Firebirds Soaring Read Free Page B

him so.
    Always in his kiss on my face I had felt approval for my obedience.
    Which did not necessarily mean that he loved me.
    Or that he would not kill me if I threatened his power.
    He scowled fit to darken the moonlight. With perilous softness he addressed me. “Wren—”
    “Vranwen,” I ordered, clutching the ring, feeling its chill metal awake and puissant in my grasp. “I am Vranwen Alarra.”
    I think he tried to stride toward me but could not move. He gasped as if something strangled him. Three times he drew choking breath before he whispered in a ragged voice, “Vranwen Alarra, guard that ring well if you wish to keep your life.”
    “Seize it!” shouted another voice. Korbye’s. He lunged from where he had been hiding, listening, in the shadow of the stone tower.
    And because I had not known he was there, because I had not turned the force of my will upon him, he could have done as he said. Before I could face him he leapt toward me—
    Then without making a sound as it left its perch, as silently as an owl in flight, the giant boulder stooped from atop the tower of rock.
    Fell.
    Thudded down upon him.
    Flattened him within an eyeblink. Took him. No part of him to be seen ever again.
    For all mortal purposes, Korbye was no more.
    Father stood as if he himself had turned into a tower of stone. And I heard a sound like the harsh cry of a sea hawk. Maybe from him. Maybe also from me.
    I know not how long we stood like wood before Father whispered, “Daughter, did you wish this?”
    “No.”
    “Did you—power of that ring—”
    “It acted of its own will.” And in that moment I knew what it might make of me.
    An avatar of the moon goddess, yes. One of whose forms was that of a black sow who devoured her own newborn babies.
    Trembling, I flung the ring away. Off the cliff. Into the roaring, all-grasping breakers of the sea.
    There I knew it would be safe. The sea needed no more power than it already possessed. Indifferent, it would drop the ring somewhere and forget it.
    I turned, once more only a stubby dun-skinned girl named Wren.
    Standing at the cliff’s edge, I said to my father, “Kill me if you will.”
    He faced me for a long moment before he said softly, “Daughter, I could never do you harm.”
    I breathed out.
    “But there is a fate on you that may kill you yet,” he said, his voice as taut as a war drum’s stretched dry pigskin. “What is it, my daughter? You wish to rule after I am gone?”
    I shook my head. “Should I attempt it, some clan chief will slay me and take the throne.” Just as someone might well have slain me for the sake of the ring.
    “What then? What is this destiny that mantles you?”
    I closed my eyes and let my mind search the night for the invisible sooth. And I found it.
    Indeed, I thought as I opened my eyes, I should have known it before.
    Slowly, gazing upon my father’s sober face, I told him, “I am to be your kingmaker.”
    On the moonlit heather a shadow moved. I looked up: low over my head an owl flew. Just an ordinary brown owl, most likely. I barely glimpsed it before it disappeared.
    At the same time something invisible winged between my father and me, some understanding beyond words but not beyond awe.
    And fear. Great fear.
    But I loved my father. I whispered, “Somewhere, growing pure like a golden rose in some hidden place, there is a true chosen one who should rule after you. I will quest for him. And I will find him for you.”
    And also for myself, for he would be my prince, my true love, and I would wed him even though I knew that thereby death awaited me. As clearly as if I saw it in a mirror of polished silver, I knew that on the day they placed the golden torc of the high king on his neck, I would die. In childbirth. Of a daughter, who would someday be high queen.
    Yet this was what I knew I must do. I told my father, “I will find him even if it means the oaken staff and the crown of mistletoe.”
    But Gwal Wredkyte did not, after