The old women fawned and fussed over Elthwen as if she were a newborn babe. They hovered, they patted her head. They bustled and fluttered about like hens, cackling incessantly. Would you care for more? Have another crust of bread. Have you ever seen hair like this? How she has grown! Such beautiful hair.
She remembered them, the ones who had tried to ease her loneliness those many years ago: Old Arenth, and Nirie, her daughter, who seemed as aged as her mother, even then; Ithlen, who sang with a golden voice; Miriel and Renellwen. Some were gone, crossed over into Glothras in the time since she had visited: Ailfan, her mother’s mother and even the youngest, Mythren.
They stood over her while she drank, savoring the bowl’s warmth in her red and stinging hands, indulging herself in the watery broth dissipating her deepest chill. Coals simmered red in braziers lining the stone walls surrounding the planked tables and the bench on which she sat in the sparsely furnished, brightly lit room. When she had had her fill, they hustled her off to a small, cold high-windowed room and a hastily drawn bath in a large copper tub before a small tiled hearth, where the jabbering continued unabated.
What news have you? Shame on your grandfather for taking you through the forest; see what has become of your clothes! Renellwen will mend that. She is skilled with a needle…not nearly as skilled as your mother…but then again we can’t remember anyone with your mother’s gifts. Why was there no word of your coming? Surely we would have been better prepared….
She hardly listened, hardly made sense of their jabbering. Soon she would be with Gamba again. He would have answers and she would know what the future held. Closing her eyes, allowing herself to revel in the comfort of the hot, petal strewn water, she hugged her knees to her chest in the shallow basin and tried to empty her mind.
Nirie whispered something and the others left the room. Following the click of the latch, silence reigned, punctuated by a slow patter of water dripping onto the white tile floor.
“You must excuse them,” Nirie said, pouring the last bucket of steaming water into the basin. “We are all, no doubt, excited. It has been a while since we have had visitors. But you are worn out from your journey. We will talk later.”
* * *
Long after the calming effects of the bath had dissipated from her aching body, Elthwen found herself seated with Nirie on a grassy slope overlooking one of the terraces half way up the hill. Trellised sithelberry vines, in various stages of flower, filled the midday air with a warm fragrance. Afternoon sunshine warmed her. A gentle breeze rustled her hair, hanging damp and heavy down the length of her back.
Dressed in the unbleached linen kirtle of the ghalthwena, Elthwen stretched out her legs and leaned back on her hands while Nirie applied a comb to the tangles. Thin and stooped, Nirie’s aged mother wandered along the overgrown path, pulling up weeds amid clusters of blue salpania growing in wild abundance. On the terraces below, where newly furrowed gardens emitted the heady smell of freshly turned earth, groups of women had gathered in the shade of flowering brackletorns for their midday meal. Sheep lowed and grazed on the gentle slope above. Chickens clucked and pecked for bugs in the long grass of the path.
“It is good to see you again,” Nirie said with a gentle tug of her brush. “How long has it been? One loses track of time.” She sighed. “Long enough, I suppose. But look at you! A grown woman now. What does that make me?” Her laugh was deep and hearty. “Was it not only yesterday you were a little girl…full of such mischief…? Oh, as long as I live I’ll not forget.”
Elthwen was barely eight years of age during that one visit to Morolath Island. According to some old ghalthwen’s teachings, “…’tis the duty of all Lothrian girls to experience at least once in her life the overwhelming sensation of being completely alone and left to her own devices.” At least, that was how she saw it.
“We tried, but nothing could cheer you. Then you found all manner of places to hide from us.” Silence took Nirie for a moment then she laughed out loud, her comb catching in a tangle. “Do you remember?”
Elthwen winced.
“Two days it was…or was it three? On this little isle, where was a child to go? And after we gave up hope of finding you—and what in Nirmanath’s name were we to tell your mother?—you turned up all wet and cold.”
Nothing on the island had touched her in the way her mother had assured it would, not even Nirmanath’s undying flame, which burned under the attention of one young priestess or another, in all manner of weather. So she spent her time in constant exploration of plants and insects, the animals in the park. She slept those summer nights under the stars. She heard the hum of life those nights, so very close to the center of all things. The hum was all around her, vibrating in her blood, lighting up her mind. Yes, she cried for her mother, but at the time something deeper chafed at her heart, something that even now, she could not quite define.
The same pang now pulsed through Elthwen’s heart. “I just wanted to go home.” A tear slithered down her cheek.
Nirie laid a reassuring hand on Elthwen’s shoulder. “Of course you did, girl!” She set the brush on the towel at her side.
“I didn’t mean to cause you any worry.”
“Ach!” For an instant, Nirie clutched Elthwen’s head to her breast. “You are your mother’s daughter, no doubt. You have her disposition.”
“But none of her gifts….” She spoke without thinking, almost a whisper, and was relieved when Nirie did not—or chose not—to respond.
What was she to have said? Anyone with half an eye could see that she had been the beneficiary of none of her mother’s graces. Where Lysienthe possessed a body soft with women’s curves and other feminine endowments, Elthwen’s inadequacies showed plainly through even the coarsest attire. Daily in her polished mirror the face looking back, while far from plain with its wide gray eyes and smooth skin, seemed no more than a pale imitation of her mother’s features.
“Lysienthe loved her life here. She was happy.” Nirie’s voice held a wistful tone as she began plaiting Elthwen’s hair into a long braid. “It seems like yesterday my mother showed her how to use a spindle…and she took to it in an instant. Such gifts she had. A pity she had to renounce them.”
“It was not of her choosing.” As soon as she uttered those words, Elthwen wished she could call them back. Even as she endeavored to control the passion in her heart, her voice betrayed her efforts.
Nirie tugged too hard. Stillness overcame the woman, her fingers tense in Elthwen’s hair, and then she continued to work distractedly, a note of confusion in her voice. “As I recall, she was only too happy to make the sacrifice. After all, it was for the good of her people.”
“No, that was not what I meant to….” It was fruitless to continue. Nirie would never understand. Choice as a concept did not exist in her world. Born of a chosen union between ghalthrach and ghalthwen, Nirie and her sisters followed a course laid out for them over hundreds of years by generations before them. Their lives had been mapped out before the day they were born. The same had been true for Lysienthe, her own mother. Until the unexpected came to pass and her life changed in an instant when her father chose her above all women in Lothria to be his queen.
“There!” Nirie settled back on her heels. “As smooth and fine as aramyd threads, and look at the color in this light! And so thick…. None of your mother’s gifts, indeed!” She plucked the matching silver clasps from the towel and fastened them at the top, middle, and bottom of the waist-length braid. “Your mother’s hair was lovely, dear, but yours is truly a gift.”
* * *
1Afternoon wore on with no word from Gamba, and no sense from the women that anything could be more important than nagging her with their ministrations. Bored and restless, Elthwen wandered in the afternoon sun through herb and flower gardens, gathering blue salpania blossoms along the hillside path. Nirie and Arenth trailed behind, never letting her out of their sight.
There was a time, she had been told, when the shrine at Morolath—indeed the whole island—bustled with life, when travelers from far and wide filled rooms in the guest house for the express purpose of receiving Nirmanath’s blessings and partaking of ritual cleansings in the lake. Since ancient times, when the ghalthrach and ghalthwen were revered for their knowledge and learning, voices of young girls and women had filled the halls and chambers with laughter and song. Now, save for the mating calls of birds, distant voices, and the chopping of hoes, the halls were silent.
The jangling bells seemed to surround her all at once, rising from all directions, echoing with deafening clamor. Covering her ears, she glanced quickly down the hill where she had last seen Arenth and Nirie ambling up the path behind her. Seeing no one there, Elthwen scanned the area farther down.
With their arms outstretched at their sides, robes puffing around them, the two old women appeared like sails without a ship, and for a fleeting instant, they seemed to fly. A handful of others stirred about on the terrace, most in drab linen kirtles, three or four in some combination of golden ceremonial armor, all imploring the two with their hands and their voices to make haste. Others pressed en masse into the main house.
One among them turned his gaze toward the summit, and the angry light from his corrath pierced her heart like a cold wind.
She looked away, out across the lake toward the old cart path cutting along its western shore. Amid the incessant jangling, she peered hard, shielding her eyes from the glare of sun slanting through the thicket at the forest’s edge. If not for the tiny motes of light dancing in procession, she would have mistaken the motion for shadows.
As her vision cleared, so did the line of horsemen—five of them—riding slowly toward the crumbling stone bridge just beyond the curve in the northern shore. Sunlight glinted off their bridles. To the south, two more of them had dismounted on the mooring platform at the ferry launch. One of them spoke with the old ferryman, who gesticulated wildly toward the hill.
Nothing in the horsemen’s unhurried pace implied danger. If not for the bells and her grandfather’s voice rising above the commotion, the pounding in her veins might have seemed odd and incongruous.
Then, just as suddenly as they had begun, the bells stopped tolling. Silence pulsed on the air and in her ears with a painful throbbing as the first of the riders emerged from shadows into the light. The others followed in single file, too far still for her to discern any markings or colors to identify them as friend or foe. Somehow she knew.
Her brother was among them. She felt his growing nearness and her racing heart seemed to stop for an instant when she spied his unmistakable form astride Banarel, the white gelding he favored above all others. Elthric! She felt his heart calling out to her, hopeful and high-spirited. She knew his heart as if it were her own. As children they often finished each other’s sentences and, more times than she could remember, they burst out in one voice the same ridiculous idea. Elthric would never hurt her; it was not in his disposition. The mere notion struck her as more than absurd. Even more preposterous, the idea of alarm bells and everyone running and Gamba….
His harried voice pierced the drumming in her ears.
“Come down from there at once!”
His corrath a fiery red, its aura pulsing, Gamba had scrambled nearly to the top of the hill and motioned to her with heightened urgency.
Unable to tear her gaze from the riders approaching the tumbledown bridge, Elthwen started with uncertain steps toward her grandfather. “But it’s Elthric! Elthric has come.”
“Those are Othreld’s men!” He took her hard by the elbow and swung her around to look at him. Face tense, eyes grave, he shook her. “Your fool of a brother has led them here.” Then without ceremony, he began hauling her down the footpath.
“No….” Her voice escaped of its own volition, a suffocated wail. A part of her refused to believe such an allegation. It simply could not be true. She dug in her heels and yanked him to a halt. “You know him as well as I. He would never—”
His slanted his face close to hers, the heat of his corrath fluttering over her skin. “There is no time for talk. Now follow me and say no more.”
She uttered not a word the rest of the way down the slope, and even as Gamba led her across the empty terrace and into the musty rectangular room that served as dining quarters and meeting room, she could not allow herself to believe anything she had seen and heard. Surely, this entire escapade was another of her grandfather’s surprising theatrics, a presentation whose finale would have all involved talking for years.
Huddled together in the hall, the last of the galthwena greeted them with somber, downcast eyes. Their uneasiness trilled on the taut silence. Those of them who could stand under the weight of their gold breastplates and horsehair-plumed helmets, propped themselves precariously along the wall lest the slightest movement send them toppling to the floor. The air thrummed with anticipation as Nochlan led Elthwen to the far end of the room where the high priestess waited, her eyes downcast, hands clasped together under her chin.
A section of the flagstone floor had been moved away, revealing it to be a false panel of wood and plaster. Under its cover, a narrow stairway had been carved into the bedrock, leading down into a dark hole.
Myrwethen, her mother’s half-sister, gazed upon her with a look that spoke of past disappointment and impending danger. “You will be safe here. We will do what we can to send them away.”
Gamba led the way down, then turned back and grabbed Elthwen’s wrist. “I pray to Nirmanath your mother is wrong and Elthric has had no part in this deception.” His fingers trembled. “But I smell foul deeds turning and I cannot help believing there was truth in her visions.”