Meghianna held her breath as her father strode from the room. She didn't think he was angry, but something had hurt him. She was afraid that, once again, she had spoken wrongly.
"The boy is far too young for all this," Mrillis said, his voice rough, soft, so Meghianna thought he spoke more to himself than to her.
"Lord Mrillis, I think there really is something wrong with me."
"I doubt that." He shook his head and smiled.
"It isn't just thinking about Megassa. Sometimes I see through her eyes."
"When?" His mouth went flat. He stood and moved around the table so he stood over her. "Oh, little one, don't worry." He sat on the edge of the table, and all the hardness and intensity that had settled on him like armor dropped away. "I'm not angry with you. No one is. We should be used to all the surprises you keep dropping on us. Despite everything, we still expect you to be an ordinary little girl."
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, no, don't be." He rested his hand on the top of her head, then slid it down so he cupped her cheek. "You are exactly what you need to be. It is the Estall's plan. You are being formed for some great duty, a heavy burden, something that only you will be able to do. I think your father sometimes grieves that you can't be ordinary."
"Then it's good that he has Megassa?"
"Hmm, perhaps. But I suspect Megassa isn't so ordinary, either. Tell me, when do you see through her eyes? What things is she doing, what is she feeling, when that happens?"
"She's..." Meghianna sat back in her chair, frowning as she thought. "She's trying something new in her lessons. Or someone has been nasty to her, and she wants to hit them, or she's fighting not to cry."
"Intense emotions and thoughts. Of course." He sighed and she felt a pang when his hand left her cheek. "It seems your sister does have some imbrose. Enough to let your minds touch. I think your blood bond from both sides has created a way for her feelings and impressions to slip past your mind-shields."
"That isn't good, is it? Maybe they aren't as strong as they should be?"
"You are six years old. You shouldn't even need mind-shields. The ones you have are quite amazing, and quite strong and..." He sighed. "To be honest, my dear, we had prayed to the Estall that Megassa would have no imbrose whatsoever. It would make our lives easier."
"Why?"
"Prophecies and problems. And your great-uncle Endor is still too fresh in the memories of too many people. They fear we are repeating the mistakes we made with him."
"Did you know him?"
"I did indeed. He was my closest friend for many years."
"Until he turned bad?"
"Until he turned bad."
Meghianna ached, deep in her chest, at the sad, introspective light in Mrillis' eyes. His silvery hair and beard, kept trimmed short like a soldier, suddenly looked dull. He never looked his age until now. For just a few heartbeats, he looked so tired, and suddenly too old, as if he would turn to dust and blow away in another moment. That frightened her, so she scooted around in her chair, to stand on the seat and fling her arms around him. Mrillis let out a broken laugh and wrapped his arms tight around her.
"What was that for, little one?"
"I don't want you to ever go away," she said between gritted teeth, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
"What makes you think I will?" He patted her head, then grasped her shoulders and gently moved her back so they were eye-to-eye.
"I have dreams of a cave. A horrid place, all dark and wet and melting rock reaching down to make a cage. And Threads wrap around you and keep you there. And nobody can find you." She hiccupped from the force of the sobs she fought to keep back.
"Hmm, visions already at your age? Why not?" He smiled, but his mouth was crooked.
"Promise me you won't go there? You won't ever go away? The white lady..."
Meghianna blinked and found herself sitting on her chair again, with Mrillis kneeling in front of her, rubbing both her hands. She felt hollow inside, almost as if she had no bones or blood and her stomach was no longer full of dinner.
"What happened?" she whispered, and her voice sounded like the wind blowing through the chambers at the top of the Stronghold, where they were open to the sea.
"You had a Seeing," Efrin said, stepping into her field of vision. He scooped her up, to cradle her against his chest. Meghianna gladly snuggled close to him, breathing deeply of the comforting scents of leather and soap and the spices the fortress' housekeeper kept in his clothes chest. She wondered how long she had been lost in the vision, that he had finished whatever errand took him from the room and came back before the Seeing ended.
"Was it a long one?"
"Not particularly." Mrillis stood up slowly, moving like Scholar Lyri did when the cold and damp made her joints ache. "It is draining when the Estall sends a Seeing. Your body is too young for such things. It took you some time to recover."
"Scared a few years off of me," Efrin muttered. He jounced her a little, like he used to do when she was much smaller. Meghianna grinned, too tired to laugh.
"What did I say?"
"You gave us a puzzle. As most Seeings do."
"Lord Mrillis?"
"A warning." He nodded absently and strode across the room to the table in the corner, where wax slates and a stylus or two waited to be used. Mrillis leaned over the table, frowning in concentration for a few moments before writing.
"Papa?" Meghianna didn't like the faint redness around his eyes that meant he had fought tears.
"I suppose I must get used to this, sweetling, but I honestly wish you wouldn't frighten me like you do."
"I'm sorry. I can't help it." She giggled, startled, when he kissed the tip of her nose.
"No, you can't help it at all." He sat down in her chair, holding her on his lap. "Well?"
"A warning. For me, I believe." Mrillis held the slate closer to his face, as if he had trouble reading what he had just written. "It seems that someday, I must beware she who is my fondest dream. She who hates me most will imprison me. And she who fears me the most will have the power to release me."
"I said that?" Meghianna shivered.
"In far more convoluted words, I fear." He forced another smile, which didn't make her feel any better.
Mrillis tucked the slate inside his robe, in one of the many pockets. Meghianna thought about the treats and treasures he had produced from those pockets, since her earliest memories, and wondered when that slate would come out so she could study it. She knew better than to ask tonight. Not with her father and Mrillis looking so somber. Besides, she felt too tired to study it. For now, it was pleasant just to snuggle close to her father and let him take care of her.
A flicker of a dream peeped out from the dark closet of her memories. She saw Efrin white-haired and bent, his hands crooked from age and hard use. He smiled at her and closed his eyes, and slid down to lie on the ground. A moment later, it wasn't the ground, but a funeral pyre. Meghianna swallowed down a sob. That scene wouldn't happen for many years, she knew. She understood the dream warned that she wouldn't have her father with her forever, much as she wanted it.
But Mrillis would always be there, unchanged from the way he was right that moment. She knew that, with a certainty more solid than the bedrock of the Stronghold and the power of the Threads that sang against the fingertips of her mind.
* * * *
Two nights later, Meghianna slipped from her bed to go to Mrillis' workroom, to pursue the questions that had filled her head since that first Seeing came upon her. She wrapped herself in Threads to make herself unseen, unheard, unfelt, just as Mrillis had done to hide them in the corner of the council chamber, to listen to the lords and minor kings argue and plan with her father. She supposed that if he knew she had seen just how he twisted the Threads into a covering for them, he would have asked her not to do it until she was much older. Meghianna reasoned that if she could do it without being taught formally, then she wouldn't hurt herself trying to do it. Because sh
e didn't have to try, didn't have to experiment. That, she had decided from reading records of other Rey'kil students, had been where the damage occurred.
It was an adventure that rivaled Megassa's wildest rides, to creep down the long, chilly stone hallways and wait until the guards on duty at the various doorways and stairways weren't looking, so she could open doors without being detected. Twice, she met up with Valors on duty, and held very still, trying not to disturb the Threads, so they wouldn't sense her presence. Meghianna found it interesting, and something else to think about later, that the colors of the Threads she saw wrapped once or twice around each Valor gave a hint to their strength or sensitivity. She didn't know either one of them, and decided that was something else she needed to add to her chores--getting to know all the Valors who served in the fortress.
Finally she reached Mrillis' workroom. She tugged the door open and slipped into the room before it occurred to her that he might have woven Threads around the room and through the lock, to keep people from intruding. Nothing happened, and after waiting a few moments for her heart and breathing to settle back to normal, she crept into the long storage room, full of racks of scrolls and tablets. Mrillis had made her learn the system he used for storing records before she was allowed to retrieve anything without supervision.
Meghianna could touch the markings on the end of each tall rack and know what she would find there. She never told him that some of the scrolls had a faint glow of energy to them, as if they had absorbed magic from the Rey'kil who had written on them. That bit of imbrose-aided sensitivity helped her to decide which history scrolls to study first. She reasoned that the leaders of the Rey'kil enchanters would have been entrusted with recording the history of the Nameless One and his children. Something in Mrillis' eyes and voice when he spoke of Endor made Meghianna curious. What had happened between him and the man who had been his closest friend?
The first scroll she took down had a slip of parchment tucked into the magic-soaked leather case, which listed the topics recorded on the scroll. She found nothing there that looked interesting. The same with the next three. The fifth scroll held the history of the three children retrieved from Flintan when the combined armies of Rey'kil and Noveni overran the Nameless One's fortress. Hands trembling with anticipation, Meghianna took the scroll to the window where she always sat to study, and carefully slid the cover off to unroll it.
She skimmed over the early histories, talking about the disposition of the three children. It struck her as odd to read about her grandmother, Nainan, referred to as a troublesome, unhappy child. Everyone she asked about her grandmother and mother always spoke of Nainan and Belissa as good, wise, generous women who were loved by everyone who met them.
Her questions were answered a little more than halfway through the scroll, when the style of handwriting changed for the fourth time, indicating yet another chronicler added to the record. Meghianna paused to think, to try to digest the information.
Magic had been wrapped around Nainan, to use her against the people who had become her family. She had broken the hold of that magic when she resisted long enough to become unusable, worthless to the enemies of the Stronghold and Wynystrys. Now, Meghianna thought she understood a little better why her caretakers, and those in charge of Megassa, were so cautious. The same magic that had enfolded Triska and Endor could have been wrapped around Trevissa, and passed on to Megassa when she was conceived, like the seed of a poisonous plant, waiting quietly, undetected, until the opportune moment to sprout.
"But what if it's in me, and no one ever found it? What if it went to sleep and didn't die when Grandmother Nainan thought she broke free?" she muttered, and sat back to cross her arms and draw her legs up in the chair and think hard.
"What you choose to be is often far stronger than what people try to make you," Mrillis said.
Meghianna gasped and nearly leaped out of the chair when the enchanter faded into view in the middle of the room a heartbeat later. He smiled, but he didn't laugh, to her great relief.
"No," he said, crossing the room to perch on the edge of the table, "you didn't sense the magic woven into the lock. What use is an alarm that lets the intruder know he--or she--has been detected? Your use of the Threads to shield yourself created a disturbance loud enough to wake me. If I had been asleep. Which I wasn't."
"I'm in trouble... but I don't think I'm sorry," she finally said.
"Hmm, no, I didn't think you would be. Though we share no blood, it is amazing how much alike we are. When Ceera and I were children, we ran full tilt into trouble, blind to the dangers because we were so intent on learning, on doing, on being, on what we thought was right and absolutely had to be done. You learned that invisibility spell quite well, but you aren't deft enough with weaving the Threads so they mesh together in harmony."
"The Valors on patrol didn't sense me."
"Yes, they did. You were making enough noise they could hear you out in the courtyard. I asked them to let you go, so we could see what you were up to."
Meghianna didn't know if she wanted to cry or scream vexation. She didn't like feeling foolish. It startled her a little, how angry she felt at being caught--but not startled enough to stifle her anger.
"Do you think we were playing tricks on you, little one?" He shook his head and glanced across the room. A flicker among the Threads brought a chair to him, scraping on the uneven spots in the flagstones of the floor. He turned Meghianna's chair so it faced him, and he sat down, resting his hands on the arms of her chair--effectively blocking her from getting up and running away.
"It wasn't very nice, hiding yourself and laughing at me when I made mistakes." She felt her lower lip stick out, and didn't care that she sounded like she would burst into tears in another minute.
"Oh, and what do you think you were doing?"
She opened her mouth to retort, to argue, and found she could only gasp a few times. Tears burned hot in her eyes. Meghianna refused to let them fall. She couldn't look him in the eyes, and that was the worst part of this whole embarrassing, frustrating incident.
"What did you want to know?" Mrillis said after several minutes of waiting, until she could breathe evenly again and the hot ache left her eyes. But she still couldn't look at him.
"What happened to Endor?"
"Ah. Did you think it was a great, terrible secret, and we would be angry if you asked?"
"You weren't happy when you talked about him. I didn't want you to be angry with me, too."
"Angry with you?" Now he did laugh, sitting back in his chair and taking his hands off her chair, so she could have escaped if she wished. "My dear child, I am sometimes frustrated, sometimes afraid for you, sometimes perplexed and even fearful that we push you too hard, to learn too much, but never angry. Disappointed, I suppose. Oh, how I wish Master Breylon were here. He would laugh."
"Why?" Meghianna dared to knuckle the moisture from her eyes.
"Haven't you ever heard the proverb that the foulest curse a man can wish on his son is that he have a son just like him someday?" He chuckled louder, his shoulders shaking, when Meghianna could only stare at him and frown, confused. "All the terrors and worries Ceera and I put our teachers through, I must now endure from your hand. And you not even seven summers old yet." The amusement left his eyes between one heartbeat and the next, and Meghianna knew some terrible, frightening thought had occurred to him.
"What is it?" she whispered. "What's wrong?"
"There must indeed be some awesome, heavy duty and burden waiting for you, for the Estall to begin forming you for it so early. I thought it was enough to be the one to strengthen and support Ceera for the making of the Zygradon and Braenlicach, and history would be done with me. I think perhaps those things will be forgotten, and I will be known as the enchanter who trained the greatest Queen of Snows the World will ever know."
"Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"
"Neither, my dear. It simply is, and a wise man accepts his destiny and does his
best to serve and to please the Estall." He held out a hand to help her stand. "Come, time to get you back into your bed."
"Does Nalla know?"
"Of course, but I am relieved to know she trusts me to look after you." He smiled, but the expression didn't quite reach or warm his eyes.
"What did happen to Endor? What did you have to do, that makes you so sad when you talk about him?"
"He killed Ceera, because she chose to love me rather than him. He killed our daughter, Emrillian, because her death would destroy her mother, and because she was my child. And when he came to kill me, thinking me weak and blind in my grief, I killed him with Braenlicach. Keep this in mind, little one. The hardest task is to decide when mercy must end, and justice must destroy evil before it grows any stronger and overcomes innocence altogether."
Meghianna thought it would take her years to understand all that his words meant and implied, but her soul grasped the truth in what Mrillis said.
She was quiet and subdued when Mrillis walked her back to her quarters, so Nalla didn't scold, only hugged her tight and tucked her into bed. Meghianna fell asleep to the murmurs of Nalla and Mrillis talking in the outer room, and knowing they were there comforted her.
* * * *
"Lord Mrillis?"
"Lady Megassa." He nodded to Megassa as she approached him in the gates of the fortress. Together, they watched the last noble leave, shrouded in the shadows of a looming storm.
The summer had passed quickly, filled with the usual complaints about the different enclaves of Encindi, friendly and unfriendly, and the expected conflicts among the Noveni minor kings and nobles as more healed land on Moerta became open for re-settlement. It didn't matter that some lords and kings didn't have enough people to hold and guard the land, everyone wanted to expand their territory. Nearly one-third of the arguments and minor battles the Warhawk had been forced to resolve that summer had been over stretches of land that had been neglected for generations because of the poisoning of raw star-metal. Now that it was purified and cleansed and usable, multiple claimants tried to take control, often leading to bloody battles. Efrin often spent more time in Moerta, settling claims through negotiation and force, and battling Encindi marauders, than he did in Lygroes. The title of 'The Bloody Sword' came from both Efrin's admirers and his detractors.
THREE DROPS OF BLOOD Page 5
