Lady Warhawk (17 page)

"Mother?" Lycen stood in the doorway behind her, eyes wide with wonder. He grinned
when she turned, startled, when she had just gained some measure of calm.

Meghianna prayed he hadn't heard her talking to herself. That would be very hard to
explain, especially because she couldn't explain it to herself just yet.

"What are you doing here?" She laughed and held out her arms, and he came to her. She
hugged him. "I don't have to ask how you got in here," she said, laughing and letting him go.
"How close behind me were you?"

"I didn't see you at all. I knew you were gone, so I went to the archway and... It sang."
He frowned and shook his head. "Not that I could hear, but it vibrated. It tickled." He grinned. "I
called to you and I walked right through."

"Well done. How did you find me?"

Lycen held up his ring, which flickered with faint blue light. "I told it I wanted to find
you, and I thought about you very hard, and a Thread turned white and led me straight
here."

"Ah, very clever. We should make an enchanter of you, not a Valor." She laughed when
dismay touched his eyes. "No, my dear, we will not take that away from you. It is what you have
wanted all your life. But you shall be a Valor strong in
imbrose
and your name shall be
legend." Meghianna shivered as she heard a faint hollowness ring through her voice, and couldn't
stop the spill of words. "A son of your blood will guard the throne in the time of waiting, when
the blood sleeps and the blood of the blood waits, and the enemy plans. Your son shall be born
here, and his son after him, so that all the sons of your line will have the right to walk these halls,
and I shall weep at your pyre," she finished, her voice breaking.

Meghianna wasn't surprised to find herself on her knees, partially supported by the
bench, with Lycen gripping her shoulders. His face was pale, his eyes dark with dread and
awe.

"Mother-- Your eyes were white," he whispered.

"That, my dear, was a Seeing. Sometimes I think the spirit of prophecy has a nasty sense
of humor, dropping words of portent on us at the most inconvenient times."

She took a few more deep breaths, forced a smile on her face for Lycen's sake, and
pushed against the bench to get to her feet. Deep inside, she shuddered, her head aching from the
rapid flow of images. She saw Lycen kneeling beside the bed of a woman giving birth, holding
her hand, laughing through tears as they looked at the baby in her arms, who grew into a man
who held a newborn in his arms in turn, while Lycen crumbled into a white-haired, bent old man
who slumped in a chair set before the empty Warhawk throne. He closed his eyes and the chair
became a pyre, and Meghianna saw herself standing alone before that pyre, weeping as the
flames engulfed the body of her son.

I didn't need to know this!
she raged at the spirit of prophecy and the
future.

Meghianna felt some shock at her temerity, and that shock helped drive away the pain
and calmed her. Yes, of course she needed to know this. The vision offered hope for the future.
She had known the day she decided to take Lycen as her son that he would grow old and die,
while she would remain much as she was for decades, maybe centuries. The vision offered her
hope that she would still have some small part of her son, through his sons. That they would be
born in the Stronghold encouraged her. Perhaps life would return to the Stronghold after all.

"We're going to hide here, aren't we?" Lycen said, breaking her from her racing
thoughts, which had only taken a few heartbeats. "This is going to be one of the few safe places."
He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself, and awareness of the weight of destiny
made him seem three times his age, just for a few heartbeats.

"The Stronghold has always been one of the oldest safe places. From the very beginning,
before the Rey'kil sensed the stirring of
imbrose
in their blood or touched the first
Threads, the Stronghold has existed. Our races were meant to be a balance, a partnership, but
from the beginning, it was one against the other. The Rey'kil erred, I must admit," she said,
putting an arm around Lycen's shoulders and drawing him further into the room, "by standing
alone when they should have acted as the elder sister and slapped some sense into the Encindi
and the Noveni from the beginning."

Meghianna smiled when Lycen stared at her choice of words, then snorted laughter.
"We built the Stronghold so the innocents would have a place to hide from the wars of their
elders and leaders, who should have known better. When Moerta and Flintan were found, the
other races retreated to those lands. The Stronghold became a place of retreat and education. It
remained the province of women, when the first High Scholar founded the school on Wynystrys.
There are times when it is best to keep boys and girls separated."

"Like right now, when Lok and Athrar act like idiots over girls?"

"Ah, so you noticed that, too. Well, you can't entirely blame your brother. Pretty girls,
being shoved into his path by their scheming relatives, who want to control the future Warhawk
through his bride." She snorted, remembering.

"What's so funny?" Lycen let her guide him through another doorway.

"I was just remembering how furious those Court ladies were when Papa married
Glyssani. Those fancy-dressed twits didn't know the first thing about laying siege."

"Indreseen does. I don't like her, but Athrar gets angry when I tell him to ignore
her."

"Really?" She gestured at the curving staircase carved out of the rock. "I'm relieved to
know you share my opinion. Up or down? Up, we go to the heights that will let us look out over
the Northern Sea, and to some of the storage rooms, the classrooms and council chambers.
Down, we go to living quarters and my office, the healing rooms, the laundry room, more
classrooms. Your mother's quarters."

Lycen hesitated for a few seconds. Meghianna could see the answer in his eyes. She
guided him toward the curve of the stairs going down, two seconds before he said, "Down."

"Indreseen is charming, but I think she's an empty head just waiting for someone to pour
in ideas. That makes her highly dangerous. A Warhawk's queen needs to be strong in her own
right, to have the courage to argue with her husband, and to be dedicated to truth and honor and
self-sacrifice. She can influence him with a few tears when hours of argument and threats from
entire armies would not sway him otherwise. If she's a silly little chatterer, she could give away
secrets that would endanger the throne. I have yet to see a man who could keep a secret from the
woman he loves."

"Then it would be better if Athrar married a girl he liked, but didn't really love. Maybe
someone chosen for him?" Lycen asked, as she guided him past the first landing and continued
downward on the stairs.

"Better for the World, but not better for his heart and soul. The Warhawk needs to be
able to share his bed and his heart and life with someone who willingly shelters him. Other kings
can marry for state reasons, other nobles can make marriage alliances for the sake of property
and protection and trade, but the Warhawk needs a woman who has given him her heart, so he
can entrust his heart to her. He doesn't see the World when he goes into battle, but his queen,
who represents all his duties and the lives that depend on him."

"Poor Athrar," her son muttered.

Meghianna laughed, and guided him off the stairs at the third landing. She stopped him,
and reached through the Threads for memories and the echoes of lives and voices that had once
filled these dark halls. The silver embedded in the ceiling glowed into life, sending cool, soft
light down the long curving passageway, showing the murals on the walls, still as bright as the
day they had been painted. The theme on this floor was of life along a river, with fanciful fish
and birds dancing together in mid-air and underwater. Children splashed through the shallows
while elegant ladies lounged under awnings and men in ancient armor played games of skill on
horseback. Lycen's eyes grew wide as they walked down the passageway.

Then he stopped short as a door opened before them and a woman stepped out, tall and
elegant, dressed in deep green that matched her eyes. She laughed silently with a
wide-shouldered man with scars on the left side of his face. He cradled a sleeping baby in one arm and
wrapped the other around her shoulders.

"Your birth parents," Meghianna whispered. They pressed back against the wall so the
memory images of Lysette and Syndal and baby Lycen could pass them by without breaking the
illusion of their solidness. "That is my last memory of them, just a moon after you were
born."

"Where did he get those scars?" Lycen said, his voice cracking.

"That is a very romantic story." She paused until the silent images went around the
curve in the passageway and vanished from sight, then squeezed Lycen's shoulder and urged him
to continue walking with her. "Your mother was something of an adventurer. I often teased her
that she should have gone for Valor training." She was glad to see the crooked smile slip across
Lycen's face. "Here we are."

The door to her suite of rooms opened before them and light came from the intricate
tracery of silver in the ceiling. Meghianna whisked coverings off couches and the rack of scrolls
and tablets that filled one entire wall. She tossed the sheets into a corner, much to Lycen's
amusement. When she had been Innkeeper Ianni, she hadn't allowed such sloppy or lazy actions,
but would have had him help her fold them neatly.

"Lysette set out one spring to explore far north of the Stronghold, even though we were
very sure that no one had ever settled past us." Meghianna settled down on a couch. "The
treachery of the Northern Sea makes the bay of the Stronghold the only safe stopping place this
far north. Or so we thought."

"Encindi got past everything?" her son guessed. He settled down on the floor in front of
her couch and rested his elbows on his crossed legs, his chin in his hands.

"They decided it was a very good place to build a village, because they thought no one
would know they were there. They had been established there nearly thirty years, by the time
Syndal's troop of Valors, fresh from training, stumbled on them."

"My father was exploring too?"

"Valors, even more than other young warriors, have the silly idea that they must ride out
on dangerous journeys and prove they are worthy of the star-metal they wear." Meghianna
sighed loudly, earning a bigger grin from her son. "I believe it is a madness that comes from the
rigors of Valor training. Megassa was the same way, after she earned her spurs as a Valor."

"So what happened when my parents met and found the Encindi?"

"Well, let me just say first that there were several among the Encindi who had some
imbrose
. Then you add in the existence of a vale close by their village, where a very
large chunk of star-metal had fallen. The star-metal awakened the
imbrose
in some
Encindi, and they learned how to use the power from the Threads for the good of their village.
These Encindi decided it was much more pleasant to depend on the Threads, rather than blood
magic. When Lysette discovered them, she watched for five days, listening in through the
Threads, because these people didn't have the first idea about shields or controlling the noise of
the magic they worked. She passed reports on to me and to the Rey'kil council, and the
discussions were rather heated about what to do with these Encindi who, quite frankly, weren't
Encindi anymore."

"But what did my father do?" Lycen demanded.

"What do you think a company of young Valors looking for excitement and battle would
do, when they discovered a village of Encindi living practically on the back doorstep of the
Stronghold?" Meghianna snorted. "Back doorstep--ten days of rough riding away from us?
Lysette knew the Encindi enchanters had woven very crude but effective protections around their
village. Syndal and his companions didn't even consider the possibility that these people knew
how to tap the Threads. It could have been very ugly, very painful, and quite a lot of deaths on
both sides if Lysette hadn't thrown herself into the Valors' path, to stop them. Then the Encindi
came racing out to do battle. It was quite confusing and got rather ugly. Syndal realized that this
mere girl, as he referred to your mother, was a Rey'kil, defending the Encindi, and that got him
furious. He knocked her off her feet, to drag her away to safety. Before he could pick her up, one
of his men went after her with liquid fire. Now, your father had always been rather an idiot when
it comes to the whole idea of women being delicate and needing protection--"

"But he knocked her off her feet!"

"Exactly. It's all right to knock a woman unconscious to protect her, so you can sling her
over your shoulder and carry her off like a sack of grain. But it's another thing entirely to try to
coat her with magic fire and burn the flesh off her bones. Quite a horrid way to die, I'm told."
Meghianna shuddered. "Syndal snatched that fire from the air. The scars came from fire he
couldn't quite control. At the same time he was protecting Lysette, three Encindi warriors
attacked him. She yanked on the Threads and tangled those men, protecting him. Then she
proceeded to lecture him on what an idiot he was for attacking an innocent village.

"The way they told it, they argued for nearly two hours before they realized it was all a
ridiculous mistake. They said later they fell in love when they started laughing at each other. The
Encindi were so startled to see a lone woman, very strong in the Threads, defending them against
a troop of warriors, they were willing to talk peace.

"Lysette was their hero. When they realized she understood
imbrose
and the
Threads, they begged her to stay and teach them. Syndal insisted on staying too, to make up for
his company's rashness, attacking without finding out the truth. Your parents were married in
that village, just before the village elders accepted the Warhawk's offer to move them to a much
more pleasant spot south of Quenlaque. The son of their chief became a Valor, Kayus."