“Were you planning not to tell me about Two Rivers Ford, either?”
Mirana snapped her head up and closed her hand around the shard. “No. I swear it. I was confused. I needed some time to figure it out. I first thought our troops at the Ford were the Ken’nar.” Her shoulders slumped. “I made a mistake in interpretation. It’s not often I don’t understand what it is I am perceiving. I guess I was frightened about this, too.”
“And Teague helped you get over your fears. Would that have been before or after you went to see Tetric Garis?” her mother said. Mirana bit her lip. “I am your prime, not Lord Garis. You should have come to me first with any inkling of any vision. Mirana il’Kellis il’Pinal, what is the matter with you?”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. It did nothing to rid her of her guilt. “I am so sorry.”
Her mother sighed in bitter frustration as she sat back in her primeship’s chair. “You are no longer a little girl, and I am no longer just your mother. I am the prime of Kin-Deren province now. Not speaking to me about the grynwen attack, and now your delay in coming to me about Two Rivers Ford? These are not things I can simply forget or pass off as childish foolishness. Your interpretation skills are worthy of a seer far beyond your summers. Consequently, when you are done with your lessons each day, you will now remain with me and my senior seers. If you have any more unbidden prescience, you need not be frightened because you will be surrounded by seers who can help you.”
No. Oh, Aspects Above. What if the keep vision appeared to her while her mother and the other seers were in her mind?
Her father reached over and squeezed Mirana’s shoulder. “Desde, she was frightened she distracted me at the wrong moment when she called the warning. With Two Rivers Ford, you said yourself the vision was difficult to interpret. She did come to you only moments after speaking with Tetric. I think she knows now to never do this again.”
“If she has been seeing more than her share of unbidden visions and can call to you across hundreds of leagues but also find you while you were hidden under U’Nehíl, she will need close supervision.” Her mother spat out her words like bitter medicine.
She was angry, certainly, but she was also scared. Mirana scowled. Why was she frightened? What was going on here?
Her mother’s expression softened. Finally.
“I am not doing this to be cruel, Lightness, but you need to remember why it is so vitally important we know any scrap of information. It can save lives.” She now sent a caring notion to Mirana’s mind. “You may go.”
She nodded and walked to the door. Fear had kept her from doing her duty and coming to her mother—no, her prime—as was required by law. Fear of no longer trusting her instincts. Fear of no longer trusting herself. Fear this misstep would lead to another and another until she believed evil choices weren’t evil anymore.
Her hand lingered on the door handle. Could she tell them? Tell them what she was? Tell them the awesome and atrocious things her destiny held for her? Would they believe her?
She turned around. “I really am sorry. For everything. Father, the grynwen weren’t hunting you like a herd of deer. They were sent. I had to warn you. I had to. I also know the kind of call I made—” She swallowed. “The call I made is beyond what most Fal’kin can do. That frightened me as well. The thought I might have killed you in the end and not saved you, that is what terrified me.” She crossed her arms tightly, holding herself. “With Two Rivers Ford, Mother, I could have given you incorrect information. If I came to you with bad information, it would have been worse. I didn’t want to cause more people to die.” She tried to keep the sob in her throat from escaping, but it slipped through her clenched teeth anyway. “I don’t want people to die because of me.”
Kaarl crossed over to her and held her face in his hands. “Gannah Tesabe did not die because of you.”
Her mother rose and stroked Mirana’s hair. “You must never be afraid of what you see, ai, even if the visions are terrifying.”
The keep tower and its deadly light flared in her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered, her folded arms unable to suppress the trembling.
“Miri, what is it?” Desde asked.
“You always told me you gave up being a battle seer to raise me. It was more than that, though, wasn’t it?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear her own words. “It was all the death, too. The guilt of taking so many lives over the summers. It had left you empty inside. That’s why you thought you could never have a child, isn’t it? You thought the Aspects Above were punishing you?”
Her mother blinked, her hand now still. “What?”
Mirana inhaled. Would they understand? They had to. This burden was killing her, heartbeat by heartbeat. “Father, you fight evil every day until you know of nothing else. The bloodlust on the battlefield. It nearly overwhelms you sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes your Defending Aspect controls you more than you control it.”
She stepped out of her parents’ embrace. “I know these things about you both. I’ve seen it, heard it from you, in bits and pieces of thoughts you don’t even want to admit to yourselves. We all have horrors like that inside. All of us.”
Her mother’s eyes held concern, ai, but it was her fear that shot like an arrow through Mirana’s heart. “What are you saying, Lightness?”
“Please don’t call me that anymore.” Her words tried to fight their way out just as strongly as she was trying to hold them back. “We call the one who leads the Ken’nar the Dark Trine. Was he born evil? Did he suddenly wake up one morning and decide to turn his back on the Fal’kin and forsake the Light from Within for the Ken’nar and the Power from Without? What choices did he make in his life that led him down the path to become evil? You both are the noblest Fal’kin I know. If you can’t fight the darkness in your hearts, how can I?”
“Mirana,” her father said, “you made some mistakes and, ai, they were serious ones, but you are not evil. They were just mistakes.”
Her mother looked once more at her father, then nudged Mirana’s mind. “The Aspects Above gave us our gifts and we are compelled to use them, but they also gave us a conscience. They gave us free will.” She reached out to cup her cheek. “You are not evil. You could never be evil, biraena. Ever.”
She pulled her face away from her mother’s hand and stepped back farther. “How do you know?”
“I carried you beneath my heart for almost eight months. The Aspects Above wanted you so badly for Kinderra, they called you to be born that much sooner. Your gifts were once my gifts. I know you. I know you are not evil.” Her mother tried to smile, but her worried brow defeated the expression.
Mirana slowly opened her hand to see the piece of the broken jadelite tiger still in her palm. “Do you think the Dark Trine’s mother said the same things to him when he was young?”
Her mother reached for her father’s hand. ... Mirana ... You know we love you ... Is there something else you haven’t told us? ... Have you done something? ...
“No.” She shook her head quickly. “Why would anyone want to become the Dark Trine, the one to destroy Kinderra? I can’t even imagine what his mother and father have gone through, seeing what he’s become. If they’re still alive. Maybe it’s better if they weren’t.”
Her father held his hand out toward her. When she did not reach for it, pain shot behind his eyes, then disappeared behind the walls of his mind. “Power—seeking it above all else—turns good men into evil men. I’ve made my share of serious mistakes, but I like to believe that maybe I’ve done a little good, too. I took up an amulet summers too early so I could kill the Ken’nar who killed my parents. But I later learned it was far more satisfying to save the lives of my comrades and the Unaspected we are sworn to protect than it was to take the lives of the Ken’nar. I also want you to know this: whatever sins I have committed, I committed them to keep you safe.”
Mirana placed the jadelite shard back on her mother’s desk. ... Plea
se know I would do the same ...
CHAPTER 11
“A bhéth en aonta cin anelies ísi a bhéth en aonta cin Kin e U'Kin i’anelies aspecaem. Acceptem ísi tuda o nehíl.”
(“To join in union with another is to join in union with another soul’s Light and Dark. Acceptance is total or not at all.”)
—Ora Fal’kinnen 130:45–46
Teague ran up the last of the four hundred and thirty-eight stairs leading to the parapet at the summit of Jasal’s Keep. His heart beat faster than even the exertion could make it.
He used to love this place. He and Mirana would steal away when their lessons and chores were done for the day—and sometimes before—to sneak up the tower and look out from its heights. He hadn’t been up here in four summers. Not since Mirana had that terrifying vision the night he had broken his arm.
When he and Mirana were younger, they would race each other up the stairs to leap up and tag the divot gouged out of the door’s lintel stone. He was taller, his legs were longer. She was Aspected and therefore faster. When they were younger, they were an even match. Now, they were no longer children. He was a man. He gritted his teeth, frowning, as he held onto the parapet door to catch his breath. Well, he was trying to be a man.
“I looked everywhere for you.” He gulped a lungful of cold air as he walked over to Mirana.
She didn’t turn to him but remained facing the landscape. “How did you find me?”
He wasn’t all that surprised she hadn’t been startled at his arrival. She probably heard him coming since the first stair. She might have even sensed his presence from the moment he left the healing hostel. Aspects Above knew his thoughts were a loud, messy jumble at the moment. It was a wonder someone hadn’t stopped him already.
He leaned on the capstone railing, smiling. Hills rolled away to the south, the dun-colored stubble of cornstalks and wheat chaff emerging from the thick frost as the afternoon sun warmed the land. Soon those hills would flush green with the first of the season’s crops.
“The padlock on the door was open. I don’t know why they even use one. It’s not like it will keep any of you out.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Her face held no emotion, and her voice was just as flat. Something was wrong. Mirana usually ran into his arms if no one was around.
“Neither should you.”
“If your parents catch you here, you’ll be in trouble.”
“So will you.”
“I’ve been granted a momentary reprieve from my sentence to eat. My mother and her seers are now to watch me like bloodhawks on a field mouse. After the grynwen and everything else, I don’t blame her.” She turned to him at last. “You really shouldn’t be seen with me. Your mother and your father made it perfectly clear they didn’t want you near me.”
Maybe that was why she was troubled. She had gotten the same bloody talking-to he had. “No,” Teague said as one side of his mouth arched upward into a scoundrel’s grin, “they didn’t want you near me. They never told me I couldn’t be near you.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. He nudged her with his elbow. “C’mon. That was supposed to make you laugh.”
At last, she gave him a sliver of a smile. “I think your distance was implied.”
That was better, but he wanted her happy. He had a lot of talking to do. “I’ve been granted a bit of a stay of sentence myself. I’m on my way to fetch some tallow from the kitchens for poultices.”
A light breeze ruffled the waves of his hair. She reached up to smooth them back. That was much, much better. He loved it when she played with his hair. “Your mother and the other seers had a vision before dawn of a battle at Two Rivers Ford. They told my parents and the rest of the hall this morning. That’s what you saw, isn’t it? In the healing hostel yesterday, and last night? That’s what you were upset about.”
She nodded. “I told my mother what I saw, but I ran into Lord Garis first.” She gave a small laugh. “Literally.”
He leaned back from her in surprise. “And you told him?”
She frowned. “I didn’t have much of a choice, but, ai, I told him what I saw.”
He reached for her hand, her fingers were cold against his palm. “Everything?”
“Of the Ford, ai.” She pulled her hand away and brushed the remaining frost from the stone. She then slammed her fist on the stone.
He started at her gesture. This wasn’t like Mirana. This wasn’t like Mirana at all. “What’s going on? What else aren’t you telling me?”
“Teague, I completely misinterpreted what is to happen at Two Rivers Ford.” She lightly pounded the stone with both fists now. “That’s never happened to me before.” She leaned over the parapet wall and looked down. “Is this the start of it all? Is this where I begin to lose my ability to do good?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
He followed her gaze but couldn’t see anything interesting other than it was a long way down. A long way. A water bucket by the courtyard’s well looked like a thimble. He turned back to her and noticed the pallor of her face. Dark circles under her eyes marred the diamond-bright beauty he so wanted to see right now.
He reached for her, but she leaned away from him. She had never before refused his embrace. The fluttering chill that suddenly decided to make a nest in his stomach had nothing to do with the cold air. Did she already know what he wanted to ask her? Had she already thought of an answer?
“What if I misunderstand something else, something important? Something where people could die?” She bit her lip. Oh, no. She only did that when she was upset. “Maybe you really should leave.”
Surely, she knew how he felt about her. He would say it to her once again, so she could hear it with her ears as real words, not magically mediated perceptions. “I don’t care what you see or don’t see. I don’t care what you think your destiny holds for you. I’m not going to stop being with you. Ever.”
The wind blew a silken ebony lock of hair across her face. When she made no move to brush it away, he did. Her expression, though, remained strained, even frightened. That frightened him. “Miri?”
She let her breath out and watched it for a moment as it rose toward the keep’s crowning pinnacle. “Why were you looking for me anyway?”
Oh, this was so not going the way he had planned, and certainly not the way he had hoped. If only he could get her to smile again. “You were pretty upset last night. I wanted to see how you were doing. And,” he leaned in closed, grinning, his body touching hers, “we were interrupted.” Mirana blushed, chasing away a bit of the paleness. Hope shall remain, the good book said. “I wanted to find you to give you something.” He dug into his belt pouch. “I made it for your birthday. I know it’s still a few sevendays away.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. After everything, I thought now might be an even better time.”
He placed a small pendant in her hand. Three tiny flowers, their yellow petals deepening to red in the center, were pressed between two thumbnail-sized plates of colorless mica. A crudely crafted thin frame of gold sealed the edges.
Mirana opened her mouth and, for a moment, he couldn’t tell if she was happy or horrified. “Teague, I—Gratas Oë.”
He had known his entire life he wanted to spend each of Mirana’s birthdays with her—and every other day in between.
“I made it myself. It’s not very good. I know the gold leaf is uneven, but I hoped you’d like it anyway. It took me sevendays. I kept breaking the mica. I hoped to find a gold chain or at least a silk cord to string it on, but maybe this will do.” He unlaced the leather cord from his tunic. He took the pendant from her and threaded the cord through, then placed it around her neck.
She touched it as it lay over her heart. “This the most precious gift I’ve ever received.”
The chill that sat in his stomach now flew up into his throat, thudding along with his heartbeat. “It’s no amulet, I know. Or a gold band.” He placed his hand over hers, feeling her heartbeat against his fingertip
s. He searched those silver eyes, the ones he knew so well. He wanted to lose himself in them forever. In truth, he already had.
“A gold band? You want to join in union? For forever? With me?”
He laughed. “You say it like I’m the one who’s settling for something less. I’m the one who’s Unaspected.”
“That’s never mattered to me. You know that. But I’m a Pinal.” She traced the outlines of the pendant with a finger. “And a liar.”
“And now, according to your mother, apparently a felon.” He and Mirana both laughed. He pulled her close and rested his forehead against hers. “I know we’re still too young, but it’s my pledge to you for the future. Our future.”
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you. More than anything.” She rose on her toes and met her lips with his.
He made her happy, and that made him happy. No, it made him ecstatic. Mirana once told him that she could feel what he felt when they kissed—emotional and otherwise. He slid his hands up to hold her face and drank in her kiss, parting her lips with his. He didn’t want this moment to end, but all too soon it would. That was the whole reason why he wanted to see her now. He might not get another chance. That fluttering bird of cold plummeted back down his throat, past his belly, and into his limbs.
She pulled back from him slightly. “What’s wrong?”
He parted from her and turned to stare at the railing to avoid her gaze. It didn’t work. From the corner of his eye, he saw her staring at him. Who knew those starlight eyes of hers could rest so heavily on him? “I just wanted to let you know all of this before I left.”
She scowled. “Where are you going?”
He took a breath before answering. This was the other thing he needed to do to be a man. Whether he’d live long enough to become one was another matter entirely. “I am going with my parents to the Ford.”
“What?” She grabbed his arm.
Trine Rising Page 13
