She looked up when a vast cloud engulfed the others. She became acutely aware, as she stood there gazing at the fore of the sept, that the other robed septas had dispersed. Where they could have gone, however, Lunette did not pretend to know. If her intuition was indeed correct, and the sept were a thousand leagues in the sky, there would have been nowhere to go but down. A treacherous drop, even for a dreaming girl.
The smallest of the septas turned to look at
her after a moment. She was a pitiful thing, pallid as an ivory moon, yet her shriveled stature somehow commanded the attention of the room. She raised a pale hand, only to have it swallowed by the bell-shaped sleeve of her robe. She remained dourly pointing at Lunette, silent as the Pokemon assembled behind her. Me? Lunettelooked about to see if the septa could have been pointing to someone else. But the sept was bare save for her and the little woman. The septa seemed finger curled to beckon Lunette forth.
The girl took a step forward, not knowing what else to do.
A cloud passed over the glass again. As the darkness drew its blinds over the carpeted floor and across the rows of pews to either side of Lunette, the septa no longer looked crone, but Alysandre Ecklish, radiant even in the grey shroud of the dead. Her skin was pale as the coal statues behind her, unblemished but for a ring of red round her throat. "You have come," she said.
"Mother." Lunette felt strangely calm, somewhat like the untouched waters of an ocean. Of course, water was always calm before a storm hit.
She reached her hand out shakily, hoping, hoping...
...It passed through her mother's fingers, soft as a shadow. This is a dream. Still, Lunette let her hand linger in her mother's shadow.
"Lunette," said Alysandre Ecklish. Her
figure flickered, and Lunette became faintly aware that her feet were not touching the floor. "How you've grown."
Grown? "It's been three days since... since I saw you last," she reminded her mother with a leaden chest. Her heart beat in little jumps; thud-thump, thud-thump.
"Has it been so long?" Alysandre cupped her daughter's hand in her own, though she could not hold it up. "It doesn't seem so."
It didn't seem so for Lunette, either. Perhaps she had been dreaming when Archer drove his pitchfork through her mother's neck. Perhaps this was reality, this great sept in the sky. "I know," was all she said, was all she could say. She hated the simplicity of it; two words were not nearly enough to paint her feelings out for Alysandre. How many are, though? There was not a word that could aptly describe the hand on Lunette's heart. All she could do was let it squeeze, unable to remember the phrase that would make it all end.
Light pierced the window behind her, and the crimson in Alysandre's hair fell away to let grey come slinking in. "So you do." She seemed to look through Lunette, eyes pools of molten silver. My mother did not have silver eyes. Tears threatened Lunette, and when she opened her mouth to speak, they washed down her cheeks in rivulets soft as silk. Once they had started she could not stop them.
How am I brave? she asked herself. I've chosen to sit in my tower and weep like some babe, what honor does that bring me? She looked up at her mother, a reminder of her weakness. I don't know, she might have admitted, I truly don't, please show me. But the tears swallowed her words.
Shame took her. Char hasn't shed a single tear. "I've been overcome with grief," she admitted. "That stupid man Fletcher..."
"I have come to terms with his actions, and forgiven him for them." The crone gave Lunette a wan smile. "Though I would empty Crestgard's treasury a thousand times over to watch you grow, what has been done has been done. There is no rightness in condemning him for what is past."
Lunette sniffled and brushed a tear from her lips. Even her mother had forgiven Fletcher, and she was dead. But this is my dream, in my mind. Can it be that I have pardoned Fletcher in some respects? The man was dead and cold, and Lunette was glad enough for that, but if she tried she could see his plight. He was just trying to change things. But he hadn't. Killing Alysandre wouldn't bring a Ponyta to every farmer in Crestgard, nor would it somehow spur Lunette to do so. If there were a way, though... She brooded on that, silent.
"Do you see the statues before me?" Alysandre had walked on feet light as summer rain to the Guardian, and was stroking the ivory coal with the loving care of a mother. "I think of them as my children, like you. They are my comforts in this empty sept." Her hand drifted to The Keeper. "Such masterful work. Sometimes it seems as though they are living, breathing; Pokemon trapped in coal." The room went dark, and as color left Alysandre's robes it flooded back into her hair. "And their eyes. Look on them, my sweet."
Lunette did. Where she had shied from the Keeper before she now stood staring, wondering why she had been so craven. It's just a statue, she told herself, straining her head up to look deeper into the bird's eyes, it's just a statue and just a dream. But how could she be seeing herself so manifestly if this was a dream? Lunette touched her braid and watched a strange red girl do the same. She blinked, and the shadow in the ruby did to, knowing her moves before she made them. And when Lunette turned and saw the door at the end of the nave swinging shut, she was certain the other girl did to. But does she know it's her mother who's leaving?
Lunette woke to the peal of the bells. What time is it? She looked out the window, saw leaden skies, and judged midnight. Her quilted covers were spread unevenly over her, leaving the night air free to nip at the skin of her arms.
Char stirred in his own bed beside hers. The fire at his tail's end flickered, burning with an ardor that kept the little Pokemon alive. Lunette watched it to keep the pounding of her heart off her mind. A dream. It was just a dream. Then why did the sept in the sky seem more real than the room she was in now?
She sat up, auburn braid stroking the small of her back. Lunette could tell by the restlessness gnawing at her that trying to fall asleep was a fruitless hope at best, so she drew the covers to the side of her bed and stood. She had to go somewhere, even if she didn't quite know where that somewhere was.
She ended up walking to the armory across the yard from her tower, a dark cloak thrown over the nightgown her handmaid Sypra had wrestled her into after her mother's death. "You need air," she had said to Lunette, her soft white hands loosening the dress's bodice, "that frock is like to suffocate you with all the crying you're doing, poor girl." Then she had smiled sadly, a gesture meant to be reassuring. It had only served to deepen Lunette's sorrow.
Her handmaid was a pretty little thing with big blue eyes and hair darker than Lunette's own. She often wondered why the girl chose to work for her; she would have done well in one of the more esteemed brothels of Crestgard, and with her charm she was bound to make more than whatever sum she earned as a handmaid. Lunette never said anything of it, though; her mother had selected the girl with her own hand, and she was a kind soul besides. Once Sypra had ascertained that Lunette's clothes would not suffocate her and left, Lunette had barred the door and crawled under her quilts to cry under a blanket of stitched dragons.
As she was going to knock on the door of the armory, a thought caught her. Should I ask Cresten about the Guardian my mother spoke of? He'd probably think her a fool. Perhaps I should go to Grrele. The maestra would take kindly to questions asked about the Old Days; from what Lunette knew of the hunchbacked woman, she had studied them in her younger days, back when she was a student at the Obsidian Library in Centrevede. That was where all the maesters and maestras of Neore were trained and sworn, and only once they had weathered ten years of training were they given their silver-cowled robes and an unsocketed ring known simply as the Circle of Forbearance.
Lunette had learned as much on the day Grelle had come to Crestgard begging her mother for a gemstone to secure into the socket. An affirmation of her servitude to Crestgard, she had said, then and forevermore.
Alysandre Ecklish had smiled and drawn Cresten to her side, asked him to fetch a raw fire opal from his storeroom. When the armorer returned, Grrele had taken a shaky knee and been named the Grand Maestra of Crestgard.
Lunette was starting the walk to Grrele's tower when the muffled opening of a conversation from behind the thick oak door caught her attention. "A Wingull from Seahaven," she could make out, when she pressed her ear to the wood. "Lord Alidor has responded at long last, and he's willing to see the girl. We needs only..." She didn't catch the rest.
"Mayhaps, though Her Grace won't be pleased," came the gruff reply of Crestgard's Master Armorer. A thick flush crept up Lunette's neck. Her Grace? Do they speak of me?
"She is only a girl," said the other. "I urge you, move deftly. If Pylon Pyke is to find the legitimate will, you'll not be Crestgard's lord reagent for long."
"Who made it my wish to be reagent?" Cresten asked.
An accusatory silence ensued. "A purse of coins," replied the other man. "The promise of full-bellied children, perhaps. Who can say?"
She heard Cresten spit. "You and your bloody promises." Lunette's breath rolled wet and heavy off the thick door, worrying over the iron grip with soft hands. Open it, they seemed to say, fumbling over the handle and passing through it with misty sorrow. Demand them to tell you of whom they speak. Lunette fidgeted, fighting her thoughts until Cresten continued. "You'd be wise to make that purse mate."
"And you'd be wise to know your worth."
"Is a kingdom truly worth less than a purse of gold? I hadn't heard. If so, I ought to buy another with the one you give me."
Another dour silence took them. "I thought you hated ruling," the other voice piped after a moment, scarcely a whisper.
"You're right. I wouldn't waste good coin on a kingdom," said Cresten. Lunette heard him chuckle gently. "The ruling's much too complicated, and I rather like my head where it is."
"And remain there it shall, so long as Pyke plays the pawn."
"Why is Pyke of such import? I could certainly... dismiss him."
"He is the only man suited to escort the girl to Seahaven should we choose to grant our little lord a look." The other voice sounded tired. Pawns aren't always mindless, Lunette thought. Some know their worth.
"You're a man," said Cresten.
"And I have a boy with me. I can't leave him till he's at least met Her Grace."
Another silence rose, but Cresten would have none of it: "A boy?"
"Of my own blood," came the other voice. "He's to be your heir. I do know how you loathe your regency."
Cresten made a sputtering noise from behind his beard. "Ser, you can't mean to -"
"After Lord Alidor weds Her Ladyship, my son will slide right into the seat she's left bare."
"A usurper," Cresten whispered. "Alidor will not be pleased. Nor will the smallfolk."
Laughter broke out, a sudden bark that sent needlepricks up Lunette's arm. "Why, it isn't usurping if it's her brother moving to take the throne."
I don't have a brother, Lunette thought, gooseprickles rising beneath her nightgown. She shifted her head to the other side to better hear the rest of the conversation. Perhaps they weren't speaking of her. It's some other lady, that's it. So why did she still listen?
"This is preposterous," fumed Cresten. "You have a lordship already, why would you presume to snow your way into another? I never understood the way of war, but if it involves such trickery, I cannot abide it."
"You will abide it if you truly love dragons. The gold kind, not those beasts the Ecklishes possess."
"I..." Crested faltered, for a moment giving
Lunette the impression he'd been punched. I shouldn't be listening to this, she had time to think, before he rejoined with, "Write back to Alidor saying we will discuss it with our lady." There was a scraping sound as a chair was pushed back. "I will speak with her on the morrow. I can be... how shall I put it... quite persuasive, I'm sure you understand." Another chair scratched against the floor, sounding almost crisp.
"I do. It is arranged, then. I shall see you and the Lady Lunette tomorrow. If you'll excuse me, I have an envoy to speak with, transportation to arrange. I am truly gracious for your support of my son."
"He will make a... wonderful lord," Cresten said. "I wish you the best of nights, ser."
Lunette backed from the door, thoroughly blanched. Her skin was warm, though the night was cold as it ever had been, and her heart was booming like the bells. All at once she turned and fled, her footfalls perfectly in time with the boong boong boooong of a thousand metal hearts. As she ran, all the questions she'd kept safe for Grelle were forgotten, snuffed out against a heavy oak door. Her cloak caught on a mounted Chargoyle's stone tooth as she swept by it in a haste to reach her tower, and tore with a sharp rippp. But still she ran, until her thoughts were only of the fate that awaited her.
And as the bells declared the death of her mother time and time again, Lunette Ecklish huddled behind a barred door high in her tower, waiting for dawn to break.