her, mocking and proud. Gaultry could not put it past Argat Climens to manipulate her daughter into singing some poignant song that Gaultry, in her own foolish soft-heartedness, would find impossible to resist. “Go on,” she said to Elisabeth, with a sinking feeling. “Tell me what decided you to come here.”
The girl’s eyes flickered to the terrace doors.
“Is it about Tullier?”
“Partly,” Elisabeth whispered.
“Then tell me the short version, and have done. It’s been a long night, and I’d like to catch another hour’s sleep before dawn.”
“My mother does not know that I am here,” Elisabeth started hesitantly. “That is the first thing that you should know.” She would not look in Gaultry’s eyes, but that seemed more a matter of protecting her own fragile pride than deceit or evasion. Her profile was set and hard, a glimpse of the woman she would become if she survived to stay on at court. She was like her mother, very like her mother, in her beauty and the swift, intelligent shifts of her thoughts. But there was something else in the girl’s features too: a directness, a pragmatic, honest sort of boldness that surely had not come to her from her mother. It struck Gaultry suddenly that for all her faults, Argat Climens was an excellent parent. The woman could not help but overawe her children—along with most of Tielmark’s population—but she had not raised them to be weaklings, either, once they spun free of her orbit. Elisabeth was a credit to her.
If, at this moment, a struggling credit, trying to tell in a straight manner a story whose convolutions she did not fully comprehend. “The things I found out tonight …” Elisabeth trailed off, looking regretful. “I suspected a little of it before, but I knew nothing for certain. If I had known—there are things I might have done differently.” She folded her hands, which were fidgeting, in her lap.