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nightmare, her father open his lips—try to speak—a puzzled look came into his
eyes—he blinked in shock and surprise—and toppled over, crashing into the table
before him. Ariella screamed and leapt for him, arms outstretched as her chair
fell over backwards.
    Pandemonium. Men shouted , women screamed or wailed, children began crying. Some
rushed for the high table, some to get water, some shouted confused instructions.
Ariella frantically turned her father over, crying out his name—but the icy
hand that held her heart was the chill and unforgiving hand of death, and she
knew he could no longer hear her.
    Someone
pulled her away, more people held her, keeping her from her father's side. She
screamed and wept, fighting them, trying to get back to his side, thinking
surely there must be something she could do, yet knowing there was nothing to
be done.
    Then
the moment of shock passed and the grief came, and her legs gave out beneath
her. Hands held her up, the Abbot's, the steward's; there was nothing in her
heart and mind but loss, nothing in her soul but grief, nothing in her world
but tears. She collapsed, her throat closing, her body knotted about itself , her hands reaching for something she could never
grasp. Animal moans of grief spilled from her, and she shook as though with
fever.
    They led her away, knotted and tangled in
her terrible grief, unable to see, to think, to feel anything now but a vast
and lonely emptiness.
    They took her to her room, coaxed her to
drink something—something bitter, but not so bitter
as the tears that burned her eyes and scorched her cheeks.
    She fell from tears
into darkness and knew nothing more for a day and a night.
    The
next days passed as in a nightmare from which there was no waking. Ariella wept
until her eyes were sore and swollen, and still there were tears left over. The
Abbot murmured words meant to comfort that she did not hear , Lady Magda plied her with platitudes she ignored. She tried to go to the
forest more than once, but those watching her prevented her, and she didn't
have the strength to fight them. Finally the Abbot brought the Infirmarian, and
there was more of the bitter drink, and her days faded into a haze of drug and
tears.
    She
walked through a dim world of shadows and sorrow. On a day gone chill and
gray, Lord Kaelin was buried. Overnight, it seemed, all the light and joy had
gone out of the universe, the trees turned to leafless
skeletons, the sky to endless slate-colored clouds, and the wind bit with teeth
of ice. People came and went, strangers she didn't know. They sat her down in
her father's study, then discussed her fate as if she
wasn't there.
    "She
fades more with every day," Lady Magda whispered to her maid on the
morning of yet another dreary day, as both of them cast furtive glances out of
the corners of their eyes to where Ariella sat, listlessly, in the
window-seat.
    "Things
will change when he comes," the pert maid replied with a knowing wink. Ariella rubbed her eyes
and wondered dimly who "he" was. There had been a great deal of talk
about some man she had never heard of. The Abbot had explained it to her, they
said. Something about Swan Manor . . . that as a woman she could not inherit,
but that . . . something . . . had been arranged with her nearest male
relative, a cousin. She licked her lips and stared out the window at the
leafless trees tossing their skeletal branches in the wind, clawing the sky
with bone-thin fingers. She only hoped that her cousin, whoever he was, would
make these people leave her in peace. She only wanted to mourn and to see
Merod. She longed for Merod with a need that was near to starvation. Merod
would know what to say, how to help her ease her loss, how to make her see
beyond all this sorrow.
    "Here,
child, let me tidy you," Lady Magda was saying, and Ariella let herself
be drawn from the window- seat, let them comb and braid her hair, put it in a
silver net, and arrange a fine veil over it. Just as they