Miss Moony would like to dedicate this chapter to maliaphire for being the first reviewer.
Miss Moony would also like to thank On top of cloud 9, bellachaos, Kaaera, moon,gates,slaying, epobbp and winky-wink for reviewing.
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Chapter 19
It wasn't until Midwinter that the Queen fell ill. Thom and Duke Baird were both called in to try to heal her, and, naturally, Alanna insisted on helping. Holding her threaded coal necklace tightly as she prayed to the Goddess for Queen Lianne's recovery, she was startled to see, when she opened her eyes, that the Queen was coated in a sheet of deep orange fire.
Jerking backwards in alarm, she released the coal and blinked a few times. The fire was gone.
Had she just imagined it? Alanna didn't think so. And she definitely knew she'd seen that shade of Gift-fire before.
'I'm afraid that I won't be able to help, Your Majesty,' Duke Baird said regretfully to the King, shaking his head. 'She seems to have become resistant to magical healing, though I don't know how.'
Alanna frowned. So did Thom. King Roald and Prince Jonathan looked as if they were about to cry. Thankfully, the two monarchs refrained from doing so, and spared the twins a lot of awkwardness in the process.
'What is the magic doing?' Alanna asked the Duke, and he looked at her, startled.
'Magic, Lady Alanna?' he asked in bafflement.
'I… er… nothing,' she said, blushing. 'I can't see it anymore, anyway. I was probably just seeing things.'
The King, the Prince, the Duke and her brother all regarded her suspiciously. 'What did you see, Lady Alanna?' King Roald asked insistently.
Alanna frowned. 'It,' she said haltingly, 'it looked liked a sheet of orange fire.'
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It was a while before Alanna realised where she'd seen that particular shade of orange fire before, but by that time, it was too late to do anything about it. And no one was likely to believe her anyway, so the knowledge of Duke Roger's murder of Queen Lianne stayed firmly within her own small circle – Alanna herself, Linnet, Thom, Alex and George.
The thief was proving to be a useful ally, despite Alex's misgivings. So far, he had managed to pass several tidbits of useful information to Alanna via Stefan the hostler, from his network of spies which spanned through several countries. Tusaine had backed down from the idea of winning back the Drell valley, but they were still very resentful of Tortall's occupation of the area; Scanra was a hostile as ever; Tyra and Galla, however, were firm members of the alliance, and his spies couldn't get anywhere near the Bazhir tribes, and those that did were usually never heard from again.
It was the last bit of information that Alanna found the most intriguing, and she silently vowed to herself to someday visit the Great Southern Desert, and the Bazhir city of Persopolis.
'You're saying the country is in the hands of Prince Jonathan?' Alanna asked her godsbrother when he stopped by to visit her after a meeting with the Prince and his other friends.
Alex nodded, and Alanna shook her head. The King was taking his wife's death even harder than Alanna had expected, and that, she knew, was something she ought to worry about.