Lady Warhawk (34 page)

"Yes, please do marry my daughter. Her mother and I will sleep better at night now that
that's settled," Pirkin said, making a shooing gesture and twisting his face into a sour mask that
didn't fool anyone. The mischief bright in his eyes clearly said he was delighted with the news.
Ynfara laughed and leaped from her seat next to Athrar to run four seats down the table and fling
her arms around her father.

"I find this all highly convenient," Lord Parcef said through gritted teeth. "Too
convenient. Such gallantry, Warhawk, is admirable, but why risk the legitimacy of your heir in
defending a girl--"

"The woman who has agreed to be my wife," Athrar growled. "And I find it highly
convenient that so many people were waiting to catch my brother in such a revolting activity. As
if you were warned he would be there at that precise moment. But none of you had the wit to
make sure my betrothed was in her room. Almost as if you were sure that some magic would
keep her there, perhaps ready for whatever activity you intended to catch them in? To avoid
wasting any more time, everyone who testifies must do so with a hand on Braenlicach." He slid
the star-metal sword from its scabbard.

To Meghianna's disappointment, no one had any knowledge of the actual spell that had
been dragging at Lycen and Ynfara for so long. They only knew what they had heard from
someone else. Part of this evening's attempted trap sprang from gossip. Too many men had
reported hearing stories, but couldn't recall where or from whom they had heard the stories.
Mrillis examined their memories and found that glimpses of Lycen and Ynfara meeting illicitly,
holding hands, sharing longing looks, had all been put into their minds by magic.

Lord Parcef was particularly disgusted to learn he had been a pawn of magic used
against the Warhawk. Like most arrogant, proud men, he tried to turn it around and use it as
justification to protest Ynfara and Athrar's betrothal.

"But Majesty, how safe is it to marry the girl when you know she will be under attack
from magic, to turn her against you?" he said for the eighth time. Meghianna had kept count.

"Entirely safe, since Braenlicach hangs either at my hip on formal occasions, or will
hang on the wall over our bed," Athrar said. One corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile
when Ynfara blushed at that statement.

Meghianna approved. It wasn't the terrified blush of a girl who had been kept
dangerously ignorant of the basics of life, but the anticipation of a girl in love, who had seen
enough happy marriages to want the joys, the laughter, the eager kisses and embraces and
everything else that followed.

"Enough," Meghianna said. She stood, and to her satisfaction, most of the men at the
table jumped to their feet. Lycen struggled to push his chair back, and she pressed her hand on
his shoulder to keep him seated. "You forget that my son is the victim in all this, drained by
malevolent magic, falsely accused by fools so eager to destroy another's happiness for their own
gain, they made themselves pawns of evil.

"Athrar, help me get your brother up to his room. Ilianora knows what is going on, but
that doesn't mean she has stopped worrying." Lycen made a sound of distress and she patted his
shoulder. "We all need our sleep." She flashed a smile at Pirkin. "We have a wedding to
plan."

* * * *

The political uproar that followed Ynfara and Athrar's betrothal alternately infuriated
and amused Meghianna. One Moertan contingent insisted that the wedding festivities take place
on Moerta, since the bride was the Goarlotte princess. The pureblood contingent refused to give
their blessing to a marriage that would infuse more magic into the Warhawk's bloodline, and
came close to ordering Athrar not to have the ceremony in the new Goarlotte Castle.

"As if we needed or wanted their blessing?" Athrar muttered, when the document signed
by five minor kings was read in a council meeting.

The wedding was set for two moons hence, which immediately fed rumors that Ynfara
was pregnant and the Warhawk was in a hurry to make sure his firstborn was legitimate. Other
rumors insisted that he refused to marry Ynfara until she was pregnant and magic revealed the
child was male. The supporters of Ynfara's bitterest rivals insisted that she was indeed pregnant,
but her child wasn't Athrar's.

When Ynfara fell ill, new rumors claimed she had been poisoned to force her to
miscarry, either by enemies, or she had taken poison herself to hide her shame. Meghianna
wanted passionately to inflict Ynfara's tormenters with some disgusting illness, or to set their
hair on fire or something equally humiliating, long-lasting and painful. But she knew that to
react, to change plans, would give Athrar and Ynfara's enemies in Court some triumph and
satisfaction.

The Encindi roused early that spring, streaming across the countryside from a dozen
passageways through the Wayhauk Mountains, leaving destruction in their wake. Athrar rode out
at the head of the armies, determined to not only push the enemy nation back behind the barrier,
but to plug all the holes and establish more watchtowers. His goal was to reduce their numbers
sufficiently to cripple them for the next ten years.

Before he left, he signed a document making Ynfara and Pirkin and Mrillis his
co-regents, effectively giving her authority as his queen before the marriage vows were made. The
war lasted until late in the summer, and Athrar kept his forces in the field of battle, patrolling the
frontier until every possible avenue of invasion had been discovered and made useless, either
with watchtowers or by blocking them with avalanches.

The wedding did not take place until the fall rains began. Athrar was again the darling of
the common people because of his prompt, decisive, brutal action in the war, saving many lives
and farms and estates. The common people celebrated the marriage, even if most of the Court
was divided for political reasons.

* * * *

Seven moons to the day after the lavish, ten-day wedding festivities, Ynfara fell ill.
Before Meghianna could do more than wrap Threads around the young queen to examine her,
she miscarried in pain and vomiting. What disturbed Meghianna most was the fact that though
the miscarriage had definitely been brought about by magic, rather than illness or poison, she
hadn't been able to detect the spell at work.

Four moons later, Ynfara again fell ill, collapsing as she stepped onto a raised platform
looking over the practice field, where Valors competed in games of skill for the entertainment of
the Court. Meghianna had an idea what to look for this time, but despite being prepared, she was
only able to delay the inevitable. Ynfara lost her second child.

Mrillis had not been at the competition, which was unusual because all three of Pirkin
and Ynessa's sons were competing. He was conspicuously absent during the struggle to save the
child in Ynfara's womb. Meghianna reached for him, to help her and advise her, but he cut off
contact with her. That shook her more than her failure. What had become so important that he
would brush off his great-granddaughter's distress?

When Mrillis returned three days later, he was distracted and only said that he had been
hunting--in the streets of Quenlaque--and had been so lost in the Threads that he didn't hear or
feel much of anything. He was duly upset and apologetic and remorseful when he heard what
had happened, but Meghianna worried that it did take two tellings of the story before he came
out of his distracted state.

When he vanished again, only a few days later, she was watching and waiting. Wrapped
in invisibility and silence, she followed him into Quenlaque very late one night. To her relief,
and then to her confusion, she followed him to one of the newer, quieter sections of the rapidly
growing city, to a house with the sign for a healer hanging above the door. Then Mrillis sat down
on a bench on the other side of the wide, clean street, and wrapped himself in the illusion of
being a harmless, shriveled old man, and he waited.

Two could play at that game. Meghianna found a perch on the sill of a second story
window, in a shop directly across the street from the healer's house, and made herself
comfortable. This way, she wouldn't have to worry about being stepped on and could stay
invisible.

Morning came. When the healer came to her door to open it and allow those in need of
help to come in, Meghianna nearly slid from the windowsill in shock. She had seen enough
images of Mrillis' dead wife to recognize her, had caught enough impressions--scent, the sound
of her voice, the vibrations of the Threads around her--to know this was no coincidence.
Meghianna trembled, terrified because she could come up with no rational thought in the
presence of Ceera's ghost--but a ghost with flesh and blood.

A ghost that spoke with the children who came to her door and gave them sweets,
laughed with them, tenderly looked after the elderly woman who came to her with a hand
wrapped in a bloodstained cloth, and greeted all comers with compassion and sweetness.

Meghianna clutched at the windowsill and sat there all day, watching this ghost at work,
following her through the Threads when she went inside and out of her view, watching her magic
at work. The purity and sweet strength of her
imbrose
couldn't be falsified. The woman
had talent, wholly dedicated to healing. She had strong personal barriers, necessary for a healer,
to keep her patients from impinging on her reserves and draining her, even weakening her so she
took on their illnesses.

"Where have you been?" Lycen demanded, meeting Meghianna at the gates of
Quenlaque when she finally dragged herself back up the long slope to the castle. He caught her
by her shoulders and shook her, concern marring his face. "We've tried calling you all day, but
something blocks the Threads. First Mrillis, then you."

"Mrillis. Yes." Meghianna shook her head, trying to clear away the cobwebs that tried to
clog her brain. "Ghosts." She spared her son a weak, achy smile when his worried frown only
deepened. "I am an arrogant fool. So sure of my strength, my invulnerability... Come, we need
to speak with Athrar."

When Mrillis finally returned to the castle, two days later, far too quiet and distracted,
they confronted him with what Meghianna had seen. He nodded, looking a little ashamed, and
then laughed at them.

"I'm an old man, but I'm not a fool. I know my Ceera is dead. We're at peace for
now--can't you let me indulge in some daydreaming? Haven't I earned it?" Then he stomped out of the
room, before they could say anything else.

Athrar sent Valors to keep watch on the healer, to find out all they could about her. Four
Valors came back in a row, each one enchanted with the charming, sweet woman, knowing little
more than her name--Nemma--and little details such as her favorite flower, the songs she sang to
the children, and the local merchants who bungled their attempts at a discrete courtship. No one
could find out where Nemma came from.

Keeping Mrillis from slipping out of the castle to sit a day or two at a time to watch
Ceera's ghost was nearly impossible. Athrar, Lycen and Meghianna agreed that it was better to
simply keep watch on him, rather than making a fuss and drawing attention to his peculiarity.
Meghianna set herself to studying the Threads around Nemma from a distance. The moons
passed. Fall turned to winter. Mrillis would leave the castle for two or three days at a time, then
come back to his work and seem completely himself again for a moon. Then vanish for a day and
come back. He was happy, the people in that quarter of Quenlaque seemed to love Nemma, and
Meghianna could find nothing wrong with the woman.

She wondered if it was jealousy that made her distrust this woman whom everyone
else--apparently--loved.

Then very late in the winter, Ynfara called to her in tears, and Meghianna dropped all
other concerns for her sake.

"I think I'm pregnant. I'm only two days late for my moon flow, but I don't want to lose
another baby. Can't we protect her, if we start early enough?" she begged Meghianna.

"Oh, my dear." Meghianna wrapped her arms around her brother's wife and sank down
onto the couch in Ynfara's quarters. "Nothing else matters in this world but protecting your
baby."

"I realized something, after the second one..." Ynfara wiped her tears on her sleeve, and
glanced toward the door into her bedroom, where Athrar supposedly slept, unaware of the
midnight conference between the two women. "I went into a sort of haze after I became
pregnant. I lost track of my cycles, and it was a surprise when I got sick and lost the baby. How
could a woman not realize she was two moons pregnant? So I made sure I noted on a tablet every
day, keeping track of my cycle." She swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself,
shivering. "When I concentrate, I can feel something...wrapping around me. A web growing
stronger and thicker. As if it grows with the child, blinding me."

"My dear, if Ceera had not said clearly that no one of her bloodline would become
Queen of Snows, I think I could name you my heir," Meghianna said.

"I don't want to be Queen of Snows. All I want is to have my baby." The young queen
pressed both hands over her flat belly.

"You will. I promise, on the very foundations of the Stronghold." She took a deep
breath. "And that is where we will go."

* * * *

Meghianna contacted Mrillis as soon as she and Ynfara reached the tunnel that would
take them to the Stronghold. The news he gave her almost made her turn back. The sudden
disappearance of Ynfara from Quenlaque had acted as a catalyst for vicious rumors to come out
into the open. Though there were many variations, they all had the same theme--the two
miscarriages had been by Ynfara's own choosing, because the children were not Athrar's.

The gossips and the enemies who attacked with whispers from shadows could not agree
on who her secret lover was, who risked the safety of the Warhawk's alliance, but Lycen was the
one blamed more than the others. Meghianna shuddered, thinking of how her son and his family
had to be feeling, their fury and helplessness. She had learned long ago that the only defense
against people who insisted on believing lies rather than the truth was to live her life the same as
always and prove them wrong.