“After the coronation, Nimenoë went back to Thäerie, and she did not return to Phaôrax to see Ouriána crowned two years later. Only one invitation to that coronation went to Leal, and of course it was Camhóinhann Ouriána sent for. He could hardly refuse. To insult the new Queen of Phaôrax—to let the whole world gossip and speculate as to the reason—would have been unthinkable. In any case, he told Faolein, she would surely outgrow her inconvenient attachment when kings and princes started suing for her hand.”
“But he was wrong?” said Kivik, across the fire.
“When he arrived on Phaôrax it seemed he had not been wrong. It was almost as though their positions were reversed,” said Sindérian, brushing back a lock of dark hair. “He wrote once to Éireamhóine to say that the Queen was very cool to him—but changed, wonderfully changed! Her small gift—so minor the Pharaxion wizards had not even seen it—had grown into a prodigious one, and she was radiant with power.
“He wrote a second time to say that she had gathered around her a circle of magicians, and they were experimenting with fragments of Otöwan sorcery she had dredged up from somewhere. The dangers she faced were obvious, and so he had warned her, but he was in no position to dictate to her in her own kingdom, no matter how young and inexperienced she might have been. That was the last letter that Camhóinhann sent back to Leal. No one knows what happened between them after that. But later, when Ouriána announced her ‘apotheosis’ and named him as her High Priest—then you may believe there was astonishment and great consternation on Thäerie and on Leal. Even so, it was not until word came of his terrible transformation that the wizards at the Scholia abandoned all hope of his return and named another to take his place among the Nine Masters.
“But I have strayed from the tale that I meant to tell you,” said Sindérian. “We were speaking of Ouriána and Nimenoë. When Ouriána declared sovereignty over all the old Empire lands—when the High King on Thäerie, and all of the kings, princes, and dukes who owed him allegiance, refused to pledge her their fealty and she declared war on them—Nimenoë did lend her strength to the wards around Thäerie and the Lesser Isles. But not then, and not ever after, did she oppose her sister in any other way. When the prophecy became known, when it came into the minds of a dozen seers at once, when it was repeated again and again over the years, no one—not anyone who knew her—thought of Nimenoë, it was so certain she would never attempt to depose her sister. It was only on the day Nimenoë wed Prince Eldori that Ouriána cursed her to barrenness, fearing a son or daughter of that union as she would never have feared Nimenoë herself.
“But it is a dangerous thing, a spell of that sort, particularly when both parties involved are so very powerful. Things get twisted. So Nimenoë died giving birth to Guenloie. Yet even then, I can’t say that the sisters were truly enemies. I was there when Nimenoë died, and she did not seem to bear her sister any hatred or think Ouriána had willed her death. She might have cursed Ouriána in return, you know—a deathbed curse can be very powerful—but she took no such revenge.”
Her story concluded, Sindérian sat gazing into the flames, trying to catch a memory, trying to remember a tower room and a dying princess. Might there not have been forces at work that a twelve-year-old apprentice healer, so young, so ignorant, had failed to detect? Things get twisted, she had said it herself.
And with a dying wizard of Nimenoë’s power a final turn was not impossible. Had there not been, after all, some last spell, some final magic…
“It is a tangled history,” she heard Skerry say across the fire, and the memory she had been trying to conjure became faint and faraway again. The white owl, returning from his evening flight, settled on her shoulder, and the memory receded even further.
“A very tangled history,” she acknowledged with a deep sigh. “And it may be a long time before all of the knots are untied.”
As they journeyed across Mistlewald, Sindérian’s lessons in magic resumed. Sometimes it seemed to her that Faolein was as urgent to teach as she was eager to learn, and though nothing was ever said, she felt that he believed as she did: events were everywhere hurrying on toward a crisis of catastrophic proportions.
When you make the werelight, he said during one predawn vigil, you do not create illumination out of nothing, but gather together in one place all of the light that is present, no matter how faint. This you already know. But even in total darkness we carry some light with us: sunlight, starlight, moonlight, firelight, we are absorbing it all of the time. That light, too, you can draw upon, but it is a finite quantity. If you were locked away in darkness for many days or weeks, you would soon exhaust it.
Likewise, he went on, blinking his round yellow eyes, you can draw water that is mixed with air and gather it in a cup, or in any vessel you choose. Mist to water and water to mist are the easiest transmutations of all, for both are already inclined toward change. It is a useful skill to have if you are ever at sea and the fresh water runs out. In the same way, you can gather water out of the soil. But you can perform these spells only where earth and water are already mixed. To the ignorant it may appear that you change one into the other, when all that you really do is summon whatever moisture is present.
So Sindérian practiced gathering water out of the air, separating water out of a handful of soil. Once learned, the spell was easy for her to perform. And as you grow more skilled, said Faolein, you may find you can summon water from a greater distance: from that rain cloud a mile away or the underground river that passes beneath us.
She knit her brows, working that out as far as imagination would take her—for she had learned by now that every lesson, every spell, foreshadowed another. And the force that runs along the ley lines?
Yes, he answered, after a brief hesitation, you can summon that power in much the same way that you summon light or water. But that is a spell better left to the greater adepts. A momentary lapse in concentration could fill you with such power you could never hold it.
Whenever they met other travellers they asked the same question: had anyone seen a large party riding south or west? Again and again the answer was no—until one day they met a man with a cart full of casks and a story of “white men in red robes, and a beautiful lady riding with them.” It had been two days, he said, and almost fifteen leagues. That meant that the Furiádhin were still well ahead.
“But at least,” said Skerry, “we know for certain we are on the right road. And that is encouraging news.”
Four days later they reached the foothills. No more than Winloki did Sindérian care for that country.
Though better able to ward herself against voices in the night, she could not entirely shut them out—and if no ill dreams haunted her sleep, the ruined cities had enough tales to tell during daylight; the ghosts who haunted that region were so present, so voluble.
They had believed in an endless cycle of reincarnation, viewed time as a maze of many twists and turns, so that they were always looking to the past or the future, with little thought for present joys or sorrows.
Many had lived only to die, making elaborate plans for the life to follow, or dreaming strange dreams of a life before—which might lie ahead when they turned the next corner. So their minds had become like mazes, too, continually running in crooked paths. In their memories Sindérian saw shadows of an old, old power, neither of the Dark nor of the Light, but pitiless, greedy; slaves to that power they had enslaved others. In their history she saw omens of things to come: what had been in ages past, what might be in days ahead, if bindings broke and ancient evils were let loose in the world again.