While Biera and Melusine withdraw from their husband’s company, the last of Auberon’s wives did not leave his side. Instead, she anchored her power at the heart of his own demesne, creating something greater still in the combination of their magic.
* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne
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17th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297
The faerie princess, Osma, led the weary knights down a dirt trail through the trees. Lorengel helped Cynric along, and they did not move quickly. By the lightness of Osma’s step, and the way she bounced along the path like a puppy, Trist guessed that she could have left them all behind easily.
“The Well will soothe your hurts,” Osma said, from the front of the company where she walked with Acrasia at her side. The older faerie had neither returned to Trist’s sword, nor taken a place beside him as had been her habit in the past. The revelation that Auberon had sent her to spy on him as a child had torn apart what little trust she had rebuilt in his mind.
For his part, Trist was exhausted, despite the effects of his Boons. By his best count, he had not truly been able to rest in well over a week, since some time along the road between Falais and Rocher de la Garde. During the intervening days, he had fought over and over again, first in the Ardenwood and at the edge of Camaret-à-Arden, then during the long days of the siege, and then to escape imprisonment at the castle of Cheverny. The desperate struggle in the Tomb of Camiel had come when he was at his absolute lowest, and now it was all he could do to trudge forward, one foot in front of the other.
“What is this well,” Lorengel asked, the tone of his voice sharp with suspicion.
“The Well of Niviène,” Acrasia spoke up, “is a spring which one of the three faerie queens has bound herself to. While Auberon’s Graal is the strongest healing magic we possess, bathing in the waters of the spring is only slightly less potent.”
“Few mortals have ever been given such an honor,” Osma pointed out. “I can recall only two - Sir Maddoc, and Queen Elantia.”
“You all keep pointing out what an honor it is, to follow in Sir Maddoc’s footsteps,” Trist grumbled. “But for all of it, he ended up in the grave. And you are still here. I cannot help but wonder whether he might not have been better off without all of these honors.”
Acrasia frowned, and though he did not lift his head, Trist saw it with the faerie-sight that was becoming easier all the time to use in place of his eyes. “Let me call ahead,” Osma said, and skipped forward along the path, down an incline crossed by roots so thick they almost became steps. “Mother!”
Below, Trist could hear the murmur of running water, and when they rounded the last turn of the path, it was to arrive at an irregular pool, roughly in the shape of an oval, perhaps thirty feet across at its widest point. The water there was shallow and clear, and the bed of the Well covered in stones smoothed and rounded by the long working of the current against them. A set of wide, flat slabs of rock had been placed as steps down into the pool, and to Trist’s left, out one end, a stream flowed, cutting through the earth of the forest floor.
Osma stood at the edge of the Well, grasping the hands of a tall, thin faerie woman. Queen Niviène’s hair was long and dark, her features fine and delicate like all of the courtiers attending Auberon above, and her skin pale as moonlight on water. She wore a white dress, and when she turned from her daughter to look the rest of them over, her eyes narrowed.
“Welcome,” the faerie queen greeted them, nonetheless. “My daughter tells me that the king has promised you rest and healing, and you shall have it. Acrasia, Osma, help me tend the wounds that afflict these knights.”
The three faerie women bustled around the Exarchs, unstrapping pauldrons and lifting aside shirts of chain. As they worked, Trist noticed steam rising from the Well, as from a cauldron of water set to boil over a fire.
“It will soothe your muscles,” Niviène told him, then took his hand in hers and led him into the pool. The water was hot - nearly hot enough to scald, but not quite, and Trist shuddered in relief when he finally sat down. Stone benches had been set along the edges of the Well, and it was one of those to which Niviène brought him. The water reached midway up his chest, and when the faerie set to work cleaning him with a cloth, he sat back and allowed it to happen.
His own relief was nothing compared to Margaret’s reaction, when she slipped into the pool. Trist did his best not to pay close attention, to respect the woman’s modesty, but he could no longer simply close his eyes or turn his head. His sight extended all around him now, and it was impossible to avoid noticing her broad shoulders and well muscled arms, built from years of fighting. Her body was so different from Clarisant’s, or from Acrasia’s, and he wondered if that was what Yaél might look like when grown: a woman built for war.
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“I can feel the power here,” Margaret said, and, pushing off from her feet and turning, slid on her back into the water, skimming just beneath the surface and stretching out her hands. She took a breath, and ducked her head beneath the water, and was grinning when she re-emerged, hair plastered around her neck and shoulders. “It isn’t like the sea, but it is wonderful. I feel like I’ve just slept a day and a half and then woke.”
“You are the Exarch of my sister Rahab,” Queen Niviène said, soaking her cloth in the water and then wringing it out, before scrubbing at a particularly stubborn crust of dried blood behind Trist’s right ear. “Of course you would feel it. Are you going to come out, sister, or remain hidden?”
Rahab shook her wings, and stood at the edge of the pool, but did not enter. “You can see me one way or the other,” the Angelus said. “It hardly matters.”
“It is true, then?” Lorengel asked, settling onto his own bench. “The faeries and Angelus - you are all the same.”
“Not the same,” Rahab said. “Some of us take responsibility for our power. Others turn their heads from the suffering of the world, and think only of themselves.”
“Let us not bring up the old argument again,” Niviène said. “Your Exarchs are ill-used, Sister. They need rest. Can we agree on that, at least?”
“We can agree on that,” Rahab allowed, with a sigh. “You all may as well be at ease. We are at the very heart of Auberon’s power, and there is little any of us could do should he choose to betray you.”
“How comforting,” Cynric said, with a chuckle. Osma had quite a task helping him into the pool, and puffs of dried blood rose into the water all around his body, obscuring the stones beneath the Well.
“Once we have cleaned your wounds, we will leave you to speak,” Niviène said. “I think, Lady Acrasia, that you had better come with my daughter and I, as well. It has been too long since we had the pleasure of your company.”
Acrasia furrowed her brow. She stood at the edge of the pool, but had made no move to enter, or to help any of the Exarchs. “As you wish, my queen,” she said, finally, and Trist guessed that she was unable to refuse. Finally, their wounds washed clean, the knights were left to rest in the hot waters of the spring.
“Stay in the water until I come to fetch you out,” Queen Niviène admonished them, pausing at the top of the stone stair that led out of the pool. Her white dress was sodden, and clung to her body so tightly she might as well have been wearing nothing at all. “The healing power of the spring needs time to work. Daughter, Acrasia, come along.” Arm in arm, the three faerie women followed the path back up toward Auberon’s host.
“So,” Cynric said, after a moment of silence. “What do we do now? We’ve escaped Cheverny.”
“We get out of this cursed place and make our way to King Lionel’s army,” Lorengel proposed. “I will not be the pawn of the faerie king, and I know where my loyalties lie.”
“That is an easy choice for you,” Cynric argued. “You still have both your arms. What good would I do him, even if I went? I’d be cut down by the first daemon we face.”
“This is no time to give in to despair,” Margaret chastised him. “Losing an arm does not make you any less an Exarch, Cynric. War was never your chief value to the old king, in any event. Lionel will need you at his side, to advise him, just as his father did.”
“As you say,” Cynric muttered. “What of you, Sir Trist? Back with us to save the kingdom, or will you do the bidding of the King of Shadows?”
Trist grimaced. “I gave my word that I would go to Velatessia,” he admitted. “After the siege at Rocher de la Garde. Unless I want another broken Oath hanging around my neck,” he continued, “I must go. And yet, I do not like it.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a puppet dancing at Auberon’s strings, either,” Lorengel said, and Margaret hushed him.
“Have you forgotten already how many times over you would be dead without Trist’s help?” Margaret asked. “Trist broke us out of Cheverny, held our pursuers so we could escape, and got us out of the Tomb. Not to mention that I suspect our reception here would have been much less warm,” she splashed her hand into the water of the pool, “if he had not been with us.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Cynric observed. “Apparently we’ve come in time for a reunion of long lost family. Being the Exarch of the king’s sister-in-law might have done well enough for you, Maggie.”
“I am sick of being a piece on Auberon’s playing board,” Trist admitted. “I thought I knew where I came from, but it has been him for over twenty years. Guiding my parents to do what he wanted before I was ever born, sending Acrasia to watch me grow. She never told me that. I thought, no matter what happened after, at least while I was a child we had something real. But I was only ever a mission from her king, and my brother paid the price. And I do not think this business in Velatessia is the end of what they want from me.”
“They played Sir Maddoc for a fool, as well, in the end,” Dame Margaret observed, her voice quiet.
Trist scowled. “All I can think,” he said, grappling for words as he went, as if feeling his way through a fog, “is how many times we’ve been forced to do what other people want. Not even just us,” he continued, waving his hand around the pool to indicate the others. “But all of Narvonne. We were conquered by the Etalans, and then invaded by daemons. And supposedly the Angelus came to save us, but they were really just another kind of invader. And a thousand years before, even the faeries were not native to this place - they came here from whatever world they were born in. Thirteen hundred years of people from other places invading our home, generation after generation, and changing us. Faeries making our ancestors offer up sacrifices in the bone-fires, Angelus giving us rules, Etalan legions building cities and roads and forts. It makes me wonder what we would be like - what Narvonne would look like - if they had all just let us be, and never come here. Would our ancestors even recognize what we have become?”
“You cannot change the past,” Margaret cautioned him.
“No,” Trist said, making up his mind. “But perhaps we can change the world our children will live in. I do not want any more cataclysms when my child is grown. At long last, is it not time for an ending? I will go to this gate,” he said. “I will go to Velatessia. And I will make certain that it never happens again.”