Rommel bowed his head. “Understood, my liege.”
“Your Lordship.” It was Lazaroth. “Transportation is a difficult and time-consuming task for any sorcerer, especially when large numbers of men are involved. I am sure my colleague Ramirus will be happy to assist in this matter, for what else could his presence at this meeting be meant to communicate?” The dark eyes sparkled maliciously.
“Even so, I would respectfully suggest that we bring in at least one more Magister to assist us. Given how quickly we may need to move your troops.”
“Indeed. Have you someone in mind who can be trusted with our secrets? And who would be willing to serve?”
Lazaroth’s smile was a cold thing. “Magister Colivar is said to know more about the Souleaters than any other man alive. I am sure he would be willing to trade his sorcery for a chance to be front and center in such a historic campaign.”
It said much for Ramirus’ self-control that his expression remained impassive. Kamala could sense a black fury raging inside him; whatever dark and malevolent chess game he and Lazaroth were playing, Ramirus had just lost control of the board. But the terms of that game were nothing he could admit to any morati, and so he simply nodded stiffly, acknowledging the move.
“Very well,” the Lord Protector said. “I leave it to you to contact him, Lazaroth.” He looked around the table. “Is there anything else that requires discussion?” When no one answered in the affirmative he took his wife’s hand in his, and the two of them rose. Chairs scraped back as their guests stood respectfully, several bowing their heads in obeisance. Rhys stood also, with Kamala by his side, but he held his head high. Perhaps it was meant as an act of defiance. Or perhaps it was a comment upon what he thought of the plan that had been presented thus far. Or perhaps . . . perhaps he was simply too exhausted by all that he had seen and done in the past few weeks to care anymore.
Kamala was hard pressed to decide which possibility bothered her more.
The memorial path was long and twisting and flanked by a forest of blue pines so dense that only the most enterprising beams of sunlight could ever hope to make it to the ground. Nearly every trunk had been carved into one shape or another; some of the trees were so ancient that they had long ago given up trying to sprout branches to cover over the mutilations, while a few younger ones still had fresh scars from their spring pruning. The summer air was heavy with the pungent perfume of the trees, underscored by the moist scent of lichens and the fertile decay of fallen needles: the scent of memories.
Moving from tree to tree, Gwynofar ran her hands along the bark-shrouded features, trying to assign names to all the faces. In her childhood she had known them all and had prided herself on being able to recite them. How clear the faces had seemed to her back then! Now, after many years’ absence, she was struck by how muted the carvings had become. The trees kept struggling to swallow up the sculptures as their trunks grew thicker. Her parents kept a sculptor on hand for the trees that needed attention, but in a memorial forest this large it was hard to keep up.
Even so, it was like walking through a forest of ghosts. As if she could hear her ancestors whispering all around her as she followed the winding path to its end.
Finally there was only a single tree that stood alone, positioned atop a hill which had been stripped of all other brush. It was an ancient thing, with long, needle-heavy boughs that spread out from the summit like a vast blue parasol. Tradition said that this tree had been old even before the Great War began and supposedly the spirits of all the men who had been killed by the Souleaters in that war took shelter beneath its branches. Its trunk had been carved in the shape of a man but not merely with a disembodied face as was the usual custom. This ancestor appeared to be emerging from the wood even as one watched, sword drawn, gazing outward fiercely as if to search out the enemy wherever it might be hiding. Gwynofar found the great tree both eerie and fascinating and when she was younger she had come here often just to stare at it, as if daring it to move while she was watching. Thus far it had not done so.
Thus was Liam, the first Protector of Kierdwyn, memorialized.
Beside the tree stood Evaine Kierdwyn. She waited as her daughter came up the hill, watching her pass from shadow to sunlight and then into shadow once more as she approached the great pine. The Lady Protector held a scroll case of simple leather in her hands, neither labeled nor adorned, and her fingers played restlessly about the edge of the cap as she waited. She looked nervous, which struck Gwynofar as odd. Evaine Kierdwyn was adept at masking her feelings and rarely looked anything but calm.
Walking up to her, Gwynofar embraced her warmly. That seemed odd as well. It was as if there were some secret, unnamed tension in her mother’s body. Something not yet acknowledged, but very wrong.
“I am so glad you could come,” Evaine said.
Gwynofar smiled in what she hoped would be a reassuring manner. “It’s not as if I have much else to do, Mother. Since you and Father both insist on treating me as a guest and not as family.”
A faint smile played across the Lady Protector’s face. “Would you rather be kneading bread in the kitchen?”
“No.” She laughed softly. “But if you offered me a chance to go rummaging among dusty scrolls in the library, in search of forgotten lore, I might not turn you down.”
“Ah.” A strange, haunting sadness entered Evaine’s eyes. “Ancient scrolls sometimes teach us things we don’t want to know.” Her fingers tightened around the leather case. “Would you read each last one that you found, knowing that to be the case? Or shy away from those that might be troubling?”
Gwynofar hesitated. She sensed that her mother wanted to discuss something very private—why else would she have asked to meet with her out here, so far from any witnesses?—but didn’t know how to start. And without some clue as to what it was all about, Gwynofar was unable to help her. “I would read them, if I could. And expect to be troubled. What was it my tutor used to say? ‘Knowledge is a double-edged sword, and the hand that grasps it too eagerly may pay for his eagerness in blood.’ ”
Her mother turned away from her. Gwynofar watched her for a moment, noting the subtle trembling of her shoulders. Gently, she put a hand on her arm. Despite the warmth of the air surrounding them, the Lady Protector’s flesh felt chill beneath her sleeve.
“What is it, Mother?” She whispered the words. “Please tell me.”
With a sigh, Evaine looked down at the tube in her hands. For a long moment she did not respond, merely ran one fingernail around the edge of its cap. Finally she said, very quietly, “If you knew that your duty as a lyra called you to act, but that doing so might cost you everything you held dear, what would you do, Gwynofar? Would you want to know the details? Or would you prefer the safety of ignorance? Knowledge is power in many respects, but it brings with it responsibility.”
A cold chill ran down her spine. “Mother, I—”
“Don’t answer too quickly, Gwynofar. Some secrets, once they are released from their cage, cannot be put back again. Be very sure you want to share in this one.”
She shut her eyes for a moment and concentrated upon quieting the wild beating of her heart. Finally she drew in a long, deep breath and looked at her mother once more. “I am lyra.” She said it quietly but firmly. “I’ve known all my life that someday the gods might call upon me to serve them. That they have not seen fit to do so up until now does not excuse me from my duty.”
A strange look came over Evaine. Part pride; part pain. “You would not compromise that duty, my daughter? Even to save one of your own family from harm? Or perhaps from shame?”
“Mother . . .” She looked deep into the older woman’s eyes, seeking whatever clues might be found there. But there was nothing she knew how to read. “Tell me what is wrong. Please.”
With a sigh her mother looked down at the leather tube in her hands. After a moment she removed the cap and upended the tube to remove the contents. All done without a word. The only sound on
the hillside was the soft rustling of pine branches in the afternoon breeze and an occasional whirring of insects.
When a tightly rolled document finally slid out Evaine held it in her hand for a moment, hesitating. Then she gave it to Gwynofar. “Here, my daughter. See for yourself.”
Gwynofar unrolled the vellum sheet so that she might read it. It was a genealogical chart, drawn up according to the customs of the lyr. Each name had beside it a collection of tiny symbols, indicating which bloodlines were the most prevalent in that person’s heritage. The lyr used such charts to choose mates for their children, identifying unions that would bring new blood into their line. Or perhaps to avoid new blood, if what they wanted most was to enhance the characteristics of their own lineage. Different families had different customs, and the archivists recorded them all, passing judgment on none. Not with the precision that Rommel’s current project required, of course, but well enough for planning marital contracts.
Gwynofar scrolled through the document until she began to see familiar names: her immediate ancestors. Stevan Kierdwyn was on the final branch, with two sons by his first wife, then came Evaine and their two children Gwynofar and Arian. But the final entry by Gwynofar’s name did not look right, somehow. It too her a minute to figure out why.
There was a Skandir sigil by her name. “This is wrong,” she murmured. She knew for a fact that she had very little Skandir blood in her veins. Her twin brother Arian had been married to a Skandir princess for just that reason, though in the end he had died in a hunting accident before siring any children.
“Follow it back,” her mother said quietly. “Find the source of the aberration.”
She did as directed, her eyes traveling back along the various branches of her family tree, searching for anything else that did not seem right. Her father’s family looked correct, back as far as she could remember the details. But her mother’s branch—
She stopped.
And read the entry.
And read it again.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “How can this be?”
Her mother said nothing.
The mistake was two generations back, in the name provided for Gwynofar’s maternal grandfather. Instead of Casigo III, a prince of the Umrah line, the chart listed someone else entirely. Haralt? Some lordling of Skandir descent with a noteworthy strain of Alkali blood in him as well. Gwynofar had never heard the name before.
She looked up at Evaine, confused.
“He was your grandfather,” the Lady Protector said.
“But Lady Desira . . . your mother . . . she was only married once. And her husband’s name is not even on this chart.”
“No,” Evaine agreed. “It is not.”
And then the truth of it sank in. The only possible answer.
Oh, my gods . . .
“Where did you get this?” Gwynofar whispered. She reached out for the trunk of the tree for support, as the world swirled dizzily around her.
“I drew it up myself, when you were born. As my mother had done for me, upon my birth. Who else could be trusted with such knowledge? I made a copy for your brother, too, but he . . . he never learned the truth.” She paused, remembering. “I buried his copy with him.”
How sad her eyes were. How lost. Gwynofar could not begin to imagine what keeping such a secret had cost her.
“Does Father know this?”
Evaine shook her head slowly from side to side. “No one knows. Not since the day my mother died, taking her secret with her. Only myself . . . and now you.”
Gwynofar stared at the scroll, struggling to absorb its message. “How did it happen?”
“She had an affair. It was short-lived—or so my mother claimed—but apparently productive. My father thought I was his child, and my mother never corrected him. All the official histories—and genealogies—reflect that lie.”
“But how could she have been sure who the father was? Casigo would not have believed the child was his unless they’d had relations in the proper time frame, which means. . . .” She was finding it all hard to process. “How could she be so sure?”
“Aside from the gift of a lyra to know her own child?” She smiled sadly. “Rather mundane, actually. A simple birthmark, not significant in any other sense. But clearly inherited. Perhaps the gods marked us thus because they wished us to know the truth, or perhaps they did it to mock her infidelity. At any rate, this is your true lineage Gwynofar.”
Speechless, Gwynofar stared at the matriarchal branch of her family. Beyond Haralt’s, they were all unfamiliar.
“Have you figured out why this matters, Gwynofar? Why I am showing this to you now, instead of taking the secret with me to my grave?”
She shook her head.
The older woman pointed to the symbols scribed by Gwynofar’s name. Tiny sigils identifying each of the sacred bloodlines that had contributed to her heritage. “Count them,” she said quietly.
There were seven.
A cold shiver coursed through Gwynofar’s flesh. Her hands holding the chart suddenly felt numb, the vellum insubstantial.
“You are the child of all seven bloodlines, Gwynofar. And while I don’t have Rommel’s formulae to determine the exact proportions of your heritage, I’m willing to bet that they are—what did the prophecy say? Birthright in balance.”
“You can’t know that,” she whispered. “No one can.”
“No? Even your sons, with only half your strength, could smell when the enemy was near. Didn’t you tell me that? That was when I realized that the gift of the gods was unusually strong in you. But I did not know why.” She gestured toward the scroll. “Now I do.”
“But Rommel doesn’t know any of this.” She had to struggle to get the words out. “No one knows.”
“That is true.” Gently Evaine took hold of the vellum, working it loose from Gwynofar’s hands. She rolled it up tightly and slid it back into its protective shell, capping the tube once more. “And no one will ever know . . . unless you choose to reveal it.”
She looked up at her mother.
“You are a queen, Gwynofar. Even if you tell them the truth, no one will ask you to risk your life in this affair. No one will want you to risk your life. You will have to fight for the right to do so, defying all those who want to protect you, who feel that your political station should put you above such risk. It will be hard enough to convince people here, where we all share the same sense of duty, but I can’t even imagine how you could get Salvator to understand.”
Gwynofar shuddered. “I could never tell Salvator.”
Evaine took her daughter’s hand in her own. “Listen to me, my child. We can tuck this chart away in some secret place, and no one will ever know it exists. If that is what you want. Or I can deliver it to Rommel, along with . . . explanations.” A shadow passed over her face. “Not a conversation I am looking forward to, if I must be honest.”
Shutting her eyes, Gwynofar tried to bring some kind of order to her thoughts. She wanted to feel brave, but she didn’t. She wanted her faith to give her strength, so that she didn’t feel so small and frightened and completely overwhelmed by all this. She wanted some kind of sign from the gods that this was the right thing to do. Anything.
But there was nothing.
They have given us powers and prophecies, she thought, and now they sit back and watch us, waiting to see what we will make of it all. Whether in the end we will prove worthy of their gifts, or else cower and weep and beg someone else to provide us with salvation.
Her mother was watching her. Waiting for her answer.
I am lyra, she thought. Born and bred to protect mankind when the Great War begins anew. Now that time has come, and the gods have dictated how the war shall be waged. Who am I to deny their will? What will all my accomplishments in life be worth, if I shirk this final duty?
“I will tell Rommel,” she whispered. The words hung heavy in the air.
Her mother nodded. “And I will tell your father.??
? She sighed heavily. “Though to be honest, that is the part I am dreading the most.”
“He will understand. He has his own infidelities.” Like Rhys, she thought. Did this explain the strange chemistry between her mother and her brother? Was Evaine more tolerant of Stevan’s indiscretions because she knew her own heritage was rooted in similar weakness? Suddenly a lot of things made more sense.
“Gwynofar. My precious daughter.” Evaine reached up to stroke her cheek. “Infidelity by itself means little. The annals of every royal history are full of it. Even lying about infidelity, in order to avoid a public scandal, is common enough. Such a crime might be forgiven in time.” She sighed. “But for a lyra to falsify genealogical charts, to insert a lie which will gain in scope and power with each new generation, that will not be forgiven so easily.”
Her hand fell from her daughter’s face. Her eyes were sad, but determined.
“In time of war we must all make sacrifice,” she said. “This is mine.”
Chapter 23
“IS IT really from her?” Salvator demanded. “Are you sure?”
The witch drew in a deep breath and tried to focus her power. It was hard, with the High King standing over her like a vulture, but she was getting used to that. Slowly she turned the letter over in her hand, rubbing the fine vellum between her fingertips as she tested its substance with her power. Once she finally managed to focus her mind, it was a simple enough item to read. Only one layer of meaning adhered to it, without supernatural obfuscation or enhancement, and there were only a few handlers to detect. Someone had cried over the ink at some point, and somewhere in the process of producing the vellum a child had been beaten, but those were all minor notes that had little real significance. The central story was clear.
“This was written by the Queen Mother,” she affirmed,
“in her own hand, by her own will. Nowhere about it is there any trace of coercion. Or deception.” Actually there was a faint echo of lies being told over the ink while it was being bottled—something about a young girl’s virginity—but she guessed that the High King did not want to hear about such trivial details. “Likewise I can confirm that it was indeed delivered to your chamber by Magister Ramirus, by a common transportation spell, that expired when the letter arrived. There is no sign of any residual sorcery that should be of concern to you.” Not that I could detect a Magister’s tricks if he meant to keep them a secret, she thought dryly. But there was no need to volunteer that information. “Nor is there sign of any man or woman handling it besides those who produced the vellum and those two persons I have named. And of course now yourself, Sire.”