by Melanie Rawn
A year went by, and then two, and Lady Allynis had no Chancellor. The irony of it was that Auvry Feiran would have been excellent in the position. His unofficial missions to other Shirs and even to Ryka Court had invariably met with splendid success. He was clever, intelligent, physically imposing, personally charming, socially adept, and both diligent and creative in pursuit of Lady Allynis’s goals. He was also proud and ambitious, and nearing forty with little to show for his devotion to duty or his Mageborn gifts. He had been trained at the Academy and could never become Chancellor; he had left the Academy as a Prentice and would never become a Listed Mage.
And after seventeen years of having a trusted brother at her side, Lady Allynis could not have brought herself to make her daughter’s husband Chancellor even if he had been eligible.
It was all so hideously unfair. Glenin had been not quite six years old when Telo Ambrai died, and over the next two years had watched the relationship between her father and her grandmother deteriorate until they were barely on speaking terms. Glenin knew who was right and who was wrong; what she would never understand was why her mother seemed stuck in the middle.
Her resentment had been that of a favorite child whose adored father has been slighted. Later she understood that her father was too valuable to be thwarted and pushed aside and stamped underfoot like a slave. He was strong, wise, clever, Mageborn, and husband to the First Daughter of the Ambrai Blood. That last would have been more than enough for most men. Auvry Feiran was not to be grouped with the common herd of males grateful to be told what to do by their mothers, sisters, the First Daughters of their Names, their own daughters, or the women they married. In government, in the vast trade Webs that spanned Lenfell, in village shops, in farm fields, in every facet of society, a man who held any position at all held it at women’s convenience, and was answerable in all things to them.
Two women ruled Auvry Feiran’s life and ambitions. Mage Captal Leninor Garvedian forbade him even to consider seeking the Chancellorship. Lady Allynis welcomed the Captal’s word as adding weight to her own refusal to give any power to her daughter’s upstart husband. Both paid dearly for this: in losing Auvry Feiran, they lost all his many gifts. On the day word came that Ambrai was destroyed as a city and a power and a Name, Glenin wondered if her tyrannical grandmother had cursed or cried as she died. Probably both.
It happened in 951, the summer after the remove to Ryka Court. One night her father came into her room very late. She half-woke as he murmured her name and stroked a finger lightly down her cheek, the way he’d done ever since she could remember. Then he was gone. Their servant gave her a letter at breakfast. Glenin was so surprised that she forgot to dismiss the man before she broke the green wax seal.
Forgive me for not saying a proper farewell. The Council orders me to Ambrai. I leave tonight. I’ll come back just as soon as this matter of the Captal is settled. I don’t think it will take long.
Stay well, First Daughter, and remember always that I love you and will strive to make you as proud of me as I am of you.
The “matter of the Captal” was serious, directly related to the divorce. In autumn of 950, the Council had proposed that Mage Guardians and Lords of Malerris hold office as their abilities qualified them and as it pleased their governments to honor them.
Everybody knew what it was all about. Anniyas wanted her recently acquired friend Auvry Feiran to be Chancellor of Ambrai. But he was a Mage Guardian—though officially still a Prentice—and Mage Guardians did not hold office. Warrior Mages did not direct the training of the Council Guard or the Watches; Healer Mages did not become resident physicians at Council or Shir infirmaries; Scholar Mages did not join the faculties of the various academies. No Mage—Novice, Prentice, or Guardian—served in any official capacity whatsoever. The same was true of the Lords of Malerris, though they kept to themselves in Seinshir by ancient choice and there were far fewer of them anyway.
Everybody also knew that Feiran was to be Avira Anniyas’ wedge. She wanted Mageborns in government. Lady Allynis rejected the notion—and where Ambraishir led, seven other Shirs followed, with three more tagging behind. Allynis thundered her opinion at her family, at the Ambraishir Assembly, and indeed at anyone within earshot, oblivious to her daughter’s white silences and her daughter’s husband’s set jaw.
By Candleweek the Council had withdrawn its proposal. Auvry Feiran would never become Chancellor. Allynis and the Captal congratulated each other. Glenin remembered hearing Grandmother laugh with satisfaction and then say a strange thing to Maichen: “I’m sorry if this incident has pained you, Daughter, but the Captal agrees we won’t accomplish anything this way. We will stay on the original path. Tell him so.”
At not quite eight years old, Glenin was unable to envision her parents, her grandmother, and the Captal in collusion. She did understand that the Council’s move had been obvious and too easily thwarted. It reminded her of when she’d demanded Sarra’s new puppy, been quite rightly refused, then asked for what she really wanted: a horse of her own. Grandfather Gerrin had obliged.
During early winter of 950, Glenin waited for Avira Anniyas to reveal what she really wanted, certain that the Council would oblige.
Next thing anyone knew, the Council had proposed registering all Mage Guardians and Lords of Malerris and testing their offspring for magic. New identity disks would then be issued them, lacking family colors and/or sigils, substituting a new classification: Mageborn. It was the Council’s opinion that such persons were too important to Lenfell to be left unidentified. Each would decide for Mage Guardians or Malerrisi, and be educated by one or the other.
Lady Allynis was appalled. She knew very well that if this idea became law, her grandchildren might not be allowed to govern the Shir her family had ruled for thirty Generations. Should Glenin and Sarra turn up Mageborn, it would mean the end of the Ambrai Blood, unbroken in direct line since the Eighth Census. A fine vengeance for Anniyas—and Auvry Feiran. She said as much, but not to his face. She had that much concern left for her daughter’s feelings.
One afternoon Glenin was on her way to a riding lesson when the Captal stormed past and nearly knocked her down, blind with rage, fist clenching her swordgrip. Glenin gaped in frank astonishment; never had the fiery Captal entered the Octagon Court armed, let alone in a black fury.
Leninor Garvedian was not just angry, she was frightened. Anniyas had all but announced that if Mageborns were forbidden government, then government would govern Mage Guardians. Unthinkable. Unprecedented. And—if she didn’t talk fast—unstoppable.
Because it all made sense. Mageborns were an important resource. But no Mageborn had ever been compelled to become either Guardian or Lord. Some never even knew what they were, for powers varied and no one learned their use without extensive schooling. Some asked to be taught just the basics, balking when told it was all or nothing; others, terrified of their magic, asked to be Warded. The Captal regretted lost potential but would not accept unwilling students; indeed, it was expressly forbidden.
She also knew that Anniyas wanted Mageborns made distinct from their families, implying that their first loyalty was to other Mageborns. This would shake the very core of Lenfell’s society. The Shirs were administrative conveniences; real allegiance went to the family. For a woman, the descending order of loyalty was her own family, then her father’s, then her husband’s. For a man, his birth-family was supplanted by the one he married into.
Almost every extant Name was Webbed across all fifteen Shirs. A Fenne of Shellinkroth might argue vividly in Assembly on behalf of Bleynbradden, even though Shellinkroth had no interest in or might even be injured by a vote in Bleynbradden’s favor. It was the Name that counted, the Fenne Web of kinship and economics. Connect that Web with all the others of all the Bloods and Tiers, and the world held together.
Mages were as bright lights shining at intervals along the interlocking Webs. Their vow of service was not to
the Guardians or to magic but to Lenfell. Identification and separation such as the Council proposed would cause that oath to be doubted and their families to suspect their allegiance.
Then there was the prospect of being set physically apart—and the Captal was sure that would be next. The Lords of Malerris wouldn’t mind. They stuck to their island in Seinshir anyway. But the Captal knew that her Guardians would know it for what it was: a cage. And this was contrary to their credo, their heritage, and their very natures.
The Captal made her objections known to the Council at Ryka Court, and in such language that even those who were on her side blanched. The mildest of her statements was that she’d burn her own regimentals and melt down her Captal’s sigil pins in public before she’d countenance governmental interference in the affairs of Mage Guardians—or the Lords of Malerris. She arrived ostentatiously by Ladder on the tenth of First Frost, spoke with a Mage Globe at her side to record her every word, and left by the same Ladder back to the Academy that evening. The next day she and Allynis Ambrai met to plan their next move.
They plotted for nothing. On St. Rilla’s Day, the first of Snow Sparrow and only twenty-eight hours after she left Ryka Court, Captal Leninor Garvedian was arrested in Ambrai by the Council Guard and charged with treason: interference by a Mage Guardian in government was as illegal on the Statutes of Lenfell as it was in the Mage Code. The irony did not escape Glenin—especially when Lady Allynis expounded on it at length one night while the candle burned low at the bronzewood table. “Why didn’t anybody ever have the sense to write a law forbidding the Council to interfere with the Mages?” she fumed, and Glenin hid a tiny smile. Anniyas, having asked for a puppy, had gotten her horse.
The Captal was spared the indignity of jail. She was confined to Academy grounds. On the Wraithenday that ended the year, Glenin’s father returned to Ambrai from Ryka Court. Lady Allynis forbade him her table. Glenin considered openly defying Grandmother by refusing to be where her father was not welcome, but no one in the family had successfully defied Allynis since Maichen had married Auvry Feiran. For a time Glenin thought about pretending illness, then realized she could be more help to her father by hearing what Grandmother said.
Grandmother said nothing—as the Lords of Malerris had thus far, and as Captal Garvedian should have. The first four dinners of the new year were silent misery. Her parents’ battles made up for it. Her elegant, serene mother; her composed, self-possessed father—raging at each other noon and night—Glenin’s whole world was coming apart.
And then Glenin and her father left Ambrai.
In the summer of 951, he went back.
Eight days into Long Sun, the Mage Captal was found guilty of treason. Twenty-five thousand Ambraians marched on the Council House in protest. Leninor Garvedian had been born in their city; she was one of their own. She was said to be as astonished by the verdict as Lady Allynis, but only half as furious. Their joint appeals to the city prevented more than windows from being broken; only a few of the Council Guard were roughed up. The Justices locked themselves in chambers and didn’t come out for three solid days.
By Allflower, things quieted down. The Captal’s conviction was appealed to the Council, Ambrai settled to grumbling resentment, and Glenin—supplied with all the latest news at Ryka Court—guessed that Grandmother bitterly regretted not having made Auvry Feiran her Chancellor.
Sailors Moon was a favorite holiday, its full moon dedicated to St. Tamas the Mapmaker. After a long, raucous morning of boat races on the lake, Ryka Court met on the grassy parade ground for a banquet and the awarding of the Silver Anchor to the ship that had sailed farthest during the preceding year. A Doyannis vessel was in the running, and Elsvet was too excited to eat. Glenin, invited to sit with the family, endured her schoolmate’s nerves with what she felt was remarkable patience. Well before the sweet was served around the trestle tables, however, she excused herself to go talk to her father. He sat with the Council—at the very end of the table, but with them just the same. Glenin quivered with pride at the sight of him. Dressed in green and black, he was ten times as handsome, twenty times as imposing, and a hundred times more worthy of sitting at that table than anyone else there.
He took her onto his lap so she could share the sweet with him. She was munching a spun-sugar anchor when all conversation died.
“Bard Falundir!” someone at the Council table whispered.
“But he never—”
“Has Anniyas seen him?”
“But Falundir never—”
“Not since that satire about her victory over the Grand Duke.”
“I thought she’d have a seizure! He wouldn’t dare offend her again.”
“Must be a new song. Has he ever used Tamas as a theme before?”
“But he hasn’t got his lute.”
“Shh! He’s about to start!”
The Bard wore plain blue. He wore no coif. Neither did he wear shoes. Glenin glanced quickly around to see if anyone else had noticed, her chest tightening with apprehension. Only those in mourning went barefoot.
All was silence. Falundir stood ten feet in front of the Council table, directly before Anniyas. The First Councillor smiled in pleased anticipation.
“‘Garden of the Long Sun,’” said the Bard, and began to sing.
His theme was not St. Tamas, or the sea, or sailors. The melody alone was enough to bring tears. The first stanza lovingly detailed the garden’s gentle perfections of sweet green shade and glorious flowers, the delicate harmony of color and scent, the cool nurturing stream.
The second stanza told of danger that made grass blades tremble. Glenin felt her father tense.
The third revealed this danger to be poison seeping into the stream, polluting and then killing the garden, as surely as a long-ago war had destroyed The Waste.
By the middle of the fourth stanza, everyone knew that the garden was Ambrai and the poison was Anniyas.
She rose to her feet with her jeweled belt-knife in hand, a squat little woman made abruptly formidable by rage. Falundir sang a fifth stanza, tracing the pollution to its source.
The sixth would reveal Malerris. Glenin knew that as surely as she knew Falundir must be stopped. He must not link Anniyas to the Lords of Malerris. No one must know.
The First Councillor gestured curtly with the knife. Two Council Guards took Falundir by the elbows and dragged him to her.
“You have been warned before, Bard,” Anniyas said, voice shaking with fury.
Auvry Feiran stood, Glenin caught close in his arms. Quickly he strode from the Council table.
“It is all Lenfell that needs warning,” Falundir replied.
Glenin squirmed, looking back over her father’s shoulder. “I want to—”
“No, Glenin.”
“And that is your final word, Bard? Yes, I think it will be. Council? Your vote, at once.”
Glenin heard the first few affirmatives before Feiran’s long legs took her out of earshot. She heard very clearly the sudden gasp behind her, as if a thousand people caught their breath in a simultaneous, horrified hiss.
When she found out what Anniyas had done, she wept for the Bard’s pain. But only a little, and only in secret. She understood why it had been done.
That evening an extraordinary person came to the Feiran suite. An old man she had never seen before—black-skinned, white-haired, and with eyes like green fire—entered without knocking and simply stared at Glenin’s father.
“You’ve come for my help,” Auvry said.
The old man nodded.
“This will settle all debts,” Auvry warned. “I risk much—”
“So did I.” The old man’s eyes flickered to Glenin; she instinctively drew back. “And I lost. But not all.”
“You think that fate reserved for me, don’t you?”
Black-clad shoulders shrugged. “You do what you must.”
“T
rue of us all.” He paused. “The Ladder, just after midnight. I’ll make sure it’s clear, and—”
“No. Now.”
“Impossible.”
The old man took but a single step. The effect was as if he’d leaped forward to grab Feiran by the throat. “Damn you, he’s bleeding to death!”
“He’ll do that anyway, inside his soul. We both know that.” Another hesitation. “If it’s any use to you, I don’t approve of what Anniyas—”
“You’re no use to me. Or to Maichen.”
“How—how is she? And Sarra. . . .” A note of pleading entered his voice, and jealousy stabbed Glenin with a shard of ice. “Gorynel, please—tell me—”
“How the hell do you think they are?” the old man snapped.
Not even Lady Allynis spoke to Auvry Feiran with such contempt. Glenin thought that if she had, he would not have reacted. But he flinched from Gorynel Desse—for that was who this old man must be. And Glenin realized that this most renowned Warrior Mage was also her father’s hitherto unnamed teacher.
“Glenin, stay here. Wait for me.”
She half-rose from her chair. “Father—”
“No. I’ll explain later.”
But he never did.
All that summer at Ambrai, Lady Allynis dug in. Since the verdict and its subsequent disturbances, she had stationed her own well-armed Watch around Council House to prevent access to the Captal until the appeals process was complete. Depending on one’s loyalties, this was seen two ways: as keeping the Guardians from rescuing their Captal before the Council ruled on her guilt or innocence, or as protecting her from possible assassination that would render any verdict moot. Allynis also closed every gate and every river dock, and restricted all Mages to Academy grounds.
This disruption of normal life—and especially of normal commerce—was endured with understanding by some and irritation by most. A few would not tolerate it. The interconnection of Lenfell’s Webs worked in Anniyas’ favor: trade must not unravel because of one recalcitrant city. All that was required to initiate proceedings against Ambrai was a complaint by a Blood Line—in this case the Doyannis, with their extensive shipping interests. Then, for the good of Lenfell, Anniyas could act.