The Gates of Night_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [63]
“What is it?” A woman stepped out of the shadows and rushed to the table. Lei’s mother. Older now, just like her father, but unmistakable. “What’s happened to her?”
“I’ve disabled her,” Talin said, his voice cold. “We have problems. She just repaired an inert scout in the battle room, and there were witnesses.”
“Repaired?”
“Repaired. Restored a critically damaged soldier to peak condition with a touch.”
“So soon? But this is more than we could have hoped for!” Aleisa’s voice was filled with amazed joy, but Lei’s father was still cold.
“Don’t you see? There were witnesses. They won’t rest until they have an explanation. And we can’t risk exposure so soon.” He looked down at the unconscious girl and shook his head. “We’ll have to destroy her. A freakish accident, a dragonmark arising before the body is ready—”
“Are you mad?” Aleisa shoved her husband away from the child. “This is our daughter!”
“I knew you’d be emotional about this,” Talin said. “But think of the greater goal!”
“Lei’s always been my greater goal,” her mother said. “I thought you understood that.”
“Aleisa.” Talin looked down at the child. “I love her too. You know that. And even I am amazed at what she has done today, and what it says of her potential. But we have always known this day could come. She is the most dangerous thing we have ever created, and if our designs are revealed, excoriation is the least of the horrors awaiting us. All that is flesh and blood must die, Aleisa, and she dies today.”
“No!” Aleisa said. “What of our faith? This is a challenge. And you would surrender? There must be another path, a way to emerge from this stronger than before.”
“There’s no time—”
“Hold.” Aleisa’s eyes narrowed, and now Lei could see the more familiar face of her mother, the calculating artificer. “You said that we can explain her death as the early manifestation of a dragonmark.”
“Yes.”
“What if she manifests the mark—and lives?”
“Explain,” Talin said.
“If we give her a mark, that explains what she has done. It gives us reason to begin her training at this unprecedented early age. Should she flare again, it will be dismissed as the talent of a prodigy, which is essentially the truth.”
“Yes,” Talin said. “For her to manifest the mark at this age … a historic event, but hardly one requiring a thorough investigation. I am humbled by your wisdom, my love.”
“It will take time to synthesize a mark that will meet all tests, but for now the outline will do,” Aleisa said. She sorted through a rack of arcane tools, twisted rods, and strange blades. “This should be sufficient,” she said, holding up a rod of ebony bound with brass and tipped with a dark dragonshard. “Where shall our daughter have her dragonmark, my husband?”
“Why, I think she should take after her lovely mother,” Talin said.
Aleisa smiled at that. “Prepare her, then.”
Talin turned the child onto her stomach, brushing her hair to the side. “Verentis ierjyx!” he said, and the power in these syllables tore at the air. The column in the center of the chamber burst into brilliant light, and runes covering the table were traced in lines of fire. The girl herself glowed, as if power were flowing through her.
Aleisa cut her palm with a silver blade. Blood dripped onto the floor as she gripped the ebony rod. “Now, my daughter,” she said. “Let my blood flow into you once more. Take this gift, and may it save us all.”
She pressed the rod against the child’s neck, and as she did so, Lei felt an agonizing pain as if her dragonmark were acid against her skin. She tried to scream, but she had no voice. The pain consumed her, and the chamber burned away in a burst of white light.
Consciousness returned. She was floating, falling.
She opened her eyes. She opened her eyes. After so much time as a bodiless presence, she was herself again! But where was she? There was pressure all around her, and she felt as if she were falling, slipping down through