She sighed and pressed her face into the silk, perhaps trying to feel some essence of her mother in it, but only inhaling the scent of cedar clinging to a garment left long in storage.
She curled upon the bed with the gown, and finally, exhausted, she dropped into sleep.
Karigan awoke to daylight filling the room. For a moment she forgot where she was and sat up shaking her head. She pushed aside her blanket. No, it was her mother’s gown. Then it came back to her—she was in her father’s room. She rubbed sleep from her eyes.
“Well,” Aunt Stace said in an acerbic tone from beside the fireplace, startling Karigan. She held a poker, and was hale and quite wide awake. “Good morning to you. It is the tenth hour of the day.”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Karigan mumbled.
“I imagine not. It seems both you and your father kept late hours.”
“Where is he?” Karigan asked, wondering why he’d not evicted her from his room.
“Out and about on his snowshoes. He came in briefly at eight hour for tea and a muffin, then headed straight back out.” Aunt Stace shook her head in bemusement. “Said he was out checking the grounds and roads.”
Karigan raised her eyebrows in incredulity. “Why?”
Aunt Stace rolled her eyes. “If I knew that one, Kari girl, I’d tell you. You know how he gets when he’s some notion in his head—whatever it is.”
Karigan nodded. She did know. Nothing would stop him no matter what obstacles lay in his path—not even a snowstorm. She glanced at the window as if to catch a glimpse of him tramping around on his snowshoes, but saw only frost coating the glass.
Probably checking if the roads are passable so he can be rid of me.
Aunt Stace set the poker aside and came to Karigan, smoothing her skirts as she sat on the bed. “What brought this on?” she asked quietly, touching the gown. “Something your father said?”
“No. I ... I don’t know. But Mother—I miss her. I hardly remember her.” Then, out of nowhere, tears came and Aunt Stace wrapped her arms around her, holding her close. She smelled of soap and cinnamon.
“I know, dear, I know.” Aunt Stace rubbed her back. “You do realize she loved you very much, don’t you?”
Karigan sniffed and nodded.
“Good. That’s the most important thing.”
“I remember she liked to sing to me.”
“Yes, she did, and she sang sweetly.”
“One thing I didn’t inherit from her,” Karigan said, and she laughed.
“But you’ve her eyes, her hair, and many of her lovely attributes,” Aunt Stace said. “Never forget she lives on in you.”
Karigan almost started sobbing again, but swallowed it back, and wiped her nose with her sleeve.
“I think,” Aunt Stace said, “a hearty breakfast would make you feel much better.”
Karigan nodded. She was hungry.
“Good. Then let me help you fold this.” Aunt Stace smoothed a sleeve of the gown. “Your mother was so beautiful in this. Absolutely radiant. Your father on the other hand ...” Aunt Stace chuckled, and it grew into a hearty laugh.
Karigan’s aunts had told the story of her father’s wedding enough times that all one of them had to do was say the word wedding and they’d all break out in helpless laughter. Except her father who would usually groan and leave the room.
“He—he turned white as the belly of a rayfish when he saw Kariny.” All of Aunt Stace jiggled. “He was so nervous!”
It was amusing, Karigan thought, to imagine her father sprawled in the moon priest’s arms while the lord-mayor of Corsa and all the elite of the merchants guild looked on. She couldn’t help but join in with Aunt Stace’s laughter.
When they’d mostly recovered, they lifted the gown to fold it, and something solid tumbled from it and plopped onto the bed.
“What in the heavens ... ?” Aunt Stace scooped up the object.
“What is it?” Karigan asked as she finished folding the gown and placed it carefully in the chest.
“A crystal of some sort.” Aunt Stace opened her hand to reveal a clear, rounded crystal that glinted brightly as the light hit it. She rolled it atop her palm and it seemed to collect all the daylight and firelight in the room and recast it in rainbow hues that shimmered on the walls and ceiling. “Pretty thing.”
“Muna’riel,” Karigan murmured, shocked to stillness.
“Say again?” Something odd lit in Aunt Stace’s eyes.
“Muna’riel.” Karigan knew exactly what it was for she had once possessed one, but what in the name of all the gods was an Eletian moonstone doing here among the folds of her mother’s wedding gown?
“Moona-ree-all,” Aunt Stace muttered, scratching her head. “Now that jogs something from a ways back ...”
“What?” Karigan asked.
“I’m thinking.” Aunt Stace glanced down as if searching her memory. “Moona-ree-all. It was something your mother said ...”
“Mother?” Karigan trembled, resisting the urge to shake her aunt to jog her memory.
“Aaah, that’s it,” Aunt Stace said, as if to herself. “We’d wondered what she was talking about, but put it down to the fever.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“It was near the end,” Aunt Stace said, and she sat on the bed again, patting the mattress to indicate Karigan should do likewise.
A moonstone, Karigan thought as she sat. My mother had a moonstone.
“Your mother was so very ill,” Aunt Stace continued. “In and out of delirium. She sang in words we did not know, pointed out dead relatives in the room no one else could see. She sings to me, she kept saying. Who? we’d ask, but she’d only answer, Like when I was pregnant with Kari. She sings to me.” Aunt Stace shrugged. “We didn’t know who she meant, but then she pointed out her grandmama and grandpapa, long dead of course. Maybe it was her grandmama that did the singing?”
Karigan shuddered, wondering if she weren’t the only one in her bloodline with a talent for seeing the dead.
“Then quite suddenly,” Aunt Stace said, “she grabbed Stevic’s wrist—made us all jump. Makes me shiver to remember. Stevic leaned down close to her to hear what she said.”
“And what did she say?” Karigan asked, almost whispering.
Aunt Stace’s eyebrows drew together. “Give Kari the moona-ree-all. That’s just what she said. Give Kari the moona-ree-all. She kept saying it till she dropped Stevic’s wrist in exhaustion. She went peacefully after that, simply faded in her sleep, almost ... almost smiling.”
Karigan had heard a little about her mother’s final moments, how she died peacefully surrounded by those she loved. Never did she hear about her mother seeing dead family members, or about her request that Karigan receive the moonstone.
“I guess this is yours,” Aunt Stace said, holding the crystal to the light, entranced by its beauty. “It is yours, come to you after all these years. At the time, we had no notion of what your mother was talking about, nor were we aware of the crystal’s existence, so we could not give it to you as she requested, and we thought ... We thought it best not to tell you about her last words, because we could only guess it was the fever that made her speak so, and we did not want an account of her confused state to sadden you.”
More secrets, Karigan thought, but she was not angry. Just stunned. Stunned and perplexed.
“Here you go, dear.” With some reluctance, Aunt Stace rolled the moonstone onto Karigan’s outstretched hand.
The moment it hit her palm it illuminated with such brilliance they both had to shield their eyes.
“My heavens!” Aunt Stace exclaimed. “How did it do that?”
“It’s Eletian,” Karigan replied. “A muna’riel is a moonstone—it contains a moonbeam.”
“Eletian magic?” Aunt Stace asked in a hushed voice.
Karigan nodded, and the moonstone’s radiance faded to a soft, silvery glow. It sent warmth through her palm and up her arm. She had not been sure if it wo
uld light up for her, but it had, just like the very first moonstone she touched. That one had belonged, originally, to a pair of eccentric, elderly sisters who lived in the heart of the Green Cloak Forest. It was one magical artifact among many others their father, Professor Berry, had collected over his lifetime. The Berry sisters had been so impressed it lit up for Karigan when it never had for them that they had given it to her.
She was never clear why the magic worked for her and not others, but a while after she had acquired the moonstone, she had met an Eletian named Somial who had told her the moonstone’s favor meant she was “Laurelyn-touched,” a friend of the Elt Wood. Exactly what that meant, she could not say, especially when some Eletians treated her more like an enemy.
Laurelyn the Moondreamer was a fabled Eletian queen of old, queen of the legendary, lost realm of Argenthyne. Fabled until Karigan learned both Laurelyn and her realm had truly existed. Argenthyne had been conquered by Mornhavon the Black and transformed into Kanmorhan Vane, the Blackveil Forest. Laurelyn’s fate was unknown, even to the Eletians.
At the moment, however, she was more overcome by the idea that this moonstone had been her mother’s. How? Why? And Kariny had wanted her to have it, which only prompted more questions.
When she glanced up, her aunt had that look in her eyes again. “It is strange,” she said. “Strange your mother should possess such a thing. Eletian, for heavens’ sakes! And yet ... And yet, it is in a way not strange to me.”
Karigan waited, not daring to interrupt.
“Your mother, as sensible a woman as she was, also had another side to her. A bit dreamy. Came down the maternal line, no doubt.” Without explaining the last, Aunt Stace continued, “That’s where all the songs and stories came from, from that dreamy part of her nature. How she loved to tell you those stories and sing to you!”
It occurred to Karigan, with a prickling on the back of her neck, that her mother most often sang of Laurelyn the Moondreamer and Argenthyne.
“Then there were the times,” Aunt Stace said, “when she’d ride out at night. To sing to the stars, she told us. Stevic often joined her, and they were like two youths caught up in love for the first time, rather than married folk with responsibilities and a child to attend to.”
“I don’t remember,” Karigan said.
“There is much a child will not remember, especially when it’s something that happened after her bedtime! And, actually, they went out like that well before you were born. Two young lovers. It would not surprise me in the least if you were conceived during one of their jaunts.”
Out in the woods? Her parents? Among the trees, ferns, and wild creatures? Karigan’s cheeks warmed. Knowing her parents were her parents was one thing, but thinking about the act that made them her parents was quite another. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands as if to banish the image now planted in her mind, of her parents joined together on the mossy floor of some forest glade with the moonlight beaming down on them ...
Aunt Stace smiled in amusement, seeming to know exactly where Karigan’s thoughts ventured, but then she sobered and resumed her story. “Even when Stevic was away, Kariny rode out into the night alone. Sevano used to have fits over her safety, but she refused his escort and always returned unharmed and happy. She especially loved full moons. It makes me wonder ...”
“If she was having an affair?” Karigan demanded, her mind still stuck in that moonlit clearing.
“No,” Aunt Stace replied thoughtfully. “It was not in her, I think. She loved your father wholly, was devoted to him. But I wonder if, in her wanderings, she met Elt out there.” She gestured vaguely to indicate the countryside. “Ever since the trouble at the D’Yer Wall, you do hear about more sightings of the Elt. Even near Corsa. But maybe they’ve always been out there and just didn’t show themselves. Maybe they befriended your mother and that’s how she came to possess the crystal.”
It was as good an explanation as any, Karigan thought. Eletians did wander, and had, as her aunt suggested, always been “out there,” even though for most Sacoridians, they inhabited only legends. They’d become more apparent after the D’Yer Wall was breached, no longer characters in fairy tales and songs, but very alive, and very real.
She tightened her fingers around the moonstone and rays of light thrust out like blades between them. Her mother wanted it to come to her. Her mother had called it by the Eletian name, muna’riel.
And Karigan had thought her father kept secrets.
CURSED
At Aunt Stace’s encouragement, Karigan went downstairs to have some breakfast. Food did much to restore her spirits. While she ate, Aunt Stace insisted she show the moonstone to her other aunts. The moment it left her hands and passed into theirs, its light extinguished and it became nothing more than an exquisite lump of crystal.
She did not know what to make of it. Why, she wondered yet again, did moonstones light up for her when they would not for others?
Laurelyn-touched, Somial had said.
It filled her with a sense of something larger going on, something beyond her own ken. She felt caught in a story not of her own making, powerless to direct her own destiny. She shuddered. She did not like it when outside forces intervened in her life, like the Rider call.
“Ugh,” she said. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but so much had happened in her life in recent years that the feeling wasn’t easy to dismiss.
After breakfast, she wandered from the kitchen into the main hall, fiddling with the moonstone in her pocket, and soon found herself standing in the doorway of her father’s office. Since she had no ready answers for the mysteries surrounding the moonstone, and little else to do with her idle time, she decided to at least try to distract herself by looking through the family collection of books.
Her father was still out and about and so she had no compunction about entering his domain. She strode in and over to the shelves, and as her gaze slipped across the spines of numerous leatherbound volumes, she was conscious of the portrait of her mother behind her father’s desk. She almost felt a sensation of being watched, of someone peering over her shoulder. Maybe it was having handled her mother’s gown earlier and talking about her that made her feel so present. Karigan tried to shake off the feeling, but couldn’t quite, so she focused her attention as best she could on the books.
The G’ladheon library held numerous old ledgers and her father’s copy of Wagner’s Navigation. Karigan used to love leafing through it to look at the charts bound within, with their vibrant colors and drawings of fantastical sea creatures. There were also some histories and books on commerce on the shelves, and another favorite, Amry’s Book of Leviathans, which contained intricate prints of all the porpoises and whales that inhabited the deeps. It was a venerable guidebook found on many a whaling ship.
There were few novels, but Karigan’s gaze was drawn to her favorite, The Adventures of Gilan Wylloland. She pulled it off the shelf; the leather cover was dyed a deep green, and the pages were edged with gold.
She sat with the book in her father’s armchair, flipping through pages worn by her own numerous readings. The book told of the unlikely exploits of Gilan and his sidekick, Blaine, as they traveled around the imaginary land of Arondel slaying dragons, rescuing princes and princesses, running off outlaws, and the like.
It occurred to Karigan that Gilan and Blaine did not seem to have any family or home, or any reliable way of supporting themselves, except for the occasional award of gold from a grateful prince or a treasure found in a goblin cave. They escaped every adventure more or less unscathed, more than ready for the next.
There appeared to be few lasting consequences for their actions, even for the blithe killing of villains. And while women continually swooned into Gilan’s arms, poor Blaine was permitted no such romantic attention. The author, however, made sure Blaine was devoted to Gilan and admired him with the whole of her heart, no matter he was, Karigan reflected, a self-absorbed boor.
Funny how
her perspective on the book had changed with her own experiences. If she were to write a sequel, she’d have Blaine smarten up, leave Gilan to his own folly, and work for a more noble purpose than simply gadding about the countryside in hopes of encountering adventure. No, she’d have Blaine offer her sword to the good prince who ruled his lands with a fair hand. Blaine’s adventures would have more purpose, be more realistic.
Maybe she should make Blaine a royal messenger? Karigan laughed at herself.
She removed the moonstone from her pocket to better view an illustration of the mighty, impossibly muscled and handsome Gilan clasping a sword in one hand and the bloody head of a monster in the other while Blaine gazed upon him with typical adoration.
The light dazzled, brightened the office as it never had been before. Objects leaped into brilliant relief, and the colors of the illustration jumped off the page. The gold edging sparkled.
On impulse, Karigan craned her neck around to gaze at her mother’s portrait. It was almost as though her mother came to life, the flesh so warm and real looking, her hair shining and eyes alight. There was more of a smile to her lips than Karigan remembered. She glanced away with a shiver and stared into the silvery white luminescence of the moonstone, the book forgotten on her lap.
She could almost hear her mother singing to her, singing to her of Laurelyn:The Moonman loved Laurelyn, brightest spirit
beneath the stars, and he built her a castle
of silver moonbeams tall,
in sylvan Argenthyne, sweet Silvermind ...
Karigan couldn’t help but glance once more at her mother’s portrait, remembering the warmth of her mother’s arms around her as she sang of Laurelyn.
That, combined with the discovery of the moonstone, was, she thought, a remarkable coincidence. Too remarkable.
Did her mother meet with Eletians in the woods as Aunt Stace suggested? How else would she have received the moonstone? The Berry sisters said an Eletian gave their father the one they possessed. If that was the case, then perhaps it was not so extraordinary that her mother had acquired one.