Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (20 page)

For a moment Teia was more afraid of that particular statement than if Ytha had said she was to burn her out the next day. After what she had seen in her dreams and in the blood scrying, she dared not let her imagination dwell on what she might be called upon to do. But she needed to learn how to tame her Talent, make it work for her instead of tossing her about like a toy in the hands of a petulant child. If she was to have any chance at all of understanding what lay ahead and how best to steer herself through it, she had to learn. The Speaker was the only one who could teach her.

Deep breaths, Teia. Remember the manners your mother taught you
. With a gesture, she indicated the embroidered cushions arranged on the floor. ‘Then will you not be seated, Speaker?’

The look Ytha flashed her way was unreadable, but the older woman sat, arranging her skirts around her. Teia sat facing her, hands on her knees.

Immediately, a bluish globe formed in the air between the two women at eye height. As it came into existence Teia felt a little tug inside, in the place where she reached when she wanted to scry. Ah. So that was what it felt like to be aware of another woman working the power. She had felt that tug before but never known what it was. Now all was clear.

‘Can you hear it?’ Ytha asked.

Teia listened, but her ears heard nothing. Then she opened herself to the music and found it shimmering and thrumming in response to the Speaker’s weaving. ‘I hear
something
.’

The little globe changed colour from blue to violet. As it did so, the note in the music changed tone, becoming richer and more rounded somehow. There was a texture, too, almost a warp and a weft. Teia could see the weave clearly now and was amazed that she had never thought to study it before. After all, Ytha’s lights were no new thing to her.

Underneath the soft chiming of the Speaker’s power, Teia heard her own Talent echoing every shade and inflection as if urging her to copy the weave. The ball of light was all but showing her how it was made.

Excitement thrilled through her. Could wielding power really be this simple? Could she learn just by studying what another woman did and letting the music – was it magic? – form itself like soap poured into a mould?

‘May I try?’

Ytha’s eyebrows twitched up a fraction. ‘We have barely begun, child. Do you think you are ready?’

‘I can see it, how it is woven. I know I can do this.’

The globe was now coppery-pink and paling like a sunrise.

‘Very well.’ Ytha’s tone was grudging.

She expects me to fail. But I won’t
.

Holding out her hand, Teia concentrated. The power rose eagerly and sang along her nerves as she spun it into a perfect sphere hovering above her palm. She had just enough time to notice Ytha’s expression shift from doubt through startlement to being quite satisfyingly impressed when a black vault opened in her mind and a Hound leapt through it. Shock ripped the power from her grasp and the globe winked out. Teia gasped, but the Hound was gone as swiftly as it had arrived. Gone as if it had never been.

Her thoughts reeled. A waking vision? She had never experienced that before. She had only seen things in dreams or when scrying.

Dragging her attention back, Teia focused on the Speaker, who was, she noted, nonplussed. It did not last long. One breath and Ytha was herself again, chill and deep as the mountain lake.

‘Remarkable.’ A knife-cut smile. ‘I congratulate you. It is rare that an apprentice manages so much from so little instruction. Can you repeat what you did?’

Power rose up the instant Teia thought of reaching for it, in spite of her weariness. Once more a little globe blushed into existence over her outstretched palm; she frowned, concentrating, and its colour paled to match the cool blue of Ytha’s. She tensed, waiting for the reappearance of the Hound, but nothing happened. The globe remained, gently rotating to the rhythm of the song inside her. She relaxed, even dared a small smile of achievement.

‘Remarkable,’ Ytha said again. She examined Teia’s globe carefully, then with a twitch of her hand snuffed it out.

The severing of her contact with the power stung Teia like the snap of a herdmaster’s quirt. She yelped, more from surprise than pain.

‘Again.’

A test, then. So be it
. Another globe, quicker and more assured than the others. Again Ytha struck and extinguished it. It stung fiercely this time, but she did not flinch.

‘Again!’

Now she could spin the globe almost without thinking. She had sensed the Speaker weaving something before she struck; she saw it now and as the other woman’s fingers flickered, she raised a fist of power.

Ytha’s weaving struck it and flew into fragments. ‘How did you do that?’

That agate-green glare demanded an explanation. How
had
she done it? Teia was not sure; she had simply known. Instinctively.

‘I saw the shape of your weaving and copied it. But I made a shield instead of a knife.’

‘How impressive.’

Something in the Speaker’s tone fair screamed a warning. It was the flat-eyed look of a cat before it scratched, the rattle in the long grass that said tread with care. Had she gone too far? Perhaps. But she was not a child any more and she was tired of being spanked like one.

‘Forgive me, Speaker. Have I done wrong?’

‘No, not wrong. You run headlong where you should barely be walking, perhaps, but nothing wrong.’ The older woman rose, drawing her robe around her. Her globe rose into the air to hover at her shoulder. ‘I think that is enough for one day, though. You do not want to overtire yourself.’

‘Of course.’ Teia stood, folding her hands meekly in front of her. ‘Thank you for your instruction, Speaker. I am sure I will learn a great deal under your guidance.’

Ytha favoured her with a long look. Teia had seen it before, knew the Speaker used it to create the kind of silence that ached to be filled and usually resulted in unwise words. She faced it with a mildness of expression that drew its sting completely, like milkweed after nettles. Drwyn’s temper had taught her that, though the skill had not been acquired without a price. Another moment’s consideration, a stiff little nod and the Speaker was gone.

Alone, Teia wondered whether it was a mistake letting Ytha see how apt a pupil she could be. Would it make for more trust, or less? More lessons, or fewer? She even let herself wonder whether it made her more likely to be burned out or safer, if she sat at the Speaker’s right hand as her apprentice.

She touched the firm curve of her belly speculatively. As long as she carried Drwyn’s child she would be safe. It even gave her power, of a sort. Not even Ytha would risk harm to her until after the birth, not unless provoked. So she had some time, at least, in which to learn as much as she could.

Very gently she let a thread of her magic reach down through the layers of skin and muscle under her hand, let it slip into the warm darkness of her womb and caress the child. Sleeping. The infant mind was wrapped in a somnolent fug in which colours shifted slowly, a skyful of sunset clouds.

Teia touched it, no more substantial than a breath. Colours swirled and rose. Deep blue, rich amber, other colours for which she had no names, opulent as jewels. Startled, she withdrew, not daring to linger, for if there was one thing she did know about her Talent it was how little she knew. Fading to the muted glow of lamplight through a thick curtain, the colours subsided. But Teia still sensed them, long after she let the music sink back into quiescence.

For the first time, she felt aware of her child as more than just the source of backache and indigestion. Did that mean the child would be gifted, too?

That thought struck an unexpected spark of fear in her. She had never heard of a male with the Talent. It followed the female line, though it did not always breed true and sometimes died out or appeared in families that had never produced an apprentice for as long as anyone could remember. But it was always a girl who went fearfully to the Speaker’s tent a month or two after her first bleed – sometimes even before, for those with the strongest gifts, when boys were still deciding whether to be warriors or herdsmen. If her child was gifted, didn’t that mean she would give birth to a girl?

Teia chewed at her lower lip, then made herself stop. If she had a daughter, she had a daughter; no amount of fretting would change it. She would not be so favoured as if she bore a son, but it would prove she was fertile enough for sons in the future, unlike Drwyn’s first wife, and he did not appear to be displeased with her, so perhaps things would not change all that much.

Her standing with Ytha, though . . . that was another kettle of soup entirely. Would the Speaker view a source of gifted children as an asset to her plans, or would she feel threatened by it, by Teia herself? That was a question with no easy answer.

And what of the Hound? What had triggered that brief, startling vision? For a fraction of a second her mind had been filled with rank fur, hot breath and a . . . presence, and then it was gone. Lacking in detail yet extraordinarily vivid, the way a few charcoal strokes and a smudge of ochre on the cave wall could depict a buck elk brought to bay by spears. Not so much a Hound as the essence of one, the core and root, the hunter of which all others were mere reflections in a bronze mirror, hazy and dim. It had consumed her entirely.

That must be how the hare felt when confronted by the fox, or the sparrow under the talons of the hawk. Nothing to see or hear or feel but the predator, and the certain knowledge that she was nothing but prey.

13

FIRSTMOON

After that first lesson, Ytha came every day. For an hour or so, she drilled Teia in the making of lights and the summoning of the wind. Her praise was grudging and her rebukes swift, but Teia accepted such chiding as came and considered it the price of knowledge.

For the first time she truly felt she had control of the power inside her. Only in small ways, to be sure, but she could command it to do her will, reliably, repeatably. After ten such lessons she could summon three globes at once and, like a juggler at the fair, make them dance between her hands.

Ytha raised her eyebrows at such frivolity, of course, but let her play for a minute or so, then cleared her throat. Teia brought the whirling spheres back into a line and lowered her eyes.

‘Forgive me. I let myself be carried away.’

‘Though there is joy in it, the Talent is not for games,’ Ytha said severely. ‘If you lose your focus, it can become dangerous. Remember that.’

‘Yes, Speaker.’ She bit her lip. ‘I was wondering, might I be allowed to practise between lessons?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘I thought it might improve my concentration—’

‘No!’ Ytha cut the air with her hand, and the draught sent Teia’s globes tumbling in the air. ‘You are too impatient, too undisciplined. You should not even be spinning simultaneous weaves this soon – always you are reaching for more, more, more.’ She glared at Teia, snapped her fingers and, one by one, extinguished the bobbing lights. ‘Your gift is strong, but if you overreach yourself, power alone will not save you.’

If she could not touch her power unsupervised, she could not scry. If she could not scry, she could not learn her future. Before she could stop herself, Teia began, ‘But—’

‘
It – is – forbidden!
’

Teia’s hopes fizzled out like her lights. Trying to hide the disappointment she was sure must be written on her face, she bowed her head. ‘Yes, Speaker.’

The next few lessons saw Ytha more strict than ever, repeating simple exercises and allowing Teia no freedom to stretch her growing control. She schooled herself to obedience, and was finally rewarded a week later with an opportunity to practise multiple weavings. She did not ask about unsupervised practice again, though the desire to do it anyway was enough to keep her awake some nights. It was too soon to try pressing Ytha’s indulgence again just yet.

Three weeks into the new year, the silver moon rose full again, and Teia celebrated Firstmoon with her parents in their family chamber on the far side of the meeting place. Ana had baked mooncakes for the feast day, and fussed so over Teia’s comfort that Teir exclaimed she was only their daughter, not Queen Etheldren herself stepped down out of legend. At that, Ana gave a sniff that said she would not spare this much effort for the Queen and all her court, then proffered another pillow for Teia’s back.

Conversation was stiff at first; they had forgotten how to be at ease with one another. Her elder sisters did not seem to know how to treat her. She was no longer a girl, but not yet a wife; no longer a maiden, but not yet a mother; Talented, but not yet a Speaker. She was Teia-in-waiting and they had no cues to follow, so fell back on a guarded formality that fair broke her heart.

But Teir was generous with his store of mead and soon tongues loosened and smiles came more freely. Ailis had titbits of the choicest gossip to share, then Tevira told a story so salacious that her father clapped his hands over his ears to spare himself whilst the women drummed their heels on the floor and hooted with laughter.