Mikayla could have given the entire speech herself from memory. She was doing her best, even if it wasn’t very good today, and she was so angry that she wanted to throw every portable object in the room at Haramis. Since this, however, would probably have resulted in at least a modified magical duel, which was a bit more than Mikayla wanted to try today, she used words instead.
“Before you came and kidnapped me,” she screamed at the Archimage, “I had a life, and a family—even if they didn’t pay much attention to me. I had a friend, and you brought me here and sent him away. You never asked if I wanted to be Archimage—you told me I was going to do it, you dragged me off to this horrid waste, and started making me learn all these stupid lessons regardless of whether I wanted to learn them or not!
“Before you kidnapped me, I was free. I could go out if I wanted to, I could study what I wanted to. I don’t know how you ever expect me to get any land sense here; I’m about as cut off from any contact with the land as I could possibly be. You won’t even let me go outdoors, much less into the Mire or the Dylex or any region in this land where anything grows!
“Maybe at home nobody cared much about me, but at least they weren’t bothering me. They weren’t hovering over me every minute of the day saying ‘you must do this’ and ‘an Archimage mustn’t do that.’ Before I came here I was Mikayla; now I’m just ‘Haramis in training.’ I want my life back! I want my self back! I hate it here! I wish I were dead!
“Every time I find some device of the Vanished Ones that’s actually interesting or fun to play with, and something I could learn something from, you take it away and tell me that it’s just a distraction from the study of pure magic which is the proper pursuit of the Archimage—which is incredibly hypocritical, considering that you’ve lived for centuries in a Tower that Orogastus put together with all the technology of the Vanished Ones he could amass! But the Archimage isn’t supposed to use anything practical; the Archimage has to be one with the land. Well, I don’t want to be one with the land! I want to be one with myself! I want my self back! I don’t want to grow up to be like you!”
By the end of this outburst Haramis was staring at her, with her mouth actually hanging open, apparently at a loss for words. Mikayla fled to her room and locked herself in before Haramis could decide on a course of action. She stayed locked in her room for the rest of the day, and no one called her for dinner.
When she went down to breakfast the next morning, Haramis acted as if nothing at all had happened. She simply announced the lesson plans for the day as if she had never heard Mikayla speak a word against the idea of becoming Archimage. Mikayla had a sudden vision of years of this, of sitting across from Haramis at mealtimes, of listening to Haramis lecture endlessly on.… Mikayla felt doomed. She wished that she could just curl up somewhere and die. But she was young and healthy. And besides, she didn’t really want to be dead—she just didn’t want to live this way.
8
Haramis looked at Mikayla, who sat across the breakfast table from her, listlessly stirring her cooked grains, and suppressed a sigh. It had been almost a year since Fiolon had left, and Mikayla was definitely still showing magical talent, although her powers had not increased as Haramis had hoped they would once Fiolon was out of the way and Mikayla wasn’t wasting her time and energy with him. Haramis was uneasy. She had expected Mikayla to improve when Fiolon was gone, but the child had promptly developed a major case of the sulks. By now, it seemed to have sunk into her basic personality. Was this sullen girl really intended to be the next Archimage?
It wasn’t that she was rude anymore, Haramis reflected. Her behavior in that respect had improved markedly since Fiolon’s departure. She was quiet, speaking only when spoken to; she was obedient, doing exactly as she was told. But the second she finished any appointed task, she slumped into the nearest chair or onto the nearest bench and stared at her lap. She appeared to have no real interest in magic, despite her undoubted aptitude for it, and worse yet, she seemed to have lost all interest in anything else in life. Of course Haramis knew that she herself wasn’t interested in anything much outside of magic, but surely she wasn’t so depressing about it. Uzun was more alive than Mikayla seemed at the moment. And he ate almost as much.
“Mikayla.” The girl raised a blank face from her bowl to meet Haramis’s eyes. Haramis tried to think of something to say to rouse her. Unfortunately nothing came to her. “Did you practice with the spheres this morning?”
“Yes, Lady.” The tone was flat, and there was no change in the expression—or lack thereof—on the child’s face.
“How are you doing with them?”
“Very well, Lady.”
This conversation is going nowhere fast, Haramis reflected grimly. I was young once, surely I ought to be able to communicate with her. “You’ll have to show me later how you’re coming along with them,” she said, trying to sound pleasant and encouraging.
“As you wish, Lady.”
Haramis gave up. “Eat your breakfast, child,” she ordered. She strongly suspected that without a direct command, Mikayla would sit there, stirring the stuff and staring at it for the rest of the morning. She made a mental note to ask Enya to find out what foods Mikayla liked and serve them; she didn’t want the girl to lose more weight than she already had.
What is there here that might interest her? Haramis thought back to her first vision of Mikayla, playing with Fiolon and the music boxes, wanting to take one apart to see how it worked. If she likes the music boxes, Haramis reflected, she’d probably be interested in other devices of the Vanished Ones. And goodness knows Orogastus left enough of them lying about here. I shoved them all into the storeroom on the lowest level when I came here, but some of them probably still work. I’d have to look at them first, however, because some of them are probably lethal. For Haramis, who was not at all fond of technology and hated rules that had to be reasoned with the head, instead of felt in soul and heart, this was an onerous chore.
She’d probably love Orogastus’s “magic mirror” as well, Haramis thought grimly, but I want to wait until her scrying is more reliable before I show that to her. I don’t want her to think that Vanished Ones’ devices can be an acceptable substitute for our own abilities.
Leaving Mikayla to finish her breakfast, Haramis went to her study. She sat in her chair and leaned Uzun against her shoulder, as if he were in truth the harp he was in seeming. She stroked her cheek against his satiny wood—a liberty that Uzun tolerated, realizing that something was seriously troubling his oldest friend.
“Honestly, Uzun, I don’t know what I’m going to do with that girl.”
“She does just what you tell her to,” Uzun pointed out.
“True.” Haramis sighed. “It’s the way she does it. If it weren’t impossible, I’d think that I had gotten the wrong child, but she was definitely the one in my vision.”
“Are you sure that you’re supposed to be training her?” Uzun asked. “The Archimage Binah didn’t train you, and you’ve done a fine job.”
“You trained me, Uzun,” Haramis pointed out. “I didn’t come to the job head-blind. Mikayla had no magical training whatsoever before she came here.”
“She obviously has magical ability,” Uzun said consolingly. “And she’s learned a lot over the past two years. She used to come here in the evenings and tell me what she was learning, and she and Fiolon came to visit me every night from the time he could walk until he left.”
“They did?” Haramis said in surprise.
“I guess they must have waited until you went to bed and wouldn’t see them,” Uzun remarked. “I did wonder why they were up and about so late.”
“She does have talent, but she doesn’t seem to want to use it,” Haramis protested. “I was never like that—I was following you around demanding that you teach me before I could walk properly!”
She slumped back into her chair, releasing Uzun suddenly and unexpectedly. He rocked a bit as he settled back onto his base. The ha
rp let out a sound midway between a twang of strings and what would have been a gasp in a human. “Haramis?” Uzun said in inquiry, and then more urgently: “Haramis! What’s wrong?”
Haramis was unable to reply. She felt very strange. The entire left side of her body had a pins-and-needles sensation, as if she had slept on it wrong, and when she tried to move, she found that she couldn’t. Even half her face seemed frozen in place. She felt very confused, as if something were seriously amiss, but she didn’t know what. Was there some disaster with the land that she had failed to notice? Am I dying? she wondered. I can’t be dying yet; Mikayla’s not trained!
It seemed forever that she lay slumped in the chair while Uzun vibrated agitatedly next to her, but in truth it couldn’t have been more than the third part of an hour. Then whatever it was—some sort of spell?—wore off and she could move again. But why would anyone cast a spell against her? She had no enemies.
She found she didn’t want to think about this now. So she tried to calm Uzun and make light of the incident. “I’m sure it was nothing, Uzun; I probably slept at an odd angle last night, that’s all.” But it does remind me of the work yet to be done. She pulled herself out of her chair, trying to hide the effort it took. “I’m going to find Mikayla. I think it’s time I taught her weather magic; it’s an important part of the Archimage’s work.”
“I think it’s a bit soon for that, Lady.” Uzun’s protest was formal, and Haramis ignored it.
“I’ll be the judge of that, old friend.” She smiled at him, momentarily forgetting that he could not see her, partly to take away the sting of her words and partly to hide how frightened she suddenly felt. I may not have as much time as I thought.
“You always were stubborn.” Uzun’s voice rippled through a soft glissando along the strings. “Do as you wish; you will anyway.”
Haramis found Mikayla in her bedchamber, sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed with her back to the door, hunched over something in her hands.
“What are you doing?” she inquired.
Mikayla jumped, and two silver spheres fell onto the bed. Haramis walked over and picked them up. She thought that she saw Mikayla shove something into the neck of her tunic, but she wasn’t sure, and anyway she had more important matters on her mind.
She handed the spheres, which were unusually warm—no doubt from the warmth of Mikayla’s hands, to her and said, “Put these away and come to the workroom. It’s time for the next phase of your training.”
She turned on her heel and walked out of the room, ignoring the groan of inarticulate protest behind her.
Mikayla dragged herself into the workroom just as Haramis was about to lose all patience and send Enya to fetch the girl. But she knew that scolding the child would only set her back up, so she forced herself to smile at her instead.
“Come join me here at this table, child. Do you recognize it?”
Mikayla slouched over to the side of the table and looked down at it. It was a variation of the traditional sand-table used for military battle planning, but instead of an expanse of blank sand and a collection of military counters, it used several different colors of sand, a few rocks, quite a bit of finely crushed white stone, and water. And, remarkably enough, it broke through Mikayla’s indifference. For the first time in ages, Haramis saw a flash of interest in her face and intelligence in her eyes.
“It’s the Kingdom,” Mikayla said promptly. “Here’s the Greenmire”—she pointed to the green sand—“and here’s the junction of the Golobar and the Lower Mutar rivers, where you”—she hesitated—“found me and Fiolon.”
Haramis wondered if the word Mikayla had censored was “kidnapped” and noted that she had not mentioned their Oddling companion at all, despite the fact that he had been with them at the time.
“Here’s the Blackmire,” Mikayla continued, “and the Goldenmire, and the Citadel is on this rock here. And we’re here.” She pointed unerringly to the heap of crushed white stone that represented Mount Brom. “And Fiolon’s here,” she added defiantly, indicating the Citadel Rock.
Haramis chose to ignore that last remark. “You are correct, Mikayla; this table is a model of the land. But it is not a toy or merely a map. It has a use. Can you guess what that is?”
Mikayla started to roll her eyes, then quickly lowered them. “No, Lady,” she replied, sinking back into her stupid-and-submissive act. Haramis wanted to shake her.
“Stay here and study it, then, until you can think of a use for it,” she said tartly. “I shall see you at luncheon.” She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.
Five minutes later she was pacing the study, venting her exasperation to Uzun. “That child is going to drive me insane!” she complained, explaining what had transpired in the workroom.
Uzun’s strings rippled uneasily. “Maybe she already has. Are you saying that you left her alone and unsupervised and told her to play with the sand-table?”
“Of course not,” Haramis replied impatiently. “I told her to study it, not to touch it.”
“Did you forbid her to touch it?” Uzun asked anxiously.
“No, I didn’t. She’d probably mess it up just to spite me, the little wretch. Why are you so worried, Uzun?”
“Because that table is one of the most powerful magical objects in this Tower,” Uzun said bluntly, “and despite the names you call her, the Princess Mikayla has a good mind and considerable natural magical ability.”
“Which she refuses to use,” Haramis pointed out.
“That could change at any time,” Uzun warned. “I believe that you are seriously underestimating her. And it doesn’t take much intelligence to discern that the table can be used for weather magic, especially if the bowls of water and the powdered rock you use for rain and snow are sitting next to it.”
“They’re in the rack at the end of the table, where they belong,” Haramis informed him. “Where else should they be? Without the activating spell they’re just flakes of rock and drops of water.”
“New spells can be created to do the same job the old ones did,” Uzun said sternly. “Magic is a matter of focus and intent, and Mikayla does have both.”
“You worry too much, old friend.” Haramis smiled fondly, moving to his side to stroke the smooth wood of his frame.
“Indeed?” Uzun said in a soft ripple, sounding almost amused. “Did you intend for it to be raining here today?”
Haramis whirled and dashed to the study window. Uzun was right; a thin stream of rain was falling precisely into the center of the courtyard, and the snow was melting in a circle around where the rain fell. She heard the harp chuckling behind her as she cursed under her breath and ran for the workroom, where she arrived with a stitch in her side and difficulty breathing.
“Stop that!” she gasped.
Mikayla looked up from the table, where she was carefully dripping water off of her little fingertip onto the image of Mount Brom. “I believe that I’ve figured out what this table is used for, Lady,” she said calmly. “It appears to work quite well for weather witching.”
Haramis felt a sharp stabbing pain in her head and forced herself not to clutch at it. Bad enough to be gasping for breath without displaying further signs of weakness. “I told you to study the table, not to touch it or play with it!” she snapped. “I told you it was not a toy.”
Mikayla looked bewildered. “But if it were dangerous, Lady, surely you would not have left me alone with it. And how was I supposed to study it without touching it? One learns about things by experimentation, by forming a theory, testing the theory, and creating a new theory if the first one doesn’t work, until one has a model that accurately represents reality—or at least the portions of it that one needs to deal with. And you need a bigger sand-table,” she added. “This one doesn’t have room for Labornok or Var, and surely Labornok at least is your responsibility; the kingdoms have been united for almost two hundreds now.”
Haramis’s head felt as though it were about to split
open, and she did not feel up to debating with Mikayla or anyone else her alleged responsibility to the inhabitants of a country that had attacked her home, violently murdered her parents and everyone else they could get their hands on, and tried to do the same to her. Even if the events in question had occurred a long time ago, in Haramis’s memory they were as clear as if they had happened last week. I must be getting old, she thought, if I can remember long-ago events more clearly than recent ones. Aloud she said simply, “Go and wash for dinner, Mikayla. I shall see you at the table.”
As she left the room to find some willow-bark tea for her headache, she heard Mikayla’s voice behind her.
“But it’s only lunchtime.”
After lunch, Haramis gave Mikayla an old Chronicle on the history of Ruwenda to read, hoping that this would at least keep the girl out of trouble for the rest of the day. She felt much too tired to deal with her.
Haramis went to her room, feeling a need to be by herself for a while, although she was trying hard not to think of the strange episode of that morning. She lay down on her bed, planning to rest just for an hour or two, but her weariness overcame her and she didn’t stir until Enya came to see why she hadn’t come down for dinner.
“Dinner?” Haramis sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. “Is it dinnertime already?” She looked out her windows and was surprised to see that it was dark. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“You certainly did, Lady,” Enya replied. “I already fed Princess Mikayla, and she’s sitting talking with Master Uzun, so you don’t need to worry about her. Why don’t you just stay here in your room and let me bring you a tray? You look as though you could use the rest.”
“Thank you, Enya,” Haramis said. “I am a bit tired and a tray in my room sounds like a good idea.”
As soon as Enya left, Haramis dragged herself out of bed and went to look in her mirror. Enya was correct. Obviously she had overtired herself, for the glamour that she usually maintained automatically, the spell that made people see what she wished them to see when they looked at her, was gone. The face that stared back at her was her true face, pale and gaunt and old. “I’d better stay in my room until I get my strength back,” she muttered to herself. “Uzun can’t see me, and Enya knows what I am. But it’s a bit soon to have to explain this to Mikayla.”
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