It was a simple thing, a small thing, beautifully crafted and heavy, though it was no larger than the length and width of her hand, but she'd known about it for years and never once dreamt of it. Perhaps she wasn't the only one dreaming of it now? Perhaps Lily, and Rose too, found themselves waking in the middle of the night to seek it out, to reassure themselves of its substance, its safety.
Perhaps. But she rather doubted her sisters thought of little else in their waking hours, as she did.
Something sharp pricked her finger, and Pansy blinked to discover herself standing in the garden, sunlight warm on her skin, the scent of earth and lemony daffodil in her nose, and a knife in one hand. The other, she saw, pinched a twig between thumb and bleeding finger. "Oh," she said, dropping the twig and struggling to clear away the shadows of moonlight and dreams. "What...?"
"You've cut yourself." Lily spoke up beside her, reaching for the injured hand.
"Careless," Rose teased, appearing over Lily's shoulder to pluck the knife from Pansy's loosening grasp. "That's not like you."
It wasn't. They were all careful, of course, but Pansy especially so. She had no gift, as her sisters did, to protect herself.
"What happened?" Lily asked.
"I-I don't know." The truth slipped out before she could stop it, and Pansy flinched. Now they would ask questions, and how was she to explain where her thoughts had been just now?
But neither sister asked anything. Lily sighed and Rose tucked the knife into her sash, and together they ushered Pansy into the cottage. In silence, Lily salved and bandaged the cut, and only then, still holding Pansy's hand between her own, did she speak. "You're dreaming of it, aren't you? The box?"
What? The box? The question was so unexpected, Pansy could only sit, startled and speechless for a moment. "I—" she began. "Well...."
"What box?" Rose asked. "The ironwood box?"
"Yes," Lily replied, voice very soft. "But quietly, if you please. Remember where we are."
Rose nodded, dark brows drawn as she dropped soundlessly into the chair beside Pansy. "All right," she said. "But what's this about the box?"
"Pansy has been dreaming of it." Lily's eyes flicked to Pansy's. "At least, I believe she has." One arched, red eyebrow asked the question.
"Yes," Pansy replied slowly. "Have you known all along? Have you been dreaming too?" Oh, she hoped so....
But Lily was already shaking her head. "No. Not I. I merely woke two nights ago to find you in the loft, holding the box. I certainly thought I'd dreamed it, at first, but you woke me the next night as well. And you've been so distracted."
Rose snorted. "So you have, little one. Coming home from market with the eggs still unsold. Pouring salt in your tea. All this down to dreams?"
A faint smile curved the corners of Lily's mouth. "I imagine they're rather persistent dreams." The smile faded a little, but Lily's eyes grew brighter. "And I believe they are very important dreams."
Important? Dreams about the box? They were certainly peculiar, but important?
Rose asked the question for her. "What are you thinking, Lily?"
Lily's eyes grew brighter still, shining honey-gold in the sunlight streaming through the door. "I believe that Pansy's dreams are what we've been waiting for." One slender hand left Pansy's to find Rose's where it curled on the table. "I believe Pansy's dreams are telling us it is time to go home."
Lily's grip on her hand was so tight it hurt, but Pansy hardly noticed. The pain in her chest, sharp and hard, rose above all else. Go home? No. No, they couldn't. She couldn't. Her lungs hitched, fought for breath. Gasping, she yanked her hand from Lily's hold and staggered to her feet. Two pairs of identical honey-gold eyes turned to her, and at the sight of the joy rising in them, Pansy's chest pinched tighter.
"I can't," she said, the words barely a whisper through her struggling lungs. "I can't," she said again and, turning, fled the cottage.
* * * *
It was with a burning chest and aching legs that she finally stopped running, some long time later. The forest around her was unfamiliar, but at the moment she could only be glad for it: if she didn't know where she was, her sisters wouldn't know either. Panting, she sank against a tree and slid to the ground.
Above her the wind rustled through the canopy, stirring the sweet-musty air beneath, and Pansy gulped, trying to match her breaths to its slow, easy rhythm. Morning sunlight danced to the wind, as well, glowing through the leaves in ever-shifting green prisms. Pansy closed her eyes, lifted her face to it, and sighed through the rasp of her lungs.
She'd grown so used to the forest that it was strange to think she hadn't always lived inside it. A smile teased her mouth. How she'd hated it when they'd first come! The trees pressed too close, shutting out the sky, and the air was so wet it dampened her clothes even as she slept. Not that she'd slept much, at first, not with all the strange chitterings and snufflings of the forest animals, the birds singing their peculiar songs at the oddest times of day.
The forest was nothing like home, nothing like Suralis. The villagers, half a morning's walk nearer the borderlands, couldn't even pronounce Suralis correctly, instead flattening the vowels and hissing the sibilants. How she'd grieved in their little cottage, how they'd all grieved, losing country and home and parents and names within days of one another.
And she thought Lily and Rose still grieved, even after five years, but while she would always remember Suralis fondly, Pansy had found a place to belong in the vast tangle of the forest. Certainly, she thought, bunching her skirt in her fingers, she belonged here, silent and separate in this humble skin, this flower name, far better than she ever did as Persal, the Right Hand, third and youngest queen of Suralis, giftless and unremarkable.
For as long as memory, the queens of Suralis had been gifted, given a talent by the land itself that they might better serve their kingdom. Lily, born Linea, eldest daughter of Marit, heir to the High Queen, found her strength in words. Calm, assured, she spoke poetry as easily as council, and as Marit, herself a prophetess, had announced at Linea's birth, all who hear must listen.
And Rose, born Rosild, second eldest daughter of Marit, heir to the Left Hand, found her gift in warcraft. Merry and graceful, her hands shaped strategy, her body dancing death to her enemies. All who defy must fail had been Marit's prophecy for her second daughter.
But Persal had been born giftless, and Marit had no prophecy for her youngest daughter. You are the best of us, she'd say, or How can Suralis be whole without you? But for all her mother's kind words, Persal knew perfectly well, even as a girl, how disappointed and worried the Suralis court had been. High Queen Irin had been the first to act on her conviction that Persal must not be queen, but she was hardly alone in that belief.
Pansy's eyes pinched tighter, shadows of that long, desperate flight into hiding and safety playing on her eyelids. All this time they'd hardly dared step from the cottage, only briefly venturing to the village, exchanging the merest of greetings with their distant neighbors, speaking of Suralis only rarely and in the faintest of whispers. And now to return home? Her sisters believed the time had come, and perhaps they might go: they were true queens and Suralis needed them. But Persal was Pansy now and safer that way. As Persal, she'd been the cause of one coup. She'd not return and be the reason for another.
"So here you are." Pansy's eyes flew open to find Rose standing across the clearing, hands hooked into the bright red of her sash. "I almost didn't see you, curled up so tight. And in that gown," dark brows jumped, "you look very little like my sister and very much like an exceedingly cross rock."
Only with great effort did Pansy manage not to smile. Instead, she hunkered down tighter against the tree. "Then please," she said, "pretend you haven't seen me and go away."
Rose gave a long-suffering sigh and sauntered closer. "Won't do you any good. Your trail ends here, and so even if I couldn't see you, I'd still know you were here somewhere. And I'd look. And I'd wait. Until I did see you."
<
br /> Pansy uncoiled a little. "I left a trail?"
"A trail?" Rose laughed. "Yes. You did. Plain enough for even one of the villagers to follow, little one." Dropping into a crouch, she unfolded one of Pansy's arms from around her knees and skimmed warm fingers over a criss-cross of scratches. "And it looks as though the forest left a trail on you, as well."
Pansy hadn't even noticed, but now that she knew they were there, the scratches started to sting a little.
"You need mending," Rose said. "Come along home and we'll salve them."
Salving sounded good, but.... "I don't want to go back to the cottage yet."
No surprise flickered in her sister's gaze. Encouraged, Pansy pressed further. "And I can't go back to Suralis." Rose still didn't appear surprised, but a faint frown now creased her brow. Pansy reached to smooth it, whispering, "You know I can't. I'm useless." This time Rose did look startled, but Pansy dropped her hand to her sister's mouth before she could speak. "I was young when we left, but I wasn't that young. I remember everything. I remember how we escaped the palace and how we made it safely to the borderlands, where Irin couldn't find us anymore, and it was you and it was Lily. Lily speaking people into leaving us alone and you fighting to win us free. But it wasn't me. I did nothing—"
Rose shook her head, pulled Pansy's hand away to say, "You were a child. Only twelve years old, little one. Of course you did nothing."
"No," Pansy protested, eyes stinging. "No. I did nothing because I can only do nothing. I'm giftless." Lowering her voice still further, she continued, "And 'tis because I'm giftless that mother and father and Aunt Vela and all the others died. If it hadn't been for me—"
Rose's hand sealed Pansy's mouth now, brown eyes fierce. "Stop. Stop saying such horrible things. They're not true. Not one of them is true." The hand lifted but Rose's gaze warned her to stay silent. "You weren't so very young, no, but you were young enough not to remember everything.
"Aunt Irin's ambitions didn't begin with you, little one. To hear Mother and Aunt Vela tell it, they began long ago, when Irin was no older than you are now. The natural order of Suralis, of the world itself, has never been enough for her. Knowing she must die someday, she planned to live on in her daughters—for she believed, fiercely and for years, that she would mother the next queens. Instead, she had only Alba, poor weak, rock-dull Alba, and when I was born, Irin knew it was Mother who would bear the three daughters, the three queens, and not herself.
"For a time, she convinced herself that her own daughter could take your place. We waited ten years for you, after all, and as Head Queen, Irin might have been able to persuade the court into believing Suralis had chosen two sisters and a cousin as queens, instead of the three sisters it had always provided before. But when Mother discovered she was expecting you, Irin was forced to acknowledge what I believe she knew all along: her only means of creating a legacy was by destroying us. Your being giftless was merely convenient for her plans, but she would have killed mother and father and Aunt Vela, and tried to kill us, even if you were the soul of Suralis, itself.
"So, no," Rose's hands squeezed Pansy's shoulders, "you weren't the cause of any of it. Irin had been planning her coup for years, and those courtiers who followed her did so not because you were giftless, but for her promises of power and wealth."
For a long moment, nothing but birdsong sounded in the clearing, and Pansy closed her eyes against her sister's sharp gaze, trying to think, to understand all Rose had said. Could she believe it? Rose did, that was clear, and Pansy certainly wanted to believe she was not at fault, but the sick guilt and fear had been with her so long she couldn't quite bring herself to accept that they were...wrong. That she had no reason to feel them. Surely, she thought, surely her lack of gift was still dangerous, even if it had not caused the deaths of so many she loved.
Swallowing to ease her dry throat, she opened her eyes and said, "But I'm still giftless, Rose, and what need has Suralis for a giftless queen?"
"If Suralis had no need for you, Persal ne-Marit, why did it provide you as our third queen?" Lily's voice pierced the quiet of the clearing, and Pansy turned to see her eldest sister where Rose had stood earlier, so still even her white blouse and red hair seemed a part of the forest beyond. There was no telling how long she'd been there, but judging by the burnt cinnamon of her eyes and the taut line of her mouth, Lily had heard more than enough.
"For centuries," Lily went on, her voice a crackling, vivid heat, "Suralis has provided each generation with three sisters. Never more, never less. Only three sisters who would someday become queens like the sisters before them. This has always been true, for Suralis requires three sisters to maintain its balance, to rule and preserve a prosperous land. I do not know why you have no gift, Persal, but you are as Suralis requires you to be. Rose and I cannot rule alone. You are our third. And just as Suralis struggles now beneath Irin, so it will suffer without you."
She paced closer and the sorcery shimmering in her voice softened. "We have hidden here for five years, as Mother said we must, but she also promised that one day we would go home. And that I would know when that day came. Your dreams, Persal, of the ironwood box—" Lily hesitated, then finished slowly, "After all this time, I cannot believe it coincidence."
She didn't explain, but she hardly needed to. The box, crafted from ironwood grown only in the western desertlands of Suralis, was the only thing their mother had insisted they take with them. No one knew precisely what was inside, but the box had been created after one of Marit's visions had warned her of Irin's treachery, and it had been sealed and strengthened by Vela, whose gift gave her power over trees and herbs. In every aspect, the box was tied to Suralis. And now Pansy was dreaming of it.
"Irin will know the instant we set foot on Suralis land," Rose warned. "We won't even reach the palace before her soldiers find us."
"Yes," Lily agreed. "And since she can see anything she wishes within the Suralis borders with her gift, she may choose to stay in the palace to watch. But I believe she wants the box, even without knowing what it holds. And for that, she will come herself. And when she comes, perhaps we can fight her. Perhaps Suralis will even assist us." Lily's eyes met Pansy's. "But only if you come with us, Persal. Suralis requires three. Without you, we cannot win."
There was no other answer to give, really, but that didn't make the words easy to say. Licking dry lips, she met Rose's eyes and then Lily's—both the same shade as their mother's, as her own eyes—and said, "I will come."
* * * *
Her hands were itching again, faint, feathery tickles teasing her palms, sweeping the tops of her knuckles. Rubbing them did no good—the sensation pricked beneath her skin—but at least this itch was tolerable. In the three days since they'd passed from the forest, over the border, and into the grasslands, Pansy had become acquainted with almost every sort of itch imaginable: the soft tingle of her fingertips; the hot, achy rawness at the heart of her palm and between her fingers; the persistent, maddening bug-bite itch on the back of her hand; the flaming lick of stings along her fingers, beneath her nails, across her palm.
That last was the worst, painful as real fire, impossible to ignore, and soothed only by the touch of cool ironwood. But since they'd crossed into Suralis, Lily and Rose both had forbidden her access to the box. Her dreams had intensified then, and several times her sisters had woken to discover Pansy hunched in the darkness, box hugged to her breast, fingers toying with the small gold latch. She mustn't open it, her sisters said, not while they still needed to lure Irin to them, and Pansy knew they were right. But only Lily and her gifted voice could convince her to release it.
It didn't make sense. Now that they'd returned to Suralis, the dreams should have stopped. Instead, she found herself thinking about the box even during the day, imagining it in her mind, smooth as satin, light catching the fine grain in gleams of cinnamon and amber, copper, russet, and gold. And the itching in her hands? It didn't distract her from her fears and worries, only inte
nsified them. As though they weren't already worsened by the sight of the land around them.
On the surface, Suralis appeared much the same as it always had: a great spread of grasslands rolling into foothills to the south, drying to scrubby desert in the west, the horizon ragged with a slate smudge of mountains. At this time of year, Suralis was always green and vivid with wildflowers, the sun just beginning to bake an edge of silver into the grasses. Even after five years, Pansy remembered that. But the Suralis she saw around her now was nothing but brown. Brown and dry, rustling and rattling eerily in the occasional breath of wind. The air wasn't hot, but the land was the worn and weary husk of late summer. Lily had been right: Suralis was struggling.
"Ho!" Rose's shout drew her from her thoughts. "Riders to the south." Pansy's eyes darted along Rose's gaze and saw, far but not far enough, a faint cloud of dirt and dust rising into the air. Irin's soldiers, at last. And, they could only hope, Irin herself.
"Any strategy, Rosild?" Lily asked, voice brisk beneath its calm.
Rose snorted and dropped her pack to the ground. "Here is as good a place as any. No ground has the advantage, and while they've horses, we've our gifts." And catching Pansy's eyes, "And the box."
Lily nodded and dropped her pack, too, although more carefully. As she rummaged in its depths, Pansy shrugged out of her own pack and smoothed itchy fingers against her fluttering stomach.
"Here," Lily said, holding out the ironwood box. "You take charge of this. I trust you won't open it?" Pansy mumbled an assurance and reached for the box. The itching eased as her fingers touched it.
Moments later, they were ready: Pansy beside the packs, Lily some feet to her left, and Rose an equal distance to her right, curved sword in hand. The cloud of dust drew nearer. And then the soldiers, themselves, were visible. And then, at last, they arrived, hooves thundering against the ground, dust stinging Pansy's eyes as they galloped to encircle them.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXII Page 10