I thumbed through the pages, dizzy. So many words, all… for me. “You expect me to memorize a lifetime?”
“Yes,” Orrik said.
The Kyer’s offer was beyond what any peasant could dream of. I’d only need to turn my life into a lie—and succeed at it. “What happens if I fail?”
He considered, tapping the box with his forefinger. “Let’s just say, if your background becomes known, the outcry will be substantial. I suggest you stay in the shadows until you become comfortable with our ways. That includes keeping the color of your Gift secret. Many will see a blue mage as a political tool.”
Orrik took back all the pages except the one with my false family. I held it out, shook it. “I can’t do this.”
“Focus on one page at a time.”
“But—”
“Thorkel will not give up,” he said. At my confusion, he nodded at the window. “Carthesia’s new king, Thorkel. He single-handedly united both the dragons and the tribes. He’s a brilliant mage, and a ruthless one. What Thorkel cannot possess, he crushes. That includes people.”
I shivered. The short battle had convinced me I had no chance against any mage.
“One page at a time,” Orrik whispered again.
One page. Then another. And another. Until it felt real. “How long until we reach the Kyer?”
“By carriage? Two weeks.”
I lifted the first page. Adara of Threepines. “I’ll start reading.”
Chapter Three
Orrik and the Dragonmaster had thought of everything. I memorized one sheet after another, each full of endless details: furniture names, room layouts, foods common to nobles. Adara of Threepines became a real person.
Almost.
For I still had my sun-kissed skin—avid horsewoman—and my accent—rural mountain. And my memories. Memories of sweating in the summer and of freezing in the winter. Of being weak from hunger or exertion. Of Mother dying. Of her on a thin pallet on the ground, choking on herbs because magical potions were too expensive. Even the crystals for creating rainbows had cost too much. Her spirit had died with no peace.
The carriage rattled on. I memorized. I wondered.
Orrik was in the area, he had said. He found me within a week of my manifestation, yet he had this entire life ready.
I wondered, but I had no courage to speak.
And so I studied, all day every day, with breaks only for food and sleep. Those times, I barely saw anyone, just a quick scurry into an inn, and then a deep sleep on a mattress. We didn’t even stop at an altar to leave an offering for a safe journey. I was fine with that. Perhaps my petition to the First One for adoption had been answered after all. It still had triggered events I didn’t understand.
We arrived at the Kyer in the middle of the night. Earlier that evening I’d noticed the change in the carriage’s tilt, but even in the mountains Orrik wouldn’t let me look outside. I fell asleep and dreamed of my new home instead. Four particular mountains made up the Kyer itself, with a lake in their valley. So Orrik had described.
“Wake up, Adara. We are here.” Orrik helped my groggy self out of the carriage.
My first sight: more carriages. A cavern, extremely dim, full of carriages. No Dragonmaster. No dragons. No one but the driver unloading the luggage.
And children. Several came over, each wearing a yellow armband and yawning. Orrik handed out a stack of folded messages, received one, and the children scattered.
Orrik waved a hand over the paper and it sprang open. After reading, he dropped it. Black fire licked the paper as it fell, and black ash landed on the smooth rock floor. I wondered if someone would come later to sweep it up.
“This way,” he told me with a wave.
We left the carriage cavern for a smooth, gray hallway cut into the stone. I kept close—an ancient transportation spell helped everyone quickly cross the length of mountains. Orrik had decided I could learn the waypoints later. Until then, I’d need to keep pace with someone who already knew them.
As we walked, the globes of magic that lit the halls—Light, Orrik called the spell—began to blur. The gray of the stone grew smudged. Occasionally, brown smears swept past: doors.
“Is it all like this?” I asked after ten minutes of walking.
“Like what?”
“Like… gray.” Endless gray with no sun. After the midnight blue of the carriage, gray was quite nice. But not forever.
Orrik could have responded, of course, you silly peasant, we live inside a mountain. But he paused. The Transportation spell paused as well, and the blurs ceased.
He pointed at a wall. “There are veins of color, if you look.”
I peered at the spot. Tiny threads of colored crystal spiderwebbed through the stone.
“Hallways are for function. You can decorate your apartment.”
My apartment. Where I’d live. All by myself. Orrik had sketched one for me. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, dressing room—Garth’s hut had been a single room with curtains around pallets for privacy. Meanwhile, a trainee had the option of taking an apartment with an attached room for a servant. Later, after I bonded, I’d move to an outer corridor with a cave for my dragon.
We finally came to my new home. Orrik swung open the wooden door.
“This is all mine?” I said with disbelief as I stepped inside the living room. There was a sofa between two tables, a desk, a chair for the desk, a bookshelf full of books, and endless space to walk around all of it. A light blue rug covered the stone floor. I suspected the rug was really a faded deep blue, and that the furniture was old, but still. Two tables in a single room. And a desk—that made three.
Craziness.
“Do you like it?” Orrik asked as he shut the door.
“This room is as big as Garth’s hut. Was.”
Orrik raised an eyebrow. “But do you like it?”
I ran a finger over the sofa’s fuzzy cushion. Cushion. Sofa. New words. New words, new life, all within gray stone. “I
