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someone tell you what happened?”

      “Wizards have an ear for rumor, lad. I’ve been waiting for a child like you, these many years.”

      Niryn’s pinched, parched young heart swelled. It was the closest thing to praise he’d ever known, save for one time; he’d never forgotten the way Queen Agnalain had looked at him that day and how she said she thought he’d do great things. She’d seen something in him, and this wizard did, too, when all the rest wanted to cast him out like some rabid dog.

      “Oh yes, I see it in those eyes,” the wizard murmured. “You have wit, and anger, too. You’ll enjoy what I have to teach you.”

      “What is that?” Niryn blurted out.

      The old man’s eyes narrowed, but he was still smiling. “Power, my boy. The uses of it and the taking of it.”

      He stayed until Niryn’s parents came home, and made his offer. They gave Niryn over to the old man, accepting a purse of coins without even asking his name or where he would take their only child.

      Niryn felt nothing. No pain. No sorrow. He looked at the two of them, so shabby compared to the old man in his robes. He saw how they feared the stranger but didn’t dare show it. Perhaps they wanted to be invisible now, too. But Niryn didn’t. He’d never felt more visible in the world than that night when he walked away from his home forever, at the side of his new master.

      Master Kandin was right about Niryn. The talents that had lain dormant in him were like a bed of banked coals. All it took was a bit of coaxing and they leaped to burn with an intensity that surprised even his mentor. Master Kandin found Niryn an apt pupil and a kindred spirit. They both understood ambition, and Niryn found he lacked nothing of that.

      Through the years of his apprenticeship, Niryn never forgot his time at the palace. He never forgot how it felt to be nothing in the eyes of another or the way the old queen had spoken to him. Those two elements combined in the crucible of his ambition. Kandin honed him like a blade and, when his mentor was done, Niryn was ready to return to court and make a place for himself. The lessons of his childhood were not forgotten, either. He still knew how to seem invisible to those from whom he wished to hide his power and purposes.

      He’d missed his chance with Queen Agnalain. Erius had put his mother out of the way before Niryn could establish himself, and taken his young sister’s rightful place on the throne.

      Niryn, now a respectable young wizard and loyal Skalan, had gone to pay his respects to the girl one day at the pretty little house her brother had installed her in on the palace grounds. By rights she should have been queen, and there was already muttering in the city about prophecies and the will of Illior. Niryn put no stock in priests, considering them nothing but skilled charlatans, but he wasn’t above putting their game to his own uses. A queen would be best.

      The lessons he’d learned among the roses and flower beds came back to him then. The royal family was a garden in its own way, one that needed proper tending.

      Ariani, the child of one of her mother’s many lovers, was the rootstock of the throne. As the only daughter of the queen, her claim was strong, perhaps strong enough to overthrow that of her brother, when she was old enough and carefully groomed and supported. Niryn had no doubt he could nurture a faction on her behalf. Sadly, he found the stock to be diseased. Ariani was very pretty and very intelligent, but the fatal weakness was in her already. She would suffer her mother’s fate, and earlier. It might have made her easier to control, but the people still had dark memories of her mother’s mad ways. No, Ariani would not do.

      That decided, he insinuated himself into Erius’ court. The young king welcomed wizards at his feasts.

      The young king was made of stronger stuff than his sister. Handsome and virile, strong in body and mind, Erius had already won the hearts of the people with a string of impressive victories against the Plenimarans. As weary of war as they were of royal madness, the Skalans turned a deaf ear to dusty prophecies and ignored the grumblings of the Illiorans. Erius was beloved.

      Fortunately for Niryn, the king also had a strain of his mother’s weakness in him, but just enough to make him malleable. Like his father’s espaliered fruit trees, Niryn would trim and prune the young king’s pliant mind, bending it to the pattern that best suited his use. The process took time and patience, but Niryn had a great deal of both.

      Niryn bided his time, finding other wizards he could use and forming the Harriers and their guard, ostensibly to serve the king. Niryn chose carefully, taking in only those he could be sure of.

      With Erius he prepared the ground, discrediting any who stood in his way, most especially Illiorans, and gently coaxing the king into killing any female of the blood who might challenge his hold on the throne.

      Erius grew more malleable as his mind became less stable, just as Niryn had foreseen, but there were always unforeseen events to contend with. Erius had five children, and the eldest daughter had shown great promise, but plague struck the household, killing all of the children save one, the youngest and a boy. Korin.

      Niryn had a vision then, of a young queen, one of his own choosing, who would be the perfect rose of his garden. It was a true vision, too, that came to him in a dream. Like many wizards, he paid little more than lip service to their patron deity, the Lightbearer. Offerings and the drugged sacred smoke of the temples had nothing to do with their power. That came with the blood of their birth; a tenuous red tie back to whatever Aurënfaie wanderer had slept with some ancestor and given the capricious magic to their line. Nonetheless, he found himself offering up a rare prayer of gratitude when he woke from that dream. He had not seen the girl’s face, but he knew without question that he’d been shown the future queen who, with his careful guidance, would redeem the land.

      Prince Korin would not have been the child Niryn would have chosen to breed his future queen from. There’d been other girls, and one of them would have made his task easier, letting the disaffected have their queen and their prophecy again. Even he could not discount the years of famine and illness that had blighted Erius’ reign. A girl would be best, but like any good gardener, Niryn must work with the shoots that matured.

      It was about this same time that he found Nalia. He’d gone with his Harriers to dispatch her mother, a distant country cousin of the queen, with royal blood in her veins and that of her twin babes. One girl child had been comely, like her father. The other had inherited her mother’s disfigurement. Something like a vision stayed Niryn’s hand over the marked child; this was the next seedling for his garden. She would bear daughters of her own, if left to grow and properly tended. He secreted her away, making her first his ward and then, when the humor took him, his concubine. Wizard-born, he had no seed to plant in that fertile womb.

      Korin was not a stupid boy, or an ignoble one, not at first. He instinctively distrusted Niryn from an early age. But he was weak-spirited. The wars kept the king away, and Korin and his Companions were left to run wild.

      Niryn lent only the occasional small encouragement here and there. Some of the Companions were quite helpful, albeit unwittingly, as they led Korin into the wine houses and brothels of the city. Niryn began more rigorous tending when Korin began to spread his seed about. It was an easy matter, with his wizards and spies now well established, to put any royal bastards out of the way. Princess Aliya had been a regrettable pruning. The girl was healthy, and intelligent, too, but lacked the usual sort of flaw that he could exploit. No, she would in time prove to be a dangerous weed in his garden, strengthened by the prince’s love.

      By the time Erius died, Korin was a dissipated young rake and a drunkard. The death of his pretty wife and the horror of the misshapen fruits of her womb left him broken and lost, and ripe for the first harvest.

      Niryn broke from his pleasant reverie and looked up at the darkened tower again. There, high above this sheltered haven, the seed of the next season was being planted.

       Chapter 11

      After a lifetime as

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