by Jenna Rhodes
A trumpet blared through her worries, and a man bellowed in answer.
“Open the gates!”
Her temple throbbed at the sound of the gatekeeper’s voice, and then at the great gears for the gates grinding into motion, their vibration moving through the very ground. With creaks and groans, the massive wooden portal split and swung up, and black-and-silver-garbed riders came trotting in, the manes of their tashya horses flying, as they herded in a stumbling group of prisoners. Or perhaps these were volunteers hoping to pass ild Fallyn Talent screenings. Or maybe, they were slaves brought from the East and transported to the western coast. She couldn’t tell from their mud-coated garments and faces. They staggered against one another, a few holding out hands to those who seemed most exhausted, their expressions numbed despite their efforts for their companions. She remembered those first days as if they were yesterday. It was the days in between which had become a blur to her.
As the horsemen began to dismount, a visible stir went through the troops. They opened a pathway through the center of their gathering, stable lads coming out and yanking the horses aside as well, as a regal-looking woman came out of the fortress main doors, tapping a riding crop against the side of her leg. Hair the color of wild honey tumbled from the high tiara that crowned her forehead, but she did not need the jewelry to define her. Anyone there—or anywhere—would have known who she was. Her blouse of black and silver shimmered like silk in the weak sunlight, while her trousers seemed to be made of soft ebony leather. Her dark boots shone. Tressandre ild Fallyn approached the ragged line of recruits and strode by them, slowly, gauging the worth of each by some calculation only she understood. At the end of the row, she turned on heel. She traced her steps back down the row, faster now, stopping every once in a while to assess one of the recruits more closely.
Ceyla found her hand on her throat, stealing up to her mouth, in case she cried aloud. She shivered as she watched the inspection, yet she could not turn her eyes away. Dreams and visions did not have to tell her what might well happen. She’d seen it before and unless she died in the coming night or escaped, she’d see it again.
Tressandre’s voice carried clearly through the air. “Dwellers,” she stated. “How many times have I told you Dweller breeds are useless to us? They are like Bolgers. Animals. I won’t have them in our programs! Who thought he knew better than my edict and brought them in?”
One of the riders fell to his knees. His young face creased in dismay. Ceyla did not recognize him, but she seldom got a look at the ild Fallyn elite in the compound except for deliveries like this. The heavy doors, which led to the fortress and grounds proper, were unbarred only rarely. She curled her fingers upon her skin, willing him not to speak, for there was nothing he could say which would please or stay Tressandre in what she would do next.
“Forgive me, most excellent one. These three all show Talent in goodly amount, and I did not wish to overlook them if they might hold any value to you.” He pointed to a girl, one Ceyla had thought a child as she’d been when brought in, but who now obviously was not, although young. “Show her the fire,” he demanded.
The Dweller stood on one foot and then the other, trembling. The two Kernan- and Vaelinar-blooded on either side of her shuffled as far away as they could.
“Show her!” he shouted at her. “If you wish to live.”
Ceyla shuttered her eyes a moment. When she looked again from her hiding place, the Dweller girl had her thin arms stretched in front of her, and flame danced in each palm. The yellow-orange aura reflected upon her face, but she did not seem to mind the heat although Ceyla could see that the flames were hot as tiny waves in the image rippled upward.
The riding crop tapped twice at Tressandre’s side. “And the other one. What does it do?” she said, her tone bored.
“It . . . he . . .” the ild Fallyn rider said, “Projects.”
“Projects.”
“He gives off illusions. Fleeting yes, but with training they can become stronger.”
Tressandre tilted her head. “What sort of illusions?”
The rider got to his feet and paced down the row to the young man. “Show her,” he said impatiently, as if the Dweller breed should have known what would be asked of him.
The young man shuddered. He had been one of the ones who stumbled most coming into the yard. “Water,” he husked, his voice barely audible to Ceyla. “I need water.”
Tressandre pointed the crop at him. “Why should I waste water on you?”
“Because,” he answered slowly, and his entire body began to waver. Ragged cloth rippled. Skin stretched and expanded. Height shot upward. “Because I can buy and sell you.”
A tall and sturdy Kernan trader, richly clothed, pointed haughtily back at Tressandre. His words brought a collective gasp from those about him and Tressandre jerked her chin in the air.
Ceyla felt her mouth fall open. Her astonishment lasted but a few seconds, for that was how long the illusion sustained itself, fleeting seconds. The prosperous trader wavered and began to fall apart, layer by layer. As the Dweller began to appear again, he fell forward to one knee, shaking, once more ragged.
“Interesting,” she drawled. She looked the subject over again. “But not interesting enough. Maybe if he could have held the image for more than a breath or three. Dweller blood is vastly inferior, even to Kernan lines. These are curs, all of them. I work to restore our bloodlines. Can none of you understand the import of that? Powers that had been ours and will be ours once again? Nothing is achieved without sacrifice and yet you—” She stabbed her crop at the offending rider. “Ignore my mandate. Ignore our greatest purposes. Ignore the heritage of ild Fallyn!” She tucked her crop under her arm, turning on her heel, and heading back to the doors that had produced her. “Test the others. Pray they prove worthy of our teaching. As for these three, kill them.”
Ceyla threw her arms over her head and ducked her chin down, curling into herself, so that she could not see, but she heard the screams despite all her hopes that she would not. She had lived through that first culling as she still lived this day, but nothing remained certain. She sank into herself knowing the end of her time might come this moment, this aching and blinding moment as she pressed herself into shadow and the crack in the stone wall, and pushed her fingers into her mouth to stifle her moans and perhaps a lucent outcry.
She could feel the overwhelming cloud begin to drop on her. No, no, no, this could not be happening to her. She doubled over, digging her heels into the broken stone and dirt, pushing herself into a painful knot as if that pain could stave off the other. Not now, not here, not in the daylight, not with riders within hearing distance. Her mind could not fill with the crushing visions of others that did not belong to her, that made little sense to her, that scrambled her own being until she hardly knew who or when she was. She could not serve the tide of otherness. But it filled her. Her pitiful attempts to save herself were swept away by a tsunami. Insanity came rushing in, pushing her sense of self aside until she could only cower and dimly await its cessation.
She knew she was crazy. One couldn’t dream the way she did and not be crazy. The minute her affliction became known, she would be killed. Defective. Blood no one in their right mind would want carried on. She would be well and truly worthless. Useless. Insane.
The torrent rushed in and she sank under its weight, sank and drowned.
When the rush receded, her hearing returned first, a faint roar obscuring the clarity as though she actually floated underwater. She could feel her awareness bobbing upward into the afternoon, sun a bit warmer than it had been in the early morning. She drifted like an insignificant scrap of flotsam rising to the surface of the tide, bobbing aimlessly here and there upon the foam of the sea. Ceyla uncurled the tiniest bit. She ached in her bones and her nerves felt like fiery wires throughout her body, her skin tight and tender. Voices drummed upon her hearing w
ith the fervor of a high tide beating upon the rocks. Rather than struggle with it, she let the buoyancy of her consciousness carry her upward until she was fully aware, her head throbbing with the remnants of the attack, and her eyes squinted against the flood of sunlight. Rolled into a ball and tucked away into the stone wall’s niche, Ceyla lay still, her stomach fighting the attack as it always did—she was invariably sick as a dog or ravenously hungry or, worse, both. This time she was hungry and warred with herself to move, to find, to eat, to replenish whatever stores the insanity always sucked out of her as though she might be some succulent fruit. She turned her face into her hands, her fingers still in her mouth and spat them out before she started gnawing on them like some mewling babe. Sounds kept beating upon her ears and slowly she separated them into words that made sense.
From above her, from little used parapets, voices drifted downward.
“. . . remains difficult to gather without attracting undue attention.”
“But you have made the efforts I prescribed to you and taken the precautions.” Tressandre’s voice, tones like liquid gold but words bitten off sharply. Ceyla held her breath desperately upon recognizing her dread mistress’ voice.
“Of course.”
“Good. Because trust me, our queen Lariel is fixed upon the Raymy. It would take a munificent mistake on your part to draw her attention. See that it doesn’t happen.”
“We do our best.”
“See that you continue to do so. Make no mistake. I am readying for that opening of the gate to our homelands and when it does, I want our forces prepared to act. We will take our heritage that was stripped from us and we will restore our legacy as it was meant to be, and we will come to the aid of our long lost Trevilara, queen and country. She will want to be generous in her rewards, to all of us. That is my pledge to you. All that was taken from us here, we will have within our grasp again. We are already in position and anything can, and will, happen on a battlefield. No one will stand in our way when it is time for us to make our move.”
The other made a sound of appreciation, a low murmur that Ceyla could not hear distinctly, but she knew in her gut what it meant. The other was groveling in his gratitude, much like one of the subjects trying for extra bread crusts, and it made her sick to hear it.
“Don’t thank me now. Hold your gratitude until we’ve accomplished what we intend.”
“Nevertheless, you have my life, Lady Tressandre. You have but to ask for it.”
“If I do, it will not be for my sake but for the sake of the heir I carry. You know that, don’t you?”
“We would all die for you and the baby. The monstrosity.” There came a noise as the speaker spat upon the courtyard flagstones. “The monstrosity that Lariel intends to name her heir, Dweller and Gods know what else, because I cannot believe that Jeredon would have touched the beastly female, that thing shames and dooms us all.”
“I hold hope that Lariel will see the truth and the justice of our position. If not, well, there are others to judge her. What is important for us today and tomorrow, is to purify our blood and Talents after decades of bowing to lesser ones so that we might be accepted,” and here the word dripped with sarcasm, “rather than rule as we were intended. If the gate cannot be opened to return us, to restore us to our rightful place, then we must carve it here. Out of stone and flesh, if we must.”
“From your lips to the ears of the Gods!”
“Not them,” Tressandre hushed the speaker. “For They sleep. From my lips to the ears and hearts of Vaelinar such as yourself who know and understand of what I speak. The day grows late. I can’t keep you longer, for the roads are still uncertain these days.”
“I’ll carry what you’ve told me.”
“Do that,” Tressandre said. “And we cannot fail.”
There was a long pause, followed by the clatter of a horse’s hooves and then the thudding of the great gates which kept the fortress sheltered. “Fool.” Tressandre made a noise through her teeth that was both dismissive and scornful before her footfalls could be heard on the courtyard paving moving away.
Silence but for the drumming of her own blood in her ears fell upon Ceyla. She stretched her body open slowly, with aches and pins and needles attacking her every movement. She’d heard too much. The next time her insanity fell upon her, those words could come tumbling out of her mouth, giving her and any who heard them a death sentence for spying. Tressandre plotted treason. All suspected it. Few had proof. And whatever else might happen, Ceyla could not give that proof, for no one would believe her but the guilty party herself, and she would be just as dead. Not to mention the disaster that her fit itself might prove. She had no memory of the visions that had danced within her twisted mind, but she knew they would resurface, unbidden. Crazy Ceyla, the other subjects called her, and they had a right to. No, she could not stay. It would bring death upon her and many others if she did. Better to flee and die alone, trying to escape.
She carried her meager belongings always with her, in a bundle tied under her skirt. It hampered her walking sometimes, giving her an odd gait that merely added to the humiliation already heaped upon her shoulders. She had nothing to go back for. Marisanna, gone. No meal would give her the sustenance she needed nor would it yield enough to stock her for a journey. Best to go now. She’d already been missing for the afternoon while under the spell of her warped mind. Ceyla heaved a sigh and stepped back. She already knew how she would get out. Like a wisp of a ghost, she could see it in her mind, playing from a dream of the past or even from this very day. These phantoms of actions danced behind her eyes until she could see little else. She had to leave. Now. And in the way she saw without seeing. She knotted her shawl tightly about her head and neck, tying it like a thin and worn scarf. She would crawl on her belly under the high rock walls of the fortress, from the kennel runs where one enterprising hound tunneled away under the wall and the kennel boy too lazy to take mortar to the stone work to repair it, merely piled up loose rock to cover the holes. She knew she would make it that far. Unfortunately, her insanity chose not to tell her if it would be safe on the other side or how far she would get. She would be blinded as to her future. Rather like the hound.
But like the hound, a compulsion had been laid on her to get away, to dig away at the fence that held her, and to escape. She could not turn back. She would run. In a day. Maybe a handful of days, but run she would.
LAMPS LIT THE GREAT CONFERENCE ROOM on the third floor of the manor. Their light spilled out of the windows into the domain of Larandaril, blessed valley of the sacred river, which bled off to the west and into the sea, carrying prosperity and commerce wherever it flowed. Lariel gazed out the windows, as quiet murmurs rose and fell at her back. She watched for late arrivals, knowing that Bistane might be close but not yet there, and Sevryn was traveling trails of his own, after having sent her dire news.
Despite the men who sat at her table, she felt alone. Terribly, unendingly, alone. She had called for a conference, yet the man whose advice meant most to her would never talk to her again. She clenched her hands, felt a pang of pain for an absent digit in her left, and unclenched quickly, to rub her scar. She no longer looked down at her hand and felt a faint surprise at the maiming; it had finally become a part of her. Perhaps the day would come when the loss of her brother would grow as dim.
She turned about in the lamplight. Indoors, the faceted glow spread into every corner and reflected warmly off the heavily polished table that dominated the area. Dinner had been served and cleared. Tapestries were drawn against the windows that normally looked out upon the vistas of the kingdom, beautiful and lush, a land blessed with bounty, a jewel in the grasp of the Vaelinar. Inland from the hardscrabble coasts of the peninsula continent referred to by the natives as the First Home, Larandaril cupped a life that, while not easy, gave up its bounty far more willingly than the rugged coastlines. She’d remade the pact her grandfat
her had with those Gods and demigods of the region, and held to it, and so the land cleaved to them and their welfare. There were those, of their own race, and of the native races of Kerith, who resented that pact, but Lariel knew the price beyond even that of her flesh and doubted that anyone else would have given it over. The land held them, but they also held the land. Reflected in the lamps’ glow also were the figures of the handful gathered about it, standing and sitting, their finely boned faces and curving tipped ears lending them an arrogance they wore as easily as the fine clothes and armor upon their bodies. As she turned to face them, and their voices quieted even more, her fondness for them braced her. Perhaps she was not quite as alone as she felt. All the men in the room knew that while Lariel Anderieon might ask them for their lives, her rival Tressandre ild Fallyn was more likely to take their lives and brutally, at that. Lara could never drag out of them what they would not willingly give. Their opinion mattered, it would be listened to, before the Warrior Queen put her thoughts into action. For a moment, she saw the great bulk of Osten Drebukar at the table which made her blink and as she did, the much younger though no less doughty figure of his nephew Farlen occupied his place. Another loss she could not quite accept but must, there being no choice. The men turned to her as if knowing the moment had come.
She stirred now as if feeling the weight of their thoughts, but it was not she who spoke.
Farlen’s hand chopped the air as did his words. “The Ferryman’s hold on our enemy is weakening. He is a dam which will break. When he does, we’ll be wiped out unless we’re ready. Sevryn’s messages attest to that.”