Seeing is Believing

(But Love is Blind)

Lynn Abbey

 

Illyra awoke to the sound of an infant's crying and a sudden stiffening of the muscles in her neck and shoulders. She stayed that way, tense—almost cringing—until she heard the wet nurse shove her blankets aside then stumble across the night-dark room. The crying changed to contented sucking sounds; Illyra closed her eyes and shrank back into Dubro's arms. He hugged her reflexively but the infant had not interrupted his sleep. Why should it? Children were women's work and this child was not even his.

The S'danzo seeress matched her breathing to her husband's and waited for sleep to touch her again. She listened to the wet nurse tuck the infant back into her cradle and return to her own bed where she swiftly resumed her gentle snoring. Dubro's strong arms were no longer comforting but had become an encircling trap from which she could not free herself—tangible symbols of the weight she had felt since summer when her half-brother, Walegrin, had appeared with the newborn girl-child in his arms.

It had never seemed like a good idea. Three years ago Illyra had borne twins: a boy-child and a girl. Now they were both gone. The boy, Alton, had been taken from the mortal world. Caught up in the influence of the demigod, Gyskouras, he had sailed for the Bandaran Islands this past spring and if he returned at all, it would not be as her son, but as a wargod stranger. Worse, Lillis, her blue-eyed daughter, had been hacked into pieces by ravening street gangs during the Plague Riots at about the same time. Illyra had tried to protect her daughter with her own body—with her own life—but fate had denied her sacrifice. There was a purple scar running across her belly but it went not nearly so deep as the scars mourning had left on her heart.

She had nurtured her grief and had wanted nothing to do with living or joy. She had hated that squirming bundle Walegrin had thrust into her arms. Had wanted to dash its head against the doorposts because it lived and Lillis did not. But it had wrapped its fragile fingers around hers and stared into her eyes. And Illyra had Seen that this child would remain at her side.

Strange how the S'danzo Sight worked. It rarely focused on the self, family, or loved ones but brought the abstract, the uncared-for, into clarity. Illyra did not love—would not allow herself to care for—this not-daughter they called Trevya and so the infant flashed constantly in her mind's eye where the Seeing visions grew.

Had not Trevya's legs been crippled in the prolonged birthing that had claimed her blood-mother's life? Had not Illyra Seen, superimposed over every other vision she commanded, a construct of baleen and leather guiding the infant's soft bones into a healthy alignment? Had not Dubro made such a brace, following her precise instructions, and was not that twisted little leg already growing straighter as the Sight had foretold?

Illyra had wrought a miracle for Trevya, who was not her daughter and whom she did not love. She had given Trevya freedom and built an unyielding trap for herself. Hot tears squeezed out from her eyes and puddled in the crook of Dubro's arm. The young woman who had once been a mother prayed that they would not awaken him and waited the long hours until dawn when she would be released.

This not-daughter consumed more of Dubro and Illyra's time and money than their own children had, for they kept Trevya with them in the Bazaar rather than send her behind the fortress walls of the Aphrodisia House where working merchants often kept their precious children. So they had had to hire a wet nurse, a woman—scarcely more than a child herself—whose baby had been stillborn and who had come to live with them alongside Dubro's forge. But there wasn't enough room for them, Trevya and the waiflike Suyan, so they'd hired workmen to make their home larger. And, of course, Suyan must have food, and clothes, and medicine when she grew sick.

Fortunately there was plenty of work to be had in Sanctuary these days. The new city walls were being made from cut and dressed stone; there were picks and mauls in need of constant repair and replacement. Dubro had both a journeyman and an apprentice working beside him at the forge these days, and he talked of building a larger furnace beyond the rising walls. Verily, a fortune could be made these days in Sanctuary, but the pump needed priming and it seemed to Illyra that their coin hoard shrank rather than increased.

She was half S'danzo, fully gifted with their preternatural clairvoyance but bereft of their tolerance for haphazard poverty. She was half Rankan, through her father's blood, and craved the material security that was the heritage of that empire's middle class. And, of course, her S'danzo Sight could offer no assurances to her Rankan anxieties. Even without Trevya, Illyra would have lost many a night's sleep this season.

As it was, she balanced on the edge between dreaming and waking, and her thoughts spiraled far beyond her control. Trevya's face drifted toward her, like a leaf on the wind or driftwood with the tide. Illyra called her mind's eye back, but it did not come and the face grew into a full Seeing of a child running through a neat flower garden, arms outstretched, silently laughing and singing a single word over and over again.

Illyra cried out, breaking the thrall of the Seeing but not disturbing her husband who, in truth, was accustomed to her cries in the night. The seeress, still bound in Dubro's protection, stared into the night determined now to remain fully awake. The vision would not be denied and inserted itself into her thoughts, demanding interpretation.

That was easy enough. If Trevya ran, then her legs grew straight and strong. If she ran through a garden, then she became a child in a place where beauty was an affordable luxury. If she sang as she ran, then she was happy. If that word was Mother…

But no, Illyra would not acknowledge that part of her Seeing—though it could have told her she would have the material security she craved. She preferred the loneliness of her anxiety and clutched its darkness tight around her until slits of dawn light came through the shutters.

Dubro stirred, freeing her as he did. The soul of routine and regularity, the smith rose with the first dawn light year around and had his forge ready when the sun peeked over the horizon. Usually the sight of his broad shoulders as they vanished beneath his worn leather tunic was enough to banish Illyra's night-born doubts, but not today—nor did she share any aspect of her visions with him. She remained huddled in the bed until Suyan had the baby at her breast and even then Illyra gathered her brightly colored garments as if in a trance.

"Feel you poorly?" Suyan asked with sincere concern.

Illyra shook her head and laced a rose-colored bodice tightly over her own breasts. The girl's voice—her odd, but lilting, syntax—grated with extra harshness this morning, and Illyra was, without forethought, determined to ignore her.

"Herself cried but once in the night, though if that come at a bad time, it's enough to keep you waking until dawn?''

Always a curl to her voice. Everything was a question that needed—no, demanded—an answer. But this time it would not work.

"There's herbs left from Masha zil-Ineel—from Herself's congestion—that could be brewed up?"

"I'm fine, Suyan," Illyra said at last. "I slept fine. The baby didn't bother me. You didn't bother me. And I don't need any herbs—just…" She inhaled a pause and wondered what she did need. "I'm going uptown today. What I need is a change of scenery."

Suyan nodded. She did not know her mistress well enough to sense how little Illyra needed change of any kind—and would not have done any different if she had.

Shunning her pots of kohl, Illyra brushed her hair into a thick chignon and wrapped a concealing, drab-colored shawl around her shoulders. She would never be mistaken for a woman who followed any of Sanctuary's fast-changing fashions but neither would she be taken for a S'danzo.

"You'll be wanting breakfast?" Suyan asked from the corner, the lilt making her maternal and chastising.

"No, no breakfast," Illyra replied, meeting the other woman's eyes for the first time, and watching them grow fragile with self-doubt. "I've got a craving for the little tarts Haakon sells; I'll get some on my way."

Those huge eyes grew bright and knowledgeable. "Aye, cravings…"

Illyra found her fist clenching into a warding sign. Suyan had her own need for security, and security for a wet nurse was her mistress's pregnancy. Not a day went by that somehow, buried in the lilting questions, the subject of Illyra's barrenness was not raised. As Illyra forced herself to relax, the unfairness of it all swept over her and she knew if she remained one more moment she would dissolve into tears that would only make her world worse.

"I'm going now," she muttered in a voice that sounded almost as bad as she felt.

Dubro was instructing the new apprentice in the finer arts of squeezing the bellows. His voice was deep and even with hard-held patience; there was nothing to be gained by interrupting him so Illyra gripped her shawl against the chill harbor wind and hoped to slip away.

"Madame…Madame Illyra. Seeress!"

Illyra shrank against the walls, unable to pretend that she had not seen or could not hear the young woman racing through the market-day crowd.

"Oh, wait, Seeress Illyra. Please wait!"

And she did, while the other woman caught her breath and pressed a filthy, battered copper coin into her hand.

"Help me, please. I've got to find him. I've looked everywhere. You're my last hope. You've got to help me."

Numbly Illyra nodded and retreated the few steps to the anteroom where she kept her cards and the other paraphernalia of the S'danzo trade. She could not refuse—though not because of the coin as the suvesh commonly believed. It was not payment that compelled the Sight but, sometimes, the contact of their flesh with her flesh. Already she was growing dizzy with the emergence of another reality. It would be a hazard to her if she attempted to deny the vision.

She pushed the deck across the table as she half collapsed onto her stool. "Make three piles of them," she commanded; there was no time to shuffle them.

The visitor's hand shook as she separated the deck. "Find my Jimny before it's too late!"

Illyra swallowed the notion that it was already too late, then surrendered herself to the emerging images: the Lance of Air, Seven of Ships, Five of Ores, reversed—the Whirlwind, the Warfleet and the Iron Key transformed into a lock. The lock wound through a chain and the chain grew from the belly of a dank, swaying ship—not an anchor chain, but a galley chain from keel to ankle, from ankle to wrist, from wrist to oar. The air reeked of drugged wine and echoed with a whip's crack.

It was too late. Illyra Saw slaves' faces, one clearly, the rest wrapped in fog, and heard—as was the way with her gift—Jimny speak out his own name. She separated herself from the Seeing and sought words to blunt the despair her answer must contain.

"Another card," she heard herself whisper. "Seek beneath the Whirlwind."

The suvesh, the ordinary non-S'danzo folk of the world, might not know any of the Seeing rituals but they knew the way things were supposed to go after they'd put their coin in a seeress's palm—and any deviation was certain to mean bad news. Illyra's visitor was sobbing openly as she reached for the first pile.

Two—not one—cards slipped free: the light-and-dark tunnel of the Three of Flames and the dark-faced portrait of the Lord of the Earth. Illyra absorbed them both and grew no wiser.

"He's been taken onto a boat," she said slowly, gathering the now lifeless chips of vellum into a single stack. "His leaving was not of his choosing," she continued, putting a high gloss over his enslavement before adding, without much conviction, "nor will he choose the time or manner of his return." Illyra could not bring herself to say that the best Jimny would likely get out of his future was a grave under the soil rather than the waves.

"Is there no hope? There must be something I can do. Something, anything. Which temple should I go to? Which gods should I pray to?"

Illyra shook her head, then spoke as a woman rather than a seeress. "There is always hope—but hope doesn't come from a handful of S'danzo cards."

Her visitor shuffled awkwardly to her feet. Illyra confirmed her suspicion that she was a few months shy of giving birth and poorer than Suyan had been when they'd found her.

"Take back your coin."

"Will it change things?"

"No, but it will buy you today's food and tomorrow's, too."

"I won't need food tomorrow," the girl shouted through her sobs as she ran from the room.

But she will, Illyra thought, weighed down by the Sight of a pale woman and a scrawny child. There's no death for her. And no life either.

The clanging of three hammers brought her out of her visions. Dubro was tapping the cadence and the other two were beating the red-hot iron. One of them had it right—tap, bang; tap, bang—but the other, probably the apprentice, was off the mark and stuttered against the metal. The forge reverberated with an unnatural rhythm that penetrated deep behind Illyra's weary eyes.

"Can't you get it right!" Illyra snarled, thrusting head and shoulders through the anteroom drapes.

The percussive chorus came to an immediate halt with an aghast look on the faces of the younger men and a knowing, concerned one on Dubro's.

"Learning's not easy," her husband said cautiously, his blue eyes narrowed to unreadable slits.

"What, then, is he learning? How to give me a headache?"

Dubro nodded twice, once to his men who laid down their hammers and the second time to his wife as he approached her. He wrapped his arm gently around her and brought her into the anteroom beside him. Just as the forge was his true home—a place built to his scale and comfort—so the scrying chamber was Illyra's true home and it made him seem an unwelcome giant scraping his head on the rafters, yet unable to sit, as the visitor's chair would not take his weight.

" 'Lyra, I'll send them home, if you want, but I think it's not the hammering that's wrong. What ails you, 'Lyra?"

Illyra on her scrying stool had taken command of the room. She would have had to arch her neck to see Dubro's face, but she had no intention of meeting her husband's eyes. She spoke to the table instead, in a soft voice that emphasized the smith's awkwardness. Yet she was no more comfortable than Dubro; her hands sought the scrying deck and her fingers riffled through the cards.

"Everything and nothing, husband. I do not know what ails me—and I'm almost past caring." The cards broke free of her nervous fingers to scatter across the green cloth.

Heaving a sigh as he moved, Dubro dropped to one knee; he could look into Illyra's eyes and force her to look into his. "Read the cards for me, then. Ask them what I must do to make you happy."

Illyra avoided him, watching the cards as she gathered them into a rough-sided stack. "You know I cannot. I love you. I cannot See what I love."

She raised her eyes, thinking to shame him but was herself shamed by what she read, without Sight, in his face. He doubted her love and, now that the notion flowed within her thoughts, he had a right to, because she doubted it as well. The worst pain Illyra had ever known shuddered along her spine. The cards spilled onto the table when she hid her face behind her hands. She never imagined Dubro would study and remember each image in the moment before he reached across the table to massage her neck and shoulders.

"Had we rich relations or a hidden villa surrounded by lakes and trees, I'd send you away. It's Sanctuary herself who's hurt you," Dubro said with an eloquence few others knew he possessed.

Illyra imagined the villa and recognized it from her predawn vision of Trevya. Fresh sobs came loose within her as she shook herself free of the villa and her husband.

"What, then?" Dubro asked, a trifle less understanding.

"I don't know. I don't know…" but then, though she still could not discern the nature of, much less the solution to, her problems, Illyra stumbled across something that could, under different circumstances, have accounted for her despair. At least to Dubro.

"I woke this morning with a foreboding around me," she admitted, not yet lying but working herself up to the sort of half-truths she routinely fed her visitors. "I thought to escape, but that woman came and the foreboding became a Seeing. She wanted to know where her lover had gone and I found him—in chains in the belly of a ship somewhere. And though I only Saw his face clearly, I saw as well that he was not alone and that many men had been pressed into slavery."

Dubro grew thoughtful, as she had known he would. Chains were made from iron, and Dubro knew every man in Sanctuary who knew that metal—in any of its forms—against his flesh. The blue eyes grew unfocused as he, like any other ungifted suvesh, ordered and made sense of his thoughts.

Illyra watched his pupils move as each mote of knowledge fell into place. Her sense of guilt lessened; she had tricked him into thinking about something else—but a good issue might yet come of it. She gathered her cards and wrapped them in a square of silk, never noting which ones had lain exposed.

"This is something for your brother, Walegrin," Dubro decided with a firm nod of his head.

"You tell him then. I'm going for a walk, maybe I'll find a garden somewhere. I don't want to go to the barracks."

Dubro grunted and Illyra suppressed a sigh. A year ago, less even, and her husband would have gone into a rage at the mention of Walegrin's name. He had blamed all their misfortunes on her straw-haired brother. Now, since Walegrin had deposited Trevya in her arms, the commander was welcome in their house and the two men often spent the evening in a tavern. Dubro had even gone so far as to share the cost of posting the child to citizenship in the increasingly meaningless Rankan Empire.

Illyra couldn't imagine conversation, let alone friendship, between the two taciturn men, had never really tried, then realized they talked about her. She had pushed them together with the wall she had built around herself. But the understanding brought no desire for reform.

"Talk to him then. Maybe eat with him as well. I don't think I'll be back until after sundown."

She straightened her shawl and eased past him to the door, never touching him, even with her skirts. The journeyman and the apprentice were gone. Trevya was squalling despite Suyan's best efforts to sing her quiet. None of it caught Illyra's heart. She was into the market-day crowd without a backward glance.

There were perhaps two dozen S'danzo in Sanctuary, counting the female children. The men and the children moved unnoticed through the city—especially now that it had become the workplace of the empire with strangers still arriving each day. But the women, the seeresses true and false, put down their roots in the Bazaar and rarely left its confines. Illyra recognized many of the faces she passed, but none recognized hers. As free as she felt, she was also very much alone and shrinking with each step farther from the Bazaar and the forge.

She was all but invisible when she reached the main gate of the palace. She was known here, and recognized, from the many visits she had made to her son when he lived in the royal nursery with the god-child, Gyskouras. She was not greeted, as she passed into the interior corridors, for much the same reason.

There were others here who knew her, who mumbled a greeting with their eyes averted from hers as they picked up their pace to be gone from her shadow as quickly as possible. It was, perhaps, a great honor to be the mother of a godling. Certainly the slave-dancer who'd been the mother of the other child did well by her servants, suite, and jewels, but such motherhood did not inspire mortal friendship. In truth, though, Seylalha, with her lithe beauty, would have found her nest of luxury without Gyskouras's help and Illyra, confidante to half of Sanctuary, had never had any friends.

Aside from Dubro and Walegrin, whose relationship to her was defined in ways other than friendship, there was only one to whom Illyra could bare her soul: Molin Torchholder. And it was a sorry state when a godless S'danzo claimed counsel with a Rankan priest.

At that moment, however, Illyra wore her isolation like armor and strode by the stairway that would have taken her to Molin's cluttered suite. She had her destination clearly in mind: a sheltered cloister that caught the sun without the chill wind. A place certain to have flowers even this late in the year.

The little courtyard was empty—deserted for considerable time and given over to weeds. Two hardy roses held onto brown-edged blooms, their scent all the stronger for the frost that had doomed them. The rest was yellow-top, white lace, and, in the most sheltered corner, a patch of fiery demons-eyes. Illyra was grateful she had no allergies as she gathered an armful of the blooms and settled onto a sunlit stone bench to weave them into a garland.

She'd learned the flower braiding in a vision once. Her mother had certainly never taught her, nor Dubro, nor Moonflower, who'd told her what she'd needed to know about womanhood and her gift. She'd learned other things as well: bits of song and poetry, snippets of lovemaking, tricks for killing with a knife or sword. She knew too much, to be just one person—and she'd loved Lillis because she yearned to share herself with someone, anyone, who would understand.

Trevya could never understand.

The sun warmed her shoulders, finally loosening the knots that had been there since that late winter day when she'd last held a living daughter of her own blood in her arms. Illyra turned her face upward, eyes closed, imagining an ageless Lillis: child, woman, and friend. She took that predawn vision and changed it until it was her own daughter and she could hear the laughter and the single word: mother, mother, mother…

But the laughter, Illyra realized after a blissful moment, was real—echoing within the cloister—not in her imagination. She opened her eyes and gazed upon the passel of children who had invaded her retreat with their games. There were none that she recognized from her visits to the nursery—save that two were clearly Beysib. Both were girls and, by their apparent ages, immigrants like their parents.

"It's your turn now!"

"And no peeking!"

The designated child, the younger of the Beysib pair, separated reluctantly from the group. Her arms and legs, which extended well beyond her fine but dirty and shapeless tunic, were still pudgy with baby fat; her gait was still flat-footed, after the manner of toddlers, rather than rolling. Her face pulled back into a near-bawling grimace as the distance between herself and the others increased but none of the children had as yet noticed Illyra sitting still and quiet on her bench.

The little girl squared her shoulders and put her hands over her eyes.

"Out loud. Count out loud, Cha-bos!" the other Beysib girl commanded.

"One…two…th-th-three…"

By the count of four the other children had vanished, squealing and shouting and quickly dispersing through the tangle of rooms and hallways of their home. The little girl, Cha-bos, heard the silence and lowered her hands from her tear-streaked face. She noticed Illyra for the first time.

The nictating membrane that distinguished the exile community from the continental norm flicked over the child's amber eyes and she stared. Illyra, despite her best efforts, started backward just as reflexively. But Cha-bos was apparently immune to that gesture—or at least already able to conceal her own reactions.

"I can't count to one hundred," Cha-bos declared, confident that she had explained everything, and Illyra learned that Beysibs could cry while they were staring.

"Neither can I," Illyra admitted—not that she had ever had need to count so many things.

Cha-bos wilted. What use was an adult who knew no more than she did? "It doesn't matter," she told herself and Illyra. "They don't want me to play anyway."

Caught up in those huge, fixed eyes, Illyra Saw that Cha-bos was right. The older children had not continued with the simple game but were, even now, regrouping for a greater adventure.

"I'm sorry. You'll grow up soon enough."

"They won't ever grow down."

Illyra felt herself squirming to get free of the child's endless eyes. She realized why the other gifted S'danzo women stayed so close to their families—where familiarity, if not love, inhibited the curse of Sight and the scrying table turned vision into a cold business. She especially did not want to know that Cha-bos was no ordinary child—even for a Beysib—but the daughter of the Beysa Shupansea, and already her blood was laced with potent poison.

"You can't have any friends, can you?" she blurted.

Cha-bos went solemn and shook her head in a slow arc, but the membrane flicked back and she blinked. "Vanda. She takes care of me."

Vanda was a name Illyra recognized from before. An Ilsigi girl who had somehow gotten herself made nursemaid to the polyglot menagerie of the palace nursery. Illyra had not seen her since Alton had been sent away and had, for no good reason, assumed the young woman had been swallowed back into the city.

"Is Vanda still here?"

"Course she's here. I need her."

Cha-bos's faith in Vanda was as strong as her gut-level certainty that the world—in the proper order of things—revolved around her personal needs. She was willing to lead Illyra through the palatial maze to an interior chamber which by its chaotic condition and the size of its beds had to be the current location of the nursery.

Vanda sat with her needle and thread amid heaps of children's ravaged clothing. Her face glowed with genuine welcome when Cha-bos announced herself but cooled and became mature when she saw Illyra.

"It's been a long time," she explained, shaking the mending from her lap and bowing slightly—as was proper in the presence of one who was the mother of a potential god. "Fare you well?"

Illyra nodded and was at a loss for words, wondering what she had hoped to accomplish by visiting. "Well enough," she stammered politely.

Living with children had preserved some of Vanda's audacity and forthrightness. "What brings you here?" she asked, taking up the mending again.

Illyra felt her mind carom wildly from one mote of knowledge to the next. Vanda was the daughter of Gilla and Lalo the Limner. Gilla had watched as her children embarked on the journey of adulthood, and had buried one who had not at the same time Illyra's Lillis had been laid in her grave. Gilla had also nursed Illyra through the bleak weeks of their mutual mourning. Vanda would know what her mother knew, and Vanda knew children….

"I have a child," Illyra began from somewhere deep in her heart.

Surprise and suspicion flickered across Vanda's face. "Oh." she sighed as a calm mask formed over her features. "How fortunate for you." It was a voice to quiet the insane.

The S'danzo couldn't help but feel the emotional distance Vanda hurriedly created between them. But her despair was a throbbing, emotional aneurysm and, having finally found its voice, it would not be stilled. She described how Trevya had been literally dumped in her arms and how the child gave her no peace. She spoke of Trevya's twisted leg and the psychic intrusions that had led to the construction of the baleen splint which, though it was straightening her bones, chafed her skin and made her cry for hours at a time.

Then Illyra told herself and Vanda about the changes that had come over Dubro since Trevya's arrival. Come over him and between them as if children were interchangeable and a woman's love flowed to any infant that squirmed in her arms. Not, of course, that it was just one child; there was also Suyan who was little more than a child herself. And the new apprentice who, though he still lived with his family in the town, expected that she would care for him…about him.

And through it all Vanda sat attentive and blank, polite, and growing more reserved with each syllable the S'danzo uttered. Until Cha-bos, who had gotten infinitely bored very early in Illyra's oration, inserted herself into their attention.

The child had unearthed one of her ti-cosa, the miniature version of the Beysib court costume, padded and embroidered so it bulked as much as Cha-bos herself.

"Fix it!" she demanded as she began a run across the room.

Ribbons trailed from the robe's seams and edges, imitating the poisonous Beynit vipers that dwelt with the older female members of the Beysa's intimate family.

"Cha-bos-tu!" Vanda shouted the child's full name as the impending catastrophe came closer.

Emerald and ruby silk serpentined around the child's legs. Cha-bos lurched forward, unaware at first that she was no longer in control of her unbalanced burden. She shrieked as she tumbled forward, becoming a confused mass of cloth and child. The nursery was frozen and quiet when her motion ceased. For a moment Illyra and Vanda believed no harm had been done, then a wail of heartrending terror erupted from the tangled embroidery.

Vanda reached her first, fairly shouting her reassurances as she separated Cha-bos from the cosa. A splinter as long as the child's finger protruded from her forearm. (The floors, this high up in the palace, were constructed of wooden planking that had seen better days.) Chabostu, second daughter of Shupansea and witness to all that had driven her mother into exile in Sanctuary, was transfixed by the sight of her own blood. Her whole body stared in the rigid Beysib way; her only movement came during her spasmodic gasps between screams.

Vanda could not relax the child's arm and when she yanked the splinter free the blood followed in bright red spurts.

"Dear Shipri preserve me," the nursemaid intoned as Cha-bos's wide-open eyes went completely white. "Hold her!"

The child was thrust into Illyra's unwilling arms as Vanda shouted for the palace guards and crawled toward the unmended clothing to tear a compress. Illyra rocked back on her heels and went almost as rigid as Cha-bos herself as the warm blood trickled along her fingers.

This was no ordinary child—no ordinary blood. That was foul and potent venom gathering in the crevice between her thumb and forefinger. Illyra gulped, shuddered, and nearly fainted as the fluid streamed over her wrist and out of sight beneath her cuff. There was nothing she wanted to do more than heave the little girl across the room and get as far from her as mortally possible. But Vanda was back, ripping strips of cloth with her teeth, and the corridor resounded with approaching guards.

Illyra could do nothing but contain her revulsion as Vanda tended the wound and Cha-bos twitched and shuddered in her arms. The nursery shimmered with surreal absurdity: what manner of contagion could possibly take root in a child whose very blood was poison? Then the visions came.

She was in the Beysib Empire, Seeing a nightmare world with a child's eyes. Giants stormed from living shadows with red-dripping steel in their hands. Cold, unyielding hands held her from behind and made the world go wild as they moved her from the familiar to the horrible.

A face swam before her: a face half her mother and half hard, grimacing giant—and the other part, the part that was not her mother, was in control. But mostly there was blood as the last fortress loyal to Shupansea fell to their enemies and the noblest individuals of the empire scrambled for their lives like lowly peasants.

Illyra, whose childish memory held scenes no less graphic, shared Chabostu's terror—and an unhealable outrage that not one of those giants who habitually controlled her world took notice of her. Worse, her mother, Shupansea, seemed herself to have been reduced to gibbering.

In the starkly judgmental mind of young Cha-bos, Shupansea had usurped the attention and comforting that belonged to her. Cha-bos was unable to comprehend this inversion of the universe and so had transformed it into something she could understand: She had never felt like this before and she'd never seen so much blood before, so blood must cause the feeling. Must lead to the feeling inevitably.

And blood became the ultimate terror in her world.

Vanda worked furiously to cleanse and conceal the child's wound, well aware of the child's progressive fears if not of their cause. Though the guards had been assured that the injury was neither serious nor the result of any malfeasance, they raised a racket in the nearby corridors—primarily designed to prove to Shupansea (who had also been summoned) that they were diligent in their duties. Illyra watched the commotion from a greater distance. She had freed herself from the child's visions, thereby insulating herself somewhat from her own fear of the poisonous fluids still staining her arm. She had wisely resisted returning completely to the world of the frantic nursery.

The seeress remained detached from her surroundings until Shupansea crossed the threshold with Prince Kadakithis and a dozen courtiers in her wake. The Beysa dropped gracefully to her knees and attempted to take her daughter into her arms. Chabostu would have none of it and fought like a little demon to avoid her mother's attention.

"Your Serenity…?" Vanda interjected cautiously, cocking a finger ever so slightly to the bandage.

Knowing what would happen if the wound bled again, Shupansea withdrew her arms. "It has been very difficult for her," she explained softly and quickly to Illyra, speaking like any mother who had been shamed or rejected by her offspring rather than as the de facto ruler of Sanctuary.

Illyra, though she was the mother of a probable god, had no idea how to speak to one who was personally both goddess and queen. She cast a furtive glance toward Vanda whose nod, she assumed, meant she should treat Shupansea with the same calculated familiarity she accorded her paying visitors. "Children have their own minds," she said with a trace of a smile.

The Beysa had the good manners not to stare, but her pet viper chose that moment to rustle through her undergarments and poke its jewel-colored head above her collar. It tasted the air, revealing its crimson maw and ivory fangs, then, while the women held motionless, it lowered itself onto Illyra's sleeve.

"Don't move," Shupansea cautioned unnecessarily.

The immense NO remained imprisoned until the beynit investigated the clotted blood on Illyra's sleeve with its darting tongue. Any thoughts of instant death were insignificant compared to the reality of the serpent's touch. With a stifled gasp, Illyra propelled herself out of the circle, flinging the serpent and the child in opposite directions.

Cha-bos cried, the snake disappeared, and Illyra was surrounded by a mixed cohort of palace guards. Rankan, Ilsigi, and Beysib by the look of them, they were united by the steadiness with which they kept their well-sharpened spears pointed at her throat.

The guards saw their duty; no one would blame them for not following procedure when the child of an avatar of one goddess was bounced on the floor by the mother of another. For once Sanctuary proved itself a place of law and due process. Not even the protests of the prince and the Beysa combined could free the S'danzo from the ordeal of reporting to the watch commander.

"There's nothing to worry about," the prince assured Illyra as he joined the bristling circle escorting her from the nursery. (Shupansea remained behind, watching her daughter and looking for her snake.) "It's just a formality. Sign your name a few times and it will all be over.''

This brought little comfort to the seeress who signed her name with an X like almost everyone else in Sanctuary.

 

* * * * *

 

It might have been different if Dubro had accompanied his wife—for he had begun life destined to be a scribe, not a blacksmith, and remembered what he now had little use for. Unfortunately Dubro wasn't even at the forge when a liveried palace servitor made his appearance there, and Suyan was awed into incoherence.

Not that Dubro had told her where he was going when he banked the fire and lowered the leather awning that separated the entrance to his workplace from the entrance to Illyra's. He could hardly admit to himself that he was going to the back wall where the other S'danzo seeresses made camp, to ask their advice.

He thought of Moonflower and was not the only person in Sanctuary that day or any other to gently mourn her untimely death. She'd been barely taller than Illyra but in all other respects she was built on Dubro's scale and he'd felt comfortable around her.

He reconsidered his whole plan as he entered the incense-rich, S'danzo quarter. He had decided to turn around and retreat to his own familiar world, when he was caught in the appraising glare of the woman who had replaced Moonflower as most indomitable among the seeresses.

"Greetings, blacksmith," the tall stick of a woman called. "What brings you up here?"

It was not done to walk away from the Termagant. She was the living embodiment of every tale ever whispered in the dark about the S'danzo. No sane man doubted that she would and could curse anything that crossed her path in the wrong light.

Dubro crumpled the lower edge of his tunic in his fists and took a step in her direction. "I have a question to ask—about the cards."

She looked him up and down, which took a moment or two, then pulled aside the curtain to her scrying room. "Then come, by all means, and ask it."

The Termagant lived alone. No one dared ask or remember if she'd ever had a family. As far as the other S'danzo and all the rest of Sanctuary were concerned she had always been exactly as she was. An aura of timelessness hung over her—by gaudy S'danzo standards—austere chambers. Her wooden table was worn black and shiny from years of use.

Her cards were tattered at the edges, their images both faded and stained. She was a seeress who let no one but herself touch the amashkiki: the cards, the Guideposts of Vision. They cascaded from one knobby hand to the other as she settled on her stool.

"Tell me where to stop. Choose your first significance."

Dubro thrust his hands, palms outward, between himself and the flittering paper. "No," he stammered. "I do not choose cards. Illyra chose them."

The cascade came to an abrupt halt. "If she chose, what is your question?" she inquired, though surely she suspected the answer.

"She cannot read for those she loves. She would not lay down the cards—but certain ones fell from her hands. I believe that she cannot read for us—but I do not believe she cannot choose."

"For an overly large man, you are not without perception," the Termagant said between self-satisfied cackles. Dubro folded his hands and said nothing. "Very well, describe the cards you saw."

"There were five. I've heard her name them Orb, Quicksilver, Acorn, Ocean, and Emptiness."

For ten or more years Dubro had stood outside Illyra's workroom, pointedly ignoring the wherewithal of her craft. Yet he had absorbed something despite the banging of his hammer. His eyes met hers and were not put off by the disbelief that grew there.

"Prime cards each and all," he averred.

Not to be outdone, the seeress set her own cards back in their silken nest with imperturbably steady hands. "I don't suppose you noticed the relation of the cards one to another as they lay? Reversed or covering?"

"They fell from her hands," he repeated.

"I see." A lengthy pause between them. "Well, then, I suppose it's safe to assume the simplest message: all images erect and alone. It will be easiest that way. You do want the simplest interpretation, don't you?"

Dubro nodded, unfazed by her sarcasm. They'd had dealings with this woman before. Her acid was as normal a part of her as a smile was to Illyra—or had been to Illyra.

"I take it you know that among the amashkiki there are five families: fire, ore, wood, water, and air, as correspond to the five elements from which the universe was made. Each family is led by its Prime and defended by its Lance. There are, of course, cards which do not fall into the families but they are of no concern here for you described only Prime cards. Every Prime card."

Again Dubro nodded. He had known that. The amashkiki had been generally adapted by the larger society around the S'danzo, though only they preserved its arcane functions. A gaming hand showing five Primes was worth a heavy bet.

"The Lances defend. They are rigid, sharp-edged, defined. The Primes, though, are the start of things." The gray-haired woman grinned. "And also the ends. Magicians like the Prime cards because they mean everything, you know. The appearance of a Prime simplifies the reading, she may have told you this; two Primes and it practically shouts. Five Primes is absurd—and you, blacksmith, I think, know that."

This time he grunted, but it meant the same as a nod.

"Perhaps she had just ordered the amashkiki and merely dropped the end cards?"

"She'd just sent out a visitor. If I thought it were an accident, I'd not have come here."

"Then you and she stand on the cusp. All has already been revealed to you. It wants only your feet upon the path."

Dubro nodded to himself, letting her statements shore up his own convictions. The old S'danzo's eyes narrowed. At her age, Sight was a secondary gift. Her chiefmost asset was her long knowledge of mortal behavior. The Termagant could read as much in a gesture as the S'danzo Sight might have revealed in her cards.

"If she waits much longer," the crusty woman admitted, "that path may well rise up to bite her feet. It is not to be denied."

"But she will deny it, amoushka"—a S'danzo diminutive for grandmother or elder seeress. "She sees Trevya wherever she turns, but her heart only grows harder."

The Termagant snorted. "She is a little fool who should by now know what happens when children get tangled up in the Sight and fate."

Even swollen with strong-backed workers from every corner of the empire, Sanctuary was still a small place where no one was by more than three or four degrees a stranger to anyone else. It took a determined insularity to live in rumorless ignorance; it was utterly impossible to live in privacy. The entire city had known about Illyra's first children and the Termagant was informed about her well-cared-for but unwelcome not-daughter.

"The longer your wife denies what her Sight has shown her, the more inevitable it becomes, blacksmith. Glimpsed once, fate is a weak thing subject to change and uncertainty—especially for the young. But repeatedly glimpsed and denied, as Illyra has done…" The Termagant shook her head and chortled softly to herself. "Ah, nothing in this life is accidental. Perhaps she knows what she's doing; not even Illyra is stronger than fate."

The interview had come to an end. There was another visitor hovering beyond the curtained doorway. Dubro scrunched down to pass under the lintel.

"Mind you," the old S'danzo added as the curtain slid across his back, "if you and yours are pawns in fate's game, you will not feel its hand upon your back."

Dubro shook his head and kept moving. He was suvesh; he expected clear answers when he went to an oracle and he ignored the ones that weren't. Visiting the S'danzo quarter had been a long shot at best: a rare submission to the gambling urge. He was satisfied that he had not lost anything by the inquiry and was not unduly distressed that he went away no wiser than he'd arrived.

It was about midday. The crowds were thick and his two assistants were gone for the day. He could go back to his forge and do a few hours of business in the old way—by himself—or he, like everyone else in his extended family, could take the rest of the day off. And, as it seemed a day for impulses, Dubro decided against the forge for once. He made his way through the town to the palace.

Walegrin and his men had the first of three great watches these days, coming on duty in the cold, predawn hours, then relieved at just about this time. Even if the man hadn't been his brother-in-law, Dubro wold have chosen him over the other two watch commanders, the eminently corruptible Aye-Gophlan or the murdering Zip, to tell about Illyra's visions.

And lately, as Illyra suspected, they'd found a comfortable subject of conversation in their concerns for her. A hearty meal and a few mugs of ale in the all-male taproom of the Tinker's Knob might be just the cure for his own irksome malaise. The market-day crowds parted before him once his destination, the palace barracks, was fixed in his mind.

 

* * * * *

 

"There, you see, I told you it was nothing," Prince Kadakithis said with rather too much surprise in his voice to be entirely convincing.

Illyra nodded weakly. They might have at least warned her that her examiner would be none other than her own half-brother—and whatever other flaw Walegrin might have, his sense of family loyalty was above reproach. He'd made it plain that it was reasonable to panic when one of those infernal snakes was around.

"I'm certain the kitchens have got more than enough food. Shall I have the guards escort you there? I'd go myself, but…" The prince cast his eyes upward—in the general direction of not only the nursery but the Hall of Justice and Torchholder's suite of exchequer and registry. Neither husband nor ruler, yet somewhat more than a decorative figurehead, Kadakithis showed his adolescence more these days than he had seven years ago when he had first arrived as a naive puppet. He was growing but not yet grown.

"Thank you, I can find it myself," Illyra assured him.

He seemed genuinely relieved and took off at a decidedly unregal trot. Illyra had a flash vision of him seated on a steel-colored stallion, then nothing, as her thoughts turned to the aromas wafting out of the beehive-roofed kitchen. They'd recognize her there and accord her the same distant politeness the other palace retainers did: they knew they were better than some S'danzo wench from down in the Bazaar even if she did have the ear of royalty and the gods.

With a tightly woven basket, worth more than the food it contained, slung in her shawl, Illyra strolled into the bright forecourt. She might wander along the general's road to the hills where the trees had turned a hundred shades of red, gold, and orange. Or she might go to the Promise of Heaven which was usually deserted by daylight. Or she might…

Illyra's musings stopped short when she caught sight of a familiar figure passing under the West Gate. Dubro—and though she herself had told him to seek out Walegrin her heart began to pound. Once or twice—when she'd been a child and the blacksmith her protector, not her husband—she'd run away from him, but never in recent years. Until now. She scooted behind a water cart, crouching over her basket, pretending to examine its contents.

She waited, cried, and thought of Cha-bos who hadn't known how to count to one hundred. When her tears had dried she decided it was safe. She headed in the direction she was now facing—to the back corner of the palace, past the ornate gate where priests and gods made their communion with temporal authority.

The palace stoneyard was here, ready for the next round of palatial repairs, and the huge water cisterns to sustain the inner fortress in times of siege. Though far from lost—she could still see the water cart—Illyra had entered unfamiliar territory and did not know the name of the little gate she discovered there. Or even if it was a deliberate gate and not one of Molin Torchholder's bright ideas. It seemed, judging by the dust, to be the main conduit between the work gangs and the palace.

"Hey, sweetheart, got anything in there for me?" a half-naked roustabout called from farther down the path.

"No, just my own meal."

"You're sure? A pretty little piece like you shouldn't be out here eating alone…"

Illyra understood, then, what he had in mind. She blushed radiantly; he laughed heartily and she ran through the nameless gate into the jumbled red sandstones piled beyond it. Indignation got the better of her; she wished all manner of minor disasters upon the workman who had not recognized her as a happily married matron and implied propositions never suggested to a S'danzo seeress.

She ate the creamy cheese without tasting it. The fire of her shame burned inwardly now, illuminating the misunderstanding with which the world treated her. It wasn't as if she asked for so much, Illyra reminded herself. It was pure selfishness and stubbornness that kept those who claimed to love her from understanding that her world— her promise of happiness—had ended when Lillis died. If they really loved her they would commiserate with her and cease their meaningless efforts to jolly her out of mourning.

Her life was a tragedy: a slow dirge relentlessly playing between Lillis's death and her own. She'd become a martyr—and was comfortable with that identity.

"You should not scowl so."

Illyra sent the basket flying and stared into the sun, unable to recognize the man who spoke so familiarly to her.

"And you should be more careful where and how you make your personal storms."

Not about to be scolded by a stranger—or anyone else, for that matter—Illyra was tempted to break her private vows and launch a full-fledged S'danzo curse in his direction. But something she did not understand restrained her. She clambered down from her perch and gathered her scattered meal instead.

From this angle, away from the sun, he was easier to see but no more recognizable. Not that there weren't a dozen incomprehensible languages spoken these days along the walls—but this one wasn't a stoneworker. Even Tempus, silhouetted by a bloody setting sun, was not so timeless and out of place as this man seemed to be. Moreover, she could not See him or his shadow which boded ill when Sanctuary itself was remarkably free of magic.

"I'm a free woman," she said petulantly, climbing onto a different stone where the light was better and she could look straight into his eyes.

"Not here you're not."

He was calm, not threatening; speaking simple facts as if there were something obvious she had overlooked. But what could be overlooked sitting on forgotten rubble with her back to the main path?

"Look down," he suggested in a bemused and paternal manner.

Down. The dirt was red where years of storms had had their way with the sandstone. Nothing grew there. Nothing was buried there. She couldn't See anything.

"Where you're sitting. Where you've been sitting this past hour."

Well, that. It was rubble, after all. These stones had been dressed and shaped into a building once, a long time ago. Not as if these were the only rocks around with little chips and bumps of some forgotten language on their sides. Lords and frogs, it could be Rankene for all she would know, wind-blasted as it was and illiterate as she was.

She took a mean-tempered bite out of her fruit and jawed it pointedly. "So?"

"Are you blind, child?"

This stranger with his beaten, bronze-colored armor and his probing, dark eyes deserved nothing less than a S'danzo curse, Illyra decided. His stare was worse than a Beysib's and his high-and-mighty attitude worse than that. He'd be less arrogant when the S'danzo were through with him. She wrapped her thoughts in the ancient forms, then dug deep in her memory to find the ritual words that would merge her desire with the Sight.

He sprang at her, though she prepared her curse in silence, and wrestled her from the stone with his hand locked firmly over her mouth.

"You fool," he exclaimed, dropping her to the ground. "You blind, hopeless fool. How many times has Sanctuary been damned by petty curses uttered in ignorance by petty fools who don't recognize sanctity when they see it?"

Illyra swept the dust from her skirt as she stood. He was too sincere in his protests, too secure to challenge directly. "Who are you to scold me?" she muttered, watching the ground. "Who made you the guardian of Sanctuary? You're just another stranger come to work on the walls. It's my home and I'll send it to hell and back if I want to."

"You're more the fool than I thought, Illyra the Seeress."

"All right, I don't want to damn it to hell. I'd love to see a Sanctuary where flowers bloomed along the streets and honest people didn't have to hide after sundown. I'd love to see a Sanctuary where men loved their wives, wives loved their children, and children had a chance to grow up with food in their bellies.

"Who wouldn't want Sanctuary like that? But Sanctuary's Sanctuary and it never changes."

She raised her eyes to glower at him and to make him think better of whatever he had meant to say next.

"If you could bring yourself to take care of it, it might change into something better. Maybe even something you could love."

"That'd be the day. Who are you, anyway?"

"Call me a shepherd."

Illyra cocked her head at him. Whatever he was, the only sheep he saw were dead, cooked, and served to him on a platter. Some errant warrior, more likely. She noticed he'd left a horse drop-tied back on the path, and noticed that no one was coming or going on the path, either. It was not really a good idea to argue with one whose saddle and weapon belt bristled with a dozen modes of death.

"All right, I give Sanctuary my blessing—"

"From the rock."

She seated herself on the first stone and made a show of clearing her throat. "I give Sanctuary my blessing," she repeated. A gust of wind carried dust into her eyes; that, and the back-lighting sun made it impossible to see him clearly. "Let its people live in peace. Let its governors rule wisely. Let its walls be strong and its stewpots full.

"There, is that more like it?" she demanded, squinting into the sun.

"You forgot love."

"Right, husbands love wives; wives love children; children…oh, children love whoever they want."

"It's a start," the unlikely shepherd confirmed. "Mighty trees and the like. Are you thirsty?"

He unslung a wineskin and offered it to her. Thinking he meant to embarrass her, Illyra took it. Not that many townswomen could aim the bladder and catch the stream without covering themselves with wine. She could. She'd learned to drink from a skin—and not from a borrowed vision, either. It was one of the very few things her father had taught her. The wine wasn't half bad: a bit tannic, perhaps, but not local. She caught a last drop and handed the skin back to him, smiling like a well-fed cat.

"Thank you," she said and noted with some satisfaction that she'd surprised him with her skill.

He tipped the wineskin up and maneuvered himself beneath it so his back was almost touching her and he, too, faced the sun. Illyra couldn't imagine why he twisted around that way, when it was apt to make him miss his aim. Wine spurted past his ear, landing on the red stone.

"Watch what you're doing," she snapped, hastily lifting her skirt out of the way as she spoke.

But he squeezed the skin again and left a goodly stain across the worn inscription before adjusting his arms and getting a decent mouthful of wine. Odd that a warrior, or a shepherd for that matter, would be so clumsy with the wine. Hard, even, to believe it had been an accident—especially when she caught him looking back at her and grinning.

"Out of practice," he said, and she did not believe him at all.

"I'd best be leaving. It's getting late. I live…"

Illyra hesitated and thought better of telling him where she lived, not that her heart believed it would help her if this stranger took it into his head to pay her and Dubro a visit. She slid carefully from the stone, avoiding him as much as the wine, and put the substantial remains of her lunch in the shawl-sling. It seemed prudent to back away from the stone. He was still grinning when her heel touched the path, then he laughed and she shot through the gate.

In truth it wasn't that late, barely past midafternoon, and she hadn't intended to return to the Bazaar before sundown. The day was still pleasantly warm, and there wouldn't be many more like this until the next spring. She might still wander along the General's Road and headed that way—back through the forecourt and along the Governor's Walk.

Haakon the vendor was prowling his afternoon route, singing a song of nutmeats and pastry. Despite the food she'd eaten and the food she carried, they made her mouth water.

"Copper bit," the vendor said when she started to approach him, then, when he finally recognized her, added in a much softer voice, "for two."

Illyra smiled and gave him the battered coin she'd received in the morning. Because she'd bought two, he wrapped the second one in a scrap of translucent parchment and tucked it into the folds of her shawl.

"Delicious," she confirmed, biting into the sweet and savory confection.

"Best to share."

He meant to share with Dubro but the face that came into her mind was Suyan. She wondered if the wet nurse had ever even tasted one of these uptown luxuries. Not likely. Suyan claimed she had grown up Downwind, though Walegrin had found her in a Shambles house. Illyra imagined the look on Suyan's face when she bit through the still-warm pastry shell to the nutmeats within. She changed direction and hurried along the street to the Bazaar.

The forge was empty but before Illyra could become concerned she heard Trevya crying and ran the last little way.

"I brought you a pastry," she announced as she pushed through the curtain.

Suyan smiled but it was almost lost amid her unsuccessful efforts to quiet the infant.

"Here, I'll hold her. They really taste best when they're warm."

She picked the child up and found, not surprisingly, that she fit snugly into the crook of her arm and that she remembered how to rock her arms a bit and wiggle a finger or two as a distraction. And as Illyra's fingers were shiny with butter and nutmeats, Trevya found them fascinating. She pulled them into her mouth and sucked contentedly. Illyra felt the sharp ridge of the tooth that had caused this latest round of wailing.

"She's getting her milk teeth."

Suyan gulped a mouthful of pastry. "Not milk teeth, I'll warrant?" Another of her lilting questions, but this one came with a furtive smile.

"Not milk teeth then. She'll soon be ready for gruel and a bit of porridge in the morning. I used to like to make porridge—especially in winter."

The happiness in Suyan's face wavered. Illyra could almost see her thinking of where she'd been before they'd brought her to the forge.

"We'll still need someone to take care of her. I'm S'danzo, not…" Illyra hesitated, wondering why she'd been about to say she wasn't Trevya's mother. Neither was Suyan, for that matter. And other S'danzo women had children.underfoot all the time. "Well, Trevya should have someone watching her all the time," she decided after a puzzling moment. "It's dangerous here, with the forge. Not like some other places where the worst that could happen is a bumped knee."

The tension left Suyan in a great sigh. She ate the rest of her pastry but left the baby in Illyra's arms. They talked then, in the afternoon light, as they had never talked before, though not about anything of importance. They talked about the foods Dubro liked, and the ones he didn't; and the bolts of brightly colored cloth that had just arrived in a caravan from Croy; and whether the journeyman had a wife in his future.

Illyra stole a look at the future, then shook her head. "I can't See a thing," she murmured and remembered what she had said out on the rock. For a heartbeat her blood went cold. He had tricked her. That strange man who was not a shepherd had tricked her into casting an unprecedented curse over Sanctuary: a S'danzo blessing. Not that there was such a thing as a S'danzo blessing. "Everyone's a child, one way or another—"

"I didn't hear you?"

Suyan leaned closer but Illyra did not repeat herself. She was, after all, only one S'danzo and Sanctuary was Sanctuary and not likely to change very much no matter what she did. But she would have to, if she ever saw him again, thank the shepherd for setting her free, at least.