“It was only a dream,” he whispered. “Only a dream. The wood revealed my own thoughts to me. That’s all. But I knew them already.”
Then he felt his heart floating again, sunlit and serene, impossibly heavy, impossibly light; he felt the earth itself balanced on his outstretched finger.
The wood will reveal your nature, he heard Felan say, and his skin prickled again, this time with wonder.
Which? he asked it. Which?
He rose again, turned aimlessly this way and that, hoping to see the walls of the school and finding only trees everywhere, interminable walls of green. He stood uncertainly, restless and disturbed for some reason, and suddenly tired of looking at himself. He heard a few twigs snap and tensed. Then one of the other students emerged on the far side of the tiny pool, and he sighed with relief at the company.
She looked only vaguely familiar. One of the newer, younger students who had entered the school at the beginning of spring, he guessed. He hardly knew them. She was flushed; her long hair, a lank white-gold, had snagged a leaf or two, a bit of moss. She nearly walked into the pond before he spoke.
“Watch your step,” he advised. She stopped dead, staring at him as though he were one of the wood’s portents. “I’m Bourne,” he added quickly. “Another student.” She was still looking at him in a kind of bewildered horror; he wondered if he had grown horns or if his face had turned green from proximity to all the trees. “There’s a pool,” he explained gently, “in front of you. It looks very shallow, and I think it’s uninhabited by monsters, but you will get your feet wet if you take another step.”
She glanced down finally. “Oh,” she said, and stepped backward carefully, as though she were practicing a dance step. When she looked at him again, her face seemed calmer. “Thank you.” Her voice was soft, very shy; she might bolt like a deer, he guessed, if he sneezed. She was oddly dressed for a student, wearing an oversized homespun cloak over what looked like pink silk worse for the mud, and a pair of black riding boots. She studied him silently, for a disconcertingly long moment, before she spoke again. “The wood,” she said hesitantly. “It’s odd today. Not like the last time I was here.”
“It is very odd,” he agreed fervently, and watched her begin a path around the pond. All her steps were cautious, precise; there might have been monsters sleeping all around her she was trying not to waken.
“It seems full of things,” she continued. “Last time it seemed empty.”
“What kinds of things?” he asked, settling back against the stump, curious about someone else’s visions.
“Except for the giant,” she amended.
“You saw a giant?”
“Last time. This time, I saw birds.”
“I haven’t seen so much as a mosquito. Not even over this pond, which should have spawned vast numbers of flying things.”
“They spoke.”
“They—?”
“The birds.” She had rounded the pool within a few feet of him; she stopped again. He could see her eyes now, a pale blue beneath her very pale brows. “I could understand them. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Oh, very,” he agreed. “What did they say?”
“There was one in particular—a fiery red, every feather, and black, black eyes. It told me to beware what I might meet in the wood. That’s why—”
“That’s why,” he finished, enlightened, “you seemed so frightened of me.”
“For a moment,” she admitted. “I was expecting something that breathed fire, or had teeth as long as my arms. But it was you.”
“All I saw was my uncle,” Bourne mused. “Who looked so much as ever that I forgot he had gone back to the Second Crown a week ago. What else did you see?” he asked the odd young woman, who seemed more woodland animal than human. A useful quality in a mage, he thought. Some of us have a harder time forgetting our humanity.
“Things,” she said vaguely, remembering them. She took an unconscious step toward him. “A tree spoke to me. It looked like a very old man, twisted and slow, with mossy hair down to its ankles and eyes like dead leaves. It did not say much, just my name. I think that’s very strange, that a tree I have never met would know my name. And there were the stags with the fire in their antlers. They did not speak. The warrior followed them.”
“The warrior.”
“Fully armed, on a white war horse. The warrior wore a great sword with a crosspiece inlaid with uncut jewels; it looked too long and heavy for anyone human to wield. The warrior was very tall and broad-shouldered. I could not see the face or hands; the visor was down and of course the hands were covered with mail gauntlets. Anyone could have that gold hair, flowing from underneath the helm.”
“Anyone,” Bourne echoed, puzzled. “Did he speak?”
“No. The warrior only pointed, and all I saw was a huge thicket of brambles. Perhaps it was meant to be seen by someone else.”
“I’m not sure that’s the way the wood works,” Bourne said slowly, “though we are all out in the wood together today. You’ve seen a great deal for a beginning student.”
She blinked at him; he wondered what word had silenced her. She told him. “Student.”
“You are a student, aren’t you?”
“At the mages’ school?”
He was silent then, wondering. A peculiar expression flitted over her face, as though she had bitten into something unfamiliar. “Is that what you are?”
“Yes,” he said. “A student at the Floating School. Our task today was to stay in the wood and let it speak to us.”
She gave a little, breathless laugh. “That’s what I thought you were,” she told him. “Something of the wood speaking to me.”
“Then who are you?” he asked, amazed. She backed a step, her face closing. The wrong question, he saw.
“I must go,” she said.
Or maybe she really was something magical in the wood that he had failed to recognize. “Go where?” he asked recklessly.
“Back. Before they miss me.”
“Are you staying on the plain?”
She hesitated, then gave a little nod. “Yes.”
“But you saw so much—the wood spoke to you. You must have a gift for magic; you shouldn’t ignore it.”
“Is that what it is?” she asked. “I’m never certain. It seems unimportant to anyone.” She took another step backward, lingered, studying him, shy again, but this time unafraid. “How will we really know,” she asked him, “if either of us is real?”
He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it and smiled ruefully. “Then let us agree to be one another’s vision,” he said gravely. “Perhaps we will meet again in the wood, if that is the only place where we exist to one another.”
“Yes.”
“Anyway, thank you.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For coming to talk to me. I was getting lonely.”
She smiled, a surprised, genuine smile, before she turned. She doesn’t smile often, he guessed, watching for a long time, it seemed, before the wood hid her away.
“How strange,” he breathed, thinking of her rough wool and fine silk, the contradictions of wildness and power in her uncertain face. Why do I know that face? he wondered, baffled. He straightened, took a step or two away from the stump, then noticed how dark it was getting, even in that perpetual twilight.
I’ve been out here all day, he realized with surprise, and saw her face again, her hair impeccably braided and bejeweled, her head held very high, very stiffly, so not to dislodge the crown that had been placed on it.
He felt his skin constrict again. “No,” he told her finally, hoarsely. “You could not possibly have been real.”
When he could see past memory, he found the massive walls of the school a pace or two away across the pool, the outer gate beginning to open as though he had just knocked.
NINE
Vevay sat high in the tower overlooking the plain, trying to remember her life. It was late at night. Fire m
urmured in the great hearth beside her, whispering things she had long forgotten. If only I could remember the language of fire before I understood it, she thought absently. The perpetual winds rattled at the thick windows, trying, like memory, to reach her. Once, long ago, she had stood in them for the first time, let her mind and body flow into them, become the dark, singing force beneath the moon. Now she was draped in white fur, listening to them from within stone and glass. If she opened an inner ear she could hear the sea, churning restlessly with some incoming squall, tearing at the cliffs with silver-white fingers, trying to reach the palace, trying to catch the wind. If she opened an inner eye, she could see into the wild spring night that once, long ago, she would have tried to breathe into her marrow; she would have changed the shape of her bones to enter into its realm.
Easier to understand the wind, she thought. Easier to walk on the surface of the frothing sea, than to remember the hunger to do it. Easier to remember knowledge than ignorance, experience than innocence. Easier to know what you are than remember what you were, so long ago that what you were then lived in an entirely different world…
Gavin’s reflection, entering the room through a pane of glass, startled her; her thoughts had strayed that deeply into past. She turned, noted his expression, or lack of it.
“Writing?” he asked, making an effort. She shook her head.
“Trying to remember what it was like to be young,” she said dourly. His set face eased a little, but not enough, she thought. He poured wine, sat down on the bed to pull off his boots. She smelled smoke on him, and wind, horses, and beer; he had been roaming, she guessed, speaking to guards on the plain, on the walls, picking up threads of rumor, incidents, gossip that might lead somewhere, mean something. Thus he kept watch on the Raine he understood, while she kept watch—or tried to—on the Raine she didn’t.
“I wish they would all go home,” he sighed.
“Maybe the queen should travel,” Vevay mused. “Visit her Crowns. They would have to return to their own lands to prepare for her. And she might learn a few things.”
“The size of her realm,” Gavin suggested.
“The size of her problems.” She crossed the room, sat down on the bed beside him. “Perhaps I’ll suggest it.”
“You’ll have to go with her.”
She contemplated that with horror. “No. Would I?”
“Who else? Her mother?”
“A younger and more energetic mage, surely. The thought makes my bones ache.”
“You were her father’s trusted counselor,” he reminded her. “The rulers of the Crowns know you; they wouldn’t want to deal with a new queen and an unfamiliar mage at the same time.”
She rose again, restively, to pace a little among the tall candle stands and tapestries. “Maybe it’s not a good idea. I used to be a mage,” she added impatiently. “Once I used my powers. Now I feel like a dancing instructor, reminding the queen whom she is dancing with at this hour and with which foot she should begin.”
“Be thankful,” Gavin advised with a laugh, “that so far the music is still being played and everyone is trying to dance in harmony.”
“It won’t last.”
The words came out unexpectedly and far too bleakly; she stopped, met Gavin’s eyes. He gave a little nod after a moment, acknowledging her deepest fears.
“I feel it, too,” he said softly. “Trouble on the wind. But from which direction, I can’t guess, and I can’t place incidents together to put a pattern to them. Everything troubling seems isolated, random. And if everyone is still here, who would attack?”
“Ermin of Seale went home.”
“But it’s the Lord of Seale whom I would suspect of insurrection first,” Gavin said simply. “Even he is being predictable. That nephew of his in the mages’ school—”
“Felan is keeping an eye on him.”
“That’s so transparent it’s ridiculous. Does Bourne have any talent?”
“Felan says yes. He might be disturbing except that he doesn’t take anything very seriously, not even his uncle, and he seems to have no ambitions of his own.”
“If he did?”
“Felan can’t guess. So far he can only watch.”
“And all we can do,” Gavin said, standing up to loosen his belt. Vevay went to the window again, stared back at the enormity of night pushing an eye against their tiny, bright window, spying on their comfort, their fragile peace.
“I can see into you, too,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I think it’s time to do what the queen’s mother suggested the queen’s mage do.”
“That being?”
“Some magic.”
So she did, the next day, while the queen rode off reluctantly with her guests to go hunting in the great forests east of the plain. Gavin, sighing over his stiff joints, rode among her guards, to ease Vevay’s mind. Vevay made herself invisible, wandered hither and yon through walls and narrow passageways so old that not even the servants knew they existed. Words drew her here, there, like a feather blown on a breeze; stray voices, scraps of conversation, soft murmurings from ladies and maids took her from high airy chambers down to stony cellars and moldering dungeons, and even deeper than that, to the weird labyrinth burrowed into stone that was the royal library. She gave that only cursory attention: even in the long, tumultuous history of Raine, the rulers had never had to go to war with their librarians.
She moved unseen through nobles and courtiers who had chosen not to hunt. Most of the younger ones had gone with the queen, leaving their elders beside the hearth fires in private rooms and council chambers. She learned a few startling things about affairs among the rulers of the Crowns, but nothing troublesome to the new queen that Vevay had not already guessed. Everyone suspected everyone else of plotting; she caught no one actually doing it.
When twilight fell, she roamed with the wind on the plain, listened to the soldiers and servants, the poor relations, peddlers, gypsies, the merchants and village folk of the Crowns who had traveled untold distances for a glimpse of their new queen. Seeing Tessera meant good luck, she learned. Her youth meant strength and beauty, her inexperience had been transformed into a kind of wisdom unsullied by reality that would lead Raine into a perpetual spring of prosperity and hope. She had been seen in improbable places: riding alone among her people on a white horse, flying out of the Floating School as it hung suspended among the trees. Along with beauty, strength, and wisdom, she had acquired magical powers.
She would be the last to recognize herself, Vevay thought ruefully. She stopped to talk to a flea-bitten witch who was telling fortunes. The witch cast the fortune of Raine with little carved bones and pieces of crystal onto a gold silk cloth with a black line painted across it.
“Above the line is good fortune,” she told Vevay. “Below the line is not.”
She closed her eyes and threw her motley tokens. They landed in an arc above the line. The witch clasped her hands in wonder, proclaiming the best of all possible fortunes for the Twelve Crowns of Raine. It was evident in the perfect rainbow’s arc above the black, and in the unbroken pattern of crystal alternating with bone. Clearly a great ruler had been crowned; a reign of unprecedented peace and affluence had begun.
“Clearly,” Vevay said, and left her a coin stamped with the new queen’s profile.
Clearly if that were so, then Vevay would not be wandering around in the dark feeling something amiss and trying to find out what from a handful of knuckle bones.
She caught the wind’s current again and flowed with it, half-visible to a mage’s eye as a swirl of cloth, a strand of ivory hair, and invisible to anyone else. It took her where she wanted, to the thick, clotted dark that crouched like an animal on the plain, never sleeping and never awake. She felt the wood’s awareness as she blew into it. She caught her balance among the trees, amazed as always at their utter stillness, even in the howling winds from the sea.
“Tell me what you see for Raine,” she as
ked the wood. But nothing spoke, not a leaf, not a breaking twig. It only revealed the school after a moment, a denser dark within the leaves. A gate opened; light beckoned. She went into it.
It was not the school that the students saw. That school was an eccentric, drafty puzzle-box of stone that changed shape according to their needs. Sometimes the stone walls would shift to let in the wood, sometimes the sky; any kind of weather was apt to appear. Stairs and corridors were rarely predictable, except for finding meals and beds. Monsters might roam the halls; doors might open to reveal riches, or strange beasts, or nothing at all as far as the eye could see. Through the centuries different mages had worked their spells into the rooms as tests and teaching devices; not even Felan knew anymore what waited behind every door, or how many magically charmed rooms lay unopened, forgotten until chanced upon by some hapless student. The school itself became a student’s first test: the inflexible mind that balked at its erratic behavior never stayed long.
The school that opened itself to Vevay was a comfortable, cluttered place, with thick carpets and musty tapestries and many fat candles. Owls queried her passing; in the windows, ravens and kingfishers muttered sleepily. A milk-white snake in a dark corner uncoiled its head and opened a sapphire eye at her. Books lined the walls, lay open on stands; some of them whispered constantly, reading themselves aloud. The hallway she walked opened into a room with an elaborately patterned floor of wood and ivory, and walls of oak and stained glass. In it, she found Felan, who would have been expecting her the moment she set foot in the wood.
He was sitting in moonlight and candlelight, scratching the head of some beast that looked to Vevay a cross between a lion and a bear. It had a black pelt, a flat, broad, fanged face, a powerful, bulky body. It seemed to be purring. It cast a smoldering red glance at Vevay then closed its eyes again, leaned heavily against Felan’s knee.
“What on earth is that?” Vevay asked.
“I have no idea,” Felan said. “It came out of an old book I was reading once and it never went back in. It seems harmless and it’s very obliging: it lets the students practice transformation spells on it. It eats strawberries when it can get them.” He stroked the pointed ears a moment, studying Vevay. “What’s wrong?”
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