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wrong. Perhaps word of Ielond's choice drove his Grace to drink.'
Elienne ignored the insult, her initial flare of temper controlled. If Darion
was incapable, she would see him
through the ordeal of the banquet with as much dignity as she could. With two
unresponsive victims, Jieles soon saw further antagonism was wasted breath. He
left the Prince and sat, just as the Regent rose to address the gathering.
Eiienne heard little of his speech. She slid her heavy chair closer to Darion
and worked to straighten the
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rumpled tabard. The slick silk of the stag blazon resisted her efforts.
Elienne tugged the cloth over limp shoulders, conscious the flesh beneath was
lean and well muscled;
this Prince Darion was not a man who spent himself in decadence. E!ienne
recognized the same hard fitness
Cinndei had acquired when the Khadrach had forced him from peacetime pursuits
into daily training with arms.
The comparison shocked her. Cinndel was beyond need. And in Faisix's presence,
even her husband's memory endangered her. Though grief roughened her throat,
Elienne moved her hands briskly on.
Darions hair lay matted across a fevered, dry forehead.
The fine chestnut strands resisted Elienne's fingers. In the end she contented
herself with smoothing the stubbornest tangles beneath the fillet.
At last she turned to Jieles. 'Help me get him upright.'
Jieles grinned. 'I rather thought his ear would make a fine trencher for the
roast.'
'You're unpleasant.' Elienne returned his smile with venomous annoyance. 'I'm
not above trying out that suggestion on your own anatomy.'
Heads turned in their direction, decked with frowns of disapproval. Garend
furiously gestured for silence.
'What a fool I was, to call you "Lady,"' Jieles mur-
mured, but he moved to lend a hand.
Together they raised the Prince like a puppet from the table and propped him
against the chairback. Elienne sent the table page for cold water and, the
moment the ewer arrived, began to blot Darion's face with her napkin.
Faisix completed his speech. Jieles filled the expectant hush that followed
with a barbed excuse for his cousin's ineptness. Forced, uneasy laughter swept
the tables below the dais. Elienne endured in tight-lipped silence. When
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Jieles tried to prolong the issue with pleasantries, she stepped hard on his
instep beneath the table.
Jieles sat precipitously and turned a wide, furious gaze upon her. 'You could
face the headsman for striking a descendant of Haigarid,' he whispered
sharply.
'It would shame your manhood to put me to trial,'
Elienne replied without lowering her voice. 'And you're the second man who's
threatened that in a single evening.
I find the repetition dull.'
A page arrived with a covered dish. Jieles seized upon the diversion, red
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under the interested stares of his neighbors across the table. An uneasy meal
commenced.
Even the conversation below the dais seemed dampened by tension. Elienne
studied the exquisitely prepared food and pitied the Master of the Revels.
Though she had forgotten when she had last eaten, her plate went largely
untouched. The others around her fared little better. The drug caused Darion
to be violently ill at the table. Elienne struggled to support him in an
upright position as his body was wracked time and again with spasms.
Servants descended like a swarm of insects. While they labored to clear the
mess, the guests continued their toasts to the Prince's health as though
nothing were amiss.
But Darion's apparent drunken stupor cast doubt like blight over his
integrity. That was inevitable, Elienne knew. Little dignity could be gained
from the Prince's present condition, and even the table pages found diffi-
culty showing his Grace the deference due an heir of
Haigarid.
The evening dragged through endless ceremonies.
Tongues loosened with the wine. By the time dessert was served, the toasts had
turned ribald, and a few were maliciously barbed at the Prince's expense.
Elienne never
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so much as blushed, but she did request leave to retire with the Prince.
Jieles overheard, and laughed.
'You can't go, Missy, until after the Seeress of
Ma'Diere's Order of the Seed and Scythe delivers the
Trinity of Fortune.'
'I'm foreign,' said Elienne flatly. 'Explain.'
Jieles did, with a self-important display of mock cour-
tesy. At a betrothal banquet, tradition required a Seeress to deliver three
prophecies, one for the Consort, one for the Prince, and one for the realm.
Not even the guests might depart until after the custom had been met.
'If the Seeress's words are unfortunate, the celebration will end early, but I
don't see much cause for impatience.'
Jieles glanced deferentially at the Prince's still form. 'Just now my cousin
doesn't seem a particularly rousing bedfellow.'
Elienne braced herself to endure. Servants cleared the plates away and
returned with cordials and baskets con-
taining comfits and sugared nuts. For the thousandth time, Elienne peered
beneath the stag's glossy belly and searched the diners below. She failed to
locate Kennaird.
A bard, a troupe of jugglers, and a knife dancer all performed and were
applauded. The candles in the chand-
eliers overhead burned slowly lower. Elienne waited anxiously for the next of
the revels, but sudden quiet settled over the long hall. A bent figure swathed
in black and yellow waited, motionless, on the stair at the entry.
'Ma'Diere's Seeress,' announced the Master of Revels.
'Archmistress of the Holy Order of the Seed and Scythe.'
The Seeress's lame step carried her down the stair and, slowly, the length of
the white carpet that led past the table to the dais. As she approached,
E!ienne saw she was aged beyond estimate. The slice of face visible over her
shroud of veils was as brown and creased as a dead leaf.
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Elienne felt sweat dampen her palms.
The hour was well past midnight. Most of the candles had burned out. Those
left alight guttered, couched in pools of wax, and long shadows flickered over
a crowd of expectant, upturned faces. Silence reigned as the Seeress shuffled
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to a stop by Elienne's seat. The woman's eyes were milky, all but blind. The
hands that caught the chairback for balance were crabbed claws of age, and the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]