Elegy for a Lost Star (30 page)

Across the frost-blanched plains of upper Sorbold and into the southern province of Navarne he traveled, deeper and deeper into winter's grasp.

His fragmented mind seething, bent on destruction.

W
hen Achmed returned from visiting Gwydion Navarne, he came directly into the garden where he had left Rhapsody. As luck would have it, she was inside the buttery, preparing to return to the festival, so instead he was alone when he met up with the ambassador from the Sea Mages.

He stopped in his tracks, and stared over his veils at Jal'asee, his
mismatched eyes sighting on the man as if he were leveling a cwellan at him.

“You lived,” he said accusatorily.

Jal'asee sighed and tucked his hands into his outer cloak.

“Yes,” he replied. “I am sorry about that.”

Achmed glanced around the garden for Rhapsody. “Well, at last you and I agree on something, Jal'asee,” he said shortly. He turned to leave, only to be stopped when the Sea Mage raised his hand.

“I have been waiting to see you for almost three months, Your Majesty,” he said in his interesting voice. “I beg you do me the honor of favoring me with your attention for a few moments, and then I will withdraw and allow you to enjoy the festivities.”

Achmed snorted. “Do be serious.”

Jal'asee's face lost its natural expression of serenity. “Believe me, Your Majesty, what I have to say to you is very serious.”

“Then get on with it. I have more pressing matters to attend to, such as informing Rhapsody that should she ever invite us to the same event again I shall burn down her almost-completed house.”

“Did I hear my name being bantered about in disrespect?” the Lady Cymrian asked humorously upon entering the garden. “It must be that Achmed has returned.”

“Had I known you planned to ambush me with this academic, I would have gone directly home from my meeting with Gwydion Navarne,” Achmed said, the hostility in his voice unmistakable. “There are three types of people I despise, Rhapsody—Cymrians, priests, and academics. You should certainly know this by now.”

“I see no need to be rude to an ambassador from a sovereign nation who is also my guest,” said the Lady Cymrian tartly. “Perhaps you can at least hear the gentleman out, Achmed.”

“No need to defend my honor, m'lady,” said Jal'asee, a twinkle in his eye. “I have been fielding the Bolg king's insults for millennia now.” He walked a few steps closer and tucked his hands into his sleeves, crossing his arms. “It is our understanding that you are seeking to rebuild the instrumentality in Gurgus Peak,” he said seriously.

Achmed sighed. “Perhaps I should just have sent a royal notice to be posted in every port of call, every judiciary, and every brothel from here to Argaut,” he said angrily. “Do yourself the favor of making a wise choice, Jal'asee; I didn't seek your counsel about this originally because I do not care what your thoughts are on the matter. Please do me the favor, therefore, of not sharing them with me.”

“I have no choice in that matter, Your Majesty,” Jal'asee retorted. “That is the precise reason I was sent from Gaematria. The Supreme Council of the Sea Magistrate respectfully asks that you suspend all work on this project until such a time when—”

“Tell them by all means, I will do that,” sneered the Bolg king. “Their opinions are even more edifying to me than yours are.”

Jal'asee's patience seemed to run suddenly thinner.

“You must heed this advice, Your Majesty.”

“Why?”

The ambassador glanced around the garden.

“Shall I leave?” Rhapsody asked, pointing to the gate. “I truly don't mind.”

Both men shook their heads.

“I'm really not at liberty to go into the specifics, Your Majesty, but I believe you know the reason, or at least should be able to surmise it.”

Achmed stepped up to the ambassador and stared up into the tall man's golden eyes.

“Tell me why, or go away.”

Jal'asee stared down at him seriously.

“Just remember the greatest gifts the earth holds, sire.”

Silence fell in the garden. Then Achmed turned and walked past Rhapsody.

“When you have time to speak to me alone, seek me out,” he said, heading for the garden entrance.

Jal'asee coughed politely. “You know, it's a shame you chose to leave the study of healing behind for another profession. Your mentor had great faith in your abilities. You would have been a credit to Quieth Keep, perhaps one of the best ever to school there.”

Achmed spun angrily on his heel.

“Then I would be as dead as the rest of the innocents you lured to that place,” he said harshly. “You and I do not have the same definition of what constitutes ‘a shame.' ”

He stalked out of the garden, glaring at Rhapsody as he left.

She stared after him as the gate slammed shut.

“Do you mind telling me what that was all about?” she asked Jal'asee incredulously. In all the time she had known him, she had never seen Achmed become so engaged in a conversation he had stated up front was of no interest to him. Achmed was quite talented at ignoring subjects, discussions, or people in whom he had no interest.

The Sea Mage sighed. “Many years ago, when he was a fairly young man, a terrible tragedy occurred at Quieth Keep, the place of scholarship I mentioned to you several months ago, where I taught,” he said solemnly. “Someone he apparently cared a great deal for—perhaps several such someones—did not survive the mishap. I take it he has never forgiven me.”

“So it would seem,” said Rhapsody. “I'm sorry.”

“No need to be, m'lady,” Jal'asee said. “Just because someone is rude and unreasonable does not mean that he is wrong.”

G
erald Owen stirred the boiling syrup in the large cauldron of black iron, ignoring the rising noise of the children and some excited adults who were anxiously awaiting the pouring of the next batch of Sugar Snow. He had been conveniently deaf to such noise for many years; Lord Stephen's father had introduced the custom of drizzling hot liquid sugar onto clean snow that had been harvested on large trays to cool the caramel syrup into crisp, hard squiggles of sweetness that had come to be hallmarks of the winter carnival. Lord Stephen had added the extra sin of dipping the hard candy in chocolate and almond cream; Gerald Owen was the festival's traditional candy cook, as well as the guardian of the secret recipes.

The elderly chamberlain of Haguefort finally signaled the readiness of the syrup to be poured; he stepped back out of the way, allowing the assistant cooks to position the pot as the snow boards were brought forward. He wiped his sugary hands on his heavy linen apron and crossed his arms, allowing himself a small smile of satisfaction.

The solstice festival, despite his misgivings, seemed to be going well. Owen had served the family for two generations, and it gave him great satisfaction to see the traditions Lord Stephen had cherished being carried on by his son, whom Owen had cared for since his birth.

He was secretly glad that Gwydion was about to take on his title in full; the presence of the Lord and Lady Cymrian, however consoling it had been in the aftermath of the loss of the duke, was an uncomfortable fit in the small keep of Haguefort. The heads of the overarching Alliance belonged in a more central, grander estate; from what he had heard of it, Highmeadow was at least central, if not particularly grand. But Haguefort had been built originally as a stronghold for the families who had settled the wilds of the province of Navarne early in the Cymrian Age, and had always been a modest keep, not a palace or even a castle. Once it went back to being the seat of a duke, not the home of imperial rulers, life would be closer to normal.

He sat down wearily on a cloth-covered barrel, suddenly winded, and watched the mad tussle of children vying for the fragile sweets. Gerald Owen, like the duke he served, was of Cymrian lineage, long diluted, and had lived many years more than the human friends with whom he had been raised and schooled, now long dead. He had watched many of the parents and grandparents of the children competing for his candy do the same thing in festivals past; there was a cyclical harmony to it all, this sense that life was passing by for others faster than it was for him, that left him occasionally melancholy.

The grip of a hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. He looked up, squinting in the sunlight above him, to see the face of Haguefort's soon-to-be master smiling down at him.

“Is it almost time, Gerald?” Gwydion Navarne asked.

Owen rose quickly, the spring back in his step.

“Yes, indeed, sir, if you are ready to begin.”

“I will be, once you have checked me over to make certain I haven't missed anything. Once I pass muster with you, I will feel ready.”

Gerald Owen took the young duke by the arm and led him back into the Great Hall, where a table had been laid with the tools for his final preparations.

“Not to worry for a moment, young sir,” he said fondly. “We will have you turned out in a manner that will make you and everyone who loves you proud this day.”

A
she, true to his word, kept the ceremony by which Gwydion was invested brief and elegant. Rhapsody watched as the boy she had claimed as her first honorary grandson four years before, bowing at her feet, raised his eyes with a new wisdom in them, the wisdom of a young man now bearing the mantle of his birthright squarely on his shoulders. Her heart swelled with pride at his calm mien, the prudent and respectful words of acceptance he spoke. After Ashe handed him the ceremonial keys to Haguefort and Stephen's prized signet ring engraved with the crest of the Navarne duchy, Gwydion had turned and thanked the assemblage, then bade them to return to the festival, citing the sledge race trials that were about to begin.

As the crowd began milling back to the tents and the fields of competition, she felt a strong, bony hand clamp down on her elbow.

“If you are ready now,” Achmed's sandy voice said quietly in her ear, “we have something important to discuss.”

Without turning around, Rhapsody nodded, allowing Achmed to maneuver her out of the crowd of excited people shouting congratulatory salutes, to a quiet enclave inside of the keep.

“Tell me,” she said tersely as soon as they were out of earshot of Haguefort's servants. “And tell me why it was necessary for you to be so ungodly unpleasant to one of our most distinguished guests.”

“It was necessary to be unpleasant to him because I don't have any other temperament,” Achmed replied irritably. “You of all people should know that by now. He's an arse-rag, and I have very little patience with arse-rags. Now, as for what I need from you, and how you can help the Bolglands, do you remember this?”

He handed her a thin locked box fashioned in steel and sealed around the edges with beeswax.

Rhapsody's brows drew together. “Yes; wasn't this the container for an ancient schematic of Gwylliam's?”

“Indeed. And I need it translated, completely and accurately.”

“I believe I did this for you once before,” Rhapsody said, her own ire rising. She opened the box, and carefully moved the top document, written in
Old Cymrian, aside from the sheaf of even more ancient parchment below it, graphed carefully in musical script. “Oh, yes, I remember this poem now:

“Seven Gifts of the Creator,

Seven colors of light

Seven seas in the wide world,

Seven days in a sennight,

Seven months of fallow

Seven continents trod, weave

Seven eras of history

In the eye of God.”

Achmed nodded impatiently.

“I understand the poem,” he said. “It's the schematic and all the corresponding documents I need translated, and carefully.”

“When?”

The Bolg king considered. “What are you doing until supper?”

“I was actually planning to attend the sledge races,” Rhapsody replied archly. “And after that I thought I might attend the rest of the winter carnival, thank you. What sort of time do you think this kind of thing takes, Achmed? I can assure you, there are many days', if not weeks', worth of translation time here. This is more than just musical script; it requires the composition to be played, and to be referenced in later parts of the piece. It's not something I can sit down and do after noonmeal.”

“I am willing to wait until teatime,” Achmed said wryly.

“You will have to wait until teatime next year,” Rhapsody answered. “Additionally, didn't I tell you at the time you last showed me this that I worry about your rash experimentation with ancient lore?”

“You did, which is why I have decided not to experiment, but rather to get a careful and accurate translation, then assess for myself what to do with the information. Surely you can't object to
that?”