Authors: Andre Norton
Mahart grinned. “As well she might be, lumbering fool!”
To her surprise Zuta glanced swiftly around. “Your Grace"—now her voice was hardly above a whisper. “It is said—and has been proven—that castle walls have ears—and tongues.”
Mahart grasped the pomander more tightly. That was really a bald hint as far as Zuta was concerned. Mahart hesitated before she asked in as low a voice as the other had used: “It is that perhaps the High Lady has some plan?”
Marriage—her father had spoken of marriage! Could it be that he would strive to brace up what he considered to be a shaky ducal throne by uniting her with Barbric? Her jaw set a little. She had been her father’s tool, but there were some things—
“It is to favor the Lord Barbric.” Zuta’s now-whispered words came in a rush. ‘‘When you open the ball, all know the Duke will not lead you out—as is usual. It has always been known that he disdains such niceties.”
“And I certainly cannot dance alone.” Mahart tried to think of pacing through the stately steps allowed the ducal family and almost laughed at the picture her imagination painted of her father indulging in such a show. No, he would remain firmly on his throne, as uncomfortable there as ever, enduring that he
must
be present.
“His Highness must signify that you choose your partner,” Zuta was continuing.
“And Barbric will be well ahead of the line,” Mahart snapped.
“He will be the only one protocol will permit you to select,” Zuta said. “Your Grace knows well that His Highness has enemies in plenty. Should you choose without due thought, you might well alienate some family he wishes to bring into his party.”
That was true enough, Mahart had to conclude. So be it—Barbric must be her choice. Luckily in the stately paces of the opening dance one did not have to approach one’s partner past the touching of hands at the end of outstretched arms. It was deadly dull, as she knew from the hours she had been drilled in its turns—deep curtsey to answer deeper bows, and the final delivery of her to her proper dais seat.
She shrugged now. “I shall remember, Zuta. But what will be my father’s answer to this bit of diplomacy?”
“His Highness cannot deny your choice, Your Grace. It will be the only proper one.”
It seemed in the days which passed all too swiftly that there were a great many proper choices to be remembered. She hated the heavy robes which weighed so on her slender body. They had a session in which her hair had to be tamed into a coiffure which would allow a wide tiara to be anchored to it. At least the Master of Horse had at last released her, doubtless having reported to her father that she would not disgrace their name by sliding out of the saddle.
Twice she ordered Zuta to see that she was supplied with that night-burning incense which produced in her soothing and restful dreams, and the last supply sent was one large enough that she could have it burnt for three nights running.
The feeling she had every time she was loosed into that place was comforting, but also it became more and more one of anticipation. She was never in the dream inclined to walk, if walk she could, away from where she entered. Yet she became surer and surer that she was the goal of another’s journeying—though no shadow ever broke the stretches of field. She was never afraid, only ready to welcome, and now she awoke disappointed when that other promised traveler did not appear.
Sometimes it seemed that time flew, and others that it
dragged sluggishly. Vazul began to ask for audiences, and at first she wanted to refuse. There was that about the Chancellor which always made her feel tense and wary when she was in his presence. Then, as the subjects he advanced in those meetings delved deeper and deeper into matters of which she had been unaware but which now aroused her curiosity to a pitch, she looked forward to his coming.
To her father she had always seemed a non-person—something to be forgotten as soon as she was out of his sight. But Vazul was treating her from the first as someone with thoughts and not just a mirror image of a proper simple child who happened by fate to have been the daughter of the Duke.
This new and exciting interest had come on his first visit to her, and looking back she was sure that the key to it was the actions of his strange pet. For when she had waved him to a seat, uncertain as to what rebuke he must carry from her father, the sinuous black-furred thing had appeared from within his sleeve, ran across his knee, and leaped lightly to the floor over which it went like a flicker of shadow to come to her own feet. Beneath the billows of her skirt her toes had tried to curl within her slippers, and she did not know what she could do if the creature sprang at her.
She dared not raise her eyes from it lest it catch her so unawares, and she longed for the Chancellor to recall it. But the longer she studied it—the thing had raised the forepart of its body, its paws crossed over its upper belly, its head held at a sharp angle as the rippling of its long whiskers suggested that it was testing the air—Mahart found that its strangeness no longer seemed to hold any menace. Impulsively she detached the chain of her pomander from her girdle and dangled it down toward that questing nose.
There was a cluttering sound, very faint. One of those forepaws came forward and claws hooked in the filigreed
side of the ball, drawing it closer to the nose. She believed she could actually see the small form swell as if it drew in as deep a breath as its small lungs would allow.
“From the Herbmistress Halwice, Your Grace?” Mahart had been so engrossed by the actions of the creature that Vazul’s question gave her a start.
“Yes, Chancellor. It is of her making. She is well-known for such things.”
“As for healing also,” he commented. But he made no attempt to recall his pet.
The creature at last made the leap Mahart had been fearing, landing on her lap, the pomander held between teeth which looked extremely sharp and menacing, small as they were.
Then its head pushed against one of her hands, and she felt the silken softness of fur she could not help but smooth. There was a vibration through the long body in return which she was certain signified pleasure. Still petting the creature, she looked to the Chancellor.
“What is its name?”
All within the castle knew of it, but never had any name been mentioned.
Vazul was leaning forward, his usually half-lidded eyes very wide, his gaze seeming to search within her as if he would count her very bones. For the first time, she saw him startled out of that usual armor he ever presented to any of the court.
“Ssssaaa.” The sound coming from him was more a hiss than any true word. But she took it for what it must be—his answer to her question. “She would be a friend worth greeting.”
“Ssssaaa.” Mahart attempted as best she could to give the sound the same quality as he had done. And felt warmth as the creature seemed to slide in some way up her arm to her shoulder and there chitter into her very ear.
It appeared to her that Vazul was still startled out of his carefully preserved outer shell.
“You have no fear—” It was not a question but a statement. “Your Grace, you have won such a supporter as you will not be able to understand until a dire time comes—”
“A dire time?”
“Yes, time—for time itself works against us. Listen, Your Grace, and listen well, for there is much you must understand before you are totally engulfed by this court as necessity orders you must be.”
He began to talk, keeping his voice very low, as Mahart listened and caressed the creature which had come to her. Her hours spent in the library had laid the foundation for much he now spoke of—but not all, for the accounts there were not of the immediate past but stretched much further back. That her father’s ascension to the ducal throne was questioned she had always been aware, just as she had been early warned against the High Lady Saylana. But now she heard other names, Vazul pausing at some as if allowing her time to memorize each.
His steady voice, pitched even as it would be if he talked to someone his equal in years and knowledge, was in its way like those dreams of the meadow—opening out her world. It was a dark world and there was little in it over which one could rejoice—thus being far from the meadow of her dreams—but her intelligence, already awakened, was sharpened by all she heard now.
“But, my lord, if Kronen is so ridden by this rot what can be done? If merchants cannot trust our roadways they will cease to come. The trade will fail—” She hesitated, thinking of the beggars at the Abbey gate—she had done what she could since her confrontation there to give aid. “It will be again as the plague—”
Ssssaaa hissed in her ear, uncoiled, and was down her knee making a leap across to Vazul.
“Except death will come more slowly” the Chancellor said. “But—for this moment—we must play another’s game—or seem to—”
“Her Grace Saylana,” she guessed, but he gave her no yes or no.
Three more such meetings she held with Vazul. On the second and again on the fourth he brought with him packets of herbs, and it was on the last such meeting he agreed that on her birthday visit to the Abbey she might well meet the Herbmistress, since Halwice was one of the guild masters who would gather there in honor of the occasion.
Finally the day came—it would be a long one, Mahart knew. First the appearance in state with her father on the foresteps of the castle. Then the procession to the Abbey—the tedium afterward of a formal dinner and then the ball. Her dress for each occasion waited, hung along the wall on a heavy cord so no crease or wrinkle would mar its splendor.
There was her father’s usual gift awaiting on the dressing table—more elaborate this year—a flagon like a half-opened rose which, in spite of its stopper, gave forth perfume. But in her mind Mahart desired more of that which had been in those packets Vazul had delivered—those which took her—
elsewhere.
She knew that Zuta wished to question how such reached her, and she had put her off with an explanation that such were delivered by her father’s orders so she might be mind-clear and prepared for all that lay before her. Only—she had never yet seen the stranger who was meant to meet her in that place—in fact, now to her unease, he seemed far too long delayed.
There were flags and banners, loopings of flowers and branches all along the way, as she rode later, a pace or so behind her father, through the streets. And the cheers of the people brought a flush to her face. Vazul’s information had sunk deep; she knew just on what a perilous foundation this gala in Kronengred rested.
But the serenity which lay within the Abbey gates held none of that feverish excitement. She made her curtsey to the Abbess even as she had before. But this time the elderly
Sister, leaning a fraction on her staff, brought her on into the aisle of the Star House.
There was the rustle of a crowd there too, but subdued. She knew that the guild masters were in place. Mahart knelt at the Star altar, and the offering she set there might be bringing a frown to her father’s face—she did not try to see. For she set the perfect rose bottle within the pure light which played along all points of the Star.
Once more there were presentations, and each of the guild masters had an offering—some fine example of the work his people did—to display. It was the fifth one who approached her who awoke Mahart from the haze of formality which had encompassed her.
This was a woman, her dress of rich green cloth but without any overlay of lace or metallic thread. She made dignified bow to the Duke and then to Mahart.
The girl could not have set any age to her. Though the woman’s fine skin showed no wrinkling, those eyes which she boldly raised to meet the girl’s gaze were strange indeed. Were they actually—yellow? Or only brown like autumn-touched forest leaves?
Mahart did not need the herald’s introduction. She could not remember now what she had expected heretofore—perhaps some cronelike figure more suited to grubbing in a garden than appearing in courtly guise. But this woman had an ease of presence which even Saylana lacked for all her posturing. And she was one toward whom some inner, deep-buried part of Mahart reached in a half-awed need for friendship.
Willadene was weighing out tiny spoonsful of a powder which made her eyes water. This was surely more potent than any pepper she had ever dealt with in Jacoba’s kitchen. She counted very carefully and then stoppered the bottle into which she had spooned the mixture. The street outside was unnaturally still. Half the shops were still closed, their keepers gone to view the grand procession.
She certainly had no desire to join the cheering, ribbon-waving crowd. In fact it was difficult for her to force herself to go beyond the front door, or that swing-gate in the garden behind. Though it had been a goodly number of days since she, trembling in spite of all her efforts at hiding her fears, had stood before the Reeve’s court and thankfully heard herself assigned from Jacoba—who stood in a grimy, dingy show of secondhand finery, scowling blackly at her—to Halwice, as neatly gowned and imperturbable as ever. She had watched the coins turned out on the Reeve’s clerk table—enough to cover by law her remaining worth to the cook. But Jacoba’s whole attitude cried aloud, at least to Willadene, her complete dissatisfaction with the transaction.
Sometimes Willadene could almost imagine herself, out
on some peaceful errand for the Herbmistress, feeling that heavy hand fall upon her shoulder, to drag her back to the inn, even though good sense assured her that this would never happen.
It remained that here alone she felt safe. Though she had one small wish—that she could see Halwice in her fine gown, plain as it was, before Her Grace, a respected member of the guilds.
Willadene had heard a number of descriptions of the High Lady Mahart—that she was so fair of face even flowers seemed to lose their color in her presence, that she was so kind of heart she had fed the hungry with her own hands. They said, too, that she was learned—a very paragon of her line. And now there was gossip that certainly some great marriage was not too far away. It was easy enough to talk, but often rumor belied the truth. Willadene found herself wondering more and more what the ducal daughter was really like. It was against the law for Mahart to ever take her father’s high seat, but that she might be won by a prince of some other land and even live to wear a crown was not now considered impossible.
The only tie between the girl whose birthday had sent Kronengred into holiday was the fact that from time to time a page or serving man would appear at the shop for a packet, carefully wrapped flagon, or bag smelling like the whole herb garden behind the shop, to be delivered to Her Grace.
These transactions had become even more frequent from week to week, and although Willadene was always carefully instructed as she watched potions for others combined, even allowed to finish the lesser ones herself, only Halwice ever melded those for the castle and she did it more or less alone—dispatching Willadene to some chore of grinding or the like while she worked at the table, two lamps, even on the brightest of days, giving her light.
Willadene finished her set task and most carefully cleaned the small spoon and set aside the other tools she
had had to use. She could hear, even across the maze of streets between, the shouting of the crowds. But she did not venture closer to the door, rather took from a small cupboard a book which she spread open with greatest care so timeworn were its covers.
She had not been totally ignorant when fate had turned her over to the hell of Jacoba’s kitchen. In fact, discovering that her scullery maid could not only read and write but also was able to figure had served the cook, in spite of her air of great disdain for such gentry knowledge when she had Willadene make any use of it.
Halwice, learning that Willadene had such abilities, limited though they might be, had set her regular lessons, and Willadene, as someone long hungry, had absorbed all she could. She could close her eyes and recite whole pages of the simpler herbals, but these older records presented puzzles which would often use lamp hours for solving.
What she sought now was a legend, though she was sure the Herbmistress considered it a historical truth—the story of Heart-Hold, that miraculous flower which gave forth a perfume no lover could withstand. No lover—she shook her head—it certainly was not for herself she sought this ancient recipe.
She
was content to spend the rest of her life even as she had the hours of this day.
But—suppose that such a fragrance could be distilled again—presented to Her Grace. Then Halwice would be in high favor and Willadene would have repaid in part her debt of gratitude.
She found the tale—for it was written in a crabbed writing using words long out of fashion, some of which she had to guess at—as a tale and not one of the carefully set formulas of the herbals she knew and used. The single flower found by chance where no other blossoms had ever bloomed, taken up with care and protected in an urn of oil of a kind which Willadene did recognize as being the most costly product of the shop. It was sold only by the drop and only those deep of purse could afford it.
Only—how was one to find any flower? To her clear memory Willadene had never been beyond the walls of Kronengred. Halwice dealt with foreign merchants, but they came to her. She never ventured forth herself to find what they finally delivered. There were a few flowering herbs, but it was still away from the time of year when their buds would appear. And Willadene knew just what those were and their proper use.
She was certain of one thing—such a marvel as Heart-Hold must root well beyond land held by man’s labor. And how might one wander into those wilds, where the outlaws now held almost complete rule, on such a searching?
Willadene was reading the scant account for the third time when noise from the street disturbed her. Those who had gone to watch the procession were beginning to drift back. She watched through the open door the Reeve of this quarter and his escort ride back, people scattering before the horses. Willadene put away the book quickly.
In order to reach her proper seat in the Abbey Halwice had had to leave before First Bell with no more than a twist of bread and a small glass of ale to break her fast. The food Willadene had since prepared must be reheated and quickly.
She was gingerly tasting soup from a long-handled spoon when the Herbmistress arrived. There was a knot of neighbors who ringed her round, mainly merchants’ wives of the street. Willadene could hear their continuous excited questioning even from where she stood.
Yes, Her Grace was all which was most gracious. And those who called her fair had not been dealing only in flattery. Indeed, the Duke was Star-blessed with such a daughter—But finally Halwice threw up her hands.
“Goodwives all, my tongue is as dry as a cut of salt beef. I have told you all that I can. She is indeed fit to be a queen, and let us hope that if she is, she will also be a happy one.”
Some of the women grumbled a little, but at last they let her go and, though the Herbmistress left the door latch out, she came on through into the inner quarters without stopping.
She did not speak to the waiting girl, nor did she make any attempt to take off her fine gown. Instead, she went to the big cupboard where she slept, saying, as her head and shoulders disappeared within its cavern: “Clear the table!”
Hastily Willadene put aside the bowls and food dishes she had set there. She had no more than taken the last piece from the table than Halwice was back, never looking to the girl but putting in place on the well-scrubbed board the object she had held close to her body as she came, as if she would so hide it from sight.
There was a white bowl, perhaps the size of Willadene’s two hands set interlapping together, and with that the bag she had seen in this very room once before—that which held the bits of polished but broken crystal.
Halwice next took up two candles Willadene recognized as the kind which gave off perfumed smoke as they burned. On either side of the bowl she set one of these and used a snap light quickly to set them burning. Into the bowl itself she poured a scant amount of the minted water which they used in their work and which Willadene knew to be thrice boiled for purity.
Having done all this to her satisfaction Halwice crooked a finger to the girl.
“Take up those which lie within.” She pushed the bag of crystals forward. “Hold them all tightly together for the space of three breaths—long-held ones.”
Willadene let the sharp-edged pieces fill one hand and then lapped it with the other, lest some spill from between her fingers. She drew three breaths, holding each, as if she feared that by releasing it she might cause some ill.
“Throw—”
Willadene tossed what she held onto the tabletop. None
of them rolled to the floor as she had feared. Halwice leaned forward, her tight-fitting cap of ceremony having no rolled edge to hide her features, and, for what seemed to Willadene a number of long breaths more, she simply stared at the bits of color where they lay. Then, with a straight forefinger, she worked among them, shoving first this and then that until there lay a single stone of sleek green not unlike a length of water-worn reed.
“Take and hold,” she bade Willadene for the second time, and this time the girl silently counted to seven breaths before the next order came.
“Drop it into the bowl—then look therein, girl, with all which lies within you, look within!”
There was no room. She might have been standing on the shore of a very silent lake, watching without even a rippling of the water as shadows passed swiftly or with languid rolling, so vague in outline she could not have said what any of them might be.
But something within her made her try to hold those shadows as they slipped by. The effort she brought to that was like taking a full load of wood across her shoulders, but she held to it, tried and tried to see more clearly.
There was something which dipped and rose—she was no longer aware that this was even water in which it was fighting away. For fighting it was and against odds she could only guess at. It deepened, sharpened. Even as she had watched such on a summer evening winging out for their hunting, so did she see a bat. But that it was injured in some way—though she could not sight its wound—she was also sure.
She had to swallow twice before she could speak, for speaking somehow broke the effort of seeing, and even as she said the words aloud the creature melted into nothingness.
“A bat—hurt.”
She was not fully aware of the gasp of breath which came from outside this place, yet something she felt—a
twinge of what was both pain and fear intermingled—and she was sure it had not come from the animal she had seen.
“Look on—look!”
The order was so demanding that Willadene forced herself to plunge faster and deeper.
This time the picture came clearer, snapping out of nowhere as if a door had burst open. There were certainly rocks, patterned with lichen, wreathed in part with small fern fringes—yet not rocks of any building in Kronengred that she had ever seen. And in a pocket between the two largest of these, their sides forming an arch over it as if to protect the fragile-stemmed star-shaped bloom, stood what she had imagined Heart-Hold to be when she had read or heard the tale of its gifting to man.
She must have spoken the name aloud, for suddenly her feeling of being otherwhere was broken. Hands were on her shoulders steadying her, but not until from that flower had spread to her such a fragrance as she knew that in all her lifetime she would never forget.
“So—that is the way of it!” Halwice’s voice sounded from far off and then close. “Let it be— But the path may be long and the way dark.”
There was only the table and on it the bowl of water at the bottom of which lay the stone the girl had tossed within. But she had to steady herself with both hands on the edge of the table, for it seemed that she could still catch that scent, as overpowering as the strongest of the autumn ale.
Well above that house and room the Duke sat huddled in his chair, his robes which always looked, when worn by him, as if they had been tailored for another man, creased about him. He had doffed his ducal coronet and held his aching head in both his hands.
Uttobric had never been a social creature, and the older he grew the more he hated these parades of pomp which
were expected. But the power itself—if one has been insignificant and overlooked for most of one’s life, the butt of a scoffing court—power was a heady wine and he was not about to surrender it. For years he had been a nobody, the least of his clan. Now he need only affix his seal to a scrap of paper and one of those who had sneered so openly would be naught.
Still that was not so—not yet. And he knew it, tasted it like a sour bile rising in his throat.
“Well,” he said now, “was Kronengred suitably impressed?” He had no desire to see the expression on Vazul’s face.
“The move was the strongest you could have made,” the Chancellor returned promptly. “Fortune favored you, Your Highness, with a daughter who can be a mighty weapon—if she is properly honed.”
Uttobric threw himself back in his chair now, his long robe crushing against his spine.
“And you will see to that,” he commented, watching the other with half-hooded eyes. “Only keep this in mind, my Chancellor, it is with me you rise—or fall—”
What he might have added to that was lost as the black creature on Vazul’s shoulder suddenly leaped with a speed and agility which carried her near across the room. The Chancellor wheeled to watch her, and his hand was already on the hilt of the dagger in his belt sheath.
Ssssaaa made straight for the darkly paneled wall and reared against that, digging claws into the age-old wood, the usual hissing cry she uttered rising to a high note.
It took but three strides for Vazul to reach that panel, for the Duke to get to his feet, tearing at the fastening of his state cloak to free himself from its hampering folds.
The Chancellor’s hands sought hidden releases. For a moment they faced only a dark hole, but into that darted Ssssaaa and Vazul, blade bared now in his hand, followed. Then, as the Duke approached the same opening, he heard an exclamation of pain only a little louder than a moan.