"Me!" Gabria gasped.
"There is a small but growing belief among the women that you are the blessed of Amara. There have been five births this season and al have been successful. Some women attribute that to your continued presence in the temple. They have brought these gifts to you."
Gabria was amazed. "But you are Amara's priestess. These gifts should be for you."
The woman's smile widened, and she shook her head. "I do not need them." She paused, her eyes boring into Gabria's. "But the clan needs you whether it knows it or not. Stay in the light of Amara's grace, and you will weather all the hatred and suspicion the unbelievers throw at you." She came to stand in front of Gabria. The girl tensed, waiting for the rest of the warning.
"Step out of the light," the priestess continued, her voice low and adamant, "And I promise you, the goddess wil destroy you."
Gabria nodded once in understanding. The priestess examined her face for a long moment before she stood back, satisfied with what she saw.
"You wil be home in three months, in time for the celebration of the Birthright. I will look forward to your return."
The Birthright was the ceremony of thanksgiving to the goddess Amara, for a fruitful birthing season. It was a vital part of the clan's duty to the Mother of All. Gabria could not help but wonder if the rest of the Khulinin would look forward to her return at that time.
The priestess strode to the entrance. "If the Hunnuli needs help at the time of her birthing, cal for me."
"Thank you, Priestess,” Gabria said with gratitude. She went to the door and watched the three women walk down the path until they disappeared among the trees.
For many days after the priestess's visit, Gabria mulled over her words. After so many months of rejection and suspicion, she found comfort in the knowledge that a few clanswomen were beginning to accept her basic goodness and her loyalty to the gods. Sorcery was believed to be a heretical evil and a perversion of the gods' powers. Gabria had believed that herself until she came to understand her powers. Perhaps now the clanspeople were beginning to question their old beliefs, too.
That was an encouraging thought.
The only part of the priestess's news that worried Gabria was the rumor about Branth. She wondered if he really was in Pra Desh and if he had the Book of Matrah. She turned cold at that possibility. Everyone believed the Geldring chieftain had stolen the book of spells, so it was very possible that he could be trying to use the knowledge captured within its ancient covers. Gabria hoped with al her heart that he was not, because Branth was as cruel and ambitious as Lord Medb. The gods only knew what kind of trouble the Geldring could devise with his power.
Gabria wondered, too, what Athlone might do when he learned where Branth was hiding. Clan law granted Athlone every right to seek Branth and exact justice for the murder of his father. But Athlone had responsibilities to the clan to think of. Besides, if Branth had become a practicing sorcerer, Athlone would not have a chance against him.
Gabria finally shook herself and set aside her disturbing thoughts. She stil had several months left of her banishment, and it seemed senseless to waste her time worrying about a rumor she could not confirm. She brought out her pinecones and returned to her practice of sorcery.
As the winter days passed, Gabria grew more adept at her spells. Her first attempts to turn the pinecone into a sweetplum were dismal failures. Her plums were either too hard, too sour, or too strange to eat. Final y, one evening, she envisioned exactly what she wanted, spoke the words of her spel , and changed the prickly brown pinecone into a perfect sweetplum. She laughed with delight when she took a bite and the delicious juice ran down her chin.
The sorceress practiced a few more times until she had a bowl of different kinds of fruit, then she went on to the next step: changing an organic substance into something inorganic. By this time her senses were more attuned to the process of bending magic to her wil . In only a few days she was able to transform the pinecone into stone or any object she desired.
Gabria was so busy hunting for food and practicing her magic, she did not notice immediately that winter was giving way to spring. The weather had remained dry and mild so the changes came gently to the land. The fifth full moon of her exile had come and gone before she realized that the air was not as chil y and the days were growing longer. She had less than one month left before she could return to Khulinin Held.
To her surprise, Gabria had to admit that she was not completely happy about going back. She had grown to like the freedom to use her magic. It would be difficult to give that up-even with the possibility that the council of chiefs would change the laws forbidding sorcery when the various clans gathered later that summer at the Tir Samod.
But that was not the only reason she was reluctant. As much as Gabria liked Khulinin Held, she did not feel at home there.
The only home she knew in her heart was a broad meadow far to the north, where the Corins had once made their winter camp. She had not been back since that day of the massacre, almost a year ago.
One night, when the half-moon rose above the plains, Gabria lay on her pallet in the dark, cramped temple and thought about her family long into the night. After a while she dozed, drifting in and out of sleep. Her dreams crowded in and jostled with her memories of her father and brothers. She tossed and turned as the dreams grew more vivid, and the phantoms of her old terrors gathered like shadows in her mind.
In the blink of an eye, her thoughts cleared. A vision came to her then, as real as the first time she had experienced it. It was the same vision she had dreamed that previous summer, just before her first meeting with Lord Medb.
Gabria saw herself standing on a hill, looking down at the ruins of a once-busy camp. The sun was high and warm, and grass grew thick in the empty pastures. Weeds sprawled over the moldering ashes and covered the wreckage with a green coverlet. A large mound encircled with spears lay to one side, its new dirt just now sprouting grass.
Gabria jolted awake. The vision faded, but the image of the burial mound remained clear in her thoughts. She had no idea if the mound was real. When she found Corin Held after the massacre, she had been alone and unable to do anything but leave her people where they had fallen. It was ill she could do to save herself.
Gabria mulled over the vision for several days, and in that time her desire to see her home again became a powerful yearning. The more she thought about it, the more important it became for her to see for herself if her clan had really been buried. There had been no chance to say good-bye to her father and brothers on that horrible day. Perhaps now, while she stil had about eight days of exile remaining, was a good time to go. On Nara she could cover the distance to the treld in three or four days and be back before anyone missed her. No one would have to know she had left the temple.
When Gabria told the Hunnuli mare of her idea, Nara agreed. To see your home once more wil give you strength, the mare told her. We wil go.
They left the next morning in the cold, misty hour of dawn.
Nara cantered east beyond the foothil s to the plains and gradual y swung north to avoid the Khulinin scouts. By sunrise they were wel to the north of Khulinin Held and fol owing the Sweetwater River. Nara settled into an easy, flowing canter that would carry them for hours over the open leagues of grass.
Gabria relaxed on Nara's broad back. It felt wonderful to be on the plains again, away from the temple, the hil s, and the people who would not come near her. Here on the wide, treeless grasslands she could see from horizon to horizon, feel the wind that tugged at her hair, and rejoice in the eternal blue sky that arched over her head. She threw her arms wide and laughed happily at her freedom.
Nara neighed in reply. The black horse stretched out into a gallop, her muscles moving effortlessly as she raced the wind for the sheer joy of running. Her black mane whipped into Gabria's face. Her hooves pounded the hard ground.
Gabria laughed again. She felt the power of the Hunnuli flow beneath her as quick and hot
as the lightning that' marked the horse's right shoulder. All at once she was overwhelmed by love, gratitude, and wonder. As long as she had Nara, she knew she would never be alone. She would always have an empathetic companion who would stand by her no matter how often her own people rejected her. She flung her arms around Nara's neck and pressed her cheek against the soft hair.
The mare slowed to an easy canter. Are you all right, Gabria?
The young woman sat up, smiling, and rubbed the horse's shoulder. "Stay with me, Nara, and I will be."
Always, the Hunnuli replied.
Silently they went on. There was no need to say more.
They traveled north for three days through the wide, grassy Val ey of the Hornguard. To the east, the snowy peaks of the Darkhorn Mountains towered into the sky, their white mantled heads crowned with clouds and their gray ramparts hidden behind veils of wind and snow. To the west, the smal er range of the Himachal Mountains bordered the valley like an old, crumbled fortress wall. The valley was a fertile, green land where antelope, wild horses, and small game flourished. Both the Geldring and the Dangari hunted in the Hornguard, and, since Gabria had no desire to meet anyone from the clans, she and Nara stayed to the eastern side of the valley among the foothills of the Darkhorns.
To Gabria the journey felt strange, yet half familiar. They were traveling back the way they had come almost a year ago.
The mountains and hil s looked much the same: barren, gray-brown with winter, and patched with snow. Only Gabria was different. She felt a lifetime older and wiser; she was no longer a simple, terrified, girl. The realities or war and magic had changed her.
Her problem was that her experiences had not erased her memories. The closer they came to Corin Treld, the more nervous Gabria became. Time and again she remembered that hideous day when she had stumbled into the ruins of her home and found her murdered family. She had thought that she would be calm and able to deal with the memories, but the feelings of terror, grief, and confusion boiled out of her mind like a turbulent flood.
As hard as she could, Gabria fought down the turmoil within her and pushed on, refusing Nara's suggestion to stop and eat or rest. The Hunnuli was not bothered by the constant traveling, but she grew worried about her rider. Gabria was obviously lost in her own thoughts. She was no longer alert or attentive to her horse and their well being.
On the third day from Khulinin Treld, Nara cantered over a hill and down into a bowl-shaped gul y.
She paused at the edge of a half-frozen, muddy pool.
Do you remember this place?
Gabria stared down at the dark pool. "Very well. I still have the scars on my hands." She ran her hand down Nara's neck. "A small price to pay for the gift of a friend."
In one motion, they both looked up to the top of a nearby hill where a small cairn of rocks could stil be seen on the crest. It was there that Gabria had buried Nara's first foal.
She had come across the wild Hunnuli trapped in the mud and fighting for her life against a pack of wolves. Gabria had driven off the marauders and spent two days digging out the pregnant mare with her bare hands. She had tried to save the foal, but it had died during birth. She had laid it to rest among the rocks.
Thinking of the foal, Gabria belatedly remembered Nara's current condition. The mare was almost ten months into her pregnancy. Shamefaced, she ran her hand down Nara's silken neck. "I'm sorry,” she said softly.
Nara nickered. There is no reason to be so.
"Let's camp here tonight,” the young woman suggested.
The mare tilted her head and looked at Gabria with her wise eye . There are stil several hours of daylight left. We could be in Corin Treld by nightfall.
Gabria shook her head. "We need to rest. Besides, I want to face the treld in the light of day." They found shelter in a shallow overhang in the side of one of the hills. Nara went to graze while Gabria built a small fire, ate her meal, and lay down on her blankets. Darkness came quickly, for the sky was overcast and the air was heavy with the threat of snow. Gabria closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
She was very tired, and she knew tomorrow would be a trying day, but her thoughts could find no rest. Her mind kept returning to the reality of the massacre and the dream-images of her clan's grave mound. What would she find tomorrow?
Had her family been buried with honor or were the bodies stil there, rotting into the grass? She tossed and turned as her imagination envisioned every possibility, then jumbled the imaginings together with the real memories of the carnage.
Phantoms drifted through her mind with half-remembered faces and voices silenced by death.
Outside Gabria's meager shelter, Nara came to stand against the cliff wall. The horse's eyes reflected the firelight, glowing like gems against the darkness.
Gabria remembered lying in the dark that night long ago, watching the eyes of the wild, trapped mare and wondering what would become of both herself and the horse. She never imagined the incredible events that were to fol ow. Now, she and Nara were going back to the place where the chain of events had begun.
Gabria sat up and leaned back against the rock. No, that's not quite true, she thought. The chain of events led back to Medb and his greed, and even farther back to the generations of clanspeople who had zealously avoided magic. It went back to the destruction of the Sorcerers, to the blossoming of the magical city of Moy Tura, to Matrah who compiled his great tome, to the early magic-wielders who had experimented with magic, and as far back as Valorian, the hero-warrior who had first used magic to defeat the evil gorthlings of Sorh. Gabria was only a small part in a story that actually had begun centuries before and would continue long after she was dead.
The woman laughed. Seen in that perspective, her worries and inner turmoil were merely threads against a vast tapestry of clan history and human events. All of her frightened imaginings would change nothing about the treld or her dead clan. What was done, was done. She would simply have to wait until morning to settle her personal fears. She lay down again, pulled her cloak up to her chin, and let her thoughts relax. This time she drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.
Snow was falling the next morning when Gabria awoke. It was a light, fitful shower that patterned Nara's dark coat with tiny stars and dusted the ground with powder. The mountains were completely obscured behind a wall of cloud. Gabria shook the snow off her belongings, ate a quick meal, and mounted Nara. They left the gully without a backward glance and trotted slowly north through the swirling snow. Corin Treld was not far by horseback, but Gabria did not want to miss it in the billowing storm.
Fortunately the snow shower did not last long. A little before noon, as Nara crested a ridge near the treld, the snow stopped and the clouds began to break.
Gabria felt her heart pounding. "It's not far,” she said. "It's just across that stream and up the next hill." Nara broke into a canter. She went down the ridge, leaped the stream without missing a stride, and ran up the slope of a long, treeless hil . Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds and poured down on the land. The Hunnuli reached the top of the hil and stopped.
For a breathless moment, Gabria wondered if they were at the right place. The area looked similar to the home she remembered: the broad meadow surrounded by trees on two sides and backed by the dark, tree-clad mountains; the small stream that clattered along its stony bed; and the pile of boulders by the copse of trees where children used to play. With a stab of pain, Gabria realized this was the same meadow, it just looked different without its once-thriving treld.
Gabria flung up her hands and cried with relief and joy. Her vision had been right; there, in the broad field, stood a new mound, crowned with spears and shining with a dusting of snow in the morning sun. She slid off the Hunnuli and ran down the hil . Halfway down, she unpinned the Khulinin cloak and dropped it in the grass, then she drew her sword and shouted the Corins' cry of victory. Her voice sang through the empty meadow. The young woman raced up the slope of the mound and through the ring of sp
ears to the very top. She brandished her sword high.
"Corin!" she shouted. "I did it, Father. You are avenged!" The silence of the ruined treld rose to meet her. Head thrown back, she listened to the wind in the grass, the cry of a hawk overhead, and the music of the stream. It almost seemed as if beloved voices would sound then, acknowledging her heroic feats, but there was no one left to answer her. She looked around, half expecting to see her father, her brothers, or someone standing by the mound.
The meadow was empty, and only the wind walked in the treld.
Gabria's joy died within her as quickly as it had come. Beneath her feet lay the hundred-odd members of Clan Corin; her father, Lord Dathlar; her three older brothers; and her twin brother, Gabran.
They were long gone, beyond the earthly lands they had once walked. Her family was in the realm of the dead now, in the presence of the gods. They might know of her victory over their kil er, Lord Medb, and the price she had paid to earn her revenge, but they could not share in her glory. They were gone, forever beyond her reach.
Gabria's eyes filled with tears as she looked down. The new growth of spring was beginning to cover the mound; the earth was gently settling down around the buried bodies. The girl noticed the spears were already sagging, so she walked around the circle and straightened each one. When she was finished, she climbed down from the mound.
For most of the afternoon Gabria wandered around the treld, remembering the places she had loved so well: the site of her father's tent, the chieftain's hall they had proudly built with logs, the pens and corrals, the tents of her brothers and her friends. Everything had been burned by the marauders during the attack, but Gabria found many traces of what had been. The foundation of the hall sprawled in the weeds, its interior crisscrossed with a few charred logs. Bits and pieces of personal items lay in the grass. The charred remains of the tents stood rotting into the blackened earth.
At last Gabria came to a level place by the edge of the treld.
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