I had gone so long without anyone to trust except myself—until I met Hlanan, and, well, I had all-too painful memories of how that had turned out.
The hour was more advanced than I had thought. Dawn began to lift the darkness at the window. By the time I rose, bathed, dressed, and ate breakfast, long squares of rare sunlight painted the floor from the east windows in the dining alcove.
I said airily, “I am going to practice music,” and traipsed sedately to the music room. By the time I got there my fingers began to tremble in anticipation.
As always as soon as I touched the harp my hands knew what to do. I closed my eyes. Being so tired, I found it easier than ever to sink into the images evoked by the music.
And there she was again, as if seen in the reflection of water.
Elenderi, she said. You can hear me mind to mind. I laid wards over this harp to protect us both. It is far less dangerous if we meet only here, while you are touching it, until you learn to speak mind to mind. And again I saw the image of the blue lady with the baby on her lap, and the harp glittering with magic.
No, I cried. HE will be waiting to get me.
Memory floated up: Dhes-Andis’s mental contact when I was aboard the pirate ship, and worse, his invasive presence in the mental realm after I left Rajanas’s principality. Before I learned to shut him out with my mental wall.
You can keep him out and limit your focus, she said.
I can?
It is much the same way you have been learning to control your magic. Concentrate on whom you wish to hear in the mental realm, and confine your focus only to that person. But until you master it, the greater the distance the more chance you can be scryed by adepts like Jardis. It is far safer, until you become more skilled, to make your attempts strictly in proximity.
I can use my pin-hole? I was so surprised I slipped right out of the connection.
Or maybe it was a sound: I opened my eyes, startled to discover one of the palace servants stood there, waiting.
After the bows and apologies and formal palaver about the Imperial Princess, she gave me a nerve-chilling shock: His Imperial Serenity desired my presence in the Garden Chamber.
Did he know? Had he heard?
Terror sped me along, my neck throbbing in anticipation, but when I got there I found Dhes-Andis and Raifas awaiting me, the latter wearing his embroidered black riding clothes.
“Elenderi,” said Dhes-Andis, “I am told you enjoyed riding the great gryph. As you no doubt are aware, we are experiencing that rarity, an entirely empty sky. The Most Noble Raifas intends to travel to Ardam Pennon to see to certain duties there, and has offered to take you with him that you might widen your experience of your homeland.”
He wasn’t asking, he was telling. But I was so relieved about the harp, the blue Hrethan, and above all the chance to get away that I bowed in gratitude.
And he clearly didn’t expect me to say anything as he added, “Andisla is being fitted with the travel harness. Have your staff prepare what you need for later transfer.”
Raifas said, “Your Imperial Serenity, if I may be permitted to make a suggestion, we shall be flying at a high altitude, where the currents are stronger. It can be quite cold.”
“I’ll fetch a wrap,” I said.
I took proper formal leave then beetled back to my suite, where I told Kal what was going to happen. “Since I don’t know what I will need, anything you pack will be fine.” Then I got to the important question. “I know this might sound funny, but I don’t know where I was born. Was it here?”
Kal bowed low enough to hide his face. When he straightened his expression had masked as bland as any Chosen. “I am told the Imperial Princess was born in Icecrest. If she requires corroboration, that I am unable to provide. I was in training then, as a child. But I believe Brin was in imperial service,” naming the old woman who sewed the fine embroidery.
“May I go in and ask?”
He bowed again and as I looked at the glossy top of his head I had a sense that he was hiding his face as he said, “The staff is here to serve the Imperial Princess.”
I felt the pressure of expectation. I couldn’t take too long, but I had to know.
I walked through the dark alcove into their big common room and there sat Brin, working at embroidering white cherry blossoms and deep red rose buds on silk the color of pewter.
“Brin, was I born here?”
She set aside her sewing to rise with difficulty. “The Imperial Princess was indeed born in this palace, though not in this suite, which belonged to the Empress Lison, blessed be her memory.” The way Brin said the words, they did not feel like mere rote.
“And then? What happened then?”
“I beg pardon of the Imperial Princess for my inadequate answer, but I was not present to see.”
I looked from her to Kal, whose gaze remained on her. The other servants had stilled, and I sensed that I had stumbled into fraught territory. Maybe they didn’t know. Or maybe they couldn’t tell me.
I longed to get back to the harp—to get answers to the questions proliferating in my head—but I could feel the Emperor of Evil waiting for me to get my fuzzy imperial hide to that perch balcony. I’d wondered all my life why I’d been abandoned at an early age—according to Dhes-Andis, by selfish, careless parents. Maybe that was true as he saw it, but that didn’t make it my truth. I could wait a little longer
When I got there, Raifas waved off the waiting servants and indicated the enormous gryph. He gave me a challenging smile, and said low-voiced, “Think you can ride fast? If so, we might reach Mount Dragon by nightfall.”
Mount Dragon! I leaped up to the saddle, my warm cloak spreading over the gryph’s back. I hoped it wouldn’t be uncivilized to ask the story behind that name.
Andisla and Firebird surged into the air and away we climbed, circling up on lazy currents until the island lay below like a toy with a sugar-statue of a palace atop a pinnacle.
I felt the change when the gryphs found their current. They stretched out their long necks, powerful wings whipping forward, down, and up until we shot into the streaming wind. The cold air forced my eyes to slits, yet it exhilarated my racing blood, and when I glanced at Raifas, his teeth showed in a brief, slashing grin.
The whistle and moan of the wind rendered conversation impossible. Good. I had too many questions buzzing through my mind like maddeningly insistent flies.
So I settled myself firmly against Andisla’s broad back, the great wing-muscles working below my arms, and attempted to make a mental pin-hole through which to reach the gryph’s mind. Not to other humans. Even without the threat of Dhes-Andis catching me I had always shied away from that. People’s minds are too much like noisy cities at noon. Animals’ minds are so different, not crowding mine with words, but with image and the impressions of other senses.
I concentrated on Andisla, for the longest time without any success. I was so afraid of letting my shield slip for an instant, lest Dhes-Andis strike. And even when I did make tiny tries, each left me so dizzy that I pressed my forehead against the bird’s feathery back until the vertigo died away.
But as the long day wore past, I tried intermittently, using image to frame my inquiry, then connecting the images, so to speak, until I gained a blurry sense of the scene ahead. That was the source of the vertigo: what the bird saw imposing over what I saw, only our eyes comprehend so differently.
Andisla’s focus was on flying, but beyond that, all I gained was a kind of foggy blur that I was too tired, too stressed, and too distracted to understand.
Meanwhile, down the white-blanketed spine of the dragon we flew, the trees sparsely scattered over the jutting cliffs and chasms of bare rock under its thick load of snow. We passed terraced towns and villages tucked here and there on slopes, always where the infrequent sun traveled most.
As the day began to wane the once-hazy and distant conical mountain seemed to grow, spreading in vast, slanting expanses out to the coast. These
long slopes formed the Pennons, Ardam (meaning East in Djuran) Pennon on one side, and Hindam (meaning West) on the far side.
The gryphs glided downward, wings outspread. I tried another pin-hole, and sensed Andisla’s tiredness and hunger.
The Ardam side of Mount Dragon had a town set above a great, curving harbor, the two connected by the familiar switchback roads.
On a prominent lower peak, with the harbor below and the great fire mountain above, sat a three-towered castle a lot like Seaforth, the tallest tower over the gate and two at the back corners of the square walls.
The birds landed with jolting steps in the broad central square, and servants ran out to take charge as Raifas trod toward the archway leading inside the main tower.
We walked past a magnificent indoor tree at which he did not cast a glance as he said, “If you’re half as sharp-set as I, you’ll want to dine before taking a tour.” And paused, looking at me expectantly.
So glad was I to dispense with the eternal courtly ritual—both tedious and false—that I assented cheerfully.
Those winged brows of his lifted, but he didn’t speak as he flicked three fingers at the gray-clad young man who’d appeared. Court behavior between us was thankfully absent, but I sensed he wouldn’t talk informally before the servants.
Raifas’s staff flowed quietly away through shaded alcoves as their Most Noble led me upstairs while loosening the lacing on his tight black jacket. When we reached an upper room warmed by a fine stove, he shrugged off the jacket and slung it over a bench by the door, and a young servant appeared carrying a long silk robe over one arm. Raifas pulled it over his loose-sleeved shirt, his fais glinting, plain gold in an interlocked weave, at his throat.
“Do you want to rid yourself of that shroud?” he asked, indicating my cape.
I surrendered it to the waiting servant as Raifas said, “You have something against jackets?”
“My hair and tail do,” I said, fluffing both around me.
He chuckled. “You’ve never used a comb, I gather.”
“Never.”
The servants bore away the winter clothing as I turned to take in the enormous lancet windows. They afforded a circular view, visible from a pair of low tables with cushions before them.
A stream of servants appeared bearing trays which they set down on both tables, then flowed noiselessly out again. Raifas sat on one cushion, and used the round, shallow spoon eat from each dish.
I picked up the spoon by mine, turning it over. Thianra and Hlanan had taught me how to manage eating utensils, which were different from this little spoon. I knew what to do with it but I much prefer eating with my fingers as I have my entire life.
However, the dishes before me smelled of meats. I turned my head.
“Nothing here to your taste, O Imperial Princess?” Raifas asked.
“It’s not taste. It’s what happens inside. I never ate meat even when I was a starveling rat in alleys.”
He set down his silver spoon and regarded me under those winged brows. “Never eat meat? But half of you is half of us.” He spread his fingers, touching himself on his chest.
“Nevertheless.”
“We’ll have to fix that.”
“There is nothing to fix,” I said.
He snapped his fingers at the open door and a servant appeared. “The Imperial Princess will list her preferred menu.” And to me, “I trust your delicate tastes are not too rarified. I feel obliged to point out that this is winter.”
“I don’t know how rare nuts, fruits, and the like are.” And I listed my preferences before finishing up with things I could eat if I had to.
“Cheese,” Raifas said, pouncing on an item halfway down my list. “I can safely promise you excellent goat cheese. It’s a specialty on this particular part of the island, made finer by the grasses the goats eat.”
Very soon I had some of it (and he was right) plus a small variety of nuts and dried berries.
“You will have more by tomorrow,” he promised, and then said, “If we do not waken to a blizzard, I’ll give you a tour of the harbor. You can see my fleet in its winter quarters below.”
I glanced through the window at the forest of bare poles moving up and down on the deep blue sea, barely visible in the fading light.
“And if we do waken to a blizzard?” I asked.
“We can still visit the mouth of the fire mountain. It’s only a short flight.”
“Won’t the gryphs need rest? Or do you have others?”
“Firebird is as yet my only,” he said. “You don’t seem to appreciate that he is the work of five years.” Raifas made a dismissive gesture. “The egg-civilized are more common, but expensive, dull, and therefore useless for my plans.”
“Plans?”
“I’ll explain once we’ve seen the harbor and explored inside Mount Dragon,” he said. “Easier. Unless you’ve knowledge of fleet strategy and tactics?”
“Don’t know a thing about that,” I said. And care even less. While I was ready enough to give answers to questions, I did not trust him enough to offer my opinions, except on things like food and clothes and the like. As always I feared Dhes-Andis and his scrying crystal, and of course even if the Evil Emperor was busy with other things, he might be expecting a report. Because there had to be a reason I was here besides getting to ride a gryph and touring the island.
The warmth and food so weighted my eyelids that I fought yawn after yawn, and barely had we finished when Raifas said with considerable amusement, “I have pennon affairs to see to if you’d like to retire.”
“Yes,” I said, and upstairs we slogged to another tower room where they had slung a hammock, more evidence of silent communication.
Raifas waited at the door, and when I turned away to look out the windows into the darkness, he said wryly, “I’ll wish you good rest, then.” And then I heard his swift footsteps descending the stair.
I was beyond question, even beyond worry. My first instinct was to try to reach the Blue Lady through a pin-hole in my mental shield, but I remembered what she had said about distance, danger, and control.
I was far too tired to even pretend I had control. But distance? The thought of Dhes-Andis lurking at a physical remove at the other end of the island was so comforting that I sank into sleep, and for the first time since my arrival in Sveran Djur, I passed an unbroken—and dreamless—night.
TWENTY-THREE
I woke to bleak light through the many windows, affording a view of an uneasy sky with two layers of clouds: thin white high above, and lower down, a marching army of brooding gray.
The chamber otherwise gave me a sense of great age, enhanced by time-blurred painted carvings up under the ceiling, of winged cats and horses and lizards bowing to each other in pairs, wings uplifted at a graceful angle. As if they were about to begin to play, or to dance.
I craned my neck, finding aidlars and eagles, lizardrakes with hands outstretched to touch palm to palm, yeth hounds and wolves bowed in canine play, one paw forward. It was so old the paint had all but worn away, but I liked this carving better than anything I’d seen yet in Sveran Djur.
However I could not lie there all day.
With a good sleep behind me, memory marched as inexorable as those clouds. My birth—my mother having lived in the palace—the harp magic—the mental shield—my experiments with magic—fais, the town, the servants. . . .
. . . And conversations. Then he will marry her off to advantage, the same as the rest of us.
That jolted me right out of the hammock.
I froze at the circle of windows and gazed over the gray seas at the slow undulation of the warships’ bare masts as they rode the rising waves.
One: the threat so far was only speculative gossip.
Two: I was a long way from Icecrest.
I breathed out the tension. Time to get ready for the day. The bath adjacent was a modest affair with a stone sink with a pitcher of water to tip into it. A Fire Stick lay nearby, but I
used my magic to heat the sink water to steaming.
When I was refreshed, I turned to the trunk that had been transferred by magic. I put on the first thing packed on top and ran downstairs to search for Raifas.
At the bottom level I found myself in the entry hall with the gigantic tree. I had to stop and look up at it. So beautiful! The urge to try my mental pin-hole again prompted me to shut my eyes and reach carefully. A sense of infinitely slow movement and awareness of the distant sun and deep rootedness pulled me down and down, until far in the distance I became vaguely aware of a slow, booming thrum . . . thrum . . . thrum. . . .
Noise—wind—violent shivering through branches . . . I soared upward and gasped, my knees buckling. Hard hands on my arms kept me upright, and I squinted in bewilderment into Raifas’s face as he frowned at me, worry and perplexity plain to see.
“What happened?”
“Happened?” I repeated as I got my feet under me again. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? I thought someone dropped a stone spell on you. When you didn’t come down for breakfast, or call for a servant, I sent someone after you—to discover you’d been standing there all morning.”
I stared witlessly back at him, my mind floundering. What could I say?
“Is this some Hrethan thing?” he asked.
Grateful for the respite, I said, “Yes. My pardon.” I looked down. “This tree. It has roots in the ground, does it not? It isn’t one of those where the roots are . . . invisible?”
His perplexity altered to relief, then impatience. “Yes. This part of the castle was built around the old tree, I’m told.” He smiled at me. “This entire building was originally a meeting and trading place between the Sveranji and your people. At least they called them Snow Folk, and they looked pretty much like you according to some of the old artwork nobody has gotten rid of. Lived in the trees, back when there were trees all over these mountains, not just the mulberry plantations on the south and west-facing slopes as now. Here, let’s get some breakfast into you. Then we’re off. The gryphs have been harnessed and ready since sunrise trine, and the wind is rising.”