The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [165]
Aryn had no doubt the man was telling the truth. “Go fetch the king,” she said to him. “Now.”
The man nodded and hastened out of the cell.
“She did it to herself,” Sareth said, his coppery eyes shining with sadness and horror. “She couldn't take Teravian's life, so she took her own.”
“Did she?” A strange clarity came over Aryn; she saw everything as if lit by a thousand candles. “And how did she do this to herself?”
The cell was empty, save for a wooden bowl of water.
Sareth shook his head. “Perhaps she used her own fingernails to open her wrists.”
Aryn knelt beside the queen, not caring as blood soaked into the hem of her gown. She touched Ivalaine's hand; the fingernails were chewed down to the quick.
“Someone else did this to her.” Anger blazed within her, burning away sickness and sorrow. “Someone who feared the queen might yet reveal something in her madness—something others wished to keep secret.”
Lirith pushed herself away from Sareth. “But whom do you mean, sister? Surely Liendra would not have done a deed such as this, not even to Ivalaine.”
“No, it wasn't Liendra. The guard would not have willingly allowed her to pass, and I don't think her magic is strong enough to have addled his mind.” Aryn thought of all she had seen and heard. Again she probed the disturbance in the Weirding, and she recalled Ivalaine's words spoken earlier that day.
She would . . . in the shadows . . . not alive, and not dead . . . she thinks she can stop me. . . .
Who could be alive and dead at the same time?
A shiver passed through Aryn, and at last she realized the answer. “Shemal,” she said, standing. “It all makes sense. After Melia left, the Necromancer Shemal must have come back. Those things Ivalaine said to us today—they sounded just like what Master Tharkis said to me in Ar-tolor. Shemal drove him mad, and then she did the same to Ivalaine.”
Only the addled fool—who once had been King of Toloria—had been murdered so he could not reveal Shemal's presence. Just like Ivalaine. How long had Shemal been there, waiting in the shadows? From the start she must have seen Toloria as central to her plans. But why?
She felt she almost grasped the answer—then the sense of clarity fled her. A sob rose in her chest. Ivalaine had been a queen, a witch, and—in secret all these years—a mother. More than that, she had been the one who had first introduced Aryn to the mysteries of the Weirding. Only now she was nothing. A cruel despair gripped Aryn; if one so great as Ivalaine could fall, what hope did any of them have?
Lirith bent down and, with a touch, shut Ivalaine's eyes. She kissed the dead queen's brow. “Farewell, fair sister.” Then she rose and turned away.
The sound of boots and voices approached down the corridor.
“We must go,” Sareth said gently. “The king will wish to speak to us.”
He was right. They did speak with Boreas, but only briefly, in his chamber an hour later. He asked them to describe the state in which they had found the queen, and he listened without moving, sitting in his chair, his eyes fixed on the fire. When Aryn began to speak of who she thought had done this terrible deed, the king waved a hand, silencing her, and gave them leave to go.
Aryn hesitated at the door; Lirith and Sareth had already stepped through. “Your Majesty,” she said, her voice hoarse from weeping, “will you delay your journey north so that she can be properly mourned?”
Still he did not look away from the fire. “There are many who will depart this life before we see an end. Better we should wait and mourn them all. I leave on the morrow.”
Aryn slipped through the door, joining Lirith and Sareth in the corridor beyond.
“I don't understand,” Sareth said as they walked. “Why didn't he want to know who murdered the queen?”
Lirith shook her head. “Maybe it doesn't matter to him. If he did know, would it change his plans? I doubt it.”
“Maybe,” Aryn said, though for some reason she doubted Lirith's theory. She knew the king better than perhaps any other. Though he was given more to action and