Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [64]
“You did,” she pressed. “You had a family and left us in a small forest village.” The words came out like a challenge.
Bronwyn wished she could have been more diplomatic, but her need was too great. She needed to hear some word of explanation, some reason for the horror that had destroyed her family and shaped her life.
Hronulf did not answer right away. He paused before the door of a long stone building that spanned the distance between the two towers, the roof rising up steeply to meet in the center in a soaring arch. Through the open door, Bronwyn could see the raised altar with the scales ofjustice above. Light filtered in through windows set high on the stone walls, falling in thin, golden slants on the knights who knelt or prostrated themselves in prayer.
“It was my duty to marry,” Hronulf said simply. “The bloodline of Samular must be carried on. Which reminds me, there are family matters of which we must speak. Come.”
That was no answer at all. Hoping that he would offer better, Bronwyn followed him back up to the tower. He closed the door and bolted it. This struck Bronwyn as a strange precaution, given their secure surroundings. She was even more puzzled when he took an ancient sheet of parchment from a small, locked wooden chest. “Can you read?” he asked.
“In several languages, both modern and ancient.”
The response seemed natural enough to her, but it seemed to displease her father. “Such pride is not seemly.”
“Not pride,” she said with complete honesty. “Necessity. I’m a merchant. And, I suppose, a scholar of sorts. I find lost artifacts, which means I have to study a wide variety of materials and speak to many sorts of people to find what I’m looking for.”
“A merchant.”
He spoke the words in a tone that could have served just as well if he’d said, “a hobgoblin.” Bronwyn suddenly knew how a cat felt when its back went up. She swallowed the tart response that came quickly to her tongue and reached for the parchment.
The style of the script was old, the ink faded and blurred, but Bronwyn got the gist of it well enough. The fortress of Thornhold, and most of the mountain upon which it stood, did not belong to the Holy Order of the Knights of Sainular. It was the property of the Caradoon family.
“There is a copy of this writ of succession in the Herald’s Holdfast,” Hronulf said. “Upon my death, you must make provision for the fortress and see that it is used as it has been for these many centuries.” He looked keenly at her. “Are you wed?”
“Not even close,” she said dryly.
“Chaste?”
Under any other circumstances, she would have answered that question with derisive laughter. Now she merely felt puzzlement, edged with the beginnings of anger. “I don’t see what that has to do with this discussion,” she said stiffly.
Hronulf apparently heard in this his answer, and not the one he’d been hoping for. An expression of grave disappointment crossed his face. He sighed, then his jaw firmed with apparent resolve. He rose and went to his writing table. Seating himself, he took up a quill. “I will write you a letter of introduction,” he said, dipping the quill into an inkwell. “Take it to Summit Hall and give it to Laharin Goldbeard of Tyr. He commands this place and will find a suitable match for you.”
Bronwyn’s jaw dropped. She dug one hand into her hair and shook her head as if to clear it. “I don’t believe this.”
“The line of Samular must continue,” Hronulf said earnestly. Fle blew on the writing to dry it, then set the parchment aside. “You are the last of my five children, so the responsibility falls to you. You seem well suited to it. You are young, comely, and in apparent health.”
This was more than Bronwyn could take. “Next I suppose you’ll be telling me that children are my duty and destiny.”
“And so they are.”
Bronwyn had a sudden, sharp feeling of empathy for a brood mare. She rose abruptly. “I am tired, father. Are there guest quarters in this fortress that will not be too sullied by a woman