Summers at Castle Auburn (30 page)

He kissed her soundly and held her against him in a ferocious hug. When she pulled away, she was smiling, and she was tugging her rings and bracelets from her hands.

“Hold these,” she said to Kent, who stood directly behind her, and then she placed her arms with infinite care around Rowena's frail shoulders. I saw my sister close her eyes and sway forward, struck by the same violent gorgeousness that had taken Matthew by surprise, and then she released the aliora and stepped back. “I am Elisandra,” she said.

“You are as beautiful as your uncle has told me,” Rowena said. “May your own marriage make you as happy as mine has made me.”

Kent came forward next, his jewels already pocketed, his greeting formal. One by one the others made their obeisances to the aliora queen, all of them quickly laying their jewelry aside and making awkward curtseys to the new bride. She was unfailingly gracious, though she made only polite, meaningless conversation, and I sensed in her a terrific sense of strain. This was an alien place to her, and rife with hazards. Every room in the castle held metal of some sort—armor, furnishings, cutlery, sculpture—and that in itself could unsettle and even harm her. But there was more. Her own people were here enslaved; anyone in the castle might form the desire of capturing her for personal gain; and she had just tied herself for life
to the man who had caused her folk their most severe suffering. I was not surprised to see that her chest rapidly rose and fell in a troubled, half-panicked motion; I was more surprised she was able to breathe at all.

Bryan was one of the last to greet her. It seemed to me he would have avoided the gesture altogether except that Matthew urged him forward. He did not bother to remove all his jewelry, as the others had, just took off the ring on his right hand and held it carelessly in his left. “Welcome, of course,” he said, and dropped her hand immediately and stalked away. Kent and Matthew looked after him. No one else appeared to notice.

I was the very last human to offer my congratulations to my uncle and his new bride. I seldom wore more jewelry than the gold necklace Elisandra had given me, so I did not have much to worry about as I stepped up to the queen of the aliora and made a little curtsey. But I did not reach out my hand right away; I took a moment to study her face. She had a fey, shifting beauty that made it hard to chart the curves and angles of her cheekbones. Her eyes were deep and changing, even while I watched, darkening to black and lightening to gray. I knew once I touched her I would not be able to form a coherent sentence. I spoke before I could think the words over too many times.

“I'm not sure I understand why you married my uncle,” I said. “For he has caused you a great deal of grief.”

Then she smiled, the first time that particular light had broken over Castle Auburn, and everyone in the room gasped at the luster that bathed her face. “And you must be Corie,” she said. “You, too, have been described to me.”

“Why did you marry him?” I asked again.

I heard Matthew's admonishing voice speak my name, and someone (Kent, I thought) laid a hand upon my arm. I shook him off. Rowena was still smiling; the room was so bright we all had to squint to keep staring at her.

“We struck a bargain,” she said. “I would marry him, and he would never sell another aliora into slavery. It was a bargain I was happy to make.”

“You should never marry,” I said, “except for love.”

Now she laughed, and the world rocked back; the silver echoes drifted around our heads for the next few minutes. She reached out a spidery hand to brush my cheek and I felt the shock lance through me, bone to bone. “You should never marry without good reason,” she amended. “Love is only one of those reasons.”

But she had touched me and now I could not answer; I could not speak; I could not think. I wanted desperately to follow her from the room, down the great stone stairs that led out of the castle, through the guarded gates, and down the long, weary road to the edge of Alora itself. I could feel the green touch of the oak leaves against my skin, I could hear the indecipherable music of the river in my head. All around me were forest scents, earth aromas, the rustle and call of leaf and bird and wild cat. All I could see was Rowena's face.

“My wish for you is that you marry for love or not at all,” she said, and though she spoke in a perfectly reasonable voice, I knew without question that I was the only one who could hear her. “But I do not have the power of bestowing that happiness upon you. One gift I can offer you, however.”

I found, unexpectedly, that I could reply. “What is that?”

“A chance to visit Alora. I would be happy to have you come as my guest.”

My own smile came, less luminous than hers, but genuine nonetheless. “And never leave again? I have heard stories of your hospitality.”

“Sample it before you refuse me out of hand.”

“Perhaps I will someday. When there is nothing left in my own world that pleases me.”

“Then you will never visit, for you are a girl who will always find pleasure in something.”

That comment gratified me more than anything else she could have said. I felt like I had been dealt a golden blessing, that I would henceforth walk the earth with a faint, ineradicable glow. “I wish I could give you something,” I heard myself say.

“There is nothing I lack,” she said. “But I would not scorn the good wishes of a wise woman and a friend.”

“Then you have those,” I said.

She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. For a moment, my mind blanked completely; it was as if a thunderclap had, for that second, obliterated the room. Then she stepped back and everything readjusted in one quick, somewhat sickening jerk of reality. The room seemed dim and ordinary, and my balance was precarious; I stumbled a little as I stepped away.

Matthew clapped his hands, and the whole room snapped to attention. “Very well! We are done here for the evening. Bryan, you and Kent will attend me in my study—we have much to discuss with Jaxon. Cressida, you will make the queen comfortable in Jaxon's quarters. Greta, tomorrow morning we will meet to go over the final lists. Thank all of you for your time.”

And with these peremptory directions, we were all dismissed. Angela had caught my arm and was literally towing me from the room, but I hung back as much as I dared, wanting to witness the reunion of Cressida and Andrew with their beloved queen. I got a chance to see very little. They had crossed the room to her side, and she had put out a hand to each of them, and they stood that way, unmoving and mute, for as long as I was able to watch. But the expressions on the faces of the aliora I knew were a cross between rapture and terror, and I knew that her touch was undoing them as it had undone me. What gifts was she offering them, I wondered, what seductive promises, what messages of hope?

She had made it clear why she had married Jaxon, but there had been no need to ask him the question in turn. He adored her; she had bewitched him. He would not, till the day he died, regret his bargain.

T
he queen of Alora stayed for three days at Castle Auburn and caused a silver disruption wherever she went. She could not walk into a room or sit down at a table or even make the smallest gesture with her hand that did not cause the air around her to ripple with an invisible heat. Wherever she was, people stared at her; they tried, in transparently nonchalant ways, to edge closer to her, brush against her, find some excuse for addressing her with the most banal comment. She was unfailingly courteous, eternally smiling, a thing of seduction and beauty, and more than once I wondered how many denizens of the castle would be discovered missing once her visit had ended. She engendered in everyone she met a fierce, impossible desire to journey to Alora, there to stay till the end of the world.

I tried without success to learn what the castle aliora thought of Rowena's appearance here. Andrew would not even let me cross the threshold into the aliora quarters. (“We are all confused and unnerved here, Corie. Let us be.”) Cressida, who still appeared every morning to help me with my toilette, had grown ferociously silent, but the strain of some difficult emotion was making her very bones seem shrunken and brittle under her flesh.

“So, what does this mean? What do you think?” I asked her for the hundredth time the morning of Rowena's third day in the castle.
“Is this a good thing for the aliora? If Uncle Jaxon no longer hunts them—”

“Your uncle is a difficult man for the aliora to trust,” Cressida said quietly. “Who knows if he will keep his word?”

“He will. He loves her.”

“Love fades.”

“Then Alora itself will win him over. They say it is a magical place.”

“He has been to Alora before and not been gentled.”

I tried to catch a glimpse of her face in the mirror, but she had her head down, and her thin hair fell across her cheekbones. “He is a good man in so many ways,” I said. “He will be kind to her.”

“Perhaps that is what he intends.”

“You are afraid for her,” I said.

“I am afraid for all of us,” she said on a long, shivering sigh so breathy that I almost could not make out the words. “If the queen succumbs to men, what hope is there for any of us to be free?”

I turned in my chair to face her. Long strands of my hair, which she had been braiding, slipped out of her hands. “But if she has given herself to him to save the rest of her people, isn't that cause enough for hope?”

She placed her hands on either side of my face and turned me back toward the mirror. “There is still slavery. There is still grief, and the world still goes on,” she said sadly. “You are too young to understand that the promises of the future cannot undo the harm of the past.”

Only then did I realize that she—that they—that all aliora had somehow believed that while Rowena was queen, they had some hope. They had believed that she would find a way, through seduction or magic, to release them. The bargain she had struck might protect those still living in Alora, but it did nothing to redeem the souls already in captivity. There were no retroactive contracts.

“Cressida—” I said, but I could not complete a sentence of comfort. Her hands came around and pressed over my mouth, shutting out the words I could not summon anyway. What flaw was it in my own heart that made me react to that touch as I always did,
drawing strength and solace from the one who needed it even more from me?

 

T
HAT EVENING WAS
to be a formal celebration of Jaxon's wedding. It had taken Matthew three days to put together a suitable guest list so close to the major event of the summer, but he had invited the highest nobles of Auburn to dine at the castle and extend their respects to the newest member of the Halsing clan. It was not a royal wedding, after all; it did not require the attendance of all the viceroys and their families. It was an Auburn event, and Auburn would observe the honors.

Naturally the evening started with a fabulous feast, course after course of the finest local food. I was amazed to see that one of the dishes offered was a fruit compote laced with dayig. I was sure Jaxon had requested it, but I was impressed that Matthew had had the resources, in such a short time, to harvest enough for a serving and find someone who knew how to cook it. Still, it was a foreign dish at the castle table, and several of the diners looked at it askance. Not me. I ate every bite and then took a second helping.

I assumed, of course, that all the seeds and poisons had been filtered out. But since my grandmother had scoffed at the hazards offered by the dayig, I was not too worried. Surreptitiously I watched the head table. Kent, too, had double portions of the fruit dish; but neither Damien nor Bryan took a single bite.

After the meal, there were interminable toasts and speeches by Matthew and a few of the Auburn nobles. Jaxon, when called upon to say something, rose to his feet and gave the whole room a wicked grin.

“I've snared the greatest prize in the eight provinces, and I am a happy man,” he announced, raising a goblet in each hand. “And
that's
something you can drink to in water and in wine!”

“True in water, true in wine!” the crowd chanted back, and we all took a gulp from each glass before us.

Except Bryan. As he had for several years now, he left his water glass untouched and merely sipped his wine at Jaxon's toast. I
happened to be sitting across the table from Angela, and I caught her eye at this flagrant breech of manners. Most often the water-and-wine toasts had been in Bryan's own honor, so there was no insult in his refusal to drink. But to decline to accept the sweet water of Auburn on behalf of another man . . . Angela raised her eyebrows high and shook her head very slightly. No doubt Matthew would have something to say about this in a more private setting.

After the meal we were all herded into the music room, which was large enough to contain a small crowd but smaller than the massive ballroom. The dais was set up with a row of stately looking chairs which left no room for the musicians, so the three of them sat in a corner playing soft melodies. As I watched, Matthew ushered Rowena to the middle chair on the dais, and he and Jaxon took their places on either side of the queen. There was to be a receiving line, and all of noble Auburn would have a chance this night to offer respects to Rowena Halsing.

Just to show the rest of us how these things were done, Kent was the first in line to pay court to the aliora queen. He approached the stage, then bent so one knee rested on the platform itself—not the completely prostrate bow one would make to a human royal, but a mark of deep reverence nonetheless. He took her hand and held it to his forehead, speaking some indistinguishable phrase of praise or approval, and then he straightened to his full height. She said something and gave him her brilliant smile, and they exchanged a few more agreeable observations. By this time, the line behind Kent was ten deep and continuing to grow. He dropped her hand and moved away. The next man stepped forward and made his bow to the queen.

“This could take the entire night,” Angela said in my ear. “Do you think we're expected to curtsey to her again? We've been running into her in the halls anytime these past three days.”

“If Kent did it, I think we're supposed to do it,” I whispered back. Andrew was passing through the crowd, carrying a tray of wineglasses, and I snagged one from his hands. I smiled at him but he merely nodded; like Cressida, he seemed tense and unhappy at Rowena's continued presence at Castle Auburn.

Angela also took a glass from Andrew and seemed to meditate as she sipped from it. “Well, if Elisandra does it, I'll do it,” she decided. “Or—no—if
Greta
kisses her hand again, then I'll know what's expected of us.”

I giggled. “Fair enough.”

But Greta, that court intriguer, was already in line behind two young women of the Auburn nobility. I gave Angela a smirk and together we made our way across the room to join the parade of well-wishers. Behind me, faintly, I heard male voices arguing. I looked around to discover the source. At first, I couldn't see anyone locked in disagreement, but I did catch sight of Roderick standing stiffly with his back flat against the wall. His gaze was fixed at a point across the room, so I turned to look in that direction.

Kent and Bryan were standing as far from the crowd as they could manage, facing each other, expressions angry, gestures short and sharp. What in the world could they be discussing so heatedly at such a time and place? Kent lifted his hand as if to make a point and Bryan batted it down. Kent's other hand lashed out to shove Bryan on the shoulder, giving the prince a push so hard that he actually stepped back a pace. Now Bryan looked furious. He raised both fists as if to strike Kent, but the older man caught the younger about the wrists and shook him, hard. I glanced around to see if anyone (except Roderick and me) was witnessing this, but no one else seemed to have eyes for anyone except the aliora.

When I looked back, Bryan had broken free of Kent's hold and was stalking across the floor in the direction of the dais. I realized then that Kent had been insisting that Bryan pay his respects to Rowena again, and the prince had been savagely refusing. Something Kent said had convinced him, and now Bryan was knocking through the disorganized crowd to insert himself at the head of the line.

Angela and I edged to one side to see.

Bryan made a bow so deep his red hair brushed the floor before the stage. There was so much drama in his gesture that the mockery was impossible to overlook. “Ah, the queen of Alora!” he exclaimed as he swept himself upright. “For how long do you intend to grace our court with your superior presence?”

Rowena regarded him warily; the men on either side of her were frowning. “For as long as my husband wishes that we remain here.”

“Excellent! I hope it is for a good long while now! I think it is important that you grow accustomed to the ways and the touch of your human cousins.”

And, putting a hand on either side of her face, he bent in to kiss her on the mouth.

And she shrieked and tore herself away from the gold on his hands.

Instantly Jaxon leapt up, bellowing rage; Matthew was on his feet, calling out commands. In a blur of motion, Jaxon flung himself on the young prince, throwing him to the ground. There was the sound of Bryan's head hitting the hard stone of the floor, and then there was no possibility of distinguishing one noise from the next, for the whole room exploded into sound and motion. The queen was still shrieking in pain; the crowd was shouting; an Auburn lord was attempting to pull Jaxon away from Bryan. Jaxon lashed out at this unfortunate noble, sending him sprawling across the room, and lifted his fist to pummel Bryan once more in the face.

Then the room blurred again and suddenly Roderick was at Bryan's side, punching Jaxon in the head, grabbing his shoulders in a powerful hold, and hauling him away from the battered prince. Jaxon cursed and fought in Roderick's grip, but the guardsman had reinforcements, as Kent and three other nobles regrouped to drag the furious husband away from the prince.

Matthew knelt on the floor beside Bryan, and Elisandra dashed onto the stage to see to Rowena. Moments later, Cressida appeared beside the aliora queen, pushing Rowena's hands away from her face and inspecting whatever damage had been done. The queen had grown quieter but was still sobbing, and even from this distance I could see the welts forming across each cheek. I stared at her, and then stared at the cruel man who had harmed her so—who was even now stumbling to his feet with his uncle's aid.

Just as Bryan achieved a standing position, one hand to his head and the other on Matthew's arm, Andrew approached him with a restorative bottle of wine. As I watched, Andrew lifted the bottle
in one grand, simple arc, and brought it down with all his force on top of Bryan's head.

Guards poured in from every door. I was jostled against the wall, like everyone else, shouting out and craning my neck to see. I could not push enough onlookers aside. Huddles of people were escaping out the servants' entrance—the prince, the queen, Elisandra, others I could not make out. Someone elbowed me in the ribs, and I struck back with the intent to do damage. Everyone around me was similarly scratching and clawing and arguing with their neighbors. “What's happened to the prince?” a male voice shouted out. That cry was taken up, and no one answered. Someone behind me began weeping softly. It was almost more than I could do to keep from turning around and slapping her into silence.

Finally, probably no more than twenty minutes later, an exhausted Kent climbed the two steps to the stage.

“The prince is hurt and bleeding, but he will be well enough,” Kent called out over the insistent clamor of the crowd. He held up his arms to ask for silence, but no one bothered to grant it. Kent raised his voice. “Rowena Halsing will also be well. We thank you so much for your attendance here tonight and apologize for this unpleasant scene. The servants will see you to your quarters or your carriages, depending on how you plan to pass the night. Thank you again for coming.”

And, with this unsatisfactory speech, he climbed back down and disappeared. The crowd milled and muttered a few minutes longer, but clearly there were going to be no more explanations offered this evening. I pushed my way toward the door, determined to find Elisandra or Cressida or even Greta and demand more information. Someone clutched my arm and I jabbed my elbow back in automatic response, but Angela's voice caught my attention.