My mother, the Lady Heroise, and the Wise Woman, Ursilla, had in turn their own chambers, which lay at the top level of the Tower. My mother was much concerned with matters of the household. Whether in the past there had been any clash of wills between her and the Lady Eldris, decided in my mother’s favor, I never knew. However, when Lord Erach was absent, it was the Lady Heroise who held Manor Court in the Great Hall and gave the orders. At such times she had me ever beside her, seated on a small stool a little behind the Lord’s great chair, which had the red mantle of our clan draped across its back, listening to what judgments she would give. Afterward, she would explain to me the way of this or that decision, whether dictated by custom, or the product of her own reasoning.
That she longed to occupy the seat permanently, I learned by instinct while I was yet a small child. It was as if the qualities that were adjudged by the world to be those of a man had been embodied in her woman’s flesh, so she chafed against our customs, decreeing the narrow limits of her own life. In one thing alone she was free, and that was the use of the Power.
Ursilla was the only being within the Keep my mother acknowledged her superior. The Wise Woman’s knowledge and talent was, I know, a matter of abiding envy for the Lady Heroise. Though my mother possessed a small talent herself, it was in nowise enough to fit her for the long learning and discipline of spirit that would have made her the equal of her instructress, and that lack she had the intelligence to recognize. But she did not admit in any other thing that she was less than able.
The Lady Heroise lacked the temperament to school her own desires and emotions for any further training in the Other Ways than she had learned in her youth. Even had she not been the vessel to bear the next heir for Car Do Prawn, she would still have been unable to enter into the full training of a sorceress. And to desire so greatly what one cannot obtain because of some lack in one’s self is a matter to sour and warp the one who has failed.
If she could not have one kind of Power, then she would excel in another. To this end she now strove with all the force of her ambition.
I have said I was in awe of Ursilla, and I would have gladly avoided her. But, even as my mother enforced upon me her form of training, so did the Wise Woman concern herself equally with my affairs. Though that part of the Power which is wielded by a sorceress is not the same as that which a Warlock or Wizard may summon, still she gave me what learning she deemed useful, carefully pruning such lessons, I realized later, of any material that I could use in an attempt to escape the fate they had set upon me.
It was Ursilla who taught me to read the runes, who set before me carefully selected ancient parchments—mainly those dealing with the history of the Four Clans, with Arvon, and with Car Do Prawn. Had I not had a measure of curiosity about such things, I would have found such tutoring a dull and discouraging time of enforced attention. But I developed a liking for the Chronicles the Wise Woman deemed useful in fashioning my character and learned eagerly.
Arvon itself, I discovered, had not always dreamed away time in this ease of golden days that now seemed endless. In the past (the addition of years was obscure since it seemed that those who wrote the accounts were never interested in reckoning up any strict numbering of seasons), there had been a great struggle that had nigh destroyed all ordered life.
Before that period of chaos, our present domain had not been bordered by the mountains to the south and east, but had spread beyond, reaching east to the legendary sea, also south into territories long since forgotten. However, those of Arvon had always had the talent in lesser and greater degrees, and our Lords and rulers were often also masters of Power. They began to experiment with the force of life itself, creating creatures to serve them—or, in mistaken experiments, ones to slay their enemies horribly. Ambition as strong as that which moved my mother worked in many of them, so that they strove to outdo each other to establish only their wills across the land.
They awakened much that should never have been allowed life—opened Gates into strange and fearful other dimensions. Then they warred, ravishing much of the land. Many of the forces they had unleashed were plagues destroying even some of the Power itself. The disputatious Lords withdrew as their numbers grew less, returning here to the home—heart of their own country. Some came quickly, alarmed and dismayed by manifestations that they could not control. Others lingered as long as they might, their roots planted so deeply in their own holdings that they could hardly face what seemed to them to be exile. Of these latter, a few never came back to Arvon.
Perhaps in the Dale land to the south, where another species of man now lives, they or their descendants still had a shadow life. But none here knew if that were so. For, after the last withdrawal, the ways outward from Arvon were spell-sealed, no one venturing forth again.
Still not all who had retreated were content with their escape from the results of folly. They continued to challenge their fellows, until the day when the Seven Lords rose in wrath and might, and there was a final, terrible confrontation between the ones who chose the path of struggle and those who wanted only peace and perhaps forgetfulness.
Many of the Great Ones who had used the Power to their own wills were thereafter either exiled beyond Gates that led to other dimensions and times or extinguished when their will force was utterly reft away. Then their followers also went into exile under certain bonds of time.
When I came upon that story in the Chronicles, I asked of Ursilla whether any of the wanderers had ever returned. I do not know why that was of importance to me, save that my imagination was struck by the thought of myself being so sent out of Arvon to wander hopelessly in an alien world.
“Some have.” She made me a short answer. “But those are the lesser. The Great Ones will not. It is of no matter now, Kethan. Nor should such concern you, boy. Be glad that you have been born into this time and place.”
Her voice to me was always sharp, as if she waited for me to commit some fault she could seize upon. Often, while reading, I would raise my head and find her staring at me with such an intentness that small sins I had reason to answer for were drawn to my mind immediately, and I squirmed upon my stool waiting for her to draw a confession from me by dominating will alone. But this never happened.
What did change was that I reached the age when, by custom, I must go out into the Youths’ Tower and there begin the tutorage that would make me a warrior (though for some long years there had been no war except some raiding at intervals from the wild men of the hills). The night before this event, Ursilla and Heroise took me into the inner chamber, which was Ursilla’s own shrine, if shrine might be the term given it.
Here the walls were not cloaked with hangings, but unadorned bare stone, having painted on them, in time-dulled colors, signs and runes I could not translate. In the middle of the floor stood a single block of stone as long as a bed a man might lie upon. It was lighted, head and foot, by candles, four of them, as thick as my small boy’s arm, set in tall holders of silver much pitted and worn, as if they also had existed for countless years.
Above the table hung a globe from which beamed a silver gleam nigh that of the moon itself. I could see no chain to support it. Rather, it was suspended there invisibly, while about the block, on the floor, was painted a five-pointed star. This glinted so bright and new the brush of its coloring might just have been lifted.