The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  I shook my head, the hair slapping around my face. Frustrated, I yanked it back, weaving it into a single braid down my back. I already knew what I would do.

  “I found a—a kind of spell. A message she left for me. I talked to her, Garland.”

  “Even Salena didn’t know how to do that.”

  “Then she learned.” And where did she learn that? I wondered. “She asked me to tell you she thought of you every day. She kept some seashell.”

  Garland paled. “You know about the seashell?”

  I finished my braid and went to the dressing room to find something to tie it off with. “No. I never saw it. She said you would know what she meant.”

  “I do.”

  “She said she wished your son the best. Wished him to live up to his early promise, which we can all see he has. She hoped you had more children and regretted we didn’t all grow up together. Though, seeing as how things worked out, that might have been for the best.”

  I surveyed the closet for something to ride in and wondered where in the name of Moranu my fighting leathers had gone to. A little halting sound caught my attention, and I saw Garland had tears streaming down her face.

  “Oh, Garland, I’m sorry. That was thoughtless.” My anger at Rayfe’s high-handedness had blinded me. Like Uorsin storming through Ordnung in a rage. Better watch that in yourself. I stepped toward her and she held up a hand to stop me, turned toward the mirror to clean up her face.

  “It was long ago. Funny how these old sorrows seal over and you’re fine until something breaks them open—and you feel it fresh all over again. You’re right, Andromeda.” She started rifling through the drawers. “It’s good you and Rayfe did not grow up together. Meant, perhaps, even if Salena didn’t foresee it. Or maybe she did.”

  She handed me a stack of neatly folded leather—all black. “I didn’t think you’d need these so soon, but here.”

  I examined the leathers, modeled after my others, but new and matching Rayfe’s. I raised questioning brows at Garland. She shrugged.

  “Salena left for a reason. You are who you are—as much a child of that one as this. Who am I to stand in the way of that?”

  I tossed the leathers down and hugged her. “Thank you,” I whispered in her ear. “Your blessing means a great deal.”

  “Just—please, be careful.” She mock-frowned at me. “I’ve only barely gotten to know you. I’d like to know more. And no matter what you think, we need you. More, we want you here.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled at her, my lips feeling trembly. Some warrior I was making. “Now, do you have any idea how I can get the barrier back up? How do I communicate with it?”

  A line appeared between her brows. “If Salena went to lengths to leave you a message, didn’t she say? I always understood it to be a secret passed from mother to daughter.”

  “Of course she didn’t say—that would have been too easy.” My frustration came out in the bitter tone. Feeling this pressure did not help. I flopped on the bed and took a deep breath, letting the swimming fish in the mosaic above soothe me. What was I missing?

  “Knowing my people—and our queens—it would not be easy. Likely there’s a series of tests involved. Maybe there’s a clue in something she said?”

  Trust the animal within. That is the first and that is the heart. She had mentioned the heart then. Right after she showed me the animals.

  And the fish.

  Staring up at the image above, I felt the first stirrings of triumph.

  Thank you, Mother.

  Garland showed me the path to the beach, with raised eyebrows at the request, but no comment. We wended down and down and down, until my booted heels sank in the soft sand of the shimmering beach, impossibly white under the round moon. The song—the one that first propelled me to the fateful meeting with Rayfe—ran into my head.

  Under the waves, under the water

  All the days of his life he sought her.

  Mermaids danced in blue coral ballrooms

  While she watched from the dark of the sea.

  I should have known all along. I wondered who watched from the dark of the sea. I supposed I was about to find out.

  “You can leave your things here, if you wish,” Garland told me. “I’ll wait for you.”

  I eyed the water dubiously, having never learned to swim. “Should I strip down and swim? I don’t want to be a fish onshore, right?”

  She laughed. “Unless you’re already good at changing size, too, that might be a good idea. A you-sized fish would be difficult to push into the water.”

  Not willing to risk my weapons or new leathers—especially if it meant more delays in getting to Rayfe’s side—I stripped down while Garland politely averted her eyes. I braced myself, tiptoeing into the water, but this was no bracing mountain lake. This sea welcomed me like a warm bath.

  Okay, big test, Andi. I tried to focus on that sense of joy and play. If only I had more time. But we were out of time. Rayfe, dead in the snow, the crimson blood . . . Stop it.

  “It might be too soon,” Garland said, quiet, without censure. “You don’t have to try this yet.”

  She didn’t know what I saw for her son. I wondered how she’d withstand the loss of him, too. It would not happen. I could not let it happen.

  “I can do this.” I said it as much for myself as for her.

  Then I did. I felt my blood swim, as if tiny guppies were traveling through my veins like the birds before, and my skin change.

  I gasped for breath, flopping against the sand as a wave retreated. I hadn’t been deep enough, and I was too big, stranded above the surf. Then Garland waded in and shoved at me while another wave swamped over—and sweet water filled my gills. I plunged into the returning waves.

  And entered, for the first time, the foreign undersea world.

  I perceived it with my whole body, it seemed. Not seeing it so much as feeling the infinite shades of seaweed forests, the millions of coral creatures and swarms of other fish, gliding by. All in scintillating, variegated detail. I could feel the barrier reef farther out and tasted the cold winter sea battering at the other side of it. Not that way.

  Knowing no other direction, I swam down.

  I passed wonders I’d never guessed at. The unknown artist who’d made the mosaic over my marriage bed had surely been here. I wondered if it had been Salena herself, though no one mentioned art as one of her talents. Colors were the same and not. Cobalt became a smell, orange a sound like a bell. Magic shimmered through it all, as if I passed through it in condensed form.

  I swam deeper.

  The waters cooled and darkened. Deep, frozen waters. I felt like I couldn’t breathe as well, my gills straining. Fear sickened me as the water pressed hard, crushing me in its fist. But that image of Rayfe, of Uorsin’s army pouring over Annfwn, drove me on.

  Likely there’s a series of tests involved.

  A large shadow, outlined in pinpoint phosphorescence, drifted past with ponderous ease. Adjusting my shape, I became that and breathed easier. And went deeper.

  Finally, below me, a glow shimmered. It smelled of emerald and sounded like sugared berries. I headed for it and the pressure around me lessened. Warmed water surged through my gills. A golden wall held in the glow. I bumped my fishy nose against it and it gave slightly.

  I pushed more. It sizzled like snowflakes on hot skin and I remembered Rayfe kissing me as the snow fell around us on our wedding day. Such a short time to grow to love so much.

  I threw myself into the barrier, wriggling through it, feeling the sticky mucus of its song strip away my fish body until I popped through, once again my human self, into a bubble of warm air with nothing inside but a simple chair.

  No one waited for me.

  I’d hoped there might be some sort of guidance at this point, but apparently I was on my own. Yet another test. So be it, then.

  Outside the barrier, the water looked opaque, no longer teeming with all my fish self had perceived. No moonli
ght made its way down this deep.

  I shivered, realizing I was the one watching from the dark of the sea.

  Spinning around, I went to the chair and sat. It was made of something pink and polished smooth, cupping my naked behind with surprising comfort. My palms rested naturally on the arms. I let my head fall back and I stared up at the deep black water surrounding me. My mother had sat here, and my ancestresses before her. What had they done?

  Then I saw them. What I hadn’t before.

  Thousands of crabs crawled over the outside of the globe, the gold light catching the deep blue of their shells. They crowded in, watching me. Waiting.

  Listening.

  Understanding at last, I spoke to them. There, in the heart of Annfwn’s magic.

  I rode Fiona out of the city, through the dark before dawn, while Moranu’s moon dropped behind me, lighting my way. Rayfe’s long dagger lay across the saddle before me, while my own sat at my hip. I’d tied the fur cloak Rayfe had given me on our wedding day to the back of the saddle. No doubt the winter chill of Mohraya would bite that much more now.

  “This is beginning to feel like a thing for me,” I remarked to Fiona, and she twitched her ears back at me. I paused a moment before entering the grassy meadow, for a last look at the lovely sea with the white-sand beach so bright in the moonlight, the dark waters quiet, giving no hint of the world that flourished beneath. I wondered if I’d ever see it again. Forever in my mother’s footsteps, here I might also be leaving Annfwn forever, if that’s what it took to keep Uorsin out.

  I thought I’d reestablished the barrier, the outer echo of the dome beneath the sea that the crabs so diligently maintained. But I wouldn’t know for sure until I got there.

  A thrice-damned way to test something so important.

  “At least we got to see it, eh, Fiona? And we’ll tell them all it was full of untamed forests and wild beasts. Demons and black magic.”

  I knew the tree spies saw me when I entered the woods and started up the pass. They kindly let me know, I felt sure, so loud were their chains of calls, echoing through the treetops. It took me all night, but I finally arrived at Rayfe’s camp at the lake right at daybreak. He was waiting for me, face stark in the harsh light of the rising sun.

  My heart quailed, but my resolve didn’t. At least he wasn’t dead in the snow. Yet. He held up a hand to help me down, and I took it. He held on, pulling me very close to his armored chest, staring into my eyes without saying a thing.

  “I figured out how to shift,” I told him, just as I’d been planning to last night when I came back to our rooms, so full of giddy joy. And he’d already been riding out to meet my family in battle. It came out sounding like an accusation.

  A half smile lit his grim expression. “I never doubted you would.”

  “I know. And yet you broke your promise to me.”

  His smiled faded. “I know. I don’t know what to say to you.”

  “You can apologize.”

  “But I’m not sorry,” he explained. “I wish you’d stayed in Annfwn. This can’t turn out well.”

  “It’s my story, too. Including the tragic ending.”

  He cupped my face with his hands. “Does our ending have to be tragic? I could have been happy, knowing you were in Annfwn, caring for our people, enjoying your life. That you would maybe someday find your way to being queen and hold the land safe for me.”

  “How would that have happened with the barrier down?”

  He blanched. “Who told you?” Then he clenched his jaw. “My mother. Of course.”

  “She only told me what you should have.”

  “As if you needed more pressure!” he shot back. “I’d put you through enough. Learning to shift is amazing, but it’s not enough. You have to find the heart, and I don’t know where to tell you to begin to look. You’d think Salena would have mentioned that in her message.”

  “She did.” I held up my hands and showed him the raw wounds where the crabs had tasted of my flesh, my blood. “It just took me a while to understand.”

  In horror, he stroked a shaking finger over my skin, then stared into my eyes. “What happened—where did you get these wounds?”

  “Family secret.” I grinned at him, profoundly feeling that sense of connection to my mother and the women before her. As if I’d finally come home. “But I found the heart and I restored the barrier. I hope.”

  His dark-blue eyes lit with fierce joy, his shoulders straightening as if a great burden had been lifted from them.

  “You did it,” he breathed. “I always knew it.”

  “I don’t know how this ends.” I closed down the image of him, bleeding out in the snow. It would not happen. “I know that it should be with us together. My mother didn’t make the choices she did so I could hide away in paradise. Besides, I have to test the barrier. I have to go with you.” Just in case.

  “What shall I do with you, Andromeda, with all your insane and fierce certainty?”

  “You could love me.” I offered it softly, with a wisp of delicate hope.

  “I do, my queen. I love you beyond need or reason.” He kissed me then, pulling me in tight and slanting his hot mouth over mine, tasting of man and sleep and desire.

  “I love you, too.” I grinned at him. “Now, where is breakfast?”

  25

  The battle—that final battle at Odfell’s Pass—took place the following morning. You all know what the minstrels tell of that day. What actually occurred is somewhat different, which should come as no surprise to any of you by now.

  History is written by the victors, yes. But whoever tells their version to the most people has an advantage also.

  We spent the day waiting, as I’ve learned soldiers spend most of their time doing. More and more Tala men joined us through the day, but the force still seemed pitifully small to me. No one else seemed to be coming through from the other side, which heartened me that the barrier might be working. Though I warned them that I hadn’t mastered the ways of the heart yet and they might not be able to come back through, they went when Rayfe sent them into winter again, in small groups, to hide themselves along the route. It moved me, their willingness to trust in the magic and to defend Annfwn.

  And I fretted, wishing I’d had more time to study the wall. Rayfe wouldn’t let me go near it yet, not without the bulk of his force going with us.

  Terin thought Ursula and Hugh would wait for Uorsin’s massive armies to arrive, and Rayfe agreed to abide by his judgment.

  I knew he was wrong. Ursula is one of the finest strategists I’ve seen. She would see immediately that no one would be dragging the massed armies of the Twelve Kingdoms up the narrow pass. She had her Hawks. With Hugh’s picked men and her highly trained crew, she’d know they could take on at least three times their number, if not more.

  More, she would want to please our father.

  She would think to rescue me and bring me back to Ordnung in triumph. She had no idea Uorsin wanted Annfwn far more than he wanted me—unless he thought I’d be his ticket in. Had that been his plan all along, or had he simply wanted to best Salena in the end?

  That didn’t matter now. What did was that Ursula would lead her Hawks up the pass to rescue me and Hugh would join her. Between his reckless bravery and her keen mind, they could make it at least to the barrier.

  Which would hopefully hold.

  “I want you to let me parley with Ursula,” I told Rayfe.

  This time he listened. “No good can come of it.” But he sounded less certain.

  “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  He smiled and lifted my hand, kissing the back, and then my wounded palm. He opened his mouth to say something I never got to hear.

  At that moment, word came of battle.

  The wolfhound scout raced into our camp, snapped into human form, gasped out the message, and left as fast as he’d arrived. It galvanized them all. The quiet camp broke into a blizzard of activity, men becoming horses, wolves, panthers, a
nd raptors, others in human shape still, weapons flashing.

  As we neared the barrier—where it should be—the effects of its fall became apparent. Winter had poured in, freezing the grasses and flowers several lengths in. Fortunately, it looked to have been like a slow leak and not a bubble popping. I shivered, thinking of what could have happened, had it been that way, then I realized cold air still flowed in. An actual snowflake kissed my nose. The cold sting of it sent dread roiling through my gut. I grabbed Rayfe’s arm and he looked down at me, initially annoyed at the interruption, then his sharp gaze softened with concern. He caressed my cheek with a gloved finger.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “The wall isn’t right yet. It’s still leaking.”

  “Can you work on it from here, now that you know?”

  “Maybe. I’ll try.”

  “You stay here and do that, then.” He fastened his cloak, and with the snowy pass behind him, he looked like he had in my visions.

  “Don’t go. Please. I’m begging you not to go.”

  “Andromeda, my love. I have to. I can’t send them to fight without me.”

  I wanted to kick him. Him and his exaggerated sense of responsibility.

  I knew then there was no stopping this. The arousal in his gaze was for the fight as much as anything. This was also him. The relaxed man enjoying the wine and the tropical breeze. The fierce warrior spoiling to take out his enemies.

  I’ll understand if you can’t stomach this side of me.

  I stood on tiptoe and wound my arms behind his neck, kissing him with all the hopeful longing that swirled inside me.

  “Then I’m going with you. No.” I held up a hand to stop his words. “If you try to stop me, I’ll just follow again. Better to keep me with you.”

  Instead of arguing, he kissed me, holding me tightly. “You are always with me, Andromeda, whether you know it or not.”

  Terin cleared his throat behind us. Rayfe squeezed my waist and gave me a little scoot toward Fiona. The moon was nowhere to be seen, but I sent a fierce prayer to Moranu to safeguard him.