Mercedes Lackey - Anthology (14 page)

 
          
Paintings
and heavy tapestries lined the walls. Kiva grew suddenly subdued.

 
          
"Come,"
Parr said anxiously.

 
          
He
led me through the hallway and up a set of wide, sweeping stairs. A long
corridor led past several doors before we stopped at a guarded chamber.

 
          
Nurses
stood anxiously around the bed. The king sat in an upholstered chair by the
princess's side, his eyes worn and hollow, ringed by dark circles. Age had
lined his face and tinted his hair with gray streaks. He wore simple, un-kingly
clothes—a yellow tunic and cloth breeches. But he held himself with the firm
posture of someone accustomed to obedience.

 
          
"Parr,"
he said, rising.

 
          
"The
mage is dead," Parr said quickly, not taking the care to soften his
language for me. "So I brought his son."

 
          
The
king stepped before me, glancing once at Kiva with a strange expression of
dread. His eyes took me in from top to bottom, his face an odd mixture of
hardness and pain, and something else, too, something seething underneath,
angry and cold but hidden under layers of restraint.

 
          
He
did not want a sorcerer here, yet had asked for one.

 
          
"You
are your father's boy. No mistaking that," he said with a sword's edge to
his voice.

 
          
"Thank
you," I said, trying not to furrow my brow. My father had never mentioned
his association with the king before, which, of course, was so like him as to
not need thought. "Let me see the princess," I continued, trying to
divert the conversation into a place more comfortable.

 
          
He
escorted me to her side.

 
          
I
placed Kiva onto the sill of the open window by the bed,
then
bent to examine the princess. Kiva opened her beak as if to call out, but then
settled into place, staring now at the princess with intense concentration.

 
          
Terisa
was dark, like her father. Her face, however, was gaunt and sickly; her skin
pulled over cheekbones like dry leather. She was about my age, I saw, maybe a
year or two older.

 
          
I
placed my hand over her forehead and spoke a quick magic. Her body radiated the
pale crimson light that only sorcerers can see. Her form glowed through the
sheets with cold magic that echoed through my mind.

 
          
At
my side, Kiva spread her wings and gave a shrill screech, a sound that
reverberated with a yearning for freedom so universal as to be unmistakable.

 
          
My
eyes narrowed.

 
          
Burning
heat grew against my thigh. I looked down to find light radiating from my
pouch. This glow was blue, however, and it met with the crimson sorcery over
Princess Terisa to bathe the room in lavender and black shadows.

 
          
The
bones, I thought, this new magic sprang from the bones Kiva had been laying at
my feet since the day my father had died.

 
          
Kiva
called out again, and urgency came to my spell work.

 
          
Something
new grew inside me, burrowing out of my understanding like a rodent emerging from
the ground. The birds have magic, I thought, remembering my father's words when
I had asked of the hawks' presence.

 
          
Sorcery
whirled around Kiva, and she fed my spell with magic of her own. I felt her
heartbeat swishing rapidly through her body. I saw into the magical realm of my
spell work with the clarity of her vision. And what I saw shook me.

 
          
The
link that enveloped us grew, closing a loop that included the princess.

 
          
The
three of us—Kiva, the princess, and I—were all linked, bonded in some fashion
seemingly inseparable, and that bond was, in some way, my magic.

 
          
"What
is it?" the king asked breathlessly.

 
          
Ignoring
his question, I bent further over the princess. Yes, her complexion was dark
like her father's. And she had the severe curve of his nose. But the shape of
her face was familiar, rounded at the cheekbone and tapering at the jawline.
Her hair had bronze highlights.

 
          
Similar
features to those I saw every time I looked into the reflection of my father's
mirror.

 
          
Kiva
called,
a shrill scream that made everyone in the
chamber jump.

 
          
"Get
the damned bird out of here," the king said.

 
          
The
guard moved toward her.

 
          
"No!"
I called. "Kiva must stay."

 
          
She
stood in the open window, her wings partially unfurled, their curve graceful
and fluid. Her heartbeat still fluttered against mine, and her gaze was still
intense. Magic flowed from her. Another heartbeat joined ours then, slow and
methodical, so familiar it could have been my own.

 
          
The princess.

 
          
With
that sound, with the throbbing beat of Terisa's heart so very much like my own,
I knew the truth with such startling clarity I found it hard to breathe.

 
          
I
clutched the bedclothes and turned my gaze to the king. Blood drained from my
face.

 
          
"She
is my sister," I said accusingly.

 
          
The
king looked crestfallen. "Yes," he admitted, his head nodding almost
absently.

 
          
The
gasp from those in the room was audible.

 
          
"But my father?"

 
          
"Was
once my own wizard," the king said. His eyes grew sharp and he set his
jaw. "I sent him away."

 
          
"But
only after I was born and it became obvious who my father was," I said,
making it a statement rather than a question.

 
          
Kiva
cried again as if prodding the king. For an instant I pondered the power of her
magic, the sway she might hold over him as well as over me. But there was not
time enough to consider this fully.

 
          
"Yes,"
the king finally said, speaking as much to Kiva as to me. "I was angry.

 
          
I
was jealous and embarrassed. So I sent him away, and I sent your mother, the
queen, away, too."

 
          
"But,
sir," Parr broke in. "The queen died with her stillborn son. The
entire land mourned her for months."

 
          
Movement
stopped in the room. The king chewed his bottom lip. Kiva spread her wings
farther and stared into the king's gaze.

 
          
The
king shook his head. "No, Parr. Lissa did not die."

 
          
Lissa.

 
          
The
name rolled off the king's lips and rang through my head with a peal as clear
as a church bell.
Lissa.
Lissa.
The name of the queen.
The name of the hawk my father
had kept beside him his entire life.
Lissa.
Lissa.

 
          
The
link between the princess and Kiva and me still burned. I thought for a moment,
knowing now with certainty that just as Terisa and I
were
siblings, so, too, somehow were Kiva and I.

 
          
"She
became a hawk," I said in a stupefied monotone.
"My
mother, the queen.

 
          
She
was a hawk."

 
          
The
king nearly broke down. Tears formed in his eyes. "Yes. She had always
kept a raptor in the castle, and it was her falconry that drew your father and
her together. So I felt it fitting punishment. I paid dearly for the spell that
made her a hawk and tied his magic to her soul. Then I sent them away."

 
          
The
king drew a chest-wracked breath.

 
          
"But
now my daughter is dying, and I don't know why. Please save her. She is all I
have left."

 
          
Fire
burned along the top of my thigh. The pouch glowed with blue waves.

 
          
The bones.

 
          
I
touched their magic flame and felt what I for the first time in my life knew to
be my mother. She was warm and she was kind. Through her eyes I saw my father,
their awkward early meetings, the love that grew between them that both fought
against, and the fervor with which he had worked in his later years.

 
          
He
had spent his life trying to free her, but the binding had been too great.

 
          
And
with both of their deaths, the bond had passed to her next generation—including
her daughters, Terisa and Kiva. Kiva and I were together throughout the past
weeks, but Terisa was alone. And bound as we were, none of us could live apart.

 
          
But
the magic was weak, now. I could feel it, see the cracks in its casting.

 
          
And
I could break it if I wanted to.

 
          
If I wanted to.

 
          
I
shuddered with the thought.

 
          
"You
will understand when you are older," my father had said. And now I did.

 
          
The
king had tied my father's magic to the hawks. I knew this to be true. All of my
magic was founded on the birds, fueled by their existence and the link I had to
them.

 
          
If
I broke this binding, I would no longer have magic of my own.

 
          
The
thought rang in my heart and sent ice through my veins. I had been raised since
a boy to be a sorcerer. I knew nothing else. The truth of the moment sat before
me like a starved lioness.

 
          
Terisa
lay on her bed. She had been apart from us for too long. If I did not cast the
final spell, she would die. Kiva folded her wings and sat calmly on the sill,
awaiting my decision. She, too, was caught in this web of deceit spun by the
king and queen and their wizard. If I did not cast the final spell, we would be
bound for the rest of our lives.

 
          
And
if I did cast the final spell, I would lose my sorcery, the only thing my father
had left me.

 
          
The
king looked at me with deep, watery eyes.

 
          
He
had lost his wife and his friend years ago. When news of his deceit was
released, he would likely lose his rule. And now he stood to lose his daughter
no matter what I did.

 
          
Outside
the window, the sky was dark with circling hawks.

 
          
I
reached into the pouch and withdrew the bones of my mother. They were
weightless, shimmering with magical heat. I clasped my fingers around them,
holding on to her for a moment that seemed to last forever and to be gone at
the same time. . She smelled of orchids, my mother.

 
          
And
her smile was playful.