Mercedes Lackey - Anthology by Flights of Fantasy Page B

chamber.
                 Nurses
stood anxiously around the bed. The king sat in an upholstered chair by the
princess's side, his eyes worn and hollow, ringed by dark circles. Age had
lined his face and tinted his hair with gray streaks. He wore simple, un-kingly
clothes—a yellow tunic and cloth breeches. But he held himself with the firm
posture of someone accustomed to obedience.
                 "Parr,"
he said, rising.
                 "The
mage is dead," Parr said quickly, not taking the care to soften his
language for me. "So I brought his son."
                 The
king stepped before me, glancing once at Kiva with a strange expression of
dread. His eyes took me in from top to bottom, his face an odd mixture of
hardness and pain, and something else, too, something seething underneath,
angry and cold but hidden under layers of restraint.
                 He
did not want a sorcerer here, yet had asked for one.
                 "You
are your father's boy. No mistaking that," he said with a sword's edge to
his voice.
                 "Thank
you," I said, trying not to furrow my brow. My father had never mentioned
his association with the king before, which, of course, was so like him as to
not need thought. "Let me see the princess," I continued, trying to
divert the conversation into a place more comfortable.
                 He
escorted me to her side.
                
                 I
placed Kiva onto the sill of the open window by the bed, then bent to examine the princess. Kiva opened her beak as if to call out, but then
settled into place, staring now at the princess with intense concentration.
                 Terisa
was dark, like her father. Her face, however, was gaunt and sickly; her skin
pulled over cheekbones like dry leather. She was about my age, I saw, maybe a
year or two older.
                 I
placed my hand over her forehead and spoke a quick magic. Her body radiated the
pale crimson light that only sorcerers can see. Her form glowed through the
sheets with cold magic that echoed through my mind.
                 At
my side, Kiva spread her wings and gave a shrill screech, a sound that
reverberated with a yearning for freedom so universal as to be unmistakable.
                 My
eyes narrowed.
                 Burning
heat grew against my thigh. I looked down to find light radiating from my
pouch. This glow was blue, however, and it met with the crimson sorcery over
Princess Terisa to bathe the room in lavender and black shadows.
                 The
bones, I thought, this new magic sprang from the bones Kiva had been laying at
my feet since the day my father had died.
                 Kiva
called out again, and urgency came to my spell work.
                 Something
new grew inside me, burrowing out of my understanding like a rodent emerging from
the ground. The birds have magic, I thought, remembering my father's words when
I had asked of the hawks' presence.
                 Sorcery
whirled around Kiva, and she fed my spell with magic of her own. I felt her
heartbeat swishing rapidly through her body. I saw into the magical realm of my
spell work with the clarity of her vision. And what I saw shook me.
                 The
link that enveloped us grew, closing a loop that included the princess.
                 The
three of us—Kiva, the princess, and I—were all linked, bonded in some fashion
seemingly inseparable, and that bond was, in some way, my magic.
                 "What
is it?" the king asked breathlessly.
                 Ignoring
his question, I bent further over the princess. Yes, her complexion was dark
like her father's. And she had the severe curve of his nose. But the shape of
her face was familiar, rounded at the cheekbone and tapering at the jawline.
Her hair had bronze highlights.