1236, Age of Magic, Late Summer
"Open the gates, there!"
My heart beat fast as I watched the gates of the great fortress gather themselves and spring open. They had flowed in instants from two great frames filled with carvings of dancing jaguars to living jaguars that jumped aside, then turned and snarled down at us from the rocks to either side of the gate.
"Come."
I started, and began to ride. The escort who followed me swept in close on either flank, some of them clutching bows, more of them holding their hands at the ready to call upon the wild magic if needed.
Not that they could do much to affect the power in this place. That much, I saw at a glance.
We rode into a large open bowl, a natural dale carved and deepened by magic, that lay between high stony walls. Grass glimmered and spread in every direction, some of it green, some of it blue-green as was more common, some pink or purple or glittering metallic silver, almost too bright to look at it in the sunlight. The light also flashed dazzlingly from the streams that coursed the dale, and flowed up the small hills nearer at hand.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
I turned to my guide and forced myself to nod. His smug tone grated on my nerves, but he was right. It was impressive.
Besides, he would know if I tried to lie, and that would only make me feel more foolish than I already did.
"When do we see the Ascender?" I asked.
My guide glanced away from me for the first time. Of course, since he was iya'calaram, with dark purple skin that could sprout any number of noses and eyes and ears that he wanted, that didn't mean much; a pair of large golden cat's eyes still faced me, blinking lazily. But it was the first time since he had turned away his carefully crafted Elwen face, and it set my heart beating faster. Casually, I called on my own powerful magic, and waited.
"Some things have changed," he said carefully. "Since I set out to meet you- well, the Ascender has died."
"Cyllorl has no Ascender?" My heart kicked into high gear now, thumping against my thigh. "Then whom do we treat with?"
"I didn't say that Cyllorl has no Ascender," said my guide, fussily. "Someone can still meet with you. But she must face the Burning Veil first, before she has any official power."
I swallowed. "And of course I will need to witness her embrace the Veil," I said. I had only heard of one previous ambassador to Cyllorl who had done that, and he had come back gibbering and half-mad. Luckily, since the Ascenders for Cyllorl tended to last a few hundred years at least, such things were rare.
But I was facing a ceremony like the one that had driven my predecessor mad now.
"Yes," said my guide. "You will."
I sighed. I am only Elwen visibly; my inner organs are in different places, rearranged by the Change. At the moment, I could feel my stomach clenching in my throat, as regular as a pulse, and wished it was back in its ordinary place.
"What is the Ascender's name?" I asked.
"Quilinaryl."
I blinked. I had never heard the name before, though it was a perfectly normal Elwen name. There was no reason for it to make me start and sweat as it did.
"She is Elwen?" Of course, none of the Ascenders were Elwen in the way that had been meant in the Old World, but she must resemble one more than most, to have a name like that.
"In body."
I blinked. Even that was rare enough. "I suppose that I shall meet her at the ceremony."
"Yes, my lord."
My guide turned then and began shouting for Changed to attend me. I fixed my gaze on the nearest hill, pierced by a cave on its highest part, like the hole that some people drilled through a turtle's shell so they could wear the poor thing as an ornament.
There, this night, I must go.
*****
I woke suddenly, sure that someone else was in the room with me. I sat up, taking resigned note of the fact that my organs had rearranged themselves yet again, so that now my heart was literally in my throat. I coughed around the full feeling and looked about the room.
"Fair-day."
No one answered, and after a moment I relaxed. I still wasn't used to the magewinds, as some of those born in the Changed World were, and so even their blowing through the room would sometimes give me the impression that someone was there, when it wasn't so. I stood and wandered to the window.
The room they had given me was fine, the walls decorated with blue tiles of spun magic, here and there the obligatory diamond touch to remind the inhabitant of the room about the white fire of the Change that had birthed us all. The bed was deep and comfortable, and I could have spent hours tracing the jewel-like patterns in the tiles with my eyes. But I chose to look out the window instead, and what I saw in the bowl of Cyllorl made me catch my breath again.
A dozen wilders danced there, whipping their slender bodies in patterns so complex that my eye and mind would have gone mad before I deciphered them all. They were almost all Elwens, of course- not many but Elwens have the grace needed for the wilder dance- and had long hair that flapped behind them as they danced. They wheeled and leaped, soared and raced across the ground like spooked quicksilvers, and I felt the despair and joy and wonder they danced.
It was a magnificent display, but it was not just the presence of wilders that had startled me. A good portion of them were curalli, shadowed Elwens, dark silver of skin and dark of hair and eye. It had been hundreds of years since I had seen a curalli. They hid most of the time, being hated and feared.
They were the ones who had brought the Change on us.
I watched with narrowed eyes, wondering if the new Ascender meant to try and change feelings towards the curalli. It wouldn't work, I thought. It had been tried in the past, and it never worked. The people around us who were born in the Changed World and fed on tales of the Old needed someone to blame for those lost glories.
Stars, there were times I needed someone to blame, and I had attended a curalli execution a time or two, with the feeling of savage justification that usually came only when I had conquered some of enemy of my people's.
Abruptly, something moved behind me, and this time I knew it was no magewind. I turned, and saw a still figure in hooded, deep purple robes standing there. I didn't think I had ever seen anyone stand so completely motionless. I bowed, knowing what the robes meant, but still wary.
"My lady Ascender?"
"Quilinaryl," she corrected me, in a voice as deep and rich as a hunting horn. "I have not yet earned the title. I understand that you are Neros, the ambassador from Fimbresia?"
"Yes, Quilinaryl."
"You appear to be land Elwen," she said, and there was a lilt in her voice that I thought I understood. Some blame land Elwens as well as curalli for the Change. After all, Grukkar Goatleap, who some say left the monster Selkendal Shadowgift no choice but to release the wild magic, was one of my kin.
I bowed my head. "I am Changed, my lady. My internal organs shift about."
"You need not give me the title," she said, a bit impatiently. I squinted at her, trying to see under the hood. "It is good to hear that you are Changed, though- you look old enough. I assume that you were born before the Sunrise?"
"Before what?" I think, now, that part of me knew what she meant, but I could not accept it. I had never heard that name for the Change before, and I could not accept it. It sounded hopeful, almost beautiful, and I could not accept that.
"The Sunrise," she said. "The Change, I suppose that you would call it."
"It is the Change, my lady." Even now, over twelve hundred years later, I woke up screaming from nightmares about those seconds of terrible fire that had destroyed everything, including killing most of the people I had ever known and taking away a large part of the physical processes by which we survived, so that we had to learn new ways to do them with magic. "Always the Change."
"I see anger in your eyes," said Quilinaryl softly. "Was it really so terrible, then?"
"You born after it can never imagine how terrible." I turned away from her, wishing that tears could sting my eyes, but my tear ducts had been moved again, or disconnected, or something of the kind. It was with dry eyes that I stared out the window at the wilders. "Consider. It lasted only a little while, and it was centuries since then, but I still can't bear to think of it without weeping- almost weeping."
The robes rustled. I turned in startlement. So still had Quilinaryl stood that I had almost convinced myself that she could not move. She laid a hand on my elbow and looked up at me. I could feel her earnestness, though I still could not see her face within the deep shadows of her hood. She must be a grotesque Changed, to conceal herself from common sight in a world like this one, where almost everything was accepted by necessity.
"My lord Neros," she said softly. "You are not the first I would have chosen to convince, but you are here during my embrace of the Veil, and this is what must be. You shall be the one I tell first, and I want you to carry the word back to Fimbresia, if I manage to convince you. Cyllorl can't face the implications of changing to suit this world alone."
"Changing to suit this world?" I shook my head. "I really don't know what you mean, my lady. After all, the world changes us as it likes. Nothing we do matters in the great sweep of things." The words stuck in my throat, but they were true. I could still hardly bring myself to accept them; that didn't diminish the truth of them.
"There are many things that you don't understand, yet," said Quilinaryl, and there was compassion in her voice. "But you shall understand them. As I said, I would not have chosen to begin with you, but it seems that I must. If you can carry the word to others, if I can convert you, then it will be a beginning. And if I can convince you, the strongest of all the many I know in your longing for the Old World, then I will have made a better start than in many another place." I could hear her voice firming. I suspected it was changing to match the metal of her resolve.
I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "Quilinaryl, you can't convince me. I have heard this nonsense before, from the Dawn Children."
"Ah, the Dawn Children. Irrino Alusta's project." Her voice was filled with a rich amusement that surprised me. Few I knew spoke of the Dawn Children with amusement. Scorn, yes, or awe, or hysterical hatred, or fanatic worship, but not amusement. "Not all those who love the Sunlit World are like him, my lord. And not all preach that the gods must have hated the Old World, to inflict the Sunrise on it. I don't think the gods hated the Old World. I don't think that the Sunrise was the result of gods. It was the choice of mortal Elwens." She took a deep breath. "And that embrace of the mortal, of what happened, is what I advocate."
"I don't understand you." I tried to pull away, but her grip on my arm might have turned into a clamplizard's hold for all the good it did me.
"Yes, you do," she said, tilting back the hood, and again I had the unnerving feeling of eyes I couldn't see staring deep into my soul. "You have heard it yourself, whispered in corners. You have seen it yourself, staring out at a sunset made beautiful by magewinds, and realizing that you would never have seen such a sight in the Old World."
"I might have seen such a sight," I said. "That does not mean that the beauty of a sunset is worth the deaths the Change caused."
"No," said Quilinaryl. "But you must understand, my lord, for many of us who were born later, those deaths are not as real as the world around us. We did not see them die. We know only the Sunrise and its reflected light-"
"Stop calling it that."
"A name holds power," she said blandly, and went on. "And even those who grieve for the deaths must overcome their grief sooner or later. And they could do worse than to stop teaching those who have never seen the Old World to long for it."
"You cannot imagine what it was like-" I began.
She interrupted me. "I can," she said. "I have heard since my youth what it was like. What I have never heard, my lord, even as they prepared me to become an Ascender- something the Old World did not have- even as I played with the wild magic they told me was evil, even as I watched the wilders practice the art that only became possible after the Sunrise, was anything that praised the world we now live in!"
I stood staring down at her. Even with her face in shadow, her swelling voice, and the tight grip on my arm that accompanied it, was powerful.
"That is all I am asking you for," she said. "To give it a chance. The embracing of the Burning Veil is tonight, and you will be required to attend."
"It drove one of the Fimbresian ambassadors mad," I said.
"Because he feared the wild magic!"
I recoiled. Unfortunately, I couldn't move very far away from her, given this grip on my arm. I would have liked to move much, much further. This madwoman was actually saying- "You do not fear it?"
"No," she said. "I have trained myself not to fear it, and for that reason I know that it will not harm me. You have forgotten some of the things you once knew, if you think that the wild magic cannot be controlled."
"It cannot! It changed the world, and-"
"Come to the ceremony, my lord," she whispered, releasing my arm at last, "and we will see if you can learn to accept the world you live in now, or if you must forever live in grief."
And before I could stop her, she slipped from the room and was gone.
I shook my head and stared out at the leaping curalli wilders again.
Mad, she was. She had to be.
Yet I did have to admit to some curiosity. I would go to this ceremony, and see what I could do to avoid getting driven mad myself.
*****
I stepped cautiously into the cave, coughing at the smoke that billowed around me. The flames smelled sweet, and somehow I had thought they would be like the silver fires that consumed dead Elwens, and not stink of smoke.
But there was heavy smoke, filling the cave in such clouds that I couldn't see further than a few feet in front of me. I wondered how they expected us to see Quilinaryl embrace the Veil. I had not thought that the choosing of a new Ascender was like this, but then, I had never read the ceremonies carefully. They said that even the words could drive someone mad.
They said.
The thought struck me, powerfully, as I was about to take a seat high up in the circular tier of seats. I hesitated. When had I cared about that? I had accepted that my predecessor had been driven mad at a ceremony like this; I had seen him broken and drooling. But why would I think that just reading the words on a page that described it could break my mind the same way? I had read harder things before that, and never flinched.
I wondered why I had ever believed that. Had it just been fear?
Perhaps. The fear was shuddering deep within me even now. But I had faced things that frightened me before. I had had to have courage, or I could never have become an ambassador for Fimbresia. I had to travel across dangerous country haunted by the beasts of the wild magic between Fimbresia and Cyllorl.
This- this dread of the ceremony had a strange, compulsive quality to it. I had tried so hard not to think about watching the ceremony at all that I had never noticed that before.
Why had I done so?
The pulse of drums began, deep in the smoke, and I knew that soon Quilinaryl would enter. I sighed and worked my way back down to the front, coughing in the fumes as I went. It would be best to sit in the front, anyway, and let everyone see that Fimbresia did not scruple to send her best and bravest.
Even if that wasn't quite true.
I grimaced at myself and sat down, trying to see something through the grayness around me.
Just in front of me, I saw a dark pot flashing with purple flames. I blinked. The flames that the parchments spoke of were blue. I wondered if it perhaps changed for each Ascender, and then blinked again as a magewind suddenly swept in front of me, filling my nostrils with the scent of strange flowers and clearing my vision.
There was a series of stone steps running down from the side of the cave- from a higher passage, it looked like- to the center of the floor. The stairs appeared to writhe as I watched. I caught my breath. The stair treads themselves were really living lizards, gray in skin as the regular rock. They had two heads, broad, flat necks they could extend without much trouble to form level platforms, and bodies and tails that might act as further support.
Unease clawed at me again. We must needs use the wild magic to carve steps, but we could carve them. Why use lizards for steps? Why did the people of Cyllorl tempt the wild magic when they didn't need to?
In its own way, this was as excessive as the use of jaguars for the gates, but those at least had a purpose. They would be seen by many, and they could impress the ambassadors who passed back and forth from the fortress city. No one might come into this cave for centuries. What purpose did the lizards have? Why not just regular stairs?
My gaze roamed over the flat middle of the room, not a raised dais as I would have expected, and then came to rest on the bright fire in the middle of the room. This at least burned with glowing golden flames, an ordinary color, and I could see no smoke coming from it. I could feel the heat, though. It was in fact extraordinarily hot. Here and there, a glimmer of white showed through the dancing tongues.
I froze, suddenly, as the white light recalled memories that I had thought safely dead. She wouldn't- surely no one would be mad-
But I was almost sure, in a few more moments, that she was.
I drew back and looked around desperately. That was no fire that burned in the middle of the room, but a gout of pure wild magic. That explained the heavy sweet smell in the room as well. Quilinaryl did not burn incense to celebrate her embrace of the Veil. The wild magic itself rode in the air, on the winds that were scented with strange blue flowers.
I wondered if I could leave, run out the entrance, and what it would mean for the trade contacts between Fimbresia and Cyllorl if I did.
"I am here."
I still do not know why it seemed as if she spoke those words directly to me. I craned my neck, and she descended down the staircase, walking as calmly on the writhing lizards as if they were firm treads, her hood back. The only sign that proclaimed her Quilinaryl was the deep purple robes. I could have expected neither her graceful movement nor her face.
It was obvious why she had hidden herself from my eyes, and why she had had curalli wilders dancing in celebration in the bowl of her home. She was curalli herself. Her skin shone like dark silver, like the bad dreams of stars. Strange shadows ran and flared and melted in it, started by the fires or perhaps by something else that I couldn't even guess at. Her hair hung around her shoulders in a thick mantle, as deep a purple as her robes. But her eyes were bright and dazzling violet, and they shone more brightly than the flames, with something more than reflected light.
Shadowed Elwen. Kin to chaos. Blood of the man who had destroyed the world in three seconds.
She paused, and her eyes swept the room. Strange, that she did not look at me at once. But then her gaze found me, and she smiled. Her teeth glowed as dark as the unlit places of the cave, and then she turned and walked smoothly past me, her feet light and soundless on the cave floor. She walked mostly on her toes; she must, to be that graceful.
"Umanital." I could not help hissing the insult at her. Daughter of humans, it meant, and would have been deadly in the Old World. I suppose that shows how attached I still was to the world before the Change came. Really, just naming her for her race would have been a deadlier insult now, and carried more of truth in it. I doubted she had a drop of human blood in her to spare her the shame of being shadowed Elwen.
Quilinaryl never took her eyes off me, never stopped her faint smile, never showed that the whispered insult disturbed her, though I was sure that she knew what it meant. She halted at the edge of the gout of wild magic, and held up her arms.
"You have come to see me embrace the Burning Veil," she said, into the silence that seemed as thick as the scent coming from the magic and the magewinds. "In the years past, the one who did so would become Ascender, Cyllorl's interceder with the other powers." She paused. "And with the wild magic."
I shuddered, wondering if Quilinaryl had taken up some of her duties early, even before the old Ascender died. It would explain her madness.
"That is all changed now," she said softly, and by the murmuring that broke out around us, this wasn't part of the ritual. "I will no longer be content only to intercede with the wild magic, as if it were a hostile power, to be placated and submitted to when nothing else will do."
She swung around to face us, and her eyes shone as brilliantly as the only torches in a dark night for miles around. "I declare that I am free," she said passionately. "And not for defiance of the wild magic. We defy it when we cling to the Old World, and the idea that we can somehow deal with the Sunrise as if nothing had ever really happened, had ever changed." She paused. "But we are Changed. We are not as we were before the Sunrise, even physically, and the old knowledge and the old ways are gone."
"Then it is our duty to recover them."
I had not realized that I was going to speak until I found myself on my feet, shouting the words. Quilinaryl turned to face me, and smiled almost sadly, holding out a hand as if she would clasp mine.
"Do you really think that we can recover them?" she asked. "How? The Sunrise burned and blasted even the knowledge that all rested in memory from our minds. I agree, if perhaps we could apply the old ways to new knowledge, we might have the Old World back. But we don't have even a large part of the old knowledge. If you are the same as many whom I have spoken with, Lord Neros, it is glory and the deeply personal moments of your life before the Sunrise that you remember. You don't remember just how to smith a weapon, or how to make glass, or how to weave without the aid of magic."
I took a deep breath, and stopped. Rowan shone in my mind, a fantastic silvery city, its buildings shaped by skill and love and far more tame magic than we had now into animals and plants. One family might live in a giant rowan tree, another in a leaping buck. I could remember it all, and I had long mourned that this Changed World held nothing half so magnificent.
But could I remember how to bind the sonor pieces together, and raise those sculptures? No. I could defend myself by saying I had never known- I had been a fighter, not an architect- but there were odd details that had slipped in over the years I had spent in Rowan. I could remember hearing them, but I could not remember what they were.
Gone, all gone.
"I know," said Quilinaryl, and I looked up to see her weeping, though somehow she managed to do it without letting her flow of tears interrupt the clarity of her words. "I know that you want to recover the Old World. But it can't be done. And we will never learn how to survive as long as we cower here in front of the wild magic, and never show it who is master. I believe that can be done."
"The wild magic is unbelievably powerful," I whispered.
"To the fearful," said Quilinaryl. "There were some who mastered it, whose will to live was so strong that they rode the waves of the power and survived it."
"You have a julaludara here?" I asked in awe, my eyes passing around the cave in search of one of the legendary mages. Of course, it might not be much good trying to find one. There were those who said they controlled their own bodies, Changed though they were, and could become anything or anyone.
"No," said Quilinaryl. "I have only learned from their mistake, and decided to stop mourning, and stop thinking of the wild magic as something separate from myself. It has influenced everyone. We have been fighting against the current long enough. It is time that we learned to swim."
She shrugged, and the robes fell from her body. They must have been attached at the shoulder or something of the kind. She stood there, naked, glowing. Her body was all smooth dark silver skin, though around her waist it swelled into thick ridges. There was no purpose to them that I could say. But then, the wild magic had not Changed us for any purpose but its own delight. Quilinaryl caught my gaze and smiled.
"They sometimes come to life and turn into snakes that writhe around and bite the inside of my flesh," she said. "The pain is excruciating."
I met her eyes again. "And you don't fear the wild magic?" I asked, starting as another ripple of power ran through my body and placed my bowels somewhere near my mouth. I could taste the foul afterechoes of digested food. I hoped this Change wouldn't endure too long. Much longer, and I would begin shitting through my mouth.
Quilinaryl's eyes flared at me. Her smile was the simplest and sweetest thing I had ever seen. "No," she said softly, and then turned and stepped into the wild magic.
I found myself lunging forward before I thought about it, and stopped with a cry. I expected Quilinaryl to melt and Change, or die at once, or something that perhaps combined both those choices.
But she did neither. She flung up her arms, and for a moment the swells around her waist came to life, moving like waves on an ocean. I tensed, remembering what she had said and expecting to hear screams of pain.
She laughed instead.
I eyed her back in incredulity. No, it was unmistakably a laugh. She turned towards me, hand extended and smile glowing on her lips.
"I am free." She spoke softly. "And for the first time in my life, I am free of fear. And I have stopped longing to be free of the wild magic, which is the first step towards taming it." She stretched, the swells around her waist almost seeming to meld into her skin as she lifted an arm above her head. "Will you join me, my Lord Neros?"
I took a step closer, my body shuddering in pain and fear. Memories raced across my mind.
The white fire had come from the east, as it had across almost the whole continent. It had swept past in seconds, and when I could see again, I had Changed, and everyone around me was dead, the bodies piled and burning and writhing and turned to stone. The wild magic Changed recklessly. The magic of creation. The magic of destruction.
The flames danced, and I found myself stepping forward. I had to face this. It might be for Fimbresia, or because I truly didn't want to live in fear any more.
But I think I went as much for myself as anything else.
The flames surrounded me, and for a moment the pain was just as bad as I had imagined. Quilinaryl's grip firmed on my hand as I began to sag, and she almost sang the words into my ear.
"The wild magic is master through your fear. That is the only way it can ever be master. Do not let it tempt you to the same fear. If you hold your will firm, and Change yourself, and refuse to remember what the wild magic did in the past, then you can conquer it."
"But I was the only one left alive," I gasped. "Why should I have lived? Why did they all die? And in such horrible ways..."
"You cannot bring them back to life." Quilinaryl danced back in front of me, her arms spreading wide, but her gaze and her hand remaining on me. "You cannot Change yourself back, perhaps, even if you gain control of the wild magic. But you can change the way that you live in the future. You don't have to cower before the wild magic forever."
Her voice rose to a triumphant cry, like the shriek of flames as they raced across the fields. "I have discovered the secret. The wild magic was only ever caged in the deep earth by the wills of Elwens. It was loosed by the wills of Elwens. It can be tamed by the wills of Elwens. Let enough of us believe strongly enough that we can tame it, and it will be tamed. But for so long we have believed that it was omnipotent and unstoppable, and so it has been."
"But if there are Elwens still believing that," I said, struggling to see her through the flames, "even if what you say is true, then what I learn to believe won't make a difference to them."
"You can live as an example to them, and you can tell them the truth," Quilinaryl sang. "Whether they listen or not is their choice. If they do not, then they will continue to live as they did, no worse off than before. But you will at least have a life unafraid and whole, for yourself. Let yourself go, my lord. Do not be afraid of the fire."
I closed my eyes, and gave myself to the flames.
It was so odd. I could feel my soul writhing, my mind shrieking in pain and fear and memories, but at the same time there was something in me that truly was not afraid, that separated itself from all those emotions and rose above them. I watched it in wonder. I had never felt it so clearly before. Always it had moved under the cloak of desire, or, once the Change had come, longing. I had wanted things, but I had never wanted them purely.
This was my will- free for the first time, moving as it was meant to move, in pure and simple defiance of all things under the sky. The wild magic might Change me, or even learn to control my mind. But it could not change the existence of my will, and if it came too early it would have only a slave and not a cowering Elwen, and if it came too late then I should have learned to resist.
It could not win.
I laughed to think I had ever believed it could.
My will unfolded through me, moving through my body, moving through the flames, surrounding me like lifted wings, spreading out and out and out until I could feel the magewinds shifting and cowering back in awe. It was all so new. I touched them, and realized that I could Change them if I wished. I could command them to turn and dash across the faces of the crowd.
But I had no desire to Change them. In this way, I was fundamentally different from the wild magic, and Elwen. I didn't want to Change things to gain power over them, or for the sake of seeing what would happen. I might do that to myself, but never to creatures of the wild magic. If I Changed others, it would be because they had threatened me or someone I loved. I would fight a second Sunrise, but I need not fight the creatures of the wild magic.
The knowledge thundered through me like the pulse of my heart, and shook me to my core with the sense of things forgotten. I had known this wisdom, once, this self-contained power that threatened others only if they threatened it, this exulting strength that ran in the way a young lion might, rejoicing in the smooth flow of its muscles. When had I forgotten it?
Perhaps the day that all my friends and family died, and I had been thrown back on the kindness of strangers to survive.
And that was another thing, I saw, as clearly as if Quilinaryl were whispering the words in my ear. I had thought of everyone around me as strangers, not as the people I would choose to be with but as strangers whom necessity had thrown me upon. I had yielded sullenly, always dreaming of what had been. It had prevented me from either coming to love the Changed World or making real friends and family out of what was left.
I had lamented once that I could never find love again. But had I ever truly thought I could? Had I ever looked? I had resented the death of the wife I loved so much that I wouldn't allow the wound to heal. I had bitten and gnawed at it, resenting all the while how unfair everything was- the Sunrise, and death, and my Changes.
Yes, it was unfair. It was unjust. But it had happened. To go on brooding over it the rest of my life meant I had surrendered. I would never get past the unfairness, and I would never get past the Change. The Change lost all power once I took it, not as the end of the world, but simply as something that had happened.
I had thought that I could not overcome the wild magic, and that was the reason I could not overcome it.
A cry burst from my lips, and suddenly I found myself kneeling amid the dying flames, with Quilinaryl beside me. She laid a hand on my shoulder, then turned and gazed upwards.
I followed her eyes.
Descending from the lighted ceiling of the cave was the Burning Veil, a glowing half-circle of golden radiance, shimmering as though dotted with dew. Quilinaryl spread her arms and calmly floated to meet it, something that drew gasps from all those assembled in the cave. I almost smiled to think they could still be so impressed by so simple a feat, and then remembered that they had not shared what I had with her.
Quilinaryl clasped the Veil, and then lifted it so that it touched her lips. It clasped her for a moment, and she hung there, shining with different colors of firelight, the Veil irradiating her body. I noticed that the swells around her waist had vanished.
Then Quilinaryl settled to the ground, and the Veil vanished, dimming and darkening like a dried rose. She looked around at the people in the cave, and said, "It is over. I am the Ascender."
And she was the most powerful person in the cave. I wondered how many of them knew that.
She came to me, and tugged me back to my face. "Thank you, my lord Neros," she said softly. "I will speak to you tomorrow of Fimbresia and the business you came on. We shall renew our ties. We should live as close as we can, we of the Changed World."
It was a test, and I did not fail it. "Don't you mean the world since the Sunrise?" I asked.
Her smile flooded me.
*****
"I hope that we shall see you soon and often, my Lord Neros of Fimbresia."
I bowed from the waist to Quilinaryl, the Ascender of Cyllorl. She spoke in a formal tone, as befit the Ascender speaking to an ambassador, but her joyful eyes let me know the full import of the message. I would be welcome, did I come on official business or for myself.
I smiled at her. "I will come back soon and often, my Lady Quilinaryl of Cyllorl."
She smiled back at me, and stepped away. Her own people watched her in bafflement. They could not understand the closeness that bound us, unless, as the rumors suggested, we had become lovers.
For that matter, my own guards were tight-lipped over my closeness to a curalli, a member of the race they thought had caused the Sunrise.
They were wrong over the source of that closeness, though. We were not lovers. And friends was too shallow a word. There would have to be a new word, I thought, for those who had shared the wild magic and the experience of unfolding wills together.
Perhaps we would make one. A new word for a new world.
I turned and touched my heels to the quicksilver's sides. For the first time, I really noticed how smoothly the beast flowed along and admired the flash of light off the gleaming flanks, and stopped lamenting for horses, none of which had survived the Sunrise, not being magical enough.
I closed my eyes as the wind blew across my face, then opened them to see the jaguar gates spring open. By all the stars, I felt more like an Elwen than I had in centuries.
I could not be master of my fate entirely. I could not bring back the dead. But I could master myself, and that was the source and ground of power and being.
"Are you all right, my lord?" asked one of the guards riding close at my side.
I smiled back at her. "All right is not the right phrase," I assured her, and saw her expression deepen with concern. "Joyful is."
She stared at me as I kicked the quicksilver and we raced ahead of the others, across the glinting purple and silver grass, my mount running faster and more smoothly than any horse.
If she looked that shocked to hear of my mood, I wondered what she would say when we returned to Fimbresia and I gave up the post of ambassador. I would, though. It only interfered with what I really wanted to do.
I turned to look back once at Cyllorl.
Then I turned ahead, and was joyful, and free.
