The Triune Stones: Ilydearta

In any series, getting to know the characters is key. Will the reads like them, hate them? Will they be real? In the Triune Stones series, the three stones play as big a part as almost any character so I thought an introduction might be in order

In Journey of Awakening, we are introduced to Ilydearta.

In Siobani, the language of the Dawn Children, Ilydearta means Doorway, or Waymaker.  From the first draft to the last, it didn’t change much in appearance:

With her eyes closed and life swirling around her, she pictured the stone in the necklace. Dark blue and swathed in silver filigree, the jewel was beautiful and as hard as it was to explain, she understood that it was now part of her, or who she was becoming. Who am I becoming? A chill of fear shot up her spine.

Sara’s grandfather gives her the stone on her birthday, but it is Sara’s father who originally found it. This is Sara relating the story to Maelys. 

“My father, Arles, was a peddler. My grandfather lived up north. He was a warrior who had hung up his sword in favor of a plow. One day, my father came home with a tale almost too strange to be believed. He had been traveling through an empty land of rolling hills. The sun had begun to set when he came upon two men digging in a field. It didn’t take him long to guess they were grave robbers. He ran them off, but they had already broken into a barrow. He placed everything back in the dark hole on top of the skeleton until he came to a box. He told my grandfather the box was covered with strange markings he didn’t understand, yet he recognized the quality of the workmanship. But that’s not what caught his attention. Although everything else in the grave had suffered the ravages of time, the box looked new. My father thought that it might have belonged to one of the robbers but knew he’d never see them again and if it was theirs, it was probably stolen. He took the box back to his cart and placed it on the seat next to him.” Sara paused, almost hearing her grandfather’s rich timbre as he had related the story.

“That night, when my father made camp, he opened the box. Inside he found a pendant on a long silver chain. When he took it out, the box crumbled into dust. There wasn’t any sign of aging on the necklace. It appeared as it does now.” She lifted the pendant. “For reasons even my father didn’t understand, he placed it around his neck, hiding it under his tunic. He said he felt odd but went on his way and shortly after, met my mother. She had been traveling with her family.”

The fire brightened and a faint blue flame tiptoed across the blaze like a butterfly over ripe wheat. Sara cleared her throat. “He fell in love as soon as he saw her. Grandfather said he didn’t doubt it because he could see the love in my father’s eyes. How he wooed my mother, I don’t know, but he did. She left her family and all she knew to follow him. Grandfather said he asked her about it and she’d told him that in my father, she found her home and her family. She would have followed him anywhere.”

Sara paused. “My father was divided. He still wanted to be a peddler, but didn’t want to expose my mother to that lifestyle. She wouldn’t be swayed. When they left, she was pregnant with me. She died in childbirth.” It was a story she’d known her entire life, but that never ceased to fill her with longing. What would it have been like had they lived? To know a mother’s touch? A father’s love? She loved her grandfather but theirs had been a solitary existence.

Maelys’s dark eyes gleamed but she remained quiet.

“The next time my grandfather saw him, my father had been wounded by bandits. Grandfather treated the injury the best he could but it was too late, and my father died.”

“Is that why your grandfather taught you Shi’ia and the healing arts? To defend yourself?” Maelys asked.

“You know I practice Shi’ia?”

Maelys’s gaze didn’t waver. “I have eyes.”

Sara shook her head. Her dark braid moved against her back. “I asked him that same question. He said he only sought to prepare me, but that I had a different destiny than my father. He said…” Sara swallowed. “He said my father told him that he may have possessed the stone, but he was not a keeper, merely a vehicle to get the necklace to me. He knew it as soon as I was born. He told my grandfather to keep me safe. To prepare me.” She met Maelys’s cool gaze. “My grandfather saved the stone for me. Until I was ready.” Tears pricked her eyes. I’m ready, Grandfather. How wrong she’d been. Sara gazed at the stone, surprised by the weariness that now weighed down her body.

For the story of how the stone was left in the grave, you will have to read Journey of the Wanderer.

Ilydearta is called the Waymaker because it can make a way where none seems possible. Sara first uses it without conscious knowledge. It is how she survived her boat capsizing. It is how she found Maelys, one of the few people who could teach of her Teann, and the stone. She needed these things to happen and the stone found a way.

It does not change matter or our physical existence in any way, but it opens the bearer’s eyes to possibilities. 

In Journey of Dominion, when it was time to attack the castle, she was able to see where the fortifications were weak and direct the siege engines accordingly.

This is the stone you’d want if you had to walk across a minefield. To observers, she’d appear very, very lucky. 

And you may be lucky too. Enter this contest for a chance to win your own Ilydearta. 

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