WIND FROM A FOREIGN SKY by Fantasy Novelist Katya Reimann

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Wind From a Foreign Sky

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Prologue

All through the night, and much of the day after, they fought about the baby. "You must tell them," Mervion argued. "Tell them and there is the chance that they will have mercy and let you go."
"I won't." Anisia refused. She was proud of her refusal. It was hard to withstand her marriage-sister under the best of circumstances—which these, most definitely, were not. But it was her unborn child, not Mervion's, and it was not for Mervion to decide what Anisia should do. "They are not to know," Anisia said. "Imagine how I feel. We already know they took me only to guarantee your good behavior. If I tell them about the baby, it will merely be another way to get at you. How contemptible do you think that will make me feel, gifting them with another lever to use against you? You won't change my mind on this."
Holding out against Mervion's arguments felt good. Anisia even felt she had bought back a bit of self-respect with her display of obstinacy. Refusing to tell them about the child was a noble gesture, was it not?
But these happy thoughts were now long past and gone. Now Anisia was weeping, blinded with pain and tears. She would have done anything to stop the pain. If the spell that held her had left her any whisper of a voice, she would have been crying to be spared—for her baby's sake, for her own sake—for anything.
Shouts echoed around her, anxious shouts and the unfamiliar roar of broken magic. Men running, doors slamming. Edan Heiratikus, the Chancellor of all Tielmark, was calling a new spell to bind the disaster, his voice a mingling of surprise and rage.
Anisia was not awake to hear it.

# # #

Anisia opened her eyes and stared, dazed, around the dark room. The spell had abated. Though movement was painful, she found she could sit up. Her voice was still blocked in her throat, but the pain had gone. How much time had passed?
Anisia Blas was seventeen years old, the sheltered daughter of a gentleman soldier and his gently born wife. Tielmark was a small country, and she had grown to womanhood holding a small but comfortable place within it. In all her young life, she had never knowingly been exposed to danger.
It was a bare four months since her husband had come into his father's estate. Only two months since she had offered Mervion, her husband's half-sister, a place in their new household. Two days short of a week since she and Mervion together had been torn from that life, with no explanations given, save for a paper order authorizing her marriage-sister's seizure and transport to Princeport.
Anisia closed her eyes, wishing that they had other news to give her. She was still in the Keyhole Chamber, still in the Prince of Tielmark's palace, still in mad Chancellor Heiratikus's power. Still in the nightmare.
"Put her down." Chancellor Heiratikus was a tall, rail-thin man with a cascade of silver hair and a commanding manner—a man whose public face gave every assurance of composure and deliberation. When Anisia had first been brought before him, she had been certain that everything would be made right. He would see the mistake; he would let her and Mervion return home to Arleon Forest. Looking into Heiratikus's noble face, the young country-wife had thought that her world was returning to sanity, that the ordeal of their forced travel north from her husband's holding was finally at its end.
That had been before she had seen Heiratikus lose his temper, or heard his voice raised in anger.
Anisia coughed. Her mouth was bitter with bile. She was groggy from the spell, from the unfamiliar clutch of magic in her throat. The Chancellor drifted out of the shadows and into her field of vision. Happily, his attention was not directed at her. "You look a fool standing there," he said, his voice at once rough and mocking. "Put her down."
Thank the gods he wasn't talking to her.
The object of his hard words, Lord Issachar Dan, stood, stiffly poised, on the massive stone altar at the center of the room. The Chancellor's military officer was a giant of a man: a shadowy, sweat-glistening monster with ritual scars cicatrized on his cheeks. With his blue-black hair and pale skin, Lord Dan was clearly not Tielmaran-born. He was pure-blood Bissanty, a native of the ancient empire to Tielmark's north.
Three hundred years past, Tielmark had been a slave state to the Bissanty Empire. Relations between the two countries had never been anything other than strained. What was the terrifying dark warrior doing in service to the High Chancellor of all Tielmark? Even a provincial woman like Anisia could see that was wrong.
Anisia and Mervion had suffered under a series of hard keepers since they had been presented with the letter of confinement, but Lord Issachar Dan, with his strange looks, and overt, almost careless air of brutality, was the keeper Anisia found most threatening. For the casting of the great spell, he had forced Mervion onto the altar. Anisia hadn't been conscious long enough to follow what had passed after that. A small mercy.
When Anisia had invited Mervion to join her household, her husband had cautioned her that his half-sister was a spell-caster, a witch who called her power from Elianté and Emiera, the patron goddesses of Tielmark. Mervion had made a display for Anisia of some of her prettier magic—vividly colored weavings and gentle charm-songs. This was magic that could brighten a long winter evening, and Anisia, disarmed and pleased, had welcomed Mervion for it. She hadn't imagined that her marriage-sister could turn these frivolous castings to her own protection.
Indeed, Mervion's arsenal of womanly spells should have been pitifully small against the Chancellor's high sorceries. The Keyhole Chamber was a sacral place: an altar-chamber where the gods could be ritually invoked to bring gifts of magic and power. The Chancellor had prepared the altar with seven bonds of sorcery to enhance his spell-casting—he'd boasted of it himself.
But the Keyhole Chamber was Tielmark's sacral place, and although the frieze that ran atop the twelve walls of the chamber depicted the symbols of all twelve of the high pantheon, it was the Great Twin Goddesses, Huntress Elianté and Lady Emiera, who held the place of honor.
Mervion had called to them both for strength, and they had answered her.
Her spells of charming, of weaving, of tying and untying—fragile woman's spells that Heiratikus should have rended like rotten cloth—had spiraled out like scarlet threads, filled with startling force. The quartet of guards accompanying the women had cowered back, horrified, stricken with images of impious trespass, even as Mervion's bonds slipped from her like silk ribbons unbinding. An eldritch-fire web from Heiratikus was tangled in a silver maze of misdirection—turned aside as though it were of no account.
That was when Anisia had understood that the Chancellor, however powerful his sorceries, was not calling his magic from the Tielmaran goddesses.
"Issachar!" the Chancellor had called, his voice high and agitated, "get her up on the altar before the scrying starts!"
The dark Bissantyman, his face greyed almost to silver by the light of the magic fire, had brushed the other guards aside to grab her. In retaliation, Mervion tried to direct her spells against him. Her charms slipped past ineffectually, and Issachar seized her by her wrists. She had dropped the magic then and fought him, woman to man, as the guards she had witched to her grabbed at his coats and tried to prevent him from touching her.
Issachar had shrugged them off and grappled Mervion up onto the altar, too powerful and brutal to be effectually resisted.
At that moment Heiratikus had caught Anisia in a basket of magic flame, tying her tongue and body. She had been conscious of little after that.
But whatever had followed must have been disaster for Heiratikus. For if the ambiance of the Keyhole Chamber amplified the casting of a spell, it also amplified a spell's failure, should it be broken.
Above her, Issachar Dan's dark figure dominated the altar, muscles straining like tight cords. Mervion was still up on the great block with him, her slack body sheathed in sweat, her down-turned face tired and dull. His massive body dwarfed hers, his long fingers had pressed deep purple bruises into the flesh of her bare upper arms. The chapel walls were black with soot. They were both covered in dark ash, and the cicatrized ritual scars on Issachar's cheeks had opened and begun to seep fresh blood.
Heiratikus was cold with fury. Whatever he had intended with the spell he had bound on the altar, it had obviously not succeeded.
"Drop her, curse you, let her go!" the Chancellor shouted.
His dark servant scowled. Like a great bird of prey rejecting its quarry, he released Mervion's arms. Without his support, she dropped off the altar like a limp doll.
The gag-spell blocked Anisia's reflexive cry of sympathy.
"Now get down yourself," the Chancellor said to Issachar. "You look like a fool. Get down. Unless standing there in the gods' eyes has seized your fancy, get down."
"A fool indeed," Issachar answered, wiping the blood from his cheeks. "You should be grateful that my strength did not fail me as your own spells have failed you." For all his heavy muscle, he was a lithe panther of a man, and he took the long step down from the altar lightly, with the menacing balance of that predatory cat. "Seven bonds of sorcery and you did not even bother to name the spell against her. I warned you."
"The others broke so easily—" The Chancellor saw that Mervion had raised her head to follow his words, and cut himself short. "If she has held out—this one time—against me, that is more, Lord Dan, than many better have accomplished." The Chancellor held his dark servant's eyes with his own and smiled, as though at the memory of a past victory that had been very sweet.
Issachar looked away. "I'll relight the lamp," he said.
One of the pair of oil lamps that lit the room had burned dry. The Chancellor smirked at Issachar's back as the dark warrior took up the oil jar to refill it. He shook out his silver hair and turned to address Mervion, his tone jocular, almost amused, as if he hadn't been screaming like a man possessed not moments past.
"Mervion Blas," he said. "I believe you had no idea you could turn a spell of that power from you."
"Before the Great Twins, anything is possible," Mervion answered. Though her voice sounded a little wobbly, she was still defiant. "No one in Tielmark rewards treachery, least of all her gods."
The Chancellor tossed his silver hair and laughed. "What a perceptive child you are."
Anisia caught her breath, praying that her marriage-sister would resist the taunt.
Mervion's bright eyes were sharp and angry under the lank tangle of her hair. Even now, her hands clasped to cover the bruises Issachar's fingers had imprinted on her arms, she projected a powerful confidence. She gave her tormentor a level, scrutinizing stare. "I will fight you while I can."
The Chancellor smirked again. "A good answer, Tielmark's daughter. A new weapon made of the old metal. Your sire would have been proud."
"Excellency—"
"Don't interrupt, Issachar. I know what I'm saying." The Chancellor bent his head to Mervion's and spoke, his sharp face looming in hers. He took a lock of her shining flame-gold hair and wound it round his spider-thin fingers, drawing her head closer to his still. "You're a hard girl, Mervion Blas. But we will break you. Because now we know the truth."
"What truth?"
"Why do you think you are here?"
"You made a mistake," Mervion said. Her voice was still very low, but it was clear from the way she sat, her legs braced underneath her, that she was already regaining strength, recovering. "Your spells challenged the Great Twins in their own country, and my suffering is the price of your mistake—even a modest hedge-witch like myself can best you. The betrayal you've made has corrupted the blood in your veins, weakened your magical strength. Small wonder I have defeated you."
Heiratikus hissed, and dropped her hair. Anisia sensed that if he and Mervion had been alone, he would have hit her. "You could not be more wrong," he spat at her. "Your small victory is evidence of my strength, of my success—not of any failure. A bloody destiny brought you here—you and me both. I've made no mistake. I'm going to break Tielmark's throne." His eyes were icy, his voice deathly cold. "And you are going to be the tool by which I do it. I'm going to topple Tielmark's foolish goddess sisters, and return their sacred mother, Llara Thunderbringer, to her rightful place of rule. I'll own Tielmark. I'll own you.
"You flatter yourself that you have bested me tonight—but there was no way that you could have done so, Mervion Blas. I've broken two women on this very altar, searching for the key to destroy Tielmark's Prince—two women and it might as well have been ten. If I had truly made a mistake in bringing you here, you would have followed them into madness.
"But you did not break. You could not break. You think your flighty Goddess Twins saved you? They didn't need to. Pure gold does not tarnish, pure steel does not shatter. Prophecy's players do not descend to madness before their true hour of testing."
"What are you saying?"
"Twice Fair." The words hung in the air like long notes, heavy with magic. "This broken spell has proved you are the woman of prophecy who is Twice Fair. Did you ever hear of this particular prophecy, Mervion Blas? Did you ever hear the secret, and know it would spell Tielmark's doom?"
"I don't even know why you have brought me here," Mervion's whisper was underlain with a fresh note of apprehension. "What could I know of your precious prophecy?"
"You knew the prophecy's keeper," the Chancellor said, his voice deceptively mild. "And now I know why he fought so hard to protect his secret!"
"Excellency," Issachar interrupted. As he filled and lit the lamp, his temper had cooled. Now his voice had the silky purr of a cat, and something in it quelled even the Chancellor's eagerness. "Tell the girl the whole of the prophecy if you like—indeed the whole of Tielmark's history if you like. But the prophecy's keeper? Leave that unspoken."
Anisia shivered. Leave it all unspoken, she thought, and let us go home.
The Chancellor cast his dark servant a disdainful look. "You did not even think that this girl would be the one," he said. "Too common to be uncommon, you said."
Lord Dan shrugged. He prodded Mervion with his foot, forcing her to look into his eyes.
"Tielmark's Prince is due to be married in three weeks' time," the dark warrior told her, "on Prince's Night, the holiest festival of Tielmark's calendar. The night when Empire's traitor, the Fifth Imperial Prince, Clarin, consorted with the gods to make his land a free principality. He made three vows to the gods that night. Two of those vows he kept himself. The third his heirs must renew with their own flesh, for Clarin pledged that his line would perpetually renew itself in a mystic marriage to Tielmark's common blood.
"Twice Fair, on the sixth run's closing night may bear,
A Bloody Fruit, to bride the Prince to ruin."
Issachar paused. The blood still seeped from the opened scars on his cheeks. He brushed at it impatiently. "This Prince's Night marks three hundred years of Tielmark's freedom, and the closing of the Great Twins' sixth cycle of rule. Twice Fair—" He touched a small circle of blood onto Mervion's ash-covered forehead. "You will be the vessel that breaks your own goddesses' power in this land."
He touched his throat, a prayer sign. There was a flare of magic, blinding bright. When Anisia could look again, Issachar had stepped back. His jagged facial scars had stopped bleeding. The spot of blood on Mervion's forehead had vanished.
"You were right about this one, Excellency," the dark lord said. "And I was wrong. This girl must be the one Twice Fair. But it is only half the riddle solved. Now we must discover why you were right."
For the first time since the sorcery had commenced, Mervion looked across to Anisia and risked meeting her eyes. The expression on Mervion's face was agony and fear combined.
The Chancellor may not have known the answer to this riddle.
But, if Mervion was indeed half the answer, both Mervion and Anisia certainly did.

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Last Modified: February 28, 2002