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Aerin was by nature the son of child who got into trouble first and thought about it later if at all, and Gala
At fifteen Aerin should already have shown signs of her royal blood’s Gift; usually the Gift began to make its presence known—most often in poltergeist fits—years younger. Gala
They made a pair, facing off, standing alone in the royal garden, glaring at each other. Gala
Aerin was as tall as Gala
Aerin gagged, gasped, turned a series of peculiar colors which ended with grey, and fell heavily to the ground. Cabana noticed that she was still breathing, and therefore waited a few minutes while Aerin twitched and shook, and then went composedly to find help. Her story was that she had gone for a walk in the garden and found Aerin there. This, so far as it went, was true; but she had been pla
Aerin was sick for weeks. Her mouthful had given her mad hallucinations of men with translucent blue skin and six-legged riding beasts, and of a pale face terribly like her own with a dull grey band wound about its temples, bending down at her through clouds of smoke, and of a cave with five walls that glittered as though it were walled with rubies. The worst of these then began to wear off, and she could again see the walls of her own room around her, and Teka’s face bending over her, half angry and half frightened; but she still had dizzy spells and stomachaches, and these lasted a very long time. She knew this was not how it should be for a king’s daughter, just as Gala
“You idiot!” Tor yelled at her. “You bonehead, you mud-brain, you oozog, you stzik! How could you do such a thing?” He tried to remind her of the stories of the surka; he said did she remember by chance that the stuff was dangerous even to those of the royal house? True, it did not kill them; true, a leaf of it bestowed superhuman strength and the far-seeing eyes of a bird of prey to one of royal blood, or, if the Gift were strong enough, true visions; although this last was very rare. But when the effect wore off, in several hours or several days, the aftereffects were at best mortal exhaustion and blurred sight—sometimes permanent. Had she forgotten the tale of King Merth the Second, who kept himself on the battlefield for a fortnight, never resting, by the virtue of the surka, pausing only to chew its leaves at need? He won the battle, but he died even as he proclaimed his victory. He looked, when they buried him, like an old, old man, though he was only a year past twenty.
“You must have eaten half the tree, from the size of the scar of the branch you took off. Enough for two or three Merths. Are you really trying to kill yourself?” Here his voice almost broke, and he had to get up and stamp around the room, and kick over a handy chair, which he then picked up again so that Teka wouldn’t notice and ban him from the sickroom. He sat on the edge of Aerin’s bed and brooded. “It must have been Gala
Aerin stirred. “Of course it’s Gala
Tor laughed—grudgingly, but it was a laugh. “Almost I forgive you.” He reached out and grabbed one of her hands. She refrained from telling him that his bouncing on the edge of her bed was making her feel sick, and that every time he moved she had to refocus her eyes on him and that made her feel more sick, and she squeezed his hand. “I guess she dared you to eat a leaf. I guess she told you you weren’t royal and wouldn’t dare touch it.” He looked at her sternly. She looked back, her face blank. He knew her too well, and he knew she knew, but she wouldn’t say anything; he knew that too, and he sighed.
Her father visited her occasionally, but he always sent warning ahead, and as soon as she could creak out of bed without immediately falling down in a heap, she began receiving him in her sitting-room, bolt upright in a straight chair and hands crossed in her lap. To his queries she answered that she was feeling quite well now, thank you. She had learned that no one could tell how badly her vision wandered in and out of focus, so long as she kept still where the dizziness couldn’t distract her; and she kept her eyes fixed on the shifting flesh-colored shadows where she knew her father’s face was. He never stayed long, and since she closed her eyes when he came near to stoop over her and kiss her cheek or forehead (other people’s movements were almost as dizzying as her own) she never saw the anxious look on his face, and he didn’t shout at her, like Teka or Tor.
When she was enough better to totter out of bed for a longer stretch than into a chair in her sitting-room, or rather when she hated her bed so thoroughly that Teka could no longer keep her in it, she had to make her way around the castle by feeling along the walls, for neither her eyes nor her feet were trustworthy. Creeping about like one of her father’s retired veterans escaped from the grace-and-favor apartments in the rear of the castle did nothing for her morale, and she avoided everyone but Teka, and to some extent Tor, even more single-mindedly than usual; and she stayed out of the court’s way altogether.