“We cleaned him up and bound him as best we could,” Chaynal went on. “Then we came back as fast as we dared. He hasn’t spoken or opened his eyes once.” At last the young lord’s voice cracked with grief. “Tobin—forgive me—”
The princess looked around briefly from her work at Andrade’s side. “You did everything you could, beloved.” She knuckled her eyes with one bloodstained hand.
Andrade was nearly finished sewing the skin together. She did so very quickly, without thought to how it would heal, for she knew it would not matter to Zehava how it healed. Dressings soaking in a pain-numbing solution were applied, and at last she wrapped clean bandages around the prince’s midsection. Her back ached and her eyes stung with the strain of so much fine work done so fast. Straightening up, she turned to her sister. The blue eyes saw nothing but Zehava’s ashen face. Andrade washed her hands in a basin of blood-clouded water, dried them, and flung her long braid back over her shoulder. “Mila,” she began.
“No,” her twin whispered. “Just leave me alone with him.”
Andrade nodded and ordered everyone out with a glance. In the antechamber, she closed the door and gestured to the frightened servants, who scurried away.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?” Tobin asked softly, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks. She wiped them away, leaving thin stains on her face.
Chaynal made a strangled sound low in his throat and strode off down the hall. Andrade said, “Yes.”
“Poor Mother. And poor Rohan.”
“I need your help, Tobin. Grief must wait. You know that what I possess, your mother does not. These things sometimes skip generations, the same way you bore twins but Mila did not. What is within me is also within you.”
The princess’ eyes went wide with shock. “You mean I’m—”
“Yes. I’m tired, and I need the strength you have but were never trained to use.” She led Tobin down the long hallway to the rooms kept for her, and locked the door behind them. Sunlight sloped in, gilding the furniture and bed hangings. Andrade stood with her niece at the windows that faced the slowly dying sun. “Perhaps I ought to have told you, shown you how to use what the Goddess gave you. But you were content as you were, and faradhi powers are not taught to those who have no need of them.”
“You’re going to use me, the way you use everyone,” Tobin said, but without resentment. “What do you want me to do?”
“Listen to me. Don’t stare directly into the sun, girl, you’ll burn your eyes. Look instead at what it does to the land—the hollows filled by light, as Water fills hollow stones and Air fills the hollow dragon caves and Fire fills the hollow hearth. The light moves,” she whispered, “caresses the Earth like a lover, warms the Air, sparkles across the Water, finds its mate in the Fire. Of these four things, all is made. Touch the sunlight with me, Tobin—feel its strands weaving between your fingers, its colors like silk threads made of jewels . . . yes, that’s it. Now follow it with me. Become sunlight, flung out across the land. . . .”
Chapter Two
When Sioned was three years old, the death of her parents left her brother Davvi, her elder by twelve winters, Lord of River Run. Within a few years he married. His bride was a girl whose father had no other heirs, and when the man died, everything that was his became his daughter’s. Davvi found himself the athri of two fine keeps and lands that stretched for twenty measures along the Catha River. But the new Lady of River Run was the possessive sort, begrudging Sioned not only the share of wealth that would have been her dowry but even the fondness between brother and sister. Thus she purchased—at a price far less than marriage to a suitable lord—Sioned’s entry into Goddess Keep. Unhappy at home, twelve-year-old Sioned had gone gladly to the great castle on the cliff’s edge in Ossetia. There she found companionship among the other students and knowledge enough to feed her ravenous appetite for learning. The small oddities that her sister-by-marriage derided as “fey” turned out to be indications that she had the faradhi gift and could become a Sunrunner.
Not everyone who went to Goddess Keep became faradhi, and Lady Andrade did not tolerate arrogance among those who could or envy among those who could not.