Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess who loved her mother very much. She and the queen spent hours together playing, dreaming, and sharing secrets. The princess’s favorite secret was that of her mother’s magic: she could transform herself into any animal she chose. The queen promised her daughter that one day, when the princess was old enough, she too would learn to do such things. The princess could hardly stand the wait.
One day, when the princess was seven years old, the queen told her daughter the most important secret yet- soon she would have a little brother or sister. The princess was worried- would her mother love the new baby more than herself? But the queen reassured her- she could never love anyone more than her daughter, and that although the love she would have for the new baby might, in its own way, be equal to the love she held for her eldest, it would never surpass it. And Siddis (for that was the little princess’s name) would come to love the new baby as well, and the three of them would be the best of friends. Thus comforted, Siddis began to eagerly anticipate the new addition to the family.
But then came the Terrible Day. There was frenzied activity, and screaming, and wailing, and no one would tell Siddis what was happening in her mother’s chambers. All that night the little princess hid in an alcove near her mother’s room, crying with helpless fear, and no one thought to look for her. When she emerged the following morning she found she had a little sister – but no mother. And her father, the king, would hold the new sister in his arms and weep while others tried to comfort him, but Siddis was left all alone.
Siddis did not come to love T’myra (for that was what her sister was called): not one bit. T’myra had killed their mother, and what was worse, T’myra could never understand what she had taken from Siddis. T’myra and their father grew as close as two people could be- as close as Siddis and the queen had been- and there was no room in their love for Siddis, so Siddis kept no room in her heart for them.
One day a mysterious stranger came to live at court. He said he was a magician, and he showed them amazing things, like transforming a small rabbit into stone- but such acts made T’myra cry and so the king asked the man to keep his tricks to himself. Siddis was furious at this dismissal; she wanted to know how the magician had come to command such powers, because her mother had been the only one she had ever known to show any mastery of the arcane. She followed him to his chambers and demanded that he teach her, which he did; he showed her many dark and wonderful things in exchange for a few drops of her royal blood. When the king discovered what had happened his wrath was terrible- he banished the magician and locked Siddis in her rooms while he contemplated her punishment. But she would not be punished, and so she escaped and ran away from the palace, determined to learn the magic her father would deny her. She traveled for a long time, until she reached the Outer Dark, and what she learned there does not bear repeating. Suffice to say, never again would she be helpless to the will of another.
During the long years of her absence, the king gave his eldest up for dead, ordered the kingdom into mourning, and finally declared T’myra his heir. In time it became apparent that she had inherited her mother’s gift for shape-change, and she spent much of her time flying, swimming, and running through the kingdom in many beautiful, snow-white forms. She was gentle, good, and wise beyond her years, and the people loved her dearly; they called T’myra the White, for she was white as all-color, iridescent and ever-shifting as sunlight on the water.
When the king finally died and T’myra ascended to the throne, the people grieved the loss of him, but they rejoiced in her reign as the White Queen. The land prospered, and people were content, and it seemed that “happily ever after” was something more than just a fairy-tale.
But in the Outer-Dark a terrible force began to stir...
Siddis had become very powerful during her self-imposed exile, and although she herself did not appear to have the inborn magic of her sister, she was able to craft tools that bent the natural order of the universe to her will. She, too, was known as the White- but her white was the white of no-color, of the blood-drained corpse: cold and hard and never-changing. She had heard tell of the events in her former homeland, and was not pleased; T’myra had stolen her birthright- both her birthrights- and Siddis meant to have them back.
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