Mikayla stared at both of them in exasperation. “Do you mean to tell me that, after all the years Haramis spent teaching me things that anyone could figure out for herself, she suddenly dumped this on me without a word of warning and with no training in how to use it?” She frowned. “How powerful is it?”
“You can kill people with it.” Fiolon and Uzun spoke in chorus.
“Ugh.” Mikayla held it out carefully at arm’s length. “In that case, I’m going to put it away. I’m not stupid enough to do random experiments with things that can kill people.” She stood up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, “and then we can go watch the ritual at the Temple.”
As she left the room she heard Fiolon saying to Uzun, “You don’t have to watch this.”
Uzun’s reply drifted down the hall after her. “If I don’t watch, how can I write a proper ballad about her heroism? No. I missed too much of her Quest; I’ll watch this to the bitter end.”
Mikayla led the way to the cave with the mirror. “Mirror, View Princess Haramis of Ruwenda,” she commanded.
“Scanning,” the mirror replied. Then it showed Haramis being helped out of the carrying chair by the two priests, showed her knees giving way, and the priests holding her up.
“What’s wrong with her?” Uzun gasped.
Fiolon studied the picture carefully. “She’s barefoot,” he noted. “Mikayla, is this the first time you would have set foot to the ground since we left you?”
“They’d use the chair to bring me from the mountain to the bathing room, and then from the bathing room to the main Temple. I don’t know why she’s out of the chair in this chamber; normally the Youngest Daughter never leaves her chair—all day.”
“What’s the floor in the bathing room made of? Is it bare rock?”
“Of course not,” Mikayla said indignantly. “Just because the Temple is hidden in a cave doesn’t mean the whole thing is a cave. The bathing room has carpets on the floor.”
“So this would be the first time she actually touched the land of Labornok,” Fiolon persisted.
“Hasn’t she ever been there before?” Mikayla asked. “She’s been Archimage for nearly two hundreds!”
“Mikayla, will you answer the question?”
“You mean is this the first time she would have set bare foot to bare ground? Yes, probably it is. Why?”
“She’s all right, Uzun,” Fiolon said reassuringly. “She’s just getting the land sense for Labornok, which can only help.”
“Just getting it?” Mikayla said. “Now? What kind of Archimage ignores half her land? And why is she getting land sense for Labornok when she hasn’t felt it for Ruwenda in years?”
“Mikayla, will you please be quiet!” Fiolon snapped.
Mikayla shut her mouth. This wasn’t the way Fiolon usually spoke to her. What’s wrong? she wondered. Why is he so angry?
“She’s back on her feet,” Uzun commented, “walking bravely to her doom.”
He sounds like a ballad, all right, Mikayla thought. But “walking bravely to her doom” is ridiculous. She didn’t, however, say anything aloud. She still didn’t know why the ritual was being changed; normally they didn’t spend much time in the chamber they were in. Maybe I should just be quiet. If I’m right, they’ll see it soon enough, and they can go get Haramis, and I can give her Talisman back to her. If I’m wrong … She shuddered. I hope I’m not wrong.
As the ritual continued it became only too clear that Mikayla was wrong and that everyone who had tried to warn her had been right. Mikayla watched in horror and disbelief as the priest cut Haramis’s heart from her body. How can she look so calm while they’re doing that? Then the heart was a handful of dust, slipping through the priest’s fingers, the body turned to dust, and the entire room began dissolving. The roof fell in with a resounding crash, and the echoes reverberated throughout the mountain. The last thing they saw before the mirror went dark was a great wall of snow crashing toward them.
Mikayla collapsed to the floor, hands over her face. Dimly she heard the mirror say, “Subject no longer exists. No living people in that location.”
Then she felt it. It started with the feeling that she was sinking into the rock beneath her, becoming a part of Mount Brom. Then Mount Gidris became part of her body as well. She felt the avalanche on the north face, and broke it up into smaller pieces so that it would do a minimum of damage. Then she felt Mount Rotolo, with its hot springs and hidden valleys. Briefly she was aware of Red-Eye, sleeping in its cave. From the mountain chain her awareness expanded in both directions, north along the River Noku and across Labornok to the Northern Sea, and south along the River Nothar, across the Thorny Hell, the Dylex, the Goldenmire, past the Citadel and the Great Causeway, the Blackmire and the Greenmire, past Lake Wum and the Tass Falls, along the Great Mutar River to the border of Var, where an image of Fiolon stood guard.
“Fio?” she said aloud.
“I’m right here, Mika.” Strong arms picked her up and carried her out of the cave. Behind her she heard the sound of the door sliding closed, followed by Uzun’s wooden footsteps, but she could also hear rivers rushing to their respective seas and insects chirping in the Mires.
Fiolon set her down briefly at the entrance to the cave so that he and Uzun could both lean on the great door to close it. Then he picked her up again. Mikayla considered protesting, saying that she could walk, but the jumble of images in her mind overrode anything else.
If Haramis felt like this, no wonder the priests had to hold her up, she thought. This is much worse than it was when Fiolon got the land sense for Var. Of course, it is at least twice as much territory and I’m getting it firsthand—at least I think I am.… “Fio? Can you sense the land?”
His reply cut briefly through the babble in her head. “Just Var. Are you getting Ruwenda?”
“Yes, and Labornok.”
“Don’t bother trying to talk,” Fiolon advised her. “Just relax and let it sort itself out.”
Sort itself out? Oh, I hope it will! She lay limp in his arms as he carried her into the kitchen, propped her on a stool by the fire, and asked Uzun to hold her. She was barely aware that he and Uzun had switched places until she saw Fiolon’s face in front of her, holding a mug. “Drink this.” He helped her to hold it steady, until she had drunk it all. It was hot adop soup and it made her feel a bit more like Mikayla and a bit less like every inch of ground in two kingdoms.
“Better?” he asked. She nodded carefully. Her body still didn’t seem to be quite all hers.
“Good. Now eat this.” He handed her a strip of dried meat. She chewed it with considerable effort, but by the time she was done, she was herself again. All the clutter in her mind was gone; in fact, when she tried carefully to reach for it, it wasn’t there.
“Fio,” she said in horror, “I’ve lost the land sense.”
“No, you haven’t,” he quickly reassured her. “It’s just turned off for a bit. Hot food and meat will do that. Getting the land sense for two kingdoms at once would be a lot for anyone to handle, especially someone who’s been fasting for over a day and has just seen her kinswoman die.”
“Haramis.” Mikayla shook her head, wishing she could deny what she had seen. “Uzun.” She turned her head to look up at the Oddling. “I am so sorry.”
“No, Lady,” Uzun said. “It was my fault. I should never have asked for a new body.”
“Considering that it was Haramis who turned you into a harp so that you needed a new body so that you could take care of her when she was ill,” Fiolon remarked, “it seems to me that the blame could be spread all around. Besides, it’s pointless. Done is done, and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault.”
“And Haramis had lost her magic,” Mikayla pointed out. “It wasn’t coming back, was it?”
Uzun sighed. “I don’t think so; and at the end, neither did she. I think that’s part of why she insisted on doing this.”
“Did she mean to destroy the Temple the way she
did?” Mikayla asked.
“I think so,” Fiolon said. “When we were planning this, she said something about your not being able to go back there if it wasn’t there. I asked her what she meant, but then the discussion got sidetracked and she never did answer me.” He paused. “But I think she did intend to destroy it; you know how she felt about blood sacrifice—especially unwilling sacrifice. That’s what really ruined their ritual, you know,” he said thoughtfully. “They wanted an unwilling sacrifice, young, terrified, and in pain. What they got was an Adept who was ready and willing to die.”
“That would change the energy involved quite a bit,” Mikayla admitted.
“Remember those priests,” Uzun said. “They were more afraid than she was! This is going to make a great ballad.” His face suddenly quivered and he started to cry. “Excuse me,” he sobbed as he hurried from the room and clattered up the stairs.
Mikayla stood up a bit unsteadily and stretched. “I think I can walk as far as my room now, Fiolon. All I want to do at the moment is to sleep for a week. I feel so numb and empty I don’t think I could do anything else if I tried.”
“Sleep is probably the best thing for you,” Fiolon said. “It’s much easier to absorb land sense if you’re not trying to do anything else at the same time.”
“I believe that,” Mikayla said fervently. Then she thought of something else. “Fiolon, on the chance that Haramis didn’t deliberately destroy the Temple, I think that when either of us dies, we should be sure to do it outdoors. Binah and Haramis were rather hard on buildings.”
Fiolon chuckled. “You may have a point,” he agreed. He had to carry her to her room; she fell asleep before they reached her door.
A few weeks later Uzun sang his ballad for them. It was a stirring epic, full of praise for Haramis’s wisdom and bravery, Fiolon’s cleverness, Mikayla’s loyal friendship, and Red-Eye’s flying skills. When he had finished it, Uzun looked at them uneasily. “What do you think?”
Mikayla, blinking away her tears, said, “It’s beautiful, Uzun. Haramis would have loved it.”
“You’ll have to teach it to me,” Fiolon said. “Some of that chording is truly original.”
Uzun hesitated. “I’ll sing it for the mirror,” he said, “and it can teach it to you.”
“That’s a good idea,” Mikayla said. “That way the mirror will always have it, just the way you sang it, even hundreds after you’re gone.”
“Speaking of going,” Uzun said, “do you remember what you promised me, Mikayla, the day you found the spell Haramis used to put me into the harp?” He looked at the harp, which he had been using to accompany himself.
No! a voice inside Mikayla’s head protested. I don’t want to lose him, too! But she reminded herself sternly that she had resolved not to be selfish, as Haramis had been, with the lives of those around her. “Yes,” she said, as steadily as she could. “I remember. I promised to release you when you asked.” She gulped. “Are you asking now?”
Uzun nodded. “Tomorrow before dawn would be best, I think. That will give me time to teach my ballad to the mirror.”
Mikayla bowed her head to hide her tears. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Thank you,” Uzun said quietly. “Good night.”
After he left the room, Fiolon turned to Mikayla. “Did he just ask you to kill him?”
“In a way,” Mikayla said. “Technically I suppose he’s been dead since Haramis put him into the harp. But he wanted my word that I’d release him when she was gone.”
“Do you really have to do this?” Fiolon protested. “I’ll miss him.”
Mikayla’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ll miss him, too,” she said. “But, yes, I do have to do this. I promised. I gave him my word.”
Fiolon sighed. “In that case, I’ll help you. What do we have to do?”
The next morning at dawn, Mikayla and Fiolon stood on the stone roof of the tower. They had burned Uzun’s wooden body in a bonfire on the roof, and the fire had just finished burning out. They stood on either side of the ashes that remained, facing the rising sun. As the dawn wind came up it swept the ashes from the roof, scattering them in the air.
Mikayla held a small box of bone dust, all that was left of Uzun’s original skull. She poured half of the contents into her hand, then handed the box to Fiolon, who poured the rest into his hand. Together they lifted their hands and blew gently, sending the bone dust into the morning wind, streaming toward the sun.
“Now he is one with the Lords of the Air,” Mikayla said softly.
Together they went down to the study, where Fiolon took up the harp and played an old song, the first of Master Uzun’s compositions that he had learned. “It seems strange to think that this is just a harp now,” he said. “I suppose it will always seem a little bit like Uzun to me.”
“Then we’ll always have a little bit of him with us,” Mikayla said. Assuming that there is an us. She forced herself to ask the question she had been dreading to have answered. “What will you do now, Fiolon? Will you have to return to Var?”
“I’ll have to go there from time to time,” Fiolon replied, “just as you’ll have to travel about your lands. But I thought, if you have no objection, that we could make this our primary home. We’ll have to get more books, of course,” he added teasingly, “by now even I’ve read everything in the library.”
Mikayla laughed in relief. He wasn’t going to leave her; she wasn’t going to have to be alone the way Haramis had been. “I have, too,” she agreed. “Years ago. So we’ll get more books. What else do we need?”
“Children,” Fiolon replied. “I know it’s early to think of that, but in five or ten years you should be old enough to bear children—if you don’t dislike the idea?”
Mikayla shook her head. “I think I’d like to have children of my own, when the time is right. Of our own, I mean,” she hastily added.
“We can raise our children with a knowledge of magic and respect for the land, and have enough of them that the land will have plenty of choices for our successors.”
“Does this mean that Haramis was mistaken when she said magicians have to be celibate?” Mikayla asked.
“Only if they make magic their entire life, if they’re seeking Ultimate Power,” Fiolon intoned solemnly. “If magic is just a tool we use in our work, we have only to stay reasonably healthy.” He grinned. “And with two of us, we can help each other out. We’ve always been a good team.” He grew serious again. “Mikayla, I’ve loved you since we were seven years old, and we’re of age now and don’t need anyone’s permission. Will you marry me?”
Mikayla flung both arms around him and hugged him tight. “With all my heart,” she replied.
About the Authors
Marion Zimmer Bradley is best known as the author of the Darkover series and the bestselling Arthurian novel The Mists of Avalon. In addition to her books, Bradley edited many magazines, amateur and professional, including Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, which she founded in 1988, and an annual anthology, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress.
Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story in 1980 to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper’s Price, the first of the Darkover story collections. Waters went on to sell dozens of stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award. She is now working on a sequel to it in addition to writing short stories and editing anthologies. Waters has also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, appearing in La Gioconda, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Khovanshchina, Das Rheingold, Werther, and Idomeneo.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or ar
e used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Elisabeth Waters
Cover design by Angela Goddard
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7581-0
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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