winter: Year 253 of the Bynding
The frustrated scream carries down the hall, to where Aidan Jarvim, consort of the queen for this realm and prince of another, is sipping seasoned hot water with a cousin and his wife. Both guests frown towards the sound.
His cousin's wife hesitates, the heritage behind her reddish skin meaning she's unfamiliar with much local etiquette, never mind the quirks that ensue from the fact that Evonalé's far less human than she 'should' be, considering only one of her three grandparents wasn't.
Kitra's dark eyes are shadowed, and the way she tilts her head causes her chin-short hair, so black as to shine with blue, to mask her expression. "Should we--"
"No," Ferrel interrupts before Kitra finishes offering to leave, then has a little pause as his blind eyes focus on the probabilities only he sees--and that are all he can see, since his blinding. He has the pale skin, ginger hair, and hazel eyes that are common in the family, shared by his sisters, but he was spared the size he could have ended up with from his mother's giant ancestry. They weren't.
"Thank you, but it won't help," Aidan says outright, keeping his voice light and kind despite the itch growing inside his skull, in the back of his head. "She wouldn't have invited you, if she minded your presences."
More likely, Evonalé invited them intentionally, for the distraction they will provide once she returns from the water closet. His wife's moontime is as predictable as her court's reaction is going to be, at her latest failure to conceive.
They've had four years of failing--not nearly long enough for the whispers that rumble behind his wife's back but not out of her hearing. She'll be twenty-one as the year turns. If the Creator wills for them to have children, there's plenty of time for it to happen yet.
Kitra stares at her own cup, which holds a blend of herbs that forces her own body to prevent what Evonalé so desperately seeks. The tisane is a condition of Ferrel's comparative freedom, for a ward of the Association for the Magically Creative--AMaC is as much insane asylum as it is a government, and his cousin's ability to See cost him his sanity when they were young. He's essentially recovered, but AMaC will never allow him to sire a child. Apparently adoption is off the table, too, but Aidan has never asked why. With what little he knows about how Ferrell improved from permanent ward to a managed one, he has a few guesses, and none are anything you ask someone about.
"I can order something else," Kitra says quietly. "It's not as if I like this blend."
"If that's what you want," Aidan replies, with a gesture to the server discreetly standing by the door, out of earshot, that he would like a refill of his own beverage, himself. The tarry drink is strong and unpleasantly bitter, but he falls asleep far too easily without it.
The server is female, as is the norm for Grehafen, and she fits the classic brunette coloring of the locals. The brown of her hair has blond undertones, though, unlike the red in Aidan's.
She's small in a way that makes her look younger than he knows she is. That impression is reinforced by the pinafore--something only worn by children, back in his native realm--and it's disconcerting. She looks far too young for that child swelling her belly, even as she easily navigates the four pots on her tray, her wool skirts brushing her ankles.
He wants to ask who fathered that child, to confirm that it was consensual, but the mores normalized by Evonalé's father mean that she wouldn't dare answer that honestly. As far as she knows, Aidan might kill a lover, as part of pulling her into his own bed, or invite a rapist to share.
Not that Aidan has ever done either of those things. Not that Aidan would ever. But his few years as consort here aren't enough to counter the expectations set up by the rulers that preceded his wife, especially not since he keeps uncovering people who are still doing things like that.
The abusers aren't all men, either. The men just tend to leave more evidence, perhaps because they're so used to getting away with it. Evonalé might be queen, but she's young, female, elfin, and illegitimate. All four categories have been trampled for generations here, and many treat her orders as suggestions, often while criticizing her for refusing to give orders on particular things they want. It's hypocritical and annoying and exhausting.
Some citizens of Grehafen, and more of places that the past few rulers of Grehafen swallowed, are ecstatic about the changes she has implemented and continues to make. Some, particularly ones who enjoyed power under the old regime, are fueling the assassination attempts.
Those death threats are increasingly targeting Aidan himself. Possibly because he's competent enough with blades and magic to help protect his wife--not that she's incapable of defending herself, but she's better at stumbling on someone than she is at searing them. Possibly because he's probably not the source of the infertility in his marriage--even his wife's brother had difficulty fathering a child on his mistresses, and that man's lineage had lacked the severe incest in Evonalé's.
"Tea?" Evonalé asks as she returns from the water closet, with obviously forced levity. She sits carefully on her chair, with a straight-backed stiffness that always reminds him of his anxiety-ridden rescue dogs, not his prim teaching ones. She's tiny like the serving maid--
Oh, maybe the server is one of the elves who stayed in Grehafen, rather than return to Marsdenfel after Evonalé freed them. He's too used to his wife to notice the difference, anymore.
Kitra can see Evonalé's fear, too. Maybe because she has experience with surviving and can recognize signs. Maybe because she met Evonalé when he did, over a decade ago when his now-wife was a small terrified child, convinced it was just a matter of time before she would experience her mother's fate.
Regardless, Evonalé is a queen now, and she hates it at least as much as his father hates his own kingship. But abdicating would allow the abusers free rein, and neither she nor his father will do that to their respective realms.
"Thank you, Zania," Evonalé tells the server--not an elvish name, so maybe she's just a small human. "How's your back?"
There's a pause before the woman answers, "Fine, Your Majesty."
Evonalé eyes her dubiously. "It looks painful."
"To be expected, at this point of pregnancy. It's fine, Majesty."
Doubt showing clearly on her face, Evonalé focuses on her cup. The raspberry leaf always makes his nose itch a little, but it helps her with the pain and cramping of moontime.
Evonalé sighs a little, then focuses on her guests. "So AMaC offered me a verifier, and I wasn't sure if that was a threat, an insult, or an offer of assistance, so I wrote Silva, and her husband said that's not a positive sign and I should talk to you about it."
Silva, Ferrel's twin, is married to a verifier, so he would know.
"Well, you and Lallie," she continues, as is her wont, "but Creator only knows where she is, these days. I haven't even heard from her stepfather since her mother fetched him to help her with something. Dakadza--er, Lallie's brother--says Geddis is doing okay, though. Well, as okay as she can be, considering."
Considering Geddis, Ferrell's younger sister, had been the one mistress who bore Evonalé's brother a child, before his assassination? And someone had kidnapped the infant? And someone (possibly Aidan's father, since she wouldn't say who did it) had done something to Geddis's magic to keep her from being able to Find her child? Yes, 'okay' was probably being generous.
"Is it okay to ask you this, or too personal? I don't want to make you uncomfortable."
Aidan smiles at the concern in his wife's rambling. She would make a terrible gambler, and she isn't the best at ruling--she acknowledges the dictatorship inherent in absolute monarchy by ordering folks to handle their own affairs, overlooking how her position means 'their' affairs are hers--but she cares about others.
The servants love Evonalé, and not just because her mother sacrificed herself to the point of death to keep the old king's ire on herself, to mitigate the harm to others.
The itch at the back of his skull strengthens into something akin to pain. He loses track of the conversation as it builds. Aidan grimaces and tentatively rubs the spot.
Evonalé's attention snaps to him, and she sets down her cup, her dark eyes wide with worry as a sensation of dry heat and moist earth surrounds her. "Aidan?"
The smile he forces feels wan. "Just a headache."
"Um... No, I don't think so. Your magic... It's not looking right."
Kitra and Ferrell both turn their attention to him, drawing up their own magic. Kitra's feels like a whirlwind, buffeting her from the world, and Ferrell's always reminds Aidan of those color toys children peer into, to give themselves headaches.
Ferrel tenses, spiking anxiety in Aidan even before he carefully asks, "Have you heard from your father, lately?"
Aidan stares at his cousin, mind blanking in denial even as he realizes what's going on.
The royal magic of Salles has left one of the Three.
Someone has died.
"What?" Evonalé asks in blatant confusion. "No, we haven't heard from him, not since-- Aidan? Aidan!"
A roaring fills his ears, and suddenly he's standing on a precipice, as naked as a newborn pup. He quickly backs from the edge. He doesn't want this--but even if he did, this is a vision, not the actual cavern, and the pit before him is a trap intended to catch (and kill) anyone who's too eager.
The vision means the magic may have chosen him as the next ruler of Salles, not that it has. It's passed him by before.
His uncle--the only legitimate one, though he's Evonalé's age and his heritage has been kept hidden for his own safety--is there, too, looking resigned as he eyes the drop.
"Curse that lover of his," it sounds as if William mutters, but Aidan must have misheard--his father doesn't have lovers.
"You two know what this is, I take it?"
The woman, obviously a bit older than them both, looks like kin. She even looks familiar, but Creator help Aidan, he can't place her.
The nakedness forced by the vision is unkind to her, revealing a body padded from soft living and childbearing, with scars that look to be mostly stretch marks. But she moves easily, not even trying to hide the jiggling (or anything else) as she peers over the edge. "Are we to jump, then?"
"No!" Aidan blurts, catching himself before he grabs her. "Don't jump, and don't touch any of us." That precaution in the spell is to prevent anyone from tossing another in the pit, to affect the end result.
The mild glance-over she gives him looks so much like his father that the hair rises on the back of his neck, but she backs away from the edge without comment on his words. "I'm in the middle of something, Your Highness, so I would appreciate going home, now."
William breaks into laughter, the sound full of disbelief at this woman who was so obviously a relative--probably an illegitimate aunt to Aidan and sibling to William--and so obviously doesn't realize it, much less recognize the vision as the magic naming her as potential ruler of Salles.
Ruler, heir, and spare. Three roles and three persons, and they have to go to the Cave of Ascension to learn which of them is which.
"My father is dead," he whispers, for the royal magic of Salles does this when one of the three dies. He's been here before. William has, too, which leaves his father the only one of the previous Three who's unaccounted for.
The woman--who is she? he's seen her before--eyes him. "I'm sorry for your loss. He seemed a decent sort."
She frowns, then, at the cavern surrounding them. "That pit looks to be the only way out. So how did we get here, and how do we leave?"
He knows her. How does he know her?
William glances at him. "There's a key for each of us in the dark somewhere, to bring with us when we meet at the Cave of Ascension."
"This...place exists somewhere in Salles, then?" the woman asks.
"Ruler, heir, and spare," William says outright. "We have to go there, and then the magic will settle enough for us to know which of us is which."
The woman stares at him.
Even so, it's only a few heartbeats later that she asks, "And if we don't meet?"
William grins at her. The expression isn't happy nor pleasant. "It'll unsettle."
"Story goes that if we don't, it'll start mucking up our lives where we are, to entice us to leave," Aidan clarifies. "Starting with minor bad luck and working up to murdering our families."
"Lovely," she says dryly. "I'm at least a week out of country--and that's if my lord allows it."
Her lord?
Curse it, who is she?
"That shouldn't be a problem," William answers. "I believe we have a month."
His uncle turns and steps into the dark before "Wait--" can escape Aidan's lips, and now they're all blind, separated, and unable to communicate with each other at all.
"She never said who she was, William!" he complains, though he knows he can't be heard, then sighs and sets out to be tripped by a rock that he'll have to lug about until he gets to the cave. Maybe it'll actually be a discreet size, this time.
Some minor schools of magic theory, commonly considered heretical, are of the opinion that magic is intelligent--that maybe magic even is the Creator, discreetly acting their will on creation, but that magic in the very least has the sentience of an animal, if not a person.
When Aidan's key turns out to be large enough to make him fall on his face and weighs as much as a dog, he's inclined to believe them.
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Author's Note:
Here we are, at the start of #6 of the Chronicles of Marsdenfel! Hooray!
This may be the last one, or there might be one after it; I'm not sure yet, despite the fact that I have planned this out and know where it's headed. This is also part of why I'm not yet sure of the title. I'm suspecting one, but I might be way off.
I'll be trying to keep the weekly posts this long (2200 words) or longer, which means we'll be here 30-some weeks, which means we should hit "the end" around the turn of the year. (And then I might finally have all the pieces I need to revise and formally release the previous two books.)
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Pick a Detail!
Wight's children are about to show up again, and not all have been named. We have Solis and Malor, sons of Barun. Suggest names for their siblings below!
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Another Note
My writing computer is broken atm, and my backup can't use my writing computer and the Internet at the same time, so this is getting some edits as my primary copy of the WIP atm. Once I resolve these things, this will continue to be a first draft.