Nyree had looked at the door enough times that Suri thought the Fhrey would be the one to take flight.
Wouldn’t that be ironic? Suri smiled.
“What are you grinning at?” Nyree scolded, as if smiling were a crime.
“Just thinking that most people would expect me to be the one wanting to escape.”
Nyree’s scowl morphed into a suspicious study. “It’s some kind of magic, isn’t it?” She looked around at the ceiling and the walls. Nyree leaned out, trying to see around Suri without moving her feet from her spot. “It’s Miralyith trickery. They’re around here somewhere, making it seem like you can speak.”
“Miralyith don’t use trickery. And it isn’t magic. It’s called the Art, although I don’t know of any weave that can make a person talk. Still, Artists can do many things: raise mountains, control weather, reroute rivers. Oh, did you know Arion did that once? Yes, she told me that she fell off a horse into a stream, and it made her so angry that she couldn’t help herself. I think you are confusing Artists with magicians, who do use trickery and call what they do magic.”
Nyree’s head tilted. Her eyes narrowed. “You sound like—” She stopped herself, uncertainty creeping into her eyes.
“Arion spoke about you. She said you two didn’t get along because she left the Umalyn to become a Miralyith. She mentioned you’re a leader in your tribe. She said it’s your job to talk to Ferrol or something like that.”
“Something like that?” Nyree said with enough pride to fill an ocean. “I’m a priestess of our lord Ferrol.”
“Yeah.” Suri nodded. “That’s what she said. She mentioned you felt betrayed when she didn’t follow your lead. She was sorry for that. Said she missed you.”
Nyree glared. She looked mad, but Suri couldn’t understand why. Maybe she had hit on a nerve, so she tried a different approach. “Arion helped teach me Fhrey. I wasn’t good at first, but she was an excellent teacher, even if she could be a real pain. With her, it was always me this and I that, as if it mattered. After all, she knew what I meant.”
“It does matter.” Nyree straightened her back. “Carelessness is unacceptable in any form.” She appraised Suri and added, “As is sloppiness.”
Suri looked down at the oversized dress she’d gotten from Treya. The rag had never been nice and was now a disaster of stains and wrinkles. After being exhumed from the grave, Vasek had treated Suri unusually well. She received two meals a day, moved into her new room, and was afforded a good deal of privacy. The one thing she hadn’t received was new clothing.
Suri took note of Nyree’s perfectly white asica. Not a fold out of place. “You take a bath every day, don’t you?”
“Twice a day—as any civilized person does.”
Suri nodded and held up her filthy rag. “You assume this is who I am because I’m a Rhune. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you that I am not allowed to bathe, was stripped of my nicer clothes, locked in a cage, and dragged here against my will. You might look like this if someone did that to you. Arion told me you were judgmental, and I can understand your contempt. But how could you hate your own daughter? Arion was as close to perfection as anyone I ever met, but she still wasn’t good enough for you.”
Nyree glared.
“She only wanted your approval. Arion told me about the last time the two of you spoke. How she wanted to smooth things over. She feared it would be the last time the two of you would ever see each other, and she was right. Don’t you have any regrets? Now that she’s gone, do you wish you could tell her you were sorry?”
Nyree remained rigid, lips squeezed tight.
If this is what having a mother is like, I’m glad I never got to know mine.
“She couldn’t understand why you refused to accept her.”
Nyree pivoted sharply and took one step toward the doorway, then stopped. She stood there with her back to Suri for several heartbeats before whirling around. Her face was red as an apple. “Arion betrayed me! I raised her properly, gave her everything. She was going to be the first female Umalyn High Priestess. I was going to see to that. She was intelligent, beautiful, charming, and capable. Arion could have been the greatest of our order. She could have been fane. The first Umalyn ruler of our people! Instead, she . . .”
Nyree started to cry. She gritted her teeth and jerked away the tears. “Instead, my daughter,” she said with disgust, “to whom I devoted a lifetime, became a Miralyith.” She shook her head in anger. “I can’t do this. I can’t stay here.” Nyree took another step toward the exit.
“She loved you,” Suri said.
“Stop it! Just stop!” Nyree screamed so loudly that Suri jerked back, bumping against the wall.
Tears ran down Nyree’s face too quickly to be wiped away.
“All I said was—”
“She didn’t love me. Never! It was I who loved her and was willing to devote all that I was, all that I had accomplished for her benefit! But she refused my help, rejected me and our tribe.”
“No, that wasn’t it. She was just being who she was instead of who you wanted her to be.”
“You know nothing! Nothing about me or my daughter. You are a heathen and a savage. Don’t you dare think you can educate me on Arion and what she was or wasn’t.”
Nyree threw the bundle at Suri and fled the room.
“Did Arion ever ask you to become a Miralyith? Would you have thought she had your best interests in mind if she had?” Suri shouted after her.
She waited, but it was Vasek’s face that reemerged in the doorway. “That didn’t go so well,” he said.
“I won’t tell you how to make dragons.”
“I wasn’t asking you to.” He pointed to the bundle. “In her haste, Nyree neglected to properly give you her gift. It’s new clothes. Oh, and from now on, a bath will be prepared if you wish. All you have to do is ask.”
“That won’t do the trick, either. It doesn’t matter how well you treat me.”
Vasek thought about this for a moment. Then he cast a glance in the direction that Nyree had fled. “I’m not sure how you misconstrued a visit from Nyree as an indication of me being nice. If I were you, I would suspect this had been a well-calculated torture, and although you likely won’t believe me, I’ll state for the record that wasn’t our intention. Perhaps Volhoric was too naïve. He doesn’t have my years of experience in studying how people like Nyree react.”
He shook his head and offered a sad sigh. “Like most of Nyree’s tribe, the Umalyn are rigid in their thinking. Once she believes something, no amount of argument, or even proof, can change her mind. Just as you saw, the more you press the more defensive and deaf she becomes. A closed mind is like a door that can’t be opened—it might as well be a wall.” He turned to leave, then paused. “You might consider that while walls are made to keep people out and to protect, these barriers also isolate, making them an impediment to a lasting peace.”
Chapter Six
The Invitation
It is strange how some things are exactly how you imagined, and others are not. Odder still are those that are both. — The Book of Brin