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1.2 - THE FIRST VIRTUE

(In the Age of the Godkind Men) - 25 Caën ot’Thir, 614 (Restored)

By the close of a year, the girl will learn the heft of a Reslean longsword, and by her journey’s end across the Divides, the slender hand that she now casts into the dust motes dancing softly before her will consign the soul of a monarch to the nethermost Depths of Death. “Would that I could bespell all the divided realm,” she whispers in her native Kyri, resting a guileless cheek against the cool pane of a fenestration.

Your grace?”

Dropping her hand, Setia Olmere, the Duchess Lyria, absently strokes the russet fur of the tom sleeping in her lap and asks of her companion, “Jisreen, have you ever been kissed?”

Seated before an ostentatious writing bureau, the quill she holds comfortably between her ink-stained fingers stilling, Jisreen Knobel, daughter of the knighted House of Haugh Knobel, turns to smilingly frown. “What concern is that, your grace?”

The duchess shifts upon the bench seat to fully face the gentlewoman across the length of the richly furnished study, well-tended leather creaking beneath her as she moves. “What was it like?”

Jisreen’s cheeks stain softly, a placid rose beneath the honeyed dusk of her foreign complexion. “Wherefrom comes this talk of kisses?”

Setia’s shoulders lift to a small extent.

In truth, ’tis hard to say. The first was unlike the second.”

A beat passes then distantly the girl murmurs, questing, “What of love?”

Her companion smooths nonexistent creases from the length of her rose and gilt embroidered gown, the bronze bangles she wears upon her left wrist raising a subdued clangor. “Love?” Jisreen sighs—the breath small, considerate—and shakes her head. “I believe love to be all a young woman wishes it. Heat. Flame. A steadfast passion that can also be gentle. Oh, so very gentle.”

Leaning to rest her slight shoulders against the glass of the window, Setia contends, “Love, if the gods were to have it, is loathing.”

Jisreen’s dark-of-night eyes dance with sudden mirth. “You are naught more than five and ten in years, your grace. Cynicism from one so young does not suit.”

Glancing away, the duchess turns a hazel gaze upon the palace’s grounds, catching note of a glittering martin. “So passes youth.”

Has it?”

Shrugging again—“Why do you suppose the priestess Dryta is here?”

A quick rap sounds at the study door, heralding the entrance of a brightly attired palace mainstay. “Ever I find you,” Ismin drolly insists, “amid dust laden tomes in company of seasoned dreamers.”

Jisreen laughs genially, querying lightly, “What brings the Lady Walbrath from her bed at such an ill-sainted hour as this?”

Ismin hums in minor pique. “Ungodslytis the hour, true.”

Does the morn find you well, Cousin?” Setia manages, dimpling.

Aye, pet, I am well but quite in dire need of a ride across the leas.”

I wonder, Cousin, does this dire need stem from the fact that Wintus Kryn is to lead a band of my Houses men in drills upon the leas before the nights festivities?” At the coquettish smile that is Ismin’s reply, Setia whispers fair words to the tom before setting him aside.

Truly, pet, that troublesome creature receives more of your affections than I.”

Take care, dearest,” Setia sweetly advises, rising to wrap an amative arm about the older girl’s ample waist, “to wipe clean the drivel falling so scathingly from your lips before proffering them in kiss.”

Pah,” Ismin voices, returning the loose embrace and bussing the bowed curve of Setia’s cheek.

Will you accompany us, Jisreen?” Setia asks, a tad archly.

Nay, your grace,” Jisreen returns reflectively. The morns pursuit ever calls.” To the brow that Ismin lifts above an amber gaze, Jisreen elaborates with—“An interpretation of the philosophies of Felds and Casselin.”

Too, what dry reads they are!” Ismin propounds, bodily directing Setia to the door and walking her beyond the portal without hesitation. “Come, pet, adventure awaits.”

Setia nods briefly in amused concession, stipulating, “I would first tender Grandmother a quick kindness.”

They wend their way through the Palace at Ana, across a network of wide, opulently decorated corridors and well lit staircases, and are received into their grandmother’s suite of rooms by a favored retinue. “Daya,” Ismin acknowledges.

Has the morn been kind to my lady and her grace?” comes Daya’s query.

It has, thank you,” Setia answers for both.

By means of a brief gesture, Daya indicates an inner parlor. Upon entrance, their grandmother dismisses one of her two present guests—this the priestess Dryta, an azure eyed Ǣilfr possessed of rare talent and dark beauty, who for a time has removed herself from the seclusion of her Sisterhood’s mountainous community to dwell amid her mother’s people. The girl’s eyes respectfully downcast, the chastely dressed mystic is treated to curtseys as she passes.

From her place of repose, this a sumptuous chaise, a still informally dressed Lysera Alamide beckons her granddaughters to her side.

My lord prince,” Ismin airily greets, acknowledging the tall figure that stands in contemplative silence behind the chaise before bending to buss Lysera’s cheek. At six and four score years, the dowager is still a handsome woman, though her skin bears upon it the ravages of time, a tacit testament of her joys, of her sorrows, a plainly written narrative etched equably into her face by deep lines. Settling herself upon the floor stones at the dowager sovereign’s left knee, Ismin queries, “Has the morn been kind, Grandmother?”

The morn has been kind, dearest,” Lysera accedes, angling to receive Setia’s buss in turn, “as I am sure it has been to you.”

The morn bears me well enough,” Ismin laughingly replies. “’Tis but a cruel deception though, my presence. The better part of me still lies abed, dreaming of love.”

Face mildly aflame, Setia attends upon the prince a short but polite address before settling herself upon the chaise at her Lysera’s right.

Does the morn bear you well, my young one, or does some part of you also linger elsewhere?”

The duchess smiles into the burnished jade of her grandmother’s eyes. “Unlike Ismin, I am a whole being. What use such inner contention?”

With gentle consideration, Lysera cites a contemporary yet wonted philosophy, “’Twas dreams, child, that bore most aspects of this reality into being.”

Setia’s smile falters. “Ismin wishes to ride the leas.”

Resting a palm against one of Setia’s cheeks, Lysera grasps her youngest granddaughter’s hand within the other. “Eran bears news.”

Drawing back, Setia turns to glance at her older cousin with trepidation.

Your mother is well,” Eran Alamide clarifies in a tone meant to allay gratuitous worry, “and sends her regard.” Then elaborating, “I bear news of a decree. By order of the Damreein Council, you are to wed the heir to Cannings seat.”

Canning?” Ismin whispers.

Resin’s heart?” Stunned, tears threaten Setia swiftly. “But, ‘tis upon the Southern Divide.”

I wish I could veto the Councils decision—”

Sovereign—” Ismin falteringly attempts, but quietens at the dowager’s somber look.

“—but the weight you would hold as Doma Magna of the kingdom of the Tres is hardly trifle. You could very well tip the scales where the proposed annex of the Unallied Kingdoms is concerned. Think, child. Think of all the good you can do.”

Tears begin to stream indelicately down the pale set of Setia’s cheeks, and rushing to rise, she quickly rounds the generous chaise and declares—and this after clutching at the swells of shell white tunic which peak out from between the ties that lace his burgundy doublet to his fine form—“I love you, Eran. I love you!” Eran, Setia thinks, who is fair, in both manner and feature. Eran, whose hazel eyes—pierced as they are by subtly luminous flecks of jade and amber and sapphire—perfectly resemble her own. He is who she dreams of when dreaming of love. “Dear gods of the Vale,” she whispers fiercely, “please, do not let them send me away!”

Fool,” the Prince of the Palace at Ana bites off, thrusting her away, as ill-concerned with her pitiable weeping, with her apparent desperation, as she has been of her family’s sensibilities. In a cold and arrogant tone, he recites the first virtue of the Noble’s Creed, “Yet, there is Duty, and Duty precedes all.”

Never in any of the imagined scenarios contrived in solitary moments, regarding the profession of her love, had Eran responded with such cruelty. Countenance wretched, Setia flees her cousin’s rejection. Her unmindful attempt at escape carries her well through the palace and on into a busy central courtyard, where she collides into the priestess Dryta.

Your grace?” the priestess murmurs worriedly.

With an anguished sob, the duchess strikes her, startling palace mainstays, unobtrusive servants, and usually stolid guards. “I curse you your lot,” Setia cries, “for it has stolen mine!”

Blood slowly trickling from the cut upon her lip, the Ǣilfr reaches to lay a sisterly hand upon the girl’s shoulder.

Nay!” Setia denies, “nay!”—striking the priestess again.

Then extricating herself from the extraordinary scene, Setia sails headlong into the palace’s well-tended grounds—scattering the wolf whelps that sleep upon the cobblestones just beyond the northern gate. Cordoned off, along with the palace itself, from the city proper by four large bastioned bulwarks, the lush grounds offer no easy respite and fitfully she ventures without thought into the wide avenues of the Tragic Maze. The oppressive dark of the esoteric web brings her to a halt and wheeling about, endeavoring retreat, she spies the priestess Dryta standing just beyond the shadows cast by the labyrinth.

Goddess!” Setia implores as wisteria vines, bare of any blooms, wrap themselves blithely around her ankles. She falls, twisting to land roughly upon her side. “Goddess, help me!”

The vines pull Setia deeper into the insoluble intricacy, dragging her carelessly from side to side, tossing her effortlessly and repeatedly into the wildly overgrown branches of the four-men-tall hedges—branches which wallow in their ability to grasp at the long tendrils of her flaxen hair, which revel in their capacity to wrench, with thin and thick limbs alike, the length of her silken day gown, and relish their license to strike at her head and back and appendages. Crushing gloom fills her sight as she reaches the maze’s heart, and though the wisteria relaxes its hold upon her, Setia is too battered, too bloodied to move.

Thœrĕd cǽn y’rængenmere, › she lowly and despairingly invokes.

A considerable beat passes before she feels the ŒRENGENMERE, that earthen made guardian of the abstruse, wrap a moss and mud caked arm about her small waist as he takes base form beneath her.

« Shŭrunĕm cĕlīd’gĕnĕm thrĕnĕm? » that profane spirit queries in a redoubtable voice against her ear.

Aye, Setia thinks, and at this, that sloe mystic commits a black theurgy, planting occultic seed within her.

Next Chapter: 1.3 - THE CONFLUENCE BETWEEN REALMS