Trine Rising

by C. K. Donnelly

  She threw the spoon down on the table and rubbed her face. No. She squeezed her eyes shut behind her hands. No, her father was not dead. She would know if he was. She would know it in her heart, in her Aspects.

  She laid her hands on the workbench, calming herself.

  No. No, she didn’t have an amulet. She couldn’t be that powerful without one, could she? Just because she had all three Aspects didn’t mean she had to use them, right? She could remain the seer everyone thought she was. Ai, she was a seer, maybe a powerful one, but a seer. Ai, that Aspect and only that Aspect would be the one she claimed. Aspects Above knew she’d never claim aloud to being a Trine.

  Mirana retrieved the spoon, then scooped more in several waiting containers. How come she didn’t feel unburdened by her decision? She did save her father by seeing a vision. She saved her father.

  The spoon hovered over a jar.

  What would her mother do if she had been successful and saved their lives?

  What if her father returned home, whole and safe, because she accomplished something almost no other Aspected individual in Kinderra could do? Her mother was Seer Prime Desde Kellis Pinal, leader of all of Kin-Deren province’s Fal’kin. She might ask her to choose an amulet early, that’s what she might do.

  Mirana bit her bottom lip as she stoppered the jar and selected another empty one.

  She slapped heaping dollops of numbweed into the container, spilling some on the workbench. Could she honestly ignore her Healing Aspect? She would always try to save her father’s life. Anyone’s life. To willingly let someone die when such a thing could be prevented was unthinkable. More than just her duty, she wanted to use her gifts for the good of Kinderra. Desperately.

  Should she have told her mother what had happened? Should she tell her now, after so many days? What would her mother do if her father had been injured—or worse—because of her call? Or—or what if her call itself had killed him, ripping his mind to cut through his cover.

  What if instead of saving him and the others from death, she had caused it?

  The medicine jar fell from her hands, smashing on the stone floor and spilling salve around her feet. “Oh!”

  “Mirana, dear, perhaps a little more attention on your jar and a little less on daydreaming,” Gemma cautioned, coming out of the storage room in the back of the apothecary.

  “I’m sorry. It slipped. My fingers are numb.”

  The herbswoman handed her a rag and a scullery pan. “That’s why it’s called numbweed. Don’t get any more on you, or your whole arm will fall asleep.”

  The woman pushed a graying black curl back up into her haircloth and gathered from the table several of the small jars Mirana had already filled with the viscous analgesic ointment.

  A particularly loud thunderclap boomed through the hallway outside the hostel. Gemma’s dark-skinned face creased in a wince at the noise. “Not exactly the spring weather for daydreams. Then again, unlike mine, your dreams actually come true.”

  Mirana hesitated in mopping up the spent salve and pottery shards. Dear Aspects Above, she didn’t want any of her dreams to come true. Ever.

  “What did you study today with your mother?” Gemma asked.

  “We analyzed the Battle of the Vale i’Dúadar.” She groaned in not-quite-feigned disgust. “For the life of me, I don’t know why we call it a victory. It was a bloodbath.” She brushed the pieces of pottery from the pan into a copper waste bin, where they fell with a declamatory crash.

  The herbswoman wore a grim expression of her own. “Ai, it was. But it was a victory, too. Thousands of Fal’kin forces from three provinces had hidden in the mountains surrounding the valley to turn back an incursion of Ken’nar. The ambush they set up sent the black-armored bastards packing. It was more than ten summers before those vermihn mounted anything close to a serious attack after that.” She carried the filled jars to the storeroom.

  Ambush. Mirana hated that word. She flexed her hands, her fingers tingling from where she had touched some of the numbing salve. Recalling the grisly images her mother had projected through her amulet during their lesson earlier that day, the Fal’kin façade worked brilliantly. The Ken’nar, however, did not give up easily. Thousands on both sides were killed before the dark-armored warriors were finally forced into a bloody rout.

  “You were there?” she asked as she wiped up the spilled salve on the workbench.

  “Ai,” Gemma said from the storeroom. “It’s been thirty summers now. I was twenty-five before I tended patients on the battlefield for the first time. My parents were killed by the Ken’nar when I was a few summers younger than you. Traders from Kana-Akün found me.” She returned with a clean rag. “Healer Prime Belessa Tir herself finished my herbswoman’s training. It was a long journey from growing up in Jad-Anüna to practicing here in Kin-Deren. I’d like to think my parents would be proud.”

  Mirana looked at the woman with even more admiration than she already held for her. Teague’s parents, Fal’kin Healers Tennen and Niah Beltran, might be the Priore’e of the infirmary, but the herbswoman had no shortage of lives she, too, pulled back from the brink of death. If Gemma Piaar had survived that battle, she could survive just about anything. No wonder she had been named senior herbswoman of Kin-Deren’s healing hostel.

  “I only sew up wounds with linen, so watching the Beltrans and their Healing Aspect was a sight to behold,” the graying herbswoman continued, her gaze resting on a pile of clean bandages at the corner of the workbench. “Niah and Tennen were so young then, just a few summers older than you, but the lives they saved that day was nothing short of miraculous.”

  After a moment, she gave her shoulders a little shake and straightened them. “I don’t understand how you seers can ever tell much from a vision.”

  If the swift topic change wasn’t clear enough, the distinct impression Mirana received not to ask further questions about the vale certainly was. Fine by her. Studying every gory nuance for hours on end with her maithe and her fellow seer scholaire’e was more than enough.

  “You can tell plenty,” she replied. “The angle of the sun or the position of the stars tell you when an event occurs, sometimes even a precise date. Landmarks like mountains or rivers can give you a location. You can even compare a vision of one army against a mind’s eye impression of an army of known size and get an estimate of troop counts.” She looked down at the rag in her hand. “That is, if you have an amulet. Maithe and the senior seers sometimes call a memory or a vision directly to our minds, but more times than not they just send it out through their amulets and the images hang there in the air.” Like ghosts.

  Gemma wrapped an arm around her and hugged her. “Don’t worry, sweetling. You will have an amulet of your own soon. Just two more summers, isn’t it? I can’t believe it—you’ve grown up so quickly.”

  Cold fear stabbed through Mirana. She must not choose an amulet. Not unless she found a way to become who she wanted to be, rather than what the skeins of the future portended she could be.

  She frowned, hoping the older woman hadn’t noticed her reaction. “Grown older, ai, but not exactly ‘up.’”

  The herbswoman laughed. “I guess you’ve caught up now as much as you’re ever going to. I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for a bit less than your maithe’s stature. You were so small when you were born, I could almost fit you in my palm. You might have come to us early, but you certainly did not come willingly. Your maithe labored a full night and day. Stubborn little kit you were, even then.” She gave her another squeeze and released her.

  Why did they always bring up the circumstances of her birth, as if she should be proud of the agony she caused her mother? She didn’t ask to be born, certainly not born with the Aspects. Sometimes, she wished she hadn’t been born at all.

  Another presence drew near. A flight of sunlarks took to wing in her stomach as she recognized the young man before the sound of his footsteps reached her ears.

  Teague sped into the apothecary.
Seeing the other woman, he slowed to a more sensible pace. He shook the rain-soaked hair out of his eyes. “Ben dië, Senior Herbswoman. Mirana.”

  She smiled broadly. “Teague.” She caught Gemma’s raised eyebrow and eased her mouth into a more sensible grin.

  The herbswoman’s grin, however, remained. “Miri, I thought your maithe had you helping out in the kitchens after your lessons today.”

  Teague began to place lids on some of the jars she had filled. How could hands be so gentle yet so strong at the same time? And warm. And tender. When they touched her arm, her face. What would his caress feel like when he, at last, touched her—

  “Mirana?” Gemma nudged her elbow.

  She shook herself. “What? Sorry. I already did. I think I peeled every potato in the province. My fingers are permanently curled from holding a paring knife. After studying a battle all day, I didn’t even want to look at another knife. So, when I finished in the kitchens, I came here.”

  “Ai, of course. Completely understandable, as there are no sharp instruments here.” The herbswoman gestured to a set of gleaming scalpels on a tray on the workbench. “Young Master Beltran, help our potato peeler fill her jars, would you?” She left through the apothecary door to see to her patients in the adjacent convalescence room, chuckling as she passed them.

  “Have you heard from your father yet?” Teague asked once Gemma was out of earshot.

  The question was simple. The answer, however, was far from it. She shook her head.

  “Are you worried? I mean, really worried?”

  “No. Maybe.” She sighed. “I don’t know. If only he had called—” She stiffened and cocked her head for a moment, sensing something.

  Pain. Nausea. Fear. Anger. Bleeding. Bleeding. Bleeding.

  He moved closer. “What is it?”

  She quickly looked over her shoulder. They were still alone. “There’s a patient. He’s hurting. It’s a deep cut of some kind.”

  “Teague? Would you come here a moment?” Niah Beltran summoned her son from the convalescence room.

  He nodded, handing Mirana a lid. She covered a jar and followed him out of the apothecary.

  “What is it?” he said entering the patient wardroom. Gemma and the learning hall’s quartermaster held worried expressions as they stood next to his mother.

  On a cot, lay a boy Mirana and Teague’s age. The youth was pale and sweaty. His left forearm was wrapped in a cloth soaked through with blood.

  “This is a good one for you to attend to, Teague,” Niah said. “The laceration on his arm is deep. It will be good suture practice for you. Just use plenty of numbweed for your deeper sutures.”

  Teague’s parents were her own parents’ closest friends, nearly family in their own right. She shared Matrua Niah’s jet-black hair and admired its thick waves much more than her own poker-straight tresses. What she appreciated the most, however, was the healer woman’s honest and reassuring smile. Teague had Patrua Tennen’s lighter coloring, not his mother’s rich, caramel skin from the southern province of Tash-Hamar. He and his father both had hazel eyes—even a dusting of freckles across the nose when they saw too much sun—but his warm expression was a perfect reflection of his mother’s. It was one of the qualities she adored most about him.

  At the moment, the wounded boy looked like he needed smiles from both the mother and the son.

  Niah pulled back her hair, tightening it into a coil at the nape of her neck, and rolled up her sleeves. “What happened to him?” she asked the quartermaster.

  “I found him lying in the street by the markets,” Haarlen Lasen replied. “He didn’t want to come.” His frown sank into cheeks turned apple-red from summers manning the learning hall’s kitchen hearths.

  Teague’s mother sighed. “It is a sentiment that grows regardless of who wins battles.”

  Gemma’s eyes widened as she pointed to the large man’s shirt. “I’ll bet you did more than just find him in the street.” A long tear rent the fabric. One that might have been made protecting oneself—or someone else—from a large knife. “You’re a good man, Haarlen.”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Let me know how he does.”

  The healer woman nodded. “I will.”

  The quartermaster grinned down at the boy, the expression nearly buried within his bushy brown beard, and left the wardroom.

  Mirana blinked as a memory flashed from the boy’s mind to hers. He had tried to steal some bread from a vendor in Deren’s markets. The baker was not about to have his wares pilfered by a street orphan. The dough knife he’d used on the boy was meant to take off his hand.

  The herbswoman was right. Quartermaster Haarlen was a good man. How many others would have left the young thief in the street as just another petty criminal?

  As Matrua Niah carefully unwrapped the cloth from the youth’s forearm, the rose quartz amulet around her neck began to glow a soft pinkish hue.

  The boy snatched his arm back from her. “Let go of me.” His breath came in short bursts through clenched teeth.

  Mirana grimaced and caught Teague’s gaze. Obviously, the young thief was terrified and in a good deal of pain, but underneath those emotions she sensed anger. More like fury.

  The healer sat back and put her hands on her lap where the boy could see them. “You can relax now. You are safe here. You’ve got yourself a nasty cut. I want to help you.”

  The injured youth recoiled in fear and hissed in pain. “You’re one of them.”

  Mirana winced, this time from the thief’s comment. Unaspected, like the boy, didn’t have powers to protect themselves. They could not see the skeins of time to know when an attack would occur, they could not heal injuries hundreds of times faster than letting nature do the work, and they could not defend themselves with amulet fire.

  The Ken’nar ransacked the homes and farms of the Unaspected for food, horses, livestock, supplies, and anything that could be melted down in a smithy fire to create weapons. If the Unaspected resisted, they were killed. Sometimes, they were killed anyway. Killed by their own life forces fueling the very amulets that struck them down.

  After three thousand summers, could no one find a way to end the war between the Ken’nar and Fal’kin? The people the Fal’kin were sworn to protect often suffered the most.

  “Ai. I am a Fal’kin healer,” Niah replied. “This is my biraen, Teague. I would like him to care for you if that’s all right.”

  The boy eyed Teague fearfully. “Your son? Where’s his amulet?”

  The healer woman looked down at her hands resting in her lap. “My son heals in a different way.”

  “Mother, please.” He turned to the youth. “I don’t have an amulet. I’m not old enough but that doesn’t matter. I’m not ‘one of them.’ I’m like you. I don’t have the Aspects. I heal, well, the regular way.”

  “He will have you as good as new in no time.” Matrua Niah moved over to make room for her son. “Mirana, dear, you might want to leave.”

  More impressions pushed at her Aspects. The boy’s mental state was as concerning as his physical injury. “I’d like to stay and help if I could.” She glanced at Teague. “It’s good for everyone to learn some healing skills, even, um, seers, isn’t it?”

  ... The boy is frightened enough of us Aspected ... I don’t want you to upset him even more ... Teague’s mother called to her mind.

  ... I have no amulet, either ... Maybe he won’t be so frightened of me ... she returned. ... I just want to help ...

  Niah regarded her for a moment. “You may spend as much time here as your parents will allow.” Her dark brown eyes glinted with humor. “Provided you learn.”

  Mirana turned her face away from the healer to pick at a hangnail on her thumb. “I do learn so much here.”

  “All right. You may stay and help. Get a basin of clean water and some fresh bandages. Teague, what else do we need?” He rattled off a list of other supplies. “Did you get that, Mirana?”

  “Ai.” She
hurried and gathered the supplies from the apothecary. When she returned, she set down an additional jar. “I brought some allium tincture as well. The cut is so deep, there will be a risk of infection. Teague says it works better than strained honey alone,” she added with a smile.

  A dark eyebrow rose in Niah’s face. Teague grinned and nodded. “I think I got this.”

  Now, a corner of his mother’s mouth lifted like her eyebrow. ... He needs to practice his stitches ... “You come get me if he runs into any trouble.”

  Oh. No.

  Did his mother suspect she had the Healing Aspect? Or did she think she was just here to dally with her son? Was it too late to run from the infirmary? Probably. She couldn’t move anyway because panic bound every limb. She swallowed and forced a smile.

  “Ai, Healer Niah, of course.” She nodded vigorously. Maybe too vigorously.

  “Gemma, let’s get more of those bundles of thyme and mint ready,” the healer woman said. “With this damp weather, it’s a wonder the entire hall hasn’t come down with croup.” She rose to leave and squeezed Mirana’s shoulder. ... I am here for you, too, if you need me ... Always ...

  She did not return the healer’s call but focused instead on the boy’s wound. His forearm had been sliced open down to the muscle. Thankfully, no bones were exposed. She had taught herself to control others’ pain without an amulet over the past few summers. It was difficult, at the limits of her abilities, but possible. Holding the youth’s pain at bay from such a deep wound would require considerably more effort than she was used to, however. This was by far the most serious injury she and Teague had worked on together. Matrua Niah was one of Kinderra’s few Fal’kin healers. Could she do it without Teague’s mother or anyone else noticing? She bit her lip.

  She glanced around the spacious convalescence room. A few patients lay in cots and appeared to be asleep. Three other herbsfolk tended them while an apprentice made up a cot with fresh linens. They were all busy enough not to notice her. Good. She took a breath. They were safe.