Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

“Good solstice, Your Grace.” Her heart pounded desperately against her ribs. She had not seen the religious leader step out of the firepit’s shadows. It was almost as if he had been part of the dancing flames the moment before he had made himself known to her.

Lord Stephen’s close ties to the religious leaders of both faiths, the Patriarchal canon and that of the Filids, had made the presence of holy men common around the keep. Rosella, raised from childhood as a Partriarchal adherent, was equally uncomfortable around both types of clergymen.

The holy man smiled, and put out his hand. Almost as if her hand had its own will, she felt her palm rotate upward and her fingers open slowly. She could not tear her gaze away from the glistening eyes that reflected the flames of the cookfire.

A tiny bag of soft cloth was dropped into her open palm.

“I assume you know what to do with this, my child.”

Rosella didn’t, but her mouth answered for her.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The holy man’s eyes gleamed red in the firelight. “Good, good. May your winter be blessed and healthy; may spring find you the same.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Rosella?”

Rosella looked down to see Melisande tugging impatiently at her skirt. She glanced toward the roasting oxen where the duke of Navarne and his son were watching her quizzically.

“Come, Rosella, come! The ox is ready to be carved, and Father said to invite you to sup with us!”

Rosella nodded dumbly, then turned back to where the holy man had stood, but he was gone.

The campfires crackled in the darkness, sending tendrils of smoke skyward, mixed with the raucous sounds of drunken singing and merry laughter echoing across the frosty fields of Haguefort. The noise of celebration, wild and chaotic; it scratched against Tristan Steward’s eardrums like a nail. He shook his head, leaned back against the cold wall of the dark portico in which he was sitting, and took another swig from the bottle of reserve port Cedric Canderre had slipped to him after the singing competition that evening.

Once the orgiastic sounds of the winter festival had been sweet music to his ears. There was a sense of sheer abandon that filled the air during the solstice, a heady, reckless excitement that stirred his blood. Now, without Prudence there to share the thrill, the passion of it, it was nothing but cacophony. He was drinking the port in great gulping swigs, hoping to drown out the din, or at least reduce it to a dull roar.

More than the noise of celebration, he was trying to silence the voice in his head. Tristan had long been unable to escape the whisper, or identify the one who had first spoken the words to him.

He vaguely recalled the day he first heard it. He thought it might have been after the awful meeting in summer when he had summoned all the Orlandan clergy and nobility together in the vain attempt to convince them to consolidate their armies and wreak vengeance on the Bolg, ostensibly for their attack on his guards, but in truth retaliation for Prudence’s brutal death. His fellow regents had thought him out of his mind, had refused unanimously

—to support him, even his cousin, Stephen Navarne, who was as close to a brother as Tristan had ever had.

It seemed to him that after that meeting someone had sought to console him—Stephen perhaps? No , he thought as he shook his head foggily. Not Stephen . Someone older, with kindly eyes that seemed to burn a bit at the edges. A holy man, he thought, but whether he was of Sepulvarta or Gwyn-wood Tristan had no idea. He struggled to make his mind bend around the image, to fill in the spaces around those disembodied eyes, but his brain refused to listen. He was left with nothing more than the same words, repeated over and over again whenever he was lost in silence.

You may be the one after all.

Tristan felt suddenly cold. It was a sensation he had remembered when he first heard the words, a chill that belied the warmth in the holy man’s eyes. He drew his greatcloak closer to him and shifted on the cold stone bench, trying to warm his chilling legs.

The one for what’ ? he had asked.

The one to return peace and security to Roland. The one to have the courage to put an end to the chaos that is the royal structure of this land and assume the throne. If you had dominion over all of Roland, not just Bethany, you would control all of the armies you sought in vain to bring together today. Your fellows, the dukes, can say no to the Lord Regent. They could not refuse the king. Your lineage is as worthy as any of the others, Tristan, more so than most.

Acid burned now in the back of his throat, as it had then, the bitter taste of humiliation, of rejection. Tristan took another swig from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I am not the one in need of convincing, Your Grace , he had replied sourly. In case this morning’s fiasco didn’t prove it, let me assure you that my fellow regents do not see the clarity of the succession scenario that you do .

The eyes had smiled. Leave that to me, m’lord. Your time will come. Just be certain that you are ready when it does. And m’lord ?

Yes?

You will think about what I said, hmmm?

Tristan remembered nodding numbly. He had been true to his word; the voice had repeated itself endlessly in his mind, in his dreams, whenever he was alone or in silence.

They could not refuse the king.

Tristan took another blind swig, wiping the spillage off with the back of his greatcloak’s coarse sleeve.

In the distance a woman laughed; Tristan looked up dully from his inebriated reverie. He could see across the courtyard a pair of lovers running from pillar to post, hiding, laughing softly, crazily, shushing each other in tipsy merriment. The woman’s blond hair gleamed in the lamplight for a moment, then disappeared with them into the shadows.

Like a fever breaking, the voice fell silent as Tristan’s thoughts turned to his other obsession. He had been bitterly disappointed when Stephen told him that none of the invited guests from the Bolglands had come. The one respite from the torturous reality of having to spend the festival with Madeleine had been the knowledge that Rhapsody would be there, too. Heat flushed through him, tightening in his groin and spreading to his sweating palms, as he thought about her, leaving him almost sick with disappointment that he had been misinformed.

Whenever his thoughts turned to her, the voice fell silent. It was almost as if she had claimed his mind first, had set her imprint into his brain, staking it as her own. Whatever later spell had been cast upon him, forcing him to constantly consider the softly spoken words, had not been powerful enough to overturn his longings for her.

Slowly Tristan rose from the stone bench and stepped unsteadily out of the portico. Dawn would come soon, and with it the early festivities of the carnival’s second day. He left the empty bottle on the bench and hurried out of the chill night air into the smoky warmth of Stephen’s keep to his sleeping chambers.

The wind howled around him as he left.

Deep past the part of the night when any reveler still stood, two robed figures separately slipped out to the fields. Hooded, the elder waited at the edge of the huge shadows cast by the waning bonfires. Also hooded, the other man was forced into a vigorous walk, drawn to the meeting, a meeting of two holy men on a holy night for an unholy purpose.

Clouds flickered overhead, doubling the darkness where neither moon nor firelight shone. At the edge of Stephen Navarne’s territory the light from the distant fires cast long shadows over the snowy field, illuminating the woods. The eyes of the first cleric, the man who had stood waiting, reflected a similar light, with a hint of red at the rims. He waited patiently while the other man caught his breath.