by Melanie Rawn
“It took six of them to do this. Could one child accomplish it on her own?”
“I suppose it would depend on the magic’s strength. But this case is surely unique. It’s not the host child who’s Mageborn, it’s Imbra.”
“And with her magic crushed like that, Warded up with their terror of it, no wonder it turned Wild.” Cailet thrust her hands into her pockets again.
“But why now?” Gorsha stared hard at the children, who were calmer now and responding to the four men who comforted them.
Cailet shrugged. “She was seven when it happened. She’s twelve now.”
“She’s inside a six-year-old! There’s no possible way that the onset of puberty could trigger her magic!”
“You know that. I know that. Imbra doesn’t know that, so why should it affect her?”
“What she doesn’t know can’t influence her?” He snorted.
“Do you have a better explanation?” she challenged. “You’re assuming that magic is a thing of the body. Of blood and bone and brain—not mind. You should know better. You’re no longer in your own body, but you can still Work through me.”
Grimacing, he replied, “I may not have a physical brain anymore, but this is definitely giving me a headache. What do you plan to do?”
“Toman’s like me, in a way. He has Others living inside his head. But they’re children who don’t understand that he has a right to live his own life.”
“There’s a rebuke in there somewhere.”
“No, not really.” She paused, then admitted, “If on some level I hadn’t wanted what all of you gave me, I don’t think you could’ve forced me.”
“Thank you for that,” he said stiffly. “But what about them? Tragedy deprived them of their own lives, so they took Toman’s. How do you propose to convince them it wasn’t right?”
“Imbra’s old enough. She’ll understand.”
“You hope.”
“That’s what I love about you, Gorsha,” she snapped. “I can always count on you for optimism when I need it.” She paced away from him, wanting to hear what her Others were saying to Toman’s Others.
Alin patted Imilan’s shoulder, ruffled Deik’s russet hair. “You understand, don’t you? It wasn’t your fault.”
“It’d be nice to be the way I was before,” Deik mused. “Just me. It happened so fast—”
“Poor Toman,” whispered Imilan. “I never meant to do this.”
Cailet wished she knew what exactly it was they’d done.
Tamos Wolvar held both of little Helena’s hands. “But you know what’s the matter now.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. It’s just—they were so young. . . .”
“They”? she thought, perplexed. Who is “they”?
Elomar was wiping Imbra’s tears away. “It’ll be all right.”
“But I’ll be different from them, won’t I?” She dragged a sleeve across her face. “Because of the magic.”
Cailet realized then that they were speaking in the singular. Not we; I.
Lusath Adennos sat cross-legged on the glossy black glass, Toman on one knee and Jennia on the other. “So you know what must be done. Is it all right with you, Toman?”
The boy’s oldest sister reached across to touch his lank hair. “It’ll be better this way,” she said gently. “Really it will. I promise.”
Toman spoke for the first time. “But I won’t have any magic!” After a whimper and a hiccup, he added, “And I’ll be all alone.”
Surely it ought to be the other way around. He would be abandoned yet again, by himself for the first time since babyhood—yet he was more concerned with losing the magic.
“The need can be powerful,” Gorsha said softly. “I had to Ward you three separate times. And when you were coming to ‘Rinnel’ in The Waste, it was all I could do to keep filling in the chinks where your magic was trying to hack its way out.”
“Can I Ward this boy?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ll show you how—it’ll be different than it was for Taigan and Mikel. But first the Others must leave.”
“I don’t know how they did it, but that won’t be a problem.” She gestured. Imilan and Deik were hugging Toman. They stepped back, shepherded by Alin’s hands on their shoulders. He saw Cailet, and smiled to break her heart. She’d forgotten what it was like to feel those blue eyes soften when they looked at her: beloved little sister and cherished friend, not the Captal.
Alin bent and whispered something to the two children. They turned, and said “I’m sorry,” and faded into gray mist.
Tamos held Felena’s hand while she said farewell to her brother. With a respectful nod for Cailet, he led the little girl a little ways across the shining black glass, then let her go. She, too, vanished. Jennia followed after thanking Lusath Adennos and kissing Toman’s cheek.
That left Imbra. The Mageborn. Cailet’s heart twisted as she drew herself up and apologized to Toman and told him good-bye.
“You would have been a good Mage Guardian,” she said when Imbra looked at her. It was all she could give the child.
“I’m sorry for what happened,” Imbra replied with poignant dignity. “Will you tell that to the man with the sword?”
“I will.”
Toman cried out wordlessly as Imbra disappeared. Lusath had firm hold of him, or he would have run after her. The magic, Cailet thought sadly. Always the damned magic—
Damned or blessed, Gorsha told her silently, you must use it now to Ward him.
In a minute.
She went to Tamos Wolvar first, taking his hands. “I never did thank you, did I? Not then, or in all the years since.”
“You’ve Worked well, Captal,” he replied. “It is an honor.” He pressed her hands, smiled, and drew away. “Continue to be wise, Cailet Ambrai. Fare well.”
She turned to her predecessor then, but before she could speak, he held up a silencing hand. “It was my fault as much as yours, for dying too quickly. Believe me when I say that if I could have held on, I would have.”
“I know. But you’re not to blame.”
“You have what you’ll need,” he told her. “Have faith in that.” All at once he grinned, and she blinked; she hadn’t known the old Scholar-Captal could so much as smile. “And stop worrying so much!”
She had to grin back.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she swung around to be caught in Alin’s arms. “He’s right,” her foster brother whispered in her ear. “You worry much too much. You didn’t used to, when we were children together.”
“Alin—” But her throat closed up, and she couldn’t speak. It had been so long since he’d been as distinct within as Gorsha always was—longer still since she’d been able to look at him.
“It’s all right. I know.” He released her, and raked a hand back through his shining hair. A gesture she’d picked up from him—but in childhood, not because he was a Presence within. “How could I not know? And you’re wrong about what just happened. It wasn’t us, really—not as us. It was you as us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re you, Caisha. Just like when you read one of those awful adventure stories you love so much—” He grinned. “You see yourself as the heroine. Well, you see parts of you as us sometimes, too. It’s not us telling you what to do, it’s you telling you with our voices.”
“Maybe,” she allowed. “But it’s not the same with Gorsha.”
“No. He’s different. And he’s waiting. So are Elomar and poor Toman.”
She kissed Alin’s cheeks. “One for you, one for Val.”
“You know what he’d say? He’d tell you to laugh more.”
“Is that you telling me or me telling me?”
“It’s Val telling me to tell you to tell yourself!”
“Cailet,” Gorsha interrupted.
She went to him where he stood w
ith Elo and the boy. The Healer Mage was looking a little ragged around the edges. She’d better Work fast.
15
IT took ten minutes to assure Lusira that her husband was only sleeping off the strain. “He’ll wake up just fine, I promise,” Cailet kept saying, but Lusira kept directing a Healer’s Globe up and down Elomar’s lanky body, alert to the tiniest flicker of black or gold across its green surface. Finally Cailet just shrugged and left the infirmary for her own chambers. She was in need of some rest, too.
Collan escorted her, and once or twice on the stairs she was glad of his strong arm to lean on. Aidan had brought lunch, then dinner, and taken both away again while Cailet worked. Spread on a table now was a copious selection of foods, one of which really should have tempted her appetite. But she hadn’t the energy left to do so much as Warm the soup.
Collan poured her a stiff brandy, then bustled for a while, slicing bread and slathering cheese. She sipped her drink, watching him. Sarra was lucky, to have this man to take such good care of her. Gorsha would have done the same for her, she told herself. She’d just been born two Generations too late.
“So, kitten,” Col said at last, his first words since leaving the infirmary. “What the hell happened?”
The brandy had warmed and revived her a little, enough to tell him the basics, anyway.
“The souls of those children didn’t want to die,” she finished. “They were self-centered and strong-willed, the way young things always are. They have to be, in order to survive.”
He snorted. “You haven’t seen self-centered or strong-willed until you try dealing with Taigan. Will the boy be all right?”
“I’ve Warded him six ways to the Wraithenwood. They’re set to fade very slowly as he grows up and grows into his own personality.” She hesitated, taking another swallow of liquor. “But it’s very likely he’ll be seen as strange all his life, and never be completely normal.”
“He didn’t develop the way other children do,” Col-Ian said. “I think it’s just that he’s got some catching up to do. But I’ll tell you one thing—from what I saw on the way here, if loving kindness can heal him, his grandmother’s the one to do it.” He leaned forward in his chair to snag a peach from the fruit bowl. “I’ll take them into Heathering when they’re ready to leave—they can catch a post coach from there back home. I’m off to Neele next. I can probably get back to Roseguard by St. Delilah’s. When you write Sarra, let her know, would you?”
“Of course. But what’s going on in Neele?”
“Some fancy financial dancing in every branch of the Homestead Hearth Bank. A Renne cousin of the Slegin boys—” They were still called that in the family circle, even though Jeymi, the youngest, was almost thirty. “—is the director, and at a meeting of her regional managers she noticed a lot of new accounts. Every Shir.”
“Why is that odd?” she asked, trying to appear interested.
“There’re Web accounts—usually in four or five different banks. Then there’re business accounts, usually in one bank that has branches all over, with smaller accounts for each shop or factory or whatever in the chain. Payroll in the big account, everyday operating expenses in the small ones. And then there’re individual personal accounts.” Noting her blank look, he laughed. “I bet you don’t even know how much money you have in the bank! Anyway, what alerted Falin Renne was a lot of every kind of account being opened in all their branches.”
“I still don’t see—”
“It wouldn’t be so weird if it was just the Homestead Hearth. Falin had a chat with a couple of other bankers, casual stuff, and found out all their banks are opening lots of new accounts, too. Some of ’em for pretty big sums.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Cailet declared, “and what’s more, I don’t care! Breakfast on the balcony tomorrow, if the weather holds. Good night.”
“Good night, kitten,” he replied, with a satisfied smile. And then she knew he had done it all on purpose: taking her mind away from the Working of this day and night, and boring her silly just for good measure. She made a face at him and went to bed.
16
EVERY St. Agvir’s, Cailet observed her own private memorial to Alin Ostin. On that day in 961, when she was ten, she’d broken her arm in a fall from Ostinhold’s St. Agvir’s Wood. Her Warded magic, responding to Alin’s suffering as an inept Scholar Mage botched the job of teaching him, had distracted her during the climb. She could still remember the world spinning dizzily, and hearing Alin cry out, and being unable to help him, and tumbling to the ground. That day had tragically defined him: crippling his magic so that he would never become a Mage Guardian, hurting him in ways not even Gorynel Desse could heal. Alin was just fourteen. At sixteen, he left The Waste with Val Maurgen. At twenty-two, he was dead.
But what had survived in him of magic—an uncanny ability with Ladders—survived still within Cailet. She remembered her Others, too, each year, not on their Birthingdays or the date of their deaths—the day she’d become Captal—but on occasions that had defined them as Mage Guardians. These scenes she had from their memories, joyous occasions for each: Tamos Wolvar on the third day of First Frost, when he’d spontaneously conjured his first Mage Globe at the age of thirteen; Lusath Adennos on St. Deiket’s, when he’d received his Scholar’s gray sash and pins; Gorsha on St. Miryenne’s, when he’d been promoted to First Sword.
Of the four special dates in Cailet’s personal calendar, only Alin’s was bitter. Alin was a warning. The others had given her their knowledge and wisdom of experience. But Alin’s legacy was more than information; he was brother, friend, and grim example of a Mageborn mind injured beyond repair. On St. Agvir’s Day, Cailet locked her doors and lit a single candle, and spent a solitary evening remembering Alin and renewing her own resolve that what had happened to him would never happen to another Mageborn.
This year—eighteenth since Alin’s death, twenty-sixth since that day at Ostinhold—she would not be alone in remembering him. His sister Miram was visiting Mage Hall with her three daughters. With them had come Jennis Maurgen, pregnant with her third twins. She’d brought along the first two sets—seventeen-year-old Solla and Valiri, eleven-year-old Aliz and Birana. The latter girls, fathered by Biren Halvos, had inherited his tawny coloring; Jennis worried that they might have inherited Biren’s magic as well.
“I know you can’t tell at this age,” Jen said to Cailet the afternoon of their arrival, as Mage Hall prepared to celebrate St. Agvir’s. “But if you can let me know what to watch for—”
In the thirty years they’d known each other, Cailet had never seen Jen nervous. She smiled reassurance, a corner of her mouth quirking as she imagined teaching Prentice Mages who had Jennis’s prickly temper.
“There’s never been a Mageborn Maurgen—” Jen went on.
Miram interrupted with laughter. “For which we thank Miryenne, Rilla, Mikellan, and any other Saint who takes an interest in magic!” She sat in one of the chairs Aidan had brought out onto the balcony. It was a glorious day, the late-summer warmth tempered by cool autumn breezes that rustled the leaves of the great oak tree. “Can you imagine what Val would’ve been like with a few spells to hand?”
“Besides the natural Maurgen magic, you mean?” drawled Aidan, handing around goblets of iced wine. His aunt Jennis took a playful swipe at his rear end as he passed—he evaded her easily, grinning.
“Speak when you’re spoken to, boy,” she told him. “Cai, you’re too lenient with him.”
“Me?” Cailet, leaning a hip against the balcony rail, made big, innocent eyes.
“Don’t blame Cailet for my manners,” Aidan said. “They’re your fault, Aunt Jen.”
“Not anymore,” she retorted. “You’re Marra’s responsibility now.”
With a smile reminiscent of Val at his most complacent, Aidan replied, “Oh, but she finds me charming—don’t you, light of my eyes and joy
of my heart?”
With a cloyingly sweet smile, Marra cooed, “Devastatingly charming, my own true love.”
Miram rolled her eyes. “Enough! Run along and play, children, while we . . . discuss. . . .”
What Miram intended to discuss would never be known. A young man suddenly appeared from the arched corridor at the end of the balcony, stopped on seeing the group gathered outside Cailet’s quarters, smiled a shy apology, and returned the way he’d come.
Cailet exchanged amused glances with Marra and Aidan, and all three waited for it. Sure enough, it was Jennis who broke the silence with a short, explosive sigh.
“Cailet, tell me this instant or I’ll rearrange those Globes on your shelves so you’ll never be able to contact another Mage Guardian as long as you live. Who was that revoltingly beautiful young man?”
The Captal managed to hide most of her smile. “Prentice Josselin Mikleine. I thought you might notice him. Most people do.” A grin escaped as Aidan snorted at the understatement. “But I have to ask, Jen—why ‘revolting’?”
“Because I’m too pregnant to take him to bed, damn it,” Jennis sighed. “Maybe after I’ve delivered. . . .”
Miram burst out laughing. “You’re incorrigible!”
“No, frustrated! Oh, don’t worry, Cailet—I didn’t travel all this way to poach Prentices—male or female!”
“If you tried, you faithless flirt,” Cailet teased, “I’d have to tell Maidilin Canzallis.”
“Now, how did you—” Jen interrupted herself with another sigh. “My sister. It was my sister, wasn’t it? Riena is the worst gossip in The Waste.”
“It was not Riena, and you have a nerve complaining about Aidan’s manners when you’re sitting here maligning your own sister!”
“So how did you know about me and Maisha?”
Cailet looked pointedly at the ring on Jennis’s right hand—the Canzallis sigil of an eagle holding a snake in its talons. “Besides, I remember Maidilin from school, and she used to lope along behind you older girls like a Senny pup.”