All Chapters of The King's Second Heart : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The ceiling was wrong.That was the first thought Elowen Vayne had when her eyes opened. Not where am I, not who is here, not what has happened to me. Just the small flat impossible thought that the ceiling above her was the wrong ceiling.The ceiling at Ironbough had been dark wood beams crossed against rough plaster. The ceiling at her father's house at Vayne Hold, in the chamber of her childhood, had been low whitewashed stone with a long crack down the middle from the year the western wall had settled. Those were the only two ceilings she had ever woken up under in her twenty years of living, and she knew them both the way you know the inside of your own mouth.The ceiling above her now was neither one.It was high. Very high. It was pale stone, vaulted in long careful curves, and it had been painted — painted, in soft faded colours that had to have been there a long time — in a pattern of blue and gold she could not entirely follow. Above her bed there hung a canopy of cream-colo

"Drink a little more water first."Ysolde did not answer the question.She lifted the silver cup again and held it to Elowen's mouth, and she did not say because you deserve kindness and she did not say because you have been hurt and she did not say any of the small careful things a kind young woman might have said to a sicker and more frightened young woman in a strange bed, and Elowen, who had been bracing for any of those words, was grateful that Ysolde said none of them.She drank three more small sips.Ysolde set the cup down. Then she did the small careful thing she had clearly decided to do instead of answering the question. She slid her arm under Elowen's shoulders again, and she lifted her — slowly, slowly, with the small steady patience of a sister moving an older sister — and she eased her up against the soft pillows so that Elowen was sitting almost upright in the bed.The change in angle nearly undid Elowen.The world tilted. The painted vaulted ceiling slid sideways and

"Eyes open, child. I have not got all day."The voice was old and brisk and slightly impatient and perfectly kind, and it was not the voice of Ysolde.Elowen's eyes opened.The light in the chamber had changed. The soft golden afternoon light through the tall windows had moved up the painted vaulted ceiling and was now slanting in a long pale line across the deep blue and gold rug at the foot of the bed. She had slept the entire morning and most of the afternoon. The fire in the unseen hearth had been built up. The chamber was warm.A small elderly woman in pale grey robes was sitting on a wooden stool that had been pulled up to the side of the bed.She had a long careful face and white hair pinned in a neat coil at the nape of her neck. Her hands were in her lap and her hands were the hands of a healer — the small thin clean hands of a woman who had been washing them in cold water and clean cloth between patients for fifty years. She wore no jewellery. She wore no ornament. She wore

"Will you read to me again, Ysolde?"It was the morning of the second day in the blue chambers and Elowen had asked the question without quite meaning to. Her own voice had become a small steady thing in this room, and the small steady voice had spoken before the small careful part of her brain had checked whether it was allowed to ask for things.Ysolde looked up from her chair by the window with the small bright surprised face of a young woman who had not yet been asked, in two days, for any small thing other than water."Of course, my lady. What would you like me to read?""The pack-songs again. The one — the one about the small grey wolf who finds the lost child in the snow.""Of course."Ysolde rose and crossed to the bedside table and picked up the small leather book of pack-songs from where she had set it the previous afternoon, and she sat back down in the chair by the window and opened the book to the small careful place she had marked with a thin grey ribbon, and she began t

After a long quiet moment, Elowen said, very softly, in the small careful voice she had been using for asking the small careful questions she was beginning to dare to ask:"Ysolde.""Yes, my lady.""What is the king like?"Ysolde did not answer immediately.She was thinking. Elowen could see her thinking. Ysolde was a careful young Lycan woman of the king's wing and she was choosing her words with the small steady care of a young woman who had been asked an important question by a small careful guest in her care, and she was not going to give any small wrong answer to the question.After a long quiet moment, Ysolde said:"He is forty-five years old, my lady. He has been the king of Velmoria for twenty years. He came to the throne when he was twenty-five — earlier than any king of his line — because his father, King Arden, died of a small slow sickness in the spring of the year he was twenty-five. The king's elder brother, who had been the Crown Prince and who was meant to be king, had