So Taj had grown up, and married a suitable Terahn wife. Vineeta was pretty enough to keep her son interested long enough to sire the required children. Amhar had been born ten months after the marriage. He was followed by his two sisters, Elvyne and Casperia. Amren, the younger son, had been the fourth, born eight years later, and was followed the next year by Taj’s youngest daughter, Mauhault.
But while offering her mother-in-law outward respect, the young Domina Vineeta found it disquieting that her husband’s mother looked as though she could be one of her own companions. The daughter of a wealthy widower, she had been chosen by Taj’s aunts Anselma and Narda to be Taj’s wife. Motherless, she looked to them for advice. As neither of Magnus Hauk’s two older sisters had liked Lara, their opinions drove Vineeta’s attitude toward her mother-in-law. Taj’s youngest aunt, the Lady Sirvat, Lara’s best friend, had attempted to heal the growing breach, but the damage was done.
Anselma and Narda whispered a stream of ignorance and prejudice into Vineeta’s small ear. Vineeta had believed it all. She kept her children from their grandmother, clutching them to her dramatically when Lara entered the nursery. The children sensed that something was wrong, and grew to fear the beautiful golden-haired woman who came to see them. Eventually they became so hysterical at the mere sight of Lara that after complaining to her son, Lara had stayed away.
“Children are like that, Mother,” the Dominus Taj told her. “They have their shy moments even with their parents.”
“I have birthed enough children to know what they are like,” Lara had replied sharply. “Those two harpies who are your father’s older sisters have taught Vineeta to fear me, and she in turn teaches my grandchildren. Amhar actually hissed at me and made a sign with his hands, which I imagine he has been told is something to ward off evil. I’m afraid I laughed at him, which sent him into a flood of tears and shrieking as he ran from me.”
“It is a phase,” Taj defended his oldest son.
“It is prejudice,” Lara said quietly. “You have no magic in you, Taj, but you are still the son of a faerie woman. Be glad you are an ordinary mortal for if you were not you would face what I now face. It was never so in your father’s time. Or perhaps it was, and your father protected me for he loved me. I am your mother, my lord Dominus, and that alone should command respect. But if your wife and aunts are allowed to treat me so shabbily, then your children will, too. Once you stood by my side against those who would mistreat me. You no longer do. It saddens me, but I will always love you even if I no longer like you,” Lara told her son, and by the shocked look upon his face she knew she had made her point.
But she could not, would not stand between Taj and Vineeta. She would not demand that he make a choice between his mother and his wife. That was a mortal way; it was not the faerie way. And so her grandchildren had become virtual strangers to Lara. But when Taj’s younger son was to be sent to Hetar as Terah’s ambassador, he came to Lara for more knowledge than anyone else could give him.
“Tell me about Hetar,” he said.
“Why do you need to know?” Lara asked him.
“I am to represent Terah,” Amren said proudly. “You are Hetarian. You know what I need to know.”
“I am faerie,” Lara told him. “I was born in the forests of Hetar, daughter of Ilona, who is Queen of the Forest Faeries, and a Hetarian named John Swiftsword. Swiftsword was your great-grandfather. His memory is much respected in Hetar, and especially among the Crusader Knights.”
“What are they?” Amren inquired.
Lara explained.
“So in Hetar there is a distinct social strata, as there is here in Terah,” he said.
“Even more so,” Lara told the young man. “In Terah there is the Dominus, his family, and an underclass of merchants, farmers, artisans and the like. In Hetar there is the Lord High Ruler, the High Council made up of representatives from the provinces, as well as a Merchants Guild to which all merchants and shopkeepers belong. There is a Mercenary Guild, the order of the Crusader Knights, the Pleasure Mistresses Guild, the Guild of Pleasure Women. There are farmers and traders, healers and those who perform miscellaneous services.”
“It sounds very complicated,” Amren noted. “But you must teach me so I know it all, and do not embarrass my father.”
“Must? How dare you speak to me so, Amren, grandson of Magnus Hauk. In Hetar how one appears is paramount, and good manners are all-important. If you are loud and rude, Hetar will believe that all who live in Terah are the same way. Your first impression will be the most important impression you make. You cannot allow Hetar to continue their foolish fantasy of being the only civilized kingdom in our world. Still I must consider if I will educate you in the ways of Hetar. Is it even possible to do so, considering how you have been raised?”
Amren was a very handsome young man. In many ways he reminded her of Magnus Hauk with his dark blond hair and his blue eyes. But his lips were thin, and his jaw weak. Yet he had a certain charm, Lara thought, and perhaps he could be taught to represent Terah with dignity and elegance. He smiled at Lara now. “Please teach me what I must know, Grandmother,” he said.
Lara laughed aloud. “Never since any of you were born have I heard the word Grandmother directed toward me,” she said. “Come back tomorrow in the second hour after midday. I will have decided by then if I will help you.”
“Could you really turn me into a toad?” he asked her half-seriously.
Lara nodded slowly. “If I choose to,” she told him.
“The old aunts say you are evil,” Amren said.
“Narda and Anselma are a pair of dried-up old biddies. And they were the same in their youth. They know far more of evil than I do. Your aunt Sirvat was the only one among Magnus Hauk’s family who befriended me, and she is now gone.”
“My mother loves them,” Amren said.
“I am glad for them that someone does,” Lara remarked tartly. “Now, go away, boy. When you return tomorrow we shall talk again.”
“If I return,” he replied.
Lara laughed again and waved him from her. Of course the next afternoon Amren came, and for the next two months he spent time with his grandmother each afternoon learning all about Hetar. When she thought he was near to being ready, she called in the royal tailor and personally oversaw the creation of his wardrobe. The royal tailor, being a clever man, smiled and nodded in agreement with the Domina Vineeta and the Ladies Narda and Anselma when they told him what to do in regard to Amren’s clothing. Then, following Lara’s careful instructions, the tailor created a magnificent wardrobe of silks, velvets and satins, trimmed in gold and bejeweled with semiprecious stones and crystals. Shoes and boots of the finest leather, some of the shoes burnished with gold or silver. There were capes and cloaks trimmed with fur, some lined in cloth of gold or silver. His sword and the several daggers among his ambassadorial possessions had handles and hilts studded with precious jewels.
When Dominus Taj saw all his mother had done for his younger son, he felt both pleased and sad. Briefly he recalled the childhood before his father had been killed, when she had loved him, and indulged him shamelessly. He remembered warm Autumn days when she would put him before her on her horse, Dasras, and gallop across the plains of Terah into the blue skies above, so he might see their world as others could not. When his father had died she had been his strength, gently but firmly guiding him, putting his interests, and those of Terah, first. Taj now knew by virtue of his years that only his magical faerie-woman mother could have been that bighearted. He realized now that she had saved Terah far more than once, and he was ashamed of his behavior. Looking at her, he said, “I have not the words.”