“I believe you already know who I am.”
“No, sir. If I must begin again, then you must do the same.”
“It is required?” His voice was low.
I let go of my teasing for a moment. “Only if you wish it. I am not Dassine.”
With another bow, he turned to me and lifted the hood from his face. His eyes were cast down, and his cheeks were flushed as I had known they would be. “It seems I have several names. You must choose the one that suits.”
“Aeren,” I said without thinking. Tall. Fair hair grown long enough to tie back with a white ribbon. Wide, muscular shoulders. Square jaw and strong, narrow cheeks that might have been sculpted to match the fairest carvings of our warrior gods. Wide-set eyes of astonishing blue.
At the time of his death, Karon had been thirty-two, slight of build, dark-haired and boyishly handsome, with high cheekbones and a narrow jaw. The rough-hewn stranger who had dropped into my life on Midsummer’s Day looked nothing like Karon. I had called him Aeren, for he had no memory of himself except that he shared a name with the bird-a gray falcon-that screeched over Poacher’s Ridge. I had learned that his own language named him D’Natheil, but this man was not D’Natheil either. I felt no scarcely restrained menace from him, The threadwork of lines about his eyes, the strands of silver in his fair hair, the air of quiet dignity stated that the one who stood in my mother’s garden was older, wiser, more thoughtful than the violent twenty-two-year-old Prince of Avonar. But he was not my husband… or so I told myself.
“As you wish.” Even as he accepted my judgment, he glanced up at me.
My breath caught. In that brief moment, as had happened four months ago in an enchanted cavern, I glimpsed the truth that lived behind his blue eyes. This was no one but Karon.
I started to speak his true name, to see if those syllables on my lips might spark some deeper memory. But no light of recognition had crossed his face when his eyes met mine. Patience, Dassine had said. You were his friend before you were his wife. He looked very tired.
“Would you like to walk?” I said. “There’s not much to see in this garden, but walking would be warmer as we wait.”
“I’d like that very much. I can’t seem to get enough of walking outdoors.”
Inside, I danced and leaped and crowed with delight; Karon had never gotten enough of walking out of doors. Outwardly, I smiled and gestured toward the path.
My boots crunched quietly as we strolled through the frosty morning. Karon broke our companionable silence first. “Tell me more of yourself.”
“What kind of things?”
“Anything. It’s refreshing to hear of someone who isn’t me.”
I laughed and began to speak of things I enjoyed, of books and conversation, of puzzles and music, of meadows and gardens. He chuckled when I told him of my first awkward attempts at growing something other than flowers. “Jonah couldn’t understand why his plants produced no beans, until the day he found me diligently picking off the blooms. I told him that my gardener had once said that plants would grow larger if we didn’t let them flower. Poor Jonah laughed until tears came, telling me that until we could eat the leaves I had best leave the flowers be. I had ruined the entire planting, a good part of their winter sustenance. It was devastating for one so proud of her intellect as I, but it was only the first of many gaps in my experience I was to discover.”
“This Jonah sounds like a kind gentleman. He was not your family, though, for if his crop was a good part of his winter sustenance, he was not the lord of this manor.”
Careful, Seri. Careful. “Jonah and Anne were like parents to me. I was estranged from my own family at the time.”
“But now you are reconciled?”
“They’re all dead now, my mother and my father and my only brother. The lord of this house is my ten-year-old nephew, and the lady is his mother, a somewhat… self-absorbed… young widow.”
“We have something in common, then. I’ve gained and lost two families in these past months, one I loved and one I hardly knew. And now I’m left with only Dassine.”
“And does Dassine teach you to grow beans, or does he pout, whine, and tell you nasty gossip?”
His laugh was deep and rich, an expression of his soul’s joy that had nothing to do with memory. “He has taught me a great deal, and done his share of pouting and cajoling, but no interesting gossip and certainly nothing of beans. Beans must be beyond my own experience also.” They were. I knew they were. I laughed with him.
The path led us toward a sagging arbor, a musty passage so hopelessly entangled with dead, matted vines that the sun could not penetrate it. Without thinking I followed my longtime habit and looked for an alternate way. But to avoid traversing the arbor we would need to trample through a muddy snarl of shrubbery or retrace our steps.
“Is there a problem with the path?” Karon asked, as I hesitated.
“No,” I said, feeling foolish. “I just need to let my eyes adjust so I won’t trip over whatever may be inside. I must get a gardener out here to clear all this away.” I led him quickly into the leafy shadows. The air was close and smelled of rotting leaves, and our feet crunched on the matted vines.
“Why are you afraid?” His voice penetrated the darkness like the beam of a lantern.
“I’m not… not really. A silly thing from childhood.”
“There’s nothing to fear.” His presence enfolded me.
Less than fifty paces and we rounded the curve and emerged into the sunlight. “No,” I said, my voice trembling ever so slightly. “Nothing to fear. This was my mother’s garden.” I walked briskly, stopping only when I reached the lambina tree again. From the corner of my eye I could see Dassine hobbling slowly toward us. Not yet! Not even an hour had passed.
Suddenly a quivering trace of enchantment pierced the morning, and the lambina burst into full bloom, each great yellow blossom unfolding like a miniature sunrise, its pungent fragrance wafting through the sharp air. In a few moments of wonder, the huge blossoms floated away like enormous, silken butterflies, only to be replaced by the soft white blooms of summer, heavy with sweet and languid scent, each cradled in its nest of bright green. And then the glorious dying, the white blossoms fading into burnished gold and the waxy green leaves into deep russet, falling at last to leave a royal carpet on the frozen ground.
“Thank you,” I said, my breath taken away by the marvel. “That was lovely.”
“It’s too cold to wake it completely, and I know I must be wary in this world, but I thought perhaps it might ease your sadness.”
“And so it has.” I hadn’t meant for him to see my tears. Perhaps he would think they were for my mother. “You’ll come again to visit me?” Dassine was almost with us.
“If my keeper allows it. I’d like it very-” Both voice and smile died away as he stared at my face. Knitting his brow, he touched my tears with his finger, and his expression changed as if I had grown wings or was a dead woman that walked before him. “Seri… you’re…” Pain glanced across his face, and the color drained out of him. Rigid, trembling, he whispered, “I know you.” He raised his hands to the sides of his head. “A beacon in darkness… Oh gods, so dark…” Eyes closed, head bent, he groaned and stepped backward. I reached out.