What if the girl was not a rival, however? What if he, instead, shaped and forged her into a weapon to be used for him?
He rubbed his hand over the injury. The dark jewel at his chest glowed and the wound disappeared.
Another Trine by his side presented advantages he had not considered. An innocent, young Fal’kin girl who embraced his philosophy might be able to convince the Fal’kinnen to lay down their arms for the good of the land. If she could see that noble future herself and her place within it, she could show the Fal’kin the beauty and worthiness of his designs.
Legend said Deren could not be conquered. The Ain Magne did not believe in absolutes, save for the Aspects Above themselves. Despite the destruction of the Ford, had he not cut down Kin-Deren’s Fal’kin nearly to a man? Without the province’s Fal’kin, the citadel’s battlements would pose but a minor obstacle, and not even that if he held the keep.
He pursed his lips. Ai, controlling Jasal’s Keep would not only give him Deren but the whole of Kinderra. For Kinderra to remain his, however, would require a force even more powerful than fear: love.
The Fal’kin would love Mirana Pinal, adore her as an instrument of peace. She would become the symbol of true unity in a new Kinderra. He would head a glorious new Aspected Triumvirate—he at the crown, Mirana on his right, his seer second on his left—leading Kinderra into a new age of enlightenment. That day, that age, however, was still far off, with many tenuous skeins needing to be woven before such a future could unfold.
The Ain Magne rose slowly out of the mud. Bodies surrounded him. Thousands of them, Ken’nar and Fal’kin, a rotting carpet of rent flesh. He finally gave in to the anger welling up in him. The waste! The needless, senseless, waste! And for what? So one people’s path to the Aspects could be proven superior over another’s beliefs?
He looked down at the inert form by his feet and closed his eyes. A wave of sadness washed through him again, defeat threatening to return. So very much death.
The Trine girl did not know him yet. She did not understand the importance of her power, not truly. She would, in time. She must. Jasal’s Keep was too important. Kinderra was too important.
The Ain Magne hated killing, detested it, but he hated failure most of all.
Mirana Pinal must come to understand him. She must. Or the ultimate failure of death would be the only fate left for Kinderra.
CHAPTER 37
“Nöc ten runh’e thet ain vidé bé dië. Per the etís verdas u’len quen bia eta ain u’comprende len.”
(“The night holds secrets that can only be revealed by the dawn. But then there is hard truth when before there was only gentle ignorance.”)
—Ora Fal’kinnen 123:56–57
Teague shivered despite the sweat that coated his limbs. The day had dawned clear, a beautiful one, really. Dewdrops on the grass glinted in the morning sunlight. After the night’s storm, the air was balmy and fresh.
Except, that is, for the stench of death.
Five mutilated bodies lay on the ground below him, next to his horse Bankin. They didn’t look much like bodies anymore, but they were. He knew of such things now. Ash darkened the ground, too. Ash that had been bodies.
A strange numbness pervaded him, a sort of disassociation between his brain and his body. Nothing held any meaning or emotion. His stomach heaved now and then, but food had left him long ago. Not even much bile came up anymore. It struck him that all of his symptoms might be the slightest bit concerning. He might even be in shock.
He stared at the bodies. His parents were gone. Mirana was gone.
He thought he might have had ridden in search of his beloved during the early hours before dawn, but he could have dreamt it. No, no, he had looked for her, he remembered now, traveling as far as the Great Anarath River itself. He had been on the Sün-Kasalan side of the river with no way to cross back over. The Ford bridges were now gone, too, and the rains had swollen the already wide river. He had tried to find her, but she was gone.
He thought he might have tried to help a few wounded while searching for her. He was less sure of that. Those memories were fuzzier, more disjointed, like half-forgotten nightmares. He had never seen battle before. He had never seen what swords, knives, amulets, and hatred did to a body. Not this close, anyway. He had never held a dying person before, either. Sometimes they just slipped away. Other times, their deaths were less peaceful. Or had he just dreamt that? Surely, people who had once been living could not have made sounds of such abject agony? Or done incomprehensible things like try to stuff their own bowels back into their bodies before they collapsed, unmoving? That couldn’t have been real. Could it?
At some point, he must have decided to ride back west to the mouth of the Kabaarh Pass in the Dar-Anar foothills in search of his parents. He must have gotten back here somehow. It was the last place he had seen them. Maybe his parents were still waiting for him. There were bodies on the ground before him. Or not.
He had no idea which way they would have gone. His parents. Mirana. She left no trace, her or Lord Garis. There was no trace of anyone. Anyone living, that is. Nothing moved. Even the bodies in front of him now had stopped jerking. Sometimes corpses made movements, the normal but disturbing ones bodies made when passing from death to decay. He had read about that but had never seen it before. Until now.
Had she ridden off with Lord Trine Garis? She could have made it, escaped. Or not. No, no, she made it. Lord Garis knew how special she was. Ai, they escaped.
The massive wall of red fire. It was Mirana. It had to be. Maybe she escaped that brilliant curtain of light.
He had tried to find a way across the river, to Mirana, but he could not. She was a Trine. He was anything but. He had no way to reach her now.
Mirana. She was gone.
Five bodies lay right there in front of him, three herbsfolk and two Ken’nar. Right there. He should get down from his horse and position their arms and legs in a more respectable repose. At this point, though, their limbs would probably be frozen stiff with death. His parents were gone. Some ash had clumped on the grass. A lot of ash. Probably the ash from several people.
Maybe this was his new life now, to be surrounded by endless death, stretching to the horizon. Ash, bodies, pieces of bodies, flesh not even recognizable as having been part of a body.
Teague leaned low over the saddle and wretched again, spitting out bitter saliva.
He listened for voices. All was still. That wasn’t completely true. Now and then, a raven crowed, and a moan lifted into the air from somewhere, echoing through the pass where he sat on Bankin. It could be the breeze through the wet grass. It could be a man or woman dying. It could even be coming from his own lips.
Gente’e morte u’dici u’bendicta. “Dead men cannot curse,” battle-hardened defenders joked. Now, he got it. He huffed a laugh. It sounded more like a sob, but he’d call it a laugh anyway.
Teague slipped off Bankin’s saddle. His legs crumpled under him, their strength abandoning him. He sat in the wet grass.
His stomach clenched again. Nothing came up, so he ended up making animalistic heaving sounds. Maybe the moaning had come from him?
He should dig a grave and bury the bodies, but he had nothing with which to dig. Build a funeral pyre? He had no way of starting a fire, and everything was still sodden from the night’s rain. Well, rain, and blood. He certainly couldn’t release amulet fire. He was Unaspected. Ungifted. Sightless. Worthless.
A raven landed nearby. He wobbled to his feet and dug through the ash for something to throw at the bird. His fingers touched a round object. One of their amulets. His heart banged in his chest as he grasped it.
It was a kneecap.
He let it fall.
Two more ravens flew in. He spied a small jar within the ash and picked it up. He cocked his arm, ready to throw it, then paused. It was a tiny alabaster medicine jar, not much larger than an egg. Etched into the jar’s surface was a leopard. The standard of Tash-Hamar. Maithe.
<
br /> How many of his cuts and scrapes had she gently daubed with some of the jar’s numbweed salve because he hated being healed with the Aspects? She understood. Unless it was serious, she let him heal on his own. He had learned to bear pain, physical and otherwise, particularly well.
His mother had told him she carried the jar with her when she was a little girl sent from Tash-Hamar to Kana-Akün to learn to be a Fal’kin healer, and every day since. She would never leave it behind.
With his fortitude and Mirana by his side, he could withstand just about anything. But she had left his life. Only his resilience remained.
What did it matter? For summers and summers, their entire lives, she had said his lack of Aspects did not matter to her. He was fool enough to have believed her. He was a fool to have believed they might have had a future together. That he could make her his wife, provide for her, care for her, protect her from the demons only she saw.
He’d been a fool to believe she loved him.
Had she lied to him all this time? Or had she, at last, come to her senses? She had finally seen him for what he truly was—a worthless Sightless piece of excra the Aspects Above cared so little about they even forgot to end his life.
How many summers had he pleaded, begged the Aspects Above to give him just one ounce of their power? He was useless to her. She told him so. She had cut him off from her like a diseased limb. He was useless to everyone. His parents. They were gone.
No, that was a lie. His parents were not gone. They were dead. Like Mirana’s love.
She had left him because she was a Trine and he was Unaspected—the river, the divide, the chasm between them was just too wide to cross. He had known it. He had always known it. All his life, he had hoped, somehow, it wasn’t true. Hope. There was another word for hope. Denial.
A sob escaped his lips, a childlike, frustrated, angry, pathetic noise.
With leaden feet, Teague turned back to his gray mare Bankin. “White Light” her name meant in the Old Tongue. What cruel irony that the horse he rode was named for the very thing that separated Mirana from him. She chose to hold on to an insubstantial vision of terror instead of him and all his physical reality. His complete and utter lack of Aspects made it impossible for him to show her otherwise.
He stumbled. A Ken’nar broadsword.
The blood of defenders from his father’s lineage flowed in his veins, if only a drop of it. His mother’s family gave rise to some of the most powerful battle seers Kinderra had ever known. And his parents? His parents were healers, possessing the rarest, most precious Aspect of all. Only Trines were more treasured. The Aspects Above could have given him any one of these gifts. Instead, they chose to ignore him completely.
Something hot began to boil in his belly. Not battle trauma, not anymore. Not soul-wrenching grief. Anger? Maybe even rage? Was this what rage felt like?
Teague hefted the broadsword, gripping the hilt with both hands. It was very heavy. The dark metal did not gleam in the sunlight but seemed to absorb light into its patina. The particular alloy the Ken’nar used for their blades and armor made the metal dark and nearly impervious. He tested the blade with his thumb. Even scraping across it, it sliced his thumb. He sucked at the blood.
He could not heal, but he had the knowledge his parents gave him of how the body worked. He had no sight, but he could now tell Ken’nar from Fal’kin on the battlefield. He had no Defending Aspect, but he had a sword.
They said Ken’nar blades could cut through chain mail. He hoped they, whoever they were, were right. He would bring down the Dark Trine, somehow, even if he had to give his own sightless, defenseless, worthless life to do it.
CHAPTER 38
“Kin il’Aspecta’e Alta vidé ad gente Oëme crearé, per Oëme u’placreé, fár eta u’gente defende tuda il’Crearae.”
(“The Light of the Aspects Above looked at the people They created, but They were not pleased, for there was no one to protect all of Creation.”)
—il’Crearae (The Creation), Ora Fal’kinnen 1:11
Kaarl squinted at the sky. It was approaching noon. They needed to move on.
Desde had regrouped what Fal’kin were still alive and immediately marched them to the Sün-Kasalan plains, south of what had been the Two Rivers Ford garrison. They would let their troops rest for a little while longer, then continue southeast along the river until nightfall.
They would try to cross the Anarath River into Kin-Deren over the shallows of the Stairs of Anar before it fell away into rapids. They didn’t have much of a choice. It would take days to reach the trader ferries farther downstream. He must move the Fal’kin onto Kin-Deren soil as quickly as possible. Deren lay completely undefended at the moment. He prayed what Ken’nar had retreated from the Ford hadn’t made straight for the city. Like so many of the thoughts sliding through his mind, he thrust this one away, too, blocking it like a Ken’nar blade.
He began to fold his arms, but quickly released them as the pain in his left shoulder flared. Most of Desde’s defenders had sustained wounds, but no one could find the healers. She sent a small patrol into the foothills where Morgan had said he had last seen them.
With any luck, the same number of Fal’kin that marched with them today would be with them when they reached home. Luck, however, was capricious in war. The only certainty in war was uncertainty.
He held the hand of his good arm across his brow against the bright sun and studied the swollen river’s current. He hoped it would let up by the time they reached the shallows.
Now and then, arrows, a body, or some other detritus left from the battle would float past. Each time, stark terror would attempt to slash through his resolve.
... Mirana ...
Still no call returned to him.
Ignoring his wounds and his fatigue, he had spent the remainder of the night and well into the morning searching for any sign of his daughter or Tetric Garis. They somehow vanished into thin air.
Part of him wanted to give in to the almost giddy sensation of relief that his daughter had escaped the fray with Garis. Another part, a tiny yet terrifyingly tenacious part, embedded a question in his brain that would not leave him.
The memory of the wall of deadly red fire and the Ford collapsing into the abyss swelled in his mind. It was Mirana. She saved their lives. Intuition as her father, not even born of his Aspect, told him so. The Ford’s destruction had to have been mediated with an amulet. She must have chosen one, at last, the courage he knew she possessed strengthening her in the end.
He had no proof, of course, that it was her. It could have been Garis. His amulet, however, was not red. It was hematite, an infernal thing spat a jet of silver fire tinged with black. The Trine could have chosen another amulet to use for some reason. It could have been the Dark Trine himself, seeking to annihilate the Fal’kin on the Ford bridges and ending up making a catastrophic mistake. Or, even more hideous, the warlord had so little regard for life, he had sacrificed his troops so no one could use Two Rivers Ford, rather than let it stay in Fal’kin hands.
Kaarl gripped his amulet, this time holding it to give him the strength to push back emotions threatening to overtake him.
For sixteen summers, he had done everything he could to keep his daughter’s Trine Aspects a secret—he and Desde both—even hiding the knowledge from the girl herself. They had meant to protect her from the Dark Trine.
They should have known, in time, she would figure out her gifts. For so many summers, he had hoped she would not. He had dreaded waiting for the day when she would come to them with her revelation. When that day never came, he was as relieved as he was guilty. When she did finally admit to her Trine Aspects, the war and Garis took her from him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
He would never let Desde share the blame. She had wanted to tell Mirana everything so many times. He refused, insisting on their silence. It was denial, plain and simple. He had been so terrified his precious child would be taken from him, like so
much else in his life, he caused the very thing he had tried to prevent.
In the end, all their secrecy had amounted to nothing. Their lies only sent her to Garis, a man who sought to take his il’Kin from him, a man who sacrificed Kaarl’s troops in the name of the greater good. A man who saved Mirana’s life. A man whom he depended on still to keep her alive.
He gripped his amulet harder, feeling its edges press into his palm. Garis, as the Light Trine of the prophecy, was most likely a target of the Dark Trine as well. Yet, only the Dar-Azûlan wielded enough power to protect Mirana from the Ken’nar overlord. That served as some consolation—if he could call it that.
The sunlight dappled on the fast water. It sparkled like his daughter’s eyes when she laughed.
“Do not take my child from me. I beg thee, O Aspects Above.”
He let go of his amulet, sank to his knees on the soft ground on the riverbank, and covered his face with his hands, letting the pain in his shoulder add to his grief.
A warm presence drew near him. Desde knelt beside him and rested her forehead on his uninjured shoulder, entwining her arm through his. He turned and brushed his lips on her head. Tears trailed down the curve of her face. For a long time, he simply held her hand.
He took a slow inhale and let it out just as slowly. “I have a gift for you.” He reached into his belt pouch and held out the short stub of the arrow shaft that had remained in his shoulder.
She took it and groaned in disgust. “I can add it to the collection.” Her eyes widened as a thought occurred to her. “Did she come back? Is Mirana back? Her Healing Aspect. Did she heal you?”
Kaarl shook his head. “Binthe. She can do nothing about wounds, but she can use her Seeing Aspect to find embedded arrowheads and sword tips to remove them. She has saved many il’Kin with her gentle hands when no other help could be found. I do think the Aspects Above gave her the wrong gift with her tender spirit.”
Trine Rising Page 27