Haramis had forgotten that Mikayla had seen her earlier in the day. In fact, Mikayla had been staring at Haramis all through lunch, and Haramis hadn’t even noticed. And now Mikayla was having a long talk with Uzun.
“Is the Lady Haramis ill, Uzun?” she asked him. “She didn’t look well at lunch, and she didn’t come down for dinner at all. Enya says she’s just tired, but she looked a lot worse than tired today.”
“What do you mean by ‘worse than tired’?” Uzun asked.
Mikayla sighed. “I wish you could see,” she said. “Usually she looks sort of ageless—I mean her hair is white, but she doesn’t really look old.”
Uzun sighed, a faint ripple of harp strings. “She used to have black hair when she was a girl, but when she became Archimage she changed the color to white, and she was only about two decades old then, not old enough for white hair to be natural. She made herself look older then, too—as if she were four decades old or so—and then she kept that appearance for as long as I could still see her. I don’t know if her appearance changed after I became a harp.…”
“It didn’t,” Mikayla said. “She looked like that every time I saw her—until today. Today her hair was a sort of grayish yellow and she looked really old. And her face was thin and sort of sunken. Was she using a spell to change her appearance all those years?”
“A very minor one,” Uzun said. “Properly it’s called a glamour, not a spell.”
“Oh, I know that one!” Mikayla said. “I used a variation of it when I was very small. That’s the spell you use to keep people from noticing you when you don’t want them to see what you’re doing, like when you want to go play outdoors and don’t want to get stopped on your way out of the castle. Or if you’re in a room and someone you don’t want to see you comes in—you just sit very still and think ‘I am not here’ and they don’t see you.”
“Sounds like the same basic principle,” Uzun agreed.
“Are you saying I could have used it to make it appear that I was neatly dressed when my clothes were streaked with mud and my braids were coming apart?” Mikayla asked. “I should have learned that version, too; it would have saved me a lot of scoldings.”
Uzun chuckled. “A glamour can be used for that, yes. But I suspect that in your case, Princess, the scoldings were more of a minor nuisance than a serious problem, so you never bothered to learn to use a glamour in that way.”
Mikayla giggled. “You’re right. It always seemed so stupid to me, the idea that I should look clean and beautiful at all times. If you go out in the swamps, you get muddy, and that’s all there is to it. And nobody really cared what I looked like unless it was some sort of special occasion, and then I let the maids dress me properly and stayed clean and neat until it was over.”
She frowned, considering how this would apply to Haramis. “So if the Lady Haramis has been maintaining a glamour to keep her appearance the same for decades and decades, and now all of a sudden the glamour is gone, either she’s suddenly stopped caring, or—or she’s sick and has no energy to maintain it?”
“I’m afraid you are right,” Uzun said. “She had some sort of seizure while she was sitting with me this morning—for a while she couldn’t talk or move. She said it was nothing, and then I pointed out to her that it was raining and she left rather abruptly.”
“She told me to figure out what the table was used for,” Mikayla said with mock innocence, “as if it weren’t perfectly obvious as soon as I looked at it. But it’s strange,” she continued, “it’s not just something that you can use as a tool to make weather—although you can certainly do that quite easily with it. When I touch it, it’s as if I can feel the land through it, even though it’s just a small model of the true land.”
“‘Feel the land’?” Uzun said encouragingly. “What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t you know?” Mikayla asked in surprise. “The land is alive, Uzun, and all of it fits together; anytime one thing changes, everything around it does as well.”
“And you can sense that,” Uzun said. “How long have you been able to feel the land?”
Mikayla shrugged. “All my life, I guess. As long as I can remember, anyway—it was always there in the background. It just got a lot stronger when I touched the table, that’s all. Does Haramis use the table to tell her what’s happening in the land? Is that why she stays here all the time, instead of traveling about the land?”
“Perhaps it is,” Uzun replied. “She’s never said.”
“But this morning she didn’t notice it was raining until you told her?” Mikayla asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“She was somewhat distracted,” Uzun said, adding smugly, “and I do have excellent hearing. Don’t worry about it, child; she’ll probably be fine in the morning.”
9
With Haramis spending the evening in bed, Mikayla took advantage of the opportunity. She went to her room, picked up the box with the spheres that Haramis still had her practicing with, and went to the workroom.
While she hadn’t been able to contact Fiolon every night and morning, over the past year she had done it often enough so that it was quite easy to do by now. It was even getting fairly easy to rotate the spheres in each hand the way Haramis wanted her to—Mikayla had been practicing that, too. But tonight she twirled them only long enough to build up enough power to establish the link.
“Fio,” she whispered excitedly when she saw his face, “I’ve got something terrific to show you. Are you someplace alone?”
Fio nodded. “I’m in our old playroom,” he said. “Nobody is going to bother me here.” He frowned for a moment. “In fact, without you here, everyone is just ignoring me. It’s pretty lonely.”
“I’m sorry,” Mikayla said sincerely. “I miss you, too. I wish you were here and I could share this with you first-hand, instead of through the spheres.”
“Share what?” Fiolon craned his neck, looking curious.
“Look.” Mikayla held the spheres over the table, moving them around so that he’d get a good view.
“It’s Ruwenda!” Fiolon said at once. “And it’s better than any map I’ve ever seen. If I get ink and parchment, can you hold the spheres long enough for me to copy it?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Mikayla replied. “Haramis and the servants have gone to bed, and Uzun isn’t exactly ambulatory. We’ve got the rest of the night if we need it. Get what you need, and contact me with your sphere when you’re ready.”
“Can I reach you with just mine?” Fiolon asked. “We’ve never tried that.”
“We won’t know until we do,” Mikayla pointed out. “If I don’t hear from you in a candlemark, I’ll bespeak you again. But I’m sure you can do it; you’re a much better natural magician than I am.”
Fiolon smiled, breaking the contact without further comment. Mikayla sat by the window, manipulating the spheres and looking down into the courtyard. She frowned when she noticed what her earlier rain had done. The snow had melted over a large expanse of the courtyard, but it had still been wet when darkness fell and the temperature dropped. Now the courtyard was a sheet of ice, glistening in the moonlight. “I’d better do something about that,” she said to herself, “or we’ll have folk sliding all over the place and breaking bones come morning.” She sighed. “I really shouldn’t have made it rain in the first place; it was awfully petty to meddle with the weather just to annoy Haramis.”
She went back to the sand-table and studied the bowls at the end of it. She pressed a fist idly into the crushed white rock. It made a sound as it moved under her knuckles, the sound of footsteps in snow. Of course! she realized. The water is rain and this is snow! I should have figured that out this morning; after all it is what the mountains are made of.
She felt a warmth inside her head and heard Fiolon’s voice. “Mikayla, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can,” she answered, bringing the sphere up to her face so she could see him. “Here, I’ll hold the sphere so you can s
ee the table, and you can draw it while I work.”
“Work?” Fio asked.
“Weather witching,” she explained briefly, ignoring Fiolon’s “Oh, of course.”
She grinned. “Haramis left me here alone this morning with orders to figure out what the table was used for. Obviously she thought it would take me all day—if I ever figured it out. She came back here in a big hurry when I made it start raining in the courtyard!”
“Are you sure it wasn’t coincidence?” Fiolon asked, falling into their common argument/counterargument pattern. “Doesn’t it usually rain there in the spring?”
“Haramis certainly seemed sure enough when she was yelling at me. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her out of breath. Serves her right, though; she shouldn’t treat me like an idiot.”
Fiolon opened his mouth, then closed it. Mikayla figured that he had decided not to give her his opinion of her intelligence. “Besides,” she added, “it never rains here, even in the summer—it always snows.”
“So what is this work that you are doing now?”
“Minor repairs. When I made it rain this morning, it melted a lot of the snow, and now the courtyard is a sheet of ice.”
“So are you going to melt the ice?”
“It’s after dark here, Fiolon, and the temperature has dropped. Melting the ice would be working against nature.”
“You’re right,” Fiolon said, still sketching busily. “I should have thought of that. And if you make it hot enough to melt ice in the middle of the night, you’ll probably cause flooding someplace.”
“Or avalanches,” Mikayla agreed. “No, I think the best thing to do now is to simply put a thick layer of snow over the ice. That way everyone will be wading through snow and the snow should help keep them from slipping. Then, if it gets a bit warmer naturally in a day or two, I can get Haramis to show me how to melt the ice enough to dry the courtyard.” She looked at the various bowls placed around the table. “Besides, I’m not sure what one uses to produce heat in a location—”
“A torch?” Fiolon suggested.
“Maybe. But I’m pretty sure that this crushed marble stuff is for making snow—and if it isn’t, I’ll find out quickly.”
“Try it, then,” Fiolon said, “but do be careful. Is it all right if I watch? I want to see how it works.”
“Certainly.” Mikayla picked up a small handful of the granules of white stone and spilled them carefully from her hand onto the Tower on the table, concentrating on snow. She visualized snow falling softly onto the Tower and its surroundings, gently covering the ice in the courtyard, frosting the roof and the balconies. She seemed to float in midair just outside the Tower watching the snow drift around her. It was a very strange feeling, one she had never experienced before. As she concentrated further she felt as if she were growing smaller, shrinking to snowflake size, becoming just another crystal falling slowly through the night, picking up moisture and converting it to lacy patterns of snowflake.…
The pale light of dawn woke her. She was lying on the floor, next to the table, and every muscle in her body was stiff and sore. Why am I sleeping on the floor when I have a perfectly good bed? she wondered. Then her memories of last night returned, and she jumped to her feet, wincing as her body protested. She hurried to the window and looked out.
“I did it!” she exclaimed in delight. The courtyard was covered with snow, and looking at the railing of the nearest balcony showed her that it was almost exactly the depth she had planned. She wondered if it had been the proper depth when she fell asleep and the spell had stopped then or if it had continued while she slept until it reached the desired amount. Maybe Haramis would tell her, if Haramis was in a good mood this morning. And Haramis would probably be in a much better mood if Mikayla was found in her room practicing with the spheres when it was time for breakfast.
Mikayla tiptoed all the way to her room, changed into her night robe, got into bed and thrashed around to give it a properly slept-in look, and reached for the box containing the spheres. But as she reached out her arm she suddenly became aware of how tired she was. “It won’t hurt to sleep for a little bit longer,” she said to herself. “It’s still early. And cold.” She let her arm drop to her side, snuggled under the covers, and fell asleep again almost instantly.
When she woke again the sun was streaming through her window—she had forgotten to close the curtains. “Oh, no,” she said, scrambling out of bed and into the clothing nearest to hand. “I’m late for breakfast!” Pausing only long enough to run a comb through her hair, she ran for the dining room, slowing down to a walk as she approached it. Her mother had told her that a princess never ran, and she had said it often enough that Mikayla had developed the habit of entering a room at a ladylike pace, regardless of what her speed had been as she came down the hall.
Breakfast was laid out on the sideboard, but there was only one plate. Haramis must have eaten earlier, Mikayla thought. I only hope she’s not too angry at me for oversleeping. Mikayla made a hasty breakfast of cold toast and ladu-fruit cider that had been hot but was now room temperature. Then she went looking for Haramis.
She tried the study first, but when she poked her head through the door, Uzun sat there alone in his place at the side of the room. “Who’s there?” the harp strings sang softly.
“It’s Mikayla,” she replied. “Good morning, Uzun.” She had grown very fond of the Oddling/harp, especially since Fiolon had left. Before that, Uzun had seemed more Fiolon’s friend than hers, as if he simply tolerated Mikayla because Fiolon liked her. But after Fiolon’s departure, Mikayla had continued to spend time with Uzun, who was much more sympathetic and easier to talk to than Haramis.
Mikayla thought it rather cruel of Haramis to have stuck Uzun in his present form. It must certainly be a trial for him to be blind. Even if he had agreed to this transformation, it still seemed to Mikayla that it was selfish of Haramis to keep him bound like this.
“Good morning, Princess Mikayla,” Uzun said politely. “Did you sleep well?”
In her mind Mikayla could still hear her mother’s frequent admonition: “That’s a greeting, daughter, not a question.” She hadn’t realized until she came here just how much of her mother’s instruction she had absorbed. Back when she had been living at the Citadel, she—and everyone who knew her—would have sworn that her mother’s words affected Mikayla no more than rain did a waterbird.
Now she found herself replying automatically. “Yes, thank you, Uzun. And you?” She caught herself. “I’m sorry, I don’t know whether you sleep or not. But if you do, I hope that you slept well.”
“I’m not sure whether I sleep or not, either, Princess,” the harp replied. “If you ever come in and have to wake me up, then we’ll both know. But I’m fairly sure I don’t dream.”
“Do you miss it?” Mikayla asked curiously.
“Yes.” The reply was as bleak as a harp could sound.
Mikayla bit her lip. I wish I weren’t always hurting his feelings, she thought. I wish I were more like my sisters. I wish I were home with my mother. Aloud she said only “I’m sorry.” After all, there wasn’t much more she could say, and Mikayla had no doubt of her ability to make a bad situation worse if she kept talking. Time to change the subject.
“Do you know where the Lady is this morning, Uzun?”
“No.” The harp sighed. “She didn’t come in to say good morning today.”
“That’s odd,” Mikayla said. “It looks as though she ate breakfast.”
“Ring the bell, child,” Uzun said briskly. “Ask Enya what has happened.”
Enya arrived a few minutes later. Uzun was demanding to know Haramis’s whereabouts before the housekeeper was even through the doorway.
He may be blind, but at least he has excellent hearing, Mikayla thought. I think he heard her coming at least half a minute before I did.
“She’s gone,” Enya explained. “One minute she was sitting there eating breakfast and staring into space—yo
u know the way she does, Princess—and the next minute she just left her food, went and got her cloak, and flew off on one of those great birds of hers.”
“Where did she go?” Uzun asked. “Didn’t she say?”
“Well, Master Uzun,” Enya replied uneasily, “it’s not my place to question her comings and goings, and I really shouldn’t say.…”
The harp strings jangled angrily, and Enya twisted her apron nervously between her hands. “She flew south, maybe toward the Citadel. I don’t know for sure.”
Mikayla gasped in horror, filled with sudden foreboding. “Fiolon!” she said, running full tilt from the room. She didn’t stop until she was in her bedchamber with the door bolted. She grabbed for the box and spilled the spheres into her hand. They almost seemed to twirl of their own accord, and the power came almost instantly as she touched the sphere she wore to them. This time hearing, not sight, was the first sense she picked up. No doubt Fiolon’s sphere was tucked safely inside his shirt, but the argument going on around him was clearly audible.
“You must be mistaken, my lady Archimage,” the Queen was saying with cold certainty. “My daughter may be a bit of a hoyden, but she is not immoral. Nor is my sister’s son.”
“She is mistaken,” Fiolon said angrily. “I never touched Mikayla that way. We were going to be betrothed last year and then married. I certainly had no reason to wish to dishonor my future wife.”
“She is not your future wife!” Haramis snapped angrily.
“During the period of time you are referring to, my lady,” Fiolon replied, “I can assure you that we considered her as such. I love Mikayla, I shall always love Mikayla, regardless of what you do to her, and I would never have done anything to harm her.”
Lady of the Trillium Page 9