A Shaper's Birthright

by Karen MacRae

  Anna was still astonished this was the Healer Shaper she’d read about in Alsham Castle’s library, the author of The Art of Shaping and the woman whose own peristone bracelets had found their way to Straton. More, she was staggered to have learned she was related to this legend in some way. The surname was probably irrelevant, but Lord Witheridge had told her no Anna Northcott had been born in The Kingdom. Was she really Anna Desmarais? And, if it were true, why would mama hide it?

  When they were done, Anna held up her brunette locks and Caitlin painstakingly threaded and knotted the tiny white bead so it lay securely next to the Shaper’s scalp. It left no sign when Anna let her hair fall, not even the slightest bump, but she could feel the boost to her aura. Even without crystal, this weapon was immense. She opened her gift to the bead and felt unadulterated power respond immediately. It took her breath away. “This is going to take a while to get used to,” she murmured.

  The Shaen girl held up Breac’s beads. “You wear?” she asked in Standard. “Best quality. Good for strong White.”

  The Shaper nodded. She held out her left arm and Caitlin fastened the bracelet to her wrist then went behind Anna to loop the necklace around her throat. The stones lay just below her collar bone. Caitlin smiled in admiration of the stunning jewels against the white of Anna’s skin. “Beautiful,” she said. “Bright lights.”

  Seleste could see only a row of small, smoky brown beads before Anna fastened her borrowed shirt and they were hidden from sight. She held out the brooch they’d found next to the beads. “What do you want to do with this?” she asked the Shaper.

  “I wouldn’t feel right wearing it, but I’d like to keep it. It… it feels like it’s mine, if that doesn’t sound insane.”

  Seleste thought the entire day had been insane. “She did say the jewellery was yours ‘by right of birth and gift.'”

  Anna popped the brooch back in Breac’s bag along with her green crystal, the King’s Circle medallion and her anchor pin then looked around for something to put the bag in. She lifted down an old, leather backpack hanging from a hook on the door. “I feel like I’m stealing,” she said, her voice unsure.

  “The woman gave you her aura. I doubt she’d begrudge you a bag.”

  Anna nodded, reassured. She put Breac’s soft bag into Evaline’s rucksack then added other bits and pieces that had survived the fire including a couple of unused crystals and the red crystal filled with the crested poison she’d taken from Thornson’s well. She fastened the flap closed on the backpack then realised she could sense the different crystals without seeing them. She wondered if she’d inherited new abilities from Evaline’s Healing or if the white peristone had given her new skills. Either way, it seemed things had changed.

  She turned to go and saw Seleste hiking up the too-long trousers Caitlin had found for her in a small chest of drawers. She realised she must look like a little girl playing dressing-up with her mother’s clothes if Evaline’s trousers were too long for Seleste. “I must look a fright,” she said with a laugh, holding out her arms to flop excess fabric over her hands.

  “About eight,” the assassin agreed, her eyes sparkling with laughter.

  Euan’s sister smiled. “Big, yes, but good leather. Keep dry.”

  Anna’s two friends gathered up their things and made their way outside to join a waiting Jimmy. The Shaper paused by the linen-bound body on the bed. “I will honour you, Evaline Desmarais,” she promised. “I will earn your sacrifice.”

  CHAPTER 30

  A ilie pointed down the right-hand trail. “Tuath and Deas” she told the others. She gestured ahead, up the steep western trail. “Craft Hall six miles.”

  “Let’s take a quick rest stop. We can get out of the rain over there,” Sy told the guards, pointing at a nearby shallow cave. “It’s going to take three hours to get to the Hall at this rate so we’ll grab an early lunch. I don’t want to have to stop again if we can get away with it.”

  The small team stretched their legs and shared out rations as their horses drank from the stream at the side of the trail and munched on the coarse scrub that grew beyond.

  Sy leaned back against the cave wall as he chewed on a hefty cereal bar, thinking about the changes he’d make to the recipe if he had the chance. As he shifted his weight, he felt something dig into his back and remembered the bag of beads. He pulled them out and looked inside. They looked like a handful of unimportant, shiny pebbles. He pulled a set out and held it up to the light. He could see some glints of colour, but that was it. They looked so insignificant and yet, centuries ago, they had been used to kill thousands of people. The world was a very strange place.

  “You see colours?” Ailie asked.

  “Only glints in the sun underneath the outer layer. Like something’s shining through a crack. Red through to lilac, like the song.” The redhead looked at him with a blank face and Sy told himself off for forgetting the girl didn’t understand much Standard. He tried again. “Eight colours. Inside.”

  Ailie smiled. “Strong light through red go red. Same blue, same green, same all. And grow stronger. All colours goes white. Very powerful. Stones same though. No good not same.”

  “I don’t understand. I get that the light changes colour and turns white with the eighth peristone. Seleste’s told me that much. I also get that Anna can use the peristones to make the light much stronger, but I don’t get what you mean by ‘no good not same’. I thought the whole point was they were different… Oh, for light’s sake, Syrano, remember she can’t understand.” The big man held up his hand in apology. “No good not same?” he asked.

  Ailie held her hands out for the bag and Sy passed it over. The Stone Crafter pulled out two sets of beads. She lifted the necklace in her left hand. “Blue.” She lifted the necklace in her right hand. “Green.” She rummaged in the bag and pulled out the third set. “Turned right.” Waggling the blue set in her left hand she said, “Turned left.”

  She handed all three sets back to Sy. He held them up to the light, inspecting the subtle differences in what he thought of as the outer layer and the way the glints seemed to be set into the beads. They might all feel the same and all contain eight colours of peristone, but that was all they had in common. One set was larger, the beads all appeared dark brown to Sy’s eyes and the glints seemed to follow a spiral that twisted to the right. The second, medium-sized set, had a green tint to it and the glints were random. The final set had the smallest beads with a blue tint and the glints spiralled to the left.

  “Which best?” Ailie asked Sy, a smile on her face.

  Sy held out the smallest set. Ailie took them. “No,” she said with a laugh, tipping them back into the bag.

  The Seaskian looked at the two remaining sets. He guessed the green-tinted set next. The Stone Crafter laughed and shook her head again, stuffing the green set in with the blue set.

  “Why these?” Sy asked, holding up the largest, dark brown beads. “Smaller better, no?”

  Ailie laughed again. “All same. All average good.”

  Sy smiled. He might have known it was a trick question. “What best?” he asked.

  “Small, pure colour, no tint, no pattern. But only strong Shaper use. Danger for weak.”

  Sy thought of Nystrieth. Did they even know how strong he was? They assumed he was powerful because of what he’d achieved, but Sy had seen what Anna could do without even trying. Wouldn’t any Shaper appear powerful when there were no others to compare them to? But Nystrieth had taken an Empire without peristones. Light help them, what might he achieve with a set of beads?

  “What about white or black?” he asked the redhead. She shook her head and offered the bag to Sy. He tossed her the third set and gestured for her to keep the bag. She busied herself stuffing it into her backpack and studiously avoided his gaze and his question.

  “Why secret?” he asked gently. He could see the frustration on Ailie’s face as she tried to find the words to explain to him.

  “Danger. Shaper a
nd Crafter. Too strong. Forbidden.”

  “You aren’t allowed to make it because it’s too powerful? Forbidden to make, too strong?”

  The girl nodded. “Very hard. Only strong make. Make too strong. Forbidden.”

  “Hew, have you been listening?” Sy called to the guard. “You got any idea what she’s saying?”

  Hew spoke briefly to Ailie in broken Shaen, asking her to explain again. He couldn’t follow all of the reply, but it was close enough to his native Dornie to be able to work out most of it. “I think what she’s saying is that only the strongest Stone Crafters can make black and white peristone, but it’s too powerful so they’ve been forbidden from making it for centuries. She says a Shaper on his own is powerful. Add a set of peristone beads then they’re at least three times more powerful. Add a white or black stone and they’re at least ten times as powerful. That’s bad enough, but white and black stone give the Shaper elements of a Stone Crafter’s gift including their immunity to aura attacks.”

  “How are we supposed to defeat someone who can kill on sight and is immune to Humanity gifts?” asked Lachlan.

  “I guess we do it the same way we usually do it,” said Hew. “Good, old-fashioned steel, preferably somewhere particularly painful.”

  The men’s laughter echoed around the small cave. Higher up the hill, Nijel’s young ears heard it. “What was that?”

  “What was what?” Elona asked.

  “I heard something. Laughing maybe?”

  “Which direction?”

  “Left, downhill.”

  “No one move until I say. And keep quiet.” Elona crept forward to a break in the left bank then lay on her belly and carefully shuffled forward through the prickly scrub. Her mood improved markedly when she made out four horses drinking by a stream. Maybe they hadn’t taken the wrong turn after all. She waited and was soon rewarded with a sight for sore eyes. She shuffled backwards then jogged to the others.

  “It’s the Seaskian,” she said quietly. “He’s with a couple of King’s Guards and a local girl. There’s only one reason he’s coming to the Craft Hall by another route.”

  Mystrim grinned. “The light wasn’t just teasing us with that blue handkerchief.”

  “What one reason?” asked Pyteor.

  His stupidity made no dent in the Reader’s good mood. “Beads, you fool. He must have beads.”

  “How close?” asked the weather mage.

  “Close, but below us on a different path, steeper than this.” Elona’s eyes focused on the bend ahead of them as she tried to work out when the two trails would meet. “I reckon this path will join his in less than a mile around the bend.”

  “You said steeper?” asked Nijel. The warrior nodded, her eyes sparkling.

  “So?” asked a frustrated Pyteor, having seen Nijel’s and Elona’s grins. He wished people would make themselves clear rather than have him guessing all the time.

  Nijel waved ahead at their flat path. “We’ll get there sooner, Concealer. We have time to prepare.”

  Pyteor grinned. Elona and Syrano Ffion in a fight - now there was something he’d enjoy watching. Elona would gut the Seaskian and get the beads with no trouble. And they’d all reap Nystrieth’s reward.

  Nijel grinned back, remembering the hot blood caressing his fingers when he’d finished off Kuri’s man, hoping for a chance to repeat the experience. Half an hour later, he was lying prone on the high banks on the inner edge of the trail, his heart pounding, his mouth dry. He felt his finger quiver on the crossbow’s trigger. Elona would kill him if he gave away their ambush so he eased his finger straight as he waited.

  The enormous Seaskian rounded the corner with a pretty, red-haired girl and two men in guard’s uniforms just minutes later, but she held up a hand for them to stop. Nijel strained to hear what she was saying to the big man. Something about colour, perhaps? He looked the other way but couldn’t see anything amiss. Pyteor’s Concealment looked perfect, but something seemed to have spooked the girl. He wasn’t sure what to do. Should he shoot one of them? Should he wait? He looked to the sailor lying to his left. “What do we do?” he whispered.

  “Wait,” the man told him with a quiet hiss, his frown a silent warning for Nijel to keep his mouth shut.

  The Healer wriggled, getting himself settled to try to wait patiently for some sign to start firing.

  Ailie had spotted Pyteor’s unknowing error as soon as she’d gone around the bend. Rather than a kaleidoscope of colour, the rock ahead was a flat grey brown. Alerted to something being wrong, Sy picked up the tiny movement of a dark head against the pale sky. “Ambush,” he whispered quietly to his teammates. “Hew, tell Ailie to pretend to go to the toilet behind that boulder on the left. Tell her there’s an enemy above, probably with a crossbow.” The big man waited until Ailie strolled across to the boulder and called after her, “Don’t be long,” in an irritated voice.

  Nijel realised he’d been holding his breath when it left in a rush at the sight of the girl apologising for needing to stop for a call of nature. They hadn’t been rumbled after all. He put his finger back near the trigger and waited for the group to get moving again. The three men dismounted and gathered by a large, jutting rock on the side of the trail. It was difficult to see from this angle, but it looked like they were sharing a snack and chatting normally. He risked a peek over the edge to see better.

  The force of the shot knocked him from his perch. His body tumbled down the hillside into the centre of the trail. A perfect hole spoiled the perfectly soft skin in the centre of his forehead. All was quiet. Nothing moved.

  The sailor forgot himself and raised his head slightly to see where the boy had finished up. A hard, glancing blow from something small and sharp sliced open his scalp and he flattened himself to the rock face, his mind racing at the accuracy of the sudden attack. Blood poured from the wound into his eyes and mouth, but he dared not move.

  Below, Sy gave a jubilant thumbs up to the Shaen girl. She waved her slingshot with a smile then focused back on the threat she’d been assigned. She knew she’d caught the second man with the second stone, but he was still alive. She picked a perfect new stone from the bag on her belt. He wouldn’t escape this one. She’d turned it so it would penetrate anything.

  Sy, Hew and Lachlan knew the greatest danger they faced was Elona. As fast as Spider, as strong as Sy and Jimmy and as lethal as Seleste, she was a truly formidable warrior. Mystrim, on the other hand, was mediocre with a blade. He could, however, throw fireballs around corners and couldn’t be touched for fear of being burned alive. The Concealer and whoever else they had with them were unknown quantities. Elona on her own was a problem. Adding a fire demon and an unknown number of opponents with an unknown range of gifts was a big problem. And they couldn’t let the beads fall into the wrong hands.

  “Hew, I need you over with Ailie,” Sy told the Dornie guard. “Elona will want that sling shot out of action as soon as possible. Tell Ailie she needs to hide the beads. No matter what happens, they can’t get them. And tell her to keep an eye on the colour ahead. We need to know if it moves.” The guard nodded and bolted across the trail, skidding to a stop beside the redhead.

  Behind Pyteor’s Concealment, Elona was nearly apoplectic. Her face burned scarlet, but she contained herself so she didn’t give away her position to the she-devil with the sling. She told herself that all they’d lost was an inexperienced teenager. They could stand the loss. He wasn’t even a good shot. At least she knew her backside was safe from a wayward bolt now. She put the Healer from her mind and focused on more important matters. Mystrim and Pyteor could deal with the girl and the guard protecting her while she took on the Seaskian and the other guard. She’d seen the stone hit the still-hidden sailor, but she could also see his aura was intact. When they engaged the enemy hand-to-hand, he could pick them off with his bow. She waved Pyteor forward.

  “But I can’t move it,” he whispered back in dismay.

  She sneered at him. “They know w
e’re here, you fool. Just give us cover from that ginger devil then do what you can to help the mage.” She waved at Mystrim to take the right-hand side and they began to advance down the slope, an anxious Pyteor working frantically to continually reframe his Concealment as they went.

  Mystrim headed straight towards the girl’s hiding place. She’d been wearing a backpack when she walked across to the boulder, but she’d not had it on when she’d stepped out for a split second to fire that shot at the sailor. The only reasons she’d have taken time to ditch the bag was to take out her sling or because she didn’t want anyone to find it. People who used sling shots did not keep them in a rucksack. The beads were in it. Getting them was far more important than the pleasure of killing a few people and he was down to his reserves anyway. He’d got a bit carried away burning up the White this morning.

  “My gift’s out,” his whispered to the Concealer. “You make sure to pull your weight.”

  Pyteor gripped his sword and nodded, his stomach reeling in terror.

  Sy was wondering why there weren’t fireballs raining down on them. Was Mystrim’s gift exhausted or was he trying to lull his opponents into a foolish attack? He waited for Ailie to look up the trail. She raised two fingers. Two hundred yards away. They were closing in. He told Lachlan to get ready when Ailie waved one finger. They had no choice but to risk a trap. They had to get behind the Concealment or Elona would take their heads from their necks without them even seeing the blade.

  CHAPTER 31

  S y drew his axe and Lachlan his two short swords. On the other side of the trail, Ailie readied her sling and Hew took position on her left, his sword before him, ready to use his body to block a possible fireball. The Crafter signalled fifty yards and Sy let out an enormous bellow. He and Lachlan charged. Ailie stepped out a little so she could draw fire and have a clear shot at any bowman. Hew hovered protectively, knowing they would be coming for the girl with the sling.