The Bonds of Blood (5 page)

“I think they do that on purpose,”
Jovian commented about the rope being more than an arm’s length
away.

In a few minutes, Angelica had given
his instructions to the answering servant, and before long a small
tub of hot water and a mug of tea were brought in. A long piece of
wood was placed over the tub for Jovian to sit on.

“I had a strange dream last night, or
rather this morning,” he said over the splashing of
water.

“Oh? What was it about?” Angelica
asked, thinking of her daydream at the funeral that
morning.

“It was really strange; a lot of death
and something about a pale horse,” Jovian recounted, staring at the
wall as he washed himself. “It was really frightening, I remember
there were dead women, and pain, that is really all there was, and
something a voice said …” With ruffled eyebrows, Jovian thought of
the line from his dream, and then said, “‘Awaken Jovian, one who
courts the Pale Horse.’ Does that make sense?”

“Well, it was your dream; it really
isn’t for me to make sense of, now is it?” Angelica responded
philosophically.

“No, I suppose it isn’t, but have you
ever heard of the Pale Horse before?” He asked, wondering how he
was supposed to wash his hair and rinse without getting water
everywhere.

“No, not that I can recall, but
Candalyn might know. Or,” she said a little more loudly, and
comically, “it could be that Grace gave you a little too much
belladonna before changing the tincture.”

Jovian grunted a laugh and cupped a
handful of water over his head to rinse out his hair.

“Maybe,” he mused
absentmindedly.

“Are you done yet?” Angelica asked,
rather bored now with staring at the wall. She too wanted to tell
him about her daydream, seeing how they were sharing, but she
wanted to look at him and tell him, not the wall.

“Just about; I need to dry off and
dress.” A few minutes of rustling fabric followed, and Jovian
called over his shoulder, “Okay, help me to bed.”

“Are you sure? Maybe a chair; I will
change your bedding for you.”

“You are an angel.” He groaned as she
helped him stand.

“I know,” she smiled and eased Jovian
into the chair, propping a pillow behind his back and gently
arranging his splinted leg onto a stool. She moved his tea a little
closer to him.

“Well, I also had a strange sight
today,” she said, finding fresh sheets and blankets in his
wardrobe. Stripping the mattress, she told him of what she saw and
waited for him to comment as she remade the bed.

“That is odd,” he said, sipping his
tea. “What do you think it means?”

“Besides that I am going crazy?”
Angelica asked. “I am not sure. Right after that Joya told me that
Amber was gone, so maybe it was an omen against her marrying
Alhamar?”

“You had a vision to warn you against
their silly romance? Maybe it was just a meaningless
thought.”

“It didn’t feel meaningless,” Angelica
said quietly.

CHAPTER FOUR

_W
ith the days leading
them
further into spring, it had been some
time since Jovian and Angelica last experienced strange
visions—what they came to call dreams. In fact, Jovian would have
nearly forgotten his if Angelica had not convinced him to write it
down as she had hers. However, there was one part of Jovian’s dream
that he would never forget no matter how much he tried, and that
was the reference to the Pale Horse, in which no one seemed to know
what it meant, including Grace and Candalyn.

Jovian’s recovery had progressed as the
long days trapped in bed—with Angelica steadily at his side—during
his favorite season drew to a close. The mornings grew warmer, and
he found himself able to move around a bit, even though his right
leg was considerably weaker due to the weeks of
inactivity.

When he was capable of wielding a
weapon, Destra refused to take it easy on him. Her theory was that
he had been away from practice so long that she needed to throw him
right back into it instead of coddle him.

The news of Amber’s engagement went
over well, and there was talk between the servants as to when the
wedding would take place. Amber still had not thought that far
ahead, and for some reason kept putting off planning.

Despite the sun’s warmth at noon, the
nights remained cool in the early summer, the talk among the
plantation shifted from past events to the twenty-first birthday of
Dauin’s four children.

As usual, their birthday party was to
be a grand event with neighbors from all around attending bearing
gifts. There was to be a large feast held out in one of the empty
fields reserved for such gatherings, along with cake, drink,
stories, and of course doting on the four celebrants.

The preparations had been going well,
with surprisingly few blunders, and before they knew it the day of
the party was upon them.

Large kegs of ale and tables of wine
were set along the left side of the field, followed by a large fire
pit in which pigs, wild birds, and bison were roasted for the
feast. The remaining tables were arranged with side dishes of
potatoes, salads, breads, cheese, and a variety of other foods too
numerous to name.

Tables were erected under a large tent
for the guests, with a table sitting across the end of the row for
the people of honor: Amber, Joya, Jovian, and Angelica.

There was fretting in the house hours
before the party as the four of them prepared for the night’s
events. Dauin had called them together and bestowed upon them their
first, and most traditional, gift. As he handed out the presents,
all of his children already knew what the packages contained. They
were not surprised to find inside new outfits bought especially for
their birthdays.

Quickly they bathed, dressed in their
new outfits, and met back downstairs for a breakfast of eggs,
toast, bacon, coffee, and an assortment of fresh fruit and crème.
There was much idle chitchat in which they all enjoyed the great
company (including the servants on this special occasion), and upon
leaning back into their chairs more presents were
presented.

Destra was the first to hand out her
gifts, and to them she gave weapons. She had watched them through
the years of practice and decided on weapons that best fit their
personality. From then on, they would be learning to fight with
these weapons, having already mastered the basics in other
fields.

Amber received the whip graciously,
though she wouldn’t have picked the weapon for herself. Joya was
confused what the blow gun and darts were, until the arms master
told her it was for long ranged fighting. Angelica had always been
more about brute force, and knew instantly that the spiked ball at
the end of a metal shaft was a mace. To Jovian she gave a new bow
and quiver of arrows she promised wouldn’t break as easily as his
last had.

After everyone had settled down from
the first of the gift giving, Grace stood with a flourish and
presented two presents to Amber and Joya that appeared hard to wrap
to disguise their identity: books.

“Now” she barked, keeping the same
strict posture as always, “here are two gifts for you girls that
were sent to me especially by my sisters from the Realm of Earth. I
have little knowledge of what they are for, because I cannot read
the language they are written in. I am sure, given time and special
training, you two will figure out a use for them.” Grace sat back
down and returned to stuffing her pipe.

Amber and Joya opened their leather
bound books, which looked much like a Carloso for it, too, had
silky thin pages and was bound in the same red leather, but that
was as far as the similarities went.

On the cover of the books were strange
designs that the girls recognized, though they could not tell from
where. They looked similar to their geometry problems Grace often
presented in arithmetic, but at the same time they were completely
different than that.

When they opened the book,
the language appeared foreign to them. They were somewhat
bewildered as they leafed through the pages, viewing diagrams and
formulas written in mathematical fashion, and Joya frowned.
Great. “For your birthday, girls, I will give you
more homework, best of all math because it is your least favorite
subject.”

To Angelica she gave a book on prophecy
and religion, which the younger girl loved to study. Jovian
received oil he could dip his arrows in and light in case of a
fight.

All eyes shifted to Dauin as he walked
toward his children, pride and love showing in his strong, careworn
face.

“Now that your twenty-first spring has
come, you are all officially adults. It has come to my notice that
it might due to hand down some of your mother’s treasures to all of
you, that is, some of your mother’s belongings that I feel she
would want given to you.” He walked back to the chair and pulled
out a long sword, hilted and sheathed in ivory. It looked very much
like a thick tube, and the hilt ended rather bluntly, though it had
long golden tassels hanging off it. Where the hilt met the blade
(though the blade was still hidden in the ivory sheath) a silver
hand guard rested like a small circlet around it.

“This is a sword that she collected
before her and I ever met. I think it is fitting, at this time, to
hand it down to one of you. I feel it is appropriate that Jovian
receive this, as he will be a fine defender of this family when I
am gone.” He handed Jovian the sword.

As his hand closed around the hilt, he
felt a strange sensation fill him. All at once Jovian was filled
with a great courage, and if there had been any fear in him, he was
sure it would not have lasted in this new state. A tingle spread
from the weapon, up his arm, and Jovian’s breath caught as his
whole body was flooded with an excited rush of what he could only
call courage.

Heart racing, blood roaring loudly in
his ears, and his hand more than a little shaken, Jovian pulled the
sword free from the sheath. He let out a rush of breath when he
looked upon the one-sided sword the swept down to the angled tip in
a slight curve, and he whispered, “Father, it looks like a katana
from the Realm of Water.”

“Yes, that is indeed what it looks
like, doesn’t it?”

Jovian slid the blade back into the
scabbard admiring the cool steal of the blade, allowing the
sensation to wane as the sword was once again concealed in its
sheath.

Dauin paced back to the chair and
retrieved another item. He held a black book that looked dainty in
his large hands. He looked down at it and smiled lovingly as he
remembered the woman it had once belonged too. He spoke, voice
thick with emotions and times past.

“This is the one item out of all of
them your mother had very little use for, but she carried it with
her everywhere she went. It was a gift to her from her sister, and
she loved her sister more than anything in the world. The only
thing was, your mother’s sister had a tendency to be pushy, and
this gift was an attempt to get your mother more versed in the lore
of herbs.” He handed the book to Joya. “A gift I feel the need to
pass along to you, seeing how you look so much like the woman whom
this gift was originally from.”

Joya, like Jovian, was overwhelmed with
emotion, and it felt to her that she now had a piece of a loved one
whom she had never had the chance to meet. Tears welled in her eyes
as she flipped open the book gingerly due to the worn pages. It was
all in an archaic type of handwriting, and if by habit, the book
automatically flipped open to a page marked with the herb aconite.
Beside the name and description of the plant was a sketch of the
herb to make recognition easy. Joya peered curiously at the folded
page and then closed the nondescript herbal book.

None of his children could tell what he
had this time, as it was small enough to fit in his palm, which he
held clasped with his other behind his back as he peered into each
of their eyes. “This was one of your mother’s favorite pieces of
jewelry, though she rarely wore it. This was something she had
obtained long before I met her, when she had spent time among the
elves of Nependier. There was something special about this ring,
and Misha often said that she could not wear it for longer than an
hour without getting a headache.”

Dauin removed his hands from behind his
back. “It is one of the most precious gems of the elves, which had
been fashioned into the platinum band.” Holding it up for all
gathered to see, the dainty gem in the thin band seemed to glow
with an inner fire. The room was filled with a fluttering blue cast
as the sun trickled through the window and illuminated the stone.
The light seemed to hum, and it held Angelica entranced. She stared
into that gem, and beyond she saw rolling hills and mountains that
reached high into the sky, disappearing into the clouds. With a
sigh, she was brought back to herself as her father spoke again.
“This gem is blue topaz, and it is sacred to all elves.” He closed
his hand around the ring, and instantly the dazzling blue light
went out. “Like all of the gifts being handed down to you today, I
don’t know what its significant is, or if it is significant at all.
All of these items were a part of your mother’s past that she
longed to forget. And all of them were kept in a locked box, which
I only found the key to last night.”