Iris’s mood dimmed. “I often saw such in my village.”
“We need a strong king who can guide Aronsdale.” She paused. “We have Muller.”
“Aye.” Iris thought it best to say no more.
“He needs capable advisors, people with intelligence, compassion and foresight.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “Someday you could be one of those advisors. You have both the strength of character and the mage power.” Softly she said, “Don’t give up now.”
Iris felt as if she were breaking inside. “I canna pretend to gifts I donna have.”
“The power is there.” Della made a frustrated noise. “I just don’t know how to help you find it.”
Iris indicated the woods that spilled down the hills around them. “This is the magic—trees, sky, flowers.”
Della’s expression turned thoughtful. “The harder I push to make you study, the more you want to come out here.”
“I donna mean disrespect, ma’am.”
“I know, Iris.” Della considered her. “It’s as if your studies drive you to seek the outdoors.”
“It does feel that way,” Iris admitted.
“Do you have a special place here, one that makes you feel even closer to the land?”
Iris hesitated to reveal her secrets. But in her own gruff way, Della had mothered her this past year, trying to ease Iris’s loneliness, to provide her with a home in the cottage, more than just a place to live. Iris felt she had given back so little, no hint of the gifts Della strove to awaken.
“I have a place where I go to be alone,” Iris offered.
“Will you take me there?”
Softly Iris said, “Aye.”
Trees and ferns enclosed the glade, curving around on all sides and overhead, hiding this secret hollow from the rest of the woods. A stream flowed off a stone ledge and fell sparkling into a pool. Shape-vines threaded the trees and draped the falls.
Iris sunk into the soft grass by the water. “I come here whenever I can.”
Della turned in a circle. “It is lovely.”
“It soothes.”
“Don’t you see what it is?”
“What do you mean?”
Della’s voice gentled. “Look at the shape.”
For the first time, Iris took in the form of the hollow rather than its beauty. “Hai! I’ll be a frog in a fig. It’s a sphere!”
Della chuckled. “In a fig, eh?” She settled next to Iris. “I have been through these woods many times and never seen this place.”
“It’s always been here.”
“I recognize the waterfall and some trees. But a sphere? It wasn’t like this before. You have changed it.”
“Nay, Della. How could I?”
“Perhaps the plants respond to your mage power.”
Iris didn’t see how such could happen. And yet…each time she visited this hollow, it soothed her more than the last, giving her peace that eluded her elsewhere. Could she have somehow been changing the shape? “It seems impossible.”
Della’s eyes lit up. “Iris!”
“Aye?”
“Make a spell here.”
“Why?”
“Maybe you can do here what you can’t do in the cottage.”
Iris squinted at her. “That is an odd idea.”
“An odd idea may be what you need.”
“I have no shape to focus my power.”
“But you do.” Della indicated the hollow.
Iris flushed. “Well then, sure, it be a sphere, too much for me.”
“Try.”
“I canna do it.”
Kindly, Della said, “You won’t know unless you try.”
Iris feared to try, lest she fail yet again. But if she never took chances, she might as well live her life in a hole. She breathed deeply, centering herself, thinking of the round hollow. The waterfall shimmered with rainbows and blossoms hung from the vines, all colors, like mage spells—
Red.
Orange.
Yellow.
Green.
Blue.
Indigo—
With a great surge of power, her mind opened.
2
Jarid
Darkness and silence filled his life.
Jarid was sitting in his favorite spot, a corner of his room. He preferred the floor, where he couldn’t fall. Blind and deaf, he lived in an isolation eased only by familiarity with his surroundings. Stone, his foster father, had long ago stopped trying to make him use furniture; after Jarid had grown larger than Stone, he had simply refused to move when Stone tried to put him in a chair.
Today, he imagined shapes in his mind, beautiful spheres, glimmering and vibrant. Over the years they had helped him focus on Stone, until now he could sense his foster father’s every mood. Lately, Stone worried that Jarid would become so immersed in his meditations, he would forget to eat.
Jarid sighed without sound. Meditation was his escape. These past fourteen years, he had neither seen nor heard, and he had never spoken. He knew about the rare visitors to the cabin only because their emotions differed from Stone’s. His foster father loved him; others found him strange and disturbing. Mercifully, almost no one visited. He and Stone lived alone, cut off from the world, never communicating with it. From Stone’s mind, Jarid knew he had no idea his foster son was heir to Aronsdale. Jarid wanted it that way. He strove to forget who he had been, because of what he had become. Never would he be king.
A vibration came through the floor, the tread of Stone’s feet. The aroma of meat tickled Jarid’s nose. He had distant memories of eating steaks from gold platters, but he wondered now if his recollections of loving parents and a grandfather who ruled as king were no more than a fantasy he created to fill the void of his life.
Jarid concentrated on the air currents, feeling them change against his face. He caught that blend of pine, wood smoke and sweat smells that defined his foster father. He thought Stone was kneeling in front of him; sure enough, someone took his hands and gave him a plate. Jarid smelled the meal so clearly, he could almost taste the meat, gravy and vegetables. He accepted the rough plate, but only to calm Stone. After his father left, Jarid set the plate on the floor. Then he sat enjoying the sunlight on his face. On these rare bright days, Stone opened the curtains, knowing his son enjoyed the warmth.
Eventually the sun moved on in its journey across the sky. Sorrow at its passing came to Jarid; so little in his life gave him pleasure. He rose and exercised, working any part of his body he thought needed training. It meant a great deal to him that he could do this without help. He worked out constantly, having little else to do but the simple chores he could manage. His only other diversion was sitting outside on those rare days when the cold, damp weather cleared.
After he tired, he settled on the floor again. Later he would go into the other room and weave more of the aromatic thatching Stone used to repair the roof. For now, he ate dinner. The meat had gon
e cold and the gravy congealed, but he didn’t mind. Nothing much bothered him anymore. When he had first lost his senses, he had cried in silence for days, months, forever it seemed. He couldn’t even feel the vibrations in his throat that would have come had he been making sounds he couldn’t hear. Over the years, he had become numb. He locked away his emotions, protecting himself from pain. Now, full from his meal, he closed his eyes, more out of habit than for any need, and rested his head against the wall.
Shapes evolved in his mind.
He loved spheres. Even in that distant time he barely remembered, they had fascinated him. They’d helped him focus his spells. As a child, he had never understood why adults had insisted he couldn’t feel the moods of other people, or that even a fully matured mage would have trouble doing what came so easily to him. They had also claimed he couldn’t heal, though he had made his kitten better when it had the wasting illness. So he had stopped telling people, except for his mother, who believed him. She had encouraged him to play his shape games and helped him learn to focus.
Now he had nothing but those bittersweet games.
Jarid imagined cubes, rings, pyramids, bars, polyhedrons and especially spheres, all glistening in gem colors so lovely they made his heart ache. They were works of art he had been refining for fourteen years. He knew, from Stone’s mind, that he could light up a room if he chose. It didn’t matter to Jarid; he never saw the light—indeed, he had seen nothing since the night Murk had shattered his life.
Fourteen years ago Jarid had hated Stone, pounding him with small fists even as a blind and deaf six-year-old. Over the years, his hatred had faltered in Stone’s unexpected kindness. Jarid knew he soothed his foster father just by his presence, and that he helped heal the emotional scars Stone had suffered in the lonely destitution of these rocky hills. But nothing could ease Stone’s crushing guilt.
Jarid knew that guilt.
Stone felt it every time he looked at his young ward, every time he struggled to understand Jarid’s needs, when Jarid could never ask or answer. If Stone had once been hard, these years had cracked his granite heart. Jarid didn’t know how he could both hate and love his foster father, yet he did. It made no difference that Stone wasn’t the one who had killed his parents; Stone had helped Murk attack the carriage. Yet since that day, Stone had been a compassionate guardian, at first out of guilt, but later out of love, an emotion he couldn’t hide from Jarid. In spite of Jarid’s intent to remain cold, he had come to love his foster father.
Isolated high in the Boxer-Mage Mountains, above even the most remote hamlets of the Tallwalk Mountains, they scratched out a living. Jarid helped as best he could, stacking firewood, digging, carrying heavy loads, making ropes and tools. Their poverty mattered little to him; all he truly cared about had died on that long-ago night. He was no longer whole. Stone had offered him a refuge where he could withdraw from humanity.
Jarid had no idea how he appeared to other people, but he thought he must be hateful and hideous. He had felt that way since his parents died. Stone seemed to find him tolerable, but in the harsh reality of their world, anything that wasn’t actively lethal was tolerable. Jarid knew he should have prevented the crash, though how, he had no idea. His mother should never have died to save his life.
Moisture gathered in his eyes. Angry, he wiped it dry. Struggling to push away his tormented memories, he filled his mind with spheres. His thoughts easily expanded out from his center.
And yet…today something was different. A tension pulled him, straining. He suddenly remembered the sphere that had strained to protect him all those years ago against Murk’s murderous cruelty. Jarid felt a similar sensation now, but gentle instead of desperate. The shapes in his mind blurred into a luminous rainbow fog.
Straining.
Reaching.
Seeking.
In his mind, a vine of shape-blossoms curled through the mist. Sweat broke out on Jarid’s forehead. What invaded his solitude? He clenched the rough cloth of his trousers, resisting the presence that reached for him, unaware and unknowing, but coming closer, closer…
Leave me alone! The cry reverberated in his mind, and he felt foolish, reacting with such dismay to his own thoughts. For surely this “intruder” was no more than his own fevered imaginings.
But no…he still felt someone seeking, coming closer, so close. A green sphere vibrant with ferns appeared in his mind and a waterfall of light poured into a bright pool.
Beautiful sphere.
Sphere mage.
Rainbow.
And then he touched her mind.
“No!”
Iris’s cry rang through the hollow. She mentally recoiled from the cold, silent darkness that had enveloped her.
“What is it?” Della was holding her shoulders. “I felt the surge of power!” She could barely contain her excitement. “What happened?”
“I—I touched his mind.” Iris couldn’t shake the overwhelming loneliness of that moment.
“His?”
“Another mage.” Iris’s pulse hammered. “A mage of power. But…but for this man, power has many forms.”
“You know who you reached?”
“Yes.” Iris stared at her, unable to believe this discovery. “Prince Jarid.”
3
Homecoming
His Highness, Prince Muller Dawnfield, paced in front of Iris, his boots loud on the parquetry floor. The receiving hall in the castle was much longer than wide and drenched in sunlight from its many tall windows. The walls and columns gleamed with gold, blue and white mosaics, tessellated patterns that had fascinated generations of shape-mages. Usually, Iris loved studying them, searching out patterns in the designs, but today she had no time for such games. She sat in an ivory-and-gold chair, her spine straight against its back, her hands folded in her lap.
“Are you certain?” Muller demanded for the fifth time.
“Aye, Your Highness,” Iris said, also for the fifth time.
“But Jarid is dead! ” Muller stopped and glowered at her. A slender man with white-gold hair brushing his shoulders, he was a full head taller than Iris when they were standing and nine years her senior. His cream-colored trousers accented the length of his legs and his gold tunic was designed in a futile attempt to make his narrow shoulders appear wider. Iris had always thought him beautiful, like a leggy and graceful wild animal, more suited to running in the forest than to the confines of his enchanting but inanimate castle. She doubted he would appreciate her comparison, though; he had always wanted to be seen as strong and powerful, not graceful and flighty.
Right now his changeable gray eyes reminded her of an overcast sky. He frowned. “My cousin, may he rest in peace, has been dead for fourteen years.”
Della was standing by Iris’s chair, one hand on its high back. “His body was never found.”
Muller resumed pacing, adjusting his tunic to smooth out minuscule wrinkles. “The rescue party said he must have been thrown from the carriage when it rolled off the cliff. He could have fallen in any crevice. The caves and chasms in those mountains are a maze.”
“It does seem impossible he survived,” Della admitted.
“Nevertheless,” Iris said. “He did.”
&nb
sp; Muller slapped his palm against his thigh. “If that were true, he would have come home.”
“How?” Iris asked. “He was a little boy.”
“Not anymore,” Muller said. “So where is he?”
“I donna know.”
His voice quieted. “You say he exists, yet you don’t know where.”
“I can find him.” Iris had no wish to revisit the cold emptiness where she had found Jarid, but she would do it if necessary.
“Very well.” Muller stood straighter. “Find him. Bring him here.”
“Your Highness—” Iris hesitated.
“Yes, yes, speak up.”
“Prince Jarid is the heir.”
“I know that.”
“He can claim the crown.”
Muller waved his hand. “I doubt you will find him, but if by some incredible chance you do, he can have the title.”
It unsettled her to hear him make such a proclamation. He was undermining his own reign before it began.
“Your coronation is in ten days,” Della said. “That hardly gives us time to look.”
Muller shrugged. “Then delay the coronation.”
“I think it unwise,” Della said.
“It’s been months. A few more days won’t matter.”
“It’s been too long already.” Della exhaled. “Saints, Muller, you know the people are mourning King Daron. We’ve just come through a hard winter. They need the coronation as a symbol that life will continue. And Aronsdale needs a committed leader.”
“The bishop canna coronate Lord Muller,” Iris said calmly. “Prince Jarid is the heir.”
Muller stiffened at her use of the word “Lord.” Unlike in other realms, in Aronsdale only the heir to the crown had the right to the title of prince; Muller hadn’t come into it until after Jarid died. Iris suspected he might find it harder to give it up than he claimed.