In other labors, a man could walk away when he became too old or too disheartened. Being a Fal’kin was not a choice; it was a birthright. How did one escape one’s destiny?
“You cannot, but you can control how you face it,” Desde said, answering his unspoken question. ... What are you hiding from me? ...
He was silent. What could he say? What was there to say?
He poured himself what was left of the wine from a carafe on a small side table near the bed. He held up his cup as a means of asking his wife if she wanted some. She shook her head.
She raised herself on her elbow and propped up her head with her hand. “I am a seer, and I was a student of my father. He was seer prime of this province for nearly fifty summers and twice as cagey as any defender. I think that entitles me to know brilliance when I see it.”
Kaarl sat down next to her again. “That is very true.” He leaned over to give her a tender kiss on her forehead. “I miss Toban. Very much.”
Their room, one of the hundreds in Deren’s learning hall, contained little more than a bed, a fireplace, some chairs, and a small table. It was Desde’s right as prime now to take up residence in the largest suite in the hall. He was glad she had not moved them to the prime’s chambers down the hallway. Too much of her beloved father Toban remained in it.
“Could the healers do nothing?”
His wife sighed. “Even Fal’kin do not live forever.”
“I wish the Aspects Above would have made him an exception.”
“You have no idea how hard I prayed for that as well. However, you sidestepped my question. What happened in the forest?”
He stared into his cup. “I already briefed you, my Prime. What more do you need to know?”
She sat up and rested her lips on his shoulder. “I need nothing more. You need to rid yourself of the poison left behind.”
He swallowed a large draft of wine. “I do not wish to discuss it.”
... Dici Oëa cerebus a Ëa, Ëi ama ... she called to him in Anqa Lingua, the old tongue of Kinderra.
... I do not wish to speak my mind to you ... Not now ... It is too soon ... he returned.
“No. I fear it has already been too long.”
He said nothing. In the firelight, the wine looked like blood.
“I have known you your whole life. Never have you allowed adversity to defeat you. You’ve lost good fighters before. Why does this one haunt you so?”
“It’s not just this one. It’s all of them. It’s thirty summers of them. Of seeing them die.” Kaarl regarded his cup once more, now disgusted by its contents. “I fight and I fight and I fight, but my sword and amulet never make one damn bit of difference. I have grown useless in this war. Why does this one haunt me so? I’ll tell you why. One moment, we were riding through the woods. The next, one of my defenders was dead.” ... By nothing more nefarious than a simple pack of beasts! ... Beasts, Desde! ... And I couldn’t do anything to save Gannah ... Not one ... Damn! ... THING! ...
His Defending Aspect flared as the cup hurled across the room and shattered within the fireplace. The flames rose as they consumed the wine.
Desde tensed. ... Ama? ...
He never brought the war to their home. To their bed. To her. He buried his face in his hands.
“I remember all too well what’s it’s like to lose people you care about, Ëi Ama.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Skilled battle seers died from a strike they had successfully blocked a hundred times before. And the most inept of fighters lived another day.” She held one of his hands and pulled it down. “I also remember all the battle lust. The stench of blood. The noises the Ken’nar made as I slit their throats. I was drowning from guilt in the deaths I caused. Becoming pregnant with Mirana and remaining a hall seer in Deren was a blessing for me beyond just bearing a child.” She brought his hand to her lips. “Now, I merely see deaths by the hundreds instead of causing them.”
Kaarl studied Desde’s hand in his. He also remembered holding his wife month after barren month, her guilt-ridden sobs blaming her empty womb on her sins. “Gannah Tesabe died.”
“Oh, Kaarl.”
He squeezed her hand and released it. His amulet glowed softly as his Aspect called to the deep red garnet with the memory. “She was just four summers older than Mirana. She had so much promise. Few older defenders could fight better than that girl.”
Gannah Tesabe, born to the far-flung tropical province of Jad-Anüna, had woven her scimitar in combat like a master craftswoman weaving a tapestry. So much talent. So very much. He cursed under his breath, his body growing rigid in an effort to hold back his anger. “I couldn’t even save her from those bloody grynwen. Do you call that brilliance?”
“Grynwen are not merely large wolves.” She covered his amulet with her hand, her fingers cool and soothing against the skin of his chest. “Even a man such as Tetric Garis cannot save everyone.” When he did not comment, she continued. “Gannah was not a child. She had seen battle. Many of them.”
He deflated back into the bed. “I shouldn’t have lost her.”
“It is said grynwen hunt with the Aspects.”
“So do we.” He sighed in frustration. “I had hoped Tetric might have been able to do something, but...” He stared at the beamed ceiling high above him. The supports no doubt came from Kana-Akün centuries ago.
“He came?”
Kaarl frowned. “After we’d taken the loss. Again. This time, it was sheer luck. We didn’t even know he was in the vicinity.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. He was weary, and for this one moment, he let himself feel the full weight of his fatigue. “The war has changed, Desde. The Ken’nar. They have always been brutal, but now?” He slowly spun the thin gold band encircling his left wrist. His wife had given it to him the day they joined in union, forever committing herself to him. She wore one just like it, his eternal promise to her. Her love and their daughter’s love were the only things he held closer to him than his Aspect. Sometimes, their love was all he cared about. “We fight them, but they do not stop. They are relentless.”
His wife gently caressed his mind, trying to comfort him, but nothing could take away this hurt anymore. “Our corpses were not even recognizable as bodies,” he continued “That is, those the Ken’nar did not turn into ash with their amulets. For summers now, grynwen are at every engagement, not just large-scale assaults.”
He sat up again and swung his legs off the edge of their bed, his back to Desde. He looked down at his hands once more, staring at them helplessly. “Last autumn, fighting out on the borderlands in between Varn-Erdal and Dar-Azûl, I rode past one felled Ken’nar. His leg had been cut from him, he was pocked with arrows, yet he still tried to stand and attack. He ripped out an arrow from his side and stabbed at the fetlocks of my horse. We are all but powerless against evil such as this.” He let his breath out slowly in a staccato exhale. “Do you remember when Tarn Salka died?”
“Ai. It was at that skirmish at Thyre’s Crossing. Two summers ago now.”
The amulet pulled at the back of his neck, its burden hanging even more heavily on his soul. “We fought in the provincial forces together. We were both called up to the il’Kin together. I didn’t think another loss could hurt more. I was wrong.” He stopped fighting the weight of his garnet and let it sag his shoulders. “The Ken’nar do not stop. We must butcher them just to press any advantage at all. This is not war. This is savagery.”
“I know you fought bravely.”
“And yet one of my own was brought down by animals. Not even a blade.”
Desde touched the shadow of another scar on his arm. “One could have been all twenty of you, regardless of whether Tetric arrived or not.” ... And we would not be having this conversation ...
He shifted uncomfortably. “That has more to do with Mirana’s warning than Tetric.”
She dropped her hand. “Warning? What warning?”
“Mirana’s call.” He scowled as her shock leaked from he
r mind to his. He turned to face her. “Did she not tell you?”
“Tell. Me. What?” She cut off each word as with a knife.
“She called to me. She should not have been able to.”
“Granted, the distance—”
“We were hidden. We were under U’Nehíl.”
Her hand went to her mouth.
The fact that Mirana had not told his wife of this warning meant their daughter knew precisely the magnitude of what she had done. She was certainly adept in her interpretation abilities, foretelling with accuracy many events, despite being given just fragments of unbidden visions. Their daughter, once so exuberant in expressing what the Aspects Above revealed to her through her Seeing Aspect, had grown more and more withdrawn in recent summers. Now, she barely discussed any vision beyond its facts. Even with her reticence, though, she had never been deceitful.
Maybe she was beginning to understand her sight meant so much more to Kinderra than merely receiving some skein of time before her mind’s eye. Was the Dark Trine beginning to take notice of their daughter’s talents as well?
A chill rippled through him having nothing to do with the night air.
He and Desde would do anything to keep their child safe. Anything. If deceit saved lives, was it still a sin? He did not know. He wasn’t sure he cared anymore. If Mirana remained safe, that was all that mattered to him.
Kaarl reached out now for their daughter’s presence in her small room across the corridor from theirs. She was awake. She had been as relieved to have him and the others home as he was to be home. He had held her and not wanted to let go, deciding to save the discussion about her warning for the morning.
She was still so petite despite seeing nearly sixteen summers. It was as though her small body never made up for the sevendays she missed coming nearly two months early when she was born. His tiny girl. Eyes like moonlight on water. Like his. Hair as black as midnight. Like his. Having to bear the weight of his ancestor Jasal Pinal’s damned reputation for failure, cowardice, and betrayal. Having to do more, be more, just to counter it. Like him. Like all in the Pinal lineage.
“Does she actually think I would punish her for saving your life?” Desde crossed her arms, hugging herself. “She is not supposed to act alone on visions yet, but this was a matter of life or death. Why would she hide this from me?”
“If you were honest with yourself, you would know why.”
She now rose from the bed and put on her robe, cinching it around her slender waist. She walked over to the window. Mirana’s high, rose-petal cheeks on porcelain skin, her rosebud mouth—adorable when she pouted, glorious when she smiled—those were all Desde’s. As were their daughter’s shoulders when she tightened them in fear. As his wife was doing now. Desde closed her mind from him.
He frowned and went over to her.
She swallowed audibly. “Perhaps she sensed the grynwen hunting you and found you that way?”
Kaarl shook his head. “Binthe did not sense them.”
“Maybe you weren’t hidden as well as you thought. You and the others were exhausted from sevendays of fighting and riding.”
He thought about this possibility for a moment, then rejected it. When the vicious carnivores attacked, he could not sense Morgan Jord until his defender second dropped the cloak of U’Nehíl to fight, and he had been only a few yards away.
“She called me,” he replied, his voice a whisper. “She found me.”
She turned. “We cannot continue to do this. It is time. We must speak with Tetric.”
“He already knows.”
Her eyes widened. “Everything?”
“No, but he suspects it.” ... He heard her, too ...
The sleet and fog he encountered in the Kana-Akün had followed him home. Icy pellets beat at the window the way unwanted conclusions beat at his mind. Rime ice coated the metal escutcheons of the window and the torchlight embrasures in the courtyard below. Beyond the learning hall sat the many homes and shops of Deren. Beyond that, the great walls, as thick as two men lying head to toe, encircled the city. Somewhere beyond the apple orchards and the fields flowed the Garnath River far to the north and the border with the Kana-Akün province. He was no seer, but his father’s heart conjured up an image of the frost-paled fields blackened by dark-armored Ken’nar, all marching down from Falantir to take his daughter from him.
He turned to face his wife. “Do you think she knows?” As soon as the words left his lips, he wished he hadn’t asked the question. He didn’t want to know the answer.
Desde shrugged sadly and shook her head. “I would have thought she would have come to me if she had questions. She doesn’t speak with me like she used to, but I thought that was because she’s becoming a young woman. It’s a natural part of growing up, I suppose. The Aspects Above know I didn’t tell my father half of what I did when I was her age.”
A small smile tugged at one corner of Kaarl’s mouth. More often than not, he had been the reason Desde had not told Toban how she was spending her days. “But to not speak up about this?” she continued. “To willfully keep silent? I don’t know whether to be furious or terrified.”
“I have fears even darker than Mirana’s silence on this.”
His wife stiffened. “I know what you are alleging. Do not dare speak it. He would have had to know where to look, when to listen to have heard her. Kaarl, with this call of hers, we can’t protect her anymore. It is time. We need to give her to Tetric.”
“No.” He again clenched his hands into fists. This time they were balled up not in anger, but in determination. “We are her parents. We know what’s best for her, and we will protect her. As we’ve always done.”
“Our lies can no longer keep her safe. She’s nearly sixteen. She will choose an amulet in just two more summers. If she doesn’t understand now, she certainly will by then. We must speak with her and tell her. Everything. She needs Tetric Garis now. Not us.”
“We agreed to wait until she’s ready to choose an amulet. When she can defend herself.”
She held his arm tightly. “I don’t think we can wait that long anymore. Not after this. Tetric Garis is the Light Trine of the prophecy. We all would have come to believe it through his success at turning back the Ken’nar time and again, even if the Aspects Above hadn’t placed that destiny on his shoulders. He’s the only one who can protect—”
He now gripped both of Desde’s arms. “He’s also a man, and he’s not invincible. I’ve seen him bleed.”
“Ai, exactly. It terrifies me to say it, but what if Mirana is the one to rebuild like the prophecy says—because Tetric will not survive?”
He dropped his hands. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? The Ken’nar are no longer loosely aligned bands of barbarians raiding unsuspecting farmers. They have become preternaturally skilled in attacking us. They must be led by the Dark Trine. No mere warlord ever won such victories against the Fal’kin. With Tetric Garis as the Light Trine, the Ken’nar bastard will want nothing more than to see him dead. If we give Mirana to Tetric, she could be killed in his wake. If he dies, the Dark Trine’s eye will be fixed on Mirana.” His amulet gave off a ruddy glow in the firelight.
Desde cupped her topaz amulet in her hands, staring into its sulfurous facets. ... If she understands why she could make such a call to you, why hasn’t she come to us, Ama? ...
... Ëo no compre ... Kaarl pulled his wife into his arms. ... The only thing I do know is that our lie is the only thing keeping her alive ...
He hoped the conviction of his words would strengthen Desde’s. And his own.
CHAPTER 6
“Like a thief in the night, the Power from Without steals. Remain watchful that even thy Aspects are not taken from thee.”
—The Book of Kinderra
Mirana gave up on sleep, her thoughts advancing and retreating like defenders in battle. Somewhere behind the overcast skies, the midnight stars wheeled ever closer to dawn.
The army of riders. Thou
sands of them. At Two Rivers Ford. Were they Fal’kin? Ken’nar? The images had appeared so quickly in her mind, she never had time to look for uniforms, standards, anything.
She rose from bed, slipped on leggings and a linen tunic, and stomped into her boots. She reached for a woolen sweater. Woven for a man more than twice her size, it hung nearly to her knees. She inhaled its scent as she pulled it over her head. Paithe. She would always keep something of his when he went away on a tour of duty in case it might be the only thing she’d have left of him.
She cinched the sweater with a belt around her waist and picked up her small belt knife. She paused, studying it. The blade was not much longer than her index finger, meant more for slicing apples than anything else.
She had never really used a weapon before, other than a few months of training summers ago with the defenders. She had certainly never seen combat before. Well, not with her mortal eyes. She had seen plenty of battles and studied them—in all their gruesome, if insubstantial, detail—through her Seeing Aspect with her mother and her fellow seer scholaire’e.
Someday, warfare would be all too real, no longer just moving pictures in her mind. She regarded the knife a moment longer, then tucked it into the sheath on her belt.
She flopped back down on the bed and listened to the sleet scratching at the window. Thoughts, elated and fearful, came at her again, vanguard legions of worry bent on breaking the line of her battalion mind’s effort to repel them.
No doubt her father would tell her mother she had called to him when, in all likelihood, she should not have been able to. Sick little rushes dribbled through her belly.
She sniffed the sweater’s fabric once more, another smell now tickling her nostrils. Ashtar.
Her father’s enormous chestnut warhorse stood seventeen hands high if he was a finger. He was all muscle and hooves, nearly impervious to the charges from Ken’nar steeds. He used his great head as a battering ram to unseat any black-armored warrior who dared approach him. Her father once remarked Ashtar seemed more like a war machine clad in a copper coat than a living, breathing destrier.
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