The Queen's Rising(50)

I closed my eyes and listened. This time, I could find those Valenian pieces—spritely, lively, something Merei called allegro—and then I found those Maevan influences—strong and deep, mellow, rising as smoke, building to a victorious crescendo. But I remained in my chair, my mind wholly my own.

I opened my eyes once he had ceased playing, the memory of the song still sweet in the air.

“Did you see anything?” he asked, unable to conceal his hope.

“No.”

“Let me play it again, then.”

He played it through two more times. But T.A.’s memories remained sheltered. Perhaps I had inherited only three of them? Perhaps a bond could be used only once?

I was beginning to feel discouraged, but Luc’s energy and determination was like a cool breeze on summer’s worst day.

“Let’s try The Book of Hours again,” he said, laying his violin safely on its side. “You said reading the passage on the Stone of Eventide inspired the first shift. Perhaps your ancestor read more of that book.”

I didn’t want to tell him that I had read many other chapters of that volume, to no avail. Because everything must be attempted again, just to ensure it was a dead end.

Time, for all her previous mockery, suddenly eased and the hours began to move with speed. An entire week passed. I hardly took notice, for Luc kept me busy trying anything he could think of.

We tested all my senses; he had me taste Maevan-inspired food, run my fingers through bolts of northern wool, listen to Maevan music, smell pine and clove and lavender. But I failed to manifest a new memory.

He eventually sat me at the table in the library and unrolled a bolt of maroon linen, a red so dark it almost looked black. In the center there was a white diamond, and in the diamond was the emblem of a stag leaping through a ring of laurels.

“What is this?” Luc asked me.

I stared at it but eventually conceded to shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve never seen this?”

“No. What is it?”

He yanked his fingers through his hair, finally displaying a measure of worry. “These are the colors and the coat of arms for the House of Allenach.”

I studied it again, but I sighed. “I’m sorry. There is nothing.”

He pushed the banner to the side and then unrolled a large map of Maevana; it depicted the cities and landmarks as well as the boundaries of the fourteen territories.

“Here are the forests,” he said. “To the northwest, we have Nuala Woods. Then to the far northeast, the Osheen Forest.” He pointed to each. My eyes followed his fingertip. “Then we have the slender strip of coastal Roiswood, on the southwestern side. And last, the Mairenna Forest, in the southern heart of the land. This is the one where I think your ancestor has buried the stone, since it sprawls through the northern half of Allenach’s territory.”

I had never seen a map of Maevana divided into her fourteen territories. My gaze touched each of them before coming to rest on the land of Allenach, which claimed a vast southern territory of Maevana. It was Allenach’s land that came closest to touching Valenia; the Berach Channel was the only thing separating the two countries. But I didn’t need to be looking at the water. I shifted my eyes to the Mairenna Forest, which spread as a dark green crown over the land of my father’s birth.

“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t see anything,” I all but moaned, burying my face in my hands.

“It’s all right, Amadine,” Luc was quick to say. “Don’t worry. We’ll come up with something.” But he eased himself into a chair, as if his bones had turned to lead. And we sat at the table in the dying light of the afternoon, the map spread between us as butter, one week already gone.

There had to be an explanation for the memories I had been given. If the Allenach armorial banner had struck nothing within my mind—and my ancestor had undoubtedly looked upon that sigil countless times during his life—then there had to be a reason why I had inherited some memories but not others.

I thought back to the three shifts I had experienced—the library, the summit, and the burial beneath the oak. The library and the burial were both clearly centered on the stone. But the view from the summit . . .

I traced back through it, the weakest of the shifts, and remembered how I had felt a weight about my neck, just over my heart. How I had been searching for a place to hide . . .

My ancestor must have stood on that summit with the stone hanging about his neck, seeking the location where he would eventually bury it.

So the memories I had inherited centered only on the Stone of Eventide.

My gaze strayed to the map, taken with the path of the river Aoife, which wound through southern Maevana as an artery, and it made me think of the Cavaret River, just beyond Jourdain’s back door.

“Luc?”

“Hmm.”

“What if we found a river rock, one the size of the Stone of Eventide? Maybe holding it would manifest something. . . .”

That perked him up. “It’s worth a try.”

We rose from the table, and I followed him out into the street. I didn’t want to tell him that I was beginning to feel like a prisoner in that library, in that house; I had not walked outside since I had arrived, and I slowed my pace, tipping my head back to the sun.

It was the middle of August, a month bloated on heat and stale air. Yet I drank in the sunlight, the slight breeze that smelled of fish and wine. A part of me missed the clean meadow air of Magnalia, and I realized only then how much I had taken that place for granted.