41
A Heart of Ashes
“After all the years that my family and I have been loyal to the crown of Erkynland, Your Majesty, I am disheartened you do not believe me!” Duke Saluceris did not sound disheartened, he sounded furious. The Sancellan’s council chamber was full of people—Duchess Canthia, the duke’s uncle Envalles, and several others—but Saluceris had not sat once, instead pacing back and forth around the table at the room’s center, weaving between the assembled courtiers.
“I do not disbelieve you, Your Grace.” It was hard for Miriamele to keep frustration and anger from her voice. “Please do not put words in my mouth. I asked you to tell me again what happened so I can understand.”
“More idle talk when my brother has been murdered!”
“The streets are full of rioters. On every corner of the city Ingadarines accuse you of the killing. This is not ‘idle talk,’ Duke.” She turned to Envalles. “My lord, help your nephew to hear me, please.”
The older man nodded. “The queen is not your foe, Saluceris. None of us are.”
The duke stopped pacing for a moment and looked around the room, as though to make certain that his uncle spoke the truth. “Nevertheless, there is conspiracy afoot here. Someone tries to make me responsible for my brother’s murder—my own brother! But I am innocent, and may God strike me down if I lie!”
“I do not doubt you,” Miri said again. “Now, please, tell me what happened. You said you received a message.”
“From Drusis, yes. It was his written in his hand—would I not know my brother’s hand?”
“How did it come to you?”
“I told this already. It was put under my door in the middle of the night. A servant found it and brought it to me. Here, see for yourself.” He took out the folded parchment and waved it, then opened it up and read. “You and I must speak, Brother. There are things you do not know. We have a mutual enemy. Meet me at the tenth hour in the Dead House.” Saluceris had calmed himself a little, but his face was still flushed and agitated. “That is the name Drusis and I called the Benidrivine mausoleum when we were young. You remember that, Envalles, don’t you?”
His uncle nodded and showed the ghost of a smile. “It is familiar, yes. Your mother thought it a terrible sacrilege and forbade you to play there.”
“Just so. Who else but Drusis would have known that? And see, the letters are just like his!”
“I see,” said Miri. “And what did you do? Tell me again.”
“I am no fool. I did not go alone. I do not trust Drusis that far. I took three of my most trustworthy guards. We made our way through the gardens and out toward the park. I saw Uncle Envalles sleeping in a chair in the Orangery Garden.” He turned to the old man. “Sleeping when he should have been preparing for us to go to the Dominiate.”
“I was waiting for you,” said Envalles simply.
“In any case, you can pledge that you saw me go past with my guards.”
“If you claim that I was asleep, how can I pledge anything about what you were doing?” Envalles replied crossly.
“Enough,” said Miriamele. “Speak on, Your Grace. You went through the park to the family mausoleum?”
“Yes. No one was there—not Drusis nor anyone else. The guards will all testify to what I say.”
Of course they will, thought Miriamele. But they would do the same if they helped you murder your brother. Still, at this point she was inclined to believe Saluceris. It was not just the genuine confusion he had shown when he returned to the palace; if his red-rimmed eyes and air of stunned indignation were play-acting, the duke was one of the most gifted mummers she had ever met.
“I went in first—with one of the soldiers, of course. He went before me. I do not know if you have been in the Benidrivine crypt, Majesty, but it is very large, a veritable catacomb. We found no one waiting there but the dead.” He paused again, disturbed by his own words. His mouth twisted in what might have been anger again or something sadder, but he shook it off and resumed his story. “The other two guards, fools that they were, came in behind us to help look. While we were searching the place, someone pushed the great door closed—we did not even hear it. We only discovered that we were locked in when we tried to leave again.”
“And that is where you were the whole time, while the rest of us were at the Hall of the Dominiate? Until you appeared here?”
“Yes, and may the Holy Aedon blast me if I tell a single untrue word. We broke open the door at last. It had been barred with a piece of wood from one of the forcing-houses on the slope above the mausoleum. I returned to find all this . . . this madness.”
At last, as if he had emptied himself like a storm cloud, Saluceris fell into a chair beside his wife. She clutched at his hand. He tried to resist at first, but Canthia would not let go. Her face, Miriamele thought, was that of someone trapped in a nightmare.
Miri felt a little the same.
“And while you were locked in the crypt, Drusis was murdered in his own chapel,” she said. “One person could not manage both acts—the Ingadarine estate is too far away, even by horse, for one man to do both. If everything you have told us is true, Saluceris, then this was a conspiracy.”
“Of course it’s true!”
“I do not mean you have lied, Your Grace. Calm yourself. I mean only if your memories of time and circumstance are correct.” She took a moment to look at the others gathered in the chamber. None looked any different than she imagined innocent folk would, all fearful but doing their best to contain it. She looked to Canthia, still doggedly clutching her husband’s hand. “Duchess, I will say it again—I think you should take your children and leave the city.”
Canthia was startled. “I will not go to Domos Benidriyan and leave my husband here alone. My place is at his side. After all, I am not just his wife, I am the duchess!”
“And your children are the heirs,” said Envalles. “The queen is right, Madam. Who knows what will happen if Dallo whips his supporters into a frenzy?”
“You truly think Canthia should leave?” Saluceris seemed bewildered, as though only now realizing how bad things could be. “How can I protect her at Domos Benidriyan? There are only a few dozen guards there—we have hundreds here in the Sancellan.”
“I do not mean your city-house,” Miriamele said. “That is far too close to the troubles and too hard to defend on top of it. No, I think your wife and children should go as far away as they can. Ardivalis in the north is the Benidrivine heartland. Send her to your family lands there.”
“No!” said Canthia. “I will not go! Even the High Ward cannot force me to leave my husband.”
“Then you are a fool,” said Miriamele, and her harsh words sent a shock through the whole gathering. “And so is your husband if he lets you sway him.” She stared at the duke. “Do you not see that whatever happened was no chance attack? This was a plan, carried out by more than one person. We cannot say who would be willing to murder Drusis—not yet—then try to make it seem as though it was done by your hand, but it was clearly part of a larger plan. And as long as you stay here with your children, not just your dukedom is in danger, but the survival of your house.”
“What do you mean we cannot say who the murderer is?” said Saluceris. “How can you call me a fool and then pretend it is not obvious to all who is behind this? Dallo! Dallo Ingadaris, that fat spider!”
“Perhaps,” said Miri. “But Drusis had only been married to Dallo’s niece for scarcely a month and a half. It seems a bit risky for Dallo to give up his best claim to the dukedom so easily.”
“But, Your Majesty,” said Count Matreu, “who else would benefit from the death of Earl Drusis?”
“Many, perhaps.” Miriamele shook her head, suddenly so weary she wished she could get up and go immediately to her bedchamber. She was aching for her husband—for dear Simon, who might not know the answer to any of these questions, but would calm her by his mere presence while she struggled to sort it out. “And that is one of the things we must discover. Duchess Canthia, it might be in my power to force you out of the city against your will, but it is not my wish. I am first and foremost your friend. For the sake of your children, for young Blasis and little Serasina, I beg you to heed me.”
Canthia did not reply but only looked back defiantly, though her eyes were wet with tears.
“Be certain that the guard officers in charge are those you most trust, Your Grace,” Miri told the duke. “And for the love of Elysia, Mother of God, tell them not to fight back against the people unless it is to save their own lives! Nabban is full of wild rumors and angry citizens—terrified citizens as well, who wonder what has happened, why thirty years of peace has so quickly disappeared. I doubt any of us will sleep much tonight because of the unrest and the earl’s murder, but that is all the more reason for the Sancellan Mahistrevis not to make things worse. Anything can happen, but let us not put a torch to our own roof.”
Nineteenth Day of Anitul, Founding Year 1201
My good Lord Tiamak,
I send you greetings and trust I find you still under God’s loving protection. I have astounding news for you. I have found Lady Faiera alive!
I will not delay by telling of my continuing problems with your friend Madi and his dreadsome offspring, the small criminals who have beggared me and twice forced me to leave a lodging just ahead of being brought to assizes by the innkeepers. That said, I would vastly appreciate it if you would send a decent sum of money no smaller than two gold pieces to the proprietor of the tavern called Li Campino as soon as you receive this, or I may spend the rest of my life in Perdruin, locked in one of Countess Yissola’s prisons.
That said, I move to the purpose of this letter.
I learned from someone who knew Faiera that she was thought to still be alive, but that she had left Ansis Pellipé some years before and moved to a mountain village called Piga Fonto on the far side of Sta Mirore, so I hired a mule and rode there, leaving Madi and his bandit offspring behind. This was a mistake, I discovered later, hence the sudden need for two gold pieces, but I will not let that slow my story.
Faiera did not live in Piga Fonto, and nobody there recognized her name, but I was told of a woman named Grandi—some said a “witch woman”—who lived in a hut high on a crag and eked out a living growing vegetables and herbs and concocting healing draughts for those who wished them. So I climbed back on my mule and made my way farther up the mountain until I came upon a tumble-down cottage with a garden full of plants I recognized—and you and your wife would recognize as well—such as Hyssop and Motherwort.
She stood in the doorway of the hut, watching as his mule trudged up the winding path. Her unbound hair was long and gray and fluttered like a cloud being shredded by the swift autumn wind. Her expression was hard and suspicious, but he saw none of the fear he might have expected from an old woman facing a male stranger in her dooryard.
“Are you the one the folk down in the village call Grandi?” he asked.
“They call me many things in the Piga Fonto. ‘Grandi’ is one of them.” Despite the sour flatness of her tone, her words were well formed: she spoke much better Westerling than most he had met in these parts. Away from Ansis Pellipé and its harbors, few bothered to learn another language so well.
“Then I bid you good day. My name is Brother Etan of Erchester. I would have speech with you. I have money and can make it worth your time.” He did not have much, though, and he hoped that if this turned out to be another path leading nowhere, he would at least only have to pay her according to local standards. The city and its expensive bribes had all but flattened his purse.
“You might be a handsome young fellow under that idiot’s tonsure,” she said. “But I am still not in the habit of inviting strangers into my house.” She pointed to a log half swallowed by wild thyme. “You may sit on my bench, and we will look over the gardens together as we speak.”
This dour jest made Etan’s heart quicken a little. “You are too kind, my lady.”
She gave him a crooked look. “So. I have little to offer you, Brother, but I always try to show courtesy to God’s messengers, even when they arrive by mule. Will you have a little burdock wine?”
“I will, thank you. The weather is cooling now that autumn is here, but it was still a hot ride up the mountain under the sun.”
She disappeared into the tiny hut as Etan tethered his mule and cleared a place for himself on the log. She returned with two clay mugs and handed one to him, then returned to her doorway with the other. “Forgive me if I do not sit,” she said. “It is pleasant while I am doing so, but it is painful when the time comes to stand again.” She took a sip. When she looked up, her expression had sharpened. “Now, what brings a traveling monk to Grandi’s door?”
“To be honest, my lady, it is not Grandi with whom I would speak.” He took a draught from his cup, wondering only when it was in his mouth whether this might be some mad old woman who poisoned travelers and robbed them. It gave the burdock wine a sour flavor, but he bravely swallowed it down. God would not bring him so far, he reassured himself, simply to let him die here on a hill in Perdruin. “I am looking for Lady Faiera.”
To his surprise, the old woman laughed, a deep, throaty sound that went on for some time. It lasted so long that by the time she finished she was wiping her eyes.
“So it is you, after all these years,” she said, then laughed again, but it only lasted a moment. “You.”
“I beg your pardon? Have we met?”
“No, no. But I knew someone would come. I just did not expect it would take so long—or that the messenger, when he arrived, would be . . . someone like you.”
Etan’s annoyance at what felt like an insult was pushed aside by the swell of triumph. “So it is you, then, truly? You are Lady Faiera? You do not know how long I have looked for you or how far I have come.”
“You have come from Erkynland,” she said. “And while you yourself have not been searching for twenty years, I would wager that whoever sent you has been looking for me that long.” She shrugged, amusement long gone. “But it does not matter much. Twenty years ago, today—the story is much the same. I will not go anywhere with you, so if that is your intention, put it from your mind. And do not think to force me.” For a moment he saw something strong in her face, strong and angry. “I plan to die here. Alone, if I am lucky. But I will not be taken from this place by anyone. Here I have found the closest thing to peace that I will know until God takes me.”
“I did not come to destroy anyone’s peace, but to bring some peace to others—those who would know what happened to Prince Josua.”
“Ha. Of course. I should have known that it would not be my well-being that troubled the minds of anyone in Erkynland.”
Etan did not like the look on her face much. “You wrong my friends, Lady. They also have looked for you, and for a long time, as you guessed. But no one knew what happened to you. I have been here in Perdruin a fortnight at least, searching, but I was lucky enough to meet someone who had heard tales of you.”
Faiera did not seem interested in that. “And who is left of the old League? For they must be the ones who sent you. The priest Strangyeard, perhaps, since you are both religious men?”
“Father Strangyeard died some years ago from a fever. It was Lord Tiamak who sent me.”
This time her laugh was a little less bitter, but still Etan heard pain. “Lord Tiamak? My, the swamp scholar has come up in the world. And he sent you? Who else lives? The little troll? I have forgotten his name.”
“Binabik of Mintahoq. Yes, he still lives.”
“I met the troll long ago, when I met Josua.” She sipped from her cup. “Do you truly want to hear my tale? I warn you, it will not lead you to the prince.”
Etan swallowed disappointment, although he had not let himself hope too much. “Tell me what you know, please, my lady.”
“Very well. But it is a tawdry story—you will not leave here with your faith in God renewed, or anything like it.”
“I will treat with my own faith, Lady Faiera, you may rest assured.”
“I sense a little steel under that dirty cassock. What did you say your name was—Etan? Very well, Brother Etan. As I said, I met Binabik when I met Prince Josua, although Josua had long since renounced his royal heritage. In my earliest days as a member of the League of the Scroll, Josua invited the Scrollbearers of the time to the place where he lived in Kwanitupul. Why he should choose such a backwater to make his home I still cannot understand, but he and his wife owned an inn called Pelippa’s Bowl.” As she spoke, she refilled her cup from a pitcher. “But to speak of Pelippa’s Bowl runs wide of what you wish to hear. Still, if you are going to understand, I must start the story even earlier in my life—if you are not in too much hurry.”
“Whatever time you can give me, I will take, with thanks. I am your servant, Lady.”
“Hah! It has been long since anyone was my servant. Still, I will take you at your word. I was not born in a hovel like this, I will have you know. I was born the daughter and only child of Baron Amando, a Perdruinese noble of some little wealth. As his only child and his heiress I was much sought after, if I say so myself. I danced at the court when I was young, and had many suitors, though you would not credit it now.”
A little life had come back to her, and for a moment Etan could see beyond the ravaged, weathered face, past the wrinkles and dirt and all the years, and could very much imagine her as a young woman worth courting.
“Count Streáwe himself was very taken by me, but nothing came of that. Still, my parents did not lack for eligible suitors, though I was not interested. Already I had grown fascinated by books, by poetry, and by natural philosophy, and could not imagine being married to someone who would cage me and show me off like a pretty bird. It would have turned into anger in the end. My father wanted me to marry and birth a boy to take the family name, but both my parents died of the Red Ruin when it ravaged Ansis Pellipe at the end of the Storm King’s War. I sold the family land and bought a fine house near the ocean. I made the place a haven for artists, bards, and poets, and answered to no one. I became a scholar of sorts, in part because, with the money I had inherited, I could afford to buy any books I wished, even those that many would have guessed had vanished from the knowledge of mankind. I had friends and intimates—lovers—but learning became my deepest love, particularly the recovery of old, lost knowledge.
“One day I received a letter from Josua, onetime prince of Erkynland. I had heard of him, of course, but did not know he had lived beyond the war. He had learned my name from some of his friends in the Usirean Brothers—the circle of those who buy and study rare books is a small one, so I knew several of them—and he had some questions for me about one of the subjects that interested me most, divination as practiced by the ancient Sithi. We wrote back and forth—so many letters!—and if he was impressed by my knowledge and interest, I was even more impressed by him. After a year or two of such correspondence he asked me if I might have interest in joining the League of the Scroll. I knew of the League and a little of its role in the Storm King’s War, and was very much interested, but I was more interested in Josua himself, who even in his letters was like no man I had ever met. So I said yes.
“A few years later he invited the members to come to his inn at Kwanitupul, which is where I met Binabik the troll, the Wrannaman Tiamak, and Father Strangyeard, who seemed at first out of his depth but soon showed that he had depths of his own, as well as a breadth of knowledge unlike anyone else’s. But it was Josua who most impressed me, of course.” She fell silent, then leaned back, eyes closed, and for a moment Etan wondered whether she would stop talking entirely.
“You would not understand,” she said at last, eyes still firmly shut, “what it was like to meet him for the first time. I had formed such a picture of him, of his kindness and his wide wisdom, that I thought that seeing him in the flesh would be a disappointment—but it was not. He was a handsome man, of course. His brother Elias was too, it is said, but his heart was weak and he fell into corruption. Josua was like a saint stepped off a statue, tall and calm, with gray eyes so full of kindness that it was easy to forget how clever he was. Even the hand he had lost only made him seem more tragic, more heroic. I think I fell in love with him then, though I might have been a little in love with him before I ever reached Pelippa’s Bowl, just from the letters we had exchanged over the years. Not that he was ever anything but a colleague in those letters. A colleague and a friend. But I had come to want something more. I was not much past thirty years, and my heart was still young.
“His wife Vorzheva was there, of course. She was beautiful in a terrible, dark way, the daughter of a barbarian chief, as full of anger and life as a thunderstorm. She did not like me from the first—women see things in other women that men do not always see, and I am sure she could sense a rival. All through the time we Scrollbearers stayed at the inn, through our long nights of talk and our ramblings across the city—which is one of the strangest in the world—she hovered at Josua’s elbow, claiming his attention whenever she could, so that I came to resent her as much as she resented me.”
Faiera poured a little more from the pitcher. “Yes, I know,” she said. “What right did I have to resent his lawful wife, who only fought to defend what was hers? But I was lonely, not simply for the fleshly part of love, but for the meeting of two minds, two souls, which I had never really known. Josua seemed like the perfect man to me.” She laughed harshly. “He still does. Is that not sad?”
When Etan said nothing, but only got up and refilled his own cup with burdock wine from her pitcher, she shook her head. “You do not have to speak. Your judgment is plain on your face. Did you lead a man’s life before you became a monk? Did you love someone you could not have? No? Then you will not fully understand, no matter what you have been taught.
“In any case, I did nothing to show how I felt, and when the others went away again I went too, back to my house in Perdruin. Despite the troops of guests and all the servants, it seemed quite empty. I decided that if I could not have Josua I could at least show him that I was someone to be reckoned with, offer him little gifts of my scholarship—something his grasslander wife could never match. So I threw myself even deeper into my studies. The Storm King’s War had ravaged the nations and done terrible damage, but the fact that men fought beside the immortals for the first time in centuries brought much learning into the world as well. Some like your King Simon actually lived among them and even became friends with them—or at least so I have heard. It was a wonderful time for those who studied Sithi lore.
“At the same time, Josua’s letters to me, which still came frequently, and which I treasured as dearly as if they spoke of love instead of learning, began to have a troubled tone. He had been in correspondence, it seemed, with a young scholar who was following many of the paths I was treading myself. But this was no ordinary cleric or young noble. This scholar was Prince John Josua, King Simon’s son, the heir to the High Throne of all Osten Ard.”
Startled, Etan made the sign of the Tree. “Prince John Josua? What year was this? How long ago?”
Faiera frowned and brushed her wind-tossed hair away from her face. “I’m not certain. Things changed for me very soon after. But John Josua was very young then—perhaps only twelve or thirteen years. He was a clever, inward-looking child who had found his direction very early, or so I remember being told. He had been named in part after Josua, his great-uncle, and so it was only sensible he would share his fledgling discoveries with him. But young John Josua was already wandering into territory that worried the older Josua—I almost said ‘my Josua’—a great deal. I do not remember the details, but the young prince had found certain books or documents in the Hayholt that dealt with the ancient scrying arts of the Sithi, and Josua was frightened for him. ‘That is how Pryrates was ensnared,’ Josua wrote, and it was enough to frighten me, too. Pryrates had also been a member of the League, before evil thoughts and evil magic cankered his soul.”
“I know,” said Etan. “But I am still surprised to hear John Josua was involved in such things at such a young age.”
She shrugged. “I do not know much. I remember only what Josua told me. I wanted to help him, of course—I would have done almost anything for his good opinion—but I was a little afraid as well. In any case, over the year that followed Josua became more and more concerned about what the young prince was doing, what he was reading, what he was thinking.
“I was still very interested in all these matters myself because of my own studies. One day a trader who often found obscure books for me, and occasionally stranger articles, sent me a message. He had found something not just unusual but surpassingly rare, and knew I would be his most likely customer. What he had found truly was astounding, and though it cost me a pretty price—five gold Imperators, if my old memory still serves me—he was right. It was an amazing find and worth every cintis-piece I paid.”
“But what was it?” A thought occurred to him. “Was it a book?”
She shook her head. “I will explain soon enough, Brother. The night I brought my new prize back to my house, I had a letter from Josua. He wrote that he was traveling to Erkynland to see his grand-nephew the prince, but that he hoped to stop in Perdruin along the way to visit me and have my advice, because scrying and other forms of divination were my chief study. I was thrilled—more than thrilled—and wrote back at once, telling him he would be most welcome. A part of me was excited simply to have Josua to myself, since his wife and family would not be accompanying him, but I also thought to surprise him and impress him with my find, so I said nothing of it in the letter.
“So it was that he came at last to Perdruin. I had sent away my guests, though ‘guests’ is not precisely the word—most of them were all but living there and had been for years, feeding off my wealth. I had become disenchanted with them anyway as I grew more and more intent on scholarship. Josua was a little surprised to find the large house empty of everyone but me and the servants, but still we had a merry first evening, talking of many things and staying away from the subject of Prince John Josua, since I could see it troubled him and I wanted nothing to mar our first time together since we had met in Kwanitupul.
“That first night I was so happy—! If Heaven is not just like that, I will be disappointed, because I can think of nothing better. And in truth, I think Josua did care for me more than a little. At the time, it felt like something much larger than that, but we had drunk a great deal of wine. It was hours past midnight when we both stumbled off to our separate chambers, and I remember praying that he would come to me—yes, sacrilegious, I know—but it did not happen.”
“I do not judge you, my lady,” said Etan, though he was not certain it was true. “But it is clear you judge yourself.”
“You cannot possibly guess.” Her anger had returned, like an ember fanned by a sudden breeze. “In any case, the next night over supper we returned to the subject we had carefully avoided—young Prince John Josua and his dangerous, foolish explorations.”
“And what were those?”
She waved her hand impatiently. “I have already told you what I remember. He was fascinated by the Sithi’s art of talking over long distances. He had been searching the castle for old books and had discovered things—not just books, but something else as well, though Josua did not give me details—that worried his great-uncle badly.”
“Did he speak of a book called ‘A Treatise on the Aetheric Whispers’?
“The lost book of Fortis?” Faiera gave him a sudden, sharp look. “No, I do not think that was mentioned. I would have remembered, despite all else that happened.”
“Please go on, then.”
“I was conscious that my time with Josua was limited—that he meant to leave the next day and continue on to Erchester and the Hayholt. It made me a little frantic, I think, to spend so much time talking about such faraway things, about the prince and about the long-dead Sithi, when Josua was sitting there with me. So I told him I had something to show him and brought out my new and expensive purchase—a Sithi scrying-glass.”
“A scrying-glass?” Etan did not immediately recognize what she meant.
“A mirror—but a special kind of mirror, made from the scale of a dragon, or so the stories are told. The Sithi used them to talk to each other over great distances. They called them Witnesses.”
“A Witness!” said Etan. “Ah! Now I see. Of course.” He had never seen one himself, but they were mentioned several times in Fortis’s Treatise and he had heard Tiamak speak of them as well. “I am told King Simon once had one. But you had one too!”
Faiera’s face was grim. “Yes, I did—for a little while. I thought Josua would be delighted by it. Such things are so rare, like finding a piece of the Execution Tree, or a shard of the actual bowl with which Pelippa gave water to the Ransomer. I suppose I even thought of it as a sort of love-gift, to share it with him. Instead, he was horrified.”
“Why?”
“He said it was dangerous—unspeakably dangerous. He talked of Pryrates and even of Fortis the Recluse, who wrote the book you spoke of earlier. Josua said that many thought Fortis had found one himself, and that using it had exposed him to the terrible, mysterious fate that had taken him.”
“I have never heard that before,” said Etan, more than a little disturbed. “What happened then?”
She showed him a sour smile. “Do not think that I will say Josua took it from me, or that we used it and he vanished. My story is not that sort. I argued with him—I could not understand his unwillingness to even look at it, and it hurt me. I had offered him the finest gift I could, and he threw it back in my face, or at least that was how it felt. The argument grew heated, though not angry— Josua was not that sort—and I suddenly realized that instead of drawing him closer to me, as I had hoped, I was pushing him away. That is when I made my terrible mistake.”
Again she fell silent, this time looking at her callused hands as she rubbed them together. Some time passed in silence before Etan’s patience began to unravel. “Your mistake, Lady?”
“Do they no longer teach Senigo? Senigo of Khand?” she asked, still looking at her hands.
“Of course I know him.”
“Then you should remember what he said about truth. ‘It is like the foxglove. In proper measure it is the most sovereign of medicines. Too much, though, brings suffering and even death.’ And he was right.”
Etan could not help shaking his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Lady Faiera. What did you tell Josua?”
“Are you even listening, monk, or are you a fool?” For a moment, in the flash of her temper, Etan could see the noblewoman she had once been, proud, full of her own importance and her own woes. “Do you know nothing of women or men? I told him the truth, and by doing so cursed myself. I told him how I felt—that I loved him.” As she fought against a powerful sorrow, her face seemed a mask of something suffering its final throes. Etan could not think of anything to say. When she spoke again, her voice was raw. “With those few words I destroyed all the happiness of my life.” She finished her cup in a long swallow and then poured herself another with such haste and inattention that half of it spilled onto the ground beside the log. “What could he do but turn away from me?”
After another silence, Etan at last ventured a question. “What did Josua say when you had told him?”
She looked at him with reddened eyes. “All the expected things. That he cared for me. That I meant much to him. But he had a wife, and he loved her.” Her lips writhed like those of a baby about to cry. “I was furious, so hurt that I could barely take a breath. Instead of taking what I offered, a life of two kindred minds, he chose instead to chain himself to that . . . barbarian woman, that jealous savage who did not understand him. But the worst thing of all was his kindness. Even as I raged at him, as I slandered his wife and called him a fool, he never lost his temper with me. I still wake in the middle of the night remembering his sad face, those terrible words that he spoke so gently that I finally fell silent to hear him. He said, ‘I want to remain your colleague and dear friend, Faiera. Do not make me choose between our friendship and the marriage I have pledged.’ By my God and His Sacred Son, monk, I wish he would have hit me instead of saying that—I wish he would have stabbed me through the heart. No, he did stab me through the heart, but he did it with words, and with perfect, knightly kindness. Then he left. Left me in that huge, empty house. I had sent the downstairs servants away after supper so we could have the evening to ourselves. He took his belongings and went, apologizing all the time, as though the fault was his.
“But the fault was that I was a fool. The fault was that I could not force him to love me. The fault was that I had lived with my feelings for Josua so long I could not believe he did not share them, at least a little.”
This time Etan did not speak. Faiera stared across her dooryard at the wooded hillside beyond her little plot of land like some battered bird of prey just escaped from a terrible storm.
“I went a little mad, I think,” she said at last. “I drank wine and walked back and forth, back and forth. I could not rest. I wanted to see Josua again, to take it all back, to tell him I had made it all up as a strange jest—anything to undo the terrible, final way he had left me. And in that madness, I picked up the Sithi glass. All I could think was that I wanted to see his face, see his expression. Was he sad? Had he at least cared for me a little? Or would I see nothing but scorn? I stared into the scrying glass, the Witness, and thought of him with all the bitterness and hope that swirled within me. And after a while, the reflection began to change. Something was there—but it was not Josua.”
“What did you see?”
She waved her hand again, but with the weariness of a dying person. “I don’t remember. I remember very little. I was drunk, and mad with grief and love. Something was there, and it spoke to me, though I did not hear words, and I do not remember now what it said. But it pulled me along and I fell in.”
“Fell in? Fell into the mirror?”
“There are no words, monk. Fell in, fell through, went beyond . . . I don’t remember. I recall very little, as I said. Sometime later I was walking through the house, feeling as cold and solid and empty of life as a stone statue, and I was putting a torch to the hangings, the furniture, my bed. Soon everything was burning. Then I was outside, watching it all as though someone else had done it.” She was breathing hard now, the sharp collarbones rising and falling above the bodice of her tattered dress. “There is little else to say. I went mad.
“I lived in darkness for longer than I can remember—like an animal. At last some kind people found me and brought me to the Pellipan Sisters, who took me in and cared for me as best they could. Years went by, and little by little my wits returned. When I was something like my old self again I left the abbey and went back into the world, but there was nothing there for me anymore. My house was gone, I was thought dead, and in truth I felt dead. Later I learned that Josua had disappeared after that night, and I wondered if somehow the thing in the mirror had harmed him, or worse, had let me harm him.” She was wringing her hands again in a curious, unthinking way. “Monk, if you had the eyes of God himself and could look into my breast, you would see a heart of ashes. But this body of mine did not die, and I must live in it until my Ransomer takes me. I have made a life for myself the best I could. My learning, at least, has left me with some use as a maker of potions, a healer. I have lived by myself for a long time. I have thought of these things often. Still, I wish you had not come today.”
Faiera pushed herself away from the doorframe, not without effort. He could see her legs trembling. She turned to him and her eyes were now cold and distant. “I know nothing of what happened to Josua, except that the last moments he was with me will haunt me until I die, and maybe longer. I doubt you will find him. Either he is dead or he does not wish to be found. And now, Brother Etan of Erchester, I think it is time for you to go.”