He slipped his pendant from beneath his shirt, the final gift his father had given him. It would no longer do Jarin any good, but it might save the life of his child.
Jarin whispered to the carved silver wolf as he tied the necklace around his daughter’s neck. Fear made his hands shake, desperation made his eyes tear, but the chant never faltered.
“Keep her safe. Hide her from the magic eye,” he begged of the amulet.
The enemy was at the door. He could feel C’Tan breaking through his spells one by one. It was almost too late, but he would save his family, no matter the cost to himself. Shandae must live. He brushed away the baby’s hair and placed his palm gently on the side of Brina’s face. She blinked rapidly for a moment, then set her jaw. He wrapped his arms tightly around them both and let the breath of power roar to life, a cyclone of magic circling tightly around his family.
“I love you,” he whispered. Then he let go.
“No!” Brina screamed, reaching for him, but it was too late. Her hand passed through his arm as her body was instantly transported to the hill overlooking their home.
His attention immediately switched to the horses corralled on the far side of the valley. “Monster, Bluebell. Go to the woods and wait for Brina. Keep her safe.” The horses sent a questioning thought but immediately agreed, and Jarin felt them race toward the fence and soar over in a single leap.
Within seconds, his thoughts were back with his wife.
“Go home to your sister, Brina. Kalandra surely has forgiven you by now, but if you cannot do the same for her, go to Ezeker in Karsholm. At the very least, seek out the Bendanatu. What family I’ve got, you can find through them. Be safe, love. Now go,” he whispered through the line that still connected them. He sent a final swell of love before letting go, her angry, pleading cries cut off like a knife. He only hoped he’d have the chance to make it right.
Cold spread from toe to top and he shivered, trying to shake away the winter of body and soul that settled over him. Death awaited him tonight. He could feel the icy breath of the specter watching from the darkness. Deep in his bones, a voice whispered that his time had come.
Jarin gathered more of the breath of power. He pulled it to himself until he nearly glowed with it—enough to burn himself out if not released soon. It was no different than an archer putting arrow to string, or a swordsman going into fighting stance. He was prepared to use magic to defend himself and only hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. He had one chance to do this and do it right, and could only pray it would work.
The barrage on his shields reached a crescendo, and he knew he could hold them no longer. Rather than damage himself fighting a lost cause, he pulled all the power of his shields into himself, closed his eyes, and waited.
There was a moment of breathless silence, and then the door exploded inward in a shower of splinters. Jarin didn’t even duck. He knew who would be on the other side when the dust settled.
C’Tan.
Jarin didn’t say a word. He watched as the air cleared and his sister stepped through the doorway, her red satin robes glittering in the magelight that still bounded about the room from the broken protection spell, her pale yellow hair standing up with the static of it. She paid it no mind. Instead her eyes sought his immediately, the rage in them as visible as the magelight.
“We seem to have a problem,” she said, her voice full of ice.
“Not of my causing. Why don’t you come in, and we can discuss it.”
“I think not.” She smiled, though it never reached her eyes. “You have something that belongs to me.”
“She was never yours to take, Celena.” Jarin leaned against the wall, arms across his chest, trying to hide with casual arrogance the fearful power he’d pulled to himself, waiting for the right moment to be released.
“Don’t call me that,” she snarled. “Give me the child.”
“No.”
The time was close now. The suppressed power burned. Jarin hugged himself tighter to keep from shaking as C’Tan left her guard at the doorway, pushed past him, and tore through the house. She howled in frustration and rage, moving from room to room and finally circling back to him. Her hands glowed with a blue flame that engulfed them, but did not burn.
“Where are they?” she hissed from between clenched teeth.
“Gone, Celena Tan. You will not have my child.” His eyes flashed fire. C’Tan began to laugh.
“You’re a fool, Jarin. I’ve got S’Kotos and all his agents at my beck and call. You might be able to fool me for a time, but you can never escape The Destroyer. S’Kotos wants the child every bit as much as I do, though for different reasons. We’ll find her. It’s a shame you won’t be around to see it."
“What happened to you?” His voice shook with anger and the power that burned within, but at least the fear was gone.
C’Tan stopped laughing, and Jarin saw a flash—small as it was—as some humanity returned to her eyes, haunted and pained. That was the girl he’d known, the child he’d loved—but the ice returned and she shrugged.
“Life happened. Enough said. I don’t want to do this, Jarin. Give me the child and you can live. You can always have more children. You must give me this child.”
That was too much. Even with all he’d heard from her, he could not take the callous dismissal of his only daughter any longer. Jarin let the power surface and simmer just below his skin. “I’ll not let you use my child for evil. You’re insane.”
“Don’t call me that!” she screeched. Her eyes narrowed in anger, and the blue flame around her hands burst once again to life. She drew back her arm as if to throw the ball of fire, but paused. Her eyes focused on the cyclone of sparkling energy in which he’d immersed himself.
She cursed and hurled the flame at him as she raced for the doorway, but it was too late. Jarin relaxed his hold on the power, and it roared to life like a tornado, twisting outward quickly. Stones littered the yard as the walls bowed, the beams high above sagging with the sudden loss. Chaos reigned as his home began toppling about him. Jarin’s ears ached with the blast, but he was not done. He reached out one hand and a great rope of flame shot toward his sister, lassoing and holding her in place as the house collapsed around them. The flames never touched Jarin—he was used to his gift. There was nothing that could hurt him here. Relief flooded through him as C’Tan tried to run for the door. She wasn’t going anywhere. The lasso tightened around her as she struggled, her hair and clothing catching fire as she fought and screamed in his grip.
There was a great crack directly above. Jarin looked up to see the squared wood he’d cut and formed with his own hands, the largest piece of the house, fall directly toward him. He lunged out of the way, throwing himself to the left, but the wood ricocheted off another fallen beam and followed him. On his knees, there was nothing more Jarin could do. The wood caught him across the chest, and he had but a moment of regret before he was pinned by the tree-sized beam. It crushed the breath from his lungs. What small margin of control he had over the whirlwind was lost.
He’d burned himself out, and now C’Tan’s flames were going to finish the job.
The fire burst around him, and Jarin was able to turn his head just enough to see that he was not the only one caught in the conflagration. C’Tan lay pinned beneath a pile of rubble, half in and half out of the doorway. Her hair was burned almost completely away, her skin a reddened mass of flesh. Perhaps the blast was enough after all, enough to destroy the enemy he’d once called sister.
Jarin choked with the heat and smoke as darkness glazed his vision.
At that moment he knew. Death had come to claim him.
Brina screamed when the house crumbled. She stepped out of the treeline and looked down the hill at the ruins of her home, then sank to the earth. She clutched Shandae as sobs racked her body. Ash and smoke carried up to her, and she choked with the smell of blackened earth and burning flesh, but still she did not leave. She watched as C’Tan’s guard pulled her
from the burning rubble and raced her back to the castle. She watched as even the stone burned and melted in the heat. At the top of the hill, she fell to her knees and wept as her entire life went up in smoke.
The horses snorted and stamped. Shandae awoke once or twice, but went back to sleep quickly with her mother’s constant rocking. Brina was unsure if she rocked to comfort herself or the sleeping child.
Jarin was gone. The link that had always grounded her—the bond between them—had snapped the instant Jarin had been taken by death. She’d felt a flash of crushing weight, the sear of flame, an ache of relief and regret as he’d slipped from this life into the next.
As the black of night turned to the misty gray of morning, Brina picked her way down the slope to inspect the ashes of her home, unable to leave until she saw proof that Jarin was truly dead. She knew she was going against Jarin’s dying wish, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to know.
She got as close as she could, but the heat of the charred remains and the baking stones would not let her get close enough to know for sure.
There was no way Jarin could have survived the blaze, but she couldn’t give up hope, despite the severance of their bond. She couldn’t live without him. Jarin had saved her from her murderous father, had taken her from Kalandra’s scorn and Tomas’s disbelieving taunts. They’d never believed the horror she’d witnessed. Only Jarin had given her a way out of her past, a place to forget.
Brina screamed at the sky.
“Why?”
She fell to her knees, pleading with the heavens for an answer.
“Why?” she whispered as the tears fell unchecked.
As she knelt before the ruins of her home, staring into the embers of the fire that had destroyed her life, she remembered Jarin’s final words, one line in particular standing out: “Go to Ezeker in Karsholm . . .”
Brina couldn’t go to her sister, as Jarin had suggested. She couldn’t afford to take the chance that her father would find her there. And she knew nothing of the Bendanatu and had no desire to start now.
No, the safest place was with few people, a place where no one knew her so she could forget her old life and start anew. She and Shandae had to hide, from her family as well as C’Tan. She had to be dead to all of them. C’Tan knew how to find her otherwise.
And so she took a new name, one she’d avoided for most of her life, for it was full of ache and loss. It belonged to her battered and dead mother and her long-gone sister who had died at her father’s hand; a name that reflected their pain and the agony of betrayal and was now etched in her very soul.
What other name could there be, now that deadness pierced her heart and soul?
“Marda,” she whispered.
But what of the child? What name would reflect her loss, yet keep her anonymous to C’Tan?
Brina, now Marda, stared into the glowing coals for an answer. They blinked and wavered back at her, and she suddenly knew. A bitter smile crept across her face as she stared at her baby, so much like her father, and brushed away a lock of dark hair as he’d done not so long ago.
“Ember,” she called the sleeping child. “Ember Shandae. For the glowing coals our lives have become.”
Marda nodded once and dashed away the tears that had plagued her the night long. She could afford them no more. She turned her back on the stone and coals. Straightening her shoulders, she left her home and heart behind.
CHAPTER ONE
Kayla cradled her flute in the crook of her arm and curtsied to the politely clapping nobles. Her stomach jumped as she waited for her final and favorite song to begin. She glanced upward, gauging the morning light. She wanted to finish her performance just as the sun crested over the outdoor theater. The applause died quickly, and still she waited for the expectant stillness to come over the room before she nodded to the orchestra behind her. She had more to accomplish with this final song than just entertainment for nobility or a welcome to the king. Oh yes, there was much more at stake.
The strings whispered a soft tremolo, the short strokes vibrating with sharp intensity that would carry her through the visions she needed to play. She lost herself in the sound as it began to build, the lower strings entering, the brass adding its muted blow, and Kayla closed her eyes to better see the picture within her mind, the image of home searing her eyelids in vivid detail.
And then she began to play.
Soft, so soft it seemed only a breath of sound, the flute came alive with her kiss. The instrument became her voice, expressing the poetry she felt in her soul, passing on the memories she held there. Her audience lived her thoughts without ever realizing what she had done, never knowing the doors she had opened between them. Even she didn’t know how she did it, but this once she took a chance on their ignorance and dared to try. She had to. It was the only way she could complete the path she’d set for herself ten years before.
The sight of a hawk greeting the morning sun spun out with her breath, carrying the crowd on a journey with her above the towers of Darthmoor to weave amongst the snapping piñons, past the strong walls of her home. As she played, the quiet room drew her more deeply into the music until the audience faded away. The music was a place all its own. The hawk called again through her flute, and the strength of Darthmoor answered in the brass. Back and forth, the call, the answer, until the hawk flew away and the horn and drum sang a song of pride and strength that came from the very stone of the keep itself.
The song was simple, easily played, the images familiar to all in attendance. There was neither man nor woman there who had not stood on Darthmoor’s walls, witnessing the rising and setting of the sun, the majesty of the mountains that guarded them, so the pictures were no surprise to the audience, causing no suspicion as she tampered with their thoughts. Her heart raced, and she could not help the light sweat that broke out on her brow, but her hands held calm and unwavering as she pulled the assembly into the height of her dream.
Selfish. She knew she was being selfish in this performance, too focused on impressing the right people to play it with passion, but she had grown so tired of the insults, the dismissals as if she were below the people of Darthmoor, unworthy of even their glance. Now she held more than their glance.
Much more.
She had their adulation. She could see it in their eyes, in the way they held themselves so perfectly still, bound by her power. They were lost in her music, unknowingly caught in her spell, and she only prayed it would be enough to free her family from society’s chains. Not selfish, she told herself. This is for Lady Kalandra. I do this for Mother, she whispered in her mind. Hardening her heart, she poured herself into the final phrases of music. The image of sun setting and moon rising came, and all of Darthmoor lay still in the silence of night. Her final note faded away to nothing. It was done. All that remained was to see the reaction.
Kayla lowered her head, still holding the flute to her lips, reluctant to let the moment pass when she was so at one with the music. There was not a stir—not a rustle, not a single breath as the audience sat transfixed for several long seconds—and then the room seemed to breathe a collective sigh before it erupted around her. She’d done it! There was no way they could keep her family exiled after that performance. People surged to their feet and clapped madly, whistling and howling their praise. Even King Rojan beamed as he stood and applauded.
Kayla took a deep breath, the tension leaving her shoulders. She actually let a smile creep through for a moment as she curtsied time and again.
The audience quieted as the curtains descended, the conversational buzz already beginning, but she ignored it. There was nothing more that could be done, and she felt confident her plan had succeeded. Kayla gathered her rosewood case from the back of the stage and fell to cleaning and taking apart her instrument, smiling to the first violinist and mouthing a thank-you for his good work. He beamed back at her and bowed. She latched the case and wound her way down the stairs to mingle with the crowd she had just finished entertai
ning. Before stepping into the grand hall, Kayla checked her hair to be sure her ears were covered. It wouldn’t do to remind them of her half-evahn heritage when she’d just gained their approval.
The Duke and Duchess Domanta waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. Kayla was disappointed their son Brant was not with them. He’d promised he would come.
“Congratulations, Kayla. That was an amazing performance,” the duke said, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips. “I have never heard Darthmoor’s Honor played with quite such fervency. Not since Rajanya himself played it. Masterful.”
“Why, thank you, sir.“ Kayla looked at him from beneath her eyelashes, bowing over his hand. “Praise for such a humble player is vastly appreciated.“
The duke laughed. “Despite growing into quite an attractive young lady, you have not changed one bit from the little sprite who used to hide in my stables and steal away my son.”
“Hush, sir!” Kayla mockingly reprimanded the man she loved and earnestly hoped someday to call Father. “You’ll ruin the reputation I am working so hard to gain, and how then could I earn your favor?”
He roared a great belly laugh that rang across the room, then patted her cheek and met her fiery eyes with twinkles of his own.
“You needn’t worry of me ruining your well-earned reputation, my dear. Right now you could talk the king into presenting you a duchy of your own.”
Her heart raced. The duke was hitting a little too close to home. He gave her shoulders a squeeze and spoke low, compassion and laughter lacing his voice. “I’m not sure how the nobles will accept a titled outsider, especially one of mixed parentage. Darthmoor will never be the same again, that’s for sure, but personally? I think it would be great fun.” He gave her shoulder another squeeze and released her, smiling. “It’s about time the pompous wake up and let go of their prejudice toward the evahn, don’t you think—even if it is only in letting a half-evahn into their elite circle.”
The Sapphire Flute Page 2