Estrella Wayland's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Estrella Wayland had one year to master four powers, or she would fail the trial that named the next queen of Arcastia. This morning she only wanted the gardener to drop his rake. She did not mean to speak the command. The words slipped out wrapped in her mother's old gift, the Voice that bent any mind that heard it. The old elf's hands opened at once. The rake fell. His eyes went flat and empty, and he waited for her next order like a thing that had forgotten it was alive. "Stop," she whispered. "Please, stop. Wake up." But the Voice only pushed deeper. He stepped toward the garden wall when she asked where her father was. He would have walked through it. She grabbed his sleeve with shaking hands. She found her father in the throne hall of the white castle. King Ash Wayland stood below the tall arched windows, reading a letter he did not look up from. He had ruled Avalon for over a hundred years. He had once ruled beside her mother, before her mother died and left Estrella every gift at once and no one who held them all. "I compelled the gardener," she said. "He won't come back. His eyes are wrong." Her father set the letter down. He closed his eyes. She felt his mind brush hers, telepath to telepath, following the thread she had tied. In the garden, far below, she sensed the old elf blink and stumble and remember his own name. "He's free," Ash said. "He won't remember it." Relief lasted one breath. "Teach me to control it. You have the Voice too. You must." "No." He said it flatly. "I have four gifts. Not hers. The Voice was your mother's alone. I never carried it." He turned to the window. "No one living holds all four. You are the first." The word first landed like a stone. She had come for a teacher. There was none. Not her father, not any elder in the courts. Whatever she learned, she would have to learn with no one ahead of her on the path. Ash crossed the hall and took her hands. His were steady. Hers were not. "Your mother found the limits of her Voice by testing them," he said. "Carefully. On herself first. There is a record. She wrote down what nearly cost her a mind she loved." "Where?" "The vault beneath this castle. Her private journals. Sealed since she died." His jaw tightened. "I have not opened them. I could not." He pressed a small iron key into her palm. It was warm from his hand. "You will teach yourself," he said. "From her. It is the only mentor left." Estrella closed her fingers around the key. She had a year, four powers, and a dead woman's handwriting. She turned toward the stairs that led down into the dark, and began to walk.