Chapter Three

Arvin’s silences around me grew more pronounced to the point that I began to truly notice them. So obvious was his discomfort that Tani accompanied Laslyn and me when we went to place her mark upon the birthing to appease him when he questioned my ability to lead the way. I still did lead, and it was a relief to have another set of eyes to spy the landmarks, but both Tani and Laslyn were uncommonly quiet during our walk.

Finally, unable to contain the question that had been festering in the back of my mind since the birth, I asked, “Mama Laslyn, may I ask you a question?” I kept my eyes forward, not wanting to look too eager. Nor was I sure how the question I had in mind would be taken and I didn’t want to see the blow coming if I got slapped upside my head for asking.

Her eyebrow cocked up as she teased, “You just did. Were you wanting another?”

“Aye, well, when the sweetling was born, you said that you missed your sisterhood with Tani. What did you mean?” I continued forward in the sudden silence until I realized I did not hear the sound of their foot steps behind me anymore. I turned back and saw both women standing frozen, identical looks of shock and concern on their faces.

Laslyn was the first to break free of her distress and she did so by leaping towards me and grabbing both my arms. The fine tremors in her hand told me more than anything else that it was by an act of will alone that she did not shake me senseless. “Never, never, repeat that question again, nor any like it!” she hissed. The fear in her eyes terrified me far more than the anger on her face.

Though I hated it, I felt the tears fall down my face, a blubber building in my chest as I, cowed, could only nod agreement. Laslyn continued to stare down into my face as she got a hold of herself. Tani came up behind her and laid a soft hand upon Laslyn’s shoulder.

“Don’t, Lessie. She’s guessed at least half of it and if she doesn’t know the significance then she may give our secret up without knowing that she’s done so.” The Llyrasdan’s glow spread out to envelope Laslyn. The deeper it sank in, the calmer she became, until she could release me and step back.

“No, it’s too dangerous for you!” she disagreed, shaking her head and letting her tears fall as they would. She drew her arms about her waist and seemed to hunch in about herself.

“But it’s my choice. Laslyn, she has more Blessing than I. Once her indenture is up, do you really think the Temples will leave her be, or worse, the mage’s school? They will do everything in their might to see her loyal to at least one of them. I’ve no wish for it to be so. No child should face what she will – no child!”

Laslyn drew a deep breath and tipped her head back, her eyes closed. She stayed that way for a moment. “You honestly think that you can trust your life to her silence?” she finally asked, her head dropping and her eyes locking on to Tani’s.

Without hesitation, Tani stepped behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. I felt her glow reach into me and seek to calm my terror. “I would do more than trust my life to her, I would trust her with my soul had she the knowledge of what a burden that trust would be.”

“Fine. It’s not my blood they will spill if you are wrong.” Laslyn turned her back on us and sat down, bowing her head between her knees.

“I’m sorry!” I managed. “I’ll never ask again and I’ll never say a word, I swear! Just please don’t be mad, Mama! Please!” I begged with the tears still flowing unchecked down my face.

Tani drew me back against her, one arm sliding down to hold me close while with the other she stroked my head. I felt the deep breath she drew and the fine tremors that shook her body.

“I was once born Tanisha Umasdan,” she began. “Laslyn and I, we were born to the same mother, in the village of Brawley, by Snowsgate. When I became a priest of the Order of Golden Wreaths, I had to renounce all former ties of blood and birth. That Lessie and I live in the same village could cause … problems. Priests of my Order are deliberately separated from their former lives. It creates a dependence upon the Order and leaves us with no refuge when – if – we become dissatisfied with our Order, as I did.

“Our village Healer was a Llyrasen and he saw the strength of my Blessing. He encouraged me to Heal and started teaching me the bits of herbal lore that he was allowed to. When I was old enough to apprentice, he convinced my mother to send me to the Temple of Grains in Dar Fallas. He told her that my Blessing, untrained, would bring havoc to the village, that I might even call down the wrath of the Primal Darkness. He promised that only in the Temples would I learn to handle my Blessing. He terrified her into sending me off. My name-sib was the same age as Talya was when you were found.”

Tani stopped speaking for a moment, catching her breath. She drew me with her as she moved to sit beside Laslyn. Once seated, she pulled me down to sit in her lap before continuing.

“Dar Fallas is … it’s big. And for a child of the Snowsgate region, it’s terribly crowded. I spent my first year there constantly jumping at every small noise and agape at all the differences. It was …awesome in a fearful way. The Temple of Grains was the grandest building I ever saw, until the day I stood before the Temple of Souls. The House of the Dark Mother is … indescribable.” Her eyes were unfocused as she remembered. I leaned into her, afraid, terribly afraid that I would not like this tale. The silence stretched between us for a nonce before Tani resumed her narrative.

“The Temple of Healers was a disturbing shock to me. I was … upset at coming and being brought from the folds of my family, exiled it seemed, to this strange world. I retreated from people for a while and spent too much time in books. Books are dangerous things, child, for they hold a man’s knowledge long past the time of his passing. The author often has no say in who may read his knowing, to whom he gives his powers. Make no mistake: books are dangerous for the knowledge they hold and the wisdom they cannot give.

“I came into possession of a very dangerous book, a wizard’s spell book. Matins Edkersol may be dead these past three centuries, but his grimoire survived him.

“There was another young acolyte, a boy name of Samil. None of us were allowed to keep our parent-name in preparation for the Severing and Rebirth of our priestly vows. Samil, he had wizard potential, but hadn’t yet grown arrogant of it. When my Blessing proved too slight for the spells of the grimoire, I turned to him.”

She paused again, to wipe tears from her eyes. “The spell I wanted to try was supposed to cause trees to flower early and to keep their blooms through winter. It killed Samil, instead. My Blessing was too weak and nothing happened, but Samil, it drained him of all his essence.”

Tani swallowed, hard, and hugged me tighter for a bit. When she regained a modicum of her composure, she finished, “They, the priests, found us by my screaming. They had the full tale from me and they decided that I must be punished. They made my punishment a full Severing and any contact with my family, even my children should I conceive, would cost me my Mortal life.

“Shortly after I made my vows, they banished me to Ebensburg. I don’t think they expected me to survive it for of the last four Healers the Temple posted here, two vanished into the Hallows, one died strangely in their bed, and the last ran back to Dar Fallas, half-crazed with tales of nightmare creatures that no one could find evidence of.

“Lessie met Arvin in Dar Fallas. They made their union-vows just after she attained Master Taylor rank and moved here, to Arvin’s home. We had both changed so much in the years between that we didn’t recognize each other at first. I knew her for my family first With the name change and the years since we were last together, I was the most changed of us. Even so, it took me almost a month to realize that the little Lassie I knew, so intent on learning a carpenter’s skills, was now Laslyn Taylor, union-mated and with a child already at her teet!

“At first I tried to deny it, for by that time it was already too late for me. The Temple would not accept that I hadn’t recognized my own same-sib, never mind over half of our lives had passed since we last saw each other! But in the end, I could not deny her.,” softly, she added, “I never could.”

Laslyn’s voice, wrath-like, came from her huddled form, still turned from us. “We never, until my slip before you, even acknowledged our bond. All ‘round about she told me of her situation and why she guessed us blood-kin. No matter what, should you prove unable to keep this secret truly well buried, it’s my sister I lose again and it’ll be my fault.”

I slipped from Tani’s lap and went to Laslyn. I wrapped my arms around her and laid my head against her back. “Then never will I tell. Laslyn, I swear by my love for you I will not, by word or by action, show such a knowing. Aye, and if Tani can, then let her take the memory from me.”

“I cannot and even if I could, I would not. To mess about in people’s minds, that only the Gods can do without lasting harm,” Tani denied. “Healers can affect the body, cause lasting slumber, and sometimes influence emotions, but our Blessings cannot change the way a person thinks or what they remember. Not even Dreamspeakers can take away your memories no matter the illusions they can send you.” She came up and embraced us both. We stayed that way for a time, taking solace in each other’s arms.

“You know, this maudlin regret does not claim the sweetling,” she, Tani, finally said, startling us from our sense of impeding grief. We were a subdued lot as we made our way to the birthing clearing.

Laslyn produced a small weave of her shed hair. The cloth was about a hand-span in size. I showed her were we had buried the birthing and she knelt and lovingly laid her offering on the new moss.

“Bright Ones, First Children, thank You for our forms.
Dark Goddess, Ilyanna, Mother and Succor of Souls,
I thank you for my essence through which you gave this child to my keep.
I claim the sweetling who’s birthing mass lies buried here.
To the child I give my name and my protection until our times are passed. 
First Children, Bright Ones, Elemental Gods,
Second Born, Lady of Grains, Lords of Beasts,
Third Born, Gods of Man, Bringers of Knowledge and Lore,
Fourth Born, Lord of Madness, Teacher and Student of Whim 
Before You All I claim this child who’s birthing mass lies buried here.
I pledge to teach her joy and show her love in respect for Your gift so dear.

“So ha minea.”

“So ha minea,” Tani and I chorused. And so it was done.

I think all would have been well enough if Talya had not reminded the village youth of that first ill-conceived idea. Perhaps I do her an injustice, but I truly do not think that her year mates would have gone as far as they did without the reminder that their elders had once thought to leave me in the forest-skirt, exposed to the elements like a still born.

While Talya was away, it was small things, nothing to bother the adults about. Her year-mates played tricks easily passed off as the pranks of active youths and I, without family, was the natural target. Darel, Maudrie’s oldest name-child and Talya’s early friend, seemed to be the ring leader. She managed to linger close by whenever the effects of their pranks could be witnessed, grinning her nasty smirk when I looked her way.

As the Dark season gave way to the Dawning, Spring ripened the land. On one particularly fine morning as Thom helped me to right the contents of the garden-box that Darel’s set has strewn about, he asked in his deliberate way, “Why don’t you get mad? They make your life harder than it needs be, but you don’t say a thing. I don’t understand you.” No heat filled his words for Thom could be as stoic as his name-parent.

“What do you want of me? Aye and they make more work for me, but they haven’t yet broken anything. Should I cry to Arvin and hear him tell me how he’ll brook no excuses? Mama Laslyn already knows of it; not much misses her eyes, but again, no real harm comes of their pranks. I’m the easy choice, Thom. I’ve got no name-parent to protect me. So should I let them make a fool of me by crying over them?” The frustration I felt poured out, shocking him a bit to judge by the widening of his eyes.

“Oh,” was his reply.

“Oh, indeed!” I grumbled and went back to straightening the garden-box.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he whispered as he, too, bent back down to help me.

I blew air from my nose and answered, “Aye, well, Tani’s been saying I’m an old soul. Maybe I was taken before my time and sent back. We’ve no one of the Sight to say so or no, but even I see that I’m not like the others my age and that’s just one more reason to single me out.”

I don’t know if it was a wary consideration or a desire to drive home that it was me, and me alone, that Talya’s year-mates objected to, but their tricks and pranks seemed crafted to cause no one but me distress. They disarrayed the garden box frequently in the hopes Arvin would find the tools he had crafted tumbled about first and give me a tanning in addition to having to straighten their mess. When they had the chance to, they stole from my gather basket or knocked it about. Strangely enough, none of them seemed to think of tearing it apart. It goes almost without saying that they taunted me when they thought they could get away with it, mostly out of ear-shot of any adults for they were not foolish creatures. As much as nobles speak of standing and fighting, any peasant will tell you that such an action should only ever be a mark of overwhelming strength or absolute desperation. You could be killed and then who would bring the harvest in?

The tormenting became so much a fact of my daily life that I only ever relaxed my guard with Laslyn and Tani and Thom. At all other times, a deep smoldering rage grew in me. Where before I was silent out of respect for my elders, I drew the silence around me now in defiance. When some small mischance befell a villager, the Crones would grumble of how I shouldn’t have been brought amongst them. For days after those pronouncements I would see the Evil Wards flashed in my direction.

Each spring she was away, we received a packet of letters from Talya as the caravan traders began their routes. Over the summer and into the winter and even after the next packet came, Laslyn would read them out loud to us and we would be allowed a span of time each evening to work on our letters to her. Being a timber town, we had much extra wood that was too knotful or cracked to sell with the caravaners. Thom made us script boards from this discard as part of his apprenticeship to the Master Carpenter. Only after Laslyn or Arvin approved our penmanship would we be allowed to, painstakingly, transcribe our charcoal scratchings to the precious paper that Merrin made from his saw’s dust. Tani made the violet ink from a strange mixture of hooves, bones, and herbs. The recipe has two ingredients more than goes into the making of simple glue, but those two keep it from getting too tacky to write with and darken it to a legible hue.

I doubt me not that neither Laslyn nor Arvin failed to note the sparseness of the letters I wrote to Talya. I could hardly stand the thought of having to be pleasant to the child I thought of as my “Betrayer of Hope”, even in such a cold medium as letters. Sheer stubbornness led me into deliberately botching my practice scripts, but not even my sense of ill-use could bring me to doing so all the time. I could not bear to so blatantly thrust my poor opinion of Laslyn’s eldest before her. However, the longer I kept up my pretense of incompetence, the more threadbare it became and the narrower Arvin’s gaze would grow upon me. His distrust hurt, but only so much as the other villager’s grumblings. It was the pain I could see growing in Laslyn that brought me to wrack my mind for kindnesses to write of Talya’s friends, those hateful creatures who took such delight in my distress. I like to think I did somewhat well for my first lessons in diplomacy.

When Talya’s first batch of letters arrived, I began to realize the power of words and emphasis. The coy brat would drop a sentence here, a remark there, wondering why I seemed to write her the least (but, then again, I was only a servant, not a family member), observing that perhaps I was a bit slow, mentioning that a letter from one of her friends had me in the role of trouble-maker, and more along these lines. From Arvin’s demeanor at these readings, I thought he believed her words and it hardened my heart to him more. Laslyn, I think, recognized her oldest’s poison and soon began to skip over those passages where Talya’s venom poured forth. Arvin did not. Thom recognized what his sister was doing and it troubled him. When he would have championed me to his father, I begged him not to, thinking it would only brew enmity between them. Rue just did not understand.

I dreaded the day Talya would return and grew more sullen and withdrawn as the summer after Beatrice’s naming grew near.

Summer passed and summer came again. The Sweetling Laslynsdan was given her name, Beatrice. Laslyn named her after the heroine of Agrimon’s Folly, for Beatrice Deft Saber was also born in the Somber Moon with striking pale eyes and sable mane. Our Beatrice was ever a quiet one and, with Laslyn’s own caring ways, she was easily loved by those who did not overlook her.

Rue, by this time, was old enough to do simple chores and often trailed in my wake. She came with us when Tani collected me for walks in the forest-skirt. There the Llyrasdan taught us which berries and plants were helpful and harmless and which should be treated with caution. Sometimes we would sit and Tani would have me See our surroundings. Sometimes there were other games to play.

She taught me how to build walls and weave wards, to fashion lances and daggers, to Heal and how to shape the world around us with Blessings. Tani was ever praiseful of the progress I made and only during these “games” did I find a sense of lasting peace. There is a special joy for me in working with the Standing forms and that joy mislead Tani into thinking I was Small Blessed and Standing. No, that’s not quite right, for I can make my Blessing work Small and Standing. I can make it work may ways, but in truth the Large and Burning work comes easiest to me. Fortunately I left Ebensburg before I found the Blazing Spark, but again I get ahead of myself.