Daughter of Ancients Read Free

other Gardeners and extended her palms to the stranger.
    â€œWelcome, wanderer,” said the gray-haired Eu’Vian.
    â€œHow may we help you?”
    â€œBe careful!” said J’Savan. “She’s not Zhid, but she’s fierce. Those stains on her tunic . . .” He hadn’t noticed the rust-colored blotches earlier. His neck hadn’t bled that much.
    The woman pushed her straggling hair aside and looked from one kind, curious face to the next. “ S’a nide, regiré .”
    â€œThat’s all she’s come out with,” J’Savan said. “I can’t understand her speech.”
    Eu’Vian crinkled her brow, but did not lower her voice. “It’s just an ancient mode. She’s asking to be taken to the regiré , the king.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œHush, lad.” Eu’Vian’s face fell into puzzled sympathy.
    The warm wind fluttered the strange woman’s rags and the wide hems of Eu’Vian’s sandy trousers as the Head Gardener spoke haltingly with the woman. At the end of their brief exchange, the stranger dropped the water flask and bronze knife to the grass, closed her eyes, and clenched her fists to her breast. “ Regiré morda ... D’Arnath morda. . . . ” She sank slowly to her knees and began a low, soft keening.
    â€œI told her we have no king in Avonar, that we honor D’Arnath so deeply that no successor has taken any greater title than his Heir,” said Eu’Vian quietly. “Then she asked if King D’Arnath had truly died, and when I said, ‘Yes, of course,’ the result is as you see. She mourns our king as though he’s been dead three days instead of nine hundred years.”
    As the evening light swept golden bars across the sweet-scented grassland, Eu’Vian crouched beside the stranger, laid her hand gently on the woman’s shoulder, and spoke as one does to a child who wakes from a nightmare or an aged friend who has lost the proportions of time and events.
    But the stranger shook off Eu’Vian’s touch. With her hands clenched to her heart, she turned to each one of them, her very posture begging them to understand. “ S’a Regiré D’Arnath ... m’padere ... Padere ...”
    Eu’Vian straightened up, shaking her head. “Poor girl. Who knows what she’s been through to put her out of her head so wickedly.”
    â€œWhat is it she says? What sorrow causes this?” said J’Savan, unable to keep his eyes from the grieving stranger. His chest felt tight and heavy, and tears that were nothing to do with wind or sand pricked his eyes. His companions, too, seemed near weeping.
    â€œIt is for a father she mourns,” said Eu’Vian. “She claims she is D’Arnath’s daughter.”

CHAPTER 1
    Seri
    In spring of the fifth year after the defeat of the Lords of Zhev’Na, our fifth year at Windham, Karon lost his appetite. He stopped sitting with me at breakfast, smiling away my inquiries and saying he’d get something later. Every evening he would push away from the dinner table, his plate scarcely touched. I paid little heed, merely reminding him not to burden Kat, our kitchen maid, with preparing meals that would not be eaten or by untimely intrusions into her domain. Our household was steadfastly informal.
    Then came one midnight when I woke with the sheets beside me cold and empty. I found him walking in the moonlight. He claimed he was too restless to sleep and sent me back to bed with a kiss. Alert now, I watched through the next few nights and noticed that he walked more than he slept. In the ensuing days a certain melancholy settled about him, like a haze obscuring the sun.
    Though I observed these things and noted them, I did not pry. For the first time in my life, I did not want to know my husband’s business. The tug in my chest that felt like a lute string stretched too tight warned me