“None.”
White lightning seared me.
“Answer my question, Elenderi.”
“I can transform. To a bird. Only in the heights,” I wheezed when I could speak again.
“That is an interesting variation, one we shall perhaps explore one day. Do not attempt a transformation. Warding transformation is one of the first controls laid on the fais. Human nature, being superior to every other form, suffices us. That is not to say that we might one day find a use for exceptions. But experiments may wait. What else?”
“I can understand any language.”
“I already knew that. What other mental controls have you?”
I considered what to say—and he struck again.
“When you hesitate, you are contemplating another of your lies. I will not tolerate lies. You can speak mind to mind I already know, as I am certain you recollect.”
“No. Yes,” I said quickly. “I mean, I did not know I could do that until I took that whistle of Prince Geric’s. I could hear, but I’d never tried sending my thoughts. Then I learned to make a wall inside my head. I have never broken it since.”
“Let us essay that.”
I hunched my shoulders, grimacing as I waited for another blast of pain-magic, but nothing happened. I cracked one eye to find his gaze not on me but on that crystal, in whose center glowed swirling color. When I tried to look at it I felt so dizzy I shut my eyes and hunched even tighter.
He was scrying. He didn’t talk mind to mind the way I did, but he was very adept at scrying, that much I already knew. I could feel from the internal pressure around my thoughts that he was trying to reach past my mind barrier, but that had become such habit it was strong as steel. When he sat back, the sense of a vice squeezing my skull eased.
“We will explore that another time. What else?”
I swallowed, trying to get my voice—and my scattered wits—under control. “There’s that fire spell. You taught me.”
“Excellent. And?”
I cast an illusory replica of that fork-bearded statue with the tripe crown, figuring that was neutral enough. “I call these shimmers.”
“Do you know who this statue represents?”
“No.”
“You will learn,” Dhes-Andis said. “Suffice it to say that he was the first emperor who united this island, the Sveranji, with Djur, wherefrom came my ancestors and half of yours. What is a shimmer? I take it that is idiom for illusion?”
“It’s what I called them when I was small. And that’s all I know.”
“No one has attempted to teach you magic?”
“Yes. But it was no use. I failed at the most elementary spells,” I added, for the first time glad to have been a failure.
But he said, “Of course you failed at mage training. That’s like trying to force a cataract through a reed-straw. I take it that fool of a scribe-mage attempted the traditional studies on you?”
I was caught. Though Aranu Crown had betrayed me, I found myself reluctant to tell Dhes-Andis anything about her court or mages. Just because she had gone from friend to enemy with one contemptuous dismissal, that didn’t make Dhes-Andis my friend.
“Why the reluctance?” Dhes-Andis said, his eyes narrowing. “Ah. Of course. The occasion for your learning the fire spell was your desperate attempt to rescue that idiot, was it not? Was he your first pet, or were you his?”
If I hadn’t still been exerting all my energy to stay upright as I recovered from those two magical shocks I might have blushed all the way to my ears. I was mostly relieved that he’d answered his own question, thereby saving me from having to talk about the Mage Council, or Erev-li-Erval.
Or who Hlanan really was. ‘Pet’ indeed.
He smiled wryly. “Our first forays into that aspect of life are almost always with negligible people, but it’s like anything else: one learns discernment as well as skill. That aside, anyone but an idiot would know that you must be trained as Hrethan are trained. So. I already know that you are capable of mastering high level spells, but as yet I have seen little evidence you have the discipline for control.” He paused, studying me, and I tried to remember my Imperial Princess mask.
If he thought I’d protest that comment about discipline, well, he could wait forever.
“I ought to have foreseen this wrinkle,” he said finally. “When we meet next, you will know whom that statue represents. At sunset seconde your cousins will meet you in the Chamber of Celestial Contemplation; it is time for your introduction to the Chosen, among whom number those of your principal family connections in residence here.”
Somewhere in the distance a gentle bell toned, silvery and sweet. All three cats lifted their heads, looking off in one direction. I did, too, but saw nothing.
Dhes-Andis flicked the cat on the chair arm. “Go on.”
The cats bounded to the floor, soft as snow and sinuous as water, vanishing among the trees somewhere. Only then I noticed I could not see the walls of the room. They were obscured by the trees, and maybe magic, as I could not bring anything beyond the trees into focus.
I realized belatedly that he had been talking to me, not the cats, and I got up, glad to get away, but sensed something wrong. My fur ruffled up my arm then I remembered: Bow.
I bowed, my knees still watery, and tottered away as fast as I could. A servant appeared to open the door for me. As soon as it shut I was alone. I got myself well away from line-of-sight of that chamber then sank down onto the marble toes of the triple-crowned empress, wrapped my arms around my legs and my tail around my arms and breathed until the shuddering stopped.
Stupid, I thought. Idiot. I knew what he was capable of. Why did I think this interview would be so easy?
Because I wasn’t in a dungeon, of course. It seemed to amuse him to give me the outer trappings of power while making it clear that I had no power whatsoever.
Now what?
Cousins. I had no idea what to do about cousins. Other people had cousins. I did not know where to begin even thinking about the concept of a family.
A man’s voice echoed down the marble halls. Was he on the prowl?
I got up and fled in the opposite direction, avoiding my room with Kal and the others always lurking to wait on me hand and foot. Watching.
I was not conscious of any destination but somehow I fetched up at the music room, finding it deserted as before. I drifted in, soothed by that profound silence.
I made straight for the harp and reached for the middle note called True, and plucked it softly. The metal hummed, welling a rich shimmering sound that resonated sweetly through my still-throbbing nerves. Oh.
I spread my fingers to pluck its triad. All I’d managed to learn had been chord triads in what they called simple mode: first note of the chord its key. One-two-three, and I breathed deeply as soothing sound caressed my ears and reached all through me, cooling as rain after the scorch of a fire.
A carved bench sat beside the harp, with a fine, inviting cushion. I sat down and carefully toed the pedal so that the harp sat back against my knee and shoulder. As soon as I touched the strings, there was that sweet sensation again flowing through me in healing waves, and though my fingering on those simple practice harps in Erev-li-Erval had always been fumbling, somehow my fingers on this great, complicated harp knew their way as if guided—
I snatched my fingers away, instantly suspicious. I trusted nothing in this place, including a harp that might have magic on it to lure me in by making me feel good. For a time I sat there listening to my own heavy breathing as my tail swept this way and that. The soothing sense had faded, leaving . . . nothing.
No mysterious force compelled me. Nothing poked at my mental steel wall.
I half-rose, then sat down again. This time I tried with one finger. No mysterious magic flowed. I tried two fingers, then three, then five, and worked through the warm-up that Thianra had taught me. The sound shimmered around me like light on water. I could pull my fingers away and nothing happen
ed beyond the ease with which I plucked chords.
Maybe the magic was inherent in the harp. If that was so it might be harmless, something beautiful that lazy Chosen could play and sound good. Comforted by that thought, I fingered my way through a couple of the simple songs I’d been taught.
It actually sounded good! Maybe this was the difference between indifferent practice instruments and great ones, I thought as I ran my fingers over the strings, reveling in the rich harmonies. Then—I was not really thinking—my fingers began to pick out another melody, familiar and yet not. I hate to use the word ‘haunting’ because no ghosts howled around me or clanked chains, but the beauty was so oddly familiar, stirring deep feelings that I did not quite trust.
I yanked my hands away and wrung them as if some kind of slimy magic clung to them. Then I got up from the bench, the harp falling back into position with a thump and a discordant shimmer of sound.
One step, two, my shoulder blades crawling as I retreated.
When I got outside, I felt stupid. Nothing had happened to me. No evil enchantments lurked to ensnare me. It was just a music room.
Why should I scare myself with imaginings? I had enough real threat to face, like the prospect of the next session with Emperor Jardis Dhes-Andis.
Time for information.
I made my way back to the Princess Elenderi suite and braced myself for another dose of bowing and Imperial Princessing. When Kal came out of the servants’ alcove I told him what Dhes-Andis had said.
“How many cousins are there?” I asked. “I only saw two in that basket thing.”
He began to tell me but I was soon lost in the recitation of names. “Never mind,” I said. “I think I’ll do better when I see faces to put to the names.”
Kal only bowed—as usual—but the deliberation of that bow made me wonder what I was missing.
And that reignited the sense of threat.
EIGHTEEN
Time wound inexorably on until one of the servants showed me the way to this new chamber, located on the floor beneath the one I’d explored. I’d faltered at the stairs, remembering that warning burn, but this time nothing happened. So the ward had been lifted at the stairs because I was expected to descend. That seemed evidence of a close watch kept on my movements, a thought that gave me that crawling sensation between my shoulder blades.
Down I went, finding even bigger rooms, with the vaulted ceilings and vast perimeters and marble and gilt and beautiful art, chambers designed to impress. Hlanan and Thianra had called the equivalent in Aranu Crown’s palace state rooms. Here the marble was not smoothed into columns or pilasters, but had been carved into complicated tracery, alternating with walls of espaliered almond trees, many rooms under domes of glass. Some rooms were six sided, in fact most, though a lot of them had two parallel long walls that suggested ballrooms to me, a dais set in the alcove at the far end.
The one thing I never saw in any of these was refreshments. Court in Erev-li-Erval could be duller than watching ice melt, but you could always count on superlative feeds. Thianra had told me that some of the poorer nobles depended on courtly entertainments for their daily meals.
This Chamber of Celestial Contemplation sported a painted night sky with stars added by magic so that they twinkled like the real thing. Magic moved the moons slowly, I noticed as the formal reception ground on with the speed of a glacier, making me wonder why they didn’t simply build a gigantic glass dome and put down some mats so they could look up at the sky itself?
But I wasn’t there to study the summer sky during winter. Seated on a low dais in one of those lily-petal chairs, I faced a semi-circle of the Dhes-Andis Chosen and they faced me.
Good things? Dhes-Andis was not there. And they were very pretty to look at. In fact I was considerably surprised to discover that Sveran Djur’s nobles in their shimmer silks looked somehow more stylish and graceful than Erev-li-Erval’s courtiers, who were not exactly lumbering ruffians in their velvet and lace.
Bad things? They looked exactly alike with their glossy black hair swooping back over the ears except for two long locks hanging down in front to dangle over those long tasseled stoles. These locks were either braided or decorated with gems (or both), and all wore the stylized broad shoulders and the paneled over-robes that suggested threes. They all wore thin gold bands on their brows that dipped in front, echoing the fais—most with tiny gems glittering against their brows.
“We are honored to welcome you at long last to your home, Your Imperial Serenity,” said the tallest and handsomest of the men.
At least he said ‘you,’ I thought.
He began with himself—Darus—and turned to his right to introduce Amney, a beautiful young woman with a heart-shaped face and a striking outfit of black underneath, white over it, embroidered with holly.
“We welcome Your Imperial Serenity to Sveran Djur,” she said in a sweet singsong.
“I thank you for your welcome, Most Noble,” I said.
From there Darus progressed so swiftly that the flow of names and titles streamed past before I could commit either names or faces to memory. But the way he spoke gave me a pattern to copy and I got what little amusement I could in mimicking their slow, smooth speech as I thanked each one.
When the introduction finally ended a century later, Darus said in his smooth, precise, musical voice (with about as much warmth as one of the icicles hanging outside the lancet windows), “We celebrate the welcome news that you have at last been found and brought home to us again, Your Imperial Serenity. Where have you dwelt?”
“In the eastern continent, Most Noble,” I replied.
“From whom did you learn in that faraway place, Your Imperial Serenity?” one of the females asked.
“Many were my tutors, Most Noble,” I replied in her exact tone.
They had to know that I’d been captured, that I’d been a thief on the run. Didn’t they? If they wanted me to admit that I was uncivilized and ignorant they were going to wait as long as this interminable ritual seemed to be lasting. So I tried to deflect them with questions of my own: Where did they hail from (not a single name I recognized), was the weather typical for the season (I had no idea what the weather outside even was).
I’d already observed in Erev-li-Erval that courtly behavior meant stylized behavior, a control of voice and movement that reminded me of dancers on stage. Only not nearly as interesting to watch, which is how I came to be distracted by the ceiling until I began to wonder if they were being deliberately boring.
In desperation I distracted myself by oh-so-slowly lifting my head and spine hair to float around me, and my tail to curl and uncurl at my knee on one side. Two, then three, then five of them watched, their eyes following the undulations as if they, too, struggled to stay awake.
By the end of that reception I hadn’t learned much more than I had known going in. We covered every exasperating aspect of snow and cold until at last one of the Chosen women who had been silent spoke up. “Might Your Imperial Serenity honor us with any questions? We should take great delight in introducing you to the world you were denied so long.”
“Those basket things drawn by big brown gryphs,” I said. “I would like very much to see one again.”
I said it mostly to spark them, possibly find out if the two women I’d seen numbered among these here—and why they’d come.
A slight stir rustled among their silks. Quick looks darted before eyelids lowered, and that same woman (I noted that her hair had red highlights, even shades of very dark brown) said in a tone that almost revealed a hint of a speck of a modicum of emotion, “I trust you will honor us with your gracious pardon for disturbing your reflections, Your Imperial Serenity. If guilt is attributed, it must be acknowledged by myself and my sister, the Noble Ingras.” A stylized gesture palm up toward the young woman sitting next to her.
“It did not disturb me at all, Most Noble,” I said.
Ingras then spoke up, her voice higher. “In which case the honor woul
d be mine and the Noble Pelan’s if Your Imperial Serenity wished to view Icecrest from a royal float.”
Icecrest. Hadn’t someone at Erev-li-Erval referred once to Dhes-Andis’s fortress on Ice Mountain? Erev-li-Erval . . . Hlanan.
I had to stop thinking about him. That part of my life was done.
That thought hurt so much I was glad when a distant bell chimed, and everyone looked at me expectantly. Experimentally I rose, and saw a subtle relief that the younger ones couldn’t quite hide as they rose as a group and performed a formal bow.
I bowed to them, remembering the degree for Most Nobles. They bowed back in a manner that made it clear they expected me to leave first, so I did.
I was tired and nervy, looking forward to rest, but when I went to bed in my silken hammock I tumbled into anxious dreams of being lost in vast, echoing caverns, utterly alone as I tried to find the faint, familiar melody that haunted me.
I began to run in the dreams, panting with effort as I chased the music. I knew that song, it had once meant comfort and joy. It had had words, though I understood them not . . . I jerked awake, my heart thundering against my ribs, my mouth dry as I gasped for breath.
“Vandarus Andis,” I whispered. I had not found out who he was!
Terror at what would await me if the Summons of Doom arrived in the morning and I was still ignorant drove me out of the hammock, though it was still dark.
I stumbled out of the room.
Someone, poor soul, obviously suffered the grim duty of sitting all night in that alcove, as immediately a woman said softly, “Does the Imperial Princess require anything?”
“Yes,” I said, as her fingers slipped up to her fais and light sprang into being in the crystal globes supported in the silver holders along the walls. “How do I find out who Vandarus Andis was?”
Her eyes widened, then she hid her face in the usual bow. “He was the first great Andis emperor,” she murmured, “honor be to his name. Much has been written about him in the royal archive.”