Prologue

Long ago, a baby girl was born to a baron and baroness in a far-flung region of a lesser-known kingdom. Her parents were delighted, having adopted many children but never having one of their own. They doted on the child, bringing her gifts and letting her have the run of the estate grounds.

As she grew, though, the girl began to behave in ways that her family found strange and unsettling. She would cry and run away from close relatives and from her siblings. She recoiled from the family dogs. She reacted with fright to harmless and everyday things, so much so that by the time she reached her teen years she barely ever left her rooms.

Across the region, word spread of the young girl’s peculiarities. Some believed that she must be possessed by a demon only she could see. Others argued that she simply needed to get out more; her fears would abate with travel abroad. Still others began to whisper of witchcraft.

Her parents, desperate to discover what ailed their daughter, took her to a healer at the outer edge of the kingdom. But as soon as the healer laid eyes on her, he condemned her and declared that she possessed powers she would ultimately use for evil. Her parents quickly took their daughter home, refusing to believe the terrible words the healer had said.

Even from within her rooms, the girl would shriek and call out warnings of accidents or calamities. The townspeople could hear her cries from her window, her thin voice floating over their heads in a never-ending series of dire pronouncements. But no one was listening.

And then, one day, an event—one that the girl had warned of—came to pass.

No one noticed at first. They had grown accustomed to her words and her warnings. When several of the townspeople had fallen sick with a mysterious illness, it only seemed natural that the girl in the window would tell passersby that they would be the next to become ill. They still were not listening.

But then the girl told one man passing below her window that he would be the next to fall sick. And he did, the very next day. Then she told an old mother. And she became sick too.

In fact, the girl told all of the townspeople, in order, who would become sick next.

The town went into an uproar, terrified residents declaring that the girl was a witch, that she had enchanted the town and was killing all of them, one by one. It stood to reason that such a girl, so frightened of everyone around her, would want them all to go away. Surely this was her way of accomplishing her terrible intent.

The baron and baroness tried to defend their daughter, to no avail. Her siblings, long estranged, had nothing to say on the matter. A growing crowd outside the estate called for a trial, or worse, for the girl’s execution. Only by ridding themselves of this evil presence could they stop the plague that was killing them one by one.

Her parents realized that soon the estate would be overrun; their entire family was in danger. Under cover of night they banished the girl, sending her alone into the forest. It was for her own good, they told her. The danger was too great. This was the only way to save her.

Inside, though, the baron and baroness knew they were also saving themselves. Their decision tore at their hearts.

The girl wandered into the woods, walking for many days and eating the provisions her parents had lovingly packed for her. She made her way higher and higher into the mountains, predicting the weather and the behavior of the animals.

Eventually she came upon a tiny town high on a mountainside. The people there had a strange aspect about them. They were peaceful, but fierce. They held to strange rituals in which they painted the ground with fanciful designs in special silver chalk. And at intervals they would send a young person away, up the mountain, to be offered up to a silver tree that none of them had ever seen. And most importantly, they were not afraid of the girl at all—even when she told them of her visions.

After some time in the village, the girl began to have a new kind of vision in which she said she could see the silver tree. She said she could see the travelers arrive at the tree’s location and what the tree and the surrounding scenery looked like. At first the villagers suspected she was attempting to fool them in order to gain access to their precious source of power. But she never made any such attempt. Instead, she would tell the townspeople the stories of each person who ascended the mountain. She did this as a tribute to their bravery, and her storytelling became part of the ceremonies honoring the tree and the people who made the journey to it.

The villagers desired to see more of this woman’s special visions and asked that artists be brought to illustrate her stories. She described the terrain, the travelers’ efforts to climb through it, and their setbacks and victories. She also described the tree: its trunk, its size, the perfectly round leaves hanging from its branches.

There was only one thing that the woman (for she had inevitably grown into a woman as the years passed) could not see: Once the travelers reached the tree, they disappeared. She could not tell the villagers where their bravest had gone.

The woman grew old in the village and had many children and grandchildren. The village grew and its people expanded their territory. A villa was built some distance away on a prominent outcropping with a view of the valley below. The building was decorated with a new crest: a drawing of the tree made to the woman’s specifications. Here the woman took up residence and received visitors. Major ceremonies took place in the building’s enormous main hall.

As the woman grew old, her stories took on a troubling tone. She said that she feared the tree was sick, or that some force had taken it prisoner. She described metal straps with bolts driven into the bark and ropes where the roots should be. She said that a branch had fallen off of the tree and lay on the ground. She told the villagers that someone must retrieve that branch or risk it falling into the wrong hands.

The villagers were fearful but clung to their traditions as a source of solace. They did not dare make any changes to their regular offerings and continued to send a single traveler at intervals up the mountain. Soon, the woman told the villagers that the fallen branch was gone. Someone had taken it, but she could not tell them who.

She had grown old by this time, and her body had become weak. She never left her bed, and she seemed to shrink smaller with each day.

And then something terrible happened. The Tromindox attacked the villa and stabbed the helpless woman in her bed with their venomous claws. The members of the clan who had grown immune to Tromindox venom attempted to free her before she could be dissolved and digested, but the only thing they were able to save was a single, blinking eye. They placed the eye in a bell jar where it remained, suspended in the air, for many more years. When it came time for the woman to go to sleep for good she closed her lid and the eye turned into a gleaming pearl.

The pearl was kept at the villa as a remembrance of this woman and her special gifts and the help that she had brought to them. The clan would refer to her from then on as the Vision.

Many of the Vision’s children and grandchildren inherited her gift and became storytellers themselves. They and their descendants gathered in the mountain village for long periods, honing their abilities and drawing the things and events that they could see. After many years of these gatherings, they decided that they required some designation and named themselves the Guild.