Chapter One

“Take her, child,” said Teacher’s voice in her mind. “She is here for you. Join with her.”

Thera reached with her mind, as Teacher had shown her, slowly and cautiously. The young sea hawk rustled and shifted nervously, and then, in a dizzying kaleidoscope of sight and sound she spread her wings and stroked upward, uttering shrill, joyful cries. Thera marveled at this new lightness of physical form coupled with such great strength. To her hawk’s eyes, colors were more vivid and her vision more sharply focused. The sounds of activity in Allenholme Keep below, so well known to Thera, were of little importance to the hawk, but no movement escaped her notice. The sea hawk yearned for the cliffs by the sea and the warm spiraling thermals there, but for a moment, Thera insisted on hovering, delighted with this unusual perspective of her home. Her mother’s garden was a mere patch of vibrant green amidst the grey granite of the keep—its stone paths bordered with myriad blooms of spring flowers. She eyed the tall lace fronds, beneath whose leaves her physical self lay concealed. Even the hawk could see nothing of her body there. She heard the clack and clangor of arms drills near the stables at the east wall, and the warhorses neighing an eager response. Then she veered and drifted over the market. She spun herself higher over the clamor and calls of the street vendors, and over the rumble of carts, wagons, and barrows.

They spiraled upward and banked toward the waterfront. Far below, Thera saw a dark-haired dancer twirling joyously by the Southgate, her red skirts fanned like a blooming flower amidst the dust and smoke. Fishermen and off-duty soldiers tossed bright coppers that fell glinting at her feet.

She drifted through a miasma of smoke and closed her inner eyelid. How convenient to have such a thing, Thera thought. It was then she smelled the cooking odors and was struck with hunger.

Thera reeled in surprise at the impact of this need on her hawk’s body. The demands of the sea hawk’s needs, this driving imperative to hunt and to kill, consumed her. They winged to the cliffs. The air here blew clean and fresh. She caught a scent of fish, but it was dead and distasteful to her. She lowered her head and scanned for the promising glint of silver or blue beneath the waves. Small clouds of herring flitted through the water, but no succulent bluefish pursued them.

Hunger drove her harder. Becoming sullen and fractious, she dove at a flock of seabirds just to send them squawking aloft, and turned for shore.

Then, in the mix of starmoss and thistle that mortared the rocks and clung to ledges of the cliffs, she saw a fat waddle of grey-brown fur lumbering toward a small crevice.

A sedgemole, a wonderful meal! An excellent meal! Bloodlust throbbed, her neck feathers fanned once as her skin tightened and her body filled with powerful, compelling sensations.

Immediately she was winging for height and position in the tricky thermals. She could already feel the rodent’s fresh warm blood and flesh coursing down her throat, filling her belly. With a sudden fold of wings, she dropped, deadly and silent, the wind screaming at her passage.

Her talons clenched, snapping the sedgemole’s spine on impact. Immediately she slashed the furry throat with her hooked beak, gulping down fur, flesh, and tendon. In six heartbeats the bird was laboring to her favorite fir tree snag to continue feeding.

The small animal’s death filled Thera with horror. Her mind-scream had coincided with the sea hawk’s victorious cry, and she now spun, formless, on the wind.

She tumbled in the violent winds off the shore, tattered, and about to be blown into nothingness.

“Child! Thera! Think of the garden,” Teacher’s usually tranquil voice a strained mind-shout. “See yourself in the garden. Remember, always, where you are!”

It worked.

As soon as Thera remembered the garden, she snapped back into her body with such force, she thought surely she would break her bones. Her human body echoed with the sensations she had just experienced so intimately.

Thera heard Teacher say, “I tell you, she is too young.”

She fought the darkness now overwhelming her. “No, I’m not!”

Thera did not hear the Elanraigh forest-mind’s deep-voiced response.

* * * *

The Elanraigh Forest quivered with deep unease. Forest-mind sifted the westerly wind and breathed its warning to the folk of Allenholme. Even the most practical fishwife in the market caught some aspect of its mood.

“Be a storm brewin’?” asked Alva, the Westharbour fishmonger. She paused in the act of slicing the dorsal fin off a large, spiny bluefish. There was heaviness in the air, similar to a pending storm, yet different.

“Aye,” Mika drawled, “feels like.” He continued to unload Alva’s stock from his barrow to ice-filled bins, then straightened and shaded his eyes with his fisherman’s rough hand, now glistening with scales.

“Aye. I’ll be bringing the Bride O’ Wind in, I’m thinkin’, and snug her tight to dock this eve.” Mika’s brow furrowed slightly, causing a cascade of mahogany creases about his grey-green eyes. The sky out to sea continued an unblemished, cerulean blue.

“Tch,” Mika was plainly disturbed. “Petrack, old barnacle that he is, be past due in.” He shook his head, “He knows these waters well, crew be seasoned hands.” He gestured west, out to sea, “The one thing that great flounder-brained nephew of his knows is his way about these islands. Old Petrack passed my Bride at dawn. Loaded to the gunnels, he was and flagged for home. He’s not at dock yet and none’s seen him since we sighted him at dawn’s blessing.” Mika rubbed knobby fingers through his grizzled head of hair. His concern was both as Fishing Guild Master, and as friend and arch rival of Petrack, skipper of the Grace O’Gull.

Mika and Alva exchanged a long look. The old fishmonger was so distracted that she failed to notice a grubby hand that quickly filched a prime cod. So unheard of was a successful filch at Alva’s booth that the youthful thief looked twice backward, then shivered and ran.

* * * *

In the West Tower of the Duke’s residence, Lady Fideiya absently smoothed her fourteen year old daughter’s abandoned needlework. The small piece of cloth was grubby and crumpled. Many of the irregular stitches in the unfinished piece were already frayed and pulled. Fideiya sighed.

“How long has she been gone this time, Nan?” asked Fideiya.

Thera’s nurse paused in her tidying of Thera’s chamber and her brow puckered, “Since I went to the cookhouse, my Lady, to fetch our noon meal.”

Nan observed the worry written on Lady Fideiya’s elegant features with mild surprise. Thera’s habit of wandering off on her own was a grievance, true, but the child always turned up somewhere about the keep. Perhaps by the stable in company with the retired Master at Arms, old Sirra Shamic, or perhaps trailing after her father, Duke Leon, known as Oak Heart, and his captains.

“By the Dance!” exclaimed Nan, distracted again, as she gingerly lifted several small white-furred kirshrews from Thera’s clothes chest. She sat back on her heels, “I swear, my lady, we’ve had such a clutter of kittens, birds, sun-lizards—and now kirshrews—all to be nursed and fed and then set free with the child’s own special blessing, it’s like she was a Salvai herself. Tch, tch.”

The tautness of Lady Fideiya’s features relaxed. She smiled to herself. Thera like a Salvai? Fideiya could not imagine her robust daughter leading the cloistered life that the child’s Aunt Keiris chose.

“Yet Thera is nothing like my sister Keiris, is she Nan?” Fideiya was thinking of her sister Keiris’ pale asceticism, her orderliness, and her precise manner of speech. No, Thera did not resemble her aunt. Fideiya smiled fondly as she brought her daughter to mind. Her hazel eyes shining like sunshine on the fast-flowing Spinfisher River when green with glacial spill, balanced with dark brows lofting cleanly against clear, olive skin. Her mouth was full and sensitive, slightly upturned at the corners, her chin strong, with a graceful jaw line. Thera’s long, curling hair was unruly, true, but was lustrous and thick. Overall, the child showed intelligence and a wildflower sort of loveliness that could soon blossom into sensual beauty. She was not fashionably pretty, but her appearance pleased Lady Fideiya.

Nurse Nan was sourly muttering under her breath, something about, “…there be no comparison between her Thera and Salvai Keiris.”

Fideiya arched one brow.

Nan flushed, though her mouth set stubbornly. She had been a young chambermaid when Lady Fideiya and her older sister, Lady Keiris, were in their maidenhood home at Chadwyn.

Fideiya’s eyes danced. “Yes, Nan, our Thera is much more trouble for you to mind, I realize, than were either Keiris or I.”

Nan’s blue eyes misted and she cast a warm glance over to Fideiya. “Oh, now, my Lady,” she smoothed a nightgown into neat folds, “Thera is just as stubborn as my Lady Keiris,” Nan’s voice was earnest. “She’s always doing before thinking. Truly, my Lady, her doings are meant well, and after the trouble she will admit honestly if she be wrong. She has a sweetness to her, does Thera that our Keiris never had, beggin’ my lady’s pardon for such plain speaking.”

“My sister ever did wield her considerable intellect as a sword, Nan.” Fideiya smiled ruefully, “Not the best way to win the love of others.”

Nan paused in her refolding of Thera’s clothes, her expression thoughtful. “The child has not been herself, this last quarter moon, my lady. She has been unusually quiet. Then, last night, she had a dream. She woke me as she cried out.”

Fideiya carefully laid down her daughter’s embroidery. She too had felt uneasy these last few days. Fideiya beckoned Nan up from her work, and gestured for the nursemaid to sit next to her on the carved bench beside the fireplace. Fideiya was carefully casual as she inquired, “A dream? Tell me of my daughter’s dream.”

Lady Fideiya felt an imminent focusing of the general unease that had been crawling over her skin all week. With pricklings of impatience, she watched Nan’s blue gaze fidget over Thera’s chamber, tallying work yet to be done.

“Nan, tell me.”

“Why, my Lady,” explained Nan, “Thera said she dreamed of black sails on the sea.”

“Black sails!” Lady Fideiya exclaimed.

“Aye,” affirmed Nan, her eyes widening as she observed Lady Fideiya’s expression, “She said the forest sang to her and she saw black sails on the horizon.”

Lady Fideiya pondered her gaze unfocused. It could merely have been that the chambermaids had frightened the girl with old tales of Memteth raiders. She sorted through possibilities. Could Thera have simply been dreaming the forest sang? Or could the child have the old gift, truly be in communion with the Elanraigh elementals, and be hearing at such a young age? Fideiya herself had only a vague sense of the forest-mind.

No, thought Fideiya, surely not the old gift. Yet, Thera dreamed and the forest sang. Black sails! Could that vileness, the Memteth—monsters of legend and fireside tales—truly be advancing on Allenholme, and no warning!

Lady Fideiya felt coldness, like a dark shadow, pass over her. Perhaps a child’s dream is our warning from the Elanraigh. She strode to the casement. The salt wind, full of seabird voices, lifted her dark hair. Her grey eyes dilated.

“What is it? What is it?” she murmured to the wind. Lady Fideiya shivered.

Warning. She sensed it, as if the wind had whipped a chill wave into spindrift against her skin.

“Blessings,” Fideiya murmured. It must be forest-mind who sent these feelings. There must be very little time.