DAW Books Presents the Finest in Science Fiction and Fantasy byJULIE E. CZERNEDA:
THE CLAN CHRONICLES
Stratification
REAP THE WILD WIND (#1)
RIDERS OF THE STORM (#2)
RIFT IN THE SKY (#3)
The Trade Pact
A THOUSAND WORDS FOR STRANGER (#1)
TIES OF POWER (#2)
TO TRADE THE STARS (#3)
Reunification
THIS GULF OF TIME AND STARS (#1)
THE GATE TO FUTURES PAST (#2)
TO GUARD AGAINST THE DARK (#3)
TALES FROM PLEXIS
NIGHT’S EDGE
A TURN OF LIGHT (#1)
A PLAY OF SHADOW (#2)
SPECIES IMPERATIVE (OMNIBUS EDITION)
(SURVIVAL | MIGRATION | REGENERATION)
ESEN
Web Shifters
BEHOLDER’S EYE (#1)
CHANGING VISION (#2)
HIDDEN IN SIGHT (#3)
Web Shifter’s Library
SEARCH IMAGE (#1)
MIRAGE (#2)*
IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS
THE GOSSAMER MAGE
*Coming soon from DAW Books
Copyright © 2019 by Julie E. Czerneda.
“The Gossamer Mage: Intended Words” was previously published in Jim Baen’s Universe (December 2008), edited by Eric Flint.
All Rights Reserved.
Jacket concept by Roger Czerneda.
Jacket design by Katie Anderson.
Jacket images courtesy of Shutterstock and Getty Images.
Jacket author photo by Roger Czerneda.
Maps by Julie E. Czerneda.
Interior design by Alissa Rose Theodor.
Edited by Sheila E. Gilbert.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1831.
Published by DAW Books, Inc.
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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Ebook ISBN: 9780756412357
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Version_1
DEDICATED TO
Scott Aleksander Czerneda
Who walks in the woods
To hear the world.
WITHIN
Also by Julie Czerneda
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map of Tananen
Fundamental Lexicon
INTENDED WORDS
Fundamental Lexicon
CONSEQUENTIAL PHRASES
Fundamental Lexicon
FRAUGHT PASSAGES
Fundamental Lexicon
Map of the Mage School
DREADFUL SYLLABUS
Fundamental Lexicon
PERILOUS DICTATES
Fundamental Lexicon
INCIDENTAL POETRY
KEY TO WITHIN
AKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fundamental Lexicon
The world was not always thus.
Keepers of histories agree on this, if little else. Those from the southern continents insist the world began as a frozen hen’s egg, its yolk the ground beneath, its pristine white the ice, and its shell a sky of endless darkness and stars. When the shell cracked, in poured sunlight and warmth, melting the ice. Finally, the world was ready for people to live upon it, and so they did.
Historians and lore masters of the northern continent, experienced with ice, teach the world started in fire and it was only as it cooled that life of any sort could exist, be it hen or person.
Theologians both north and south avoid the topic, the present and future wellbeing of the souls in their care having the greater weight, the past being unalterable.
And perilous.
We were not the first here.
This is the truth no one—no person—dares imagine. That there were voices before ours. Hands. Hearts and love. Rage and a hunger so terrible it consumed the surface of the world, heaving mountains skyward, tossing continents, boiling oceans. Until nowhere was left unscarred.
Save one place.
This is a truth impossible to rediscover. Only in the names of places, only in that one place on all the world, could you glimpse it. For ages flew by and everywhere, even there, came new voices, new hearts and hands, to claim the land and write their truths upon it.
Magic, once, was everywhere.
Now magic is not, being confined to that one untouched place. Those of north and south might be curious. Might long for magic of their own. Might wish, in the fragile moment between twilight and the rise of the moon, to see a gossamer come to life before their eyes and transform the ordinary into wonder.
But there is only one place left in the world where you could. Where the words of those who came before linger. Where mage scribes write them down, to summon magic from the land itself.
Tananen.
INTENDED WORDS
The body was beechwood, smooth and bronzed with age, of perfect balance. Silver girdled it, worn plain and tarnished, quickly warm to Maleonarial’s fingertips. The pen had been an extravagant gift, from a father with neither coin to spare nor generous nature until a son proved of marketable talent. He remembered how the silver had glittered in his hand, that long-ago day, like some cheap gaud on a whore. He’d done his utmost not to use the thing in front of classmates or masters. Such a garish object demeaned the lofty position of mage scribe-to-be.
Had he ever been so young?
The new nib was old. Bone, weathered wood-bronze, carved silver-smooth. Simple, like the now-plain band, but with remembered complexity and purpose. He’d found the piece on his wanderings, tucked among reeds by a busy, impervious stream. A deer once.
Or a man.
A good choice. Now for the next.
Three small inkpots remained. Each was stoppered with thick yellow wax, a tiny russet curl imbedded as surety. Baby curls. Inkmaster Jowen Hammerson had courage to mock his aging guest. And a remarkable abundance of russet-haired great-grandchildren.
The contents of one inkpot, sold at Alden Hold where mage scribes clung like leeches to their famous school, would feed those children for a year. Maleonarial had left Tankerton with five wrapped in linen and bound against his waist, bought with the only coin he possessed: words.
Not any words. Names. He’d written the names of the Hammerson family in his clearest script; no more official rendering could have been asked by any hold lord or The Deathless Goddess Herself. It had taken the best of a night, but he begrudged not a moment. As each callused hand received its precious strip of parchment, as eyes wondered at the letters that bloomed in ebon permanence under the warmth of living breath, toil-bent backs had straightened. The raucous babble of dogs, children, and clanging spoons had fallen to a solemn hush. The parchments would be treasured and kept close; more importantly, the letters’ shape would be practiced with care. None of them would ag
ain use a rude thumbprint to sign a document of importance, or be forced to wait on the uncertain—and expensive—arrival of a scribe. To write their own names was to gain respect and fair treatment from merchants and lawgivers alike.
The inkmaster counted himself well-paid. His kin whispered of marvels. But it hadn’t been magic, other than that of skill.
Magic must be intended.
The night’s breeze snapped and billowed the canvas overhead, a token against the pending rain. He slept in the open by preference. The fresh air and privacy of wilder places were a boon to his spirit; a shame they couldn’t feed or clothe him. Not that he needed more than a stew or porridge under his ribs. Maleonarial plucked his threadbare, much-mended cloak. It would do another season.
His fellow mage scribes, having discovered his lifestyle—an unfortunate coincidence of storm and crowded inn, followed by a collision in a narrow hallway with a round bulk of rich velvet and gilt that had exploded in ire until he’d lifted his face to the torchlight and the other had stammered something aghast and apologetic—had sent along a beautifully penned and rolled parchment, levying a fine for inappropriate attire, unbecoming his high station.
Kind of them to overlook the dirty hair and sweat as well, not to mention bad breath.
Folded, the parchment made a fine lining for his right boot. They’d be aghast if they knew. Not that he’d apologize. As if he’d scrape it clean to reuse even if those were only words, however mean-spirited.
Magic required purity.
Though soaked, then left in heated sand to harden, the bone nib remained brittle and unforgiving. His gentlest touch would coax a smattering of words at best from it. Words and how many months from his life?
Maleonarial shrugged, shaking the tiny bells knotted in his hair. Mage scribes marked their lives by them, the quiet tinkling a constant reminder of magic’s toll, collected by The Deathless Goddess. A bell for each intention. The first twenty or so accumulated quickly; schooling spent half—or more, for those prone to mistakes. The next thirty or so were reasoned, deliberate, considered. These earned what a mage judged of greater worth than time. Wealth. Security. The touch of a woman.
The moment came for every mage when that balance shifted, when the bells whispered: “Life’s short enough, fool.” A hundred-bell mage could write anything and make it live—for a fee to make even a heartland hold lord reconsider.
Having tied his three hundredth bell this season, Maleonarial counted himself fortunate to still have teeth.
He ran his tongue along their tips.
Most of them.
Enough for chewing.
To write with intent was, for those with Her Gift, an expenditure of life. A mage scribe used ink and pen, needed a surface on which to write, would study years to master stroke and technique, would above all else learn as many words of The Goddess’ unspoken language as possible since those words were the means by which magic could be summoned.
To bring life.
At life’s cost.
What matter the price? said those new to Her Gift. To the young, life was the deepest well, always full. When students gathered in hallways to gossip, it was of how their masters were timid, grown inept with age . . . that this was why mage scribes worked so little magic after the first wrinkle and ache . . . it couldn’t be because those masters had been young once too and squandered the time they’d had . . . that they’d strutted from holding to holding to work magic, sustained by their confidence that the bells sang praise, not warning. Until too late.
The young believed their elders were indeed old.
They learned better. Come twenty years, each would find himself like a man of thirty. At thirty, more like forty-five. They would finally understand that no mage scribe escaped magic’s toll. That they too aged not as nature but as each set of words intended, paying Her price for power. Until they too became masters, to hoard days, begrudge minutes, and scorn the young.
Until they refused to write magic again.
Rain on canvas echoed Maleonarial’s bells as he bent to his task. Young once. Master once.
Fool, he hoped, no longer.
* * *
Cil was his name.
“Silly-Cil.” Thick lips, bent teeth, twisted the whisper. They thought he didn’t understand, thought him slow and stupid, but he knew what they meant. “Silly-Cil. Think me dumb. Think me meat.”
With practiced ease, he stabbed the hollow tube into the calf’s pulse, sucking warm rich life into his mouth as the creature bawled its torment. He was supposed to knock it dead with the hammer before bleeding it. The knacker would cuff his malformed ears, make his head ring. But the knacker was glad enough to have an apprentice, let alone one eager for the work.
Work no one else wanted to see.
Replete, he took another mouthful. Held it. Turned, his knee on the calf’s neck, holding it down.
Spat at the plastered wall.
The blood flew through the air, a spume of death and anger.
Cil considered the result on the wall. The calf struggled, a distraction. He silenced it with a hammer blow. Wiped his lips on his sleeve. Admired the artwork of red on the wall’s lime-plaster and rough-hewn wood.
It was something. But what?
There . . . an eye.
Lower down, where blood rilled along a crack . . . a foot.
The closer Cil looked, the clearer the image became. The eye blinked. The foot’s clawed toes flexed. A sowbug popped free of the wood, bounced as it hit the floor, curled into a tight ball that rolled. Afraid.
He gave his laugh—the heavy snort and wheeze made others look as if they wanted him gone—and squashed the tiny thing flat with his bare foot.
Lantern light caught on a razor-edge. A tooth. There were more. Cil couldn’t count, but he knew more.
He laughed again and moved aside to give it room. “Silly-Cil think them meat now.”
* * *
Domozuk fussed with an uncooperative belt tassel, muttering under his breath. Saeleonarial stood still on the pedestal and waited, though he curled his toes within their ornate slippers. No hurrying his servant of these many years. His mouth quirked. A tassel askew or absent made no difference to him. It made every difference to the company surrounding this hold lord. He might as well wade with an open wound and expect leeches to ignore his blood, as that lot miss sloppy dress.
“I should write them something with spines. Something to climb inside their smalls,” he murmured, fingers hovering over the generous beard Domozuk despaired of keeping silken smooth. Saeleonarial couldn’t help him with that—he’d been born Sael Fisherson and men of that name sprouted wiry growths of red from chin and cheek to rival seamoss for twist and toughness.
And went bald.
The wig was bulky, overscented, and essential. How else to carry a mage scribe’s weight of bells? Saeleonarial was in no hurry to don the hot, itchy thing. Domozuk humored him, letting it drape from its stand like a hide on display till the last possible moment.
“You won’t,” the servant said primly. He bent to snip an errant thread from a slipper.
“What—use magic on them?” Saeleonarial didn’t risk the delicate pleats at each shoulder with a shrug, not before his audience. Instead he scowled fiercely. “Think I wouldn’t dare?”
“I think I’ve enough gray to dye in your beard,” Domozuk, ever-practical, replied as he straightened. His eyes sparkled with mischief. “Unless you’ll let me commission something more modern.” “Modern” being the contraptions younger nobles had begun attaching to their beardless chins: ridiculous conflagrations of precious metal, exotic feathers, and whatever else was too costly for commons; some hung to the knees and required bracing at the table. Equally witless mage scribes spent months of their magic penning tiny birds and gem-eyed lizards to live within the curls of wire. Saeleonarial pitied the servants assigned
to clean that mess.
He crooked his finger for the damnable wig, quaint and sedate by comparison. “Point taken.”
Scribemaster Saeleonarial knew his own worth. His rise through the ranks of his peers had more to do with honesty, a good head for names, and modest ambition than brilliance. Oh, he’d written one intention of memorable originality. The result still swam in the temple fountain of Xcel, all grave eyes and mischievous whiskers, trilling its song by moonlight to bewitch even dry old men with lust. Gossamer.
Not an accomplishment to share. He’d hastily destroyed that pen and done his utmost to forget those words and its shape. Though he dreamed it. When the world grew drab by day, predictability more deadly than age, he’d wake in the dark, blood pounding. At such a moment, Saeleonarial would swear he’d heard a faint splash, smelled musk on a warm summer’s night. Been young and unafraid of the future again.
The Deathless Goddess wasn’t above irony.
Just as well such moments didn’t last. Someone had to keep his head. Magic wasn’t to be squandered on useless marvels. The world might be drab for their lack, but it was calmer, more reliable. Like him. Another reason he’d been voted scribemaster.
No more need to write magic. He had wealth. Prestige. Some hair left behind his ears and still-reasonable bowels. What more could he want?
Surely by now he was safe.
Saeleonarial fidgeted.
Surely safe from that maddening, bone-deep, skin-crawling itch to create only magic’s use could salve.
Surely now, he need no longer test his mastery of word and intention, waiting for the remembered and longed for and never-ever-enough climax of having those words take form and breathe.
He’d no need for magic. Knowing hands and a winsome smile would do him. The dimpled barmaid at . . . “Have done. It’s fine,” the scribemaster muttered peevishly as Domozuk fluffed the damned wig yet again. He was weary of standing. Weary of his own thoughts.
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