by Melanie Rawn
Her sharp tone betrayed a nervousness that made them both gulp. Taguare, who had at least talked to them along the way, now behaved as if they didn’t exist; he splashed his face, filled his waterskin, and peered into the distance with one scholarly, ink-stained hand shading his eyes. Falundir ignored them even more thoroughly, sinking wearily onto a hummock of brown grass beneath a willow, looking terribly old.
All they knew about what happened was what Taguare had told them—and their own muddled memories of a storm of magic that left them with wrenching headaches. Every other Mageborn in the theater had felt it, Taguare said, and the Mage Guardians had known it for Malerrisi. The Wards they’d individually conjured to protect themselves and Taigan and Mikel had deflected the magic. And if the twins thought their heads hurt, they should consider what an assault of that kind had done to Mageborns not personally Warded by the Captal herself.
As for who was responsible—that was a given. One woman had died, identifiable only by the strange necklace she wore beneath her gown: a golden spool on a thin golden chain, marking her as Threadkeeper of the Malerrisi.
“She would’ve taken you both,” their old tutor concluded grimly, “and wound you on her little spool to be woven into the Great Loom—and there’s nothing you could do about it.”
And so they were going to Mage Hall, to learn how to do something about it if it ever happened again.
But there had to be more to it. More than just self-protection through instruction in the intricacies of magic. They were to be Mage Guardians, weren’t they? There must be a place ready for them—with their money and connections and Name, there had to be a special role reserved for them in the Captal’s plans for the future.
And their mother’s.
But that was the way Malerrisi thought. Everyone had a specific function, a prescribed pattern in the Great Loom, no individual choices allowed. You did as you were told: no more, no less. When you failed, your thread was cut from the tapestry. When you succeeded. . . .
What did happen when you succeeded?
Nothing. There was no reward for doing what you were supposed to do. All success meant was that the Warden of the Loom and the Master Weaver had done their work well. Failure meant that you were flawed, not they.
“So what was the point?” Taigan whispered to Mikel as they washed faces and hands. “If victory was taken for granted, and failure was your fault alone, then—”
“Survival, I guess,” Mikel ventured. “You do your job, you get to live.”
“And if you fail, you end up like the Threadkeeper.” Taigan eyed her mother’s straight, unyielding, untiring spine. “We’re expected to succeed at this, you know.”
“We’re Mageborns. We can do it.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “I just wish I knew what else Mother expects of us.”
“And Fa,” Mikel said moodily, kicking at a stone with a scuffed boot.
“I wonder what he’ll think when he finds out what happened.”
“Truly told, the Threadkeeper’s lucky she died when she did.”
“Before Fa got back from Roke Castle, you mean?” Taigan snorted. “What makes you think mother would’ve let her live that long?” She paused, another idea making her frown. “Do you suppose she really died, Mishka—or was she killed?”
He mulled that over. At length, sending another rock flying with the toe of his boot, he shrugged and said, “From what I know of the Malerrisi, if it was me, I’d kill myself before I let Glenin Feiran get hold of me.”
“Why does she want us? I mean, we’re Mother’s children and all, not to mention Mageborn, but why are we so important that she’d try twice to take us?”
“Take us—or kill us?”
Taigan shivered as if the hot sun had vanished in a snowstorm.
Now, following their mother and Falundir and Taguare through a gate set in walls festooned with roses, they saw their new home. It was singularly unimpressive. Taigan, who’d been to Ambrai with her father and seen the ruins of the Mage Academy from across the river, almost gave voice to her disappointment. Almost.
As they neared, Mage Hall seemed even more bleak. No roses climbed the brick buildings to soften their stark lines; only a few trees provided shade and greenery. There was an orchard about a quarter of a mile distant, a garden of vegetables and herbs, and a few big clay pots set here and there where some optimist encouraged vines to grow up wooden trellises, but to eyes accustomed to the verdant splendor of Roseguard Grounds, the place was about as dismal as The Waste.
They reached a red-brick archway and paused while Taguare opened the gate. Below, down a long flight of steps, was a courtyard in a natural hollow. Buildings rose on three sides, with breezeways leading from the court elsewhere. Doors and windows appeared at odd intervals; the upper story, really the ground floor, was set back to accommodate an encircling wooden-railed balcony. Sand-colored flagstones paved the whole but for a space around a matriarchal oak tree. A wooden bench circled the base of the trunk; someone had left shallow bowls of seed for the small flock of sparrows. The birds scarcely looked up from breakfast as the five new arrivals descended and walked across the courtyard.
“St. Alilen is with us,” Mikel whispered.
“Good, because I know we must be crazy,” Taigan responded.
“Be quiet,” their mother snapped. “Wait here.”
She and Falundir and Taguare climbed the side stair, leaving Taigan and Mikel alone. But for sparrow chirps, there wasn’t a sound to be heard, not a stirring in the oak’s branches. They stood awkwardly beneath the tree, waiting for someone to notice them. It was a new sensation, being ignored—they who had been the center of attention all their young lives.
At last they sensed someone looking at them. It had been several years since they’d last seen her, but the Mage Captal in solid black was unmistakable. She stood at the balcony rail, silent and still and staring down at them with a strange expression on her thin, wide-jawed face.
Taigan cleared her throat, about to speak. The Captal’s head tilted slightly to one side; a smile hovered around her lips. She turned then, and went indoors.
It took a moment for Mikel to find his voice. “Teggie . . . do you get the feeling she’s been expecting us?”
“How could she?”
He shrugged helplessly. “She’s the Captal. Remember when we were little, and were convinced she knew everything?”
“She couldn’t know something before it happens.”
Recalling the little smile in those black eyes, Mikel wasn’t so sure.
21
CAILET wore her habitual black, a choice Sarra deplored despite its traditional association with Mage Guardians. The color was too harsh for her, accenting her sunbleached hair and the depths of her eyes and the pallor beneath her bronzed skin. Moreover, the cut of trousers and shirt was too severe, emphasizing her thinness. Sarra frowned slightly as she accepted a chair just inside the balcony doors; Cailet, recognizing the expression as worry, made a face.
Down below, Prentices had begun to assemble in the shade of the old oak, attending with interest to the woman seated on the bench. She lectured animatedly, with broad gestures and much laughter. Odd; Sarra hadn’t thought an education in magic would include humor. Certainly Cailet evidenced little of it, judging by the weary bitterness in her eyes.
Aidan Maurgen served iced fruit juice and set a tray of small cakes on the low table, then left after telling Cailet that the twins were just outside, waiting to be introduced. Sarra waited until the door had closed behind him, then stared her sister straight in the eye.
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever’s bothering you.”
Cailet pulled in a long breath, sinking back in her chair and crossing slim legs at the knees. Sarra sensed a straggle within her between the need to keep her troubles private and the need to share them. All at once Ca
ilet looked directly at her, and looked so much like Taigan that Sarra’s heart tore. The same bewilderment came into her daughter’s eyes when she’d done everything she thought was right yet still fell short of her goals. Cailet’s face was hurt, slightly angry, and deeply puzzled—and in a voice so young and lost that Sarra felt twenty years her senior, she said, “I’m afraid.”
Her first impulse was to tell Cailet not to be ridiculous, she’d never been afraid in her life. But the look in black eyes stopped her. She was afraid.
“Tell me,” she said again, very quietly. “Show me how to help.”
“I don’t think anybody can. It’s—it’s like a darkness, gathering around me and—”
“—and in you?” Now, that was ridiculous. “You’re starting at shadows.”
“The shadows in me.” Cailet rose, walking over to the open balcony doors. Staring down at the lively lesson being taught below, she murmured, “I finally figured out why I’m scared of the dark. It’s the echo of what’s waiting inside me. It’s as if—it’s as if they ever meet, the darkness outside and the darkness within, I’ll be swallowed up.” She glanced over her shoulder and gave a rueful little shrug. “So—I’m afraid.”
All at once Sarra wanted Collan, needed his clear-sighted, sardonic common sense. And thinking of the man who had fathered her children, she was less afraid for those children. They were hers—but they were also his.
She had Collan. Cailet had no one. She is so alone, Sarra told herself, not for the first time. And the loneliness was killing her gentle little sister, despite her magic and her knowledge and the strength of her purpose. Surrounded by the Hall she had built from nothing, working with Mages she had trained and teaching Prentices who reverenced her—still she was utterly alone. Sarra had never understood why—no, that was wrong. She was afraid she understood all too well. Cailet had sacrificed her personal needs to Lenfell’s need for a symbol. They’d tried to make her into one years ago—a dead martyr instead of a living Captal. Cailet had escaped the one but embraced the other. What man would look at her and see just Cailet? Sarra had always been suspicious of men who approached her, certain they were interested in her wealth and position, not her. It had taken a long time for her to realize that Collan would have preferred it if she’d been like him: an orphan without a cutpiece to his name. Cailet needed someone like that. But where would she find him?
Perhaps, Sarra thought suddenly, he would have to find her. But until that happened. . . .
Ah, but now she wouldn’t be so thoroughly alone. Taigan and Mikel were family, and Cailet clung very hard to her bonds with Sarra and Collan, with the Ostins and Maurgens. It had long ago been decided that the twins must come to her as students and not as kin, not even knowing what Collan did, that Sarra and Cailet were sisters. But Cailet knew and loved them as family. And Sarra’s spirits rose at the thought of her two young, untrained, intuitive, powerful Mageborns—who’d keep Cailet too busy to worry about anything else.
But what would they do, how would they react, when they found out who they truly were? Grimly she cleared her mind of speculation. Once they were Mage Guardians, fully adult and able to judge their own hearts and minds, they could be told. Until then. . . .
“You know why I’m here,” she said abruptly.
Cailet turned, smiling slightly. “Not exactly. I knew you were coming, but I’m not sure why you’re here with them now. What happened?”
Sarra described the events at the theater. As she spoke, Cailet’s smile vanished.
“I’m sorry, Sarra. I should have known this was coming. Taigan’s of childbearing age.”
She felt all the blood drain from her face. “Are you saying Glenin would—”
“She planned the same for us, didn’t she? Why would she balk at mating your daughter and son to whomever she believes would make the most powerful Mageborn children?”
“Is that what you’ve been sensing?”
A shrug. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Then how did you know we were coming?”
“I could say that magic is responsible—but the plain unvarnished truth is that the sentry saw you up by the creek.” Suddenly she grinned. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Sarra made a face at her. “Do you always give away your secrets?”
“Only to you. Well, do you think they’re nervous enough yet to be properly subdued when they meet me?”
Rising from her chair, Sarra went to open the door into the next room. A few moments later she was watching her children make their bows. Subdued, yes; nervous, certainly; but at least they hadn’t forgotten their manners. Further, they met Cailet as Mageborns to Mage Captal: not equals, never that, but like meeting like.
“They’ve grown a bit,” Cailet said at last.
A ridiculous understatement. Mikel was at least a foot taller than when Cailet had last seen him; Taigan had added half as much height; both were young adults now, with manly muscles and womanly curves to prove it. But to Sarra they seemed too young still, far from ready to become Mage Guardians.
Taigan found her voice. “It’s good to see you again, Aunt Cailet—”
The Mage Captal arched a brow; Taigan turned crimson and shut up. Sarra marveled, never having suspected anyone but herself capable of quelling Taigan with a single glance.
Mikel interposed smoothly, “We’re very glad to be here, Captal.”
“Tell me that in a few weeks. Marra will have found someone to show you to your quarters. You have until Eighth to get settled before you’re given the grand tour.”
Taigan was not accustomed to being summarily dismissed. Her green eyes narrowed fractionally and she opened her mouth to say something else—Sarra would never know what, because Mikel grabbed his sister’s arm and hissed, “Teggie, come on!”
When the door shut behind them, Cailet burst out laughing. “Wonderful! She’s even worse than you!”
Sarra grinned back at her. “Why else do we have children, other than to pass along our most admirable qualities—and hope they surpass us at them?”
22
FOR the first time in all their lives, Taigan and Mikel were not in adjoining rooms. They weren’t even in the same wing of the residence building.
Outside the Captal’s quarters, Marra Gorrst led them down to the courtyard level and through one of the arched breezeways, where her husband, Aidan Maurgen, joined them. He took charge of Mikel; Taigan went with Marra; they didn’t see each other again until lunch.
Not that Mikel didn’t try to find his sister. He just got lost on the way.
Aidan didn’t say much—unusual for him. He didn’t even ask what had happened to bring the twins so precipitously to Mage Hall. Through a bewildering tangle of curving corridors, small courtyards, and spiraling staircases, he pointed out facilities, rattling off identifications Mikel was evidently expected to memorize on the instant. Workrooms, classrooms, kitchens, refectory, storage, library, greenhouse, offices, stables, gardening sheds, infirmary, chambers and offices belonging to the Archivist, Master Healer, First Sword, and Captal’s Warders. The only thing Mikel swore he’d recall was the route to the refectory; he was starving.
His room turned out to be a cubicle on the second floor of the men’s quarters. There was a bed without a headboard (let alone posts and hangings), a chair without a pillow, a desk without so much as a pen on it, and a window without a curtain. The bath was down the hall, shared with nine other students. Aidan helped him stow his few possessions in the wardrobe, gave him a schedule of Prentice classes, and told him someone would come by soon with sheets and blankets for the bed.
Responsibility to a new student done with, Aidan relaxed and grinned. “You ready for all this?”
If Mikel said No, he’d sound like a coward. If he said Yes, he’d sound like a fool. Either way, Aidan would probably laugh at him. He chose instead to say, “All what?”
Aidan laughed anyhow
. “You’ll find out.”
“Any general rules I should know about?” he asked casually.
“Such as?”
“Whatever’s not on this sheet.” He gestured to the page on the desk.
“You’ll get the feel of things soon enough.”
“I just don’t want to do anything glaringly offensive.”
“You’ll be all right.”
Mikel decided he was really looking forward to the day when he was a Mage Guardian and could give evasive answers to frustrate the uninitiated. Immediately following this thought he was more confused than ever: Aidan was no more Mageborn than any other Maurgen. Mikel supposed, sourly, that it was something contagious in the water.
“I’ll leave you to settle in. You had a long walk from Roseguard.” Aidan patted his arm companionably. “Don’t worry, Mikel. You’ll do just fine here.”
But when Aidan was gone, and Mikel sat on the unmade bed staring out the uncurtained window at the uninspiring view of yellow-brown grass, he wondered how well he’d do until the Wards protecting him from his own magic were unWorked. And by the Captal herself, who had set them in the first place. He’d tried to explore his own mind, prodding memories and things he supposed were at least partly magical, but he figured it might be like tone-deafness: if you didn’t know what a note sounded like, how could you tell if it was on key or not? Which was a stupid analogy for someone with perfect pitch, but it was the best he could come up with.
Well, he’d find out soon enough, he supposed. As he waited for the bedclothes to arrive, he looked over the page he’d been given. Closely printed in the new, simplified typeface designed by Archivist Lirenza Gorrst, it listed all the teaching Mages in residence, the classes they taught, the rooms they taught them in, and their office hours. Aidan had said there were thirty-four Prentices at various levels of training, not counting Mikel and Taigan; counting, he found there were twenty-seven teachers, and whistled. That was an amazing ratio of Prentice to teacher. But further perusal showed him a little mark beside twelve names, and a sentence at the bottom of the page that said these people were themselves in training as teachers—presumably to take their knowledge (not just of magic, Mikel guessed) out into Lenfell at large.