Trine Rising

by C. K. Donnelly

  Her father was home in one piece as much from Ashtar’s efforts as her warning call. The very least she could do was feed the horse a midnight snack.

  Mirana stepped out of her room, crept down the hallway, and hurried into the night. Sleet prickled at her face as she darted across an exterior portico. She blinked back the icy droplets and ducked into another interior corridor.

  The dozens of rooms on either side of the hallway were still empty. Lord Garis and the fifty troops from his Dar-Azûlan provincial forces that had ridden to Deren with her father from Kana-Akün must be embedded elsewhere in the hall. At one time, every single room in the learning hall had been occupied. The never-ending war was very good at creating vacancies. The Trine’s men and women helped bring some life back into the compound, but the months of fighting had been as hard on them as on her father, the il’Kin, and Kin-Deren’s provincial forces. Most of the Dar-Azûlans’ minds were either closed or somber. A few suffered pain as they recovered from wounds, both physical and otherwise.

  She could not keep up the charade of healing in secret with Teague much longer. She risked exposing her Trine powers whenever she did so, but how could she possibly leave someone in pain—or worse—when she could do something about it? At least she was trying to do something useful and not completely shirk her duty. Still, his mother, if not both his parents, already suspected she might have the Healing Aspect. How long would it be before they would tell her own parents? She gritted her teeth.

  She trotted down a set of stairs and paused under a covered portico. Torchlight around the yard glowed in diffuse orange spheres in the cold fog. Mirana dashed across the learning hall’s courtyard toward the stables, squinting against the stinging ice and frigid rain. Once inside, she shook the wet hair from her eyes and wiped away the rain from her face.

  A presence rang through her Aspects. Taddie.

  She frowned. Any other time she would have welcomed spending time with the young stable boy. Tonight, however, she preferred the company of animals.

  Taddie jumped up as she drew near. “Oh. Scholaira Mirana.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You didn’t startle me. My Seeing Aspect told me you were coming,” the boy replied proudly, then his mouth stretched in an enormous yawn.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Did it now?” She brushed a blond curl from his sleepy eyes. “Are you guarding the horses all by yourself tonight?”

  The boy shook his head. “Defender Isel just stepped out for a late dinner after he gave me mine. It took us a long time to get the horses of Lord Garis’s troops settled. I wanted to stable the Lord Trine’s stallion, but Patrua Isel said he was too much for me. The beast didn’t even like him, pulling against him and all.”

  “That is surprising. Defender Isel knows horses almost as well as the horses know themselves.”

  Taddie smiled brightly. “He says if I spend as much time learning about horses as I do my Seeing Aspect, someday I could be as good with them as he is.”

  She patted his shoulder. “I bet you will be.”

  “What are you doing down here? It’s late.” The little seer yawned again.

  “No, it’s very early. I couldn’t sleep. I guess I’m too excited to have my father home. I’m going to see to Ashtar for a bit.”

  She began to scoop some oats from a large barrel into a nearby bucket, then jumped back with a yelp. Several mice scurried out. Taddie gestured to a broom against the wall and it flew into his hand. He swept at the mice and sent them squeaking and running into the straw.

  Mirana laughed. “Maybe you should be a battle seer instead of a horse breeder.”

  The little boy stuck out his chest. “I am going to be both.”

  “You certainly did very well learning your numbers and glyphs in our lessons earlier. At this rate, you’ll be ready for your amulet before me.”

  He looked down at his boots for a moment. ... When you get your amulet, will you help me see some past skeins of time? ... I miss my maithe and paithe ... Seeing them will almost be like having them here again ... Even if it is only a vision ...

  “Oh, Taddie.” She gathered the boy in her arms. “I have a better idea. I’ll show you how when you get your own amulet. That way you can see them whenever you want.” He nodded. “Here. Help me get some more oats for Ashtar.”

  When she and the boy finished doling out the feed, she asked, “Do you have a curry brush and a sheepskin mitt handy?”

  The young seer scholaire nodded again and gestured toward the items hanging among some stable tools pegged to the wall. They floated to his hand as he called to them.

  She sent a notion of thanks when he gave them to her. ... Why don’t you get some more sleep ... I don’t think even horse thieves would be out on a night like this ... And I promise I won’t tell Defender Isel ...

  He looked up at her with a bashful half-grin, dimples dotting his cheeks, and nodded. She squeezed his shoulder, picked up the feed bucket, and made her way down the line of paddocks.

  Mirana peered up at the timber beams of the stable’s ceiling as she walked, each one as thick as her body. They had to be strong to support four more stories of the learning hall rising above the stable. The immense aisles of paddocks always made her feel as though she stood in a roof-covered city, the stalls like homes to hundreds of horses instead of people. Legend said the stable was so large, it once housed every horse in Kinderra. It was a preposterous claim, of course, but it did take a small army of Fal’kin and Unaspected to maintain it.

  An army. Thousands.

  She shook her head to clear it. As she neared Ashtar’s paddock, she looked over her shoulder. Taddie’s mind had quieted in slumber. A deep-throated whuffling rumbled as she approached a stall on the left.

  “Ashtar, you big brute.”

  She set down the brushes and the bucket, and threw her arms around the horse’s great neck. She buried her face against his coat as he greedily ate the oats before she could pour them into his feeding trough. He smelled of leather and the sweet grassiness of fresh hay. She inhaled again and now detected a more pungent odor. She scowled. A poultice was wrapped midway down his left hind flank, secured with bandages.

  “You were wounded?”

  She rubbed the white blaze running down Ashtar’s face, then swept a hand along his side as she walked to his hindquarters, stopping at the poultice. The horse snorted. His muscles shivered at her touch, and he stamped his white-socked hoof. She made a low, soothing noise.

  Torn flesh. Four lacerations. Claws. Muscles intact. A painful redness spreads.

  The wound wasn’t deep, but infection had started. Thankfully, her father returned when he did and got the horse some attention. Untreated wounds easily festered out in the wilds.

  She returned to the horse’s head and stroked his broad, velvety nose. “If I only had an amulet, Ashtar, I would fix this in a heartbeat.” And yet.

  Could she tell Teague’s parents—her own parents—that she had been a healer all along and hadn’t realized it? That her temporal visions had simply been lifted from other seers’ minds because she was so acutely attuned to their bodies? Every time she had a vision, she’d just say it was some other seer’s and she picked up on it as she healed the person. That way, she could keep using her Trine gifts in secret and honor her duty privately, and no one would be the wiser. Ai, that might actually work. She scowled and bit her lip.

  Wouldn’t it?

  She picked up the brush and began to curry the horse’s ruddy coat, staying well away from his left hind leg.

  Ai, she would be able to heal wounds, even life-threatening ones, with an amulet. It would be such a greater use of her healing gift than merely blunting some pain as she did now. She wanted to heal. Oh, Aspects Above, how she wanted to. She wanted to embrace all her gifts, honor her duty, and serve as a Fal’kin, fully in communion with an amulet and her Trine Aspects. Someday, though, an amulet in her hands would not heal. It would threaten lives, not
save them. She knew this. She had seen it. Almost every night for four summers.

  Jasal’s Keep. Rising two hundred feet in the air, wreathed in lightning. The sense of a desperate battle, thousands fighting, dying. A physical agony more than a mortal could bear. A rage so incendiary, it burned as bright as a thousand amulets. Grief, a desolation so deep, it bled the life from her. Betrayal so raw it shattered her soul into countless shards. And a white light. A light of awesome power. Of terrible power. Of magnificence. Of destruction. The explosion of light left her with a complete and utter “endness,” at once glorious and final.

  What exactly was the white light in Jasal’s Keep? Some manifestation of her evil? The Aspects Above reaching down from the heavens to destroy her for her sins yet to be committed?

  Something rubbed Mirana’s leg. She cried out and dropped the curry brush.

  “Cider, you scared me half to death.” A large cream-and-orange-striped tomcat purred against her calf. She glanced down the dim row of stalls. Taddie was still asleep.

  She picked up the cat and nuzzled the soft fur between his ears. “I think you came to the stables not so much to see me and Ashtar as to catch the mice eating his nighttime snack.” She kissed the cat and set him down. He padded over to the corner of the paddock, curled into a knot, and closed his eyes to slits. “You can’t fool me. You’re no more asleep than I am.”

  She retrieved the curry brush and ran it along Ashtar’s sinewy forequarters.

  If her parents, if the other Fal’kin, found out she was a Trine, they would compel her to choose an amulet right away, regardless of the age custom. They would think her possession of the Trine powers was a blessing, her three Aspects were desperately needed to stop the Ken’nar. To create the enormous destruction she sensed in her keep vision of white light, however, would most certainly require an amulet. To leverage that kind of power without one would kill her. If she told them she could not take up an amulet because of the destruction she would bring at Jasal’s Keep, they wouldn’t believe her and say it was impossible. They would say she misunderstood what she was seeing, that it was perhaps just a dream. But she knew it was no dream. Someday, some mistake, some choice, some path would lead her to perpetrate all the horror she saw at Jasal’s Keep. She would destroy all she loved and bring to ruin all for which her people fought. She would rather disavow her duty, her birthright than let that happen.

  She’d rather die.

  A soft note from her Healing Aspect whispered to her again. Her hand neared a scrape on Ashtar that had scabbed over.

  She sighed and looked up at the rafters. “Why? Why give me these powers if I can’t use them?”

  In hindsight, she knew she had been born with the Healing Aspect, too, as well as her other powers. As a child, however, she had been too young to understand visions of a bleeding wound or a lung filling with fluid were any different than the visions of seers. It wasn’t until she was older that she realized what she truly was.

  She and Teague, both just past twelve summers, had climbed one of the apple trees in the orchards outside of Deren’s walls. Teague, showing off for her, climbed too high on a branch too small. The tree limb snapped, and he fell. The stark picture of the two jagged white ends of the broken bones in his arm had speared into her mind. Bleeding, inflammation, and other signs of which she had no concept pulled at her.

  A power had welled up in her, an almost undeniable need to correct the cacophony of “wrongness” she sensed, but she didn’t know how to direct it. In the end, she had done more harm than good. Tiny bits of bone, so small they could only be seen by a trained Fal’kin healer, fused in the wrong order. She had fainted from the ordeal, and Teague’s parents had to re-break his arm to keep him from being maimed.

  The vision of Jasal’s Keep came to her that night and forever changed her. When she awoke from unconsciousness, she finally understood what she was.

  She was a Trine. And she would someday destroy Kinderra.

  Mirana paused in currying Ashtar. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Why have the Aspects Above cursed me like this?” The horse snorted and resumed munching on the oats. “Some help you are.”

  She walked around to the other side, stroking his neck as she crossed in front of him. She set the curry brush down and picked up the sheepskin mitt. His copper coat gleamed under her long strokes, and she made sure to stay away from the scab.

  People could call the one who led the Ken’nar whatever they wanted, but she knew better. She wasn’t just a Trine. She was a Trine of the prophecy. She would become the Dark Trine. As evil as the Trine at the head of the Ken’nar was, she had yet to hear of him doing anything like she would do someday. Ai, he decimated armies and outposts—all horrific enough—but laying waste to the entire citadel of Deren? And the hundreds of thousands that lived there? No. That would be her.

  Someday.

  She stopped stroking Ashtar.

  The damnable thing was an amulet could help her control and understand her power, but she couldn’t possibly choose an amulet and put Kinderra at risk for the destruction she saw.

  How could she not choose an amulet and use her Aspects when they might actually do some good, at least in the immediate present? Was the only way to save Kinderra’s future to refuse to choose an amulet and let horrible things happen now?

  Choose an amulet and risk all she loved. Not choose an amulet and turn her back on all she loved. It was an impossible choice.

  A cry of frustrated desperation escaped her throat, and she threw down the mitt. She wanted to cry, but weeping had long ceased to comfort her. She rested her forehead against the horse’s shoulder, feeling him breathe, hearing the beating of his heart, sensing the robust life within him.

  “No matter what I choose, Ëi cara, Kinderra will suffer. There must be some way. Why would the Aspects Above make me their Trine if they didn’t want me to use my powers? What would make me do all of what I see at Jasal’s Keep? I love Kinderra.” She lifted her head, searching once more for a godhead who created all but only gave her silence.

  She retrieved the sheepskin mitt and wiped Ashtar’s coat forcefully, scrubbing away the memory of the nightmare.

  Ashtar whinnied and stomped his left leg. The muscles near his wound trembled under her mitted hand. “Ashtar. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m trying.” She pulled the mitt off, letting it fall, and stared at her hands. So powerful. So powerless. “By the Light, I am trying. I’m trying to do good, to be good. I’m trying to do the right thing. I keep hoping if I do enough good, it will change my destiny. But it doesn’t. Nothing I ever do changes it.”

  Her hand drifted to her belt knife. There was always that. She let her hand fall away.

  She dropped to sit in the hay next to the cat. The indecision paralyzed her. “You have no idea how lucky you are.” She gave Cider a sad smile and stroked his fur. He stretched, kneaded her with his paws, then coiled back into a sleepy ball.

  She picked up the brush and traced her finger along the stiff bristles. “Skeins of the future always change. Little things. Big things. Only until the future becomes the present do we truly know what is to happen. Why doesn’t my keep vision ever change, Cider?”

  And if the destruction was so terrible, why was it that no other seer—even her mother, even her grandfather—never mentioned it or accused her?

  She tilted her head back, searching the unforgiving rafters for answers. “You’ve given this future vision to me and only me, haven’t you? Why? Why are you torturing me? What have I ever done to deserve your punishment?”

  She set the brush back down and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes until sparks danced against the insides of her eyelids. They looked all too much like flashes of amulet fire.

  Even though his cowardice tainted her family’s name to this day, maybe Jasal Pinal had been right to leave. Maybe his own Trine powers proved too overwhelming, too damning, so he left Deren. Maybe he believed abandoning his people to their fate at the hands of the Ken’nar was
better than remaining and bringing about wholesale destruction at his own hands. If she, too, abandoned the Fal’kin, would she save them?

  She could run away with Teague.

  “I don’t want to leave you, Ashtar, nor leave Maithe and Paithe, but maybe you’d all be safer.” Her heart beat wildly in her chest at the sudden hope of an escape from her dilemma. “Ai, Teague and I could join in union and run away to the ocean. Oh, we could have a little cottage and even a garden. And...and chickens! Oh-oh and apple trees! I could grow medicinal plants for him. He could use his herbsman’s skills to care for the people who homestead on the coastal plains.” He could hide her. Hide her Aspects from Kinderra.

  Ashtar snorted as he munched on oats. She frowned. “Gratas fár Oëa comprendean, you big brute.”

  Mirana sought Teague’s mind from among the hundreds in the learning hall. He was awake and waiting for her, hoping she’d come and find him.

  She rose and paused at the paddock’s gate. A thought spiked, stealing her breath. Would he be caught up in her destiny of destruction? She gripped the gate with both hands. “No. Please. Anything but that.”

  She would not let that happen. If she had to put hundreds of miles between them to save Teague’s life, she would.

  Hundreds.

  Lightning flares. Five hundred riders race over the hills outside Two Rivers Ford. Black armor encases them like charred skeletons. Ken’nar. Inhuman howls fill the air. Grynwen. Their blood-red eyes wink with an insatiable hunger in the lightning. Rain falls. Down, down, a deluge from the dark sky. Lightning flashes again. A massive force of fighters surges to meet the Ken’nar. Red eagles on a gold field. Fal’kin. From Kin-Deren province. Thousands. The Fal’kin engulf the scant hundreds of Ken’nar. A sea of amulets and swords. Kin-Deren fighters drive the black-armored warriors toward the Ford’s southern bridge over the Great Anarath River.