Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book III ]

27

The morning after the little Arcborn girl had died, Ealin felt achy and ill and hollow.

She did not feel powerful.

"Try," her father said. Holding a bloodstone tight in his left hand, he lifted his right, palm up. His eyelids fluttered lightly closed for an instant, and when they opened, he was holding a flame in his hand. "Try. You must feel it—the power. I feel it in the stone, and I can call it to me, bend it to my will, make a desire manifest. Something small. For greater work—traveling long distances, perhaps—for that, more stones are needed. But you've been imbued with the power, Ealin."

She closed her eyes, making an effort to feel what her father had spoken of; in her case, she thought, she must feel it from within, from her very veins, but she couldn't. She couldn't make it come. "I'm sorry, Father, I—"

"Try!" he demanded, and when she opened her eyes, startled by his tone, she was even more surprised by how he looked—white-faced, his hands trembling fists at his sides.

"I can't!" she cried in response. She could not meet his gaze. "Please. I'm tired and I'm—I'm frightened—"

"Frightened? How can you be frightened?"

"You're angry. You're angry because I can't do it and that little girl is dead, Father. You'll be arrested. You'll be punished."

Her father's expression softened. She could not tell whether it was understanding or amusement or a curious mixture of both. "My sweet little bird. You are so soft of heart, I fear you are also soft of mind. You need not worry. Who will miss her? She was just an Arcborn peasant." He laughed, casting his eyes to the heavens as if calling upon Zanara for patience, or sharing some private joke with her.

Then he sighed. "You have read and studied but you do not know it. Perhaps this is the problem; the magic runs in your blood, but you have not the faculties yet to bend it to your will. We must first apply ourselves to the tutelage and then, once you understand it—once you fully understand..."

The light came back into his eyes, and Ealin wrapped her arms around herself, plucking at the bandage that was wound round her forearm.

"Then, you will truly be a wayfarer, Daughter."

***

But, months later, when Ealin was grasping the concepts of magic after long and exhausting hours learning at her father's side, his theories were proven not to bear out. They knew this, more or less, because she had finally mastered the art of drawing a flame from her own palm with the use of a bloodstone. It was small, and it was difficult for her to maintain, but this first trick of hers—she could not help but think of it as a trick—was not possible unless she had the stone in her hand.

By now she had also mastered the power of the charm her father had given her, the charm her mother had used to walk among the Arcborn and learn their secrets—precious few secrets they had been, Ealin had learned, for the Arcborn were forbidden to practice their magic and, contrary to her father's suspicions, it appeared that most of them obeyed the law.

Ealin could understand that. When the penalty for disobedience is a public whipping, or even death, depending on the gravity of the crime, it was wiser to obey.

"I do not understand why it hasn't worked," her father muttered one evening, poring over his notes. Ealin had taken to spending her nights in his chamber, too, reading and studying and practicing her powers under his wing. Now, she was turning a bloodstone over and over in one hand.

"Perhaps it wears off," she said quietly. "Perhaps the blood has all been washed away."

"Washed away," he echoed. "What nonsense. Have you wept blood? Have you been wounded? Where would it go?"

Ealin shrugged her shoulders. "I do not know, Father. But were I to bleed..." She avoided his gaze, too embarrassed to mention in his company that she had already bled as women bleed. Would that have disturbed the currents of the magic blood? "Surely new blood is made somewhere in my body. Perhaps it is somehow diluted, and now none remains to me."

Her father narrowed his eyes, contemplating this. Ealin wrapped her arm around herself. By now, the wound in her wrist had closed over and revealed itself only as a fading pink scar.

"Then perhaps we must try it again."

And so they did.

The next time, the archmage had better tools: a thinner tube, attached to a device with a plunger that he could use to push a liquid inside out through the needle-like end. He demonstrated how it worked with water and a potato, and Ealin marveled at the cleverness of the creation. It made the work a bit less messy.

The Arcborn peasant boy survived the experiment. Ealin's father brought him in the dead of night, but his cries threatened to wake the whole of the Mage's Keep, and so he laid his hands on the boy's throat and worked the magic spell that Ealin would soon enough learn for herself: it silenced him completely, robbing him of any ability to speak, to cry, to whisper. When they turned him out in the morning, back onto the streets of Karelin, Ealin's father seemed content; he did not seem to think that the boy posed them any risk whatsoever. And Ealin, woozy with the effects of the experiment, lay down and slept the entire day, a bandage wrapped tightly around her wrist.

Her father did not let her lie in the next morning. He roused her early, although it was difficult to tell the hour with no windows to the outside world. And then, when she was still weak and exhausted and still in pain, he made her try the spells.

Ealin stood in the center of her father's room, her arms spread, the bandage on her wrist glowing pale in the gloom, and she turned her palms up, closing her eyes and concentrating every fiber of her being on what she aimed to do.

Please work. Please, let it work. Let this be over.

At the sound of her father's sharp indrawn breath, Ealin opened her eyes. There was a flame welling in her palm.

She could have wept.

It was feeble, but so were her attempts with the bloodstones; she could feel it now, feel the power coursing through her blood, and she could draw upon it and bring it out through her body in a way she had never experienced before. It was chilling and awe-inspiring all at once.

When she looked up and saw her father's face, her heart turned over. He looked at Ealin—at her hands—with such a mixture of pride and triumph that she finally knew the meaning of happiness.

I am on holiday break from my day job, which apparently means...

...MORE CHAPTERS TO THE FACE! Duck, friends, 'cause they're comin'! 

xx Mina