Sorcerer's Legacy (7 page)

Elienne took a slow breath. The icy, tingling sensation of the soulfocus within her body totally absorbed her attention.

“The Lady is innocent,” said Taroith presently. “Test for truth if you wish, Excellency.”

Faisix rounded the chair and knelt beside the Sorcerer. He reached out and placed his narrow hand over Taroith’s. Despite all effort at control, Elienne’s stomach muscles knotted.

“There is nothing to fear, Elienne,” said the Sorcerer gently. “The Regent will only atune his awareness to mine. There will be no pain, I assure you.”

Elienne closed her eyes, forced herself to remain calm. The sensation of cold in her middle sharpened and grew heavy. Since she had no way of knowing whether Faisix could exert any control over Taroith’s probe, Elienne tried to limit herself to trivial thoughts as a precaution, until the trial should end.

A small bubble of surprise rose in her mind. Startled by a swift flare of annoyance, Elienne repressed a shiver, certain the emotion was not her own. The feeling vanished as Faisix removed his hand. He had passed briefly through her awareness, and some of his own reaction had leaked through the contact. The Regent had expected to find evidence of Ielond’s meddling, Elienne realized. Faisix knew that she carried some means of establishing pregnancy. But the Prince’s Guardian had predicted accurately; no trace of her child by Cinndel could be detected yet through conventional sorcery.

Elienne found little comfort in the fact she had passed safely through the examination. Faisix would now be forced to seek her ruin beneath the Law, and in a strange court with unfamiliar customs she had little defense against treachery.

Taroith lifted his hands. Like a spark fanned by an air current, his focus withdrew from Elienne’s body. Numbness lifted and her own warmth flooded back like circulation returning to a cramped limb.

“The Lady is indeed innocent.” Faisix mastered his disappointment with finesse, and his yellow eyes seemed empty of malice. “I owe you an apology, Master Taroith, for expressing doubt against you earlier. The Law has been satisfied. The Council will place its seal of approval on the required documents this afternoon. I will personally send word to the kitchens to prepare a banquet in celebration.” The Regent bestowed a smile cold as a snowdrift on Elienne. “Congratulations, my Lady Consort. May the Prince’s favor become you.”

Elienne rose warily and curtsied. Her mistrust of the Regent proved justified; she had barely completed her gesture when the door opened and admitted two strapping women in armor. Their hair was cropped short as a child’s, and wide mesh belts clinked with weaponry. Broad, calloused hands and sinewy wrists offered mute evidence that scabbarded steel and heavy ash spears were not at all ornamental.

“Aisa and Denji,” Faisix introduced. “They will stand guard at your door, Lady, until the royal grace period is past. They have orders to kill any man who enters your chambers—other than the Prince, of course. Questions will be asked afterward, should such a situation arise. Pendaire’s succession is no light matter, and with Ielond dead, the Select chose caution.”

Elienne said nothing. Plainly, she would have no chance to speak alone with Taroith. Rather than place her escort on their guard, she smiled sweetly and allowed herself to be marched from the room. The muscled height of the guardswomen made her small build seem fragile by contrast. Elienne hoped with all her heart the impression would cause Faisix to underestimate her. She needed every advantage she could foster, however slight.

* * *

Elienne was given a suite of rooms in the top of a keep overlooking the sea. Aisa and Denji guarded the only door, which gave onto the stair. The room was built on the defense wall, and arrowslits pierced the stone in place of casements.

Left to herself, Elienne looked out. Hundreds of feet down, green, foam-laced breakers crashed against the black, splintered rock of the headland, and sunlight struck rainbows through the spindrift thrown up by the surf. Chilled by more than damp air, Elienne turned away. Though savagely beautiful, the view foreclosed any hope of escape. Even the spartan ugliness of the arrowslits became a blessing to her eyes. Windows, in that place, would have left her susceptible, not to attack from the outside, but to a push from within. And all too likely, the guardswomen were hostile. Until they proved otherwise, Elienne chose to regard her surroundings with an eye for her own defense.

The chambers themselves were lavish. In keeping with what she had observed of Pendaire’s palace, the furnishings were handsomely adorned with stone and inlay of silver filigree. Thick, patterned carpets brightened the parquet floor, and a fire burned in the grate to drive off the damp. Through the doorway, a maid labored over a carved double bed, patting smooth silken sheets and embroidered coverlets in deferential silence.

Yet the beautiful decor did nothing to allay Elienne’s sense of vulnerability. With stiff self-reliance, she began at once to rearrange the furniture. The maid emerged from the bedchamber, startled to find the new Consort pushing a heavy chest across the floor.

She curtsied deeply. “My Lady, did you not find the room to your liking?”

Elienne shook her head and leaned like a draft horse. The chest rumbled another foot across the parquet. She abandoned it in the middle of the chamber and gathered the ornaments from a small side table.

Puzzled more than politeness would permit, the maid tactfully curtsied again. “The Lady mustn’t spoil her dress before this evening’s banquet.”

Elienne responded with a preoccupied smile, both hands full of glassware. When she deposited the items on a cushioned chair and hefted the table toward the other side of the room, the maid salvaged the awkward situation as best she could by offering her help.

“Thank you.” Elienne nodded toward a stuffed stool. “That can go there.”

She and the maid labored for a time in silence. After a particularly trying struggle with an armchair, Elienne said, “Why won’t Aisa and Denji speak to me? Have I offended them?”

“The shieldmaids?” The woman’s eyebrows rose in her round, sweating face. “My Lady, they are deaf-mutes.”

“Forgive me; I’m foreign,” said Elienne quickly. ‘‘I didn’t know. Is it common practice to put out ears and tongues in Pendaire?”

“Ma’Diere, no, my Lady.” The maid wiped sweaty palms on her sleeves. “That pair belonged to the royal family of Kedgard.”

Elienne’s face remained carefully blank.

“It is an island kingdom,” explained the maid. “The Regent took pity on them during a diplomatic visit and bought their freedom. They have served out of gratitude since.”

“That was a kind act.” Glad she had not trusted the guardswomen, Elienne bent and began to wrestle with an immense potted plant. “Is his Excellency often moved to charity?”

“I wouldn’t know.” The maid sighed. “Lady, must you move that?”

Elienne gave the plant a determined shove. Branches swayed, bobbing small pink fruits precariously against stem moorings. The tree was top-heavy, and would likely upset if she disturbed it further.

“I suppose the thing will do well enough where it is.” Elienne critically surveyed the room and finally nodded in satisfaction. “That will do. And thank you.”

The maid’s reddened face reflected little appreciation for Elienne’s taste. “I’ll send a girl up to help tidy your hair and dress, with permission, Lady.”

Elienne hesitated. She disliked personal fuss. As Duchess of Trathmere, she had often declined the services of a maid, and since her arrival in Pendaire she wanted nothing better than to be left alone. “I’d rather manage myself.”

The maid pursed her lips with evident disapproval. Elienne’s labors with the furniture had badly mussed her dress, and her dark, copper-brown hair sported loosened wisps like a peasant woman’s. Should she appear in that state before Pendaire’s best blood, she would disgrace her royal partner.

Elienne sighed and tilted her head toward the reddened slice of sky visible through the nearest arrowslit. “It’s only sunset.” She smiled with girlish innocence. “I have until the ninth hour of the evening before the banquet, and nothing at all to do between. If I have to sit idle, I think the excitement will ruin me.”

“Very well, my Lady.” Dubious still, the maid curtsied and departed, weaving her way through a tortuous maze of tables, chairs, and hassocks toward the door.

Elienne sank into the nearest chair the moment the heavy, inlaid panel closed and left her solitary. She was hot and tired, and the excuse she had just uttered had been an outright lie. The necessity of acting and reacting with strangers who had no awareness of her recent loss strained her. Not even in Trathmere, as prisoner of the Khadrach, had she felt so bereft, and until now Darion’s difficulties had denied her the rest and quiet she needed to reach acceptance of foreign surroundings and the role she had agreed to play through.

Unbidden, Cinndel’s face arose in her mind as he had appeared the night his son was conceived. Elienne thrust the memory forcibly away. Darion’s uncertain succession endangered her own safety, and only the Prince’s enemies would gain advantage if she indulged grief to the exclusion of caution.

Reluctantly Elienne rose, pulled a stick of kindling from the bin by the fireside, and wedged it beneath the fruit tree. She gave the ornate pot an experimental shove. It tottered unsteadily. Satisfied that an easy push would topple the ungainly plant, Elienne crossed the chamber and sat down before the lady’s dresser. Brushes, combs, hairpins, and a manicure kit gleamed in neat array beneath a gilt-framed mirror.

Elienne sorted the items until she located a cuticle knife. Though the wrought gold haft was delicately set with pearls, the blade was tempered steel. Elienne experimentally pared a broken thumbnail. The knife parted it like butter. Nothing but the best would serve for one who might become Queen of Pendaire. Thoughtfully Elienne returned the instrument to a tooled leather sheath. Faisix would hardly have troubled to see her legally locked in a remote palace keep without devising a threat to match that advantage. She tucked the knife beneath the cuff of her dress and smoothed yellow silk over the lump; Darion’s enemies would not catch her entirely defenseless.

The light through the arrowslits slowly failed. Oppressed by the deepening shadows, Elienne located a flint striker and lit the candle on the dresser, then busied herself with the pins that held her hair. Freed, the locks tumbled down her back, rich as dark mahogany. Fanned in wide, curling waves over her shoulders, the hair provided a perfect screen for her hands should the guardswomen look unexpectedly through the door.

Elienne drew the mirrowstone from her collar. Silver highlights gleamed coldly over its polished face, eerie against the warm yellows of the candle flame, yet Elienne noticed little beyond the image beneath.

Darion lay still, exactly as she had last observed him. But now the dribbled stalk of the candle had burned out. Elienne observed a scene carved into clarity by the frosty glow of a Sorcerer’s soulfocus. Even as she watched, Taroith’s veined fingers entered into view and gently unfastened the Prince’s shirt. The Sorcerer bared a tautly muscled chest adorned by a pendant wrought with the golden stag device of Pendaire’s royal house. Elienne held still. The mirrowstone transmitted sound along with its image, but only faintly.

“Can you rouse him?” said a voice to one side—Kennaird’s, surely, by the impatient inflection.

“Not here.” Taroith leaned forward and placed his ear against Darion’s ribs. The soulfocus drifted lower, hovered closely over the Prince‘s forehead. A long moment passed. Then Taroith sighed. As he moved to rise, his hair snagged in the Prince’s pendant. He freed the lock with an abrupt gesture that roused a flickering sparkle of reflection from the mirrowstone’s depths. “Not here,” he repeated. “I fear Nairgen overdid himself. The Prince suffers severe overdose. To heal him now would require deeper trance than I wish to risk in this place.”

“He must appear at the banquet in three hours.” Kennaird sounded frantic.

“Then we must move,” Taroith said.

The image in the mirrowstone dipped and spun as hands lifted the unconscious Prince from the pallet. Elienne caught a blurred glimpse of shelves stacked with glass jars, a shuttered window, and the supine figure of a woman on the floor. Then a sound beyond her own door recalled all her attention.

She thrust the mirrowstone back under her collar. Someone climbed the stair without, and by the weight of the tread, sharply punctuated by the ring of booted heels, her visitor was male. Without protest from the guards, the latch tripped sharply. Elienne whirled as the door swung open.

Over the threshold stepped a man of medium build, resplendently dressed in a white tabard blazoned in gold with the royal stag device. Through the blurred shadow of twilight, Elienne saw a polite smile of welcome spread across Darion’s features.

“Good evening, my Lady Consort,” said the man in a light, pleasant voice. “I have waited long for this day. Permit me to express admiration for Ielond’s choice. He has sent a true beauty, far finer than my most fanciful dream. I hope you shall find happiness with me.”

Elienne barely noticed the compliment. Faisix had aptly demonstrated the powers of Pendaire’s masters to alter faces with illusion; the man was surely an impostor, shape-changed by sorcery to the Prince’s image. If she trusted that the mirrowstone from Ielond had reflected the real Darion, this one was surely a stranger and a threat.

“Come here, Elienne.” The man politely offered his hand. “Let me have a closer look at you.”

Elienne’s heart pounded with leaden strokes against her breast. The guardswomen were deaf. She could expect no help from them.

“My Lady?”

Elienne curtsied and forced a smile. Her lips responded woodenly. “There is better light here, your Grace.”

Her only choice was to play along, delay the man with coyness until she could catch him off guard. There was risk no such chance would present itself, but Elienne shied from the conclusion of that possibility. As the man wound his way between the furnishings, she rose warily, left her stool placed in his path, and rested one slippered foot on its embroidered cushion.