Free The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg Page A

She pinched my cheeks. “And so pale. You’re not ill?”
    “No, my lady.”
    My cheeks surely took on a more fashionable blush as she inspected me. My mother and brother were dark-haired, physically strong, and graceful, with rich-hued skin and luminous eyes. Lianelle had taken the best of my father’s fairer coloring and gold-flecked brown hair, and had surpassed me in height by the age of fourteen. Yet despite my dull complexion and plain features, I despised face painting, rejecting the world’s consuming passion to look like something one was not. I certainly didn’t care what these people thought of me. Humiliating, nonetheless, to hear my lacks laid out so baldly.
    Lady Antonia squeezed my shoulder. “Good health is assuredly a blessing. But, of course, the family connection is the great difficulty here. How are we ever to match a woman whose father’s name is so reviled, the king will not have it spoken in his presence? Or convince a suitor that lunacy will not taint his children? I shall have to apply my best wiles! A modest presence in the palace will enhance your prospects.”
    As if I wished to be here! I crushed a rising heat. “Certainly, Your Grace. As you say.”
    She fixed her great surprised eyes on my face, as if she could read my heart. “And one more thing. As your devoted well-wisher, I must advise you: You must not practice even a tat of sorcery. With your father’s history—his collusion with such disgusting, unholy practices—everyone will be watching. Do you understand me, caeri ?”
    I bit my tongue yet again. “Such would be impossible, my lady. I possess no power for sorcery.”
    “But, Anne, your sister studied at Seravain! And your mother’s family . . .”
    “It is long proven that neither my brother nor I carry the Cazar factor in the blood. Only my late sister.”
    She took up my left hand and with a dry finger ringed in emeralds, traced the Cazar zahkri imprinted there when I was born. “Even those ungifted use magical artifacts, spells purchased at the market or given them by others. Her Majesty’s mage advises you refrain from that, as well—even the seeming. You understand.”
    “Certainly, my lady.” Though I didn’t, really. Happily, my inclinations favored her advice.
    “Now, caeri , you’d best get settled in. Tomorrow you must work with all diligence. You’re far behind the other girls.”
    In flurry of kisses and pats, she was gone. Angry, humiliated, and entirely flustered, I could not think what to do next.
    A sneezing fit broke my paralysis. A combination of the lady’s abrasive perfume and the scent of the dried rosemary and lavender sprinkled over bedclothes and floor set my nose dripping and eyes itching.
    Squeezing past the luggage and the table, I wrestled with the heavy iron window latch and shoved open the casement. The heavy air scarce moved, the night swollen and inflamed like a septic wound. Floating lights, bent shadows, pits and pools of blackness, impregnable fortresses in ruins . . . Perhaps it was not so surprising to find people installing quartieres near their homes.
    The formidable Lady Antonia had left me feeling as if I’d been trampled by horses. Instead of unpacking, I unbuckled my little traveling case and installed my two tessilae on a small stone altar table set beside the bed, calling up fond remembrances of my grandmother and my cousin Raynald. Little Raynald’s death of summer fever had fed my doubts about Ixtador Beyond the Veil. What god worthy of honoring would be so cruel as to set children wandering alone in a barren wasteland? My mother’s belief, unsanctioned by the Temple, insisted that children could find their friends and family in Ixtador. At least that way Lianelle might have Grandmama and Raynald to companion her.
    Settling on my bed, I pulled out Lianelle’s letter. Her exuberant voice was so clear in those pages, as if she sat in her room at Seravain, awaiting my answer.
    As I completed a third rereading,