17
My dearest Nanthema,
Many thanks for your last package. The soaps were exquisite, although I am afraid the bottle of bath oil had shattered in transit – everything smelled quite divine! Luckily, the pages you had hidden within the wooden box were unscathed, and I managed to retrieve them before anyone else saw them. They are now safely hidden in my rooms, the ribbon you gave me tying them securely. I’ve never been one for sentiment, but it seems you bring it out in me.
You have travelled so far in so short a time. I will have to ask you for more details of Jarlsbad. I know you only spent a few days there, but the scattering of lines you gave to the city have made it sound so bewitching. It will be one of the places we will visit together, I am sure of it. The bathing houses you mention I have read about in Father’s library, although, if he caught me reading those books, I would be banned from the place.
Three days ago there was another sighting of a parasite spirit in the vine forest. I know that you wanted me to tell you if the remains were growing more lively, so I have started going along on the patrols – Father is livid but I have pointed out to him that one day this will be my responsibility and I must learn. He is rather taken aback by my sudden interest, and the more wrong-footed he is, the easier it is to get what I want, and need. It was dusk, and we were making our way along the last section of the empty zone (we will need to burn back the foliage again soon, it grows so fast). The forest was dripping with shadows by then, and I was keeping my hand on my crossbow, quite glad that we were making our way back to the house, when the shadows stretched and vanished, and everything was lit up with pale blue light. We only saw it for a few seconds, my dear Nanthema – I don’t think it even realised we were there – but I saw enough to know it was different to the one we observed while you were here. I have enclosed sketches I made as soon as we got back to the house. Please forgive my unskilled hand. I have tried to capture the colours as best I could, but, as you know, no watercolour could do them justice. It was an extraordinary sight. While everyone else was terrified, I could only think how much I long to be out there with you, solving this mystery. But my time will come. Soon Father must let me leave to attend further courses in Silia, and once I am on that road, Nanthema, he won’t be able to stop me joining you.
Copy of a private letter from the records of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
‘Quickly, Aldasair, unfurl that rug and lay it in front of these chairs.’
Hestillion stepped back as Aldasair wrestled the rolled-up rug from where it was resting against the wall and rolled it across the marble floor. A cloud of dust rose up from it, and Aldasair grimaced.
‘It’ll have to do.’ Hestillion stepped onto the rug and pushed some of the creases out with her slippered foot. It was a deep, dark blue, embroidered with a great silver stag, stars in its antlers, and if it was a little grey from years of disuse, it was still a beautiful thing. ‘We just don’t have time. Did you bring the food like I asked you?’
Aldasair moved to the corner of the chamber and picked up a linen sack.
‘Good. Set it out on the table.’
The young Eboran stared at her blankly. ‘I don’t know how to do that. I’m not a servant.’
‘Aldasair, this is hardly the time—’
‘There are, there are proper ways, my mother used to insist on it, the right knives and the right forks in the right places, and nothing has been right for years, I can’t.’
Hestillion forced herself to take a deep breath.
‘It doesn’t matter. These are people from the plains, Aldasair. Normally, they eat off their laps in tents; they won’t know any better.’
Aldasair’s eyes grew a little wider. ‘Do they? Truly? Eat off their laps?’
‘Quickly, come on. I’ll help you.’
Hestillion emptied the bag onto the table, which was already covered in a snow-white tablecloth. The best foods they had to hand were preserves: jars of glass and clay that contained pickled fruits and salted meats, all sealed with cloth and wax. There was wine too, and spirits – she had raided anything that might look respectable – and she had already placed a large portion of what they had in Mother Fast’s rooms. Hestillion had given the old woman and her people her mother’s old suite; that had hurt, a little, but she had been keeping it clean for sentimental reasons, and they needed something workable, fast.
‘Who are these people, Hestillion? Why are they here?’
Hestillion took a silver fork from his unresisting hand and laid it on the table. ‘Go and fetch them, please. Can you do that for me, Aldasair?’
For a moment he looked at her uncomprehendingly, his dishevelled hair falling over his face. She had convinced him to put a brush through it, but he had refused to put it back in the traditional tail. Hestillion thought that perhaps he had forgotten how to do it.
‘Aldasair?’
‘Yes, I will.’ He nodded. ‘I will go and fetch them.’
He left, and Hestillion looked around the chamber. It would have to do. She had chosen someone’s old study, a room with glass doors to one side that looked out across the gardens. It was a cold, bleak view on a day like this, and it made the palace feel all the more empty, but she felt it was better to have some daylight than to meet by candlelight. They had brought some of the paintings out of storage and had hung them hurriedly on the walls, beautiful expressive daubs of paint and ink that captured the wildness of surrounding Ebora and a few stirring portraits of war-beasts, long lost; a great snowy cat, dwarfing the Eboran that stood next to her; a dragon in flight with golden scales. The marble flooring was intact in here, at least. She looked down at herself, peering at her hands for remnants of dust. She had changed into a blue silk robe, simple and elegant, with a padded jacket of darker blue over the top; a white dragon, embroidered in white silk, clung to her left shoulder, and she had pushed a simple black comb into her hair to hold it away from her face. She could do nothing about her chalk-white skin or blood-red eyes, but she would do her best not to be intimidating.
There was a cough at the door, and Aldasair returned. He paused and gestured in what she suspected he thought was a welcoming way, and Mother Fast appeared. She was out of the chair she had been carried in, but there were two people at her elbow to support her: a burly woman with close-cropped hair, and a young man with flinty, watchful eyes.
‘Please, do come in.’ Hestillion bowed to the trio formally, and then gave them a moment to respond. When none of them moved, she forced a smile upon her face. ‘I have food and drink here for you, and tea, if you wish it. But where is the remainder of your company?’
‘They need more of a rest,’ said Mother Fast. She looked at Hestillion with her one good eye, and then at the laden table. ‘And I’m hungry enough to eat a scabby horse.’
‘Please,’ Hestillion came forward, half thinking to help the old woman to the table, but the man and the woman stepped around her and led Mother Fast to a thickly padded chair. She walked slowly, with one arm tucked away inside her jacket. She had removed the horsehair hood, as they all had, and it was possible to see that she wore a pair of silver chains around her neck, each with what looked like a carved wooden head hanging from them. How charming, thought Hestillion.
Seated in her chair, Mother Fast pulled a plate of salted sausage towards her, selected one, and chewed the end. For a few moments the only sound in the room was the old woman’s determined chewing. By the door, Aldasair stood fiddling with the buttons on his frock coat, clearly wishing to be somewhere else, while the young man and the broad-shouldered woman stood behind their leader. Hestillion felt a brief wave of disorientation move through her, and all at once she wanted to be back in the empty corridors, waiting for the silence to claim her. It was too hard, all of this. Too desperate.
‘I will have that tea, if you’re offering.’
Hestillion nodded, glad of the distraction. She went to the brazier in the corner of the room where the pot of water was heating, and Mother Fast continued helping herself to the food on the plates.
‘This is Frost –’ she indicated the young man with a wave of a sausage – ‘and Yellowheart.’ The stocky woman inclined her head. ‘I do not travel well these days, and we are a travelling people, as you know, Mistress Hestillion. Frost and Yellowheart help me to get around, and they don’t complain about it too much.’
Hestillion brought the pot over to the table, and poured the steaming water over the bowl of leaves. The familiar scent of tea, slightly stale but utterly welcome, filled the room. ‘And I am very grateful that you have made such a journey, Mother Fast. A journey across the mountains at any time of the year is arduous.’
The unspoken question hovered in the air between them. Hestillion focussed her attention on mashing the leaves with a long silver spoon, wrought especially for the purpose. It was important, she felt, to let the old woman explain it in her own words. But it seemed Mother Fast wasn’t to be so easily led.
‘Our peoples have a shared history. You know that, Mistress Hestillion.’
Hestillion poured the tea into the cups. She had chosen a simple set; red-glazed clay with the lip outlined in gold. Abruptly, she wished she’d chosen another colour.
‘A very long time ago,’ she said, keeping her voice smooth. ‘We call it history, for that is what it truly is.’
‘You imagine we’d have forgotten, is that it?’ Mother Fast grasped the cup between fingers like sticks, and glared at Hestillion with her single eye. ‘Memories like that, girl, they get passed down in the bone. Your people swept down from the Bloodless Mountains and massacred mine. At first, you called it a border dispute. We had sent raiders to Ebora, you said, to steal away the treasures of your precious empire. Thieves and bandits. But, in the end, you had no time for excuses – you just came for our blood, and it didn’t trouble your conscience at all.’
Hestillion took a sip of her own tea, savouring the burn against her lip whilst keeping her eyes downcast. Let the old woman say her piece. In human terms she was teetering on the edge of death anyway. By the door, Aldasair was looking out into the corridor, his lips pressed into a thin line. She knew any mention of the Carrion Wars tended to upset him.
‘Good tea.’ Mother Fast cleared her throat. ‘Anyway, I am not here to pick over old corpses with you. I don’t have time for it, and, judging by the emptiness of your palace, neither do you. On the last full moon, I was troubled by a terrible dream.’
Hestillion looked up, settling her gaze on Mother Fast’s ravaged face. She held herself very still.
‘A dream?’
‘The worm people.’ Mother Fast spat the words, her lips twisted with distaste so that her burned cheeks stretched and puckered. ‘The Jure’lia come again. I saw them as clearly as I see you now. By all the gods, I could smell them. They came again in force, and I saw the plains eaten up with their terrible excretions, and I saw my people eaten from the inside out.’ For the first time, Mother Fast looked uncertain. The hand that had so far been hidden within her sleeve crept out and touched the carved heads at her throat; it was little more than a blackened claw. ‘I’ve never had a dream like it, not one so real. There are very few of my people left, Mistress Hestillion, but we had seers. One or two. I never thought their blood had mixed with mine, but I cannot turn away from what this dream means. The Jure’lia are set to return. I woke screaming, the knowledge of that heavy in my bones.’
Frost and Yellowheart stood behind her still, their faces grim. Hestillion leaned forward slightly.
‘And you have come to us?’
Mother Fast took a slow breath, rattling through her bony chest.
‘You may have a monstrous past, and the gods know I have no love for Ebora, but all know who stood against the Jure’lia, time and again. We all know it. Sarn knows it. For every invasion, a Rain.’
There was a brief silence. Aldasair was staring at the far wall now, his beautiful face blank. Hestillion let her eyes fill with unshed tears.
‘Mother Fast, Ebora is not what it once was.’
‘And all of Sarn knows that too.’ The old woman leaned forward. In the cold daylight from the glass doors, the ruined landscape of her face was hard to look at. ‘Whatever it is we can do to heal Ebora, we will do it. We must at least try.’
‘But what can we do?’ Hestillion lifted her hands once and dropped them, looking around the table as if the answer might be there amongst the jams and dried sausages. ‘Our Ygseril, the giver of the Rains, sleeps and has not grown leaves in centuries, let alone the silver fruits. My people, Mother Fast, are dying. What can you do about that?’
‘Whatever we can.’ The young man called Frost stepped forward, one hand on the back of Mother Fast’s chair. ‘This is a problem we must open up to the world. Sarn has tried to forget Ebora, with its bloodlust and greed, but we don’t have that option any more. As a people, you’ve always been closed off.’ His eyes flashed, although whether with anger or passion Hestillion couldn’t have said. ‘But we will reopen trade routes. Bring people here again. We can start at the Broken Rock markets – we have riders already on their way – and work from there. Somewhere, there may be an answer to what has happened to your Ygseril, a cure even for your people, but you will not find it closed behind these walls.’
‘A slower convoy is on its way here now.’ Yellowheart’s voice was deep and kind. ‘Bringing supplies, medicines. It is a start.’
‘Oh.’ Hestillion stood up, her hands floating up to her face again, and she let a single tear fall down her cheek. ‘Oh. Such kindness. I hardly know – Aldasair, did you hear? Help is coming. Help is coming for Ebora.’
Aldasair looked around the room as if he’d only just noticed the strangers there. His brow creased slightly.
‘By the roots.’
Later, much later, when their guests were comfortably asleep and Hestillion could sense their dreaming minds like points of faint light, she went again to the Hall of Roots. It was dark, but the ghostly shapes of sculptures and furniture were so familiar she nearly danced around them, while sharp starlight fell on her through the glass ceiling.
She climbed out onto the roots without hesitating, feeling rather than seeing her way, until she sat once again underneath the enormous trunk. Mother Fast expected the convoy to arrive in the next few days – she had come on ahead with her closest people, to see that all was clear – and from there they could hope to start expecting other representatives. Frost and his riders had already started putting out the word to the other plains tribes, and from there word was expected to reach Mushenska, Reidn, even distant Jarlsbad. Trade would come again to Ebora, and perhaps, with it, the true cure for the crimson flux.
Laying her head against the cold bark, Hestillion closed her eyes and stepped easily into the netherdark. Ignoring the warm human minds, clustered close to each other in the south wing, she cast her mind down, down towards the roots again, searching for the light she was sure she had seen, just before Aldasair had interrupted her.
She went deep, perilously deep, far from any mind shaped like her own, feeling the press of cold roots against her dreaming self, squeezing down into the gaps. She imagined herself a drop of water, slipping down into the dark where her god might take her up and use her.
Ygseril? Ygseril, are you there?
There was a dull bloom of light – barely even light at all, more like the flash of colour that might blast someone’s eyes if they were struck on the head. Hestillion shot towards it, letting herself be drawn.
Ygseril!
Now the light was constant, still dim like the light before dawn, but there was more to it than that. A mind hovered there, something so large and so alien Hestillion felt herself instinctively trying to retreat, but she held herself still, a hunted creature in open ground.
I knew it! I knew you lived!
It was fading already, sinking back away from her like water draining into sand, but she called after it, knowing that, next time, it would be easier to find.
They’ve fallen for it, Ygseril, exactly as I knew they would! Ebora will not die. Not while I live. They are like children, and they eat from my hands. I will see us live again, Ygseril!