"He might have some suspicions." Emrillian's cheeks turned slightly pinker, and she looked down at the half-empty cup of cider clasped between her hands. "He seeks me out more often than he did the last time he was here. Trevissa thinks he's grown silly over me. If she thinks so, then it's not my imagination or my vanity, is it?"
"Hmm. Trevissa isn't the kindest judge of people's thoughts and feelings," Ceera murmured, and exchanged a glance with Mrillis. He read in her eyes concern for Trevissa's interference in this matter.
"I hope she doesn't intend to trap him for herself," their daughter continued, with a shrug. "She's only eleven, after all."
"I was younger than that when I decided your father was the one for me."
"You could have told me," Mrillis offered. "Think of all the suffering you put me through. I was positive all I would ever have was your love as a sister." He shuddered dramatically, earning a roll of the eyes and a sigh and grin from their daughter. Ceera smothered a chuckle behind her hand. "If you love him, Emmi, don't leave him dangling for years."
He bit off the next words, just before they slid from his lips: Noveni don't have half the years we do, even if he does have imbrose.
"Yes, but being interested in me isn't the same as loving me," Emrillian whispered. "I don't want to frighten him away."
"He's a Valor. They don't frighten easily."
"And you are an enchanter who fought star-metal when you were a child, but did you have the courage to tell me you loved me?" Ceera shot back. She held onto her indignant expression for less than two heartbeats before the whole family laughed together.
"True. Men are cowards and weak and full of doubts, when it comes to the ladies they love. Give him some hints, some opportunity to speak his heart to you." Mrillis rested his hand on Emrillian's wrist to emphasize his next words. "Without your two shadows, dearling. It will be hard enough baring his heart to you, but an audience--"
"Especially Trevissa," Ceera sighed.
"Yes." Mrillis took encouragement from his daughter's thoughtful nod of acceptance. She didn't reject the notion that Trevissa was prone to interfere and cause trouble in the fragile, early days of her courtship with Pyris. "The two of you need privacy to speak of such things, with no fear of what others will say." He squeezed her arm again and released her. "But not too much privacy."
"Papa!" Emrillian blushed darker and her eyes sparkled with laughter and that giddy type of guilt that told him his daughter had been thinking of kisses and embraces, but hadn't experienced any yet.
"When did she grow old enough to have a sweetheart?" he asked Ceera that evening, long after Emrillian had gone to bed and the two of them sat curled up together in one chair in their front room.
"I honestly don't know." She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. "We're still as young as we were the day we first kissed."
"Maybe I should have a talk with Pyris."
"Don't. You'll ruin everything."
"What's wrong with letting a young man know that his sweetheart's parents approve?"
"Our Lady told you she approved of you for me, but did that move you any faster?"
"Umm...no." He sighed and shifted Ceera onto his lap, to cradle her closer. "Sorry about that. It was easier to let myself get distracted in those days. Especially since I was sure you only saw me as a brother."
"Well, there is that." Ceera brushed a kiss against his cheekbone. "At least Pyris knows Emmi doesn't consider him a brother. What?" she asked, stiffening when Mrillis groaned at a new thought.
"If they marry--"
"They will. Eventually."
"Well, eventually, we'll be grandparents." Mrillis burst out laughing when Ceera sat up straight and stared at him, eyes wide and mouth dropping open in shock.
* * * *
Three attacks came that winter, little more than testing jabs against the Threads that bound all the forgers to Mrillis. The first came just a day after Pyris formally asked permission to marry Emrillian. The second came the night before the feast Athrar insisted on holding, to celebrate the betrothal. The third came during the worst winter storm, on the verge of the breaking point before spring's arrival.
No one died. All those bound to Zygradon and Braenlicach felt the attack, but there was no pain, no draining of power, no shredding of Threads. Ceera had lessened the strength of the bond between Zygradon and its forgers, spreading it out among them when she channeled all the links through Mrillis. In this attack, no one could be sure who was the target.
"There is a possibility that you were the target, Mrillis," Master Breylon said, after the third attack, when they all gathered together to compare what they knew and sensed from all three attacks. "Just as you cannot sense the Zygradon when you are close to it, and it has blurred in your eyes, just so you cannot feel the attack when it is directed specifically at you."
"If someone else had been the focal point, it would have been more obvious. Yes." Mrillis sighed and nodded. He grew more sure Breylon's theory was right, the longer he considered it.
"What did you feel during the attacks?" Nainan asked. "It was different, I think, than what the rest of us experienced. Yes?"
"We felt as if harp strings had been plucked with extra force. Almost violently," Ceera said slowly. Others around the table offered their observations, for the most part agreeing. They felt vibrations, movement, force, but no pain or burning.
"Pressure," Mrillis said. "As if I were being squeezed into a chest just a little too small to hold me. No air, just for a few seconds. My chest felt...not hollow, but as if something--or someone--tried to hollow it out. But like the rest of you, no pain or fire. Most peculiar."
"Our enemy knows you hold all the Threads," Patros offered. "He knows enough not to waste time severing the Threads binding us to the Zygradon, because he still must sever your link before he can steal it."
"Our enemy, our enemy," Ceera snarled, surprising everyone. "Why will you not say it? Endor is our enemy. We have known for years that he is his father's son. Perhaps more so because he has preserved his imbrose while harnessing blood magic for his use at the same time. We might have been better prepared for the Nameless One's actions if we had kept a record of his name and family and history."
Mrillis surprised them all, himself first, by laughing ruefully at her sharp observation. "We never really learned that lesson, did we? Know your enemy, you will know how to fight against him. If we had not ignored the Encindi all these generations, if we had gone to Flintan instead of washing our hands of the barbarians... Who knows where the World would be now?"
"It does us little good to dig up our mistakes unless we learn from them," Breylon said with a weary smile.
"Then let us learn," Athrar said, thumping the table with his fist. "I will assign Valors to work with scholars and examine the histories, speak with everyone who knew Endor, and try to understand how he thinks. Somehow, we will, we must, know our enemy better than he knows himself. My heir is almost grown. I do not want my grandsons facing the battles and dangers that have plagued us since the days of our ancestors."
* * * *
Emrillian and Pyris were married at summer solstice. Athrar insisted on hosting the feast. Mrillis and Ceera danced and laughed and watched their daughter sparkle with happiness, and tried not to think of how quiet their quarters would be when they returned to the Stronghold.
"She's much too young to be married," Mrillis said, in the quiet of their bed in the sumptuous guest quarters. "I thought she was old enough last summer, when she said she wanted him, but I started doubting at her betrothal, and now I'm positive."
"Men are such idiots," Ceera said with a sigh and a smile that trembled. And then she burst into tears and flung herself into his arms. They held each other and cried and laughed, and didn't say much of anything, long into the night.
* * * *
The spring after Mrillis turned fifty-one, Ceera turned forty-nine and Athrar turned forty-one, Ceera called together all those who had helped in the
forging of sword and bowl. The subject was the fate of their children, many of them grown or nearly grown.
"I feel old, just thinking about it," Mrillis said, earning laughter from all those gathered in the council room in the Stronghold. "Our children, old enough to take over our duties."
"How do you think we feel? These are our children. We were children when we did it," Ferrys said, grinning. He wrapped an arm around Nyessa, his wife, and looked around the table, meeting the eyes of everyone else seated there.
Ceera had also asked the spouses or betrothed of the remaining forgers of the bowl and sword to join them in this meeting. Mrillis couldn't help looking back at the last time they had come together, for the grim purpose of finding a way to save the lives of all those tied to the two powerful, magical objects. Today had a far happier purpose, and yet, he couldn't help feeling a little sadness. And the pressure of the passage of time.
"Our children," Nainan murmured. She always spoke quietly now, but she had become a reliable counselor, a strong support for Ceera, and whenever she spoke, people paused to listen. "It is a good thing, yet it frightens me. If our children are bound to the Zygradon, as Emmi and 'Lissa and others have demonstrated, simply by being born to us, what does it say about our grandchildren?"
"I hope it says they will be too busy learning their duties and abilities to make us grandparents," Athrar muttered. That earned more laughter from the assembled.
"They will be busy, I guarantee," Ceera said. Her smiled faded into a serious expression that stilled the laughter a little sooner than Mrillis liked. "No, I propose this training not to keep them busy, but because it is wrong to leave a sword lying unsheathed where children can cut themselves with it. Either remove the sword, or teach the children to use and respect that sword.
"Well, we cannot remove the Zygradon and Braenlicach. Through curiosity and necessity and--yes--arrogance, these things were formed and have harnessed the power of star-metal now in our world, and the star-metal that shall fall for the next thousand years. Our children are bound to it, born bound to it. Who can tell the purpose of the Estall in allowing this to happen?"
"We must protect them, and the future," Mrillis said, taking up her thoughts and command of the discussion. "We must train them to defend themselves, to use the power of the Zygradon and Braenlicach and not be used by others who might seek to use them to control the World."
"We weave shields of magic around the children whose strength far outstrips their wisdom and self-control," Nainan said. "I think we should do it for our children, until we know their hearts. Until we know what influences have come to bear on them that we have not seen or sensed. This is too crucial an opportunity for our enemy. A seed planted in childhood could grow into a vine that chokes the life out of us all." She offered a wintry, sad smile and the expressions that flickered around the table showed they understood exactly what she referred to. Endor had controlled her and Triska, and no one had suspected until everything crumbled around him, nearly ending in disaster.
Belissa? Mrillis thought to Ceera.
That was my first thought, she answered, and turned her hand under his, where they rested together on the table, to twine her fingers through his and squeeze. Nainan came to me when I first sent out word for our gathering. She guessed what I intended, and her first fear was for Belissa. Endor did show a sudden and complete change of heart toward her baby, just before the rift came.
All the children of the forgers had been tested by the Zygradon and by Braenlicach when they grew old enough to show any imbrose. Those with potential had been sent to the Stronghold to train. Now, all the other children of the forgers came to the Stronghold, to spend time in the Zygradon's presence and learn the disciplines necessary to sense attacks against the Threads binding them to the sword and bowl, no matter how thin, and how to defend against those attacks. Because Mrillis was the intermediary, by necessity he became their primary teacher.
The children of the forgers grew stronger and more adept at linking with the Zygradon, and Mrillis gradually had to go farther away within the Stronghold before he could sense the presence of the bowl. He could still see it, still touch it and lift it, but it was otherwise beyond him.
"It's as if it has become a spot behind my eyes," Mrillis said with a rueful chuckle, when they discussed the dilemma during a visit with Athrar and Ygerna. "I know it's there, but I can't pinpoint the exact spot, can't even feel it, but thank the Estall, whatever is behind my eyes is there for me to use!"
"Hmm, but that is an interesting analogy," Ygerna offered after their chuckles faded. "You can feel what is behind your eyes when there is pain. If someone were to attack the Zygradon, or you to get to it, would you feel its presence then?"
"Let us hope that never happens," Ceera said quietly, and reached for Mrillis' hand.
Mrillis tested each student for outside influence, and taught them to weave tight shields from the Threads that were naturally attracted to the stronger Thread binding them, through him, to the Zygradon. He was pleased, as the moons of teaching turned into years, when his students grew stronger and their shields remained un-breached.
Then, as the years became four, then five, he worried.
"Endor has done nothing to them, made no attempt," he told Ceera one night, as they prepared to go to bed.
"Must you always spoil a perfect evening this way?" she sighed with mock irritation.
"Sorry, love." He apologized with a kiss. Unfortunately, Ceera was right. It had been a perfect evening. Emrillian had come for her regular moon of training, Pyris had accompanied her, and the four had enjoyed a private, warm, family evening full of laughter and mind-games.
"Unfortunately, I've had flickers of the same idea. And Deyral mentioned something about that in his last report from the Council on Wynystrys." She sat down on the side of their bed. "If he isn't attacking us or our children, is he trying to lull us into complacency? What is his plan? Has he decided to wait for another generation, for those who don't remember him or what his father did to our World?"
"Or has he found another path to take, another crevice in our walls through which to approach us, and we haven't discovered it yet?" It was almost a relief to speak those thoughts, and to see Ceera shared his concerns.
Still, part of Mrillis wished she had some knowledge or certainty to counter his theories, and give them a little reassurance. The peace had lost its tinge of uneasiness and grown quite comfortable.
"I suppose it's too much to hope he's met with some accident and is dead, isn't it?" Ceera whispered.
So we don't have to be the ones to kill him, Mrillis thought to her, unwilling to give the thought substance by speaking it aloud.
Ceera called another gathering of the Guardians of the Bowl and Sword, as they had come to call themselves. They agreed to seek out the strongest Valors and send them out with soldiers, into the mountains and wastelands of Lygroes and Moerta, to hunt Endor and his supporters wherever they might be hiding. The Valors were to use their imbrose to spy, to see and sense the activities of Endor and the rebel enchanters with him, and the soldiers would protect them from Encindi attack.
Cafral and Efrin accompanied their parents to the meeting, though their imbrose and their bond to the two powerful objects were negligible. Both were fine young men, handsome, and born charmers. Cafral was twenty-one, and Efrin eighteen. Nainan remarked on the broken hearts they would leave behind, after just a few days in the Stronghold, and suggested that perhaps the young princes be kept busy, so they would not snare pretty young girls' hearts.
Athrar laughed at the suggestion, but agreed. Ygerna and Ceera, however, visibly saw some other meaning in Nainan's words, and the three women went off together to speak in private. Athrar reminded them, only half in jest, that he and Ygerna had wanted to betroth Belissa to Cafral when they were children. To Mrillis' surprise--and he was more surprised to realize he was the only one who felt that way--Nainan, Ceera and Ygerna all supported the idea. Before they could implement wh
atever plans the three mothers had made, and before they could approach Belissa and Cafral to test their feelings on the proposal, Nainan's worries were proven true. Cafral and Trevissa were caught sneaking away to the Lake of Ice in the middle of the night, with blankets and a skin of wine. The young prince blustered and flushed dark, and took all the blame on himself. Trevissa wept and protested that they weren't doing anything more than stargazing, and it wasn't fair that they had so little time to become friends.
In his anger, Athrar let slip that he had been considering matching Belissa with his son and heir, and the young prince's pleased surprise gave everyone pause for thought. Belissa didn't reject the idea out of hand, but neither did she put much stock in Cafral's apologies for the attention he paid her flirtatious cousin. Mrillis and Athrar decided they would never understand women, when their wives appeared pleased with the situation.
Trevissa showed a vicious, bitter side of her personality that no one had ever suspected. The jolly mischief-maker, who could snap with fiery temper one moment and apologize prettily and make up just a few heartbeats later, revealed years of feeling herself unfairly held back and suspected of wrongdoing simply because of her parentage. She insisted that Belissa had arranged her embarrassment to harm her, and wouldn't take back anything she said.
Triska said little beyond turning her daughter over to the discipline and admonition of the Stronghold, and Mrillis found that odd. She had always been fierce to defend her child when the teachers and Queen's Ladies called for discipline for the mischievous girl. Why did she fall silent now, when Cafral and Trevissa continued to maintain she was innocent?
"Because the day that girl is innocent, I will step down from my place as Queen of Snows," Ceera responded with considerably more heat than expected, when he voiced his thoughts.
"It would be quite an accomplishment, wouldn't it, for Trevissa to become the next queen?"
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