He had bowed his head and gone down to one knee before the empress, who was lying propped up by pillows in the large, canopied gilt bed. He could still recall how radiant and beautiful she looked, with her long, golden hair hanging loose around her shoulders.
“What is my lord’s name, Your Highness?” he had asked.
The empress had smiled and said, “Michael.”
“Michael,” Aedan murmured softly to himself, repeating the name now as he had then. Almost as if in answer, a sudden gust of wind blew in through the window and the candles flickered.
Sensing a presence in the room behind him, Aedan turned from the window. In the dim glow of the flickering candlelight, he saw a tall, dark, and slender figure appear in the center of the chamber. His full-length, hooded cloak billowed in the dissipating wind of his arrival, then settled down around him, giving the brief impression of wings being folded back.
“Am I intruding on your vigil, Lord Aedan?”
The voice was unmistakable. It was deep, musical, and resonant, with the old, familiar, lilting elvish accent.
“Gylvain!” said Aedan. “By Haelyn, is it really you, or am I dreaming?”
The elven mage pulled back the hood of his dark green, velvet cloak, revealing handsome, ageless features. His thick, silver-streaked black hair fell almost to his waist and framed a striking face. His forehead was high and his eyebrows thin and delicately arched. His nose was fine and blade straight; his cheekbones high and sharply pronounced, typical of elven physiognomy. The long hair partially concealed large, gracefully curved and pointed ears; the mouth was wide and thin-lipped; the strong jawline tapered sharply to a narrow, well-shaped chin. His eyes, however, were his strongest features, large and almond-shaped, so light a blue that they were almost gray, like arctic ice. With his dark coloring, they stood out sharply, and the effect was magnetic. Aedan stared at him, and the years seemed to fall away.
“The world of dreams is no less real than the waking one,” Gylvain replied. “However, I take it your question was rhetorical.”
“You have not changed,” said Aedan with a smile. “How long has it been? Twenty years? No, by Haelyn, more like thirty. Yet you are still as I remember you, even after all this time, while I… I have grown old and gray.”
Aedan turned and glanced into the full-length gilt-framed mirror mounted on the wall. Behind him, Gylvain Aurealis stood reflected, looking just the same as he remembered him. By contrast, Aedan had changed enormously. His hair, cropped short as he had worn it since his midthirties, when he began to lose it, was a grizzled, iron-gray stubble. His thick, full beard was streaked in shades of gray and white. His face was lined with age and scarred from battle. The stress of his responsibilities had given him dark bags below his eyes, and years of squinting through a helm into glaring sunlight had placed crow’s-feet at their corners. There was a weary melancholy in his gaze that had not been there only a few short years before. Once slim and muscular, he was thicker in the waist and chest now, and in the perpetual dampness of the castle on the bay, his old wounds pained him.
Gylvain’s reflection smiled. “You will never seem old to me. I shall always see you as you were when we first met: a shy, ungainly, coltish youth, with the most earnest and serious expression I have ever seen on one so young.”
“Your elven vision is far more acute than mine,” said Aedan wistfully. “I have looked for that young boy in my reflection many times, but I no longer see him.” He turned to face the mage. “Is it too late to ask for your forgiveness?”
Gylvain cocked his head and stared at him with a faintly puzzled expression. “What was there to forgive?”
“Is it possible you have forgotten?”
“I must confess, I have,” Gylvain replied. “What cause had I to take offense?”
“Sylvanna,” Aedan said.
“Oh, that,” said Gylvain with a sudden look of comprehension. “I never took offense. I merely disapproved.”
“Of me,” said Aedan.
Gylvain shook his head. “No, of the situation, not of you.”
Aedan turned, biting his lower lip, and stared pensively out the window. “How is she?”
“Well.”
“As beautiful as ever?”
“She has changed but little.”
Aedan stood silent for a moment. “Does she ever speak of me?”
“Yes, often.”
“Truly?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
Aedan turned. “No, you never have. You were always a true friend. But I had thought I crossed the boundaries of our friendship with Sylvanna.”
“True friendship knows no boundaries,” Gylvain replied. “The only boundaries you had crossed were those of reason. I tried to make you see that, but you were thinking with your heart and not your mind. It was the only time I ever knew you to be just like Michael.”
“Had you told me that back then, I would have considered it the greatest compliment,” said Aedan. “I wanted so to be like him.”
“Be grateful you were not.”
Aedan snorted. “There was a time I would have bridled at a remark like that,” he said, “but now I understand. Michael and I were like two sides of the same coin. Each stamped differently, but meant to complement the other. I feel my worth diminished by his … absence.” He shook his head. “But I am being a poor host. May I offer you a drink?”
“Anuirean brandy?”
“But of course.” He poured them each a gobletful from a decanter on his writing table, then handed one to Gylvain. “What shall we drink to?”
“Why not absent friends?” said Gylvain.
Aedan nodded. “To absent friends,” he toasted. They drank, and as the brandy flowed, the two old friends sat vigil and remembered.
Book I
ABDUCTION
1
“I’m going to be Haelyn; Aedan will be my brother, Roele; and you, Derwyn, will be the Black Prince, Raesene,” announced Michael in a tone that brooked no argument. But he got one anyway.
“I don’t want to be Raesene! Why can’t I be Roele?” Lord Derwyn whined petulantly.
“Because you are not of the royal house,” said Michael in a tone of lofty disdain.
“Well, neither is Aedan,” Derwyn protested, unconvinced by this argument. “Besides, my father is an archduke, while his is just a viscount, so I outrank him.”
“Nevertheless, Aedan is my standard-bearer and his father is the lord high chamberlain,” said Michael. “As such, despite his rank, he is closest to the royal house.”
“Well, if I cannot be Roele, then I cannot be Raesene, either,” Derwyn insisted. “Raesene was Roele’s half-brother, so he was also of the royal house.”
Michael neatly sidestepped this piece of logic. “When Raesene gave his allegiance to Azrai, he betrayed the royal house and was thereby disinherited. Besides, I am heir to the imperial throne,” he added, the color rising to his cheeks, “so I can make anyone anything I want them to be!”
Aedan stepped in to play the diplomat before a minor court scandal erupted. “Why not let me take the part of the Black Prince, Your Highness? I always play Roele, and this would give me the opportunity to do something different for a change. I would enjoy that.”
Michael did not want to give in too easily. He tossed his thick, dark hair and frowned, making a great show of considering the matter, then finally relented. “Oh, very well then, since you request it, Aedan, you can be Raesene. Derwyn can be my brother, Roele, and Caelan can be Traederic, the standard-bearer.”
He quickly assigned roles to all the other boys, and they made ready to begin the battle. For Aedan, this was sheer torture. At eighteen, armed with a wooden sword and shield, he felt absolutely ridiculous playing with a group of children aged from six to thirteen. However, his duty was to serve his prince, and if his prince wanted to play war, then war it was.