Interlude: The end of 769
"No boyfriends yet?" asked Angeline. They were sitting around in Vivian's drawing room, three slightly drunk young women and a pregnant one, all wrapped in blankets, in a cold evening on the last day of December. A fire burned in the fireplace as a foot of snow blew around outside.
"No contractions yet?" replied Ellean.
"No, but I don't recommend this as a hobby," said Angeline. "I know I'm only going to gain more weight, but I haven't any idea where I'm going to put it."
"You're having no more wine tonight," said Jen. "Two glasses is plenty for a woman in your state. What if you slipped on the stairs?"
"I don't want any more, thank you. Countess, are you allowing your servants to be impertinent with the nobility?"
"She's scrupulously polite to me," said Vivian. "I'll take some more. I'm not with child."
"Me either," said Ellean.
"Yet," said Angeline.
"Ever! You look like you just swallowed a pig."
"Thank you very much. I'll tell your nephew you said that."
"Ah," said Vivian, "you think it's a boy, do you?"
"I sort of have a feeling. Maybe it's just because Francis wants a boy so badly."
"When are you due?" asked Jen.
"End of next month, the doctor says, and Priestess Enjele agrees."
"It's going to be an interesting year," said Vivian.
"Why do you say that?" asked the Rains.
Down the Rocky River Valley in the heat of August the victorious Clanish infantry had marched. The Rugians had spent too much of their force in the terrible defeat at the Hogback, and had retired to the snow-topped mountains north of Siret; Thane Ellimer had returned to his stout keep at Hvanar on the Snow River. The Countess and Sir Rogier and Ellean and half a dozen riders took two months to wander down the wide valley and up into the hills of Westdubbik.
They were required to spend two weeks at Sir Rogier's and Lady Alice's house at Clatu, south of the Rocky just twelve miles from Tarnhold. Seeing the place for the first time since she was ten years old, Vivian could not help make sarcastic comments about how much money her ministers seemed to have, which Sir Rogier endured politely. During the long days, Vivian and Ellean and Annie, Sir Rogier's fourteen-year-old younger daughter, wandered the markets of nearby Dubkarin and hiked in the hills above. On a perfect fall afternoon the three women were standing on a boulder at the top of a low round mountain to look out in all directions over Clane.
"And everything we can see is yours?" asked Annie de Clatu.
"It's not mine," said Vivian. "I don't own very much of it, just some of that bit over there," she said, waving northeastward toward the Rocky inflow into the Lavan, where Vonnis stood.
When Vivian and Ellean left to return to Vonnis, Sir Rogier and Lady Alice stayed home to watch over the harvest. They gave the Countess a case of their own 749 vintage, with instructions to finish it before the year was out.
"Whatever you do," he said, "don't sell it. It's worth more to drink than to trade. Especially now--you know, someone's flooding the market with cheap wine."
They returned by way of Fugad to Vonnis. The news was that there wasn't much news. Inzil was hanging on. Count Chalris was married to one of his lords' daughters, who had already borne him a daughter. The Duke of Farlain was still fighting his rebels, on his own soil. Farlain diplomats paid occasional visits to Vonnis and sometimes mentioned marriage prospects, but no new suitors had come forward. The Rugian bands were back to their usual level of raid and skirmish. The fall was lovely, the harvests were good, and tax receipts were ahead of projections. The County was basking, and the Countess basked too.
She made some progress with her private studies as well. She began to learn the meanings of the glyphs in the writings of some of the previous counts. There were many styles--Tereza's were rounded and flowy, Edmund's small and neat--but they all corresponded. She decided she preferred Theodred's glyphs, which suited her careful, squared-off handwriting.
After more than a year of studying, she had read all her father's notes, and still understood less than half of the symbols she saw on a typical page of Tereza's or Theodred's secret journals. Recipes were especially frustrating, and Countess Tereza, among others, had left lots of recipes. "Paste for Sleeping" was clear enough, but included among its ingredients "Fresh red (something) beaten with (something) until (something)". Then there was the recipe for "Powder for (something something something)", which seemed very important and laborious to make. Tereza had made it often--that page had stains on top of stains, and the substance was mentioned often in her notes--but what was it?
On a cool evening in late October, as the colored leaves that the trees of Vonnis had made with such easy art were blowing about in the streets, Vivian sat in her high room. She had not until now had the courage to venture again through the Arch, and in fact had hardly been back up to this room. But lately she felt like a child lying in bed in the dark of night with her eyes closed, wondering what monsters might be leaning over her. So here she was, her grandfather's book before her, and a glass of wine, and two candles, one lit, one unlit. She scraped a little more of her crystals into the wine. It swirled of its own accord. She drained the cup and settled into the small transparent trance that was the first phase. The lefthand candle winked into life.
She fell past the weakling flaps of evil and plummeted through the arch into the garden. She landed on her feet. It was evening, as always. She was alone.
She began exploring somewhat systematically. She found three unexamined openings in the hedge nearby: one onto the strand of a grey and quiet sea, another onto a maze of hedges, a third onto a road that ran out into a misty green land. She strolled along the sea for some time, her mind growing quieter than the lapping of the waves. Presently she found a gap in the line of trees and dunes on her right, passed through and found herself back where she had entered.
Vivian pushed on across the garden, and under a line of dark-leaved flowering trees she found the lane that ran straight out from the mansion. She followed this until she came to the path that led to the balcony and the city. She stood in the crossroads, debating. She almost worked up the strength of will to go have a peek from the balustrade.
She looked to her right, onward along the avenue. There, near enough to one of the trees to be in passing mistaken for part of it, stood a grey figure. It was looking her way, she thought, but she could make out no features.
She turned away and walked with suppressed haste back toward the mansion. It was much larger in front of her when she paused again by a circle of tall flowers and surreptitiously looked back. She let out a breath when she scanned the scene and saw no one, just the grey walks in the twilight and the hedges and the flowers and trees casting their colors and scents about. Then she caught her breath back half-exhaled when she saw it. It was visible near the wide avenue perhaps halfway back to the path to the balcony. It did not move, nor did it especially seem to be hiding. She wondered what made her fear it. She turned, with wavering control, and walked away at a right angle.
She could not resist, when she came to the opening in the hedge that led to the misty road, the temptation to turn quickly aside. Out of sight of her presumed pursuer, she sprinted down the road until the mist surrounded her, and then stopped. Was something behind her? She felt like a leaf blowing in the October wind. She turned off the road's half-buried round stones and ducked in among the trees. Soon she was in halls of pines, running on a fragrant carpet of old red needles. She stopped in a long hall among very large trees with beards of moss.
She could still see the road gleaming behind her between many tree trunks. There was no fog under the trees, but wisps drifted down the paved way. There it stood, the still grey figure, among the strands of mist.
Something was beside her. She turned to face--the woman with the little girl. The girl smiled at Vivian, and then they turned and hurried away into the trees. Vivian followed. They came to the edge of a black mere, its waters unmirroring among rock outcrops and pines. They turned to the right along a path, leaving the pond behind, then coming suddenly to a pair of standing stones. They went through, the woman, then the girl, and last Vivian, and found themselves in a small garden with a fountain in the middle. Vivian stood between the standing stones and looked back, but all she could see was the black mere among the pines.
She looked at the woman, who sat on the edge of the pool talking with her daughter in the language of mothers and children. The woman looked up and smiled, but worry creased the ends of her mouth. She looked back to her daughter and whispered to her. Vivian watched them for some time, then turned away and found herself within a few steps of the Arch.
She turned and hurried through. The wisps of evil strained toward her, but they were disturbed, scattered by a sidelong breeze. She hurtled toward the world. The tower rushed up toward her, the air blowing through her as she fell. She came to the window.
She could not see the young woman before the cup. There was something in between. It was a figure cloaked in dark cloth. It was no dream now: it stood motionless, there in three ordinary dimensions, in the middle of this familiar room. Vivian hung for an eternity at the window waiting.
Her heart, across the room, was silent. Her breath stopped in her spirit lungs.
She leapt from the night into the room with a slight cry. The figure moved, or its cloak blew in a current of air. She dodged it and dove into the entranced girl's ear. In her head was darkness as though someone had let all the fires die on a winter night in the Citadel. The return of her thought jolted her body back to life from whatever indeterminate state it had been in. Her eyes shot open.
He stood there. He was cloaked in dark grey, and only a long nose showed through the hood. He stared in contempt upon the top of the girl's head. Still her heart sat silent in her chest.
All wonder and fear had to wait: there was no time to do anything but fight. She did not need to look, but found a weapon hidden in her heart. She gathered it into a ball, all her hope and her pride and her dread and doubt, along with her father's worry and the careworn smile of the lady of the fountain, and she hurled it into the unseen face of the thing that stood before her. It staggered back, and her spirit advanced against it, giving it no chance to regroup, wielding her anger like a staff. It fled before her unexpected survival and her wrath.
Her heart beat once again. She sat there alone in the room and gathered her senses. It was gone. The candles both burned. She was alone. She might have been alone the whole time. Certainly it was nothing but a dream. What was that other world but a locus of dreams anyway?
She looked at the cup. There was a little wine in it. She saw herself drinking it earlier--yes, she had drained it, and seen herself in the silver at the bottom. There in the wine reflected she saw something--a hooded figure. She stared at it, and it looked back as though it were peering through a window unseen.
She seized the cup and leapt toward the open window. Out flew the wine into the night as she spilled it in a wide arc, some on the wall of the tower, some on the trees below, some taken by the wind and lost in the distance. She heard a faint sound like a cry of pain, but not as in death, more as in the poking of an eye.
Vivian dropped the cup on the floor. She bent and set it upright, then blew out the candles. Then she staggered downstairs and got Jen to fetch some more wine, the ordinary wine of last year's vintage. She let Jen bring her food, and the maid sat and watched over the Countess as the color slowly returned to her face.
Angeline took her leave first, on the night before the new year, going down to sleep beside Francis Weaver around midnight. The other three sat and talked and laughed and drank the last bottle of Sir Rogier's excellent gift until the wee hours, and then fell asleep: Ellean on the couch and Jen in the comfy chair by the bed, where Vivian snored softly. They had ended by toasting the new year, which according to Clanish custom would start at dawn the next day.
"It's going to be an interesting year," said Vivian again, setting down her cup and laying her head down on the pillow. It seemed to her that things were just fine as they were. Clane was strong enough and prosperous, and its countess was learning one by one the tricks and traps of ruling it. The people were united, the enemy had been stopped again, the ministers were hard-working and conscientious, and the granaries were full. As the snow began to fall again outside her window, Countess Vivian fell asleep with a smile on her face, while something watched from beyond the scope of her dreams.