Larad raised an eyebrow. “If so, that is dark news indeed. I will speak to the witches. Perhaps they have sensed something I have not.”
And I’ll speak to some witches as well, Grace added to herself, resolved to ask Aryn and Lirith about it the next time they contacted her.
Larad begged his leave, and once the Runelord was gone Grace was no longer in the mood for revelry. She bid Melia and Falken and Kel good night, putting on a cheerful face. Even if Master Larad was right–and Grace had no doubt he was– there was no use spoiling the revel for everyone else until they knew more.
She left the great hall, ascended a spiral staircase, and started down the corridor that led to her chamber. The passage was dim, illuminated by only a scant collection of oil lamps, and as she rounded a corner she did not see the servingwoman until she collided with her. The old woman let out a grunt, and something fell to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said, stumbling back. “I didn’t see you there.”
The other wore a shapeless gray dress and oversized bonnet. She bowed low and muttered fervently, no doubt making an apology, though Grace couldn’t understand a word of it.
“It’s all right,” Grace said. “Really, it was my fault.”
However, the old woman kept ducking her head.
So much for the whole not terrifying the servants thing, Grace thought with a sigh. She glanced down and saw that the object the old woman had dropped had rolled to a stop next to her feet. It was a ball of yarn. Grace bent to pick it up.
“Oh!” she said.
Carefully, she pulled the needle from the tip of her finger. It had been sticking out of the ball of yarn, but she hadn’t seen it in the dim light.
“Well, I suppose that evens the score,” she said with a wry smile.
Grace stuck the needle back into the ball of yarn, then held the ball out. The old woman accepted it in a wrinkled hand. She muttered something unintelligible–still not looking up –then shuffled away down the corridor, her ashen dress blending with the gloom. Grace shrugged, sucked on her bleeding finger, and headed to her chamber.
Two men‑at‑arms stood outside the door. Though it irked her they were always stationed there, they were one of the concessions she had made to Sir Tarus. The men‑at‑arms saluted as she approached. Grace gave them a self‑conscious nod in return– she still had no idea how she was supposed to greet them, if at all–then slipped into her room and pressed the door shut behind her, sighing at the blissful silence. Maybe the men‑at‑arms weren’t such a bad idea after all. They could keep King Kel from barging in at odd hours and asking her to dance.
Bone‑tired, she shucked off her woolen dress and shrugged on a nightgown, wincing as she did. Though the pain in her right arm never entirely went away, most of the time it was a dull, bearable ache. Tonight, however, despite all the wine she had drunk, it throbbed fiercely.
She held her arm to her chest, gazing at the lone candle burning on the sideboard. Its flame blazed hotly, just like his eyes had, burning into her as he raised his scepter, ready to smite her down. Only at the last moment the sky had broken, and as he looked up she had thrust the sword Fellring through a chink in his armor, up into his chest, cleaving the Pale King’s enchanted iron heart in two.
Fellring had shattered in the act, and Grace’s sword arm had been numb and lifeless for days afterward. Only slowly, over the course of many months, had she regained the use of it, and she knew it would never be the same again. But none of them were; the battles they had fought had changed them forever, and maybe it was all right to have some scars. That way they would never forget what they had done.
Grace blew out the candle and climbed into bed.
It wasn’t long before a dream took her, and an hour later she sat up, staring into the dark, her hair tangled with sweat. She clutched the bedclothes, willing her breathing to slow.
It was only a dream, Grace, she told herself, but it was hard to hear her own thoughts over the pounding in her ears.
It had been a wedding. The dream was so vivid, she could almost see them stilclass="underline" a king dressed all in white, and a queen clad in black. A radiance emanated from him, and he was handsome beyond all other men; a halo of light adorned his tawny head like a crown. She was like night to his day: dark of hair and eye and skin, a mysterious beauty wearing a gown woven of the stuff of shadows. They gazed at one another with a look of love. He took her dusky fingers in his pale hand as the priest–a commanding figure all in gray–spoke the rites of marriage.
Only before the priest could finish the words, a figure strode forward, a gigantic warrior. The people who had gathered to witness the marriage fled screaming, and the priest ran after them. The couple turned to face their foe. The warrior was neither light nor dark, solid nor transparent. He could be seen only by his jagged outlines, for where he was there was nothing at all, and he held a sword forged of nothingness in his hand.
You are the end of everything, the white king said.
The black queen shook her head. No, she said, her dark eyes full of sorrow. He is the beginning of nothing.
The warrior swung his empty sword, and both their heads, light and dark, fell to the ground, their bodies tumbling after.
That was when Grace woke. She climbed from the bed, lit the candle with a coal from the fire, and threw a shawl about her; despite the balmy night she was shivering.
Grace didn’t usually place much stock in dreams, but once she had had dreams about Travis Wilder that had come true, and this dream had been unusually vivid, like those had been. Only what did it mean? She didn’t recognize the light king or the dark queen, though in a way they made her think of Durge’s alchemical books. She had paged through some of them when she packed up the knight’s possessions a few months after he died. The books had been written in a kind of code and were rife with metaphorical tales about fiery men marrying watery ladies, resulting in the birth of new child elements with fantastical properties, such as the power to turn lead to gold, or to cause a man to live forever.
However, the king and queen in her dream hadn’t created something new. They had been slain. Slain by . . . nothing. Grace had no idea what it meant, if it meant anything at all. Which it almost certainly didn’t, she reminded herself. Dreams were simply the brain’s janitors, cleaning out the day’s synaptic garbage.
All the same, she knew rest would be impossible for the remainder of the night, and she felt trapped in the stuffy chamber. She needed to get out, to breathe some fresh air.
She padded to the door, weaving a quick spell about herself, so that the men‑at‑arms outside would detect her passing as no more than a fleeting shadow. It was a simple spell, but at first the threads of the Weirding seemed to slip through her fingers and tangle themselves in knots.
You’re just half‑asleep, Grace, that’s all.
She concentrated, and after some effort the spell was complete. It unraveled after less than a minute, but by then she was already ascending a spiral staircase and was well out of sight of the men‑at‑arms. Getting back into the chamber was going to be tricky, but she could worry about that later.
Pushing through a door, Grace stepped onto the battlements atop the keep. The night was clear and moonless. A zephyr caught her hair, brushing it back from her face, and she breathed deeply, feeling the sweat and fear of her dream evaporate.
Grace approached the south side of the battlement and cast her gaze upward. The stars were brighter and far closer‑seeming than those of Earth, as if Eldh’s heavens were not so very distant. She searched for a single point of crimson among the thousands of cool silver, hoping to glimpse Tira’s star. It wasn’t the same as hugging the small, silent, flame‑haired girl who had become a goddess, but seeing her star always made Grace feel a little closer to her.