Protector of Thristas: A Lisen of Solsta Novel

by D. Hart St. Martin

  “Where’s Mother?” Insenlo asked.

  “She’s weary of all the fighting and went directly to her office this morning.”

  Rinli wished she could hate her mother, but one cannot hate what one is starving for, and Rinli was starving. Nearly half the year in Thristas with her father, then her mother caught up in preparations for Council and Council itself and, therefore, rarely available when Rinli was here in Avaret—Rinli knew one truth, that she wanted her mother more than her mother wanted her. From the moment the Empir had learned of the existence of the child she and her “captain” had conceived and realized the possibility that that daughter could be Mantar’s Child, she’d used Rinli to fix the world and had given little attention to the child herself. Rinli knew her place; she understood and reluctantly accepted her role. But for her mother to then tell her she’d have to train to use the push—Rinli wanted to spit. She wasn’t going to be manipulated into that one.

  She studied those seated at the table. These were her Avaret people, gathered around a finely carved great wood table and sitting on fancy chairs. She loved her brother and sister; she really did. Elor she could live without, but he was her cousin and, by rights, belonged here. And her father—he was her life, the only person she didn’t resent when he told her what to do. She’d be leaving all this behind soon, and for some time she’d believed she’d be glad to be quit of this life. But the people—she’d eventually hear less and less from and about her own kin, and that left her aching inside.

  No wonder she couldn’t trust her mother even though she desired her love more and more every day. She’d lost these people before they’d even come into existence, and soon she’d say good-bye and have to mean it. She sighed, stared at her sausage and finally began to eat. Her life here was over; it had only to end.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NEVER HARMED, NEVER HARMING

  Lisen stared at the document on the desk in front of her and rubbed her head. Focus. But still, her mind balked, returning instead to Rinli’s refusal to cooperate, and this had left her floundering in a choppy sea of anxiety surrounding the fate of her first-emerged. She hadn’t been difficult at that age, had she? When she was fifteen, her guardians—the Holts—had guided her, aware of her alien nature. But none of them, not the Holts nor she herself, had known of the throne that awaited her on a world she couldn’t remember. Perhaps that was what drove Rinli’s sense of entitlement—she knew she was special. She was Mantar’s Child, had lived with that reality from as early as her memory stretched and felt manipulated by everyone involved.

  And why shouldn’t Rinli feel manipulated? Lisen still hated Eloise for manipulating her. But was Korin right when he said that forgiving Eloise might open the way for Lisen to reach their daughter? No. The thought burned in her throat. Eloise had made choices on Lisen’s behalf with the hope that some “foreseen” future would settle into place once certain requirements had been met, and those requirements had proved so brutal Lisen rarely allowed herself to think about them. After killing her brother, Lisen had exiled Eloise to Solsta Haven, and it had taken a year after that for Lisen to understand why Eloise had sent her to Earth where she could shed all that hermit pacifism and humility she’d acquired as a child at Solsta.

  Stop! She dragged herself back to the document before her—Akdor Ba’s petition, its flood of attachments set off to the side by Nalin for further study later. Lisen didn’t know either of the Ba twins. If she’d grown up in court, she would have run into them, but she hadn’t. She’d barely even known their mother, Elak Ba, the holder of Terane. The only good thing about this case was they could finally test the new trial law she and Nalin had struggled to put into place over the last couple of years.

  She returned to Akdor’s petition. Again. He believed that as the twin pouched by the holder, he must be her heir, and yet neither she nor Nalin had found precedent for this. They’d looked first to Lisen’s claim against her brother, but unlike most twin pouchings, Lisen’s mother, Flandari, had pouched both twins herself rather than sharing the duty with Lisen’s father. Flandari had hearkened to the predictions of the sooth, Eloise—that the male twin was doomed to rule as a despot—and had sought to protect the female twin from his madness. Hence, Lisen’s own claim against her brother contained little of value as her legal battle had lain more in proving her own legitimacy than in asserting the validity of Flandari’s Decree.

  And this…is where I allow myself to become entangled in the legalities. This case brushed too close to personal experience, and she couldn’t help but desperately desire a better outcome for these two siblings than hers and her brother’s. She didn’t want either of these twins to escalate this into a fight terminating in…well, a termination.

  The door opened, and Nalin stepped in. He paused just inside the door which had closed behind him and nodded sideways towards the conference table. Lisen’s knees protested, creaking as she unfolded slowly from her chair behind the desk; at only thirty-four years out she already paid dearly for extended periods of inactivity.

  She stretched, then picked up all the documents she’d brought with her to the desk earlier this morning and carried them back to the table where she sat down at her usual place. Nalin had already taken his seat at her right hand.

  “So,” she said with a sigh as she stared at the pile of papers she’d dropped on the table, “how are you?”

  “I’m good. You look like the end of a bad day, however.”

  She waved him off with a hand. “Two weeks on the road and a run-in with Rinli early this morning.”

  “I don’t understand it. On the one hand, she seems to love you…”

  “And on the other,” Lisen countered, “she can’t stop hating me for making the only decision I could at the time.” She attempted to straighten the stack of documents in front of her. “But I don’t want to talk about that. I need to understand this Ba thing, or I’ll never be able to rein the damn case in during Council.”

  “What troubles you?”

  “Well, for one thing, there are the obvious comparisons with my situation with my brother.”

  “Which,” Nalin countered, “is one of the reasons you won’t be voting.”

  “Unless there’s a tie.”

  “There is that.”

  Any further comment from Nalin was interrupted when the door from the hall opened, and Korin stepped in, carrying a tray. He came directly to the conference table and set the tray down in front of Lisen. Hmm, buttered toast and fish, she thought.

  “Good morning, Korin,” Nalin said.

  Korin nodded. “Holder.” He turned to Lisen. “I thought I’d bring you breakfast.”

  Nalin rose. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Not necessary,” Korin said.

  “No, I insist. I’ll be in Jazel’s office when you need me, my Liege.” And cane supporting him in one hand and a document in the other, Nalin headed out through the clerk’s door.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” Lisen said as Korin sat down on her left.

  “No, but I know you’re going to hide out here all day to avoid our daughter. So, eat.”

  Lisen shrugged as she picked up a fork. “How is our daughter?” She took a bite of the delicately poached fish.

  “Angry. Refusing resolutely to cooperate.”

  Lisen dropped her fork on the plate with a clatter. “Damn it.”

  “Eat,” Korin urged and put a hand on her shoulder. “She doesn’t understand, and I don’t know how we convince her.”

  “I’m no help,” Lisen said around a bit of the crisp, warm toast.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Have you ever actually told her you do?” he asked.

  “Well… I don’t know.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “What?” Lisen asked.

  “She needs to know that before she can trust you. You have to tell her. Or, figure out an obvious and unmistakable way to show her.
”

  Lisen pushed her tray away, the fish barely touched and the toast half eaten. “I…” And then, a burning realization threatened to ravage her soul. “I’ve turned into my mother.”

  “You didn’t even know your mother.”

  “My mother abandoned me at Solsta on the word of a sooth. She accepted Eloise’s assertion that my brother would be a tyrant and rejected him, in effect, participating in grooming him for the role Eloise foretold. I abandoned Rinli to you, to Thristas, to her destiny. I’m no different from my mother.”

  “The couple of years I spent here while your mother was still alive left me with no insight as I had so little contact with her.”

  “Jozan—or maybe it was Nalin—told me they always wondered at my mother’s detachment from my brother, that it was no surprise he’d turned out the way he had. I sensed the pain of rejection as soon as I got near him.”

  Korin’s brow furrowed. “So, you’re comparing Rin to Ariel?”

  Lisen shook her head. “No. No. Thank the Creators she had you. Because I was certainly no help. I’m surprised Nas and Sen are normal. I’ve had no real time for any of them.”

  “You’ve been maintaining an empirdom. You spent years just learning how to be Empir. I had the time. You didn’t.”

  “I’ve failed them, all three of them.”

  “Tell them you love them. Tell them more than once. Mark my words. Their wounds aren’t so deep that you can’t heal them with a little love.”

  She sighed. “If you say so.” It both sweetened her feelings for him and galled her at the same time when she had to admit he was right. She should have grown accustomed to the feeling by now; his logic rarely failed.

  “You’re finished?” he asked, reaching out to the tray. “And regarding Rinli,” he said as he stood up, “you have three months before we head back to Thristas. You may still have time to reach her.” He lifted her tray from the table, then turned and headed out through Jazel’s door.

  When Nalin stepped back in, she pulled the next document from the stack, this time the petition from the brother, Mutar Ba, and centered herself back on the work in front of her and away from the distraction of her daughter. There may be two weeks remaining until Council convened, but she wanted to be fully prepared for the Ba twins and aware of the arguments which they had presented in their petitions. It was not going to be an easy session.

  Life on the desert dried people out. It was the only aspect of her world that left Madlen wishing for something different. However, if one listened to her parents, especially Regat, her mother, as Madlen was doing now at breakfast, Madlen’s life would never be complete without a spouse—a spouse other than Rinli. Rinli had been gone for nearly three weeks, and here they were, at it again. Why was it they always brought this topic up when some so-called suitable young man joined them at the table? All Madlen could do was grit her teeth and try harder than she was able to keep from voicing her vociferous opinions.

  “Don’t you agree, Tinlo,” her mother said, encouraging today’s suitable candidate, Tinlo Randa, to fall in on Madlen’s parents’ side, “that a young woman such as Madlen owes it to The Tribe to make the Farii? I mean, it’s everyone’s duty.”

  “Regat,” Tinlo answered with maximum courtesy, his lightly slanted, golden-brown eyes smiling, “I believe if a member of The Tribe doesn’t hear Mantar’s call, then that member has the right to decline The Tribe’s invitation.”

  “She’s Mantar’s Child, for the Maker’s sake,” Madlen said, no longer able to contain herself. “Who deserves my devotion more than her?” And with that, she pushed her recalcitrant loose locks of dark hair out of her face.

  “And there’s my point,” Madlen’s mother continued. “Not only can you not conceive a child in the Farii with her, but who knows if she would even be eligible to participate?”

  “And who cares? Not me. I love Rinli, and she loves me.”

  Regat threw her arms up in her usual frustration. “Arma, talk to your daughter.”

  Madlen looked at Tinlo briefly, gauging the degree of his discomfort, appreciating his charming smile but unaffected by it. Then she turned to her father who reached a hand out to touch one of hers across the table. “Madlen, you know the respect I have for Rinli’s father, and even though she’s young, she may yet tame the Thristan beast. But your mother is concerned. I’m concerned. We have no idea what will happen. If Rinli is, indeed, Mantar’s Child, there are aspects of the prophecy that none of us understands—aspects you know well, about lying as though dead and then returning to The People.”

  “No. No.” Madlen shook her head. “No one knows what that means at all. It’s just gibberish. Even Rinli doesn’t understand it. And if anybody should, it would be her, right? She is a child of the Farii, conceived of two lands for the good of The People. You can’t deny that.” She punctuated her words by crossing her arms in defiance.

  “And what about the ‘grey one’ who gives Mantar’s Child power?” her father asked.

  “Her mother?” Madlen supplied. Of course, the Empir is anything but grey, but who knows.

  “She’s mesmerized you,” Madlen’s mother blurted out in frustration. “With that mother of hers, who knows what she’s capable of.”

  “Who knows what she’s capable of as Mantar’s Child? It plays both ways, Mother.”

  Madlen could see nothing but red. Knowing that if she sat at that table one moment longer she’d start screaming, she jumped up, grabbed her half-empty plate, dropped it on the collection tray and bounded out of the dining chamber. She ran through the tunnels, navigating the maze until she reached Korin’s chamber near the bottom of the mesa. She hesitated at the doorway, then stepped in as quietly as possible. Rinli had used the chamber a few feet away that had been set aside for the Empir’s children on this visit, but to Madlen this was Rinli’s chamber and likely would become hers in fact when she settled in as a permanent, unchaperoned member of The Tribe. Madlen felt her presence here and wondered if she, too, would ever call this compact cave home.

  Mesmerized? Madlen repeated her mother’s word silently to herself. By Rin? Am I?

  The image of their farewell in the stable floated up from her memory. She hadn’t wanted to let Rinli go and knew she’d acted like a needy child. Rinli had tried patience but had finally resorted to a firm “Stop!” It was at that point that Madlen’s memory got blurry. She’d stopped, that much she knew. She’d let go and pulled away a step, but she couldn’t recall making the choice to do so.

  Maybe it was just a reaction. Yes, that’s what had happened. She’d recoiled unconsciously. Nothing, really.

  Her eyes alighted on the end of a red ribbon buried under the pallet. She gave it a slight tug, and it slid out easily. Korin never wore red even though its meaning included leadership and strength in battle, both of which he’d demonstrated. He never wore it because it was the family color of someone he didn’t trust, or something like that. Madlen couldn’t remember exactly. But Rinli wove it into her braid often; it could also symbolize Mantar’s Chosen. Although any Thristan could claim such status, Rinli owned it.

  Madlen dropped down slowly to her knees and brought the ribbon up to her nose. How long had it been since Rinli had worn this? Madlen swore she could still smell Rinli on it. Ah, Rinli. Beloved. Never harmed, never harming. She fell into a quiet trance and failed to report for her task that night.

  Lisen stood at the window in her office and stared off to the north, the grey sky glaring right back at her. It had dripped rain all day, and she wondered if it would ever let up. She recalled her days on Earth when she could watch a weatherman, or weatherwoman—or what Garlan’s might call a magician—talk about the coming weather on television, defending their predictions with maps and Doppler radar, forecasting the weather for the next week. She sighed. No such tools existed here, so whatever made it over the mountains from Bedel arrived with only the preceding clouds as forewarning.

  She’d wanted to grab Rinli and take a ride with
her this afternoon, but Jal hated it when she took Pharaoh out in the wet. His mane would kink up and require hours of combing, which Lisen always gladly assisted Jal in doing. And although neither Lisen nor Jal objected to the work, it was the stress it would put on her “baby” that distressed Lisen. Instead, she’d tried to satisfy herself with an afternoon of pondering the first draft of the agenda for the upcoming Council session, but she’d slipped into boredom at about the third item on the first day.

  So now, she stood at the window, watching the water shower down slowly from the sky, and she waited. For she had summoned Rinli anyway, Creators help her.

  She jumped as the door to the wardrobe beside her opened. She tightened her grip on her emotions, settled her startled stomach and observed Rinli descend the one step from the wardrobe to the floor. She hadn’t told Rinli about the secret passages.

  “So, I’m here,” the girl announced and strode directly to one of the chairs in front of Lisen’s desk where she promptly plopped down.

  Lisen took a deep breath, nodded a silent farewell to the rain and the sky and turned. She walked to the chair next to the one into which Rinli had settled, and she, too, sat down.

  “Rin, what’s your first memory?”

  “The desert, I suppose. Why?”

  Rinli had slouched into the chair, a posture of intentional disrespect.

  “No,” Lisen said. “Think back. Be specific. It’s important.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, then, let me tell you mine. I must have been…what…three years out? I’d been playing in the receiving yard at Solsta, picking up stones, running around, trying to rearrange my world. Some poor old hermit had been left in charge of me. Don’t ask me who. Whoever it was, I think he passed shortly after that.”

  Lisen shifted in her chair, leaned in towards her daughter. “You’ve never been to Solsta, have you. The receiving yard is just grass and ground, all fairly flat, except for one rock sticking up where there couldn’t have been as much traffic as everywhere else. So there I was, this little thing, tearing around like I was possessed by the Destroyer Itself, laughing and screaming my delight. And suddenly wham! The toe of my sandal must have caught on that rock, and I was on the ground before I felt myself falling. I hit the ground with a whack. My head spun, and as I lifted it up, I realized I had blood dripping from someplace; I didn’t know where. I started crying. I mean, between the blood and the fall, I was terrified. That stupid old hermit just got up and left me. I’d been abandoned, and I cried harder than ever.”