The Two Princesses of Bamarre Read Free Page B

asleep, and Milton wouldn’t let me wake her. Then, before I awoke the next morning, a carriage took her away from Bamarre castle.
    I thought of her often in the weeks that followed. I decided that she must be defying the Gray Death. She might hesitate at first, but as she weakened, she would become frightened and then she’d begin to struggle. I imagined her forcing herself to stand and then to walk, then to go outdoors. I imagined her reveling in her restored health.
    I thought of Rhys often too. He kept his promise, and I saw no more spiders. I was grateful every time I stepped briskly into a room or walked confidently down a corridor. I told Meryl about the spiders’ banishment, and she rejoiced with me, but she had little interest in Rhys since he didn’t ride a horse or wield a sword.
    I wondered how he had accomplished the spider miracle and the cloud trick. I knew little about sorcerers, although I knew about the spectacle of their birth. They were born when lightning struck marble, which happens rarely enough. They had no parents and no brothers or sisters.
    People wealthy enough to own marble put a slab of it outdoors during storms in hopes of witnessing a birth. Father always did so, but we’d never been lucky.
    When a birth occurred, the lightning and the marble begot a flame that grew and unfolded as might a quick-blooming rose. Within the flame would be the sorcerer—full grown, still glowing, his nakedness covered by a shimmering cocoon.
    He would look about him for a moment. Then he would look inward and learn what he was. In a burst of joy he would rocket into the sky, into the storm, showering sparks. The speed of his flight would burn off his cocoon, but a spark of the flame that gave him life would burn on in his chest, sustaining him until death.
    This was all I knew. To learn more, I went to the library and looked sorcerers up in The Book of Beings . After the description of their birth, I read:
     
    Life span: Sorcerers need only air to live. They may eat and drink for pleasure, but they need not. They are incapable of sleep. Although they never take ill, they may die in as many other ways as humans can, by accident or by design or in war. If they do not meet with disaster, however, then at the end of five hundred years their spark is extinguished, and they die.
    During their first two hundred years they are apprentices, and they live out in the world. At the end of that time, they are journeymen and retreat to their citadel, which they rarely leave again.
    Appearance: Their most distinguishing feature is their white eyelashes. All sorcerers, whether male or female, young or old, have dark wavy hair. The species runs to tallness: The average height of a female is five feet and ten inches; the average height of a male is six feet and two inches. All have long, tapering fingers and long, graceful necks. The faces are individual, with as much variety of feature as is seen in humankind. Immature sorcerers have the open, unlined faces of youth.
    Disposition and relations with humans: Sorcerers are neither universally good nor universally bad. There have been heroes and villains, but most sorcerers, like most humans, are a blend of good and bad qualities.
    Although most are indifferent to humans, some of the young go through a phase of intense interest that always terminates at the end of their apprenticeship. Sorcerers rarely marry, and they never marry each other. A few marriages between sorcerers and humans have occurred, and children have been born of such unions.
     
    The section ended, and I slammed the book shut. It hadn’t told me what magic the sorcerers could do, what went on at their citadel, or even how many sorcerers there were.
    Rhys and I did speak again, but not often. Father kept sending him off to distant regions, to help farmers with the weather and to report on monster depredations.
    I met Rhys a few times by accident in the castle corridors. Each time, he stopped to talk. Once he