Trust him, Faanshi ordered herself. “Please go ahead, akreshi,” she said, with an effort that drained her voice to the smallest of whispers.
“Kirinil,” the elf corrected, unhurried. “Alarrah, if you please?”
The other healer leaned in, pressing her fingertips to Faanshi’s temples, and at that contact a heady languor spread down through her limbs—not quite true sleep, but rather, a peaceful detachment that settled round her like a blanket. She could easily have lost herself in the sensation, but Kirinil’s free hand was moving, flipping the end of his braid back over his shoulder. Faanshi watched the ornate bronze-and-amber clasp that held the plait in check vanish behind him; then he drew his dagger, and that too glinted in the sunlight. With one swift slash he drew the blade across his forearm. Part of her marveled that she didn’t shriek. The rest of her yielded to amazement as her magic surged.
Before she could do more than notice his pain, the line of red on his arm vanished. In its place came another layer over her consciousness, this one cool silver, washing like rain against Alarrah’s golden warmth. That was Kirinil. His presence filled her mind, yet only as a mirror of his hand gripping hers.
“I have you,” he murmured. “Now find your Hawk.”
That took no effort at all. She had only to let go of the three faces around her, leaving them to fade in her sight while the shape of her awareness changed.
* * *
She’d been riding, long enough that her mother’s poultice could no longer quite muffle the sting in her chest, and she was dully grateful that the mare called Granna was of far more placid temperament than Tenthim. It meant she could still push herself through stopping at the next village to buy provender for the creature, food for herself and water for them both. And she could muster a smile and greeting for the dubious-eyed merchant who took her coins.
“Eshallavan, akresha, can you tell me the way to Arlitham?”
Only at the woman’s confused stare did she realize she’d spoken in Tantiu. She shook her head to clear it and tried again, this time in Adalonic, with an inward prayer to the Mother—no, the Lady of Time—no, the Daughter—that she could at least pretend to be coherent while she spoke...
And then she was back at her horse, trembling, holding on to Granna’s neck for support while her sense of self blurred.
“Please don’t be afraid, Kestar, we’re coming to help you.”
“What? No, Faanshi! You can’t—”
Talking to herself seemed foolish somehow, yet she couldn’t quite manage laughter. Alarrah’s power had relaxed her so deeply that to do more than think was a massive effort, and at any rate her wound ached enough to distract her. She couldn’t stop to heal it, not till she got to where she was going, not till she reached the abbey.
“We can’t come there. We have to hide!”
“We have to come help us!”
We. The single syllable resounded through her, compelling in its sunlit clarity, and all at once she wanted to embrace it. There was no loneliness in that word. It was rich with shared experience, with shared existence so deep that each breath drawn in was drawn as one. They were healer and warrior, musician and rider, with eyes that both knew the world and looked upon it for the very first time.
They could be—
She could be—
* * *
“Mother of Stars! Valannè, come back to us!”
“Curse it, Kirinil, can’t you—”
“For the love of Tykhe, girl, wake up!”
Voices pulled at her. At first she fought them, for they were drawing her away from the promise of we, forcing her back to a single name, a single body, a single place. But that final voice compelled her above all the others, for it was nearest to her, a rough and anxious growl just above her ears. It belonged with the shoulder against which she lay, and with the hand that had let go of her fingers to hold her instead—
“Faanshi!”
That’s me, she thought, with a vague sense of disappointment—and of relief, for her name barked out in Julian’s voice was an anchor back to herself.
“I’m...here,” she whispered, opening her eyes. “I’m here.”
As if those two words were the signal they’d needed, both elves drew their magic back from her. Their hands were slower to move, and Kirinil’s in particular were shaking. “Much, much work ahead of us,” the elf gasped. “You blaze like the sun.”
“How do you feel?” Alarrah had broken their contact, but her palms lingered just over her, faint power still resonating from them.
“Tired.” Faanshi let herself confess that, and swallowed back alone before that could escape her too. It wasn’t true, not when Julian still held her, and in weary bemusement she looked up to find the assassin regarding her with urgent concern. Under that gaze, she realized her face was wet, and that her nose and throat were clogged with tears. “My head is...very full. Please keep talking to me. It keeps me here.”
“Was it worth it?” the Rook promptly demanded. “Do you know where he is?”
He was scowling all over again, and at the sight of it, Faanshi could think of nothing but how worn and drawn he looked. What might his face be like at peace? The question transfixed her, fitting oddly in her mind, as though born from someone else’s awareness. Yet with all of Kestar Vaarsen still shining behind her eyes, she was certain it hadn’t come from him.
It seemed selfish somehow to think of Julian smiling. Yet Faanshi clung to it, for like the first light of dawn, like the ridahs of Djashtet, this thought was hers and hers alone. In gratitude for it, she offered the man who held her a wan smile of her own.
“No,” she said. “But I know where he’ll be.”
* * *
They broke their camp. With no further immediate task to fill, Faanshi thought to help the others ready the packs and horses. Yet in the aftermath of what she’d done, now that Alarrah’s magic had left her and her own had subsided, her body seemed transmuted to dullest lead. It was all she could do to sit upright, to accept the water Alarrah bade her drink, and to rise and climb onto Kirinil’s horse when they set out at last.
“I know you’d prefer to ride with Julian,” he told her, “but he and Alarrah must scout our way. You and I must work together as we go to build your shields. Are you ready to try?”
She couldn’t lie; she wanted nothing more than to sleep, to drift down into the light that never left her inner thoughts. But to close her eyes was dangerous, and so she whispered an affirmative instead, and prayed that she’d have enough strength to learn and use what this new teacher had to offer.
“Good. As we ride, if you can, I want you to let go of all else but the sound of my voice, and the part of you that heals.” Kirinil’s voice was barely louder than the breeze that ruffled past her cheek, still strange and new against skin that hadn’t yet forgotten her veil, and his words melded in her exhausted senses with the rhythm of his horse’s hooves. His arms kept her secure in the saddle, while his shielding magic bolstered her flagging alertness. “Take hold of it, and tell me what you sense.”
That sent a tremor of nervousness through her, for she’d never before tried to sense her magic on purpose. It had always bubbled up from somewhere far down within her, where she could never reach unless driven by pain or illness or fear.
Frowning, she clenched her fists tighter until her nails drove into her palms. It was the tiniest of hurts, but it was enough, kindling her magic in a faint warm flare that shot up from deep in her belly straight out to her fingertips. With her eyes still squeezed shut, she chased that warmth back down into herself, seeking its hiding place. When she found it, the warmth pulsed outward once more, through her every nerve to every last square inch of her skin. Everything wavered and then steadied, as if some vital connection she’d never known to be sundered within her had been rejoined at last.
“I have it,” she murmured. “It’s like a hearth fire.”
“Hang on to that,” Kirinil said. “This hearth fire is part of you,
and you must protect it like any other. How do you keep a fire from burning a room? How do you keep it in the hearth?”
“You need bricks to line the hearth. A grate, for the logs...a screen to keep the fire in.”
“Yes. Right now I’m your screen, but you must build your own hearth within you, a safe place for your power to burn. Build it now.”
“I’ll fall asleep,” she protested. “Back into the light. I’ll fall off your horse.”
“Elisel and I won’t let you fall. Picture your hearth in your head, valannè. Brick by brick.”
Those were the last clear words she remembered from Kirinil for much of the rest of the ride that day. Faanshi lost herself in imagining what he encouraged, and at first it wasn’t hard. With her magic warming her from within, she already had her fire. But her first thought of bricks gave her the shut-up window in the cellar at Lomhannor Hall, and as she flinched away from that memory, another rose to take its place. A hearth she didn’t know took shape behind her eyes—
But of course she knew the hearth in the common room at Hawksvale Academy, for where else would her fellow cadets gather on a cold winter’s night? There was companionship here, shared work and food and song, and the buff-colored uniforms familiar to her as her own name—
She ripped herself away from that recollection, no longer entirely certain if it was hers or Kestar’s. From there Faanshi faltered. No hearth at Lomhannor would do. She couldn’t remember a hearth at Dolmerrath, and the only other one she’d seen was in the house of the rag-and-bone man. In the end, she built a hearth within her from all of those places and none of them.
Its bricks were of desert sand, she decided, for her mother’s blood was Tantiu. Likewise, for the Lady of Time, she placed the signs of the rising, noon and setting suns on the stone of the lintel. Down the jambs she traced the shapes of branches, for Dolmerrath and the elves. In the hearth itself, the logs on their grate—ah, Great Djashtet, she could see them, one for her okinya and one for Aenghis, one each Alarrah and Kirinil, and the strongest one for Julian himself.
Be there, she told her magic. Burn there.
Her logs burst into flame.
Then she imagined the screen, and in dread and wonder saw a hawk with upraised wings take form in the wrought iron on either side, limned by her fire glowing behind them—
While the other cadets sang around the hearth, and her own young hands strummed out chords on the mandolin Father Sigald had given her—
Faanshi could hear them, along with the voices of elves woven within them like water running through a forest glade. She longed to sing with them all, but the song that leaped up within her was the ridahs—the bulwark that had sustained her in the duke’s dark cellar. And so she sang to them, to the Dawnmaiden and the Noonmother and the Crone of Night, until the bricks she’d laid in the hearth of her heart resounded with the echoes of her prayers.
Through it all she heard Kirinil too, his voice ceaseless and subtle as wind, urging her to keep going. Whether she accomplished what he asked, or how far they’d ridden as she’d done so, Faanshi never knew. When her throat was hoarse from singing, when her form was bathed in hearth-light, her strength gave out at last and hurled her down into slumber so deep that even Kestar for once was silent.
* * *
Nothing more than her own body’s willingness to let her wake brought Faanshi back to herself, and even then her body ached. That her power hadn’t yet chased the stiffness from her muscles surprised her enough that she lay quietly for a time, aware only that she was no longer on Kirinil’s horse, and pleased beyond speech for that small gift. They must have made another camp. When she opened her eyes, she saw that this was true.
Night had fallen. New trees surrounded her, confirming that she’d awakened in a different place for all that the shapes of Kirinil and Julian asleep in their bedrolls nearby were much the same as the last place they’d camped. The horses were huddled together in a tight little herd just behind her, with Kirinil’s mare Elisel flanked on either side by the larger Morrigh and Doreel. More than that Faanshi couldn’t tell, for as soon as she thought of stirring where she lay, Alarrah stepped into her line of sight.
“Good evening,” the elf woman said, offering her a battered tin flask. “You’d better drink this. I knew you’d need it as soon as you woke up.”
Water. Its scent seized her senses, warning her at last of her own raging thirst. With a whimper of need, she snatched the flask and gulped down the liquid it contained. Too quickly, for two long swallows set her to coughing.
Alarrah settled down beside her, and with one hand took back her flask; the other she laid on Faanshi’s shoulder, sending a faint wash of power into the girl’s frame. “Gently. How do you feel?”
“Limp,” Faanshi said, again on impulse, and only then did she pause and consider. “My head’s quiet.”
“Very good. Kirinil told me he had you working on your shields all the way here. But I’m afraid I must ask you to continue what he started.” Ingrained habit made Faanshi begin to rise, but the elf stopped her, with a firmer grip upon her shoulder. “When you’re ready. It can’t wait long, but you can take a few moments.”
Grateful for that, Faanshi studied her. So many questions bubbled through her that she had no idea which to ask first. Did Alarrah resemble the father they shared? Had Jord Tanorel also been a healer? Where was Alarrah’s mother? One escaped her, though, before she could choose any of the others. “Who did you heal? I mean...before you learned to shield yourself?”
Fair brows rose, and with a soft sigh, Alarrah leaned back against the tree behind them both. “It was a very long time ago, when the Anreulag drove us into Dolmerrath. I was much younger then, and my power was very new. We lost many of our people in those days, but by the grace of the Mother of Stars, I was able to make sure Gerren wasn’t one of them.”
“I don’t know when that was,” Faanshi admitted, and then blushed at her own words. “Or what the Anreulag did. I must sound like a child.”
“You’ve been a slave. Human masters never teach slaves of our blood anything of our people—it’s no mark against you.”
“But I should know these things. I should know more than any child. Why does the Anreulag hate elves and magic so? Is She a goddess? Like Djashtet, or your Mother of Stars?”
Alarrah’s gaze lifted to those stars, fastening upon the spray of light they cast across the sky, and the lamp of the moon that hung amongst them all. She was silent for a few moments before she finally answered. “I wish I could tell you why the Anreulag hates us; none of us know. For one who is supposed to be the Voice of the Gods, She’s never been heard to speak much. When She walks the land, it’s always because the Church has unleashed Her. It’s they, not She, who preach against us.”
Faanshi shivered and wrapped her arms about herself. “That makes it sound as if She isn’t a goddess at all.”
“The humans claim they don’t count the Anreulag among their gods,” Alarrah said. “Yet there seems to be little difference. I’ve heard of villages that give the Anreulag more honor than their Four Gods, and She might as well be a goddess to the Hawks. None of us alive in Dolmerrath remember what it was like before Her coming. The oldest of us are barely old enough to remember when we still had a country in the east, over two hundred years ago, and tales of the Anreulag go back even farther than that.”
“I didn’t know the elves had a country, either.” Faanshi scrubbed a hand across her eyes. How much more was there to discover had never been part of her confined and narrow world? “So much I’ve never known.”
“Adalonia would like everyone to forget that, I think. But they destroyed our land, and oh yes, as long as there are elves alive, we’ll remember.” To this, the she-elf smirked. “They conquered Nirrivy when they conquered us, and many humans of Nirrivan blood remember, too.”
“So much war. They fought with Tantiulo too. My mother and okinya came to this land as part of a settlement of peace.”
Glan
cing sidelong at her, Alarrah nodded grimly. “Yes. Jannyn and Tembriel were made to fight for the Duke of Shalridan in that war, and saw him put their parents to death when they didn’t kill enough Tantiu soldiers in the Anreulag’s name.”
“Then we’ve all four lost parents to him. He is a breaker of ridahs, and should face Djashtet’s justice.” Faanshi scowled and wrestled for further words. Though she held solid faith that the Lady of Time guided Her children’s lives, she’d never heard her okinya Ulima speak of Djashtet as others spoke of the Anreulag. Surely it was wrong that Djashtet didn’t walk upon the earth as the Voice of the Four Gods did? “I never knew that a goddess could be...real. Like us.”
Her gaze stark, Alarrah said, “That’s the question—what the Anreulag truly is, goddess, elven, or human, or something beyond us all. There have always been tales of holy beings that walk the land, but this one...She’s been seen far too often and Her power all too often felt for Her to be anything but real. Some of us have begun to wonder if She’s more real than the Mother of Stars Herself. Blood has been shed over it, blood our people can’t afford to lose.”
Our people. Those words caught Faanshi. Sharp and bright, they lodged somewhere within her chest, as if she’d swallowed a shard of shining glass. It took her several moments before she could ask, “Have you ever seen Her?”
“Once.” The she-elf’s voice was the barest whisper now, and for the first time, Faanshi saw her unearthly features blanch with fear. “When we were driven into Dolmerrath, eighty years ago. I was there when Gerren’s father was killed, and Gerren almost killed with him. And when Oriolle sacrificed herself to save us all.”
“Oriolle?”
Alarrah closed her eyes, and when she opened them again they gleamed with a trace of tears. “The last of our great mages. My first teacher, before Kirinil taught me to shield. My friend.”
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