She removed it and traced its delicate lines. The mica reflected the heat from her palm.
Teague. Her parents. Teague’s parents. Binthe and Morgan, her father’s il’Kin. So many others who were friends, mentors. They would all be at the Ford. With only five hundred-odd Ken’nar, the Fal’kin from Kin-Deren would be victorious. How could they not? The Kin-Deren forces outnumbered the Ken’nar four to one. Like her mother had said only a moment ago, it would be like the victory the Fal’kin claimed at the Battle of Vale when they had split their forces. How could she have been so wrong about the Ford?
Unless she was not.
She gasped. Split forces. Victory.
An avalanche of understanding careened through her mind. She had been right all along. The first viewing of the Ford attack was not simply a preamble to the second. It was a separate and distinct prescience of its own. She truly saw two different visions. Both versions of the attack on the Ford installation were correct. The Ken’nar’s Dark Trine would split his troops. Her first vision, the one with thousands of Ken’nar, came after the second one with Kin-Deren’s more numerous forces. She first saw the attack’s conclusion, the Ken’nar rear guard. When she saw the vision again with Lord Garis—that refined premonition, with just five hundred Ken’nar and thousands of Fal’kin from Kin-Deren province—that was the Dark Trine’s opening ploy!
Five hundred Ken’nar would indeed attack from the north. The Ken’nar Dark Trine would hold back more than four thousand to attack later when the Fal’kin were fully engaged with the smaller force. The Fal’kin would be annihilated.
She brought her shaking hands to her mouth. “Oh, Aspects Above, no. What have I done?”
If she had only listened to herself—trusted herself as the person she was now and not some distant, horrific version of herself—her mother and her troops could have prepared for a larger force, even sought help from neighboring provinces. Instead, her self-denial and her silence had left Kin-Deren to march into a trap where they would be decimated. And it was all her fault.
Mirana jammed Teague’s pendant back into her belt pouch and tore out of the training room.
CHAPTER 13
“Like leaves unfurling in the spring, so didst my dream unfold before my eyes. Whether for good or ill, I could not tell. Its conclusion still lay behind the curtain of understanding.”
—The Codex of Jasal the Great
Mirana threw the door open to her mother’s study with a swipe of her hand and her Aspects. “Your vision of the Ford. It’s a trap.”
“Ah, there you are—” Her mother froze. “What?”
“The Ken’nar will split their forces. We’re marching into a trap.”
Her mother’s council gathered in her prime’s study—her senior seers, provincial defender commanders, Morgan Jord and Binthe Lima from her father’s il’Kin, Teague’s parents. Her father. Lord Trine Tetric Garis.
“The Ken’nar Dark Trine will split his forces.” She gulped a breath. “Five hundred will indeed attack, as we all have seen, but he will reserve the majority of his troops until we’re occupied with his vanguard. The others will then charge in and surround us. By the thousands.”
Her mother rose from her chair. “How do you know this?”
Mirana’s heart banged in her chest, striking out at her ribs. “I saw it. I didn’t understand at first. As we know, the vision was hard to understand because it mostly takes place at night. By the time I studied it again with Lord Garis, it became what we see now. I had two separate visions of the Ford attack.”
“Mirana—” the Trine said.
Her mother held up her hand, stopping his comment. “You saw a different version of Two Rivers Ford? A vision before this one? One you did not tell me about?”
Mirana nodded slowly. Her breath turned into soft, jagged gasps. “I thought I was wrong, and that it was just a fuzzier and earlier version of the one we’ve been seeing for sevendays. I never saw it again. So, I didn’t say anything. The one we’ve all been seeing will take place before what I saw the first time. My first vision was the conclusion of the attack, not the beginning. He will attack with five thousand, only he’s split that single force into two—a smaller one and a larger one. I saw them both.” She swallowed and tried to breathe at the same time. “I saw. Them. Both.”
“Withholding a vision is a crime. A grave one. You know this,” her mother said, her voice hushed with horror. “If you were a full Fal’kin with an amulet about her neck, I would have to consider expulsion from the province. What have you done, child?”
The minds of those gathered assaulted her. They leaped upon her like grynwen on prey. The senior seers stood around her, judgment and downright disgust emanating from their minds. Binthe, her sea-green eyes full of compassion, full of trepidation. Morgan, his handsome bearded face wearing the hard, stoic expression of a man who knew he might not be alive in a matter of days. Niah Beltran turned away from Mirana, her mind closed. Tennen Beltran’s, however, was not. His mind bored into hers with the precision of an amulet-driven scalpel. Tetric Garis, his face remained as inscrutable as his mind. Her father—
“Paithe, I thought what I saw was wrong. I swear it.” Mirana’s trembling blurred the sound of her words. Her cheeks flushed with heat. “Maybe the Ken’nar Dark Trine was going to attack with his full might, then changed his plans to what we see now. I don’t know. I saw only once the single force of thousands. It never happened again. I thought I was wrong. I’m so sorry.”
Her mother ran over and dragged her to the center of the room with an iron grip on her wrist. She slapped Mirana’s hand over her topaz amulet. “Call to us what you first saw.”
She tried to pull her hand back from her mother’s unyielding grip. “I can’t—”
“Call. Your. First vision. All of it,” her mother repeated, snapping off each word like a dry twig.
Mirana’s shoulders fell in bitter defeat. Her transgressions stood naked, her sins exposed, with nowhere to hide. Fear of her fate had driven her to turn her back on the shred of belief she had in herself. She had begged the Aspects Above for more time to find a different future for herself, one without corrupting her Aspects. Her actions to prevent her fate had only brought her closer to her downfall. Thousands would now pay for her fear, her hesitation, and her cowardice because there was no time to seek help from other provinces. Kin-Deren would be fighting on its own. Her people would pay for her sins just like they had centuries ago with her ancestor Jasal Pinal. Time had run out. For the Fal’kin. For her.
She was the Dark Trine.
The amulet called to her, slowly drawing her Aspects from her. Her breath left her lungs in short, useless bursts. Her stomach clenched and bile seared her throat. She swallowed and closed her eyes. A brilliant yellow light burst from her mother’s topaz between their fingers as Desde projected Mirana’s memory out through her amulet. Ethereal fighters floated like specters in front of the Fal’kin.
Rain falls, a cold, liquid curtain. Lightning flares from roiling clouds, illuminating the night, only to plunge it back into darkness a heartbeat later. Cries of blood-thirsty grynwen pierce the night. A wave of black riders pounds down a rise above Two Rivers Ford. Three thousand. Lightning flickers again. Four thousand. Riders flood across the Kin-Deren landmass and charge into the Ford garrison, an endless wave of dark bodies. Five thousand. The landscape fades as night descends once more between the flashes of lightning. A smaller force of fighters fans out to meet the riders. The darkness and the storm and the uncertain skeins of the future hide the heraldics of the combatants’ uniforms. Another lightning bolt explodes across the dark sky. Grynwen howl like demon hounds unleashed from the Underworld, ripping flesh from bone. Tents erupt in flames. Screams of the dying fill the air. The battlefield fades once more under the shroud of darkness.
The crystal of her mother’s amulet began to take on a life of its own with its nearness, pulling at Mirana, drawing, bleeding the memory of the images out of her.
&n
bsp; On and on they come, this terrifying mass of horses and grynwen and swords and amulets, visible one moment in the lightning, only to disappear in the next. Amulets burst in jets of their own colored lightning as the two forces hurl death at one another. Bodies fall and grynwen feed. The smaller force of fighters is pushed southward, toward the river chasm, unable to beat back the onslaught of the larger army. Corpses of the dead impede fighters, sending men and women from both forces off the Ford bridges to their doom into the river ravine below.
Her heart constricted within the cage of her ribs with a sharp, visceral ache. Her legs grew weak, her bones dissolving along with her resolve. Her Defending Aspect rose, searing and urgent, in response to what she witnessed again in her memory. Her Healing Aspect begged to be released upon the mortal wounds that had yet to come. The demand from her mother’s amulet was insistent, incessant, as it wrenched from her the memory of that first vision of slaughter awaiting Two Rivers Ford.
Gabrial, the Guiding Star, quivers over the backbone of the Dar-Anar Mountains in the west, a piercing silver eye in the red dawn. Bellicose chanting overtakes the refrains of fading life notes, the howls of grynwen sing a crying descant. Lightning flares again then dies.
Jasal’s Keep.
The watchtower explodes in light, unleashing white fury.
Mirana tore her hand away from her mother and staggered back, gasping for breath. Her hair clung to her forehead with sweat.
“This is a completely different vision,” Morgan said, his voice hushed. “It is—” the defender swallowed, “deeply concerning.”
“Call it to me again,” her mother ordered, reaching for Mirana’s hand again.
She backed away. “Mother, please don’t make me—”
“Now.”
She clenched Desde’s hand and forced her memory of the vision once more from her mind.
“Wait. I will hold it here,” her mother commanded.
An image of the battlefield, hazy with the loosely woven skeins of time, hung frozen in front of the Fal’kin from Desde’s amulet. A massive army in black armor darkened the land, briefly illuminated by lightning. Individual fighters could not be made out clearly, but the dark armor they wore was apparent. The armor of the Ken’nar. The murmuring in the room ceased.
“There must be four, five thousand Ken’nar,” her father whispered.
Binthe shook her head slowly, her gaze riveted on the image. “We have seen nothing of this.”
Desde released Mirana’s hand and the ghostly image of fighters slowly disappeared. “Tetric, you both came to me and told me we would be attacked by five hundred Ken’nar. The very same vision I had. The same one I’ve had—we’ve all had—all along.”
“Ai, I, too, saw some hazy thousands of fighters,” the tall Trine said as he stood from his chair. “She told me she had been confused by what she saw, a greater force attacking a lesser force, but both armies were indistinct. When we reached for the Seeing Aspect together to understand just who those fighters were, it was as we see it now. The Fal’kin are the thousands, not the Ken’nar. The vision has remained so ever since.”
The muscles in her mother’s jaw tightened.
“Mother—”
“You blame my daughter for this?” Desde questioned Lord Garis.
“No, not at all. And neither should you. Nor should any of you.” His dark gaze traveled around the room. “This is a memory of a vision, Desde, not an actual one. That’s why I didn’t have her call it to me.” He gestured to the empty air in the middle of the room where the translucent images had been displayed. “As I said, by the time I called on my Seeing Aspect and we viewed the actual vision together, it appears as it does now. There is no way the girl could have possibly understood at the time what she was seeing. Without an amulet, she would have had absolutely no way of controlling the vision to examine it.”
“She understands it now,” her mother hissed, “and, it appears she may be correct.”
“I can explain—” Mirana stepped closer to her.
“If you must assign blame, my prime, put it on my shoulders,” Lord Garis said, stopping her reply. “None of us even considered looking into different skeins of time for something different. Did we not all believe we had seen enough? Only your daughter had the wisdom to think of other possibilities.”
The Trine’s mind pushed against hers, not to condemn her but something else. To comfort her? She didn’t deserve his comfort and certainly not his defense.
“How do we know this memory of hers,” her father gestured toward her, “is any more correct than the one you all have been seeing? You seers tell me visions change all the time. I agree with Tetric. Mirana doesn’t have an amulet to bring in the precision required. I’ve been around enough seers to know it wouldn’t be the first time emotions skewed an interpretation of a vision and certainly the memory of one.”
“My memory is not wrong, Father,” she said. “My vision is correct.”
He gave her a worried smile. “I know you believe it to be correct.”
It was time to tell them before she put even more people in jeopardy. Everything. All of it. She had no choice. Maybe she never really did.
She stared into the faces around the chamber, giving in to their condemning expressions. “It is difficult to see the armies at Two Rivers Ford if one only looks at the vision with the Seeing Aspect. My awareness of the battle around me spoke to me of thousands more than you can see in the mind’s eye. I felt them, their presences, their bloodlust. My chest ached with the need to release amulet fire. I sensed their heartbeats, too. Their wounds cried out to me. Their deaths. So much death. My first vision is right because I sensed it with my Aspects. All three of them.” She took a breath, and, for a moment, it would not leave her body. “I am a Trine.”
“Mirana,” her mother cried.
... Hush, now ... her father called to her, his strident mind-voice resounding within her. ... All will be well ...
She tried to block out the shock of the others from her mind, but it was impossible. It engulfed her like the wave of Ken’nar that would engulf the Ford.
“This is all my fault. I am so sorry.” The words sounded so pathetically inadequate. Nothing would make up for this. Nothing. The wall of deceit behind which she had hidden for summers crashed down around her.
She was the Dark Trine.
“I’ve hidden my Aspects from you because I was trying to stop a far more horrific nightmare than all of this. I am a Trine. I am the Dark Trine, and I will destroy Kinderra. Someday.”
Desperation, mirroring her own, escaped from her father’s mind to hers. “Mirana, quiet now. You are overwhelmed.” He turned to the others. “She’s obviously distraught. Our daughter is not a Trine. She certainly could not destroy anything. She’s a seer.”
Lord Garis folded his long arms. “Are you so certain?”
“I think I should know my own child’s gift,” Kaarl snapped.
“Tetric may be right,” Patrua Tennen said. “She has been healing, or close to it, for a while now.” His gaze, so like Teague’s yet so unfamiliar in its raw disbelief, bored into her. “And she has not said a single word of it.”
Her father gave a disgusted laugh. “How do you know it has been Mirana who has done these supposed healings?”
“We started to notice them several summers ago after Teague fractured his arm,” Matrua Niah replied. “That injury itself made no sense. The break was fresh, yet there had been some partial remodeling. Performed incorrectly. The only way this could have occurred was by a healer. At first, we thought maybe Teague had finally—But then summers went by, and, well, we knew it wasn’t Teague who had tried to heal.” The healer woman’s hands curled into fists for a moment, then relaxed. “These past few summers our use of numbweed in the hostel has dropped by magnitudes. Maybe Mirana has yet to mend flesh and definitively set bone, but she has been suppressing the pain of our patients nearly as deeply as we could.”
“There is nothing to debate�
��” Mirana started.
... Be still, girl ... her father called sharply. “Niah, we all can shunt away pain. My Light, if I couldn’t, I would have never made it past my first battle.”
“That has more to do with endurance than the actual calming of nerves,” she replied. “She’s been suppressing pain with the Healing Aspect. On others. Which is the utmost any healer can do without an amulet, and even that is difficult.”
Teague’s father nodded in agreement with his wife. “Kaarl, even we remember how quickly she progressed in training as a battle seer. She nearly bested Dav and Niall both inside of six months. No seer child of ten summers could do that. Unless she is a defender, too. This is a blessing. One we desperately need, given what’s about to take place.”
“She does not defend, Tennen,” her father snarled. “She’s a seer. She saw their moves. That’s all. Dav and Niall know her too well and didn’t press her enough. That’s why she appeared to excel so quickly with a sword. My daughter is no Trine.”
“I do not think the leaders of Kin-Deren’s provincial armies would willingly shirk their duty in training,” the healer rejoined.
Healer Niah moved to stand beside her husband. “I was there when that girl was born. Her Aspect was so incredibly powerful but had no alignment. We thought perhaps it was because she had come two months early or even her difficult breech birth. Perhaps, though, it was due to all three Aspects superimposed over each other. Ask Tetric.”
Her father flicked his eyes to Tetric Garis then back to Niah Beltran like a bullwhip. “Mirana is no Trine. Just you speaking such words could put her life in jeopardy.”
“I love her as much as you do. I would never do anything to harm that child,” Matrua Niah said, pointing to her.
“Except try to make it impossible for her to be near your son,” her father seethed.
Her mother reached for her father’s arm. “Kaarl, please.”
Tennen took a step towards her father. “Are you alleging my wife would attempt to get your daughter killed to prevent her from joining in union to my son?”
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