The chronicle of secret.., p.1
The Chronicle of Secret Riven, page 1
Table of Contents
Copyright
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– XXXVII –
– XXXVIII –
– XXXIX –
– XL –
– XLI –
– XLII –
– XLIII –
– XLIV –
– XLV –
– XLVI –
– XLVII –
Appendix I
Appendix II
Acknowledgments
THE CHRONICLE OF SECRET RIVEN
ALSO BY RONLYN DOMINGUE
The Mapmaker’s War
The Mercy of Thin Air
THE CHRONICLE OF SECRET RIVEN
•
RONLYN DOMINGUE
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY NEW DELHI
Contents
* * *
CopyrIght
– I –
– II –
– III –
– IV –
– V –
– VI –
– VII –
– VIII –
– IX –
– X –
– XI –
– XII –
– XIII –
– XIV –
– XV –
– XVI –
– XVII –
– XVIII –
– XIX –
– XX –
– XXI –
– XXII –
– XXIII –
– XXIV –
– XXV –
– XXVI –
– XXVII –
– XXVIII –
– XXIX –
– XXX –
– XXXI –
– XXXII –
– XXXIII –
– XXXIV –
– XXXV –
– XXXVI –
– XXXVII –
– XXXVIII –
– XXXIX –
– XL –
– XLI –
– XLII –
– XLIII –
– XLIV –
– XLV –
– XLVI –
– XlVII –
AppendIX I
AppendIX II
Acknowledgments
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Ronlyn Domingue
Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Kathryn Hunter
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Atria Books hardcover edition May 2014
ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Domingue, Ronlyn.
The Chronicle of Secret Riven : Keeper of Tales Trilogy : book two : an acccount of what preceded The Plague of Silences / Ronlyn Domingue.—First Atria Books hardcover edition.
pages cm.— (The Keeper of Tales Trilogy; book two)
Sequel to: The Mapmaker’s War, 2013.
Summary: “An uncanny child born to brilliant parents, befriended by a prince, mentored by a wise woman, pursued by a powerful man, Secret Riven has no idea what destiny will demand of her or the courage she must have to confront it in the breathtakingly epic, genre-spanning sequel to The Mapmaker’s War”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4516-8891-7 (hardback)
1. Gifted children—Fiction. 2. Women cartographers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.O457C47 2014
813'.6—dc23 2013045442
ISBN 978-1-4516-8891-7
ISBN 978-1-4516-8893-1 (ebook)
THE
CHRONICLE
OF
SECRET RIVEN
AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT PRECEDED THE PLAGUE OF SILENCES
THE CHRONICLE OF SECRET RIVEN
– I –
The Babe Born Evensong Riven
MOMENTS AFTER HER BIRTH, THREE BIRDS SWEPT INTO THE room through an open window. The pigeon, the dove, and the sparrow circled the newborn three times, widdershins, lit upon the wooden sill, and settled their feathers. They turned to one another in conference, or so it seemed to the baby’s father, who saw their heads bob and heard them coo and chirp. He had respect for the uncanny and, believing the birds’ council to be that indeed, watched them come to their enigmatic conclusion.
The meeting adjourned. The sparrow fluttered toward the infant, snatched a wispy hair from her head, and guided the dove and the pigeon into the autumn twilight.
Her father would one day tell her this, and about how he walked to the window to decide what to name her. He hadn’t expected the dark tiny creature she turned out to be. She was third born but an only child. Two brothers, born blue, had preceded her. Her father looked to the sky at the crescent moon and the bright star rising at its side. She was named Evensong, for the time of her birth, but she would be called Eve, then become Secret soon enough.
She was an odd little thing with black hair, tawny skin, and eyes the colors of night and day. Except for the occasional cry or laugh, she would be mute until her seventh year, skilled with only one mother tongue until her fourteenth. From Secret’s first breaths, the girl was hushed with a silencing hiss, a sound of menace, not comfort, by her own mother.
The child became a watchful being.
Secret remembered the room where she spent the days of her first three years. The door to the room was always closed, and she was penned off by a guard of wooden slats with a soft pallet and toys on the floor. She occupied herself with colorful blocks, leather balls filled with sawdust, and dolls stuffed with wool. Secret took pleasure in the crawling things in her space. She wiped her hand through webs to watch the spiders build again. Beetles danced on their backs if knocked off their feet. Ants marched in lines to carry off crumbs she left for them. She was glad to have the insects to amuse her because they helped her feel less lonely.
Out of reach, in a corner of the same room where the windows faced east and south, sat her mother. There, Zavet bent over manuscripts and books, often muttering and burbling, caught in a rushing stream of words.
Madness? No.
Zavet was gifted with the languages of the entire known and ancient worlds. She did not, and could not, explain the mystery of her many tongues. Whatever language she heard or read, she grasped instantly, as if she remembered rather than learned it. She spoke all of them like a native without the accent of her own. The words burbled out of her as if from a deep, hidden spring. She dammed them with her work as a translator, but the flood could only be slowed to a trickle.
Now and again, this strangeness happened in front of other people. With Secret comfortable in a little wagon, Zavet went to market or for afternoon walks, and sometimes Zavet would mutter aloud softly. Some people seemed to try to ignore her, but Secret observed the suspicious glances from others. She saw them lean close, eyes narrow, fingers pointing. She rarely heard what they said, but she could sense their scrutiny. This is how she knew her mother was not quite right, and perhaps neither was she. Zavet and Secret did not look like their neighbors and, between her mother’s muttering and her silence, did not sound like them either. Still, the other women were polite toward Zavet, and she was polite but cool toward them, and they allowed their children to play within view as they filled their baskets and remarked about the weather.
As for Secret’s father, Bren was often gone while it was light but home when it was dark. Now and then, Bren went away for long periods of time but always came back. When he returned, he brought presents. Secret remembered a set of thick cards marked with colors, shapes, images, and symbols. Glad for the attention, she sat on his lap as he named them. She learned quickly and delighted him with the deft accuracy of her pointing finger when he asked her to identify the images for the words he spoke.
Her mother was always surrounded by books, but her father was the one who filled her with stories. Zavet taught her respect for the texts, which Secret was allowed to look at but not touch. What Bren gave her she was allowed to handle, with care. She turned the pages and, with his voice, he guided her into other worlds, slowly reading with his finger under the symbols that became words, and the words became images. Many of the books had illustrations, but they couldn’t compare to what emerged in her mind as she listened.
Although she was very young, Secret discovered she, too, could divine the symbols again and conjure what they told. What marvelous tales of wonder, adventure, and possibility! Her father found her concentration unusual and tested to see whether she understood what she read on her own. He gave her books he had never read to her. He asked her questions to answer yes or no, which she did with nods and shakes of her dark head. My mute little prodigy, he called her.
Secret knew her mother possessed this magic as well, but Zavet was parsimonious with its use in regards to her daughter. Some of the books her father brought he couldn’t read and promised that her mother would. She rarely did. With those, Secret sat in silence—such a good, obedient child was she —and studied the mysterious marks on the pages. She wondered what they meant, what tales they told.
One ordinary day, Zavet gave her coloring sticks and used paper with which to draw. The little girl sat on the floor and marked the page with all manner of symbols like ones she had seen. As she wrote the unintelligible words, Secret’s heart pounded. Her tiny hand gripped the coloring stick as her head flooded with images. There, within her, was a story she could not yet tell. One she must reveal herself. All at once, she felt its burden, its danger, and its redemption.
Secret cried out with wonder and dread, unable to understand what had opened in her but fully able to feel its power.
From the sunny corner, her mother hissed long and harsh. The noise startled the girl, and she spilled a half-empty cup of water with a jolt of her hand. Her mother hissed again, louder. The girl felt a tight knot at her navel loosen into a heavy force, which spread through her belly and chest. She held her breath, kept her glare to the ground, and pushed the hot feeling deep into her body, coiling it back to where it lived. Secret struck the page with thick black marks, but quietly, quietly.
“This spill is but an accident, yes, little scourge,” Zavet said under her breath as she wiped the floor clean.
– II –
A Visit to Her Grandmother
WHEN SECRET WAS THREE YEARS OLD, SHE HEARD TWO words she knew but didn’t understand when paired together.
Zavet said they were going on a journey to see the child’s grand mother, an old woman who lived far away in a place Zavet hadn’t seen in many years. She had never mentioned the woman or the village where she was born.
Secret’s father, an historian trained in geography, tried to explain the distance to her. She sat on a stool as he faced a map on the wall. “You are here, in this kingdom, in the town of its very seat, in a ward near its center,” he said, pointing to one dot among many. Bren drew his finger up and far to the right, then tapped the chart once. “You’re going there, to another kingdom, to a village in the woods. An adventure, my pet!”
Secret knew what that was because almost every story her father read to her was an adventure. She could hardly sleep knowing she would soon have one of her own.
On a cool, sunny morning, a large carriage pulled by six brown horses arrived at Secret’s small house. Her father carried three trunks to the road where two stout-armed men strapped them on the roof. Bren patted Secret’s hair and kissed her on the forehead. Then he and her mother wrapped their arms around each other, whispering and smiling, and quickly kissed full on the lips. Zavet walked up the steps into the carriage, then reached for Secret. The girl saw her mother had tears in her eyes. Several other travelers were already waiting inside. Clean yellow curtains with green sashes framed the windows.
In this carriage, Zavet and Secret traveled for many miles. Day after day, Secret rocked to and fro, sometimes on a seat by herself, sometimes on her mother’s lap if the carriage was full. She was used to sitting alone, and she felt uncomfortable on Zavet’s thighs, a hard place where she rarely ever sat. Secret was glad when they stopped for meals and for nights in sparse, tiny inns.
Never before had Secret been among so many different kinds of people. They were young and old and in between. Some were dressed in clothing that was worn and patched, others in clean and flawless garb. She watched them with attention, observing their movement and manners, what seemed proper and what did not. She listened to their private conversations and ones they had with her mother, who hardly muttered at all, her mouth busy speaking to the fellow passengers, nervously it seemed.
Secret didn’t escape observation either. People stared at her mismatched eyes the colors of night and day but smiled at her. She looked down at her books or out the window for hours on end, but never said a word. In these circumstances, Secret realized, her silence was welcomed. An inquisitive person or two asked her mother why she didn’t speak. Zavet said no physician who had examined her could explain it, and this was true. But most who bothered to remark at all said, “Oh, what a well-behaved little girl.” Her mother replied with a thank you, in a tone that made Secret think she was truly pleased.
Then the roads became narrow, and the buildings and houses were farther and farther apart. Secret and Zavet were the last passengers in the carriage, which left them at a large stone cottage near the edge of an endless thicket of trees, rows of green triangles. When her mother went into the cottage, a small creature with triangular ears and a thin tail circled Secret’s legs.
Cat, Secret thought. The soft beast made a puttering sound as she stroked its fur. She smiled, her palms warm. Although cats and dogs often approached her when she was out to market or on walks with her mother, Zavet never let her touch them and scared them away with a stomping foot and threatening hiss. The little girl secretly felt they went to her on purpose but was powerless to attend them.
Secret heard her mother’s sharp call. Zavet warned her to get away before it bit her, but the innkeeper, an old woman, said the cat loved nothing more than children’s cuddles. Secret pressed her face to the cat’s, then Zavet pulled her away.
The little girl heard hoof beats and watched a black horse approach. It and the carriage it drew stopped at the cottage gate. A man in a dark-blue coat and breeches stepped down. He spoke words she didn’t understand, but the adults clearly did. He and a helper from the cottage strapped their trunks on a wide, solid shelf on the back of the carriage. It was the same color as the man’s clothing with wood trim and light-blue leaves painted around the windows and doors. The old woman gave Zavet a basket filled with food.
Inside the carriage, Secret leaned on the windowsill. Soft shade and a cool breeze surrounded them. As far as she could see, there were trees and plants coming into leaf. Spring had followed them along the journey and finally met their stride.
They stopped along the way to rest. Secret stepped off the dirt road and trampled what looked like hay. She looked up into the green tree and sat upon the dry whiskery leaves it had shed, the smell sweet and thick as syrup. Never had she seen anything like this before. Birds and shadows scuffling in the trees and shrubs, the spiraling ferns, the dense moss. Soon enough, Secret would be able to name everything she saw, but in that moment, she did not yet have a word to describe how she felt. The awareness was familiar, as if she might have experienced it before, but not so intensely, not in a way that filled her with laughter and tears of joy. She sensed herself a part of everything around her—what was green, alive, Beauty, all that belongs together and was meant to be.
A cord of sunlight parted leaves and attached to the glow of a pale yellow cone on the soil. Secret knelt next to it, entranced. The coachman saw her and crouched at her side.
“That is a mushroom,” he said with an unfamiliar lilt to his words. “It’s beautiful to see but poisonous to eat. Not all mushrooms are that way, and you must learn the difference. It has emerged too soon in the year. How strange.”
Secret stroked the cool, smooth cap and smiled. The man mirrored her joy.
“Oh, Eve, don’t touch that dirty fungus,” Zavet said. As soon as she spoke these words, she turned her back and walked to the carriage.
Secret’s smile ebbed away as her finger fell to her side.
“Come, child,” the coachman said. He reached out his gloved hand and pressed her delicate fingers in his blue silk palm the color of the sky. “Your grandmother is waiting for you.”
