“Why not?” He would have given anything to have her purity of gifts.
Chime averted her eyes. “I cannot handle it.”
“I didn’t take you for a coward.”
She rounded on him, eyes flashing. “I fear nothing.”
“You fear yourself.”
“And you fear your title.”
He had no argument with that. “At least I’m not afraid to admit it.”
For a moment she simply looked at him. Then she said, “You need to help your uncle more. He is tired, that bone-deep weariness that comes when you have worn out your body and your health.”
Panic sparked in Muller. “How dare you speak such of the king.”
“It is true.”
“How would you know this?”
“I’m not sure.” She motioned at the castle around them. “Everything here is shapes, all the mosaics, lamps, walkways, windows—everything. Beautiful, perfect shapes. I feel…I don’t know how to describe it. Too sensitized. On edge with everyone. People’s moods, their pain, their need for light—I can’t escape it here.”
An ache for the beauty of her power filled him. “And you claim you are no mage?”
Her face paled. “I don’t want this.”
“You should.” How could she throw away such a gift?
“As you should accept the truth about your uncle.”
He wanted to deny it. He couldn’t bear the thought. But he had seen Daron age this past season. The weaker his uncle’s health became, the more Muller longed to assure him that Aronsdale would continue. It mattered to Muller, mattered a great deal, for he loved his uncle, who had been his guardian for half his life. This country was Daron’s legacy; the king deserved a strong heir to carry on for him after his death.
Unfortunately he had only Muller.
The ramshackle cabin stood high in the Boxer-Mage Mountains, surrounded by stunted trees. Its thatched roof barely kept out the rain and the walls needed repair. The rocky earth couldn’t support much in the way of crops, but the man who lived there coaxed a garden out of the infertile soil, enough to feed him and his ward.
The man’s name was Unbent. Thirteen years ago, desperate and starving, he had made the worst mistake of his life, going on a midnight raid with Murk, a highwayman who robbed the gentry. They had intended only to stop the orb-carriage and take jewels and coins from its passengers. Unbent had never expected the carriage to go over the cliff and crash into a ravine. He never expected the man and woman inside to die.
Their six-year-old son had survived.
Murk had decreed they must kill the child, lest he reveal what happened. Unbent had fled then, taking the boy with him, determined to protect the orphan. He named the boy Dani and cared for him as best he could at the cabin. The accident left Dani blind, deaf, and mute. He had no lasting injuries Unbent could see, except for a scar on his neck, but his sight and hearing never returned, and he never spoke again after that night.
So they lived, mired in poverty, hidden from the world, never coming down from the mountain, cut off from humanity.
Unbent knew nothing about his ward’s true identity.
8
The Broken Ring
“I can’t do it!” Chime clenched the table, staring at the parchment inked in shimmering colors. “I can’t remember what all these shapes and hues mean.”
Della sighed. “We will try again.”
Chime wanted to lash out in frustration, but she held back. It wasn’t Della’s fault she had trouble. In the three days Chime had been here, she had learned so little. It was another reason she had dreaded coming to Suncroft; no matter how hard she studied, she would never be quick.
They were sitting at a table in the parlor of Della’s cottage at the castle. Sunshine slanted through the windows, casting colored light over well-worn tables and chairs. The windows were lovely, with stained glass in many shapes: diamonds, hexagons, squares, circles, and more. They made graceful patterns around larger round windows with clear panes. Vases of rosy box-blossoms brightened the room even more.
“Start with the colors,” Della suggested. “What do they do for mages?”
Chime hesitated. “Color specifies the type of spell.”
“Yes. Good. In what way?”
“Like a rainbow.” Chime loved her mental image of a rainbow arching over sunlit towers of the castle. Thinking of it helped make this less intimidating. “Red spells create light.”
Della nodded her encouragement. “And the others?”
“I don’t know,” Chime admitted.
“Think of spells as ways to bring light into people’s lives.” The mage mistress took an orange out of a bowl on the table. “What do orange spells soothe?”
The word “soothe” clicked for Chime. Relieved to recall something, she said, “Pain. They soothe physical pain. Yellow spells soothe emotional pain, like sorrow.” She wondered if it worked on insecurity. If so, she could certainly use some yellow spells here at Suncroft.
“Very good.” Della smiled. “How about green?”
“After soothing comes healing, yes?”
“Yes, that is a way to think about it.”
“Green heals emotional wounds,” Chime guessed.
Della shook her head. “To soothe pain, all you need to know is how to comfort someone. But before you can heal, you must understand what causes the pain.”
“That isn’t green?”
“Well, it is, in a sense.” Della considered her. “Tell me—how did you know, in the cottage with Muller, that you weren’t in danger from him?”
Chime snorted. “Heaven forbid, he might tackle me in the mud.” She was still irked at him for that.
Della chuckled. “That must have been a sight.” When Chime glared, the mage mistress tried to hide her smile. “But why weren’t you worried? A strange man throws you down, then lures you to his cottage and makes improper advances. You weren’t afraid?”
Chime crossed her arms. “Are you suggesting my behavior was inappropriate?”
“I think your behavior is fine. You haven’t answered my question.”
Ah, well. Why hadn’t she been afraid of Muller? “I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“But how do you know?”
“I could tell.”
“How?”
“I just knew. I felt it.”
Della spoke quietly. “You made a green spell. Green is the ability to feel the emotions of others.”
“Oh.” Now that Della mentioned it, Chime did remember something about that on the scroll Della had given her to study last night.
“So if green is feeling emotions,” Della prodded, “what about blue?”
“It heals emotions!” Chime knew that had been on the scroll, somewhere.
“Healing, yes,” Della said, patient. “But blue tends to physical injuries. That is why the healer at Suncroft is a sapphire mage. Emotions are much harder to heal.”
It was coming together for Chime. “In the rainbow, you have blue and then indigo. Blue heals injuries and indigo heals emotions.”
“Yes.” Della beamed at her. “A mage can make spells at her color and below. Most can do red and orange. It is more difficult to soothe emotions; it takes a strong mage to do yellow spells. Green mages are rare. Blue is almost unheard of; I know of only the healer at Suncroft. She is even a stronger mage than I.”
“But you are mage mistress.”
Della nodded. “The mage who serves as the King’s Advisor needs ability, yes, but also political savvy.”
It made sense to Chime. “What about indigo mages?”
“They probably don’t exist.”
Chime tried to read her expression. “Probably?”
“I think it must be impossible.” Della paused, her face thoughtful. “How do you cure grief, anguish, misery? Time is the true indigo mage. Only it heals such wounds.”
Chime hesitated, afraid of looking gullible. “I’ve heard it said that the royal line of Aronsdale,
the House of Dawnfield, produced indigo mages in ancient times.”
“So the legends say.” Della smiled wryly. “It increases the mystique of the Dawnfields. But no historian has ever found a reliable record of such a mage.”
Self-conscious now, Chime said, “What is my color?”
“I’m not sure, yet. Emerald, I think.”
Chime brightened. “Like you!”
“I am a jade mage. It isn’t as strong as emerald.”
“It isn’t?”
Della laughed. “Don’t look so shocked.”
A wave of unexpected jealousy swept over Chime. “If the castle healer is a sapphire, stronger than us both, doesn’t that mean she must marry Muller?”
Della’s mouth quirked upward. “I suspect her husband, children, and grandchildren wouldn’t take kindly to the idea.”
Relief washed through Chime. “She is elderly?”
“In her seventh decade.”
“Ah.” Chime would never admit it to Muller, but she had found herself unable to stop thinking about him. She touched the parchment in front of her, which was covered with shapes inked in a rainbow of colors. “I don’t have much of a feeling for how the shapes work.”
“Ask yourself this.” Della rolled up the voluminous sleeves of her tunic. “How do mages use shapes?”
“To focus spells.” Chime thought about the coins used throughout Aronsdale, so many different shapes, their value increasing with their number of sides. “The more sides a shape has, the better it concentrates your power.”
“Yes, but only to a point. If you try to use a shape more powerful than your maximum ability, your spell dissipates.”
Chime squinted at her. The few spells she had made had happened by accident rather than design. “I’ve never made a spell on purpose, so I doubt I need worry about it dissipating.”
“It will come.” Della touched her jade pendant. “Three-dimensional forms are stronger than two-dimensional. The more sides a shape has, the more power it can focus. You can use any shape up to the one of your maximum ability. If your highest shape is three-dimensional, you can also use any two-dimensional shape.” She folded her hand around her pendant. “I can use three-dimensional shapes, but only with five sides or less.”
“I could never use one with three dimensions.”
“Certainly you can. At least eighteen sides. Maybe twenty.”
“No! It is impossible.” Chime made the denial out of habit. But then she hesitated. “You think so?”
Della smiled. “I think so.” She tapped a glimmering silver circle on the parchment. “This is the highest two-dimensional shape—a polyhedron with an infinite number of sides.”
Chime squinted at her. “A circle has no sides.”
“But look.” Della showed her the other shapes: square, pentagon, hexagon, each with more sides than the last. “The more sides, the rounder they look. If you had a polygon with two hundred sides, you could hardly tell it apart from a circle.”
Chime traced a circle on the page. She enjoyed the drawings, finding satisfaction in them, especially those with three dimensions: pyramids, boxes, heptahedrons, and so on, the shapes becoming rounder as their sides increased, until they resembled faceted balls. Sudden insight came to her: a sphere had an infinite number of sides. It was the most perfect shape of all.
Concentrating on the sphere drawing, however, made her head hurt. She preferred faceted balls.
Della was watching her closely. “Only the most powerful mage can use a sphere.”
“I like this one.” Chime touched the drawing of a ball with twenty sides. “It feels right.”
Della nodded with approval. “That may be your shape.”
Excitement sparked in Chime. Perhaps she wouldn’t fail here after all. “How would I find out?”
“Concentrate on it. See if you can make light.”
Chime peered at the drawing. After a moment, she began to feel foolish. “Nothing is happening.”
“Imagine light appearing,” Della suggested.
She pictured a lamp on the table and focused hard.
Nothing.
“I feel silly,” Chime said.
“It is all right,” Della said. “Give yourself time.”
Despite the kind words, Chime felt the mage mistress’s disappointment. Della had hoped Chime would be a quicker study. Chime felt like a fraud. She had no idea how to be what these people wanted. She had felt accepted only that time when Muller came out to greet her on the Star Walk, and that had been because he liked her dress. It annoyed her. If she had to marry him, he could at least like her for herself rather than her clothes. He had been more fun in his cottage, before he knew her identity.
Muller was right about the two of them, the fop who dreaded the crown and the bumpkin who dreaded her mage power. If they were the best Aronsdale had to rely on, their country was in trouble.
Anvil took a tour of Castle Escar. He paced the blue marble halls, appreciating the high ceilings and polished columns, and the mosaics, silver, blue, violet, and white tiles with accents of red and gold. He stopped to view a series of interlocked geometric forms: triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, octagons, and so on, until the progression ended in circles.
Closing his eyes, Anvil pressed his hand against a circle and let it focus his power. He opened his eyes to find himself bathed in blue light. So easy.
Spells were simple to make—and to manipulate. All shapes bent to his will. His will. He had lived thirty-one years and spent most of them, since his eleventh birthday, on his own, searching out knowledge. He had traveled the width and breadth of first Aronsdale and then Harsdown, alone, ignored and silent. He researched every history on mages he could find. This he had learned: with the right incantation, spells turned inside out. Healing became injury and soothing became agony. Mages created light, but they could also burn.
A normal mage of his power would never twist his gifts, for what he did to others, he experienced himself. But Anvil had a difference, an imperfection some might say, though in truth it gave him superiority. He wielded every color except green. He knew nothing of emotions. He felt nothing of what he did to others.
So it was that no restraints existed on his power.
“What do you think of her?” Muller reclined on the sofa in his bedroom, holding a crystal goblet full of red wine, one of his booted legs up on the table and his other stretched across the sofa. The gold upholstery matched his fawn-colored breeches and golden tunic.
Sam Threadman continued arranging Muller’s clothes in the wardrobe, an antique with a mirror bordered by frosted polygons. “She, Your Highness?”
“You know.” Muller waved his goblet. “My bride.”
“She is lovely.” Sam paused. “And stylish.”
“Not yet, much.” Muller swung his boots to the floor and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “But just think what she could become!”
Sam answered dryly. “A mage, I would hope.”
“Well, yes, that, too.” Muller squinted at him. “I am trying to imagine being married.”
Sam turned, the lines around his eyes crinkled with a kindly look. “Do you think of a family, milord?”
“A family?” That threw Muller off guard. Of course someday he would sire an heir. He had never thought about a family, though, beyond his duty to give Aronsdale its next king. He, a father? He didn’t feel ready. He rather liked the idea of Chime as mother to his children, though. She would take no guff from them. He winced. Or from him.
In some ways, though, the idea of a family intrigued him. He was twenty-seven, certainly old enough. Both of his parents had long passed away, his father two decades ago and his mother several years after that. He had no siblings. King Daron was his only kin. The sparse nature of his family left him with a hollow space in his life.
“Yes,” Muller said, surprised. “I am thinking of a family.”
“Speaking of which—King Daron came here earlier.”
/> Muller took a swallow of wine. “What did he say?”
Sam went back to arranging clothes. “Apparently you were expected at a meeting this morning with His Majesty and Cube-General Fieldson.”
“Damnation!” Muller jumped to his feet, sloshing wine out of his goblet. “I forgot!”
Sam sighed. “I fear King Daron is unhappy with you.”
“He always is.” Muller thunked his goblet on a table. “I had better find out how much trouble I’m in this time.”
“Good luck,” Sam said.
“I’ll need it,” Muller muttered.
Chime ran into Muller just as he blew up Suncroft.
At least it seemed the entire castle could have gone up in that blast. She was running down a hallway, already late for her mage lesson. She had stayed too long in her bedroom, writing a letter to her family. She missed them so much, it ached within her. So she raced around the corner—and ran smack into Muller.
Light flared around them and the stained-glass window in a nearby alcove exploded inward.
“Saints almighty!” Muller grabbed her around the waist, shielding her with his body while broken glass showered the hallway.
“Goodness.” When the tumult stopped, Chime peered around him, staring at the colored shards all over the tiled floor. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything. Nothing!” He looked panicked. “What makes you think I did that?”
She blinked, aware of his arm around her waist and how good it felt. Embarrassed, she stepped back. His mood came to her vividly, here in a hall tiled with blue and gray polyhedrons in the floor, and with geometric wall mosaics of sky and countryside. Why would he deny the spell that burst the window? She knew without doubt the impetus had come from within him. She didn’t ask herself how she knew; she wasn’t ready to hear the answer.
“It takes a great mage to shatter windows,” she said.
“The wind did it,” he said quickly.
She put her hand on her hip. “The wind, pah.”
“Are you challenging my word?”
He tried to look fierce, but Chime wasn’t fooled. She had trouble reading his face, though; it was difficult to see past the beauty of his features to his expressions. She wondered if it had caused him problems in his youth. In her experience, boys as pretty as Muller took a lot of grief for it from other boys. If that were true, she would have thought he would welcome any power that gave him an advantage. Perhaps she was wrong about his gifts.
The Charmed Sphere Page 5