Page 102 of The Castle & the Cloister

“Of you.” With two words, Gwylen pressed on the sore spot Fia had been nursing since finding herself haplessly present at Orden Inver’s death. “You owe a great deal to Ariana. I will see she survives this shift of power and is returned to her cloister, if you do something for me.”

Narrowing her eyes, Fia watched a contingent of guards traveling away from the castle. What business they were on, she couldn’t guess. Briefly, she imagined waving them over and pointing out Gwylen as a foreign spy. Instead, she chose to hear the woman out.

“What is your price for Ariana’s life?”

“Yours,” Gwylen said bluntly. “I would have you leave Inver court and come to Caervallion. Whatever ban of the Beloved Three lies upon Afon prevents me from supplanting him in the present, so I must work toward the future. Everyone knows the Priest is enamored of you, and so Afon would view it as a triumph if you joined the Caervallin court instead of remaining in Honoria. There, I would have you raise and tutor Celina Inver, who Afon will name his heir. I will fetch her from Raea’s house and, together, we will make her a worthy queen for Caervallion. One who is not corrupted by Afon’s cruelty and perversions. If you knew how my land and my people suffer…” Fia slowed a little in shock as Gwylen’s voice broke. “… you would not deny me this. Please, Fia. You’ve done things here in Honoria no one would have thought possible. Come to Caervallion and do the same.”

Fia stumbled, then righted herself. Of course any opportunity to save Ariana was a temptation. Knowing Ari was imprisoned and in imminent danger of death on an Inver altar haunted her. It hurt like a newly broken bone. But she felt acutely her own backwardness, and the hands of the goddesses upon her circumstances. She had not felled Orden Inver. She had not risen to his throne. All she had done was push against the glimpse of a fate that terrified her. Hearing of Caervallion’s plight grieved Fia, but she was not what they required. She’d been no more than a catalyst at best, bestirring others to make change.

Even then, as inadequate as she felt, she might trade herself for Ariana if not for the matter of Celina. If Caervallion was all that Gwylen warned, Fia could not, under any circumstances, entertain the notion of removing Celina from the safety and comfort of Raea’s house to make hera warlord’s heir. She had seen all too well the consequences of expecting one woman to shoulder the burden of maintaining peace. To place the same weight upon Celina would be unforgivable.

Fia stopped dead in her tracks in the middle of the roadway. Carters swore and swift-traveling messengers shouted, but she stayed just where she was, a stone that could not be moved.

“I can’t,” Fia said, her words so low they hardly carried over the busy noises of the street. “I’m sorry, Gwylen, but I won’t trade one life for another. I learned that today. If it were only mine that hung in the balance, I would die happily for Ariana. But I won’t subject Celina to the same sort of existence that’s led to her mother’s downfall.”

“Are you certain?” Gwylen asked, and there was a note of desperation behind the words. “I mislike the other paths I might choose. They are… darker and more doubtful roads. But one way or another, Caervallionmustget out from under Afon’s grip.”

“Certain as sunrise, I’m afraid,” Fia said.

She turned after a moment and found only the bustling thoroughfare and its ordinary traffic behind her. With leaden feet and a heavy heart, Fia carried on.

The remainder of that day passed in a blur. Fia could feel the time slipping away, and knew what she should do. She should go see Ariana and say her goodbyes. But she could no more bring herself to do so than she could cajole herself into unnecessarily taking a life. Instead, she stayed in the king’s quarters, dismissing Beneson and making much of Justus. He was the only thing that mattered now. He was life and love and a measure of joy, even in the midst of despair.

In the small hours of the night, something jolted Fia awake. She’d stayed up later than usual, needing the deadening effect of exhaustion to push her out of consciousness. Even then, the Priest had still been away, sequestered somewhere in the castle with Hadrian and a handful of nobles. Now, she found herself curled against him, her back to his chest, his breath warm in her hair, one of his arms resting protectively over her waist. She pressed closer to him but took care not to stir so much that he’d wake. Eyes wide in the gloom, Fia pushed back at the memories rising up—the awareness of all that had come to pass in the last few days, and that would transpire by midnight on the day to come.

The coronation of a king. The legitimizing of a regent. The sacrifice of a queen.

Silver moonlight spilled through the windows of the king’s chambers, and with a sudden chill, Fia realized what had drawn her out of sleep.

A repeating rill of music, barely audible, drifting from behind one tapestried wall panel.

Slipping out of bed, Fia pulled on a thick woolen dressing gown and a pair of sheepskin slippers. In the mountains, the nights were growing cold already, though down on the plains, the harvests were only just beginning to be brought in. The music grew louder as Fia approached the tapestry and pushed it aside to reveal the door to a servants’ tunnel.

As she opened the door, the music became clearer, resolving unmistakably into high, clear singing. The daughters of Silith were restless. But Fia had never heard them outside the mountain sanctuary before, nor had the Priest ever mentioned encountering them anywhere besides the caverns. With a frown, Fia glanced back at Justus and the Priest, both asleep. Taking a lamp from a side table, she struck a light and ventured into the tunnel, letting the tapestry fall between herself and the king’s chambers.

Following the singing of the sorias, Fia soon found herself on familiar roads through the subterranean labyrinth that crisscrossed the mountain. There was the branching path that would lead to the residential wing, the tunnel that came out near the audience hall, the passageway to the kitchens. But the voices led her on, to a little-used byway carpeted with a layer of thick dust. The sorias were taking her into uncharted territory.

Fia’s heartbeat quickened with anticipatory fear. She followed the sorias down, and down, and then suddenly out into the cavern sanctuary’s all-encompassing dark. The sense of vastness and enormity was oppressive, and Fia, in her glimmering pool of lamplight, felt wholly insignificant. She carried on, drawn by the sound of singing. Time grew meaningless, as it always did in the cavern dark. She might have been walking for minutes, or hours, or days. There was no telling in that lightless void. Fia had gone far enough that her legs were beginning to ache when her lamp guttered and died, having burned through all its oil. For a moment she stood still and pressed her fists to her eyes, just to see the stars. But the sorias’ singing grew insistent. Setting the empty lamp down, Fia continued on.

After a time, the sense of openness and space dwindled. Reaching outwith one hand, Fia felt cold stone beneath her fingertips. Stretching out the other, she felt the same. So she’d left the great cave behind and crossed into another unknown tunnel. With nothing to do but follow the sound of the sorias, Fia walked onward, running her fingers along the tunnel wall.

When exactly she first saw light glimmering in the dark, she couldn’t say. She’d assumed it was the result of her eyes compulsively roaming the tunnel, despite their current uselessness. But gradually, she became aware that the faint glow ahead was not a product of her imagination, or of wishful thinking. It was something true, and real.

Fia made for it with renewed energy, bolstered by the sorias’ singing, which had reached a bittersweet and eerie pitch. Hurrying forward, she nearly tripped into a room-sized chamber cut into the rock. There were signs of habitation everywhere—a comfortable bedroll, a small wooden table and chair with the remains of dinner still left on a plate. A shelf with half a dozen books on it, and a stone jug of extra lamp oil. A wooden chest occupied one corner, its lid thrown open to show spare clothing, and a small handcart stood waiting near the entrance. There was even, incongruously, an upholstered armchair, its back to the cavern entrance, a lamp on a stand beside it casting flickering shadows over the whole scene.

Someone stirred in the chair and spoke.

“Hello, Fia.”

XXXI

By a thousand lights in a thousand skies

By a thousand hands, a thousand eyes,

Our way is laid out, our end a prize

For faith, for love, a star gladly dies.