It was a man’s face, fair hair sweeping across a wide brow to shade river-blue eyes, a face with strong bones and an unsmiling mouth. Yet there was tenderness in the curve of the lips, gentleness to balance the stubborn line of the jaw.
Fire slid down the rocks then, igniting the pool, and Sioned drew back her hands with a cry of fright. The single red-gold hair floating on the water writhed, became a thin rivulet of flame that crossed the man’s forehead like the circlets worn by princes—and then extended to form the same royal crown for her.
It was a very long time before Sioned rose from her knees. Even after the Fire died away and the picture in the Water vanished, after the Air had ceased to sing in the pines and the Earth was calm beneath the pool, she stared wide-eyed at the cairn and the spring. At last the chill of oncoming night wrapped around her naked body and she shivered, the spell finally broken.
The next day she sought out Lady Andrade, troubled by what she had seen. “Was it true?” she asked urgently. “What I saw yesterday—will it come true?”
“Perhaps. If the vision disturbed you, it can be changed. Nothing is written in stone, child. Even if it were, the stones can be shattered.” The Lady gazed musingly at the brilliant sunlight outside.
“When I was about your age, I looked into the Water and saw the face of my husband. He was not the man I would have Chosen for myself, so I did everything I could to make the vision change. I know now that what the Goddess showed me was a warning, not a promise. Perhaps she did the same for you.”
“No,” Sioned murmured. “This time, it was a promise.”
A wry smile played over the Lady’s mouth. “Just so. But remember that a man is more than a face and a body and a name. Sometimes he’s a whole world within himself, even if he isn’t a great lord or a prince.”
“I think I saw the whole world in his eyes,” Sioned admitted, frowning. “Is that what you mean?”
“How young you are!” Lady Andrade said indulgently, and the girl blushed.
Now, five years later, Sioned knew her own face had changed until it was very nearly the version of herself she had seen that day. Only the royal circlet was missing, and her first real sight of the man. She had spent the last years looking carefully at every blond, blue-eyed man who came to Goddess Keep, but had not found anyone like him. Who was he?
The answer had come to her very suddenly as she’d helped Lady Andrade pack for her journey to Stronghold. Fair hair, blue eyes, certain angles of bone—Sioned had been amazed and appalled that she’d never seen it before. Then she had realized that “before” had not been the right time, not for knowledge like this. She saw at last the echoes of that masculine face in Lady Andrade’s, remembering the royal circlet and the fact that the Lady’s nephew was a prince. Though she had said nothing, Andrade had seen the shock in her eyes and nodded silent acknowledgment of the truth.
One thing still puzzled Sioned. The circlet had been formed of herself, the hair floating on the Water. Yet he was already royal, already the heir; how could his becoming Prince of the Desert have anything to do with her? She was thinking about it as she walked the sunswept battlements of Goddess Keep one afternoon. The sea was a placid blue beneath a cloudless sky, sunlight reaching deep into the water to warm the new life there, and around the cliffs otters laughed uproariously as they played with their young. Sioned was fascinated by water, whether it was the ocean below Goddess Keep or the Catha River where she had spent her childhood. But she had a Sunrunner’s wariness of it as well, for few faradh’im were able to set foot on anything that floated without becoming sick as a gorged dragon.
Sioned unplaited her hair and ran her fingers through it, feeling the sunlight warm each strand. Soon she would have to go back inside and help with the evening meal—not that anyone ever let her near the cookpots except to taste their contents. She was hopelessly inept at the skills Camigwen practiced with a decided flair, and had never even learned how to blend herbs and cloves for a decent cup of taze. Sioned laughed