Read Online Song Magick by Elisabeth Hamill - Free Book Online

Mithrais
out.
    “My curiosity can wait until later. Go and
rest, lad, while you can. No one can enter the keep uninvited
without the guard raising the alarm, and my seneschal knows who
should be here for the feast and who should not. I will finish this
missive to the Sildan King and request that he send word to
Cerisild when the matter is concluded.”
    “Thank you, Lord Riordan. I give you my word
that I’ll see Telyn there safely.”
    “No such assurances are necessary.” Riordan’s
expression softened. “I believe you to be a man of honor, Mithrais,
like your father. I can see that you care deeply what becomes of
Telyn, however brief your acquaintance may be. I need no other
guarantee for her safety.”
    Startled that his feelings were so evident to
Riordan, there was nothing more that Mithrais could say. He
sketched a quick bow and turned to the waiting seneschal. Riordan
bent purposefully over the parchment again, stabbing his quill into
the inkwell, and calling for Rand to return to him when he had seen
Mithrais to his room.
    The harried seneschal led Mithrais down the
left-hand passageway he had seen before, and up a flight of winding
stairs, which led to another hallway lined with doors and lit by
candles in twisted iron sconces.
    “This is your room, my lord.” Rand indicated
the final door on the right side of the passage. “Lady Telyn’s is
directly opposite. I have made sure that there is water for
washing, and Lord Riordan has provided appropriate attire for the
feast. He asks that you join him on the dais as a guest of
honor.”
    “I am flattered. Thank you, Rand.” The
seneschal bowed and hurried away, muttering under his breath about
the thousand things left undone.
    Mithrais found the promised basin of water
warming beside the fire grate, and clean linen towels. He also
found the clothing he was expected to wear for the feast, and his
eyebrows rose in surprise.
    Apparently, the feast was a masquerade,
something neither Telyn nor Riordan had mentioned. Riordan had made
good on his earlier jest, for the costume was that of the Green
Man, a velvet jerkin in forest colors, fluttering with leaves made
of silk and metallic threads. A crown of ivy with a green cloth
mask completed the outfit.
    He laughed softly. The Green Man and the
Maiden...Mithrais had a sneaking suspicion that as guests of honor,
they might be asked to officiate the rites of spring as well. Oh,
Riordan was a perceptive man, indeed.
     

 
    Chapter
Five
     
    Telyn woke from foul dreams with a start,
sitting straight up and looking about her in panic, unable to
remember where she was. The failing light in the room still
illuminated enough detail to show her the familiar chamber, and she
exhaled a shaky breath.
    She rose from the bed where she had collapsed
in exhaustion on top of the coverlets. Going to the fire grate to
light a taper, she touched it to the wicks of the candles in the
room, feeling pangs of nostalgia as she looked about the chamber
with a wistful smile. Telyn had always loved this room. As a young
girl barely out of childhood, it had made her feel like a princess
with its drapery-hung bed and the balcony.
    She slipped through the curtain that led
outside, leaning tentatively on the stone ledge of the balcony. She
closed her eyes and raised her face to the warm southern breeze,
letting it cleanse her of the last cobwebs of sleep. The wind
tugged at her hair, lifting the wilted garland of flowers and
sending it spiraling down to the ground even as Telyn reached to
catch it.
    She sighed, leaning cautiously over the
balcony to watch it land in the rocky soil at the shadowed base of
the keep, a blue and gold fairy ring of blossoms in a desert
landscape. Telyn had been reluctant to remove it. Tradition among
the feudal villages said that a young man crowned his chosen love
with flowers on the eve of spring. Old wives’ tales held that the
blossoms should be kept and dried if the maiden wished to assure
that her suitor