Daughter of Blood

by Helen Lowe

  “Very little.” Khar frowned. “Except that both the wyr hounds and a Sea ship have befriended him.”

  Nimor’s mouth turned down at that, but he remained silent while Khar outlined the rest of their discussion from earlier that same day. When Lady Myr was still alive, Faro thought, miserably aware of all that had changed in so short a time. Malian looked intrigued by the suggestion that Faro’s mam might have been over four hundred years old, but was more interested in Arcolin having been struck by lightning. “Because lightning was called here, too,” she said, nodding at the tapestry, “which points to a Sea House influence.”

  “Or a Darksworn one,” said Khar—reluctantly, Faro thought.

  Tirael’s brows lifted, while Nimor’s drew together, but Malian pursed her lips. “Possibly.” Faro could tell she did not think so, though, as she glanced at Raven. “What do you think?”

  “It’s unlikely.” The warrior’s eyes rested on Faro, who scowled back, resenting that someone could claim to see things in or around him that he didn’t know about himself. “But if you know nothing,” Raven continued, addressing him directly, “that suggests that for you, the warding has always been present.”

  “Something he was born with?” Tirael asked. “Is that even possible?”

  “Well, you think he could be four hundred years old,” Nimor said, beneath his breath. More than any of them, he looked drained, but the set of his mouth said he had no intention of leaving.

  Malian inclined her head to the wyr hounds before sinking onto her heels before Faro. “I think we should remove the compulsion, at least.” She met his gaze. “Do you agree?”

  Faro had to check the vehemence of his nod, because he did agree—but he was also wary. “You look like Ilai. Only younger,” he said, finding that was something he could say. “But your eyes are just like hers, even if yours don’t change color.”

  The tent was hushed, despite the camp noises outside. Malian nodded. “Are they? What else can you tell me about her, Faro?”

  Faro scowled again with the effort of remembering, and thinking what words he could use. “She saved me, and said she would come back for me before the camp fell.” Since it hadn’t fallen, after all, he supposed Ilai must have fled. “And she told Lady Myr she was sorry.” Faro had been crying too hard to understand the reasons why, but he didn’t want to admit that. “She was something to do with lightning as well. It was on her knife. And she said Lady Myr was a great hero.” That had to do with the shield-mirror, but the compulsion locked his tongue when he even thought about trying to explain. Faro could see Khar behind Malian, but his face was so stern that it was a relief to focus on the cool eyes that looked like smoke. Rather than shifting between gray and green and blue, Faro reflected, the way Ilai’s always had.

  “I see. But I’m not her, Faro.” Her gaze held his. “I am Malian of Night, and Khar and I have known each other since we were close to your age. You’re what, ten, twelve?”

  “Eleven,” he mumbled.

  “Eleven: a brave age. As I will need you to be brave now, and trust me, if I am to have this compulsion out of you. Then you will be free to tell us everything that’s happened.”

  Free, Faro thought, and felt as though she had shown him dawn at the end of a long dark night. He was afraid, but he knew he could not turn away from the hope she offered. Not only to be rid of Thanir’s hold on him, but to be able to tell Khar what had happened in the tent. “Please,” he whispered.

  “Be careful, Malian,” Khar said, “especially with this deeper warding.”

  Faro had forgotten about that, but it was clear Malian had not. “Life is a risk,” she said softly, as much to Faro as Khar, and he nodded, because his mam used to say similar things. Besides, accepting the risk was a way he could prove himself worthy of Myr’s sacrifice. “But I will only look at whatever lies deeper,” Malian promised, “unless I am very sure of my course. I don’t think they would let me do otherwise,” she added, nodding at the wyrs. She held out her hands. “When you’re ready, place your hands in mine.”

  Do the hard thing quickly, that was what his mam always said. So Faro extended his hands straightaway. He felt Khar’s shielding surround the tent as Malian’s clasp tightened, conveying reassurance—but Faro still almost jerked free when he realized she was in his mind. He thought there was another presence joined to hers, as fine and elusive as moonlight, but he also felt the wyr hounds’ solidity and understood they were with him still. “Safe, you see?” Malian’s mindvoice murmured. “I told you they would not let us go where we should not.”

  Us, Faro thought. But he made himself relax and let his memories unfold: not just of recent events in the tent, but of the three strangers he had guided to the Ship’s Prow House and the horror that ensued. Thanir’s fingers rested against his mouth again, amid rain and fire and terror. Never speak of it, little rat, the obsidian voice whispered. Let it be our secret, yours and mine.

  “Not anymore,” Malian said aloud—and when she placed her own fingers on Faro’s lips, he felt the invisible compulsion that had stitched them closed dissolve. “Clever,” she added, and winked at Faro. “But not quite clever enough.”

  She was full of cleverness and secrets herself. Because she was in his mind, Faro could see that. Twisty, he thought. He felt rather than saw her smile, overhearing him, and caught the echo of a reply that was something about the moon’s face being dark as well as bright. I’m like that, too, he thought dreamily, dark and light, whereas Khar is always bright, like the sun, and Lady Myr was clear water, with the light shining through . . .

  Within the dreaminess, he realized that Malian was observing the reverse unfolding of his short life before the Ship’s Prow House: his mam’s death, and the years before that, living in the narrow rooms above the armorer’s shop. She seemed very interested in his mam, as the wyr hounds were, too—but more so in a shadowy figure from his very earliest years that Faro had forgotten he remembered. The shadow sharpened as soon as Malian focused on the memory, and gradually became clearer still. Finally it was not a shadow at all, but a young woman gazing back at Faro through a frame of light. She was of the Sea House, he knew that at once because of her cabled hair and the rings in her ears, and he thought she would have been beautiful if she had not looked so sad. When he concentrated, he could hear what she was saying.

  “I was bound to the ship and to Ammaran, and despite his sacrifice, I cannot live now that both are gone. Every day I fade more. Only our child has held me this long, because he, too, is theirs. But you tell me our ships come here, so I must find a way to protect him—to hide him so no one will ever see, or know . . . And you, Kara, on your honor and your oath of fealty to Ammaran: you must protect him too.”

  “My life for his, always. Fear not, Lady, I keep faith.”

  Mam’s voice, although Faro could not see her, just the Sea woman’s face bending over his. I keep faith, he thought. But those are Khar’s words, the ones that belong to the Storm Spears.

  “Indeed.” Malian’s observation was as cool as silver, before she spoke out loud. “She must have spent the last of her strength weaving wards that turn away eyes and minds, not just from you, but from any thought of the Derai and the Wall of Night. The working’s profound, but very elegant. Almost invisible, as Raven said. The Darksworn did not see it, that’s certain, or I doubt Thanir would have let you go.”

  Faro shuddered, but felt deeply grateful to the unknown woman with her rings and cabled hair, at the same time as he wondered why his mam would say the Storm Spears’ words. As though, he thought, puzzled, she was one.

  “Because she was one. The weatherworker was your birth mother, Faro. Kara must have been your foster mother, but also a warrior, honor-sworn to Ammaran—who was your father.”

  “The last Heir to the old line of the Earls of Blood,” Khar said. “He and his Honor Guard were lost sometime after the Betrayal War.” Wonder stirred beneath his sternness. “A Blood father and a Sea mother: that explains a great d
eal.”

  Foster mother, not mother, Faro thought, bewildered. He caught a glimpse of something that surrounded him like a chrysalis, only spun from glass so it was invisible. But now a fracture ran through it, or perhaps it was the world as he had always known it that was splintering . . .

  “I think you’ll know about all of this,” Malian said softly. “Kara will have told you, against the day when the wards—and their prohibition against knowing who you truly are—would lift.”

  But will I know what my mother was protecting me against? Faro wondered. And Ma—Kara, too? Or why the death of my father and a ship meant my mother couldn’t live? Unless she had died of a broken heart, like they said in the stories . . . A vignette asserted itself, out of the Grayharbor years: Stefa and Leti’s mam scoffing at just such a tale, sung in her inn one Summer’s Eve—but his own mam saying no, in fact she had seen it. “And you so hard a case,” the inn-wife had replied, shaking her head and smiling at the same time.

  Kara was my mam, Faro thought. She was the one who had raised him, living in a narrow house in a backwater town, when she could have gone anywhere with her genius for making and mending armor. She had died there, too, far from home and House and kin. And perhaps, if Lady Myr had guessed right, over four hundred years out of her own time.

  “The four-hundred-odd years is a mystery,” Malian agreed. “But it’s not the strangest I’ve ever encountered and still found to be true. As for the warding, it’s a casing, not a working woven into your psyche or physical being, so not intended to be forever.” Her cool eyes looked deep into his. “The key, I suspect, is for you to want to step clear.”

  The chrysalis was already fractured, but Faro hesitated, because if Malian was correct, it had protected him from Aranraith and those with him—while still allowing him, at great need, to call the lightning that was an inheritance from his mother. So I really did burn Arcolin, he thought, caught between remembered horror and satisfaction. Dark and light, he told himself, as the chrysalis split wider still. Only now Faro felt as though the fissures ran through him, too, despite what Malian had said.

  “You are Derai,” the wyr hounds answered. Their voices were in his mind, as they had been since the Red Keep whenever danger or need threatened. The Che’Ryl-g-Raham’s voice had been as well, when he sailed north. “There were always reasons, beyond those the Alliance will admit to, why the Wall is named for Night. But the Derai world and all that goes with it is your birthright. The old Blood returns—and we have chosen the new to raise up with it, as was always our right.”

  Faro knew they meant himself and Khar. He understood, too, through their wordless communication, why the wyr hound in the Red Keep stable had let Sarein to take its life. Allowing the attack had distracted attention from those the wyrs sought to protect, but the Daughter of Blood’s knife stroke had also severed their last bond to the current ruling kin.

  This time Faro heard the crack as a longer, deeper, fracture split his mother’s working. “The old Blood that is true will always come into its own again—and the new must be raised up when the old is found wanting.” His mam, who was also his father’s Honor Lieutenant, had taught him that saying, along with so much else. Faro felt as though his eyes were full of the wyr hounds’ light, a blaze that was in his mind as well, so that he knew Kara had been a Storm Spear—like his father, Ammaran, and all their company. Through the dazzle, he could feel Malian’s hands holding him up as the last of the warding fell away and he spoke the words that were fire in his throat.

  “I am Pha’Rho-l-Ynor. My mother was a weatherworker and navigator, also called Pha’Rho-l-Ynor after the ship of the same name. Through her and the name I bear, I brought a spark of Yelusin, once contained in the ship, Pha’Rho-l-Ynor, back to the Sea Keep fleet.”

  Malian had released his hands now, but Faro continued standing straight and tall. “My father was Ammaran, a Storm Spear and Heir of Blood.” The fire was dying down, but he made himself meet Khar’s eyes before his courage fled with it. “I have never lied to you. Everything I could say, I believed to be the truth. And I didn’t kill Lady Myr. That was Thanir, although he tried to make me do it.” Faro knew what had taken place was more complicated than that, because without Ilai’s intervention, Thanir would have killed him as well. Right now, though, he was filled with the wyr hounds’ words, that were also his mam’s: the old Blood comes into its own again. “So Lady Myr was right, you see. I have come home.”

  And then, because it all felt like far too much, he did what he had once despised Myr for doing, and burst into tears.

  60

  Old Blood

  “It’s all right,” Khar said. And it was, because he had put his arms around Faro. Beyond his tears, Faro could hear Malian telling the others what she had seen in his memories: the truth of Thanir’s possession, and the mirror, and Myr’s death. I’m sorry, he whispered again to her shade, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . But Ilai had said she was sorry, too, which Faro suspected only showed how little it meant, no matter how often the words thudded in time with his heart.

  “Heir, eh?” Tirael spoke lightly, but Faro could tell he was serious. “That’ll loose a wyr pack in the halls of Blood.”

  “Not just Blood,” Nimor said tersely, “among the entire Nine Houses.” He paused, his face haggard in the tent’s dim light. “But Pha’Rho-l-Ynor, after more than four hundred years—”

  “So you know of this ship?” Tirael asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Nimor rubbed his hands over his face. “We have a shrine in the Sea Keep, inscribed with the name of every vessel we lose. But the Pha’Rho-l-Ynor . . .” He paused. “The name of the ship’s weatherworker was originally Taierin; she was also Count Tirunor’s niece. Our history records that she stole the ship from its rightful navigator out of infatuation for Ammaran, who had more than his share of the old Derai glamour. He had come to Sea wanting a ship for some quest he was on, but the Count refused him. The ships were as valuable then as they are now, and the risks greater . . .” He paused again.

  “And he was of Blood,” Malian said quietly.

  The envoy’s eyes slid to hers before he nodded. “Probably. It was barely two generations since the Betrayal War, after all. Ammaran was also suspected of suffering from the Madness of Jaransor, having ventured there in pursuit of whatever quest drove him. In any event, he persuaded Taierin to commandeer the Pha’Rho-l-Ynor, usurping the role and name of the rightful navigator.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Faro said fiercely, from the shelter of Khar’s arm. “My mam—Kara—said my father loved my mother above his own life!” He stopped, still trying to fit his new memories together with those he had always had. “She told me they married in secret, because Blood and Sea were close to enemies then, and sailed on Pha’Rho-l-Ynor because almost all the ship’s crew supported my father’s quest. When the navigator would not, they agreed my mother must replace him, which meant her taking the ship’s name as well.” Nimor shook his head but remained silent. “My father needed a ship,” Faro went on, “because he had learned in Jaransor that what he sought lay in Haarth, but he didn’t know how far south he would have to travel to find it. My mam said the crew agreed,” he repeated. “She and my father’s Honor Guard didn’t take the ship by force.”

  “They couldn’t have sailed it anyway,” Khar said. “Or made a ship leave port against its will, I wouldn’t have thought.”

  “But—” Nimor began, then paused, looking simultaneously uncertain and worn. “Tirunor must have thought differently,” he said finally. “His Heir and a considerable fleet pursued the fugitives until they lost them in a great storm, one the Pha’Rho-l-Ynor never sailed out of.”

  “In that time,” Khar said.

  “So it would seem.” Nimor sounded reluctant. “But the ship’s name is on our memorial, so I think it must still have been lost.”

  “Mam said the storm was greater than anyone on the ship had ever experienced.” Faro mimicked his foster mother’s somber intonation. �
��The seas were mountainous, as high as the Wall itself, and Taierin believed there was some other power at work, beyond the Great Ocean tempests. The winds shredded sails and rigging, many were lost overboard, and the Luck died before the mainmast finally snapped. That’s when my father made my mother bind his power to hers in the Luck’s place, so her weatherworking would have greater reserves and she could save the ship.” Faro’s voice shook, but Khar’s arm, which had lightened to a hand on his shoulder, helped him remain steady. “He gave all his power and his life, but the ship was still wrecked. As far as Mam knew, she and my true mother were the only survivors.”

  Nimor looked shaken. “But—” he said, then stopped a second time. The others watched him curiously until he spoke again. “As far as we know, the remnant of what had once been Yelusin first woke among the fleet that pursued the Pha’Rho-l-Ynor, when they turned back because of the great storm. We always thought it was because so many Lucks were lost as they fled before its fury.” Nimor sighed. “Perhaps the Pha’Rho-l-Ynor also woke at that time. But,” he repeated, “if the essence of a lost ship had returned, especially after so many centuries, it could not be kept hidden. The whole of Sea would be alight with the news. Yet I heard nothing before I left.”

  “You weren’t meant to!” Affronted, Faro nearly threw off Khar’s restraining hand. “Che’Ryl-g-Raham made me wait until the very last night before we left with your company, and then go to the Ships’ Shrine just before dawn.” He remembered how quiet it had been, stealing away from Khar and the horses, then creeping along the dock and into the dark shrine where the likeness of another ship’s prow had awaited his coming, its watchful eyes open. “I put my hand on it, exactly like Che’Ryl-g-Raham said, and a light came out of me and went into the shrine. Pha’Rho-l-Ynor’s name vanished off the plinth at once, and I could hear all the other ships speaking to me from around the harbor, welcoming me. But they said my road lay with Khar, to the Red Keep and Blood.” The old Blood returns, Faro thought—and could see from the way Malian looked at him that she had observed that part of his memories, too.