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“What an enigma the Aspects are. They reveal all but say nothing.”
—The Codex of Jasal the Great
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“I’ve taught you better than this. Or at least I thought I had. Perhaps this is as much my mistake as yours.”
“No, Mother,” Mirana said. “This has nothing to do with you. You’re right. I should have come to you immediately and told you about the grynwen attack. I was terrified I might have distracted Father at precisely the wrong moment when I called to warn him.” She glanced at her father. “When you didn’t call later, I didn’t know what to think. I was frightened, so I didn’t say anything.”
Her mother’s hands were folded in front of her, a false semblance of calm. Her knuckles were clenched white. Her father leaned back against her mother’s desk, his mind closed as tightly as his folded arms.
Her father shook his head slowly. “You’ve studied enough military tactics with your mother as a seer. Tell me why you think I did not return your call?”
She lowered her eyes to avoid the accusation and the disappointment in her father’s silver gaze. She focused instead on the shards of jadelite scattered on her mother’s desk. Brepaithe Toban’s tiger stamp. It was broken. She used to play with it. She loved that stamp. She picked up a jadelite fragment.
“You had to remain under U’Nehíl so the Ken’nar in Falantir would not sense your location.”
She could stare at the stone shards all she wanted to avoid her father’s gaze, but her mother’s mind was not to be ignored.
“Were you planning not to tell me about Two Rivers Ford, either?”
Mirana snapped her head up and closed her hand around the shard. “No. I swear it. I was confused. I needed some time to figure it out. I first thought our troops at the Ford were the Ken’nar.” Her shoulders slumped. “I made a mistake in interpretation. It’s not often I don’t understand what it is I am perceiving. I guess I was frightened about this, too.”
“And Teague helped you get over your fears. Would that have been before or after you went to see Tetric Garis?” her mother said. Mirana bit her lip. “I am your prime, not Lord Garis. You should have come to me first with any inkling of any vision. Mirana il’Kellis il’Pinal, what is the matter with you?”
She closed her eyes and exhaled. It did nothing to rid her of her guilt. “I am so sorry.”
Her mother sighed in bitter frustration as she sat back in her primeship’s chair. “You are no longer a little girl, and I am no longer just your mother. I am the prime of Kin-Deren province now. Not speaking to me about the grynwen attack, and now your delay in coming to me about Two Rivers Ford? These are not things I can simply forget or pass off as childish foolishness. Your interpretation skills are worthy of a seer far beyond your summers. Consequently, when you are done with your lessons each day, you will now remain with me and my senior seers. If you have any more unbidden prescience, you need not be frightened because you will be surrounded by seers who can help you.”
No. Oh, Aspects Above. What if the keep vision appeared to her while her mother and the other seers were in her mind?
Her father reached over and squeezed Mirana’s shoulder. “Desde, she was frightened she distracted me at the wrong moment when she called the warning. With Two Rivers Ford, you said yourself the vision was difficult to interpret. She did come to you only moments after speaking with Tetric. I think she knows now to never do this again.”
“If she has been seeing more than her share of unbidden visions and can call to you across hundreds of leagues but also find you while you were hidden under U’Nehíl, she will need close supervision.” Her mother spat out her words like bitter medicine.
She was angry, certainly, but she was also scared. Mirana scowled. Why was she frightened? What was going on here?
Her mother’s expression softened. Finally.
“I am not doing this to be cruel, Lightness, but you need to remember why it is so vitally important we know any scrap of information. It can save lives.” She now sent a caring notion to Mirana’s mind. “You may go.”
She nodded and walked to the door. Fear had kept her from doing her duty and coming to her mother—no, her prime—as was required by law. Fear of no longer trusting her instincts. Fear of no longer trusting herself. Fear this misstep would lead to another and another until she believed evil choices weren’t evil anymore.
Her hand lingered on the door handle. Could she tell them? Tell them what she was? Tell them the awesome and atrocious things her destiny held for her? Would they believe her?
She turned around. “I really am sorry. For everything. Father, the grynwen weren’t hunting you like a herd of deer. They were sent. I had to warn you. I had to. I also know the kind of call I made—” She swallowed. “The call I made is beyond what most Fal’kin can do. That frightened me as well. The thought I might have killed you in the end and not saved you, that is what terrified me.” She crossed her arms tightly, holding herself. “With Two Rivers Ford, Mother, I could have given you incorrect information. If I came to you with bad information, it would have been worse. I didn’t want to cause more people to die.” She tried to keep the sob in her throat from escaping, but it slipped through her clenched teeth anyway. “I don’t want people to die because of me.”
Kaarl crossed over to her and held her face in his hands. “Gannah Tesabe did not die because of you.”
Her mother rose and stroked Mirana’s hair. “You must never be afraid of what you see, ai, even if the visions are terrifying.”
The keep tower and its deadly light flared in her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered, her folded arms unable to suppress the trembling.
“Miri, what is it?” Desde asked.
“You always told me you gave up being a battle seer to raise me. It was more than that, though, wasn’t it?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear her own words. “It was all the death, too. The guilt of taking so many lives over the summers. It had left you empty inside. That’s why you thought you could never have a child, isn’t it? You thought the Aspects Above were punishing you?”
Her mother blinked, her hand now still. “What?”
Mirana inhaled. Would they understand? They had to. This burden was killing her, heartbeat by heartbeat. “Father, you fight evil every day until you know of nothing else. The bloodlust on the battlefield. It nearly overwhelms you sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes your Defending Aspect controls you more than you control it.”
She stepped out of her parents’ embrace. “I know these things about you both. I’ve seen it, heard it from you, in bits and pieces of thoughts you don’t even want to admit to yourselves. We all have horrors like that inside. All of us.”
Her mother’s eyes held concern, ai, but it was her fear that shot like an arrow through Mirana’s heart. “What are you saying, Lightness?”
“Please don’t call me that anymore.” Her words tried to fight their way out just as strongly as she was trying to hold them back. “We call the one who leads the Ken’nar the Dark Trine. Was he born evil? Did he suddenly wake up one morning and decide to turn his back on the Fal’kin and forsake the Light from Within for the Ken’nar and the Power from Without? What choices did he make in his life that led him down the path to become evil? You both are the noblest Fal’kin I know. If you can’t fight the darkness in your hearts, how can I?”
“Mirana,” her father said, “you made some mistakes and, ai, they were serious ones, but you are not evil. They were just mistakes.”
Her mother looked once more at her father, then nudged Mirana’s mind. “The Aspects Above gave us our gifts and we are compelled to use them, but they also gave us a conscience. They gave us free will.” She reached out to cup her cheek. “You are not evil. You could never be evil, biraena. Ever.”
She pulled her face away from her mother’s hand and stepped back farther. “How do you know?”
“I carried you beneath my heart for almost eight months. The Aspects Above wanted you so badly for Kinderra, they called you to be born that much sooner. Your gifts were once my gifts. I know you. I know you are not evil.” Her mother tried to smile, but her worried brow defeated the expression.
Mirana slowly opened her hand to see the piece of the broken jadelite tiger still in her palm. “Do you think the Dark Trine’s mother said the same things to him when he was young?”
Her mother reached for her father’s hand. ... Mirana ... You know we love you ... Is there something else you haven’t told us? ... Have you done something? ...
“No.” She shook her head quickly. “Why would anyone want to become the Dark Trine, the one to destroy Kinderra? I can’t even imagine what his mother and father have gone through, seeing what he’s become. If they’re still alive. Maybe it’s better if they weren’t.”
Her father held his hand out toward her. When she did not reach for it, pain shot behind his eyes, then disappeared behind the walls of his mind. “Power—seeking it above all else—turns good men into evil men. I’ve made my share of serious mistakes, but I like to believe that maybe I’ve done a little good, too. I took up an amulet summers too early so I could kill the Ken’nar who killed my parents. But I later learned it was far more satisfying to save the lives of my comrades and the Unaspected we are sworn to protect than it was to take the lives of the Ken’nar. I also want you to know this: whatever sins I have committed, I committed them to keep you safe.”
Mirana placed the jadelite shard back on her mother’s desk. ... Please know I would do the same ...
