Trine Rising

by C. K. Donnelly

  Her father moved closer still. “A father will do anything to protect his child.”

  “Stop it, Father!” Mirana cried. “Listen to me! All of you. I have to stop pretending to be something I’m not. I’m not a seer. Or not just a seer. I’m a defender and a healer as well. I am a Trine.”

  Stark hopelessness etched itself on her father’s face. “Mirana. Please. Don’t.”

  Her mother uttered a sob. “Biraena, Lightness, please. Don’t do this.”

  “I didn’t know at first. My Seeing and my Defending Aspects were almost always joined.” She wove her fingers together. “But healing?” She glanced at Tennen and Niah, then looked down at her boots. “I didn’t understand until Teague broke his arm. Then it was no longer just sight. It was a power. An Aspect. I had to heal him. I had to.”

  “Why didn’t you come to us then?” Patrua Tennen asked.

  Binthe Lima clutched her emerald amulet. “Why would you keep this to yourself? You know we love you. I would lay down my life for you.”

  Mirana shook her head quickly. “Binthe, you don’t understand—”

  Lord Garis moved to stand close behind her as if he were guarding her against the others. “She said nothing because she is terrified. It is not easy knowing every single Ken’nar would kill you instantly if he or she could, especially when you have seen so few summers. It was the same for me when I was a child. Kaarl is not wrong. Her life will be in danger with this revelation.”

  “None of you will speak of this. It means her life,” her father added, the warning unmistakable in his voice.

  Mirana slipped a hand inside her belt pouch to hold Teague’s pendant for comfort. All that did was remind her that he, too, could be caught up in this nightmare. She dropped her hand to her side. “I tried for summers to hide my Defending and Healing Aspects, and look what’s happened? I can’t hide this anymore. Too much is at stake. You call the one who leads the Ken’nar the Dark Trine. Are you so certain he is, in fact, a Trine? Have you ever seen him in the flesh? Have you ever fought against him, face-to-face?”

  The Trine gifts. The three Aspects. That was more power than one mortal should hold. It was an abomination. She was an abomination. She was the Dark Trine.

  “What are you saying?” Her mother’s voice quaked in a way she had never heard before—a strangled, almost wheezing quality diluting her normally melodious alto.

  Her parents. All of them. They didn’t understand. “The Trine Prophecy speaks of the Light Trine and the Dark Trine. There is nothing written anywhere about three Trines. I know. I’ve looked. Lord Garis is our Light Trine. What role, then, does the prophecy leave for me?”

  The minds of the other Fal’kin burst through her consciousness like exploding amulets. Voices shouted, but it was all just noise in her ears. Her heartbeat pulsed in her eardrums until it, too, faded into a ringing.

  “Mirana.” Her father ran to her and gripped her arms so hard it hurt.

  “You are frightened, child,” Lord Garis said, “but you are not the Dark Trine.”

  She pushed her father away and backed against the tall Trine. “Kinderra will be destroyed. Because of me. I’ve seen it.” Her voice sounded strange to her, someone else’s words echoing through her ears.

  How many Ken’nar had Lord Garis put down with his amulet? If she asked him, would he do it? Was it not his destiny as the Thrice-blessed to stop the Thrice-cursed? Ice replaced the burning bile in her stomach, a smothering, chill blanket, oddly comforting. Maybe he would respect her for finding a shred of courage at the end. Maybe he would be quick.

  Her mother rushed over, pulled her from the men, and held her. “You are not the Dark Trine. You cannot be.” Her voice grew shrill. “I don’t know what could have possibly made you think that. You are just frightened. Ai, it is your fear making you believe these things. Perhaps it is an actual nightmare. Ai, that is what it is. It is just a nightmare, biraena.”

  Ai, it was a nightmare. Of apocalyptic proportions.

  Her father’s silver eyes drilled into hers. “I don’t know why you are saying all of this, but you are not the Dark Trine. You are not any Trine. You are a seer. Do you hear me? A seer. Just. A seer.”

  Desde’s face turned into a pale mask of surrender. “Kaarl. Enough.”

  “You should have given her to me long ago.” The tall Trine glared at her father. “Only I can protect her from those who would kill her at the Ford.”

  Her father’s hands curled into fists and turned to her mother. “She’s not going to the Ford.”

  “Ai, she is. She must.”

  “Surely, you don’t mean to bring her there. We can’t.”

  “I have no choice,” her mother continued. “If there is even a chance she is correct, I will need every Fal’kin in the province I can send. We will be outnumbered.”

  Morgan stepped forward. “I will leave tonight, my prime, and be in Kasan within a sevenday. We will get aid from Sün-Kasal. That province has one of the largest complements of Fal’kin in Kinderra.”

  “There is not enough time.” Desde closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed audibly. “Even if you left this very moment, Sün-Kasal’s defenders will never be able to reach the Ford in time. Why do you think we leave at dawn? You’ve seen the position of Gabrial from our visions. That gives us less than two sevendays to reach the Ford ourselves. I will have to order any scholaire’e of at least sixteen summers to choose their amulets now. Those of at least fifteen summers will choose and serve in support roles. We cannot spare experienced Fal’kin to provision weapons and tend horses during the battle.”

  Mirana’s heart constricted. By her mother’s pronouncement, she would have to choose an amulet.

  “I can’t. You don’t understand what an amulet in my hands—”

  Her father ignored her protests, and pulled her mother’s arm, forcing her to look at him. “Desde, do you understand what you are saying? You can’t take her to the Ford. You cannot.”

  “I have no choice. I need every last Fal’kin in the province to turn back the Ken’nar. I cannot ask other mothers and fathers to give up their children while I hold my own back, even if it shatters my heart to do so. Our children must take up their amulets. Tonight. Including Mirana. I know what this means, Ëi ama, but I have no choice. She must choose her amulet and ride to the Ford. I need her there. Kinderra needs her there.”

  Her mother’s pronouncement drove like a pike through Mirana’s mind. Turning back from an amulet had been her last refuge to prevent her destiny of destruction. Cold no longer surrounded her with an insidious comfort but became a lethal weight dragging her down.

  “No. I must not choose. I told you. I will destroy Kinderra, not save her. I am the Dark Trine.”

  “Miri, stop this! Now!” Kaarl shouted, swiping his hand down like a sword. “You are not the Dark Trine!”

  “Your father is right,” Lord Garis said. “Listen to him.”

  “If you don’t believe me, I will show you.” She thrust out her hand and reached for the Trine’s amulet to release the keep vision from her mind.

  He grabbed her hand before she could touch the hematite crystal. ... No, Mirana, stop ... Even if they see it, they will not understand its importance ... I can help you ...

  She tried to pull her hand back from his, but it remained locked in his grip. “No, you can’t. Nobody can.”

  “Mirana, trust me. It will be all right.”

  She locked herself behind U’Nehíl, wanting not just her presence but her entire being to disappear. It would never be all right unless she made it right. One way or another.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Oëa gemma pone com aste proxi Ëi pecta. Oëa servad ísi gloriaé en nome il’Aspecta’e Alta hale!”

  (“Thy crystal resteth like a star against my breast. Thy servant is glorified in the name of the holy Aspects Above!”)

  —The Exultantae, Ora Fal’kinnen 12:3–4

  Mirana stood unmoving, her feet a part of the slate pavers o
n the floor. The central nave of the cavernous gathering hall stretched before her, both impossibly long and frighteningly short. As a very young child, she had been terrified of becoming lost from her parents during convocations within the enormous sanctuary. Now, the aisle that once appeared so lengthy was not nearly long enough to give her time to find a path away from the future she dreaded.

  The line of Fal’kin scholaire’e slowly moved toward a dais at the aisle’s end, one hundred brave youths, fear and expectation written on their faces.

  “Go on, sweetling. I thought you’d be running up that aisle.”

  She turned toward the familiar voice. Gemma hadn’t heard yet what happened at the war council, not everything. She would learn soon enough.

  The boy in front of her was already five rows ahead. She nodded to the herbswoman and attempted to smile. She dragged one foot forward and began walking in the Choosing Ceremony procession.

  Hundreds of Fal’kin packed the hall’s transepts and aisles. The heat from the packed bodies, the acrid scent of incense, and the smothering pall of emotion-laden minds pressed down on her.

  Torchlight and candlelight quaked within the gathering hall in anemic mimicry of the storm’s lightning outside. The amulets of hundreds of Fal’kin ebbed and glowed in the fretful light, reflecting the calls and emotions of their owners. She concentrated on the worn slate floor tiles to try and distance herself from the sensations of which she was all too keenly aware. A myriad of colors from the amulet crystals played strange shadows against lofty stone columns upholding a ceiling lost in darkness.

  Mirana prayed as she stumbled forward on leaden feet. The one thing—the one thing!—she had promised herself was that she would never accept an amulet into her soul unless she could find a way to avoid her destructive fate at Jasal’s Keep. Perhaps choosing an amulet was exactly what the Aspects Above had willed for her after all.

  She lifted her head to the dark ceiling. “If I give myself to your divine directive and take up an amulet, will you take Jasal’s Keep from me?” Only the thunder answered in reply. The leather pectoral armor constricted her chest like a prisoner’s bonds as she walked. Thick animal-hide guards shackled her thighs over buckskin leggings.

  She dimly recalled Binthe Lima and Niah Beltran securing her armor while her mother watched. The young il’Kin seer’s face had remained stoic, belying the tears that brimmed in her eyes. Matrua Niah had tried to hold back her crying, odd guttural clicks in her throat. Mirana’s hands had shaken violently as she struggled to fasten the buckle of her knife belt. Her mother held out two long knives. The weapons of battle seers. With numb fingers, she had placed them in the sheaths at her waist, nicking her unsteady thumb on one. Her mother had remained silent as she wound Mirana’s hair into a coil at the nape of her neck where it would not interfere if she had to fight. Her hands had trembled as much as Mirana’s own.

  All at once, the emotions her mother had locked within her escaped in a cry. She had pulled Mirana to her fiercely and refused to let her go. Binthe and Niah had to pull her away, both women vowing to give their own lives to keep her safe.

  Her mother was here now in the gathering hall, standing atop the dais at the end of that impossibly long, frighteningly short nave. Or was she? Tall and golden-haired, wrapped in silver mail and silver-plated leather, gleaming knives of her own caressing her hips. Her yellow topaz scintillated like the venomous eye of a serpent. That woman was not her maithe. She was not even a woman, but the incarnation of a heathen goddess of war.

  The province’s senior Fal’kin stood in the dark shadows of the dais behind her mother, an austere and foreboding pantheon of lesser gods.

  “Kin il’Aspecta’e Alta biran derra u’kin voide. Kinderra Oëme nomé fár Id ísi Derra i’Kin.” The ancient chant her mother sang reverberated in her ears.

  The youth ahead of Mirana had a sword strapped to his waist, not long knives. Light glinted off the shiny metal of the cross guard. Its luster betrayed that the blade had yet to be tested. Like its owner. He would be elevated from a scholaire to a defender. And he would likely die at the Ford.

  “The Light of the Aspects Above called land forth from the dark void. Kinderra they named it, for it was the Land of Light. May the Light of the Aspects shine on the land,” the Fal’kin responded to the orison.

  Her father stood near her mother on the altar, wearing the armor and mail he had shed only sevendays ago. His plain white livery was devoid of heraldics as the il’Kin were sworn to protect every province. She was a Trine. She was sworn to protect every province, too.

  Her throat ached with the force of holding back yet another sob. “Please. I want to. You must know that,” she whispered once more to the silent godhead.

  His silver gaze tried to catch hers. ... Mirana ... I will keep you safe ... You will be with Maithe and me ... You will be safe ...

  His mind was filled with enough frantic determination to do something rash. She had never known him to react this way.

  She averted her eyes from his and shut out his mind. She focused instead on putting one awkward, heavy-booted foot in front of the other as she filed up the aisle. The long knives brushed against her hips as she walked, a constant reminder of their presence.

  ... I will take up an amulet if that is what you need me to do ... she called to the Aspects Above. ... Answer me! ... Is this what you have willed for me? ...

  The minds of those gathered pressed in on her, mocking her prayer with the response of their meaningless din. She groaned as her empty stomach clenched again.

  Her mother chanted another passage from the Ora Fal’kinnen in the Old Tongue.

  “May the Light of the Aspects fill the land,” the gathering responded in unison.

  The Choosing Ceremony. The wedding of a Fal’kin’s Aspect to the soul of a crystal. The consummation of a sacred bond conferring control over the release of the Light from Within.

  If the keep vision had never been in her life, she would have run up the nave just like Gemma described, and grabbed the first amulet she could reach. She would have raced to Two Rivers Ford and brought down every single Ken’nar herself to protect these innocents.

  These youths, boys and girls she had known since she was born, would die because of her negligence. There had to be a way to save them, even now when all looked so hopeless. There just had to be. She moaned and grabbed a heavy wrought iron candle stand to steady herself.

  ... They don’t deserve to die ... I do ... Please, Aspects Above ... Help me save these people ...

  Again, always, the Aspects Above were silent. They only spoke to her when they wished to torment her.

  Three steps led up to the dais where her mother and the senior Fal’kin stood. Arrayed on the dais in front of them were hundreds of amulets. One would glow as its rightful owner drew near. Brilliant light would shine out in the darkness as the bond between crystal and Fal’kin took place. For her, however, not just one would sing to her soul. They all would.

  Mirana staggered again. The boy in front of her whirled around with his defender’s reflexes to catch her. The chain mail under his metal armor made a high-pitched shivering sound as he quaked in fear and excitement. He gave her a knowing smile as his nervousness flowed to her mind. He must have assumed she felt the same way. He was right, and so very wrong. Her anxiety had nothing to do with the impending battle at the Ford.

  It was not supposed to be like this. Joining with an amulet was supposed to be the most fulfilling experience of one’s life. Her mother once described choosing her amulet as a reunion with a part of herself she never knew she had lost. Her father wanted that union so badly, he broke into the gathering hall on the eve of a Choosing Ceremony when he was only fifteen and stole an amulet so he could bond with it three summers sooner than he should have.

  The amulets on the dais would not want to bond with her. They would not want to join in holy union with her. They would possess her, devour her whole in their frantic need to fuse to her Trine Aspects. It wo
uld not be just one amulet that wailed to her as it would to other Fal’kin. All of them would. She was a Trine. Such was the miraculous and cruel gift of holding three Aspects. Every amulet, chosen or free, was open to her.

  A powerful Aspected mind touched to hers. Behind the Fal’kin on the dais towered Trine Tetric Garis. His black armor appeared to absorb what little light surrounded him, darker than the darkness. The hematite amulet about his neck washed silver and black, a strange inverse of light. He softened his mind’s connection to hers, then closed himself from her. His amulet winked out. For a moment, that one less voice, that one less amulet to scrape at her soul, gave her relief. She took a deep breath and nodded to him. He inclined his head.

  Outside, lightning flashed and thunder crashed. Mirana flinched as the stained-glass windows rattled in their frames.

  Yenira, the seer girl with whom she shared so many of her mother’s lessons, ascended the three steps of the dais. The fear of the imminent battle at the Ford imprinted on her face washed away into beatified joy as a blue topaz gleamed in her hand. Moments later, an emerald glowed as a boy drew near. He released the white-knuckled grip on his battle seer’s long knife and picked up the green gem. His face broke into a glorious smile even before he placed its chain over his head.

  A familiar mind, a presence rose above the rest. It didn’t call out to her—it couldn’t—she sensed it only because she was so closely attuned to it. Teague.

  ... Please don’t let him die ... she begged. ... Not Teague ... I will take an amulet and use it to destroy myself if that is what you will for me ... But please don’t hurt him ...

  Mirana wilted, overwhelmed with grief at the possibility of losing Teague. She fell against a cold marble column, clinging to it for support, only to sink to her knees.

  Teague hauled her up and pulled her into the shadows of an aisle. “Mirana,” he whispered as he held her. “I can’t believe you’re going through with this.”