by Melanie Rawn
“Father?” she whispered to bring him back to her. “What happened?”
“Linnar and I were out on the lake, fishing. I found it . . . soothing. Serene. I’d been struggling more than a year with what I didn’t know was magic. We all thought it was just moodiness, the way adolescent boys are when they grow too fast. Linnar used to take me climbing to tire me out so I could sleep, or out fishing for the silence of it. At first it helped, but as I got older—I spared you that, Glenin. You never had to go through that, thank St. Chevasto.”
Glenin nodded and said softly, “Tell me the rest.”
He sat beside her and she took his hands in her own. “That day out on the lake I felt—it was like an explosion inside. I believe now that I was poised on the edge of Wild Magic. But back then I only knew I had to find what had caused the pain. I wanted to kill it, I think. I grabbed the oars and started rowing. Linnar tried to stop me, but I was a head taller and twenty pounds heavier. He screamed and begged, but I rowed for the river outlet as if Wraithenbeasts were after me.”
Glenin caught her breath, knowing what must come next.
“The boat was so small,” he said tonelessly. “Strong as I was even then, I couldn’t control it. We hit rapids and I remember plunging into a trough, and coming up on the other side. Linnar—Linnar was gone. I never saw him again.”
He paused, ran his tongue around dry lips, and met her gaze. “Nor any of my family. Later I tried to find them, but the house was deserted. No one knew where my mother and Garris had gone, or even if they were alive. A Mage at the Academy had a cousin at Census who checked for me in 925 and again in 950, but no Feirans were recorded anywhere.” He stared down at their twined hands. “However they died, at least it wasn’t magic that killed them.”
“I’m so sorry,” Glenin murmured, stroking his fingers.
“What I’d felt, what made my magic burst inside me, was word going out that Captal Ferros was dead. But the way I felt it was twisted—my magic was turning on itself for lack of training. I learned later that it happens that way to the very powerful.” He shrugged. “I made it through the rapids somehow, and drifted down the Brai River for days, curled in the boat like a wounded animal. When Gorynel Desse finally found me, I was half-dead.”
“Desse found you?”
“He was looking for me. The new Captal, Leninor Garvedian, was having nightmares that she swore came from the north. So he started upriver, Folding the road and casting scrying Mage Globes periodically, and that’s how I came to be trained as a Prentice Mage.”
“But not at the Academy. You told me that.”
“It was two weeks before I was well enough to travel, and another three before we arrived in Ambrai. Gorsha took it slow, teaching me along the way so I wouldn’t unleash something dreadful on the whole Academy. But they wouldn’t have me. I still lapsed occasionally into Wild Magic, and they had to protect Novices who didn’t know how to defend themselves. So I lived in a cottage the Desse Name owned outside the city. Gorsha came every few days to teach me. No one else would,” he added with a shrug. “I can’t blame them. For years I blamed myself for killing Linnar.”
“But you didn’t! It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what was happening to you, and it was Mage Guardian magic that was really to blame.”
“I know that now. But back then I didn’t trust myself and there was no reason for them to trust me, either. Captal Garvedian rode out occasionally to test me, but I was seventeen before she let me live at the Academy. By then I didn’t want to. When I turned eighteen, I was recognized as a Prentice and took to the road.”
She’d heard his traveler’s tales before, but never the whole story of how he became an itinerant Prentice Mage Guardian. “When did you return to Ambrai?”
“Twelve years later. I was nearly thirty . . . and your mother was twenty-two, nearly as beautiful as you are now.” He leaned back with a sigh. “You know the rest—how furious Allynis was when her First and only Daughter wanted to marry a copperless Feiran who wasn’t even a Listed Mage.” After a moment he shook off bitter memory and finished, “I told you this to apologize for doubting you, Glensha. What you felt was a Summons, a variation on what I felt back then.”
She nodded. “But who did this Summoning? And why?”
“Where did it come from? Which direction?”
“That way. Northeast.” She pointed across the room, then frowned. “No, it’s a little farther to the right, now.” Startled, she exclaimed, “It moved! In the last five days, whoever sent the Summons has moved!”
“So you’re still feeling it. Excellent. How strongly?”
“I have to concentrate some,” she said critically. “It’s not urgent, the way it was at first. It’s not an imperative to go find it anymore.”
He stood, facing in the direction she’d first pointed. “Renig,” he mused.
“But it’s moved farther east now—Father!” she gasped. “Toward Ambrai?”
17
Col returned to consciousness with the light touch on his shoulder.
“Dinner,” Sarra said. “I woke up, and here it was. At least whoever set up this place knew how to cook.”
Venison steaks smothered in sour cherry sauce, butterand-herb noodles, red wine, three kinds of cheese, green-apple tart—exactly what he would have ordered at Fielto’s Horn, his favorite of the summer-holiday trade eateries overlooking Tillin Lake. He didn’t mention it.
Beyond the foggy window it was very dark. Col didn’t remember having fallen asleep in his chair, and that bothered him. Perhaps the cottage had done it, dutiful to its spells of rest and serenity.
Or maybe it just didn’t want to get caught providing dinner.
“You know,” he remarked as he loaded his plate with more venison, “my brain is still arguing that this is completely unreal. But my stomach disagrees, and for now, it’s winning.”
“You’re incorrigible.” But she was smiling as she said it.
“At least I’m past the ‘there must be a logical explanation’ stage. Does that count?”
After the meal, Sarra delved into the grimoire. Collan fire-gazed for a time, then retrieved an illustrated Wraithenbestiary he’d seen earlier. It was written in an archaic style he could read with just enough effort to distract his mind, but not enough to frustrate him and make him put it aside.
The drawings would give nightmares to a Warrior Mage. There were monsters that were all teeth, all claws, all hideous eyes, or various combinations of same. There were creatures that looked like the progeny of impossible matings between generations of wild animals—a wolf’s head on a boar’s body with leathery bat-wings and the split hooves of a horse. Some resembled common farm livestock—goats, sheep, geese, swine—dismembered and reassembled into horrible mismatched lumps of hoof and horn, tooth and tail. Yet somehow the worst were the pets: dogs and cats that retained their forms but whose defenses were all out of proportion. One lurid woodcut featured a hound, jaws agape with sword-length fangs; another, a cat whose four-inch claws gleamed like steel.
What struck him most, however, was the fury in the monsters’ eyes. As if they knew they were freaks of magic and despised themselves as much as they hated their creators for giving them life. And they wanted revenge.
Whatever their shape, they were universally murderous. But, curiously, there was no mention in the text of instantaneous death on merely beholding a Wraithenbeast. Which follows, Collan thought, trying for cynicism. A book about Wraithenbeasts, complete with illustrations, is hardly possible if nobody survived to describe them.
This implied that it was possible to survive an encounter. Unless the whole dreadful book was simply the product of someone’s overheated imagination.
It might have been Half-Twelfth or nearly Fifteenth when he decided to go to bed. Getting to his feet, he stretched and said, “Let me know if you find anything that works against the Ryka Legion.”
&nb
sp; “Mmm,” Sarra replied absently, turning a page.
The alcove basin had been replenished with hot water. He gave himself a rag-bath, paying special attention to his rapidly healing feet, then donned the white nightshirt again and snuggled beneath the blankets in happy anticipation of another long night of uninterrupted sleep, courtesy of an ensor-celled cottage.
For reasons of its own, the cottage did not oblige.
Col woke very suddenly, chilled. He knew he’d accepted the magic when his first thought was, Some spell—the fire’s gone out. When he checked the gigantic hearth, sure enough, the flames had burned low.
The magic was fading, even in this room—the only one that still worked. Could truth actually renew the waning power here? He snorted when he caught himself wistfully wishing that it could.
Sarra was in bed asleep. All he could see by the dimming hearthfire light was a long lock or two of curling blonde hair. Moving nearer, huddling into the fur-lined robe, he twitched the quilt aside so he could watch her face.
The spells were almost worn out. Sarra was having a nightmare. Even though the grimoire attested that this place was one of rest and ease, there was fear in the knotted fair brows and the trembling of her lips. Collan sank to his knees in billowing silk and took one small, chill hand between his own. “Shh. It’s all right, Sarra. Hush now, little one. Hush.”
It took only moments—a few words, a touch, a smoothing of her hair. She settled, sinking deep into the enormous bed, her mouth relaxing into a tender curve, the nightmare gone.
Col got to his feet and tried to warm his hands at the fire, glaring down at the dying light.
“What’re you trying to do, frighten it out of her? Her truth is none of your damned business, whatever it is. If you want it bad enough to scare it out of us, try me instead. She’s the one who believes in you. She’s the one who wants to change things so the kind of people who made you don’t have to live in fear anymore. Let her be. Let her rest.”
The flames flickered, then dimmed. Cursing, he returned to Sarra’s bed, sitting on its edge, taking up protective watch over her slumber.
The softening fireglow softened her features, but revealed none of the childlike innocence he might have expected. How could a woman who’d seen and done and endured what Sarra had retain any innocence? Col knew none was left of his own—if he’d ever had any. Memory provided no evidence. But if there was no innocence in Sarra’s face, neither was there any disillusionment.
Saints knew he’d done his best to put it there, he accused himself bitterly. Shoving her face in harsh and dirty realities, haranguing her about the Rising and its goals, practically accusing her of being no better than the Malerrisi she despised—
“But you’ve got to think it all through, Sarra,” he heard himself whisper. “You know where you want to go, but you don’t have a clue about how to get there or what’s in your way. I don’t want to see you break your heart. . . .”
Sarra shifted, pushing the heavy quilt from her shoulders, hands lax and vulnerable on the pillow. Such small, delicate hands. One of them had pulled a knife from her belt and thrown it into the heart of a Malerrisi.
The popular “Ballad of Castle Watch” asserted that you never knew the value of your own life until you killed someone. The song was about soldiers in some long-ago siege, and he’d never liked it much, but now he understood. It wasn’t that your own life became more precious when you took the life of another. The point was that you discovered your own life’s value in who you were willing to risk it to kill.
Facing immediate threats, Collan had made a judgment—My life is worth more than yours—and killed. Quite a few times. He wondered if Sarra’s own “highly individualized ethics” could encompass that.
He’d killed Scraller Pelleris in what was commonly and erroneously termed “cold blood.” Scraller’s life was worth nothing. Nobody would miss him or mourn him. Was Scraller the value of Col’s own life?
A truly nauseating thought.
Verald Jescarin had been worth more than the dozens Collan had killed to avenge him. His fury of loss slammed into his abrupt realization that a thousand deaths wouldn’t make up for the loss of this one kind, humorous friend. Col had known that when he’d killed them. So why had he killed so many?
The other deaths had happened because instinct told him his own life mattered more than the life of the person trying to kill him. Well, of course his life mattered more to him. Verald’s had mattered at least as much. But Verald was dead before Collan even unsheathed his sword that night. So why—?
That Warrior Mage—what was her name?—Imilial Gorrst. The Healer Mage she’d traveled with had willingly died to keep her safe. Well, he’d loved her, presumably. Col tried hard, but couldn’t imagine loving anyone more than his own life.
Sarra did. As he watched her sleeping face—very young, but not the face of a child—he knew absolutely that if there’d been no other way, she would have leaped between Cailet and the Malerrisi and taken the lethal blast of magic herself. Instead, she had grabbed her knife and killed. But the worth of her life wasn’t the Malerrisi: it was Cailet.
It had been true of the old man as well. And Scholar Wolvar, and the old Captal. Even Alin—who’d delayed following Val Maurgen into death long enough to teach Cailet about Ladders. Col hated to think how she’d react when one day she realized that so many people considered her life worth their deaths.
But who decided which lives were valuable? The Lords of Malerris, to hear the Mage Guardians tell it, with an implied condemnation of their arrogance in claiming the right to decide. But to the Mage Guardians, the Captal’s life mattered more than anyone’s in the world.
That was why Sarra had killed. To protect the Captal.
No, that was wrong. Sarra had killed to protect Cailet.
At last he had it. It wasn’t who you were willing to risk your life to kill, but who you’d risk it to kill for. No one—Mage, Malerrisi, Council, no one—had the right to make that decision for you.
And just that simply, Collan Rosvenir joined the Rising.
He knew it, and gazed down at Sarra with real annoyance. Yet an instinctive What the hell has she done to me? was quickly answered by I did it to myself. The realization was as true and real as the sudden renewed warmth of the fire across the room.
Straightening, Col stared at the blaze. Then he went downstairs. All the way to the bottom. Opening the door, he stood looking out at the misty night for a long time. Then, his steps slow and soft, he returned to the bedchamber.
18
Glenin stretched her shoulders, sighed, and glared at the list on her writing desk. Having finished the first fifty invitations to Garon’s Birthingday dinner, there were twice that many left to do. Most of the guests were neither her friends nor Garon’s, but she wasn’t giving this party for the fun of it. The whole Council and selected influential members of the Assembly; the full roster of ministers and officials from the Keeper of the Archives to the Keeper of the Zoo (excepting the Minister of Mines, a position vacant since Telomir Renne’s escape); all the Justices and certain Advocates; and representatives of the most powerful Names and most cash-heavy Webs.
Plus everyone’s personal guest.
On reflection, she was amazed the guest list was only three hundred.
The Malachite Hall was bespoken, the musicians hired, the flowers ordered, the menu planned, the various wines tagged in the cellars. All that remained were the invitations to be written and the souvenir tokens to be chosen. Manners obligated Glenin to pen each letter with her own hand, for all the guests must receive the impression that it was her personal pleasure to share this celebration with them. One could get away with printed invitations for a large ball or casual picnic, but to be a guest at dinner was to be included in a family ritual. So Glenin had decided against a large ball, a casual picnic, or anything in between. To sit at a First Daughter’s dinner table was an intimate h
onor—not that most of them deserved it, Glenin thought with a sniff. But a dinner celebrating the Birthingday of a First Daughter’s husband was an occasion eclipsed only by her own Birthingday and those of her female children.
Those she selected to attend would be thrilled. What they didn’t know was that her acceptance of the usual return invitations would be just as selective. She intended this, the first really grand party she’d ever given, as an ambush. Many invitees were people she didn’t like, had no use for, or wished to impress—not with the dinner itself, but with her growing power. This year, a polite refusal from Lady Glenin Feiran would be tantamount to social ruin. Next year, the disaster would be political as well.
No one would know that on the first night of First Flowers. She’d treat every single odious guest as if she’d waited all year to dine with each of them particularly. Though there would be twenty-five tables, each would be as much Glenin’s own as if they’d been crammed into her private chambers. She would design the pattern of porcelain, silver, crystal, napkins, and flowers herself, and that evening light each candle with her own hands.
The planning was all very tedious and time-consuming. But Glenin had been taught her manners by the last Lady of Ambrai, and though she would never admit it, she secretly saluted her grandmother’s Wraith every time she entertained. Because of Lady Allynis, even Glenin’s hitherto casual parties were the most elegant and talked-about at Ryka Court, and her invitations the most coveted.
Flexing stiff fingers, she let her gaze fall on another list. This was in Anniyas’s writing, and suggested possibilities for the tokens each guest would take home from the dinner. They ranged from silver floral crowns (in honor of St. Sirrala, on whose day Garon had been born) to golden gavels (in honor of Garony the Righteous) to gem-studded scissors (in honor of Niya the Seamstress, from whom the Anniyas Blood took its name). There were other suggestions, but all had one thing in common: they were obscenely expensive.