The Promised Queen (Forgotten Empires #3)- Jeffe Kennedy Page 0,65

own failings, I couldn’t summon any anger that Ambrose had obviously seen my fate. He’d known about Con needing to bring my hand home from Yekpehr, and the wizard had been prepared to bring me back from death. He hadn’t warned me, but I believed he’d had good reason not to.

“There’s no need for you to apologize,” I said. “You couldn’t have—”

He held up a finger, stopping me. “The apology stands, even if the explanation must wait.”

“Then I forgive you,” I told him.

He shook his head. “You cannot, not until You know what You would be forgiving.”

“I don’t understand.” A curl of distress wormed through me.

“I know, child. I know.” He patted my hand, then released me. “Let’s go rescue Merle and settle Calanthe down, yes?”

“Yes.” As we’d been speaking, Mother had drunk of the waters, and now approached us beaming with radiant truth. She drank from the spring daily and so had purified herself to the point that she emerged perfectly dry and with no weight of regret.

“Follow me,” she said, and entered the tunnel.

12

I watched Lia until the last glimmer of her pale skin disappeared into the deep shadows. Her crown, glittering in the bits of sunshine that leaked into the shadowed cave, abandoned to perch on a bed of moss, seemed like a bad omen. No sense reading into it, though. I couldn’t go with her, so I’d wait. I unstrapped the rock hammer and set it aside, along with the bagiroca, and settled myself on the ground, back against a boulder. The thick, weirdly bright-green moss covering everything—which I tried not to find too creepy, though it was—made the seat as comfortable as a bed.

“You going to drink the water?” Sondra asked, standing at the edge of the pool and scuffing the toe of her boot through the gravel.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I could see this going either way. Whether I gambled on drinking that water might depend on how bored I got—which was probably not the best reason to elect to examine the dark corners of my psyche. “Are you?”

“Asked you first,” she retorted, then came to sit next to me.

“On the one hand, we have nothing better to do, and it could be a long wait.” I stared at the water. The fall from the spring barely stirred the mirror-still blackness of the surface. It made a pretty tinkling sound, but it seemed Ambrose’s screams still echoed from the deep tunnels. “On the other hand, there’s a lot of shit in my head I’m pretty sure I don’t want to dredge up.”

“Yeah,” she agreed glumly, drawing up her knees and dangling her hands between them. “Look what happened to Ambrose. For a few minutes there I thought it was going to kill him.”

“I think it nearly did.” I’d never expected to see the wizard brought so low. “I think Ambrose is really old,” I said, mulling it over as I spoke. “And it could be he paid a heavy price to be a wizard. He might be paying it still.”

“Do you think that’s why he doesn’t use his magic much?”

I glanced at her, surprised. Sondra still stared intently at the water, like she hoped to catch a glimpse ahead of time of what she might see. “Could be. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Yeah. You know, like maybe he pays a price every time he uses it. Like that old tale of the minstrel who snuck into Sawehl’s golden palace and stole the magic harp. He got to keep it, play it, and write those songs we still sing—but his fingers bled every time, and he wept from the pain.”

“I don’t think I ever heard that story,” I finally said.

She grinned at me. “You were a naughty kid—you never paid attention to any of the songs and stories.”

“I listened to some,” I protested. “I remember hearing you sing,” I added on impulse. Maybe the truth of the place had snuck into me anyway, just by breathing the mist in the air. Though Sondra stiffened, I plunged on. “Your voice impressed even this snot-nosed kid. It was like … magic. And the way you sang those old songs—I could see the stories in my head. I’ve never heard anything like it since.”

She didn’t reply right away, and I hoped I hadn’t pissed her off—or hurt her too much by bringing up old wounds. “Thank you,” she finally said, her voice thick with emotion. “I miss singing. I miss the music, giving voice