The Hidden Queen by Alma Alexander Read Free Book Online Page B

sometimes; it repulsed him always. He clearly saw it as something dreadful, inhuman.
    “Then Anghara could have it too,” said Sif, after a pause. “She may well be alive, but she’s out there somewhere biding her time, waiting until she comes into her power. If she doesn’t want to be found, I’ll never find her.”
    “She is too young, Sight comes into its own only with adolescence,” Fodrun said. “In her own right, I don’t think she can be a threat, or even a factor in her own concealment. Not yet. That still had to be done for her, by others, with mature powers. But yes, if she has inherited the gift, she will be able to use it, sooner rather than later. And one day she might well turn it against you. But if she has been hidden with Sight, lord, then she may be found with Sight. Perhaps.”
    “What do you mean?” The query was sharp, intense.
    “There are still Sighted women in Miranei. Set some of them looking.”
    Sif rose violently to his feet and crossed to the window, staring outside into the thin winter twilight. “I never liked dealing with those witches.” It sounded as though he spat the words.
    “They may succeed, where all else has failed,” said Fodrun with delicacy. He wished he could get rid of the foul taste the words left in his own mouth—he could not seem to rid them of the guilt of betrayal which clung to them like a skin. If Anghara was ever discovered, Fodrun knew he would go to his grave feeling like a murderer. And yet…not helping Sif’s search was unthinkable.
    Sif seemed to have come to terms with his own qualms. “I’ll do it,” he said, but his voice was heavy. “If it will help, I will do it. But I swear I do not like it. Why is just being human never quite enough in Roisinan?”
    With a sudden flash of insight, Fodrun realized part of the reason Sif harbored such an implacable hostility toward Sight. When both Rima and Clera, Sif’s mother, had come to Miranei there had been little to choose between them. Both daughters of country gentry, lords of distant manors who laid claim to neither great wealth nor power, all they brought with them had been their youth and beauty. If Dynan had been an ordinary man it might have been different—but he was more than a man, he was a king. Clera had borne Dynan a son, but it was Rima whom Dynan had married, and crowned; Rima, whose single advantage and addition to Dynan’s treasury had been Sight—something that Clera, for all the proof of her devotion, could never offer.

3
    A nghara had been very quiet during the first part of the journey from Miranei. Lady Catlin, who rode with her in the back of the covered wagon together with their trunks and bags, made no attempt to draw her out and wisely left her to herself for a while. Anghara had stared at Miranei for as long as she could see it through the rear of the wagon, where the flaps of the wagon covering had been tied back. They made good time. The great keep grew smaller and smaller, finally vanishing altogether; it was then that Anghara closed her eyes, sealing in the memory.
    Catlin thought that the girl dozed, as their horse kept up its steady pace and carried them further and further into the night. But Anghara was not asleep; her senses, if anything, seemed to have been sharpened by the last few hours to something almost supernatural. She was aware of the way the lantern hanging by the side of the wagon swung and bounced, its wavering light keeping time to the rhythm of the horse’s hooves striking the road. She was aware of the stars winking above in a sky deepening from salmon-pink and apricot clouds into shades of amethyst and indigo. She heard the tuneless whistling of the wagon driver on his seat, his back to them, and the dissonant counterpoint of another horse’s hoofbeats, March’s great heavy beast, pacing the wagon just out of her line of sight. This day’s sunset, star-rise, swift travel on unfamiliar roads, these things were being burned into her and