“Aye, they do certainly.”
“But I’m not a bell.” That was her mother’s name.
Iris sighed. “It is’n important.”
Even more defensive now, Chime spoke tartly. “Your speech is so quaint.” She regretted the words immediately, but it was too late to take them back.
An image jumped into Iris’s mind, one so vivid that Chime caught it without trying, her spell tuned by the many shapes in the room: the other girl imagined Chime with a vase of flowers dumped on her head. Iris’s lips curved upward.
Chime knew she should be offended, but the image made her want to laugh. “Why are you smiling like that?” she asked Iris, all innocence. She knew why, but she wanted to see what the other girl would say.
“Smiling?” Iris flushed. “Uh…I was thinking you look radiant this morning.”
The easing of Iris’s tone so relieved Chime that she barely listened to the words, instead responding to their intent. “Oh, well, in that case. Of course.”
Iris spoke in a low voice. Chime wasn’t sure, but it sounded like, “And humble.”
“What did you say?” Chime asked.
“Bumble.” Iris floundered, obviously embarrassed that Chime had overheard her comments. “Bumble bees.”
“Bees?”
“They are, uh, sunny and bright. Like you.”
“Oh.” Confused, Chime smiled. “Thank you.”
Della returned then with scrolls, rescuing Chime and Iris from their excruciating conversation.
The lesson went well for a while, but then Della asked Chime to make light using a faceted sphere. Uncertain with her technique, Chime made an emotion spell instead. It focused through the powerful shape, revealing Della’s mood. The success so delighted Chime that she spoke before she thought.
“You’re frustrated with Iris,” Chime said. “You worry she will never achieve her potential.” The instant the words came out, Chime could have died. Saints almighty, couldn’t she watch her tongue?
It was too late to undo the damage. Iris rose to her feet. “Well, then, and it be a pity for us all.” Then she whirled around and strode away from the table. She grabbed her boots from the mat by the door and ran outside.
“Hai!” Chime stared at Della in dismay. “I am so very sorry.”
“It isn’t me who needs to hear the apology.” Della shook her head wearily. “I know you mean well. But you must learn to be more careful.”
Chime jumped to her feet. “I will go to her.”
Della also stood up. “Seeing you will only hurt her right now, I think. Let me talk to her first. Give her time to cool off. Then you can talk to her.”
Chime wanted to fix it now, to rush after Iris. But she knew Della was right. With reluctance, she said, “Yes. Of course.”
After Della left, Chime walked dejectedly back to the castle. A man was coming down from Suncroft. He was dressed like a peddler, with russet pants and a green vest over a shirt with billowy sleeves. He carried a large russet sack, one of the special type that had folding shelves inside made from sheepskin. His dark hair and narrow face looked familiar, but she couldn’t say why.
As they approached each other, he nodded, slowing to a stop. Chime spoke stiffly, afraid of saying the wrong thing again. “A fine morn, Goodman.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.” His smile didn’t touch his eyes. “You grace the sunlight with your presence.”
Chime felt terribly awkward with him. She wasn’t sure why; he seemed very nice. But something about him felt…odd. “Thank you,” she said.
He swung his sack off his shoulder and rested it on the ground. “Your betrothed drives a hard bargain, milady.”
She hadn’t known Muller was bargaining for anything. “What wares do you sell, kind sir?”
His voice took on a peddler’s enthusiasm. “Gold plate like you’ve never seen. Here, let me show you.” He opened his bag.
“I really can’t—”
“Won’t take but a moment.” He pulled out a bundle and unwound the protective cloth. When he finished, he held a sparkling gold bowl inlaid with diamonds arranged in star patterns.
“Oh, it’s lovely.” Chime had never seen such a fine piece, even here at Suncroft where they had so many more beautiful things than she had ever imagined. “May I hold it?”
“Certainly.” He handed her the bowl. “I have table settings, goldware, serving platters.”
She beamed at him. “I will speak to Muller.”
“Ah, ma’am, that would be kind of you. Kind indeed.”
Chime gave him back the bowl. “Have a good day, sir.”
“That I will.” His eyes glinted. “I will indeed.”
It wasn’t until they parted that Chime realized why he made her feel odd. She had formed no mood spells with him. That itself wasn’t unusual; under normal circumstances, she tried to avoid making them so she wouldn’t intrude on the privacy of other people. But she didn’t have enough control to stop it from happening if she found herself unexpectedly confronted with strong shapes. Although the stars on the goblet could have sparked her power, she had felt no hint of the peddler’s mood.
Well, maybe she couldn’t draw on stars. Or perhaps it was their color. She did best with green, though she could use any color of a lower rank. Or maybe her control was improving after all.
Still, the incident tugged at her.
Iris ran through the trees, uncaring of her path. She came out on a bluff above Croft’s Vale. The village filled the valley below, pretty houses with thatched roofs, close enough for her to make out gardens and people, but too far to see the clutter and debris of so many inhabitants living together. Vines bloomed everywhere, spilling down trellises, winding up houses, and brightening flower boxes with rosy orb blossoms, star-flowers, green box-buds. The contrast with the rocky, sparse land of the Tallwalks where she had grown up made her heart ache.
She would miss this place.
Iris knew she wouldn’t be at Suncroft much longer. Chime had only put in words what they all realized: the talent Della had thought she saw in Iris was a ghost, like drifting mist that seemed to take form and shape for a moment, but quickly faded.
She 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.”
With a start, 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. “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?”
Iris blinked. “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 air scented by sweet grass. “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 spoke tiredly. “Then who will? He doesn’t want the throne.”
Knowing Della loved the prince as her own nephew, Iris understood what it took for her to make such an admission. Nor was it a surprise. Iris had long suspected Muller’s reluctance to become king. But Aronsda
le needed the royal family. The House of Dawnfield was the symbolic heart of the country; their loss would devastate the people.
“He is the heir,” Iris said.
The older woman’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 one of his advisors, perhaps Brant Firestoke.”
“Canna Chime reassure Muller? She is well an’ sure a green mage.” Iris spoke with difficulty. “I felt it this afternoon.”
“She does have great gifts.” Della sighed. “But one must also know how to use them.”
Iris longed for Chime’s gifts. Techniques were easy; Iris had no trouble learning those. But still she did no spells. Chime struggled to learn techniques, yet she made spells as easily as drinking water. If only they could combine their talents; together they might be the student Della deserved.
“It is only that the studies are new,” Iris said. “She will learn.”
Della sighed. “You are kind, Iris, especially given how she speaks to you.”
Iris hadn’t realized how well Della saw the tension between her young charges. The mage mistress seemed to know how to calm her. Della continued to talk, telling her of mages, and Iris inner turmoil began to settle. When they spoke of King Daron’s death, she saw how it had devastated Della, who usually hid her softer emotions.
Finally Della spoke of what would happen after Muller became king. “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. 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 around them. “This is the magic—trees, sky, flowers.”
Della considered her. “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’s expression turned thoughtful. “It’s as if the studies drive you to seek the outdoors.”
“It feels that way.” Chime had several times tried to tell her the same.
“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, easing Iris’s loneliness. When Della had realized how ill-at-ease her charge felt in the castle, she had brought Iris to the cottage, giving her a home. 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 and overhead, hiding this hollow in the woods. A stream flowed off a stone ledge and fell sparkling into a pool. Shape-vines hung everywhere in colorful loops.
Iris sunk into the grass by the water. “I come here whenever I can.”
Della turned in a circle. “It is lovely.”
Iris’s tension trickled away. “It soothes.”
“Don’t you see what it is?”
“What do you mean?”
Della’s face gentled. “Look at the shape.”
Iris studied the hollow, paying attention to its form today. “I’ll be a frog in a fig. It’s a sphere!”
Della laughed. “In a fig, eh?” She settled herself on the grass next to Iris. “I have been through these woods many times and never did I see 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 a peace that eluded her elsewhere. Could she have molded the shape? “It seems impossible.”
Della’s eyes lit up. “Iris!”
“Aye?”
“Make a spell here.”
Iris squinted at her. “That is an odd idea.”
“Maybe an odd idea is 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. Then she concentrated. The waterfall shimmered with rainbows, and blossoms hung from vines, all colors, like mage spells—
Red.
Orange.
Yellow.
Green.
Blue.
Indigo—
With a great surge of power, her mind opened.
12
A Luminous Touch
Darkness and silence filled Jarid’s life.
He sat in his favorite spot in a corner, on the floor where he couldn’t fall. His foster father had stopped urging him to use furniture; after Jarid had grown large and muscular, he asserted himself simply by refusing to move when his guardian tried to put him in a chair. He didn’t know his father’s true name; he had never understood the signs the older man used to communicate it. Jarid had thought of him as Stone since that long ago night when the man saved his life, protecting Jarid like an unbreakable stone when Murk would have killed him.
Now Jarid imagined spheres, beautiful spheres, glimmering and vibrant in his mind. Over the years they had helped him focus on Stone, until he could sense his father’s every mood. Lately Stone worried Jarid would become so immersed in meditations, he would forget to eat.
Jarid sighed without sound. Meditation was his only escape. Since that night his world had ended with the death of his parents, he had neither seen nor heard. On the rare occasions when visitors came, he knew only because their moods differed from Stone’s. His father loved him; others found him strange, crippled, disturbing. Mercifully, in these remote mountains few people visited. He and Stone lived alone, cut off from the world, never communicating with it, neither for gossip nor great news. Stone didn’t know his son was heir to Aronsdale. He and Jarid were simply two people in the mountains.
A vibration came through the floor, the tread of feet. The aroma of meat tickled Jarid’s nose. He had distant memories of eating steaks from gold platters, but over the years he had begun to wonder 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 lifted his head, feeling changes in the air. Stone was in front of him, probably kneeling. He waited, and a moment later Stone carefully placed a dinner plate made from chipped stone in his hands. Jarid accepted it to calm Stone, but after his father left, he set the plate down on the floor. Then he sat, savoring the sunlight on his face. On these rare sunny days, Stone opened the frayed curtains and uneven shutters, knowing Jarid enjoyed the warmth.
Eventually the sun moved across the sky, no longer sending its rays through the window. Sorrow at its passing came to Jarid. He rose and did his exercises then, working his legs, arms, torso, any part of his body that he thought needed training. It meant a great deal to him that he could manage this on his own. He worked out constantly, having little else to do but make thatching for the roof or wander outside when the cold, foggy weather cleared.
Eventually he tired and settled into
his corner again. After resting, he ate his meal. The meat had gone cold and the gravy congealed, but Jarid didn’t mind. Little touched him now. When he had first lost his sight, hearing, and voice, he had cried in silence for days, weeks, forever it seemed, unable even to feel vibrations in his throat that would have come had he been making sounds he couldn’t hear. But over the years, he had become numb. He locked away his emotions, protecting himself. Now, full from his meal, he closed his eyes, more out of habit than for any need, and rested his head against the wall, content.
Shapes evolved in his mind.
He loved spheres. Even in that distant time he barely remembered, they had fascinated him. As a child, he had never understood why adults insisted he couldn’t feel the moods of other people, or that a fully matured mage would have trouble doing what came so easily to him. They 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 his mother, who believed him. She encouraged him to play shape-games that helped him focus.
Now he had nothing of her but those bittersweet games.
Jarid imagined cubes, rings, pyramids, bars, circles, polyhedrons, faceted orbs, and especially spheres, all in gem colors so lovely his heart ached. They were art to him. He knew, from Stone’s mind, that he could light up a room. Jarid never saw the light—indeed, he had seen nothing since the night Murk had shattered his life.
Jarid had hated Stone that night, pounding the man with his small fists. As the years had passed, his hatred had faltered in the face of Stone’s unexpected kindness. Jarid knew he soothed his foster father, that he helped heal emotional scars Stone had suffered, mired in the lonely destitution of these rocky hills where crops died and livestock starved. But nothing could ease Stone’s crushing guilt.
Jarid knew that guilt.
Stone felt it every time he looked at the youth he had orphaned, every time he struggled to understand his ward’s needs. If Stone had once been hard, the years had cracked his granite heart.
Jarid didn’t know how he could both hate and love a person, yet he did. It didn’t matter that Stone hadn’t killed Jarid’s parents; he had helped Murk attack the orb-carriage. But since that day, Stone had been a compassionate guardian, at first out of guilt, then later out of love, an emotion he couldn’t hide from Jarid. In spite of Jarid’s intent to remain cold, he came to return that love. He and Stone barely scratched out a living, but he didn’t care; all that mattered had died that long ago night. Stone offered a refuge where he could withdraw from humanity.