Beyond the Boundary Stones (The Chronicles of Tevenar Book 3) (7 page)

“That’s our hope.” Elkan gestured for her to take a seat near his. “I’d be very interested to hear what treatments you’ve found effective.”

Yerenna spread her hands in a self-deprecating way as she sat down. “I’m happy to tell you, although I’m sure it will seem painfully inadequate to those who wield the Mother’s power. The palace is abuzz with tales of what you did in the Beggars’ Quarter today.”

“On the contrary,” Elkan assured her. “There’s far more need in Ramunna than we’re able to meet. The more remedies available that don’t require the Mother’s power, the better. We’ve had little need in Tevenar to develop them, so I’m eager to learn of any the healers of Ravanetha have devised.”

Josiah could tell Yerenna was pleased by Elkan’s respect for her skill, though she showed it only by a slight straightening of her posture. “In that case, there are a number of things I use that you might be interested in. Tincture of vitex is my most widely useful preparation. It’s very effective in regulating a woman’s cycles. Many times it’s all that’s needed to help a barren woman conceive. Then there’s a cream I prepare from wild yam that prevents early miscarriage. After Verinna brought me to the palace I began treating her with it, and she never lost another before the third month.” A shadow crossed her face. “Unfortunately it seems to have no effect on later losses.”

Elkan looked thoughtful. “Hmm. The next time you use it, would you allow me to observe what it does?”

“Certainly. Perhaps if Verinna—” She broke off, glancing at the Matriarch.

The Matriarch smiled blandly at them. “Don’t mind me.” She angled her body away, looking toward a window where a soft breeze stirred the drapes. Outside, a few stars had become visible in the deep blue twilight.

Josiah shifted impatiently as Elkan continued his discussion with Yerenna. It was all very interesting, Josiah supposed, but he wasn’t familiar with the less common complications of pregnancy, so most of it went over his head. He wished they’d finish so they could proceed to the feast the Matriarch had mentioned. He studied the intricate gold curlicues decorating the ceiling, wondering if they were actually made of the precious metal, or just painted to give that illusion.

A softly cleared throat called him back to the present. He turned to find the Matriarch regarding him with an avidity far too intense for comfort. He blinked at her. “Ma’am?”

She smiled tolerantly. “Everything here must seem very strange to you. You have nothing like my palace in your homeland, do you?”

“No, ma’am.” Belatedly Josiah remembered the correct form of address. “Your majesty.”

She waved his error away with a negligent hand. “I’m sure you have things there that would fascinate me, though they seem commonplace to you. Your animals, for instance.” She turned her gaze on Sar, who blinked his long lashes at her. “They’re clearly more than ordinary beasts.”

“Well, yeah.” Josiah glanced anxiously at Elkan, but his master was deeply absorbed in conversation with Yerenna. Josiah was acutely aware of the need to keep the Matriarch from learning too much about Tevenar, for fear she’d use the information against them. But she was going to find out about the familiars eventually—they couldn’t use the Mother’s power on her regularly without her observing the most important parts. It couldn’t hurt to make sure she knew the truth from the beginning, or at least as much as anyone who wasn’t a wizard was allowed to know. That way she wouldn’t jump to any false conclusions that might put Sar and Tobi in danger. “They’re Mother-touched.”

Her brow creased. “What does that mean?”

Josiah warmed to the subject. It was fun to play the master for a change. “See this mark? Sar, show her.”

Sar angled his body so the Matriarch could see the right side of his chest, where a small white oval the size and shape of a fingerprint marked his fur. “That’s where the Mother touched him, either before he was born or right after. All familiars have one, although sometimes they’re dark and sometimes light, whatever contrasts with their natural coloring. That’s how we know they can become familiars. Tobi’s is in her ear. N—”

Josiah!

At Sar’s sharp warning, Josiah transformed the word into a cough. Dear Mother, he’d been about to mention Nina! He really had to be more careful.

The Matriarch raised her eyebrows in polite concern. He waved his hand and shook his head. “I’m fine. Sorry. Anyway, what I was saying is that, um, n… nobody knows why the Mother chooses a particular animal to touch. The parents of familiars, and their offspring, too, are usually ordinary animals.” He scratched around Sar’s ears the way the donkey liked.

Her voice stayed pleasantly interested, but relaxed, as if she was making idle conversation to while away the time. “What changes when the Mother touches them, besides their markings?”

Josiah couldn’t see any danger in telling her. “They become much smarter, as smart as people. And they become able to bond with a wizard.”

“How does that happen?”

Again Josiah thought hard about his answer, but couldn’t see any harm in letting her know. “There’s a ceremony every Springtide. All the fourth year apprentices are paired with a familiar. Your master cuts your hand and your familiar’s paw or whatever, and you touch each other so your blood mixes.” It didn’t always happen exactly that way—it hadn’t for Josiah—but he thought it wiser to keep his explanation simple. “Then somehow you’re standing before the Mother, and she asks if you’re willing to serve her as a wizard. If you say yes, you’re bonded, and after that you can use the Mother’s power. As long as you’re actually touching your familiar, of course.” That was the public explanation. Only wizards were allowed to know the full truth—that the familiar, not the wizard, controlled the Mother’s power.

“Amazing.” The Matriarch studied Sar intently. “That’s not how it worked for the wizards of ancient Miarban, was it?”

“Not until Gurion Thricebound. Before him, people were wizards by themselves, if they were born that way because their parents were. But they did evil things with the Mother’s power, so she took it away from them.”

“So the Keepers tell us. My ancestors were wizards.” The Matriarch looked off into the distance, her expression nearly as hungry as when she’d spoken of a child.

Josiah shifted uncomfortably. “Um, yeah. Anyway, Gurion asked the Mother to give the wizards their powers back, but she didn’t want to risk people misusing them again. So she made it so we had to bond with a familiar. That way, if somebody tries to do something bad with her power, or tries to use being a wizard to manipulate people, their familiar can break their bond.” He swallowed and studied his hands.

She studied him, her perceptive eyes seeing far more than Josiah had meant to reveal. “You’ve seen it happen?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “A couple times. It’s pretty bad. It hurts a lot, and you’re knocked unconscious for three days.” He glanced at Elkan. “You can ask Elkan if you want to know more. Sar used to be his, but he broke their bond. Not because Elkan had done anything wrong,” he hastened to add. “He was out of energy, and I wasn’t, and it was an emergency…” Josiah shrugged again. “Otherwise a bond lasts until either the wizard or the familiar dies.”

“I see.” The Matriarch looked Sar over with far more interest than Josiah liked. He put a possessive hand on the donkey’s back. Sar’s skin shuddered under his palm, but he made no comment except a mild impression of reassurance in Josiah’s mind.

The Matriarch reached to stroke Sar’s velvet nose. Sar didn’t object, so Josiah couldn’t, even though he wanted to. “The Mother only touches animals in Tevenar?”

This was a safe subject, and one he was sure would interest her. “Up until now, yes. But Elkan thinks that’s going to change. There used to be a Law that wizards and familiars weren’t allowed to go any farther from Tevenar than the boundary stones in the north and south. But right before we left, the Mother changed that.” Josiah hoped the Matriarch wouldn’t question him too closely about how that had happened. He couldn’t tell the whole story without revealing Kevessa’s secret.

He hurried on. “She said that her power is for the whole world now. So Elkan thinks she’ll start touching animals here in Ramunna pretty soon, and maybe all over Ravanetha. But not many, at least not at first, because we’re going to have to teach the new wizards how to use her powers—it’s not as easy as you’d think. And if she touches the world too often it causes problems, earthquakes and floods and hurricanes, that sort of thing.”

The Matriarch’s brow creased. Smash it, she was going to ask why that happened, and he had no idea how he’d explain, because he didn’t fully understand himself.

Sure enough, her lips shaped a “W—” before a stir by the door caught her attention. Josiah breathed a sigh of relief as her gaze went past his shoulder. For a moment an odd combination of eagerness and wariness flashed across her features, before she smoothed them into their usual uncommunicative mask.

“We must continue this conversation later,” she said to Josiah as she rose, without moving her gaze from the door. She swept across the room, extending her hands in welcome. “Renarre.”

Josiah swiveled in his seat, curious to see what sort of man was married to the Matriarch. It must be an odd sort of relationship, with one partner having so much more power than the other. He must love her an awful lot to put up with always being in her shadow, subject to her whims, vulnerable to being discarded if she tired of him or if he failed to meet her needs.

The man in the doorway was tall and solidly built, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and weathered skin. He was dressed in the same sort of elaborate silk and velvet clothes as Gevan and the other men of the Matriarch’s court, but the colors were more muted than most Josiah had seen, dark blues and browns. He bowed to the Matriarch, took one of her hands in his, and brushed the back of her fingers with a light kiss. He straightened with a reserved but genuine smile. “Verinna.”

“Come meet the wizards, Renarre.” She pulled him over to where Elkan and Yerenna had risen. Josiah belatedly jumped to his feet as well, hoping his delay hadn’t been too rude. “This is Master Elkan. He examined me and says he’ll be able to use the Mother’s power to allow me to bear an heir, just as I hoped. He wants to examine you as well and fix whatever keeps you from siring a child.”

If Renarre disliked the way his wife spoke so carelessly of his failing, he showed no sign. He inclined his head to Elkan. “Thank you for coming so far for our sakes. If you’re able to help Verinna, it will be an answer to many prayers.”

“It will be my joy to serve the Mother in that way.” Elkan and Renarre moved to the seating area at the Matriarch’s urging. Renarre chose a place on the couch beside the Matriarch. Josiah settled into his chair. Hopefully they wouldn’t waste time on chitchat and get down to business quickly. He really was starving.

The Matriarch shared his impatience. She looked expectantly from Elkan to Tobi. “Go ahead.”

Elkan nodded to her and smiled apologetically at Renarre as he placed his hand on Tobi’s head. “May we use the Mother’s power to examine you? From your wife’s account, it seems clear that apart from her own difficulties there’s some factor in you that prevents the two of you from conceiving. Some causes of infertility in men can’t be helped by the Mother’s power, but some can. If we’re able to determine what’s causing the problem we’ll likely be able to correct it.”

Renarre held up his hand and glanced at the Matriarch. “I’ve long assumed something in me was lacking. I was never able to give my first wife a child, either. I’ll welcome your healing, wizard. But only if Verinna will assure me of something first.”

The Matriarch turned to him, startled. “What?”

Renarre took her hands and drew them toward him against her resistance. “Verinna, if you want me to make a child with you, I need your promise that you’ll never bar me from her life. I will be her father, and I want the full privileges and responsibilities of that role, even if someday you choose to end our marriage. You have the power to deny her to me, but if I believe you’ll ever use it I can’t go along with this.”

The Matriarch jerked her hands away. “How dare you make such demands of me? Our child will be the future Matriarch. I alone will determine what will best prepare her for her destiny. If you ever give me reason to believe her relationship with you undermines that purpose, you’ll never see her again.” She glared at him.

He met her gaze with quiet implacability. “Then I’m afraid I can’t go through with this. Put me aside for another if you must.” He turned to Elkan. “No, wizard, you may not use the Mother’s power on me.”

The Matriarch whirled on Elkan. “I order you to heal him, no matter what he says!”

Elkan looked back and forth between them cautiously. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, your majesty. The Mother doesn’t allow me to heal someone against their will.”

Josiah shrank into his chair, wishing he could make himself invisible. Elkan was right, no matter how furious his refusal made the Matriarch. It wasn’t something wizards had to deal with often—in Tevenar people were nearly always eager to receive the benefits of the Mother’s power. But the point had become very clear when Master Dabiel’s assassin had been mortally wounded but adamantly refused healing. The familiars had refused to go against his wishes, even though it meant he’d died and they’d lost the opportunity to discover who he worked for.

The Matriarch grew cold and still. “I can rescind the shipments of food to Tevenar. Your people will starve.”

Josiah could see the tenseness in Elkan’s hand on Tobi’s head, but his master’s voice stayed calm. “Nevertheless, I can’t do what you ask. The Law forbids it.”

The Matriarch stared at him for a long moment before rising majestically to her feet. One long stride brought her to tower over Josiah. “You, boy. You’re smarter than your master. You know I hold your life and the lives of your companions in my hands.”

Josiah cowered, gaping up at her threatening form. He hadn’t seen her give a signal, but suddenly a dozen guards were in the room, swords out, moving to enclose both wizards and their familiars in a deadly ring. Josiah knew with sickening certainty that the Matriarch wouldn’t hesitate to kill them if they thwarted her will.