Maybe if Miri said something to his mother and father this time, it would help her. Aspects knew he was at a loss of what to do.
Her gaze, however, dropped to her boots. “I am so sorry if I interfered with Teague’s training in the healing hostel this afternoon. I like spending time there. It’s better than seeing. Sometimes, anyway.”
“Then why haven’t you come to us before?” his mother asked. “We could have spoken to your mother. We’ve often thought a seer working with us would be of great benefit. It would help us to know when an onslaught of casualties was to come. Or an epidemic. Or looking into the future for a prognosis when one eludes us.”
She had a point, a very good one. Teague reached for Mirana’s hand. It was cold.
“My mother said she needs me to concentrate on long-range forecasts. Weather. Ken’nar troop movements. I really shouldn’t spend time at the hostel at all. I didn’t mean to be in Teague’s way. I swear it.” She let go of his hand and turned to leave.
“Mirana, wait.” He started after her.
“Miri, Teague, please. Wait a moment,” his father said, his voice becoming the compassionate tenor he used when Teague came to him for help. “I am not blind. I know you have feelings for each other. Don’t you understand that this will harm you both?”
Harm them? Teague looked from his father to Mirana and back, and dug his fists into his hips. “How exactly, Father?”
“Son, she’s destined to be a Fal’kin. And you’re...not.”
“I can’t believe—” He shook his head, fury stealing the rest of his words. What was the point of finishing?
Tennen turned to Mirana. “Every day, he is surrounded by those who can touch the Aspects he cannot. It is like a spring of cool water just out of reach of a man dying of thirst.” His gaze shifted back to him. “I feel your pain, son. And it breaks my heart that there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You’re right,” Teague replied. “There is nothing you can do about it.” He looked at his mother. “Either of you.” Even Mirana. The Aspects Above made him a failure in the eyes of his parents. But not Mirana. He put his arm around her. “But whether I can touch the Aspects or not has nothing to do with her.” He pulled her closer.
She peered up at him. “You don’t feel that way about me...do you? That I make you feel somehow ‘less than’ when I use my, well, when I see something?”
“Of course not!” He then glared at his father.
Tennen turned his own hard expression on Mirana. “I also know you have indeed healed to some degree more than a few of those who have come to the hostel. Just exactly how, I do not know.”
“I have not healed anyone—” She started to protest, but he held up his hand, silencing her. His hazel gaze bore down on her. “If you truly are a healer, if you truly have the Healing Aspect and are constantly showing our son that rare gift, one he desperately wants and can never have, it will shatter him—”
“Father!” Teague shouted.
“—I will not let that happen. If you care for him at all, you will let him go.”
“I would never hurt him. Ever. We love each other. You must know that.”
Teague threw his hands out wide. “How can you stand there, Father, and say these things?”
“I’m trying to save you both, son, from making a mistake,” his father replied. That shocked him. He fully expected a harsh reprimand. “I know you care for our son, Mirana, just as I know you’d never intentionally hurt him. But none of that matters. I am trying to spare you pain as well. It was difficult enough for his mother and me—” Tennen gestured to Niah, “joining in union despite coming from different provinces. No province ever likes to give up even just one Fal’kin to another province under any circumstance. An Aspected espoused to an Unaspected is far more difficult. Far more.”
“It’s not too difficult,” Teague replied. “Nothing I could do is too difficult for Mirana.”
His father shook his head sadly. “Teague, you’re not being logical.”
“Patrua, I know it must have been difficult for you and Matrua Niah,” Mirana nodded toward his mother, “but you found a way. You travel back to Tash-Hamar province every few summers to heal her people, and in doing so, received the blessing from not one but two provinces. If you found a way to have a future together, why can’t we?”
“Such a union just cannot be, no matter how much you both want it,” his father answered. “The chasm is just too wide. You both need to put this foolishness aside.”
Teague stalked up to his father, his hands clenched into fists. “How dare you?”
“Teague, that’s enough,” Niah cautioned. He took a breath and stepped back. “Tennen, we came out here to speak with Mirana, not about their relationship. That’s a discussion for another day. He’s nearly old enough to begin a journeyman’s sabbatical away from Deren anyway.”
She reached for Mirana’s hands. “Miri, biraena, seeing an injury from inside the body with the Healing Aspect can be frightening, but the Healing Aspect itself is nothing to be frightened of. If we have another healer in our midst, we would be blessed beyond all telling. The Aspects Above know there are enough injuries and disease in this land for a thousand Fal’kin healers.”
Teague put his hand on Mirana’s back to let her know—feel within him—his resolve to stand by her. No matter what happened. Even the keep. Maybe now she would say something.
But she didn’t. She just bit her lip and stared at Jasal’s Keep. Was she trying to prevent an intimate psychic connection with his mother? Seeing something about her nemesis? He couldn’t tell. He never could tell.
Mirana let go of his hand and flexed her fingers. He hadn’t realized he had crushed it in his grip.
“When you were born, Miri, your Aspect was so very strong but undefined,” his mother continued. “Could there be a reason you’re drawn to the hostel? A reason besides our son?”
Mirana tensed beside him. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was about to bolt. He sure as hell wanted to. He’d never been so angry and so worried at the same time.
Tennen sighed. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Miri. I, too, held you moments after you were born. I felt your gift then, but it was impossible to tell which Aspect it was shining within you. We all thought it was because you came to us so early. Do you think your Aspected sight might be the Healing Aspect? Or even something else? You can trust us. Please. Tell us.”
“Have you ever made a mistake with your Healing Aspect and killed a patient instead of saving him?” Her voice was quiet, distant. It would grow soft like that when she was frightened. Again, he put his arm around her, willing his love to her for her to sense.
His mother’s dark brows drew together in confusion as she glanced at his father and back to Mirana. “Not everyone can be saved, ai, that’s true. Wounds can be too grave, illness too advanced—”
“That’s not what I mean,” Mirana answered. “What if you wanted to use your Aspect to save lives, but you ended up harming people instead. What if you meant to do something, well, good, but ended up doing something horrible? How do you stop that from happening?”
Niah’s eyes widened. “Wh-What? Mirana, what are you trying to tell us?”
Mirana stepped out of his arms. “Miri?” Oh, this was so not good.
His father’s face, however, lost all expression. “Ëi biraena? Have you—” he swallowed, “have you hurt someone?”
“No! I would never want to hurt anyone.”
He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t ask if you wanted to. I asked you if you had.”
“No! I—no.” She did not meet his gaze.
He reached for her, but she moved farther away. “Mirana.”
“I am so sorry. I never meant to stand in Teague’s way. Ever. I need to go.”
“Miri, we want to help you. If you have the Healing gift, please let us show you how to use your blessing,” his mother tried once more.
“You don’t understand,” Mirana sa
id, her voice dropping to a strangled whisper. “Sometimes the powers the Aspects Above give are not blessings. I won’t trouble you in the healing hostel anymore.”
She turned away from him, no longer meeting his eyes and hurried down the stairs, snuffing out the torchlight as she disappeared into the night.
Teague fought the urge to run after her, but he’d only alienate his parents from them more if he did. He had to do something, that much was certain. If he didn’t, he’d lose Mirana forever.
CHAPTER 8
“Confian ísi passenae tré qua seconda necesit íre.”
(“Trust is a passage through which two must journey.”)
—Ora Fal’kinnen 74:4
Mirana hurried back through the corridors of the learning hall. She tripped on a broken slate tile, her feet numb from the cold, her heart numb with grief over her fading future with Teague.
Her mother had not sounded an alarm, nor had any of the other seers. No late-night—or early-morning, as it were—strategy session had been called. Had no one else seen any attack on Two Rivers Ford?
Regardless if other seers had a vision of what was to befall the Ford garrison, she had to tell her mother. She would have to submit her mind to examination by the seers. They could see so much more than she wanted to reveal. What then? Elope with Teague? Leave alone?
Dread now dragged at her and chained her footfalls. Could she run away with Teague? She loved him with her whole heart, and he loved her just as much. Even if they had yet to make love, the stolen moments they had shared told her as much of his feelings for her as any Aspect. A fourth Aspect in its strength. She knew he held deep pain from his lack of powers, but he had never hidden it from her. Did her three add to his unfounded sense of inadequacy? Was he hiding that? What if his father were right, and her love would break her beloved? Would he grow to hate her?
She paused when she reached the door leading to the hallway where her family’s rooms were located. The grynwen warning. The Ford premonitions. Her Trine Aspects. The keep. Now Teague. It all suddenly became too complicated, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to bear it anymore.
Her mother’s primeship office was also down this hallway. It used to be Brepaithe Toban’s chambers. How many times had she run down the hall to Brepaithe with a difficult school lesson or trouble with a classmate or when Maithe scolded her?
Why couldn’t he have taken her with him when he died?
Desperation billowed up from the marrow of her bones. A sudden compulsion gripped her to run up the spire of Jasal’s Keep and beg the deadly white light she saw in her hellish vision to come down on top of her now and end any horror before it could begin.
She pressed her forehead against the entryway’s wood. “I don’t want this. Aspects Above, please take this from me. I beg of you.” She wanted it to end. All of it. All of it, except for Teague.
She gave the iron pull a hard tug and entered. She had taken two paces into the still hallway when another door opened, forcing her to stumble to a halt.
“What are you doing up at this hour?”
She sucked in her breath and looked up. And up.
“L-Lord Garis. You startled me.”
His black eyes glinted down at her like obsidian shards. A hematite amulet glowed in the center of his chest like a demon’s eye. The argent griffin of Dar-Azûl province’s heraldic on his black tunic appeared to glare back at her, too. Had she not met Trine Tetric Garis a few times during Quorumtide celebrations, she might have been frightened of him. Or maybe she was frightened anyway.
“You are far too talented to have anyone startle you.”
His dark hair was streaked with silver and a frown tugged at the close-cropped beard outlining the sharp angles of his face. Was everything about him all hard and black and silver?
“I apologize if I disturbed you, my lord. I couldn’t sleep after all the excitement of having my father home. Why are you awake?” She winced. She didn’t mean the comment to sound so forward. This was Lord Tetric Garis, for Aspects’ sakes.
The tall Trine’s scowl deepened. “I have had a vision. I was about to go see your mother despite the inconvenient hour.”
Oh, thank the Aspects Above. Someone else had seen the attack.
“I have heard you are quite adept with your Seeing Aspect. Perhaps we are well met after all.” His expression softened into a smile. Well, not exactly a smile. She didn’t think the serious man was capable of expressing anything more jovial than mild annoyance.
“My lord?” She blinked as his mind pressed in on hers. Maybe it was too soon to feel relieved.
“I think you couldn’t sleep because you had a vision as well. I also think you are concerned, even frightened by what you saw. I am as well.” Although his voice was soft, its deep register drummed in her ears.
“I might have seen something,” she swallowed, “well, that is, I think—”
“I’d like to know exactly what it is you saw.” Lord Garis gestured for her to enter his room.
She quickly looked down the hallway to her parents’ chambers. “I wasn’t sure what it was. I was going to my mother with it right now.”
“Before we concern her, shouldn’t we try to understand what ‘it’ is, first?”
When he did not move, she sighed and stepped into his quarters. “Ai, sir.”
He shut the door behind him. “I have seen a battle at Two Rivers Ford. I think you have as well.” A chair scraped across the floor by pulled by the unseen hand of his Aspects. “Sit.”
She stood rigid. “I—”
He pointed to the seat. “Sit.”
The Trine’s longsword rested on its tip in the far corner of his room. It probably came up to her chin. She quickly sat on the edge of the chair.
His mind pressed heavily against hers again. “Now. What did you see?” He balled his hands into fists and rested them on his hips. Very. Large. Fists. Lord Garis took a step closer. He seemed as tall as Jasal’s Keep, and just as ominous.
She eyed the door. She couldn’t simply walk out on a living legend. “Maybe we should both just go to my mother?”
“And tell her what? I’m not exactly sure what I saw, either. I don’t want to tell the Seer Prime of Kin-Deren province something might be true when it is, in fact, wrong. Everyone thinks because I have three Aspects I’m somehow infallible.” He examined a scar on the back of his hand. “I’m not. Believe me.”
She was about to tell her mother and probably all the other seers in the hall. What was one more person? It was said he had spent many summers in hermitage when he was younger before he came back to Fal’kin society. Maybe he knew of a nice but desolate place in which to live. She hung her head. Tetric Garis, Trine Tetric Garis, of all people, would understand just how frightening the power she held within her was.
She blinked. He just might understand. Truly.
“I think I saw a battle, but I’m not sure I picked up anything of consequence,” she said at last.
He folded his long arms and continued to stare down at her. “Your fear moments ago cut through my mind. Like your warning call to your father.”
She tried to speak several intelligent replies, shock stomped them all flat, however. “Oh?”
He studied her a moment. With a sigh, he walked over to a small side table and leaned on it, his back to her. “I know you must be troubled by some of the things you see and what you can do. Seeing yourself do things in the future that you don’t understand in the present.” His voice was subdued and his shoulders sank a bit. “Finding a hidden mind and calling to it. I’ve never known anyone else who could do such an action, other than I.”
His emotions leaked from his mind to hers. He was concerned. About the Ford? About her? What was happening here? “It was my father, Lord Garis. I suppose I could find his presence anywhere.”
“Even under U’Nehíl?” He turned to face her again. Then, he did smile. A real, genuine one. Unfortunately, it was because he knew he had her.
She couldn’t quite match his expression with all the guilt she held. “I love my father. I love both my parents. I would do anything to save their lives.”
“I know. That’s why we need to understand what is to happen at Two Rivers Ford. I could use your help. I need corroboration for what I’ve seen. It’s not exactly easy for me to go to your mother, the prime—or any prime, for that matter—and tell her she needs to commit men and women to an action that will likely get some killed. The blood of the fallen is on my hands as well as hers.”
All her life, she had heard of Lord Tetric Garis, the Trine of Kinderra. He was larger than life, almost literally. He was like one of the heroes come to life out of the stories Brepaithe Toban would read to her at bedtime. Standing in front of her now, however, was not a demigod, but a war-weary man whose enormous burden weighed heavily on him. He reminded her more than a little of her father.
He returned to her and crouched in front of her, making his height less threatening. His gesture stunned her, so like her father would do when she was young and scared.
“You can do things other Aspected cannot. This makes you stand apart. I felt just as alone when I was your age.”
Mirana blinked once more. He was a Trine. Did he know? About her? Could he sense her own Trine Aspects? “Ai, it can be frightening sometimes. Seeing. Things.”
Lord Garis was perhaps the only person on the continent who could even begin to understand her deepest fears. Could he find a way around her destiny that she could not? Maybe that was too much to ask.
She sat up straighter in the chair. “I saw an attack on the Fal’kin garrison at Two Rivers Ford, only I saw two different versions of it. Or at least I think it’s two different versions. I saw one this afternoon just before Father and you arrived home. I saw thousands upon thousands of riders. I had another premonition later tonight, but I only saw several hundred riders, not even a thousand.”
He stood slowly and rubbed his beard. “That smaller force. That is what I saw tonight.”
She ran her fingers through her wet hair, trying to recall what few details she could. “In the earlier version, I thought, well, maybe I had seen an army of Ken’nar. Larger than any army I’ve ever seen.”
Trine Rising Page 10