The Invisible Ring

“Lia.” Jared waited for her to acknowledge his presence.

She didn’t.

Feeling awkward, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he watched her move from pot to pot, speaking so softly he couldn’t make out the words that weren’t meant for him anyway.

She held the dipper in her left hand. Two fingers of her right hand rested just above the soil in the pot. She poured the water over her fingers and murmured a phrase. The same movements, the same words, over and over.

It wasn’t until he really looked at the seedlings in the first pots and saw how much stronger and greener they looked than the rest of the plants that he realized what she was doing.

Queen’s magic.

According to their oldest legends, the Blood had been created to be the caretakers of the Realm, to use the awesome power they’d been given to maintain the balance between the land and all its creatures. As the caretakers, they became the rulers of everything that walked upon Terreille or flew above it or swam in its waters.

The price of power was service. Or so the legends said.

The Blood had a deep respect for the land. Many had a special gift for nurturing it.

But only a Queen could heal it once it had been wounded. Only a Queen’s blood and a Queen’s strength could turn barren ground back into fertile soil.

They were, after all, the land’s heart.

Coming up behind her, Jared lifted her right hand and poured water from the dipper over it to clean the cuts she’d made on her fingertips.

“No, Lia,” he said gently, turning her around.

She stared at his chest. “Let me do this. I need to do this.”

Jared shook his head. “There’s nowhere to plant them. There’s nowhere for them to go.” Was that true for the Shalador people as well? he wondered. Would they, too, wither and die?

Since she didn’t pull away from him, he slipped his arms around her and nudged her closer. He sighed when her hands touched his waist.

“I used to help her in here,” Jared said in a hushed voice. “She always said I had to make myself useful if I was going to—”

“Going to what?” Lia asked when he didn’t continue.

Jared grimaced. “If I was going to pester her.”

Lia chuckled. “No wonder you’re so good at it. You’ve been in training your whole life.”

Jared made a rumbling sound, which amused her even more.

Drawing her closer, he rested -his cheek on the top of her head. “I saw her once, a few months after I was Ringed.

During the training time. I don’t know if she was in that particular Territory for another reason and just happened to be walking in that plaza that day or if she’d somehow found out where I was and had come to see me.

“I saw her. It would have been hard to miss a golden-skinned woman with shining black hair that flowed to her waist and those rare green eyes.” He paused. “I have her eyes.”

Lia stroked his back.

“The witches in charge of the training saw her, too. They didn’t know, or care, who she was, only that her presence there was important to me. One of them walked over to me and fondled me through my clothes. And there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing they’d done to me up to that point that had humiliated me quite that much. In a way, it’s ironic that I felt so much shame because Shalador boys look forward to the day when we’re old enough for the Fire Dance, for the time when we’ll step into the dance circle and display ourselves to every woman in the village. I wouldn’t have been dancing for my mother, but I would have danced in front of her and never given it a thought.”

“That’s different,” Lia murmured. “That would have been your choice, and it was part of the male rites among your people.”

“Yes,” Jared whispered, not sure he could bear her understanding. “So I went up to her, and I told her it was her fault. That all of it was her fault. That it was because of her that I was Ringed and would never know any pleasure with a woman. That if she’d been a different kind of woman, this wouldn’t have happened to me.

“Then I told her I hated her, and I walked away.

“I looked back just once. She was on the ground, curled up in a tight ball. No one stopped. No one touched her or tried to help her.”

“Oh, Jared.”

“I blamed her for a long time because it was safer to blame someone else. But I couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when I said those things. I couldn’t forget seeing her on the ground.

“When I stopped blaming her, the only thing I wanted to do was go home. I even made a couple of timid attempts to escape, but I was too terrified of the agony the Ring can produce to manage it. So I used to lie in my bed and imagine that I’d gotten home somehow. Just for an hour. Just long enough to see her, to talk to her. Just long enough . . . And now I’m home, and it’s too late. I’m too late, and I’ll never be able to take back the words.”

Lia held him while he cried. He had no tears yet for his father and brother. There would be time enough to mourn them later. There was no room in him to grieve for anyone but Reyna.

She held him long after the last tear.

“What was she like?” Lia asked softly.

Jared wiped his face on his coat sleeve. “Compassionate. Generous, stubborn, strong, loving, patient, courageous.”Like you .

Lia took his hand. “There’s something I want to show you.”

She led him to the back of the greenhouse and pointed to three large, glazed pots. Each one was divided into two sections and contained two seedling trees. “Someone must be caring for them. They’re the only healthy plants here.”

Love formed a lump in Jared’s throat that was sharper than grief. “Those are our luck and love pots,” he said, his voice husky. “And these”—he brushed a leaf with his fingertip—“are honey pear trees.”

Lia leaned over, brushing her fingers over the leaves and thin trunks while she crooned to the little trees.

“Reyna gave each of us one of these pots on our sixth birthday. Luck and love, she called them. There’s a hollow in the base. In the spring, we’d write down a wish or a dream or a desire and then fold the paper and pass it through the base into the hollow. Then we could plant any seeds or seedlings we wanted in the pot. They were ours to care for. Some years they grew. There were a lot of years when the seedlings started out well enough, but then we’d forget about them.

“She never touched them. I planted honey pear seedlings one year because I wanted a honey pear tree that I didn’t have to share with anyone. I drenched them whenever I remembered and then forgot to water them for weeks at a time. When they died, I got mad at her. She waited through my undignified tantrum and then quietly told me that the plants were a symbol, a way for me to learn that no one else could nurture my wishes or dreams or desires. If I wanted them to thrive, I had to take care of them myself.”

“These seedlings can’t be more than a year old,” Lia said. “So she must have planted them and tended them for you.”

“Yes.” Two honey pear trees for each of her sons— even the son who had walked away from her.

“What happened to the papers you tucked in the hollows?” Lia asked.

“We’d take them out after the harvest to compare what had happened during those months to what we’d written.”

“Did you get your wishes if the plants thrived?”

“Sometimes.” Jared smiled crookedly. “Although one year I had to wait until the next horse fair to get the pony I’d admired so much because it wasn’t for sale until then.”

Lia smiled with him. “Is your last wish still in the hollow?”

Jared’s smile faded. It had been years since he’d thought about the luck and love pots. “I don’t know.” He took a couple of deep breaths before using Craft to pass his fingers through the pot’s base.

His fingers brushed against paper. Touched sealing wax.

Frowning, he drew the paper out of the hollow. When he turned it over, he saw his name written in a feminine hand.

“I’ll wait outside,” Lia said.

“No, you—”

Lia touched his arm. “I won’t go far.”

Jared watched her until he felt convinced she wouldn’t wander out of his sight. Then he settled on the stool Reyna had kept in the greenhouse and broke the letter’s seal.

Jared,

A few weeks ago, a Black Widow came through Ranon’s Wood with her brother and his Lady. They were exhausted and the Warlord had been wounded in a fight. After the healing, they stayed with us a few days to recover their strength. Since whatever marks they had between them would be needed for the rest of their journey, I had refused payment. The Black Widow offered to trade a skill for a skill, so I asked if she could make a tangled web that could show how you fared.

When she approached me several hours later, I knew she didn’t want to tell me what the web of visions had revealed.

She told me you would return to Ranon’s Wood this autumn.

Then she told me I wouldn’t be here to see you.

At first I thought she meant that I’d be away from the village or committed to a healing and you wouldn’t be able to wait. But I’ve been a Healer too long not to understand words that are left unspoken. I didn’t ask if it would be an accident or illness or if I could do something to prevent it. What matters is there are things to be said, and this may be the only chance I’ll have to say them.

I won’t insult you by saying that your words didn’t hurt or that I didn’t cry. They did hurt. I did cry. But I understood even then why you needed to say them. Since that day, Belarr and I have had to accept the bitter truth that, in some ways, you were right. Because of our mistakes, no matter how well intentioned, a son lost his freedom and a precious part of his life.

The Blood survive on trust, Jared. We trust that everyone will follow the Laws and Protocol that keep the weaker safe from the stronger. We trust that males won’t use their strength against a female except in self-defense. We trust that every witch who is served will respect the males who hand over their lives into her keeping. When the code of honor we’ve lived by for thousands upon thousands of years is broken, fear seeps in, and no man trusts what he fears.