“This is ludicrous,” the King protested feebly. “Look at him—they’re little more than children. And,” he added with more firmness, “for most of the past two years Mikayla has been living with you. They couldn’t have lain together unless you were lax about chaperoning them.”
“What?” Mikayla gasped aloud.
Apparently Fiolon could hear her, but fortunately his urgent “Hush!” was covered by the adults’ voices.
But I’m not old enough to lie with anyone, Mikayla thought. I remember when my older sisters reached marriageable age, and I’m not that mature yet—which is odd; they were about my age when it happened to them. Is Haramis doing something to keep me a child? No, she couldn’t be; if she were, she’d realize that what she’s saying about me and Fiolon is nonsense. Maybe it’s a side effect of studying magic.…
“And if they were not physically intimate,” Haramis snapped, “just how do you explain the fact that they’re bonded together like this?”
“What do you mean by bonded?” the Queen asked.
“Linked, connected, permanently in contact with each other,” Haramis said impatiently. “Why do you think you have snow all over the Citadel Knoll?”
“Oh, no!” Mikayla whispered.
“What does the snow have to do with this?” The King sounded totally confused.
“Ask the boy,” Haramis said coldly.
“It was an accident,” Fiolon said quietly. “I didn’t mean to make it snow here. I was watching Mikayla, who was making it snow at the Lady’s Tower, and we both fell asleep, and somehow the weather spell got duplicated here.”
“What do you mean ‘Mikayla was making it snow’?” Haramis asked sharply. “She doesn’t know how to make it snow!”
“Lady,” Fiolon said politely, “if you look at the table, it’s really pretty obvious how to make it snow. She was doing it because the rain she made earlier in the day had left the courtyard still wet at dark, and it froze solid. She didn’t want the servants falling down and getting hurt when they started work in the morning.”
“Wouldn’t melting the ice have been simpler?” the King asked. “And how does putting a layer of snow over it help?”
“It would take a lot of energy to melt ice in the mountains at night,” Fiolon explained. “It’s cold and dark, so you can’t use the sun to help—and the moons aren’t strong enough. And if you did produce enough energy to melt ice in a cold stone courtyard near the top of a mountain, you’d have melted enough of the surrounding snow to produce at least an avalanche, if not flooding, farther downhill. As for putting snow on top of ice, when you’re stepping into snow, it helps hold your legs where you put them; and if you do fall, you fall on something softer than ice.”
“Hmm,” Haramis said thoughtfully. “And did Mikayla work all of this out for herself? Or did you help her?”
“We talked about it, deciding what would be best to do,” Fiolon said. “We’re used to working as a team. But most of it was Mikayla; she’s generally the one who comes up with the original ideas. My part is usually to make sure she doesn’t charge headlong into something without thinking it through. And we knew how snow over ice works from all the camping we did in the mountains three years ago.”
“I didn’t realize you’d ever seen snow before,” Haramis remarked idly. She sounded much calmer now.
Fiolon, however, was suddenly feeling anything but calm. “Are you saying, Lady,” he said through clenched teeth, “that when you handed me two fronials and a sack of supplies and sent me back here, on a journey that runs through snowy mountains for at least four days, you thought I knew nothing about snow?”
“I didn’t really think of it one way or the other,” Haramis said. “Why?”
“Lords Above!” Fiolon exclaimed angrily. “You really don’t have any regard for life or people—or anything except your own convenience! If I didn’t know how to make camp in snow, I would have died—didn’t that ever occur to you? Or is that what you wanted—to be sure that Mikayla and I were separated! I warn you, Lady; if you kill me, I’ll come back and haunt you, and I’ll be right by Mikayla’s side as long as she lives—and afterward!”
Haramis’s voice was long-suffering as she addressed the King and Queen. “I realize that everyone considered these two children surplus, but it would have been convenient if someone could have spent a little time civilizing them. I have never encountered such poor manners before in my life.”
“Don’t blame them,” Fiolon snapped. “They did teach us manners. But being treated as things instead of people tends to bring out the worst in us; and you, Lady, definitely treat people as things. Look what you did to Uzun!”
“Uzun is not the subject of this discussion; you and Mikayla are.” Mikayla could hear Haramis’s footsteps and guessed that the Lady was pacing over to the window. She reached out with her mind and added sight to the link with Fiolon. He was watching Haramis, who was glaring out the window at the snow. The glamour, Mikayla noted, was back; Haramis looked the same as she always had. But now Mikayla knew it was an illusion.
After several minutes of staring out the window, Haramis turned her attention back to Fiolon. “I’ve taken care of your little snowstorm,” she informed him. “It will all melt within a few hours. As for your bond with Mikayla”—she looked around the room, then walked over to a display of swords on the wall and took one down—“I’m going to sever it. I suggest that you cooperate.”
“What happens if we don’t?” Fiolon asked. Mikayla could feel a great deal of determination that the bond be kept intact. She wasn’t sure how much was hers and how much his, but a lot of it was in his voice.
Haramis’s lips thinned in annoyance. “I’ll break the bond anyway, I’ll keep breaking it if you try to reestablish it, and I’ll have you sent back to Var, assigned to the Royal Navy, and sent as far out to sea as possible. Nobody can maintain a bond that far away, especially across running water.” She swept the sword in an arc through the air, with the sharp edge pointing down, several feet in front of Fiolon’s body. Fiolon and Mikayla cried out together in pain, and the bond broke.
10
The next thing Mikayla knew, she was lying on her side on top of her bed, curled up in a ball and holding her stomach, which felt as if someone had set fire to the front of her tunic. Her head burned, too, from the center of her forehead up across the top of her head. She heard a whimpering sound, and after a few minutes she realized that she was the one making it. She bit her lip and forced herself to be silent, but the pain continued. She tried to straighten out, but that hurt even worse, so she lay curled up on her side and waited for it to go away. It was still there when she lost consciousness again.
Mikayla woke again when someone started pounding on her door. Go away, she thought. I don’t want to be awake. She tried to ignore the noise and go back to sleep.
“Princess Mikayla.” Enya’s voice was full of concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mikayla called, although her voice came out as rather a croak.
“It’s time for lunch. Don’t you want any?”
The thought of food was truly repugnant at the moment—in fact Mikayla didn’t think she’d ever want to eat again in her life. “Thank you, Enya, but I’m really not hungry. Tell the Lady that I’m busy studying and don’t want to stop for lunch.”
“She’s not back yet,” Enya replied. “Do you know where she is?”
“Probably still at the Citadel,” Mikayla replied, trying to figure out times involved. It had been midmorning when she had been watching Haramis, and now Enya said it was lunchtime.…
So I’ve only been unconscious for a couple of hours—on and off. Aloud she said, “If she’s not back by dinnertime, don’t bother to cook anything—I’ll raid the kitchen when I take a break.” She hoped her voice sounded as if she were absorbed in her studies, rather than in pain.
Apparently Enya didn’t notice anything wrong, for she simply said, “As you wish, Princess. Oh, and Ma
ster Uzun would like to see you at your convenience.”
“Thank you, Enya. I’ll go see him presently.” When I can manage advanced functions like standing up and walking. She heard the housekeeper’s footsteps move away, and then fell asleep again.
When she next woke, it was dark outside and the only light in her room came from the embers of the fire, which had died down to almost nothing. It was cold in the room, despite the warm air coming from the grille by the bed. Mikayla was cold, too; she hadn’t even had the energy to pull a blanket over her earlier.
Cautiously she straightened her body. It was stiff from long hours in one tense position, but the worst of the pain was gone. Now she simply had a stomachache and an empty feeling inside. “I’m going to get up,” she told herself, as if saying it aloud would make it happen, “and I’m going to go to the library and find the description of that spell Haramis used on us. And I’m going to find out how to reverse it.” She moved slowly over to the edge of the bed, then slid over the side of the mattress to a standing position on the floor, still holding on to the bed. After a moment, when she was reasonably sure that her legs would support her, she picked up the candle from her table, lit it with a word of command, and headed toward the door.
She still felt weak and dizzy, so it took her a few minutes to get the door unbolted, but she finally managed it. Then she headed for the library.
As she passed the study there was a commanding ripple of the harp’s strings. “Mikayla!”
Oh, that’s right, Uzun wanted to see me. She poked her head into the study, which was also dark, except for the fire. The fire in the study was always kept burning so that the temperature would stay the same for Uzun. Harps, whether sentient or not, did not react well to changes in temperature. Uzun had explained this to Mikayla in great and highly technical detail during one of their late-night talks.
“Come in and sit down, child—or fall down, whichever is easier,” Uzun said sympathetically. “And tell me what in the name of the Lords of the Air is going on around here! Haramis hasn’t returned; you’re a wreck—what happened?”
Mikayla set her candle down carefully on the table and dropped her body a good deal less carefully into the chair next to it. In fact, she missed the chair and wound up on the floor in front of it. She leaned back against the seat of the chair and closed her eyes. It was too much work to move anymore.
“I’m not sure exactly what happened myself, Uzun,” she said, “but, Lords, how I hurt!”
“I know about the rain yesterday,” Uzun prompted her. “Did you do the snow last night as well?”
“Yes,” Mikayla said dully. “I didn’t want the servants to slip on the ice and get hurt. Nobody did, did they?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Uzun said. “Go on.”
“When I was making it snow, I was linked to Fiolon.” Mikayla started to cry. “He was sketching the sand-table, because it’s better than any of the maps we have. Even if I’m stuck here, he still ought to be allowed to go exploring, don’t you think?”
“I don’t see why not,” Uzun replied, “as long as he doesn’t go into the Mazy Mire alone or do something equally dangerous.”
“He doesn’t do dangerous things,” Mikayla said, sniffling. “I’m the reckless one, I’m the one who does stupid things—he’s the one who gets us out of trouble when I get us into it.”
“A valuable quality in a friend,” Uzun said gravely.
“Yes.” Mikayla started crying again, this time mostly from anger. “But Haramis doesn’t see it that way. Do you believe that she actually went to my parents and accused Fiolon and me of immoral behavior!”
“Why ever would she think that?”
“Just because it snowed at the Citadel when I made it snow here. She said that Fiolon and I were bonded, and she was going to break the bond, and then she took a sword off the wall, and …” Mikayla paused. “I’m not sure exactly what she did next; it hurt and I fainted. And I don’t know what she did to Fiolon and I’m worried about him.”
“The spell you’re describing is fairly simple,” Uzun said. “You swing a sword through the space between the two people, which snaps the bond temporarily, then you visualize a flame burning the cord or cords that bound them together.”
“That would certainly explain the way I feel,” Mikayla said. “I hurt from the top of my head down to my stomach.”
“But nothing below the waist hurts?” Uzun asked.
“No. Why should it?” Mikayla asked in bewilderment. “What does hurt is more than enough.”
“The cords attach to different points on your body depending on the type of bond you have,” Uzun explained. “If you and Fiolon had been married, for example, the pain would go down as far as your legs. Since it stops at the waist, obviously Haramis is mistaken.”
“Fiolon told her that before she started swinging that sword around,” Mikayla said. “But would she listen? No. She never listens!”
“It’s not her strongest skill,” Uzun agreed. “But I’m worried about her.”
“Because she’s not back already?”
“Partly that,” Uzun admitted, “but she doesn’t always account to me for her comings and goings. No, I feel that there is something wrong with her. She had some sort of seizure yesterday morning before your lesson, and then she flew off to the Citadel when she probably should have rested for at least a few days.”
“And it’s not as if she needed to do anything about the snow at the Citadel,” Mikayla pointed out. “Even in the middle of winter, it would have all melted by midafternoon, and it’s late spring now.”
“She does have a bit of a temper,” Uzun admitted, “and she’s used to doing things her own way.” He sighed. “Princess, do you feel well enough to try to scry for her and see if she’s all right?”
“I don’t know,” Mikayla said slowly. “I guess I can try. But I really do feel sick—sort of empty and hollow inside.”
“Please try,” Uzun pleaded, “for my sake, if not for hers. If I could still scry, I’d do it myself.”
“For your sake, Uzun, I’ll try it.” Mikayla pulled the small sphere out of the front of her tunic. I don’t have the energy to go find a proper scrying bowl, and if I can scry at all, I can do it with this. “I still think it was rotten of her to make you blind.”
For the first time, Uzun didn’t argue with her or automatically leap to Haramis’s defense. He just sat there quietly while Mikayla stared into the sphere, focusing beyond the reflected firelight.
She was standing in the playroom in the Citadel’s old tower, staring out the window toward Mount Brom. It was dark, except for a candle on the floor behind her, and the sound of rain pouring down outside the window explained why there was nothing much to see outside. And there was only one person who was likely to be in the playroom.
“Fiolon?” she whispered.
“Mikayla?” Fiolon’s voice whispered back. “Are you all right?”
Suddenly she was fine. Her head didn’t hurt, her stomach didn’t hurt, and the empty feeling inside was gone—except for the fact that now she was hungry and very much aware of the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.
“Yes, I’m all right now,” she said. “How about you?”
“It just stopped hurting,” he replied. “Does this mean that we’ve reestablished our bond?”
“I think so,” she said, turning to the harp. “Uzun, all of a sudden Fiolon and I don’t hurt anymore. Does this mean that our bond is back?”
“Yes, it does,” Uzun answered.
“Hey! I can hear him!” Fiolon exclaimed.
“Good,” Uzun said. “Listen carefully, then. You established the bond in the first place by spending a lot of time together, didn’t you?”
“Just about every waking moment for seven years,” Fiolon confirmed.
“And even when Haramis tried to separate you, you both tried to stay together: you thought about each other often, and you tried to far-speak each other—and succ
eeded, am I not right?”
“You’re right,” Mikayla admitted.
“So it would take a lot of effort to break such a bond. Even were it not a strong one, even if you did not both possess much magic—”
“We do?” Mikayla gasped. “I mean, I know Fiolon has talent in that direction, but me?”
“Yes, both of you. But even if you did not, the bond would be hard to break because it has been in existence for so many years. If both of you wished to break it, and you both worked at it, you could probably get rid of most of it within a month or two, although it would still probably reactivate in emergencies. If only one of you wished to break it, it would take at least a season or two of hard work—more if the other person was fighting your attempts.”
“Does this mean that Haramis can’t break it?” Mikayla asked hopefully.
“Against both your wills?” Uzun said dryly. “I very much doubt it.”
“She certainly can’t do anything about it at the moment,” Fiolon said. “I’ll bet she can’t even tell that it’s back.”
“What happened to her?” Uzun asked anxiously. “I knew something had gone badly wrong!”
“I’m sorry, Uzun,” Fiolon said. “I know you’re fond of her—and the healers do think she’ll recover in time,” he added hastily. “But she had some type of brainstorm this morning. I missed part of it; I was writhing on the floor in pain at the time, but she collapsed, and she can’t move the left side of her body at all, and she can’t summon the lammergeiers—she wanted to send you a message, Uzun—and it’s hard to understand when she tries to talk because only half her mouth moves.” He paused, then added, “I can call the lammergeiers, but I was afraid that would only upset her more, and she’s already really upset with me.”
“Who’s taking care of her?” Uzun asked anxiously.
“Ayah, mostly, and some healers from the Greenmire. They’re giving her swamp-worm venom to thin her blood and keep it from blocking off more of her brain. They seem to think that a lot of the damage can be reversed, that she’ll be able to move her left side and walk again and so forth.”
Lady of the Trillium Page 10