"Well, Little Star, are you all well now?" Graddon's hearty greeting startled both children.
Mrillis recovered first, leaping to his feet and grinning widely as the seer stepped into Le'esha's office. The two children spent their afternoons in Le'esha's office, reading scrolls and playing quiet games to conserve Ceera's strength as she regained her health. Mrillis avoided Nainan, because he still grew angry every time he thought about what Endor's sister had done.
"Do you have more lessons for us?" Ceera asked. She put aside the silver wires she had been stringing with beads of semi-precious stones, to braid into rings and bracelets.
"Lessons, yes, but I think you'll like them. We will learn to make more pretty things together, yes?" The big bald man got down on his knees and studied the project in her hand. "You know the feel of metal in your skin, the smell of it when it is hot and pliant. And... you are learning the feeling of power in the air and ground, now. Very good." He nodded.
"Did you see this, sir?" Mrillis asked. He glanced over his shoulder toward the door. As he expected, Le'esha had arrived a few steps behind Graddon.
She hadn't warned the children of their approaching visitor, and Mrillis wondered if she hadn't known, or if Graddon had been able to hide himself from her foresight. But if he could, why would he do it?
That evening, after Ceera had gone to bed, Mrillis had his chance to ask. He and Le'esha and Graddon were alone in the common room. The questions kept turning around in his head until they became an itch he had to satisfy. He wasn't sure what bothered him more: that someone had the power to hide from the Queen of Snows, or that they wanted or needed to do it at all.
"Master Graddon, can you hide so my Lady can't see you?"
"What?" Le'esha tipped her head to one side and frowned, as if she couldn't believe what the boy had said.
"But I don't understand why you would do it. If you could. Can you?"
Graddon's mouth dropped open at the boy's questions. He shook his head and walked away, across the nearly empty common room to the brazier full of cherry-red coals, turned and stared at Mrillis and scratched his head. Then he came back and stood, big fists jammed into his hips, frowning down at the boy.
Le'esha had been as still as stone all this time. Finally, a grin brightened her face and she tugged on Graddon's sleeve to get him to sit again.
"I warned you, did I not?" she said.
"You did," the big man rumbled. "Have you trained him to look inside a man's thoughts and disinter his fears?"
"We are training him to think deeply and see clearly. A far rarer talent, I think." She slid her arm around Mrillis' shoulders. "Yes, my lad, Graddon hid his movements. But not from me, specifically. The Nameless One is his enemy."
"Why?"
"My visions." Graddon dropped down on the bench they shared. He sighed and closed his eyes and his broad shoulders slumped. "I am nearly two centuries old, boy. I have been helping the battle against the Nameless One since he turned to blood magic. I know more about him than he knows about himself--much good it has done us until recently. My scrolls hold hundreds of visions, many of which have yet to be fulfilled. The Nameless One fears they deal with him, his downfall, or a clue to his final, permanent defeat."
"He wants to know what they say, so he can prevent them?" Mrillis guessed.
"He wants to pervert them to serve his return to power," the seer growled, but with only half the energy the boy had heard on other occasions. "What frightens me more is that he could try to imprison me, bend me to serve his will, in an attempt to not only stop the future I have seen but reshape it to serve him. That is worse than killing me, because yes, we can change small things, reshape small events in our future by what we do now. I would much rather he tried to kill me."
"He can't kill you. We won't let him!" Mrillis leaped to his feet and grasped Le'esha's hand. "Will we, Lady?"
"Do not fear, lad," Graddon said, taking hold of Mrillis' other hand before Le'esha could respond. "When you have lived so long in the Estall's service, death loses its cold bitterness. There are regrets, yes, for those I will leave behind, but I am weary. I want to rest. Soon, I will rest. I know that, but I do not know whether it will be in death, or a long sleep, to wait until I am needed once more. Only the Estall knows."
"But there's so much you still have to teach me. Teach us. You have to teach Ceera to make the bowl." Mrillis caught his breath at the glance that passed between Graddon and Le'esha. The Queen of Snows shrugged and a crooked smile flicked across her face.
"This is how the Estall has made him," was all she said.
"A bowl, eh?" the seer said with a harrumph like a grumpy old man. "What kind of bowl? Made of what? How big? What designs on it?"
"A bowl made of stars," Mrillis half-whispered. He shivered, chilled as if ice filled his stomach, though he stood close to the brazier that spilled heat across the room. "I had a dream. There was a sword in a bowl made of stars. Ceera held the bowl. She offered me the sword and I gave it to a man."
"What did he look like?"
"He stood in the shadows. I didn't really see much...." The boy shook his head. "That's why you're here, isn't it? Why you want us to learn about metal and why you're... you're surprised, but you're happy, that we've found our imbrose earlier than everyone else."
"Indeed. The enemy will not expect you to begin your training so early, even if he suspects your identity and your place in prophecy." Graddon nodded. "A bowl made of stars, eh? That is something even I have not tried to do."
"A bowl to hold and control the power of the stars," Le'esha whispered. "My predecessor spoke of such a thing, in her most private journals. This is not something Ceera will make solely with her hands, but with her heart and soul."
"Then let us teach her the principles, so she understands with her flesh and bone, and can then do it with her spirit." The big man nodded, staring into an unseen distance for so long, Mrillis wondered if he was about to have another vision. Finally, a huge grin split his face. "To bed with you, boy. You have new lessons in the morning. If your greatest accomplishment is to be known as the one who guarded and guided Ceera of the Bowl of Stars, it will be a worthy thing. You will learn, so you can teach her the things she cannot learn now. Are you ready?"
"I'll do whatever you want me to," Mrillis said, and pressed his clenched fist over his heart as a vow.
* * * *
Graddon taught Ceera and Mrillis with stories, how to bring images from their minds into the metal and clay and wood they worked with. He taught them mold-making and took them to the Stronghold's craftsmen, to learn about melting copper and tin, gold and silver to pour into molds for pins and the bases for bowls and cups. Before he left, he gave specific instructions for Ceera's training to the Mistress of Artisans. He also gifted Ceera with her own tool kit, with many sizes of hammers and awls and stone bowls for melting metals, to fit her hands as she grew up. To Mrillis, he gave his own inkpot and the writing kit he carried in a wide pouch at his belt, and commanded him to record every vision, every dream, even the nonsensical ones.
"Because who knows when something that makes no sense today will be the key to a mystery many decades in the future?" he said, and rested his hand on the boy's head in blessing.
Not until Graddon was half a day away from the Stronghold did Mrillis realize why the man gave him his own writing kit. He spoke to no one of his fear, not even Le'esha, because if Graddon did not want to be found, how could she send anyone to guard him?
That fall, seekers went to Whispering Vale to inquire of the seer. When word reached the Stronghold that Graddon could not be found, Mrillis knew he had been right. Whether Graddon had been caught by the Nameless One and taken prisoner, or killed, or had gone to his long rest under the Estall's protection, no one knew.
The boy went to the highest point of the Stronghold, the place where Le'esha had waited and seen images of his future on the night he was born. He brought the writing kit with him and opened it for the first time, to compose a letter to Graddon. Instead, he found a letter from Graddon for him.
Short, written in big letters so it was easy to read, even in the dim light of an unnaturally calm evening.
If you would find me and find my fate, you must first find the Vale of Lanteer. You will neither see it nor touch it nor know it is there until there is need. Do not wake the Sleeper, but bring others to join in well-deserved rest. Do not enter until you have sore need of it, in a time of blood and fire. When images of sorrow turn to hope. When hope turns to sorrow. When one who cannot live unless he rests requires all the world be changed.
* * * *
The winter Mrillis turned twelve was bitter and cruel, so there were no more games in the snow during lulls. The darkness that came with storms lasted for days at a time, long stretches of howling winds and sitting in dimly lit rooms reading by the light of lamps, trying to stay warm and cheerful. Those sleepy, surreal times were broken by intervals where the entire Stronghold rushed about in frantic haste to help rescue survivors of ships foolish enough to travel up the coast to visit the Queen of Snows. The coast was not kind to unwary or unwelcome travelers even during fair weather, trapping them and devouring their ships with unexpected shallows and hidden reefs. Storms blew up without warning to drive ships into the cliffs and against the unforgiving, pebbly shore. That winter, sailors swore the rocks and reefs leaped up from the icy water to eat their ships and drag them down to the seabed.
Mrillis and Ceera learned to speak into each other's minds that winter. It happened quite innocently and quietly.
One morning, he came as usual into the long healing room that smelled of steam and fever sweat overlaid with herbs and wet linen. His arms were loaded with the morning porridge pot and a stack of bowls and spoons. Ceera sat by the bedside of Canrif, a messenger who had come from the Warhawk. He was here in the healing room instead of the guest quarters because he tried to climb the cliffs to find the Queen of Snows, instead of waiting for the weather to clear so he could approach through the Mist Gates. Canrif had fallen and broke his skull and half his ribs. When he didn't suffer delirium from blood loss and lying in a snowbank for hours, he was in agony from his battered flesh and bones.
Ceera saw Mrillis enter the room and thought about asking him to bring her the flask of nightflower oil, to soothe the sufferer. Mrillis heard her thought and didn't realize she hadn't spoken. He put down his burden and brought her the flask before she even opened her mouth.
Le'esha was pleased when the children reported this development to her. She taught them to share their inner strength and combine their imbrose, which could only occur between minds and souls that touched without effort. Like any other Rey'kil child, they had already learned the discipline needed to heal themselves from minor cuts and burns. Now, they could share energy for larger challenges. When they grew older, they would be able to take power from the Threads to communicate through the Threads and to heal others.
Le'esha saw nothing wrong in teaching them disciplines and theories they would need far in the future. As she told her ladies when they protested, and as she told the children, it was a crime not to prepare them if they were able to understand and their gifts were ready to be trained--even at the cost of depriving them of the carefree years of their childhood.
By the time spring crept across the icy landscape, Mrillis and Ceera could speak into each other's mind in words. Small words. Images were far easier to send. They treated their discovery as a game. Le'esha and her ladies let the children perceive it as a game, even when they tested their distance and accuracy.
On the day before Mrillis had to return to Wynystrys, Ceera sent him a detailed image and a message of five sentences, from the innermost rooms of the Stronghold to a ridge where he stood, half a league beyond the canyons that surrounded the Stronghold.
* * * *
That night, the tunnel leading to Wynystrys crumbled. The magic that bored through the bedrock of the continent, supported the stone ceiling and twisted time, drained away like the juice from a smashed grape. Mrillis, Ceera and all the older children woke from dreams filled with flames that reeked of blood and froze them with utter darkness.
Le'esha gathered her warriors and sent the boys away in all directions, each one guarded by three and four warriors, male and female. Mrillis was the first to go, riding due south instead of west to Wynystrys. Disguised as a servant boy in the livery of the Warhawk, he rode with four messengers from Afrin who had come to Le'esha for advice and healing potions against the expected spring fevers.
Though he understood that the attack had to have come from the Nameless One and was an attempt to find the boy of prophecy--him--Mrillis rode out too excited to be afraid. The boys would all eventually arrive on Wynystrys, and he devoutly hoped none of them would be attacked in an effort to find him. After a winter holed up in the Stronghold, cramming his head with knowledge and learning discipline, it was time for an adventure. After all, he was only twelve years old, and the future was a long way away.
Mrillis spent the first few days of the journey maintaining contact with Ceera, showing her the trails the small company rode down, and the villages they passed. Ceera had never gone beyond the canyons that surrounded the Stronghold. Mrillis felt a flicker of concern that perhaps he was doing something wrong by showing the outside world to the ten-year-old. Then he reasoned that Le'esha had to know they would communicate, and she would have told him if it was forbidden.
Too soon, though, Mrillis traveled beyond the faintest contact with Ceera. He didn't regret it as much as he thought, because the growing effort made his head ache. Besides, the weather was too beautiful, the adventure too new and exciting to let him be in a foul mood. He would be able to see Lyon and the Warhawk before they mustered the troops across Lygroes to prepare for the Encindi raids that would come with spring. He would talk about his journey with the other boys and compare their adventures when they all gathered on Wynystrys, and no one would tease him about being the Queen of Snows' protected, pampered favorite.
He had told no one on Wynystrys but Breylon about linking with Ceera. Mrillis couldn't quite decide if it was because the boys wouldn't believe him, or because they would mock him for having a bond with a mere girl-child. He didn't feel any shame; he liked Ceera more than most of the boys his age. She listened and she thought long before she said something. She didn't rage over inconsequential things or break other's possessions or play nasty tricks on children who were younger than her.
Mrillis put those thoughts aside and concentrated on learning the landscape, the landmarks, the sounds, colors, smells and the feeling of power moving through the land. When he was older, he would travel throughout Lygroes, using his talents wherever Breylon and Le'esha sent him. He wanted to be able to ride anywhere and everywhere on Lygroes, without asking for directions or a map.
The thought of learning Lygroes from northern shore to the southern tip, traveling the rocky cliffs of the west and the black sandy shores of the east, thrilled Mrillis. At night, he lay in his blankets and listened to Haster, the stargazer, telling stories about the stars. Every evening, as the stars rose above the eastern horizon, Haster gave him short lessons on how to find his way using the stars.
Mrillis wished Haster would continue on to Wynystrys, instead of staying with the Warhawk, but he knew better than to even speak his wish aloud. Haster was one of the most valuable spies who served the Warhawk. Men who could move across the land with stealth, blending into the landscape, were more valuable than ever. The Encindi no longer attacked in huge, loud masses that could be seen from leagues away. Their boats didn't make the sea white and red with their sails. They crept across the sea from Flintan in small boats, in groups of five or ten at a time, and crawled through the shadows, to attack villages and outlying farms. They slaughtered families in their sleep, poisoned wells, killed cattle and sheep in the fields and stole horses. Haster and the men he led had to be invisible to the near-invisible enemies creeping through Lygroes like choking vines, in order to stop them.
Mrillis listened to the men talk of the battles they had fought last summer and fall, driving Encindi out of Lygroes, and he wished he could stay with them and help protect the land. How could studying prophecies, learning discipline and preparing for the day his magical talents manifested compare to using bow, sword and spear to protect the innocent and helpless?
Haster's small traveling party rode south and west toward the Warhawk's winter quarters, following the course of the great river that emerged from the canyons of the Stronghold. Their band was two days away from the fortress and directly east of Wynystrys, when Mrillis saw a streak of white-gold tinged with crimson in the night sky, heading west across Lygroes.
"Starshower?" he asked, pointing.
Haster frowned, watching the path of the streak through the darkening sky. Mrillis saw more streaks join the first; smaller, perhaps higher up in the sky.
"A big one. Lots of star-metal falling down into the sea. Closer to Moerta than Lygroes," the tall, silver-haired man said finally.
"How can you tell it will fall into the sea?" Mrillis asked. He grinned, knowing Haster loved nothing better than to teach more of his beloved stargazer lore.
For the next few minutes, Haster talked and sketched in the dirt in front of their campfire. The other three men attended to cooking their dinner while the stargazer taught the boy. The third time Haster raised his staff and sighted through the crystal set in its head, to focus on the starshower, the big man froze. He muttered under his breath, glanced down at the calculations he had just scribbled, and looked up again.
"Sir?" Mrillis dropped down on one knee to study the numbers and the diagram of the arch Haster had just drawn. A shiver moved through his gut; the same shiver that came when he knew something without knowing how or why he knew it. "It's not falling right, is it?"
"Indeed it is not," Haster said, shaking his head. He continued watching the starshower. "As if something has grabbed hold of it, to pull it down onto the shore of Lygroes. Dangerously close to the port of Quenlaque, if my calculations are right. But how can that be done?"
"Not like starshowers are fish to be grabbed with a net, are they?" one of the men joked. His grin looked strained.
"A net?" He swore, louder, and closed his eyes. The crystal in the head of his staff flared for a moment.
Mrillis flinched, feeling a jolt through his middle and in his head, just behind his eyes. He shifted his sense of sight until he saw the Threads running through the landscape. They were fine. He shifted his attention to the web that hovered between the trees and stars.
Mrillis felt the ground shudder. Dizziness surged inside him. He couldn't pull away from the sideways vision as he watched the lines of the sky web waver and twist. They warped like a net being pulled toward the starshower. Like a fishing net, tugged along behind an enormous fish that didn't want to be caught.
"Somebody's using the Threads to pull the star-metal down on Lygroes," he blurted, responding to the certainty in his gut.
"I hope not, lad," Haster said. He swore again, in a tongue that seemed halfway familiar to Mrillis, with enough bitterness in his voice to make the boy jump.
In those few seconds of thinking and talking, Mrillis saw the streaks of light flowing from the back of the starshower change color and direction. The white-gold shifted toward crimson, and the streaks of light pointed into the sky, instead of trailing out behind like a cape in a stiff breeze.
"Gonna hit Lygroes instead of the sea," someone muttered among the three men behind Mrillis.
"Somebody is pulling it down," Mrillis insisted. He caught hold of the stargazer's wrist, remembering how those first tentative mental links with Ceera were easier if they touched. It was the only way he could think of to try to show the man what he saw.
Haster pulled free with a gasp, but not before blinding light exploded behind Mrillis' eyes. When it cleared, he heard all the Threads running across and through and over the land humming, clear in his head. Every color had its own note, and the thicker the Thread, the stronger, more intensely the sound vibrated through his bones.
"What did you do to me, boy?" Haster demanded. "What did you do to yourself?"
"The Threads are warping! Not just up in the sky, but down here on the ground, too!"
"I know they are, but I couldn't see it until you touched me." He grasped hold of Mrillis by his shoulders, using their shirts and cloaks as padding, a buffer between their flesh. "You're wide open, like a seed forced ahead of its time." He stared hard into the boy's eyes. "We're at war, and sometimes we have to use the weapons the Estall throws into our hands, whether we know how to use them or not. Do you understand me?"
Mrillis tried to nod. The humming in his bones and blood grew stronger. He felt as if liquid metal flowed through his veins, threatening to scorch to his marrow--but it hadn't scorched him yet.
He could touch the power running through the land. What could he do with it?
"We have to do something," someone said from what sounded like leagues away.
"Call for help, at least," another man said.
"Others have to know what's happening," gravel-voiced Maxin said. He knelt next to Mrillis and rested a hand on the boy's back, steadying him. "Will he be all right, do you think?"
"When the Estall touches us, we are always changed." Haster made a choked sound that could have been a mixture of sigh and laughter. "Yes...that's a different definition for everyone. But yes, we have to do something."
"Call," Mrillis managed to say.
With the sound of his own voice, something changed inside. He broke through whatever membrane tried to hold him prisoner, buzzing and smoldering with power. He could call Ceera.
Where are you? Ceera responded when he thought her name. She gasped, and it seemed her small, cool hand slipped into his when he showed her what he saw, the things that had happened. I'll tell our Lady!
The sensation of her hand stayed clasped in his. Mrillis knew he stood still, held up by Haster, but another part of him sped down the corridors with Ceera as she raced to find Le'esha.
"A starshower is falling on Lygroes!" the child called, and Mrillis called with her. "The Threads are being used to pull star-metal down on Quenlaque!"
Their voices combined, bouncing off the inner walls of the Stronghold, then penetrating the ancient rock to pierce the canyons and dart across Lygroes with the speed of wind.
On Wynystrys, Breylon touched the Threads and Mrillis heard him call. The boy acted as go-between, asking questions for Haster and the High Scholar and repeating the other's answers. The children trembled and felt their combined souls grow thin, but together they cried out the warning. Breylon sent out his fastest riders to warn the port of Quenlaque and the surrounding villages in the direct path of the falling star-metal and the death it could bring.
The Threads screamed, resisting as an outside force used them to draw death and destruction down on Lygroes. Mrillis felt as if the Threads ran through his own flesh, yanking him forward and back. He shouted, the sound torn out of him, and felt the response in every strong Rey'kil who could touch the Threads. Hundreds of adult voices responded, pulling with him, resisting the burning that stank of blood and rot and slashed hot knives along all his nerves.
With a final shrill shriek, the Threads sprang free of the starshower. They resumed their normal shape, no longer warped and twisted. Mrillis gasped and felt cool relief speed through his flesh, through Ceera, as the starshower sped across the night sky.
"It's let go," Haster said from far away. His voice grew thin and faint, and Mrillis thought he fell into a deep, velvety, dark well.
"He did it?" Maxin said. His hands braced Mrillis through the fall.
"Whatever he did. Estall bless us all. I hope the boy didn't destroy himself doing it." Haster's hand rested gently over Mrillis' face. His touch seemed distant, as if a thick coating of dust lay between them. "Rest, lad. You did well."
* * * *
Mrillis floated in soft, warm darkness. Someone sang to him with a low, gentle voice, in words he couldn't decipher. They touched his soul and soothed him whenever fear or a flicker of pain tried to scrape the darkness away. He felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life.
Once, the darkness grew thin enough for him to see a face. The eyes were green, standing out in stark contrast to the pale skin, brows and lashes. Tears glistened in those eyes, turning them to emeralds. A soft, pink mouth smiled at him. Mrillis tried to smile back, and drained himself so completely he fell into the darkness again. He sank into the soft warmth gladly.
Soon, though, he rose past the comfortable barrier, like bobbing on the gentle swells of the sea. He heard Ceera's voice, then Le'esha's, then other voices he didn't recognize. They spoke softly, making background music. Mrillis lay still a long while, growing used to the feeling of having a body again, the scent of lantern oil and wool blankets and the moaning of the spring wind past shuttered windows.
He smelled mud, the wet hides of horses, crushed moss and the herb-and-smoke scent of the fire pit at the central, high point of Wynystrys. That realization woke him fully, because he thought he was home in the Stronghold. When he opened his eyes, Breylon sat by his bed. Their gazes met. The white-haired High Scholar nodded, a faint smile breaking the expanse of his beard.
"So, you have awakened. You were gone a long time, young herald."
"Herald?" Mrillis' voice cracked. It felt as if he hadn't used it in years.
"You grasped the Threads and shouted warning so the entire land heard you." He nodded again. "Most well done."
"Did anyone die?" He didn't have to close his eyes to see the streamers of fire trailing behind the falling star-metal and the poison that would burn Quenlaque when it impacted.
"A few fools were hurt, who refused to heed the warning, but no, no one died. Only a small piece of star-metal survived the battle in the sky, and it landed in the sea where the entire cluster should have landed."
"That's what the higher web is supposed to do, isn't it? Push the star-metal away from Lygroes, into the sea." He moaned when the sound of his own voice and the movement of his jaw reverberated through his head in nauseating waves.
"Yes, that is what it is supposed to do. And does most of the time. Even Lygroes still fears star-metal. Already, many have voiced the fear that we must dismantle the higher web altogether, to keep our enemy from using it against us."
"The Nameless One?"
"Who can tell? He is not the only Rey'kil who has turned away from our laws and principles. Perhaps now that he has gone into hiding, others have become brave enough to act. Some are arrogant enough to think they can learn from his mistakes and take over the World." Breylon reached across the table next to Mrillis' bed and picked up a wooden cup of some dark potion that smelled of mint--but not strong enough to hide the odors of other, less pleasant ingredients. "Drink, and go back to sleep."
"I feel like I've slept forever."
"The day may come when you will wish you could." The High Scholar tried to smile, but the momentary flicker of hurt in his eyes showed Mrillis that he too thought of Graddon and wondered about the man's fate. "For now, though, you must sleep to be completely healed. You are most blessed, lad, that you did not entirely burn away all your imbrose."
"You've been worrying about that ever since I pulled Ceera out of the fire." Mrillis smiled, despite the ache that simple motion sent through his facial muscles.
"Hmm, true, and you did scorch and scar yourself in those earlier escapades. What you went through with the starshower... it burned away all the scars, so to speak, and dug deeper channels through your body and soul, to carry power. Something strange happened when we did battle over the starshower and Threads. Something we did not expect was revealed, and your very survival, my lad, is part of the lesson we have learned." Breylon tipped the cup against Mrillis' lips and the boy was forced to drink the entire sweet, slightly noxious potion, or spill it all over himself.
Before he could frame another question, the High Scholar held out his hand. Pale yellow Threads appeared in the air. Mrillis heard a mellow chord reverberate through the air, just before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.