Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

“Watch the pool,” Lhel told him again, rustling around with something behind him. “Arkoniel, you tell.”

The wizard knelt beside him. “It should have been your father who told you this, or Iya. And you should be older and ready to take your place. But it seems the gods have other plans.

“You’ve heard people say that your dead twin was a girl. Well, that’s true, in a way.”

Tobin looked up at him and saw a deep sadness in the wizard’s face.

“Your mother bore two children that night: a boy and a girl. One died, as you know. But you see, the child who lived was a girl. You, Tobin. Lhel used a special kind of magic—”

“Skin binding,” said Lhel.

“Skin binding, to make you appear to be a boy, and the dead boy—Brother—appear to be a girl.”

For a moment Tobin thought he’d lost his voice again, as he had when his mother died. But he managed a rasping, “No!”

“It’s true, Tobin. You are a girl in boy’s form. And there will come a time when you must put aside that false form and take your place in the world as a woman.”

Tobin was shivering now, and not because of the cold. “But—But why ?”

“To protect you until you can be queen.”

“Protect me? From who?”

“From your uncle and his Harriers. They’d kill you if they knew. The king would have killed you the night you were born if we hadn’t done as we did. He’d killed others already, many others, whom he feared would challenge his right, and Korin’s.”

“Niryn said—But he talked of traitors!”

“No, they were innocents. And they had far less claim than you, his own sister’s child. You know the Prophecy of Afra. You’re a true daughter of Thelátimos, the last of the pure line. This skin binding—it was the only way we could think of to protect you. And until now it worked.”

Tobin stared down at the face in the water—his eyes, his hair, the scar on his pointed chin. “No! You’re lying! I want to be who I am! I’m a warrior!”

“You’ve never been anything else,” Arkoniel told him. “But you’re destined by Illior to be something more. Illior showed this to Iya while you were still in your mother’s womb. Countless wizards and priests have dreamed of you. You’ll be a great warrior and a great queen, like Ghërilain herself.”

Tobin pressed his hands to his ears and shook his head in fury. “No! Women aren’t warriors! I’m a warrior! I’m Tobin. I know who I am! ”

The scent of musk and green herbs enveloped him as Lhel knelt on his other side and wrapped strong arms around him. “You are who you are. Let me show.”

She covered the bloody place on his chest with her hand and the pain came back for a moment on crawling centipede feet. When she took her hand away, he saw a vertical line of stitching on his chest identical to the one that Brother had once shown him, tiny and fine as spider silk. But his wound had healed and the scar had faded pale. Only the lower end of it was bloody, like Brother’s wound.

“The magic grow thin, the binding not hold. Must be new magic made,” Lhel said. “It’s not your time to show the true face, keesa.”

Tobin pressed against her gratefully. He didn’t want to change.

“But how—” Arkoniel began.

Lhel forestalled him with one upraised finger. “For later. Tobin, you should know your true face.”

“I don’t want to!”

“Yes. Is good to know. Come, keesa, look.”

Lhel pressed a finger to the stitching on his chest and when she spoke again, he heard her voice inside his head; for the first time her words were clear and unbroken. “Goddess Mother, I loosen these stitches made in your name, sewn on the night of your waxing harvest moon, that they may be made sound again in this moon to protect this child with the binding of one form to another. Let this daughter called Tobin see her true face in your mirror. Ease, red moon woven strand, here.” Saying this, she passed her hand across Tobin’s eyes and guided him to lean over the pool’s glassy surface again.

Fearfully, unwillingly, he looked down to see what stranger would peer up at him.

She was not so different.

It was a girl—there was no mistaking that—but she had his dark blue eyes, his straight nose and pointed chin, even the same scar. He’d feared to see someone soft and silly, like the girls at court, but this one had nothing soft about her. Her cheekbones might be a little higher set than his own, the lips a hint fuller, but she met his gaze with the same wariness he’d so often seen in his mirror at home—and the same determination.

“Not ‘she,’ Tobin,” Arkoniel whispered. “You. You are she. You’ve been looking at Brother in your mirror all these years. But not all of him. Your eyes are your own.”

“No binding change that. And this.” Tobin felt Lhel touch the wisdom mark and heard the witch’s voice inside his head again. “That did not change from your birth. That has always been a part of you. And this—” She touched the scar. “This was given to you, and this you keep. All your life you have thought to follow Sakor, but Illior marked you from birth. So it is with your memories, your training, your art, your soul. All the things that you are you keep. But you shall be more than that.”

Tobin shivered, remembering the ghostly queen who’d offered him the sword. Had she known, and given it as a blessing?

“You can see me, Arkoniel?”

“Yes. Oh, yes!” The wizard’s voice was thick with joy. “I’m so glad to see you at last, after all these years, my lady!”

My lady.

Tobin covered her ears against the word but could not take her gaze from the reflection.

“I know what you fear, Tobin,” Arkoniel told her, speaking gently. “But you know the histories. Before your uncle’s time, the queens of Skala were the greatest warriors of all, and there were women generals, women captains and squires and arms masters.”

“Like Ki’s sister.”

“Yes, like Ki’s sister. And Cook, too, in her day. They’re still out there in the armies, as she is. You can bring them back to court, back to honor. But only if you stay safe and hidden until the time is right. To do that, you must go back to Ero and remain Tobin to the world. Nari and Iya are the only others who know the truth, besides we two. No one else can know. Not even Ki or Tharin.”

“But why?” Tobin demanded. She’d had enough of secrets already. How was she to bear this one alone?

“I gave my word to your father and to Iya that no one would learn of your true identity until the sign is given.”

“What sign?”

“I don’t know that yet. Illior will reveal it. For now, we must be patient.”

The incident with the doll had ended any chance of Ki being at ease with the spirit or demon or whatever the hell Brother was.

Even so, he wasn’t prepared when it suddenly flew at him as they climbed a steep, crumbling bank. It didn’t touch him, but spooked Dragon, who reared and threw him. He went tumbling ass over tippet down the bank. Luckily the ground was soft with moss and ferns, but he still found a few rocks and logs before he fetched up against a tree halfway back down the slope.

“Damnation, what did you do that for?” he gasped, trying to get his wind back. He could see Brother at the top of the hill. The ghost had the flour sack now, and he was smiling that unsettling smile of his as he looked back at Ki. The horse was long gone.

“What do you want?” Ki shouted at him.

Brother said nothing.

Ki started to scramble up after him. When he looked up again, Brother was gone.

He climbed to the top of the rise and found Brother watching him from the mouth of a game track a few yards away. Ki took a step in his direction and Brother faded back, leading him.