by Melanie Rawn
“You don’t even know where ‘here’ is,” Tarise said.
“Settle down,” the other woman advised. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Sorry, domna, wrong answer. Where’s my shirt?”
She folded her arms. Collan didn’t bother staring her down. He flung back the blanket, stood up, and looked around.
“You won’t find it.”
“Then I’ll do without.”
“Better give it to him, Imilial,” Tarise said with a sigh. “He looks all right to me.” A sudden sly smile took all the strain and fifteen years from her face. “Very all right, in fact.”
“I’d noticed.” Imilial eyed Collan. “Interesting scenery.”
Col grinned back. “Better after a wash.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The rugged, day-old-beard look has a certain appeal.”
“A lady of rare discernment. My shirt, please?”
“Under the bed.”
He didn’t crouch; he bent from the waist, knowing they watched his bare backside. They watched while he dressed, too. Decently covered—and grateful that neither woman even glanced at Scraller’s mark on his shoulder, let alone commented on it—he gave them a low bow and asked, “Which way to breakfast?”
“Lunch. It’s past Eighth.” Tarise smiled at his reaction. “You needed the sleep. It’s been a rough week.”
Nothing wrong with me that a good night’s sleep didn’t cure. The reassurance came smoothly. He accepted it without wondering why his slumber required monitoring by two women who almost certainly had better things to do.
“The famous Collan Rosvenir,” the older woman repeated musingly.
He bowed again. “You may believe everything they say about me.”
“Taig praises you as the very model of masculine modesty,” she said, straight-faced.
“One of you is a liar, and as I never doubt the word of a lady—especially a lady wearing a sword—it must’ve been Taig.”
“Oh, you’re all they say, all right,” she responded. “Go get fed and watered, Minstrel.”
He did, and afterward lolled outside in the surprisingly warm winter sun, enjoying the silence. Rested, relaxed, with other people’s problems as remote as the Wraithenwood, he lacked only his lute to make the afternoon perfect. He considered fetching it, but decided too much energy was involved. He lazed away one hour, then two, until Taig intruded with the news that Sela Trayos was in labor, and this time it would stop only when her child was born.
20
She stood in the center of an expanse of flat black glass, like a mirror of obsidian stretching horizon to horizon, reflecting the occasional swirl of grayish mist in the white sky. She looked down and saw her own face in the blackness: a thick cap of white-blonde hair falling forward to frame sharp bones and a wide mouth and eyes as black as the mirrored surface itself—shining eyes, avid with hunger and flashing silver with need.
Need for magic. For knowledge. For power.
Magic was burning in her eyes, demanding knowledge, Magelore, the words and means to burn even more brightly and light this world of black and white and shadow-gray—demanding to transmute itself into power, the ultimate goal of magic and knowledge.
But to fashion that alchemy, she must feed her hungry magic with knowledge.
And she was alone here. Monumentally alone.
Anger was first, easier to admit than fear. She ran from both, bootheels splintering the mirror, a brittle music of flight.
Behind her a woman’s voice cried out. She stopped, whirled, and from a fissure in the glass a gout of gray mist roiled Wraithlike, resolving into the figure of a woman.
Small, slender, golden-haired, black-eyed, shouting defiance to someone unseen: Whatever you may call Auvry Feiran, I will call him mine!
The mist obscured her for an instant. When she appeared again, she was older, desperate, head thrown back and cropped silken hair wild around her cheeks, crying out in anguish: No! I won’t let you take Glenin! You can’t! She’s my daughter, my Firstborn—
Again gray haze surged up from the crevasse; again it parted to reveal the woman. Wrapped in a black cloak, one hand extended down and curled as if around a child’s hand, she said: Hush, Sarra! We must hurry, my darling, Guardian Desse is waiting for us.
When next the cloud thinned, the woman lay on the black glass. Exhausted, bereft of physical endurance and emotional strength, she turned her head away and shut her eyes and said: No. I don’t want to see her. She can never be my child, my daughter—I don’t want to look at her!
The mist dissipated on a sudden wind; she felt it touch her cheek and chill tears she didn’t know she’d wept. With the wind came another voice, a man’s voice, familiar to her, both loved and feared.
“No, Cailet. You cannot take living power from the dead.”
“She—she was my mother.” Words came hard, each one scraping her lips. “She didn’t want to look at me—”
“You don’t understand.”
“She didn’t even want to look at me!” she screamed, and again began to run. Glass cracked and shattered behind her. She tried not to hear. She wanted no more of Wraiths and magic and knowledge—
“Cailet!” He called her name, the mad old man who was Rinnel of the cottage in the canyon, who had cared for her—who was also Warrior Mage Gorynel Desse, who had stolen her magic and left her in The Waste and now had trapped her in this black-white-gray emptiness.
She ran faster. Her every step cracked the glass in shivering, chiming lines that rayed out behind her.
She could not escape him.
“There is nowhere you can run. There is no place but this. There are things you must know, Cailet—”
She didn’t want to know. Knowledge hurt. Nothing had ever hurt her so much.
“No, Cailet. Learning hurts. And so it should—for the knowledge is all the more precious because of the pain.”
Precious? The knowledge that her own mother had hated her so deeply she wouldn’t even look at her?
“Listen to me, Cailet. Listen! There is no leaving here until you know what you must. If you run, you will run forever. You will be trapped here, forever.”
“You trapped me!” she cried, slowing to catch breath enough to accuse him of his crimes. “You stole my magic the day I was born.”
“I set Wards upon you, to keep you safe. Stop running, Cailet. There’s nowhere to go.”
Thin, chill wind sobbed in her throat and lungs. She stumbled to a halt, arms wrapped around herself, and tossed the hair from her eyes.
“So you remember what I did to you. I might have known you would. Power like yours occurs once in ten Generations.”
“Power? I have no power! You made sure of that!”
“I made sure you had no access to it. Now you do. Can’t you feel it, Cailet? It’s there inside you.”
“I’m empty! And it hurts! Does that mean I’m learning?” she cried bitterly.
“Not yet. But there are those who can teach you. Find them, Cailet. They’re here, waiting.”
“Where?”
“Find them,” he repeated.
Magic she could feel inside her. Hungering. But it was not the same as power. Power was the sum of magic and knowledge.
Knowledge was whispering to her, promising incredible things. She cast about for its source, scanning the empty horizon with increasing panic—where? Where?
Ahead, so far away as to be nearly indistinguishable from the gray shadows that stained the sky, stood a man. Tall, dark-haired, garbed in Guardian black with a cloak of Malerris white. She started for him, wary, soft-footed now on the shining obsidian. For a moment she was able to see the contours of his face: handsome, compelling, he looked directly at her with gray-green eyes that knew her no more than she knew him. But the old man had said people were waiting for her, to teach her—
“No. Not him. Turn from h
im, Cailet. Now!”
The tall man did not react to the words. She didn’t think he heard them. But he frowned with fear in his eyes and left her, hastening his long strides into the distant mist.
“No—come back! Don’t leave me here alone—” She stumbled again, onto her knees. A gasp of pain escaped her as the black glass broke on impact and splinters sliced her skin. A shudder crossed the mirrored surface. A thin fissure opened before her, jagged and wild. She heard the sound of a single footstep and looked up. The crack ended at the feet of a beautiful young woman in white and bright gold.
“That is quite enough,” the woman said, brushing a strand of long blonde hair from eyes the same color as the man’s. But these eyes were different. They had never known fear. “I don’t know who you’re meant to be, girl, but I don’t believe in dream images.”
She turned in a sweep of heavy silk skirts and walked away.
When she had vanished as the man had done, Gorynel Desse spoke again. “That was sheer luck, Cailet. Knowledge of them is something you need, but their kind of knowledge is—”
“Who are they?”
“Your father, Auvry Feiran. Your sister, Glenin.”
“M-my—” If it was true, then her true Name was—
No, her Name had come from her mother. But what was the Name of the woman who had rejected even the sight of her own daughter? She knew it was not the Name borrowed for her at birth. It was not Rille.
“Tell me my Name!” she cried suddenly. “Tell me who I really am!”
“That is what you’re here to discover. But not from them. Your magic called to them as they sleep, a call of power and shared blood. Praise be to St. Miryenne that he fears you and she does not believe in you.”
“Afraid of me?” She struggled to her feet. “How can she be my sister? I have only one sister, and her name is Sarra—”
Summons enough, it seemed. In the place where Glenin had stood, Sarra now appeared—not a thing of shadow or mist, but real and warm and clear, gazing at her with yearning, loving eyes. Cailet’s own eyes, as black and brilliant as the mirror they stood on, in a face both sweeter and stronger and certainly much more lovely.
“Sarra,” she breathed. “Help me.”
There was no reply. Cailet watched tears form in her eyes.
“She cannot help you here, or even answer you. This is a place of magic, and hers is Warded.”
Cailet saw that it was true: power’s fire was dim in Sarra’s eyes. “What you did for me, you can do for her!”
Her sister shook her head slightly, a brief smile curving her soft mouth.
“No,” said Gorynel Desse. “She cannot help you, Cailet. There are others who can. I may not guide you to them, but you must trust that they are here.”
Now Sarra nodded, and there was urgency in her eyes.
Cailet started for her, hands outstretched. “Stay with me, please—if you can’t help me, then at least stay! Sarra!”
“She must not. Let her go, Cailet.”
“I can’t! Not when I’ve only just found her again!”
“Let her go. If you cannot find the strength inside yourself to do so, borrow it from her. She has more than enough to spare.”
“Sarra?” She took another step forward. “Will you be there when I wake up?”
“Look at her,” Desse said ruefully. “Could Wraithenbeasts keep her away? I certainly couldn’t.”
Sarra’s smile widened, her eyes sparkling. With a sigh, Cailet nodded and smiled back. “Be there,” she whispered.
Sarra vanished. The splintered rent in the glass fused together. Cailet looked back over her shoulder. The black mirror was perfect once more. Healed.
And Gorynel Desse stood before her, as real as Sarra—and more. He was not an old man. He was young and cleanshaven, with hair even darker than his skin. His green eyes blazed with power.
“Find them,” he said.
She realized why, then. “You’re trapped here, too. Until I free you, as you freed my magic.”
“Yes.”
Fear assuaged by Sarra’s love, anger boiled over. “Why? Why did you do that to me?”
“Forgive me. I never meant for it to be this way.”
Forgive him? For robbing her of family and magic and what she was, who she was, and then abandoning her to The Waste—only to bring her to this second wasteland neither of them could escape? Forgive him?
“How did you mean it, then?” she demanded furiously. “If I hadn’t seen Sarra that day—” What day? When had it happened?
“Stop wasting time. Find them, Cailet. Call them to you. Free yourself to know your own power.”
“You’re the one who did this to me! You know everything about me, about what’s inside me—”
“Only you can know that.”
“Damn you, teach me!”
“No.”
And she flung herself at him, battering his body with her fists and his mind with her mind. The mirror quaked and heaved underfoot. He fended her off easily, young and strong and with knowledge besides.
“Stop it!” he commanded, grabbing her wrists and shaking her. The ground quivered slightly, then stilled. “You accomplish nothing by behaving like a child thwarted of a toy!”
“I’m a child?” she shouted into his face. “Look at you—so jealous of your knowledge and power that you won’t even tell me my own Name!”
“My knowledge and power are keeping us alive, you little fool!”
Stricken, she backed away.
“Did you think this was real?” He gestured skyward. “This is a place of magic. I told you that. Our minds wear bodies because our minds are part of our bodies—but the flesh and bone we truly are lie senseless in a locked room.”
“Where?” she asked with no voice at all.
“Ambrai.”
Ambrai—
Cailet Ambrai—
She covered her face with her hands. More knowledge, gotten she knew not how. More hurt.
But there was pride, too, for what Ambrai had been. And sorrow for all of Ambrai that had been lost.
After a time she lowered her hands to her sides. Desse was gone. Again she was alone. Her fear and her anger that had been defenses against the loneliness were gone as well. And the hunger leaped, wild and eager.
She tethered it as she would an untamed wolf, recognizing its danger. Because she knew no other way, she began to scan the expanse of obsidian and the vast white sky, gaze lingering on each momentary swirl of gray cloud until one caught and held her attention. It drifted down, coalescing into a small, weary old man. He smiled at her, shook his head for silence when she would have spoken, and lifted both hands.
Sparks flew from his fingertips, dozens and then hundreds, swelling to milky opalescent spheres. They danced toward her one at a time. As she caught them, she saw within images and words and sometimes people, but only for an instant: just as her hands closed around them, they vanished like bursting soap bubbles with a tingle that spread up her arms and into her brain. It was a pleasant sensation, not painful at all, and when the Mage smiled at her once more she smiled back.
But the elderly man was tiring. She took a step closer, then another, so the spheres would not have so far to go. The sparks like stars continued to fly from his hands, faster now even though he began to sway on his feet. She reached for globe after globe, trying to keep up with him. Yet as she extended her hands for the next, it skipped away from her and returned to him, sheltering behind him.
“Your pardon,” he said. “That was a mistake, not meant for you.”
“But—you’re one of my teachers, I need to know what you know.”
“Some things are and must remain my own,” he chided gently.
Still the spheres were created of his magic, and still she caught them and felt her own magic respond. But many of them he waved away from her now, his private things, his
memories encased in scintillating light, gathering into a single glow behind him.
At last there was nothing left. He nodded to himself, satisfied, and gave her one last smile of benediction and peace.
“Be wise, Cailet Ambrai,” he told her. “Fare well.”
The sphere of his memories difted forward to enclose him, and he vanished.
She stared in wonderment at the place the Mage had been. A soft touch on her shoulder turned her head.
“His name was Tamos Wolvar. He was a Scholar Mage, and my friend of many long years.”
She had to remind herself that this young man standing beside her was in truth a very old man. Did vanity prompt him to wear his youthful body? Or was it a subtler choice, to impress upon her that whereas his physical body might be nearly eighty years old, his powers were still young and strong?
He smiled at her, green eyes alight with sudden mirth. “Really, Cailet—if you had a choice, would you keep the wrinkles and white hairs? Not that I didn’t earn every one of them, you understand. Yes, you’re right, it’s vain of me, but we all have our little foibles.”
She smiled back. “No doubt you have a list of mine.”
“Vanity doesn’t number among them,” he replied. “Or you would have done something about your clothes and hair.”
Before she could catch herself, one hand raked the bangs from her forehead. He laughed down at her and she made a little shrug of wry agreement.
“Oh, Sarra will teach you all that, I daresay. But that’s a different sort of magic, and I must admit I’ve never understood the sweet mysteries of feminine rituals. At any rate, there are lessons to be learned here, first.”
“That wasn’t so bad,” she offered.
“Tamos was a generous man.”
She scowled. “Am I taking things these people don’t want to give?”
“You haven’t a single ‘taking’ impulse to your name, my dear.”
Glancing away, Cailet bit her lip, for she knew the hungering of her magic argued otherwise. At its imperious bidding, she searched the skies to every horizon, looking for another gray cloud. Tamos Wolvar’s gifts had sharpened her senses and her awareness of magic; she felt a glimmering behind her, where she had run from. She closed her eyes to concentrate, and for an instant—