Authors: Vera Nazarian
Ranhé turned her head slowly and unobtrusively to stare at the speaker, and then whispered, “Quiet, or the poet will have you publicly reprimanded for disrespecting him!”
“
For a newly made lady, you still hiss quite effectively—Lady Ylir!”
But she ignored that remark, and turned her back to him. Elasirr did not know that it was because she had once again seen the urgency of his eyes upon her, and now had to avert her own. She had been long aware of the way his relentless gaze stung the back of her neck, all throughout this gathering. And now, because she knew he continued to stare, to watch her—undaunted and, in that very intensity, somehow vulnerable—she had to look away and hide a shadow of a smile.
She could not smile at him yet, directly, not at this one. But somehow, it was quite satisfying to have that gaze locked upon her, every time she turned away, every time he thought she did not know.
Indeed, this had been a day of miracles in more than one sense. For, when she had come downstairs in the morning, and saw them both in the front hall of the Vaeste Villa, Elasirr merely averted his unreadable eyes, but Elasand, in his more direct manner, had looked at her appraisingly, differently somehow.
Maybe it was to be attributed to what had happened to him. For Elasand was indeed a subtly changed man. No trace of miraculously healed wounds on his body. But there were other intangible signs. His attention span was intensified, his gaze deepened, and a restlessness that had been in his vaguest mannerisms all throughout the time she knew him was now replaced by a sense of harmony.
Elasand looked upon her in a way she had never thought he would. A gaze of appraisal. What did it mean?
“
Elasirr, Guildmaster of the Light Guild and Bilhaar, come forth!”
Ranhé was nudged out of her reverie to see Elasirr walk forward and stand before the King, next to his half-brother.
But before the Monteyn could say another word, Elasirr bowed curtly, and then, with one glance at Elasand, began to speak: “Your Sovereign Grace! I cherish your honor upon me, but I must first bring to your attention the unbearable state of affairs of this City, which in your absence had been allowed to run to the ground by the selfish incompetence of the former Regent and his lovely whore of a sister! It is obviously not to Your Sovereign Grace’s knowledge, since you’ve been stuck in a casket these last couple of hundred years, but Tronaelend-Lis has long demanded a major reorganization of resources—always denied by Grelias—the primary being the Guilds. I ask Your Sovereign Grace to convene the Council of Guilds, so long denied to us! This Council was a strong body of political power in your own time, and its advice valued and taken often in fact by Your Sovereign Grace—”
“
Enough! Well said, but enough.”
The King raised his hand to silence Elasirr’s tirade. Tiredly, but with some amusement, he gazed at the man with such a brazen tongue, who had continued to stare back so directly at him.
“
I will be happy to let you handle all this Guilds business in an official capacity starting tomorrow,” said the King suddenly. “Provided that Bilhaar is no longer the Assassin Guild, and is dissolved as a body into the greater Light Guild. I will have no assassins in the ranks of my advisors, no matter how clever-spoken or glib, no matter how well meaning and noble, and no matter that they nearly single-handedly organized and led the Resistance of this City.”
Elasirr stared in growing surprise.
“
Is it true,” asked the Monteyn gently, “that you, Guildmaster, are the bastard son of Rendvahl Vaeste who was also the father of the present lord? And is it true that you’re the younger half-brother to this man standing next to you?”
“
It is true, Your Sovereign Grace,” said Elasirr in a quieter but yet impassive voice.
At this, there were whisperings in the crowd.
“
Lord Vaeste,” the King addressed the raven-haired brother. “Is your heart set on being the Heir to your father? Or would you prefer to be my Chancellor here at Court?”
Elasand, with his new deeper perceptive gaze, smiled softly, then glanced momentarily at his brother. “I had never liked being at Court, Your Sovereign Grace. But I admit it was a Court of Grelias. But now I believe I would like to be near Your Sovereign Grace, and I would be honored to remain at the Court of Monteyn.”
“
I am glad,” said the King. “Then you are now mine, Elasand-re. I pronounce you my Lord Chancellor Vaeste, to replace the honorably fallen Lirr. And you, Guildmaster with the insolent tongue—which I quite like, by the way, for it portends honesty—you, I pronounce the new Lord and Heir Vaeste. Come forward, Lord Chancellor Elasand Vaeste, and Lord Elasirr Vaeste, so I may touch you with the sword, and so that you may be the first to swear loyalty to Monteyn.”
Elasirr’s expression, was almost humorous to observe, thought Ranhé, watching the scene of fealty being enacted.
And then her own name was called.
She walked into the brilliantly illuminated center before the Throne dais, feeling suddenly the eyes of the whole world upon her.
A moment not unlike that just before a battle. Time slows down, all things, all responses, each breath becomes magnified, intensified, more acute.
“
Lady Ranhéas Ylir! I pronounce you head of a new Eleventh House, the Family Ylir. And your color will be Black, in memory of what this world had seen.”
Black is not a color, only the absence of light. . . .
She stood, petrified somehow, listening with only one half of her mind to the voice of the Monteyn King, seeing only with one half of her vision the brilliant golden candlelight.
With her other half, she saw an old ghetto hovel of granite and limestone, a place filled with candlelight, a wake. She was sitting, surrounded by those candles, alone. Only an hour after her father’s body had been lowered into the ground, in a simple wood casket. Her father, a lowly scribe who had been mad and cruel and pathetic and beloved. Her mother, crying softly, pitifully in a locked room somewhere in the remote corner of her memory childhood.
These were the people of the “house” of Ylir. These two, who had engendered her and unwittingly tortured and loved and once again tortured her, in the anonymous silence of the poor masses—just two souls taken at random, out of this great fathomless City—these would never know or care about the honor being bestowed upon them by a resurrected Monteyn King. For, to them, he would always be but an ancient wax-puppet from that Tomb, the place they used to often walk by, all their lives, when they too had been children, for as long as they could remember, bathed by a monochrome silver sun. . . .
She stood, coming again to herself. Then she bowed with a soft smile of respect upon her lips. And she repeated the oath of fealty—forgetting for once in her life that she did not swear loyalty to anyone—speaking in a voice devoid of feeling, words of promise to this new and old King.
When it was done, she returned from the bright light and stood aside in the ranks of the aristocracy, now their equal.
Yet she felt abysmally and sadly the same.
Soon, others were called to swear before the King, before the antique banner of white and gold that had upon it an embroidered image of a Winged Bird—a Phoenix surely—its wings outspread in flight. . . . Only an hour ago, the banner had been removed from storage, unwrapped with care and dusted off, and the Bird was now seen soaring once again toward the sky.
“
How does it feel to be Lady Ylir?”
She started, finding her thoughts had wandered once again (that bird, flying, somehow calling her), and found herself looking into the pale beautiful eyes of the man she never thought she would again see alive. Even now, she met his gaze with a hurtful pang of emotional intensity.
“
Well, how do you feel, Lady Ranhéas Ylir?” he repeated softly, his face close to hers, looking into her eyes.
“
I don’t know my lord—Lord Chancellor Vaeste. . . .”
“
You will know soon enough. When you have the chance to hold and rule the estate gifted you by the King. He has favored you, you realize. He thinks unusually well of you.”
“
And I think well of him,” she whispered, letting the strange new warmth and intimacy of his words come licking over her, soothing like sun-warmed honey.
Their attention was drawn suddenly by the sight of a man and a woman who stepped forward before the Monteyn, and bowed their heads. The first was Harlian Daqua. And at his side, his new bride of less than two weeks, Elasand’s cousin, Lixa Beis. And suddenly it was Lixa who stepped forward, and lifted her moon-serpentine face to gaze up at the King.
“
Your Sovereign Grace,” she said quietly and yet firmly. “We come before you now begging your mercy despite all. We have been wed before the Grelias, in a ceremony that was but a weak charade set up for the benefit of our former Qurthe enemy, a ceremony that went against our deepest wills. We ask you now, despite the wills of both our Families, to dissolve this union that has never been and never will be consummated.”
And Harlian Daqua echoed her, saying, “Yes, it is true, Your Sovereign Grace. We have been betrothed blindly, and our hearts have never been in this union.”
“
Is it because you already love someone else?” said the King simply.
And both Harlian and Lixa, suddenly, unexpectedly spoke in unison, “Yes.”
“
So be it,” said the King. “Let this be a day of true judgment. And let no Daqua or Beis protest my decision in this. I declare this union nullified. You are free, both of you, to love as you will.”
“
Once again, naive words of a poet,” whispered Elasirr’s voice from behind into Ranhé’s ear.
But in that moment, another was presented before the King, and the resulting silence was profound.
She came forward lightly, this lady, and was veiled heavily. And then two noblewomen at her side lifted the gauze and lace from her face, revealing a young maiden of unearthly beauty, with hair soft and gently yellow-white, and skin like cream. Her eyes, framed by dark sable lashes and perfect brows, were downcast, and her lips, like the sunset.
“
Lady Imogenn Olvan, Your Sovereign Grace . . .” a man’s voice pronounced. “She has been chosen, of all the fairest daughters of this City, to be your Queen.”
For a moment, the King maintained the universal silence. Only a slight quiver of a facial muscle. He looked at her, all amusement—if ever it truly was there—swiftly leaving his face, so that for a moment they who had brought her here thought they had made a terrible mistake.
And then he uttered, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Reiera. . . . Could it be, you are she? No . . . of course, not. . . .”
The young woman raised her eyes for the first time to look at the King, and then said in a barely audible voice, “Your Sovereign Grace. I am Imogenn. If you will have me.”
But the King never allowed her to finish her words. Instead, he got up from his Throne, and came down the steps of the dais, and took her small pale hands into his own. For a long moment he stared into her eyes, and again whispered, “You are . . . so much like her . . . my betrothed who is now long gone, like dust of the centuries. . . . But—forgive me, Lady Imogenn. I know nothing of you, nothing except that you are lovely and fragile as another was ages ago. And yet, it seems, time comes and returns upon us all, and fulfills all things, allowing that which we need most to catch up with us. Yes, you of all will be my Queen!”
“
More poetic fodder for our royal bard. Now he’ll sing praises to his new lady for the rest of our days,” came Elasirr’s soft biting voice from behind Ranhé, and once again she turned lightly, and barely acknowledged him.
Elasand meanwhile, observed her very intently, seeing maybe for the first time, this woman standing at his side. And he knew something at last, something that had long been half-formed, in great conflict with his formal convictions, his outlook, his stubborn nature, something that had been brewing inside him, and now had a chance to emerge.
“
Ranhé,” whispered Chancellor Vaeste, close to her other ear, “I would speak with you tomorrow about something very important. Promise to come to me. At noon. You must promise me this, my loyal Lady Ylir.”
“
Yes,” she replied, without hesitation, looking in that instant into his eyes, her face, her cheek only inches away from his own.
And with that, the second night of this new Age settled warmly over the City.
S
he came the next day, as promised.
The Monteyn’s gift to her was a villa in the midst of
Dirvan
, formerly belonging to Grelias who in turn had confiscated it decades ago under the guise of Regental stewardship, as they had dealt with all of the Monteyn belongings. It had been small and virtually unused, but due to a Grelias whim, a small permanent retinue of live-in servants was always maintained.
And now, it was the Ylir Villa.
Ranhé had awoken in a deep fine bed that was unbelievably and completely hers. For a moment she recalled a thought she’d carried around with her, long before any of this had happened—a wish to have a house of her own, illuminated by white light. She had been naive, then.
And now, here she was, her wish fulfilled.
Thinking small irony-ridden thoughts, tired somehow, Ranhé dressed in her own set of clothes, and spent the morning walking in the small but perfect garden protected by a tall private fence. Here, she gazed long at the bizarre green of the leaves, and at the recurring shadows of varied pulsing colors that the sun cast in its continuous spectral cycle.