Lady Warhawk (35 page)

The only way to prove these enemies wrong was to make sure Ynfara gave birth to this
child now in her womb. And yet, Meghianna longed to turn around and stand with Lycen and
Ilianora against these newest assaults on their honor and happiness. Returning to Quenlaque and
telling their enemies, open and hidden, could fight the new, cruel tales, but would leave Ynfara
vulnerable to the magic trying to destroy her unborn child.

The longer Ynfara stayed away from Quenlaque, the more people would choose to
believe the lies. The fact that Athrar stated he knew where his queen had gone, that he knew she
was faithful and she was safe, would do no good. For the sake of the unborn child, no one could
know Ynfara was pregnant. Until Meghianna unraveled the magic wrapped around Ynfara's
flesh, they could not be sure how it was formed, what triggered it, and if some hidden enemy
knew she was pregnant before she did. The only way to protect Ynfara was to get her inside the
protective walls of the Stronghold, where the enemy's magic could not reach.

She might need to give birth here, if we are unable to dislodge the spell and keep it
from killing the child,
Meghianna said.

If Ynfara stays away from Quenlaque so long, it might not be safe for her to return
at all, even with a child who is Athrar's image.
Mrillis sounded tired, but Meghianna
thought he also sounded less distracted than he had been in a long time.
I fear that these fools
will tear Quenlaque apart with their tongues faster than the catapults of the enemy,
he
added.
There might be no Quenlaque to return to.

Are you well, old meddler?
Meghianna wrapped her arm a little tighter around
Ynfara's shoulder and gestured ahead. The tunnel turned slightly, and the door into the
Stronghold was just around that turn, glowing softly silver and blue in the twilight shadows.

I am unsure,
he admitted after several long, waiting moments.
There are
times I feel as if I move in a dream, and I am unsure what is my waking and what is my
dreaming.

Do not go to see Nemma anymore. Please?

Oh, but she will miss me.
He chuckled.
I can guess your expression, even if
you haven't said a word. Yes, I have finally gathered my courage and approached my
ghost.

"Ceera's ghost," she whispered, startling Ynfara. They had both been silent during most
of the journey down the tunnel.

No, she is no ghost. A warm, delightful young woman. She doesn't know who I
am,
Mrillis added quickly, before Meghianna could gather her thoughts to interrupt.
She
is lost. Before she woke in a healer's hall in Quenlaque, her entire life is a blur, lost in the
darkness. I have promised to help her find some answers.

Are you sure that is wise? With all the troubles assailing Athrar? Mrillis, I am
depending on you to stand with my brother while I am busy with Ynfara.

I will not abandon him. You worry too much, child.
Mrillis chuckled, and
abruptly the connection between them closed.

Meghianna shuddered. That was unlike Mrillis. And the tight, hot, slightly sick feeling
in her belly when she thought of Mrillis talking and laughing and spending time with Ceera's
ghost was unlike her. She wondered, for the first time in a long while, if she could indeed be
jealous.

There was no time for self-examination. Every moment counted. They had now reached
the Stronghold. The door opened and they hurried through. Light and warmth flowed around
them as the ancient stone structure came to life. Now was the time for work. The fulfillment of
prophecy and the life of an innocent child depended on her utter concentration on the task at
hand.

* * * *

Meghianna found the fine web of the spell growing through Ynfara's flesh within a day
of reaching the Stronghold, her search aided by surrounding the young queen with the
concentrated star-metal embedded in the place. The filaments reminded her of hair-fine roots.
When she simply sat and observed, she could see them growing, spreading through her flesh.
Like the main root of a grape vine, she was able to trace the malevolent magic back to a tiny spot
at the base of Ynfara's neck, one tiny dot of darkness hidden inside her bone, where the tattoo of
her grandmother's spell had not been completely eliminated.

Meghianna knew someone had control of the spell, turning it nearly invisible, as it grew
through her flesh instead of across her back in an intricate pattern of lovely blackness. The roots
of the spell wove through Ynfara's vital organs and enclosed her womb. Meghianna sacrificed
two days to merely observing the spell as it grew. She could predict the time when the delicate
web of the spell would entirely enclose Ynfara's womb and the growing child. When it touched
the child, it would penetrate her flesh and kill her.

"Her." Meghianna yanked back out of the Threads that let her observe the growth of the
spell. "You have a daughter."

"A daughter." Ynfara blinked, stunned, then a slow smile touched her face and she
rubbed tears from her eyes. "Athrar will be pleased. He said he wants a daughter first, another
Lady Warhawk, to watch out for our son when he is born." She shrugged, her smile growing
crooked. "He said you had been surrounded by boys too long. He wanted to give you a girl to
spoil, and perhaps she could be your heir."

Meghianna blinked away the tears that threatened to scald her face and laughed shakily
as she reached out to embrace the young queen.

"No one must know," Ynfara said, when they had dried their eyes and settled back into
their seats again. "Athrar, yes, of course, but no one else. They'll say my child is not Athrar's, if
anyone knows. Someone will think they are serving Athrar by killing my baby, if there is any
rumor that she isn't Athrar's daughter. No one must know."

"There will come a time when you won't be able to hide the evidence."

"I know." Ynfara pressed both hands over her flat belly. "When that time comes,
hopefully this trouble will have faded to nothing. Or at least there will be other problems to
occupy their attention, so they don't watch me, ready to shred me for the slightest mistake."

"Athrar does love you," Meghianna whispered. "More than he can express."

"I know. And that's why I chose to marry him, despite all the troubles and all the attacks
I knew would fall on me. And especially with Indreseen's shadow constantly hanging over us."
She shuddered. "Edrout... He frightens me. He's just a little boy, but he's too clever. Sometimes,
I think there's someone else looking out through his eyes."

"We will attend to that problem, my dear, when we have ensured your child will be
born. That is the focus of our lives right at this moment. Let tomorrow's problems take care of
themselves." Meghianna gestured for her to lie down again, so she could continue her
examination.

It took eight more days to remove the webwork of magic woven through Ynfara's body.
The least frustrating part was that it kept growing, visibly, like roots of a stubborn, prolific weed.
Meghianna could handle that. What slowed her and made her sweat was the fact that the spell
wove through all of Ynfara's vital organs. She was forced to stop frequently when pulling on a
single filament of malevolent magic caused Ynfara distress--choked the breath from her lungs,
caused her heart to stutter, tangled her intestines.

Finally, after meticulously wrapping Threads around each filament of the spell to drain
it of power, it was all removed. Even down to the tiny speck of original spell hidden in Ynfara's
bone. They were both exhausted from the effort, and slept for two days straight, until Lycen's
frantic call penetrated the Stronghold's protective, thick shield.

Mrillis had vanished, and there was no sign of him in the Threads. Worse, Nemma had
vanished, and every evidence said they had gone away together.

Meghianna searched for signs of Mrillis, but the trail of his pathway through the
Threads woven throughout the land grew fainter and fainter, swallowed up in the growing
discord of Nemma's presence in the Threads. She followed Nemma's trail, until it suddenly
erupted in violence and vanished. Meghianna found the healer woman, lying in a burned puddle
of her own blood, eyes wide and unseeing, no signs of struggle, her throat and wrists slashed and
her heart cut from her chest. Death magic, without a doubt. All around Nemma, glowing, twisted
symbols in a language she had never seen before were scrawled in the dust in blood. The
corruption that made the air thick grew stronger, fouler with every breath she took, until it
threatened to crawl down her throat and strangle her. Meghianna staggered out of the clearing,
feeling the ground shudder under her feet, as if something tried to erupt like maggots bursting
through rotted flesh.

Faintly, the last whispers of Mrillis' presence shimmered in the air. Meghianna stretched
herself through the Threads, trying to catch his resonance, until she thought her physical body
would fade away, absorbed in the effort.

Then, suddenly, Mrillis was gone. She shuddered deep inside, a cry yanked out of her as
a far off, discordant shriek of metal filled her blood and bones, and the Threads became visible in
the air around her, blazing bright for two heartbeats. Meghianna slid to the ground, her arms
wrapped around her head as she waited for the world to unravel around her.

The reverberations continued, silently, lingering, like thunder heard from halfway
around the world. Meghianna thought perhaps the entire World would continue trembling on the
verge of fracturing until Mrillis was restored.

She pulled herself to her feet, clinging to a tree, staring at the symbols that faded as she
tried to decipher them. It seemed to her as if all the ground and air and trees in the desecrated
clearing tried to pull away from the abomination of death magic that had taken place there. Then
that faded as well, just like Mrillis' presence had faded to nothing. Even the stink of Nemma's
slaughter dissipated into a smell of scorched stone.

"It's as if someone shielded him from the Threads as they went along. Enfolding him in
a shield like the Stronghold possesses. Or choking off all his
imbrose
, so he has no
magic whatsoever and the Threads do not respond to him anymore," Meghianna reported, when
she met with Athrar and Lycen and the Warhawk's council three-quarters of a moon later. She
described what she had seen when she followed the intertwined trail of Mrillis' and Nemma's
resonances, until all she had left was the violated clearing reeking with death magic.

"If the World's greatest enchanter could fall victim to such a ploy..." Lycen shook his
head, then turned sharply to face her and his stern expression crumpled. "Mother, I'm sorry.
You've had the worst of all of us, hunting for him and finding such a thing at the end of the trail."
He got up from the table and knelt next to her chair and wrapped his arms around her.

Meghianna felt very small as she finally let go and wept in her son's arms. Far in the
back of her mind, she thought that she might someday smile at the glorious relief she felt in
being able to rest her burden on someone else for a little while.

Even as she thought that, she braced herself for the battle that lay ahead. The world now
rested entirely on her shoulders. All the Rey'kil, all the enchanters and Valors, looked solely to
her. She felt very young and unready, and very old and tired, both at the same time.

"Meggi ... what was it?" Athrar asked, when she had wept herself empty. He went to
one knee next to her. "That sound, when Mrillis vanished utterly. What was it? It made
Braenlicach burst into light, so I thought I would be blind for days."

"Zygradon." Meghianna wiped at her swollen, aching wet eyes with the cuff of her
sleeve. She wanted to sleep for a year. "That sound was Zygradon, crying out in protest. The
bond between them...not shattered. I do believe the world would end if it would ever be
destroyed, but Mrillis is cut off from the bowl of power. Without it, how can he ever be restored
to us?"

"Could you follow it? Could you find the Zygradon, now that you've heard it?"

"I...don't know." She closed her eyes and rested her head on Lycen's shoulder.

Meghianna swallowed hard, refusing to give voice to the jagged, aching thoughts
rattling through her soul: Without Mrillis, what did anything matter? She almost wished the
world had ended in that moment when the Zygradon mourned.

* * * *

"Lady?" Ynfara paused in the doorway of Meghianna's workroom. She looked uneasy
about entering, and Meghianna didn't blame her--the room had once been Mrillis' province, but
she had taken it over because her main library was stored at the Stronghold.

"Come in, dear. How are you feeling? I'm sorry I haven't been up to see you yet, since I
got back, but--"

Ynfara looked over her shoulder, both directions up and down the hallway outside, then
stepped into the room and pulled the door closed. "Megassa is gone."

Meghianna almost asked 'Megassa who?' Then she blinked, and a crushing feeling of
horror stole her breath for a few heartbeats as she searched through the Threads and found no
sign of her sister anywhere within Quenlaque. She struggled to push that horror aside as Ynfara
settled into the chair opposite her at the long table full of scrolls.

"Thank the Estall, you know who she is. I've asked a dozen people already where
Princess Megassa is, and they either tell me she's out riding or she's in her rooms. Or they tell me
they don't know who I'm talking about. And no one remembers the boy, Edrout, at all." Ynfara
hugged her shawl tighter around her shoulders. "What's happened to everyone?"

"We have been so busy with one crisis..." Meghianna gestured at the many scrolls and
tablets and sheets of parchment she'd piled up on the table in her effort to track down the
prophecy that would give a clue to finding and freeing Mrillis. "I suspect she and the boy slipped
away under cover of that travesty of foul magic, and nobody noticed."