The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [168]
Lirith turned around. Her eyes were dark, haunted. “There is no other choice, sister. One way or another, he will lose his maidenhead this night—Liendra will see to that. I know he fancies me. A boyish crush, to be sure, but better it is me than one of her minions who does the deed. Perhaps, this way, we will keep him from becoming entangled in their snare.”
Aryn gripped the back of a chair. “Then it should be me who should do this thing.”
“No,” Lirith said, her voice hard. “You are pure, sister. You must not give that up, not yet. And with me . . . well, with me it doesn't matter anymore.”
This was madness. Aryn couldn't bear the thought of it. “You can't do this, Lirith. You can't.”
“Yes, I can.” Her expression was stern and cold, then her gaze softened. “Forgive me, sister. I should have told you long ago. Only I was too ashamed.”
“You should have told me what long ago?”
“Of the years I spent dancing in the house of Gulthas, in the Free City of Corantha.”
Before Aryn could ask what she was talking about, Lirith moved to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. The other woman's shimmering life thread contacted her own. In a single, terrible flash, Aryn saw it all: how Lirith's parents were slain by thieves, how the lost girl was sold into slavery, and how as she grew she danced for the men, scarves fluttering.
Aryn tried to look away, only she couldn't. How many men had paid their gold to Gulthas to lay themselves beside her? How many bright sparks had kindled to life in Lirith's womb only to be extinguished, until no more sparks would kindle there ever again? They were more numerous than the fluttering scarves she wore; Aryn couldn't possibly count.
The last images flickered through Aryn's mind: Lirith's flight on bare, bloody feet to Toloria, her first tentative steps along the path of Sia, her marriage to the count of Arafel, and her rise in the favor of Queen Ivalaine. Lirith's thread pulled away, and Aryn slumped into the chair, weak and sweating.
“I should have told you,” Lirith said again, her voice thick with anguish. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Aryn looked up, her eyes full of tears. “Forgive you for what, sister? For being beautiful and noble? For being strong enough to survive in a hell that surely would have destroyed any other of us? Why should I forgive you for these things?”
Tears streamed down Lirith's dark cheeks. She knelt on the floor and laid her head on Aryn's lap, and Aryn stroked her glossy black hair.
“I love you, sister,” Aryn murmured. “Now more than ever.” Lirith's only answer was a sob.
They stayed that way for a time, then Lirith stood again, and her eyes were dry. “Do not tell Sareth what I do,” she said.
Before Aryn could speak, the door opened and shut, and Lirith was gone.
For a time, Aryn simply sat in the chair, staring. Then a strange compulsion came over her, and she stood. She moved around Lirith's chamber, searching, and soon found what she needed: an ivory comb lay on the dressing table. Aryn picked it up, and from the comb's teeth she pulled seven strands of black hair. Quickly, she wove the strands into a slender braid, then knotted the braid into a small circlet.
“What are you doing, Aryn?” she murmured to herself as she sat back in the chair. “What are you doing?”
Before she could answer, she slipped the circlet of Lirith's hair onto her right ring finger and shut her eyes.
The spell worked at once. It was not like the other magic, the one where she had flown through the night, into the garden, and spied upon Teravian and Queen Ivalaine. This magic was subtler. It was more as if Aryn were gazing through a window—one dusted with frost, so that the images beyond were at once crystalline and slightly blurred.
She watched as Lirith stood in a dim corridor, in the shadow of a doorway. For a long time nothing happened, and Aryn's head began to ache. This was wrong, Sia knew it; she should break the spell. Then, just as she was about to pull the circlet from her finger, a figure