Chapter 9 - ILSEVEL #2
The queen’s mouth firms into a hard line.
It’s difficult to imagine this woman ever giving way to any soft or tender feelings.
“You’ve always been a willful creature,” she says, bitterness coating each word.
“Even now, returning from the grave to wed this man . . .” She stops abruptly and shakes her head, seeming to remember the occasion and what it requires of her.
“I hope you get everything you ever hoped for,” she finishes.
But judging by her tone, she means, everything you deserve.
“I’m sure I will, Mother,” I answer with a brittle laugh. “I’m quite primed to languish in the mire of all my foolish mistakes, have no fear.”
Mother leads the procession down into the Beldroth gardens.
These are still drab from a long winter, but signs of a new spring are beginning to appear here and there.
It’s strange to see all that life on the verge of blooming when my own existence seems to be narrowing down into the confines of a living grave.
I long for Faraine and Aurae’s presence; the entourage is singularly bereft in their absence.
Partway through the garden my mother begins to sing, leading the women in sacred chorus.
It is a song of call and response, and I am meant to sing my own part solo.
It occurs to me that I have not sung once since waking in my bed, wrapped in spellwork, all those days ago.
It feels as though all music has been stripped from my soul.
When it comes to my part in the sacred melody, I simply hold my tongue, allow the silence to linger awkwardly.
“Ilsevel,” my mother says sternly, turning to look back at me. “You dishonor the Goddess with your silence.”
“Do I?” I tilt my head beneath the heavy veil. “How sad.”
Queen Mereth looks at me long and hard. The skin around her eyes tightens.
Then she covers the distance between us in a few strides and draws her hard face close to mine.
“You’ve already spoiled your own chances,” she hisses, as though the women gathered cannot hear every word loud and clear.
“You’ve ruined your two sisters, destroyed every hope I once cherished for their prospects and for yours.
You’ll kindly oblige me by, at the very least, going through with this farce of a marriage with some dignity. ”
I meet her gaze without flinching, reading in her eyes all the pain of her own disappointed dreams. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she poured everything into idealized futures for her own four children.
Now what? Aurae is lost, Faraine banished to the Shadow Realm as a substitute bride.
My older brother, Theodre, is long gone as well, so they tell me.
I am all that remains of Mereth’s legacy.
And here I stand, with my bastard half-sister at my back, on my way to wed a man without title or eminence, a worker of black magic. How very disappointing for her.
I smile—without warmth, without love, merely answering her own expression in kind. “You can sing my part, Mother,” I say, “if it makes you feel better. But I do not feel like singing today.”
With those words I sweep past her and, Lyria carrying my train behind me, hasten through the garden, leaving my entourage behind.
A flurry of furious whispering erupts behind me, but no one tries to protest or take up that hymn once more.
I know the way to the sacred courtyard set apart for this ceremony; I’ve walked all these garden paths hundreds of times and could navigate them blindfolded with ease.
We reach the little mossy door set in a stone wall.
I pause a moment, hesitating before I enter.
Lyria tries to catch my eye, but I won’t look at her.
So she merely reaches out, opens the door, and steps aside to let me pass through.
Alone. I duck under the low lintel, leaving her behind to shut the door fast in my wake.
For a moment I simply stand, taking in the sacred grove before me.
Spring has progressed more rapidly in this space, possibly due to whatever holiness infuses the ground.
Green vines climb the walls, which surround me on all sides, budding with white and purple blooms. Flowering shrubs grow tall and a trifle wild, delicate yellow blossoms like sunbursts in their dark green branches.
Early bulbs put forth their jewel-tone bounty, and a sweet, complicated perfume fills my nostrils.
In the center of the yard stands a large stone basin filled with clear water.
A statue rises in its center, the sculpted image of a man and a woman, locked in eternal embrace.
Her back is to him, but she turns her head to accept his kiss.
One of his hands caresses her jaw while the other gently cups her breast. A tender moment, the sight of which makes my heart ache strangely.
I know no such tenderness awaits me in the arms of my intended bridegroom.
And yet, why is it that the sight of that couple, rendered in marble, feels so strangely familiar?
I press my hand against my bare breast, palm covering that place over my heart that feels so empty, so bereft. Once again I find myself straining after a memory that will not come, but the lack of it fills me with mourning so heavy, it threatens to break my spirit.
With a shake of my head, I hasten deeper into the garden.
Artoris will appear imminently, then we must speak our sacred vows to one another.
But for a few moments, at least, I may enjoy my solitude.
This is not my first time in this secret garden.
Memory sparks—memory of two young girls, giggling and full of mischief, sneaking into forbidden places on their hunt for the old castle dungeons.
Lyria was always game for a lark back in those days, more akin to me in spirit than either of my sisters.
I turn my head suddenly. We found something as children, did we not?
No dungeon entrance, but something else.
Something mysterious. My gaze searches the far end of the courtyard where a curtain of ivy hangs thickly over the wall.
Something about it calls to me. After that first visit, Lyria and I returned several times, searching, never to find again what we had initially uncovered.
I’d often thought perhaps I dreamed it entirely, but now . . .
All thoughts of Artoris and my pending doom banished, I step around the lover’s basin and approach the far wall.
Hands shaking, I begin to pull back clinging ivy vines.
There are so many, so densely grown, I begin to think I’ll never get through.
But then—Ah! There it is. Exactly as it has lingered in my memory all these years.
A hidden doorway. Like a gaping mouth in the wall. A wall that should be no more than two feet thick, but here seems to venture much more deeply into a stoney cavern. A stairway, beginning just at my feet, leads down into darkness, and the air rising from within is cool and moist.
I stand as though frozen, one hand still gripping a fistful of greenery.
Is this the entrance to that labyrinthine gallery Lyria and I explored together all those years ago?
We never did discover where those twisting passages might lead.
My heart leaps, singing in my breast of escape.
I almost let it drive my feet down that stairway in eager flight.
But I stop. My fingers curl tightly around their handful of vines, knuckles whitening.
What would be the use of rushing down those stairs, of losing myself in the tunnels below?
If, indeed, they really are there. If I didn’t lose myself in a tangled network of underground stone, if I somehow emerged beyond these walls, out in open country .
. . what then? I’m hardly dressed for escape in this revealing white gown and veil.
I have no money, no horse, no supplies, nor even the first idea where I would go.
Besides, how long will it be before Artoris’s dark spell begins to ebb?
How long before the pain catches up to me again, breaks me in two before I inevitably succumb to death?
Without Artoris to reimplement the magic, I will surely perish in agony.
Is that what I want? Maybe. Maybe I simply don’t care anymore.
I chew the inside of my cheek, undecided. While none of my previous escape attempts have turned out well, it is difficult to resist the draw of this opportunity. But—
A sudden scrabbling noise makes me jump back from the wall, my hand pressed against my beating heart. Is it my bridegroom? I don’t know why, but I can’t help thinking it’s important he not see this secret door. With a little gasp I spring forward, pull at the ivy so that it falls over the opening.
Movement draws my eye. Not back to the garden door from whence I expect my bridegroom, but up.
Up to the top of the wall, where a figure appears, scaling stones from the far side.
An enormous, broad, hooded figure, whose too-small cloak does very little to shield the eye from a vast display of muscular, naked flesh.
I’m so shocked at the sight, I cannot speak or move, only watch as he hauls himself over the wall and drops into the garden, graceful despite his bulk. He lands not far from where I stand.
I should scream. Shouldn’t I? Surely there must be guards posted somewhere near who would come running to my aid. It occurs to me that the bells I heard down in the village might have been an alarm after all. Am I now facing the very perpetrator who inspired their ringing?
He turns to me abruptly, his face shadowed by his low-pulled hood. Nevertheless, I feel the tension that shoots through him at the sight of me in my white gown and beaded veil. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost.
I push the veil back from my face angrily, glaring at this strange invader. “What in the gods’ names do you think you’re doing?” I demand, my voice shrill in the stillness of the air. “Don’t you know this is a sacred space?”
He is silent for such a long stretch, I begin to wonder if he’s mute. He makes no move, not even to breathe. Yet there is such a burn of energy in the atmosphere around him, as though his very flesh is about to ignite.
Then he speaks in a rough voice, almost animalistic in its timbre, uttering a strange, foreign word: “Zylnala?”