The Oracle's Queen (14 page)

Niryn didn't sleep at all that night, caught up in dire imaginings. His family would starve, and he'd be set out on the road to be marked and stoned, all because of what those young lords called fun! How he wished he had spoken up when he had the chance. His face burned at the thought of his own fruitless obedience.

That thought took root, watered with shame at how he'd let a single look from the guilty one silence him. If he'd spoken up, maybe they wouldn't have cast him out! If those three boys hadn't used him for their sport, or if his father had made them stop, or if Niryn had moved or turned sooner or tried to fight back—

If, if, if
. It ate at him and he felt the dark feeling well
up again. In the darkness, he felt his hands tingling and when he held them up, there were blue sparks dancing between his fingers like sheet lightning. It scared him and he thrust them into the water jug by his bed, fearing he'd set the bedclothes on fire.

The sparks stopped and nothing bad happened. And as his fear subsided, he began to feel something new, something else he'd never felt before.

It was hope.

He spent the next few days wandering the marketplaces, trying to catch the attention of the conjurers who plied their trade there, selling charms and doing fancy spells. None of them were interested in a gardener's boy in homespun clothes. They laughed him away from their little booths.

He'd begun to think he might indeed have to starve or take to the road, when a stranger showed up at the cottage door while his parents were away at their work.

He was a stooped, ancient-looking man with long dirty whiskers, but he was dressed in a very fine robe. It was white, with silver embroidery around the neck and sleeves.

“Are you the gardener's boy who can make fire?” the old man asked, staring hard into Niryn's eyes.

“Yes,” Niryn replied, guessing what the old man was.

“Can you do it for me now, boy?” he demanded.

Niryn faltered. “No, sir. Only when I'm angry.”

The old man smiled and brushed past Niryn without an invitation. Looking around the spare, humble room, he shook his head, still smiling to himself. “Just so. Had your fill of 'em and lashed out, did you? That's how it comes to some. That's how it came to me. Felt good, I expect? Lucky for you that you didn't set them on fire, or you'd not be sitting here now. There's lots of wild seeds like yourself, that get themselves stoned or burned.”

He lowered himself into Niryn's father's chair by the hearth. “Come, boy,” he said, gesturing for Niryn to stand before him. He placed a gnarled hand on Niryn's head and
bowed his own for a moment. Niryn felt a strange tingle run down through his body.

“Oh, yes! Power, and ambition, too,” the old man murmured. “I can make something of you. Something strong. Would you like to be strong, boy, and not let young whelps like that take advantage of you ever again?”

Niryn nodded and the old man leaned forward, eyes glowing like a cat's in the dim light of the cottage. “A quick answer. I can see your heart in those red eyes of yours; you've had a taste of what wizardry is, and you liked it, didn't you?”

Niryn wasn't certain that was true. It had scared him, but under this stranger's knowing gaze, he felt that tingle again, even though the man had withdrawn his hand. “Did someone tell you what happened?”

“Wizards have an ear for rumor, lad. I've been waiting for a child like you, these many years.”

Niryn's pinched, parched young heart swelled. It was the closest thing to praise he'd ever known, save for one time; he'd never forgotten the way Queen Agnalain had looked at him that day and how she said she thought he'd do great things. She'd seen something in him, and this wizard did, too, when all the rest wanted to cast him out like some rabid dog.

“Oh yes, I see it in those eyes,” the wizard murmured. “You have wit, and anger, too. You'll enjoy what I have to teach you.”

“What is that?” Niryn blurted out.

The old man's eyes narrowed, but he was still smiling. “Power, my boy. The uses of it and the taking of it.”

He stayed until Niryn's parents came home, and made his offer. They gave Niryn over to the old man, accepting a purse of coins without even asking his name or where he would take their only child.

Niryn felt nothing. No pain. No sorrow. He looked at the two of them, so shabby compared to the old man in his robes. He saw how they feared the stranger but didn't dare
show it. Perhaps they wanted to be invisible now, too. But Niryn didn't. He'd never felt more visible in the world than that night when he walked away from his home forever, at the side of his new master.

M
aster Kandin was right about Niryn. The talents that had lain dormant in him were like a bed of banked coals. All it took was a bit of coaxing and they leaped to bum with an intensity that surprised even his mentor. Master Kandin found Niryn an apt pupil and a kindred spirit. They both understood ambition, and Niryn found he lacked nothing of that.

Through the years of his apprenticeship, Niryn never forgot his time at the palace. He never forgot how it felt to be nothing in the eyes of another or the way the old queen had spoken to him. Those two elements combined in the crucible of his ambition. Kandin honed him like a blade and, when his mentor was done, Niryn was ready to return to court and make a place for himself. The lessons of his childhood were not forgotten, either. He still knew how to seem invisible to those from whom he wished to hide his power and purposes.

He'd missed his chance with Queen Agnalain. Erius had put his mother out of the way before Niryn could establish himself, and taken his young sister's rightful place on the throne.

Niryn, now a respectable young wizard and loyal Skalan, had gone to pay his respects to the girl one day at the pretty little house her brother had installed her in on the palace grounds. By rights she should have been queen, and there was already muttering in the city about prophecies and the will of Illior. Niryn put no stock in priests, considering them nothing but skilled charlatans, but he wasn't above putting their game to his own uses. A queen would be best.

The lessons he'd learned among the roses and flower
beds came back to him then. The royal family was a garden in its own way, one that needed proper tending.

Ariani, the child of one of her mother's many lovers, was the rootstock of the throne. As the only daughter of the queen, her claim was strong, perhaps strong enough to overthrow that of her brother, when she was old enough and carefully groomed and supported. Niryn had no doubt he could nurture a faction on her behalf. Sadly, he found the stock to be diseased. Ariani was very pretty and very intelligent, but the fatal weakness was in her already. She would suffer her mother's fate, and earlier. It might have made her easier to control, but the people still had dark memories of her mother's mad ways. No, Ariani would not do.

That decided, he insinuated himself into Erius' court. The young king welcomed wizards at his feasts.

The young king was made of stronger stuff than his sister. Handsome and virile, strong in body and mind, Erius had already won the hearts of the people with a string of impressive victories against the Plenimarans. As weary of war as they were of royal madness, the Skalans turned a deaf ear to dusty prophecies and ignored the grumblings of the Illiorans. Erius was beloved.

Fortunately for Niryn, the king also had a strain of his mother's weakness in him, but just enough to make him malleable. Like his father's espaliered fruit trees, Niryn would trim and prune the young king's pliant mind, bending it to the pattern that best suited his use. The process took time and patience, but Niryn had a great deal of both.

Niryn bided his time, finding other wizards he could use and forming the Harriers and their guard, ostensibly to serve the king. Niryn chose carefully, taking in only those he could be sure of.

With Erius he prepared the ground, discrediting any who stood in his way, most especially Illiorans, and gently coaxing the king into killing any female of the blood who might challenge his hold on the throne.

Erius grew more malleable as his mind became less stable, just as Niryn had foreseen, but there were always unforeseen events to contend with. Erius had five children, and the eldest daughter had shown great promise, but plague struck the household, killing all of the children save one, the youngest and a boy. Korin.

Niryn had a vision then, of a young queen, one of his own choosing, who would be the perfect rose of his garden. It was a true vision, too, that came to him in a dream. Like many wizards, he paid little more than lip service to their patron deity, the Lightbearer. Offerings and the drugged sacred smoke of the temples had nothing to do with their power. That came with the blood of their birth; a tenuous red tie back to whatever Aurënfaie wanderer had slept with some ancestor and given the capricious magic to their line. Nonetheless, he found himself offering up a rare prayer of gratitude when he woke from that dream. He had not seen the girl's face, but he knew without question that he'd been shown the future queen who, with his careful guidance, would redeem the land.

Prince Korin would not have been the child Niryn would have chosen to breed his future queen from. There'd been other girls, and one of them would have made his task easier, letting the disaffected have their queen and their prophecy again. Even he could not discount the years of famine and illness that had blighted Erius' reign. A girl would be best, but like any good gardener, Niryn must work with the shoots that matured.

It was about this same time that he found Nalia. He'd gone with his Harriers to dispatch her mother, a distant country cousin of the queen, with royal blood in her veins and that of her twin babes. One girl child had been comely, like her father. The other had inherited her mother's disfigurement. Something like a vision stayed Niryn's hand over the marked child; this was the next seedling for his garden. She would bear daughters of her own, if left to grow and properly tended. He secreted her
away, making her first his ward and then, when the humor took him, his concubine. Wizard-born, he had no seed to plant in that fertile womb.

K
orin was not a stupid boy, or an ignoble one, not at first. He instinctively distrusted Niryn from an early age. But he was weak-spirited. The wars kept the king away, and Korin and his Companions were left to run wild.

Niryn lent only the occasional small encouragement here and there. Some of the Companions were quite helpful, albeit unwittingly, as they led Korin into the wine houses and brothels of the city. Niryn began more rigorous tending when Korin began to spread his seed about. It was an easy matter, with his wizards and spies now well established, to put any royal bastards out of the way. Princess Aliya had been a regrettable pruning. The girl was healthy, and intelligent, too, but lacked the usual sort of flaw that he could exploit. No, she would in time prove to be a dangerous weed in his garden, strengthened by the prince's love.

By the time Erius died, Korin was a dissipated young rake and a drunkard. The death of his pretty wife and the horror of the misshapen fruits of her womb left him broken and lost, and ripe for the first harvest.

N
iryn broke from his pleasant reverie and looked up at the darkened tower again. There, high above this sheltered haven, the seed of the next season was being planted.

A
fter a lifetime as a free wizard, wandering where she chose, Iya now found herself not only with an untried, and at times unwilling young queen on her hands, but a pack of her own kind who needed organizing, as well. The Third Orëska had been a noble concept; now she and Arkoniel were faced with finding out whether or not their wizards could actually work together.

Tamír had kept her word and insisted from the start that Iya's wizards be made welcome in Illardi's house, despite the grumbling from some of the lords and generals. In return, they found ways to make themselves useful, making small useful charms like firechips and roof wards. Iya, Saruel, and Dylias all knew a bit of healing and helped where they could, with the drysians' blessings.

Arkoniel's own little group of wizards had arrived at the end of Lithion. Iya had been touched by the joy with which he'd greeted them. He'd truly missed them, especially a green-eyed boy of nine named Wythnir, whom he'd taken as his first pupil. He was a frail little thing, and shy, but Iya sensed the strong potential in him. She exchanged an approving look with Arkoniel, who was positively beaming.

Busy as Tamír was, she ordered a special banquet for them in her chambers with the other wizards and Companions that night, and Arkoniel proudly presented them.

The old ones, Lyan, Vornus, Iya's friend Cerana, and a gruff, scowling, common-looking fellow named Kaulin
were the first to bow to Tamír with their hands to their hearts.

“You are the queen that was foreseen, indeed,” Lyan said, speaking for them all. “By our hands, hearts, and eyes, we will gladly serve you, and Skala.”

The younger ones came forward next, a noble-looking pair in tattered finery, named Melissandra and Lord Malkanus, and a plain young fellow named Hain. He was about Arkoniel's age and had the same aura of banked power about him.

The children came forward last, and Iya saw Tamír's eyes light up as they were presented. Ethni was close to Tamír's age, with only the faintest trace of magic about her. The twin girls, Ylina and Rala, weren't much stronger, nor was little Danil. Wythnir shone among them like a jewel in a handful of river stones. This was the sort of child Iya had imagined, all those years ago when they first spoke of gathering wizards, but Arkoniel seemed delighted with all of them, regardless of their ability.

“Welcome, all of you,” said Tamír. “Arkoniel has told me good things about you, and your studies. I'm glad to see you here.”