Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  The battle raged on for what seemed like forever, the bodies piling up—until suddenly all those bodies and soldiers were gone as if they had never existed. Sighing in relief, she let her hands fall from her ears and waited for the final phase of the dream to begin. The part that was the most strange and made no sense whatsoever.

  Three men shimmered to life on the wet sand, just out of reach of the waves. She could tell they were men because of their physiques and because they wore men’s battle armor, but they were all facing away from her.

  The men stood lined up in a row, far enough apart that they could not touch one another with their outstretched arms. Leethan noted that one of the men wore a helm decorated with a jeweled crown, the likes of which would only be worn by a sovereign who was destined to “lead” his men into battle by giving them orders and hanging back himself. To that man’s right was one who wore a cloak and hood over armor that, when the wind tugged his cloak out of the way, was revealed as a light coat of mail, hanging from a cadaverously gaunt figure. And the third man was dressed in the plain, utilitarian armor of a man of Nandel.

  The three women appeared next, each taking her place facing one of the men. As with the soldiers who had fought and died on that same beach, the faces of the three women blurred whenever Leethan tried to focus on them. One had hair that was almost entirely gray under a simple, unadorned headdress; one wore a crown over salt-and-pepper hair and was dressed in mourning black; and one of them wore a court gown that revealed the neck and shoulders of a young woman, though her face was no more visible than the others’.

  Three women, facing three men. And with unnerving certainty, Leethan felt as though the fate of the world rested on them.

  First, the old woman stepped forward and slashed her wrists, laying each one open. A tricolored mote formed in the air before her, looking like three separate crystals had fused together—one red, one white, and one black. It was unmistakably some form of Kai, though Leethan had never heard of Kai looking like that or being formed by suicide.

  It was patently impossible for Leethan to see with both her worldly vision and her Mindsight at the same time, but this dream did not care about what was possible.

  The woman seized the mote of Kai, pushing it toward the man standing across from her. As soon as the mote touched him, he collapsed and died at her feet.

  One by one, the women slashed their wrists and created those motes of red, white, and black Kai. One by one, they sent those motes at the men who stood opposite them. And one by one, the men sank lifeless to the ground.

  But those three motes of Kai did not disappear upon the death of the men; instead, the motes drifted toward one another and merged. A bright, blinding light suddenly seared Leethan’s eyeballs.

  And she awoke with a half-choked scream in her throat.

  * * *

  —

  More than a fortnight passed, and Delnamal had yet to receive a response from King Khalvin. He’d asked his mother if she had received a reply to her own missive and had been surprised when she’d lied and told him she had not. But he’d seen the butler hand her a flier, and he had seen the furtive way she had looked around when she’d read it. He’d been lurking in the woods at the time, hidden from her view by distance and brambles.

  The man he used to be would have been furious at the attempted subterfuge, but he’d done nothing more dire than give her a long, cold stare. Eventually, she’d broken down and admitted that yes, the king had replied to her letter, and no, it was not the reply Delnamal hoped to hear.

  He considered demanding she tell him exactly what the letter contained, but quickly realized he did not in actuality care. Based on his mother’s too-obvious fear, it was clear the tone of the letter had been less than conciliatory, and Delnamal didn’t need the details.

  It was a setback, to be sure, and Delnamal found himself momentarily paralyzed with fear that despite his terrible newfound power, he might be as helpless now as he had been when he’d first arrived in Khalpar. But fear had no more power over him now than did anger, and he let it flow through him and away, thinking what an easier, better life he would have led if he’d known how to do this all along.

  There was nothing to do but write to the king again. And again. As many times as necessary to persuade the man to give him an audience, where he might demonstrate his power in person.

  He did not like the whiff of desperation he sensed in this plan, nor the feeling that he was begging his exalted uncle for help. But pride was perhaps the most unhelpful emotion of all, and he would not allow it to stand in his way. He could not even begin to form a plan to take back his kingdom while exiled in the hinterlands, kept secluded like the embarrassing family secret his uncle thought him to be. He needed to gain an invitation to Khalwell so that he might have a private audience with the king.

  In the meantime, Delnamal had no choice but to supplement his strength with nothing more than the occasional purloined chicken or unlucky rabbit he discovered in a snare and not yet collected for the stewpot.

  It was a paltry existence, and it meant he was back to the cycle of his strength waxing and waning that was tiresome in the extreme. But he had patience now the likes of which he had never known before. He could bide his time until eventually, inevitably, Khalvin answered him—or at least sent someone out to the manor house to speak to him in person.

  All he had to do was be patient. And resist the sometimes nearly overwhelming urge to help himself to the fat, juicy motes of Rhokai that were so tantalizingly close to him at all hours of the day and night.

  * * *

  —

  Kailee heard her husband groan softly and push his breakfast plate away, and she watched the aura of his hands as they patted a belly that was visibly more rounded and softer than it had once been.

  “I have got to stop eating like this,” he said, then laughed at himself. “Which is something I should have thought of before I cleaned my plate.”

  Kailee smiled. “You should endeavor to hire a less skillful cook,” she teased.

  “I spent most of my adult life in the military,” he reminded her. “We made a habit of eating quickly and thoroughly, whether the food was good or not. It’s a hard habit to break now that I spend most of my day sitting and have no time for exercise.”

  “You were the Lord Chancellor of Women’s Well, which was hardly a military position.”

  “But I was a very active lord chancellor. My duties here keep me nearly tied to my chair. I haven’t swung a sword for a month.” He snorted. “No wonder Delnamal grew so enormous once he became king.”

  Kailee winced at the venom in his voice and couldn’t help remembering Oona’s story of the sword lessons he’d given his little brother. She had defended Tynthanal at the time, and she reminded herself that he had a great many reasons to hate Delnamal. Although no one had told Kailee straight out that Chanlix had been one of the abigails Delnamal’s men had savaged under his orders, she had easily surmised the truth. So Tynthanal had already thoroughly hated him even before Delnamal had killed Alysoon’s daughter.

  “You know that I visited with Queen Oona the other day,” she said, still working on the remains of her own breakfast.

  “So I had heard,” he replied. “You will let me know if she says anything that might help us locate Delnamal, will you not?”

  Kailee frowned at him. She had hoped he’d be happy she was forming something resembling a friendship rather than seeing that friendship through the lens of what might be useful to him. “I will not spy on her, nor will I betray her confidence.” There was a sharp edge in her tone that she had never used with him before. Her friendship with Mairah had begun with just that kind of betrayal, although at least in that instance Mairah had been fully aware of Kailee’s ulterior motives. Kailee had never bothered to deny them, which had in a perverse way made it easier for them both to set them aside.r />
  “I didn’t mean to give offense,” Tynthanal said, “but you have to know that it’s vital we locate Delnamal.”

  “So that you can kill him, you mean?” She pushed aside her unfinished food, her appetite now gone.

  “So I can find out what happened to our Well and fix it!” he countered.

  “Do you mean to tell me that’s the only reason you want to find him?” she asked with a little heat of her own. She had no doubt he wanted to fix the Well more than anything, but she was equally certain that even if Oona reached Delnamal and learned what had happened at the Well, Tynthanal would not be satisfied. His silence in response to her question confirmed her suspicion.

  She tried to remind herself that Tynthanal was incapable of seeing straight where his half-brother was concerned. “It isn’t enough that he’s fled the kingdom in disgrace and can never come back? Is it vitally important for the good of all of Aaltah that you also hunt him down and kill him to punish him for everything he’s done?”

  Tynthanal sat back in his chair, and she felt sure he was gaping at her in shock.

  “I know you’ve a kind heart,” he said, “but can you really mean to tell me that he doesn’t deserve to die?”

  “Very likely he does,” Kailee had to agree. “However, that does not mean it is of such vital importance that I betray the one and only friend I have at court so that you can hunt him.”

  Tynthanal sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “And if you are making friends with Oona, then I am glad for you both. She does not deserve to bear the blame for what her husband did.”

  “She told me about the sword lessons you gave Delnamal when you were growing up.”

  “What?”

  “Did you try to ‘tutor’ Delnamal in swordplay?” she asked.

  “Well, yes,” he replied, sounding nonplussed. “He was pathetic at it. He came to me one day blubbering because Father had accused him of not practicing enough. I know our father found Delnamal’s ineptitude embarrassing and was not always gentle about telling him so. Delnamal asked me to help him improve, and so I did.”

  “Hmm,” Kailee said, for it all sounded quite reasonable. Except there was a touch of something in his voice that did not entirely ring true, some faint echo that might well have been guilt. It was possible she was reading things into it, but because she’d spent her life without the ability to see facial expressions, she liked to think she was especially good at reading voices. “And when you tried to teach him, you trounced him?”

  He gave an impatient sigh. “Yes, of course. I did say he was terrible at it. He was clumsy and slow and had nothing resembling patience.”

  “Did your teaching help him improve?”

  Tynthanal scoffed and shook his head. “No. He was hopeless.”

  “But you kept ‘teaching’ him anyway, didn’t you?”

  Tynthanal fell silent, his body going still.

  It was a telling silence.

  “Why keep teaching him if it wasn’t doing any good?” she pressed, feeling more than a twinge of disappointment. She did not like to think of her husband as a bully, and she had rarely seen him be anything but kind, and yet it seemed clear to her that he had not treated his half-brother quite as well as he’d claimed.

  Tynthanal remained silent for a good minute or two, and she gave him the space and time to think.

  “He was a little shit even as a kid,” Tynthanal finally said, the vulgarity surprising Kailee so much she gasped. “Forgive my language, but he was.”

  “Meaning it was okay for someone eight years his senior to beat him up under the guise of being helpful?” she retorted indignantly, and Tynthanal sighed.

  “No,” he admitted. “I told myself I was being helpful, but of course you’re right. If I were truly being helpful, I would not have kept doing it once I recognized it was hopeless.”

  “So you found a socially acceptable excuse to beat up on a younger, weaker boy.”

  He bowed his head. “I never allowed myself to think of it that way, and yet when you say it…I suppose I must admit you have the right of it. But it doesn’t forgive what he became.”

  “I never said it did. I’m merely suggesting that your desire to find and punish him has more to do with your personal feelings than with the good of Aaltah.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded with obvious reluctance. “I’m sorry I suggested you betray your friend’s confidence. The request was insensitive, and I’ll try to do better.”

  Moments ago, Kailee had been disappointed in her husband, but now she felt a glow of warmth she wished she could ignore. Her experience with men was perhaps somewhat limited, but she hadn’t met a great many of them who were willing to apologize to the women in their lives with any degree of sincerity. Just her luck to be married to one of them while knowing beyond any doubt that his heart could never be hers.

  * * *

  —

  Alys bade her honor guardsmen wait outside as Maidel opened the door to Grunamai’s home. When Alys had first met Maidel, the young woman had been so ashamed of the birthmark on her face that her eyes were always downcast, her body always slightly canted so that the side with the birthmark was farthest from view. Maidel had come a long way since then, and though she performed the necessary respectful bow, she raised her head afterward with no hesitation.

  “Thank you for coming, Your Royal Highness,” she said. “Lady Grunamai is most anxious to speak with you.”

  “So I heard,” Alys said with false cheer, for though she was relieved that Grunamai had finally regained consciousness, the messenger who had fetched her said the seer was still in dangerously poor condition.

  When she’d first received the request from Tynthanal to have one of her seers try to re-create one of the potions he and Kailee had deciphered from Mairahsol’s notes, her inclination had been to refuse. But she’d allowed Tynthanal and Kailee to convince her of the importance of testing it, and now she was regretting it.

  Alys had known that taking a standard seer’s poison was unpleasant, even for the most gifted seers. But if she’d had any true concept of what Grunamai would go through after downing the modified poison, she would have stuck to her first instinct to refuse.

  The house felt unnaturally still and quiet as Maidel led the way up the stairs to the seer’s bedroom, where she had lain unconscious for two days since she’d downed the poison. Alys was not surprised to find Chanlix sitting at her friend’s side, though the straight-backed chair could not be comfortable with that formidable belly.

  “You should be resting while you have the chance,” Alys chided gently, for Chanlix was due any day now. And it didn’t matter how many times Chanlix scolded her for hovering; she just couldn’t help it.

  “That’s what I told her,” said a voice from within the shadows of the bed curtains. Those curtains had been tucked aside—no doubt for Chanlix’s sake—but the room was gloomy enough that Alys couldn’t get a good look at Grunamai’s face until the woman groaned and moved over into a patch of light.

  It was all Alys could do not to gasp at what the light revealed, and though she tried to hide her horror, she was sure it showed in her face. Two days ago, Grunamai had been a plump and vivacious woman of middling years, with sparkling eyes and a contagious laugh. During her stint as an abigail in Aaltah, she’d apparently been nicknamed “Sister Dimples,” and there had been no missing the why of it. But though Grunamai attempted one of her trademark smiles, her cheeks were so hollow that not a hint of a dimple appeared, and her eyes were frighteningly dull.

  “Please picture me performing the requisite curtsy, Your Royal Highness,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically thin and weak. “I’m afraid my body is not up to doing it for real.”

  Alys swallowed hard as guilt gnawed at her.

  “Don’t do it, Alysoon,” Chanlix said, sounding rather cross,
which was unlike her. Just as it was unlike her to address Alys so informally. “Don’t take all the blame on your shoulders as if you were the only one responsible for the decision.”

  Grunamai started to speak, then broke down coughing. Chanlix reached over and squeezed the other woman’s hand, her brow furrowed with concern. Still looking at Grunamai, she said, “We all knew that taking a seer’s poison was dangerous, and that testing unknown potions was dangerous. And we all agreed it was worth the risk.”

  “ ‘Dangerous’ is too weak a word to describe this,” Alys said, approaching Grunamai’s bedside and taking in her unhealthy pallor and the faint trembling of her hands.

  “It was worse than expected,” Grunamai admitted, her voice raspy from the cough. “I would have been wiser to mix the potion with a less potent seer’s poison, as it seems to have exacerbated the effects, but there was no way anyone could have known. And I was fully aware of the risk when I agreed to test it.”

  Alys sat gingerly on the woman’s bedside and knew that logic would do little to assuage her guilt. It was common practice at academies elsewhere in the world to test new magic on prisoners or impoverished volunteers who could not turn down the lure of “easy” money, but Alys had refused to allow the Women’s Well Academy to do so. Magic was tested on animals or on true volunteers, even though that put limits on the kinds of magic they could produce.

  “Still,” Alys started, “I should have—”

  “I still have family back in Aaltah,” Grunamai interrupted, perhaps too ill to consider the breach in protocol. “They may have disowned me, but I still care about them. Whatever is wrong with Aaltah’s Well, I want it fixed so that my sisters and their children are safe. I wanted to test this potion.”