Chapter 300: You Have Accused The Ward Of The Crown Of Witchcraft

The murmur swelled.

She felt it rise around her, a warm soft tide of sympathy. A woman on the second tier pressed a handkerchief to her lips. A fat lord in blue velvet shook his head in grave approval. Somewhere in the back someone said, quite audibly, "how very noble."

Morgana stood very still.

She understood what she was watching. She had grown up in a house where a woman could say forgive me in such a way that it was an accusation. This was the same craft, practiced by a master. He had apologized for his daughter’s crime, and in the same breath he had called it sickness, and he had asked a peasant girl to give her pardon in front of two hundred witnesses. If she refused, she was cruel. If she accepted, she was agreeing that Isolde had been merely ill.

She felt Draeven’s arm tighten under her hand.

Wait, it said. Not yet.

She waited.

"Thank you for your candor, Lord Carrick," said Draeven, quite evenly. "The crown notes your apology. Lady Morgana will answer in her own time. Is this the matter you wished to bring before the council?"

"It is not." Carrick replied.

"Then proceed."

"With pleasure." Carrick lowered his hand. His smile deepened by a degree, and something in it changed, grew sharper and brighter and more confident. "I have come to set right a grave error."

The benches went quiet.

"For two hundred years," said Carrick, "the three kings of this realm have labored under a curse. It is no secret. It is the sorrow of every house in this hall. And for two hundred years, they have sought the one who could lift it. The Mother of Dragons."

Silence passed across the hall.

"They have searched the whole of the world. They have sent riders to every province. They have asked, and prayed, and waited." His voice dropped, grave and kind. "And I come to tell you, my lords, that they need search no further. The Mother of Dragons has been in this palace all along."

A gasp went round the hall.

It was a physical thing, a sudden rustle of silk and indrawn breath. People half rose. Someone dropped a goblet, and it rang against the stone.

"She has been at their side for weeks," Carrick said. "She has dined at their table. She has walked their halls. And they have not known her." He let the silence stretch. "Because they have been blinded."

Morgana’s stomach went cold.

"By whom?" demanded someone from the benches.

Carrick turned.

He did it slowly, with a faint, regretful sigh, and his pale gaze came to rest on Morgana. There was nothing hostile in it. That was the horror of it. He looked at her with an expression of sad and patient pity.

"By a peasant girl from a village called Ashford," he said gently, "with strange gifts."

The hall exploded.

It broke over her like a wave.

The noise was enormous. Two hundred voices rose at once, a roar of shock and outrage and avid delight. She saw mouths open, hands fly up, heads turn. A man leaped to his feet and was dragged back by his neighbor. A woman in green began to shout something and could not be heard. In the front row, a stout old lord with a face like a ham stood up, shaking, and pointed at her with a trembling finger.

"Witchcraft!"

The word cracked across the room like a whip.

She flinched.

She couldn’t help it. It struck her somewhere under the ribs, a hot bright shock, the word her mother had spent eighteen years teaching her to fear. Her hand clenched on Draeven’s sleeve. For one frozen second she was eight years old again, kneeling in a dark kitchen with a hand pressed over her mouth, hearing a stranger’s footsteps pass outside the shutters.

Then she felt the dais shake.

It was a small thing, a faint tremor underfoot, as though a great weight had shifted somewhere far below. A chill ran across the marble. She looked down and saw, with a distant and astonished clarity, a thin white line of frost spreading out from Kaelen’s boots.

It crept across the stone in a delicate web.

It crossed the edge of the dais. It reached the first step, and the second, and slid down toward the center of the stage where Carrick Greythorne stood, still smiling, with his hands folded.

"Lord Carrick," said Kaelen.

He did not raise his voice.

Somehow it carried over the din, quiet and clear and utterly without warmth, and the roaring noise of the hall shuddered and began to fall away.

"You have accused the ward of the crown," Kaelen said, "of witchcraft, in the royal hall, before the council, without evidence."

"I accuse her of nothing," Carrick said smoothly. "I only report what I have observed."

"And what is that?"

"That she is unusual." His smile did not change. "That strange occurrences follow her. That certain persons in this court have remarked upon them. Frost on windows. Objects that move. Lamps that burn bright without cause."

"Rumor."

"Rumor, perhaps. But persistent."

"Of whose making?"

Carrick spread his hands. "I could not say."

"No," said Kaelen. "I don’t think you could."

The frost reached Carrick’s boots.

It touched the toe of one polished shoe, and paused, and then, with a soft crackling sound, began to climb. A thin line of ice slid up the leather. Carrick glanced down at it with a slight frown. He shifted his weight. The frost followed.

It crept up to his ankle.

It crawled across his hand, and the heavy ring on his finger, a great carved stone in a silver band, and the ring went white with rime. Carrick’s smile slipped, just slightly, at the corner. He tried to flex his fingers. The ring did not move.

"Kaelen," said Draeven mildly.

"Yes?"

"Perhaps that will do."

Kaelen sighed.

The frost withdrew. It slid off Carrick’s boots, and the ring cleared, and he stood very still, rubbing his thumb across the silver as though it had grown unaccountably cold. His pale eyes went to Kaelen and stayed there for a long beat.

"You are a very spirited king," he said.

"I’m told it’s my best quality," said Kaelen.