Chapter 19 #2
Taar dismounts and gently lifts me down from the saddle. I wonder, wildly, wishfully, if he will take me in his arms and ravish me here and now. Oh, how I wish he would! We are so far from everyone—who could possibly know?
But Taar takes his vows seriously, blight him. He simply pulls me close again, resting my cheek on his heart and his chin on the top of my head. He breathes me in deep and exhales slowly. “There now,” he says. “That is the air my lungs have craved these long hours.”
I snuggle in close, relishing the size and strength of this man who has chosen so inexplicably to love me.
How many times over these last few days of drudgerous riding have I told myself that I would release him from this marriage come silmael?
How many times have I convinced myself that our parting is inevitable, necessary even?
Now, as I listen to the beat of his heart once more, I know all those convincing mental arguments were utterly pointless.
I will choose him. I must choose him. Yes, I may suffer the consequences of isolation and ultimate rejection.
It doesn’t matter. All that matters is to be his and to know that he is mine.
“How many nights until silmael?” I ask, my voice tight.
“Seven,” Taar answers without hesitation, and presses his mouth against the top of my head.
“So long!” I whimper.
“So long,” he agrees. Then he pushes me back from him just enough that he can look down at my face, lit only by starlight.
My human eyes struggle to discern much of his features, but I know his ibrildian gaze reads every trace expression.
I wonder if he will kiss me then. I could make him—I want to make him.
A single look, a whimper of sound, and he would fall upon me with a hunger only I can satisfy.
I crave that hunger of his so much, it hurts!
Instead I drop my gaze and turn my head to look out over the encampment once more. “What are your intentions then, warlord, in bringing me out all this way?”
“No intentions,” he admits. “Just the need to be with you.”
He takes my hand and leads me to a swath of thick grass.
There he sits and pulls me down beside him.
We lie back, and I tuck my body under his arm, my head resting on his shoulder.
Together we stare up at the sky. The stars are closer here than they are in my world—so close I can almost see the moving halo of light swirling around their burning centers, can almost discern their unique colors.
“Do you see that star, zylnala?” Taar asks, pointing to a bright orb burning straight overhead.
I nod. “And there,” he adds, extending his arm in an arc, tracing out a constellation.
“Those nine together. They form the constellation of Ianletha, the first maelar of Licorna, Mahra’s first heart-bound rider.
It is said the souls of all the queens of Licorna are gathered into her heart-star, joining their songs with hers in an eternal hymn of protection over our world. ”
“Ianletha,” I whisper. Then: “Maelar.”
“Someday,” Taar says, “your soul will join with those stars. And your voice will ring across the heavens for all eternity.”
My throat tightens against a rising sob, too thick to form any sort of an answer.
Part of me is angry that he would say such a thing, knowing as he does that I can never be his maelar.
That he will have to pick another one day, and it is her soul which shall sing with his foremothers, not mine.
But he speaks with such confidence, such conviction, as though he has seen a future I dare not even imagine.
“Will you tell me something, Ilsevel?” he says suddenly, turning his head to look down at me.
“What do you need to know?” I ask, tilting my chin to look up and catch his eye.
He chuckles softly at the expression on my face and presses me a little closer to his side. “Your favorite childhood memory.”
“What?” I burst out laughing and smack his chest for worrying me like that. “What in the gods’ names brought this on?”
He settles more comfortably, lifting the arm which does not hold me to support the back of his head.
“It occurred to me today,” he says, “during those awful, endless hours of separation, that I know so little about you. I know your name—Ilsevel Cyhorn. And I know your courage, your determination, your strength in the face of adversity. I know the beautiful timbre of your voice, the voice of heaven itself. But there is still so much I know nothing of. And I want to. I want to know everything that can be known about you.”
I bite my lip, uncertain how to respond to such ardor. “The person I was before . . . before I met you . . . she wasn’t particularly worth knowing.”
Taar turns his head to look down at me more closely.
“Don’t say that.” His voice is stern but somehow still so full of love, it makes me ache inside.
“Don’t say that. Please. Everything about you, everything that shaped your life and made you into this wonderous creature .
. . all of it matters to me. Good, bad, what difference does it make?
If it is part of you, I want to know, to understand.
” Then he leans over and kisses the top of my head ever so lightly, so chastely, so as not to compromise that damnable vow of his.
“But for tonight,” he says, “I don’t need to know everything.
Just something. Something small, something beautiful. A good memory.”
I want to please him in whatever way I can. But it is difficult to know what to share. My childhood was not a happy one. There are fond memories, however, of Faraine, of Aurae. And even of Lyria.
“One day,” I say softly, falling into a space of musing recall, “when I was nine years old, I took it into my head to find the dungeons of Beldroth Castle. I don’t know what it was that intrigued me about the notion.
Some grim fantasy, perhaps. I tried to convince Faraine to join me, but she had one of her headaches again.
And Aurae was still just a little tot. But Lyria .
. . Lyria was as eager as I and took the lead. ”
“Who is Lyria?” Taar asks.
My stomach knots. I don’t want to admit the truth about my bastard half-sister. That revelation, which struck me like a thunderbolt, still hurts. But for many years, I lived in ignorance of our true relationship, and Lyria and I were close.
“She was a companion,” I say. “A sort of lady-in-waiting, and . . . my best friend. Faraine, you see, was so often sick, and Aurae was just a baby. But Lyria and I were a match in temperament. We got into a lot of scrapes together, and I admired her tremendously, for she was a year older than I.”
From there I spin a story for him of two little girls, searching the castle grounds for a secret entrance to the old dungeons.
Beldroth was long ago converted to a pleasure palace and had not been used to house prisoners in several generations, but we had visions of dark cells and iron chains dancing in our imaginations and were determined to follow through.
“Our initial foray merely led us to a root cellar, where we surprised a footman and scullery maid, who seemed to us to be acting very silly.” I snort at the memory of flying skirts and scarlet faces, which makes rather more sense to me now.
“We had enough good grace to retreat and were chased out of the lower levels by an angry cook. So it seemed our adventure was at an end.”
Taar chuckles softly. “Something tells me you did not give up so easily.”
“Oh, certainly not. It occurred to me, you see, that the entrance to the dungeons must be in an older part of the castle, built long before the main structure in which we now lived. There is a hidden courtyard deep in the gardens, walled off from everything else. It’s considered sacred ground and is used for solemn ceremonies. ”
I go on to describe for him how Lyria and I boosted and hoisted each other over the secret wall and into the sacred garden.
There we found a large basin of water and, in the center of it, an ancient statue of a couple in an amorous clinch.
Quite shocking to our young eyes, more so than anything we’d half-glimpsed in the root cellar.
It sent us into peels of giggles, and we hastily ran to the far end of the courtyard.
There we discovered a little doorway, half-hidden behind a curtain of ivy.
Pushing this back, we uncovered a stairway leading down into the cool dark underground.
“What could it be, we asked ourselves, other than the sought-after dungeons entrance?”
“And was it?” Taar asks.
“No. It wasn’t particularly good logic anyway. Why would anyone stash prisoners underneath sacred ground?”
“But you found something else more interesting, I imagine.”
“Much more interesting. Listen.”
I tell him how Lyria led the way down the little stairway, me trailing close at her heels.
The only light came from the doorway behind us, and it was soon very dark.
But when we reached the bottom of the stairs, the space around us opened up into a strange grotto, lit by patches of sunlight falling through carved holes in the ceiling.
Water poured down the stone, shaping it over the eons.
And the shapes the water had carved shocked us with delight.
“The walls,” I tell Taar, “were covered in images. Not carvings—they were naturally shaped, you could tell, somehow. And yet they were clearer than any image I’ve ever seen in either chapel or shrine.
The faces of the gods—each one as tall as a grown man.
The way the water dripped, it seemed as though they were crying great tears. ”
“Sounds frightening.”
“It was, I suppose. But also very solemn and very beautiful. Both Lyria and I felt it, the gravity of that place, though even now I don’t pretend to understand it.”