Prologue
Winter’s always talking.
Her breath frosts the tavern window, but I can still hear the wind whispering outside. A voice slips through a crack in the pane, tugging curls from my snarled white braids.
COME OUT AND PLAY, she says.
But our tutor would never allow it. Not with the blizzard setting in.
I trace the crystals growing on the glass and let my eyes wander across the ice rigs parked in the lot outside. If I had a rig, I could play in the snow all day long and not risk frostbite. That red truck there isn’t so large, and my ten-year-old legs have grown long in the past year.
“Tell us a fairy story, Mystra Dyfan,” Lenore calls, suddenly there, tucking a dishrag into the crack, shutting Winter out.
“They’re histories,” our tutor corrects.
“The Majority doesn’t like us learning histories.”
“We’ll tell them they’re only fairy stories then.” Mystra’s left leg drags as she crosses the room. “Come. Bring Sylvi and we’ll talk by the fire. The night is growing cold.”
“I’ve boiled chocolate,” Lenore says, her fingers closing around my wrist. “Mystra’s going to tell us of Sola and Begynd.”
“She’s told us of them before,” I answer, my thumb playing on the latch.
Leni always knows when I’m plotting an escape. We were the same once, both of us wanting to get away. But not anymore. Not since Mystra Dyfan came. Now when I look at my friend, all I see are the differences between us: her auburn hair carefully plaited, her woolen skirt mended, her face scrubbed clean. Without Leni’s reminders, I’d forget to change my trousers.
“Please,” she says. “I like the stories.”
“Can’t I listen from here?”
“It’s so cold,” she says. “Come to the fire.”
I let her drag me to the hearth where our tutor has taken up her chair. Leni and I settle in, shoulder to shoulder, passing a mug of steaming chocolate back and forth.
Mystra Dyfan stabs at the fire with the charred end of her cane. She tugs the cape more tightly about her shoulders and shakes her graying hair from the collar. A shard of black marks one of her pale eyes, and just now, it sparkles with magic. When at last she opens her mouth, her voice scratches with a story Leni and I have heard many times before. A story only one of us believes.
“Long ago,” Mystra begins, “when the Wethyrd Seas were but a splash of water, there was Sola, a being of great imagination and light. In an act of benevolence, she selected a drop of sea spray and bestowed upon it her character, warmth, and a desire to create. She kissed his face and called him Begynd.”
Lenore grins. “She kissed the water.”
“It’s not real, Leni.”
“Quiet now,” Mystra Dyfan says, rubbing at her bad leg. “Together, Sola and Begynd stretched the seas. They molded lands from the deep dark beneath the waters and, because it pleased them, they hid great mystery within the rocks. From her own light, Sola crafted folk like you and me, people to fill the islands and to enjoy all that she and her son had made. They were content.
“Creation grew. Men and women became families and families became kingdoms—kingdoms that anointed their own kings and queens. It wasn’t long before Sola, High Queen of Creation, and Begynd, her son, were forgotten by all but Paradyia—an island nation devoted to Sola and the works of her hand.
“Desiring a love like that of Sola and Paradyia, Begynd asked for a people of his own—a people he could dwell with, as Sola dwelled with the Paradyians.
“Sola granted Begynd this request, allowing him to select a people from any island in the Wethyrd Seas. Whichever isle he chose would forever be his.
“But as Begynd searched to and fro, he was not satisfied with the forgetful peoples his mother’s light had wrought. He preferred the constancy of the mountains and trees. He remembered then a cropping of jeweled rock he had long ago lifted from the waters.”
“Layce,” I say.
“But they didn’t call the island Layce back then,” Leni corrects. “That’s a Majority name, isn’t it, Mystra?”
“Yes. Now, hush. The island was flinty, sharp as a shiv, and void of life. A winter spirit was its only inhabitant and she wore the land ragged with a perpetual snowy gale. From somewhere deep within the rock, a black mineral spilled into the surrounding sea. A mineral that rode the waves and addled the mind, keeping the forgetful peoples at bay. This, Shiv Island, would be his.”
“See,” Lenore says. “Shiv Island. Not Layce.”
I shrug, my eyes wandering to the window.
“From the rock,” Mystra continues, “Begynd carved a people and, as Sola had done for him, he gave to his children his character, loyalty, and devotion. Desiring to be near those he loved, he poured himself into the depths of the island’s deepest valley, emptying all that he was until Begynd was a vast pool the color of starlight, rich with the power of creation.
“Winter fled the warmth of Begynd’s waters, confined now to the mountaintops high above. But Begynd’s people—the Shiv—lived and breathed on the shores of the great pool, providing for their families, watering their crops, birthing their young—their sustenance drawn from the waters of the one who had chiseled them from stone.
“Begynd knew them there. And they knew him. They brought him their joy and he rejoiced. They waded into the pool with their tears and he healed their wounds.
“And the island, which had once appealed only to Winter, grew fertile and ripe. Settled in the heavens, Sola smiled down on her son’s great triumph, the Pool of Begynd sparkling like a gem set deep in the flinty rock. Beyond the isle, the sea churned black, rich with dangerous magic. Kol, the Shiv called it.
“Begynd’s presence on the island changed everything. Like the many wild spirits scattered across the seas, Winter had never before thought to care where she was sent or what she destroyed, but now she felt for the first time. And what she felt was loneliness. From her seat on the highest peak, she attempted to climb down into the valley, attempted to mingle with Begynd and his people, but the heat of the great pool turned her away time and again. Winter could not exist where Begynd reigned.”
A gust of wind strikes the window and Leni jumps, nearly spilling the chocolate. The latch rattles, sounding like mischief, and I hide a smile.
Mystra frowns at me and continues. “Locked away with naught but her wolves and the kol to keep her company, Winter’s despair turned to anger. For a millennium she raged while far below, on the land that was once dazzled by her charms, the Shiv prospered.”
“And then a shipwreck!” Leni exclaims.
“Yes,” Mystra says, her voice suddenly full of adventure. “A shipwreck. Black waves delivered to the island a shattered vessel and an exiled queen. Once the sovereign of a thriving people, Maree Vale arrived with so little. There was the prince in her arms, the promise of another fluttering inside, and, holding her together, a burning desire to see her kingdom reborn.
“Only a small remnant of her royal entourage had made it to the ship before the invaders arrived. Fewer than that outlasted the storm. Forced to abandon their home on the neighboring island of Kerce, the queen and her subjects had drifted into unsafe waters. Those who washed up on the rocks would have died had it not been for the Shiv. But they were a resilient people. They’d survived the monsters that crawled out of the sea, and the kol that slipped into their minds and brought madness.”