Unbidden, his gaze rose up from Calewind’s high walls to where Sunfall sat on the lowest peak of the Ihlkin range. From here, the palace was a gleaming mass of spires, arched bridges, and stained-glass windows.
He resumed pacing. He didn’t
have
to go back. A few prayers, a little light, and he could be on Leaston’s sandy coasts, or hiking along one of Darinia’s mountain ranges. He would come back to visit, of course. His mother and father would miss him dearly. He would explain his reasons to them later. Right now he needed to get moving. If he left now, he—
Aidan felt his skin grow warm. He looked around, alert. Someone had kindled, or was in the process of kindling. A wave of snow slapped against his cape and pants. Aidan spun—and immediately felt his shoulders loosen. Moments ago, the north had been an unbroken quilt of white. Now an old man in fine blue robes and a long, white beard stood behind him. Together, they gazed out at Calewind’s high walls.
“You can’t run, you know,” the old man said pleasantly, coming up beside the prince. Aidan’s skin warmed as the old man kindled again. Heat radiated from him, drying the patches of snow clinging to his clothes and the braids dangling from his long white beard and peeling a hole in the snowy quilt beneath his feet.
“Do you read minds, too, Tyrnen?” Aidan said. His heat bubble had already dried the patches of wetness on his back and legs that Tyrnen’s sudden appearance had kicked up.
Tyrnen’s bushy brow rose. “I’ve spent the last thirteen years watching you stare daydreaming out of windows. I don’t need to read your mind to know what you’re thinking.” He paused. “Although I do dabble in telepathy from time to time.”
Curious, Aidan forgot all about the terrible fate about to be thrust upon him. “Could you teach me?”
“It involves reading. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“What a hurtful thing to say,” Aidan said, pouting. “You’re my oldest friend, Tyrnen.”
“Really?” Tyrnen said, sounding touched.
“Yes. You are
so
old.”
The old man scowled and opened his mouth to deliver a scathing riposte. Another cheer rose up from Calewind. Aidan’s anxiousness came flooding back.
“Is it time?” he asked.
Tyrnen consulted the Lady’s position, squinting up through the falling snow. “Hard to say with all this cloud cover.” He eyed Aidan. “I suspect we can wait a few minutes longer.”
Aidan shifted his weight from foot to foot, fidgeting with his cape.
“Stop fussing,” Tyrnen said.
Aidan sighed and let his arms dangle.
No one can tell me to stop fussing once I’m on that rock of a chair. Why can’t we just get this over with? I—
He noticed Tyrnen picking at his robes and muttering a string of curses under his breath.
“Stop fussing,” Aidan said, and laughed when Tyrnen glared at him.
The old man flailed around before gathering his composure with an effort and folding his arms behind him. “I’m practically swimming in this... this
tarp
your mother asked me to wear.”
Aidan’s laughter caught in his throat at the sound of bells clanging from inside the city. The cheers amplified, swelling over the walls. Calewind’s southern gate split down the center; both halves swung slowly inward, revealing roads bordered by throngs of onlookers.
Tyrnen placed a gnarled hand on Aidan’s shoulder. “Let’s get this over with. Then, after things quiet down, we’ll see about your first telepathy lesson. How would that be?”
Aidan felt some of his tension trickle away like the snow at his feet. “Really? Tonight?”
“I was thinking tomorrow morning, but, yes, all right. If you don’t mind keeping an old man up far past his bedtime.”
“I don’t. Why am I only hearing about this now?”
“It’s not a skill I use often, although I’ve been known to pluck out a thought from time to time,” Tyrnen said airily. “Not from your head, of course.” He smiled and gave Aidan’s shoulder a squeeze. “Are you ready, boy?”
“Of course,” Aidan lied.
Tyrnen took a step forward, then sighed. “I had almost forgotten. The fountain in the square, correct?”
Aidan broke into a sly smile. He
had
forgotten about his plan for this part of the ceremony: a harmless little display he had concocted all on his own.
“Correct. Race you there?”
“Very well,” Tyrnen said. “On your mark.”
“One, two, thr—”
Tyrnen kindled and vanished, kicking up another flurry of snow.
“Cheater,” Aidan muttered. Then he let his body relax, opening himself to the Lady’s light. Not that there was much for the taking. A few faint rays seeped through the gray clouds overhead. The paltry warmth bled through his skin like water soaking through a sponge. As quickly as he’d opened himself up, Aidan closed himself off, no longer a sponge but a rock that rejected water that lapped against it.
The scant amount of heat he’d drawn ran through him like hot cider racing down his throat to warm his belly. For almost any other Touched, shifting was much more complex than forming a heat bubble. Aidan had only taken in a dewdrop’s worth of heat, but he had never needed much. He pictured the ornate fountain in the center of the Calewind, directing his will at it. Then he closed his eyes, spoke a prayer to the Lady of Dawn in the Language of Light, and the dewdrop propelled him forward.
The shifting was over and done in an instant. One moment he was a mile outside Calewind. The next, the roar of shouts and cheers crashed into him, as if he’d been listening to a conversation from outside a closed door that had been thrown open. He stepped down from the fountain’s rim, gawking. People were everywhere; leaning from windows, packed into alleyways, pointing down at him from rooftops. Wardsmen, red-faced from the effort of holding back the tides that surged forward at the sight of him.
He looked around the fountain and saw Tyrnen moving toward him, wincing against the deafening roar. Cringing himself, he kindled again, feeling the Lady’s light warm him as his prayer was swept away in the commotion. A soft touch like fingers in silk gloves settled into his ears. All at once the whistles, shouts, and screams cut off, leaving him in blissful silence. The people still strained for him, their mouths opening and closing without sound.
Now that he could actually form a thought, Aidan studied the crowd. Hundreds—no, it had to be thousands—had journeyed from all across Crotaria’s three realms to see him. They deserved a fitting way to remember the day they had traveled an absurd number of miles to see a man wave around a sword and sit in a big chair.
With a flourish Aidan threw back his cape and began his long march up the center road toward Sunfall. Occasionally he pointed at mounds of snow, kindled, and prayed in the Language. The snow rose upward in a dazzling coil that sprayed out in every direction, and the crowds lining the street burst into applause and cries of delight.
Aidan’s skin warmed again. Suddenly a torrent of snow arced over his head and froze in place, glittering like a rainbow caught in ice. Up ahead, snow on either side of the road leaped high into the air and collided, freezing to form another arch. Another arch appeared, and then another and another, crowning the road with ribs of ice. Aidan looked over at Tyrnen to see the old man’s eyes sparkling as his lips and fingers waggled.
The prince broke out in a grin, his first genuine smile of the day.
A challenge, old man?
Aidan drew in more light and directed it all across the snow shoveled to either side of the street. Clumps of snow spun together to form miniature snowmen who scrambled up Tyrnen’s arches and capered about, spinning and bowing and leaping and tumbling. He turned to Tyrnen and gave him a bored look.
“Showoff,” Tyrnen mouthed, then flicked a hand. The ribs popped one by one, raining flecks of ice over the onlookers. Aidan’s snowmen fared less well. With their platforms destroyed they twirled through the air magnificently—he wouldn’t let Tyrnen have the last word—until they plopped to the street, splattering to piles of slush.
As if on cue, Aidan and Tyrnen turned to opposite sides of the road and bowed. Aidan couldn’t hear them, but the renewed enthusiasm of the crowd as they surged against the lines of Wardsmen and strained to touch him made him smile.
Word of the duo’s antics appeared to have spread to the throngs bordering the shallow mountain trail leading up to Sunfall. At every turn, people watched with pleading eyes and waved their hands in gestures that only the magically un-gifted believed had anything to do with conjuring up the fantastic. Aidan obliged them, juggling balls of fire that zoomed in and out of tendrils of snow that Tyrnen spun with a finger.
Aidan was in the middle of a particularly deep and graceful bow when he felt a tug on his sleeve. Looking up, he saw Tyrnen pointing. He had been so busy bowing and showboating that he only just realized they had reached the southern courtyard. The doors to Sunfall stood open ahead, revealing a great hall filled with columns and banners. The fun part of
the great day
was over. Grudgingly, his feet suddenly weighing as much as a Darinian blacksmith’s anvil—or, indeed, most Darinian blacksmiths—he marched over a scorched patch of stone toward the maw of the palace, opting to meet fate with his head held low.
As he crossed the threshold, one pair of eyes seemed to settle more heavily on Aidan than all the rest. He stopped and turned back, fixing on the wall to one side. A young woman of about his age, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, stood calmly amid the tumult, moving only when others jostled her. She watched him with her almond eyes, and when he finally noticed her, she gave him a lopsided smile. She was Sallnerian, he realized, perhaps the only southerner who had dared make the journey north to witness his ceremony. And she was the most beautiful woman Aidan had ever seen in his life.
He stared, transfixed. She noticed him noticing and smiled, and his heart once again took off at a gallop. Then Tyrnen pulled him inside the palace and the doors boomed closed behind them, cutting the woman off from view.
Chapter 2
Choice and Destiny
A
IDAN STARED THROUGH THE
doors at the spot where he’d seen the Sallnerian girl until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Tyrnen mouthing words and gesturing wildly. With regret, Aidan dissipated the swabs of air in his ears. Sound rushed back in: bustling footsteps, shouting, the creak of armor worn by the Wardsmen ringing the room, and Tyrnen’s reproving tone.
“—showing off like that. Honestly, Aidan, you need to learn to act—”
“—my age,” Aidan cut in dryly. “You’re right. I should act my age. Even better, I should act
your
age. Or was there another Touched in the crowd building bridges from ice?”
Tyrnen snorted. “Thirteen years of lessons, all so you can create dancing snow people.”
“You’re just upset because you were outdone,” Aidan said, adopting an imperious pose. “On this day, the student became the teacher.”
“I bow to your superiority in the art of foolishness.”
“Ah, don’t sell yourself short. You made your master proud.”
“And shifting instead of walking? What a flair for the dramatic, and a superfluous use of the Lady’s light.”
“It was a much more impressive entrance than strolling through the gates,” Aidan said. “People came from leagues away to see their beloved Prince Aidan—”
“
Beloved
?”
“—so I gave them something special to remember.”
“Special? I’ve seen you shift across a room to pick up a book.”
“I’ve never done that!”
Tyrnen scratched at his chin. “You’re right. What would you do with a book?”
“Actually,” Aidan said, his thoughts returning to the woman outside the door. “There was a girl outside the door, just in the courtyard. Do you think she liked the display? She was Sallnerian, but—”
“No good can come of that,” Tyrnen said quickly, steering Aidan from the closed doors. “Best to forget about it, especially when you should be focusing on what is to come.”
Tyrnen guided Aidan to the doors of the throne room. Aidan’s chest tightened. All thoughts of the beautiful Sallnerian fled from his mind. He felt as if his world had suddenly been carved into two separate realms: the one outside the throne room, and the one within, the one that would change everything.
Tyrnen placed a wizened hand on his shoulder. “It won’t be so bad, you know,” he said, his voice soft. “Or so different.”
Aidan laughed nervously. “I’m beginning to think you really can read minds.”
The old man squeezed. “Only yours.” He winked. “I enjoy light reading now and again.”
Before Aidan could retort, the Wardsmen flanking the doors threw them open. A red carpet divided the marble floor. Merchants, tradesmen, sailors, visiting foreigners from the farthest corners of the realms filled the space on either side, peering over shoulders to catch a glimpse of him. Above, galleries wrapped around and around the room all the way to the ceiling. Colorful banners bearing crests and sigils lolled over the lip of each gallery like tongues. Nobles dressed in flowing golden robes looked down at Aidan from on high, weighing him as if he were a fish at market. Great windows between galleries flooded the room with the Lady’s light.
Fighting the urge to bolt, Aidan took one last breath and took a step forward. A tug on his sleeve made him look back. Daniel Shirey stood like all the other Wardsmen: straight and tall, spear held parallel to his body, mail freshly polished, eyes boring a hole through the wall across the room. Aidan swallowed a laugh as he noticed the one flaw in Daniel’s image of the perfect Wardsman. Red hair spilled out from beneath Daniel’s helmet like sloppily bundled hay.
“Good luck,” Daniel mouthed. Aidan nodded back. Tyrnen nudged Aidan forward, well aware of the mischief that seemed to spontaneously occur when Daniel and Aidan were together for longer than a few moments.
Men and women bowed low as Aidan passed, like wind flowing over tall grass. Visitors from the western and eastern realms of Darinia and Leaston inclined their heads. At last he mounted the handful of steps that led to a tall throne, lacquered gold and polished to a shine. The Crown of the North, men called it—both the ornate chair and the Gairden who sat upon it. Beside it sat a smaller companion chair where a Gairden’s mate, co-ruler of Torel, sat during court.