#aspenvale

Such matters had filled his thoughts in the preceding weeks, and had in the end inspired his decision to return to his home.  A word he had never felt would  be assigned to him in the years of his youth.  Home was an anchor to be avoided when there was a world of wonder to explore.  In his soul there would always be a piece of the wanderer, but the duties of his former occupation had done much to forge a new life, a new path for him in the darkening passage of time.  

The gates the carriage passed did not lead to that home, or at least not the home where he felt most alive.  Aspenvale, the last vestige of the Vellinox and home of the last bearer of that august name.  It was a large, well appointed manse that had been painstakingly cared for in the last thirty or so years that it had been under the aegis of his mother.  For this was her home, her sanctuary.  It was true that, in part, he had grown up here but his true home lay within the city.  It was fashioned of white-washed stone rather than the regal, yet verdant trappings of a country noble’s estate.  

Noah stepped from the carriage with an easy grace.  The door of the main entrance had already been opened, and the familiar figure of Mr. Baines caught his eye.  Baines never failed to impress Noah in one way or another.  When it came to receiving guests it was as if the old butler could see through the eyes of the stone owls that sat atop the posts of the gate wrought of iron and stone.  

Perfunctory greetings and musings of respect were shared between the Lady’s butler and her son.  If he had been anyone other than family or other close relation the butler would have directed him to the ground floor’s parlor or sitting room.  Given that he did not meet this exception he was directed to the Lady’s solar.  A wing of the home dedicated solely to its mistress.  It had been that way even before the death of his father.  In Winghaven they had shared a chamber, but in Aspenvale the rules were different.  Traditions upheld by her always intimated one duality or another.  

The crackling flames of a recently lit fire danced within the hearth of Allyria’s sitting room.  Two tea cups lay abandoned, one on an end table near a chaise, and the other on the table in front of a set of finely crafted chairs.  Noah heard two voices, feminine in their cast, trailing from the opened doors of the solar’s balcony.  As he stepped closer he found that both were familiar to him, and a small smile graced his lips when he came to the opened doors.  

Rebekah, eldest of the Dylane daughters, and his junior by only a year had turned at the sound of approaching footsteps.  A warm smile met his as she stood up to greet him properly.  Like so many of his siblings she had taken the coloring of their father.  Her hair was a deep, rich blonde and her eyes were of a darker, more precipitous green hue.

“Your niece will be delighted,” she said in her usual, honeyed tones.  Rebekah had the aura of a kindly woman about her.  He was not sure if she had always borne that quality or if it had somehow been bestowed upon her with the cowl of widowhood.  

“As shall I,” he responded, quietly with a tone of affection shared between two siblings that had seldom shared any strife.  “I trust all has gone well in my absence?”  

“Did you expect otherwise?”  There was a soft jibe in her reply, but it was not serious.  At least not in any real way.  Rebekah offered a glance to their mother before adding, “The bank and your dear niece thrives, but certainly we shall speak of such things later.  I’d better see to it that Esther and I get changed for dinner.”  

The Lady of Aspenvale did not rise upon her son’s arrival, and nor had she offered any words of greeting as her daughter had done.  Instead she had remained in the same posture she had done upon his approach with her eyes cast to the falls.  The mother’s mind far from the mundane exchange of pleasantries that went on before her.  Whatever discussion she and Rebekah had partaken in had been finished for some time.  

Noah blinked slowly and looked towards her.  Though his thirtieth name day had come and gone some months before he still felt a child in her presence.  Again he pondered if she always projected such precipitous gravity.  It was something he often wondered at ever since he was a boy.  As such he hesitated, but only for a moment.  He had already begun to step forward when the Lady curled her hand in a gesture that beckoned approach.  

The lord walked around the chair Rebekah had occupied, and lowered himself into it gingerly.  Allyria canted her head toward him then, the expression upon her face as much a veil as it ever was.  The two were much alike in that way as they were in so many others.  Noah, more so than any of his siblings, reflected his mother’s features.  Both had hair as black as onyx, and eyes of silvered green.  It struck him that she still donned the colors of mourning, and was coming to realize she might continue to for the rest of her natural life.  Just as when he had last seen her he questioned if such symbolism was meant for his father alone.  

“You wear your hair like your father’s.”  It was a simple observation, and spoken in a carefully crafted tone that did not quite disguise the surprise within it.  Noah usually kept his hair short, and well groomed.  Even when he was in the field scouring some ruin or other.  This last time, however, he had not shorn his hair and it had now grown to crest his shoulder.  The sheen belonged to his mother, but the way it lay was reminiscent of Rhade.  At having mentioned him Allyria brought long fingers to stroke the large emerald that ever adorned her neck. A gift his father had once commissioned for her in what seemed a lifetime ago.

Noah tucked a strand of hair behind his ear as he straightened his posture within the chair.  A silence fell between them.  The observation was not one that begged reply.  He knew this, and so took the moment to contemplate why he had come.  To simply see his mother was never reason enough to disturb her, and to him, it had ever been thus.  For as long as he could remember there had always been an air of imminent importance about whatever it was she might have been doing. To disrupt any delicacy within that grand game was not something he relished, or at least this is what he reflected whenever he willed himself away.  

When the Lady of Aspenvale finally looked away he allowed his eyes to wander towards the horizon.  There was much to be said of the chord struck between them.  Questions that begged to be asked and in their turn answered.  So many queries that had built between a mother and her eldest son.  Only once did they come perilously close to the most poignant in his mind.  It had been a year after her departure from Kryta’s borders on his return journey to take his father’s seat within the family, and his mother’s role within the Ministry.  On that rare occasion she had even prompted him, allowed him a gateway to whatever she might provide.  

In that moment he had resisted, and since came to terms that his chance to know where the truest of loyalties may lie was beyond him. He did not need such knowledge to do what needed to be done.  Despite this he could not help but wonder now as he sat next to her in the place he mused was her only true source of respite.  If one such as she ever required such a thing.  He did, of course, no matter the image he had projected during his time in public life.  There it was, then, the reason he had come.  The Ministry, and those within whom had wrought treachery, terror within both Kingdom and its Reach.  

“Caudecus always was a fool.”  The words were spoken beneath a thin veneer of contempt, even disgust.  Another observation, but only this time as if she had been able to pluck a strand of thought from his mind. As she spoke her gaze of silvered green turned in the direction of the city that was ever upon her son’s mind. “He never valued genuine subtlety, or the art of what it is to have a plan within a plan.  It was ever thus.  A man whom proffers no palpable respect for blood -- his own or otherwise -- nor tradition, relinquishes  hope for true ascendance.”  

The Lady’s son blinked slowly and looked toward his mother.  A thoughtful, reflective expression played upon his features.  Noah was a man of great intellect, and had more than once been able to catch meaning within words released to wind.  So much was said there, and yet with so little employed.  “It is the reason I’ve come.  Murder in the gardens.  Whispers of attempted assassination, and even usurpation.  A body of great importance suspended, and those within placed under strictest scrutiny.”  

Those silver-green eyes turned to meet his as the Lord’s mother canted her head to regard him inquisitively.  The shadow of an abyss, precipitous and vast, glittered within those eyes. Something so familiar but furthermore unknowable to him.  A mystique he could never quite divine.  Very much like his mother herself.  “You are Lord Dylane,” she began, her voice and tone an echo of a role she fulfilled in the past.  “You are my son.”  Not our son, no, but hers.  It was a rare confirmation, but one that offered little solace.  “I would expect no less of you.  Yet tread carefully as you walk into that mire.  There is danger, but such is always the price of power.”  

Noah was struck by her words.  The lord had long since abandoned the notion that he could confide his fears, his doubts to her.  Once in a time when the Dylane children had numbered only five he might have done, but that was a time beyond memory.  How had she seen the susurration of fear that lurked within the depths of his mind?  A fear he had always known, and ever sought to overcome.  There was only one to whom he confided such notions, and though a Lady it was she was  not named Dylane.  

I do not fear for myself,  he thought, stubbornly.  It pained him to note how much the child he sounded in the protestation.  Of course he was afraid.  He had been Minister of Rurikton and Vice Legate Minister  besides.  The city’s future had been at his fingertips.  He had allowed counsel and the very fear he denounced drive him from the vocation where he had most felt alive.  Even more he had been a Dylane to hold such prestige, and articles of office.  One that followed in the shadow of his mother’s controversial reign.  

“Order can rise from chaos, Noah,” she said, her eyes transfixed upon him. The use of his name brought him from his reverie.  Its employment provided him with a soft pang that he did not quite understand.  Surely she had often addressed him by the name that she herself had given him.  Even still it had been so long since he had heard its utterance in that voice, in that cadence.  “What order that may be rests entirely upon those with the vision and will to craft it.  Danger may lick the heels of our past, but you know more than anyone there is more than one answer to a question.  One that could have harmonized much discord has ever lay within your reach, and even once fell beyond it.  That inhibitor no longer provides disruption.  If only you had the resolve to see it.”  

The lord’s brows knitted together, and a look of perplexity played upon his features.  “I do not take in your meaning.”  

“I imagine you inspected the winter wheat of Roanwilde before arriving here,” she said.  Her tone was veiled, then, but a small shadow of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.  While gently stroking the emerald at her throat she turned her eyes back towards the falls she had admired before he walked across the threshold.  

Noah blinked several times as he took in her meaning.  Perplexity gave way in favor of the pensive.  His cheeks threatened to turn a deep shade of red, but he resisted.  It would have been a lie if he said he had never considered such possibility. Despite his protestations to the contrary he knew the merits of such establishment.  The ghost of Emerys entered his thoughts then as he considered her subtle teasing on the issue his mother now spoke of as brazenly as she was able.  He and his Willow had a friendship forged and tempered in the fire.  A bond that was strong, and even at times, tested.  As much as he might want to dismiss the notion out of hand he could not.  It did, indeed, deserve due thought.  

After several more moments of silence, reflection, and all that lay in between he gave voice to only one question.  “What will you do, Mother?”  

Allyria Dylane, the Lady of Aspenvale, drew herself up in the chair with her eyes still cast towards the falls and whatever it was that lay beyond them.  The answer came in a tone that was lilted with both pride, and the undercurrent of authority that power by presumption allowed.  “I shall do as I and the Vellinox have ever done . . . I shall endure.”

Gasping rays of sunlight silhouetted the mountainous horizon that lie betwixt Altar Brook and Shaemoor in a panoply of  violet and orange. It was a stark image that came into sight as they made those last few yards out of the pass. The thundering of Clayent was a delicate thrum in the distance when Claypool, at last, came into view. Like the pass the township seemed asleep, quiet, even serene; it was as idyllic as it always seemed.

Those few farmers, and tradesman that still walked the street made way for the procession with curious eyes. It was not the sight of a carriage, or guard.  Claypool played host to many families of the nobility and were used to the varied trappings that entailed. Rather it was the lack of sigil, or mark of any kind.  To them most of the nobles could not help but scream their identities, or origins, in every possible way.

They did not stop, however, and soldiered on their way. Those men on horseback did not spare those few they met so much as a single glance. It was not entirely unsurprising when they turned off the main road, and began to make their way down a trail that led to some estate or other.  The nosiest among them, a fishwife of fifty or so years, considered following as far as she dared but the silent guards made her think better.  

Passed the wheat stalked gates of Roanwilde, passed the apple borne posts of the Naji they treaded down the winding path.  Most of the roads in the region were well kept, but the one they now traveled was even more so. It welcomed the retinue as they turned upon it.  A straight path forward with only a smattering of trees on either side. Clayent’s ambient roar was louder now as, at last, it came into view.  

Aspenvale, the senescent estate once of the Vellinox, and now of their last daughter’s Dylane. Two years it had been since she last looked upon it.  Two years almost to the very day that she, along with Captain Bishop and his men, had made a choice that set her on a path far from her home. The owl of her maiden house, wings outstretched, gazed at her retinue from its perch atop the opened gates.  Only six entered through those gates, but a number just shy of twenty had left them those seasons ago.

One of the carriage’s curtains opened as they rounded the stone fountain that lay within the courtyard entrance of the home.  The likeness of Aristophanes, sometimes known as the Weaver to those such as she, welcomed his descendant with the cool gaze she could remember first noting when she was only but a girl. The curtain closed as the carriage and its escort finally halted.  

The statue was not the only thing to await them at the entrance of Aspenvale.  A small gathering, the manor’s staff, waited diligently by the great wooden doors.  Most notable among them was a grave faced elderly gentleman, and a short plump woman of middle years with tears streaming down her cheeks. The guards dismounted, removed their helms, and the youngest among them opened the door.  

A demure, glove hand outstretched from the shadowed interior.  The armored man who had led their small procession stepped forward and took hold of her hand. Allyria Dylane stepped down and regarded the man with the slightest hint of a nod before she released his hand.  No words were necessary between them.  Bishop offered her a gesture of deference and stepped off to the side.  She wore dark garments of a fine make, appropriate for travel, but also suitable to her station.  Her hair was still as black as it had been, and only a few more lines had begun to give way on her face.  A striking, perhaps even imposing figure.  Both the guards and servants straightened in her presence, as if she were austere elegance made manifest in human form.

She stepped forward and took in the view.  First she looked upon her home, and then to those she had left to care for it.  After a long moment the grave man, whom was the butler, broke the silence, “Welcome home my lady.”  Allyria looked toward the elder man with a veil upon her features.  When she gave voice to a response the echo of a smile played upon her lips.

“I am glad to be home, Mr. Baines.  I trust you have kept it to standard?”

“That will be for your ladyship to judge.  If we have not, then we have failed,” Baines responded in a tone to match the near static expression upon his face. The plump woman next to him had managed to gain control of herself, and shot him a reproving eye. Allyria, however, looked on with satisfaction.

“Very well,” she said, and began to make her way to the door.  One of the younger retainers quickly followed suit so that he might open it for her.  She stopped, midway, and looked back to Bishop.  “See to it that the contents within are taken below, Captain.”  

“I will do so at once, my lady.”

Allyria turned back, and walked through the now open door.  Upon crossing the threshold she let out a heavy breath, and a feeling of nostalgia blossomed in her chest. She removed her gloves and scarf to hand to the awaiting boy before making her way deeper inside.  

Her footsteps echoed faintly as she made her way through the large hall.  The lady paused only when she made her way mid way up the steps to the second floor.  It was an imperial staircase that split one wing from the other.  On the wall of the landing midway was a large, intricate portrait, and it was this that halted her steps. The portrait had been commissioned over a decade before.  It as she, Rhade and all seven of their children.  The twins, Noah and Artaen, her eldest sons, had been drawing on their seventeenth year.  

She was not sure how long she stood there taking it in with memories flitting in and out of the forefront of her mind. Some time later  Baines walked up slowly from behind.  Like her he too paused and looked toward the portrait.  “I remember it as it were yesterday,” he said. His tone was still respectful, but yet slightly more familiar.  An elder servant speaking with a woman whom had been master to him all her life.

“So do I,” she said distantly, her eyes blinking before looking toward him.  When she spoke again her voice had hardened a fraction, “Is it ready?”  

Baines closed his eyes, folded his hands behind his back, and nodded. “The masons brought it only this morning.  I instructed them see it to the lord’s study as you requested.”  

“Excellent,” she said, offering a final glance to the portrait before turning to make her way up the rest of the stairs. “Have tea sent to my solar. I shall be along shortly.” Allyria did not await confirmation of her order as she continued on her way.  

Lord Rhade’s study had been on the second floor, and it did not take her long to reach it.  She may have spared a fleeting glance to this room, or that, as she passed but nothing gave her pause as the portrait had done.  Not until she came to his door.  Much as when she entered the house she took in a heavy breath.  Her hand was steady when she reached forward to turn the knob, and push it open.  

The room was much as it had been when last she had entered it. As if time had stood still in this room supremely unconcerned with the goings-on without it.  Her hand ran along the edge of his desk as she circled the room.  One marked difference was what lay in the center. The object was almost the same height as she and draped in black cloth.  She reached forward and pulled upon it.  

It fell to the ground in a heap and revealed what had lain beneath.  A marble bust intricately carved in the likeness of her late husband and father of her children. She took a step forward as her breath caught in her throat.  Its creation had been an arduous ordeal.  Using varied portraits, pictures and personal accounts the mason had captured almost every line, every feature of the lord’s visage.  

“Magnificent,” she said in a hushed tone as she reached forward.  Her hand hesitated, but only for a second, until she brushed the stone cheek. “It has been a long time, but you have never been far from my thoughts.”  

She took a step back as if waiting on his answer. It had been over two years since she had heard his voice on the afternoon of that fateful masquerade.  Yet that, for her, seemed near an eternity.  He had been her partner in everything. His loss a void she would never quite fill.

“Circumstances have changed,” she said, as she might have done if he truly stood before her, “I was forced to make a choice, and I had to alter our plans.  Without you it has all fallen to me, and after some time it became clear that a sacrifice was to be made.  It was either my career or the legacy of my blood.  You would not be surprised by my choice.”  Her tone had been dark, but then she laughed quietly.  “It is as you often said, after all.  Political position is little more than illusion.  A potent illusion, perhaps, but one nonetheless. I did not always agree, of course, but no matter.  Our son plays that game now.”  

She turned upon her heel slightly, and looked down.  There were so few that she allowed past the veil that she kept static upon her features.  Rhade had been among them.  Before his likeness was a woman who had often burdened more weight than most could even fathom. Like one true to her birth she bore that weight with all the dignity, and strength she could muster.

“A day does not go by that I do not wish you were still at my side.  All too often I must remind myself that even I cannot turn back time, or summon you back into the mortal world. So here I am, returned to Aspenvale, and from here I shall carry on with our work as I have done since you left me behind.” There was the faintest glimmer in her eyes.  She took in a heavy breath to steady herself cognizant of the fact that soon she would have to speak with Bishop, Baines and the others.

Allyria stood in silence for quite some time.  Her pale green eyes looking first out the window on the far side wall, and then back to Rhade’s countenance. The lady’s mind wandered as it was filtering through so many memories of the past and still yet more plans for the future.  Her future, Noah’s future, her other children’s future and humanity’s place in the grand game.

“There is one thing,” she began, at last giving voice to her most recent decision.  “We were partners you and I.  From the moment you took my hand that one Wintersday until the moment the Shadow swept you away.  Throughout that time we have often agreed, and when we did not we would work together until we found a better way. Tonight, however, there is a contrivance which I fear you would never be able to forgive.”  A steel had entered her voice, cold and hard.  As if she was trying to convince herself she had been right no matter the anguish it would have caused him.

“When I left Kryta, your brother saw fit to challenge the claim of our children.  I knew he would, and thus put into motion certain assurances.  His death was not in my design, and I shall not bear the weight of a man too weak for his own failures.”  Here she paused as if calculating her words, “Far more surprising was her betrayal.  Your mother deemed that those of our union did not deserve all that Winghaven entailed. It was not her choice to make, but the cut was deep.  My son was successful and has been forgiving in victory.”  There was another pause as a cold anger set into her eyes, “I do not forgive, and I do not forget.  All of us have a choice, and we must bear the consequences when we make them.  Lady Rhaea will learn this before the night’s end.  For that, I am sorry, but I will always do what needs to be done.”  

The Lady of Aspenvale looked toward him a final time a myriad of emotions playing upon her features. When she turned upon her heel, however, the veil had been lifted, and she parted the room.  There was much needed rest for the work had yet to be done.