Lady Warhawk (42 page)

Through it all, Athrar slept, hanging on the edge of death. How he had come through the
last few hours of his battle with Edrout, Meghianna had no idea. He was a mass of broken bones
and bloody bruises, a skeleton, all his energy and half his flesh sucked away. She shuddered to
think of the foul magic spells Edrout had wrapped around him--and how much Athrar had
resisted with his own limited
imbrose
.

Where was Edrout? When Mrillis rejoined them, unknown days later, he came from the
foothills of the Wayhauk Mountains. The way was barred with a torn and poisonous landscape,
littered with the bodies of hundreds of Encindi and Noveni and Rey'kil who had either followed
the Nameless One into battle, or who had been taken prisoner. Their blood had been spilled in a
protective spell to shut out the victorious forces of the Warhawk.

"Let them stay behind their shield," Lycen said. "Let them leave us alone for the next
thousand years."

"A thousand years for us," Mrillis murmured, "or a thousand years for the rest of the
world?"

Athrar did not improve, even when they moved him and all the wounded to Quenlaque,
which had been held safe under Pirkin's guardianship. Meghianna remembered the Vale of
Lanteer, and Graddon the Seer, and how Mrillis had speculated so many years ago that the vale
had healing powers.

"Let him sleep," she said, proposing her plan to Mrillis, Pirkin and Lycen. "He will sleep
and heal, until the time comes that the World needs him again. Edrout will emerge from behind
his shield someday, when he thinks he can break through the dome around Lygroes. We will
need Athrar and Braenlicach. It is the prophecy--the one who sleeps."

"We will need the Zygradon," Lycen said. He sat in Athrar's chair at the empty council
table, reluctantly accepting his position as regent, per Athrar's wishes. It only helped a little that
Pirkin, speaking with the authority of his daughter, the queen, supported him.

"Emrillian hid it," Mrillis whispered. "Let Emrillian find it again." He gave them a
crooked, pained smile. "She is the blood of the blood, are we agreed? She has been protected
from the one who would destroy innocence. I propose Emmi and Ynfara sleep, as well as Athrar,
to wait until we need them again."

Lycen rode with Meghianna and Mrillis and the cart that held Athrar, down into the
tunnel below the sea, where Ynfara and Emrillian still waited, safe and alone. Pirkin and Ynessa
were too busy with their duties, tending to the wounded, organizing the survivors, and exploring
the drastically changed landscape of Lygroes, to accompany them. As Ynessa said, when the
decision was made not to make the journey to the tunnel, she and Pirkin had already made their
farewells to their daughter and granddaughter, in case Quenlaque fell to the enemy's magic or the
protection of the tunnel failed. Why endure the pain of another farewell?

Ynfara wept when she saw Athrar's condition. She demanded that they put her with
Athrar, when Mrillis told her their plan, and opened the doorway to the Vale of Lanteer.

"But not Emmi," Meghianna said, hearing her voice take on hollow echoes. She couldn't
stop the words, as prophecy spoke through her. "She will sleep, but she will awaken when the
fulfillment of time comes. When the world is changed and we are nothing but a tale for children,
she will awaken, and she will make that world her own. She will awaken the sword and she will
make the bowl sing, and then awaken the Blood when the Rift War comes."

They wrapped Emrillian in a cocoon of spells, to sleep in the passageway between the
tunnel and the Vale of Lanteer, caught between Lygroes and Moerta, between tunnel and Vale,
between the world of the past and the world of the future. Ynfara kissed her sleeping child,
weeping quietly, and then helped them settle Athrar on a thick pallet of blankets and sheepskins
within the shimmering, soft light of the Vale of Lanteer. She studied Graddon for a few
moments, and seemed to find some peace in the quiet, healthy form of the ancient Seer.

"Do you think Athrar will know I am here, with him?"

"He knows, my dear." Mrillis' voice cracked, and he blinked back tears as he offered his
hand to his great-granddaughter and guided her to lie down next to Athrar. Ynfara gasped a little
when Athrar sighed in his sleep and turned his head toward her.

"He said my name," she whispered, and lay down next to him without hesitation, resting
her head on his shoulder, with her arm across his chest. "I am here, love. I will be here when you
awaken." She swallowed a sob. "Emmi will be here, yes?"

"Grown and trained and eager to see you. The time will go quickly for her," Meghianna
promised. "Now, close your eyes, dear one, and sleep."

She waited until Ynfara obeyed, then she and Mrillis and Lycen stepped backwards,
until the shimmer in the air settled down around Athrar and Ynfara, wrapping them in a soft
blanket of healing magic.

A few more backward steps took them into the tunnel below the sea, and the doorway
into the Vale of Lanteer vanished, swallowed up in the stone. Lycen knelt next to the little nest of
blankets in a niche in the wall, where Emrillian slept. He reached to touch her hair, and was
stopped by the protective cocoon of magic.

"I suppose time will speed by for us," he said on a sigh. "Ilianora rather hoped Emmi
and Garad would marry someday." He tried to smile as he struggled to his feet. "Will we ever see
them again?"

"Perhaps Garad's son will marry Emmi instead. I'm sure Athrar would be pleased,"
Meghianna offered. She linked her arm through her son's, and gently turned him to leave the
waystop below the sea, and return to Lygroes.

Great-great-great-grandson, rather,
Mrillis said to her, and hooked his arm
through hers, so the three walked together, joined as a unit, to their waiting horses and the empty
cart.

* * * *

Four years went by, spent in rebuilding, scouting the land, determining just where the
enemy were encamped, and re-establishing the frontier and watchtowers between the kingdom of
Quenlaque and the enemy's territory. Mrillis took teams of sailors up and down all the coastlines,
to determine just how much of Lygroes had been devoured by earthquakes and the encroachment
of the sea and how far out ships could sail into the sea before they were stopped and turned back
by the protective dome. Nearly a day of sailing when the winds were brisk took them to the
shimmer in the air that warned them their known world had reached its limits.

They buried their dead and erected monuments to those who had given their lives in the
last great battle. A cloister of Star-Mothers built a school on the edge of the trampled plain where
Mrillis had met and killed the Nameless One. The intent was to establish a school where the
history of the land would be kept alive. Devout Star-Mothers and Star-Fathers would lead in
constant prayer vigils that such evil would never arise again, and Valors would keep watch for
the first signs of blood magic awakening.

At the end of five years, Mrillis declared his work done. He joined Meghianna and
Lycen, Ilianora and Garad, Pirkin and Ynessa for winter solstice at the Stronghold, and he stayed
behind with Meghianna when the others returned to Quenlaque.

"I need to sleep, dearest Meggi, and there is nowhere I feel at peace except here. No one
I trust to watch over me. I hesitate to ask it of you." He stared into the glowing coals of the fire
pit and paused, so they could both hear the howling of the storms across the Northern Sea. "You
need to sleep, deep and long, just as I do."

"I am not ready to rest just yet, old meddler." She was glad when her words brought a
snort of laughter and a smile from him. "Rest. Sleep for fifty years. I will watch over Quenlaque
and my grandson and great-grandson. Then it will be time for me to sleep, and your turn to keep
watch over me. We will take turns, until Emrillian wakes."

She and Mrillis wove thick spells around his quarters in the Stronghold, the rooms he
had shared with Ceera. Meghianna waited, keeping watch over Mrillis as he slept, welcoming the
utter silence of the Stronghold.

In the years that followed, she occasionally ventured out into the World, teaching
healing magic, which seemed to be the only magic that remained. She celebrated when Garad
married Serina, the daughter of Tarran, a Valor. She delivered Garad's son Garath, who was born
in the Stronghold. Pirkin and Ynessa visited her regularly in the Stronghold, and she left the
Stronghold to lead the mourning when they died, quietly, of old age and weariness. She wept
with Lycen when Ilianora died of a winter fever. She put the circlet of the regent on Garad's head
when Lycen followed Ilianora four years later.

Afterward, she went through the tunnel under the sea, pausing to watch Emrillian sleep,
before she continued on to Moerta. To her relief and delight, she retained the full scope of her
magic--as long as she stayed within four days of riding from the tunnel mouth. No Threads
crossed Moerta, and Meghianna speculated that the tunnel itself fed power to her for her
magic.

Less than forty years had passed in Lygroes, yet after traveling in disguise and listening
and asking discrete questions, she learned nearly two hundred years had gone by in Moerta. The
alliance of kingdoms had fallen into disarray and civilization had disintegrated with the total loss
of magic.

Markas and Pirkin's three sons had done as Mrillis asked, hiding the opening to the
tunnel in earthworks, with a forest planted around it. The shielding magic Meghianna had woven
around it so long ago did the rest. Lygroes was a legend, lost in tangled tales of disasters falling
from the sky and earthquakes. Quenlaque was a wish-tale of a golden era.

She tried to find some bitter humor in the tales that had settled around the tangled lives
of her family. These people believed that Edrout was indeed Athrar's son, that Ynfara had
betrayed Athrar with Lycen. Ilianora had drowned herself, and Garad had turned on his father in
righteous wrath.

Emrillian didn't even exist, as far as these people, two centuries removed from
Quenlaque, were concerned. There was no mention at all that a princess of Goarlotte had married
the high king. How had Ynfara's three brothers managed to make her vanish from all memory,
not just written records? Meghianna traveled to Goarlotte and found records stating that Pirkin
and Ynessa had been lost in the destruction of Lygroes, and they never had a daughter. There
was an Ynfara who was the daughter of a Rey'kil scholar, and the historical records were so
scattered and fragmented, the historians of the modern world concluded that she was the Ynfara
who married and betrayed Athrar. As far as the people of Moerta knew, mother and daughter had
never existed.

Perhaps that was all for the best, Meghianna reasoned. If no one knew of Athrar's heir,
they would not look for her hiding place, would look for no signs of her in history, and would
not expect her awakening.

She gathered all the tales of Quenlaque and Athrar, for Mrillis' education and
amusement. She compiled all the histories that the people had bothered to record, and made her
own observations of how the world outside Lygroes had changed. Then she went back to
Lygroes through the tunnel. It amused her that though she had spent three years in Moerta, only a
moon or so had passed in Lygroes, and no one even realized she had been gone.

Garad listened to her stories of the world outside the dome. When he proposed that a
perpetual guard be established in the tower of the Vale of Bo'Lantier, Meghianna agreed with
him. The shielding magic around the vale had failed when the dome enclosed Lygroes. With the
constant draining away of magic by the dome, the protective shields and spells keeping people
from traveling the tunnel from Moerta might someday fail. It was better to be prepared.

When Mrillis' fifty years of sleep had passed, Meghianna prepared a feast for him, and
unraveled the spell wrapped around his quarters. They talked for half a moon, comparing his
dreams of the world outside with what her explorations had revealed. When she wove the spells
around her own chambers, to take her long-awaited rest, Mrillis kissed her, softly, like a boy
when he first began courting, and asked her to dream of him.

Meghianna did dream of him, following him as he explored the changing world of
Moerta, seeing the rise of mechanical devices to do the work that had been done by magic. It
pleased her when Mrillis sometimes sent thoughts her way, sharing his observations of the new
world and Lygroes, which seemed not to change at all.

When Meghianna woke again, Garad and Garath were both dead. Garath's son, Erix had
been born in the Stronghold and now wore the regent's circlet. Mrillis brought Braenlicach from
its resting place in the throne room of Quenlaque, and entrusted it to her keeping.

"The protective spells are failing. Magic is shrinking, drained away a little more every
year. I fear that as the years pass, we will have traitors who will choose Edrout's leadership. They
will believe the lies, and refuse to wait for Athrar to awaken," he explained, as they stood on the
cliffs high above the Northern Sea, enjoying a warm summer night together. "The magic
protecting the Stronghold will keep everyone out. When the time comes, Erix's sons and
Emrillian will be the only ones who may enter and retrieve the sword."

"The magic will be so drained away throughout the land, they will be able to find the
Zygradon, when no one else could," she said, nodding. "Do you know, I think I am...not afraid,
but hesitant, to see how the world has changed again. Is it very strange?"

"They are learning things that we never dreamed of. Things we never needed to know,
with magic at our fingertips. They call it science, these people who don't believe magic ever
existed." Mrillis sighed. "One of their philosophers has stated that there is very little difference
between magic and science. That someday, they will find the secret to what our 'primitive,
superstitious' minds called the power of the Threads and star-metal, and science will harness that
power."