Mercedes Lackey - Crown of Vengeance

Lesser spells were bound into the stones of the practice chambers, so that the Postulants might See them and take them for their own. Vieliessar knew as well as any Postulant the order in which the spells must be learned, for there was a Teaching Song about it: Fire and Sight and Silverlight, Find and Fetch and Send and Shield, Weather and Ward, Keep and Heal …

She’d seen Silverlight cast all her life. She closed her eyes and held out her hands …

And Silverlight rushed into her mind as if she had opened a floodgate. Suddenly there was brightness behind her closed eyes, as if she held the moon between her open hands. With a startled cry, Vieliessar flung it away, only to see the spell-symbol in her mind become another equally familiar shape as the power did her bidding. She opened her eyes, and saw—in horror—that the bowl of the brazier was now shining with an all-too-familiar light.

No! Don’t!

In vain, she tried to douse the glow. All she managed to do was make the metal glow even more brightly. Sadimerial Lightsister would soon arrive; Vieliessar’s breath came hot and hard with fear. The Lightsister would see Silverlight cast on the brazier.…

Darkness! I want it to be dark! Vieliessar thought in blind panic. Unmade! Untouched! As if I never—

She felt something shift inside her mind, but before she could turn her inward eye to see it, a wave of cold sickness washed over her. She staggered backward, her hands covered with a sticky dust.

The brazier had gone dark.

But it had also turned to grey stone and was crumbling away.

If she had not been so terrified of discovery, horror and disbelief would have held Vieliessar frozen. What had been, moments before, a bright copper bowl on a bronze tripod was now … rock. Ore.

Unmade.

She was on her hands and knees, trying to scoop the pieces into her skirt, when she felt the now-familiar tingle of the presence of one of the Lightborn. She looked behind her apprehensively. For a long moment she held Sadimerial Lightsister’s gaze.

“The work will go faster if you use a broom, girl,” Sadimerial said at last. “And have a new brazier brought from storage. I had not known Filgoroth wished to challenge me again so soon.”

Vieliessar fled, holding a skirt full of dust.

Who Filgoroth was, and why he would challenge Sadimerial, and how, Vieliessar never found out. All she knew was that no one accused her of being Lightborn. She swore she would never again do anything so unsafe, but a few sennights later she was in Oiloisse-chamber. Oiloisse was utterly empty, for some practice had gone awry and its furniture had not yet been replaced. This time the Silverlight came easily—a moon-pale globe she could hold in her hands. She could feel the spellshape in her mind try to twist from simple conjuration to bespelling an object, but there was nothing within the bounds of the Wards for it to fix on.

She still did not know how to unmake what she had made, but forcing it against the Wards worked well enough.

And time passed.

Each year, the hot breathless days of Thunder Moon brought a pause in the Sanctuary’s unceasing labor, for the days were hot, and many in the Sanctuary—save those Candidates who had incurred Maeredhiel’s special displeasure—came to the gardens take a candlemark or more of ease when the sun had passed its fiercest. Behind her, Vieliessar could hear the shouts and laughter of a group of Postulants playing a counting game, the soft distant sounds of someone practicing upon the harp. The song of a flute wound through its soft sweet notes—hesitant, unpracticed, but holding the promise of mastery to come.

The chirring of insects, the soft hot breeze, the smooth warmth of the Vilya’s bark beneath her hands, all lulled her. Was I ever so young as these new Postulants? she wondered in bemusement. They had all thought themselves on the verge of adulthood when they came to the Sanctuary, but it had been a very long time since she had been a Postulant. To number those years Vieliessar must think hard, and count Midwinters upon her fingers.

She ducked back against the trunk of the great Vilya that dominated the garden as two of the Postulants ran past her, shrieking excitedly in their play. They reached the low wall and scrambled over it, racing along one of the narrow paths between the fields of standing grain in the field beyond. Landbonds, she thought to herself, seeing cropped hair and faces narrow with a lifetime of starvation. At least they return to a better life than that, Twice-Called or not. One trained at the Sanctuary could be sure of a place in a Great House, for the Lightborn preferred Sanctuary-trained servants. One thought blended inevitably into the next: Soon Thurion will go. It is already past time.

It was not that after a dozen short years of study Thurion could know all the Light held …

… but that the knowing came from the Light itself, not from Lightborn teachings.

I could be happy here blended, in a seamless instant, with: I am happy here. Vieliessar no longer wondered at her good fortune in remaining hidden from discovery. She had wished for nothing else, desperately, for moonturns. A wish, a desire, need , was the beginning of a spell. She could spend the rest of her life learning all the Light had to teach.

She got to her feet, shook her long skirts free of grass, and walked slowly across the garden. The low stone wall at its edge marked the boundary between the Sanctuary gardens and Rosemoss Farm, and its smooth grey stone was hot against her hands. Beyond the farm and its fields lay Arevethmonion. She could feel the radiant beat of its life against her skin like a second kind of sunlight. She would never walk beneath the Flower Forest’s canopy save as a fugitive or a prisoner. The thought had brought her reflexive rage and sorrow since the first day she had come here, but she could not remember the last time she had looked upon Arevethmonion and thought of herself as a captive: the wall beneath her hands marked the outermost possible bounds of her world, but at last the thought gave her no pain. Nothing endured forever, and what must be, must be.

Suddenly she heard a thin wail of distress from the direction of the young Postulants. One was standing. The other was huddled at his feet. As she watched, he tried to pull himself upright.

The front of his grey tunic was dark with blood.

She did not stop to think. She vaulted the wall and went running toward them. When she reached the pair, she knelt down beside the wounded Postulant.

“Go—Rian?—and fetch Mistress Healer Hervilafimir from the healing chambers—or any you find there! Go! ”

Rian fled toward the Sanctuary as if the Starry Hunt Itself pursued him.

“Here, let me see,” Vieliessar said, trying to pull the child’s hands away from the wound. To truly Heal required Light, but for small wounds and sickness there were many things one could do to ease suffering, even without the Light, and Nithrithuin Lightsister had begun to teach Vieliessar these minor mysteries.

Bright blood welled from between the Postulant’s fingers and he whimpered in fear.

“What is your name, child?” Vieliessar asked.

“Garwen,” he said. “Of—” He gasped, and the blood ran more strongly. “It hurts!”

As if that cry were a summons, Vieliessar felt the power rise up in her, forming its spellshape in her mind. She could see the dark flaw in the brightness Garwen showed to her inward eyes. A sharp stone. A careless fall. Before she could stop herself—before she could think —the Healing broke free. Blue fire leaped from her hands, and she could See it pour into the dark wrongness. Garwen’s breathing eased.