The Thirteenth Scroll (2 page)

Lysandra started to scream. But her fear meant less than nothing to the men. Her helplessness fed their lust as they grabbed
at her, easily holding her arms though she struggled with all her strength. One man grasped her bodice, ready to rip it apart.
Suddenly, he was hit from behind. He stumbled, his fingers slipping from her as he turned toward his attackers.

In that same instant, through her screams and her fear-blurred vision, Lysandra saw what he saw. It was Ultan—the boy she
loved, the boy she planned to marry. Her father was with him. Her mother, too, suddenly appeared, running from the other direction,
come to find her and fight for the safety of her only child. Ultan wielded a length of board; Lysandra’s father grasped a
hayfork, and her mother clutched a kitchen knife. Lysandra knew they would be no match for the swords of the men who held
her.

“
No!”
she screamed again, renewing her struggles. She
kicked, she hit, she tried everything she could to break free and save those she loved.

But the men were too strong, their reflexes too swift. While two still held her, two turned on her family. Lysandra saw the
quick parry and thrust of their swords flashing in the sunlight. She saw the looks of surprise, terror, and then death, come
to the faces first of Ultan, then of her parents. She saw the blood gush and flow, staining the clothes, their bodies deep
crimson. She saw their bodies crumple to the ground. She saw all that was life and love to her die.

She saw…

The men turned back around. The swords in their hands still glistened, wet and red. In horrified fascination, Lysandra saw
the blood run down the blade, drip by drip, onto the ground. She tore her eyes away and looked into their faces again. She
saw how the violence had only sharpened their lust.

Suddenly the world spun around her. It went black as Lysandra’s body crumpled, unconscious, in the grip of her attackers.

When, at last, consciousness returned, Lysandra did not know how long it had been. She knew only that she was alone.

The pains in her body told her that the men had carried through their intent. But at least they had left her behind and not
dragged her off for further violation at the hands of their leader.

Lysandra could smell the blood and death that lay only a few feet from her; she could hear the cries, the wails of sorrow
and agony from elsewhere in her village. With them, the horror of the day flooded her anew and made permanent wounds upon
her soul.

She crawled toward the bodies of Ultan and her parents. Although the pain each movement cost her assured her that consciousness
had indeed returned, her world remained in darkness.

Lysandra was blind.

Ten years later
:

203rd year of the reign of the House of Baoghil

Ruling House of the Eighth Province, Kingdom of Aghamore

D
eep in the heart of the Great Forest, twenty-seven-year-old Lysandra knelt in her garden, feeling the warmth of the spring
sun upon her shoulders. At that moment she felt wrapped in peace. But it was a peace that had come hard-earned. Time had taught
that such moments were to be cherished but never trusted; security was more delicate than a butterfly’s wing—and even more
easily destroyed.

She had been in this cottage for almost nine years now. It was a place she had come across by accident, an old hermit’s home
standing alone and abandoned deep in the forest. She had at once sensed an affinity for the place; her own heart had felt
just as empty as this house, just as overrun by brambles and weeds as its garden.

For the first few days of her blindness, Lysandra had stayed in her family home. Although the villagers were kind in their
pity of her, she could not stand the silence
of the house that had once been filled with her mother’s singing and her father’s hearty laughter.

And there was Ultan’s death, the death of her love, of her future. Without him, her heart felt as empty and bare as the void
her eyes could not see. The only thing that filled them both was the memory of blood and fear.

The memory of death.

The decision to leave Scorda was not one she made consciously; reasonable thought would have told her that, blind now and
needy in her infirmity, she must remain where life was familiar. But Lysandra could not stay in that empty place that had
once been her home. As she packed those few belongings she could comfortably make into a bundle and headed for the door, leaving
felt as inevitable as her next breath.

She did not care where she went as long as it was far away from the reminders of what she had lost. She wandered, somehow
finding her way to the Great Forest. She fully expected to die there, of loneliness and starvation. She accepted that fate
without care or regret—perhaps, even, with eagerness.

It was instinct that kept her alive as she learned to rely upon her senses other than sight. Touch and hearing kept her from
falling down ravines or stumbling into brambles; smell and taste told her what food she had found; and it was the feel of
the sun and the sounds of the birds or crickets that separated daylight from the night.

But time did not matter. She ate when she was hungry and found food; she slept when she was tired, beneath some tree or in
the shelter of a thicket. None of it mattered to her. Though she walked and moved and breathed, life was only a façade; she
felt as dead as her murdered family.

Lysandra had no sense in which direction she wandered
or for how long, but she kept herself away from any human contact. Twice she stumbled upon a crofter’s home whose goodwife
took her in, fed and cleaned her, and for pity’s sake offered her a place to stay. But these acts of kindness only deepened
the wounds upon Lysandra’s heart until she ran from them, back into the forest and her solitude.

Spring became summer, that faded into autumn. Rumors spread throughout the Province of the crazed woman roaming the forest.
She was crazed then—crazed with the pain of her grief and her loss, crazed with guilt that she should live while those whom
she loved had given their lives to save her.

If only she had not screamed…

If only she had been stronger…

If only
was the voice of her madness…

Lysandra waited for death to claim her and bring welcome reunion with those she had lost. But it was not death that came to
her during those timeless months. Instead her mind began to open in a way so new, so unexpected, it was nearly incomprehensible.

Slowly, creeping on her almost unawares, vague shapes began to form, filling her mind with outlines and patterns that at first
it refused to recognize. This was not vision as she had known before; to her eyes the world remained in darkness, a void unfilled
and unfillable. But into her mind now came images cast in auraed shapes of shadow and brightness.

This new way of seeing was not easy, nor did it come all at once. It was like the morning sun burning through a thick bank
of fog—slowly, revealing not only an object before her, but its intent, its inner nature. She could
see
which plants would harm her and which would nourish,
which animals feared her, which were curious, and which might do her injury.

At first, in her heart-numbed state of grief, she felt neither surprise nor fear at this new
Sight
. She felt nothing, remembered nothing; she merely existed from moment to moment, day to day, not dead but neither truly alive.

She spent that first winter sheltered in a cave she shared with a young female fox. It was there, during the long, snowbound
days, that her sanity began to return—and with it came the first puzzled wonderment at the images filling her mind.

Lysandra was sitting across the fire from the vixen when the spark of true awareness glimmered, changing into a spreading
dawn that came upon her so gently, she was not certain when, between one breath and the next, the darkness had ended and the
light of Self began again. But it was the fire that first caught her attention. She knew, in some vague way, that she had
kindled and maintained it this night as on countless nights before. Yet she had no more direct memory of the action than she
had of taking shelter within this cave.

She felt the fire’s heat—and then, suddenly, she realized that within her mind she
saw
the dance of light and shadow that was its flame. Across the fire, the vixen regarded her calmly. Now, her wonder growing
with each passing second, Lysandra considered her companion and found she
saw
much more than the outlined shape of the animal; this was far less distinct than her physical eyes would have seen. Instead,
Lysandra
saw
the acceptance that shone from the fox’s eyes, and from this she knew they had spent many weeks learning to live together.

And even more amazing, Lysandra found that by concentrating, by listening beyond the silence, she could share
the fox’s feelings. They were not thoughts; at least they did not mirror the individual patterns of human thought. But she
knew that the fox’s wariness of the fire mingled with its comfort in the warmth. Accepting the fire was part of its acceptance
of her.

From that moment, Lysandra never again sank into the blackness of unremembered days. It was now she truly began to wonder
at this new
Sight
. What was it exactly and from whence had it come? Was it a gift from the God in whom she was no longer certain she believed—some
Divinely ordered recompense for all she had lost?

For this, as for so much in her life now, she had no answers. A part of her, the larger part, did not care. To question was
to invite again the grief-filled darkness that still hovered somewhere close. Instead, throughout the winter, she and the
fox continued to share their cave while Lysandra learned to choose
life
again. She knew that the person she had been before, the girl to whom laughter came easily and who believed in love and happy
endings, was dead. She had died in that alleyway in Scorda and was part of the dreams that had been buried along with her
parents—with Ultan. She could never be resurrected.

Yet this realization was not only one of endings. With the acceptance of youth forever gone, with the choice of the new life
waiting, Lysandra knew herself reborn; though she wore the same body, this new Lysandra had a very different soul.

Like all the newly born, each moment held things she must learn if her new life was to continue and she was now glad of the
long winter months. Her time in the cave gave her an opportunity to explore the range of her new
Sight
. She found it was not like physical vision, full of countless hues of bright and muted color. Color in Lysandra’s world was
more felt than seen, though on rare occasions
it would still manifest with sudden and surprising clarity, granting her a glimpse of the world as she used to know it. The
first time her
Sight
expanded, showing her the vixen in the full beauty of her winter coat, it took Lysandra several seconds to realize what was
before her.

The vision did not last long, and the brilliant detail of it was almost blinding. But in those few seconds, Lysandra saw again
the colors of earth and stone, of flame and fox, of the winter night’s darkness outside the cave’s opening and the golden
glow of the fire’s radiance within. Then, as this revelation of her world began to fade, there came a long awe-filled moment
when the two manifestations of
Sight
blended, when color and clarity melded with aura and pattern. It was a marvel that almost reawakened the depth of her failed
faith.

Then the moment passed, leaving Lysandra to question again the nature of this
Sight
.

Those brief glimpses of color returned upon occasion, but never for long or by any reason Lysandra could find. Nor was her
Sight
always with her. Sometimes she existed in true blindness once again, as if to remind her of the darkness out of which her
new life had been born—and in which a part of her soul still existed.

When spring came again and the vixen moved on in search of territory and a mate, Lysandra was sorry to see her go. The fox
had been a good companion, and Lysandra would miss her silent presence and the lessons of existence she had taught.

Soon Lysandra also left the cave. For a while she resumed walking through the Great Forest. But this time her travels were
different because
she
was different. With the fox as teacher, she had learned to be her own companion. There were no more dreams of the future.
She
had learned to live each moment for what it was, and to accept what it—what she—was not. As the forest and its creatures cycled
forward into spring, Lysandra, too, moved on into the life that must be lived by the woman she had become.

She found it here in this cottage, where over the years she had become a healer. The animals came to her and, like the fox,
seemed to know that she was someone they need not fear, whose touch and voice were soft and whose actions were only for their
good. This pleased Lysandra in a way that went far beyond words. Her devotion to these creatures grew, became her focus, and
filled her hours with purpose.

In one section of Lysandra’s garden, she grew the food to keep her alive, for she would eat no animal flesh. But most of the
beds were filled with healing plants that she tended carefully. Eventually, people in the area also came to know of her healing
touch. Crofters and gamekeepers, shepherds and farmers, would occasionally show up at her door, sometimes bringing their animals
to her, other times in need of care for themselves or their families. Lysandra did what she could for them, accepting payments
of eggs or cheese or bread, of wool or cloth, if they chose to offer such. But she never asked for payment or turned anyone
away for the lack of it.

Also over the years, as she learned to use her
Sight
to heal, she found that other… gifts… were occasionally present, as well. As with the vixen that first winter, she could
often feel the emotions of her patients. With the animals, emotions were simple, primal—fear, confusion, pain, or relief.
But with the nearness of humans came a jumble of thoughts and emotions that bombarded her mind, destroying her hard-won peace.