Lilz brought her horse to a stop just below the crest of the hill to get her bearings. Below her, the faint broad line of the limestone-graveled trail she had followed for the past two hours seemed to glow in the starlight, descending gently for another hundred sashlengths before it disappeared into thick shadow. A glance at the sky told her: the trail had turned southwest. In the distance a single yellow light twinkled. She sat watching it for a moment or two. The motion was only a trick of her yes, she was sure.
"That must be House-Among-Oaks, Matanda."
The horse took a step or two in place at the sound of Lilz's voice.
"At last, yes," she sighed.
Between Lilz and the light lay a rustling valley dark with trees, a dark relieved only by an occasional glint where a leaf caught the starlight as it moved in the breeze. An hour ride, at least. She'd need her lantern in the forest. Lilz glanced again at the stars.
This time she was certain that once moved slowly, brightening and dimming, among its brothers. A galloping star! Had it seen her? Lip caught under her teeth, she watched the star disappear over the horizon. No help for that now.
She twitched the reins and the bay gelding moved down the trail. Despite the anxiety that dried her mouth, Lilz let him choose his own speed; here, the gravel had sunk into the earth. As they neared the wood she dismounted and reached for a bulls-eye lantern hooked to her saddlepack. Lucifers dipped in wax were in an outer pocket. She got one out and struck it, talking to steady the horse as the match flared over the lantern's fat candle.
I've been on the road too long, she thought, aiming the half-focussed yellow beam at the packed dirt. Waiting this long to use the lantern was idiocy. As if the king's spies weren't everywhere, even whirling across the sky above her head--if rumor could be trusted, already chittering to the palace about this horse and rider on the track to House-Among-Oaks. What would King Guyr make of that? Would he know who the rider was, that she was on her way to see her mistress, Fenne Hasten?
Lilz walked along the forest path holding reins and lantern until she spotted a thick fog close beside the trail. She used the log to remount, talking softly to remind Matanda that lunging shadows bore no threat. As she rode on she listened for the tell-tale hum of a whizzer, speeding back to the New Palace with pictures and sound recorded for the king to view at his leisure, or arriving to investigate whatever the galloping star might have reported. All she heard was ordinary insects, whispering leaves, the creak of her saddle and the jingle of the bridle, the clop of hooves, Matanda's occasional soft snort, a calling owl. She cursed each sound as it filled her ears.
A large toad, red-eyed in the lamplight, jumped onto the trail. Matanda's even stride wavered. "Steady, steady," Lilz soothed. The toad hopped toward the stream Lilz could hear off to her right. Matanda did a little side-step as he passed the spot, catching her nervousness.
But not yet her weariness, thank heaven! Her eyes burned. She closed them and let the horse pick his way along the dark path. If toads were the boldest game the Iarl of Oakforest stocked in his wood she was in scant danger. What is someone should come from the other direction? She was tall and thin. Straight in the saddle, she might pass for a man in her heavy cloak, a cloak far too warm for this late summer night. Only her long hair, pulled into a braid, would give her away, and that was hidden under the cloak. Even her face was too angular to betray her sex.
Lilz squinted to inspect the trail. Other hoofprints, yes, but blurred by rain, old. She let her eyes close again.
Lord Jen Makeready is dead. What's the hurry, Lilz? Just to tell Fenne, waiting for news at House-Among-Oaks? Because he took so long to die? Because you're late to attend?
"Who'd have thought it, Matanda?" she murmured. With a sniff of surprise, she caught herself before she said more. Confiding in horses was a bad, bad habit. No sense in giving the king any more entrance to her thoughts than he otherwise had.
The stars had wheeled past the peak of the night when House-Among-Oaks loomed over her. Only one window in its whole bulk was lit, high above her head. Lilz crossed a short wooden bridge over the stream and came into the cobbled courtyard. Here, not a single light showed. She made for the stable, to the left as she'd been told.
Lilz slung the pack from one shoulder and strode across the courtyard to knock on the residence door. Instantly, the door opened, spilling light across the gray cobbles. Fenne grabbed her wrist and pulled her in. "Lilz, thank heaven! I thought you'd forgotten to come! Is he--?"
"Shh!" Lilz leaned the door shut and glanced up the dim stairs along the dark hall. "My mistress, please! You must be more circumspect. Another room?"
"Oh. Oh, of course." Fenne turned to go up the steps, looking over her shoulder for Lilz to follow with the same coquettish air she used on men, though she meant nothing by it.... What a beauty she's grown into, Lilz thought. Fenne's blond hair shone in the light of the lamp she held high, hair that hadn't darkened at puberty as so many women's did. Thick pale lashes surrounding dark brown eyes gave her a look of inviolable innocence, very useful. She was small and light-footed and quick with a smile, not at all like her bond-servant. Lilz knew very well what she looked like: no great beauty! Eyes of no particular color, ordinary brown hair. No wonder Fenne liked having her nearby.
"Well?" Fenne tugged at the already snug sash of her nightrobe. "We've heard nothing about him."
Lilz wet her lips. "He's dead."
"Oh, I thought I'd never hear those words!" Fenne sighed extravagantly and dropped into a chair. "Sit down, Lilz, sit down. Does anyone suspect?"
Lilz remembered the day of Fenne's birth all too well.
Well under eighteen years had passed since Fenne was born, three days' ride northeast of House-Among-Oaks in a manor house called Summerlea, which sprawled amid its meadows like a succession of afterthoughts: exactly what it was.
The manor was the ancestral seat of one of the five dychdoms of Kinland. Nevan Hasten, sixteenth Dych of Summerlea--Fenne's grandfather--had an entire afterthought to himself at the west end of the house, staffed by a snobbish bunch none of the servants of the rest of the house could abide. When Lilz had come to the manor, late in the summer before Fenne was born, the house had been full of extended Hasten family, all of them sirs or milords or miladies of one sort or another. For a month after she arrived Lilz had trouble keeping them all straight, with the exception of Lord Saen, whose five-year-old rear end she often longed to bend over her knee and give an over-earned swat or two. Even new to service, Lilz had known better than to do that!
Her mother had recently died. Orphaned, not yet nineteen years old, without prospects, Lilz had gladly seized the unexpected chance to mortgage her future to the Hastens: well-born herself to a family shorn of power, she was well aware that the Dychs of Summerlea had been trusted seconds to the monarchs of Kinland--at that time the king was Oerl, father of the present king, Guyr--as long as they'd had the dychal surname Hasten, a good many generations. Consequently the opportunity had seemed a gift of fate beyond hope. Of Court intrigue Lilz had known next to nothing at the time, or she might have hesitated longer before trading her name for the promise of an easy old age.
Like all aristocrats, Fenne's mother elected to give birth at home, attended by a midwife: superstition held that a son born away from the manor would lose his inheritance. That a blizzard was threatening just at the critical time made no difference to this decision. Milady was accustomed to having her way. Her way was to follow custom. Nor, despite Lilz's tentative suggestion, did Lady Delle trouble to have the midwife called to attend her in case labor should begin while the storm impeded travel, although she was a full week past her time when the first snowflakes fell. Both the dych and his son, the Iarl of Meadowlands--Fenne's father--were at Court in Miense for the winter. The servants were left with no one to appeal for help in changing Lady Delle's mind.
Late that evening, with the windows of Summerlea blank with snow, Lady Delle felt the first strong contraction.
Then--only then--a stable lad was sent to fetch the midwife back in a sled.
Almost two days passed before Lilz was called to Lady Delle's bedside. Milady had her newborn nestled beside her under the fine quilts...."You're young and bright, Lilz, and you speak well. Clearly you were raised in a good house. I'm sure you can teach my daughter all the necessary refinements, so I'm going to make you her bond-servant." Lady Delle looked down at the sleeping baby with a wry little smile and touched the blonde fuzz on her scalp. "She's a Hasten--she'll need someone with good sense to serve her."
The dych himself gave Fenne her name...she was a beautiful newborn, round of head and placid of face. Within six months her hair had grown in white-blonde and her eyes turned deep brown--signs that at least on one occasion her mother had kept to her marriage bed, just as the similar coloring of the stable-keeper's son showed that on at least one occasion her father had left it.
One blonde daughter after one dark-haired and one red-headed son. For some reason this amused Fenne's grandfather the dych. She quickly became the old man's favorite, to the disgruntlement of her brothers and some of the nearer cousins. Before Fenne could talk in whole sentences she had gran'papa wrapped twice around each of her small fingers. Not long after, Lilz noticed that blank expression, the eyes slightly narrowed, that meant that Fenne had been denied something she was about to get.
© 1999 by Allau Press