Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book... - Chapter 12: Chapter 12

The hall was dark, and little Ealin was alone. She stood bare-footed on the cold flagstones before a tall wooden door, still shaking from the nightmare that had woken her. Behind the door was her father. She was a girl of six and had no mother; he was the only one who could chase the nightmares away, and yet she hesitated to disturb him.
Ealin crept to the door and laid her ear upon it, her knees knocking together. There came no sound from within. Hesitantly, she reached for the handle and turned it. The hinges of the door squealed as she pulled it open, peering around the edge. It was her father's bedchamber and workshop. Within, despite the late hour, candlelight glowed golden and cast dark, flickering shadows over the walls.
A man sat at a writing desk with his back toward the door, his head bent over a large book. He raised his head at the sound of the crying hinges and said without turning, "Ealin. You should be in bed."
"I had a nightmare, Father," she whispered.
Ealin's father turned his head to look at her. His long black hair fell in waves to his shoulders, and his deep-set, dark eyes glittered in the light of the candles. For an instant, he looked grim, and dread coiled itself into little Ealin's stomach like a snake...but then the stiff set of his shoulders relaxed a fraction, and his mouth eased into a slight smile.
"Come here, little bird," he said, reaching out for her.
Relief washed over Ealin in a soothing wave. At once, the shaking of her limbs stilled. She padded across the room toward him. He took her by the upper arms and lifted her up onto his lap, leaning down to kiss her brow. "What did you dream of this time?"
"I don't like to say." She curled against her father's narrow chest, closing her eyes. In the warmth of his arms, she was suddenly sleepy.
"You must. The only power fear has over you is that which you give it. You must speak its name; in knowing it, you render it less powerful."
Ealin looked up at her father's face. It was a hard face, all planes and angles, and the most familiar face in Ealin's life. When he raised his brows expectantly, she knew she had no choice; he would press her until she confessed. "It was them. The magic people."
His expression did not soften. "Go on."
"They came for us in the night, and they took me away."
"And where did they take you, little bird?"
"To some dark place. They used their wicked spells to hurt me, and they never brought me home again."
A thoughtful expression overtook the expectation on his face. "It could happen."
Ealin's fingers tightened their grip on her father's tunic. She let her cheek fall to rest against his chest, making a small sound of fear.
"Until we find our path to glory, we are victims in the making—helpless, if the magic-blooded choose to rise up against us. How easily they could stamp us out, if only they awoke to their power. What are the laws condemning their use of magic but words on scrolls in the emperor's archives? Were the Arcborn to come to this house this very night and endeavor to steal my own daughter away, they could do it." His wiry arm tightened around her shoulders. "Be wary of them, Ealin; look out always for the marke."
"You could stop them. You have magic, too."
Ealin's father acknowledged this with a shift in his expression; he glanced toward his writing desk, and the little girl turned her head, following his gaze. There on the worn wooden desktop sat four gleaming stones, each of them the color of blood. Even in the gloom, they glowed and pulsed with unfathomable power.
"You are right," he said mildly, "but how can this magic compare? The Arcborn call magic from their blood, Ealin. They need no trinkets, no toys. And one day, neither will we."
He turned back to the large book on his desk. The pages were patterned with his own handwriting and neat diagrams, some of them inked in bloody red. She could not read well enough to make out any of the script. "What do you mean, Father?"
He smiled, not looking at her but instead reaching out to pluck one of the bloodstones up off of the tabletop. "Someday, you and I will have magic in our blood. The rightful order will be implemented, and the race of the Arcborn will no longer be useful to us. Our world will be reborn."
A chill swept down Ealin's spine. She watched the bloodstone glitter in the candlelight as her father turned it in his long, white fingers. She did not like bloodstones; they were evil-looking things, like monsters' eyes.
Her father seemed to notice her discomfort. Looking at her with a faint frown, he murmured, "But you are still frightened."
She nodded her head. Talk of somedays and of magic in her blood did not reassure her, not now, when the nightmare that had woken her still played in fragments through the corners of her mind.
He lifted her off of his lap and set her back onto her feet. Then he stood, towering over her at his impressive height, and strode over to a shelf on the far side of the room. There were dozens of books on this shelf as well as a couple of instruments, the utility of which Ealin could not even guess. There was also a small wooden box. He took this and knelt, opening it.
Ealin walked toward him, her curiosity piqued, and peered over his shoulder as he sorted through the little box. There was a ribbon inside, and some coins, and a shell like the ones she had found when her father had taken her to the beach on the north side of the Holy City a few years before. There was also a tiny brass charm in the shape of a bird.
"This was your mother's," he said. "And now it can be yours. Treasure it, my little bird. You have her face; now you'll have the only other thing she left behind."
He held out the charm to Ealin for her inspection. She picked it up and turned it in her small fingers, watching it wink in the light. It was beautiful—roughly made, the size of his smallest fingernail, with tiny blue flakes of gemstone for eyes. It was made in two halves which clipped together. She smiled. "Where is Mother?" she asked, for the hundredth time.
"Far away, Ealin."
"Why?"
"She did not share our vision. But I know that you do." He reached out and cupped Ealin's face in his hands, giving her perhaps the tenderest smile he had ever spared her, and then he plucked the charm from her palm and pulled her closer. Still kneeling before her, he hooked a lock of hair from just above her ear and began to braid it, and once he had plaited the length, he folded the charm around it and clipped it closed. "I know that you do. Do you know what this is?"
Ealin took up the end of her braid and gazed at the charm. "I don't know. A bead."
"It's charmed. Your mother used it for some of our work; she used it to walk among the Arcborn." He tapped his left cheek with a smile. "When you need it to, it can disguise you."
"Why would I need a disguise, Father?"
His tender smile sharpened, and something dark glittered in his eyes. "Well, it is pretty for its own sake, too, isn't it? Fitting for a girl." He smoothed Ealin's hair back from her face. "But there may come a day when its powers will serve you. Remember that, Ealin."