He had promised her they would, had promised to take her wherever she wished to go, but before they could put their plans in place he was torn back to his own time by whatever unseen hands had placed him there to begin with.
Ashe winced in the flickering heat of the flames. The hollow pain of loss was with him still, even after four years of having her back, even having joined their souls together again. Even knowing that she loved him eternally.
Even sharing a child with her, a son he loved beyond measure and had barely been given a chance to know. That loss was one he consciously struggled not to think about, because his draconic nature was unpredictable enough, and suffering enough, that he could not risk it. In the back of his mind a tune was playing. It was a song that Rhapsody had often sung to him on their evenings alone together, a tale of a wanderer that her seafaring grandfather had taught her when she was a child. When she had met up with him again in the new world, he had been solitary, in pain and alone, just such a wanderer, so it had reminded her of him, and of the tree they had fallen in love beneath. Ashe pictured her before him, her harp or concertina in hand, singing the melodious tune in the voice that haunted his dreams.
His dragon sense roared to life at the presence of a tickling sensation. He opened his eyes. His wife was sitting before the fire, her song finished, smiling warmly at him. His heightened senses could feel the physical presence of her in the room, a bending of the currents of air around a form that was heavy, real, unlike the dreams and fantasies in which she was nothing more than a picture in his head, a phantasm that vanished with the morning light. There was heft to this vision, a realness that never had been there before. Her scent, the simple odor of vanilla and soap, sweet meadow flowers and wood smoke, filled his nostrils, causing the blood to pound in his head, and his hands to shake. Rhapsody smiled, her green eyes sparkling, backlit by the fire. Ashe sat straighter in his chair. There was no question she was real, no figment of his imagination or dragon sense playing tricks of the mind on him; the energy of her life force rippled over him like waves in the sea.
Rhapsody, he whispered, almost afraid to shatter what was either a miraculous moment or an illusion of a slipping mind. You’re here.
Her smile grew brighter in the firelight. Yes. I’m here.
Ashe rose slowly from his chair and walked carefully toward the hearth. Rhapsody rose in return, and extended her arms to him in welcome.
He quickened his step, all but running to her, and scooped her up in his arms, drawing her near, pressing his face in the hollow of her neck and inhaling the scent of her skin, burying his lips in her hair, reveling in the solidity, the realness of her, no phantom of his mind, but flesh and blood and the warmth of a beating heart within her chest, thundering against his own. A shocked gasp rent the air.
Like the slap of an ice-cold wave, the noise rebounded off of Ashe’s forehead. He loosed his grasp and took a step back, his frazzled mind trying to gauge what was wrong. Standing before him in the shadows of the firelight, trembling like a leaf in a high autumn wind, was a young chambermaid whose name he did not remember. She was dark of hair and eye, taller than Rhapsody by half a head, and shaped nothing like her. Her face had gone white with shock, and flushed red in a combination of horror and embarrassment. Much like Ashe’s own.
Made worse by the knowledge that this was not the first time it had happened. The tea tray she was holding a moment before clattered to the floor, the plate bearing his supper bounced on the carpet before the hearth.
Ashe felt his face freeze in a mask of shock.
“I—I—”
The chambermaid’s mouth was similarly open. “M’lord,” she whispered. “No. Please.” Ashe struggled to place the woman, remembering distantly that she had come to Haguefort from Bethany with several other servants in the company of Tristan Steward, the Lord Regent of Roland, as a gift during Rhapsody’s confinement. Ashe thought perhaps the other two women were nursemaids of some sort, but this one was a servant of insignificant rank, a chambermaid, who now stood, terror in her eyes, shaking visibly. “I—I am so very sorry,” he murmured, running his hand through his coppery hair, suddenly wet with sweat. “I—I am not feeling well. Please forgive me.”
The young woman bent quickly, as did Ashe, fumbling to gather the dishes and food that now littered the floor.
“My fault, m’lord,” she whispered nervously.
“No,” said Ashe, “no, not at all. I, as I said, am very sorry.”
He quickly turned and bolted from the room and out of the keep, into the cold night, seeking clarity. The chambermaid gathered the dishes, calming quickly, and carried them back down to the kitchen again. She stopped as she passed the window of the library, long enough to see him hurry into the courtyard and come to rest with his head against a lamppost, the candlelight catching the metallic sheen of his hair, making it glow like embers in the night.
25
Ashe’s head was buzzing the next morning as if from the aftereffects of potent libation. After the first few hours of the headache, he began to rue refraining from imbibing the night before, knowing that even a hangover could not have caused his skull to throb more than the arrival of the dukes of Roland did. He stood on the balcony, in his hand a cup of strong plantain tea with medicinal properties that his wife had often used to bring him out of the hard repose of dragon slumber, trying to focus his eyes on each carriage as it made its way up the well-traveled road that ran east-west in front of the Hague-fort’s gates. Archers stood in the recently rebuilt guard towers, providing cover for the carriages, while the Lord Cymrian mused whether or not to give the signal to open fire on some of the occupants as they emerged from the bowels of the coaches.
The first of the dukes to arrive would never have drawn his fire, he noted, as Cedric Canderre stepped, with the assistance of his footman, out of his coach. In his own state of loss, Ashe felt tremendous empathy for the elderly duke, a gentleman and friend who had always lived hospitably and with grace, and while not the most admirable of husbands, had always been a loving and devoted fattier. To have witnessed the death of his only son and heir presumptive, Andrew, on these very grounds at the winter carnival that had taken the lives of so many could only be a soul-ripping reminder of that loss. Ashe took a sip of the bad-tasting tea and winced. Had he been less distracted, he would have arranged for the meeting to take place at Highmeadow, whose halls and defenses were all but complete, and into which they would be moving any day. While the creature comforts had not yet been established in the new fortress, it was certainly furnished enough to have spared Cedric Canderre the pain he was undoubtedly undergoing as he slowly made his way up Haguefort’s cobbled entranceway. Alas, he thought, such diplomatic considerations are a thing of the past; it’s all I can do to keep my mind clear enough of rage to focus on the meeting at all. At the opening of the gate Gwydion Navarne was standing, his hands behind his back. Ashe watched, gratified, as the newly invested young duke greeted Cedric Canderre warmly and took his arm, leading him into the keep. How like his father he looks, Ashe thought as Gwydion held the door. Perhaps there will still be hospitality within these walls, even in Rhapsody’s absence, after all. The thought and the sight cheered him a little; in the contentious discussions they were about to undertake, he was glad to have his namesake beside him, even if the new duke’s opinions were often discounted by the others because of his youth and inexperience. Behind the carriage of the Duke of Canderre hovered two more, one directly on the road, the other jockeying to hold the position of last arrival behind it. The first carriage bore the livery of Yarim, the dry red land to the east of Cedric Canderre’s lush and fertile province. The second was emblazoned with the colors of Bethany, Roland’s capital and central province. Ashe took another deep draught of tea and willed his head to stop pounding. Ihrman Karsrick, the Duke of Yarim, waited for a long moment before opening his door and descending the stairs of his coach. He glanced in obvious annoyance at the carriage behind him, which had arrived more than a quarter hour ahead of him, then strode angrily up the walkway, his displeasure evident by the set of his shoulders and jaw. The Lord Cymrian sighed. The carriage from Bethany continued to linger at the road’s edge for almost an hour more while the coaches of Quentin Baldassarre and Martin Ivenstrand, the dukes of Bethe Corbair and Avonderre, arrived. Ivenstrand’s carriage, unlike the others, had come from the east, where Avonderre bordered Navarne on one side and the sea on the other. The Duke of Avonderre alighted, looked about, then made his way quickly inside, pausing as the carriage from Bethe Corbair pulled up to the gate. He walked back to wait for Quentin Baldasarre to emerge, then accompanied him up the walkway, conferring as they came.