The Lioness

I had thought we would have another guest at dinner, however as his health at the moment seems uncertain, I have advised the steward not to expect him.

L.

Gil’s heart sank as he recognized the coded message. The guest, of course, was the treaty, its health at the moment uncertain. He read the note again and after the third scan took some hope from between the lines. Uncertain health was not a sentence of death, or so one could hope. Wearily, he tossed the note into the fire and went through to his bed chamber.

There he found Kerian, and he could hardly credit that a woman so shaken by sobbing could weep as silently as she did.

Chapter Three

“Kerian!”

Sobbing shook her; she did not lift her head or move in any way to acknowledge that she heard Gil’s voice. The morning’s bright dancer lay like a broken bird, hardly able to move.

“Kerian,” the elf king whispered, lifting her gently into his arms. Gilthas barely caught the scent of the Tarsian perfume that had enchanted him in the morning. She smelled of the city, his city. Her perfumes were the richer scents of the horse fair, warm spice rolls from Baker’s Way, a tang of mint from the garden in which she had danced.

Kerian looked up, her lips bitten to bleeding. She pushed her tangled hair from her face with shaking hands.

“Gil, she’s one of those killed! Lania—she’s been murdered!”

Through the window a breeze drifted, and it carried the sound of the celebrating city. The soft song of a mandolin twined with the laughter of children and the voices of their elders melding into a constant, pleasant hum that would not subside till dawn. The first whiff of wood smoke hung in the air. Tall fires would light the city tonight, a reminder in these genteel precincts of an earthier existence and a time when the elves who cleared spaces in the forest to farm lit up the sky with their hot, high fires to celebrate the seasons of light that had brought them health and harvest and to bid the long days of summer farewell.

Gil held her close. When he felt her calm, he let her go and went out quickly to pour a golden goblet full of ruby wine. She took a sip, then another. He took the goblet from her, and softly he said, “Who is Lania?”

Her tanned cheek flushed, her fists clenched, and the bitten lip bled again. “She was my cousin. Gil, did you see...” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, blood and tears and wine. “Did you see on the eastern bridge?”

Feeling anger again, and shame, Gilthas said, “I did.”

Cold, her voice, like wind from winter. “Did you see my cousin, my lord king? Did you see her with the ravens round her head?”

“Ah, Mishakal’s mercy,” he whispered, feeling powerless. “Kerian, I don’t know how—she wasn’t a robber, surely.”

Color drained from her cheeks, golden tan turned ashen gray. The angry set of her jaw faltered and tears rose again in her eyes.

“No! She was... Lania was my brother’s dearest friend. Gil…”

Gilthas had not seen Kerian’s brother Iydahar in many years, not since before the Chaos War and the time of the disaster that resulted in the death of his mother’s brother Porthios who had been, for a brief and blood-soaked moment, Speaker of the Sun and Stars, king of two elven nations. Upon his apparent death, Gilthas the puppet king had taken the throne.

Iydahar was, Gilthas knew, a proud man of the forest to whom even Qualinesti hunters seemed effete. He abhorred the status of his fellow Kagonesti, had no patience for the word “servant” when “slave” seemed, to him, closer to truth, yet fierce Iydahar had once embraced the cause Porthios had espoused, the dream that the two elven kingdoms, Qualinesti and Silvanesti, would be joined as one, that their Wilder Elf kin would be welcome in that broad and beautiful realm. Iydahar had believed with all his wild heart in this cause.

Iydahar had conceived no love for the boy-king who took the prince’s place and turned over the kingdom to a dragon’s Dark Knights. Porthios’s wife, the Silvanesti queen Alhanna, and Silvanos their infant son, had fled Qualinesti. Exiles, they dwelt in wild lands now, forbidden to live in Qualinesti for their part in a failed rebellion, forbidden to return to Silvanesti by the foes they had made there. Gilthas had not seen his lover’s kinsman since then.

Gilthas shuddered. Behind closed eyes he saw again the head of a red-haired woman, her mouth gaped wide, a dark veil of crows gathering round her bloody hair.

“Kerian,” he said. “I’m sorry about your cousin. I know you’re worried about your brother. I am too. I pray Lord Thagol is done now with his—”

Now she did move from him, only a little, but her eyes narrowed. “Done, my lord king?” Color flared in ashen cheeks. “He’s done with Lania, surely.”