The Coming Storm (16 page)

The room was empty.

Ailith’s breath came in short, hard pants.

Reluctantly, but almost as if she were drawn to do it she stepped inside. Moonlight lit the loom with silvery clarity. A tapestry was stretched across it, half-started, the pattern clear at first before it became a jumbled madness. Her mother made wonderful tapestries, masterworks of loom, needle and thread. Had made. This wasn’t one of them.

A section of wall stood ajar. The hidden door. The escape door, the one that led to the stairs within the walls. A like one exited her father’s rooms, an escape route from ancient times when such things were necessary.

Her heart seemed to go still for a moment and her blood went cold. She froze. That door led to the tunnels far below. Dark, dank and dripping tunnels, smelling of mold and earth. It had seemed an exciting place to explore when she was a child. No more. Reality began to sink into her awareness. The open door. The tunnels. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

Oh, no. Oh please, no
.

Something distracted her, though, some odd bit of darkness, a wrongness. Something wasn’t right in this room. Something goaded her. It repelled her rather than called to her, a half-heard not-whisper, a thread of sound that wasn’t sound. An odd mindless maddening humming that was felt more than heard. Her skin crawled.

Kneeling by the side of the bed, she peered beneath it. The moonlight made something there gleam. It was like being in the awful dream again, that speechless horror. Whatever it was that lay there, it frightened her and called to her. She didn’t want to touch it, not with bare fingers. No, something within her recoiled at the mere thought of it. Reaching behind her blindly, she snatched up one of her mother’s dresses. Smooth, impossibly smooth, so very soft and incredibly thin. Elven-silk. No one knew how those folk made it, nothing made by men could match it.

Wrapping her hand in it thickly, she reached out with clumsy fingers and snagged a bit of chain, drew it toward her.

It dangled in front of her eyes. The charm. One just like the one her father wore. The sight of it stunned her. It wasn’t something her mother would have worn and there was something strange about it. Something disturbing. She was suddenly dizzy and hot, as if she were caught in a sudden fever. Her skin crawled. She was abruptly aware of how alone she was and of time passing.

Quickly she wrapped the thing deep in folds of silk and then she ran. Back to the dubious safety of her own room.

She locked it as quietly as she might and then pushed her storage chest against it for additional security.

Creeping into a corner far from the window she lit a candle and shielded the light with her body as she unfolded the silk once more. A gold chain, a simple gold pendant with a single, smooth, gray and oily stone in the center. Plain and unassuming. The stone only seemed smooth and shiny, though, until you looked closely. Then you could see movement and patterns within. A shifting greasy shine seemed to shimmer inside the stone, it was like looking at oil on water in a basin when the sun shone on it. Except it wasn’t bright, it was shades of black and gray. She was suddenly lightheaded.

She shook herself and glanced at the window. The first pearly light of dawn was showing.

That stunned her.

How long had she been staring at the thing? Shocked and startled, she covered it up, tying the folds of the dress tightly around it. Where to put it? Not beneath the bed. Not so close. Not this thing, not sharing space with her swords.

The garderobe. There was a curtain across it, she stuffed the thing in the corner where the curtain bunched.

Ailith stood in the middle of the room, lost for a moment. Lost in grief.

The pain was too deep, too great for her to speak. Her mother was gone. She was dead. Somehow she knew it, knew it for sure. She rocked with the pain. Even if she could have wept, she would have, but if she did she was doomed. They would see by her eyes, they would know that something was wrong. They mustn’t know. How could she not weep for her mother? But she couldn’t. Maybe it was only that the horror of it was too huge.

Her father had slain her mother and in doing so had slain himself. Whatever he looked like, the man that was her father was no longer there. He was gone as well. She knew that, somehow she knew that. She thought she would go mad with that knowledge, the pain was so great. Then she was on her knees, her head to the floor, hands clasped over her wrenching, aching heart. It seemed to go on forever, yet it was only hours before she crawled onto her bed, to lie limp, shaking and exhausted.

What could she do? If she accused him, who would believe her?

That so smooth voice, that had been Tolan. She knew how reasonable he could be, how persuasive. Would the body of her mother still be there in the cold fetid tunnel? She didn’t think so.

Her father still resembled her father, but he wasn’t.

How would they explain her mother’s absence? There would be some explanation, she was sure of that.
How far would they go to explain it away
? They’d murdered her mother. That was how far. But she had no proof. All she had was a dream and that charm. Nothing else. Somehow she needed to get down in the tunnels. Not soon but she would need to go. Had to look, to see if what she imagined and dreamed matched what was there. She needed to know, had to know.

Could she go? Flee? Could she run away? If she ran would they let her go?

Somehow she didn’t think so. Tolan wanted her for some reason but she didn’t know what that reason was. Even if she ran, where would she go? To her grandmother’s? And if she did? They would simply come after her. What would happen then? It was a large homestead but not that large. She still wasn’t of age. So far as King and Crown were concerned, she was still the ward of her father as both her father and her King and so the man who looked like her father had complete jurisdiction over her. With no proof, she would sound mad if she accused him of anything. Anyone she went to would have to send her back to her father in the end.

There was no place to go, nowhere to run. What could she do? Nothing. All she could do was pretend nothing had happened. That there had been no dream. That nothing was wrong. And wait, wait until an opportunity presented itself.

Stay out of Tolan’s way.

Her heart raced and she was weary from her uneasy sleep. Even so, sleep was impossible. She needed calm.

Dorovan’s lessons. The exercises and meditations he’d had taught her.

She took a deliberately slow deep breath, willed herself to stillness. Found her center and pressed her hands together over her heart and faced east. The forms, without her swords. Each movement careful and deliberate. Think of the sun, the bright and soothing warmth, the light. Let the light of reason still your mind. She could almost hear Dorovan’s voice coaching her.

She wished so much that he was here to advise her.

When she was done, she was sweating lightly but calm again and in control.

The sun was up. It was time for breakfast. She washed quickly and dressed.

She had another fitting scheduled for one of her dresses for her majority ceremony. A reason to get away from the castle, people who expected her. Terror gripped her. Her throat tightened. Another deep breath. And another. Until she was calm again.

Downstairs, she walked into the great room with its massive fireplace, the room where her father held court. The thrones for her father and mother were there at the long table. Her father and Tolan were there. Her mother’s seat was empty.

“Where’s Mother?” she asked, keeping her voice light and curious, because they would expect her to ask.

To no surprise it was Tolan who answered. “There was a call in the night, some illness in one of the villages to the north. She went to help tend the sick.”

It was reasonable. Selah had trained as a healer, she was an herbalist. Her herbs and tinctures, salves and potions were well known. It was a wonderful excuse, not only for them but for Ailith. She’d helped Selah a time or two.

“I have to go down into the village today for a fitting for my dress for the majority ceremony,” she said as she sat down, to let him know she was expected somewhere.

One of the kitchen folk placed a bowl of porridge in front of her. With an effort, she made every show of eating heartily.

“Perhaps while I’m down there I’ll pick up some more herbs. Mothers showed me how to mix up some of her herbs and potions. I’ll put some of the most useful up in case she has need and sends for them.”

Her father sat silently, eating steadily, mechanically.

Tolan let her words wash over him, watching her with a disturbing level of interest. Almost hungrily.

With relief, she escaped, finally.

Once outside the doors of the castle she let out a careful sigh. She waved to Korin. Up on the parapets, Caradoc called down a greeting.

How could things be so normal? It seemed astonishing. Her mother was dead and her father had killed her. How could nothing have changed? Had it only been her imagination?

Caradoc hadn’t asked about her mother’s leaving but she doubted he knew. He would have sent guards with her, especially at night. No guards were gone. That wasn’t proof. Still, her mother wasn’t here and the truth was it was unlikely she could have prepared and been gone by morning. She would have had to make batches of the appropriate medicines, enough for an unknown number of people. That would have taken time. It was very unlike her mother to go unprepared.

Her mother’s herbarium was along the side wall of the courtyard, where all could see and the occasional stench would blow away. Not all tinctures and potions smelled good. Some of them tasted pretty bad as well. There was no sign she’d even been there or of a hasty late night departure.

Since Tolan had become chatelaine, he was kept busy a fair amount of time. That was a blessing. He’d also slowly taken on many of the duties Ailith had once done. Not going out with the Hunters as she did but the task of acting as her father’s agent. Much of her father’s duties would now fall to him, also. Whatever it was her father had become wasn’t ready yet for all else to see. That silent figure at the end of the table hadn’t even greeted her as her father always had.

Over the next few days Ailith kept quietly out of the way, working in her mother’s herbarium.

Finally, Tolan was called away on what she knew would be a long day’s ride. The thing that resembled her father was becoming more aware every day but it was also clear  he wasn’t yet ready for a long trip in another’s company – not that she could tell. The lapses would be noticed, the lack of attention, the blankness of expression. Her only blessing was  it couldn’t be less interested in her. That was where the resemblance ended, thankfully. To have it feign an interest in her and her affairs, knowing what had been done, would’ve driven her insane.

Once she was sure Tolan was well away and not likely to return soon, she made her way down into the tunnels. In her hand was the chain from her mother’s pendant. There had been nights lately when she’d thought she heard movement in the walls. They would be wondering where it was. The pendant itself was still thickly wrapped in her room, it’s attraction muted.

On her way down past the dungeons, she snapped off some of the links. Rats liked shiny things. There were rats down here in plenty, those she’d seen on previous excursions. The torch she carried blew a little in a breeze that hadn’t been here in on those visits. Her heart pounded wildly.

There, there was the niche where Tolan and her father had stood to await her mother. It was the exit to her father’s solar, the door now closed. Ailith’s breath came short.

A little further. The torch crackled and popped.

In her mind’s eye she saw  the images from the dream. Saw the cold stones of the wall, the dripping fluids and the desperate race. Somewhere here. Of course there was no sign. No blood. No dead body of her mother. There were marks in the dirt, though. Odd ones. She followed them to the end, to the barred door to the outside. It hadn’t been closed again tightly enough. Is that what they’d done? Dumped her mother’s body in the river? Weighted it to keep it down? She left the door as it was. Going backward, she erasing the prints of her feet in the fine soil while glancing back over her shoulder and dropping bits of the chain to be buried beneath the shifted dirt. He would find them or not. She hoped he would think the chain had broken and a rat or something had taken it. So long as he didn’t turn his mind to searching other places. Like her rooms.

At last, at long last, she left, unharmed and unnoticed.

She heard Tolan come back late that night, the sound of a horse at that hour unusual. On light feet she ran to the arrowslit.