The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [18]
The fool leaped to his feet, then spoke shrill words in a fractured rhyme:
“The wolf said to the moon one day,
‘I think I can no longer stay
Upon this path so long I’ve run—
It always ends where it’s begun.’
“The moon said to the wolf one night,
‘Come with me, and we’ll take flight.
We’ll eat of suns and drink of stars—
All we’ve dreamed will here be ours.’
“But though as much as he did try,
The wolf could never leap so high.
Nor could the moon descend so deep—
I’ve heard it said they both yet weep.”
Throughout the verse, the smile on Melia’s face gradually faded. When Tharkis finished speaking, she looked away. Falken glanced at her and sighed. Lirith didn’t understand why, but the poem had seemed to sadden the two.
“Your rhyme makes for a poor welcome, Fool,” she said.
“Did I say welcome?” A sly gleam entered Tharkis’s crossed eyes. “Perhaps I meant farewell. One’s so like the other, it’s often hard to tell.”
“Or perhaps you’re simply a bad poet,” Aryn said. “After all, I bested you once.”
Tharkis scurried toward the baroness, his rubbery limbs tangling and untangling as he moved. “But we have not finished our game yet, my sweet. I’ll speak you your poem when next we do meet.”
Before Aryn could reply, the fool sprang backward in a series of flips. Then, with a chiming of bells, he scampered through a door and was gone.
There was a long silence, broken when Durge cleared his throat.
“I have been thinking,” the knight said seemingly to no one in particular. “Lord Falken and Lady Melia can offer both better company and better protection than I. Perhaps now that they are here it is time I return to Stonebreak. It has been long since I have seen personally to the affairs of my manor.”
Aryn’s blue eyes went wide. “Oh, Durge, you mustn’t even make a jest of leaving!” She rushed forward and grasped his left hand with hers. “I am certain your reeve can look after your manor well enough. Please—you must promise me that you will stay with us.”
The Embarran hesitated, then nodded, clasping rough fingers around her smooth hand for a moment. “As you wish, my lady.”
Aryn beamed, but Durge’s careworn face appeared more deeply lined than ever. Lirith didn’t need to steal his thoughts as she had in the Barrens to know that this gesture had cost him. Lirith wished she had never learned of the knight’s feelings for Aryn. And sometimes she wished she could tell the young woman. Perhaps there was a chance.…
But no, that was foolish. Durge was over twice Aryn’s age. And while such marriages happened often enough, they were arranged for land, money, and alliance, not for love. Durge would never make his feelings plain to Aryn. And Lirith had sworn she would never tell.
Yet it was more than this that seemed to weigh on him; Durge seemed grimmer than ever today. Had something happened to him? Or was it that, after the tangle she had glimpsed that morning, nothing seemed quite right.
“Come on,” Falken said. “The queen granted us her hospitality, and I’m ready to take advantage of it. Let’s get breakfast.”
7.
The next day, witches began to arrive at Ar-tolor.
Aryn first suspected something was happening as she sat in her chamber, taking breakfast. A tingling danced along her spine, and—compelled for a reason she could not name—she set down her spoon, rose, and moved to the window. In the bailey below, a rider clad in a green cloak and hood sat upon a black horse. A guardsman reached out to help the rider dismount, but instead the traveler looked up and the hood slipped back, revealing a cascade of gold hair. The rider was a woman past her middle years, but still possessed of a powerful beauty.
Evidently the guardsman was as surprised as Aryn, for he stepped back. The woman on the horse turned her head, as if searching. Then her gaze locked on the window through which Aryn watched, and a smile touched her lips. For a moment Aryn gazed into sea-green eyes. Then, with a gasp, she