by Melanie Rawn
Ollia faltered, and the Mage Globe half-Worked in her right hand sputtered and faded and vanished. “C—Captal—”
Sarra watched the sword lower, point almost touching the black tiles. Cailet smiled—wry and apologetic and admiring and intensely proud of her Prentice who had just become a Mage Guardian.
“Cailet,” she said. “To you, now, my name is Cailet.”
Ollia stared.
Cailet sheathed Desse’s sword and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. She sent a brief glance in Sarra’s direction, then started with surprise as Ollia began to take the last step out of the compass. “Don’t you dare!” she exclaimed. “That’s exactly where you belong!”
The new Mage Guardian hesitated, then walked forward, toward her Captal, with a rueful little smile on her face. Deliberately she stepped over the silver bordering tiles. Cailet grinned and gave her a swift, fond embrace.
“Go on—Marra will give you some breakfast in the anteroom. Then get some rest. If you put half as much into that as I had to, you’ll need to lie down for a while!”
The easy acknowledgment of skill complimented Ollia as nothing else could have. Arrogance had died in her, replaced by precious confidence. It shone in her eyes as she bowed to Cailet—and to Sarra—and walked out of the Hall.
After a moment’s silence, Sarra got to her feet—as exhausted, truly told, as Cailet. “Well,” she said casually, “you certainly taught her a thing or two.”
Cailet grinned tiredly. “There’d better be some breakfast waiting for me, or I’ll have Aidan’s head on the end of this sword. Come on.”
They left the sunlit hall for Cailet’s quarters. Aidan had indeed left a copious meal for them, and as they settled down on either side of a low table, Cailet said, “You knew what was going on, didn’t you? What’d you think of it?”
Sarra went to the crux of it at once. “What if she hadn’t accepted you?”
“What if her anger had turned to real hate, you mean? And she’d really tried to kill me?” She poured juice for them both and shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s never happened. They’re all furious with me, of course, and try to sneak past my guard somehow—one of them went for my throat with his bare hands once.” She laughed. “Damned near got me, too!”
“You begin to frighten me.”
“I do?”
“I know where you took her, but I’m not sure how you got her there.”
“Neither am I—exactly how she got there, I mean. It’s different for all of them, I suppose.” Cailet drank down the juice and selected a nut-filled pastry from her plate. Leaning back in the low chair, she crossed her legs and sighed.
“I thought Mage Globes were supposed to be difficult.”
“Used to be.” Cailet smiled. “I wouldn’t be able to do this at all if it wasn’t for that copy of the Code of Malerris. Gorsha got hold of one once—but before he could read it, he took it through a Ladder, and it disintegrated. The Code we have now, added to the Bequest’s information about Mage Globes, lets me teach everyone how to Work them very well indeed. Some people still have some trouble until they get the knack of it, but it’s a skill most Mages can use—and much more effectively than before.”
“Ollia certainly seems proficient,” Sarra observed dryly.
“She’s already a Warrior, even though it’ll take Imilial and Granon a few weeks to test her out in all the particulars. I don’t envy them the job!” Sighing again, she rubbed the nape of her neck. “It takes more out of me than it used to. But there’s one more Mage Guardian to do our work, Sarra. One more.”
“They attack you, and—”
“And never forget it. Those moments of being power-drunk—I can always see it in their faces, even sense it in their magic. When they get over it, and open to me completely, the magic tangibly changes. Every person’s magic feels different. You learn to recognize individuals, like a signature. A Mage Guardian’s signature is completely different from a Malerrisi’s.”
Sarra lifted her teacup—a beautiful thing of black Rine porcelain rimmed in St. Caitiri’s flameflowers—and sipped to ease her dry throat before replying. “Do you think it’s fair to them, Caisha? The shock of what they try to do to you?”
“I don’t enjoy it. It has to be done. They have to know where power can lead them. The warning’s got to be there for them, the memory of being tempted—and to kill me, the one they’ve sworn to give their own lives for.”
“I see.”
Cailet looked up from shredding the pastry in her fingers. “If you’re thinking about Taigan and Mikel—”
“No,” she said, too quickly. Of course she was thinking of her children. How would Taigan react when Cailet deliberately humbled that high pride? Would Mikel have confidence enough in himself to fight back at all, or would he give in to despair and certainty that he was unworthy of standing within that silver octagon?
She drank again, burning her tongue.
“Sasha—”
“This is what you wanted me to see,” she said.
“Yes. For the twins’ sake, so you’ll know—but even more for your own.”
“You want me to stay.”
“The Council doesn’t need you right now as much as you need to be here—as much as you need your magic.”
Sarra glared at her sister. “You’ve taken my children,” she snapped. “Isn’t that enough for you, Captal?”
Cailet flinched as if Sarra had struck her across the face. No—she wouldn’t have reacted to any bodily hurt; the look in her black eyes was heart-pain, something very few could make her feel. But before Sarra could frame an apology, a mask slid over the thin, angular features, a calm and remote mask that Sarra suddenly feared.
“Did I take them?” the Captal asked quietly. “Did you and Collan give them to me? Or have they come because what’s inside them is as undeniable as what Gorsha blocked for eighteen years in me? What you insisted he release, without my knowledge or my consent!”
“I can’t go back and undo that—and I wouldn’t, even if I could. You were needed. It was necessary. I won’t apologize.”
“I don’t want an apology. I only want you to understand. . . .” All at once Cailet sagged back in her chair, cheeks ashen, eyes sickly dull. “Please, Sasha,” she whispered. “Don’t be angry with me—don’t let’s fight. I’m tired. Saints, I’m so tired. . . .”
Sarra leaned over, sweeping the lank golden hair from her sister’s face. “Caisha? I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“Just . . . just so damned tired.”
Guilt raged in her. Cailet had just undergone a great strain, physical and magical and emotional, to guide a young Prentice into becoming a Mage Guardian. And now here Sarra was, Cailet’s own sister, pestering her with doubts and accusations and demands. She rose and set about loosening the collar of Cailet’s shirt, checking the weary pulse in her wrist, dampening a linen napkin at the washstand basin to wipe the cold sweat from her face and neck.
“Thank you, Sasha.”
“Who causes, should cure,” she quoted, tenderness and worry obliterating all her anger.
“You didn’t cause it, but thanks anyway.” Cailet sat a little straighter, the luster returning to her eyes. “Keep a sharp watch on Vellerin Dombur. I’ll do what I can through the Mages assigned to the Shir, but—”
It was tacit concession that Sarra would not be staying at Mage Hall. “I’ll send one of the Minstrelsy soon to let you know what we know. For now, you stay here and get some rest. I’ll come back after I’ve said good-bye to the twins—if someone’s rousted Mikel out of bed yet, that is.”
“Not even he could sleep through the magic that got loosed this morning.” She smiled. “And not even I can Ward someone that well.”
“Go easy on them when you do the unWorking.”
Meekly, but with brightly laughing eyes, the Captal replied, “Yes, Lady Sarra. But consid
ering the trouble I had setting and then resetting their Wards, you’d do better to worry about me!”
PART TWO
988–989
THE HUNT
1
TAIGAN collapsed onto her narrow bed, flushed and sweating after the morning’s run. Mikel sank bonelessly down the wall nearby to sit on the floor looking numbed.
“If you survive me, make sure I get a nice funeral.”
Mikel shut his eyes. “Sorry. I’m already dead. Tell Mother and Fa I gave it a good try, will you?”
Taigan rubbed at an abused thigh muscle. “How does she do it? She’s twenty years older than us!” After running five miles, the Captal had looked as if she could do another fifty without breaking a sweat. It was humiliating. “Besides, I thought we were here to become Mage Guardians, not train for the All-Lenfell Games.”
“If they have an event for corpses, I’ll enter.” Mikel sighed. “And win.”
“Feeling sorry for yourselves, I see.” Aidan Maurgen’s sardonic comment made the twins look up. He stood in Taigan’s doorway, arms folded across his chest, a smile on his face. Mikel thought briefly about getting to his feet as a mark of respect due his elder, then abandoned the idea as requiring too much precious energy.
“Is it like this for everybody?” Taigan asked.
“No.” Aidan grinned. “Sometimes it’s worse. The Captal wants to see you two. Come along, and stop imitating martyred Saints. It’ll get easier.”
“When?” Taigan muttered as she lurched to her feet.
Following Aidan along cool hallways, Mikel said, “It has to get easier. Doesn’t it?”
His sister shook her head. “Dreamer.”
Aidan heard them. He stopped, turned, and asked, “You know the old one that goes, ‘Cheer up, things could get worse’?”
Taigan sighed tolerantly and finished it for him. “‘So we cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.’”
“Heard it at Fa’s knee.” Mikel made a face and asked Taigan, “Do we deserve this kind of abuse?”
Aidan only laughed at them.
Climbing the stairs to the Captal’s chambers was agony on Taigan’s bruised muscle. Aidan bade them wait in the anteroom on an uncushioned bench, vanished into the private office, and came back a few moments later. “Come on. She doesn’t bite, you know.”
The Captal, looking cool and composed in her severely elegant black, welcomed them with an unsympathetic, “Recovered yet?”
They nodded without enthusiasm.
“Good.” Gesturing to chairs on either side of a low table, she said, “Have a seat. Aidan, tell Jenira and Tirez they’ll be along in a little while.”
“She said last night they’ll be ready for ’em.” The grin he gave them this time was gleefully malicious. “Question is, are they ready for Jenira and Tirez?”
Ready for who to do what? flashed in a look between the twins, swiftly followed by a mutual, heartfelt: I don’t want to know!
“I gather the last four days have been rather uncomfortable,” said the Captal, perching on the windowsill near her desk. Late-morning sunlight cast a nimbus of gold above her silver-gilt head, bright contrast to her long shadow on the rug. “Believe me, you’ll grow even less comfortable. But right now I have a question for you.” She paused. “Why are you here?”
Taigan shifted in her chair. “We want to become Mage Guardians.”
“Why?”
“Because—” She stopped, confused. All Mageborns wanted to become Guardians, didn’t they? Except their mother, but she was a special case.
Mikel spoke for them both. “Because we want to learn how to use our magic.”
“For what purpose?” The Captal held up a quelling hand. “Please, no noble mouthings about the good of Lenfell, the defense of the weak, and the protection of the downtrodden. I get enough of that from your mother—and I know your father much too well to believe that he raised you to be self-sacrificing altruists. Why do you want to learn the uses of magic?”
Taigan’s green eyes darkened below a frown. “We’d be able to answer better if we had the use of our magic,” she pointed out. “We’ve been here four days, and we’re still Warded.”
“Truly told,” agreed the Captal. “Do you know why?”
Taigan shrugged. “We’re dangerous.”
The Captal snorted.
Mikel hastened to explain. “Because we’ve been Warded so long, and so powerfully, that when our magic is set loose, it might—”
An arched brow silenced him. “My thanks for the compliment on the Wards I set on you two in childhood, but pay me the further honor of believing that not only do I know my Work, I know how to unWork it. Believe me, you compliment yourselves. You’re not dangerous—nothing a halfway competent Mage couldn’t handle while in a coma. Now, for the third time, why is magic something you want to learn?”
Why seemed to be to the Captal’s favorite word. Taigan suddenly boiled over. “Because I don’t want to spend my life like Falundir!”
Shocked, Mikel stared at his sister. But the Captal was nodding slowly, as if the answer was not only understandable but pleasing.
“And you, Mikel?” she asked softly. “Do you also fear having your magic locked up inside you, as the Bard’s music is locked inside him?”
“But it isn’t,” he heard himself say. “He can’t sing anymore, or play a lute, but the music comes out of him just the same. He writes songs and operas and—”
“—and can’t perform them,” Taigan interrupted. “He knows how it should sound, but he can’t make the sounds himself. That’s how magic is for us, Mikel—we know it’s there, we’ve felt it sometimes, but we can’t do anything with it.” She met the Captal’s gaze squarely. “Yet.”
Pale lids drooped slightly, seemingly weighted down by long, thick lashes—dark like her brows, but sunbleached at the tips as if brushed with gold dust to emphasize the limitless blackness of her eyes. Taigan was abruptly captured in the depths of those eyes and caught her breath. In the next instant Mikel did the same.
Too cold, too bright, too loud—freezing air inhaled in protest escapes in a shriek of outrage, and eyes squeeze shut against the painful blaze of light, and fists batter helplessly at the onslaught of noise—
“There’s the first one. Perfect in every way. Hand it over, Collan, before we all go deaf.” Warmer now. Quieter. Cradling softness, a familiar slow rocking/floating, a low rhythmic murmur that soothes—
“Now, Sarra—deep breath—push! Again!” But the light suddenly invades, and expands, and reaches into every shadow—and it doesn’t hurt at all anymore—
“Two fine, healthy babies. Excellent. You’re all done now, Lady. Beautiful work.”
Oh, yes, beautiful—bright warm shining—
“Very funny, Elo. Your work, or mine?”—
MINE!
“Excuse me, but did I have something to do with it?”
—MINE MINE MINE—
Yes, but only for this moment, my dears. Forgive me.
No! Don’t take it away! MINE! Want it back, give it back—
Hush now. You can have it back again one day, I promise. For now, it’s better so.
NO! WANT IT NOW!
Hush.
And for a long time the bright warm light is masked.
But then it glimmers within, teasing and promising, rising up like a kindled hearthfire to shield them from her—
SHE WANTS TO TAKE THE MAGIC! JUST LIKE THE OTHER ONE DID!
Hide it, disguise it, pretend it isn’t there—
But it is there, though it cannot be touched. And it hides itself a moment later, drawing back behind its mask, until something just as powerful and much more knowing fashions a stronger disguise.
This was a lot easier when you were little.
Fa said the same thing a few weeks ago, when we got away from that w
oman—
Who was she? What had she looked like? We can’t remember anything about her anymore—
No, and you won’t remember her, any more than you’ll remember this or your magic, until the time is right.
But it’s mine, it belongs to me—
One day. Not yet.
WHEN?
One day.
Now.
They opened their eyes. Had the Captal spoken aloud? Both looked at her where she still sat at the window, slender hands clasping one knee, face lit with a whimsical smile.
“There. Much simpler than when I Worked your Wards. By all the Guardian Saints, back then you two fought me every inch of the way. Truly told, it’s a relief to’ve had your active cooperation.”
The twins stared at each other. Their Wards were gone?
“Even if it did take two hours to accomplish.”
Two hours?
At least that long; the Captal’s shadow on the Cloister rug was much shorter than when they’d entered, pooling now at her feet.
“Do you feel different?” Mikel blurted.
Taigan bit her upper lip. “I’m not sure.”
“Give it some time,” the Captal advised. “And take it carefully. It hits everyone differently, and you may be a little off-balance for a while.”
Taigan stood up and knew instantly the wisdom of the caution. She glanced at Mikel, who also swayed on his feet.
The Captal shook her head. “Sit down before you fall down. You can stay here until you feel able to walk down to the Oak Court.”
“What happens there?” Taigan asked suspiciously.
“You meet Jenira Doriaz and Tirez Escovor.”
“What do they teach?”
“Oh, this and that.” And the Captal smiled.
Another glance flashed between the twins: At last! We’re going to learn some magic!