The Element of Fire, Martha Wells [books for new readers .txt] 📗

ROLAND COULD NOT stop shivering. He sat near the fire in a windowless interior chamber at Bel Garde. A salon meant for entertaining, its walls were softened by cloth-of-gold draperies and the overmantel and borders delicately painted with black grotesques on gilt backgrounds. Fretfully looking around the room, Roland’s eyes lit on a silver and gold filigreed perfume burner he had given Denzil some months ago, and it occurred to Roland just how isolated he had become from the others in his court. He had no other close confidant or advisor but Denzil; most of those who had surrounded him were his cousin’s companions, not his, and he had no wish to see any of them.

Lord General Villon had arrived with his men not long ago, and the walls of the little fortress had almost trembled from the cheers of the other guards. After Ravenna’s death their situation had seemed hopeless, and now for the first time there was a chance for revenge and victory. Roland had been just as glad as the others to see them, but he was nervous of Villon, knowing the General’s opinion of him was not a high one. And having to greet the old warrior with news of the Dowager Queen’s death…

Behind Roland, in the center of the room, Villon and his officers, their cloaks still steaming from melting snow, met with Renier and the Queen’s Guard lieutenant who had brought Falaise. They were talking intently, pointing to the maps laid out on the round table, making some plan. Roland had no wish to join in their council. They all thought him a coward, or a fool, and perhaps they were right.

A new voice made Roland look up, and he saw that Elaine had been brought in again. The hem of her skirt was torn and dirty, and her face was a pale oval in the candlelight. Her only companion was an Albon knight standing at her elbow as if she were a prisoner, and Roland wondered if she had been left to sit in some cold anteroom, without even a maid to accompany her. Such treatment suddenly reminded him of one of Fulstan’s more subtle tricks, when Roland had been left alone in a bare room to contemplate his fate for hours, only to discover later that the King had left the palace and that there would be no punishment after all.

“Hasn’t anyone even sent for a lady to care for her?” Roland interrupted. All heads turned toward him, and he wished they would stop looking at him as if he were mad, or had just grown an extra limb. “God, just let her alone. Your damned questions are worthless.”

“At once, m’lord,” someone said. Roland found himself meeting General Villon’s expressionless gaze and quickly looked away. Elaine still stood shivering in the center of the room and he motioned her to come over by the fire. She came obediently, taking a low cushioned stool near his chair, moving stiffly as if the cold and shock had solidified her muscles. Roland felt more at ease in her presence. Here, at least, was someone who knew he could not have disobeyed his mother’s order, who did not think him a coward. If he had stayed in the tower he would be dead as well, or Bel Garde overrun by fay and they would all be prisoners. But he wondered if he would have had the courage to order his own son or daughter to safety while he met death. I will never know, because we’ll all die here and I will never live to have a son or daughter…

There was more quiet talk, but the council seemed to be over. Roland stared into the fire, trying not to see images it hurt to think about. Since hearing Falaise’s tale, he had sunk deeper into grief and pain, and he felt powerless to help himself. He heard Renier move up behind his chair, and he said the words he had been living on since that moment in the tower. “He will explain himself. There will be some reason.”

“Yes, my lord,” a soft voice answered. “But if he meant to betray you, wouldn’t he also have a reason, a clever lie?”

Roland looked down at Elaine, startled, and heard Renier gasp. He glanced up and saw that his Preceptor looked as shocked as if a pet cat had spoken. But Roland knew that his mother would not have had women close to her who were fools; they had been at the focal point of the court with her.

Renier stepped forward to take Elaine’s arm and Roland motioned him away, irritated at the interruption. He wanted to talk, and the young woman’s eyes were red and bruised from crying and the expression in them anything but cruel. “If he loved me how could he betray me?” he asked, hearing the tears in his own voice.

“If he loved you, he couldn’t,” she whispered.

Roland hesitated. If his mother had asked it of her, this woman would have flung herself off the roof of the highest tower in the city. She would believe whatever Ravenna had told her to believe. But Ravenna was not here to tell her what to say now. If Elaine was repeating his mother’s views, it was only because she believed in them herself.

“You were close as boys,” Elaine persisted. “I remember it. But didn’t he change?”

Didn’t he? Roland asked himself. Had the teasing turned to mockery? I know he has a cruel streak. God, he could hardly hide it. “That was because…” Roland began, and thought, because after I tried to die, he knew how much I needed him, and he thought me pathetic, and it made him feel powerful. He felt anger stir in him, old tired anger. “Yes, he changed.”

They sat in silence for a time, until a matron who had been one of Ravenna’s gentlewomen came for Elaine. She let the older woman lead her away, but reluctantly, with a worried glance back at Roland.

*

The frigid wind tore at Kade’s hair, blowing it into her face, and she shook it away irritatedly. “You’ll be ready?”

The gold and amber fay leaned on his pikestaff and looked down at her with a smile. “If you can flush the birds, my lady, we can chase them.”

It was late afternoon, the sky a low solid gray like the polished surface of an ancient shield, the housetops around them still sheathed in ice and snow. Kade had left Boliver at Knockma, to help the others pack what was necessary and to take them through the ring to Chariot, another of her mother’s enchanted castles. She hadn’t been to it for years, so it would not occur to the Host to search for her there. She had little memory of what it was like, except that it was big and old, and hidden rather prosaically in the hills of Monbeaudreux, a province in the south. It was protected from the Bisran border by steadily rising mountains that were too high and rugged to cross except on foot. The summer and spring lasted longer there, and they grew olive trees. At the moment it sounded like heaven.

The fay from the Seelie Court, with his white blond hair, delicate features, and the embroidered satin of his doublet and cloak, was unreal in this world of gray and white. “Chase them far,” Kade told him. “I don’t want them turning back on us. I’ve paid enough for it.”

“To the ends of the earth, and that will be a pleasure.” The fay swept a bow to her, and suddenly a golden hawk glittered in the air beside her, and with a powerful sweep of its wings, it shot toward the sky.

Kade watched him until he disappeared into the clouds. She couldn’t afford mistakes, and she wasn’t at all sure of herself. She had been lax over the last few years, using what she could of the swift instinctive fay magic, depending on glamour and illusion. Swift, and in the end ineffective against the sorcery that was practiced so painstakingly, using as poor a tool as letters from a dead language’s alphabet to symbolize concepts that passed understanding. With fay magic it was impossible to attempt something beyond one’s skill; with sorcery it was all too possible, and all too deadly.

Kade hugged herself and shivered. She hadn’t given sorcery the long hours of study it needed. Her efforts seemed so ungainly compared to the elegant and involved work of sorcerers like Galen Dubell and Dr. Surete. Both of whom are dead now, she thought, savagely, and at least I’m alive. But it all came home to rest in the end, and she had taken the easy way