A moment later, the Oakenkeep's head housekeeper appeared. "Yes, Madame Zazar?"
"If Rohan did as I instructed, he told you I've spoken to Ashen about a particular item she keeps locked away in a cabinet."
"He did, Madame. I have the key right here." Ayfare indicated a bundle of keys dangling from the chatelaine around her waist. "Please follow me."
Ayfare led them up the stairs to the private apartment Ashen and Gaurin shared.
Without hesitation, she crossed the living quarters to a large upright armoire.
At the base of the armoire was a set of drawers that could be locked—the cabinet of which Ashen had spoken. Ayfare inserted a small key into the lock on one of these drawers and turned it. Then she opened the drawer and stood back so that
Zazar could examine the contents.
Rohan peered over her shoulder. Whatever it was that was so important, it was wrapped in what looked like waterproof leather and tied with a silver ribbon.
Disappointed, he said, "Is that it? Perhaps you'd better open it just to make sure."
Zazar hefted the package, feeling the outlines of the contents with her strong old fingers. She pulled one end of the wrapping loose just enough that Rohan caught a glimpse of blue.
"No, this is it," she said. "But I will open it. In private, if you please." She glared at him.
Accept defeat, Rohan bowed and left the room with Ay-fare close behind him. She pulled the door shut.
"Do you know what's in that package?" Rohan asked her.
"I think it's a book," Ayfare replied, "but why she set such store by it I don't know. We have other books."
Indeed, the Oakenkeep boasted an extensive library for a private residence.
Upwards of a dozen volumes on various subjects graced the shelf behind the table where Gaurin was accustomed to working, and that was besides the books of accounting he meticulously maintained. Only Rendelsham Castle could claim more, and except for the Dowager's notorious appetite for reading, those books went mostly untouched.
"I suppose we might as well go back down where it's warm, and wait for Granddam
Zaz to get through with whatever she's looking at," Rohan said, a little glumly.
It was bad enough that his broken arm—mending, according to the physicians, but still keeping him on the sidelines—rendered him fit for nothing more than being a messenger. Worse, he now felt he was not trusted.
He and Ayfare descended the stairs and re-entered the warm area behind the screens. Disconsolately, he reached for the pitcher only to have Ayfare grab it first and place it on the hearth to warm again.
Just as he was pouring the mulled wine into his goblet, Zazar hurried around the screen and sat down. He stared across the table at her. She was obviously more than a little agitated and out of breath.
"What is it, Granddam?" he asked. He reached for Zazar's goblet to refill it as well.
"I've been glancing through the book—yes, you might as well know what it was, even if it's far beyond you. What I've learned will come as a surprise to several people, though I anticipated it. Did Ashen ever tell you about the time when she was tending to your father, and tried to use magic for the first time?"
"No!" Rohan exclaimed. "What happened?"
"Well, she had just found him. He had been knocked off the cliff and fallen into some ferns. He was hurt and lucky to be alive. Anyway, I wasn't there and she tried to contact me."
She had brought Obern to the room Rohan was familiar with, in the ruined city of
Galinth. Despairing of his life, Ashen had stirred together a mixture such as she had seen Zazar use on rare occasions and dissolved it in water from the pipe. Then, hoping she had done it right, she drank off the potion.
"She wound up in—well, I suppose you could call it an underground chamber. I knew she needed me, but I was caught in a pillar of fire, which is why I hadn't gone to her by then."
"You were caught, you say?"
"Yes," Zazar snapped in some annoyance. "Even with me, sometimes experiments don't go exactly the way I'd like."
There had been another woman in the room when Ashen arrived. It was the Dowager, then Queen Ysa of Rendel. Both women had stared at each other, astonished, until
Zazar made them concentrate on the issue at hand.
"I should have known it would take both of you," Zazar had said. "Well, come on then."
She held out one hand to Ashen, and the other to Queen Ysa. Ashen took her hand at once, but Ysa hesitated a moment. Still, she did what was required, and then
Zazar stepped out of the fire and it died behind her.
Then Zazar had introduced the two, telling them that they would meet in the outside world sooner or later.
"Ashen went back to Galinth and tending your father, Ysa returned to whatever she was doing in Rendelsham, and nobody was the wiser," Zazar finished.
"What a tale]" Rohan exclaimed. "But what has this got to do with this mysterious book you spoke of?"
"You are a dunce," Zazar said flatly. "We three were tied at that moment, and now the time has come to use that bond in defeating our common enemy."
"B-but how?"
The Wysen-wyf averted her head, unable to meet his eyes. "I do not know," she said. "I only know that this is what will be required of us." Then after a long moment she turned and looked him squarely in the face. "I know one thing more.
You now have another errand to perform, perhaps the most important you have ever embarked upon. When we leave the Oakenkeep, I will go to New Void, and thence sail north with the supplies I gathered. Harvas will not like learning that you will be left behind, but I will deal with him. You will return to Rendelsham, and persuade the Dowager Ysa to come to the encampment of the Four Armies as quickly as she can."
Rohan just stared at her, mouth agape while a hundred conflicting thoughts chased themselves through his mind. Fi- nally he found his voice. "This is no trifling task you have set me to," he said.
"I know. Do you still have that brush of herbs and grasses that I bade you wear in your helm?"
"Yes, I keep it ever close by me though my helm is useless in such cold as we endure. It is stored here, in an armoire in my rooms, along with my other gear."
"Go and get it," Zazar instructed. "Wear it and your mail coat when you go into the Dowager's presence."
"Do you think it will help?" Rohan asked.
"Again, I don't know. But there were forces beyond either of us at work when I devised it for you. Now such forces may themselves prompt you what to say, what to do, to get this pampered lady to follow my command."
"May it be so," Rohan responded somberly. "I will be frank with you. There have been times when I doubted your wisdom and your foresight. Not so now. I will go to Rendel-sham and do my best to do your bidding."
"Good. What Ysa will think of this, nobody can tell, but I can guess she will be reluctant."
Rohan grimaced. "Reluctant" was a very mild way to put it, if he knew anything about the Dowager and, having been in her company for many nights during his training in the Queen's Levy, he was certain that he did.
"I say this also to you," Zazar continued. "Persuasion is preferable, but if all else fails, take her by force, bound and gagged, and drag her behind you."
Rohan was shocked. "It is that important."
"It is."
Then Zazar did something very uncharacteristic. She arose from the bench where she had been sitting, took Rohan's face between her old, brown hands, and kissed him on the forehead. "You will not fail," she told him. "For all our sakes, you cannot."
Eighteen
The Dowager Ysa stared at Rohan, standing before her as a supplicant in the room she had set aside for such matters. Here at specified hours she allowed those to come who would plea for her to intervene with King Peres, or for the favors that only she could bestow. These occasions pleased her greatly, for there were always large numbers of people waiting in the antechamber. Further, because so many of these petitions conce
rned private matters, she received them alone and their attention centered entirely on her. Guards stood outside the doors, of course, but none dared disturb what went on within, not even one of the
Dowager's ladies.
Out of curiosity, she allowed Rohan to enter ahead of the rest. At his greeting given with less than the deference she felt she deserved, she decided she should have left him cool- ing his heels instead. It would have done him some good, surely. Taken down his arrogance, if only a little.
The young knight had definitely matured since she had first seen him, a stripling youth come in answer to the summons of the Queen's Levy. Now he stood before her clad in deep blue, the Court color, over chain mail and with his helm tucked under his arm. The stains on his mail sleeve from the fire powder still showed. The mail was obviously freshly polished, so the marks had not been left as a form of boasting. Yet, despite his martial appearance, he was still far from being a presence to be reckoned with.
Nor had the Dowager forgiven him for what had happened to Anamara. She blamed him entirely for the fog that had fallen over Anamara's mind, that had led the girl to the brink of death. A fragment of a plan flitted across Ysa's thoughts.
Perhaps that marriage could be set aside. Ysa could think of more valuable dispositions of what amounted to her royal ward, than bestowing her upon someone little better than a hedge knight for all his connections with the Sea-Rover leadership.
Rohan's words penetrated the indifference with which the Dowager was regarding him, and her attention suddenly came into focus. "You—you want me to what?" she demanded incredulously. "To journey north, into the army encampment? To subject myself to the harshness of the clime, the discomfort not to mention the dangers, and for what purpose?"
"My granddam, Zazar, the great Wysen-wyf of the Bog, has decreed it," Rohan replied. "She says—"
"Oh, I know what she says," Ysa said irritably. "You needn't repeat it." Indeed,
Zazar's bizarre request—an order, actually; Ysa knew one when she encountered it—was one of the few things Rohan had told her since this interview began that had engaged her attention. To be sure, Zazar had a fearsome reputation—as formidable as Ysa's own—but that was no reason for her to leave the comfort and relative warmth of her private chambers in Rendelsham Castle to put herself into peril just on Zazar's say-so. "It is a ridiculous demand. I will not do it."
"Granddam Zazar says you must," Rohan replied.
"And if I refuse?"
The young knight had the grace to blush and look down. "Then I am commanded to take you unwillingly, if need be."
Ysa arose. From the height of the dais on which her chair stood she could glare down at Rohan with the full force of her displeasure.
"Never!" she cried. "It is impossible! All I have to do is cry out and you would die before you laid a hand on me. I will not be dictated to in this fashion!"
She gestured toward the door. "Now, get out before I summon the guard and have you removed—willingly or unwillingly," she added with more than a trace of spite.
"Please, Your Highness," Rohan said. "I merely follow the orders of those more versed in certain arts—" He put a slight but definite emphasis on the word.
"—than I."
He moved his good hand and an emerald-green silk rose, Yew's color, appeared in it. He offered it to the Dowager. Without her consciously willing it, she stepped down from the dais and took the rose from him.
"Yew's color," Ysa murmured.
Despite its being made of silk, she lifted it to her nose. At that moment, the ridiculous tuft of dried herbs and grasses in the crest of Rohan's helm began to give off a slight but unmistakable vapor that rose in the air and enveloped both the Dowager and Rohan. The odor was fresh and clean, despite the desiccated appearance of the sprigs, and Ysa breathed it in deeply.
She stared at the young knight. "Thank you for your gift," she said, vaguely surprised at the gentleness of her own words. "Know that your demand is both insolent and insulting, but for that very reason I must give it due consideration because of your bravery in speaking so to me. You would not have dared voice such, had it not been important."
Rohan bowed. "Thank you, Your Highness," he said. "Let us hope—for both our sakes—that you grant me my plea."
"Go now," Ysa said. "You will have my answer tomorrow."
"I will return at this hour." Rohan bowed again, and left the room.
As if in a dream, Ysa noticed that sometime during the interview the tuft of grasses and herbs had disappeared from Rohan's helm, no doubt falling to dust at last. Now, perhaps he would wear a proper ornament in his helm. A plume, perhaps, in Sea-Rover colors.
When Rohan had bowed his way out of Ysa's audience chamber, she sat long, thinking, wondering why she had not had the young man arrested. She stared at the green silk rose she still held and sniffed at it again. The fresh scent had all but disappeared. On impulse, she arose and called one of the guards.
"Please tell the ones waiting to see me that I have an important matter to attend to," she instructed him, "and I will grant them interviews at another time."
"Yes, Your Highness," the guard replied. "But some will be very disappointed."
"Of course. They always are. Nevertheless, I must be about the matter of which I spoke, and so tell them."
The guard bowed and turned to do Ysa's bidding. Ysa left the audience chamber by another door and returned to her apartment. There she selected a plain cloak and put it about her shoulders, pulling the hood up over her head so that, she hoped, nobody would recognize her.
She made her way out of Rendelsham Castle and across the courtyard to the Great
Fane of the Glowing. There was that within that she must see.
She glanced up as she approached. The Fane boasted windows both great and small decorated with pictures made of pieces of colored glass, set into the openings with great skill and artisanship. None, however, was as beautiful or as elaborate as the circular one surmounting the main doors. Designed for no purpose other than sheer decoration, this window glowed as if it created its own light even on a dreary day such as this one was. The flowers and leaves, picked out in jewel tones—ruby and garnet and rose quartz; sapphire and spinel and lapis; golden topaz and yellow quartz and citrine; emerald and chrysophase and jade—represented the Four Houses. Her own father had contributed many of the green elements, even as Boroth's father had supplied red ones. She could remember the day, fraught with tension, when the completed window had been lifted and cemented in place. Who had given the yellow ones? She remembered—
Erft of the House of Rowan, elder brother of Wittern, the current head. The late
Aldren of the House of Ash had contributed the blue so that all Four Great
Houses were well represented. All great nobles. All departed.
But it was three of the smallest windows that were the focus of Ysa's quest this day. These particular ones were located on an upper balcony, virtually hidden from all but the most inquisitive, and few of those, after discovering them, would return more than once. Exquisite as the windows were, nonetheless they inspired vague feelings of dread. For these windows changed with time, and no artisan's touch could account for the shifting. One of these windows depicted the hands and Web of the Weavers. When the land awakened as the Great Foulness stirred, this picture, which had changed only a little from the oldest man's memory, began to shift. Now if someone watched patiently, he could see the dark hands of the Weavers moving. Since the last time Ysa had beheld it, the Web had taken on a different appearance. Now it showed a dreadful tangle, a snarl of white, where the Web of Time accepted no thread of color except for the occasional strand of red—the color of blood—and where fell shapes moved obscurely on hidden business of their own.
The second window, the one showing a Bog-lupper, was no less alarming. The small lupper that had once sat beside a pool had now vanished into the underbrush and a huge lupper with a mouth full of sharp teeth had emerged onto the land.
It was, however, in the third window that the most frightening phenomena had once been seen, before Ysa had or- dered a curtain nailed into place to cover it and hide it from unwary eyes.
This mysterious window had ever shown a blank face, white and barely translucent. Its very lack of design made it uninteresting. Then something began stirring in its depths as if a creature more deadly, more horrifying even than the one making its way out of the Bog-pool were emerging from a heavy snowstorm.
Ysa stood before this window for a moment, gathering her resolve, before reaching out and pulling the dusty curtain loose from the nails holding it in place.