Free The Phantom Queen Awakes by Mark S. Deniz Page B

my
seed.”
    His gaze as he said that had been rather easy
to decipher. She knew he would not have waited to bed her under
ordinary circumstances, but their handfasting symbolized a union
between her tribe and his. Iaun knew the tradition required of a
leader and was bound to honor it. Lys understood the hope this
union meant to her own people. The Condrusi stood to gain more from
it than the Veneti: protection, something her people desperately
needed. They had already faced the Roman wolf at the
door.
    Iaun left, and the two women guided her
through the wood to a willow bower they had already prepared. They
sang softly to her while they bathed her with a fragrant mistletoe
wash as she stood before them.
    “How long have you been in training?” Lys
asked.
    One woman, not much more than a girl, Lys
thought, shook her hair forward as she spoke. “We have just been
adopted.”
    “It is an honor for our family,” the other one
said.
    “Have you no holy men here?” Lys continued as
they dressed her in a long tunic of white linen.
    They smiled at each other before answering.
“No. Not here.”
    Before she entered her bower, another woman
approached her. The portions of gray in hair that hung in a thick
cloud around her face, and ended in a long braid down her back,
were in stark contrast to the dark hair of the other
women.
    “I am Uxía.” She took Lys by the upper arms
and then tilted her chin up, staring deeply into her eyes. “You
have the eyes of a seer.”
    Lys started. “How can you know
that?”
    Uxía nodded. “Experience. I have enough of the
Gift to recognize it in others.”
    Lys resisted the urge to look away and fought
to keep her breathing normal. “I don’t have any scrying
talents.”
    “Seeing is not only scrying,” she said. “Maybe
I should have said that you have the Sight.”
    Lys looked away to hide her dismay. Only the
most addled of old women in her tribe were attributed with the
second Sight. “Those women are shunned among my people.”
    Uxía laughed at her reaction. “Do not fear.
The Veneti revere their women, holy or not.” She let go of Lys’
arms and stood before her. “Do others of your tribe have eyes such
a deep blue that the sea would grow jealous?”
    Lys relaxed somewhat at Uxía’s compliment.
“No. My father has blue eyes, but of a normal shade. That is the
reason why my people chose me to be the gift of our people. Blue is
a color of good fortune.”
    “Your father is one of your tribe’s holy
ones?”
    “No, but he is one of the village elders, one
of the most respected among them.”
    Uxía nodded her approval. “In that case, the
goddess will be pleased as well. She may visit you tonight. If she
does, it is a sign of great favor.”
    The women had prepared a warm drink for her.
It had a bitter, unpleasant taste, and she drank it all as they
watched. It made her feel relaxed but oddly alert. She suspected
they had laced it with the fly mushrooms her tribe’s holy men used
to prepare men for battle. Lys sat alert within her nest of soft
grasses, her only company small snuffling creatures in the woods
around her. She had not slept alone or outside since she was a
young girl. Even the days of celebrating Bel saw her safely in her
family’s hut after dark. Her father had not wanted to risk the
chance of her deflowering from one of the youths in her village.
She was too great a prize to be lost.
    A bright cusp of light appeared and danced in
front of the bower. It settled in front of her, just above her
forehead, and she looked into it for a time before she felt herself
falling, being pulled into the light.
    After a time that could have been five minutes
or a year, the sky brightened. Only it was not the sky, but a small
area around where she sat. She was naked and her long hair fell
loose about her, providing her a scant but welcome covering. She
felt neither cold nor heat. She could not see any trees through the
light, only a dense white fog that pulsed forward