Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 3

The autumn days quickly fell into a routine. I breakfasted with Nellia in the housekeeper’s room, and then spent the morning either with the steward, going over the accounts or inspecting those parts of the castle in need of repair, or with Nellia, poking into the storerooms, guest rooms, linen rooms, or pantries. I had agreed with Philomena that in exchange for my help in collecting the rents, I would be allowed to put right what was needed with the house and estate, setting it in good order for my nephew.

Though the servants were universally shy of me-the infamous, corrupted conspirator of sorcerers, allowed to live only by the king’s grace-my respectful manner to Giorge and his clerks quickly soothed the anxious steward. After a few awkward sessions in which I demonstrated both my understanding of the estate’s complex finances and my regard for the unique arrangements between the lord’s family and the tenants, the steward became my most ardent defender save for Nellia. With delight he dispatched his assistants to every tenant, notifying them that the world was in order once again. Covenant Day was set for the first day of the new year.

Afternoons I reserved for myself, walking out every day to enjoy the northern autumn, a luxury I had sorely missed in my impoverished exile, when autumn labors might be the only thing to stave off starvation in a hard winter. I returned from my walks to write letters on estate business or work on some household project: taking inventory of the linen, or showing the maids how my father’s maps and books should be cared for.

I had agreed to spend an hour with my sister-in-law every evening after dinner. At first, Philomena required me to expound upon the most minute details of my activities and investigations, from how many napkins I had found in the dining-room cupboards to the state of the hay supplies in the stables. After a few days of verifying every item with Giorge or Lady Verally, her sour aunt, she must have satisfied herself that I was dealing with her honestly. I never again got beyond, “Here is what transpired today…” without her saying, “Good enough, good enough. Let’s talk of more interesting matters.”

As I knew no court gossip and had no insight into current fashion, her “more interesting matters” seemed to be the private details of my life with a sorcerer. She wheedled and teased, calling me boorish, stupid, and cruel for refusing to amuse a poor bedridden woman, but I was not at all inclined to provide anecdotes to titillate Philomena’s friends when the duchess returned to society. One night, in exasperation at our abortive attempts at conversation, I asked Philomena if she would like me to read to her.

“Anything that will pass this interminable time,” she said. I suppose she thought that to dismiss me early would grant me some mysterious advantage in our contract.

After rejecting the first ten titles I brought as too serious or complicated, she allowed me to begin one of the books of romantic adventure that had been my mother’s. Soon she was wheedling me to read beyond our hour’s time. I always shut the book firmly; one hour of my life a day was all I was going to give her. But reading made these interludes more than tolerable and set our relationship on a reasonable, if not intimate, course.

Which left me to the matter of my nephew. An uncomfortable and unclear responsibility. My love for my brother was built in large part on our common history. We had been two very different people connected by the people, things, and experiences we had shared as children in this house. Yet our attachment had been much stronger than I had ever imagined, surfacing at the last after so many horrors seemed to have destroyed it. But I could see no way to stretch my affection for Tomas to encompass this strange boy. Someone needed to discover what was troubling the child, but I didn’t even know how to begin and was little inclined to try.

Any presumption that casual interaction might break down Gerick’s barriers was quickly dismissed. My nephew seemed to have abandoned all the public rooms of the house. Except for an occasional glimpse in the library, I saw him only at dinner. Formal and genuinely polite to the servants, he spoke not a word to either Lady Verally or me.

“Has Gerick a tutor?” I asked Nellia over breakfast one morning. I had never lived around children. A tutor might serve as a source of advice or insights.

“He’s had a number of them,” she said, “but none for long. He tells them how stupid they are, how he can’t abide them as they’re no better than beggars. If they’re stubborn and put up with that, he’ll start with the mischief, putting tar in their ink pots or lamp oil in their tea. Or he’ll put on screaming fits with the duchess to make her send them away. Out of all the poor gentleman, only one ever stuck at his post for more than a week. But didn’t the boy carry a tale to his mother that the man was getting overly friendly… in a nasty sort of way, if you take my meaning? So, of course, the man was dismissed right off. That was almost a year ago, and none has taken up the position since then.”

And this was the boy that Ren Wesley claimed was polite and well behaved! “He doesn’t seem to treat the servants so wickedly.”

“Oh, no! He’s as sweet a body as one could wish. Always polite and so grateful when you do him a service. James- the young master’s manservant-he’s never had a cross word from the boy, and spends more than half his time sitting idle because the child takes care of himself and his own things. He’s ever so proper. Just not friendly as you and your brother always were.”

Strange. “Does he have any friends that visit?”

“A few times children have come to stay with their parents-even the king’s own daughter has been brought here-but the young master might as well not live here for all he shows his face. From what I hear, when the family goes to Montevial it’s much the same. It don’t seem right.”

“So there’s no one close to him, no one who could tell me anything that might help me understand him better?”

Nellia shook her head and poured more tea in our cups. “The only one ever got on with him was Lucy, his old nurse, but she’s been off her head for nigh on five years now. Of course, she couldn’t tell you ought anyhow as she don’t speak. Then there’s the fencing master. The young master does dearly love his sword fighting. I always thought it a sorry thing that he never let Duke Tomas teach him. The lad would only work at it-and right fiercely too- when his lordship was away. He-the duke that is-heard about the boy’s practicing. He hired the finest fencing master he could find to come and teach the lad.”

“And has Gerick allowed the fencing master to stay?”

“Indeed so. Swordmaster Fenotte. But he’ll be of no help to you. He’s Kerotean. Speaks not a word of decent Leiran. I just never understood why the boy wouldn’t learn sword fighting of his father who was the finest in the kingdom.”

“Actually, I think that’s the most understandable thing you’ve told me.”

Nellia looked puzzled.

“Tomas would have had no patience with a beginner. If the boy admired his father, wanted to be like him…”

The old woman nodded her head. “I’d not thought of it in that light. It’s true the duke, grace his memory, was not humble about his skills.”

I laughed, with no little sadness. “Perhaps he had the wisdom to see it and spare the boy his impatience.” My brother had loved his son very much.

One of my first duties in the house was to make some ceremony of Tomas’s death. King Evard would likely mount an elaborate rite for his sword champion, but with Philomena confined to her bed and Gerick so uncomfortable with me, I could not see us traveling to Montevial for such an event. Yet I felt the need of some ritual of closure for the family.

Most Leirans had long lost interest in the only gods sanctioned by our priests and king-the Holy Twins, Annadis the Swordsman, god of fire and earth and sunlight, and Jerrat the Navigator, god of sea and storm, stars and moon. History, most particularly fear of sorcery, had wiped out any public acknowledgement of other deities. And the cruelties of life had convinced most everyone that the Twins must be more concerned with controlling the legendary beasts of earth and sky and monsters of the deep than with the trials of mortals. But warriors like my brother and my father had found some solace in thinking that Annadis and his brother would write the history of their deeds in the Book of Heroes and tell their stories around their mythical campfires.

I had grown past blind acceptance of myth when I learned to think and explore for myself, and I had lost all faith in supernatural benevolence when I saw the slit throat of my newborn son. Yet experience had taught me the comfort of ritual, and it was not my place to refuse Tomas or his son the rite my brother would have chosen for himself.

So I brought in a priest of Annadis, and Gerick and Philomena and I, along with representatives of the servants and the household guard, sat in Philomena’s room and listened to the stories of the Beginnings and the First God Arot’s battle with chaos and how, after his victory, Arot had given dominion over the world to his twin sons. Rather than have the priest recite the entirety of my brother’s military history-some of which I could not stomach hearing- I had the aging cleric list the matches Tomas had fought to defend the honor of his king in his fourteen years as Evard’s sword champion. That evening, Gerick and I stood on the hill of Desfiere outside the castle walls and watched as a stone was raised to Tomas beside my father’s stone and my grandfather’s and the hundreds of others that stood on the treeless hillside like a forest of granite. My nephew remained sober and proper throughout the day, so I didn’t know if the rite meant anything to him or not. But I felt better after.

It was nearing four weeks of my stay when I began to sense I was being watched. At first I told myself I was just unused to living with other people. Seventy-three house servants worked at Comigor: clerks and maids, cooks and footmen, boot boys and sewing women and Philomena’s gaggle of personal attendants. There were about half that number of outside servants, grooms and pot boys, a smith and an armorer, carters and gardeners. Tomas’s personal guard numbered some ninety men; they lived in the barracks across the inner bailey from the keep. And hundreds of other people lived on the estate and in the villages close by. So plenty of eyes were on me every day. But a day came when I became convinced that the creeping sensation was not just my imagination.

The day was hot and bright as only an autumn day can be, the sky a regal blue, the light golden, the angle of the sun and the sharp edge of the wind hinting at the season’s change. I trudged through a deep rift that split the grass-carpeted hills to the west of the castle, risking a stumble on the rocks that littered the rift bottom and pricks and scratches from the draggle bushes in compensation for the shade.

As I walked, the hairs on my neck began to rise, the creeping sensation that had become so familiar over the past days. Calling myself fifty names for foolish, I hurried my pace and then made a sudden stop beyond the next bend of the rift. Peering back around the corner, I strained to catch some telltale movement or hear a soft footstep. But I didn’t glimpse so much as a hare.

Feeling ridiculous, I tramped back toward the castle. But on the return journey, my eyes were momentarily blinded by an arrow of light from the west battlements. I blinked and caught the glint again. The third time, I smiled in satisfaction. So I wasn’t mad. The only thing out this way for anyone to be observing with a spyglass was me.

The thought of a spyglass turned my thoughts to the Comigor spyholes. When I was ten and sorely lamenting the disdain heaped upon me whenever my eleven-year-old brother ventured into manly pursuits not permitted little sisters, my father had supplied me with a powerful weapon in sibling combat. One of the former lords of Comigor, desiring to know everything that went on in his domain, had installed squints into the Comigor walls and ceilings. The small holes were hidden in the decorative stonework or the capitals of columns or in the intricate carving of a wooden mantelpiece or door frame. If one knew just the right place to stand, in a niche or behind a column, or in the crawls left by stairs or corners or angles, one could press eye or ear to the hole and gain possession of castle secrets. I almost laughed in relief. To spy on the suspicious intruder was such a natural thing for a child. Perhaps I could turn the situation to good purpose.

No spyholes opened into my bedchamber, thank goodness, nor into the little study I’d made from the adjoining room in the north wing, but one of them overlooked the passage outside my door. The passage joined the north wing to the northwest tower stair, and the spyhole was concealed in a stepped molding that matched the rectangular wing to the circular tower. To look through the hole, one had only to lie flat on the first landing of the tower stair and peer through a slot in the dusty wooden floor.

On a day when I had the clear impression that my shadow was with me, I dug about in a cluttered storeroom until I found an old metal box that had a hasp, a working lock, and a key. I set the box in the passage outside my bedchamber door in clear sight of the spyhole. Over the next few days I found occasion to place several wrapped bundles in the box, making sure to lock it carefully after each entry. Having installed no telltales, I had no idea if the box had been moved or examined, but I didn’t believe my spy could get into it.

On a crisp autumn morning, I inserted a last bundle into the box and carried it up the tower stair. Only because I knew to expect them did I notice the disturbed dust on the floor beside the lumpy shape of a moth-eaten rug, crumpled in the corner of the landing. I climbed slowly past the hidden spy.

The narrow triangles of the tower steps spiraled about the walls, expanding into a landing as they penetrated each of four levels. Tall arrowslits laid a barred pattern of light on the worn steps. A keen observer might note that the walls narrowed near the top, the spiral of the stair closing just a bit tighter than it should have. No more stairs existed beyond the fourth landing. Were an invading enemy to harry him so far, a besieged warrior could make his last stand there with no escape but his blade. The enemy could not know that the lady or the heir of the house had preceded this last defender into a secret place.

Pausing at the eighth stair past the third landing, and making a great show of sneaking, I twisted the head of a stone gargoyle and pressed hard on the blank stone beneath the ugly carving. Though I worried briefly that my scheme might be foiled by time and neglect, the stone slab soon swung away from me, revealing a steep narrow stair between the inner and outer wall of the tower. Narrow shafts in the outer stonework, invisible from below, supplied light and air.

Carefully I slipped through the opening and pushed the door closed, but not quite enough to let the gargoyle slip back into position. I ran up the steps to the tiny room at the top of the tower, the secret room where the lady and the heir could huddle terrified until their champions repelled the invaders, or where they would die by their own hands if all hope was lost.

The wind gusted through a small door to the outside. Past the door, five more steps led up to an open stone platform, centered by a firepit. This platform, hidden behind the crown of the tower, was the highest point in all of Comigor Castle, commanding a view that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The vast forest of Tennebar made a dark line in the west, while the snowcapped peaks of the Dorian Wall were just visible far to the southwest.

I smiled as the door from the inner stair creaked slightly, and I counted the steps it would take him to see where I had gone… Six, seven paces across the room and peer out the door… Four, five steps. Now peek around the low wall that faces the platform and open your mouth in astonishment.

“In this place only a bird can look down on you,” I said. I was perched on the parapet between two merlons, eating an apple, my feet dangling over the wide world. “To my mind it’s quite the most spectacular view in all of Leire.”

As I had thought it might, the wonder of the place stole away the boy’s determination to remain apart. He was soon leaning over the wall on which I sat.

He moved slowly around the parapet, his eyes wide, his red-brown hair blowing wildly. I said nothing more until he completed his survey and stood beside the metal box that sat in the crenel beside me. He glanced up at me quickly.

“Do you want to see what’s in it?” I was careful not to smile.

He shrugged and said nothing, backing away a few steps.

“You’ve been interested in my doings these past days.”

He flushed, but didn’t run away.

I opened the box and pulled out a cloth bag. “When I was a girl and wanted to be alone, I often came up here. I didn’t want anyone to spy me going in and out of the secret door, so I made sure to keep a box of supplies up here-a metal box to keep out the mice. I pretended I was the lady of the keep, and I needed enough food to sustain me until I could be rescued. That’s what all this was built for, you know. At one time a supply of wood was kept in the secret room, so a balefire could be lit in this firepit to let the lord’s troops know survivors were waiting for help.”

From the bag I pulled out two more apples, a chunk of dry bread, and a lump of cheese, and set them beside me. From another bundle came a flask of wine and two mugs, then a tightly rolled shawl, a cloak, three candles, flint and steel, and a book.

I held up the shawl and the cloak. “It’s nice to have something soft to sit or lean on, and, of course, the wind never stops, so at sundown, even in summer, it can get chilly. But the stars make it worth the wait. That’s everything in my box. As with most things that look mysterious or frightening, it is really quite ordinary.”

The boy narrowed his eyes, waiting.

I poured a mug of wine, stuck the rolled cloak between my back and the merlon, and picked up the book. “Help yourself to something to eat if you like,” I said and began to read.

After only a few moments, the boy turned on his heel and disappeared down the steps. Too much to expect he’d say anything.

Gerick continued to watch me for the next few days, though he was quieter and more careful in his stalking. I was pleased in a way, for it meant he was still interested, and there was some hope that my scheme would succeed. Late one afternoon, as I started up the tower stair once again and passed the lumpy rug on the first landing, I said, “If you come, I’ll show you how to open the door. Then you can go up whenever you like.”

He didn’t answer, but when I reached the eighth step past the third landing, the boy stood at my elbow. Without saying a word, I demonstrated how to turn the gargoyle’s head and push on the proper place. Once I had it open, I shut it again and let Gerick try. He struggled a bit with the stiff and balky mechanism, but I didn’t offer to help. When he managed to get it open, I acknowledged his success with a nod and started up the inner stair. “You can come too if you wish,” I said. “I won’t bother you.”

He stayed well behind me, and he sat himself in his own crenel while I settled down once more to read. I poured myself a mug of wine, but didn’t offer him any or attempt any conversation. After an hour or so of pretending not to watch me, he left.

After that, I went up to the northwest tower every few days, and on occasion found Gerick there. I always asked him if he minded my staying, and he always shook his head, but inevitably he left within half an hour. Had I not heard his voice on my first day at Comigor, I might have believed him mute.

Every morning he worked with the Kerotean swordmaster in the fencing yard. Although Gerick tried hard, he wasn’t very good. His form was poor and his attacks more earnest than effective. But he was still young. The language difficulty was surely part of the problem. Once the Kerotean master had demonstrated a move, all his coaching and teaching was in the way of waving his hands and stamping his feet.

Three more weeks passed, and it seemed I was getting nowhere, but at least matters were no worse. And then on one evening I found ink spilled over the papers on the writing desk in my study. There had been little of importance on the desk: a letter to my friend Tennice’s father asking for advice about roofs and forges, a shopping list for Nancy’s next trip to Graysteve, half a sheet of musical notation for a melody I was trying to remember. But of course, the value of what was destroyed was not the measure of the loss. Nor was it the invasion of my privacy, for I had clearly left myself open to such a violation. I almost laughed when I realized what bothered me so sorely. It was the lack of imagination. I had been consigned by a ten-year-old to the company of weak-willed tutors and spineless schoolmasters. All my cleverness had advanced me not a whit. I was insulted.

Soon I found myself devising one scheme after another to crack Gerick’s shell. One day when I visited the tower, I brought a small wooden box that held chess pieces and unfolded into a small game board. I asked Gerick if he played. He nodded, but refused to have a game with me. Another day, I brought my knife. Surely knives were irresistible for young boys still practicing swordplay with wooden weapons. I made a flute from a hollow reed, proud that I got it to play passably. When I offered to show Gerick how to make one, he flared his nostrils in distaste. “You are a wicked, evil woman. Everyone knows it. Why do you stay here? Go away!” At least I had evidence he was not struck dumb by my presence. On another day I brought a bundle of tall meadow grass and spent an entire afternoon weaving figures of animals as my old friend Jonah had taught me to do when I lived in Dunfarrie. Gerick stayed, pretending to shoot arrows at birds, only leaving the tower once I had used up my supplies. I considered that a victory.

Only one certain conclusion resulted from my activity. The boy was not afraid of me. Though he still maintained his reserve, he would sit on the windy parapet all afternoon, separated from me only by the empty firepit or a stone merlon. He watched me for hours at a time while I was at my business, though he knew I was aware of him. So, if fear that I might somehow ensorcel him was not keeping him silent, he must have some other reason, well calculated and determined. It made me look at him with new eyes. What could prompt a child to maintain such control?

Not for the first time I wished I had the ability to steal the boy’s thoughts as Karon’s people could. Scruples prevented the Dar’Nethi from using their power without permission, but for my part, the puzzle of my nephew would have quickly overcome any such ideals.

Philomena paid no attention to Gerick’s attempts to be rid of me. She was pleased with our arrangement, she told me. No one bothered her with tedious business, yet the house was calm, the servants well ordered, the food excellent, and, most importantly, it would soon be Covenant Day, and silver would flow into the Comigor coffers once more. “You’ve been a great blessing, Seri,” she told me one evening after our reading time. She had just finished detailing Gerick’s latest complaints. “I told him he’s acting the selfish little pig.”

“Tell me, Philomena, have you considered getting some friend of Tomas’s to foster Gerick?”

“Well, of course. Not that anyone I know would put up with him. One would think someone might offer out of sympathy, but only the captain has said he’d do it. He’s such a nosy.”

“The captain?”

“You know him. Tomas’s trained dog. Captain Darzid.”

Hatred bubbled up from my depths for the immaculately groomed courtier who had stood in every dark place of my life. Karon’s arrest and trial. My son’s murder. Darzid had hunted the sorcerer prince who had come to me at midsummer, and I believed he had lured Tomas to his death, making him a pawn in the long war between Karon’s people and the three sorcerers who called themselves the Lords of Zhev’Na. “Darzid has offered to train Gerick?”

“Of course, I would never consider him.” Philomena fanned herself with a flat of stiff, painted paper cut in the outline of a rose. “He’s no more than a common soldier really, not even knighted. Not at all suitable for a duke’s companion.”

“Very true. How perceptive of you to see that a relationship with your son would be only to Darzid’s advantage and not Gerick’s at all.”

“Gerick loathes him. He’d probably kill the man if forced to be with him. I told the captain not even to think of it.”

I almost patted Philomena’s head that evening. I read to her for an extra hour, which put her quite to sleep. “Your snobbery has served you well for once,” I whispered as I blew out her lamp.

Common sense told me to waste no more time trying to befriend a child who so clearly wanted nothing to do with me, but somehow that answer was no longer acceptable. I could not shake the image of his red-brown hair blowing wildly in the wind on the roof of the northwest tower. Whatever was troubling Gerick had cut him off from the most basic human contact. No child should be so alone.

One morning in late fall, Allard, the head stableman, came to me with an odd story. Two days previous, a boy had come to the stables asking for work. Being unknown to anyone, he was sent away. “An ordinary kind of boy,” said Allard. “But yestermorn, that same boy was at the kitchen door, asking cook for work. Cook sent him away, too, though she gave him a morsel of food as he looked so forlorn. I hope that’s all right, ma’am, as I wouldn’t want to get cook in trouble.”

“Of course, that’s all right,” I said.

“Then last night late,” said the stableman, “I woke with the feeling that all was not right with the horses. When I went to the stable, I found that boy again! I thought to take a whip to him, but he started talking about how Quicksilver was getting a twist in his gut that was hurting him terrible, and how Slewfoot had a crack in his hoof and would soon go lame if it weren’t fixed, and about how Marigold was going to foal a fine colt, but we needed to keep her quiet as she was delicate…”

I almost burst out laughing. Paulo! No other boy in the Four Realms had a feel for horses like Paulo. It was hard to let Allard talk his worries out.

“… and he sounded so true, that I took a look and Quicksilver was tender in the belly just as the boy said. All the rest was right, too. The boy is lame, which some would hold against him, but I could see as he was a natural with the horses, far past any lad in the stable. But I didn’t want to take him on without your say. I thought there might be something odd, as he was asking if this was where ‘the lady called Serf was set up to run things.’”

“Allard, would it make you feel better if I were to speak to this boy before you took him on?”

Relief poured out of the man like summer ale from a barrel. “Aye, my lady. That would be just what I was thinking.”

“Send him to me in the housekeeper’s room.”

The old man touched his forehead in respect and looked relieved to have shed the burden of the extraordinary. I hurried to Nellia’s sitting room and shooed her away, saying I was to interview a new lad for Allard. When Allard brought Paulo to the door, the boy grinned shyly.

“You can go, Allard,” I said. “No need to interrupt your work. Come in, young man.”

Paulo limped in, his twisting gait the result of one leg misshapen since birth. The old man bowed and closed the door. The boy grinned shyly at me and touched his brow.

Only the certainty that Paulo would be mortified with embarrassment kept me from embracing him. I offered my hand instead. “What in the name of the stars are you doing here, Paulo?”

“Sheriff sent me.”

Graeme Rowan, Sheriff of Dunfarrie, had sheltered the homeless thirteen-year-old since our adventures of the summer. Rowan, Paulo, and Kellea, an untrained young sorceress from Valleor, had become valuable, if unexpected, allies, as I helped the mysterious Prince of Avonar evade pursuit and accomplish his mission in our world.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Nope. Just checking on things. Not heard from you in a while. Sheriff thought you might want one of us about to take letters or help out or whatever. Easiest if it was me.”

“I’ve just been a bit busy. I’ll write a letter to send back, but before you go, I want to hear all the news from Dunfarrie.”

Paulo’s brown hand twisted the tail of his tunic, and his eyes roamed everywhere in the room except my face. “Course, I don’t need to go back. You got horses here need a good hand.”

“I’d be delighted to have you here, but don’t you think the sheriff would worry?”

“Time I was getting me a job. Don’t want to be a burden. He and Kellea are… well, you know. Don’t need me about all the time.”

I knew that the courageous sheriff, bound by his office to hunt down sorcerers and burn them, had lost his heart to a talented, short-tempered young woman who was probably the last living Dar’Nethi sorcerer born in the Four Realms. But I also knew that neither of them begrudged Paulo a home. “It’s not that Graeme’s making you work at your lessons?”

It wasn’t easy to make Paulo blush, but a spring radish would have paled in comparison. “Horses don’t care if a man can read.”

“I’ll give you a job in the stables. Allard needs the help. But later this winter, we might have to work on your schooling a bit.”

I returned Paulo to Allard, who was waiting in the kitchen, and I said I could find no fault with the boy except that he needed a bath even more than he needed a meal. Paulo scowled and followed the old man back to the stables.

Paulo and I seldom had occasion to speak. But as I made my rounds of the estate with Giorge or rode out for pleasure, I saw him limping about the place. He always grinned before he ducked his head and touched his brow. Allard swore that Paulo had been born in a stable, perhaps of equine parentage. Soon I couldn’t go into the yard without seeing the two of them, heads together.

I never told anyone that I had known Paulo in my former life, though I could not have explained why. I was certainly not ashamed of him. He was a good and talented boy who had been my companion in adventure, brave and steady in circumstances that would daunt many grown men. It just felt good to have a private friend.

Seille came, the midwinter season when we observed the longest night of the year and the ten days until the new year. Seille and Long Night were celebrations bound up with the legend of a wounded god brought from despair by the generous offering of food, entertainment, and gifts from the poorest of his subjects. I found the truths of sorcery, two worlds, and the magical Bridge that somehow linked them and kept them in balance more fascinating than any Long Night myth. But I had always loved the trappings of Seille: gifts bound with silk ribbons, storytelling, pageants, pastries, evergreen boughs, hot cider fragrant with cinnamon and cloves, and splurging with hundreds of scented candles to brighten the cold, dark nights.

With the holidays came the first evidence of real progress with my nephew. I was surprised and pleased to find Gerick in Philomena’s room when I went to her for our nightly hour on the Feast of Long Night. It had seemed a bleak holiday having no family gathering to parallel the festivity in the servants’ hall, so I had asked the maids to garland Philomena’s mantel with evergreen, ordered a special supper for the duchess, and invited Gerick to join us. Though matters between the boy and me had been more detached than hostile of late, I had never expected him to come. But he was dressed in a fine suit and had already lit the candles that Nellia had sent on the tray, adding their perfume to the scent of balsam that filled the air.

“A joyous Long Night, Philomena,” I said, “and to you, Gerick.”

Philomena sighed. Gerick bowed politely, but didn’t say anything. One couldn’t expect too much.

Gerick sat on the edge of his mother’s bed while I pulled up a chair. I poured the wine and shared around the roasted duck, sugared oranges, and cinnamon cakes. There was no conversation, but no hostility either. When we were finished eating, Gerick and I moved the table out of the way. Philomena frowned and said, “Aren’t you planning to read tonight?”

“On the contrary…” From my pockets I pulled two wrapped parcels and gave one to each of them. I had ordered the two books from a shop in Montevial. Philomena’s was an exotic Isker romance, and she insisted I begin it immediately. Gerick’s was a manuscript about Kerotean swordmaking, so beautifully illustrated that I had hesitated to give it to him. I hated the thought that he might destroy it because it came from me. But while I read to Philomena, he sat cross-legged on her bed turning every page. His cheeks glowed in the candlelight.

When he closed the book at last, he jumped off the bed. I paused in my reading while he pecked his mother on the cheek. “Excuse me, Mama. I’m off to bed.” Then, his eyes not quite settling on me, he made a small gesture with the book. “It’s fine. Thank you.” Tucking the book securely under his arm, he ran off, leaving me feeling inordinately happy. Even Philomena’s gleeful report on his most recent demand that I be sent away did not spoil it.

A mere two days before the turning of the year and Covenant Day, I took my afternoon walk on the south battlement, forced to confine myself to the castle because of a snowstorm that had raged throughout the day. The wild whirling snow made me dizzy, and a sudden gust sent me stumbling toward the crumbling southernmost cornice. As I grabbed the cold iron ring embedded in the stone, thanking the ancient guardian warriors for protecting the daughter of Comigor yet again, I began to feel a burning sensation in the region of my heart. I thought I had frosted my lungs or developed a sudden fever in them, or perhaps something I’d eaten was bothering my digestion.

Before going back inside, I pulled on the silver chain about my neck as was my custom when I was alone, drawing Dassine’s talisman from my bodice, expecting to find it cold and dull as always. But, as the storm wind whipped my hair into my face, the snow swirled about me in a rose-colored frenzy, picking up a soft glow from the translucent stone, banishing all thoughts of storms or loneliness or difficult children. I wrapped my cold fingers about the stone until my hand gleamed with its pink radiance, and I relished every moment of that burning, for I had been assured that when the stone grew warm and glowed with its own light, Karon would arrive with the next dawn to visit me.