Standing in the formal receiving room, the silver-and-blonde-haired Matriarch glances toward the clear blue crystal chair of the Matriarchy, set upon the low dais at the far end of the long room half-walled with floor-to-ceiling windows. Then she looks back at Alcaren, who waits just inside the doorway, and speaks. “A lady in a black cloak will be arriving shortly. You will wait outside the door and announce her. You will not escort her inside, but let her enter by herself. You will let no others in to see me, should they accompany her. If she will not enter by herself, she may not enter.”
“Should I not…” Alcaren stops. His eyes drop to the blue stone floor. “I am sorry.”
“You are right to worry about me, but this is one room where I am secure by myself.” A wry smile follows the words. “Unless I must face more than one other.”
“You are the Matriarch.” Alcaren inclines his head. “I am still learning. Yet…might I ask? One of the Ladies of Shadows?”
“Yes. I am certain that they wish to warn me about something sorcerous. I may already know it, or I may not, but it is better to listen and hear again what one knows than to ignore the request and fail to learn something that I should know.” Alya nods. “You may go and take your position without.”
“Yes, Matriarch.”
Once the door shuts, and the Matriarch is alone, she walks to the dais, where she seats herself in the crystalline chair, upon the blue cushion that is the sole softness within the formal receiving room. She straightens herself and waits, thinking, oblivious to the cold autumn sunlight that angles through the clear glass of the closed windows and falls upon the shimmering blue stone floor.
Before long, there is a knock on the door, followed by Alcaren’s voice. “A Lady of the Shadows to see you, Matriarch.”
“Show her in,” replies Alya.
The door opens. In walks a figure of height neither small nor exceedingly tall, but wearing a black cloak that covers all from the crown of the head down to just above the tops of the mid-calf black boots. The door closes. The hooded cloak of black shadows the face of the figure standing in the receiving room, but the shadows are not deep enough to conceal the gray hair and the age-sharpened jaw. Nor is the cloak bulky enough to disguise that the caller is a woman.
The Matriarch sits erect upon the clear blue crystal chair of the Matriarchy. “You requested an audience?”
“I did, Matriarch.” The woman bows gracefully. “We appreciate that you are willing to hear us.”
“What did you wish to bring to my attention?”
“We understand that two sorceresses of Defalk are traveling eastward into Ebra to deal with the rebellion of Lord Mynntar, and that a third is in Neserea. Further, there is a renegade sorcerer in Neserea who has been partially trained by the Sturinnese. He has already used sorcery to slaughter a company of Mansuuran lancers.”
“For women who abhor sorcery, you know a great deal.”
“We have never opposed sorcery for knowledge and communications, only its use as a tool for changing the world and weather or for warfare.”
The Matriarch waits for the Lady of the Shadows to speak again.
“Last, you have trained a man in sorcery, armed him as one of your guards, and set him before you.” The dark eyes under the hood fix on the Matriarch.
“That is true. He is where I can watch him, and he can protect me in these disturbing times.”
“Not in generations have there been so many sorceresses—and sorcerers—in Liedwahr trained for war.” The Lady of the Shadows pauses. “There are two other sorceresses yet in Falcor who may yet bring their evil arts into play, and several apprentices.”
“All that is known.”
“Matriarch, we exist because of the horrors of the Spell-Fire Wars. We would not see sorcery such as that ever unleashed again.”
“Ranuak would not be here today without the Spell-Fire Wars,” Alya points out. “All our ancestors would have died under the yoke of the Mynyan lords.”
“That was a price we cannot pay again, Matriarch, and well you know that. Ebra is yet a blighted and poor land, and Wei remains so, and cold as well. We must trade, for much of our land remains boggy and wet, and far too many of those bogs poison the land around them.” The shadow lady waits within the black cloak.
“All that is true. What would you have me do? I have trained none in battle sorcery, nor have I used such sorcery. Yet the Sturinnese have used sorcery to flatten most of Narial. Their vessels swarm around the coast. They are blocking our trading vessels, and they support the rebel Mynntar in Ebra. Defalk sees itself threatened.”
“You must insist that Lord Robero turn from sorcery.”
The Matriarch laughs, ruefully. “Defalk has perhaps thirty full companies of lancers. Dumar has less than that—or had less than that. We have twenty. The Maitre of Sturinn can bring ten times that to our shores, should he wish. Do you think my words will sway either Lord Robero or the Maitre?”
“Then close the Exchange to the Defalkans and their allies. You must. This poor land cannot bear another set of scars like those of the Spell-Fire Wars.”
“We are already losing trading vessels to the Sturinnese. Before long, few or none will port here. Then…we will need trade from Defalk and Ebra far more than they will need it from us. Do you wish me to condemn our people to starvation?”
“Better that than death in fire and flame.”
“It has not come to that. It may well not. I will do as I can.”
The Lady of the Shadows bows. “Thank you, Matriarch. We have offered what we know, and what we fear from another excess of sorcery. We have warned you.”
“I do hope that is not a threat,” Alya says.
“The Ladies of the Shadows do not threaten, Matriarch.”
“I have heard you.” The Matriarch smiles coldly, formally. “As always, I must act for all in Ranuak. As always, I will not use battle sorcery. But…” She pauses, then utters the next words slowly and deliberately, “I will not stand by and let all that the pain and suffering of the Spell-Fire Wars produced vanish from Erde because of fear. Suffering—and sorcery—are to be preferred over slavery.” Alya’s eyes blaze before the fire in them is shielded once more, and she speaks her last words to the figure before her. “You may depart.”
Once the door to the formal receiving chamber closes, another kind of darkness passes over the Matriarch’s face, a face that has become more angular with the years, like that of her father, rather than round as her mother’s had been. She looks toward the door, not seeing it, her eyes fixed somewhere else, and her face is drawn.