"WHERE are we going?" Aldar ventured.
Faia looked around her and actually saw her surroundings for the first time in hours. It was dark, and she supposed that they must have been walking trudging half the day without food or rest through endless rain and tenacious mud.
She thought about the question for a moment.
"I do not know. Does it matter?"
"I guess not—but I am tired. It is getting dark. If we are not going anyplace in particular, I would really like to stop for the night."
Faia shrugged, walked to the side of the road, and dumped her pack beside a tree.
"Would you not prefer to look for a clearing?" Aldar suggested.
She stared at him. "Do you want to stop?"
"Yah."
"Then we will stop here and sleep under the trees."
Aldar did not say anything else—but as Faia knotted the tiecords of her erda over the low-hanging branch of a tree, she noticed his expression as he watched her. His eyes were wide and scared. She pretended not to notice. Instead, she continued making her shelter for the night. She tied the hood of the erda flat over the neck hole, then she took her roll of fishing net out of her pack, and ran cords through the loops on either end. She hung her makeshift hammock under the angled tarpaulin. It would keep her as dry as she cared to be. Aldar began making his own camp a stone's throw away. He kept his back to her.
Why should he not be scared? she thought bitterly. I just made our whole village disappear as if it had never been. He must wonder what sort of a monster I am. But then, I wonder what sort of monster I am. She bit her lip and hung her head. I wonder what Faljon would have to say about me.
She decided she was glad she would never know.
Aldar shivered and sat under his own staked-out erda, his face pale and miserable. She watched him for a moment, and felt stirrings of pity—he had lost as much as she had. And worse, he was terrified of her, the only person left who might offer some comfort.
I suppose I should try to set Aldar's mind at ease, she thought.
"Aldar, what do you have in your pack that we can eat?"
His face brightened a little. "Well, ah..." He rummaged nervously through his pack and began producing foods. Once he found them, they continued to appear in a steady stream. " Akka-bread, dried apples, gath cheese and mebal cheese, chicken, coffee, a bit of lamb haunch, a few fresh foxberries—not many—" he added apologetically, "and a few raisin-and-grain sweetballs. How about you?"
Faia grinned in spite of herself. "All that? I have some jerky strips, powdered soup base, and tea."
"That is all?"
"Mmm-hmm. I usually do a little foraging while I walk. Or stop in the upland stay-stations. I do not like to carry a lot."
He brought his pack under the meager shelter of her erda. "I do not mind. I will share."
Her grin twisted lopsidedly. "I will make a bargain with you. If you can get a fire started, I will make us a stew from some of my soup stock and some of the rest of this."
He looked bewildered. "Start a fire?"
"Of course. I can get everything else ready while you get the fire going. I have tinder and quicklights in my pack if you have none—"
He still looked confused. "I have everything. But if you can do—uh, what you did—why do you need me to build a fire?"
Ah, yes. To him, that must seem like the most reasonable question in the world. If I can destroy someone's whole world in a blaze of heavenfire by pointing at it, surely I can also get the cookfire going.
"Because I am never going to do that again, Aldar. Not ever." She cut pine boughs with her camp knife and twisted them into kneeling pads to avoid looking at him while she talked. "Besides," she said, "faeriefire is the wrong kind of fire. No heat. You cannot use it for cooking."
There was no need to mention that successful magic required concentrated emotion—and she did not have enough emotion left to conjure a single tiny faeriefire as a camp ward. He would not understand. She just said, "Please build a fire for us, Aldar." And she turned her back on him.
Aldar struggled with the wet wood but eventually built the fire, and after a few feeble attempts at conversation, lapsed into silence. Faia prepared the meal without seeing what she was doing. Her eyes saw only her mother's grave, her sister and her children lying still and cold, and the tattered fur of Huss and Chirp. It was a grim, dismal meal.
After the two of them cleaned up, Faia crawled into her bedroll. The rain had gone from deluge to steady downpour. Gusts of wind blew cold water across her face and rocked her hammock and soaked the bedroll through to her skin.
In spite of that, the exhaustion of the day overcame her, and she immediately fell into dreamless sleep.
She was awakened by a hand gently shaking her. At first, she could not remember where she was or what had happened. But the blackness of the night and the steady drizzle of rain, and Aldar's hopeless voice begging her to please wake up brought the reality back to her.
"What do you want, Aldar?"
"I cannot sleep. I just want to know what killed them, Faia. What killed my family?"
Faia's eyes flew open. Oh, Lady, he is just a kid—and I did not tell him... . I just thought he would know. Or I did not think.... How could he possibly know Plague when he saw it? I would not have recognized it if Mama had not been teaching me the Healer's lays.
She rolled over to face him. The few glowing embers of the campfire cast dim light that gleamed in the tears on his cheeks. Eyes round as an owl's—he was determined that he would not cry when he asked her.
Lost everything—and trying to be brave.
She sat up and wrapped her arms around him. "It was Racker's Plague, Aldar. I am almost certain a trader brought it with him when he came to town."
"Plague? Are we going to die, too, Faia?"
Reasonable question.
Faia studied his dark, worried eyes. "Not likely. The dead do not give Racker's Plague to the living. Only the living do."
He nestled his head against her shoulder. His wet hair brushed her skin, and she felt him shiver with chill. "Why did they all die?" he whispered.
Why did they all die? What a question, Aldar. If I knew that, I would be the greatest Healer that ever lived, instead of just an unwilling student of herbs and roots. They all died because anyone who gets Plague dies. They all died because everything dies in its time. They all died because no one knew enough to save them.
"I do not know, Aldar. I do not think anyone knows. They just did, and if we had been there, we would have died too. We could not have helped them."
His shoulders heaved convulsively. "I want my family back, Faia."
She felt her eyes filling with tears—the sweet relief of tears that came just when she was sure her heart had gone dead. "Me too, Aldar. I want my family back, too."
They clung to each other—wet, cold, crying; they wept until they were exhausted. Then Aldar crawled into Faia's hammock, and, curled tightly together, the two drifted back to sleep—survivors with nothing left but each other.
Faia woke first, thinking it was dawn—but the rain was sheeting down again, and what faint light there was came from directly overhead.
Midday?
Aldar, even in his sleep, clutched at her with the strength of desperation.
What am I going to do now?
Yesterday, leaving Bright had been obvious. There was nothing else she and Aldar could have done. But she had no idea where to go. Her life had centered around the village and the highlands. She had never been to a village other than Bright. She rememberd her father's tales of such places, of course; but faced with the sudden prospect of going to one of them—and without her father to guide her, she felt sudden terror. Such places would be full of Flatters—and how human could such folk be, to live without farming or flock-tending, to dally without toiling from day to day? She yearned for the familiar security of Bright.
There is no Bright, Faia, and you are going to have to figure out something to do, because you cannot sleep on the road for the rest of your short, miserable life.
Aldar shifted, and she found herself stroking his hair.
Thank you, Denneina, Lady of Beginning and Ending, that I am not alone. Thank you that there is another with me who remembers Mama and my sibs; who recalls the Floralea Day pole dance, and the Tidelight procession at Sammahen Eve on the village green; who remembers the love that was in Bright. Because I do not think I could live if I had to remember it alone.
Aldar cried out, and flailed around.
Faia tightened her grip on him. "I am here, Aldar. I am right here."
He woke up, and Faia could see the terror still in his eyes.
"It really happened, didn't it? They're all gone."
"Yes. They are all gone."
His shoulders sagged, and the faint remainder of light in his eyes went out.
He needs to think about something else. We both do.
Faia sat up and faced him. "Aldar, we need to make some decisions. Right now, we have no place to go. We have very little food, and no trade goods. I have never been out of Bright except to go to the highlands. Have you been anywhere else?"
He nodded solemnly. "I just got back from Willowlake yesterday. I was there getting merchants to agree to buy our wool."
"Would that be a good place to go?"
"I don't know any other one."
Faia smiled sadly.
For three days, the mages and sajes of Ariss hadn't been able to conjure so much as a warm beer. Ever since the terrifying disappearance of magic, the city of Ariss sat in a silent darkness brought on by the grounding of flying carpets and the snuffing of the ghostlights. At the same time, the naenrids and darklingsprites who had been kept on their best behavior by warding spells ran amok. With their magic weakened, the damage they could do was slight—still, they did their level best to inflict grief where they could. They spilled water on cookfires and peppers into sweets and sugar into fuel, tracked dirt over clean floors and loosed livestock from their pens. When, on the fourth day, the ghostlights flickered dimly back to life, the magicworkers of Ariss cheered, and began cleaning up the mess—and also began Searching in earnest for whoever or whatever had caused it.
In small groups, mages and sages tracked the flow of magic backward, finally narrowing the source to the place where a tiny hamlet called Bright was supposed to be. When they found only a slagged and blackened pit that followed the outlines of a village, the strongest and best of Ariss' magical community girded for war, and sent out scouts to find the cause.
Faia and Aldar ran out of food on the third day; they did not run out of rain at all. But they were thinking and acting as a team, Faia realized, and there were times when, trudging along the road, she could once again think about things other than Bright.
I worry, mostly. Never does any good, but at least I come by it honestly. For a brief instant, she managed a smile. Yes, I am just like Mama that way.
"Anything in your snares?" she asked.
Aldar, crouched by a thicket, grinned up at Faia. "A rabbit. Did you have any luck?"
"The rain is wrecking the berries, but I got a perryfowl—lucky hit with the slingshot. So we eat at least one more day."
"We're only two days away from Willowlake, I figure." Aldar studied the forest. "I think we'll be out of this by late tomorrow."
"Good. I like to see where I am going. I am not used to all these trees."
They sat together, their erdas overhead hooked together to make a larger covering. Faia had found that their nightmares were not as bad if they slept next to each other. The campfire glowed with friendly warmth as they cleaned the game.
Aldar skinned the rabbit carefully and rolled the hide— "I'll tan this if I get a chance," he told her. "It won't be worth much, but it will get us something."
Faia nodded agreement. "We might be able to get a bit out of these feathers, too. If I had a loom and some yarn, I could make two or three keurn-cloths; perryfowl feathers are better woven into those than almost anything else."
Do the people of Willowlake use keurn-cloths to ensure the fertility of their flocks—or do they do something different? Maybe even if I make these into keurn-cloths, I will not be able to sell them.
Suddenly, she was a little nervous. "What is Willowlake like?"
Aldar flicked an eyebrow—an oddly adult expression on his young face. "Fancy. There is a rooming house there that has running water indoors—you can take a bath that comes hot straight out a trough tap stuck in the wall. I got to stay there one night because the village had me listed as a merchant trader." His voice grew enthusiastic. "They have three full streets of shops, and the main streets are all paved in cobblestones. They've even named the streets. The Willowlakers do not allow livestock to be herded on the shop streets, either."
He looked thoughtful. "I have heard that some of the people have their privies indoors, too—though I do not imagine that is true. If you keep livestock off your main street, I reckon you will not stick a privy in your house."
Faia nodded. Willowlake did not sound like a comfortingly familiar place so far; it sounded alien. "I imagine you are right," she mused. "How are the people?"
"They are nice enough. Shopkeepers are all the same, no matter where you find them—they are looking to get something for cheap they can sell for dear. Bakers are about the same, too. If you look hungry enough, sometimes the baker will give you some dough-ends or day-old crusts, just like in Bright." He grinned wolfishly at that. Apparently, like the other village boys, Aldar had made a habit of looking pathetic and starved when in the presence of anyone who might give him something to snack on. "One of Mama's sisters lives there—she took me around and showed me the sights. She told me that almost five hundred people live there."
Faia, who knew her own village had had about eighty people living in it, tried hard to imagine five hundred people all together. "How could they possibly remember everybody's names?" she murmured.
Aldar sighed. "I truly do not know—but I do not think there is anyone there my aunt does not know."
"So you will have family when you get there?" Faia thought about that wistfully. Her whole family had lived in Bright. She had no one left.
"Yes. My aunt Sarral. Mama did not think much of her—her going off to Willowlake and becoming all fancy... but I like her. I suppose Sarral will take me in." His eyes darkened with concern. "There will not be anyone there for you, will there?"
Faia shook her head.
Aldar bit his lip. "I am sorry, Faia. But Sarral is really nice. She will let you stay with her; I know she will."
And what place will I have in a big city like Willowlake? Will I be able to find work tending someone else's flocks? Will they be able to use a half-trained healer? Or will I just be in the way? Aldar will manage—he already knows the people who buy and sell, and they know him.
But there was no sense feeling sorry for herself. She would manage. Somehow—she wasn't sure how—but somehow she would find a place for herself in Willowlake.
In the tenuous morning mist of Ariss, under a dull, gray, rain-laden sky, soft light reflected off a secluded bay of the lake next to the campus of Daane University. A transparent, one-sided bubble—a gate of rainbow-washed light that opened into nothingness—grew larger and brighter. Its light flickered off the surface of the water, and drew the attention of a lean tan-and-brown cat who had been hunting along the shoreline. The cat crouched beneath a sweet-smelling dzada bush and waited.
Magic had been returning slowly to Ariss—slowly, but steadily. The bubble grew with the magic it drew through the ley-line streams that coursed overhead and through the earth, and reflected exactly the amount and quality of the power available there. The growth of the bubble, too, was steady and slow.
The cat who watched did not wait for an event, as a human observer surely would have. It did not look for explanations. It was satisfied simply to observe the patterns of light the bubble put forth, and later, the wispy shadows that began to take shape behind the transparent wall. The cat was not hungry, or perhaps it would have looked for dinner instead lolling under the shrub entertaining its curiosity. Perhaps not. The bubble was outside of its experience, and its experience was broad—for a cat. Its curiosity regarding magic in any form was acute.
For a very long time, nothing happened except that the bubble grew larger, and brighter. This was sufficient for the cat. It rolled a leaf back and forth between stubby fingers, and waited.
The shapes inside of the bubble became more defined and more pronounced. One of the dark shapes began to deform the surface of the bubble, as though pressing against it. The stretching became more and more pronounced, until there was a sudden "pop," and a dark, furred form splashed into the water.
The cat watched this remarkable occurrence without apparent surprise. He had, after all, seen many startling things—had even participated in some of them. He stretched out one lean foreleg and admired the sharp claws and neat, mobile fingers of what had once been a paw, but was now unmistakably a hand.
He waited further, and was rewarded with one repetition, and then another, of the bizarre event. When the bubble had popped seven times, it grew abruptly and painfully bright, and with incredible speed tightened and shrank until without warning it vanished.
Seven large, furred shapes swam along the shoreline. The cat watched them until they disappeared around a bend in the little bay. He waited still longer—hoping, perhaps, for yet another miracle. When finally he yawned and stretched and turned to stalk home, midday bells were ringing in the city, rain lashed the surface of the lake, and the fog was long gone.
Aldar had judged their distances about right. Even in the pouring rain, they still managed to come within sight of Willowlake just after sunup three days later.
The town covered the entire far side of the valley from one bend in the river to the next. It had spread from the river bottom-land to the ridge, and edged along the lake from which it obviously drew its name—her eyes tried to adjust to the size of the place, and could not.
"Oh, gods," Faia whispered, "it is huge.... So big.
Willowlake lay on the other side of a deep, slow-moving river. The road she and Aldar were on led directly to a covered stone bridge that arched across the water. The bridge was wide enough that two wagons could cross it side by side; Faia was in awe. On their side of the river, cultivated fields spread over every tillable inch of land; the rocky fields held sheep and goats and cows. Right across the river, at the edge of Willowlake, there were little fieldstone cottages with thatched roofs that looked very much like the houses in Bright. But beyond them, there were cut-stone buildings that soared two stories high, and buildings with roofs of slate cut and laid in pretty patterns, and houses that looked for all the world as if they were built of wood—
"Faia, are you all right?" Aldar's voice cut through her anxious reverie.
"I cannot go there. I could never feel at home in such a place."
Aldar became very grown-up and reassuring. "You will do fine. It is big, but the people there have always been good to me." He gave her a quick, fierce hug. "You are wonderful, Faia. They will be glad to have you there."
Fifteen-year-old eyes looked into hers with a devotion she had not anticipated. She was surprised to find that she actually did feel better.
"Thanks, Aldar. As long as we are together, I guess we will be fine." She hugged him back, and sighed. With a nervous gesture, she pulled the wide brim of her hat lower across her face and wiped the rain from her cheeks. She was sniffling a little; apparently she was going to catch a cold from all her days in the rain.
Her stomach churned.
I just wish I had someplace to wash up before I walked into that big, fancy town. What will they think of me? I am covered in mud and soaking wet and my clothes reek from six straight days of wearing— She clenched her fists until the nails bit into her palms, then squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. They will just have to understand, I suppose. I have been doing the best I can.
She gave Aldar another brief hug, then smiled uncertainly. "I am ready," she said.
Aldar became more animated with every step toward Willowlake. Now that it was in sight, he chattered on, all about the wonders in the massive town of five hundred—the elegant horse-drawn carriage he had seen, the fountain that one woman had in her front yard, the stall in the market where a traveling vendor sold animals as pets. Not practical animals like the kittens of good mousers or dogs for herding sheep or guarding property, he remarked—but pets. Birds that sang, or talked; gaudy fish that were no good for eating, but that simply swam around in glass bowls to be looked at; even a miniature horse that, as far as Aldar could tell, was no good for anything.
Faia listened with half her attention. The other half was concentrated on the covered bridge, where, she became more and more certain, something was wrong.
Something was wrong—and the prickling hairs on the back of her neck insisted that it concerned her and Aldar.
As they drew closer, she could make out shapes standing under the covering on the bridge, out of the rain. There appeared to be more than a dozen people—and she could feel their eyes on her and Aldar.
"—and Sarral does not cook on a rack in the fireplace. She has a stove—" Aldar was saying.
Faia cut him off. "Are there always that many people waiting on the bridge?"
Aldar peered into the gloom of the covered bridge, and noticed what she was talking about. "Usually there is only the toll-taker." He looked puzzled for a minute, then he smiled. "I guess not everyone wants to walk in the rain like us."
Faia was neither convinced nor reassured. "It has been raining for days without a break, Aldar. They would not all just stay under that bridge, waiting."
She noticed movement from the crowd, as the people who had been standing in the front moved aside to let several others through. Faia was close enough now that she could make out details.
The ones who had come through the crowd to stand in front were two men and two women dressed unlike any she had seen in her entire life. The men wore gaudy gold-and-green robes that swept in smooth lines to the ground, and rich carmine hoods that fell away from their faces in gracious draping curves. Their hair was long, pulled back and braided, and their beards were worn long, also braided, and adorned with heavy gold rings and wires. The women had their hair cut straight off at their shoulders and worn loose—in fact, had it not been for the revealing tightness of their clothes, she would have thought them to be men as well. They wore leather pants and matching leather jackets—the tall, dark brunette wore red, the tiny redhead, pale blue. Both sported soft, loose black boots that bagged around their calves, and heavy silver rings at neck and wrist and ankle over the boots.
The two men were standing close together, conferring; they were obviously maintaining as much distance from the two women as they could without going out and standing in the muddy, swollen river.
"Lady bless," Aldar whispered. "I have never seen anything like them before."
Wonderful. Faia shivered in the cold rain and worried. There is something off kilter about that mob on the bridge, and about their interest in us—
"Aldar, stay here," she hissed. "I do not like this, and I do not want you to get hurt. I will go up and talk with them and find out what is going on."
"But what about you?" Aldar worried.
Faia thought of what she had done to the village of Bright, and shook her head grimly. "I can take care of myself if I have to. I want to know that you are safely out of harm's way first, though."
Apparently Aldar was remembering the village, too, because his eyes grew round again. He gripped her hand. "Be careful, sis'ling," he said, using that childish term of endearment for the first time.
She bit her lip. "Just stay put."
She and Aldar had paused several stones' throws from the entryway to the bridge. It was trouble that was waiting for her, and no doubt of it. She took a firmer grip on her staff, and even though she had not intended to, she pulled the energy of earth and sky like a cloak around her and Aldar. Then she strode forward to meet and challenge whatever Fate had in store.
It had been a long and weary wait. The Sensings of the magic that had first been felt when it blasted Bright came at odd intervals. Those Sensings were almost always in the dark of night or the very early morning. They were random fluctuations, undirected—unlike that first horrifying burst that had destroyed the entire village to such a degree that only the etchings of foundation marks melted into the native bedrock remained to show that the village had been there. And though the random power only reappeared in brief, untraceable, and apparently harmless bursts, the talent behind it was still so awesomely strong that Frelle Medwind Song broke out in a nervous sweat just thinking about it. The surges couldn't be pinpointed, but the general areas of their occurrence could be mapped—and whatever was making them, it had been heading directly from Bright to Willowlake.
Medwind and her colleague, sitting in their shared office in Mage-Ariss had figured direction and speed and had determined that whatever it was that was causing the disturbances—and whatever it was that had, not incidentally, leveled Bright—would be arriving in Willowlake fairly early on Terradae morning.
Apparently, in Saje-Ariss, the same calculations had been made and the same conclusions drawn, for along with Medwind and her colleague, Frelle Jann Raxesmotte, there were two sajes on the bridge in the pale, cold, rainy morning, as tense and drawn and worried as the two women.
And now, at just the appropriate time, we have a man and a boy coming down the road, and though both of them appear to be peasants, well—appearances can surely be deceiving.
Medwind leaned over and whispered to Jann, "If either of these is the one we've been waiting for, at least it's going to be their problem, not ours." She indicated the two pale, nervous sajes in their glorious, overdone robes.
Jann nodded slowly. "We could actually leave now, and let them deal with it."
"I know. But suppose Bright's destroyer decides we are a problem for him, even though we are from the mage side of the city. Suppose he attacks."
Medwind didn't miss the fact that, when the man and the boy stopped to confer about fifty yards off, the two sajes grew even paler and more anxious. She felt a great deal of sympathy for them.
After all, if either of those two had been female, I'd be in the boiling pot now, instead of them.
Suddenly there was an enormous surge of magic, so overwhelming that Medwind felt light-headed. "Bitch-Goddess," she swore, "what in the saje-hells is that?!"
Jann had been watching with Sight, her eyes pressed tightly closed. "The tall one," she whispered from a throat gone suddenly dry and tight. "All of that energy swarmed to the tall one. It doesn't feel male, but it doesn't feel female either. The magic has no gender signatures on it at all. It is drawing from the earth-lines and the sky-lines."
Oh, no, no—I don't want to think about the implications of that. What could possibly use the magic of ground and sky together? How could anyone do that?
"Wild talent?" Medwind got very scared, very fast. "Could there be a wild talent that powerful?"
"By bloody Horned Adar, what if you're right?"
The two frelles stared at each other, eyes wide with speculation. "Could what happened in Bright have been an accident?" Medwind croaked.
Stiffly, as paralyzed by the approaching apparition as songbirds transfixed by a deadly snake, the two women watched the tall peasant stalk up to the bridge. Behind her, Medwind was conscious of the villagers, packed together like sheep tucked behind the shepherd when the wolf approaches.
If only they knew how scared their shepherds were, I don't wonder but that they'd be running for the hills right now.
Medwind tried to read the approaching peasant's intent, to no avail. "I can't pull anything through those shields at all. I feel like I'm attacking a seamless stone wall with a thread."
Jann said, "If he goes on the attack, it is going to take all four of us just to contain him."
Medwind gave her a sideways glance. "Tell me something, Jann. Even pooling our strength, do you think the four of us could level a village the way Bright was leveled? Down to a puddle of glass and slag? Hmmm?"
Jann shivered and shook her head slowly.
Medwind nodded, her black hair bobbing. "Right. So what, exactly, do you propose we do if this saje-peasant does attack? Aside from dying bravely, I mean?" The woman in red glanced down at her feet, then tipped her head at an angle. "The only thing we'll be able to accomplish if he attacks is to make enough noise when we die to alert Ariss."
Jann paled and wrapped thin hands around her torso.
The peasant stopped a few paces away from the waiting crowd. He sniffled, and Medwind noticed that he was young, and that he was suffering from a bad cold, and that he looked like he hadn't had enough rest or food in a long time. He was a tall boy, dirty, covered from neck to knee by the heavy shapeless erda the peasants all admired so greatly and used for so many things, and wearing a big, hideous, broad-brimmed leather hat that hid his eyes and bulky, mud-covered peasant boots that went at least to the knee, and perhaps higher.
He braced his feet apart and planted his staff vertically in front of him. He sneezed once, then settled into a waiting attitude.
The four magicians looked anxiously at each other. No one, it was obvious, wanted to make the first move.
It isn't actually my problem... but thrice returns the good as well as the bad. So I don't suppose it would hurt if I got things rolling.... Medwind cleared her throat, hoping against hope that her voice would not crack from nervousness. "Greetings. From where do you hail, stranger?"
The stranger angled his head to one side in a birdlike gesture, seeming to think about the answer. "I was from Bright—but Bright is no more."
Medwind felt icy rain racing down her spine, even though she was under the shelter of the bridge, and dry. "We had heard rumors of Bright. Do you know what happened there?"
She felt, even through the shields, an enveloping wave of grief. "I do."
She waited with the others on the bridge, but the stranger was not forthcoming with any more information.
One of the sajes asked, "What did happen to Bright?"
The stranger ignored the question. "What are all of you people waiting for?"
Medwind closed her eyes and took a deep breath and centered herself, trying to prepare herself for the attack that her response was likely to bring. "Something terrible happened in Bright, and we are waiting for the person who can tell us what something that was."
"Plague." The stranger's response was terse, but Medwind thought that she could hear a sob clipped short in that answer.
One of the sajes was braver than he looked. "I know of no Plague that makes even the stones disappear," he ventured.
"Oh... that. I did that. It was an accident."
Medwind and Jann and the two sajes threw frantic looks back and forth at each other.
It was an accident? An accident! By the gods, what sort of a rutting "accident" could someone have that would do melt the very stones?! Medwind wondered wildly.
"Wh-what kind of accident?" she asked, voice shaking.
The stranger hung his head. "Aldar was here in Willowlake, and I was in the hills with my flock when Plague struck Bright. He and I returned to find no one alive in the village. We both lost everyone. Most were—most were... were dead in their beds when we found them." He stopped speaking, and Medwind could see his shoulders shaking.
He's crying.
She felt pity for this poor young man, even through her fear.
The peasant resumed his story. "We could not bury them all. Not just the two of us. And the rats and wolves and flies and vultures—"
As his voice ground to a halt, Medwind shuddered at the picture her mind painted.
The boy resumed talking. "Aldar and I left Bright. We were going to leave it just as we had found it—but they were our families. They deserved better burial than the open air and the rats. I can call the faeriefires. Before we were too far out of Bright, I called them, and set them to clean Bright. I did not know that... that..."
Emotion, Medwind realized. Emotion channeled through someone with enormous potential, and sent completely out of control—and, gods, think of the amount of power it took to annihilate a village with peasant magic and—and bloody rutting faeriefires.
"I did not know it would do that...."
The sajes seemed about as reassured by this tale as she was—perhaps less.
The two sajes conferred for a moment. "We're s-s-sorry about your village," one of the men finally stammered. "But we have a new home for you now. We hope you'll let us give you room and board, and some teaching. We'll take you to Ariss, lad, to get training for your talent, before you have an—" He swallowed, and winced. "—An accident that involves the living."
The young man glanced behind him at the boy. "Thank you, but no. I will be doing nothing else with the Lady's Gift."
His lips twitched at the corners. It was the first glimpse of something other than pain that Medwind had seen written on that young face. "And I'm no lad," the peasant continued.
One of the sajes shrugged. "Young man, then."
"Not that, either."
The hair stood up on Medwind's arms, and she stared. The tall boy removed his hat, and cascades of heavy brown hair tumbled below his—her—waist. The cool, pale gray eyes that appraised the group were edged with thick black lashes, under arched black brows. The broad peasant cheekbones and the strong peasant jaw no longer hid the fact that the powerful stranger was, in fact, mage, not saje. Was in fact a woman, and, Medwind thought, rather pretty too, in spite of her brawny size and coarse features. Was, in fact, Medwind's problem.
"Aw-w-w—tsanngas!..." Medwind swore in her native tongue, softly. It was a vile imprecation, but not nearly potent enough to express her feelings.
Jann's breath whistled through her teeth. "Gods—the most powerful natural wizard in at least a century—and a mage. And she's ours—all ours." Jann looked at Medwind, and her eyes widened. "Ouch. Lucky us."
The gaunt, golden-haired saje growled something to his companion, and the two of them, relief etched plainly on their faces, turned away, and vanished in a cloud of viridian smoke.
The peasant girl's eyes widened at the dramatic disappearance of the sajes.
Medwind saw the dark humor of the moment, and grinned. If we don't get killed dragging her home, what a stroke of luck this will be. Imagine training that much power, that much talent. Of course, she'll probably toast us to charcoal before we even get out of Willowlake—
She turned to Jann and whispered, "Bring the wingmounts." Then she returned her attention to the young woman.
"What is your name?"
"Faia Rissedote."
"Faia. Well, I'm—happy—to meet you. I'm Medwind Song. I'm an instructor at Daane University, the University of Women's Magic at Mage-Ariss."
Faia nodded acknowledgement at the introduction.
"Faia, the saje was right when he said that a talent such as yours cannot be left loose and untrained. We sensed magic in Bright six days ago, and went there to see what had caused it. You must imagine how worried we were when we found nothing left of Bright at all. And the side effects of that spell are still going on."
Faia looked puzzled.
"Oh, yes. Didn't you think it was odd that, though last Watterdae was clear and beautiful, the storms started after you did your magic with the faeriefires? Haven't you noticed that it has rained constantly since?"
The girl's brows knitted in worry. "Then I have made it rain forever?"
"No—the storm will blow itself out in a few more days. But you changed the weather drastically, and we'll feel that come harvest-time this year. Farmers are already complaining that they are late getting their crops into the fields, and those that were already in have been washed away."
"I did that?"
"Sadly, yes. And you used no ward-confinements, and not one single stop-spell. You just let the magic run its course. Your simple faeriefire spell stripped the magic, not only from your own area, but also from ley-lines that stretched as far away as Ariss. You turned loose every contained wizard spell there, and you had no way to call any of them back. In Ariss, we have been the week cleaning up the mess and setting things right. There is no telling what the mages and sajes in outlying areas have had to do. We've found nothing particularly deadly that was set loose—but we were lucky. What will happen the next time your magic runs wild, Faia?"
Faia sighed. "I am not going to use the Lady's Gift again, so it does not matter—not really. Though I am awfully sorry about the rain and your problems."
"You aren't going to use magic again?" Medwind raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Really?"
"Really."
"Then what did you surround yourself with when you walked to the bridge? What surrounds you even now? The energy that courses through you even at this instant is completely out of control. I don't think you realize how much of the earth's strength and the sky's power you are pulling in—and I've already seen proof that you have no idea of the consequences of using that power."
Faia flinched.
"I'm sorry," Medwind concluded, "but you could be dangerous left untrained and to your own devices. Last time you were mostly lucky. Next time you might not be—and more people than you alone could suffer from your ignorance."
Jann returned and told Medwind, "The wingmounts are ready."
Medwind nodded. "Good." She turned to Faia, and said, "We'll offer you the same thing the sajes offered. Room, board, training—we can't make you come with us, but we can tell you that, for the good of everyone around you, you must make yourself see this our way. Your talent cannot be allowed to continue unschooled; that way lies certain disaster. You needn't worry about yourself or your future, though. We'll take care of you."
Faia looked into the implacable eyes of the two city-women. She could sense no wavering in their determination to convince her to go with them. She looked behind them to the villagers of Willowlake, her eyes pleading with them to show her some sign of welcome. But the villagers had heard, not only Faia's story, but Medwind's assessment of the danger Faia and her Gift posed to them. Her glances were returned with coldness. Faia could see that they wanted nothing to do with her.
Except for Aldar, then, she would have no support in Willowlake. Her presence would bring nothing but resentment. And if she fought the will of the Ariss mages, she would also make life hard for Aldar.
She turned her back on the bridge and slowly walked to the waiting boy.
Behind her, she heard the small red-headed Ariss woman say, "Stop her."
The other one replied, "Let her go. She'll be back."
Aldar had waited patiently in the rain. His eyes were trusting when he asked her, "What's going on?"
She saw no reason to soften the blow. It would benefit neither him nor her to pretend that everything was going to be fine.
"I am going to go with those women to Ariss," she said.
"You cannot. You are all that I have left."
Faia gripped her staff and leaned her cheek against it. No. You are all that I have left, she thought. "That is not so," she told him. "You have your aunt here, and you will be accepted. The townspeople here are afraid of me because those Ariss women told them what happened in Bright. The townspeople are afraid that I might do something like that again."
"You would not, Faia." The boy was loyal.
"I do not know." Faia found to her surprise that when she said that, she meant it. She really was not sure if she might not make another stupid mistake with magic—a deadly one. "I did not mean to do what I did the first time," she added.
The wind gusted stinging drops of rain against her face and in her eyes; Aldar moved around so that his back was to the wind.
His expression was hopeless. "Faia, if you go, there will not be anyone with me who remembers. You do not want to go, do you?"
"No. But I have to." It was simple truth. More than anything, she wanted to stay—but that choice was not hers to make.
"Goodbye, Aldar. You will be fine." She embraced him and whispered, "I will miss you, brae'ling. Be happy."
His eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I will miss you, sis'ling...."
Faia turned her back before he could see that she was crying. It would be hard enough for him if he thought she was resigned to her fate—she could not let him know how miserable she was to be leaving.
She returned to the waiting women, and nodded. "If I must go, then let us leave now."
The woman in blue, the one the other woman had called Jann, wrinkled her nose and ruffled her fingers through her dark red hair. "Like that?! You can't go to Ariss looking like that! You're dirty, you smell like a stable, and your clothes are dreadful. We'll get you a bath and take you to a shop where we can buy you some clothes that civilized people wear."
Medwind made a surreptitious jab with her elbow at Jann's ribs. "What Jann means to say is that you would probably feel better if you got some clean, dry clothes on before we left," she said, and glared at her associate.
That is not what Jann meant to say at all, Faia thought. Prettified helke! She meant that I look bad, I smell bad, and I dress funny, and she does not want anyone to see me with her. Well, too damned bad. Just for that, I will make sure that everyone sees me with her, and I hope she dies of embarrassment.
Faia crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at the petite redhead. "I will go as I am, or not at all."
Jann looked at the other woman in mute appeal. The other woman shrugged, eyes amused.
Jann whispered, "Gods, Medwind, back me up on this. We can't take her to the University looking like she's been wallowing in a pigsty—and you can't even tell she's female. Looking like that, someone is going to think she's goddamned saje and throw her off the campus."
The whisper carried surprisingly well. Faia felt her face burn. Furious, she moved toward Jann. She wanted to rearrange that over-pretty face with her fist, or her walking stick. Medwind gave her a panicked look that stopped her cold, though. Gods—she acts like I am going to turn that redheaded shrew into a pondworm. Maybe she thinks I can. Faia thought about that an instant longer, and her stomach flipped queasily. Maybe she is right.
Medwind, turning back to Jann, shrugged again. "She'll be fine. She has the right to dress as she wants—and I'm sure she'll feel more like washing up when she gets someplace warm and dry."
Medwind turned to Faia. "I know these past few days have been hard for you. It will be up to you, though, to decide whether the next few days will be as hard."
Medwind gave a piercing whistle, and three dappled gray horses broke loose from the man who held their reins, and trotted forward.
At least, they looked like horses to Faia's first glance. At her second glance, though, Faia found herself gawking at the beasts in disbelief. They were far slenderer than regular horses, though as tall, and incredibly dainty, with legs that appeared to have been created of smoke and dreams, they were so fragile. Their muzzles were finely tapered and delicate, with nostrils that flared twice the size of horses' nostrils, on faces only two-thirds the size. The creatures tossed their heads and snorted, and unfurled wings that had been tucked tightly to their lean sides.
Wings— Faia mused. Huge gossamer wings on horses from my dreams. She held her breath and stared, almost afraid that they might disappear into clouds of smoke as the Flatter-men had if she blinked. These are the miracles Papa talked about, then. It was for this he wanted me to see the Flatterlands.
The wings spread wide, and Faia saw downy gray membranes so thin they let through more light than the oilskin windows in Bright. The black wingtips and the red lines of the blood veins over the bones stood out in high relief. The beasts' wingspreads were tremendous. She inched closer, attracted like metal to a lodestone by the exotic creatures.
"What are they—where did you get them?" she asked Medwind.
Medwind smiled and said, "They're called wingmounts. They're one of the varieties of experimental animal that we are developing at Daane University. Perhaps someday you will make wingmounts, too. Gods know, it would thrill the Mottemage to have someone else studying her specialty. At this point, we haven't managed to get them to breed true—so each one we have has been created magically, over a long period of time, from a normal horse foal. There are very few of them, and we are only permitted to use them for urgent transportation."
Faia's eyebrow raised. Urgent transportation? Which makes me something of value to these people.
Medwind read the look. "We were more than politely interested in the force that annihilated Bright. We're less anxious about it now that we know no one was killed when the village was destroyed—but only a little less anxious. We need to make sure you learn control. Quickly."
Medwind's wingmount knelt at her side, and she slipped into the saddle. Jann followed suit.
Faia's mount failed to kneel fast enough to suit her. She shrugged and vaulted on as she would have when riding one of the plowhorses around the pasture when she was younger—and looked up in time to see Jann's pained expression.
To the hells with her. I may be some stupid peasant in her eyes, but I did not volunteer for this, I did not want this, and if she does not care for me the way I am, she can just freeze in the Dark Gods' underworld for a turn of the Wheel or two.
Bravery was all very well, and defiance was wonderful for keeping the courage up—and putting that helke Jann in her place felt fine—but once astride the dainty wingmount, Faia was awash in niggling doubts. The creature had wings for a reason; and sitting on its back, the reason became clear enough, even when one was not thinking clearly. Obviously, the wingmounts were intended to fly—
Faia suddenly decided that she did not wish to go flying. The ground seemed like a much safer place to be. At that moment, however, the two city-women urged their steeds forward, and Faia's, tethered to Medwind's, followed.
They rocked through a jolting, teeth-clattering trot into a canter, and Faia locked her knees tightly into her mounts' sides. No climbing off now. She clenched her fists into the wingmount's mane and looked back helplessly at Aldar, who stood twisting his hat in his hands, with tears streaming down his cheeks. She looked away as fast as she could.
I really do not want to do this, she thought, as the wingmount's smooth gallop shifted to something else, and the ground dropped away from her with a sickening lurch. She clenched her eyes shut.
Sweet Denneina, I really do not want to do this.