Relief broke over him, and he made his way down the ladder and signaled for the guards to open the gate and usher her in.
Once on the ground, his relief turned to delight.
He did, in fact, recognize the elderly Liringlas woman the guards were escorting through the heavily bound doors of the gate. He had once been a guest in her household in Manosse, in the second year of his marriage when he had taken Rhapsody across the sea to meet and visit his family and ancestral lands there.
She was his wife’s oldest friend from Serendair, someone she had known longer, though not as dearly, as Achmed and Grunthor.
“Analise!” he called as the woman passed through the guard station. She looked in his direction and smiled warmly, then dropped him a respectful bow.
“Lord Gwydion.”
“Ashe, please,” he said, embracing her. “Happy as I am to see you, what in the world are you doing here, in a time of war?”
Analise’s face went slack.
“War?”
Ashe offered her his arm and led her back toward the central building of the fortress.
“I am surprised you are unaware of the buildup and hostilities here; I sent word long ago to the magisterium in Manosse.”
The elderly woman blinked rapidly as they traveled through the forest.
“I do not believe that word was received, m’lord. My husband be, as you know, a member of the consulate, and if he had been aware that war was in the offing, I be quite certain he would not have agreed with my decision to come here.” She looked up into Ashe’s face, a head higher than her own. “Though I would have come anyway. Rhapsody—be she all right?”
“I believe so.”
“Forgive me—believe so? You don’t know?”
They had reached sight of the central command post; Analise paused where she stood and took in a breath.
The palace was a wonder of architecture and engineering, built from polished wood and stone to evoke and enhance the natural beauty of its forest setting, with gleaming leaded glass windows filling the building with light and breathtaking views. It was set at many interesting angles and levels, as Ashe’s father Llauron’s house at the Circle had been when he had served as the Invoker of the Filids and the guardian of the Great White Tree in Gwynwood, but with a more Cymrian aspect, the lost artistry of the Island of Serendair apparent in its design.
Analise, who had been born on the Island, had seen its type of design in person, rather than from historical renderings.
“Please come in, Analise,” Ashe said as one of the soldiers standing guard opened the front door. “This is the chamberlain, Gerald Owen, on loan from Navarne; he is the wisest person in the fortress, so if you need anything, by all means seek his aid.”
The elderly chamberlain smiled politely and bowed, then extended his arms for Analise’s cloak, which she gave him. She returned her attention to Ashe.
“M’lord, I came from Manosse because, until six months or so ago, Rhapsody and I were in regular contact, exchanging letters on each Alliance flagship that sailed between Manosse and the Middle Continent. She had written to me in great excitement and joy of her pregnancy; as you know, I be, by profession, a midwife and healer specializing in young children.” Ashe nodded. “But then, suddenly, the letters stopped coming, and I thought perhaps, feared really, that something had happened to Rhapsody or the baby, that she was grieving, or ill—”
“No, no,” Ashe said quickly, seeing the tears that had welled up in the woman’s eyes. He took her elbow and guided her gently into the library, wordlessly signaling to Gerald Owen, who departed immediately. “Come, please, Analise, let us sit. Gerald will bring us tea, and supper later.” He led his wife’s friend to a set of chairs across from one another in front of the cold fireplace and waited until she had taken a seat, then did so himself.
“Rhapsody has had quite a hard time of it in the last six months,” he said quietly. “First, she was kidnapped by a maniac from the old world when I was away at the funeral of the empress of Sorbold, someone who had been seeking her all this time. She escaped him, endured, and prevailed, only to have the baby come early, in a manner that threatened her life and left her profoundly weak. Finally, as war neared, I needed to send them both away, into hiding. But I hear from her almost every day, in one way or another, and she and our child seem well.”
“The baby was born already, then?”
“Yes.”
The Liringlas woman exhaled in relief. Then her silver eyes darkened.
“A maniac, you say? From the old land?”
Ashe grimaced, then nodded. He had already said more to Analise than he normally would have, but there was comfort in speaking with someone who was unlikely to be a thrall of the demon. Analise lived on the other side of the sea, and her relationship to Rhapsody was unknown to any but the two of them on the continent.
Forbear, the dragon in his blood whispered. You can trust no one.
Ashe swallowed and forced the words out.
“He was a soldier when he knew her in Serendair. She hated him.”
Analise went pale, and she began to tremble slightly.
“Not—not—Michael?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
Ashe blinked, and his face grew solemn.
“Yes, it was Michael, the Wind of Death.”
Analise’s hand went to her mouth. “He be still alive? Dear One-God.”
“He is no longer,” said Ashe bitterly. “You knew of him?”
The elderly woman nodded, her breathing somewhat lighter.
“Not of him; I knew him, in the most horrible of ways.” She looked askance at the Lord Cymrian. “Rhapsody did not tell you how we met? Not even before you came to visit my family in Manosse?”
“No,” said Ashe, thinking back. “I don’t think she ever did. She said you were a child when she knew you, and she was older, seventeen or so, I believe, though I can’t recall her saying more than that. But I am aware that the era in her life in which you must have known her was the most terrible time; I have held her through the nightmares she still occasionally has of it, though she does not speak of those days to me.” His stomach turned over. “She once told me of some of the things she was forced to do in those days, and it upset me so greatly that she has shielded me, coward that I am, ever since, to spare the dragon in my blood from knowledge that might enflame it.”
Tears came to Analise’s eyes again.
“It is because of what she did for me in those days that I be alive and here this day,” she said quietly. “Michael killed my family before my eyes, set our longhouse on fire, and took me, wrapped in my mother’s bloody shawl, away with him to the city of Easton where he used me as leverage to gain her attention. My memories of that time be those of a child, because I was spared the details, as Rhapsody made sure to shield me as much as she could as well, m’lord. But I know that Michael’s intentions for me were brutal, and that Rhapsody’s intervention spared me from them. I do not know everything she sacrificed to save me, but on at least one occasion I saw—”
Ashe could see the lump rise in her throat, his dragon sense making note of the depth of her horror.
“I beg you, Analise, please do not tell me,” he interrupted, urgency in his voice. “I am having a difficult enough time maintaining my sanity with the loss of my wife and child; please. It could very well provoke a rampage.”
Analise nodded silently as the tears in her eyes spilled over and down her cheeks.
“Of course; my deepest apologies, m’lord. It is brazen past words for me to think to tell you of things she did not choose to. I only wish you to know that I had planned to come when Rhapsody was closer to the end of her pregnancy, to help, if possible, with the delivery of the baby. There is a song Liringlas women sing to one another to ease the pain of childbirth, with which I be very familiar.”
Ashe smiled as a soft tap sounded at the door, and Gerald Owen came in, bearing a tea tray. “I imagine. I’m sure she would have welcomed that gr
eatly. I am sorry for your worry, Analise, though it certainly was founded, but she has returned to health, from what I can surmise, and the baby is apparently growing stronger each day.” His own throat felt a lump rise in it. “I miss them both more than I can put into words.”
He picked up the cup of tea the chamberlain had placed before him as Analise did the same.
“I am sorry you traveled all this way, only to not find them here,” he said after taking a draught. “If Manosse truly does not know that we are in a state of war, I fear even more for the outcome, as I had been depending on a number of warships I ordered from there and Gaematria. So, after we’ve finished our repast, I fear I must return to my work. If you would like to tour the fortress, I can arrange that. Then we can have supper and decide what to do about getting you home.”
27
INTERNAL STOCKADE, HIGHMEADOW
A few hours later and several buildings away, deep within the heavy walls and behind the even heavier doors of the high-security stockade, Tristan Steward was pacing his cell, wearing a path in the small rug on the stone floor.
Each day that passed devolved him, bit by bit, into something only vaguely human. He was allowed, in exchange for being bound and under bowman sight, to be shaved if he so desired, as well as having a one-way drain for any refuse or bodily fluids he wished to dispose of through the floor. Hot water was available to him every day through a pipe high above in the ceiling in a tiled area in the corner of his cell for cleansing himself, and fresh clothes were delivered daily also. Ashe had commented, on one of the occasions he had come down to make good on his offer of a flask of brandy now and then, that he wished he had been so incarcerated during his time in hiding.
But in spite of a relatively luxurious captivity, Tristan was going out of his mind.
If the utter solitude and ascetic living wasn’t enough to drive him mad, the thin voice that scratched on windy nights at the back of his brain surely would bring it about.
Tristan.
He thought he had heard that voice before, somewhere in his broken memory, but the solid walls of the prison cell, the complete silence that the stones kept locked away with him, prevented him from deriving any tone from it. It was as if it was sounding deep within his mind, rather than coming to him through his ears.
Mostly because it was.
Tristan, come to me.
He had been hearing it, or something like it, for a very long time he realized one day, early in his captivity, just after he had finished reading one of the books Ashe loaned him to occupy his mind in his solitude. The text was a dense historical narrative, a dull retelling of the story of the exodus of the Cymrian Fleets. The only actual satisfaction he had derived from it was the picture it had placed in his mind of Rhapsody in the land of her birth. His lack of intellectual curiosity meant that he had never ascertained with which Fleet she had sailed, or anything else about her history, though he was aware that she was one of the Three that had been prophesied about at the end of the Cymrian War. But her personal history, or any other mundane detail, was not what held his interest about her.
The Lord Roland had been shocked when Gwydion had arrested him at Ashe’s angry accusation of Tristan’s desire to have his wife. The shock was not a result of error, but rather of degree; if the Lord Cymrian had any real notion of the intensity and depth of Tristan’s obsession with the Lady Cymrian, the Lord Roland reasoned, he would have been long since buried in an unmarked grave, undoubtedly watered with Gwydion’s urine. He had been consumed with an overpowering lust from the moment Rhapsody had walked away from him almost five years before, upon their meeting in which she had unsuccessfully presented a diplomatic initiative to him on behalf of the Firbolg king. His arrogant response to her, and her amused departure, had ignited an anger and passion so foolhardy in his addled brain and the lower regions of his body that he had sent two thousand men to their slaughter in the vain attempt to win back her interest.
His sexual fantasies while awake and feverish dreams while asleep were consumed with images of her, none of which he would have wanted her husband to be able to see through his eyes. Having been raised in unrivaled privelege, Tristan’s powers of self-deception and self-importance led to him having no compunction about planning for a time when he might steal her away from his childhood friend, whether for a well-timed tryst or something more long-lasting that would increase his power and social standing. A realistic assessment of his chances of this happening was never in question. Married to the cold and pusillanimous woman that he was, he felt no guilt at his unclean thoughts, believing on a soul-deep level that he deserved better than what he had chosen for his life. At the very worst, he reasoned, he was engaging in harmless sexual fantasy that satisfied masturbatory needs which he alone was aware of. At best, his gloriously seedy fornication with Portia, whom Gwydion had described as being the host of a F’dor, was fueled by her encouragement of his sharing of those raunchy and deviant fantasies as she fulfilled them to the best of her abilities. Upon discovering her real nature after her death, Tristan was grateful to have escaped with his soul intact.
Or so he thought.
He had no idea that the intensity of his longing for another man’s wife, predating his introduction to the demonic serving wench, was the only thing that had kept him from succumbing to the F’dor’s thrall.
But as time passed in his cell, his fading ability to recall Rhapsody’s face, to bring her image into his mind, or feel anything but despair left him vulnerable to the whispering voice in his mind.
Tristan, come to me.
Tristan listened carefully now, as he always did, to the toneless words in his mind. It was an all-but-unavoidable beckoning, one he could not ignore, but the solidity of his surroundings made its demand impossible to obey. The only opening in the room was a low, locked metal window on the one door, near the floor. It was unlocked from the outside, and items, mostly food, were slid in on wooden trays which needed to be returned before any new ones were sent through. Tristan had tried repeatedly but was unable to fathom any possible escape; Gwydion had made certain of the jail’s impenetrability.
Now, however, the words were more than the command to come. They whispered other instructions, simple words with a harsh meaning, repeated over and over in the silence of his empty chamber.
Finally, Tristan comprehended.
When it was almost time for the evening meal to be delivered, he rose from his cot and made his way to the door. It was built from thick elm trunks bound tightly in brass bands that had been affixed with heavy bolts, the heads of which were rounded and smoothed to prevent being used to shape weapons, though the jailers were always careful not to leave anything behind that would be able to be so manufactured.
Tristan took hold of the stone walls on either side of the doorway.
His muscles strained as he gripped them tight.
Then, with all his strength, he slammed his head into the door.
Over, and over, methodically repeating the self-assault as soon as his head cleared enough to do it again.
He kept bashing his head into the door and the stone edges of the opening, gashing his forehead open and spraying blood all over the walls. Finally the world went dark around him and he fell to the floor, his head leaking a black-red river immediately in front of the metal opening at the base of the door.
So that when the guard came to bring him his supper, and unlocked that opening, he was met with an ominous cascade of gore pooling already under the metal window.
* * *
“M’lord! M’lord!”
Ashe looked up in surprise from the meal he was sharing with his visitor. He smiled reassuringly at Analise, then rose, bowed politely, folded his napkin, and went to the door of his library chambers.
“Yes, Gerald?”
“M’lord, come, please. Your, er, guest in the stockade is in need of your attention.”
Ashe nodded, then turned to Analise.
“I’m very sorry, I must go,
though I will return as soon as I can. Please, finish and enjoy the rest of the meal; we can talk more when I return.” He made a slight bow again and followed Gerald Owen through the doorway.
* * *
Ashe’s dragon sense had assessed the degree of Tristan’s injury even before he had entered the corridor leading to the cell.
“Tristan, you fool,” he muttered as he strode down the corridor, the jailer, two guards and Gerald Owen hurrying to keep pace with him. “What sort of game are you playing this time?”
He signaled impatiently for the jailer to unlock the door, then drew his sword as the guards entered the cell. Just beyond the door, Tristan was lying in a large pool of blood, sprawled prone on the stone floor. Ashe gestured impatiently, and the two guards took the unconscious prince by the upper arms and hauled him to his feet, then over to his cot, where they propped him, slumped, against the cell wall.
The jailer slung his crossbow over his shoulder and sighted it on the prisoner, just to be sure.
Ashe crossed the room slowly, deliberation in each step. The blue waves of light emitted by Kirsdarke made the cell seem as if it were under the sea in the fading radiance of dusk.
“Exactly what do you think you accomplished with this brilliant tactic, my friend?” he asked the prince, who was coming to consciousness, wincing in pain.
The Lord Roland waved his hand in front of his face hazily.
“Let me out of here,” he whispered weakly. “For the love of the All-God, Gwydion, send me home.”
“I’m sorry, Tristan, but nothing has changed. I’ve asked for those who might be able to assess you to do so if they are in the area, but the war is in full fledge now, and there is little travel that isn’t of a martial nature.”