Клейтон Эмери - The Halls of Stormweather

Her mother covered the braided dough it with a damp cloth. “Something’s troubling you,” she said, gesturing Larajin closer. “Come tell me what it is.”

Larajin found herself unable to move from the doorway. She gripped the door frame tightly and spoke in a rush. “Father says I’m not his daughter. I believe him. I want to know who my real father is.”

A flash of anger crossed Shonri’s face. An instant later it was replaced with an expression of resolve. She patted a stool beside her. “Sit down. It’s time you knew the truth.”

Like a sleeper walking in a dream, Larajin slowly crossed the room. She sat beside her mother and waited while her mother carefully cleaned her hands on a rag. Then Shonri herself sat down.

“You are a daughter to your father,” she said in a careful voice, “as much as you are a daughter to me. Always remember that.”

Larajin nodded. She already knew that her mother and father loved her. She considered the relationship between herself and her mother a close one, even though it was to her Aunt Habrith that Larajin turned when she wanted to confide her secrets.

Shonri stared at the oven, not really seeing it.

“Twenty-three years ago, I lost a child,” she said slowly.

Larajin was confused. This wasn’t what she’d expected to hear. “I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Shonri said. She continued. “I was accompanying Master Thamalon the Elder on a trip north to the Dales, a trading expedition. He’d asked me to come with him to evaluate the quality of the wild forest nuts and fruits he intended to purchase. It was a very important journey, a keystone in the household’s economic well-being, and the meeting had been set up a full year in advance. It was a singular honor for me. So I agreed to accompany the master, even though I was pregnant and near to giving birth.”

Shonri’s eyes grew sad. “Your father didn’t want me to go. We’d been trying for a child for so long…”

She sighed. “I lost my child on that journey. When the birth came, we were deep in the woods, far from a cleric. The child died.”

Larajin touched her mother’s hand. “How—”

“The trading expedition was not a success,” Shonri said. “More than half of the nuts had been damaged in the harvest, and the fruits hadn’t ripened properly. We stayed only a short time-long enough for the master to conclude that the yields would never be large enough to turn a profit.

“While we were there, the folk in the place we were staying at learned that I had just lost a child and approached the master to ask a favor. One of their women had died in childbirth, and no other woman had milk to suckle it with. They asked the master if his servant would care for it. I took one look into your beautiful hazel eyes and immediately agreed.”

Larajin had listened carefully to every word her mother said, yet she still found them difficult to believe. “I… I am not your daughter, either?” she asked. “Who am I, then?”

Shonri gave a slight shrug. “An orphan. The mother was unwed, and no one knew who the father was.”

Larajin wanted to know more. “Was my mother a Daleswoman?” she asked. “From what town?”

“I don’t know,” Shonri answered. “We were deep in the Tangled Trees, far from any town. The meeting was held in a place where the nuts and fruits grew wild. The master never inquired as to the woman’s name.”

Even though she was firmly seated upon a stool, Larajin felt as if she were floating. Her mind groped for something—some as-yet unspoken detail—then seized upon it.

“You never told Father that you lost your own child, did you?” she said. “He was just guessing when he said that I wasn’t his daughter. He didn’t know how right he was.”

Shonri rose from her stool and picked up a metal tray. Lifting the cloth away from the bread, she carefully eased it onto the tray, then opened the oven and slid it inside.

“Have you finished folding the linen?” she asked in a businesslike voice.

Larajin suddenly realized that her mother wasn’t going to tell her any more. The familiar distance between mother and daughter was back. The time for confidences was over.

“Not yet,” Larajin answered.

“Well get back to it, then, before Mister Cale finds out.”

Larajin stood quietly, listening to the lap of the water against her ankles. The Temple of Sune was quiet this early in the morning. Its priests tended to serve the Lady of Love with nightly revels, then sleep late the next day. Only on mornings when there was an especially beautiful sunrise did they rise to greet it.

It was snowing again outside, and a chill wind was blowing, but the waters of the great fountain that filled the temple’s courtyard were as warm as a stream on a summer day. Powerful clerical magic kept the temperature balmy at ground level. The snowflakes that were falling into the open central courtyard, with its beautiful natural rock formations and magically animated fountains, gently melted away before they hit the ground. Driftglobes floated just above the surface of the main pond, filling the temple with soft-hued light.

The only other occupant of the temple at this hour was a young girl about eleven years old, wearing the crimson robes of the temple. She was an auburn-haired child, one whose high cheekbones and long eyelashes suggested that she would grow into a great beauty one day. Like Larajin, she was of uncertain parentage. The priests had found the girl on their doorstep one day and taken her in.

Larajin had been worshiping at the temple long enough to know the serving girl’s name: Jeina. She knew little else about her. Was Jeina as tormented by questions as Larajin was? Or had knowing ever since her birth that she was a foundling allowed the girl to come to terms with her unknown ancestry?

Larajin watched Jeina tip a bowl of pale yellow rose petals into the water. For a moment, their eyes met. Jeina smiled, then shyly turned away.

Larajin waded through the ankle-deep water to one of the pools near the center of the fountain. Formed over decades by pebbles that had gradually worn a boulder into a natural bowl as the water swirled them round, the pool was one of those used by lay worshipers who wanted to ask questions of the goddess. Its stone was veined with gold and tufted with velvety mosses that were blooming in the unseasonable warmth.

Larajin stared into the clear water that filled the pool, watching the pebble trace a lazy circle around its bottom and the ripples flowing across the pool’s surface. They distorted her reflection, softening the rust-colored hair that straggled out from under her turban and blurring a face that was too long and angular to ever be considered pretty. Usually a petitioner would ask the pool to reveal the face of a future beloved. Larajin had other questions on her mind.

“Who am I?” she asked. She dipped a finger in the water, then touched it to her heart, leaving a damp spot on the gold fabric of the vest of her serving uniform.

Larajin felt a tickle on the back of her neck, like a lover’s breath, and smelled the unmistakable fragrance of Sune’s Kisses. A moment later, a tiny red flower petal slid down the trickle of water that was falling into the pool, then another. Even though water was still falling into the pool, its surface became still.

Larajin looked down upon a reflection that she only half-recognized. The face was her own, but the turban was gone. Her hair was tucked back behind her ears. Her ears were…

“A golden morning to you, Larajin.”

Larajin started, and her hand fell into the pool. Ripples covered its surface once more, distorting her reflection. She whirled around and saw the one person in Selgaunt she’d least expected to see. Diurgo Karn, a young noble about her own age, was a priest of Sune. He wore holy vestments: tight-fitting crimson hose capped by a thickly padded codpiece, and a shirt slashed to reveal his muscular arms and chest. His features were every bit as handsome as Larajin remembered, with fair hair containing just a touch of red swept back from his high forehead and forest-green eyes. Not so long ago, Larajin had thought herself in love with him and had dreamed that the goddess would smile upon this “impossible” match between servant and noble.