But she was more than that, and less. She had left her owl behind, on the isle. That had been, actually, the first of the very hard things.
This is, Rinette thought, walking at twilight among bare trees and evergreens and bushes and shrubs and flowers that would be glorious come spring, my own castle. One of her castles. Barbentain itself was another, and even Miraval was part of her legacy, if one stretched a point only a little.
It was cold, but she did not mind the cold. Winter was something she could deal with. She was still wearing the robes of Rian under her grey cloak. It wasn't as if she'd had a great deal of time to change her garb. Or her sense of where she belonged in the world. When she had arisen this morning she had been a priestess of Rian on her holy Isle, the named successor to the High Priestess there, though wondering, with a fear every one of them had felt, if their lives would stretch beyond this winter. Or if their destiny was fire in the name of Gorhaut and the god it claimed to serve.
Then battle had come today, screaming horses and men, blood and chaos in the valley, and at the end, unlooked-for amid helpless terror, a victory so complete the mind and heart could scarcely absorb it. She had gone into the sanctuary, to help the High Priestess lead them through the ancient, holy ceremony of thanksgiving.
And had come out from under the dome to find the lady Ariane de Carenzu waiting for her with a story that changed her life forever.
It was hard, it was very hard, however she strove to deal with this as she had always tried to deal with everything—calmly and with as much clarity as she could command. The lady of Carenzu had ended by telling her what was obvious to any thinking person from the moment the story had begun to grow clear—that her place was almost certainly away from the isle now. That the blindness and inner sight of a High Priestess of Rian was not what Arbonne needed from her after this. Everything had changed.
Ariane had said something else, though, something unexpected: that she would defend with all her own power and honour any choice at all that Rinette made. She had been near to weeping as she said that, Rinette remembered. It was a deeply generous offer, but it actually didn't matter very much, not really. Rinette would not have been what she was had she been unable to see for herself the clear truth of what all of this meant.
She was heir to Arbonne. There was no one else. With the offer of her hand in marriage, the future of her country, of the worship of holy Rian, could be safeguarded for a time. Perhaps a very long time. It was not an awareness from which one could turn away for the familiarity of the small isle that was all the home she'd ever known. The paths of holy blindness and the inward sight it might offer were not to be hers any more.
She was not going to follow the High Priestesses after all. Neither the one here, nor Beatritz herself on the island in the sea. The High Priestess on Rian's Island, the goddess's most holy servant, Rinette thought suddenly, putting her mind around this for the first time, was her mother's older sister.
She shook her head. It was going to be very hard. She could see them lighting torches in the garden now. They were being careful of her privacy, keeping at a distance from where she walked. The light in the west had become quite beautiful, crimson and purple and a softer range of dusky hues low down where the sun was nearly gone. The garden, she could see, was nowhere near its best in this depth of winter, but Talair was far enough south that there were still hints of colour all around, and the wind was gentler here, with the walls and the trees for shelter. She heard the sound of splashing water and walking a little further down a path of small stones she came to a fountain. The servants had been here before her; there were torches burning in brackets set into the soil. She stood close to one, holding her hands out for warmth.
She was heir to Arbonne. Heir to this castle of Talair as well, for En Bertran had never married and never named anyone to succeed him. En Bertran. The duke of Talair was her father.
She had seen him, of course; growing up on the isle so near this castle she had seen him so many times across the water. She could remember how she and the other acolytes had spent countless evenings when they were supposed to be asleep breathlessly repeating tales and rumours about him, carried by the troubadours and joglars who came to Rian's Isle. She knew all about Bertran de Talair and Duke Urté and the beautiful lady who had died, Aelis de Miraval. She even knew—everyone knew—the old song Bertran had written for his beloved beside the springtime shores of this same lake. What she had never known was that the song was her father's for her mother, that she was a part of that tale. She seemed to be, in fact, the ending of the story.
There was the other man as well, the one who was soon to be made king of Gorhaut. He had fought for Arbonne today against his own people. She had seen him, too, twice. Once last spring and again this morning when they had come across the lake to take the countess from the parley. He was a tall man, that one, bearded as the northerners all were, grim-looking with that, but a message had come from Rian's Island last spring that he should be watched for, that he was coming their way and might be important to them. And only a little while ago this afternoon Ariane de Carenzu, who ought, Rinette supposed, to know about such things, had said that he was a good man, gentler than he looked, and wiser, carrying burdens with which he would need someone's help in the days and years to come.
She wondered if he would come to her here. If it would begin already. She wondered if her father would come. Abruptly she sat down on one of the stone benches by the fountain, ignoring the cold. Cold was easy to deal with. What had overtaken her today was not, despite the self-possession she had managed to preserve with Ariane. It had been an overwhelming day. She wished she could hide, sleep, not dream. She wanted… she didn't really know what she wanted.
She suddenly felt—and could not remember feeling this way since she'd been a small child—that she might even cry. It wasn't Ariane's fault, it wasn't anyone's fault. She was sitting in the walled garden of her father's castle, and all she knew of her father were the endlessly traded stories about a duke who wrote the finest music of his day and had fought in wars in many countries, and who had spent more than twenty years pursuing women all over the world with a flamboyance that everyone knew—everyone knew—was a lifelong attempt to deal with the death of the one lady he had ever loved. Her mother.
I am afraid, Rinette said to herself suddenly, and the admission, curiously, seemed to help her gather her self-control again. I am not going to burn alive, she admonished herself sternly. None of us are going to burn now. We have won, by grace of Rian, who has given us, again, more than we have ever deserved of her. These changes in her life, she told herself, were only that—changes in a life. Mortal men and women were not to know—they could not know—what the future held in store for them, except for the fleeting, wayward glimpses the goddess sometimes granted those who had blinded themselves in her name.
That was not to be her path. Her path began here in this garden, walking forth with whomever came to lead her into the brightness and the burdens shaped by what, it seemed, she was.
Surely it was all right to be a little afraid, though? Surely that could be allowed of someone sitting alone at dusk in a winter garden dealing with the loss of every expectation she had ever had of her life?
It was then that she heard a footfall on the walkway, from behind her, the way she had come. She looked up at the torches for a moment and then, a little blinded, beyond them until she could see the stars again. She drew a long breath and pushed her dark hair back from her face. Then Rinette rose, straight-backed, holding her head high, and turned to meet her future. There was a solitary figure standing at the end of the path that led to this foundation.