Lady of the Trillium

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Mikayla had fastened on something else the Archimage had said. “You said that we had not yet learned much of how to communicate with the Skritek-kind. Will you then teach me the language of the hatchling Skriteks?”

  The Archimage nodded. “It is more accurate to say you will learn to communicate with them within your heart. That knowledge may not be in words; I do not know if they truly have such a thing as one could call language; but you will be able to understand them.”

  “To understand a hatchling Skritek? I think I would rather learn to kill them!” Mikayla was still seeing in her mind’s eye how Traneo had been devoured by that Skritek hatchling.

  “That is a very cruel and shortsighted point of view. In the purpose of life there may be some reason even for the Skriteks; though I confess I do not yet know it.” She noted Mikayla’s surprised glance with inner amusement. “Oh, yes, there are many things even I do not know.” She could tell this was a new idea to Mikayla, that there was anything the old sorceress did not know.

  “You feel about the Skritek thus, because you personally can put them to no use, is it not so?” Haramis continued the lesson.

  “I cannot imagine what good the Skriteks are to anyone.”

  “Is that the Skriteks’ fault, or is it the failure of your imagination?” the Archimage asked. “If nothing else, their eggs are some use as food for the Oddlings.”

  Mikayla found herself wondering why the Oddlings did not keep some kind of domestic fowl instead; but it was true that there was no place in the Mire to house and run yard fowl of any kind. She thought that the advantage of not coping with Skriteks would at least allow the Oddlings to seek out some other food. But she did not want to sound quarrelsome, and so she held her peace.

  Haramis lectured on for the rest of the morning. Then she selected a book on scrying and handed it to Mikayla. “After lunch, start reading this. And remember that I shall be questioning you on it later, so be sure to pay attention to what you are reading. Always remember, there is nothing in the world more important than learning. You never know when some seemingly insignificant thing will turn out to be vital. It’s usually not the big things that kill or save you, it’s the little details. So learn carefully and well.”

  Mikayla nodded, but she looked bored and rebellious. Oh, well, Haramis thought, I don’t care how she feels about me, just as long as she learns. But I don’t understand her. I would have given everything I ever owned for the education I’m giving her—why can’t she see its value?

  Mikayla disappeared after lunch while Haramis was in her study talking to Uzun. Haramis had assumed that she was in the library until she went to find her for dinner. But the library was empty, as was the bedroom she had told Enya to assign to the girl—had anyone told her that this was now her room? Haramis rolled her eyes and went down the hall toward Fiolon’s room, willing to bet that she would find the girl there.

  Sure enough, she heard Mikayla’s voice as she approached the room. She stopped just outside the door to hear what the girl was saying. It took her only a few seconds to realize that Mikayla was not carrying on a conversation; she was reading aloud from the book on scrying. Haramis poked her head around the door. Fiolon was asleep, but Mikayla sat on a wooden stool at the side of his bed. With her left hand she held one of his hands, and she was balancing the book on her lap with her other hand and reading it aloud to him.

  “I don’t think he’s getting much out of this,” Haramis remarked, “and it’s time for dinner.”

  Mikayla, sticking a finger in the book to mark where she was, twisted in place to look at Haramis. “If you mean that he’s not absorbing every word I read,” she said coldly, “no doubt you are correct. He was delirious before he fell asleep. But the sound of my voice does seem to calm him. Besides,” she added before Haramis could protest her choice of reading location, “when I read aloud to him, I remember more of what I’m reading than I would if I were reading to myself.”

  Haramis decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. She was tired and hungry and not used to having children about. “Come and eat dinner,” she said, “and after dinner, I expect you to go to your own room.”

  “I have another room?” Mikayla asked.

  “Yes,” Haramis said firmly, “you do. I’ll have Enya show you where it is after dinner.”

  Mikayla looked around the room that Enya showed her to. It was still on the same floor as the one Fiolon was in, which Mikayla was glad of. She didn’t intend to be separated from Fiolon if she could possibly avoid it. One wall of the room was stone, obviously the outer wall of the Tower. It had two small glazed windows, through which nothing could be seen in the dark, but the rest of the wall was covered with tapestries.

  The room was surprisingly warm for an outer room in a stone building, even though the remaining walls were covered with wood paneling and there was a fireplace surrounded by colored tiles. Mikayla investigated and found a small grille in the wall next to the bed, at about the level of her knees. Warm air flowed out through the grille, and that, combined with the heat from the fire, explained the room’s unusual warmth. Mikayla pictured in her mind the other rooms she had seen and was pretty certain that she had seen grilles like this one in all of them. That explained why the Tower was warm enough for Haramis to keep Nyssomu servants in this climate, and it was probably also the reason why the Vispi here wore such filmy draperies instead of normal clothing.

  The bed was grander than anything Mikayla had ever slept in. Its canopy was carved of gonda wood and hung with brocade, and the mattress was at the level of her shoulders. It had soft sheets and a large down comforter as well as three down pillows. Mikayla decided that she was in no danger of catching cold here, but she wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t suffocate.

  Someone had laid out a nightgown for her on a bench by the bed, next to the wardrobe. Dropping the book on scrying, which had not proved quite as dull as she had feared, on a table that was placed, along with a pair of red leather chairs, next to the fire, she put on the nightgown, climbed the three steps of the miniature wooden staircase set next to the bed, and wriggled her way under the covers. It was a bit suffocating, but Mikayla fell asleep too quickly to care.

  In the next few days she learned many interesting things, even though she missed her home. After she had finished the book on scrying, Haramis taught her to scry into the Greenmire, which was the southern section of the Mazy Mire. Since this was on the other side of the country from the Tower on Mount Brom, it did at least establish that Mikayla could learn to see the entire land.

  Haramis made her scry it in detail, right down to the tiny stinging insects, which made Mikayla glad to be in the Tower watching them, instead of in the swamp being stung by them.

  “I suppose you can think of no reason for their existence, either?” Haramis asked Mikayla, with the air of a challenge.

  Mikayla, looking at the ugly little things, said morosely that she personally could think of no special reason for their existence; but that, knowing something of the way Haramis’s mind worked, she was quite sure there must be one, even if she herself did not yet know it. In any case she supposed the fish in the Mire enjoyed catching them, and they were some good, even if only for fish food.

  “Good,” said the Archimage, “you are beginning to understand some things about this land.” Mikayla could not imagine what good that knowledge would be to her, but she supposed someday the Archimage would tell her—at least if it was anything she ought to know. And if not, she supposed there was no reason to burden her mind with it.

  She spent every afternoon in Fiolon’s room, reading whatever book she had been assigned aloud to him and telling him about her lessons. She noticed, however, that Haramis seemed determined that she and Fiolon not be alone together; after that first day, even when he was still sick and raving, there was always a servant there with them. As the weeks went by, Fiolon’s fever broke and his mind cleared. Mikayla found it a considerable relief when he could carry on intelligible conversa
tions again. But still, one of the servants was always with them, so Mikayla felt certain that Haramis’s concern was not for Fiolon’s health.

  In fact, Haramis had a very lively concern for Fiolon’s health; she was most eager to see him healthy enough to leave. But he had been very ill, and while his mind was healing rapidly, his body was not. He remained thin and pale, and it required the efforts of both Mikayla and a servant to move him from bed to chair.

  At the beginning of summer, fearing that Fiolon might have some disease in addition to the lung fever, Haramis went so far as to send a lammergeier for a Vispi healer from the village of Movis on Mount Rotolo.

  Mount Rotolo was the westernmost of the three mountain peaks of which Mount Brom, where the Tower was, was the eastern one. The middle peak, Mount Gidris, was sacred; no one lived there. Haramis herself had been there only once, on her Quest to fetch her Talisman. It had been in an ice cave on the southern flank, and the cave had collapsed around her when she removed the Talisman. Her lammergeier had pulled her out in the nick of time and Haramis hadn’t been back to Mount Gidris since. She didn’t intend to return there, either.

  The healer examined Fiolon carefully, talked to him alone for a long time, spoke briefly and reassuringly to Mikayla, and told Haramis to have patience. “He’ll be with you for some months yet, I feel,” she told Haramis, “but he will recover fully in time. I am certain of that.”

  So Haramis continued to teach Mikayla in the mornings, refrained from asking how she spent the afternoons, and made certain that there was always a servant in Fiolon’s room when Mikayla was not with Haramis. At least the girl was making progress. As the months went by she mastered scrying, as well as the simple teleportation Haramis used to clear the table or fetch a book from the library, although she made Mikayla fetch books in person so that she would learn where each book belonged and would be able to reshelve them properly. “Remember always that a book misshelved is knowledge lost.” Mikayla sighed, nodded, and memorized the proper location of each book on the library shelves.

  She also learned communication with the lammergeiers, although Haramis would not allow her to ride them. She now had clothing suitable to wear indoors, but nothing heavy enough to be worn outside ever found its way into her wardrobe. Mikayla intended to do something about that someday, but she was also learning when and how to resist Haramis and how much she could get away with. As long as she was allowed to see Fiolon every day, she tried not to upset Haramis too much.

  It wasn’t her fault that Haramis walked in one afternoon to find her and Fiolon playing teleport catch. Teleport catch was a game they had developed; it was played with a small—and preferably unbreakable—object. Today they were using a ladu fruit. The point of the game was to teleport the object to a place somewhere within arm’s reach of the other person, who then had to catch it by hand without letting it hit the floor or the bed and then teleport it back. Since the object could be materialized anywhere in the half circle in front and to both sides of you, spotting the object in time to catch it was tricky—unless, of course, you cheated a bit and used telepathy to tell where the other person was sending it, which didn’t work if the other person was using shields against telepathy.…

  They had worked out several variations of the rules and the game had become quite competitive. Today they were both shielding their minds, which took a fair amount of concentration. Haramis watched from the doorway for quite a while before they noticed she was there. She had plenty of time to observe that while Mikayla was quite competent, Fiolon was much better than that.

  The next day, Haramis had the healer back, and Fiolon started intensive physical therapy. He was walking within a week, however reluctantly, and two weeks later Haramis decreed that he was well enough to return home to the Citadel. She completely ignored Mikayla’s protest that Fiolon was too ill—or had been too ill—to be sent home in the depths of winter. “Not that the climate here is any different in the summer,” she added.

  “We’ll start studying weather and land sense next,” Haramis informed her. “I assure you that you will soon learn to notice the difference in seasons—even here.”

  7

  The Archimage ordered riding clothes and camping gear assembled for Fiolon. Since the Tower was not stocked with much in the way of human clothing, it was fortunate that he was small enough to wear Vispi clothing when necessary. As soon as the servants had packed supplies for him and dressed him in warm clothing, she led him and Mikayla down the long flights of stairs which finally opened onto a great plaza at the front of the Tower. Mikayla hadn’t noticed this plaza before; they had landed on the top of the other side of the building when they arrived and she hadn’t been outdoors since. With Fiolon for company, she hadn’t been getting too stir-crazy, but she was afraid that this was about to change. She had spent a large part of her life outdoors before coming here, and she had been accustomed to coming and going as she wished for several years before being shut up in the Tower. Fiolon’s imminent departure was making Mikayla feel very anxious; she felt even more like a prisoner than she had before when both of them were there.

  Haramis had neglected to provide her with any clothing heavy enough to be worn outside, and Mikayla suspected that the omission was deliberate. At the moment she was wrapped in one of Haramis’s cloaks, which was too long for her but would keep her from freezing while she said good-bye to Fiolon.

  But Mikayla’s feet, in the slippers she wore, were getting very cold and wet. The plaza was ankle-deep in snow.

  There was a great chasm on the far side of the plaza, with no apparent way across it. Mikayla expected to see the Archimage summon the lammergeiers. Instead a large door to their left opened, and a Vispi led a pair of fronials down a ramp that led upward beyond the door. Mikayla gaped at them. “How do they get across there?” she asked pointing to the chasm. “Magic?”

  The Archimage looked cross. “Not a bit of it,” she answered. “When Orogastus built this Tower, he equipped it with every bit of the technology of the Vanished Ones that he could beg, buy, or steal. Of course,” she added with disdain, “he thought it was sorcery. I think even after so many years, he never knew the difference. But you, Mikayla, at least, should learn what that difference is. It is not right to command the lammergeiers when nonmagical methods will work. This will be one of your most important lessons; when it is right to use sorcery, and when it is not.”

  “And I’m really going to learn it from someone who uses sorcery to clear the breakfast table,” Mikayla muttered rebelliously.

  Haramis ignored her. With practice, it was getting easier—and the Lords of the Air knew she was getting plenty of practice.

  The fronials were a fine matched pair, and Fiolon watched with amazement as they stood quietly while his baggage was put on one of them by the Vispi groom.

  He looked over the edge of the great chasm, with a river flowing at the bottom. “This would be very fine, Lady, if either the fronials—or I—or my baggage—could fly,” he said politely. “Are you going to teach me to fly? Or can these fly already?”

  “No, of course not,” said Haramis. “Although Orogastus probably thought that this was sorcery.” She pulled from the depths of her robe a small silver pipe and blew on it. It emitted a high, thin tone, and as the children watched in amazement a narrow steel causeway extruded from the edge of the chasm and quickly grew into a bridge.

  Mikayla gasped. She thought there might be something very interesting in learning about this new technology—at least as interesting as the music boxes she and Fiolon had scrupulously divided between them. She had kept three, two of which were duplicates of ones they had found, and the rest he had carefully packed along with the clothing and food the Archimage had provided him. As long as she was stuck here with the Archimage, she might as well learn as much as she could. And preferably learn things that interested her, not just what Lady Haramis thought a proper young Archimage-in-training ought to know.

  Unfortunately, Haramis seemed to
have no interest in technology, and she definitely had no feel for it. She can complain all she wants about my lack of feeling for magic, Mikayla thought, but at least I can feel technology. All she can do is use it—if she can figure out somehow how it works—or if Orogastus told her how it worked before she killed him.

  Ignoring the Archimage’s disapproving glare and the snow soaking her house slippers, Mikayla slogged across the plaza to where Fiolon was preparing to mount the lead fronial. “You will be careful, won’t you?” she said. “I don’t know why she’s sending you off on a fronial in the middle of winter—” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  Fiolon put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring hug. “I’ll be careful, Mika. I’ve camped out in the winter before—we did this a few years ago, remember?”

  “Yes, but you weren’t alone then. I was with you, and we took two of the guardsmen along—it was the only way my parents would let us go; they said it was too dangerous otherwise.” Mikayla bit her lip. “I don’t think Haramis would mourn overmuch if you met with a fatal accident.” She looked straight into his eyes. “But I warn you, Fio, if you go and get yourself killed, I’ll never speak to you again!”

  They both chuckled at the silliness of that threat. “I won’t get killed,” Fiolon said. “I promise.” He looked at Haramis and sighed. “She’s glaring at us again, and I really do need to leave before it gets dark.”