“Steward Pinal. The battle seers say Ken’nar are coming from the north and the south.”
Lord Garis turned to the healers. “Tennen, Niah, move up into the foothills, out of the way of action.”
“How will you bring us the wounded if the Ken’nar take the southern bridge?” Healer Niah asked.
“The battlefield will be too dangerous to heal during the conflict. If you leave now, you might be able to make it across ahead of the southern Ken’nar unit. Hurry. You have no time to waste,” the Trine replied. The healers nodded and dashed from the tent. He then turned to the il’Kin. “Defender Commander Jord, have the il’Kin guard the healers. You will be the only protection they have to make it through.”
“Belay that, Morgan,” her father said. “The northern phalanx will enter the garrison at any moment. We need to stop them before they can merge with the southern force. Go now.”
“Hold.” Lord Garis held up his hand. “You are too few. The provincials can handle the north. The healers must be kept clear from the fray. They are too important to lose.”
When her father took a step toward Lord Garis, she moved quickly to stand between the men. “Father—”
“If they are not on the battlefield, they do not need a guard. The Ken’nar surely mean to box us in.”
“If the healers die, so will others who could have been saved. Do you want that kind of blood on your hands? We are wasting time, Steward.”
Her father glared at the Trine a moment longer. “Morgan, guard the healers.”
Binthe shook her head in disbelief. “The Ken’nar will—”
“Do as I say before more people die needlessly,” her father snapped, his silver eyes flashing in anger.
Morgan’s gaze slid from her father to Lord Garis. “I will wait for your next call, my steward.”
He and Binthe ran from the tent. Kaarl turned to the Trine. “Whatever has passed between us, please, save my daughter. I’m begging you.”
“I promised you, no harm will come to her as long as I am alive. I stand by my word.” Lord Garis’s mouth curled into a most unpleasant smile. “In spite of what has passed between us.”
What was going on here? Mirana glanced at the Trine, to her father, and back again.
“Garis.” Her father’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t want you to protect her. I want you to get her out of here. She won’t make it past the black bastards without you.”
Her mother shook her head. “It’s too late for that now.”
Mirana held the hilt of a long knife. “I have to stay and help. It’s my right—”
The sound of a galloping horse interrupted the rest of her reply. A fiercely beautiful young woman staggered into the command tent cradling another unconscious older woman in her arms. Their torn cloaks bore a red horse on a white field, the mark of the Varn-Erdal province. For a moment, Mirana didn’t recognize them. Blood and grime covered both women, the younger woman’s face contorted in grief. Liaonne Edaran and her mother Vallia, the province’s defender prime. The few times Mirana had met them during Quorumtide had been brief. Her father once said they fought like Ken’nar, only not as mercifully.
“Expect no aid from Varn-Erdal, Prime Kellis Pinal,” the young woman said, her voice hoarse with exhaustion. “I need help. My mother is dying.”
Lord Garis took Vallia Edaran from Liaonne and laid her down on the tent floor to examine her injuries.
“Liaonne, what happened?” Desde helped the younger defender to sit on a supply chest.
“We took a different route from Edara to come to the Ford for our tour of duty.” She clawed the mud and blood out of the braids in her pale-gold hair. “Traders reported Ken’nar on our eastern borders. We rode on the windward side of the Dar-Anars, making for the Kabaarh Pass. The Ken’nar were already there. More than I’ve ever seen.”
Mirana never heard the rest of Liaonne Edaran’s tale. The tent vanished from her eyes.
Pain. In the chest. In the stomach. A stabbing, burning consuming all. Blood. Gushing away, away, away.
“She’s bleeding.” What was this she was seeing with her Healing Aspect? Where was this?
“Vallia is done for, Tetric,” her father said. “The Ken’nar are coming. Please take Mirana away from here.”
... I need your help ... the Trine called to Mirana. ... The healers have left ...
She shook her head. “I’ve never done anything like this.”
Lord Garis’s amulet glowed as he put his hands on Vallia Edaran’s injuries. ... You must help me stop the bleeding ...
... I hear it, but I don’t know how to stop it ... The screeching discord nearly drowned out the Trine’s call.
... You do not need to ... I need you to work in concert with me ... I need you ... Now ... He reached up with a bloody hand to grab her wrist and pull her down to her knees with him. He forced her hand into wounds in the woman’s chest.
She tried to pull away, but his grip on her was unbreakable. Vallia Edaran’s wounds, the Trine’s Healing Aspect, and the Trine’s amulet pulled at her even stronger.
Chest muscles torn. Blood leaks from veins. Soft gray lobes, lungs, punctured. Filling with blood. Another artery, low in the abdomen, bleeds, bleeds, bleeds.
Mirana’s consciousness slipped further from her control. The woman’s injuries immobilized her, starved for her Aspects to heal them. Lord Garis’s presence held her fast to Vallia’s wounds. Her very life felt as though it were draining from her. He focused on the rent flesh in the woman’s chest. In Vallia’s abdomen, however, blood hemorrhaged unchecked in rhythmic, ever-weakening rushes. The Varn-Erdalan prime would bleed to death from the stomach wound before he would finish repairing her chest. She knew this. Her Healing Aspect told her so. Her Seeing Aspect told her so.
Her Defending Aspect, however, rose in response to a warning, competing for her attention. The Ken’nar advanced ever closer.
Mirana’s Healing powers welled up within her, demanding release. She wrested her hand from Lord Garis’s grip and reached for his amulet. Her Aspects surged through her, through the Trine, through his amulet. They collided with the harmonics of the hematite crystal with brutal force, vying for control of the amulet over its owner. She sank her free hand deep into the Vallia Edaran’s ruined abdomen. She needed to heal.
She. Must. Heal.
A large artery in the woman’s abdomen leaked out her life with each fading heartbeat. The cacophony of the injuries resolved into a single unbearable note. She poured all her strength into silencing that note, trying to close the tear in the great vessel behind the woman’s bowels.
The wound was suddenly torn from her mind’s eye. She screamed, the separation was too abrupt, too profound.
“How dare you use my daughter like an accursed Ken’nar tool?” Her father dragged her back from the dying woman’s body. The tent snapped into focus again.
Her mother rushed over. “Kaarl!”
Mirana gasped. Blood had spattered over her clothes, her chest, and her face. She began to shake with revulsion as she attempted to wipe the gore away from her cheek with the back of a bloody hand.
Liaonne Edaran rushed to Vallia, holding her head. “Lord Trine, please save my mother.”
“What in Aspects’ name are you doing, man?” Lord Garis shouted. “Vallia Edaran will die without Mirana.”
The raw notes from Vallia Edaran’s body silenced abruptly.
“No!” Mirana pulled herself from her father’s hold. She sank back to her knees and placed her hands on the Varn-Erdalan prime. “Oh, no.” She frantically searched for the discord of agony that had been there a moment ago. All was silent. “No.”
The Trine held his amulet a moment longer, then let it fall back against his chest. “You will regret this, Pinal.” He sat back on his heels and glared at her father with raw hatred. Was he calling something to him—or was going to attack him?
The Dar-Azûlan raised his face to Liaonne. “I am so sorry, Defender Second. Your mother i
s gone.” He reverently lifted the prime’s red beryl amulet over her neck and handed it to her daughter. “Oë Primus. Thou art prime, Liaonne il’Edaran. Diu vide a Vallia il’Edaran. Long live Vallia Edaran.”
“Why, Father?” Mirana staggered to her feet. “Why?”
Lightning flashed outside the tent, illuminating the canvas, and her father’s furious face riveted on Lord Garis. Thunder cracked in answer. The wind rose sharply, battering at the tent.
The Trine rose to his feet and wiped his hands on his cloak. “Mirana, leave it be.”
She ignored him. “Is your hatred of Lord Garis so strong, you would let a prime die rather than let me work with him to save her?”
He shook his head. “He was stealing your Aspects from you.”
“Stealing? He was directing me. I’ve never done this before. We were trying to save Prime Edaran’s life. You would let a woman die in an act of revenge because our Trine did not answer your call for aid two summers ago? Did you ever think about how painful that decision was for him to make, knowing good men and women were going to die? Did you? And now you let another good woman die to spite him.”
“Mirana, stop,” the Trine said, breathing his words in futility.
Her father held up his hands, pleading. “No. Of course not. I was trying to protect you.”
She curled her hands into fists. “You would rather a woman die because of a disagreement about the future of the il’Kin?”
“I was trying to protect you, Mirana. Don’t you understand that?” Her father grabbed her arms. “I have not kept your Trine gifts a secret for sixteen summers only to have you killed!”
The tent went silent.
She froze in horrified astonishment. “You what?” Disbelief slammed into her like a battering ram made of amulet fire. She wrenched herself free. “You knew? All along?”
Her mother clutched her amulet. “We were trying to keep you safe, biraena. Please believe that. But now, we must retreat. The Ken’nar will be here at any moment. Please believe us.”
“You both knew? Both of you?” Mirana looked from her mother to her father, ignoring the warning. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Please understand, Miri,” her mother said, “we never meant to deceive you. We knew you’d understand your powers someday, but we hoped you’d come to us before now. When you didn’t, we thought you still didn’t know. We decided to wait until you were ready to choose an amulet. That way, you could protect yourself—” she looked out the tent entrance, “in case we no longer could. We were wrong. So very wrong.”
Her father now held his amulet, red light spilling from between his fingers. “If the Dark Trine knew yet another Trine existed, he would have done everything in his power to kill you.” He glanced out of the tent. “We did this to keep you safe. We have no time to discuss this now. We must hurry.”
Mirana whirled around to face Tetric Garis. “Did you know, too?”
He shook his head. “I never knew for certain. They would never let me near you.”
Had she only known when she was a young child, had she only been apprenticed to Lord Garis sooner, she might never have had her vision of the white light in the keep. Of Kinderra’s destruction at her hands. Of Teague’s death. Kinderra might have been free of what she was to become. If she had known summers ago, she might not have been so wrapped in fear she would not have lost trust in herself and could have saved these people at the Ford. Had she only known sooner.
Anger consumed her like a wildfire burning tinder-dry grass. It filled her, validated her sense of betrayal. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Her father's face so often wore a determined expression, as if he never left his battles behind. Now, it sank into utter despondency, reflecting the desperation and despair in his mind. He deserved his pain. Maybe he would know something of what the Underworld her life had become felt like. “Mirana, please. We never meant to hurt you. You must go now.”
She backed away from them. “It’s more than me you’ve hurt. Kinderra will suffer, too.”
She stormed out of the command tent. Thunder rolled through the cold, damp night, but this time it did not die away. It grew louder. Otherworldly cries filled the air followed by peculiar whistles and dull thuds. Grynwen. Arrows.
The Ken’nar had arrived.
CHAPTER 21
“Quen u’pace ve, Aspecta’e Alta íre.”
(“When war comes, the Aspects Above abandon.”)
—Ora Fal’kinnen 95:16
Mirana stood, disbelief and fear adding to her rage at her parents’ betrayal. A nightmare came to life before her. To the north, two battalions of Fal’kin clashed with an equal number of Ken’nar as lightning knifed overhead. Grynwen tore at the bellies of horses with claws and knife-long fangs, sending their riders falling into the amulet fire and swords of the black-armored warriors. An instant later, the lightning ceased, and the fields were plunged back into the inky darkness, but the sounds of war drew inexorably closer. This was no longer a vision from the Seeing Aspect, no longer just moving pictures in her mind. This was real.
The Fal’kin leaders rushed from the tent behind her. Liaonne Edaran growled at the Ken’nar nearing the camp. “I will fight with you, Prime Kellis Pinal. And I will make every single one of those black bastards pay for what they’ve done to Varn-Erdal and to me!”
“I cannot express my sorrow or gratitude to you,” her mother replied to Liaonne, but her eyes remained on Mirana. “Take Legion Three from Defender Second Niall Corran. I’ll call him with the order.”
The new prime nodded and raced to her horse. Mirana shook her head, breaking her daze. She fought the urge to follow the Varn-Erdalan and add her own inferno of fury to the defender woman’s revenge.
Desde reached out to her. “Miri, Lightness, please—”
She pushed her mother away. “Don’t. Just. Don’t.”
Her Seeing and Defending Aspects rose. She sucked in a raw breath. Without an amulet to focus them, they fought each other for supremacy within her. Her Defending Aspect surged, blotting out future skeins of time with the immediacy of need.
Dark-fletched arrows sang overhead, their flaming shafts making bright steaks in the night sky. A long, thick projectile tore through the command tent, setting it ablaze. She screamed, the fire tearing her awareness from her Aspects.
Tetric Garis tore his helmet from the saddlebag straps and slammed it down on his head. In one smooth movement, he swung his leg over his black stallion. ... Get on your horse, Mirana ... Now ...
She ran for Ashtar and vaulted onto his saddle. She turned to her parents, more emotions boiling in her than she could ever identify. “I never want to see either of you again.”
She dug her heels into Ashtar's sides and sent him into a run.
Mirana’s Aspects were assaulted by the fury of the oncoming Ken’nar as she charged to the east with the Trine. Her Healing Aspect erupted in response to the abrupt ending of lives. Swift and relentless, images borne of her Seeing Aspect cut in and out before her mind’s eye and her mortal eyes. A burning hunger welled up from deep in her chest. Her Defending Aspect begged to be released to stop the Ken’nar.
She stole a glance to the south. Through a flash of lightning, she saw the southern Ken’nar contingent riding toward the garrison. Like a black ocean, the warriors covered the plains just beyond the entrance to the Ford valley. Thunder plunged the scene back into darkness.
Lord Garis charged his stallion alongside her. ... Follow the Anarath River until you are well away from the Ford ... I will meet you by the Stairs of Anar ... Go now ... He sharply wheeled his horse away to charge south.
“My lord, wait—!”
Flares of multicolored lightning exploded around her. She screamed and ducked low over her saddle, covering her head with one arm. Fal’kin converged on the Ken’nar as they neared the installation. The clash of their swords cut through the night air.
The blood-soaked fury around her was far more terrifyi
ng than any vision ever could be. She fought to put the death that surrounded her, the agony, the rage into some sort of context, but no rationale could ever explain this. The Underworld had released itself before her and she was now one of the damned.
Panicked, she drew a long knife as Ashtar surged forward, frantically searching the battlefield for the Trine. ... Lord Garis ... No answer returned to her. Had he hidden under U’Nehíl, cloaking his presence from the Ken’nar Dark Trine? No Fal’kin could fight under U’Nehíl, and certainly not use an amulet while hidden. Lord Garis was no ordinary Fal’kin, however. Could his Trine Aspects uphold U’Nehíl while he fought? She couldn’t possibly sift through Aspects amid the fighting to find his mind behind false duplications of life like she had her father. There was simply too much of...of everything.
Only Tetric Garis could help her find a new destiny, one that would save Kinderra and not destroy it. If the Ken’nar Dark Trine was here at the Ford, he would try to kill him just as surely as he would try to kill her. Fervent determination welled up from her, no less powerful than a true Aspect.
Tetric Garis saved her life. And she would save his.
“Ashtar, we have to find him before the Dark Trine does.”
Mirana slapped the horse’s reins on his shoulder with one hand, held out her long knife with the other, and charged south further into the embattled garrison.
CHAPTER 22
“The love I bear for my wife, and she for me, has been made incarnate. A son! The Aspects Above hath granted their servant a son!”
—The Codex of Jasal the Great
Teague raced toward the Dar-Anar foothills with his parents and the herbsfolk who had come with them from Deren. The il’Kin defenders surrounded them in a protective circle as they rode.
He glanced back over his shoulder and wished he hadn’t. Flames within the garrison shot up into the sky, engulfing the canvas and wood tents. The battle was silhouetted against the bright orange of the fire. Thankfully the Ken’nar were so preoccupied with the Fal’kin, their little group hadn’t been seen. He frowned at himself. Should he even be thankful for that?
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