Firebrand

She exhaled in relief and relaxed her tense muscles. Her back was killing her.

“However, we cannot allow you to leave our valley ever again.”

“What?” Karigan cried. “Why not?”

“You have seen too much. You know our secret. We cannot have outsiders entering our valley.”

“You don’t think our people won’t come looking for us?” she demanded.

“If they do, they won’t find you,” Ghallos said, his arms crossed upon his chest.

“We found you.”

“The entrance to our valley will be changed,” Yannuf said.

She looked from one to the other, from youngster to elder. “You expect me to accept this?”

“We offer you our hospitality,” Yannuf replied. “If you choose not to accept, you will be dealt with accordingly.”

“Killed.”

Yannuf nodded.

Karigan began to tremble with rage. She stepped boldly up to the two p’ehdrose. Enver tried grabbing her arm, but she shook him off.

He whispered an urgent, “Galadheon, they are already angry!”

She ignored him. “You think changing the entry to your valley will keep searchers out?” she demanded of Yannuf and Ghallos. “You think the rising darkness will not affect you? That the tainted wild magic of Blackveil will not reach you? You think Mornhavon won’t remember you? Then I suggest you think again.”

“I’ll not hear this—” Yannuf began.

“You ignore me at your peril!” she shouted. “You look to the past, but what about the future? Let me show you the future.” And she ripped off her eyepatch and stared up at Ghallos. There were intakes of breath from those who caught the gleam of her mirror eye.

“Mirare,” one or two whispered.

Ghallos bent toward her as though her gaze drew him inescapably in. She saw nothing out of her mirror eye. Until she did. Through it she viewed the universe with myriad stars and the interweaving of threads, past, present, future. Some threads ran their course unbroken, twined with others, but moving so rapidly like a comet that she could make no sense of it. Others frayed and threatened to snap. And then there were those that had snapped, the severed ends dangling, wispy, reaching out to rejoin, but it was too late for them. Of one of those she got an impression of Nyssa on one end, and on the other, of a man named Starling, one who would have been born in the future had Nyssa not been killed.

Ghallos seemed to stare into her eye for what felt like forever—she’d never revealed it for so long before. Daggerlike pain stabbed her eye, and she fell back with a cry into Enver’s arms.

“It is all right, Galadheon,” he whispered in soothing tones. “I have you. It is all right.” He cradled her while she caught her breath, while her heartbeat steadied, while she tried to make sense of who she was, where she was.

When she came to her senses and her vision cleared, she saw that Ghallos was pale. He knelt down before her, his legs shaking. “You are Mirare,” he said.

“So I have been told.”

He shivered. “One such as you has not been seen among our people since Maultin’s time. What I saw in your eye . . . You were telling us truth. We are not safe, not even here. Nothing we could do would guarantee our safety.” He stood once more, looked at his uncle and all the p’ehdrose assembled. “If we do nothing, we will be hunted down and slaughtered, every last one of us, until we are no more. Mornhavon the Black is rising, and he has not forgotten us. Now is not the time to hide, but to strike before we are destroyed.”

Voices rose and raged around him in the guttural language of the p’ehdrose. Karigan remained reclined in Enver’s arms, feeling rather muddled. One voice stood out from the others—Ghallos. He paced among the other p’ehdrose, his tone by turns cajoling, argumentative, authoritative. She did not know how much time elapsed for she seemed to fall in and out of awareness, the fire flickering against the faces of the p’ehdrose, dreamlike. Enver carried her back to their hut.

“Ghallos looked in your eye a very long time,” he told her. “The effect on him was profound.”

“Have they decided?” Karigan asked.

In the hut, Enver gently set her down and wrapped her in his cloak. “No, Galadheon. I think they will be arguing much of the night.”

As she drifted off, she was vaguely aware of him seated so close beside her that they touched. She thought, perhaps, she should move away, but she hadn’t the energy, and the dark of sleep descended.

• • •

In the morning she awoke with a headache. One of the p’ehdrose brought them a tray of food and drink. There was more of the cold-smoked salmon, cheese, and a stout bread dripping with honey.

Karigan tried to shake off the grogginess and sipped tea. “Have they come to a decision?” she asked Enver. She peered through the doorway and found the outer world quiet but for the morning song of birds and a few p’ehdrose moving about, attending to chores. The bonfire from the previous night was nothing but ashes.

“I believe they have,” Enver said, “but I am not sure which way it has gone.”

Breakfast was long finished, and Karigan pacing with anxiety and impatience, by the time Yannuf came to see them, his expression grim.

“Tell your kings,” he said, “that the p’ehdrose will honor its alliance of old. We will once more go to war.”

While Karigan no longer saw the heavens with its many threads, she felt one snap, and decisively. Her body actually jerked with it and Enver hastened to steady her. She had done it. She had turned the p’ehdrose to their cause. And now she could return home to whatever uncertainty awaited her there.