Normally, that would be the end of it—the woman would have been lost forever to the sebahta-ris. But somehow Heffel had managed to earn the respect of his wife’s relatives and had forged a durable relationship with them. There was visiting and some commerce between them, across the Lireth Mountains. Ellynor was not sure exactly how it had all unfolded, but she knew that Heffel was the one who had suggested the Lumanen Convent as a place to send the wayward Rosurie. He was a devout man, a follower of the moon goddess, and he had described the convent as both safe and holy.
And so here they were.
“I would like to go to Coravann someday,” Ellynor murmured as Rosurie’s voice drifted to a stop. “Wouldn’t you?”
“No. Why?” her cousin demanded.
“To meet the man who stole a Lirren woman from the clans.”
Rosurie sniffed. “He did not steal her. They let him take her.”
“He killed her father!” Ellynor reflected a moment. “Although her father wasn’t very well liked and maybe wasn’t such a loss.”
“That’s what I mean. The sebahta allowed it.”
“I’d still like to meet him. I’d like to meet his daughter— you realize we have a cousin who is only half Lirren?”
“Two,” Rosurie corrected. “She’s got a brother.”
Ellynor nodded in the dark. “So I’d like to meet him, too. And I’d like to see Coravann. Oh, I’d like to see any part of Gillengaria! Ghosenhall or one of the Twelve Houses! I’d like to be free to roam anywhere I wanted to. Wouldn’t you?”
“No,” said Rosurie, turning over on her bed and twitching her blankets up to her chin. “I’m happy where I am. Except I miss the Lirrens. I miss the sebahta. If I could, I would spend half my life on this side of the Lireth Mountains, and half on the other side.”
Ellynor sighed. “I miss the sebahta, too,” she said. “If we were home right now, we’d be planning the baking for the high harvest—”
Rosurie chimed right in, describing the recipes they would be selecting, the spices they would be mixing into the pies and soups. It was a game they played often. If we were home right now . . . Ellynor could not decide if the exercise made her more homesick or less, but she did know that she could remember every detail, every scent, every color, every name. She did not think she would ever forget any of them, if she lived at the convent until she was a hundred.
Her whole life, she had wanted to run away from the clans. But she had always wanted to be able to go back home. Once she left the convent, she would be able to return to the Lirrens. But if she left on her own? Slipped away in the night, or chose a rash lover and eloped? She would never be able to return. She would forfeit the Lirrens forever.
IN the morning, after they had attended the first set of devotions, Rosurie asked Ellynor to dye her hair. “I’ m baking today,” Ellynor said. “I’ll be free in the afternoon, and I can do it then. And you can do mine.”
So shortly after lunch, they returned to their room and set about the time-consuming but pleasurable task of marking their hair with sebahta patterns. A few of the other girls who lived on their floor had always been fascinated by this particular ritual, so Rosurie had invited them in to watch. When Ellynor arrived in the room, buckets of water in hand, she found Rosurie sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, hair unbound and touching the floor. Five other novices had crammed onto the two beds and were giggling and gossiping. They were all boy crazy, always discussing the charms and characteristics of the young men in the Lestra’s guard. Never mind that they were forbidden to speak to the soldiers or interact with them in any way. Talk about the soldiers formed their primary topic of conversation.
“Did you see him? I think he’s from Tilt. So handsome. I never saw eyes so blue.”
“Shavell will murder you if she thinks you’re flirting with one of the new guards.”
“I wasn’t flirting! Well, I would have, but he wouldn’t flirt back. I think he’s shy.”
“I like that other boy. The one with the fair hair and the scar on his left cheek. He has the sweetest smile.”
Ellynor pulled up a second stool right behind Rosurie’s and ran her palm down the thick, straight hair. It was a reddish chestnut, many shades lighter than Ellynor’s own night-black hair. It was marked all down the back with the sickle-rose-and-star design of the Plesa family, done in a blond dye. Every few weeks, as new hair grew in, Ellynor added another row to the pattern near the top of Rosurie’s head; every few months, she trimmed off the ragged ends at the bottom, and some of the old designs with them. Every Lirren woman wore her hair this way—long and marked with her family heraldry. Of course, in most situations, certainly in public, a Lirren woman kept her hair rolled up in some manner on her head—in braids or in a knot—so the patterns were not visible. But everyone knew they were there.
“I talked to Daken the other day,” one of the other girls said in a dreamy voice.
“You didn’t! And Shavell didn’t see you?”
“Just a few words. He was so serious.”
Rosurie sat very still while Ellynor dampened her hair with a sponge, then separated the thick locks into five sections. She opened the small container of dry dye and rubbed the top with a damp sponge, then transferred the color in deliberate strokes to Rosurie’s hair. The sickle was easy, the star a little more complicated, the rose the hardest symbol of all to translate. Ellynor worked carefully with the skill of much practice, knowing how important it was that the final result be perfect. If anyone were to come across Rosurie, lost or ill or dead— unable to speak—he could unpin her hair and know exactly to which family she belonged. Even if she was found by one of the warring sebahta, one who hated the Plesa family, she would be returned to them, safe from further harm.
If a Lirren girl were ever to chop off all her hair, she would be lost forever. No one would recognize her, no one would know how to send her home.
“You know who I haven’t seen for a few days?” said one of the novices. “That young man from Fortunalt. Kelti. I liked him.”
There was a gasp and then an ominous silence that lasted long enough to make Ellynor look away from her task. Even Rosurie turned her head, carefully, to keep the dye from running.
“You haven’t heard?” That was Astira speaking. The tall blonde from Merrenstow was the one Ellynor liked best of all the novices. At twenty-two, Astira was Ellynor’s own age, and both of them were older than most of the other girls. “Kelti’s disappeared. They found Rostiff and three others, but Kelti— just vanished.”
“Found them? What does that mean?” Ellynor demanded.
Astira gave her a wide-eyed look. She had patrician features and a well-bred air, and Ellynor had always assumed she was part of the Gillengaria nobility. “Found them dead,” Astira said solemnly. “Murdered.”
All the girls were exclaiming now with dismay and fascination. Their words tumbled over each other. Murdered? How? Who killed them? And why?
“What happened?” Ellynor asked.
Astira shook her head. “I don’t know all the details,” she said, which meant that she only had this much information because she’d been eavesdropping on conversations she was not meant to hear. “They were about a day’s ride away from here, maybe two. Someone said they were looking for mystics— someone else said, no, they were merely carrying messages for the Lestra. At any rate, their bodies were found outside some little hut miles off the main road, buried in a common grave. Blood all over the floor inside the house. No one else around. None of the people who lived anywhere nearby knew what had happened to the soldiers—or the woman who used to live there.”
The novices all listened, rapt with horror. Ellynor and Rosurie, who had grown up with violent men and knew a bit more about combat than the rest of the girls, were even more shocked and impressed than the others. They knew what kind of skill and manpower it took to overcome five soldiers fighting for their lives.
“But then—what happened to Kelti?” one of the girls asked.
“If his body wasn’t found—”
“Maybe he was abducted,” another novice replied. “Who- ever killed the others took him. To torture him. To make him— tell them things.”
The first girl, the one who was sweet on Kelti, started crying. “They took him,” she said with a sob. “They took him, and they’ll hurt him, and then they’ll kill him after all.”
She didn’t specify who she meant by they, but all of them knew. Everyone else in the room was nodding.
“May the Pale Mother strike them all down,” Astira said. “Mystics.”
“Are they really so terrible?” one of the younger girls asked. She hadn’t been at the convent very long, so she could get away with asking the question that Ellynor knew better than to raise. Though she had wondered it silently many times.
“Yes,” Astira replied with emphasis, while Ellynor returned her attention to Rosurie’s hair. “They’re evil. They contravene the laws of nature and the laws of the goddess. They—well. Here’s a story I just heard. There’s an island off of Danalustrous, on the western coast. That’s where they send people who are dying with a fever that has no cure. But now mystics who have the power to change themselves and other people into animal shapes—these mystics are going to the island and turning sick people into dogs and horses and who knows what? Changing them! From humans into beasts!”
“Why?” breathed the youngest novice.
“I heard about that,” Rosurie said. “Animals get that same fever, don’t they, except there’s a cure for it in dogs and horses. Isn’t that right?”
Ellynor looked up from the pattern forming between her fingers. “You mean mystics change people into animals so they can be cured? Do they change the animals back into humans when the fever’s gone?”
“I don’t know! But it’s still an abomination!” Astira exclaimed. “The goddess made each of us into the shape she most desired. We can’t just decide to be something else—something she did not sanctify! You should have heard the Lestra when somebody brought her this news. I’m surprised the whole convent didn’t come tumbling down, she was so angry.”
Ellynor concentrated on her task again, holding the dye-soaked sponge to Rosurie’s hair. But she was thinking about this extreme form of healing. Ellynor herself was very good in a sickroom; only a few times in her life had she encountered a fever that she could not defeat. She rather liked the inventiveness that had caused a mystic to take such drastic action, simply to save a few lives.
She knew better than to say so, of course. Here in Lumanen Convent, no one would ever defend a mystic.
WORD of the soldiers’ deaths had spread through the whole convent by dinnertime, but there was never any official announcement about the incident. The girls sat in their usual orderly fashion at the long tables in the dining hall, completing the meal in three shifts as they rotated through the stages of cooking, eating, and cleaning. Shavell passed among the tables for all three dining shifts, more tense and critical than ever, so no one wanted to speak too much or ask for additional helpings.
Ellynor and Astira were among the final group of diners, trying to eat as quickly as they could so they could leave the oppressive atmosphere, when there was a stir and a murmur from the girls closest to the door. Soon, in one graceful ripple, the whole crowd had come to its feet, and the Lestra walked down the aisle between the two center tables.
As always, Ellynor found herself both hoping she didn’t draw the Lestra’s attention and incapable of looking away. There was such a heavy, insistent glamour to the woman—her very body seemed to absorb whatever light was available, whatever air was in the room. While she was nearby, it was impossible to look anywhere else or think about anything except pleasing her.
The Lestra paced slowly between the tables, nodding coolly as each novice dipped her head in a submissive bow. She wore her usual black robes, heavily embroidered in silver. Her hair, long as a Lirren girl’s, fell in a loose braid of gray and black all the way to her knees. Her face was set, her dark eyes unreadable.
She stopped right in front of Astira and stared for a moment at the tall blond girl. Astira had lowered her head and did not look up as the Lestra studied her. Astira was a good five inches taller than the older woman, but she did not seem to have the advantage; there was something about the Lestra that was magnificent despite her short stature.
“You. You shall come with me tomorrow,” the Lestra said. “We shall leave at noon.”
“Yes, my lady. As it pleases the goddess.”
“Pick someone else to come with us as well. We shall be gone two days, possibly three. You ride a horse, don’t you?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Make sure your friend does also.”
That was it. The Lestra abruptly turned and retraced her steps, leaving as swiftly and deliberately as she had entered. Not until the door had closed behind her and there was no chance she was still near enough to hear did the room erupt into an excited chattering of awe and speculation. The Lestra had moved among them! Spoken to one of the novices!
“Where will you be going? What does she need you for?” Rosurie demanded.
Astira shook her head. “I don’t know! Not just to offer benedictions to travelers, because she would send us out with Shavell or one of the other dedicants. A two- or three-day trip! Surely we will be going to Neft, at least? I have not been outside of the convent for two months!”
“Neither have I,” several girls replied in wistful voices. The Lestra had said Astira should pick one of her friends to go on this journey with them, and it was clear everyone at the table was hoping she’d be the one Astira favored.
But the Merrenstow girl was already smiling at Ellynor. “You’ll come, won’t you? I know you can ride.”
Ellynor actually shivered with excitement. To be out of the convent for two days at least! Whether they went to Neft or merely camped out on the side of the road, the prospect of a change of scenery was giddily alluring. “I will. I do. Let’s go pack right now! I can’t wait till morning.”
CHAPTER 4
THEY set out the next day shortly after noon, a cavalcade of eight. In addition to the Lestra, the novices and four guards, their group included Darris, another one of the dedicants. Despite the violet robes, she was nothing like Shavell, being plump and short and altogether more kind. She was also one of the oldest Daughters at the convent, for she had to be more than sixty, Ellynor thought. She was the one all the novices turned to if they had a problem, and if they could find her. She was most often closeted with the Lestra or working in the infirmary or bustling about on convent business and hard to track down. Shavell, on the other hand, was always available, especially when you least wanted her.
They traveled in near silence except for the noise the horses made. Astira and Ellynor, of course, were too overwhelmed to speak, though they exchanged wide-eyed glances now and then. Two guards rode before the women, two behind, and made no conversation that Ellynor could overhear. Now and then Darris and the Lestra murmured together, but never for long. Ellynor imagined that, in years of living at the convent together, the two women had already discussed every topic that might come up.
At first they traveled through woodland, for the convent was located deep in the forest, but gradually they won their way to a main road cutting through more open terrain. The day was warm and a little humid, so Ellynor was a little sorry to leave the shade of the trees, but at least now she could gauge the position of the sun and guess their direction. She nearly clapped her hands together as she realized they were heading northwest. Neft! she mouthed to Astira, who smiled in delight.
Sure enough, by the time the sun began to set, they were pulling up on the outskirts of the city. Ellynor felt her head practically swivel on her neck as she tried to take in all the sights at once. There was no such thing as a city in the Lirrens—just the occasional clusters of sebahta families living in a more tight-knit community than others. Astira had said Neft was small by the standards of Ghosenhall,
but Ellynor found it hard to imagine anything more grand than this place, with its crisscross of streets, its clutter of buildings, its press of people, its sounds, its smell, its energy.