Chapter Four:
The Tryst
Chapter Four:
The Tryst
Saeunn Amberstone held tightly to the hand of Ulla von Dunstig and pulled her hurriedly along. The two girls made their way down the underground passageway. This was a servant corridor that led from the castle at Raukenrose Castle to one of the kitchens that was a separate building. The passageway was pitch dark. It was lit by oil lamps during the day, but now the time was half past midnight.
Both girls could see nothing, but Saeunn had a sixth sense that Ulla did not possess. Like all of the Children of Starlight, she could sense the direction to her homeland, Amberstone Valley, from any spot on Earth. And she could always find her star in the sky at night. She just knew where she was. All elves did.
And sometimes her star also spoke to her.
Your land-dragon is stirring tonight, my child. The clutch is restless. Tonight we sing to calm them.
I hear you, my star, my soul.
Since she had been down this corridor several times before—with and without Ulla in tow—she also knew where to pull up short and stop walking.
Ulla, who truly had a terrible sense of direction even for a human, stumbled, but Saeunn caught the hem of her dress and steadied her.
They had gotten to the locked iron grate that covered the corridor at night. Saeunn put her hand out and touched the cool metal of the grate, then lowered her hand gradually until she felt the keyhole.
“All right, here it is,” she said, guiding Ulla’s hand to the spot. “Use the key.”
After curfew the gate was locked and the key got hung in its place on the rack.
She’d been the one who had taken it. That was always her role. She could move a lot more silently and quickly than Ulla.
Stealing the key was also the least of the ways they were disobeying. If the duke and duchess found out—
No, when they find out, Saeunn thought. They are definitely going to find out. She didn’t have to see the future to guess that much.
Ulla was breaking the rules big time.
Saeunn heard the voice of her star again. You are restless as the dragon tonight, my child.
I am happy, my star. Just a little overexcited.
Her star laughed a tinkling laugh like crystal ringing.
The humans interest you?
Yes, my star.
The girl you are helping?
Yes, she is untraditional.
And the other, the brother?
He’s very intelligent. I do like him . . .
Take care not to become too attached, for you know—
Yes, I know. They die.
And we do not.
“Saeunn?” said Ulla. “Are you in there? You’re doing that thing again, where you get all distracted and practically turn into a statue.”
“Talking to my star,” Saeunn answered. “We’re done. Open the gate.”
“Elves are really strange sometimes,” Ulla said.
“It wasn’t my idea to go rambling around in the dark, you know.”
“Okay, okay.”
Ulla slid the key into the keyhole with far too much racket. Saeunn figured Ulla’s hands were trembling. There was the click of the lock opening. The gate was heavy, but well oiled. Ulla left the key in the lock. Saeunn would get it on her way back if all went well.
The girls pushed the gate open. It still squeaked enough as it swung on its hinges to worry them both.
Saeunn went first, and then Ulla tried to follow her through the gate opening, but banged into the bar on the side of the gate.
“Curse it,” she whispered. “That’s going to leave a bruise. I’ll have to come up with some reason I got it. Thayer will definitely notice when she’s dressing me tomorrow.” Thayer was Ulla’s personal maid. She was a bear woman, a Tier, a talking beast. You did not want to get on her bad side. “Well, we’d better start moving.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think anyone heard us?” Ulla asked in a whisper. “Can you listen?”
Saeunn’s hearing was much better than Ulla’s. They both knew it.
The girls stood still for a moment while Saeunn listened. She heard the usual castle noises—settling stones, mice scampering—but there were no footsteps. She did hear someone stumbling around in the castle beyond the entrance of the corridor, but then a toilet door in the castle creaked open and shut. Nothing to worry them down here.
“I think we’re all right,” Saeunn said.
Ulla squeezed Saeunn’s hand, then leaned forward and bussed her cheek with her lips. “I love you, little sister. I would be lost without you,” she whispered. “No matter what happens to me, you know that’s true.”
Ulla drew back, leaving the lingering scent of her perfume. It was exquisite, like everything else about Ulla. But what impressed Saeunn most was that none of her perfection seemed to have gone to her head. In fact, the von Dunstig children were certainly overindulged, but none of them were really spoiled. She’d met lots of other children of nobility elsewhere who were.
“Ready to go, big sister?” Saeunn whispered back.
Ulla smothered a giggle. “Oh, yes,” she said.
Saeunn had not been lying to her star—even if that were possible. She was happy here in Shenandoah.
When she’d come, she’d expected to have to endure the place. She’d figured that Shenandoah was going to be a layover, a diplomatic stop she had to take for a few years. Her father wanted to explore an alliance between the elves of Amberstone and the Mark of Shenandoah.
The arrangement had been made with Duke Otto to foster Saeunn for ten years, which, she knew, would seem like a long time to a human but was practically a blink of an eye to a Child of Starlight.
People died. Elves did not.
Oh, elves might be killed by accident or in battle, and there were rare diseases that could kill them. But if she avoided any of these calamities, Saeunn would go on living for century after century.
Right now, though, she was very young for an elf. She was sixty-two years old. A teenager.
Although she’d been alive for decades, a lot of Saeunn’s early life, especially the very first few years, had been spent in the star-trance. She’d lived within the thoughts of her star, and sang her star’s part in the great song the stars sang to the dragons. Stars were not just friends to the elves. They weren’t just family.
The stars were elves and the elves were stars. Like one of the saga singers had put it:
Light that splatters into matter,
and to living bodies scatters.
Souls of elves are starlight spatter,
stars that come to Earth to dwell.
Elves are stars and stars are elves.
The souls of elves were made of starlight, and each elf shared that soul with a particular star in the night sky. Saeunn was her star made into a person upon the Earth.
She did not understand exactly how this worked, or why it should be. She’d asked her mother once, but her mother had smiled and replied, “Ask me again in a hundred years. Then you might be ready to understand the answer.”
Saeunn might be over sixty years old, but because of the nature of elves, she had the mind, the personality, of a teenager. It took elves a very long time to mature into a grown-up.
Saeunn led Ulla the rest of the way down the corridor until they emerged into the outside kitchen, a single large room with four huge fire hearths for cooking. The dim glow of the half moon outside filtered through the kitchen’s high-set windows. After the complete darkness of the corridor, there was moonlight.
Moonlight!
Saeunn was drawn to it like a cat to catnip. She stepped into a spot where the moon was shining through most brightly. To be touched by pure moonlight felt good to an elf, like a nice, long bath might to a human—only this feeling was a lot more intense.
“Uh, Saeunn.” Ulla nudged her gently. “Moonlight’s got you again.”
Saeunn started. She blinked her eyes hard and shook her shoulders to bring herself out of the shallow trance.
“Sorry,” she said too loudly, then continued in a whisper. “I’m back now.”
“I swear you might stand there the rest of the night if I didn’t say something.”
“I might. You’ve seen me do it before.”
Ulla nodded. “Okay, now for the scary part,” she whispered. “Can you hear the bailey guard?”
Saeunn went to stand behind the kitchen’s wooden door, closed her eyes, and listened closely for a moment.
The crunch of leather-soled boot on gravel. Clank of mailed shirt. Blowing of breath by a cold man trying to warm his cupped hands.
“Cold as a well-digger’s butt,” muttered a low voice.
It was Morast, who sounded like he gargled with gravel.
“He’s near the middle of the courtyard,” Saeunn said.
Ulla moved up beside Saeunn. She stared at the kitchen door as if she could see through it. “Is he moving toward us or away?”
Saeunn lifted a hand to tell her to wait. “Give me a moment.”
The flap of the banners and flags upon the battlements. The yawn and sigh of the guard. Then the crunch of boots getting softer, farther away.
Saeunn turned to Ulla. “He’s headed to the other side of the bailey with his back to us. Let’s be very quiet and really quick.”
Ulla nodded. The two girls worked together to open the kitchen door with as little noise as possible, and then only enough to let them to slip out.
They kept to the edge of the bailey and worked their way past the different trade stalls. When they passed a stable, Saeunn heard a horse start and stamp. She knew this horse.
“Soft now, Slep,” she whispered toward the stable. “Everything’s all right.” Slep evidently heard her, because she settled back down.
Finally they arrived at their destination. Their hearts were racing, but neither girl was breathing hard. Despite her delicate looks, Ulla was in good condition. She spent a lot of time outdoors riding, walking, and climbing to spots where she could work on her paintings. She got plenty of exercise. Ulla did tend to tan, and so she had to keep herself well covered even in the hottest weather.
Saeunn glanced through the crack in the stall door of the smith’s shop.
Yes, the bell ringer was tied off to the side. If it weren’t, they might get a nasty surprise when the iron triangle tolled.
She quietly tugged on the string attached to the wooden latch on the inside and pushed the door open. Ulla slipped inside, and she followed.
“You’re finally here,” said a low male voice from the rear of the shop.
Ulla stepped into the light cast by the banked coals, her face beaming. “Told you I’d make it.”
From the shadows stepped Grer Smead, Raukenrose Castle’s chief smith.
He was a commoner. Ulla was a duke’s daughter.
Humans and their rules. Saeunn shook her head.
This could be a major disaster in the making.
Or something amazing.
Or both.
Ulla stepped into Grer’s arms.
Then they kissed. For a long, long time.
Saeunn stepped back toward the forge to give them more privacy. The heat from the glowing coals felt good against her back.
Finally Ulla turned her head from Grer and looked over at her. “You should go to bed now, little sister,” Ulla said. “Grer will take me back in.”
Because he had to deal with woodcutters to get fuel for his forge, Grer got the best price. Wulf’s mother, who knew a good deal when she saw it, had given him a contract to deliver a cord of wood for the castle fireplaces each morning.
He would trundle the wood in on a woodcart that would normally take two men to handle. Grer was incredibly strong from hammering metal all day. He would make several deliveries to different spots so that the staff could reach the wood more easily and get the castle fireplaces going. Castles were chilly in general, and now in the month of Gormanuder, a room could be downright freezing without a good fire to warm it.
To get Ulla back inside, she climbed into a burlap bag and Grer rolled her in on a cart full of wood. In fact, since one of the inside woodpiles was near her bedchamber, he was able to deliver Ulla right to her door.
“You don’t want me to stand watch or something?”
Grer let out a low chuckle. “We’ll be as quiet as mice,” he said.
“And you have school tomorrow,” Ulla said. “I’ve already kept you up way past your bed time.”
This was true.
“Okay, sister. Good night. And good night, Grer Smead.”
“Pleasant evening to you, Lady Saeunn,” Grer replied. “Ulla and I…well, we thank you.”
Saeunn looked at Ulla, whose face seemed aglow after the kiss. “I love my sister,” she said. “So this makes me happy.”
The night was chilly when she slipped out of the smith’s shop. She got past the bailey guard once again, this time much more easily without Ulla, and made her way through the lightless kitchen corridor back toward the castle and her own bedchamber.
In the darkness of the corridor she spoke once again with her star. Ulla seems so happy and content, even though what she’s doing is crazy. Do you think I will ever fall in love, my star, my soul?
Again she heard her star’s crystalline laughter. But this time her star did not reply.
Never mind, Saeunn thought. I already know the answer.
Yes, she would. And she knew whom she would fall in love with. She’d seen it in the moonlight on this and other nights.
Another disaster in the making.
Maybe it was just the moonlight affecting her, but it was funny how at the moment she really, truly didn’t care. She was having too much fun.