They drew away so that they could almost see one another, their foreheads together… their breathing still erratic.
“It is enough… it is,” Llinolae murmured again and again, finding the blurred amarin from her sweet love so frightened and yet wanting. There was more there to be Seen too, but Llinolae could not make sense of it — and for the first time in her entire life, she regretted having chosen a different training. There was so much… so much openness in wanting — needing! — to share with her. “Oh Gwyn, I wish I could, my Love….” She pulled Gwyn close again, this time in comfort.
“I know.” The hoarse whisper was muffled against Llinolae’s neck, then Gwyn forced a laugh and straightened — her hands gently framing Llinolae’s face. She looked at her for a long moment, a thumb stroking away threatening tears. Gwyn smiled. Her heart filled with the wonder of simply holding — of knowing Llinolae at all. They laughed together a little, both realizing how silly it seemed to be so happy while in the same moment so indecisive.
Gwyn brushed the stray curl off of Llinolae’s forehead; it only fell again. A smile danced tentatively across her face once more. Until finally, she met Llinolae’s gaze properly. “I don’t know much about you — in some ways.”
“Like my use of the Sight,” Llinolae murmured.
“Like that… or your favorite color?”
“Used to be blue… that satin blue of the Dracoon’s formal colors.”
“Used to be?” Gwyn tipped her head quizzically, and Llinolae laughed. “What?”
“When you do that…,” Llinolae put a finger to Gwyn’s chin, adjusting her head to the side again, “… when you turn your head like this, it reminds me of your sandwolves.”
“Especially that irascible, inquisitive look Ty gets?”
“Yes — especially…. Do you mind?”
“That you noticed? No. It’s nice that you do notice.”
Llinolae’s smiled fondly.
“Do you mind?” Gwyn pressed.
“What?”
“That I want to know more about you?”
“Like my favorite color now? It’s a copperish… light… red.” Her fingertips touched Gwyn’s tousled bangs and traced the line beneath an eye. “I may have to change the Khirlan official colors. Do you think the King or Crowned Rule might forgive me?”
“Perhaps.” Gwyn’s eyes sparkled, pleased.
Llinolae looked at her in gathering silence. Gwyn waited.
“Do you think I should have told them of my Blue Sight?”
“No.”
Llinolae assessed her carefully, but found no hint of reservations in Gwyn’s amarin. “You trust me that much?”
“I do.”
Llinolae took Gwyn’s hands in her own, glancing nervously at their entwining fingers before asking, “Would you truly like to know more… about me and my Sight?”
Gwyn nodded, amending gently, “Only if you want to tell me.”
“I do.” Llinolae sighed. She turned. But she kept one hand in Gwyn’s, inviting her love to walk beside her.
They followed the waters upstream until the creek disappeared through the rocky curtains of haymoss. Then Llinolae took them ’round towards the entrance to the waterfall, explaining, “I’d rather not be interrupted.”
“I understand.”
Beyond the dangling haymoss, Llinolae hesitated. The flat-rocked perch across from the falls didn’t seem quite the best place for this. She nodded instead to the broad bed of green-black moss that swept across the stony flats to the right of the pool’s leafy foliage. Gwyn’s own glance lingered wistfully on the white churning waters that spilled into the shiny, black calm of the wider pool.
“Go ahead,” Llinolae laughed, suddenly feeling much less pensive in the face of Gwyn’s innocent shift of priorities.
Gwyn tossed her a look of sheer gratitude and began to tear off her weapons. “You’re sure, you don’t mind?”
“Hm-uhm.” Llinolae nodded, still charmed and amused by her Amazon’s eagerness.
“It’s been so sticky and hot all day.” The jerkin and tunic went quickly.
“Yes, I know, you’ve been in the saddle or skinning braygoat. It’s all right, Gwyn — go! ”
A hand to each boot, the laces loosened down her shins. Then with Llinolae watching in amazement, breeches, briefs, boots and socks all peeled off in a single layer. Must be a chore to untangle that mess, she caught herself thinking, and suddenly was laughing again as Gwyn took barely two steps and launched a long dive that carried her over as much land as black water, ending perfectly by sliding into that ebony coolness.
The laughter was gone — Llinolae’s hand to her throat — stilled so quickly by that fleeting image of Gwyn — brown, lean, stretching — reflected in that mirror-clear blackness. A trick of light — no, of amarin perhaps? — but for the briefest of instants, to Llinolae it seemed the world was suspended above with the starry voids below — and Gwyn’s beauty hung within both, binding both together at that point where they touched. Her hands slicing into the water, Niachero ascended to Grandmother’s Stars.
Her Mistress n’Athena had once told her a dey Sorormin legend —
“…When it came time that the divine woman had finished Her work among the people, she returned to the great mountain where she stepped back into Grandmother Lybia’s embrace. And ever after was Niachero known as — a Daughter of the Stars….”
Llinolae gulped for air, and Gwyn came up with a splash. She waved with a grin, bobbed under again, and Llinolae staggered beneath the amarin weight of normalcy.
“Mae n’Pour!” she breathed and managed to sit herself down on the mossy blanket with a bump, even though the moss cushioned her tail bone better than the horsehair pallets they were using in camp. She took another deep breath or two, still readjusting to the world as she knew it.
“What’s wrong?”
Llinolae blinked, then smiled uneasily, realized she hadn’t actually been alarmed enough to heed the amarin announcing Gwyn’s approach. Was she trusting this woman more than she’d even noticed?
“Llinolae?” Gwyn dropped to her knees in concern, shrugging into her tunic hurriedly.
“I’m all right.”
Gwyn shifted over to sit beside her with a blunt, “You don’t look it.”
She noticed her hand then. Her darker tones of color had returned. She shook her head, amused at her usual lack of subtlety. “There are occasions I do seem rather infatuated, don’t I?”
Gwyn sent her companion a commiserating glance as she lay back, and propped herself up by the elbows. She studied Llinolae, not missing the weariness in those hunched shoulders as the woman sat with her feet planted flat and her hands dangling over her knees.
“The amarin still play tricks on me every so often… show me succinct little glimpses of a more powerful whole.” Like they did just now, she admittedly silently.
Gwyn said nothing, content to let Llinolae choose her own words and time.
“I See….” A hand waved, at a loss for words. “What do I See? Usually, I Sense more than I See, at least in regard to people. I don’t ‘decipher’ intentions or ‘read’ emotions all that well — for individuals I mean. I can’t. I chose not to learn how to impose my perceptions on another or how to steal them from someone else’s awareness. I couldn’t — I still can’t! — justify such intrusions on an un-Sighted companion.”
“You don’t consider it simply some form of communication?”
“No!” Llinolae swiveled half about, adamant in her denial at first, then she turned away again, repeating more calmly, “No. I don’t. Communication is as much a choice as a tool, I think. An individual’s choice in what to share and when to share it — as well as what not to share — is to be respected. I can’t offer that respect if I manipulate their choosing by my Sight.”
“What’s different in using your Sight versus say — interpreting someone’s sincerity or deception by their posture and inflections?”
“What’s
the difference in using a sword versus a fire weapon?” Llinolae glanced at her quickly, then shrugged. “I can’t justify using the fire weapons we’ve confiscated over the seasons, either.”
“Not even against the Clan itself?”
“Especially not then. It has to stop somewhere or nothing will ever get better.”
Gwyn tipped her head, thinking the Steward’s Swords obviously weren’t supporting that particular judgment very well but decided discussions best waited for another day. She could certainly see the point Llinolae had that there was a ‘choice’ in not sharing some things.
“It’s an imperfect analogy, I know. The other piece of it is less a matter of ethics and more a matter of selfishness.”
Gwyn said nothing, and Llinolae smiled off at the beige stone heights, grateful yet amazed at this Amazon’s patience. With a faint shake of her head, Llinolae admitted, “Coming from Valley Bay and with Bryana as a mother, I suspect this will strike you as somewhat ludicrous, but I’ve always had to fight very hard to earn my rights as an individual — turning around to lose that identity again to the amarin was just not acceptable.”
“That doesn’t strike me as ludicrous in the least.”
She smiled again. “Thank you.” Llinolae moved hesitantly to face Gwyn. Her fingers reached out to toy with a knobby little curl of moss. Then almost shyly, she lay down on her side, an arm curled beneath her head as she played with another bit of mossy growth.
Gwyn turned onto her side to face Llinolae, propping her elbow in the moss and her head on her hand. Then she waited until, gradually, Llinolae grew more at ease.
“I’ve never told anyone any of this — or about my mentors.” She sighed and abandoned the moss bud, tucking her hand beneath her cheek. “My mother was a Clan refugee. She’d been found injured in the west district forests, fleeing her kinfolk. She’d been attacked by a pair of wild baskers, it seemed. My father was already in West Bough, arbitrating some town dispute, when they brought her in. He must have fallen in love at the first sight of her — she seemed so very strong and beautiful that day, he’d say — despite her being half-starved and exhausted from the blood loss and running. When she died of fever, her forearm and thigh were still carrying those scars — that was three tenmoons later. I remember Mother once saying, she’d only survived the baskers’ attack because the beasts had been young, not fully grown.
“She was like that, noticing even the littlest of details… never seemed to panic at anything. Except once, when I was born and Father saw my blue eyes.” A mirthless bit of a laugh made her pause. Her gaze shifted to Gwyn as she explained, “Mother had heard of the Blue Sights and of how the Council of Ten would take them for training. She didn’t want to lose me so soon.”
Llinolae’s eyes grew shadowed at the next thought then, a blank stare turning back to the mossy cushion. “She lost me anyway, didn’t she… in dying so young? I was only a season-and-a-half old….
“I remember running about and once in a while even falling over my own feet — much too bright and energetic for any nursemaid — much too strong in my Sight even then. Mother had blue eyes herself, you see, so when she told Father mine were because of her Clan blood, he thought it odd but not refutable.” Llinolae paused and gave a short sigh. “I think it was the only thing she ever lied to him about. He was dubious, kept watching for some sign of the Gift in me, but he was in Court a lot during the days — occasionally away overnight visiting the district townships for duties. So, she was always the first to notice my talent’s eccentricities. She taught me to hide it — to keep it a secret.
“It was a game of ours from the beginning. Literally a hide-and-go-seek game. ‘Be invisible!’ she’d say, and somehow…? Well, now I know it was because of the Blue Sight, but I always understood it was terribly, terribly important that I be good at the game. So I was.”
“Important to your mother,” Gwyn interjected.
“Yes — or we would be separated ‘too soon’… for however long that was, I don’t know now.”
Gwyn nodded, “The Clans keep their children young for a great many seasons more than most of us do.”
“Yet I was young then… barely knee high… that made it important to me as well. But I could imagine being without her so clearly, because again the Sight itself was beginning to show me out-of-time glimpses of when she’d be gone.”
“So you learned to hide well.”
“Very, very well. Soon servants, grooms — whomever! — could walk right past and never see me.”
“You were bending the amarin around you and you weren’t even three seasons old?”
“Before I was two, actually.”
Gwyn was amazed. Kimarie had been nearly three times that age before she’d been able to touch that kind of power.
“Consciously, no. Unconsciously though? From the assumption everyone did it, yes. I didn’t control much consciously for another tenmoon-or-so. When Mother died, Father stopped worrying about whether or not I had the Sight — I think he suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of losing me too. In his grief after her pyre burning, he begged me to always stay beside him. I promised I would.” Llinolae looked at Gwyn solemnly. “It was the first promise I’d ever made.”
From anyone else, Gwyn might have challenged that sort of comment. But given the strength of Llinolae’s Blue Gift, she now understood just how the woman would know; every detail of her life would be as accessible as an etched carving to Llinolae. Her out-of-time Seeing ability would only allow her to draw sharper focus on the images. But the drawback would be in that clarity itself — those memories would not be the memories of a child necessarily, rather they’d be complex pictures of what had actually happened. All it would take — all it would ever take — was a determined enough, fierce concentration to sift through those images until the proper set were uncovered. Given the grief of her father’s loss — of her own loss! — the child would never have been allowed to forget the importance of that promise to the widowed husband.
“At first, he held me as the most cherished reminder of her. He took me nearly everywhere with him. I’d sit in Court at his knee, ride through the District — first held before him in the saddle then soon beside him on my own shaggy bit-pony.” Affection softened her tone and brought a smile to her lips. “He soon came to love me for myself and not merely for her sake.”
“Except that he never knew of you as Sighted.”
“Except for that — though sometimes he almost let himself suspect it again. Like when we were traveling and needing fresh meat, I’d always be the first to notice the sign of braygoat — or I’d be the first to give warning of a roaming pack of wild baskers. He convinced himself I was merely growing to be more like my mother, I think.”
“Aware of the smallest details?”
“Aye. No one ever challenged his assessment, and there hadn’t been a Blue Sight born near the city in nearly a generation. Most never returned from the Council once they’d left the outlying regions as children, so no one knew what the Sight could or couldn’t be influencing in my talents.”
“The emissaries from Churv never had a Seer or an unbonded Shadow trainee among them?”
“Only once, during one of the last few official visits. Before father died, the Changlings Wars had worsened. The delegations from Churv had already been stopped. When Taysa and I seemed able enough to cope without direct supervision after Father’s death, the Royal Family only seemed grateful and relieved.”
“Leaving you overwhelmed,” Gwyn grimaced. Then she asked, “You said there was a Blue Sight visitor to Khirla’s Court before your Father’s death?”
“Yes, when I was three-or-so seasons. It was the day I…,” she smiled with little humor. “You could say I ran away from home that day. Or from Aggar, more aptly. It was the journey that introduced me to my Mistress n’Shea and her n’Athena Amazon.
“It was around the time Taysa joined us. I remember she had just married my uncle — Father’s younger brother. Fath
er had gotten uneasy with the Blue Sight emissary during the afternoon, and he’d sent Taysa up to me before eventide to tell me a little about each of the Court visitors… he’d told her it would help me remember who they were during dinner. He’d never do that unless he was leery of someone, though—”
“Wait. You said he was always keeping you near. Why hadn’t you been there when they arrived in Court?”
A rueful mischief lit Llinolae’s blue eyes and nudged her to tease, “I wasn’t such a big girl then, Gwyn’l. I was… what? About three-and-a-half tenmoons? We’d been traipsing around the brushberry farms all morning and my little legs had covered more leagues of soggy ditches than my little mind could count! When we got back to the Palace, Father promptly ordered me off to bed for a nap.” She actually giggled, and Gwyn started smiling. “Did you think he was trying to make me into some clingy, fruit vine? I assure you — he had quite a lot of sense for a single parent with no nieces or nephews to learn from.
“Still — that day was different. He was frightened by the Blue Sight visitor….” The laughter died, and Llinolae remembered that eventide news again. She rolled onto her back, her Sight blurring as she recalled the fresh flush of fear that had rushed through her. It had made her physically ill at Taysa’s announcement — she’d thrown up on her aunt’s best satins. Then with calm complacency, she’d been bundled back into bed and cooed assurances that her tummy would be all right come morning.
Until finally she’d been left alone in the stony haven of her tower room. It was a hide-away-safe stone place which had once been her mother’s sewing room and her playroom. She’d taken it as her bedroom after her mother’s death, because Mother had assured her once that ‘not even the Council’s best Seers could find’ her in there. But her mother had been talking about the Seers in the Council’s Keep; this Sighted One was in the Palace itself, and she hadn’t trusted the room with its door of honeywood and its drafty edges. So she had dressed and clutching her warm riding cloak around herself, she had disappeared into the black depths of the gaping fireplace.
Fires of Aggar Page 34
