More than ale would soon spill across the carefully polished wooden floors of their cottages. But the Healer saw only the pattern of the sails splashed across the horizon like clusters of low-lying clouds.
A young woman in a long, yellow dress stood at the far end of the beach, watching the largest boat swing gracefully about. The Healer recognized Drucilla, the Captain's daughter. The wind was shifting. The colorful ribbons on her dress fluttered in the same direction as the sails. Drucilla brought her hands to her hair, pushing it out of her face as she turned towards the pier. The Healer was about to raise her hand in greeting when a searing pain shot through her thin body. She doubled in half, gasping.
From across the frozen marshlands there came a deafening rumble; steady and relentless. It echoed through the icy pines. Snow cascaded from branches, icicles dropped like daggers tearing slender wounds in the whiteness below.
The Healer leaned unsteadily against a rope-bound piling, its pine-tar coating sticky against her skin. Bile rose in her throat. She blinked forcibly, focused on the thundering sound and saw them coming, saw the dark-clothed men on dark horses, raised swords glinting hard and cold in the Wintertide sun. She cried out to Drucilla in warning, but the young woman, blinded by fear, was already running towards the dunes. Her long dress whipped out behind her, its brilliant ribbons contrasting sharply with the sand and snow under her feet. She clutched her short woolen cape against her breast. Her boots dug a desperate trail into the sand.
A group of riders broke away, wheeled their horses after Drucilla. The Healer watched with sickening certainty as they quickly closed the short distance. The rest continued towards the village, shouting oaths, shouting wardings. The mystic words were clearer now. The Healer understood them.
She pushed against the piling, tried to stand. Tar-coated splinters raked down her hands. But something far more heinous burned her soul, tried to strip her of her essence.
Then the sound of screams filled the air, mixing with the acrid smell of burning timber and canvas. And something else. The thick, cloying scent of dark magic that only the Healer could smell. She cried out against the pain, thrust her hand into the amulet pouch threaded to her belt. Stiff fingers trembled over the stones. She palmed two, knowing their essences as she touched them. She struggled to stand.
"Tal tay Raheira!" The Healer drew strength from the ancient words, felt her essence generate its own protective fire. Heat against heat scorched at the magics. Then the air cleared. She stepped haltingly back from the piling, cast a worried glance down the beach. The horses were riderless. She was too late.
She stumbled off the pier and ran for the village. Her destination was solely practical. She could save dozens there. Behind her she could no longer save even one.
Far out to sea, the Covemen perceived a blackish tinge on the horizon. But it wasn't until the red glow of the flames crested like scarlet breakers against the deep blue of the winter sky that the Captain shouted the order to return to port.
They found Drucilla, the Captain's daughter, at the far end of the frozen beach. Her colorful dress torn, her porcelain complexion mottled with bruises. The bright ribbons still fluttered in the biting wind, streaming over the snow and sand. She lay in a pool of blood from the wound in her shoulder - a gash that crossed towards her right breast, now bared from where her blouse had been ripped from her body. She'd been beaten and raped by the raiders, the Hill people from the West. But she was alive.
The village itself was a mass of smoldering rubble. The gusting wind wailed through the charred timbers as if the dwellings mourned their occupants, many now dead. Abused and mutilated bodies littered the cart paths and rutted roadway.
The burly Covemen cried out in anger, shouting oaths to their Gods. Their anguished voices echoed, broke. Then in the silence that followed, the first of the children who'd escaped crept silently out of hiding from the thickness of the forest's edge. It would be days before the eldest - a lanky lad of twelve - would be able to relate, haltingly, those things he'd seen. The bright glitter of silver daggers slitting flesh like butter, the intense crimson of the flames that licked through the shattered windows of the small thatched houses. Many would never be able voice those atrocities. But they'd hear forever in their nightmares the sickening thud of Hill stallions' hooves on the lifeless bodies of their friends and kinsmen.
Other children stumbled forth, ten in all, some clinging to the skirts of their mothers. The Covemen rushed forward. Tears of joy ran down faces taut with grief.
The last child was a toddler, his hand grasped firmly by the Healer.
The grizzled Captain, his bushy white hair stiff with salt spray, scooped his small nephew into his arms. "Why, Healer? Why now?" In the forty years he'd ruled the village, the Hill people never attacked in Wintertide; the ground too slippery and treacherous for their slim-hooved stallions.
The old Raheiran woman met his gaze levelly, but her fingers trembled as she traced the ancient runesigns embroidered into her shawl. "Come to my cave, at moonrise. I will have answers for you, then."
The Captain suppressed a shudder as she walked quickly away, amulet pouches swinging from her belt. Hearth side legends told of times when the mysterious Raheira had ruled the Land, altering its form and enchanting it with spells. But now they were few and many villages no longer used the services of a Healer. Nor cared to, for the Raheira were viewed with equal amounts of distrust and suspicion, as well as respect.
But at moonrise he found himself at the cave in the foothills, where the green and gold of the dunes intermingled with the browns and grays of the mountains.
Three times Bronya the Healer cast the stones into the mage circle scratched in the sandy surface of her cave. And three times she shook her head and told the despondent Captain there was no choice. It had to be.
The old man clutched his short hunting knife and struck out at the heavens daring the Sea God, Merkara, to explain these actions. But neither the God, nor the Healer, had anything further to say.
In late summer, the Captain brought Drucilla, swollen with child, to the cave of the Healer. Again, stones were cast into the mage circle.
"I won't tolerate a halfling in my house!" The old man's dark eyes blazed.
Drucilla said nothing, her face ashen even in the rosy glow of the fire.
Bronya retrieved the round objects. "If the child is to be who the stones say she will, it's best I raise her. She will live with me."
A low rumble of distant thunder penetrated the stillness of the cave, echoing off mossy gray walls. The Healer's gaze darted around the room as if searching for something she didn't want to see.
The Captain toyed nervously with his blade, his expression softening. "Well, perhaps a girlchild should be raised in a house, Healer. I wasn't thinking the child would be a girl. The foothills are too..."
"I will raise her." Bronya's voice held a note of anger. "The stones say this is the chosen child. The child he will want. Your village offers no protection to such a child."
Thunder resounded, sounding closer this time. The old woman stood abruptly, knocking the smooth stones out of her lap and onto the floor. She shook a gnarled fist towards the heavens, her metal bracelets clanging almost as loudly as the approaching storm.
"This time, she will be mine, do you hear me?"
A wind whipped through the cave extinguishing the fire, chilling the occupants of the dark hole. The Captain grabbed his daughter's arm and quickly guided her towards the entrance into the failing daylight.
"We'll send word when it's her time!" His voice echoed back into the darkness. Wrapping his long cape around his trembling daughter, he carefully led her away from the mountains to the safety of their own gathering on the dunes.
Bronya stared defiantly into the storm, her coarse green dress buffeted about in the winds.
"She will be mine!"
Suddenly all was quiet. The yellow light of the night sky cast an eerie glow into the cave of the Healer. She followed its sha
ft to the floor. The outlines of the circle, now covered in dust, were barely discernible. The stones were as they had fallen from her lap. Their pattern was unmistakable.
The Sorcerer claimed the unborn child for himself.
The thin, dark-haired young boy scurried through the foothills to the cave of the Healer. Mounds of gold and orange leaves, crisp from autumn's influence, swirled in his passing. Drucilla's time was near.
"Aye, Tavis. This I know. Everything's ready." She ruffled the hair of the smith's only son then sent him careening back through the leaves with word of her arrival.
The Healer carefully patted the bags of herbs and medicines she wore around her waist, tied to the knotted string belt. More than the usual birthing herbs were needed with this one. Strong wards would be necessary, to keep him out. She couldn't let him interfere.
Not yet. Not until the child knew of her powers and could choose her own destiny, as was her right, by Ixari, the Goddess of the Heavens. Merkara and Tarkir were not the only Powers in the Land.
The afternoon sun blazed overhead. It was warm for mid-autumn. But the Healer saw the clouds rolling in from the South. Heavy clouds, full of rain and wind and lightning.
The sea already churned as she entered the gates of the village. Strong winds whistled through the freshly thatched roofs around her. The boats in the cove strained at their moorings. The spray dampened her face and the air smelled of salt, and something else. She squinted into the wind, narrowing her gray brows, the lines on her face deepening. The smell, the scent came from the storm clouds.
The smell of magic, the scent of power.
She quickened her steps to the center of the village, to the Captain's house with its white-shingled sides and heavy oak door.
The child, with hair as pale as the lightning that slashed the sky, was born at the height of the hurricane, a maelstrom from the south. The old woman cradled the infant in her arms. Gale winds buffeted about the house, screeching through the cracks in the timbers.
"She's mine!" she cried into the hot, damp winds. She wrapped a garland of herbs and gemstones about the child's small form.
She moved for the door. The white-haired Captain sprang from his chair by the hearth.
"You're mad, Healer. Surely you can't take the child out in this?"
"It's either that or suffer the chance of this house being destroyed. There's no wind that can level my cave."
"Then go!" The Captain thrust his hand towards the door, his arm shaking. "And take this madness with you!"
He slammed the large oak door behind the hunched form. The Healer's clothing darkened as it absorbed the slashing rain. Her head bent protectively over the small bundle she clutched to her breast, wrapped in a bolt of bright cloth that she had spent hours embroidering with the symbols of the deities.
The child neither cried nor whimpered, in spite of the harsh sounds and flashes of light. Her large eyes, now blue, now gray, now green, watched with intense curiosity at the events around her.
The Healer staggered into her cave and placed the child into the wooden cradle; its sides, too, decorated with the signs and symbols of her craft. She shivered and added wood to the fire, unaware that the storm outside had subsided.
"We are home, Khamsin," she whispered to the sleeping child, whose small hand curled around the edge of the blanket. "He did not get you, this time."
CHAPTER 1
Orange tongues of flame licked at the stout logs on the hearth. But the fire was more for light than heat. The last warm breath of summer still drifted over the Land though it was a month into the autumn season.
The stone floor of the cave echoed a coolness drawn from the dark green forest. Khamsin folded a small rug into a cushion and decided that this was the perfect spot to finish the chain of brightpinks she'd started earlier.
She intertwined the long green stems, keeping the blossoms to the outside. It was a silly thing, a brightpink chain. Tanta Bron told her it had no real magic to offer. But the village girls thought otherwise. They made them every summer, to call their lovers to them.
"A flower bright I take to thee, a flower bright brings thee to me." Khamsin recited the words softly as she carefully bent the slender stem in a half circle. "A flower bright..."
The sound of a wooden chair scraping against the floor stilled her whispered song. Quickly she thrust the half-formed chain under an edge of the rug. She turned as Tanta Bron drew back the embroidered curtain covering the archway to her bedchamber.
"Finished your chores, child?"
"Yes, Tanta."
"But not your studies." Bronya knelt in front of the young girl and placed a leather-bound book on the gray stone floor. "Now. Time grows short."
A petulant frown creased Khamsin's face. Time grows short, time grows short, for what? "But I'm so tired, Tanta Bron..."
"Tired? Chasing that cat all day in the woods again. That's play. This is different."
Khamsin opened the book with a resigned sigh. Its thin, dusty pages had a sweet, powdery odor. "It wasn't all play. Nixa hears me now. Even when I'm not touching her."
At the mention of her name, the gray cat curled in front of the large hearth blinked opened her golden eyes. A soft Nixa-tinged sensation filtered into Khamsin's mind as their awareness linked briefly. She saw her own image from the cat's viewpoint: a slender sixteen year old girl clad in boy's tan breeches and white overshirt, sitting cross-legged on the floor. But it was Khamsin's pale hair, in a long braid that reached past her waist, that caught the cat's attention. She shook her head. The ribbons binding the end fluttered. Nixa's playful interest rippled over her.
"And I can sometimes even see what she sees. Like now. She's..."
"Visions of ribbons to play with won't be able to protect you, when the time comes. Start here." Bronya tapped her finger at the start of a series of dark slashes and curlicues in the middle of the page.
Khamsin squinted at the shapes. They shifted, becoming words in her mind. Though not really words. She knew words, letters Tavis taught her. She could write her own name and his. And simple sentences like "I will buy this horse for two pigs."
But the rune signs in Healer's Book didn't pertain to such mundane things. They pertained to spells: incantations, callings and divinations. They had to be memorized, practiced over and over again until Khamsin could say them without hesitation. They had to be imbedded in her mind, inscribed on her soul.
"Now, this is...?" Bronya prompted.
"Ixari's Third Blessing for Rain." Khamsin closed her eyes, called the rune signs from memory. "T'cai l'heira, Ixari..." she said softly, remembering to touch her lips with the side of her index finger as she said the Goddess's name. The rest of the odd-sounding words flowed easily. She'd recited this incantation many times before. Weather blessings were the least difficult. She knew Tanta Bron had her repeat them only to relax her mind.
More difficult ones followed. The spell to stop the flow of water in a stream. The spell to stop the flow of blood from a wound. The spell to make lifesweet from leaves and flowers, if no food can be found. The spell to make firestones, for warmth and protection.
"And the Supplications, child?"
Khamsin opened her eyes. Saying her Supplications signaled the lesson's end. She wiggled her right foot. Her ankle was stiff from sitting cross-legged for so long.
"To Merkara, God of the Sea. And Ixari, Goddess of the Sky. For protection, I beseech you. For guidance, I entreat you. In all..." And she yawned, then grinned sheepishly at the Healer. "Sorry."
Nixa yawned too, stretching her paws towards the fire.
"Finish, Khamsin."
"In all things, mystic and mundane, in all realms and all planes. Let your powers now guide me. Your blessings, beside me. From harm you will hide me. I live in the light of your names."
Bronya pulled herself to her feet. "Good." She rummaged in the deep pockets of her long skirt. "I'll place the warding stones. No, don't turn around. Tell me first if they're right."
; Khamsin closed her eyes again. A new image popped into her mind: Tanta Bron's bent figure in her long blue and green skirts and blue shawl. Her dark hair, pulled so carefully and so tightly back into a bun early this morning, now unraveled in wispy strands.
No, Nixa, Khamsin admonished gently. You can't help. That's cheating.
"Do you sense the spell lines?"
"Ummm. Yes. But the Ladri stone's in the wrong place." She felt the discordant hum of the stones' energy. "It's too close to the Khal."
"Then why didn't you say the Khal was in the wrong place? I've told you time and time again. You must look for Tarkir's stone before all others. Tarkir's stone must be your power point for all wardings.
"Yes, ma'am I know, but..."
"No buts, Khamsin. Now, tell me again."
A ripple of energy told Khamsin that Tanta Bron moved the warding stones.
"The Khal is centered in primary," she said. "Ladri and Vedri are balanced. But Nevri is..." She tightened her mental focus slightly. "Nevri is in opposition to Ladri. Nevri must be reversed."
There was a soft sound as Bronya turned the wardstone.
"Better?"
Bronya's approval washed over Khamsin even before she answered. "Better!"
"Much better. Now, come, come. Up off the floor. We'll have some moonpetal tea and then it's off to bed with you."
Khamsin snuggled under her blankets and breathed in the sweet aroma of the moonpetal tea still in the air. She heard soft snoring sounds filtering through the embroidered curtain covering Tanta Bron's alcove.
The curtain across Khamsin's own small alcove was open. She saw Nixa sitting in front of the fireplace, her small form outlined by the weak orange glow of the embers. The cat industriously washed her whiskers, pleased at having found a small piece of cheese on the table.
Behind Nixa, the folded rug was still where Khamsin left it. A tangle of brightpinks peeked out from under one corner.
At the mouth of the cave, where roughhewn timbers and large boulders laced to form her home's front wall, Khamsin saw the flicker of the wardstones in the darkness.
Biondine, Shannah Page 30