Fractured (Lisen of Solsta Book 1) Read online

  Lisen heard the sound of many sandaled feet shuffling down the hall. Heading for meditation, in the sanctuary.

  Her breath caught. I remember. Her eyes widened. I remember.

  Those on kitchen duty would not attend. She remembered. Instead, they would prepare food for the breaking of the fast—nothing fancy, no eggs, no bacon, just some sort of porridge—while the others meditated in the great, high-ceilinged sanctuary.

  I remember.

  And remembering continued all day. One minute she’d know where she was and the next—well, it was like waking up over and over and over again without ever falling asleep. Hermit Eloise showed her around the haven itself, and every room, every hallway, the sanctuary and the dining hall all felt real and familiar to her. Yet, the comfort and safety that had once embraced her here no longer touched her, and this saddened her.

  She moved, first with Eloise and then on her own, from the tower—always a favorite hiding place when she was little—to the dock where vivid memories of everything she’d learned about Garla as a child reemerged. She recalled that dignitaries from Avaret, Garla’s capital, often made land here. Standing on the dock, she gazed across the bay, and there, to the southwest, glowing white in the sun, stood the great city. She’d probably never get any closer to it than this. She also remembered the ferry landing to the east which connected the Isle with Holding Bedel, one of Garla’s ten holdings. She couldn’t recall all their names, nor the names of their holders, but she did know that the holders were members of Garla’s Council.

  And the desert, she thought. That lay far to the west of the sea, divided from the lush, green plains, hills and valleys of Garla by a mountain range known simply as The Rim. As Eloise had promised last night, Lisen could now remember a great deal. The routine here at Solsta hadn’t changed in seven years, making remembering easier, and from what she could tell, even Garla itself had changed little.

  Nothing had changed. Except her. Seven years ago she had planned on becoming a hermit. The only people she’d ever known back then were hermits. She realized now that hermits, like nuns and monks, were celibate. She, however, was not sure she wanted to remain so. She had, as they said in that other world, “saved herself” for the right guy. She’d planned on getting married, having kids, making a normal life on good old modern Earth. This not-so-modern world didn’t offer the conveniences to which she’d grown accustomed, but she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life here in a haven hiding out from it. She had a lot to think about.

  By evening, Lisen had begun to confront regret—a regret that would not retreat—and her memories of home, of that other home, had grown heavy and suffocating. The tower called to her, so, after dinner, she escaped to its safety and waited to break—or to heal—she wasn’t sure which.

  The inevitable wind whipped away at her hair, loosening wispy tendrils from her brazen braids. She’d always been vain about her copper hair, so vain, in fact, that when she’d gone Goth, she’d taken a pass on the idea of dying it black. Good thing, she reflected now. How would she have explained it here when the red roots began to show?

  She stared out at the sea. Even in the quarter moon, the ripples sparkled like a multitude of candles lit against the night. With her memory clear and focused now, she reflected on this great Isle of Solsta standing at the mouth of Miyora Bay, a non-intruding silent sentinel. A thing of contention—amongst other things—between Holding Prea to the east and south and Holding Bedel to the north. But with the holder of Prea also being the Empir of Garla, Prea’s claim had remained inviolate for more than twenty generations, what with the holder of Bedel owing allegiance to the Empir. The Zanlots of Bedel continued to fume while contemplating the day when they could lay siege to the hermit haven on what they referred to as “that damn rock” and claim it as their own. Only the grace of Empir Flandari stood between Solsta and annihilation. Lisen smiled. All those memories belonged to her again.

  She jumped at the sound of approaching footsteps, her heart pounding. Someone ascended the stairs up to the tower. She took a deep breath, crossed her arms, placing each hand in the opposing sleeve of her brown novice habit, turned her back to the sea and faced the tower’s door.

  Hermit Eloise emerged. Eloise the Frustrating. And her heart, which had only just reclaimed its rhythm in the ocean’s ebb and flow, shriveled up and died within her. The hermit’s expression as she stepped out into the dim moonlight was unreadable.

  “Lisen,” she said. “I thought I’d find you here.”

  “Hermit Eloise,” Lisen replied.

  Eloise stepped past her to the parapet, placed her callused fingers on the rail and stared down upon the ripples of the ocean far below. She stood, still as death, while Lisen waited an eternity.

  Finally, Lisen couldn’t take it anymore, and she broke the silence. “It’s awfully cold. For June, I mean.”

  “Oh,” the sooth answered flatly, “it’s not June. It’s February. Why would you think…? Oh, of course. It was June there.” She turned back to face Lisen. “Time doesn’t necessarily match. I should have explained that.”

  “Oh.” Lisen nodded, accepting this as another one of those things she’d never understand. The sound of the waves breaking on the Isle’s cliffs filled the quiet space between her and the sooth.

  “Are you happy to be home?” Hermit Eloise asked at last.

  “Seven years is a long time to believe a lie about yourself,” Lisen replied. “Reconciled to being back? Yeah, I suppose I’m that. Happy? Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Why would I want to hold my breath?”

  Lisen shook her head. “Forget it. It’s just another expression that doesn’t translate.” She touched her belly where the pouch was, the constant reminder of who and where she was.

  “Look to the dock,” Eloise said, nodding in that direction, her tone a warning.

  “What? What is it?” Lisen asked.

  “Look to the dock.”

  The old woman spoke in riddles. Look to the dock, indeed. No one ever came to Solsta without prior notice and the proper permissions—even Lisen knew that—and she had seen no sign of preparations for a visitor. Perhaps Eloise was about to teach her some lesson about trust or not always relying on what your senses told you. She’d done this sort of thing in the past. To humor her, Lisen stepped to the tower’s southern side and gazed down at the dock far below, fully expecting to see nothing save more dark mysteries. But to her astonishment, she saw light, speckles of torch light, moving about. Someone was disembarking from a vessel. She couldn’t separate it from the dark water of the bay in the hint of moonlight, but it was there.

  “Who…?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.” Eloise had followed her and now stood behind her as she continued to stare down at the bay.

  “They didn’t send ahead?”

  “No, they did not.”

  She turned to the sooth. “We should alert somebody.” Lisen tried to push past Eloise, but she wouldn’t step aside.

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Wait here. I’ll return for you.”

  In the light of stars as well as moon, Lisen attempted to read Eloise’s eyes, to see through them into her soul, but Eloise wouldn’t have it.

  “Wait,” she ordered. Then, with an agility that surprised Lisen from a mostly sedentary hermit, Eloise disappeared into the tower, leaving Lisen to her scrambled thoughts.

  Slippery sooth! Lisen turned back to watch the small dots of light moving about below her. Her stomach twisted at the sight, all thoughts of anything else diminishing to nothing. The arrival of strangers here compressed her with a fear she couldn’t fathom. One thing she did know. Those bits of light, moving about randomly, carried with them some connection to her. Was this that destiny Eloise had promised? Was she finally going to know?

  Only twenty-four hours ago, she’d sat on a beach in another world considering Senator Clinton’s speech from earlier that day about the remarkable becoming the unremarkabl
e and how remarkable that would be. She’d known nothing then about remarkability. Even after being sucked out of one dimension and into another where human beings were more like Homo marsupialis than Homo sapiens, where men had pouches to carry babies just like women, she suspected she still had more to learn about what remarkable really meant. Simon Holt, the anthropologist, would have sold his soul to discover such a thing. But those who studied other cultures and other species could go home when they were done; Lisen would never be done because she was already home. Damn that Eloise the Elusive!

  CHAPTER THREE

  A DAGGER, POISON AND CHAOS

  Empir Flandari Ilazer looked around the miniscule chamber they euphemistically referred to as a cabin on the Emperi barge and considered one last time what to bring with her on her ascent to the haven. She’d waited nearly eighteen years, and this final impatient day of thousands of impatient days—this day spent sailing from Avaret to the Isle—had proven to be the longest day of all. She’d occupied herself with reworking the documents which would make it all official. She’d long ago passed the originals off to the seer for safekeeping, just as she’d handed off her baby daughter to her for the same reason. Now, they would all meet again here at Solsta, new documents prepared in order to encompass what time had taught her.

  Damnable seer—or “sooth,” as the woman now preferred to be called. Flandari had known Eloise Tuane for years. Two nobles’ daughters, close in age, couldn’t have avoided each other in court. When the grown Eloise had approached the impressionable and newly pregnant Flandari, the fledgling Empir had listened to every word of warning her near-equal and onetime friend had spoken. She’d quaked at the horrors the woman had detailed would certainly fall upon her, her family and all of Garla if she failed to act. Elsin, Flandari’s spouse, had cautioned her not to be so easy in her acceptance of the seer’s words, but she’d ignored him. She was the Empir—the Ruler of Garla, Protector of Thristas, and Holder of Prea and Forn—and he was just a non-inheriting holder’s son. So, to protect the secret of the girl’s existence, she had pouched both the children herself, and Elsin had protested that as well. Again, she had ignored him, and, when the twins emerged from the pouch, she had passed their daughter into the arms of the seer. As was customary, the name she had chosen for the girl began with the final letters of the carrying parent’s name—her name—and the daughter of Flandari and Elsin had been dubbed Ariannas.

  Eloise had then vanished, but not before assuring Flandari that her daughter would be safe from the boy with whom she’d shared the pouch. Flandari now saw how very young and naïve she had been.

  Damnable seer!

  Eloise had promised a reunion in a future as-yet unlived, and Flandari had pretended for seventeen years that Ariel, Ariannas’ brother, was the lone Heir of Garla. Her bully of a son had more than fulfilled the seer’s prophecy, growing into the tyrant predicted all those years ago, and still Flandari had waited, obeying the seer as she obeyed no one else. Fear had motivated her from the beginning, and fear motivated her yet. One could not observe the heartlessness that masqueraded as her son and not fear the consequences if she failed to keep the only hope for Garla alive and well.

  Then, finally, early this morning, word had come—a terse, simple message, saying little but meaning much, and unsigned. “It is time. Come to Solsta now. Today. Ask for Lisen.”

  Flandari opened up the note again now and stared at it. “Lisen,” she whispered, recognizing the play on her spouse’s name. She’d known nothing—not about the girl’s pseudonym nor where Eloise had hidden her. Flandari had known that Eloise had pursued her calling as a hermit and had ended up at one of Garla’s three havens, but she’d never known which one. Solsta. A day’s voyage from Avaret. She should have realized. She could have asked Elsba Tuane, the seer’s brother and the holder of Minol, but Flandari had forbidden herself to speculate. She’d taken her knowledge of her daughter’s existence and carefully closed it off from conscious thought. How else could she have maintained her sanity? And it had worked. She’d survived to this moment, confiding only in Nalin Corday, the young holder of Felane, whom she had mentored since he had arrived in court at fifteen. As far as she was aware, only three now living knew—Eloise, Nalin and herself—but soon one more would join them. Soon.

  There was another reason why she’d refused to anticipate this moment. Grave suspicion had haunted her since Eloise had first shared her premonition. Flandari had sensed then and continued to suspect that Eloise had withheld something, something that spoke more of endings than of beginnings. That, too, she’d packed up and hidden away, but over the last fifteen hours, it had risen, along with everything else, and now it occupied a prominent spot in her immediate vision.

  She shivered. She must have time with the girl. At the very least she must have enough time to explain why she had abandoned her. Flandari had no doubt she’d done the right thing. Years spent in the presence of her son had proven she’d made the right decision to trust Eloise. She did regret that Elsin hadn’t lived to see the fulfillment of the prophecy. Despite chiding her gullibility, eventually he would have admitted to the wisdom of her decision. But Elsin had passed, seven years ago now, and she’d had to live alone with her secret until two years ago when she’d revealed everything to Nalin.

  “My Liege?”

  She looked up from the small table which served as her desk, from the parchment which lay there, and smiled as Nalin stepped in. Dear Nalin, a little more than two years older than Ariel and Ariannas, the young man she would gladly have exchanged for her own son.

  “This is it, Nal,” she said softly as she tapped on the parchment and then picked up the quill and dipped it in ink.

  He stepped around the desk to stand behind her. “Your Order of Ascension Decree?”

  “My amended Order of Ascension Decree,” she replied as she began to sign.

  “Are you sure, my Liege? You haven’t even met the girl.”

  She made her customary swirl beneath her signature. “Eloise says it’s time, and I believe her. Of course, there’s still so much for her to learn. I’m counting on you.”

  “You can teach her much more than I can, my Liege.”

  “Just in case, Nal.” She re-inked the pen and passed it up to him. “Now, if you will witness this.”

  “Of course,” Nalin replied as he took the quill, leaned down and placed his name below the notation “Witnessed.” “And you will be the one to teach her,” he insisted.

  Imagine that, Flandari thought. Lecturing his own Empir. But she simply nodded and thanked the Creators for sending Nalin to her. His father, Holder Stephen Corday, had passed when Nalin was only fifteen. He’d arrived in Avaret for the Council session immediately following his loss—sensitive, vulnerable and malleable. Flandari had fostered him, and soon she had begun teaching him everything she knew about ruling, that nagging fear about the limits of her own time motivating her. She’d taught him so that he could teach the girl. Just in case. Just in case.

  When Nalin straightened up again and handed her back the pen, she blotted the signatures, then rolled the parchment up and slipped it into a leather scrollkeep. By the time she looked up again, Nalin had returned to the other side of her desk and had lowered his lean frame into the only other chair in the cabin, crossing his legs and lightly shaking his long, smooth, golden hair back. Nalin was a noble’s noble, and Flandari beamed at the man she had personally guided to this moment.

  “Take this.” She capped the scrollkeep and wrapped its leather tie around the metal button on the cap. “Tell the seer to destroy the documents she has in her possession and replace them with these.”

  Nalin did not reach out to take the ’keep. “My Liege, you should tell her that yourself.”

  “Of course, I will. But if for any reason, I cannot….”

  “You want me to handle it for you. I am at your command, my Liege,” he conceded. brow furrowed as he allowed her, finally, to pass the scrollkeep to him, his blue eyes growi
ng cold. His features, though angled, were almost too soft to be a male’s. Only the deeper timbre of his voice and his beard, a little darker than his hair, confirmed his gender.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she cautioned good naturedly. “This is delicate business, and nothing must stand in the way of the greater goal.”

  “Which is?”

  “Assuring that Ariannas is recognized as the Heir and not Ariel.”

  “Of course.” But his eyes remained icy, and Flandari knew he didn’t like hearing her hint at her own mortality. “Why don’t you remain here on the barge. I’ll retrieve the girl,” he offered.

  “No, the seer’s note said ‘come,’ not ‘send someone.’ I will finish what I began.” She rose. “Tell the captain to let me know as soon as the horses are saddled.” When he did not immediately depart, she waved him out. “Go. And don’t lose that.” She pointed to the scrollkeep.

  “I am your servant, my Liege,” he said, and with a nod of his head, he slipped out, leaving her to finish what she’d begun nearly eighteen years earlier. How she wished Elsin had survived to be here with her now, preparing to meet their child. It was perhaps her greatest regret—that that opportunity had been denied him.

  Flandari shook her head. No regrets. Elsin had slipped away from her bit by bit after she’d sent the baby girl away, instead seeking solace in wine and ale and who knew what else. She believed that his indulgences had hastened his passing. He was gone, and she was here, now, at the dock of the Isle of Solsta where she would end her child’s exile.