Guests of Evenstar
1230 Words
Guests of Evenstar~
Brynmohr o’Berwyn
Evenstar Watch
Brynmohr strode away from the sailing sloop, brusque of gait and dark of countenance. He glanced up at the rickety stairs crisscrossing the island’s cliffside. A modest old keep with squat corner towers, Evenstar Watch clung to the barren rock in the sea like a forlorn cat leery of the encroaching waves.
It was an unsavory task to be dispensed with and forgotten. Merely knowing of the place disquieted him. Seeing it for himself set his skin crawling. Coming here acknowledged the aberration his father had conceived, and he had allowed to continue.
A single black door, incongruously small in the expanse of fieldstone, creaked open as he neared the stoop. A hollow-eyed vulture waited inside, preening the jeweled buttons on his black velvet longcoat. Master Vyrdun bowed in exaggerated deference.
“Your Grace, I am honored by your visit.”
The Fervent disciple assigned to Evenstar lifted his expressionless face. Most nenes were beardless. Vyrdun’s added lack of eyebrows or lashes was as disconcerting as his vacant stare. As ruthless as any in Twelvestones’ inner circle, Vyrdun had volunteered for this duty, and that made him defective, in Brynmohr’s estimation.
“My father wants a firsthand accounting.” Brynmohr surveyed the richly appointed hall. The keep’s modest exterior belied an interior as opulent as Twelvestones itself. Vyrdun had not lacked for comfort during his assignment.
“How many years since you began?” Brynmohr asked, well aware of the answer.
“Five and a half, Your Grace,” Vyrdun replied in silky assurance.
“And no results?”
“Not the results we seek. Not yet.”
“How do you select the ones you bring here?”
“I gather them from the farthest reaches of Rhynn.” His eyes lit with a passion for his work. “Some are lowborn. Some come from noble lines. I select from a variety of potential talents.”
“Which show the most promise?”
“How can one pick from such bounty? Some have an uncanny ability to sense another’s approach. They can focus their minds on an individual and identify his location, even across a great distance. I call the phenomenon farsight. Its value in intelligence gathering is obvious.”
“And?”
“Some show an aptitude for reading emotion. Empathy, if you will. Useful in gauging the intentions of one’s opponent, of course, but I’ve also discovered it has a healing aspect. In my experiments, I found a touch of the hand can soothe an ache. Imagine the endurance of a warrior impervious to the pain of his wounds.”
Brynmohr chose not to consider how those experimental aches came about in the first place. Vyrdun’s moral compass did not point true north.
“The last of the talents is less interesting. One woman can impose her will on the minds of beasts. Mindriding, I call it. I suppose her offspring might be put to service in training warhorses or carrier pigeons.”
“How many have you…collected?”
“Seven in all. More disappearances might have aroused suspicion. I dared not collect more until we had at least one success.”
“And of those seven?”
“They are still here, but for two.”
Brynmohr held his tongue and waited. He didn’t want to hear what he feared came next, but it was his responsibility. He would have it said.
“One hanged herself with a bedsheet. The other threw herself out a window onto the rocks.”
Brynmohr swallowed. “You were to treat them gently. Make them comfortable.”
“I have, Your Grace. Our volunteers make every attempt to win them over. They woo the women with gentleness and finesse that would honor even a Firstborn lady.”
“And?”
“Well, I did choose the strongest mindgifts, and their time here has made them stronger.” Vyrdun licked his lips. “They learned to communicate in a manner I cannot detect. They formed a pact to work against our goals.”
Brynmohr dreaded what must come next. He’d come this far. He would see it through.
“Take me to the one who has been here the longest.”
“Prince Brynmohr, surely you don’t—”
“Take me. That was not a request.”
Vyrdun bowed and led him up a tower’s winding stairway. The higher Brynmohr climbed, the closer the walls pressed in on him, as if the remote old keep had judged and found him guilty.
At the top of the tower was a single door, bolted with a heavy crossbar. Vyrdun didn’t knock before sliding the bolt. Brynmohr followed him into a suite as elegantly furnished as the hall below.
Between the sitting area and dining table, bookshelves covered an entire wall. A partially finished tapestry of silk embroidery lay folded on a tea table. Through an open door, striped satin bedcurtains fringed in gold framed a canopy bed.
It’s still a prison. A gilded prison of rose petals and crystal and coercion.
An auburn-haired woman sat in the sunlight streaming through a tall mullioned window. Without looking up, she sighed and set her needlework aside. She rose and smoothed her gown with an unhurried hand. When she finally raised her head, her eyes bore into his.
Hatred steamed from twin deep blue pools of pride. The same unbreakable pride that gazed back at him across the breakfast table every morning. There was no more formidable female in any race than an Aurel woman who thought she’d been wronged.
“Leave us,” he commanded.
“Is that wise, Your Grace?” Vyrdun hesitated. “She is a mere woman, I realize. I mean to imply no disrespect, but if she—”
One withering glance cut him short. Vyrdun slithered out and pulled the door closed.
“A new suitor? And nobility, no less.” The woman’s gaze raked him. “You may be even less forgiving of my refusals. Have you ever been refused, Your Grace?”
“I am here to talk. That is all.”
“No better ploy than that? How disappointing. I expected someone of your breeding to devise a more subtle ploy to worm your way into my bed.”
“You are a guest here, at my father’s command,” he said. “Take care you do not annoy me.”
“A guest? Is that what you tell yourself? Is that how you sleep at night?”
His skin prickled as she measured him, peering into the depths of his soul.
“You fear us,” she said. “You can never admit it, not even to yourself. Not even alone in the dark of the night. But you fear us.”
She took a step closer.
“You are disgusted by what you see here,” she said. “It is what you wanted to believe it was not. We are forced against our will because your king wants an army of half-breed warriors with the numbers and mindgifts your precious nenen cannot give you.”
Brynmohr drew back to slap her. She flinched like one accustomed to such treatment, but she did not shy away. He pulled in a steadying breath, unwilling to believe he’d nearly struck her.
“Dare not judge me, woman. The survival of my kind rests on my shoulders.”
“A single thought stops a seed from sprouting.” Her eyes narrowed in defiance. “What you meant to gain, you will not have. Not by us. I swear it.”
Brynmohr knew the futility of arguing with Aurel pride. He left without another word. Vyrdun was hovering outside the door. Brynmohr brushed past him and heard the bolt slide into place.
He descended the stairs quickly and pulled on his cloak, pausing at the door as Vyrdun scurried after him. He delayed not because he had other options, but because he found the option loathsome.
“Five years and not one birth,” he said. “And there will be none because they are not willing to bear children for the Firstborn.”
He’d known. He’d allowed it to continue. He hadn’t meant for it to turn sordid.
“We’ve had a few miscarriages,” Vyrdun’s slippery dodge tried to appease. “Perhaps in time.”
“Perhaps in time, they will go willingly to their Firstborn lovers?” Brynmohr mocked the legend.
“I’ve begun steeping sapphires in their tea and considered—”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Brynmohr. “This is futile and too great a risk. We are finished here.”
“And the women, Your Grace?”
“Make it painless.”
Brynmohr left and buried his loathing for the beast he had become.
Chapter 21
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