Fires of Aggar (43 page)

“I See….” A hand waved, at a loss for words. “What do I See? Usually, I Sense more than I See, at least in regard to people. I don’t ‘decipher’ intentions or ‘read’ emotions all that well — for individuals I mean. I can’t. I chose not to learn how to impose my perceptions on another or how to steal them from someone else’s awareness. I couldn’t — I still can’t! — justify such intrusions on an un-Sighted companion.”

“You don’t consider it simply some form of communication?”

“No!” Llinolae swiveled half about, adamant in her denial at first, then she turned away again, repeating more calmly, “No. I don’t. Communication is as much a choice as a tool, I think. An individual’s choice in what to share and when to share it — as well as what not to share — is to be respected. I can’t offer that respect if I manipulate their choosing by my Sight.”

“What’s different in using your Sight versus say — interpreting someone’s sincerity or deception by their posture and inflections?”

“What’s the difference in using a sword versus a fire weapon?” Llinolae glanced at her quickly, then shrugged. “I can’t justify using the fire weapons we’ve confiscated over the seasons, either.”

“Not even against the Clan itself?”

“Especially not then. It has to stop somewhere or nothing will ever get better.”

Gwyn tipped her head, thinking the Steward’s Swords obviously weren’t supporting that particular judgment very well but decided discussions best waited for another day. She could certainly see the point Llinolae had that there was a ‘choice’ in not sharing some things.

“It’s an imperfect analogy, I know. The other piece of it is less a matter of ethics and more a matter of selfishness.”

Gwyn said nothing, and Llinolae smiled off at the beige stone heights, grateful yet amazed at this Amazon’s patience. With a faint shake of her head, Llinolae admitted, “Coming from Valley Bay and with Bryana as a mother, I suspect this will strike you as somewhat ludicrous, but I’ve always had to fight very hard to earn my rights as an individual — turning around to lose that identity again to the amarin was just not acceptable.”

“That doesn’t strike me as ludicrous in the least.”

She smiled again. “Thank you.” Llinolae moved hesitantly to face Gwyn. Her fingers reached out to toy with a knobby little curl of moss. Then almost shyly, she lay down on her side, an arm curled beneath her head as she played with another bit of mossy growth.

Gwyn turned onto her side to face Llinolae, propping her elbow in the moss and her head on her hand. Then she waited until, gradually, Llinolae grew more at ease.

“I’ve never told anyone any of this — or about my mentors.” She sighed and abandoned the moss bud, tucking her hand beneath her cheek. “My mother was a Clan refugee. She’d been found injured in the west district forests, fleeing her kinfolk. She’d been attacked by a pair of wild baskers, it seemed. My father was already in West Bough, arbitrating some town dispute, when they brought her in. He must have fallen in love at the first sight of her — she seemed so very strong and beautiful that day, he’d say — despite her being half-starved and exhausted from the blood loss and running. When she died of fever, her forearm and thigh were still carrying those scars — that was three tenmoons later. I remember Mother once saying, she’d only survived the baskers’ attack because the beasts had been young, not fully grown.

“She was like that, noticing even the littlest of details… never seemed to panic at anything. Except once, when I was born and Father saw my blue eyes.” A mirthless bit of a laugh made her pause. Her gaze shifted to Gwyn as she explained, “Mother had heard of the Blue Sights and of how the Council of Ten would take them for training. She didn’t want to lose me so soon.”

Llinolae’s eyes grew shadowed at the next thought then, a blank stare turning back to the mossy cushion. “She lost me anyway, didn’t she… in dying so young? I was only a season-and-a-half old….

“I remember running about and once in a while even falling over my own feet — much too bright and energetic for any nursemaid — much too strong in my Sight even then. Mother had blue eyes herself, you see, so when she told Father mine were because of her Clan blood, he thought it odd but not refutable.” Llinolae paused and gave a short sigh. “I think it was the only thing she ever lied to him about. He was dubious, kept watching for some sign of the Gift in me, but he was in Court a lot during the days — occasionally away overnight visiting the district townships for duties. So, she was always the first to notice my talent’s eccentricities. She taught me to hide it — to keep it a secret.

“It was a game of ours from the beginning. Literally a hide-and-go-seek game. ‘Be invisible!’ she’d say, and somehow…? Well, now I know it was because of the Blue Sight, but I always understood it was terribly, terribly important that I be good at the game. So I was.”

“Important to your mother,” Gwyn interjected.

“Yes — or we would be separated ‘too soon’… for however long that was, I don’t know now.”

Gwyn nodded, “The Clans keep their children young for a great many seasons more than most of us do.”

“Yet I was young then… barely knee high… that made it important to me as well. But I could imagine being without her so clearly, because again the Sight itself was beginning to show me out-of-time glimpses of when she’d be gone.”

“So you learned to hide well.”

“Very, very well. Soon servants, grooms — whomever! — could walk right past and never see me.”

“You were bending the amarin around you and you weren’t even three seasons old?”

“Before I was two, actually.”

Gwyn was amazed. Kimarie had been nearly three times that age before she’d been able to touch that kind of power.

“Consciously, no. Unconsciously though? From the assumption everyone did it, yes. I didn’t control much consciously for another tenmoon-or-so. When Mother died, Father stopped worrying about whether or not I had the Sight — I think he suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of losing me too. In his grief after her pyre burning, he begged me to always stay beside him. I promised I would.” Llinolae looked at Gwyn solemnly. “It was the first promise I’d ever made.”

From anyone else, Gwyn might have challenged that sort of comment. But given the strength of Llinolae’s Blue Gift, she now understood just how the woman would know; every detail of her life would be as accessible as an etched carving to Llinolae. Her out-of-time Seeing ability would only allow her to draw sharper focus on the images. But the drawback would be in that clarity itself — those memories would not be the memories of a child necessarily, rather they’d be complex pictures of what had actually happened. All it would take — all it would ever take — was a determined enough, fierce concentration to sift through those images until the proper set were uncovered. Given the grief of her father’s loss — of her own loss! — the child would never have been allowed to forget the importance of that promise to the widowed husband.

“At first, he held me as the most cherished reminder of her. He took me nearly everywhere with him. I’d sit in Court at his knee, ride through the District — first held before him in the saddle then soon beside him on my own shaggy bit-pony.” Affection softened her tone and brought a smile to her lips. “He soon came to love me for myself and not merely for her sake.”

“Except that he never knew of you as Sighted.”

“Except for that — though sometimes he almost let himself suspect it again. Like when we were traveling and needing fresh meat, I’d always be the first to notice the sign of braygoat — or I’d be the first to give warning of a roaming pack of wild baskers. He convinced himself I was merely growing to be more like my mother, I think.”

“Aware of the smallest details?”

“Aye. No one ever challenged his assessment, and there hadn’t been a Blue Sight born near the city in nearly a generation. Most never returned from the Council once they’d left the outlying regions as children, so no one knew what the Sight could or couldn’t be influencing in my talents.”

“The emissaries from Churv never had a Seer or an unbonded Shadow trainee among them?”

“Only once, during one of the last few official visits. Before father died, the Changlings Wars had worsened. The delegations from Churv had already been stopped. When Taysa and I seemed able enough to cope without direct supervision after Father’s death, the Royal Family only seemed grateful and relieved.”

“Leaving you overwhelmed,” Gwyn grimaced. Then she asked, “You said there was a Blue Sight visitor to Khirla’s Court before your Father’s death?”

“Yes, when I was three-or-so seasons. It was the day I…,” she smiled with little humor. “You could say I ran away from home that day. Or from Aggar, more aptly. It was the journey that introduced me to my Mistress n’Shea and her n’Athena Amazon.

“It was around the time Taysa joined us. I remember she had just married my uncle — Father’s younger brother. Father had gotten uneasy with the Blue Sight emissary during the afternoon, and he’d sent Taysa up to me before eventide to tell me a little about each of the Court visitors… he’d told her it would help me remember who they were during dinner. He’d never do that unless he was leery of someone, though—”

“Wait. You said he was always keeping you near. Why hadn’t you been there when they arrived in Court?”

A rueful mischief lit Llinolae’s blue eyes and nudged her to tease, “I wasn’t such a big girl then, Gwyn’l. I was… what? About three-and-a-half tenmoons? We’d been traipsing around the brushberry farms all morning and my little legs had covered more leagues of soggy ditches than my little mind could count! When we got back to the Palace, Father promptly ordered me off to bed for a nap.” She actually giggled, and Gwyn started smiling. “Did you think he was trying to make me into some clingy, fruit vine? I assure you — he had quite a lot of sense for a single parent with no nieces or nephews to learn from.

“Still — that day was different. He was frightened by the Blue Sight visitor….” The laughter died, and Llinolae remembered that eventide news again. She rolled onto her back, her Sight blurring as she recalled the fresh flush of fear that had rushed through her. It had made her physically ill at Taysa’s announcement — she’d thrown up on her aunt’s best satins. Then with calm complacency, she’d been bundled back into bed and cooed assurances that her tummy would be all right come morning.

Until finally she’d been left alone in the stony haven of her tower room. It was a hide-away-safe stone place which had once been her mother’s sewing room and her playroom. She’d taken it as her bedroom after her mother’s death, because Mother had assured her once that ‘not even the Council’s best Seers could find’ her in there. But her mother had been talking about the Seers in the Council’s Keep; this Sighted One was in the Palace itself, and she hadn’t trusted the room with its door of honeywood and its drafty edges. So she had dressed and clutching her warm riding cloak around herself, she had disappeared into the black depths of the gaping fireplace.

Crawling… squirming she’d gotten in behind the mammoth stone crest plate with it’s sooty engravings. Back into that thin space between stones where the air channeled up from other fire hearths below, then slanted above her own to finally drift into the open skies beyond….

Though the spring was wet, it was warm, and none of the fires in the tower were lit. The updrafts swept through the stone mazes making them chilly. The child shivered, trying to tuck the cloak around her better, as she looked up into the evening’s twilight. Her only thought was to hide — to disappear to some place safe. Night fell darker. The early moon stayed hidden from the chimney vent, and the little girl watched as stars appeared. All her focus narrowed, guided by that stone chimney chute. Her eyes shut, clenching tight against shivers and distractions. And she ‘reached’ high to hide in the black velvet of the starry skies.

Bushes — she suddenly felt bushes around her. They were fragrant and sweet smelling things. In surprise, the child looked around at this strange new place of the night.

Voices and laughter were coming from nearby. The girl rose cautiously to her knees, all the while ‘hiding’ her best amidst this strange leafed brush.

A campfire blazed brightly with a circle of gray stones. A small cabin with a thatched roof and a single window stood off to the side of the clearing. A huge set of bay horses lazed in the corral beside the building. But as the laughter broke again, it was to the pair beyond the fire that the child turned.

Two women lay against a long seat, playing with a slender stick and an ashen bulb stuck to it. The younger woman laughed again, tossing a dark braid back over a shoulder as she pointed hurriedly at the bulb. Her companion tried to catch the thing as it began to disintegrate into gooey strands, dripping from the stick. Fingers danced back, then forward, juggling the branch and the thing’s heat, until laughingly she abandoned all reason and shoved the sticky thing into her mouth.

“Oh Soroi, no!”

“Too late!” she panted, trying to suck the air in to cool the food and her burnt tongue. She almost choked on her laughter. And she gulped it down with a swallow, frantically fanning her open mouth again.

“Di’nay!”

“Hot!”

“But sweet.” Fingers reached high to rearrange those short brown strands of hair back into a semblance of order.

The taller woman grew still with the touch, her dark gaze turning tender. She caught the fussing hand and pressed a kiss against the tooled leather band on the wrist. “Not nearly as sweet as you, Love.”

The younger woman moved her hand to intercept the next kiss before it reached her lips. “I have something to tell you first.”

At the quiet tone, the woman took the other’s hand in her own. And her assurance was a loving one as she smiled, “I knew you brought me out camping for some time to talk with me alone.”

Still the younger hesitated.

“Ti’ Mae — tell me.”

“I’m carrying your daughter.”

The air seemed hushed, holding time suspended for a breath. “Your wh…? My — ?” Shock made her blink, then sit straighter with a start. Her gaze locked to the brown flushed face of her lover. “You’re carrying my daughter?”