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In the center of the clearing was a perfectly round pond, not much larger than the tub back in Liath’s bathing chamber.
“There it is,” Liath said again. “The Pool of Seeing.” He set me down on my feet and took my hand, drawing me towards the pool. “Come—let us see what it might show us.”
12
The Pool of Seeing was perfectly calm and still, without a single ripple and the water in it remained unfrozen though the rest of the forest was blanketed in snow and ice. The strange thing about it was that it didn’t reflect the sky above or the branches of the trees growing around it. It showed nothing at all and its waters were dead black, so that it looked like a kind of dark hole in the forest floor.
I was reluctant to approach it but Liath drew me forward.
“It’s all right,” he told me. “The Pool won’t hurt you. Don’t touch the waters, though—they’re deadly poison,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“Deadly poison?” I exclaimed, trying to step back. But he pulled me right up to the edge.
“Just don’t touch. The Pool can show you much if you know what to ask,” he said.
“But what should I ask?” Looking down into the black hole in the forest floor made a shiver go down my spine.
“You can’t ask it anything until you reach your powers and learn to use them,” Liath told me. “Also, it requires a sacrifice of blood. But that’s nothing new.”
He unsheathed his dagger again and prepared to cut his palm. I wondered if he had used blood magic so often he was immune to the pain.
“I brought you here to show you something, little bird,” he said to me. “Something that should prove to you that you have magic inside you—more magic than anyone ever fucking dreamed of.”
I didn’t see how that could be true, but I simply nodded.
“All right—show me.”
Liath drew the blade of his dagger over his palm. Then he held his clenched fist over the black waters of the Pool of Seeing and let the ruby blood drip into its dark depths. It looked like a hungry mouth to me, swallowing his sacrifice eagerly and strangely the drops made no ripples in the water. After a few moments, the glassy surface turned from midnight black to a pale blue.
“There—now it’s ready,” Liath murmured under his breath. Then he spoke loudly. “Show us the Punishment of Princess Talandra of the Seelie Court,” he said.
The Pool rippled for the first time—a ripple that started in the center and went all the way to its perfectly circular edge. Then, suddenly, a Fae maiden appeared in the center of the water. Her image was so clear it was as though she was standing right in front of me.
I marveled at the image—I could see every detail from her pale pink dress to her long curls of dark gold hair. Her eyes, though, were gray—gray like mine, I thought.
“Oh…who is she?” I bent over the Pool, half reaching for the mysterious maiden but Liath pulled me back.
“Poison, remember?” he growled. “This is the Lady Talandra—your ancestress, if I am not mistaken.”
“But I’ve never heard of her,” I protested. “She is not listed in the family tree of the Royal Seelie house.”
“That is because she was scrubbed from your history texts,” Liath said grimly.
“She was? But why?” I protested.
“Watch and you’ll see,” he murmured, pointing at the Pool of Seeing.
I did as he said, watching as the maiden looked about her, as though she was trying to be certain she was quite private. She appeared to be in the forest, just as we were, but instead of the trees being full of green leaves or laden with snow, they were many different colors of red, orange, golden yellow, and bright vermillion.
“What is that forest she’s in?” I asked.
“It’s our forest—the Fae forest which shelters both the Summer and the Winter Courts,” Liath told me. “But this was back before the Great Divide was put up to separate the Seelie from the Unseelie. Back then, all the people of the Fae lived in the same place and time and the forest had four seasons, not just two.”
“Oh,” I breathed, intrigued at the idea of two more seasons—not to mention the inhabitants of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts mingling together. “But what happened to Talandra?”
“She was a Princess—the daughter of the King who sat upon the Shining and the Shadow Throne—for back then, they were one,” Liath continued, in a deep, mysterious voice. “Unfortunately, she fell in love.”
“She fell in love? What’s so unfortunate about that?” I asked, frowning.
“It was who she fell in love with that sealed her fate,” Liath told me. “Watch.”
As he spoke, a new person entered the forest glade where Talandra was concealed. It was a Satyr, I saw—a male with the muscular torso and head of a human man, but the shaggy hocks of a goat. Tall horns rose from his forehead and he had a goatee beard on his handsome, dark face. He and Talandra came together in a passionate kiss and I couldn’t help remembering the way Liath had kissed me the night before.
