by Jenna Rhodes
He took it off the table and got to his feet, crossing the room in a few strides before he turned at the doorway. “I’m not bitter because my father took me to his estates and raised me, but for every day you’ve been scorned and spit upon, think of my experience in decades. Things were worse until I finally grew taller than Bistel’s war sword, but it was all to be expected. I tussled with Bistane as your brothers probably tested one another, and suffered the hatred of others because all Vaelinars are hated. I decided a long time ago not to see the world through the veil of those memories. My father gave me love and discipline, and my brother who lives today loves me no less than the brothers that time took away from me ages ago. Your babe will be born with his own sight, but you’re the one who will give him vision.” Verdayne took a long breath as if he might say more. Instead, he pivoted and left.
Nutmeg sat back in her chair, as spent as if she’d run across the wide vineyard.
Ild Fallyn
IT WAS NOT THAT HER BROTHER was useless. On the contrary, Alton served a number of very important uses. It was that he did not always show the insight, the ingenuity that she expected of him. Tressandre stood reminded that she needed to retain the option of doing things herself when he brought back word that the escaped woman had eluded them all and disappeared into the wilderness. Half his retinue had died or suffered crippling injury. She could not fault the effort he’d put into his attempt to capture and return her. Why had the wretch bolted? Where might she have gone? Those were questions to which she wanted answers. She searched through her fortress looking for them.
That was how she found the miserable youth now huddled in front of her on the flooring. He clutched a pillow to his chest, doubled over as if hatching it, his tears soaking into the silken cover and his begrimed fingers sinking deeply into it in his white-knuckled hold. The pillow wouldn’t save him, of course. It wouldn’t even come close to protecting him. At least, for the moment, it seemed to have stopped his wails.
Tressandre stopped pacing to look at him more closely. He might have been the equivalent of ten Vaelinar years old. Perhaps even closer to thirteen. He’d been at the fortress for a decade and had not, according to the yard supervisor, shown Talent of any sort. He was due to be culled then, sent to the fields or forests for work, or simply dispatched for his knowledge. Males on the edge of puberty either bloomed with their Talent or had none. She didn’t have to be patient with them as she did the females, who matured later and slower. He did not know that he neared the end of his usefulness to the ild Fallyn, or perhaps he sensed it vaguely, but it didn’t account for his extreme distress.
No. He feared her in the immediate moment, and rightly so. Tressandre gave a small, secret smile. Very rightly so. She made certain to have earned the fear and respect they gave her.
She leaned forward slightly to tap her whip on his shoulder. He flinched and inhaled a sharp, gasping breath, but held his tears back as she’d told him.
“Now, then. You know a bit of this Ceyla.”
He nodded and took a gulping, snotty inhalation, pressing the cushion closer. Tressandre stared at the top of his head. That pillow would be thrown out and burned. Possibly the whole divan. And, certainly, the carpet. The tip of the whip bounced in the air impatiently. “Tell me.”
“I have . . . I have . . . Talent,” he gulped. “Not much. Not yet. But I can hear . . .”
“Hear?”
“Things. Things people say to themselves.”
“All the time?”
He shook his head. “Sometimes. It bursts in my head. It hurts. My ears buzz like I was stuck in a hornet hive. There’s words in the buzz. Voices.” He twisted his neck so he could look up at her. “I heard you think you would burn everything just because—because I touched it.”
“And because you’re filthy.” Unapologetically, Tressandre dropped onto a tuffet upholstered in a matching silk coverlet nearby.
He nodded miserably and put his face back in his pillow.
She ground her teeth. “I haven’t all day. Tell me what you promised to tell me and we shall see what your fate might be.”
“Cey—Ceyla talked in her sleep sometimes. Like a fevered dream. No one else could understand her.”
“But you could.”
“Because I heard her in my head, too. She could get loud.” He relinquished the pillow with one hand and thumped the side of his skull. It did not sound like the thumping of a ripe melon she’d anticipated. “She knew something. Saw it. She had to leave and carry the message. It clawed at her mind. She had to go!”
“She saw something?”
“She did. No one else knew, but I guessed at it. Before a thing would happen, she would see it. Not everything of course, but important things.”
Tressandre flexed her whip in her hands. A seer . . . a Vaelinar with Foresight . . . and her brother had missed it? She would doubt the probability of such a Talent because of its rarity, but evidence suggested that Ceyla might indeed have had it, enough of it, and could have used it in her escape. It would have given her a great advantage, even if the Talent was a new, raw, untrained ability. Yes, a great advantage. If true, she wanted the girl. Tressandre would have to exert whatever means she had to get that girl back.
She got to her feet. The boy heard her stand and drew himself inward even more, rolling into a ball about his pillow center. He was all elbows and big feet and scrawny arms as she looked down at him.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“That depends,” Tressandre whispered as she leaned down to his ear. “What did you hear from her thoughts that drove her to run away?”
“A battle. A great battle coming, and she had to gather the Galdarkan Abayan Diort and bring him to it.” He looked up, his nose swollen red and leaking, his eyes smeared pink with tears and fear, and his lower lip tucked between his teeth.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. It’s all I heard that I could make out. I promise, mistress, I promise that is all I know!”
“It can’t be all. What is a battle without a battlefield? It’s not enough to know soon, I need to know where.” Her knuckles went white. She could feel her icy skin stretch across the bones of her fingers.
“I can’t—I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I can’t. I can’t.” He curled back into a ball, huddling, awaiting a blow of anger.
Tressandre looked down. Her mouth curled. “No matter.”
“Is that . . . is that enough?”
“To save you? It might be. You will have to pray it will be.” Tressandre stood and crossed the room in three great strides, throwing open the closed doors. Her retainer standing outside startled, jumping to his feet.
“Get me Alton. Immediately! And the birdmaster. I have messages to send. I want the light cavalry ready to mount up.” Tressandre could not contain her smile. Lariel had not been so vulnerable in decades. Nor did she intend to let Diort gather the prize which she had hunted, plotted, and waited so many years to gather for herself and her family. She would find him, and then she would settle with the Anderieon House.
Behind her, the lad sobbed again, this time in relief.
NUTMEG BROUGHT THE JOURNAL out when the entire house fell into quiet except for the soft creaks and moans of the wood, which always spoke as hot and cold, light and dark, affected it. Nutmeg cradled it between her palms. She should give it to Verdayne. That had been part of Bistel’s command to her, but only part of it, because he’d told her to give it to her sons first, and hold it until they felt ready to give it to his sons.
Her sons.
She would have this child and someday another, if Bistel were as good a prophet as he’d been a warlord. That thought curved her mouth in a pensive smile as she rested her arms upon her swollen belly. That meant she might love again someday. Marry. And go through this all over again, perhaps not so alone next time.
She lifted her chin, looking off into the darkness. Not that she could feel herself entirely alone this time. Her family enveloped her. She was selfish, she realized. She might not have Jeredon, but she had family. It was not the same, but she certainly wasn’t bereft. As for passing it on, she didn’t feel quite ready yet. She wished that Bistel had been a bit clearer in his wishes.
Nutmeg leaned over and lit a candle. Its glow brightened the room perhaps more than it ought and the leather cover of her book gleamed richly in its illumination. Why had Bistel not left the book in the archives? It might, indeed, be the very book meant to be destroyed by whoever had infiltrated the library. On that count, it might endanger her now. Not enough to be hunted for the possible heir she carried, but to add this to the pot, Nutmeg knew she might be hunted relentlessly until she gave up the secret she held. The warlord had laid a terrible burden and charge upon her. Why? She was no great hero or warrior. Had he seen more in her than she saw in herself? Without the child she carried, she couldn’t even read it. Perhaps he had never meant to give it to someone who could. If so, he didn’t know her. No hero, maybe, but as stubborn as any Dweller could be. Nutmeg would have worked at it, like a knot in an old, frayed rope, until she puzzled it loose and open to her. Maybe he had seen that in her and counted on it.
Maybe this, maybe that. She couldn’t ever know—Bistel was far beyond her reach!
Nutmeg opened the book and ran the tip of her finger down its crackling page. Within her, she could feel the baby stir slightly, grown so that now he (he?) could not have much room and as if to prove it, she could feel a pain in her rib cage as a hand or foot stretched out. Whoever it was, they could no more resist the book than she could.
She didn’t know a time when the Ways didn’t exist, just as she had never known a history when the Vaelinars had not been there to manipulate it. She’d crossed at the behest of the Ferryman who had tamed an untamable river, and proved he could cross not only water but time. The shores of the First Home lands had been protected by the Shield of Tomarq. And a half dozen other Ways shuttled the fortunes of the Vaelinars, and eventually the other peoples of Kerith, back and forth.
Yet, like anything built by a mortal people, the Ways did not seem limitless. She’d heard whispers at Larandaril that Ways were failing. Unraveling. The elemental strands of Kerith falling back into their proper place, no matter how the Vaelinars had twisted them to be, her world resisting its invaders down to its very core. Like the terrible aftermath of the Mageborn Wars, magic unleashed by a failing Way could be devastating. A book like this—and Nutmeg stroked her finger upon the page again—could stabilize and restore the Ways to their former glory, or make it possible to create new, wondrous Ways, something not attempted in centuries. The toll for failure had been too high, the methods not understood and thought lost forever. But not to everyone.
Not lost to Bistel Vantane. His mighty aryns were thought to have been the first Way created on Kerith, a tree blossoming out of a staff, a tree which could even stand against the corrupted magics and chaos left behind by the Mageborn Wars, groves growing and even thriving in the blighted lands where pools of miasma twisted Kerith forever. Had he thought to create again? Something? What? Or had he hoped to keep Ways from ever being created again? The power involved, the power bestowed upon the makers . . . Vaelinars who invoked Ways would be nothing less than gods.
Nutmeg closed the book on her finger. Even if no one lived who could truly use the book she held, there would always be those who would think they could. Perhaps she held a key which could unlock any door, even a door that should never be opened. The light in the room shimmered as she looked across it, its glow falling among the shadows to be shivered away by what she could not see, like a golden thread disappearing in a weave of dark threads, there but not always seen, not unless the weaver wished it to be seen.
As if it were a Way that could be designed, patterned, and crafted by her.
Nutmeg stifled the small, startled noise she made at that thought, dropping Bistel’s book into her lap. Had she thought that or had it come from within, from the independent mind forming within her? A thought that never should have been formed to begin with.
We are not ones to play Gods, she told herself. She laid both hands palm down on her stomach. Never think otherwise. Sweet apples! We do not change our world to be what we want it to be.
And yet . . . do we not plant groves? Plow fields? Seed for harvests?
We do change worlds. Every day.
That is different.
How is it different?
That thought froze her, motionless, for a very long time without an answer while the candle guttered low beside her, till she eventually stirred abruptly to pinch the wick out and let the room fall into total darkness.
Tree’s blood . . . what did she carry inside her?
CLOUDS SENT DARTING SHADOWS over the green hills and forest of Larandaril. The River Andredia flowed strong and swift, white curls upon its rapids as winter runoff swelled its banks. Yet, uneasiness weighed down upon her charge, her domain, and that tugged upon her heart. She finally decided to speak aloud some of her thoughts.
“We almost had him at Hawthorne.”
“The confusion would have been perfect cover; unfortunately, the riot was too massive for our men to converge on Sevryn, and he was pulled away from us.”
“It’s been days and no further sighting.”
“Not yet.”
Lariel turned in her chair, seeking the window and its framed view of her beautiful river valley, lush with springtime and maiden’s nod and not finding the sight as soothing as usual. She was seething, she thought to her faint surprise, and that was not something she did. Her grandfather had done much of it; and, although she couldn’t be absolutely certain, she was fairly certain Tressandre and Alton ild Fallyn seethed. They all had the same hardheaded temperaments about being obeyed absolutely and never crossed, as if humans could reliably be depended upon to do such things. She had thought herself a little more bendable.
Apparently not. Would her inflexibility cost her as dearly as it had Sinok? She couldn’t allow it to, but she carried a knowledge buried deep inside her. A moment would come when fate needed her. She’d seen it. She had to live to fulfill that moment, and that meant her life could not end at Sevryn’s hand. It could not! Doubt riddled her now. She carried within her that endpoint which she had shared with no one, not even Jeredon, but it loomed inevitably ahead of her. She accepted that. Now, however, she feared she would not carry out her part as seen, and that would be unacceptable. Kerith and all its peoples faced the unthinkable if she did not carry her burden forth to that future.
Lara ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her temples and jawline, thrusting the heavy curls back upon her shoulders. No more would she allow Sevryn to be a traitor against her. She could not. She had too much at stake. House Vantane could have taken the title from her if they wished, but Bistel had had power of his own and had never wished for the kingdom of Larandaril. He possessed his own lands to nourish, his own peoples to protect. Bistane and the other son—she could not quite recall his name at the moment—she did not think either of Bistel’s heirs would do anything other than follow in their father’s footsteps. No. She knew a web of conspiracies tightened to take her throne from her, and some of her enemies had not yet been revealed, but she feared Tressandre through experience and now Sevryn. What he knew about her Talents would make her cast out from the Vaelinars, that which her grandfather had known, nurtured, and guarded until death. She closed her eyes momentarily. The old Warrior King had even killed those servants around her as she grew up who might have suspected her Talents. She remembered a day when she had pled for Jeredon’s life as well. He had finally relented and let her brother live. His actions had led to much speculation that she had little or no Talent, but Sinok Anderieon dealt with that as he did most of life: he tore through it. N
ow she seemed called upon to do the same.
If she had Sevryn in hand, perhaps she could take his measure. Perhaps she could avoid the inevitable, now that her temper seemed cooled and logic could prevail. He’d been loyal to her and Jeredon all these many years, had he not? What made her think he would turn against her now? Gilgarran had trained him. That in itself made him an unknown quantity. Who knew what Gilgarran’s end game, so untimely cut short, had been?
Behind her closed lids, she saw again what she’d seen through Chastain’s eyes on an unknown battlefield, quite near in the future: Sevryn, clothed in the dark weavings of the Kobrir assassins, advancing on her, silvery blades in hand, close enough to kill her—
Lara wrenched her eyes open. Her memory staggered to a halt, even as her heartbeat jolted in fear. She knew what she saw. What she felt. Even as she fought within herself, she knew what she had seen.
Lara looked at Drebukar and stifled a faint sigh, managing it as a slightly longer than necessary pause. “We’ve sent the last of the troops out successfully?”
“On their way. Our presence here is strategic only, three squads apportioned over the valley to keep some semblance of security. These last we’ve sent out should bolster our presence considerably. We are ready at Ashenbrook.”
“We need to be. Reports of Raymy drops are coming in all along the coast, indicating Daravan’s hold is weakening. I think we can expect to see the mass of that army dropped at the river within the next handful of weeks.”
“Our troops are prepared.”
She smiled ruefully. “Overprepared, I should imagine. It’s been long seasons since the last engagement and we can only keep their edge for so long before it becomes tiresome. Not to mention expensive.”