A Song for Arbonne

PROLOGUE

On a morning in the springtime of the year, when the snows of the mountains were melting and the rivers swift in their running, Aelis de Miraval watched her husband ride out at dawn to hunt in the forest west of their castle, and shortly after that she took horse herself, travelling north and east along the shores of the lake towards the begetting of her son.

She did not ride alone or secretly; that would have been folly beyond words. Though she was young and had always been headstrong, Aelis had never been a fool and would not be one now, even in love.

She had her young cousin with her, and an escort of six armed corans, the trained and anointed warriors of the household, and she was riding by pre-arrangement—as she had told her husband several days before—to spend a day and a night with the duchess of Talair in her moated castle on the northern shore of Lake Dierne. All was in order, carefully so.

The fact that there were other people in Castle Talair besides the duchess and her ladies was an obvious truth, not worthy of comment or observation. A great many people made up the household of a powerful duke such as Bernart de Talair, and if one of them might be the younger son and a poet, what of that? Women in a castle, even here in Arbonne, were guarded like spices or gold, locked up at night against whoever might be wandering in the silence of the dark hours.

But night, and its wanderers, was a long way off. It was a beautiful morning through which they now rode, the first delicate note of the song that would be springtime in Arbonne. To their left, the terraced vineyards stretched into the distance of the Miraval lands, pale green now, but with the promise of the dark, ripe summer grapes to come. East of the curving path, the waters of Lake Dierne were a dazzle of blue in the light of the early sun. Aelis could see the isle clearly, and the smoke rising from the three sacred fires in Rian's temple there. Despite her two years on the other, larger island of the goddess far to the south in the sea, Aelis had lived her life too near to the gather and play of earthly power to be truly devout, but that morning she offered an inward prayer to Rian, and then another—amused at herself—to Corannos, that the god of the Ancients, too, might look down with favour upon her from his throne behind the sun.

The air was so clear, swept by the freshness of the breeze, that she could already see Talair itself on the far shore of the lake. The castle ramparts rose up, formidable and stern, as befitted the home of a family so proud. She glanced back behind her then and saw, across the vineyards that lay between, the equally arrogant walls of Miraval, a little higher even, seat of a lineage as august as any in Arbonne. But when Aelis looked across the water to Talair she smiled, and when she looked back at the castle where she dwelled with her husband she could not suppress a shiver and a fleeting chill.

"I thought you might be cold. I brought your cloak, Aelis. It is early yet in the day, and early in the year."

Her cousin Ariane, Aelis thought, was far too quick and observant for a thirteen-year-old. It was almost time for her to wed. Let some other girl of their family discover the dubious joys of politically guided marriages. Aelis thought spitefully. But then she was quick to withdraw that wish: she would not have another lord such as Urté de Miraval visited upon any of her kin, least of all a child as glad-hearted as Ariane.

She had been much the same herself, Aelis reflected, not so long ago.

She glanced over at her cousin, at the quick, expressive, dark eyes and the long black hair tumbling free. Her own hair was carefully pinned and covered now, of course; she was a married woman, not a maiden, and unloosed hair, as everyone knew, as all the troubadours wrote and the joglars sang, was sheerest incitement to desire. Married women of rank were not to incite such desire, Aelis thought drily. She smiled at Ariane though; it was hard not to smile at Ariane.

"No cloak this morning, bright heart, it would feel like a denial of the spring."

Ariane laughed. "When even the birds above the lake are singing of my love," she quoted. "Though none can hear them but the waves."

Aelis couldn't help smiling again. Ariane had the lyric wrong, but it wouldn't do to correct her, it might give too much away. All of her ladies-in-waiting were singing that song. The lines were recent and anonymous. They had heard a joglar sing the tune in the hall at Miraval only a few months before during the winter rains, and there had been at least a fortnight's worth of avid conjecture among the women afterwards as to which of the better-known troubadours had shaped this newest, impassioned invocation of the spring and his desire.

Aelis knew. She knew exactly who had written that song, and she also knew rather more than that—that it had been composed for her, and not for any of the other high-born ladies whose names were being bandied about in febrile speculation. It was hers, that song. A response to a promise she had chosen to make during the midwinter feasting at Barbentain.

A rash promise? A deserved one? Aelis thought she knew what her father would have said, but she wondered about her mother. Signe, countess of Arbonne, had, after all, founded the Courts of Love here in the south, and Aelis had grown into womanhood hearing her mother's clear voice lifted in wit or mockery in the great hall at Barbentain, and the responding, deep-throated laughter of a circle of besotted men.

It was still happening now, today, probably this very morning amid the splendours of Barbentain on its own island in the river near the mountain passes. The young lords of Arbonne and even the older ones and the troubadours and the joglars with their lutes and harps and the emissaries from over all the mountains and across the seas would be dancing attendance upon the dazzling countess of Arbonne, her mother.

With Guibor, the count, watching it all, smiling to himself in the way he had, and then assessing and deciding affairs of state afterwards, at night, with the glittering wife he loved and who loved him, and whom he trusted with his life, his honour, his realm, with all his hope of happiness on this side of death.

"Your mother's laughter," he'd said to Aelis once, "is the strongest army I will ever have in Arbonne."

He'd said that to his daughter. She'd been sixteen then, newly returned home from two years on Rian's Island in the sea, newly discovering, almost day by day, that there seemed to be avenues to beauty and grace for herself, after an awkward childhood.

Less than a year after that conversation her father had married her to Urté de Miraval, perhaps the strongest of the lords of Arbonne, and so exiled her from all the newly charming, flattering courtiers and poets, from the wit and music and laughter of Barbentain to the hunting dogs and the sweaty night thrustings of the duke he'd decided needed to be bound more closely to his allegiance to the ruling counts of Arbonne.

A fate no different from that of any daughter of any noble house. It had been her mother's fate, her aunt's in Malmont to the east across the river; it would be black-haired Ariane's too, one day—and night—not far off.

Some women were lucky in their men, and some found an early widowhood—which might actually mean power here in Arbonne, though not, by any means, everywhere in the world. There were other paths as well: those of the goddess or the god. Her sister Beatritz, the eldest child, had been given to Rian; she was a priestess in a sanctuary in the eastern mountains near Gfitzland. She would be High Priestess there one day—her parentage assured at least so much—and wield her own measure of power in the intricate councils of Rian's clergy. In many ways, Aelis thought, it was an enviable future, however remote it might be from the laughter and the music of the courts.

On the other hand, how close was she herself to such music and such laughter in Miraval, with the candles and torches doused just after dusk and Duke Urté coming to her in the night through the unlatched door that linked their rooms—smelling of dogs and moulting falcons and sour wine, in search of temporary release and an heir, nothing more?

Different women dealt with their destinies in very different ways, thought dark-haired, dark-eyed Aelis, the lady of Miraval, as she rode under green-gold leaves beside the rippling waters of Lake Dierne with vineyards on her left and forests beyond.

She knew exactly who and what she was, what her lineage meant to the ferociously ambitious man she'd been given to like a prize in the tournament at the Lussan Fair: Urté, who seemed so much more a lord of Gorhaut in the cold, grim north than of sun-blessed Arbonne, however full and ripe the grapes and olives might grow on his rich lands. Aelis knew precisely what she was for him; it didn't need a scholar from the university in Tavernel to do that sum.

There was a sudden sound, an involuntary gasp of wonder beside her. Aelis stirred from reverie and glanced quickly over and then beyond Ariane to see what had startled the girl. What she saw stirred her own pulse. Just ahead of them, off the road beside the lake, the Arch of the Ancients stood at the end of a double row of elm trees, its stones honey-coloured in the morning sunlight. Ariane hadn't taken this ride before, Aelis realized; she would never have seen the arch.

There were ruins of the Ancients all over the fertile land named for the Arbonne River that watered it: columns by the roadside, temples on cliffs by the sea or in the mountain passes, foundations of houses in the cities, bridge stones tumbled into the mountain streams and some still standing, some still in use. Many of the roads they rode or walked today had been built by the Ancients long ago. The great high road beside the Arbonne itself, from the sea at Tavernel north to Barbentain and Lussan and beyond them into and through the mountains to Gorhaut, was one of the old straight roads. All along its length were marker stones, some standing, many toppled into the roadside grass, with words upon them in a language no one living knew, not even the scholars of the university.

The Ancients were everywhere in Arbonne, the simple sight of one of their ruins or artifacts, however unexpected, would not have drawn a cry from Ariane.

But the arch by Lake Dierne was something else again.

Rising ten times the height of a man, and almost as broad, it stood alone in the countryside at the end of its avenue of elms, seeming to master and subdue the gentle, vine-clad landscape between the forests and the lake, Which, Aelis had long suspected, was precisely the purpose for which it had been raised. The friezes sculpted on both the near face and the far were of war and conquest: armoured men in chariots carrying round shields and heavy swords, battling others armed with only clubs and spears. And the warriors with the clubs were dying on the friezes, their pain made vivid in the sculptor's art. On the sides of the arch were images of men and women clad in animal skins, manacled, their heads bowed and averted in defeat, slaves. Whoever they were, wherever they now had gone, the Ancients who had set their marks upon this land had not come in peace.

"Would you like to see it more nearly?" she asked Ariane mildly. The girl nodded, never taking her eyes from the arch. Aelis lifted her voice, calling ahead to Riquier, the leader of the corans detailed to ride with her. He dropped hastily back to her side.

"My lady?"

She smiled up at him. Balding and humourless, Riquier was much the best of the household corans, and she was, in any case, prepared to smile at almost anyone this morning. There was a song winding through her heart, a song written this winter, after the festive season, in response to a promise a lady had made. Every joglar in Arbonne had been singing that song. No one knew the troubadour who had written it, no one knew the lady.

"If you think it safe," she said, "I should like to stop for a few moments that my cousin might see the arch more closely. Do you think we could do that?"

Riquier looked cautiously around at the serene, sunlit countryside. His expression was earnest; it was always earnest when he spoke with her. She had never once been able to make him laugh. Not any of them, actually; the corans of Miraval were men cut from her husband's cloth, not surprisingly.

"I think that would be all right," he said.

"Thank you," Aelis murmured. "I am happy to be in your hands, En Riquier, in this as in all things." A younger, better-educated man would have returned her smile, and a witty one would have known how to reply to the shameless flattery of the honorific she had granted him. Riquier merely flushed, nodded once and dropped back to give his orders to the rear guard. Aelis often wondered what he thought of her; at other times she wasn't really sure she wanted to know.

"The only things that belong in that one's hand are a sword or a flask of unmixed wine," Ariane said tartly and not quite softly enough at Aelis's side. "And if he deserves a lord's title, so does the man who saddled my horse." Her expression was scornful.

Aelis had to suppress a smile. For the second time that morning she had cause to wonder about her young cousin. The girl was disconcertingly quick. Despite the fact that Ariane's words reflected her own thoughts exactly, Aelis tendered her a reproving glance. She had duties here—the duties of a duchess towards the girl-woman who had been sent to her as a lady-in-waiting for fostering and to learn the manners proper to a court. Which was not, Aelis thought, going to happen in Miraval. She had considered writing her aunt at Malmont and saying as much, but had so far refrained, for selfish reasons as much as any others: Ariane's brightness, since she had arrived last fall, had been a source of genuine pleasure, one of the very few Aelis had. Not counting certain songs. Even the birds above the lake are singing of my love…

"Not all men are made for gallantry or the forms of courtliness," she said to her cousin, keeping her voice low. "Riquier is loyal and competent, and the remark about the wine is uncalled for—you've seen him in the hall yourself."

"Indeed I have," Ariane said ambiguously. Aelis raised her eyebrows, but had neither time or inclination to pursue the matter.

Riquier cantered his horse past them again and swung off the path, angling through the roadside grass and then between the flanking trees towards the arch. The two woman followed, with corans on either side and behind.

They never reached it.

There was a crackling sound, a surge and rustle of leaves. Six men plummeted from branches overhead and all six of Urté's corans were pulled from their horses to tumble on the ground. Other men sprang instantly from hiding in the tall grass and raced over to help in the attack. Ariane screamed. Aelis reared her horse and a masked assailant rushing towards her scrambled hastily back. She saw two other men emerge from the trees to stand in front of them all, not joining in the fight. They too were masked; they were all masked. Riquier was down, she saw, two men standing over him. She wheeled her horse, creating room for herself, and grappled at her saddle for the small crossbow she always carried.

She was her father's daughter, and had been taught by him, and in his prime Guibor de Barbentain was said to have been the best archer in his own country. Aelis steadied her horse with her knees, aimed quickly but with care and fired. One of the two men in the road before her cried out and staggered back, clutching at the arrow in his shoulder.

Aelis wheeled swiftly. There were four men around her now trying to seize the horse's reins. She reared her stallion again and it kicked out, scattering them. She fumbled in the quiver for a second arrow.

"Hold!" the other man between the trees cried then. "Hold, Lady Aelis. If you harm another of my men we will begin killing your corans. Besides, there is the girl. Put down your bow."

Her mouth dry and her heart pounding, Aelis looked over and saw that Ariane's frightened, snorting horse was firmly in the grasp of two of their attackers. All six of Urté's corans were down and disarmed, but none seemed to have been critically injured yet.

"It is you we want," the leader in front of them said, as if answering her thought. "If you come gently the others will not be further hurt. You have my word."

"Gently?" Aelis snapped, with all the hauteur she could manage. "Is this a setting for gentleness? And how highly should I value the word of a man who has done this?"

They were halfway to the arch, among the elms. To her right, across the lake, Talair was clearly visible. Behind her, if she turned, she could probably still see Miraval. They had been attacked within sight of both castles.

"You don't really have a great deal of choice, do you?" the man before her said, taking a few steps forward. He was of middling height, clad in brown, with a midwinter carnival mask, unsettlingly incongruous in such a place as this, covering most of his face.

"Do you know what my husband will do to you?" Aelis said grimly. "And my father in Barbentain? Have you any idea?"

"I do, actually," the masked man said. Besides him, the one she had wounded was still clutching his shoulder; there was blood on his hand. "And it has rather a lot to do with money, my lady. Rather a lot of money, actually."

"You are a very great fool!" Aelis snapped. They had surrounded her horse now, but no one, as yet, had reached for the reins. There seemed to be about fifteen of them—an extraordinary number for an outlaw band, so near the two castles. "Do you expect to live to spend anything they give you? Don't you know how you will be pursued?"

"These are indeed worrisome matters," the man in front of her said, not sounding greatly worried. "I don't expect you to have given them much thought. I have." His voice sharpened. "I do expect you to co-operate, though, or people will start being hurt, and I'm afraid that might include the girl. I don't have unlimited time, Lady Aelis, or patience. Drop the bow!"

There was a crack of command in the last sentence that actually made Aelis jump. She looked over at Ariane; the girl was big-eyed, trembling with fear. Riquier lay face down on the grass. He seemed to be unconscious, but there was no blade wound she could see.

"The others will not be hurt?" she said.

"I said that. I don't like repeating myself." The voice was muffled by the festive mask, but the arrogance came through clearly.

Aelis dropped her bow. Without another word the leader turned and nodded his head. From behind the arch, having been hidden by its massive shape, another man stepped out leading two horses. The leader swung himself up on a big grey, and beside him the wounded man awkwardly mounted a black mare. No one else moved. The others were clearly going to stay and deal with the corans.

"What will you do with the girl?" Aelis called out.

The outlaw turned back. "I am done with questions," he said bluntly. "Will you come, or will you need to be trussed and carried like an heifer?"

With deliberate slowness, Aelis moved her horse forward. When she was beside Ariane she stopped and said, very clearly, "Be gallant, bright one, they will not, they dare not do you any harm. With Rian's grace I shall see you very soon."

She moved on, still slowly, sitting her horse with head high and shoulders straight as befitted her father's daughter. The leader paid her no attention, he had already wheeled his mount and had begun to ride, not even glancing back. The wounded man fell in behind Aelis. The three of them went forward in a soft jingling of harness, passing under the Arch of the Ancients, through the cold shadow of it, and then out into sunlight again on the other side.

They rode through the young grasses, travelling almost due north. Behind them the shoreline of Lake Dierne fell away, curving to the east. On their left Urté's vineyards stretched into the distance. Ahead of them was the forest. Aelis kept her silence and neither of the masked men spoke. As they approached the outlying pines and balsams of the wood Aelis saw a charcoal-burner's cottage lying just off the lightly worn path. The door was open. There was no one in sight, nor were there any sounds in the morning light save their horses and the calling of birds.

The leader stopped. He had not even looked at her since they had begun to ride, nor did he now. "Valery," he said, scanning the edges of the forest to either side, "keep watch for the next while, but find Garnoth first—he won't be far away—and have him clean and bind your shoulder. There's water in the stream."

"There is usually water in a stream," the wounded man said in a deep voice, his tone unexpectedly tart. The leader laughed; the sound carried in the stillness.

"You have no one to blame for that wound but yourself," he said, "don't take your grievances out on me." He swung down from his horse, and then he looked at Aelis for the first time. He motioned for her to dismount. Slowly she did. With an elaborately graceful gesture—almost a parody given where they were—he indicated the entrance to the cottage.

Aelis looked around. They were quite alone, a long way from where anyone might chance to pass. The man Valery, masked in fur like a grey wolf, was already turning away to find Garnoth, whoever that was—probably the charcoal-burner. Her arrow was still in his shoulder.

She walked forward and entered the hut. The outlaw leader followed and closed the door behind him. It shut with a loud click of the latch. There were windows on either side, open so that the breeze could enter. Aelis walked to the centre of the small, sparsely furnished room, noting that it had been recently swept clean. She turned around.

Bertran de Talair, the younger son, the troubadour, removed the falcon mask he wore.

"By all the holy names of Rian," he said, "I have never known a woman like you in my life. Aelis, you were magnificent."

With some difficulty she kept her expression stern, despite what seeing his face again, the flash of his quick, remembered smile, was suddenly doing to her. She forced herself to gaze coolly into the unnerving clarity of his blue eyes. She was not a kitchen girl, not a tavern wench in Tavernel, to swoon into his arms.

"Your man is badly wounded," she said sharply. "I might have killed him. I sent specific word with Brette that I was going to shoot an arrow when you stopped us. That you should tell your men to wear chain mail under their clothing."

"And I told them," said Bertran de Talair with an easy shrug. He moved towards the table, discarding his mask, and Aelis saw belatedly that there was wine waiting for them. It was becoming more difficult by the moment, but she continued to fight the impulse to smile back at him, or even to laugh aloud.

"I did tell them, truly," Bertran repeated, attending to the wine bottle. "Valery chose not to. He doesn't like armour. Says it impedes his movement. He'll never make a proper coran, my cousin Valery." He shook his head in mock sorrow and then glanced over his shoulder at her again. "Green becomes you, as the leaves the trees. I cannot believe you are here with me."

She seemed to be smiling, after all. She struggled to keep control of the subject though; there was a real issue here. She could easily have killed the man, Valery. "But you chose not to tell him why he ought to protect himself, correct? You didn't tell him I planned to shoot. Even though you knew he would be the one standing beside you."

Smoothly he opened the bottle. He grinned at her. "Correct and correct. Why are all the de Barbentain so unfairly clever? It makes it terribly difficult for the rest of us, you know. I thought it might be a lesson for him—Valery should know by now that he ought to listen when I make a suggestion, and not ask for reasons."

"I might have killed him," Aelis said again.

Bertran was pouring the wine into two goblets. Silver and machial, she saw, not remotely belonging in a cabin such as this. She wondered what the charcoal-burner was being paid. The goblets were each worth more than the man would earn in his whole life.

Bertran came towards her, offering wine. "I trusted your aim," he said simply. The simple brown jacket and leggings became him, accenting his burnished outdoor colour and the bronze of his hair. The eyes were genuinely extraordinary; most of the lineage of Talair had those eyes. In the women, that shade of blue had broken hearts in Arbonne and beyond for generations. In the men too, Aelis supposed.

She made no motion towards the extended goblet. Not yet. She was the daughter of Guibor de Barbentain, count of Arbonne, ruler of this land.

"You trusted your cousin's life to my aim?" she asked. "Your own? An irrational trust, surely? I might have wounded you as easily as he."

His expression changed. "You did wound me, Aelis. At the midwinter feast. I fear it is a wound that will be with me all my life." There was a gravity to his tone, sharply at odds with what had gone before. "Are you truly displeased with me? Do you not know the power you have in this room?" The blue eyes were guileless, clear as a child's, resting on her own. The words and the voice were balm and music to her parched soul.

She took the wine. Their fingers touched as she did. He made no other movement towards her though. She sipped and he did the same, not speaking. It was Talair wine, of course, from his family's vineyards on the eastern shores of the lake.

She smiled finally, releasing him from interrogation for the moment. She sank down onto the one bench the cottage offered. He took a small wooden stool, leaning forward towards her, his long, musician's fingers holding the goblet in two hands. There was a bed by the far wall; she had been acutely aware of that from the moment she'd walked in, and equally aware that the charcoal-burner was unlikely to have had a proper bed for himself in this cottage.

Urté de Miraval would be a long way west by now in his favourite woods, lathering his horses and dogs in pursuit of a boar or a stag. The sunlight fell slantwise through the eastern window, laying a benison of light across the bed. She saw Bertran's glance follow hers in that direction. She saw him look away.

And realized in that instant, with a surge of unexpected discovery, that he was not nearly so assured as he seemed. That it might actually be true what he'd just said, what was so often spun in the troubadours' songs: that hers, as the highborn woman, the long-desired, was the true mastery in this room. Even the birds above the lake…

"What will they do with Ariane and the corans?" she asked, aware that unmixed wine and excitement were doing dangerous things to her. His hair was tousled from the confining mask and his smooth-shaven face looked clever and young and a little bit reckless. Whatever the rules of the courtly game, this would not be a man easily or always controlled. She had known that from the first.

As if to bear witness to that, he arched his brows, composed and poised again. "They will be continuing on their way to Talair soon enough. My men will have removed their masks by now and declared themselves. We brought wine and food for a meal on the grass. Ramir was there, did you recognize him? He has his harp, and I wrote a ballad last week about a play-acting escapade by the arch. My parents will disapprove, and your husband I rather imagine, but no one has been hurt, except Valery by you, and no one will really be able to imagine or suggest I would do you any harm or dishonour. We will give Arbonne a story to be shocked about for a month or so, no more than that. This was fairly carefully thought out," he said. She could hear the note of pride.

"Evidently," she murmured. A month or so, no more than that? Not so swiftly, my lord. She was trying to guess how her mother would have handled this. "How did you arrange for Brette in Miraval to help you?" she temporized.

He smiled. "Brette de Vaux and I were fostered together. We have had various… adventures with each other. I thought he could be trusted to help me with…»

"With another adventure, my lord?" She had her opening now. She stood. It seemed she didn't need to think of her mother after all. She knew exactly what to do. What she had dreamt of doing through the long nights of the winter just past. "With the easy matter of another tavern song?"

He rose as well, awkwardly, spilling some of his wine. He laid the goblet down on the table, and she could see that his hand was trembling.

"Aelis," he said, his voice low and fierce, "what I wrote last winter was true. You need never undervalue yourself. Not with me, not with anyone alive. This is no adventure. I am afraid… " He hesitated and then went on, "I am greatly afraid that this is the consummation of my heart's desire."

"What is?" she said then, forcing herself to remain calm despite what his words were doing to her. "Having a cup of wine with me? How delicate. How modest a desire for your heart."

He blinked in astonishment, but then the quality of his gaze changed, kindled, and his expression made her knees suddenly weak. She tried not to let that show either. He had been quick to follow her meaning though, too quick. She suddenly felt less sure of herself. She wished she had somewhere to set down her own wine. Instead, she drained it and let the empty goblet drop among the strewn rushes on the floor. She was unused to unmixed wine, to standing in a place so entirely alone with a man such as this.

Drawing a breath against the racing of her heart, Aelis said, "We are not children, nor lesser people of this land, and I can drink a cup of wine with a great many different men." She forced herself to hold his eyes with her own dark gaze. She swallowed, and said clearly, "We are going to make a child today, you and I."

And watched Bertran de Talair as all colour fled from his face. He is afraid now, she thought. Of her, of what she was, of the swiftness and the unknown depths of this.

"Aelis," he began, visibly struggling for self-possession, "any child you bear, as duchess of Miraval, and as your father's daughter—"

He stopped there. He stopped because she had reached up even as he began to speak and was now, with careful, deliberate motions, unbinding her hair.

Bertran fell silent, desire and wonder and the sharp awareness of implications all written in his face. It was that last she had to smooth away. He was too clever a man, for all his youth; he might hold back even now, weighing consequences. She pulled the last long ivory pin free and shook her head to let the cascade of her hair tumble down her back. The sheerest encitement to desire. So all the poets sang.

The poet before her, of a lineage nearly as proud as her own, said, with a certain desperation now, "A child. Are you certain? How do you know that today, now, that we…"

Aelis de Miraval, daughter of the count of Arbonne, smiled then, the ancient smile of the goddess, of women centred in their own mysteries. She said, "En Bertran, I spent two years on Rian's Island in the sea. We may have only a little magic there, but if it lies not in such matters as this, where should it possibly lie?"

And then knowing—without even having to think of what her mother would have done—knowing as surely as she knew the many-faceted shape of her own need, that it was time for words to cease, Aelis brought her fingers up to the silken ties at the throat of her green gown and tugged at them so that the silk fell away to her hips. She lowered her arms and stood before him, waiting, trying to control her breathing, though that was suddenly difficult.

There was hunger, a kind of awe and a fully kindled desire in his eyes. They devoured what she offered to his sight. He still did not move, though. Even now, with wine and desire racing through her blood, she understood: just as she was no tavern girl, he in turn was no drunken coran in a furtive corner of some baron's midnight hall. He too was proud, and intimately versed in power, and it seemed he still had too keen a sense of how far the reverberations of this moment might go.

"Why do you hate him so much?" Bertran de Talair asked softly, his eyes never leaving her pale, smooth skin, the curve of her breasts. "Why do you hate your husband so?"

She knew the answer to that. Knew it like a charm or spell of Rian's priestesses chanted over and over in the starry, sea-swept darkness of the island nights.

"Because he doesn't love me," Aelis said.

And held her hands out then, a curiously fragile gesture, as she stood, half-naked before him, her father's daughter, her husband's avenue to power, heiress to Arbonne, but trying to shape her own response today, now, in this room, to the coldness of destiny.

He took a step, the one step necessary, and gathered her in his arms, and lifted her, and then he carried her to the bed that was not the charcoal-burner's, and laid her down where the slanting beam of sunlight fell, warm and bright and transitory.