Lady of the Trillium

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Yes,” Mikayla agreed, “I know you do.”

  “Then maybe you would consider letting go of my jacket,” Fiolon said.

  Mikayla looked down at her hands. She was clinging to the sleeves of Fiolon’s short jacket so tightly that her knuckles were white. She forced her stiff fingers to release their grip, then defiantly leaned forward and kissed Fiolon on the cheek. “Take care,” she said fiercely. “And fare well.”

  “Be well, Mika,” Fiolon said, patting her shoulder and turning to mount the fronial. He looked down at her. “Try to be good.”

  “Do you really think Haramis is going to give me any chance to be otherwise?” Mikayla tried to smile. She didn’t want Fiolon’s last memory of her to be of a tear-streaked face.

  She held the smile by pure effort of will until Fiolon had his back to her and was halfway across the bridge. By then Haramis had crossed the plaza to join her. She put a hand on Mikayla’s shoulder, but Mikayla angrily shrugged it off.

  As they stood watching Fiolon ride out of sight across the causeway and down the slopes, with the second fronial behind him on a leading rope, Mikayla asked again, “Why should you have sent him on this long journey alone by bad roads and passes and through heavy snow, when you can command the lammergeiers and by tonight he could have been safe in his own bed?”

  Haramis sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you, Mikayla, that it is not wise to use the lammergeiers if it is not absolutely necessary?”

  Mikayla shrugged. Fiolon was out of sight by now, and the girl returned to the Tower and started to trudge up the stairs, head bowed and eyes cast down to the step in front of her. Haramis followed slowly, with an occasional pause to catch her breath, but Mikayla maintained a steady automatic pace all the way up to the living quarters in the middle of the Tower. And she didn’t speak to Haramis for the rest of the day.

  That evening after supper, Haramis gave her a small fabric-covered box. When Mikayla opened the latch, she found that it contained two silver spheres. When she picked one up, it made the same sort of chiming noise as the small spheres she and Fiolon had found in the ruins, except that this one was louder and lower-pitched, probably because its diameter was approximately twice that of the one she still wore about her neck.

  She hadn’t shown it to Haramis, and since she kept it tucked under her clothes, its chiming was muted, so she didn’t think Haramis knew about it. Mikayla had the firm intention of keeping it, as a reminder of Fiolon and how happy they had been that day in the ruins. Haramis often spoke of her approaching death, leaving Mikayla to hope that she might be free within a few years. Haramis couldn’t separate Mikayla and Fiolon if she were dead.

  If Haramis knew of the small sphere pendant, she made no mention of it, merely telling Mikayla to pick up the second sphere. It chimed at a slightly lower pitch, even though the spheres were outwardly identical.

  “Why do they chime at different pitches, Lady?” Mikayla asked.

  “Do they?” Haramis asked in surprise. “I never paid that much attention to the sound. What I want you to do with them is this—” She took both spheres into one hand and rotated them silently about each other first in one direction and then in the other. “You try it.”

  She handed the spheres back to Mikayla. Side by side, they were the same width as Mikayla’s palm, and when she tried to rotate them, they clinked against each other and made clanging noises as they moved. She tried to rotate them the other way, and promptly dropped one, which rolled off her lap and onto the floor with a loud clang. Mikayla winced at the sound and hastily crawled under the table to retrieve the sphere.

  When she resurfaced, Haramis was looking at her with an expression of long suffering. “Take them to your room and practice with them before you go to bed each night and when you wake up each morning. At least if you drop them on your bed, they won’t make so much noise.” She stood up, obviously preparing to retire for the night. “You need to practice with these until you can rotate them in either direction, in either hand, silently.”

  This prospect seemed so unlikely to Mikayla that she didn’t even think to ask why she should learn to do this until after Haramis had already left the room. Sighing, she put the spheres back into their box and went up the stairs to the bedroom Haramis had assigned her. She undressed and put on her nightgown, thinking that she might as well go to bed, since there was nothing else for her to do here anyway.

  She had thought that she was lonely as a child, before Fiolon had come to live at the Citadel, but then she had had her family, even if they did ignore her much of the time. And the servants at the Citadel had been friendly. Here only Enya, the housekeeper, spoke to her at all; if she passed any of the other servants in the hallways they pretended that she was invisible—or perhaps that they were. Uzun was willing to talk to her now, and she sat with him sometimes when Haramis was busy elsewhere in the evenings. But Uzun, being a harp, couldn’t move at all. And Mikayla, by means of careful questioning interspersed with more general conversation, had discovered that he was indeed blind. Apparently he had fallen into his final illness quite suddenly, and Haramis had changed him into a harp because it was the first spell she could find that would ensure his continued consciousness. Mikayla had heard of blind harpers, and of course harps didn’t have eyes, but most harps weren’t sentient. Uzun had excellent hearing, even better than Mikayla’s, which was quite good, and used that to compensate for his lack of sight and mobility. But still he knew only what happened within his hearing, in the Archimage’s study and the hallway just outside it. Mikayla often wondered just how much he minded it. She was certain that it bothered him to some degree; she could sense a sort of sadness emanating from him even when his “voice” was most cheerful, and when he played songs just for himself, they tended to be melancholy.

  Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she took out the spheres again. She shook each one next to her ear, listening to the difference in tone and wondering how this was achieved. She wished that Fiolon was there to ask about them—or even to show them to. He would love these, she thought wistfully. I wish he were here now. I wonder how he’s doing on his journey home.

  She held the spheres along the palm of her right hand and pulled the little sphere on the green ribbon free from her nightgown. She amused herself by striking it gently against the two larger spheres and listening to the sounds it made. She noticed that, for some reason, when she touched it to the top of the two larger spheres, it was reflected three times in each sphere, and when she held it beside them and looked down at the arrangement, there was a triangle between them, outlined in reflected spheres. At first she could see the palm of her hand through the triangle—after all, that was what was there—but after she stared at them for a minute her vision blurred, and as it cleared she could see Fiolon, curled up in a sleep sack next to a small fire. She was so startled that she dropped the spheres on her bed, and when she tried again, she couldn’t get the vision back. But she fell asleep that night with a smile on her face, thinking that perhaps the spheres might have uses Haramis didn’t suspect.

  Mikayla awakened shortly after dawn the next morning, and promptly picked up the spheres again. She was curious to see if she could summon up again the vision of Fiolon she had seen the night before. She rolled the spheres in her hand, a trick she found was getting easier—at least in the direction she was moving them—until she felt in her consciousness the faint beginnings of a trance state. The spheres in her hand grew warmer, almost so warm as to be uncomfortable. She touched the sphere that hung around her neck to the other two and looked at their conjunction.

  Sure enough, there was Fiolon, asleep in a sleep sack spread on the ground near the pair of tethered fronials. What a lay-abed, Mikayla thought in amusement. I wonder if I can wake him up. She gently shook the arrangement of spheres in her hands, causing them to chime softly.

  In her vision, Fiolon opened his eyes and sat up suddenly, reaching for his breast. Was his sphere chiming as well? Mikayla wished that she c
ould hear as well as see what was happening around him.

  Well, perhaps she could. At least she could try. She felt herself reach out somehow, with her mind, and something seemed to stretch inside her head. Now she could hear the soft snorting noises of the fronials, and the rustle of tree branches, and even Fiolon’s breathing, which was somewhat ragged, as if he had been wakened suddenly from a dream.

  “Fiolon?” she said softly, not sure whether she spoke aloud or not. “Can you hear me?”

  Fiolon twisted his head to look all about him. “Mika? Where are you?”

  This is wonderful! Mikayla thought. Maybe the Archimage can’t separate us after all.

  “I’m still stuck in this wretched Tower, Fio—where you left me!” she added accusingly. “But I think I’ve discovered something interesting. Look at the sphere around your neck.”

  Fiolon looked all around him again, then shrugged and pulled the sphere out from under his tunic. It chimed as he moved it, and the small sphere in Mikayla’s hand chimed as well, even though she was holding it perfectly still. The larger spheres touching it chimed in resonance with it. Fiolon held his sphere in front of his face, and his face appeared in Mikayla’s small sphere, overlaying the scene of his surroundings. “I can see your face in this, Mika!” he said in surprise. “What is this, some sort of magic? Did the Archimage teach you this?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Mikayla snapped. “I do still have a brain, Fio; I didn’t drop it in the river when she dragged us onto the lammergeiers. As for these being magic,” she added, thinking it over, “I think she’d be very cross to hear you call this magic. Remember where we found these—they’re probably some sort of device the Vanished Ones used to communicate with each other. Maybe they used them in the theater so that they could prompt an actor who forgot his lines.”

  “You may be right,” said Fiolon. “There were lots of different ones, but the two we took were a matched set. Maybe they are linked to each other. But if they were just made for use in the theater, how can we talk over this much distance?”

  “I have a theory about that,” Mikayla explained. “Haramis gave me a box with two spheres of the same general type, but larger in size—I wish you were here to see them; they’re exactly the same size, but their pitches are different, and when I asked Haramis why, she didn’t seem to know or care—I don’t think she ever even noticed. Do you suppose she can’t hear differences in pitch?”

  “I’ve heard that there are some people like that,” Fiolon said. “I think they call it tone-deaf. But she would hardly have made Master Uzun into a harp if she were tone-deaf—or if she weren’t particularly fond of music. And the old songs all say that she was very musical.”

  “Maybe the ability to hear pitch degrades when one gets old,” Mikayla said. “She’s very old, isn’t she?”

  “A bit over two hundreds,” Fiolon said. “She was about to be married when the last Great Threefold Conjunction occurred, and the next one is due in about four years from now. So she’s probably between two hundred ten and two hundred fifteen.”

  “But people don’t live to be that old!” Mikayla protested. “Are you sure?”

  “She’s not exactly an ordinary person,” Fiolon said. “She’s the Archimage. And I’m very sure that if she’s the Haramis who was one of the triplet princesses who defeated the evil sorcerer Orogastus, then she’s over two hundreds old.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to live that long,” Mikayla said, shuddering. The spheres in her grasps chimed softly.

  “Why did she give the spheres to you?” Fiolon asked curiously.

  “She told me to practice rolling them around in my hand, but I haven’t a clue as to why.”

  “I’ll bet it’s to make your fingers more supple and give you more control,” Fiolon said. “You’ve seen the magical gestures the Oddlings make—like the one against the evil eye. She’s probably going to be teaching you magic that requires you to use your hands and fingers very precisely.”

  That made sense to Mikayla. “You may be right; it certainly seems reasonable. The Lady Archimage doesn’t deign to explain anything to me or give reasons for anything she tells me to do.” She sighed. “It’s a pity she didn’t choose you instead; you already use your hands more precisely than I’ll ever be able to do. I can’t even play a small lap harp.”

  “But she chose you, Mikayla, and she has to have known what she was doing. After all, she is the Archimage.”

  Mikayla shrugged. “She certainly does seem to do as she pleases. Look what she did to poor Uzun. But I’m glad that I can talk to you, even if we can’t be together.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I really miss you. Why did she have to separate us? I bet I’d learn what she wants me to much faster if you were learning it with me.”

  Fiolon looked grave. “Does she know you’re doing this? Talking to me through the spheres?”

  Mikayla shrugged. “I have no idea. It depends on just how omniscient she is, I guess. On the off chance that she doesn’t, I don’t think I’ll tell her just yet, so I’d better get up and dressed before somebody comes looking for me. I’ll talk to you again later, all right? I’m supposed to practice with these spheres when I wake up and just before I go to bed, so it’ll probably be one of those times.”

  “If you’re sure that the Archimage won’t object …” Fiolon said uncertainly.

  “I’m sure that if she does object, she’ll let me know,” Mikayla said. “Please, Fiolon; I need all the help I can get. I’d never have reasoned out why she wanted me to practice with the spheres—you can really help me, if you will.”

  “Of course I will, Mika. As long as I can.”

  Mikayla did make some effort to learn what Haramis wished to teach her, but she found it very difficult. When she was feeling charitable, she told herself that Haramis had never taught anyone before, in addition to having had no formal training herself, so it made sense that the “lessons” she gave were haphazard and not well organized. Mikayla coped by discussing everything with Fiolon, who seemed to have a much better intuitive understanding of magic and related subjects than she did, and if neither of them could work something out, she waited until Haramis had retired for the night and crept down to the study to ask Master Uzun. He almost always had the answer or could tell her where in the library to look it up. She became quite fond of the Oddling/harp and often went down to see him at night just to talk, even when she didn’t have any specific questions. She was lonely, and she suspected that Uzun was much more lonely than she would ever be. Uzun told her a lot about what Haramis had been like as a child, although that information wasn’t of much use now.

  “Surely she must have changed a great deal after she became Archimage,” Mikayla said one night as she sat by the study hearth near Uzun. “The girl you describe isn’t much like the old woman I have to deal with.”

  “For a while,” Uzun said thoughtfully, “she did change. She was softer, less sure of herself, less certain that her way was the right way to do everything. But, as time passed, and everyone she used to know died off, she started to change back.”

  “And then some.” Mikayla sighed. “By now, she’s convinced that her way is the only way to do things. Her rules are the only ones that matter—and her rules aren’t even consistent.” She rested her chin on her drawn-up knees and stared into the fire. “She says that we shouldn’t use technology, like the devices of the Vanished Ones, and that magic should be used only for important necessary purposes—and then she uses magic to send the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. But let her catch me and Fiolon using exactly the same magic to play catch and sharpen our skills, and she pitches a fit and sends him away, by fronial, through the snow, in the middle of winter. I don’t think she even cared if he caught lung fever again, just as long as he didn’t do it here and inconvenience her.”

  There was the descending glissando of harp strings that was Uzun’s equivalent of a sigh. “I know it’s hard for you, Princess,” he said, “but try to be patient with h
er. Fiolon did reach the Citadel safely, you know that.”

  “Yes, thanks to the Lords of the Air,” Mikayla said. “But I miss him so much! If Haramis didn’t have to be parted from you, why did Fiolon have to leave?”

  “I think you had better go to bed now,” Uzun said. “It’s very late, and you do need some sleep.”

  “In other words, you’re not going to tell me.” Mikayla got to her feet. She didn’t bother looking for a candle; by now she knew every inch of hallway between her room and the study and could cover the distance silently in pitch blackness. “Good night, Uzun.”

  “Good night, Princess.”

  But Mikayla’s attempts to have patience with Haramis were somewhat less than successful. One particularly frustrating lesson a few days later was simply more than she could cope with. She hadn’t had enough sleep the night before, and what sleep she had managed to get had been disturbed by nightmares. She had a headache, lunch had tasted funny, and she suspected that she was coming down with a cold. She felt generally wretched, and her lesson reflected it. She dropped her spheres at least five times before Haramis gave a long-suffering sigh and told her to put them away, and then she managed to knock over the scrying bowl. At the time it had contained only water, not the water-and-ink mixture they sometimes used, but Haramis had looked pained and made a fuss over mopping up the water.

  Haramis had a knack of making it clear, without having to use words, that she considered Mikayla badly raised, stupid, lazy, unmotivated, and totally unworthy to be Archimage. While this attitude did hurt, Mikayla could have tolerated it if it had meant that Haramis was willing to give up and send her home. But Haramis wasn’t. She started, for at least the fiftieth time, her standard lecture on how lucky Mikayla was to be getting this training instead of being thrust into the job unprepared as she, Haramis, had been, and why couldn’t Mikayla put a little effort into her lessons, and why was she being such a sulky, ungrateful brat.…