The coach rolled over ragged byways.
"When I was out hunting for the sweet morel with Aline, we used to make the silica crystallize to quartz. It amused us well. And the morels; we grew them in magic sand, which is why you don't find morels like that any more. They'd grow to the size of cabbages. We'd spin webs of moonlight and ore into silver thread, and the Head Sorcerer would trade it for rare spices..."
"Enough!" Jaeris exploded, his auburn goatee quivering. Iren gently stroked his knee, calming him. In a more subdued voice, he went on, poking his finger as though a weapon in Chara's vicinity. "Too much, too much. Too many stories and not enough fact. You've never said how you do all this. How you did all this. Why you can't do it any more. We know that sorcery can be learned by anyone, if we have the formulae."
"Almost anyone," qualified Princess Katarina.
"Almost anyone," repeated Jaeris Plaice.
"I forget the formulae."
She was silent for many hours. The coach rocked incessantly over the roads. She grew accustomed to the motion. Iren tried to draw her out with questions about her father.
"He does well. He keeps all your letters in a box by his bed."
"He wants me to return to Antrahil. But it's no longer home. I've been gone over three years. The city is vast, and my world is no longer his. Princess Katarina told me I could remain with my father, if I wanted. I told her I'd wait and see. But, I couldn't stay with him. Not after the palace." She looked out the window at the passing scenes of farmers tending their crops; herdmen tending their herds.
Her face was wistful. "Antrahil isn't the same, or I am not the same. Don't ever tell him that. I've let him believe that I am required to return with my princess."
"I will never tell him." There was a tone of sorrow in the old woman's voice. "Are you not still mistress to King Rivulan?"
Iren shook her head. "Not for these past fifteen months. My lady Katarina and I have grown close. She would grant me my freedom, but I have accepted rather her friendship and entwined it with my own. I like palace life."
"Tell me more of the Point," begged Iren, after a silence, watching her past life slip back away outside the carriage.
Quietly, almost with a verbal reluctance, Chara told more. And, as she spoke, her reluctance faded into animation. She talked about the architects, who, apparent eons ago, had constructed that tower, levitating massive hunks of rock into place. She talked of the rainstorm that Aline had called up; the one that had been too powerful to control until the Head Sorcerer lent his skill. She spoke of the battering ram that was half a mountainside another sorcerer had levitated into the enemy's defenses, thereby slowing down the progress of that fateful war for awhile. She mentioned Aline's miniature moving sculptures, a hobby that other woman had devoted many, many hours to. One sculpture had been that of a waterfall, with trees that waved cheerfully while a squirrel scampered gleefully through the branches.
Somehow, she avoided discussing herself.
back to ...The Universe Next Door...