The Darkling Hills

by Lori Martin

  On the morning that they were to leave she walked far from camp, to the top of the Hill. She was in brown, in mourning, as she had been since her brother’s death; and she had seen all of Lindahne dressed now the same, mourning for their country. Paither was beneath her cloak. He was content, having gotten used to it.

  “We’re going to Mendale,” she told him. “Your grandmother is there. Maybe someday I can bring you to see her.”

  The last Assembly Forlas had been permitted to attend, now that he was no longer in power, had seen the sentencing of the former queen of Lindahne. Almost certainly they had intended to put her to death, but there was something, Nichos’s uncle had written, something about the way she stood before them, that had changed their minds. Ayenna waited, strong and quiet and with all of the royal dignity that no one could take from her. Instead of death, she was given an isolated house and a small garden, and a constant guard: they were her jailers, and she was never to leave the house’s boundaries. But she would be only a little uncomfortable, just enough to remind her that she was still alive. Nichos said it might be possible, after a time, for them to get permission to see her. “But we’ll have to think up a good reason,” he said. Pillyn liked to imagine her face on the day her living grandson was shown to her. She would be the only one, now, to whom Pillyn would say, “He is not mine.”

  She reached inside her cloak and stroked the baby’s head. He had the blue mark on his shoulder, and now he also had his mother’s ring, hanging on a chain around his neck. The relasii ring, the carved jewel set in gold. They had found it on Sillus’s body. Pillyn had never seen it up close before. There was the Lindahne saying etched into it, running along the inner side: “Forever past, forever to come.” That was what they had once believed.

  The temple behind her had been the house of Proseras. From where she stood she could see the valley beneath her, where Lindahne children grew hungrier by the day, as their parents worked for the conquerors. Where had the immortals fled? Services, even, were forbidden. She could see across to the First Hill; just barely she could make out the darkened temple of Nialia, Mother of Fate. And these shall be my people, the goddess had said, and they shall be mine. Where had she gone?

  In the wind of the Hilltop she tried to make some sense of it. All of their lives had gone for it: Rendell, Dalleena, Lilli, the king, the little murdered girl-child whose body they had not found. Her father too, in a way, and those that lived – or might live – had all been a part of it. Temhas, the queen, she herself, even Baili – what had they all been striving for, what had pushed them forward in the very face of destruction, what force had guided the loom? It had to be the goddess. It had to be the weaver. But why?

  The threads of the past year were dyed in dark colors, in the stains of Nialia’s handiwork. One thread only was bright, one ran though, giving life, the life of a child. A child who had, in the end, been born on Lindahne earth.

  And that morning Pillyn saw it, as she would see it for the rest of her life. She was not a Nialian, not a priestess. Her vision was a mortal one, but it was a true one all the same. The pattern stretched out before her, and the words ran around her head. She had not been at the truth-seeking; she did not know they were the words of an old and dying woman, but she knew it was the clear sound of prophecy. Comes another. Another to raise the Hills again.

  A voice said, “Are you ready to leave, little one?”

  Pillyn smiled at him, and at how easily he had found her. He seemed to know her so well. She still had so much to learn about him.

  “I was saying goodbye,” she said.

  “Is it very hard?”

  She considered it. “No. I’m bringing the important things with me: you, and Baili. And Paither.”

  For answer he kissed the top of her head. “He’s a beautiful child.”

  “And he will be a beautiful man,” she pronounced.

  “Come, then,” he said.

  “One more moment, please, Nichos? I’ll follow you.”

  He nodded, and left her, walking slowly.

  Pillyn paused a little longer. He was to be her husband, but he was, after all, a Mendale, so she said it to the lifeless trees and the winter sun.

  “He will be a king.”

  The words hung in the air. She turned, and followed him down the Hill.