Trine Rising

by C. K. Donnelly

  “They expect a victory, but there will still be wounded. Gemma and a few of the others will remain here at the healing hostel. Most of the herbsfolk, however, are headed to the Ford.”

  Mirana shook her head. “You can’t go. You could be killed.”

  It was one thing if he thought it, quite another if she did. Mirana had the annoying tendency to always be right. “Gratas. Thanks for the encouragement, unskilled Unaspected wretch that I am.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” She held his other arm now, too. “You can’t go. It’s too dangerous.”

  He pulled himself away from her. “What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t think I can survive because I don’t have the Aspects?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t mean that at all. Teague—”

  “This is what I’m supposed to be doing as an herbsman. Someday, anyway.”

  Her eyes remained wide in shock. “I can’t believe your parents are making you do this.”

  He started to say something but gave up in frustration and now looked out on the thawing fields himself. She had asked him last night to take her away, begged him. He wanted nothing more than to build her a little cottage someplace, maybe on the bluffs of Parsalon overlooking the sea, where they could care for the countryfolk together. He would never be able to have her as his wife, to make a life for her, if he didn’t learn how to take responsibility for his own life first.

  He couldn’t fight demons he couldn’t see like Mirana could, he wasn’t Aspected. He could only fight the ones he could see and, only then, if he knew what they were. She was a Trine, and someday when the Ken’nar found out about her, he would need something more than a poultice to protect her.

  “They aren’t making me. I volunteered to go,” he said finally. “I demanded it, actually.”

  She leaned forward into his view. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “It makes sense if you think about it. If I am skilled enough to train someone else, it’s high time I put my knowledge into practice. If I stop acting like a child, my parents will stop treating me like one. They’re going to have to start respecting my choices.”

  He scooped up some of the remaining frost and compacted it between his palms into a tiny snowball. He threw it down toward the stone pavers below in the courtyard. She thrust out her hand. The snowball hung suspended in mid-air. He glared at her. She released it, letting it fall to the pavers below where it spattered into icy dust.

  “By choices, you mean me,” she said. “Oh, Light Above, I would never want to come between you and your family. You have nothing to prove to me or anyone else by going to Two Rivers Ford. Teague, don’t do this. Least of all for me.”

  “It’s not just for you.” He laughed sadly. “Well, ai, it is, mostly, but I’m doing this for me, too. I want to be strong for you.”

  She gripped his arms again, tighter this time. “You are strong for me.”

  “No, I’m not. Or I guess I don’t know if I am or not.” He raised his hands to hold her. “The only way you truly know a sword’s mettle is to test it in combat.”

  “You are not a sword!” Her breath ascended into the cold air with the force of her words.

  He gave her a strained smile. “Not yet.” Her face remained pulled taut in disbelief. “You’re not laughing at any of my jokes today.”

  “This is not funny. This is the least funny thing there could be.” Her shoulders fell. “I don’t need you to be a weapon for me. I don’t need your protection. All I need is you.” She drew a ragged breath.

  Oh, Lights! Was she going to cry? Had he made her cry? “Maybe not today, but someday you’re going to need help. Even a Trine is just one person.”

  Mirana held his pendant. “You shouldn’t be going to the Ford. I should be the one going. Maybe it’s best if we’re apart from each other for a while. My life has become such a nightmare. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Her hand dropped to her side.

  Teague’s heart fell along with it. “We shouldn’t be gone that long, but that’s not the point.” He reached for her again. “You can’t hurt me.”

  “I would never want to. Ever.” She refused to let him pull her back into his embrace and turned from him. “Why can’t I just disappear like your snowball?”

  Rank dread now replaced the fluttering chill. It was hot, sitting there in his belly, and far worse. “What are you talking about?”

  She was silent for a moment, her gaze fixed on the southern horizon. “Have you ever been to the ocean?”

  He scowled as concern fought for his attention with his confusion. “What? Ai, a few times with my parents. We’d sail occasionally when they went on their sabbaticals to Tash-Hamar. The only way their provinces allowed them to join in union was if my mother came home to heal the sick there once in a while. But I don’t see—”

  “It’s wide. Oblivious,” she replied, not listening to him. “It doesn’t know who I am or what I do, or even care.”

  He reached for her, but she stepped back from him and hugged herself. “Miri, you’re not making any sense.”

  “Nothing’s changed.” Her voice had dropped so low, he could barely hear her. “Which means everything’s changed. It has to. I have my own choices to make.” She turned around to stare up at the keep’s pinnacle. “Maybe we—” she swallowed loudly, “Maybe we aren’t such a good idea after all.”

  The keep. Her damn keep vision! Because of that racking vision, she believed she would lay waste to Kinderra. It had to be wrong. She wasn’t capable of that kind of evil. He knew her. She was the most loving person he knew. She fought herself every time she walked into the healing hostel to help him with patients, even though it terrified her to do so. Those weren’t the actions of a demon bent on wielding death. They were the actions of someone trying to do the right thing, the good thing. The Light thing.

  Worried, he moved closer. “Maybe it’s time to tell your parents what you are. Maybe it’s even time to let them know about the keep.”

  “How can you even suggest such a thing?” She groaned in frustration. She hid her face in her hands a moment, then threw them back down.

  “I want to help you. I think you know that,” he said. “Please listen to me. My parents know we’ve been doing some sort of healing together. How long do you think it’s going to be before they tell your parents? We can’t hide anymore.”

  She spun back to face him. “Hiding the fact that I’m a Trine is what’s saving everyone from me right now.”

  “Tell your parents about your Aspects,” he pleaded once again. “We’ll find a way to deal with whatever happens. I won’t let you go through this alone.”

  “Don’t you understand? I am alone.” She held her arms out in an appeal. “Don’t you think I want to tell my parents? Don’t you think I want help to stop all of this? For Aspects’ sakes, Teague, I’m trying desperately to honor who I am called to be, yet avoid who I am to become!” Tears began to shimmer in her silver eyes. “I tried to tell your parents. But if they don’t believe in us, believe that we can overcome any hardships, how will they believe that I’m going to cause all of this?” She slammed her hand down on a parapet capstone. “I even tried to tell my parents earlier. I want to tell them, but I can’t. My father still calls me ‘his tiny child.’ By the Light, it’s like he still sees me as that infant born two months early sometimes. They won’t believe me. They would never believe me. Even you don’t. How do you expect them to?”

  “Mirana—”

  “If I told them I was a Trine, they would demand I choose an amulet immediately, and choosing would lead to this damned watchtower exploding and death and nothingness!” She threw her hands out to her sides. “To prevent that from happening, I would have no other choice than to leave in exile. What then, Teague? My Aspects will still speak to me. I can run away from every Fal’kin and Unaspected on the continent, but I can’t outrun my Aspects. What if I see my father’s life threatened again? Or someone innocent like Maark Bedane?
Or-Or you? I’m living in the wilds of Kinderra somewhere. What then? Do I ignore what I see, what I sense? Do I ignore the fact I could help? Do I let my father die this time? Do I let you—” She curled her fingers into fists. “No matter what I do, people will die. My Aspects have given me a birthright without honor. They have left me with a life I cannot live.”

  Teague rushed over and wrapped his arms around her, but she did not return his embrace. He held her closer still and whispered into her dark hair, “You think this is what will happen, but you don’t know for sure. You’ve never truly told anyone the whole of it except me. Tell. Your parents.”

  “Teague—”

  “Maybe they actually will believe you. If they don’t, well, you’re not much worse off than you are now. We’ll leave. Together.”

  The tension melted from her body. That was good. Wait. Now, she felt completely limp. That was bad.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe they will believe me. They and all the Fal’kin will drag me out beyond the Great Gates. Their amulets will solve everything.” She laughed, a cold one he’d never heard her make before. She turned, peering out over the vista. “Everyone would be safe then. You’ll be safe. Maybe that would be for the best. For everyone.”

  His brows drew together in confusion. “What do you mean?” When she didn’t answer, he held her back from him. “You’re joking. Right?” She was joking. She had to be. She better be.

  “Of course, of course.” She waved him off, however, she wouldn’t meet his eyes. In fact, she wasn’t looking at anything, just sort gazing past his shoulder.

  He pulled her close once more and held her fiercely. “I know you are not evil. I know you will never become evil. Mirana, you don’t really know what your keep vision means. Talk to your parents. We’ll see this through together.”

  She pushed him away, gentle but resolute. “Go tell your parents you spoke out of turn. Stay here and help Gemma prepare supplies. There is much to do before the Fal’kin leave.”

  “Mirana.”

  “Please leave me.”

  Tears began to scald his eyes. “I love you.”

  “Leave me.”

  When Teague reached the stairwell door, he paused and turned around. He watched her take off his pendant—along with the promise it held—and put it into her belt pouch.

  She fought demons he could not see and never would. No matter how hard he tried.

  CHAPTER 12

  “In the stillness before the war horns sound is the true moment of decision: Will you answer the Aspects’ call or the call of fear?”

  —The Book of Kinderra

  A raindrop splattered on the back of Mirana’s hand. It blew in from the small clerestory window high up in the seer’s training room. On sunny days, light would pour through the opening to form a tightly focused shaft ending in a brilliant square in the center of the floor. Today, however, it only focused the rain from the spring storm.

  The weather had finally changed, bringing warm wind and downpours. It melted the ice. It saturated the roads. It drowned the new crops. She brought her hand to her mouth and sucked off the drop. It was no better than winter.

  The bare room featured no decorations or furniture, nothing to distract a seer from visions. Unfortunately, the sparseness of the room only left her with her thoughts to consume her.

  She tried to pay attention to her mother’s lesson, as the other twelve seer scholaire’e around her were, but her mind kept drifting. Uneasiness about the Two Rivers Ford visions continued to prickle her mind over the last sevendays like a splinter just below the skin—always nagging but impossible to remove.

  Lord Garis had said she couldn’t possibly have gotten accurate information from her first viewing of the Ford vision, the one where she thought she had seen thousands of Ken’nar. Aspects Above knew she didn’t see every vision the other seers did. She couldn’t without an amulet, even if she wanted to. Her Seeing Aspect, however, had only been part of what had led her to believe a Ken’nar horde of that size would attack the garrison. Her other gifts added to her convictions—the sense of so very many bloodthirsty lives around her mediated by her Defending Aspect, the sudden stillness of life notes amplified by her Healing Aspect.

  Not once, though, had she misinterpreted a vision she did see. Not once. Had she lost what little control she had of her Aspects? Whatever hope she had begun to feel from Lord Garis melted away like frost in a warm rain shower.

  Her mother called images of Two Rivers Ford to Mirana’s mind and the minds of the other young seers, as much to teach and test them as to perhaps have them reveal some unnoticed detail of information the Kin-Deren Fal’kin could use to their advantage against the Ken’nar.

  The scenes her mother sent were the same ones Mirana had been seeing for sevendays. Nothing had changed. How could she be wrong when she had sensed so much with all three of her Aspects? Yet, she had not seen, had not sensed, anything like the thousands of Ken’nar again.

  “As I view this scene, can anyone give me an estimate of how many Ken’nar he or she sees?” her mother asked. Her voice sounded soft, mesmerizing. Her yellow topaz glowed, spilling golden light around the room.

  “Five hundred. Maybe five hundred and fifty,” Pelen said. He had not stopped talking about all the frightening images he would conjure up with his amulet to terrify the Ken’nar on the battlefield when he chose next summer. Why couldn’t she feel like that—excited and eager to choose an amulet and use it? “The number of Ken’nar troops at the Ford appears to be similar to their forces at the Dawn Point Incursion of 3358.”

  Her mother nodded. “Excellent. That has been our estimate as well.”

  Pelen’s observation was right. Only a few hundred Ken’nar appeared to ride on the Ford now, as had been foreseen for sevendays. How could there possibly be two completely different versions of the attack on Two Rivers Ford and both still be correct?

  One of the very few skills in which she once had placed her confidence was her ability to interpret what she saw. Now, she no longer trusted herself. How many more visions would she not understand correctly?

  “Can anyone surmise from where the Ken’nar have come?” her mother questioned.

  “From the north. The span of that bridge is narrower than the other one. It’s the Garnath River bridge,” Yenira said. “Also, we heard from the defenders Ken’nar entered the Kana-Akün interior during the winter. Perhaps they came from Falantir, its capital.” The older girl was always so smug, but Mirana supposed she had every right to be. She, too, was seldom wrong in her predictions.

  Desde nodded. “Ai. Good. We believe that as well. You are more than ready for your amulet, Yenira.”

  The girl sat back, smiling in satisfaction.

  Teague would be going. Even five hundred Ken’nar would fight viciously. What if there would be ten times as many, like at the Vale i’Dúadar? She ground her knuckles in the rough stone pavers, wanting the pain to blot out the thought.

  “Landmarks like mountain ranges are also good reference points,” her mother said. “Although it helps if there are recognizable peaks or a profile. Closer in, well, one rock ledge can look pretty much like another.”

  Mirana wiped her bloody knuckles on the sleeve of her father’s woolen tunic that engulfed her over her clothes. The spring weather was too warm for such a heavy sweater, but she hadn’t put it on for warmth. She put it on to be comforted. It wasn’t working well for that either. Her father had been named interim Steward of the Quorum of Light. Would he stay in Deren or head to the Ford with Kin-Deren’s provincial troops and the il’Kin?

  “Sometimes, such a vague reference point can be of benefit. It helped the Kin-Deren forces as they hid in the Dar-Tal Si Mountains at the Battle of the Vale i’Dúadar,” her mother continued. “As you remember, our split forces were a complete surprise to the Ken’nar and led to their rout that day.”

  Mirana frowned. Who was she kidding? Her father was a defender. He lived for one thing: to defend. Her mother
would be going, too. She was prime of a province now. Any physical threat to the province demanded her presence.

  “Good work today, all of you.” Her mother rose to her feet. “Before I release you for the day, I wanted to say how very proud I am of each one of you. This will be my last lesson with you for a while. I will be riding out with our forces for the Ford tomorrow. I have asked Seer Vesta to remain behind and continue your training. My only regret is I will not be able to officiate this summer’s Choosing Ceremony. I cannot believe eighteen summers have passed for so many of you, and you will be choosing. I remember when you were all just babes. Rememore Kin e Forte. Remember the Light and the Keep, Ëi cara’e.”

  If her mother held any fear of the upcoming battle, she certainly did not show it. Her voice was full of emotion, ai, but not fear.

  Her mother and the seer scholaire’e filed out of the training room, leaving Mirana alone. Remember the Light and the Keep. She didn’t want to remember it at all, she wanted to forget it ever existed.

  Running away would have solved nothing. Ai, it would keep an amulet from hanging around her neck, but her Aspects would continue to constrict her like a hangman’s noose. If she left, the knowledge that people would die who could have been saved would be just as damning as killing them through the fate awaiting her at Jasal’s Keep. As always, telling everyone of the impending destruction at her hands would get her nowhere. They’d think the notion was ludicrous. She highly doubted the Fal’kin would see her as a threat serious enough to require immediate execution with their amulets—something that hadn’t been done in centuries. At best, they’d write it off as a nightmare, at worst, she was imagining it. No, her revelation would be dismissed out of hand by everyone, even her parents. They loved her. Because they loved her, they would never understand. Or believe.

  Mirana reached for her small belt knife.

  She knew of one sure way, however, to stop her future. To stop it all. Forever.

  She frowned. As she sheathed the blade, her fingers brushed her belt pouch and the cherished rectangular object within it. Teague’s pendant.