A Shaper's Birthright

by Karen MacRae

  Anna’s face became serious and a tear ran from the corner of her eye. “Oh, Sy, I miss her terribly. She was my world. Everything she did, she did to make me safe.”

  “You once told me you would never dishonour your mother. What did you mean?”

  “I meant I would never hurt anyone. Well, except in self-defence or the defence of others - I had to add that bit later. But I only ever wanted to use my gift to Heal and make the world a better place. To use my gift as she would. For good.”

  A pure white aura shone brilliantly around the girl from Straton. Seleste gave Sy a thumbs up. “Good idea,” she mouthed. She nodded at Finn. Anna was back.

  From the security of her white bubble, Anna looked at how she’d been feeling and acting since she’d broken the King’s Oath. She didn’t like what she saw. “I know I’ve been behaving badly, but why are you all so worried?” she asked. “What happened that I don’t know about?”

  “Anna, your aura was grey,” Seleste replied. “When you were looking for Spider, part of it got very dark.”

  The Shaper’s face whitened so it was almost as pale as her aura. “The King’s Oath is supposed to stop evil, but it’s too easy to break in there,” she said. “It’s no protection from whatever that field does to me.”

  “Can’t you just not go there?” asked Sy.

  “I don’t think I can trust myself, Sy. Part of me is longing to go back even though I know I might do something terrible. But what if I need to use it? What if I draw power and get lost in it? It wouldn’t be so bad if that’s all that happened, but everything seems so insignificant when I’m there. Beneath me. Beneath it, really, because I’m just part of it. It… I might do anything.”

  “Why now?” asked Malik. “What’s so different here?”

  “I’ve been feeling ill for days and it’s gotten worse the closer we’ve got to the mountains. That landslide was all crystal. What if the whole place is like that?”

  The group looked up at Valteira. The dormant volcano loomed over the landscape, its ever-present snow cap shining in the morning sun. The road took them right around its base. They’d be at the closest point later today.

  “I wonder if Nystrieth was born near a mountain range all of crystal? It’d be no wonder he turned out the way he did,” said Spider. Everyone fell quiet.

  Seleste broke the silence. “But your aura’s white at the moment. Thinking about your mother let you shake it off.”

  “I doubt we can rely on Anna thinking only of her mother for the next three or four days solid,” Finn pointed out.

  “Of course not. I didn’t mean that.” Seleste turned to Anna. “Do you remember that stuff about a Shaper’s code of honour? You know, in the Art of Shaping? Do you think you could use the stuff you said about honouring your mother to construct a Shapers’ Oath? Like the King’s Oath, but especially for Shapers? Something that would protect you from whatever this energy field seems to do?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s got to be worth a try. Finn, I’ll need your help. I’ll need to build it from my own aura.”

  “Won’t you have to use crystal though?” asked Lachlan.

  “Not this time. This is all me. It has to resonate at exactly the same frequency as the rest of my aura.” The others hadn’t a clue what she was talking about but kept their questions for another time.

  Anna thought of the woven shield of gold the King’s Oath generated and the intricate nets that Mistress Manson had used to make her blocks. Nystrieth’s oath was similar. All were made of finely entwined strands of power. She knew that the strongest white in her aura radiated from her birthmark. Using Finn’s mirror, she chose a small portion that ran close to her heart and began to work it instinctively, letting memories of her mother guide her gift.

  Seleste began to whisper a quiet commentary to the others as she saw a nugget of brilliant white begin to transform itself into a delicate web. Each thread of light told a different story. Among them was the joy of giving, the gift of Healing, the importance of justice, how the strong should protect the weak and that it was a Shaper’s responsibility to use their gift to fight evil. The net encapsulated so many ideals, its branches became almost invisibly thin. Seleste thought it must break, but it held firm, almost as if every added idea strengthened it.

  Anna lifted the net before her and inspected it for flaws. It was everything that was good about her mother and everything else she believed in herself. She thought about how the King’s and Nystrieth’s oaths could be broken - how a Shaper’s gift could get behind them or even unravel them. In the energy field, she had simply wiped her King’s Oath away. She had to avoid these weaknesses. Neither crystal nor Nystrieth could be allowed to turn her.

  When it was done, she got to her feet and put her hand on her heart. There was no need to say anything out loud, but she felt it needed a final touch; an oath needed something that encapsulated its purpose. In the end, it needed only two words. She cleared her throat, a bit nervous to share her oath with her audience, but when she swore it, her voice was clear and sure. She believed in it utterly and completely.

  “Forever White.”

  Seleste saw the net spin wildly around Anna’s aura then wrap itself around her heart. Its branches pierced the beating organ and linked together in a lattice that could never be broken for its removal would mean death.

  Anna’s friends felt humbled by the young woman’s commitment. At just eighteen, she had done more than promise to follow a King. She had sworn her life to a set of ideals many would struggle to follow. She would die rather than turn.

  CHAPTER 12

  W ith almost no sleep and plenty of exertion and tension overnight, Finn’s team were nearly dead on their feet as they set off. They had no choice - they had to reach the islands as soon as possible. Thankfully the horses were rested, well able to follow the road without guidance and well-behaved enough not to play tricks on riders dozing in the saddle.

  Anna didn’t dare sleep. She was assiduously avoiding the mountain range’s energy field with her gift and trying hard to focus on memories of her mother, but she could feel Valteira calling to her. Her head throbbed, her stomach churned and the bees had taken up residence in her limbs once more. Her mind slipped from an old song her mother had taught her as a child and she knew she had no choice but to test her oath. The thought terrified her.

  Given their heads, Blue and Hope were riding together so she looked across to see if Finn was awake. He was looking right at her. The grey nibbling at the edge of her reflected white aura confirmed her decision.

  “I’m not going to be able to stop it when I’m asleep. The call will be too strong,” she admitted. “I’m going to have to let it in and I don’t know if my oath will be strong enough to stop me from hurting people.”

  Finn looked at her for a few seconds, then nodded. “Let me talk with Seleste,” he said, slowing Blue to walk beside Ancora

  Anna hadn’t even realised Seleste had been riding right behind her. Clearly the assassin didn’t wholly trust the Shaper’s Oath either. She watched the two speak quietly then Finn trotted Blue back beside Hope.

  “We’re going to stop for a quick lunch soon. We’ll discuss it then. Would it help to talk until then?”

  “Yes, please,” Anna replied gratefully.

  “It’s been going through my head that no one in their right mind would try to land an army in the north, the south or the east of The Kingdom. Even if some of the ships survived the reefs, it would take weeks to get the men up those cliffs and that’s without us trying to stop them.”

  “There’s Norcombe or Smithy Bay. It’s easy to land boats there.”

  Finn shook his head. “The mountain pass south of Norcombe is too narrow and he’d have to transfer his men to small shuttle craft to get through the channel to Smithy Bay. The whole thing would take forever.”

  “True.”

  “So Nystrieth is going to be landing in the west. Where the crystal is at its most dense.”

  �
��Well, this is cheering.”

  Finn smiled. “Sorry, it’s the kind of thing my mind dwells on when there are no distractions.” The smile fell away as he turned to face the young woman. “What if he lands on the peninsula? What if he lands near Valteira?”

  Anna thought of the endless power of the mountains. “He’ll kill everyone who comes against him. In their thousands. Tens of thousands maybe. They won’t stand a chance.”

  Finn nodded. “The King’s Guard would have to withdraw. The war would begin on the mainland.” He looked at the Shaper, his eyes deathly serious. “Unless a small team managed to get close enough to take him out before he got there.”

  Anna knew full well the small team would have to include her. “My mother told me it would be better to be a lowly servant than a dead Shaper. I decided years ago that she was wrong, but I couldn’t make her understand. I had to learn what I was, what I could do, no matter what.” She shook her head, remembering her naivety of only weeks ago. She thought of Bojek’s twisted mind and the way Chiara and Luciado had been treated at the hands of Nystrieth’s spies. “I think I would have convinced her had we known about Nystrieth. It has to be better to be dead than any servant of his.”

  The pair rode alongside in silence.

  “What’s it like in Ionantis City?” Anna asked, changing the subject.

  “The University’s like nothing on the mainland. It was built in the shape of a seven-spoked wheel with each spoke a wide street separating the different schools. If you walk due south from the city harbour, you’ll come to the street between Order and Elements. Heading clockwise from there takes you past Elements then Science, Languages, Humanity, Creative Arts, Physical Arts and Order then you’re back to where you started. The centre of the wheel is the main University. It’s where most of the teaching happens. It’s got a long, proper name, but everyone calls it the Hub. It’s like a beautiful park, full of open spaces and breath-taking buildings. The library’s the main one, right at the top of the hill, bang in the centre of the Hub. The main offices are in front of the library and the amphitheatre’s at the back, behind the lake. Outside the university walls is called the Rim, for obvious reasons. It’s dedicated to trade and non-Quorum housing, but a fair number of students live there too because it’s a lot cheaper. The Rim’s more like a regular town. The original planners didn’t anticipate the numbers who would come to live there though so it’s a bit of a sprawl. It gets bigger every year.”

  “What’s the difference between the High Quorum and the Inner Quorum?”

  “The High Quorum is for the exceptionally gifted, almost always in more than one discipline these days. Membership more or less gets you a free pass to everything the Quorum owns. It also means you can call on the services of any Quorum gifted. The Inner Quorum is a small group of gifted who run the whole thing. They’re voted in by the High Quorum and serve for life.”

  “What school do you think I’d have been admitted to?”

  Finn didn’t bother to point out that Anna wouldn’t have made it that far. The law would have prevented it. “It’d have to be Humanity, I would think. Let’s face it, your strengths don’t exactly lie in other areas.”

  “What? You don’t think I sing like Luciado?”

  Finn laughed. “Nor dance like Seleste, sorry.”

  “What happens when someone has more than one gift, like Seleste? What school do they go into?”

  “They’re assigned a room and tutor associated with their dominant gift but take lessons in both. I don’t think Seleste took many Reading lessons though. She was never particularly good at it. Saying that, I hear she’s got much better at it recently, hasn’t she?”

  Anna wanted to tell Finn her theory about Seleste but owed it to her friend to speak to her about it first. She pretended not to hear the question mark in Finn’s last sentence. “But how did she get so good at fighting, if her gift is Dance?”

  “I asked to be admitted to Physical Arts instead of Creative Arts,” came the assassin’s voice from close behind. Anna asked Hope to move over a bit so Ancora could join them. “I passed the entrance tests so they let me in. I stopped Dance classes and Reading classes after a few months. My heart wasn’t in them. All I wanted to do was learn to fight.”

  “I’m not sure they’d have let you in Ionantis,” said Finn. “It’s very traditional.”

  “It’s why I went to Seask. It was a much smaller University. Not Quorum. Much more forward-thinking and flexible. I threatened to kill myself if I wasn’t allowed to go so my father ordered Spider to go with me. He was all for heading to Ionantis, but father wanted me brought home as soon as we completed the course.”

  Anna was horrified by the sense of helplessness, fear and shame that flooded Seleste’s aura as soon as she mentioned her father. Here was the source of her previously unreadable, grey aura. She could see Finn had thought Seleste’s suicide threat empty. She knew it hadn’t been.

  “But you signed up with Rybis straight from Seask, didn’t you?” asked a smiling Finn, oblivious to the young woman’s pain.

  Seleste didn’t hear the question. “He was furious when he found out I’d dropped Dance. It was too late by then to stop me. I could already kill a man a hundred ways.” Satisfaction eased the pain in the assassin’s aura. She smiled a humourless smile. “He wasn’t so keen for me to come home when he learned that.”

  Finn opened his mouth to ask why, but Anna caught his eye and shook her head. He looked at her inquisitively then his brain joined the dots. The joyful extrovert who’d turned into a withdrawn, frightened child and then a cold introvert who killed for a living. He felt fury course through his body.

  “Does Spider know?” he asked quietly.

  Seleste shook her head. “I never told anyone. Especially not Spider. I don’t know why I’m admitting it to you now. I suspect it might have something to do with you, Anna.”

  “Your block has gone, Seleste. Somehow, you built an aura-wide block that, I think, stopped emotion getting in or out. Being near me when I’ve been Healing has Healed your block. It wasn’t supposed to be there and undirected white energy seems to remove anything that’s… for want of a better word, wrong. It’s like Finn’s black hair. It was wrong, so the white light changed it back to red when we Healed him. Your aura’s now the twin to Spider’s: silver to his bronze. I hope it eased the pain at the same time. I swear I never meant for you to have to face it all again.”

  “It’s strange. It hurts, yes, but I can look at it from afar. I’ll kill him if I ever get the chance, and I’ll do it slowly, but I can live with knowing he lives in fear of me ever showing up at his door. He must be scared to even close his eyes at night. That pleases me.”

  The three walked on in silence. Only Malik had overheard. He said nothing, but he mentally added a side mission while he was here in The Kingdom. If he ever got the chance, Lord Peyton of Norcombe would be getting a visit from a certain Mastran spy. His lordship wouldn’t survive the encounter.

  Finn was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Lunch was a quick pit stop. The horses were left by the spring-fed water troughs at the side of the road while their riders sat cross-legged on the grass verge and munched on Sy’s amazingly tasty trail rations.

  Finn cleared his throat before bringing up the bad news. “Anna isn’t going to be able to stop her gift connecting with the energy field if she goes to sleep and we’re still days away from Theatis. There’s no way we can keep her awake until we get away from these mountains so we’re going to have to come up with a way to protect ourselves in case her new oath doesn’t hold.”

  Anna sat and listened as various possibilities were discussed and discarded. She knew there was only one answer. “Thanks for trying, everyone, but there’s only one way. I need to stay here, awake, until you’re all well away and then someone needs to watch me while I let my gift go.” Her eyes turned to the assassin. “It has to be you, Seleste.”

  Seleste nodded. She knew what Anna left unsaid. S
he had to be ready to kill the Shaper if the grey swamped her oath. She could see it had already taken the outer edge of her aura. It was only a matter of time until it threatened her heart.

  “Will you need backup?” Finn asked.

  Again, Seleste knew what wasn’t being said. Finn was really asking if Seleste’s changed aura would affect her ability to execute a threat to The Kingdom if that threat was a friend. Seleste didn’t consider killing a grey Anna to be murder. She considered it a mercy. She shook her head. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

  The mood was sombre as the others hugged both women before heading to the horses. “We’ll wait for as long as we can in Theatis and we’ll leave Estrell and Blue for you,” Finn told them. “Once you know everything’s all right, split your time between two horses so you can catch us up quicker.” When Anna was buried in Sy’s bear hug with no chance of overhearing, he whispered, “I’ll leave two coils of rope on Blue, just in case.” Seleste nodded. She’d bring Anna back to them, whatever happened.

  Sy had lit a fire for them before he’d left and provided them with enough caffe and food to keep them going. Seleste delved into her rucksack for some herbs that would help them both stay awake. “Couldn’t I just take these until we board the ship?” Anna asked.

  “They’re fatal in larger doses. Two days’ worth would kill you, especially since you’re so tiny.”

  “What else have you got in there?” Anna asked, curious.

  “All sorts. Some are antidotes and I’ve got a packet of your mother’s herbs in case of injury, but the rest do unpleasant things. Most are poisonous.”

  Seleste added a tiny pinch of the herb to their mugs and swirled the liquid. She handed one to Anna.

  “You haven’t got it confused with something else in that bag, have you?”