Read Online Shadow of a Dark Queen by Raymond E. Feist - Free Book Online Page B

awhile,” she said softly, a request and not an order. “It was a night like this I met your father.”
    Erik had heard the story before but knew his mother was struggling with something that had occurred while she spoke to the smith. He still didn’t fully understand what had happened in his mother, but he knew she needed to speak. He sat down on the steps beside where his mother stood.
    â€œOtto had come to Ravensburg for the first time as Baron, after his father’s death two years before. He had attended the Vintners’ and Growers’ reception for him, and after drinking with the town leaders, he had gone for a walk to clear his head. He was brash and quick to dispense with protocol, and had ordered his servants and guards to leave him alone.”
    She stared into the night, calling up memories. “I had come down to the fountain with the other girls, to flirt with the boys.” Erik recalled his own last visit to the fountain with Roo and realized the practicewas long established. “The Baron came into the lantern light and suddenly we were a bunch of awkward children.” Then Erik saw a spark in his mother’s eyes, and heard an echo of the spirit that had captivated men’s hearts before he was born. “I was as awed as the rest, but I was too proud to show it,” she said with a rueful smile, and years dropped away from her. Erik could imagine the impact such a sight after an evening spent drinking must have had on the Baron as he spied the beautiful Freida at the fountain.
    â€œHe had court manners, and rank, and riches, and yet there was something honest in him, Erik: a little boy who was as afraid of being sent away as any other boy. He was twenty-five, and young for that age. But he swept me off my feet, with sweet words and a wicked humor in them. Less than an hour later he had bedded me under a tree in an apple orchard.” She sighed, and again Erik was put in mind of a young girl, not this woman of iron he had known all his life.
    â€œI had a terrible reputation, but I had never known another man. He had known other women, for he was sure, but he was also tender and gentle and loving.” She glanced at her son. “In the dark, under the stars, he spoke of love, but the next day I thought I’d never see him again and counted myself just another foolish girl taken in by a nobleman’s charms.
    â€œBut against any hope of mine, he came to me a month later, in the late afternoon, alone, astride a horse flecked with foam from a hard ride from his castle. Hidden by a large cloak, he had slipped into the inn as we were readying for the night’s trade, and there he sought me out and revealed himself. To myastonishment, he professed love and asked for my hand.” She gave a bittersweet laugh. “I called him mad and ran from the inn.
    â€œLater that night, I returned to find him waiting at this very spot, like a common farmhand. He again told of his love for me, and again I told him he was bereft of sense.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “He laughed and said he knew it seemed that way, but after taking my hand and gazing into my eyes, he kissed me once and convinced me. This time I knew why I had gone with him the first time—not because of his rank and station, but because I loved him as well.
    â€œHe cautioned me that none must know of our love for each other until he had journeyed to Rillanon to petition King Lyam for my hand, for tradition bound him to his liege lord’s pleasure. But to seal our love, and to provide me with a claim, we spoke our vows in a small chapel used during the harvest, with an itinerant monk who had been in town less than a day, conducting the ceremony. The monk made a pledge not to speak of the vows until Otto gave him leave, and left us alone, for the next morning Otto planned to leave to see the King.”
    Freida was silent a moment; then her tone took on a familiar bitterness.