7 Fall 492 Sir Galensar, I write with great regret to inform you that my noble husband, Bayezid Hardai, is dead. He was murdered seven days hence on the eve of the Beaton’s battle, found with his throat slit like a dog's in his own temple. Pray forgive the brutality of my words, but my heart at this juncture feels brutal and mercilessly torn. You loved my husband well, and for that I offer you what I can at distance: honesty. I know he thought highly of you all his days, and valued most dearly your friendship. He spoke of you fondly and often and expressed great hopes for the future in which you were included. If it any way assauges (though how, I ask, can it? yet then I am not a man and mayhaps therein lies the difference), the mage scion has been brought to judgement and the forces of Armitage and my brother-by-law, the new regent, have won an indisputable victory. Peace, they say, shall come now again. Is that what I am to tell Thaddeus of his father? Timothy, I am sorry. Know that all of Kenash mourns with you the loss of our lord of Summer. We loved him well. Gods, how we tried. Sivah keep you, Treza Hardai Widow of Summer - - - To Lady Treza Hardai: Forgive the length that has endured between your letter and my receipt of it, I pray you. I confess I let it sit upon my desk for days, and have reread the words a hundred times, and find them lacking. Lacking, my lady, because ink and parchment seem such a pale, empty vessel for such a wealth of thought, of anger, of sadness. It is perhaps inappropriate and no doubt offensive that the death of a Hardai lord has so shaken the staunch, unyielding bones of Galensar, but know that it has, and I in my seat have yet looked west and seen more darkness, and more regret, than any scion of Galensar before me. And it is not war that I look toward, my lady, only a vacancy in myself, rended and open in the wake of Bayezid’s passing. If your husband was Summer and I am His Bidding, it was with laughter and friendship that his temples and my seas sat side by side, like two boys' shoulders meeting. I don't know who shall sit beside me now, if anyone, and perhaps it is unfair that I should express to you how honestly and awfully that frightens me. Bayezid and I were always men, Lady Treza, and always more than men, and it was within the parameters of our unique friendship that we truly grew to be the men we wanted to be, and settled firmly beneath the weight of our respective names. We did not become our fathers, because we had each other. Bayezid to cool the heat of the sun in my blood, and I to warm the blossoms of peace in his heart. I owe him what and who I am, as surely as I owe my own bones, my own flesh, my own mind. Bayezid once said to me -- Timothy, a Triarch’s heart must only have room enough to love his god, his lady and his children, and yet we will always wish to love ever so many more, won't we? And it's true. He spoke of you to me often, and while I know that in him lived a bright and unstoppable passion, I know too that it was not for you, my lady. Only I feel justified in telling you (as I know he never could), that if he believed his heart could withstand breaking into quarters, he would have made it so, for you. No doubt he tried, and the results frightened him. Here at the last, I would share that one secret of his, with you, because I believe he will forgive me for having done so. I turn my eyes ahead now, and look inevitably at a future that I have no desire to see come to pass, for it is emptier and more looming than any dark cloud in the sky. I cannot fathom what you must see -- if it be a cloud for me, surely it must seem a gaping stretch of empty field, flowerless. He used to threaten to populate my seas with his roses, and how I cursed him for the suggestion then, but now I harbor doubts that perhaps I should have let him, if only to let the scent of flowers linger. Memories will have to suffice, until Dira sees fit to sit us side by side once again. I have no fears for that time, and shall only hope that when it comes, he looks at me and tells me that I have not failed us, that I have not faltered in his absence, that our dreams and hopes have at least survived where we did not. If you have need of me, my sword, my seat or my sunlight, please never hesitate to write me again. He and I were bound by blood and ink and more than those dissembling greeds, and I shall happily turn that bond to purpose in your name, should the need arise. All my hope, my sorrow, and my condolences. Upon my sword, Timothy Galensar |