“But you were the best for the position and the king recognized that.” She squeezed his hand so hard it was almost uncomfortable. “Surely he will listen to you when you suggest something that will help Morgan be a better king someday.”
“I cannot promise that.” He did not want her to think she had hooked him too easily. “The king and queen are both rare in the stubbornness of their minds. I say that as a compliment! They see things their own way, not as others tell them things must be. But I will try my best.”
“Oh, may God bless you for your kindness!” Idela reached for the wine and, quite daringly, poured for both of them. “Say we are partners in this endeavor, and I will be the happiest woman in the Hayholt.”
“I was always your partner, my lady, even if I did not know your cause, because I want the same things you want. Security for the High Ward, and happiness and health for your son.”
“Pasevalles, you are the finest man I know.” She drained her goblet with the vigor of a soldier just escaped from a deadly and blisteringly hot battlefield. “Come, let us take the rest of this and go and look at my husband’s books.”
She had caught him off balance by returning to the books, but when she stood, he did too. She took him by the hand and led him away from the table. He hesitated a little as they passed Lady Wilona’s chair. The older woman was fast asleep, her plate set down carefully on the floor, her sewing muddled in her lap. “Will she not . . .?”
“Leave the poor dear be. What does she know about books that are even older than she is?” Idela giggled like a girl, then tugged at his hand. “Come away. We do not need her supervision this moment.”
He let himself be led toward what he expected would be her late husband’s library, or perhaps a storage room where the books were kept, but when she pulled him through the doorway, it was into a room completely without light.
“Oh, dear,” she said, sounding quite undisturbed. “I seem to have led you into the wrong room. I must have had too much of this lovely wine.”
“Should I go back for a candle?”
Even in the darkness, he was quite aware that she had turned to face him and was standing very close. She had let go of his hand, but now she reached up to touch his shoulder, then follow the line of his neck with her finger until her hand reached his face. “I think not,” she said softly. “We can do without light and company for a little while, can we not?” She moved closer, so that he could feel her slender form touch him in several places. He could smell the wine on her breath and the floral sweetness of her scent.
“Idela . . .”
Her finger touched his lips, silencing him. “You know, it is not only a man’s voice I have missed.”
He kissed the finger, then gently pulled it away from his mouth. “My lady, I am only—”
“Hush. You are a man, and that is something truly wonderful. No, you are the finest man I know. Oh, and I have admired you so long!”
“But the servants—”
“Know better than to come stumbling into my chamber. Yes, I told you a lie, I confess it, my lord. This is not where my husband’s books are, this is my own bedchamber. Do you hate me for my falsehood?”
“I could never hate you, dear lady. Sweet Idela.” He took her hand again and kissed her fingertips, each one. He heard her breath, deep and unsteady, so he leaned forward again and found her lips. Long moments passed before he spoke again. “I could never do anything to hurt you, in any way.”
“Oh, glory!” she said, and in that moment he could detect nothing false in her words. “I am all goosebumps—and my heart beats so! Here, can you feel it?” She took his hand and put it on her breast, naked now, her skin warm, the nipple nearly as hard as a cherry stone. In the darkness, she had quietly unlaced the top of her dress and pulled it down. “Can you love me, Pasevalles? Just a little?”
“Yes,” was what he said, then squeezed her flesh, gently, until she gasped. “Yes, my lady, I can.”
The first night they camped within sight of Aldheorte, as Binabik and the trolls were caring for the Sitha, Count Eolair waited until the knights and their squires began eating their suppers, then asked Morgan if he would like to accompany him into the forest.
“But why?” said Morgan, who had been about to go in search of Porto and the wineskin the old man generally had somewhere close by.
“To blow the horn, Highness,” said Eolair, patting the wooden box tied to his saddle. “There seemed no sense in doing it while we were still within the bounds of Erchestershire.”
Morgan could only say yes. He found his horse cropping contentedly in the thick, green grass, and climbed into the saddle. The mare gave him such a look that he almost felt he should apologize.
“We are not far from Hasu Vale,” Eolair said as they headed their mounts toward the dark edges of the forest. “It was a dark place, once. Your grandparents were captured there and nearly killed by Fire Dancers, worshippers of the Storm King.”
“I know all about the Fire Dancers,” said Morgan. “Believe me, Count, I have heard all the stories.” He was missing his sister and his grandmother and didn’t much want to talk. He even missed his mother.
Morgan had a sudden memory of his grandfather drolly suggesting that the women in the family were conspiring to keep the king and his grandson from having any proper fun. His grandfather had wanted to go out and catch frogs in the Royal Puddle, which was his joking name for a large pond at the edge of the castle’s common green. Morgan hadn’t been particularly interested in catching frogs—already he was concerned to appear a young man, not a small boy—but he had been pleased his grandfather wanted to spend time with him. When had that been? After his father’s death, certainly. As he thought of it now, he remembered more than a few occasions when the king had tried to interest him or amuse him.
“You and I, Morgan. That’s what it will come down to, you mark your grandfather’s words,” the king had said. “They’ll never let you do anything if you listen to them, your mother and my wife. They’re afraid you’ll be hurt. But what’s wrong with a bloody nose from time to time?” Then he had told some story about Rachel, a chambermaid who had apparently frightened him badly when he was young.
His grandfather had been kind to him in those days, it was true. Why had everything changed since then? Why was the king always so angry at him now over a few foolish scrapes and mistakes?
“You have gone quiet, Highness,” Eolair said, startling Morgan a little. “Is all well?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, although his thoughts were so confused and uncomfortable that he truly did feel unwell. “I am just tired of talking.”
So they rode silently through the trees spotted with failing afternoon light, Eolair in front and Morgan just behind him, grateful that the older man respected his wish for silence. The sun was low in the west, but such sky as Morgan could see between the branches was orange and red except for high above their heads, where it showed somber blue. In the new quiet, he could hear the sounds of the forest, or in this case, the absence of sounds. But for a few birds piping far away, safely distant, Morgan heard nothing but the soft crunching of twigs and leaves beneath their horses’ hooves. The camp was only a short ride behind them, but it suddenly seemed leagues away.
“Ah, I think we can tie our mounts here,” said Eolair at last. He dismounted, still impressively nimble for a man his age, and knotted his horse’s reins around the slender trunk of a birch, then began to remove from his saddle the box that held the horn. Morgan tied his horse beside Eolair’s, staring around at the shadowy glade.
“It’s so quiet.” Even to Morgan’s own ears that sounded like a foolish thing to say, but Eolair only nodded.
“The forest is careful,” the count replied. “It does not welcome visitors, but it does not repel them, either. At least that is what my father used to say, although he was talking about our own Grianspog woods. This forest, the Aldheorte, though . . . many say it is the oldest place there is. That is why it is named ‘Oldheart’.”
“How could one place be older than another?” Morgan demanded, unsettled by his recollections and by the forest stillness. Eolair had taken the velvet sack out of the box and now slid the cloth from the horn as carefully as if the strange instrument were a sleeping child. Morgan said, “I mean to say, if God made the world then He didn’t make a forest first, then the rest of everything later on, did He? That doesn’t make sense.” The sound of his voice in the quiet clearing seemed harsh as a hectoring crow’s.