evil."
She shook her head in denial. "The both of you are mad."
Kerrigan placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. He could well understand her fear at finding this out, especially like this. But it changed nothing. "Tell me something, Seren. The loom you used to make my tunic…where did you get it?"
"It was my mother's."
Blaise asked the next question from his chair. "And where did she get it?"
"It belonged to her mother before her."
"Aye," Kerrigan said, "because they were both Merlins sent out into the world to protect your loom. Just as the nameless man who fathered me must have carried the blood of Caliburn's Merlin. I doubt my father, whoever he was, ever knew of his heritage. But given the actions of your mother, I think she may have known exactly who and what you were. What she was."
Seren couldn't breathe as he spoke. In a way, it all made sense. Her mother's gift of foresight. Her ability to heal and to care. She'd had what the local priests called unholy powers. But there had been nothing evil about her mother. She'd been a good and decent woman who only wanted to help others.
And now that Seren thought about it, her mother had always been skittish, as if looking for someone who might be after them. As a girl, she'd thought nothing of it. But now that she considered it, she remembered how many times her mother would stay up into the wee hours of the night as if afraid to sleep. How she would always make their beds someplace where they could quickly flee if they needed to.
Her mother must have known about Morgen and her servants.
But most of all, she remembered the day her mother had gifted her with the loom for her birthday. Seren had wrinkled her nose in distaste of the old, scuffed-up piece. It'd been small, no more than three of her mother's hand spans in width.
Still, her mother's face had beamed with pride as she set it on the table before Seren. "This has been in our family for generations, little Seren. It belonged to my mother and to hers before her. Now I'm gifting it to you."
"But I don't want it," she'd whined. "Can I not have a new one?"
Her mother had shaken her head as she lovingly brushed the hair back from her child's face. "This is a very special loom, my Seren. One that will come to mean the world to you one day. And with it, you will make a destiny all your own."
Even so, Seren had poked her finger at it in distaste. She'd wanted a new doll, not some silly old loom. Even if it had been in her family, what did that matter? All her mother ever thought of was work.
Laughing gently at her, her mother had wrapped it back up in a piece of brown cloth. "Keep this put away, child. Always. Let no one know that you have it."
"Why?"
"Because it, like you, is very special and dear, and I don't want anyone to take either one of you away from me. One day you will know exactly what to do with your loom. Until then, keep it with you and hidden."
No sooner had her mother packed away the loom than Seren had forgotten those words. Her mother had arranged her apprenticeship only a few weeks later, and then her mother had died.
After that, Seren had hated the loom that reminded her of the mother she'd lost. She'd kept it hidden away, along with all the painful memories of her mother's death. It was only after Mistress Maude had caught her last year using the store loom for her personal project, and punished her for it, that Seren had remembered her mother's loom.
There in the faint moonlight of the room she shared with the other apprentices, after everyone else had gone to sleep, she'd carefully unwrap it and bring it out at night to weave. And as she worked, the loom had ceased to be such an eyesore. It'd become beautiful to her, and in time, it'd become a friend.
There were times when she could have even sworn that it talked to her. Madness surely, which was why she'd never mentioned it to others. But she knew in her heart that the loom had somehow helped her make her cloth. That it directed her stitches.
Could it really be magical?
Nay, her mother would have told her if it were. Her mother would never have kept such