Springwar by Tom Deitz Page B

begun explaining that instead, which had then prompted an ongoing analysis of how words felt on one’s tongue, and the fact that they likewise had colors.
    Eventually, her inquisitor had departed, and the air had slowly cleared. Too much imphor would do lasting damage—and most inquisitors only stayed until they began to feel themselves affected.
    Her next dose would be stronger, though, and she dreaded it. The next level, so she’d read, usually involved the inquisitors trying to frighten the truth from one by playing on fears through verbal suggestions.
    As if sensing that anxiety, the brazier returned, along with another one. Imphor and something else she didn’t recognize. She closed her eyes, tried to sleep. Or pass out. Or go into trance. Anything that would wall away her mind. Along with that, she tried to take shallow breaths, and them as rarely as possible.
    But the fumes, especially the new ones, were pervasive and not unpleasant, and before she knew it, she was inhaling ever more deeply, even as her mind recoiled.
    And with those breaths came muttered words in soft female voices.
    “Think of who you love, and then think of what you fear.”
    Repeated.
    Endlessly.
    She resisted, but she’d been raised to worship the arts, and one art was that of the storyteller, and so she began to construct images …
    … a woman beautiful beyond description, for neither she nor anyone else could explain how Strynn—for so it was: herbond-sister—could have a face like most other High Clan women and yet surpass them all, to be accounted the most beautiful woman of her time.
    They’d become bond-sisters at their first bleeding, and confirmed that bond every year after. Strynn had been gawky then, and Merryn often mistaken for a boy, so physical attraction clearly hadn’t mattered. And though they’d pleasured themselves with each other, as bond-mates usually did, that had never been the basis of their affection.
    But to lose Strynn—that was what she feared most. And yet she couldn’t help thinking of that loss, and all the ways it could be accomplished. And so she saw …
    Strynn working bare-armed before a forge, hammering out swords and daggers and axes. No, a
particular
sword—and she was leaning far over the forge, and the fire was leaping up and raking that perfectly smooth face, and finding a hold in her hair, so that it, too, blazed up, and Strynn was screaming, and then her robe had also taken fire and she was all aflame, and nobody was helping, though many stood around to point and cheer. And then she glimpsed Strynn’s face with the brow and lashes burned away, and the lips and nose starting to melt—and Strynn said one thing: “This is all your fault.”
    And then Merryn screamed and closed her eyes, but what she found inside them was also Strynn …
    … lying in an odd sort of bed, her belly as big as the biggest summer melon. She wore a shift, but it was open around that swelling, and movement occurred there, like ripples in still water. Strynn’s legs were spread, and she half lay, half squatted, so that the draw of the earth would help the baby out. But the baby wouldn’t come, though Strynn screamed at it to be born, and cursed the midwives gathered round, and then cursed Merryn’s brother, Avall, who had put this baby in her …
    Except that wasn’t right. This was Eddyn’s child, the fruit of his seed. Avall was only the acknowledged father, chosen to circumvent Eddyn’s attempts to woo her
.
    And it didn’t matter, because the child was coming out all wrong, and blood was coming, too: first a trickle then a gush that made odd harmony with the sound of Strynn’s screaming, and then the baby’s shoulders were free—but it was pushing out, and
    grinning a grin that looked exactly like Eddyn’s, and then it tore at Strynn’s womanhood and ripped her all asunder: a terrible gash from between her legs to halfway up her belly
.
    Strynn screamed. The baby laughed. And then Strynn died