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  "He admitted he was jealous," Athrar said with a grin.

  "Just until I realized how proud I was," Afron Warhawk admitted less than an hour later, as Mrillis settled in for a pleasant, informal evening in the family quarters of the fortress. They were only six: Afron and Queen Elysion, Lyon and Lady Gretha, Athrar and Mrillis. "This is what Lady Le'esha dreamed of. Unity between our two races, a bridge over the differences between us. Noveni can no longer say that we are two separate races and there are no obligations between us, when this proves that we are brothers beyond the ties of blood. This is something no one can deny."

  "Especially when they despised those of mixed blood who proved we were all one blood," Elysion said softly.

  Mrillis swallowed hard against the heat and choking sensation in his throat as he watched the gray-haired Warhawk catch up his wife's hand and kiss it, and saw the tender, sad light in his eyes. Their four children, half-bloods, had been murdered, and still no one was quite sure who was responsible. Blood magic had been involved in the vicious storm, but no one knew if it was Encindi practicing the forbidden arts, or Noveni who turned to forbidden things in a bid for power, or another Rey'kil who had sold his imbrose for the sake of power.

  "I will always acknowledge the debt the Noveni owe to the Rey'kil for sharing Lygroes with us, when our own lands were overrun with star-metal poisoning and the Encindi invaders," the Warhawk continued after several moments when everyone was content to stare into the fire and visit sad memories. "Just as generations of our race took shelter here, so will generations give service in defending the vales and the cup of life and power before that debt is repaid. As long as there is magic in our bloodline, the family of the Warhawk will lead in that defense."

  "Witnessed," Lyon and Athrar said together. Father and son exchanged grins.

  "It is a good thing for the next Warhawk to train to be a Valor," Lyon continued. "No matter how many Noveni return to Moerta, our race will always be tied to Lygroes through the vales and the Valors."

  "And the Rey'kil can never say that the Noveni have no part in Lygroes," Mrillis added softly, listening to an inner voice while his physical vision clouded for a moment. "There will come a day when there will only be one land for those who wish to live, and all will need to share it and forget that there ever were three continents and three races." He shuddered, feeling as if the images that prompted those words had been yanked out of some deep, until then silent, part of his soul.

  Athrar held out his hand, with the ring Ceera had made for him softly glowing on his thumb. Sparks danced on the tips of the wings and beak of the stylized warhawk engraved into the thick band, physical witness of the power that had slid through the room and stirred the Threads like an errant, warm breeze.

  "Did you do that...or was it done to you?" the boy asked. His hand shook just a little.

  "What did you see?" Mrillis countered.

  "It was a web, all different colors." He swallowed hard, audibly, but he didn't go pale. If anything, his eyes shone with wonder, not fear. "It just fell out of the ceiling and covered you. Then it melted into you." He shook his head. "But that isn't right, either."

  "I think the sooner you go to Ceera for training, the happier we all will be." Mrillis stood and gestured for the boy to follow him. "If you will all excuse us, I think it is time for our prince's first lesson in using his imbrose."

  "Doing what?" Athrar's voice crackled, but he didn't blush or make a face. Mrillis suspected the boy hadn't even heard that bit of adolescent stress.

  "Using the Threads to speak with the Queen of Snows, of course." He bowed extravagantly, earning smiles from the two couples remaining in the room. "Do you really think she would forgive me if I made her wait any longer to hear the news? And she should hear it from you, not from anyone else."

  The rooms Mrillis had shared with Master Breylon, the first time he visited the Warhawk's fortress, were kept just for the Rey'kil leaders' use. Mrillis was grateful, because constant habitation seemed to cause the Threads to appear thicker there than anywhere else in the fortress. He would need those thicker Threads and the stronger flow of power for the boy's first communication. And keeping the rooms set aside just for him or Master Breylon or Ceera kept other magically talented folk, especially those who didn't even know they possessed imbrose, from scattering or even draining the Threads unintentionally.

  "Will she be pleased?" Athrar asked, as the two climbed the winding staircase to the tower room.

  "Oh, very pleased. If you were five years older, I think I'd be jealous, she's so fond of you." He wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders and shook him a little in mocking reproof.

  "But Lady Ceera loves you better than anyone," the boy protested.

  "You think so?" Mrillis shook his head, halting Athrar's response. "I love Lady Ceera better than anyone, too. We were raised together. I can't imagine life without her. But we're not here to talk about that." He paused as they emerged from the staircase into the first tower room. "Now, that web you saw, that is part of the Threads that we Rey'kil use to tap the power that flows through the entire World, which gives us our imbrose. You will need to find the Threads in this room, and touch them. Just with the tips of your fingers. Don't grasp them. And you must do it with your imagination, with your mind, rather than your physical hands. Do you understand?"

  The boy started to nod, then he sighed gustily and shook his head. He looked disgusted when Mrillis laughed.

  "I'm not mocking you. I'm remembering all the boys who claimed they could see the Threads years before they actually could, all out of pride. Or shame, that they lacked what others seemed to grasp so easily. Tonight, I will help you find the Threads. In the future, you must find them yourself, because guarding the Threads and the power that flows through them is a Valor's first duty."

  Just as he had with Ceera years before, Mrillis grasped the boy's hands, creating a link between them to help him see the Threads. Speaking softly, trying not to intrude and break Athrar's concentration, he released the physical contact and instructed the newest Valor in the process of calling to one specific mind through the Threads. He brought the boy with him when he reached to find that particular musical, chiming resonance that was unmistakably Ceera.

  You're lucky I wasn't asleep yet, Ceera responded, with a touch of laughter in her mental voice. Did you find out who the new Valor trainee is?

  I thought you didn't want to know.

  Spare me. I know you wouldn't call this late in the evening unless it was important. What other reason could there be for Lord Afron to send for you?

  You have a new pupil, Mrillis said, deliberately prolonging the moment to tease her.

  Mrillis! Please, not another spoiled nobleman who thinks he's too good for the teachers everyone else goes to. Did you tell them how horrid it is at the Stronghold in the winter?

  Athrar laughed, and Mrillis caught fragments of memories in the boy's thoughts, of delightfully lazy days spent in the common room while blizzards roared outside the cliffs of the Stronghold.

  Who's there with you? Ceera demanded.

  Your pupil. And you have to take this one, Ceera. It's your fault that we discovered him at all.

  Mrillis, if you don't tell me --

  You gave him a ring of star-metal for solstice. He heard it sing to him before he even put it on.

  Total silence rang among their three minds. Mrillis opened his eyes and saw Athrar watching him A lopsided smile accompanied the eagerness and uncertainty bright in his eyes. He was about to ask Ceera just how many rings of star-metal she made for solstice gifts, when she spoke.

  Athrar?

  Yes, Lady, the boy answered.

  She laughed, and a sensation of arms wrapping warm around them enfolded Mrillis and Athrar.

  * * * *

  Not everyone was delighted with the news that the Warhawk's heir had discovered his imbrose and entered training as a Valor. Triska sulked when an hour of Ceera's morning each day went to training Athrar, inste
ad of teaching her, as Queen's Heir. She continued to sulk, though discretely, after Ceera pointed out that the hour would have been used for other tasks, and not on lessons.

  Mrillis sometimes marveled at the differences between Triska and Athrar, with only six moons of difference in their ages. Triska was the elder, but Athrar at fourteen displayed discretion and dignity worthy of a grown man. Ceera spoke to her chosen heir about her attitude and how it would interfere with the growth and control of her imbrose, and warned Triska that she would not need a second lecture on the proper attitude and actions of Queen's Heir if she did not mend her ways. The girl caught the implications, and all was well for half a moon.

  Mrillis and Ceera both thought the problem solved, until Endor came to the Stronghold to visit his sisters. The second morning, he waited outside Ceera's workroom until Athrar's lessons had ended, then strode into the room the moment the prince opened the door. Mrillis noted Endor's sour expression darkened, as if displeased to find him there with Ceera.

  "Why does the boy need both of you teaching him?" he immediately demanded, before the door had finished closing behind Athrar's departing figure.

  "What one of us misses, the other sees," Ceera replied with a calmness that surprised Mrillis. He moved half a step back, physically and mentally, and studied her.

  You expected this?

  I caught Triska whispering and hissing into his ear in the common room last night and suspected. Ceera's mental sigh sounded more weary than amused, and Mrillis wished he had the right to put his arm around her and guide her back to her seat at the table. Or better yet, cancel all her meetings and chores for the rest of the day and make her take time for herself.

  "I've never known you to play politics before," Endor retorted, his voice louder than usual, that angry, self-righteous glint in his eyes for just a moment.

  "Politics?" Mrillis would have laughed, but a shiver of apprehension raced up his spine. Endor had indeed changed since the forging of the Zygradon. Nixtan had warned him that all the mischief and high spirits had drained out of the young man, like sap tapped from sugarleaf trees during the spring thaw.

  "It isn't politics to spend extra care on the young man who will lead our allies when he is crowned High King," Ceera said, "but common sense. Besides, I like Athrar. He's a good boy. He likes to learn. It refreshes me to teach him."

  "Triska likes to learn, and she's a good girl," Endor said, punctuating his statement by dropping heavily into a chair in front of Ceera's table. Not the chair Athrar had been using, Mrillis noted, and wondered if that was significant. "You chose her as your heir because she was a good girl, even though she's weak, not strong and smart like Nainan."

  Mrillis bit his tongue against pointing out that since Triska had been chosen as Queen's Heir, Nainan had become a different person. The older girl of the Nameless One's three orphans had, almost overnight, retreated into the background. She no longer struggled for preeminence and what she considered her fair share of attention and opportunity. She practically lived in the healing halls now, learning everything Andienha could teach her. Compared to Triska's increasing sulks and demands, Nainan was the 'good girl' among the siblings.

  "Triska has the potential to be a preeminent Queen of Snows," Ceera said with the same calmness and certainty Mrillis had witnessed Le'esha display when dealing with pugnacious Noveni ambassadors and self-important Rey'kil clan leaders. He wondered if Endor caught the similarity--and if his friend would take warning and know something was wrong if Ceera no longer spoke to him as a friend.

  "You're neglecting her education in favor of that boy."

  "Triska has a dozen duties every day to attend to while I am in lessons. Duties that I myself carried out when I was several years younger than her, as part of my training."

  "She doesn't see it that way." Endor shrugged and offered a crooked smile to Mrillis. "I know she's only hurting herself, but she can't get it out of her head that she's only Queen's Heir until someone better comes along. She's jealous of the boy. I understand completely why it's so important to train him yourself," he added, holding up his hands to stop the retort about to spill from Mrillis' lips. "Wouldn't it be good for the future to train them together? When the boy is grown and takes over as Warhawk, he'll be working with Triska, won't he? Wouldn't it be good for everyone concerned if they got used to working together now?" He shrugged. "Look at you two, raised together. Look at how much good that has done for our world. Maybe Triska and Athrar will do the same, in their time."

  "I will consider the possibility," Ceera said, after a pause that seemed to fill her workroom with ringing silence.

  "That's all I wanted."

  That evening, Endor dominated the games and singing in the common room, showering both his sisters with affectionate teasing, playing tricks for the younger children with sleight-of-hand to produce sweets and tiny carvings of animals and flowers from stone. Mrillis was glad to see his old friend in good spirits again, until he saw the disquiet in Ceera's eyes. It was plain to him, though not to anyone else, that Ceera didn't trust Endor's jolly mood.

  "He's too eager to have them be friends," she admitted, when Mrillis asked her about it the next day, before Athrar's lessons. "Yet he does have a point. They should be trained together. Even if Triska doesn't inherit my place until Athrar's grandson leads the Noveni as Warhawk, she needs to be used to working with him."

  "I think Endor was overreacting," Mrillis offered. "To make up for the problems he had with Noveni, earlier. If he trusts the Noveni prince to spend time with his baby sister, then he doesn't carry the grudge against them any longer, do you see?"

  "Politics." She wrinkled up her mouth as if she tasted something foul. "I hope letting them take lessons together will solve a multitude of problems."

  As the winter drew to a close, Triska's attitude appeared to be much mended. If anything, Mrillis thought she acted like any normal girl caught in the turbulence of adolescence. Perhaps she had grown sweet on Athrar. The boy was tall for his age, handsome, clever, a shining example for his generation. Triska alternated between trying to dominate their lessons, because she was older by six moons, or flirting with a sweet, bumbling eagerness that often made Ceera laugh and forgive her.

  Athrar wasn't charmed, and Mrillis felt badly for the young prince. Especially when Endor seemed to approve of all the time the boy spent with Triska.

  "I'm afraid to turn around one day and find out we're betrothed," Athrar confided in Mrillis, two days before he was to head home to the Warhawk's fortress, to begin preparations for the first Encindi attacks of the spring. "It's hard work, being nice to her, but not so nice she thinks I like her. Because I don't really like her. But I don't dislike her, either. Does that make any sense?"

  "Too much sense." Mrillis fought not to laugh, and was glad that they had this conversation while walking the pebbly shore of the Lake of Ice, which granted them privacy.

  He understood the boy's frustration. This winter had not turned out as he had anticipated, though he would not have taken away Athrar's imbrose or Nainan's metamorphosis from brat to defender of the downtrodden or Triska's blossoming in confidence. Even if Triska was just a little too confident, leaning toward arrogance.

  What he grudged, however, was the total lack of privacy to speak his thoughts, especially his heart, to Ceera. Sometimes during the long winter days, with so much work to do, so many responsibilities pulling them away from each other, Mrillis fancied that the entire Stronghold conspired to keep him and Ceera apart. He could have spoken to her in their private link of minds, through the Threads, but he shied away from that tactic. What he felt for her, the longings of his heart, had to be spoken, face-to-face, not sent in those drowsy, dark hours when they were both safely tucked into their beds and the frantic current of the day had finally released them to sleep. They both needed to be alert. He needed to see her face, when he revealed his heart. The link of their minds made him too open and vulnerable, revealed too much of each other's hearts and th
oughts between them, and he couldn't take it if Ceera didn't feel anything for him beyond the brotherly-sisterly unity.

  "I'm glad I'm going home soon, even if I'll miss this place. It's disgusting how all the toadies among the courtiers try to either bully me or flatter me like I'm witless." Athrar kicked at a pebble and it skittered out onto the ice and vanished into the mist rising from the white, cloudy surface. "They're just trying to prepare for the day when I'll be Warhawk, so they can try to control me. They'll have a few surprises waiting for them, I can promise you that."

  "Good. And even if you warn them, they'll still be surprised." Mrillis let himself laugh now.

  "The only thing I'm not going to miss is watching you act like a ninny over Lady Ceera." The boy grinned and snorted, muffling laughter, when Mrillis' mouth dropped open and he stared at him.

  "A ninny?" was all he could get out.

  "The way you just moon after her all the time. And you just stand there and watch her and I can see you almost ready to burst, to tell her, but you can't."

  "If you're so wise, can you tell me how she feels about me?" Mrillis tried to turn his words into a jest, but it was hard. Something heavy and thick seemed to wrap around his lungs, stealing his breath, putting a weight in his belly.

  "Like I said before, she loves you best. Anybody can tell that. So you should tell her. I don't understand why you haven't."

  "It's not that easy. Timing...courage." He shrugged.

  "I think you should just get it over with. Fast. Like pulling a bandage off a wound."

  "That probably does make sense. Wait until you've lost your heart to a girl, then tell me how easy it is to speak your feelings." Mrillis burst out laughing when a look of horror twisted Athrar's suddenly pale face.

  * * * *

  Prince Athrar was still at the Stronghold, delaying his journey home because of the first icy rainstorms of spring, when the plagues began.

  Chapter Two

  The plagues didn't start in one place and spread out like ripples from a stone tossed into a pool. They sprouted up in a dozen spots simultaneously, like seeds that had been scattered in one long swing from a generous hand.