“Do you see what you’ve done?” Arion asked the students. “If I hadn’t been here, if I hadn’t intervened, she might have drowned!”
Aiden looked at the old Fhrey and shrugged. “Who cares? She’s not Miralyith. Lothian proved how insignificant, how useless the other tribes are now. If they can’t take care of themselves, they don’t deserve to live.”
Makareta must have had less to drink than the others, or perhaps she’d paid more attention in Arion’s classes, because she took a quick step back.
With a hiss and a squeezed fist, Arion summoned light and turned Aiden into a living torch. He shrieked, and the square glowed with brilliant fire as tongues of flame slithered up and down the ringleader’s body. The others fell over themselves trying to get away. Looking back, they cringed at the sight of their accomplice burning to death. Even the elderly Nilyndd crafter looked aghast, one arm raised to protect her face, eyes wide in horror.
With a quick puff of air, as if she were blowing out a candle, Arion extinguished Aiden. The ex-student shook but appeared unharmed.
“Illusion,” Makareta whispered.
Arion took a step closer to Aiden. “Not so drunk now, am I right?” She glared at him, and when she spoke again, her tone was cold. “Here’s the problem with the young: You think you’re invincible. Just because Ferrol’s Law prevents me from killing you doesn’t mean you’re impervious to harm.” She crept closer. “How painful do you think it would be to live three thousand years without skin? That I can do. And I will if I hear you speaking in such a way again. Any of you! We are all Fhrey. Do you understand?”
All heads nodded but none as vigorously as Aiden’s.
“Now clean up this mess and make restitution for anything you can’t restore, or Ferrol help me I’ll—”
They were moving before she finished. Arion caught Makareta before she could set off to join the others.
“I expect better from you. You’re smarter than that. You should stick to your sculptures and paintings. They’re lovely, and the world can always use more beauty. There’s plenty of ugly to go around.”
Makareta couldn’t quite look her in the eye but managed to say, “I’d like to think the Art is for greater things than pretty pictures and carvings.”
Arion nodded. “Perhaps, but certainly nothing so wonderfully pure of purpose.” Then she allowed herself to look back at the tomb of Fenelyus. “And a thing wrought in stone is a beauty and a truth that lasts forever.”
—
The next morning things had calmed down. The celebrants were sleeping, and Arion was looking forward to her first day as the prince’s tutor. Passing through the Garden of Estramnadon, she spotted her mother sitting on a bench directly across from the Door. Arion hadn’t seen Nyree in at least five hundred years, but little about her had changed. She still wore her cloud-white hair long and loose, still sat straight and proper, and dressed in what could have been the same white asica Arion had last seen her wearing. The garment’s folds enveloped Nyree in a monochromatic pile of silk. The elderly Fhrey presented an image so ancient that it appeared she’d outlived color.
“Hello, Mother.”
“Oh, it’s you,” Nyree said with an indifferent tone that nevertheless translated as disappointment.
Arion expected something else, something cutting, but her mother merely continued to sit with hands clasped in her lap, looking past her daughter at the sacred Door.
“That’s it?” Arion asked. “You haven’t seen me in half a millennium and oh, it’s you is all you can say?”
Nyree turned and faced Arion. She tilted her head up, squinting as she studied her daughter. “You look ridiculous, shaving your head like that. Also, you’re too thin and pale, but I suppose they don’t let you out much now that you’re a famous magician.”
“An Artist, Mother. Miralyith are Artists, not magicians. Magicians perform tricks using sleight of hand. Artists raise mountains, control the weather, and reroute rivers.”
“You use magic. That makes you a magician.”
Nyree’s gaze left Arion again and returned to the Door.
It isn’t only the asica that hasn’t changed, Arion thought.
She sat down beside her mother, who frowned and shifted over despite having plenty of room. For no reason Arion was willing to admit, she, too, sat unusually straight and adjusted the folds of her asica, regretting that morning’s choice of bright yellow with ornate blue piping.
The two sat for several minutes in silence, listening to songbirds in the trees and the trickle of streams and the miniature waterfalls that skilled artisans had crafted to perfection over the centuries. After a minute or two, Arion also looked at the Door on the other side of the path. Painted and repainted bright white, the Door was an otherwise nondescript gate in a solid, circular wall supporting an enclosed dome. Ivy and flowering vines had covered the dome and sides ages ago, but nothing encroached on the Door’s surface. Before it, several stone benches had been placed for visitors to sit and contemplate the simple white threshold.
“You’re looking well,” Arion offered. “I like your asica. Is it new?”
“No.”
Arion waited. Nyree remained silent.
“How is Era?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to your father in centuries.”
“Oh, I hadn’t heard.” Arion tucked a tiny edge of piping out of sight. “I recently separated from Celeste. So it’s just me in my little house again.”
“I’m sure it was the filth that drove him out.”
“Her, Mother, not him. Celeste is a—never mind.”
Arion found herself slouching and straightened up again.
Why do I let her do this to me? I’m not a child in my first century. Nor am I insignificant. I am—
“I’ve been appointed to tutor the prince,” Arion said.
“But not in the faith of our lord Ferrol, I take it,” her mother responded without looking away from the Door.
“Of course not, Mother. I’m Miralyith now. I have been for nearly a thousand years.”
“Oh, you’re right,” she said without a bit of surprise in her voice. Instead, a colorless, odorless poison coated her words.
“You know, most mothers would be proud to have a daughter rise to such an important position in the fane’s court.”
Nyree made a sound with her nose, less than a snort and more than a sniff but most certainly unfavorable. “If the fane were a devout member of the Umalyn tribe rather than a godless Miralyith, I’d agree.”
“We aren’t godless, Mother. At least no less so than the other tribes.”
“Oh, no? I’ve heard the rumors. Miralyith claim the Art has elevated them above everyone else. Some even declare themselves gods. I’ve never heard a member of any other tribe making such blasphemous claims.”
“The Rhunes believe the Instarya are gods. Why aren’t you complaining about them?”
“That’s different. The Rhunes aren’t Fhrey. They’re barely one step above rabbits. They see gods everywhere. The only Fhrey they’ve ever met are the Instarya, and I’ve never heard of anyone from that tribe claiming to be gods. I can’t say the same about the Miralyith. Besides, what a Rhune believes is of no consequence. I’m sure ants consider mice to be gods, too. Such notions don’t diminish Ferrol.”