Page 25 of Fate’s Bane

O R M AYBE, THE T ALE G OES LIKE T HIS

Once, a girl fell in love with her father’s ward, and they plighted their troth in the luck-hound’s wood.

But their clans went to war, as all and fate knew they should, and the girl who had been ward was now a woman grown, marked with the ink of her true-blood clan.

Bold as Bannos, Agnir Clan Fein stood against her foster brother as he made to hew her down, but strength of arms was not her strength.

If battle was not her blessing, it was the fates-bane’s own luck that she had mastered.

Her brother who was not her brother held a sword she’d bound with guilt, and on her arms she bore a promise: She could not be harmed, so long as her true love yet lived.

And Hadhnri Clan Aradoc did live; she sprinted ’cross the sucking fens, without heed for the luck-hound’s treacherous gaps. She cried out only once, clear as the anvil-strike:

“Agnir!”

Clever as Bannos, Hadhnri Clan Aradoc threw her own blade at her brother’s feet, where it stuck, point down, in the mud. He turned his eye upon her, and where he looked, his blade followed.

They say she ran upon that bloody point by accident, but if so—why did she smile with her last breath?

They say Agnir Clan Fein’s anguish echoed through the land, and even the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens in her cold-stone halls on her cold-metal chair wept, though she did not know the reason.

They say that Gunni Clan Aradoc, that slayer of kin, knelt in Hadhnri Clan Aradoc’s blood as Garadin Clan Fein ran upon him with death-oath sworn and no mercy in his heart.

They say Agnir rose silently from the fens like the luck-hound itself and stood alone between them, her open hands full of grief.

As long as I live , swore her love in the Baneswood—but Hadhnri’s blood was nothing now but lacquer upon leather.

And her father did not stop, and her brother did not rise, and Agnir Clan Fein did not move.

So she fell, curled like a shield over her lover, where she died in the fens of Bannos.