Haydon, Elizabeth - Symphony of Ages 07 - The Merchant Emperor by Haydon Elizabeth

Author:Haydon, Elizabeth [Haydon, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429943970
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2014-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

27

INTERNAL STOCKADE, HIGHMEADOW

A few hours later and several buildings away, deep within the heavy walls and behind the even heavier doors of the high-security stockade, Tristan Steward was pacing his cell, wearing a path in the small rug on the stone floor.

Each day that passed devolved him, bit by bit, into something only vaguely human. He was allowed, in exchange for being bound and under bowman sight, to be shaved if he so desired, as well as having a one-way drain for any refuse or bodily fluids he wished to dispose of through the floor. Hot water was available to him every day through a pipe high above in the ceiling in a tiled area in the corner of his cell for cleansing himself, and fresh clothes were delivered daily also. Ashe had commented, on one of the occasions he had come down to make good on his offer of a flask of brandy now and then, that he wished he had been so incarcerated during his time in hiding.

But in spite of a relatively luxurious captivity, Tristan was going out of his mind.

If the utter solitude and ascetic living wasn’t enough to drive him mad, the thin voice that scratched on windy nights at the back of his brain surely would bring it about.

Tristan.

He thought he had heard that voice before, somewhere in his broken memory, but the solid walls of the prison cell, the complete silence that the stones kept locked away with him, prevented him from deriving any tone from it. It was as if it was sounding deep within his mind, rather than coming to him through his ears.

Mostly because it was.

Tristan, come to me.

He had been hearing it, or something like it, for a very long time he realized one day, early in his captivity, just after he had finished reading one of the books Ashe loaned him to occupy his mind in his solitude. The text was a dense historical narrative, a dull retelling of the story of the exodus of the Cymrian Fleets. The only actual satisfaction he had derived from it was the picture it had placed in his mind of Rhapsody in the land of her birth. His lack of intellectual curiosity meant that he had never ascertained with which Fleet she had sailed, or anything else about her history, though he was aware that she was one of the Three that had been prophesied about at the end of the Cymrian War. But her personal history, or any other mundane detail, was not what held his interest about her.

The Lord Roland had been shocked when Gwydion had arrested him at Ashe’s angry accusation of Tristan’s desire to have his wife. The shock was not a result of error, but rather of degree; if the Lord Cymrian had any real notion of the intensity and depth of Tristan’s obsession with the Lady Cymrian, the Lord Roland reasoned, he would have been long since buried in an unmarked grave, undoubtedly watered with Gwydion’s urine.

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