A Dream of the Heaven

Chapter 3 (Part 2 of 2)

Two very well-dressed women came into the light.  The first would have been noted as elderly by her lined face and white hair, bound up tightly behind her head, but her bearing and movement were those of a woman half her age, effortlessly regal.  She wore a dark green gown over a black kirtle, neither of which would have suited anyone else of her years, but she demanded that it did – and so it did. 

By contrast, the young lady behind her was beautiful, ten times more so in the flattering candlelight.  It exaggerated the sheen of her auburn curls and the softness of her pale face, the sort beloved of the new portraitists in the west; but she wore her beauty shyly, her head turned down as she stayed behind the matriarch in front.  Her dress was just as rich, deep-blue and bejewelled, but although it fitted her perfectly she seemed ill-suited to it.  Imlon couldn't help staring at her, but a fleeting moment of pity was all she elicited from his thoughts.

“You should not be here, my lady,” said Isendrin, clearly addressing the elder of the two women.

“It is my pleasure to be here, my lord.  Considering the circumstances, I had hoped you would be flattered.”

“I am not flattered.  If you are known to be here, it will not bode well.”

“We will not be known.”

“How can you know that?  You’re here with a retinue, you’ve crossed provincial borders.  Agostes is not so blind as you think.  And to bring her as well.”  Isendrin turned to the younger woman.  “I am sorry to speak to you thus, my lady, but this was not prudent.”

“You got to Crown’s unnoticed,” said the elder woman, “And I hardly have a whole knightly order with me.”

Isendrin groaned, but the smile never once left the woman’s face, at once inquisitive and knowledgeable.  Imlon frowned, trying to stop himself from shivering, but then her green eyes caught his own.  She held his gaze for a moment.  He felt obliged to lower his head.

“Will you not introduce us, my lord?” she said. 

Isendrin sighed.

“This is my brother Imlonavar.  Imlon, might I present Addiena, Duchess of Roethenna, and her niece, the Lady Aiavessa Aetherflow.”

Imlon’s head span.

“It is an honour to meet you,” he heard himself say.  For a short, stupefied moment, all he could think about was the similarity of western names. 

“I have heard much of your scholarship, Imlonavar,” said the Duchess, “Would that this were a banquet in happier times, for then I would have spoken to you all evening.”

“This is honour enough, my lady.  And indeed to meet you as well, Lady Aiavessa,” said Imlon, struggling with his words.  The young woman responded in a tiny voice, barely raising her head.

“Thank you, sir.”

Then she was silent again, as was Imlon.  That fear he had felt in the brief moment before the ladies’ appearance had returned, cold and creeping along his spine and sweating hands.

When he heard the name Addiena, only one other word sprang to mind, and it was not Duchess – it was Queen.  He had grown up knowing two names, Eseus Aetherflow and Addiena Vieli, alongside those of his own family, the King and Queen Consort who reigned over Emmares for forty years of prosperity and might. 

One of his earliest memories was the glimpse he had caught of them as a flourishing progress had passed through the little town of Temenesta: the cheering, the music, the petals of a thousand colours flung from the windows and carpeting the road, the knights and the courtiers; then the couple themselves, radiant, beaming, power and love in person; then the caravans, the baggage, and the stragglers as the pageantry dimmed with the rest of the memory.  It rushed through him now, that same childish awe, as he looked upon her, an image of royalty that Agostes could never muster.