Val was so confused - she didn't know what to think. Jasil was gone, at least for a while, and Niko had admitted that she liked girls. But, notably, she hadn't admitted that she liked Val. Maybe she thought they were just friends… in which case, they were just friends. And if Val was hoping to reconnect with Jasil, then they would have to stay friends. But Ginn had suggested that she shouldn't do that.

Why couldn't these things be simpler? Simple like fighting. Instead, love was like magic. Instead, there was the blurry, bubbly, absolutely wonderful feeling of infatuation. And then of two souls touching, kissing like lips kiss, merging in and out of one another as you discovered that wonderful, unique, inimitable person you'd fallen for. It was maddening.

Val hoped she'd be able to clear her thoughts when she left Verdenlecht in the first time since what had felt like forever. She'd spent an aggravating morning training with the duke's old standard, Tobbin Zollen, on how to keep people at a distance using the standard (which doubled as an unwieldy pike) and a sword. It was completely pointless, though, as Val was pretty decent with her net spell by then and could probably hold about five times as many people twice as far away if she liked. But it was part of the training, so she did it.

Afterward, she rushed back home and finished packing her things for the magic class excursion. It was scheduled to last two days - one day out into the woods and one day back. Just her, Gus, Beni, and three of the other magic students. Plus Levin, obviously, who was the leader of the 'expedition'. Apparently, exposure to nature was a good thing for experiencing natural magic. Apparently, natural magic wasn't what Val had been doing. This, too, was all very confusing.

"It's pretty easy to conceptualize," Levin said. "The kind of magic that we've been doing is self-centered. It's you shaping your spirit's energy and passing it out into the world. But the world already has all sorts of energy, and that can be moved and shaped, too. That's why we're going out into the forest - to go where the natural magic is strong to give you some idea of what it's like. You probably won't be able to do too much, since it takes practice, just like anything else worth doing."

"Why is there less in cities?" Gus asked. Val had been wondering the same thing.

Levin shrugged. "Some say it's the sort of magic we do, and some say it's just people in general. For whatever reason, there's less wherever you have lots of people for any significant period of time. That's why none of the other races are around anymore."

"Like the fae?" Val asked. She'd read a dozen more books on the Old Sudren myths since the book back at Mrs. Lavoie's orphanage. They were filled with heroes, queens, kings, and gods, obviously. But there were all sorts of other fantastic things, like the fae, trolls, and geists, all of which seemed to have their own civilizations (depending on how loose your definition of the 'civilization' was), and possibly their own gods. But Val had never seen one, or even met somebody who'd seen one. The people who claimed they had literal garden gnomes had always seemed a bit suspect to Val.

"Right… like fae, renard, geists, all of that," Levin said. "They're still around, but not around anywhere that humans live. That's why you only find fairy circles away from cities. We'll still be too close to the city to find anything like that… not that we'd want to, since they can be dangerous… but we'll be a lot closer to the natural world than we usually are."

They rode out of Verdenlecht going southwestward. Priestess Oestel had managed to borrow some horses, calling in her sacrifice of effort from the Levanchi family, who ran the Riverway Stables. Val rode on a white-spotted mare named Spitter whom she'd ridden before - the horse had a tendency to drip spittle when she was hungry, which was often. She still wasn't the best at riding… Ginn had taken her out a few times, reasoning that it could be an important part of fighting, but only enough so her riding wasn't a liability. Getting good would take a lot more effort than that.

Gus, of course, had her own horse. Her parents weren't rich, per se, but they were about as wealthy as you could be without people calling you rich. Beni's horse wasn't his own, but he rode him like a champ, and for the first time Val was jealous of Beni.

"I take lessons twice a week," he said. "I even compete sometimes when the weather's warmer. I'm surprised it hasn't come up."

"To be fair, the three of us are usually either talking about magic or classes," Gus said. "Or streetball."

"Or boys," Beni added, rolling his eyes.

Val wondered whether to correct him but, since she'd only just figured it out herself, she decided that Beni wasn't entirely wrong. Gus talked enough about boys for the two of them. Sometimes more.

They passed the farmland outside of the city, passed terraced fields of wheat and maize and barley, passed a handful of small villages just outside of the capital's penumbra, and into the wild country beyond, where individual homesteads speckled the terrain.

Val had to admit, it felt different out away from the city. She'd felt it on the night she'd met Jasil, on the night they'd camped with the Sheore. But back then, she'd been new to her Gift and hadn't quite known what to notice. But now she had a bit of a better idea, and she could feel it. There was an openness in the place, like the city was a stuffy room and even the sparse exurbs beyond barely escaped that feel. But the air was free in the countryside and Val could almost feel the ethereal currents of magic like the flow of a great, lazy river.

That feeling only got stronger as they proceeded into the forest three hours out from Verdenlecht. Val had always assumed that a forest just started with a wall of trees, but they'd been riding through increasingly denser woodland for fifteen minutes before she realized that this was it. The intermittent copses had merged, and then the trees grew larger and denser until the feeble light trickling through the canopy looked like evening even though it was only mid-afternoon.

It might have been scary if it hadn't been for the other people passing on the road - the trade road ran through the forest, but it was still a trade road. Every five or six minutes, they passed a cart or a caravan headed for the city and had even seen a few patrols.

Levin glanced at the mile marker to the side of the road and squinted into the distance. "There - that's the trail we're taking. Almost there."

The trail was a lot narrower and more uneven than the main road, but they didn't travel along it for very far. After maybe ten minutes, they reached a glade with a clear spring and a big marshy meadow beyond it. The close side, though, was rocky and dry.

Val leaned over the pool, peering into the clear water, but couldn't see the bottom. Beni dropped a stone in, and they watched it sink for at least thirty feet before it disappeared from view. Levin approached them from behind, peering over their shoulders into the dark blue depths of the pool.

"That's why we're here - this is the closest place that Priestess Oestel knows of that has a strong natural connection. We'll sleep here tonight and the magic will work its way into you… then, in the morning, we'll see whether each of you can call on it…"

"What if we can't?" Beni asked. Being friends with Val and Gus had given him an inferiority complex over his Gift - by any objective measure, he was quite talented.

Levin shrugged. "Then you'll try again next year and the year after that. Eventually, you'll either give up or you'll get your tattoo." He rolled his sleeve up to reveal an intricate green twist upon his forearm, like flowery vines decorating his skin… in the shadow of the glade, they almost looked real. "And this one is for the magic you've all already learned." He rolled up his other sleeve to reveal a more abstract pattern of gray and black swirls with little colorful gems at the pattern's nodes. In the dim light, Val thought she could see the gems actually glittering.

Val had known that the Gifted in the Old Sudren faith got tattoos, but it had never occurred to her that she might get them. After all, she was way too young to get tattooed. Plus, Ginn was Gifted and she didn't have any…

Levin did a little gesture with both hands and Val felt the whispery hum of magic. Before her eyes, the tattoos faded from sight. Oh. Right… it was almost identical to the disguise trick that Val already knew.

"Who's studied their herbalism?" Levin asked.

Gus's hand shot up, obviously. Val raised her hand, even though she was iffier on the topic.

"Three and three," Levin said. "You'll go in pairs - one person who's studied their herbalism and somebody who's got some catching up to do. Each pair will forage for an hour to see if we can find anything interesting to add to our supper, and you'll take turns casting the orientation spell we learned two weeks ago."

"Mine!" Gus giggled, and she snatched Beni by the arm.

Damn her! Val barely knew the other three students - and two of them had already paired off. That left her with Marianza, who must have been judged very charitably to land in the top six students in the current class. Val picked up a pebble and shuffled over to her.

"What's that for?" the girl asked. Marianza was the physical epitome of average, with reddish brown hair, amber eyes, average height, average build, average everything. Academically, she was quite bright, which made her average for a Gifted person. Why couldn't Niko have been Gifted instead? Val would have enjoyed that. She was way smarter than Marianza.

"It's for our orientation stones. You'll need one, too," Val said. "You remember how to make one, right?"

Marianza shrugged. "Not really. Can you make one for me?"

Val rolled her eyes. "No. That would defeat the point. You can only cast the orientation spell on your own stone. Pay attention. I'll show you how."

+++++

Marianza got the orientation spell right on her fifth try, which was a bit earlier than Val had expected. It still made them the last pair to leave, and a visibly annoyed Levin had to shoo them from the area so he could make preparations. Preparations for what? He didn't say.

"Just come back in fifty-five minutes and you'll find out," he said.

Val and Marianza crunched off through the underbrush, occasionally coming across a wild trail and following it for a bit. Even without trails, the going was pretty navigable - the sheer density of the canopy above meant that not much else grew below. Unlike the woods, most of the forests's trees never lost their leaves. It trapped in heat, making it at least ten degrees warmer at ground level, though Levin had told them it was actually cooler in the summer. Wherever there was a break in the canopy would be a little mini-forest of ferns, saplings, and bushes, which was where they did most of their foraging.

"This one's valley rizomanthus… it tastes like mint and is edible," Marianza said, popping one of the berries into her mouth - so she wasn't useless after all. "But it's also good for tremors, so maybe I shouldn't eat too many. I only studied a quarter of our book, but I studied it pretty well," she explained.

Val helped her pick a few handfuls of the berries to add to their stash. Whatever couldn't be used for cooking would be used to restock Priestess Oestel's herbarium. They picked some edible mushrooms, some mellow coriander, and a handful of wildflowers, which Marianza deftly wove into little bracelets for each of them. Val thought it was a nice gesture.

Being in the real forest was different from being in the woods, which was all Val had ever been in. In her heart, she was a city girl, but could remember the woods as vague memories from her early childhood - and she'd passed through them three times between Wayfair and Verdenlecht. The most recent time had been when she and Ette returned with Galvan and she'd met Jasil in the campgrounds in the borderland woods. The real forest was darker, its trees more primal, and its undergrowth much sparser. It was an ancient place.

Val held her orientation stone in her palm, shaped her energy, and turned the stone with her other hand until it glowed - this happened when its meridian aligned with the smooth quartz pebble she'd left back at the clearing, giving her a good approximation of the way back to camp. They were perhaps half a mile northwest of the clearing - Val had a pretty decent sense of direction even without the stone, though navigating the woods was quite different from navigating in the city.

They heard more crunching along the way and voices. It was probably one of the other foraging groups… maybe even Gus and Beni. No, the man's voice was deeper than Beni's… two men's voices… strange. Then three men in red and blue brigandine strolled over the crest of a leaf-strewn hill. Brother-knights of the penitent order.

"That's her!" one of them shouted.

Damn! "Run!" she shouted. Marianza didn't have to be told twice.

Val didn't have enough time to check her orientation stone, so she took off in what she thought was the right direction. She skittered through the woods, her fast footfalls going tap-tap-tap against the dry leaves and nettles that carpeted the forest floor. But their pursuers were fast, too.

Marianza kept up for about ten paces but gradually fell behind. Val could hear her trip and skid along the ground with a yelp of surprise and pain. Val wanted to turn around and help her, but she didn't. She just kept sprinting.

"We'll kill your friend!" one of the men shouted.

Val skidded to a stop and turned, her dagger already drawn from its sheath. "She's not my friend!" Val called back.

"We'll just kill her, then," he said and unsheathed his blade - apparently, they didn't bring their pikes to search for people in the forest.

"What do you want?" Val thought she knew the answer, though.

"Just you, girl." Yep.

Val hadn't done so poorly the last time the brother-knights had come for her, and she was a lot better at fighting now than she was back then.

"Well… then you've got me," she said.

She couldn't quite believe it when she found herself sprinting back toward the men, her dagger still drawn. It occurred to Val that they might kill poor Marianza to have one less person to worry about. But they were probably going to kill her anyway, so Val figured she'd actually improved the girl's chances.

The closest brother-knight waited for Val with his sword drawn and, when she started to veer wide to avoid him, he stepped sideways and swung his sword like you might sidearm a club. Clearly, they trained a lot more with their pikes than with swords. It was such a clumsy maneuver that Val dropped right under the swing, slid along the dry leaves for four or five feet, and spun right back to hamstring the man along the little gap between his brigandine and his boots. That move was an improvised amalgam of about three different exercises, but it worked - he collapsed with a scream. He certainly wouldn't be walking anywhere anytime soon.

"Shit!" one of the others said. He pushed Marianza away, sending her tumbling down the little hillside.

The two men charged her, but not for long - as soon as they got within fifteen feet, Val cast her magical net, which had them struggling to approach her, their footfalls treading against the forest floor. She stepped to the side and dispelled the net - the sudden release had them tumbling down after Marianza who, thankfully, was already fleeing the scene. She would have been more of a liability than a help.

Unfortunately, Val didn't know any offensive magical spells. Oestel was of the opinion that they were against the spirit of the sept's magical training. And perhaps they were, but Val quickly decided that she'd need to find some extracurricular sources if she made it back to Verdenlecht alive. That was a big if.

Val had the high ground, but that didn't mean a whole lot when your opponents were more than a head taller than you and had longer weapons. But she had the Gift and they didn't. She sent whooshes of air at them - not enough to knock either down, but it slowed them, casting leaves and sticks up into the air and into their faces and buffeting them with directed gusts of wind. Then she cast as bright and sudden of a light as she could, shutting her eyes for the flash but, hopefully, leaving the men stunned and unadjusted to the gradually-darkening woods.

For an instant, she vacillated between taking off and engaging with the brother-knights. If she ran, she was so completely disorientated that she could easily be headed in the wrong direction. And she'd have to put some decent distance between herself and her attackers before she could spent the fifteen seconds it would take to use her orientation stone. So she'd engage.

She ran to the far side of the man to her right - she was left-handed, so it made sense to put him to her left. Since he still had trouble spotting her in the dark, he swung wildly and was a lot closer to hitting his friend than to getting Val. She leapt and sank her dagger into the man's neck… deep into his neck… but the hilt caught on his brigandine. Instead of pulling clean, she fell with his momentum as he tumbled, pushing him off with her legs at the bottom of a gentle ravine. Before she could retrieve her dagger, the other man was on top of her.

Val bucked like she'd been taught, but the man and his armor were a lot heavier than her. Ette had warned her of this - and had demonstrated it numerous times. When somebody a lot bigger than you was on top of you, sometimes the only thing you could do was wait for them to make a mistake. And he did make a mistake, but it wasn't a very big one.

He tried to stab her right in the chest, but her chem-hardened leather firmed at the blow and the blade slid right off, making hardly a scratch. He tossed his blade well to the side and decided, instead, to simply strangle the life right out of Val.

Val bucked again, but it did even less good. The man's strong hands crushed at her throat, her head pounded in pain and screamed for air. Her vision went blotchy. Val wondered how long after she passed out it would take forher to actually die. She would never get to kiss a girl ever again. She would never get to do any of the million and one things she wanted to do with her life. And her parents would be so upset.

Her parents.

The Vinzennos were listed as Val's guardians on her official papers, but she could call them whatever she liked. Ginn and Ette. Mrs. and Mr. Vinzenno. Auntie and Uncle. Mom and Dad. She had a family now. A real family. She'd only just realized it and she was about to die. That would never do.

Val's lungs screamed for air, even though it was the blood to her brain that was being cut off. Her every instinct told her to buck and to claw at the man's guarded wrists. To resist more and more feebly as the life was squeezed out of her. But that was animal instinct. In the middle of the forest, there was magic everywhere. If she could use it at all, now would be the time. So she did.

Val called out to it, some instinct deep inside of her instructing her to pull from down within the rich earth of the forest floor, to force the energy through herself and then push it just like she pushed her own energy for regular spells. And she felt the energy welling up, pervading into her body, infiltrating her every tissue even as she was being starved of oxygen.

Her tunneling vision receded, and it took Val a moment to understand why. It wasn't because the natural magic was nourishing her - though it was in a way - but because her body was suddenly much, much stronger. The brother-knights big hands squeezed just as strongly as before, but stopping her blood was like trying to stop a torrent of floodwater. She reached up and gripped her confused attacker by the throat and strangled him right back. He reached up to pull her hands free, but Val went right on squeezing. Things popped and cracked as she crushed him. It wasn't at all pleasant. And when the energy finally ebbed and Val pushed the brother-knight off of her, he was quite dead.

She touched her throat, wincing from the pain, and staggered to her feet. She felt absolutely exhausted, as if when the energy of nature had flowed through her, it had taken every bit of vigor that Val had left. When she tried to call upon her own energy to light the orientation stones, she found herself utterly unable to do so. Instead, she wavered on her feet and collapsed.

+++++

It wasn't unusual for Val to dream of her mother - her birth mother, that is. She had only ever dreamt of Ginn, who was her mom now, once or twice, and not in the same way. It wasn't unusual for Val to dream of her mother and her face, which she could never quite remember when she was awake. But it was unusual to dream of so many others.

She saw a whole procession of them lined up behind her mother - women and men both. Some of them had crowns and some had fancy sceptres, and they all watched her with a sort of stony anticipation. They all had the ashen pallor of somebody who'd recently died, and yet they all watched her.

"Our line does not end here," one of them said - a women with a gleaming golden circlet about eight spots back from her mother. "Watch, child, and learn…"

Suddenly, Val found herself in a raging battle, the screams of men and horses alike all around her, the clash of metal on metal, black bolts whizzing through the air almost too fast to see. The knight riding next to her took a bolt through the eye and died on the spot. Others weren't so lucky.

"How can they reach us?" one of the commanders shouted. "Retreat!"

"No! We must charge! Around me, men! Around me!" Val recognized the voice as the duke's. "Battle-mages, raise your shields!"

Most of the men did manage to rally around him, for all of about five seconds. Then the next salvo of bolts zipped in. Big bolts - larger and more powerful than any Val had seen before. They punched right through armor. Even hardened leather. Val found herself on her back - she'd barely felt the impact - with a big bolt sticking out of her chest. She tried to pull it out, but her arm wouldn't move.

"The king! Sweet Almighty, the king!" somebody shouted. Val didn't know where her standard had gone to, but it didn't seem so important anymore. Suddenly, she was very tired…

+++++

"There she is," a woman's voice said.

Val awoke with a start, sitting up and clutching her head, which still hurt with a pulsing pain. Her whole neck felt like ground meat. She felt like she was still being strangled. Priestess Oestel lifted a healing potion to Val's lips and she sucked it down, the radiating warmth of its magical effects immediately easing her pain. The tightness in her collar released. She blinked back against the morning sunlight.

"Priestess Oestel?" she said. Her voice was hoarse, so she tried again. "Where am I?" That sounded a bit more like her.

"Safe in the clearing, little cousin," the priestess said. She sat next to Val and put a slim arm around her. "We were about to start with the tattoos, but we'll wait for you to get a bite if you'd like to be there for the whole thing?"

Val's stomach grumbled.

Oestel chuckled. "I'll take that as a yes. Cousin Levin, a plate, please?"

"Coming right up, priestess."

Val ate an omelet with wild herbs and some herb bread and drank two cups of the wildflower tea. It was pretty clear that there had been a lot of culinary herbs in yesterday's foraging, but Levin had managed to avoid overpowering everything with the flavor. Somebody had drawn an intricate circle around the whole pool in crushed lime - presumably the greenspear, but maybe Oestel had done it herself. Right… and, for some reason, Oestel was there with them.

"You were here this whole time?" Val asked.

"Except for when we all went out to find you," the priestess said. "We found you curled up in the middle of a fairy circle not far from the three bodies. The forest had already half-devoured them… one of them while he was still alive from the look of it… covering them in thorny-vines and swallowing them under the earth. You must have convinced them that they were enemies unworthy of Sturmhalle."

"Them?"

Oestel nodded, the little bangles in her iron-gray hair glittering in the reflected sunlight. "The Earth. Mother Earth and Father Earth, Atriba and Orriba, one and the same. Marianza told us what happened and we all… well most of us… felt the shift in nature right after. Somebody calling upon the Earth for help and receiving a most vigorous reply."

Val finished her tea. "The Penitent Order doesn't believe in Sturmhalle anyhow," she said. "Of course they don't deserve to go there. Especially not the ones who try to kill kids. May the Earth devour them." She recalled the phrase from her Sudren history.

"Well said, little cousin. Do you feel well enough to join the tattooing ceremony?"

"I'm not going to miss it on account of a few bruises," she said, and she pulled herself to her feet. "What do I do?"

Watch and wait was what Val did. Since she was still recovering and might get more good out of the healing potion she'd just ingested, it didn't make any sense to potentially disrupt that with more magic. So she watched as the others got their tattoos. Each of them stripped naked and got in the pool with each arm resting upon a little altar right on the edge. There, Levin would clean the ceremonial dagger before each use and then Oestel would take the dagger and hold it aloft.

"Gustinia Talencio, do you swear before the gods to use your Gift in good faith? To promote virtue, to assist the powerless, to respect the earth, and to practice compassion upon every living thing?"

"I do," Gus said.

"Then you shall be marked, that all shall see the oath that you have sworn. Will you accept the Mark of the Gifted?"

"I will."

With that, the priestess made a tiny nick upon each of Gus's forearms - barely enough to draw blood.

Val had seen people receiving tattoos before, and this wasn't how it was done. Usually, somebody crouched over you with a needle for hours, pushing intricate (or sometimes less artful) ink designs into your skin. She'd heard it was painful. And yet the Mark of the Gifted was supposed to show both which disciplines you knew and how capable you were with each discipline. A bigger tattoo meant you could wield more of that sort of magic. Apparently, this was how it was done.

Oestel and Levin each wore only a loincloth, whereas everybody else had to strip naked as they got into the pool. Oestel had tattoos covering much of her body, some of them the gems and complex swirls of traditional magecraft or the viny, flowery tangle of natural magic. Others Val couldn't identify. And, as slim and petite as Oestel was and despite her age, she was also incredibly fit, with well-toned muscles flexing precisely as she carried out the ritual. Levin was rangy with wiry muscle - he'd have been legitimately strong if he hadn't been quite so skinny. His tattoos barely reached past his elbows, though he had a third webwork of angles and spines covering about a quarter of his back, too. That was probably for alchemy.

When Oestel nicked Gus's arms, patterns issued forth like living creatures crawling across her skin. It didn't appear to hurt - Gus looked on in fascination as the tangle of vines spread out to cover about half of her forearm and the swirls and gems on her other arm crept all the way up to where Levin had his. That was no surprise.

Some of the students didn't get nature tattoos at all. Marianza, for instance, got nicked but nothing showed up. While everybody with the Gift could learn eventually, some took longer than others. All Beni got was a tiny purple flower for his natural magic tattoo - only twice the width of the little nick it was centered upon. But that was enough - as long as you were marked at all, then the mark would grow with your skill. At least that was what Val came to understand. Finally, it was Val's turn.

She turned her back to shed her clothes, even though all of the other students were already nude and what Oestel and Levin wore didn't cover much more. But she was the smallest one there and was embarrassed about looking like a little kid in front of her classmates. But, since there was no point in hiding it, she sighed, turned to face them, and then hopped into the pool before they could gawk at much.

Despite the chill of the early springtime air, the pool was only a bit cooler than perfectly neutral. She paddled over to the altar, since that was the only swimming that she knew how to do, and rested her arms on the altar. The carved stone was a lot cooler than the pool and it gave her goosebumps. She looked up to Oestel and nodded - she was ready.

"Valkyrie Valicent-Vinzenno, do you swear before the gods to use your Gift in good faith? To promote virtue, to assist the powerless, to respect the earth, and to practice compassion upon every living thing?"

"I swear," she said.

"Then you shall be marked, that all shall see the oath that you have sworn. Will you accept the Mark of the Gifted?"

"Yes."

The nicks from the ceremonial blade barely hurt at all. By the time Val could blink and register the pain, both were done. She watched as the magecraft tattoo swirled across her arm, little tattoo gemstones popping into existence as the array of swirls spread out like an oil slick in turbulent waters. They spread up… up… and stopped just short of where Gus's marks were. Oh well - that was fair. Then she turned to her other arm and gasped.

The vines and flowers were already stretching past her elbow… up to her shoulder… across and over. They covered her little breasts and then started down her belly. They crossed to her other arm and worked their way down. They spread up to her collarbone and slowed. Within a minute, every inch below Val's neck was covered in vines and flowers. You could still see the swirl and gems on her right arm and, somehow, the overlapping patterns didn't make a complete mess of things.

Oestel nearly dropped the ceremonial dagger. "I… well, that's different," she said eventually. "Please note that Cousin Val has been marked by both cuts."

"Right…" Levin said, also a bit bewildered.

Val got the same check marks as everybody else and climbed from the pool, standing next to a shivering Gus until the priestess finished the ceremony with her closing prayer and the retirement of the ceremonial dagger. As they dried off and got dressed, Gus leaned over to her and whispered,

"I'm so jealous!"

And, as she dressed herself and forced her full-body tattoos into hiding with a concealment spell, Val wondered whether this was why her bloodline was so valuable. Why the Pale Order wanted her dead. She figured that was a better guess than most.