Chime entered the cottage with her. Iris left her boots at the door, feeling as if she had lost the freedom of the outdoors. She didn’t know why the cottage stifled her; it was lovely inside. Sunlight filtered through colored windows of many shapes: triangles, diamonds, hexagons, beveled squares, and others. They made graceful patterns around larger round windows with clear panes. Sunshine slanted through the glass, warming the well-worn tables and chairs, and vases full of colorful shape-blossoms brightened the room even more.
Della No-Cozen bustled in from the kitchen and waved her hands at the girls. “Sit yourselves down, you two. What is all this playing about, eh? We have lessons.”
Iris settled at a table beside a yellow window and tried to look contrite. She doubted she succeeded, judging by the way Della frowned at her.
“Well then,” the mage mistress said tartly. “Don’t you look healthy today.”
A flush spread in Iris’s face. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Very healthy,” Della grumbled. “What with all the fresh air you get, out who-knows-where instead of studying.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Iris said, mortified.
“Aye, ma’am?” Della crossed her arms. “I would rather hear, ‘Aye, Mistress No-Cozen, I will be on time from now on.’”
“Aye, ma’am. I mean, I willna be late, Mage Mistress.” Iris winced, knowing her voice lilted even more when she was nervous.
Della said humph and bustled off, probably to retrieve their class materials from her office.
Sitting at the table, Chime brushed an invisible speck of dirt off her sleeve. Then she smiled sweetly at Iris. “Yes, let us proceed, now that everyone is here.”
“I didna come that late,” Iris grumbled.
“Did I say that?” Chime asked, all innocence.
“Well then, is’n that what you meant?”
“Perhaps we have a language difficulty.”
“Nay, Chime, I donna have a language difficulty.” Iris felt her face heat as her accent thickened.
“I’m sure you can’t help it,” Chime murmured.
Iris poked her finger into the petals of a green box-blossom in the vase. “An’ I’m sure you canna help but notice, aye?”
“Language, like appearance, is an art form,” Chime explained. “Some people have the gift for its graceful expression. Others don’t. It isn’t their fault.”
Exasperated, Iris resisted the urge to snap the box-blossom. Chime, she decided, had been sorely misnamed. “I swear, I do truly think sometimes you clang.”
Chime blinked. “Clang?”
“You know the word?”
“Of course.” Chime hesitated. “Don’t bells clang?”
“Aye, they do certainly.”
Chime looked bewildered. “But I’m not a bell.”
Iris held back her sigh. It was difficult to make a witty comeback with someone who couldn’t figure out what the comeback meant. “It is’n important.”
“Your speech is so quaint,” Chime said.
Patience, Iris thought. Be serene. She felt more like pouring the shape-blossoms out of the vase onto Chime’s head. But she shouldn’t think such thoughts about the future queen. Really.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Chime asked.
“Smiling?” Hai! She had to stop this. Antagonizing Chime would only lead to repercussions from Muller. Iris made a valiant effort to be polite. “I was thinking you look radiant this morning.” That was certainly true. Chime was maddeningly beautiful even just after she woke up.
“Oh, well, in that case.” Chime smiled. “Of course.”
“And humble,” Iris added under her breath.
“What did you say?” Chime asked, friendly now.
“Uh…bumble.” Iris tried to think of a way out of the insult she had almost given. “Bumblebees.”
Chime looked bewildered. “Bees?”
“They are, uh, sunny and bright. Like you.”
“Oh.” Chime gave her a confused smile. “Thank you.”
Della came back before Iris could cram her foot any further down her own throat. The teacher opened a scroll on the table before them. “Here.”
The scroll delighted Iris. Inked in bright colors, with finely drawn vines curling around the edges, it showed the shapes that mages used to focus spells. For all that Iris had yet to succeed with even a simple spell, she felt the power in those beautiful forms.
“We will start with the basics.” Della lowered her plump self into a chair. “Iris, how do we use the shapes?”
The easy question relieved Iris. “They focus our gifts. The more powerful the shape, the better it concentrates a mage’s power.” She paused, but the answer felt incomplete. “If a mage tries to focus through a shape too powerful for her ability, her spell will dissipate.”
“Good.” Della turned to Chime. “And what determines the power of a shape?”
Chime hesitated. “The, uh…number of its sides?”
Ach, everyone knows that, Iris thought. Then she reminded herself she was being serene toward Chime.
Della, however, scowled. “And?”
Chime blinked. “Ma’am?”
“How do the number of sides give a mage power?”
“The more sides a shape has, the greater its power?”
“The shape itself has no power,” Della reminded her.
“Oh. Well, yes. The mage has the power.”
“Go on.”
“The shapes focus her power?”
“All right. How?”
After a moment Chime said, “I don’t know.”
Della sighed. “Try, Chime. Take your time.”
Iris knew Della wanted Chime to describe what a mage could do with her power. Although Chime should have known, Iris sympathized with her confusion. If they could already use shapes to focus their power, they wouldn’t need to be here.
Iris touched a glimmering silver triangle on the scroll. She traced her finger over the shapes in order of increasing power: squares, diamonds, pentagons, hexagons and more, the number of sides increasing until the shape resembled a circle. With an infinite number of sides, it became a circle, the most perfect flat shape. But those weren’t the forms that captivated Iris. She loved three-dimensional shapes: pyramids, boxes, octahedrons and so on, their forms becoming rounder as their number of sides increased, until they resembled faceted balls. With an infinite number of sides, a shape became the most perfect form of all: a sphere. Only the most powerful of all mages could focus through such a shape.
Della was watching Iris now. “Tell me what you see in the shapes.”
Frustration welled within her. “To what purpose? I canna use them for even the simplest spell.”
“You will,” Della said. “You have the talent.”
Iris couldn’t fathom why Della believed such a thing. Iris had never managed to foc
us power through any shape, not even flat triangles made from red sticks.
Excitement sparked in Chime’s voice. “Della, I used a ten-sided shape in my exercises this morning, a blocky ball like my little brother plays with.”
Della’s expression softened. “I’m not surprised. I’m sure you can go even higher, maybe to twenty sides.”
Chime’s gaze widened. “That would be almost a sphere.”
Iris smiled, caught by Chime’s excitement despite herself. “Well then, and sure it is.” She tapped a picture on the scroll, a faceted sphere with many faces. “This is your mage shape, Chime.” The other girl beamed at her.
“Let’s try.” Della went to a cabinet by the wall, one with shape-blossom vines engraved on its doors. She opened it to reveal shelves of solid objects. From one shelf, she took a polished jade ball with faceted sides; from another, she took a pearly disk, a lower level shape than the ball, but highest among the two-dimensional forms. Returning to the table, she set the ball in front of Chime and the disk in front of Iris. Then she settled in her chair.
“So.” Della tapped the faceted ball. “Chime, try a ruby spell.”
Chime squinted at the ball, as if it could reveal the spell she should have memorized. Iris wished she could help. It seemed unfair Chime had so much trouble learning, given the effort she put into her studies. Iris had to respect her for that; Iris could barely make herself stay indoors, let alone study. She often thought about doing her studies, but no matter how earnest her intentions, she usually ended up wandering in the woods instead.
The universe had no justice. Chime had great mage gifts and the will to study, but she struggled to learn the simplest uses of her power. Iris learned easily, but she had neither the power to perform the spells nor the will to apply herself. If she and Chime could have combined their strengths, together they might have become the student Della wished.
Even if Iris couldn’t do spells, though, they fascinated her. They were a rainbow: red spells created light, orange soothed physical pain, yellow eased sorrow, green revealed the emotions of others, blue healed physical injuries and indigo healed emotional injuries. A mage worked spells at her color and below. Most could do red and orange. It was more difficult to soothe emotional rather than physical pain, and it took a strong mage to do yellow spells. Green mages were rare; feeling emotions was harder than easing them, because a mage could soothe the pain of another person without actually experiencing it. Blue mages were almost unheard of; only the strongest could heal injuries, treating the source of the pain rather than just the symptoms.
No indigo mages existed. How did you cure grief, anguish or misery? Only time could truly heal such wounds. Legend claimed the royal line of Aronsdale, the House of Dawnfield, had once produced indigos, but the historians had never found reliable records of any such mages.
In all Aronsdale, Iris knew of only two mages who had the strength to call on three-dimensional forms—Chime and Della. Right now Chime was squinting at her blocky globe. When she murmured, rosy light flickered in the ball.
“You can do better,” Della prodded.
A flush stained Chime’s delicate cheeks. As her forehead furrowed, the light within the sphere flared and turned green. A sense of well-being spread through Iris, and she no longer felt so painfully homesick. Her crushing loneliness eased for the first time since she had come to Suncroft.
Chime smiled angelically at Della. “You’re frustrated with Iris. You worry she will never achieve her potential.”
Iris’s good mood crashed down. Only Chime would show her ability to do green spells by speaking Della’s disappointment in another student.
“Well then.” Iris’s voice caught. Dismayed to have her failure made so obvious, she rose to her feet. “And it be a pity for us all.”
Then she escaped from the cottage.
Iris ran through the woods. She hadn’t stopped to put on her boots, but it made no difference if someone saw her tearing about in stockings and disapproved. She wouldn’t be at Suncroft much longer. Chime had only spoken what they all knew: Della had erred. The talent she believed she had seen in Iris was no more than a ghost that didn’t really exist, like drifting mist that, for a moment, seemed to take form but then dissipated.
She came out on a bluff above a valley. To her right, Castle Suncroft stood on its hill, golden in the sunlight. The nearby village of Crofts Vale nestled in the valley, pretty houses with thatched roofs. Vines bloomed everywhere, with rosy pyramid blossoms, green and blue box-buds, orange ring-flowers and violet orbs. They climbed trees, spilled down trellises and brightened gardens.
Iris knelt in the grass and bowed her head. A tear ran down her face.
“What is this?” a voice said. “We’ve hardly started the lesson and already you are leaving.”
Iris looked around. Della stood a few paces away, her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.
“Hai, Della, admit the truth.” Iris rose wearily to her feet. “I donna have it in me to be a mage.”
Della came over to her. “Is that so?”
“Aye, that be so.”
“So now you think you can take my place?”
“Well, sure as the sun shines, I would never be thinking such a thing.”
“No?”
“No, ma’am.”
Della glowered. “I am the one who decides if you have what it takes to study with me, young woman.”
“But I canna—”
“Pah.” Della motioned around them, taking in the sky and the distant hazy mountains. “You see all this?”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“What is it?”
“Aronsdale.”
“Aronsdale, Hairs-in-Dale, that isn’t what I meant.”
Iris gazed over the enchanting panorama and breathed in the crisp, pure air. “It is a place of beauty and serenity.”
“Serenity, pah. Aronsdale is a mess.”
“It is?”
“It will be, after Prince Muller’s coronation.”
“Della!”
“Well, it’s true.”
“You shouldna speak of His Highness so.”
Della exhaled tiredly. “Then who will? He doesn’t want the throne.”
Knowing Della loved the prince as if he were her own nephew, Iris understood what it took for her to make such an admission. “He is the heir.”
Della’s voice quieted. “I speak to you privately, Iris, as one of the king’s advisors. We have delayed the coronation because if we push Muller, he may refuse the crown.”
“But then who will be king?”
“We don’t know. Probably another of his advisors, perhaps Brant Firestoke.”
Iris didn’t doubt Lord Firestoke would make a good ruler. But Aronsdale needed the royal family; the House of Dawnfield was the symbolic heart of the country. Their loss would devastate the people. “Canna Chime reassure Muller? She is well an’ sure a green mage, Della. I felt it this afternoon.”
“She does have great gifts.” Della hesitated. “But one must also know how to use such gifts.”
“It is only that the spells are new. She will lea
rn.”
Della sighed. “You are kind, especially given how she speaks to you.”
Iris hadn’t realized Della saw the tension between her two young charges. “I think it frustrates her to learn the spells so slow. When her words bite, it is only her fear speaking. She has a good spirit.”
“Now you sound like a green mage.”
“It is only common sense, no feeling of emotions.”
“You think so? I see the power in you.”
Iris answered dourly. “You are the only one who does.”
“Well, of course.” Della actually smiled. “Why do you think I am mage mistress here? It is one of my best skills, to see gifts in others.” Her smile faded. “I saw it even in Prince Jarid, the boy who died in the carriage crash.”
“A boy mage? Nay, it is impossible.”
“Improbable, but not impossible. History tells of a few. In the Dawnfield line, they seem to skip every other generation. And Jarid’s mother, Lady Sky, was one of the strongest shape-mages Aronsdale has known.” Della’s mood turned pensive. “She and Prince Jarid had so much promise.”
Iris sensed her grief. “Their deaths were a great sorrow.”
“Aye, all of them.” Della took a moment before she continued. “After King Daron lost his son, Prince Aron, his advisors urged him to remarry and sire another heir. But he had never stopped mourning his first wife, who had died many years before. And he refused to see the truth about Muller, his nephew, that the boy had neither the interest nor aptitude for the title.” She sighed. “If Daron had a fault, it was that he loved his family too much to acknowledge their flaws.”
Even now, three turnings of the moon since Daron had died, Iris found it hard to accept he was no longer with them. “He was a good king.”
“He was.” Della spoke quietly. “Aronsdale is a small realm. We don’t have much else to live on besides farming. The land can offer a good life, yes, but during drought or famine, we have few resources to fall back on.”