"I killed fifty men before you uttered your first squall and you think to take me unaware with that?" She nodded at the dagger. "Are you enspelled? Mad? What are you doing?"
Rivalen looked at the dagger in his fist, the black poison on its blade, the smear of his mother's red blood. "Murdering you," he answered, and started to stand.
She snarled and stepped toward him, blade ready, but staggered. Her eyes widened and she wobbled.
"Poison," she said, and slurred the word. "But…"
"None of your protective wards are functioning."
She swayed, backed up a step.
"Nor your alarm spells," Rivalen said, on his feet. "Nor the contingency spells placed on you by my father."
She tried to back off another step, but the poison had stolen her coordination. She fell amid the flowers and sent up a cloud of silver.
He stepped near her, stood over her, held his holy symbol for her to see.
She stared up at him through eyes turning glassy. "Why, Rivalen?"
"Because love is a lie. Only hate endures."
Shock widened her eyes. "I am your mother."
"Only of my flesh," he said. "Not of my soul."
Tears showed at the corners of her eyes.
"Your bitterness is sweet to the Lady, Mother."
He kneeled beside her to watch her die. The tinkling flowers sang a funeral dirge.
She swallowed rapidly, reflexively. Her breathing was shallow. Her fingers worked, clawed at the ground, and reached for him.
"Hold my… hand, Rivalen," she said in a whispered gasp.
He did not reach for her, merely stared into her wan face. "We all die alone, Mother."
She closed her eyes, and the tears leaked down her cheeks.
"Your father will learn of this."
"No. This will be known only to us. And to Shar."
To that, she said nothing. She stared at him for a moment, then closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
When her intentions registered, he smiled.
"What did you wish for, Mother?"
She opened her eyes and the hurt in her gaze was gone, replaced by anger. "To be the instrument of your downfall."
He stood. "Good night, Mother. I answer to another mistress now."
She gagged, tried to speak, but failed. Her eyes turned distant. She stared up at the twilight sky, and he saw the awareness melt out of her eyes.
Looking upon her corpse, he felt nothing-emptiness, a hole. He ran his fingertips over the edge of his holy symbol and supposed that was point.
Rivalen.
He looked around the avenorani patch, and noticed for the first time that many of the flowers were wilted, dead. How had he not noticed before?
Rivalen.
His mother was calling him from the next world.
Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)
Rivalen.
Brennus's mental voice, communicated to Rivalen through the magical rings each wore, pulled Rivalen from sleep. He sat up in his bed, still groggy, haunted by tinkling bells, the smell of flowers, and the dead eyes of his mother.
Brennus?
A pause, then, Are you well? You sound different.
Shadows churned around Rivalen. Moonlight leaked through the shutter slats of his room. He ran a hand through his black hair, tried to dislodge from his mind the dream of his mother, the memory of matricide.
I am well, he said. What is it?
Erevis Cale has a woman.
Rivalen grew alert. A woman? A wife?
No, Brennus answered. But a woman he cares for. I am unable to scry Cale, but he may return to her.
Where is she?
She lives alone in a cottage northwest of Ordulin.
The shadows around Rivalen spun, coiled as he considered possible courses. Watch her.
Just watch?
Yes. If Cale appears, inform me immediately.
Very well. Rivalen, she is pregnant.
With his child?
Yes. But she does not know it yet.
Rivalen blinked. How do you know it, then?
His brother spoke in the self-satisfied tone of one who has mastered his Art. Brennus was a diviner without peer. Discovering things is my gift, he said.
The magical connection ended.
Rivalen tried to turn his mind to Erevis Cale, to the events in Selgaunt, to his plans for all of Sembia, but the thoughts of his mother dominated his mind.
He had healed the dagger wound in her flesh, magically concealed his involvement with the murder, and returned the body to her bed in Shade Enclave. As expected, his father had despaired upon finding his beloved dead.
His despair, however, had quickly turned to rage. Rivalen's mother's body had been found without the inscribed platinum and jacinth necklace Telemont had given her the night of her death. He had put it upon her himself.
Suspicious of his wife's death and his inability to have her revivified, Telemont had obsessed over the missing necklace, had sought it for years. He knew for certain that it must have been taken, that she must have been murdered. He had driven Brennus to focus his magical studies on divinations to assist him in finding the culpable party.
Rivalen had lived in terror of his father's wrath and his brother's skill for years. But even Brennus's divinations proved unable to locate his mother's necklace or learn of Rivalen's involvement.
Shar had protected her priest.
Often Rivalen had returned to the scene of his crime in secret, had scoured the area for the necklace, but found nothing. He told himself that a servant had found the body and stolen the necklace before announcing the news to the rest of the staff.
The death of his wife drove a spike of bitterness into the soul of Telemont. The loss of his beloved drove him, at Rivalen's urging, to the worship of the Lady of Loss. Rivalen marveled at the subtlety of the Lady's plan, still did, though he wondered why his mother had returned to haunt his dreams just then. He had not dreamed of her in centuries.
"Why trouble my sleep now, Lady?" Rivalen asked Shar.
After all, the moment of her triumph, and his, was nearly at hand.
A distant rumble pulled Varra from dreams of shadows. She opened her eyes and rolled over in the bed. Save for the soft glow of starlight, darkness shrouded the cottage.
The air felt strange, gauzy against her skin, wet in her lungs. The empty space in the bed beside her-the place where Erevis should have been-looked like a hole.
Blinking away sleep, she saw a figure of shadow standing in the far corner of the room. Surprise stole her voice. Her heart hammered.
"Erevis?"
She lurched out of bed, and the abrupt movement caused the room to spin, to close in on her. Her stomach turned. She reached frantically for the chamberpot on the floor, put her head over it, and vomited.
When she looked up again, the figure was gone and she realized that sleepiness and the darkness had summoned a phantom of her hopes. Erevis was not with her. She was alone.
Pulling the blanket around her shoulders, she walked to the shuttered window. Pre-dawn light leaked through them, ghostly, pale.
Thunder rumbled again, but Varra knew the sky to make a poor prophet. Thunder rarely brought rain. Her garden was parched under the ungenerous sky.
The rumble continued, took an odd pitch, rose, fell. She pushed open the shutters and looked out on the meadow, the elm, her vegetable garden, the wildflowers, the rough chairs Erevis had crafted from dead wood, the chairs in which they had sat when they said good-bye.