The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [31]
“I have, truly.”
“She wants to use your powers for herself, that’s why. When you learn about your gifts, you’ll be able to use them for yourself, and she won’t be able to force you to do what she wants.”
Lilli walked over and sat down. Brour smiled and opened his book.
“There’s a picture in here that I want to show you,” he said. “It shows what the universe looks like.”
Circles within circles, drawn in black ink—at the center sat the Earth, or so Brour called it, and each circle around it bore a name.
“This is Greggyn lore,” Brour said. “It came over with King Bran during the Great Migration. The sphere—that’s what these circles represent, spheres—above and surrounding the sphere of the Earth belongs to the Moon. The next one belongs to the Sun. We’ll learn about those higher ones when it’s time. There’s too much for you to remember all at once.”
“That’s certainly true.” Lilli put her elbows on the table and leaned forward to study the picture. “It gives me such an odd feeling, seeing this.”
“Ah, no doubt the knowledge is calling to you.”
In truth the feeling was more like terror, but she decided against telling him that. She listened carefully as he explained how the matter of each sphere interpenetrates the one below it.
“Only on the earthly world do all the others exist,” Brour finished up. “Here they reach completion. And that means from here you can reach all the others. That’s what you do when you go into trance. You leave your body and go to one of these other worlds.”
The terror stuck in her throat. That’s what people do when they die, Lilli thought. They leave their bodies and go to the Otherlands.
“Now, omens of the future exist in the upper astral,” Brour pointed at a circle. “That’s where your mother sends you.”
“My mother sends me there? I thought you were the one who did that.”
“Not I, child. Your mother knows as much about these things as I do.” Abruptly he looked away.
In the hall, a noise—someone walking, several people, all talking at once. Lilli leapt to her feet. Brour shut the book. The sounds grew louder—and went on past. Lilli let out her breath in a long sigh and realized that Brour had lost the color in his face.
“You’re scared of her, too, aren’t you?” she said.
“I can’t deny it.”
Lilli stared. She’d never thought to see a man frightened of a woman, not anywhere in her world.
“I’d best go.” She moved toward the door. “I don’t dare have her find me here.”
“Just so. But come back when you can, and I’ll tell you more.”
Lilli ran out of the chamber, slammed the door, and raced down the hall. At the staircase she paused to smooth her hair and catch her breath, then decorously descended to the great hall below. I’ll never go back, she told herself. I’ll never look at that book again.
At dinner that evening she sat next to Bevyan, whose warmth drove all thoughts of dangerous magic from her mind. They discussed Lilli’s dower chest, which she’d started filling while she was still at Hendyr, although, as she admitted, she’d been lax of late.
“Well, dear, Sarra and I are here to help,” Bevyan said. “The first thing we’ll want to do is the wedding shirt for Braemys, and then the coverlet for your new bed.”
“We should have all summer,” Sarra put in. “They won’t be holding the wedding till the campaigning’s done.”
“That’s true.” Lilli felt oddly cold, and she rubbed her hands together. “I hope naught ill happens to Braemys.”
“Ai!” Bevyan shook her head. “You’re a woman now truly, aren’t you, dear? You’ve joined the rest of us in worrying about one man or another.”
That night, as she lay in bed and tried to sleep, Lilli was thinking about Braemys. She’d always liked her cousin, who had also been fostered out to Peddyc and Bevyan. Whether or not they married, she certainly didn’t want him to die in the summer’s fighting. And now, if he did die, whom would she be forced to marry in the autumn? Nantyn or some other old and drink-besotted northern lord like him. Uncle Tibryn would never allow his mind to be changed a second time;