Proceed to Chapter 5
Christophe had already explained to Lyss how the Castle was built with the Throne Room as its hub, with the main structure as well as all the outlying buildings situated at the points of the Elvin Star. The Castle was nestled among the mountains, built of the same pale, silvery stones as the surrounding peaks. Crafted by the dwarves, it was considered to be in itself one of the greatest fonts of power in the Eastern Realms, and perhaps in the world. Nothing of those mere facts could have prepared her for the majesty of the palace.
The Castle of the Elven Star towered above Lyss and Christophe as they rode Luma up the cobbled path that led towards the palace, catching the fading sunset within its stones, a pale, luminescent pink. The tiled roofs flashed golden, transforming the palace into a tower of flaming light. Lyss gasped as she saw what she had thought was small dragon figurine perched upon one of the gateposts take flight, spiraling upwards into the clouds, a message bundle clutched within its shining silver claws. Everything bustled with creatures and humans alike; children Lyss’s age and older in the pale and dark green uniforms and cloaks of students, adults in the seven colors of the Masters or the grey of Apprentices. Voices tumbled over each other like the song of the river, loud and soft, sweet and coarse, laughter and sadness. Lyss sank lower in her seat behind her guardian, overwhelmed by it all.
A hand reached back to tap her shoulder. Lyss realized with a start that she had covered her eyes with her hands, and she straightened up, embarrassed that Christophe had noticed. Blinking, she noticed that their surroundings had changed: they had entered the courtyard of the castle, a cloister within the silver gates, surrounded on its other three sides by arched doorways, each with an Elvin Star at its peak set in shimmering stones. Except for two guards in stiff, creased golden uniforms who stood under each of the pillars, one hand at their sword hilts, the other on their wizard staffs or wands, Lyss and Christophe were alone. Listening to the gentle bubbling of the small fountain in the center of the courtyard, Lyss sighed with relief at the beauty of the quiet within the courtyard.
Christophe dismounted, and reached up a hand to help Lyss do so, as well. She slipped down rather clumsily, and steadied herself to stand next to him, looking up in awe at the pillars that surrounded her. From the vantage point of Luma’s back, they had seemed impressive; now they were giants, and the guards who stood before them, men and women both, seemed dwarves in comparison. To a girl whose first memories were of the tiny, squalid quarters of a holding-building for children about to be shipped off to the mines; who had grown up in a tiny village a day’s walk from the sea, a hamlet where everyone knew everybody else’s business; the Castle was a place impossible to fathom.
“You’ll get used to it after awhile.” Christophe’s words broke through Lyss’s awed reverie. She looked up, confused. “When I first came here,” Christophe explained, “I was terrified. I had grown up in a tiny peasant’s hut in Sennlynn: I was one of eight children of a fieldworker and his wife. The old Finder came for me when I was about your age, along with a girl who worked as a fire-banker for the local manor. She’s a Captain now: stationed in the Borderlands. But anyway, when I first rode up the path into the castle, I nearly fainted. I was used to the noise, being of a large family, but the crowds! It was a marketday, and there were carts of goods everywhere. Never before had I seen such finery. It was for the new students that this courtyard was bespelled for silence: it gives you enough time to adjust.”
A tall woman with fiery red hair and green eyes dressed in the uniform of the guards walked from beneath one of the arches, striding towards them. She stopped short when she saw Christophe, then smiled, speeding up her already impossibly quick strides. “Christophe!” she cried. “You’re back already!”
“Callie, I didn’t know you were home.” Christophe grinned, giving her a playful bear hug, then turned to Lyss, who had been gazing at the tall woman in awe. “Lyss, may I present Captain Callista Sennlynntaen, the girl from my village I just mentioned to you. Callie, this is Lyss, my charge. She comes from the Borderlands; she came here to study.”
The Captain leaned over to shake Lyss’s hand, smiling down at her, locked eyes with her, then suddenly straightened, turning to Christophe. “Chris, I didn’t know you were in Sennlynn. I thought…” She stopped as Lyss saw Christophe shake his head slightly. “Never mind…I could have sworn I smelled Sennlynnian lavendar on Lyss’s clothes.”
Lyss smiled. “You did, Captain Cal…Cal…” She struggled with the slight flip in the ll in the Captain’s name, her Borderlands accent slipping up her tongue.
“Call me Callie,” the Captain said. “Pronounce it any way you like.”
“Callie…it sounds like my Mistress’s name for Colandra,” Lyss giggled. “That evil-smelling mint doesn’t really fit you. The lavendar that Christophe put on my cloak is pretty like you…can I call you Dara?”
The Captain chuckled, recognizing the Borderland word for Fire, and twitched her rope of red hair over one shoulder. “Only if I can call you Asintania,” she replied, then explained in response to Lyss’s questioning look, “It’s Sennlynn for ‘little one’. Why don’t I show you around while Christophe takes Luma to the stables?” Looking at Lyss’s faded, fraying homespun gown, which peeked from beneath her cloak, Dara added, “Perhaps we should stop at the Wardrobe Mistress’s first. If you’re going to be a student here, ‘tis high time you looked like it.”
Dara explained the layout of the castle as they walked down a long corridor of sandy brick (or rather, as Dara walked, and Lyss scampered to catch up with her). “The castle is like a wheel,” she explained, “with the Throne Room as its hub, and seven corridors, each for a point on the star, as its spokes. A circular corridor surrounds it all, connecting each of the corridors, and forming the rim of the wheel.”
“Where are we now?” Lyss asked between gasps for breath, catching furtive glimpses of older students who strode past in green trousers or hose and jerkins, or in gowns, all embroidered with gold.
Dara paused to allow Lyss to catch up, explaining as she pointed to a small golden sun above each of the doors which Lyss guessed led to chambers, “This is the corridor of the followers of Aurora, the sun Queen. She’s the sec..”
Lyss interrupted, rolling her eyes, “I know, the second Queen, daughter of Laeleena, mother of Irvette, the Sea Queen. Her trainees study metalworking, pottery, fire, and the martial Gifts. Christophe explained to me.”
“A little impudent, are we?” Dara eyed Lyss reprovingly. “You’ll learn very quickly not to interrupt a superior. I might as well be the one to teach you: others might be harsh in their punishment. If you have something to add, at least ask permission, or wait until the sentence has been finished. But there, we’re at the Wardrobe Chambers. Don’t worry…you’ll love Mistress Elfrida; everyone does.”
Dara had stopped at a small door in a corridor of pale grey stones. Lyss guessed by the crescent moon engraved above the door that this was a room that served Celia, the Moon Queen, the patron of art, and Lyss remembered, weaving, in the Castle. Engraved in the pale wood of the door was the word “Wardrobe” in flowing script. Lyss stared at it, suddenly and unexplainably frightened. What if the Wardrobe Mistress took one look at her and decided it had all been a mistake; she didn’t belong here? What if Christophe were wrong, and Lyss wasn’t powerful enough for the Elvenguard? What would happen then?
Behind Lyss, Dara cleared her throat. Startled, Lyss jumped, then reached forward to touch the doorknob. Teeth gritted, shoulders straightened, she turned it, laughing in surprise as the door squeaked a popular nursery song on its slightly rusty hinges. “Go on,” teased Dara. “There isn’t a harpy in there, you know.”
“In there” was a large, open room with a jumble of giant spools of thread in the seven colors of the Star to the left, and wheels of dark and light green cloth to the right. Distracted-looking people in the grey of Apprentices, with pale silver thread embroidered at their collars and cuffs, rushed about, pins in their mouths and bunches of cloth or thread in their hands, calling out measurements to anyone who would listen. “36, 24, 38! Dark green Wind Cloister guard uniform; female!” cried one frazzled man to a blonde-haired girl in a pale green gown.
In the midst of it all a small, portly woman with curly silver hair clothed in a long, silvery gown sat in a rocking chair, busily stitching. The chaos of the assistants seemed to part around her and begin again afterwards, like water around a rock in a streambed. When Lyss and Dara entered, she looked up, slipped her eyeglasses onto her nose, and smiled a smile that made Lyss feel as if she had just stepped in front of a fire after a cold day picking winter herbs in the snow. Neatly folding the cloak she had been working on and draping it over the rung of her chair, she stood up to greet them, holding out her arms to embrace Dara. Maternally inspecting Dara’s coat, she let out a sigh, then pulled a needle from the pincushion strapped to her wrist. “Really, Callie! I do declare. Will you ever learn not to fray your cuffs? Same as when you were nine years old and always snagging them on that rough spot on your bedframe.” Squinting to poke a length of red thread through the needle, she stopped, glimpsing Lyss from behind Dara.
“Who are you, dear? No need to hide behind our fiery Captain here, you know. I don’t bite. There, that’s better. Now how old are you, and where are you from?”
“My name is Lyss, Mistress. I’m seven, and I come from the Borderlands. Christophe brought me; he says I’m to study here.”
“Don’t call me Mistress, Lyss…all the rest call me Mum. Well, then, you’ll have to have a proper set of clothes. Can’t have the girls seeing you in that excuse for a dishcloth. Have you been assigned a Queen yet? No? Then I won’t measure you for your spring gowns, then; just find you something simple until you’re assigned. Hmmm…about 4’3” I think…I know just the one. I always keep a few handy for new students.”
The Mistress rummaged about in a shelf behind her chair, drawing out a pale green dress with square buttons all the way down the front, a cotton shift, stockings, and slippers. Lyss gasped at the slippers, catching them up in her hands and fingering the dark green canvas, stitched with white. Gathering up the clothes in her arms, she whispered, eyes glowing, “Oh, thank you, Mistress…I mean Mum. Thank you!”
Elfrida looked at her for a moment, then shook her head. “They’re only hand-me-down clothes, Lyss. We’ll make far better ones for you when you’re assigned, you’ll see. I have a mind to give a fair beating to whoever put you in those rags in the first place. Borderlands, indeed! ‘Tis no place for a child. Now, go, dear. It’s getting late, and Dara can show you to the new-comer’s rooms.”
Lyss turned to go, then paused. “Mum…how will I be assigned?”
“They do it in your sleep, dear…the Queens do. Don’t worry your little head about it, though; you can’t do anything wrong, it’s just a test to see your strengths. It’s a bit strange, it’s true, but that’s the Castle. Welcome home, both of you!”
Lyss smiled, and followed Dara out the door of the Wardrobe Chambers, and into the relative calm of the corridor. Breathing in the slight smell of jasmine, she walked quickly, clutching her clothes to her chest. For the first time all day, she was glad she had come to the Castle.
“Ahh, Duke. You’re just in time, as usual,” Queen Celia smiled, smoothing back a stray lock of shiny, silvery-blonde hair. “We finished testing the new girl…Lyss is it?…only a few moments ago. Our findings were…quite…”
“Interesting.” Glenna’s brow furrowed within the dome of Christophe’s scrying-crystal as she sat in her chair in the Throne Room. “I assumed that, as you said, she was one of mine; a Healer, with perhaps a little plant magic on the side. I was wrong.”
“Quite frankly, we haven’t seen anyone with her strength since the last StarMaster graduated seventy years ago.” Lirit’s voice was sweet and melodic and alluring: her father had been a siren’s son, and her speech still held the ability to spellbind her listener’s. “She has weather magic, but music, as well…each one of us found some of our powers within her.”
Irvette cleared her throat, her eyes on Aurora, who was speedily signing with her hands. The Sun Queen had contracted a magical illness as a child, which removed her speech, and despite the other queens’ entreaties, she refused to have it restored, saying that it made her listen, unlike the rest of them. “Mother says that it isn’t only a small amount of power from each of us: it’s enough to earn a Mastery. In other words…”
“You found us another StarMaster, Christophe.” The First Queen had remained silent through all her daughters’ explanations, but now she leaned forward on the table, chin in her hands. “As far as my powers can tell, she can handle it. She survived that orphanage and the Borderlands without significant psychological damage: that’s a testimony in itself. She’s intelligent, hard-working, and determined enough to achieve a Mastery in each of the seven powers. We have agreed that it is our belief that she should begin her course of study instantly. While in her first years of training, she will live within my dormitory: the children there tend to be slightly more forgiving of great power. When she grows old enough, she will of course be moved to smaller chambers with another girl. However, before we finalize everything, we wished to check with you. She is your charge, and as such, you are responsible for her care. Do you agree with our proposition?”
Christophe nodded, then replied, “It is how I have Seen with her.”
Laeleena lifted her hands upward, a small ball of white fire gleaming within her palms. Around the Star, the other queens did likewise, their colors glowing brightly, gold, aquamarine, green, pale blue, and silver. With a sudden burst of power, the balls combined, forming a flaming tower of multi-colored fire. “To the next StarMaster!” The First Queen cried, and her daughters echoed her, Christophe last of all, as he sat in his chambers in the rim of the wheel that made up the castle.
When the fire slowly faded and disappeared, Laeleena let out a sigh. “We will have to see how Lyss turns out,” she said.
The Elvin Star:
Prologue | 1
| 2 | 3 | 4
| 5 | 6 | 7
| 8 | 9 | 10
| 11
Short Stories:
For Robbie
Poems:
Wizard | White
Witch
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