Fallon lifted the flower to his nose. “I’m eager to face the challenges of the Gauntlets, despite your jests. I intend to master them all. I hope you will cheer for me, on occasion, from the galleries?”
She gazed up at him, conflicted, all the while wondering how she could find a way to face them herself.
PART II
Knight
Where there is reverence, there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear has a wider scope than reverence. We fear what we cannot see. We fear what we do see. We fear what we cannot know. We fear what we do know. We fear what may not happen. We fear what does happen. Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. If only because it finally puts an end to fear.
Myrddin
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ley Lines
Sometimes it felt as if Trynne’s heart were slowly twisting in half. She was exhausted all of the time, but pushed herself to succeed even though it felt as if her mind and body would be sundered by the double life she lived. In the two and a half years that had passed since Drew and Genevieve’s wedding, she had taken to rising before the sun each day so she could train as a warrior under the tutelage of Captain Staeli. She climbed ropes fastened to rings in the walls. She lifted and hurled heavy sacks of grain. She could handle weapons ambidextrously after the constant practice, though she had been surprised to discover she was slightly better with her left hand than with her right. The training was rigorous, frustrating, and she ended each session with the determination to do better the next day.
She was equally determined to continue keeping her parents in the dark about it.
Once she had bathed and changed from the clothes of the training yard into the silks of a duke’s daughter, she lived a completely different life. She accompanied her mother on her noble responsibilities as Duchess of Brythonica, and also spent hours each day poring over books that held the secrets of becoming a Wizr. They were tedious and difficult to translate, and the work did not come naturally to her at all. She often found herself daydreaming about being in the training yard and thinking of a new way to deflect and parry blows with multiple weapons. When she caught her mind wandering, she’d get frustrated at herself and redouble her efforts to learn the arcane text. But her heart was not devoted to it, and she yearned for the simplicity and innocence of her childhood.
It was a tug-of-war, in a way, between the personalities and styles of her parents. She loved them both deeply. She worried every day about her father, and that worry drove her to throw everything she had into each side of her double life. Still, she knew where her talents lay—and where they did not. Sinia’s approving smile was more often earned by Gannon’s efforts with his storybooks than her own with the Wizr books.
She realized she was lost in thought again, having been sitting at her desk for hours on a wooden chair. The library also boasted a comfortable couch, but she found the softness—and her early rising—made her fall asleep too easily. The daylight was streaming in through the curtained window, and she rubbed her forehead, wishing she could descend down the cliffside on the rope-and-pulley system that was used to transport supplies from the town below. It was much faster than taking a carriage down the winding switchbacks, so she’d be roaming the streets of Ploemeur all the sooner, just as she’d done as a little girl. At fifteen, she had much more responsibility, and the weight of it constantly pressed on her shoulders. The room smelled of dried lavender, a pleasant scent that mixed with the musty books on the shelves. A globe on a circular table attracted her eye, but while she was tempted to go study it and imagine visiting all the different realms, she knew how much time she would waste if she did.
Trynne sighed and stared back down at the thick leather-strapped book in front of her. The book was called The Vulgate. It was a collection of tales and fables relating to the original King Andrew, written in a once popular language that had died away centuries ago, a relic of the past. It had taken her months to learn to read the proud, archaic script. As a child, she had read translations of The Vulgate and had been entranced by the stories of King Andrew and his knights. She hadn’t realized at the time that there were sixty volumes of such tales and she would be required to read them all in her studies.
At first, she had groaned through the task. Obviously someone Fountain-blessed with the gift of reading would have fared better. For Trynne, deciphering the script was a chore, and the tales and fables that had once interested her seemed tedious and full of pointless details. They were so repetitive that she began to wonder whether there was any value to reading them. But then, after several months of poring over the words and growing more comfortable with her ability to translate them, she had been startled to hear the whisper of the Fountain in connection with a particular passage.