Trine Rising

by C. K. Donnelly

  Power grows within her. Building, consuming. Her chest aches, burns. The power demands to be freed. She must release the power.

  Shreds of clouds reveal the bloody dawn. Gabrial, the Guiding Star, slowly fades in the west over the Dar-Anar Mountains. Distant lightning flares again. Jasal’s Keep. Rage. Desolation. Agony. She grips a sword, raising it against an unseen foe. Power grows within her. She must release it. She can no longer contain it. White light. Exploding.

  Mirana screamed.

  The stable snapped back before her eyes. Her fist clutched the knife from her belt.

  ... Mirana? ... came Taddie’s sleepy call. ... Are you all right? ...

  She gasped, trying to recover her breath. It was the same attack on Two Rivers Ford, the same premonition she’d had in the healing hostel—except it all had changed. She thought she saw thousands of Ken’nar in the earlier iteration she had in the hostel, but it happened so quickly, she wasn’t even sure it was a true vision. Now, the thousands she saw were not Ken’nar at all, but Fal’kin.

  “How could I have been so wrong? I’ve never made a mistake like this before.” She gripped her head. “What is happening to me?”

  “Mirana?” Taddie jogged over to her.

  She held both his arms. “Did you see something? Just now, or-or at all today? An unbidden vision?” The boy looked down at his boots and nodded. She gave him a gentle shake. “What? Tell me.”

  “I saw I would be thrown from that gray palfrey mare your brepaithe used to ride. Bankin. I was frightened, so I didn’t exercise her as I should have.” He kept his gaze lowered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Taddie.” She held him. “Just walk her tomorrow morning. Ride her later when you feel more comfortable.”

  “You’re upset.” He lifted his face, bottom lip trembling. “With me?”

  “No.” She stared at the knife in her hand. “With me.”

  Mirana sheathed the small blade and ran from the stables. Once outside, she passed a man, his face battered by more than just the elements. His right leg, wooden from the knee down, told even more of his past.

  “Mirana? What the blazes are you doing up at this hour, girl?” he shouted as she ran past.

  “I can’t talk now, Defender Isel. Ben nöc!” She did not stop.

  “It’s more like ‘ben dia.’ If I find young Herbsman Teague loitering about again this late, it’s not me you’ll have to talk to,” he called after her. “Your father’s home, I hear.”

  Aspects Above! If only all she had to worry about was a late-night kiss from Teague.

  And not an impending calamity.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Ama u’vide tuda. Ama tudsa vide tuda.”

  (“Love blinds all. Love also sees all.”)

  —Ora Fal’kinnen 32:68–69

  Teague shifted on the frozen flagstones just outside the corridor entrance leading to his family’s rooms. He breathed on his even more frozen fingers. The springtime sleet had drifted off to the south, but the stars and the rest of the learning hall were still obscured by icy fog. The cold penetrated through the cloak he had thrown over his homespun shirt and breeches.

  He heard footsteps race up a flight of stairs. On the opposite side of the landing spanning the courtyard, a torch sprang to ruddy life, its light softened by the mist.

  Mirana emerged from the shadows. Her raven hair plastered against her forehead and neck in a rain-soaked sheet and the old woolen sweater she wore hung down to her knees with the weight of the wetness. She rushed into his arms, and he wrapped his cloak around them both.

  “I almost thought you weren’t coming.”

  “How long would you have waited?”

  He smiled down at her. “As long as it took.” He held her tighter, a very good thing as he was freezing. She had a way of making him warm up inside and out. Her body was warm against his, but she was shaking. She wasn’t cold.

  Oh no. She was scared. So, she did see something in the infirmary earlier that afternoon.

  “What is it, Miri?”

  “I saw something I don’t understand.”

  He hated it when he was right about Mirana’s fear.

  “Well, I mean I do,” she continued, “but it doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely different.” Her words came out in a rush.

  He stroked her hair. “Does this have to do with what happened with that boy Maark?” When she looked up at him, he smiled. “I knew something happened.”

  “A premonition came to me. At least I think it was a premonition. I wasn’t sure at first. Then I had it again. The same one. Now? I’m so confused. It was—” she shook her head slowly, “only it was completely different.”

  “Different? How can that be?”

  “I don’t know,” she cried into his chest. “I have to say something to my mother, but I don’t know what to tell her.”

  “The truth?”

  She stood back from him. He curled up one corner of his mouth. “I’ve never lied to her. Not in so many words. I’ve just decided to say nothing. About some things. For a while.”

  He continued to grin. “So, lies of omission are not really lies?”

  “Teague.” She glared at him.

  “All right, all right. We’ll save that debate for another day. C’mere.” He pulled her back into his arms. “What did you see that has you so upset?”

  She breathed into his chest in exasperation. “I saw two completely different versions of the same event. Or I think so, anyway. No one’s called an alarm yet, which means no one else has seen this battle. So, I’m the first to see something. Again.” She turned her face to rest her cheek against him. “Details change all the time as an occurrence gets closer to reality, but a completely different vision? That never happens. To me, anyway.”

  Teague rested his lips on the top of her head. Even wet, her hair smelled good. “So, tell your mother both versions.”

  She leaned back, frowning. “It’s not as simple as that. To figure out what’s going on, regardless if others have seen something or not, my mother and the seers would all work together to corroborate the vision. We all enter each other’s minds and look at everybody’s visions. That’s how it works. That’s how seers work together.”

  It was his turn to frown. “I know how it works. Just because I can’t do it, doesn’t mean I don’t understand it.”

  She waved her hand, dismissing his comment. “You know I didn’t mean it like that. We see everyone’s visions. And the more similar they are, the more something is likely to happen that way, right?”

  “Right.” What was she getting at?

  “And sometimes, we have to read deeply. Without an amulet, reading someone’s visions from her mind and having mine read is the only way I have to study and learn a vision.”

  Her nightmare vision. The keep. Everything for the last few summers was about Jasal’s Keep. “So you can’t risk them discovering details they shouldn’t.”

  The frustrated expression in her moonlight eyes became one of defeat. She turned into his chest once more. “They wouldn’t believe even if I told them about the keep. They’d say I got it wrong somehow.”

  “But they would see what you’d see,” he whispered into her hair. “Wouldn’t that help?”

  She let out a growl of frustration. “No. Because they wouldn’t feel what I’m feeling. Sense what I’m sensing. They’re not...me. And, on top of it all, I’m going to have to speak up about the grynwen and my warning to my father. I’m sure he’s told Maithe by now.”

  “Miri.” He held her tighter and kissed her forehead. “Why didn’t you tell her right away?”

  “I intended to. I got scared when I didn’t hear back from my father.” She frowned. “I thought, well, I thought I might have killed him.”

  “I don’t think your father is so easily killed, even if you startled him with your call.”

  He held her back from him to see her face in the diffuse torchlight. “Or maybe the real reason you haven’t told your mother is th
at you’re afraid you did the right thing? And she’d want to know more about how you did manage to call him. Which, if you told her the truth, you know full well how she’d react. She’d want you to choose an amulet. Two summers early.”

  She frowned at him and shook her head. “I can’t let that happen. At least, not yet.”

  “Not until you find a way to change your keep vision. Or avoid it altogether.” Teague exhaled, his breath turning to smoke in the damp, cold air.

  It was a keep vision, all right. It kept hold of her and never let go. And not in a good way, like he would.

  She nodded slowly and rubbed her eyes. “Besides, with Brepaithe Toban’s death just a few months ago and her having to take over the province, she’s got enough to worry about without me adding to the heap.” She let her hands drop to her sides.

  Jasal’s Keep stood in the center of the learning hall’s courtyard. Without the moon, it was an imposing black spire shrouded in the frigid gloom. Maybe she wasn’t wrong to be frightened. If he saw that monstrous thing exploding on top of him night after night, he’d probably be a bit jumpy, too. But what he could never understand—refused to—was she somehow felt responsible for the white light she claimed was destructive.

  Mirana scooped butterflies out of horse drinking troughs to save them. That hardly sounded like someone who would turn into a mass murderer someday.

  Then again, he saw what the war did to good defenders as he served in his parents’ healing hostel. The endless rampage of death turned decent people, well, not decent.

  He’d never let that happen to Mirana. She might not like it, but he was never so happy as when her parents decided she would become a hall seer instead of a battle seer serving on the front lines.

  Teague rubbed her arms, brushing some of the frost from her sweater. “Maybe you’d be removing something from your mother’s heap? I guess I can understand why you’re not ready to tell her yet you’re a Trine. But your mother’s not stupid. She knows your Seeing Aspect is as strong as it comes. She could maybe use your help.”

  She blew out her breath, its mist slowly rising in the cold, damp air. “I should have told her right away about Paithe.”

  “Probably.”

  “Now that he’s home, it’s ridiculous to pretend anymore.”

  “Definitely.”

  She rolled her eyes and huffed an irritated but amused laugh. “You’re no help.”

  He took a lock of damp, jet hair and twined it around his fingers. “No, I’m very good help. You’re just a terrible listener.”

  She put her arms around his waist. “Probably.”

  He laughed. “Definitely.”

  Teague held her in his arms in silence for a few breaths. Instead of relaxing into his embrace like she usually did, she tensed. “Mirana?”

  “Seriously, though. Does this make me a bad person?”

  He screwed his mouth into a grimace. “You’re not a bad person, but maybe keeping your warning a secret wasn’t a good thing.” He lightly kissed her forehead. “You can still come clean, you know.”

  “I know, I know. I will. Maybe she’ll just take my word for it and not pick around in my brain for more.”

  “And if she does?”

  She pushed him away. “Dammit, Teague.” She turned and strode away a few steps, her hands clenched into fists.

  Sometimes, there was no winning with her. “Ama, I didn’t mean to upset you. But it just might be time to get some help with all of this. Your warning is going to come out. And so is whatever the hell you saw in the infirmary today. Your Aspects. The damn keep thing. This is bigger than you can handle alone.” He moved closer to her. “I’d do anything to help you, you know that, but all of this might be bigger than the both of us. It’s ripping you apart. And I can’t stand to see that.”

  “You’re right.” She spun suddenly back into his arms. “Take me away. Now. Tonight. I’ll tell Mother and Father about the grynwen and these two confusing forewarnings, and then we will run to the ocean and never come back.” She pulled him by the wrist toward a stairway. “Please, let’s just go. We’ll leave everything behind. Please.”

  “Look, there are days when I hate it here at the learning hall. With all the Aspected—” He shook his head. Oh, how he’d love to leave some days. But it wasn’t like there weren’t Fal’kin—to say nothing of Ken’nar—everywhere. Deren was as much a hell as anyplace else.

  He took her hand from his wrist and held it in both of his. “Ai, you should tell them. Everything. If they start to question you about things you don’t want to answer, well, we’ll figure that out. Maybe then you can give them a proper lie.”

  “That’s not funny.” She pulled out of his arms and walked over to lean on the landing’s railing.

  He just couldn’t say the right thing tonight. “This double premonition thing. Was it a battle?”

  Once again, she tensed. “I can’t keep asking you to put yourself in danger for me. You’ve already done so much. Keeping all my secrets.”

  Huh?

  “What—?” The halted question died in a puff of frozen breath. “Danger? Because I haven’t told a soul what you asked me to keep confident? My parents aren’t that cruel.” He shrugged. “Then again, they could make me haul the healing hostel refuse to the midden pits. I do that already, though, so I guess I don’t know what they would do.”

  He rested his forearms on the walkway railing and knocked his shoulder against hers. “I was trying to make you laugh.”

  She bit her bottom lip as her eyes began to shimmer. “It’s better you don’t know.”

  Oh, Lights. The lip. She was really upset. “You’re keeping secrets from me now?”

  She covered her eyes with her hands. “I have to tell my mother. I know this. Lives are at stake.” She slapped her palms down on the railing. “If I do, though, all the rest could fall apart.”

  “So, you’re afraid if they read your mind deeply enough to understand the inconsistencies of whatever you saw, they will find out you’re a Trine? And maybe even see your vision of Jasal’s Keep?” She nodded. “You can’t be the one who brings all that destruction. You just can’t be.”

  “Then why doesn’t the vision ever change? I’ve done all I can think of to change my future in some way, but it is always the same. Always.”

  “I don’t know.” He held her shoulders then slipped his hands up to hold her face. In the flickering torchlight, her eyes shown with unreleased tears like moonlight reflecting on ice. “But I do know you are not evil or another Dark Trine or anything like that, and you never will be. If you truly want to leave, I will take you anywhere you want to go. I’d do anything for you. You know that.”

  She leaned into the warm safety of his arms. He touched his lips to her forehead, the bridge of her nose. She lifted her face to his. He bent his head down, resting his lips on hers, letting the heat of his body and his love fill her. He pressed the small of her back toward him and deepened their kiss. She opened her mouth to his, inviting him in, and he eagerly accepted. He had no Healing Aspect, but he could feel her heartbeat quicken against his chest mirroring his own passion.

  Mirana made a small gasp of surprise. “Your parents are coming.”

  Teague swore under his breath and stepped back from her.

  His father walked through the corridor door onto the landing, Teague’s mother just behind. Always a stern man, Teague adored him nonetheless for the great lengths he went to heal his patients. But he hated—hated even more than Mirana’s keep nightmare—the deep, barely discernible sadness behind his father’s stoicism when Teague couldn’t help patients himself.

  If anything would boot him out the door, it was his father’s pity.

  Teague resembled his father closely—green and brown and gold eyes like a sun-dappled forest, gilded-brown hair—but he rarely wore his father’s serious bearing. The very one his father wore right now.

  “It is late, Mirana. Unless you have an emergency that requires healing, I’d sugge
st you go back to bed. Teague, go to your room.”

  Teague kept his arm around her. “Father, can’t you see she’s upset?”

  The pale-purple sapphire in his father’s amulet began to glow. The crystal’s hue always reminded him of spring-blooming lilac lilies. Except for now. “She appears to be many things but not upset. Mirana, your father is exhausted from a very long tour of duty. I would not want to have to wake him to collect you. Go to bed.”

  “I had a nightmare, Patrua Tennen. Teague comforted me.”

  He and his parents lived above the healing hostel. The location of their chambers was very convenient for patients and very inconvenient for Mirana and him when they wanted to be alone together.

  Tennen frowned. “Apparently. Teague. Inside.”

  Teague stood his ground. “I am not a child.”

  His father planted his feet and crossed his arms, not yielding, either. “Maybe not, but you are an herbsman’s apprentice living under my roof.”

  Teague turned to his mother. “Is this about her working with me this afternoon? If Mirana is going to be a battle seer someday, doesn’t it make sense she learns some aid? The battle seer unit is the first to be hit in any attack.”

  His mother could look remarkably stern when she wanted to. “Her parents decided against her becoming a battle seer summers ago.”

  Bloody hell. He was no better a liar than Mirana.

  “Well, ai, but—”

  His mother held up her hand, silencing him, “Biraen, I’ll not have you become ill from lack of sleep and this chill air.” His mother pointed to the door. “Go.”

  He stepped closer to his parents. “You cannot make me—”

  Tennen made a slight movement with his hand. The corridor door nudged open wider. “Now.”

  “No, dammit. I’m sixteen. I might be an apprentice, but I’m not a child. I’ll see Mirana when I want to. And I’ll go to bed when I’m good and ready.”

  “Teague.” Mirana laid a hand on his arm. He let out an explosive exhale. She turned to his parents. “I didn’t mean to keep him out in this foul weather.”

  Niah drew closer to them. “You didn’t have a nightmare, did you?”