Lady Warhawk (26 page)

"Well, to pay him back, you must stay here and spoil Athrar's daughter." Her laughter
caught in her throat when Glyssani stopped short at her words.

"Athrar's daughter? You have seen her?"

"Not so much seen her as... Sometimes visions are not always visions, but impressions,
sensing what will be. I knew Athrar would have a daughter, and that Indreseen would not be her
mother, but I had no idea..." Meghianna gestured helplessly to the west, across the sea toward
Indreseen's prison quarters in Welcairn Castle.

"It gives me little comfort, knowing you and I sensed something not quite right in that
girl, though we could not find any good reason to stop her from marrying Athrar." Glyssani
shook her head. "Enough. No good comes of gnawing on the past. The child here and now is our
concern. What is your--"

They both stopped and turned to look as the door into the courtyard creaked open.
Ynfara peered inside, holding a lantern high, spilling light, tinted blue and green by the glass
panels, over the bushes at the courtyard entrance.

"Come in, child. Join us," Glyssani said, holding out both hands. "You have met
Princess Meghianna, my stepdaughter?"

Ynfara nodded, dropping a brief curtsey imbued with the grace of a wild animal. She
winced, and pressed her hand to the small of her back as she passed Meghianna, to take
Glyssani's outstretched hand.

"Are you in pain?" Meghianna sent a tiny Thread to examine the girl's back.

Ynfara let out a shriek, like a rabbit caught by a hawk. She went to her knees, trembling
and sweating, and dropped the lantern to press both hands to her back.

"Help her." Glyssani knelt to wrap her arms around the girl. "Whatever you have to do,
do it."

Meghianna wrapped a Thread around Ynfara from head to foot, yanking the girl into a
deep, unfeeling sleep. Then she called through the Threads for Pirkin and Ynessa.

"Being near me caused her pain," she said, thinking aloud as she picked up the girl and
Glyssani hurried ahead of her to open doors. "The real pain came when I moved a Thread to
examine her. Could it be that something has been done to her to... I don't know, make her
sensitive to the use of
imbrose
?"

"That would explain why she was so unhappy around Lord Mrillis," Glyssani said.

"I think it is a very good thing that foul old woman is very far away," Meghianna said
between clenched teeth, as they reached the suite given over to Pirkin and Ynessa. "Else I should
very much enjoy shredding her, a little at a time. First her body, then her soul."

Ynfara's parents joined them, out of breath and wearing cloaks--they had likely been out
riding. Pirkin was grim, and Meghianna knew he had heard her and likely shared her feelings
toward his stepmother. Ynessa was pale, fighting tears, and took her daughter's unconscious
body, to lay her in her bed.

Because Ynfara had reflexively touched her back, Meghianna started there. The three
women peeled off the girl's clothes, stretched her out on her stomach, and froze in shock and
growing dismay.

A black design covered Ynfara's back, from just above her hipbones to just below her
shoulder blades. It was like nothing Meghianna had ever seen before, more geometric markings
and swirls and sharp corners than anything recognizable, either building or plant or animal. A
thick line followed the girl's spine, and Meghianna trembled at the notion that the marking was
alive, climbing the girl's back, reaching for her skull. Eventually, it would infiltrate her limbs,
her internal organs, controlling her mind, perhaps touching the children she might someday carry
in her womb.

"It moves," Ynessa whispered, and demonstrated by stretching out her hand with two
blue-wreathed star-metal rings. The black markings rippled like wind-blown water--as if they
tried to escape from the magic radiating from the rings.

"I don't know nearly enough of magic," Glyssani began.

"You know more than enough, Mother." Meghianna shared a grim smile with the
dowager queen. She had overseen Glyssani's education in the theory and history of Rey'kil
magic. Glyssani understood enough to know that this strange, writhing black tattoo across the
girl's back was a deadly, dangerous, growing thing.

"Remove it," Pirkin snapped, when they came out to the common room of the suite to
tell him what they had found. "Even if it leaves her scarred, remove it before it gets its roots any
deeper into her." He shuddered, his face creasing in a fury Meghianna had never imagined he
could wear. Then he seemed to crumple, and reached to enfold Ynessa in his arms. "How could
she do that to a little girl? She claimed she loved Ynfara. How could she do that?"

"It is possible she thought she was protecting her," Glyssani said slowly. "By associating
magic with pain, Ynfara would never want anything to do with her Rey'kil heritage."

"Can it be removed?" Ynessa said.

"We will do our best, and not rest until it is done," Meghianna promised.

* * * *

They kept Ynfara asleep, to protect her from pain, and took her to the coast. Master
Deyral came from Wynystrys, setting foot on the mainland for the first time in decades, to help
transport Ynfara to the island.

The multiple layers of protective spells woven around the hidden island sparkled and
groaned audibly, protesting as the boat carrying the girl passed through them. Meghianna and
Deyral paused the boat each time a shield reacted, and examined the writhing black design. They
feared that bringing her to the island might give the enemy who had woven that spell some entry
into Wynystrys. The scholars had agreed that if they sensed any weakening of the shields of
Threads, they would eject the girl and find some other place to work on freeing her.

Each time they examined the markings, the black lines seemed thinner or fainter, or they
writhed more in visibly painful protest. When they brought Ynfara up onto the pebbly shore of
Wynystrys, Deyral called a halt and ordered that a shelter be built there.

"No farther. I am afraid the magic might drain her physical reserves, in a desperate
effort to resist us."

Meghianna didn't question him. Deyral had kept one hand resting on the girl's bare back
the entire time, keeping watch over her physical state.

On the shore of Wynystrys, with the shields sparkling and shimmering as the enemy's
magic fought them, all the scholars of Wynystrys gathered around the girl and set to work. It
took them four days of patient testing and bolstering Ynfara's physical strength, wrapping fine
Threads of magic around the alien magic embedded in her flesh, and delicately pulling the spell
and the markings free. Ten scholars and enchanters worked on her at a time, with twenty more
providing protection and keeping watch for attack, and all the others seeing to the needs of those
who worked and watched. Later, Deyral and several others agreed that the task was like trying to
pick apart an ancient tapestry, in the dark, one color at a time, with only their fingers to tell them
what colors they touched.

When Ynfara's back was unblemished and undamaged, they brought the girl to the
healer hall, to sleep undisturbed and recover. Then they sent for Pirkin and Ynessa and Mrillis, to
report their success and let them come fetch the girl home again.

"Still," Deyral said, when the anxious family came to his quarters on the island, "we
cannot be sure we have removed it completely. There could be some tiny seed, a single dot of
inimical magic, waiting for the right trigger to awaken it and start it growing again."

"She will always be sensitive to the working of magic around her," Meghianna said,
taking over from Deyral. Even after five days of resting from the effort, which he had overseen
from start to finish, he had dark smears of strain under his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt under
his long gray beard.

"But only sensitive, yes? Not the pain she felt before?" The guarded hope in Mrillis'
voice made her ache, and she caught her breath in an effort not to sob.

"We will not be sure until she awakens. I know this will be hard, but I propose taking
Ynfara to the Stronghold and teaching her as if she were to become a Queen's Lady. We have no
idea yet of the depth of the
imbrose
she inherited. History has proven that those who
come under great magical attack sometimes develop talents far beyond what is expected. Ynfara
must learn to monitor her own
imbrose
and the slightest workings of magic around her,
to protect herself." Meghianna reached across the table to clasp Ynessa's hand. "I don't want to
deprive you of your daughter, when you have so recently regained her. Pirkin, you can enter the
Stronghold, because you were born there. Come with me, both of you. Take this opportunity to
know your daughter again, and help me teach her to protect herself."

"Grandfather?" Pirkin looked to Mrillis, after several long moments of silence.

"I'm sorry," Mrillis said. "In the end, it does come down to your stepmother's hatred for
me as the blame for all this."

"No!" Pirkin staggered to his feet and leaned across the table to clasp Mrillis' shoulder.
"I wasn't blaming you. I was asking if you could come with us, actually."

Meghianna fought hard not to weep now, when she saw such relief and hope in Mrillis'
eyes. No man, she vowed, should ever have to suffer such loss and guilt and grief. She swore she
would make it her life's quest to guard him from such suffering in the future. Hadn't he given his
life, lost so many he loved already, in service to the World? Didn't he deserve some joy, now, in
his old age?

"Then it is settled," she said, when she could be sure her voice would stay steady. "The
five of us will go to the Stronghold."

* * * *

"The blood," Trevissa whispered, startling the five who stood around Ynfara's bed,
waiting for the girl to awaken. She gave them all a wintry smile and clutched a little harder at the
doorpost, so her knuckles whitened visibly.

Meghianna wondered how much effort it had taken the madwoman to leave her sickbed
and cross the village to the healing hall. How long had Trevissa stood there, watching them? The
long years had been kind to her, as if age had diluted the madness. Deyral reported that she had
longer spells of lucidity, but she looked older than Mrillis.

"The vessel of the blood," Trevissa continued, nodding. "Guard her well. She hates the
most, with the least reason, and she is the key. Forgiveness is the key. And love that never fails.
She is the vessel of the blood to awaken the sleeper and lead Quenlaque into the Rift War."

"Rift War?" Pirkin whispered. He looked to Mrillis, questions clear in his eyes.

"That is something new in prophecy," Mrillis said. He glanced at Meghianna.

I will record it all,
she assured him.
Stay here with them.
Holding out
her hand, she led Trevissa from the sickroom.

"It is like picking up pieces of a map with each step through unfamiliar territory,"
Mrillis said to the others, as she walked away. "We only now catch glimpses of more pivotal
events in the future."

"He is part of it," Trevissa whispered. "I have seen it. So sad, that he should be hated by
the one he loves so much." She looked up at Meghianna, her eyes full of tears.

"Why does she hate him?"

"Hate has to be taught. Only sorrow can heal it. Sorrow and forgiveness." She stumbled,
and Meghianna automatically put her arm around the elderly woman. "You are Efrin's daughter,
aren't you? The good one."

"I am the daughter Belissa gave him," Meghianna said carefully.

"The clean one. Apples don't choose to rot, but you must discard them anyway. Should
have died with her man. Happier if she had. Know she's rotten. Can't help it. Bad choices. Bad
blood. She'll hurt you. I'm sorry," she finished, her knees buckling. Trevissa shuddered with
silent sobs as Meghianna guided her the last few steps into her hut.

"My sister is a good woman. She has proven herself trustworthy and faithful."

"Efrin is dead, isn't he?" Trevissa said, as Meghianna helped her take off her shoes and
climb into her abandoned bed. "I wish... I wish I knew if I really did love him, or if the spell just
made me think I did."

"You are a victim more than anyone, and you fought hard and well to resist the evil that
controlled you," Meghianna began.

"Not well enough." A soft, uneven vibration shook her shoulders. It took Meghianna a
moment to realize she laughed. "Thank you for the comfort you give an old woman you should
hate. But you are Belissa's daughter, and she was always good and forgiving. If things had been
different... Your mother would be alive, Megassa would never have been born, but do you think
we would have been family? We would have loved each other?"

"Yes," Meghianna whispered. "I think so." Her throat hurt from the effort to fight tears.
She was relieved when Trevissa closed her eyes. "Sleep well, Aunt."

A soft sigh escaped the old woman as Meghianna left her hut. Something hovered in the
air a moment, then left, a gentle breeze that stirred a few loose hairs. She was not surprised when
one of Trevissa's caretakers brought Deyral the news the next morning that the old woman had
died in the night, with a smile on her emaciated face.

Meghianna faithfully recorded Trevissa's last words of prophecy, leaving one copy in
the archives of Wynystrys for the scholars to ponder, and taking one copy to the Stronghold.
Whenever blood was mentioned, the prophecy of the Three Drops of Blood always came first to
Meghianna's mind. She wasn't quite sure how that blood figured into Trevissa's prophecy.
Perhaps it did not at all. Or perhaps it referred to the blood of the blood? Meaning a child born to
one of the three drops of blood?

She had gathered up all the scraps of prophecy spoken about Mrillis. Trevissa's words
about hate harkened back to Ceera's prophecy that Mrillis would be betrayed by one he loved,
who had the least reason to harm him, and freed by the one who hated him the most, with the
least reason. What did it all mean?