Promising Light (32 page)

Before leaving, Vin changed his
appearance to the same portly man that had opened the door the
night before. They made small talk while traveling. Sierra’s head
was somewhere else, though, worrying about Evan. Imagining all the
horrible possibilities. Ready to leave and go find him if he hadn’t
arrived in Belisha yet.

The Zinna lived in a small hut next
to the village well. Vin and Sierra tied up their horses, and Vin
called from a few feet away from the flap door,
“Michael?”

A moment passed before an old man
opened the flap. He had only a few white hairs left. “Who’s
calling?”

“It’s Vin, and this is my cousin,
Sierra.”

Michael came out of his hut,
staring at Vin. He barely came up to Sierra’s shoulders.
“Who?”

“Vin. I’m… an Avialie.”

“Oh, yes!” Michael said. “What do
you need?”

“We need to communicate with
someone in Belisha,” Vin said. “We want to make sure our friend got
to him safely and we need to make arrangements for him to meet
us.”

Michael paused, glancing at Sierra
and scratching his chin. “He’s an Avialie, too?”

“Yes.”

“How old?”

Vin hesitated. “Probably
eighty.”

“Fifty ryrels.”

Sierra took a pouch out of her bag,
but Vin held up his hand and shook his head. “Please, allow me,” he
said.

“Vin,” she began.

“It’s no trouble,” Vin said,
already counting out coins.

“All right, come in,” Michael said
after receiving his price.

The hut had two rooms; the one they
stood in had mats on the ground and a wood stove that poked through
a hole in the roof. The hut was made of grass and leaves, the
ground packed dirt. Sierra wondered if he lived in such a humble
place because he moved often or because he was poor. Michael told
them to sit on the mats.

“I’ll change to my original state,
if you don’t mind,” Vin said. He changed back, growing in height,
diminishing in width. A couple weeks ago, Sierra thought she’d
never see that sight again. He sat down next to Sierra, across from
Michael.

“What is his name?” Michael
asked.

“Jeshro,” Vin said. “Jeshro
Avialie.”

Michael closed his eyes, crossing
his legs in front of him. “What shall I say?”

“We’re asking if Evan arrived at
the manor in Belisha.”

Michael nodded and took a deep
breath. They sat in silence for a moment, and Sierra wondered what
he was doing. How did Zinnas speak with others when they’d never
met them? When she was younger, she wanted magical blood so
badly.

Michael startled her by speaking.
“Jeshro Avialie, I am with Vin. He asks if Evan has arrived at the
manor in Belisha.”

Sierra leaned forward, clenching
her hands in her lap.

A moment later, his eyes still
closed, Michael said, “Vin, Jeshro says he just arrived an hour
ago. He’s very tired, but he’s told Jeshro and Lisbeth where you
are and about your eagerness to help.”

Sierra breathed relief, putting her
hands over her mouth. She don’t know what she would have done if he
hadn’t arrived yet.

“He’s trying to come back to meet
you, but Lisbeth is insisting he rest,” Michael continued. “Jeshro
will leave as soon as he can to meet you at Vin and Amina’s house.
He says to make sure to keep the others in your party safe and in a
protected area.”

“When will Evan come?” Sierra
asked. “Should I go see him?”

Michael repeated her questions, and
she knew that Jeshro, though hours away, was hearing them. Michael
answered Sierra, “He won’t leave until Lisbeth feels like he’s
rested, so you may come if you choose.”

“I don’t think you should travel
there alone,” Vin said quietly. She knew he and Amina would stay
with Dar and Grace.

“Can he give Evan a sleep syrup?
He needs to rest, but be sure to tell him I’ll see him
soon.”

Michael spoke her words to Jeshro
and he answered, “Yes, Sierra, Jeshro will be sure he’s healthy
before he leaves the manor.”

Sierra frowned. Would Evan react
well to that? He trusted Jeshro and Lisbeth more than she did.
Still, hopefully he didn’t see it as captivity or anything like
what the Protectors did to him. But he shouldn’t travel, and she
didn’t want him to be caught by Protectors on the way, either.
She’d have to wait a little while. She nodded, then realizing
Michael’s eyes were still closed, she said, “Yes, all
right.”

Michael turned slightly in Vin’s
direction. “Do you have any other words before I end the
communication?”

“Tell him we’ll be waiting at our
cottage,” Vin said.

After that, Michael opened his
eyes. His face seemed paler. He rubbed his temples and said, “Will
that be all?”

Sierra hesitated. “I want to
communicate with my husband, but he may be too weak. He’s been in
captivity for two years, being tortured and… well, we finally got
him out, and he had rest for a few days. But he’s been traveling
all night, all day yesterday, and the night before that. Could you
communicate with him?”

Michael asked questions about
Evan’s physical and mental condition. In the end, he said, “I don’t
think it’s a good idea. His mind seems very fragile, and his body’s
probably exhausted. I think once he gets some rest, I could do it.
Maybe even this afternoon.”

Sierra nodded. She hoped so; she
longed to speak to him, even if it was through a Zinna. “All
right.”

“Thank you,” Vin said, getting to
his feet. He pulled out some more ryrel coins and handed them to
Michael. “For your silence.”

After Vin changed his form again,
he and Sierra left the hut and went to their horses. “Lisbeth will
take good care of him,” Vin assured her.

If she didn’t, she would have to
deal with Sierra.

* * *

Grace didn’t want to think about
how her parents had responded to her absence. It’d been a full day
now; the Protectors and the prince must be searching for her. What
would they tell people? That she’d been kidnapped again? Grace
propped her head on her arm, trying to listen as Dar read to
her.

Sierra was in the cottage with Vin
and Amina, and Grace and Dar had been sent to the underground
shelter to keep her presence in the village secret. Perhaps they
also thought the two of them would take a chance on fulfilling the
prophecy. That was the farthest thing from Grace’s mind. She wanted
to know if Jeshro knew anything about the ancient texts. She didn’t
want to wait around for him, yet he probably wouldn’t arrive until
tomorrow.

Even then, would he only want to
get her pregnant? He might not be concerned with the ancient texts
at all. She didn’t want to fake anything with Dar as she had back
in Belisha. She left because she was tired of lying to her family
and the Protectors, but soon she’d have to lie to the
elders.

She tried to clear her mind,
watching Dar’s lips move as he told the story. They passed the book
back and forth, and after what must have been a few hours, Grace
put it down. “My throat is tired.”

“It’s a good story.” Dar took it
from her hands. “But I’m bored with it.” He examined the front and
back cover, his fingers running over the leather. She thought of
his fingers running all over her body, and a shiver ran up her
spine.

Grace stood up to stretch. Out of
curiosity, she went through the trunks. They’d taken out all the
blankets and the one pillow. She found a few shabby outfits and two
empty water skins. She dug deeper into the trunk, and a sharp pain
in her finger caused her to cry out.

Dar got to his feet. “What is
it?”

She pulled her hand out; her middle
finger had a large gash down the side, and the blood streamed down
her palm. “I cut myself on something.”

Dar kneeled next to her. He
dribbled a few drops of water on it, and she hissed in pain. He
held her wrist steady and pulled a handkerchief out of his back
pocket. “It’s clean, don’t worry,” he told her as he wiped away the
blood.

The cut started throbbing, and she
looked away from it as Dar cleaned it. His ears still had small
scabs on them. A few moments later, he said, “It’s not too deep.”
He tied the handkerchief around her finger.

“Thank you,” she whispered,
looking at the stained piece of fabric.

“What did you cut yourself on?”
Dar carefully sifted through the trunk, and they found the broken
lantern. He took it out and set it on the ground. Grace could see
the drops of blood on the glass.

She moved to the next trunk, but
was more careful about digging around. One of the first things she
found was a thin book. She pulled it out and stared at it in
surprise. “I have this book.”

“Which book is it?” Dar
asked.

Grace went to her bag and pulled
out the book of magic legends. “I bought it at a store in Renaul.”
She compared the books. The one that had been in the trunk was
thicker. “They’re different, though.”

Dar moved closer and looked over
her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“This one, the one I found here,
is thicker.” Grace asked him to hold her book, and she thumbed
through the pages of the Avialie copy. They turned through the
pages, almost all of them identical, but they finally found the
difference. Grace’s book was missing nearly twenty pages near the
end, pages that spoke of the ancient texts of the Avialies. Since
it was a thin book already, twenty pages made a difference. They
hadn’t been torn out, the printing must have been a second
edition.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Look
at the print edition of that one.” She looked at the one on hers;
they were nearly ten years apart. It wasn’t often that books were
printed twice. The money and work involved made it a rare
occurrence, saved only for the most popular titles.

“Someone didn’t want people to see
this.” Her eyes ran over the text. Dar had set her book aside and
was reading over her shoulder. His breath tickled her
neck.

They read through silently. The
author of the book spoke about the ancient texts as a combination
of storybook and spell book. It had legends about the beginning of
the Avialies, which some people regarded as fairy tales and others
as fact. It credited more abilities to the Avialies than just shape
changing, including changing other peoples’ perception of small
things, like one person, and large things, like weather.

“‘
The collected
ancient texts of the Avialies also has sections which provide
protective magic in case of attacks,’” Grace read out loud. She
looked at Dar with wide eyes. She continued, “‘Some of this magic
could apply to small groups of people or the entire bloodline.
There are legends of two women who contained some kind of magic in
themselves to protect the bloodline. They were marked and called
the Protectors. Kallis and Tamare were two such women who lived
five hundred years ago and saved the Avialies from a Thieran
curse.’”

“Oh, my,” Dar said, then covered
his mouth. “I’ve heard that legend. I never thought…”

“Like the tapestry Lisbeth showed
me.” Grace touched her stomach. “Marked. Mine and Sierra’s
birthmark. What if this is true?” She looked at Dar, her eyes wide.
“Then if we found the ancient texts, we really could save your
family.”

Dar nodded. “What else does it
say?”

As the years went on, the author
wrote, the ancient texts became obsolete as Avialies lost some of
their abilities. Some blamed blood pollution, but as the population
dwindled, they had little choice but to marry outside of the family
without inbreeding. The rumors were that the eldest in the Avialie
family had possession of the texts, but extremely rare copies of
bits and pieces of the ancient texts were kept around
Haltar.

Grace turned the page, but it
switched topics to the Zinna family. “That’s it?” she said, her
shoulders sagging.

There were suddenly footsteps on
the trapdoor. Grace looked up, expecting Vin’s knock. They heard
loud voices.

Dar stood up. “I don’t think that’s
Vin.”

* * *

Chapter
Nineteen

“What?” Grace asked, her heart
skipping a beat.

“Come on!” Dar said as he grabbed
her arm and pulled her to her feet.

Grace threw her book into the
trunk, and stuffed the old edition in her bag. As she rushed to
Dar, the people outside pounded on the trapdoor, their voices
rising. Dar turned off the lantern, and they were plunged into
darkness.

Dar grabbed her hand, and he
dragged her toward the back of the cave. Grace raked her hand along
the wall to their left, the stone the only thing that gave her any
indication of where in the cave she stood. A moment later, the
trapdoor opened.

Grace looked over her shoulder,
still hoping it might be Vin, but the feet she saw on the steps
were dressed in fine shoes and pants. A sliver of light appeared,
lighting up the walls of the cave.