The Gossamer Mage

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Pylor didn’t intend to be stopped again.

  * * *

  Nim Millerson was his name. How Ferden found the young man was anyone’s guess, but the pair arrived with Leksand, carrying supper trays, and Kait helped the barge crew—two brothers, a wife, and son—willingly make room for more. They’d barrels and planks, good solid seats and tables. She doubted any but the damesen in her carriage would eat in greater comfort.

  Or better company. Farmer. Forester. Barge crew. Field, mountain, or canal. They worked for themselves, lived with the land and in The Lady’s grace; Kait was touched to be asked to bless the meal in Her Name, but not surprised.

  Nim watched her, most of his expression hidden behind a bandage, but his one eye glistened, perhaps at the homely blessing, perhaps simply worn from travel. He sat close to Ferden, as if finding a haven, and put his head down to eat. Slowly at first, as though he’d forgotten hunger, then more quickly, for the damesen had provided well.

  The crew were like as peas in a pod, weathered, broad, and good-natured. The bargemaster, Nanse Heronsbill, had a mass of gray curls tied atop her head with a yellow bow and an embroidered patch over one eye she lifted companionably when they’d reached the stage of black tea and whiskey. Empty socket and sharp blue eye leered at Nim. “Lessee yers, lad.”

  He shot her a startled look.

  “C’mon w’yer. Dun b’shy.”

  Nim undid the rag covering the left side of his face, and plucked free the oval pad of clean linen where his eye had been, his remaining eye defiant.

  “Huh,” Nanse declared. “Mine’s better. ’Ere.” With a wicked grin she topped up Nim’s mug and her own. “Ta’the one we got!”

  An angry gash shot from chin to eyebrow, shocking on an otherwise comely face. It should, Kait judged, familiar with injury from axe and branch, fade to a roguish scar. The eye, well, there was no help for that, but a surgeon with skill had stitched the worst of the injury and the skin would mend. Ointment such as she’d left with the damesen might ease the redness and puckering, soothe the pain. She’d obtain some in the morning.

  Nanse’s son, Arnsey, leaned forward to study Nim’s face. He gave a satisfied grunt. “If ye like, ye kin ha m’ma’s glass eye. She dunna use it.”

  “N’so fast.” His father, also named Arnsey but referred to as “Bitters” for no reason Kait could discern, cuffed his son’s head fondly. “M’beaut saves it f’parties.”

  Senert, the father’s brother and twin, burst out, “Afer a sup like this’un? A party’s wha we need, f’sure!” Lurching to his feet, he pulled a pair of throwing axes from his belt, pointing their gleaming heads at the shed wall beyond the firebowl. “Less h’a game!”

  “Sit n’drink,” Nanse advised. “It’s t’dark f’yer fool’n. Ye’ll hit our guests.”

  “Will not!” The big man straightened to his full height, axes wavering. “I n’r miss!” An axe aimed at Nim. “Can ye say t’same?”

  Fireglow distorted friendly features, turning smiles into hungry grimaces. It picked out the innumerable gouges and pits marring the shed’s wooden planking, most but far from all clustered toward a prominent knot near the center, head-high, and Kait recognized the signs of a favored pastime, probably one the crew used to part newcomers from their coin.

  Leksand’s expression of polite curiosity was a feint; he’d be aquiver with joy, being Woodshaven’s up and coming champion.

  The current and longest with that title sat beside Kait, gnarled fingers clasped around a warm mug, milky gaze vague but attentive.

  Nim busied himself retying his rag bandage, but his eye shone. “You’d take a friendly wager, n’doubt?”

  With that, Leksand’s box prudently disappeared from view.

  Nanse chuckled. “We dinna rob t’poor.”

  A sudden grin. “I’ve anothern bet in mind.” Nim curved an arm, smacked its muscle. “Any job needs do’n?”

  The barge crew, it turned out, had a plethora of tasks waiting, each dirtier than the last. The young farmer, unperturbed, rose to take the offered axe. “If’n I win,” he announced, “I get your fine boots.” His feet, puzzlingly, being in worn court slippers.

  Ferden smiled into his drink.

  And the game was on. In his cups he might be but Senert lifted the first axe in his massive hand and threw, the axe spinning once in midair before burying its head half into the wood; his family crowed with triumph.

  Nim’s first throw, to Arnsey’s outspoken glee, bounced and fell.

  “Giv’m another,” Kait urged, despite Nim’s dismayed look. Boys and their pride. “It’s fair. He’s new to your axes.”

  “Aie,” agreed Bitters. “Canna ha’ it said we took advantages. Not that m’bro won’t crush ye, Nim,” he added kindly. “Sen ’ates hos’n down t’decks.”

  Now aware his remaining eye couldn’t be trusted, Nim took longer lining up his next throw. The crew called out advice he ignored. This time he sent the axe to strike with an authoritative thud, blade biting deep. Wide of the knot, their erstwhile target but, Kait observed with satisfaction, closer than Senert’s.

  “Best tree o’five!”

  The whiskey a pleasant burn in her full stomach, Kait crossed her ankles and relaxed. The dark crept close; the comforting dark of night and peaceful rest. Somewhere on the barge, music played softly. A fiddle and flute, presumably the drivers and grooms relaxing. Did canal dancers listen?

  Nim lost, if you counted throws and who’d be hosing decks come morning; won, if the cant of his head and rise of confidence mattered more, as Kait firmly held to be true. Leksand, though sorely tempted, begged off a turn.

  She was sorry to see they thought less of her son for it. Did they judge him already more mage than commonfolk? Kait was half inclined to have Leksand show the bargeman what skill was—but it was his choice, not hers.

  “Thankee f’the game.” Senert raised his drink to Nim.

  Ferden stirred, aiming his face to the voice like a flower to sunshine. “Ye canna be done yet.”

  The son looked askance at his parents but the uncle roared with laughter. “Ye canna see the bloody shed. How’re ye go’n hit it? Wi’yer face?”

  Leksand ducked to hide a smile. Nim flushed with anger. “Mind! Some respect—”

  Ferden’s hand closed on the farmer’s arm. “Too dark f’ye, issit?” he asked gently.

  “Aie,” Bitters chuckled. “’E’d hit us, most like!”

  His brother’s face clouded and he set down his mug. “I kin see, ol’man.” He rose, axe in hand. When he drew back his arm, Arnsey, being in its path, scrambled clear, but the throw was more than assured, it was Senert’s best of the night. The handle quivered, blade lodged a hand’s breadth from the knot. After a stunned pause, his family leapt to congratulate him, slapping his shoulders and sitting him down again with a brimming drink.

  Ferden stood. “Laddie.”

  Leksand jumped to his feet and went to the shed, pulling free the bargeman’s axe. He leaned head and shoulders against the splintered wall by the knot, as if taking his ease. Nanse’s one eye squinted at him then at Kait, who merely smiled. “Ready, Great-uncle.”

  “Wassit a good ’un?”

  Leksand fingered the gash left by Senert’s axe, the closest of any mark to the knot. “Missed the target a smidge.”

  “Best shot o’me life!”

  “If’n I best it,” Ferden proposed, “I get yer bed t’night.”

  “If’n y’it the wall ye kin h’ours,” Bitters said. “Move aside, boy.”

  The wide smile on Leksand’s face was, to Kait, a thing of beauty. “I’m fine here.”

  The silence thickened when Ferden plucked a worn-handled axe from inside his tunic. He slipped the leather guard from the head. The metal was black with age, but the blade splintered the firelight. This was a tool used over a lifetime and too sharp,
by the concern on their faces, to be tossed in the dark by anyone, least of all a blind man.

  Muscle honed by a lifetime felling trees and trimming bush flexed. “Laddie?”

  “Sir.” With a gentle hand, Nim turned Ferden to face the shed.

  Nanse glared at Kait, who shrugged.

  “Great-uncle.” Leksand rapped a knuckle against the knot, once, twice, then moved his hand away.

  Before anyone but Kait could prepare, Ferden’s axe tumbled handle over head through the air, as if drawn by the sound. The blade split the knot, plunging so deep the handle vibrated. “Do I get m’bed?” Ferden asked with a smile.

  They all burst out clapping. Nim shook his head. “I could ne’er do that.”

  “Jus’a bit o’practice,” Ferden assured him, sitting back down. “I’ll kin show ye, if ye like.”

  Kait smiled to see Leksand the recipient of his share of awe, his face aglow with pride, and wished with all her heart she could pretend, for another moment’s laughter, another drink, that this passage wasn’t fraught with perils to threaten them all.

  * * *

  “You should know who’s there, sir.”

  There were others with Her Gift on the barge. A daughter. Another mage. The feel of them made Harn sweat, but they weren’t who Dom meant. Maleonarial slipped another bundle of sticks, by the pungent scent waste from a lumber mill, into the metal bowl, watching the dry tips smolder, then catch. “Do I?” he murmured.

  Domozuk shook his head. Whether at the obtuseness of mages, him in particular, or the placement of the sticks, Maleonarial couldn’t tell. He sat back to make room in case. “They’ll want answers,” the servant said after a moment.

  “I have none.” He hadn’t twelve years ago, only the glimmer of a possibility. They’d have judged him mad.

  Nothing in that was likely to have changed.

  “When I arrived,” Harn volunteered, “no one spoke of you except in whispers. Except the scribemaster.”

  Maleonarial lifted a brow. “I trust I was a cautionary tale.”

  Rid grunted something noncommittal.

  “They said there’d never been a scribe with your skill. There never would be again.”

  “Distrust absolutes, Harneonarial. They have teeth.” Their regard was a weight; he shrugged to shift it. “Very well. How many masters will be home?”

  “T’was fourteen when the scribemaster left for Tiler’s.”

  “Twelve,” Harn said at the same time, then stared at Domozuk as if he’d grown feathers. “There were more? Who? Where?”

  Rid spat to the side. “W’yer t’ink’s inna cellars?”

  The student brought a hand to his mouth, his eyes big as saucers. Maleonarial didn’t know if he should take pity or not, or if it was pity at all.

  And not cowardice. Students weren’t told until ready to be masters themselves, something Harn was unlikely to be.

  Yet hadn’t Harn witnessed more of magic’s toll than most ever would?

  “They aren’t in cellars,” Maleonarial said at last. “There are rooms in the attic, decent ones, above the dining hall and kitchen. If a master can no longer be trusted with Her Gift, he’s moved to the upper floor.”

  As were dangerously talented students unable or unwilling to control their magic but this Harn didn’t need to know. Though surely even he suspected. There were those students who just disappeared one day and though the masters might say they wandered off, no one believed it.

  Alden’s mage school was as much prison as it was school, and its purpose as much to protect Tananen from those unable to safely use Her magic, as to train new mages to do so.

  That The Hag approved was evident from Her inattention.

  “What of Pageonarial?” he asked abruptly.

  “Sorry to say, sir, he’s been on the upper floor a few months now. Comes and goes. Seems happy.” Domozuk forced a chuckle into the appalled hush. “Attends all the gatherings.”

  That much at least was good news.

  “And Alden’s hold daughter?”

  “Affarealyon still builds and bothers and keeps the masters on their toes. Her cousin Nedsom’s hold lord. Does a good job, by all accounts.”

  A lad he’d taught a nice flourish for his signature, and how to catch carp from the school ponds. Not the only one to age honestly since he’d left. Rid had lost hair and gained a wreath of wrinkles around his keen eyes. Dom—“Your nose is bigger.”

  Domozuk tapped the offending organ with a fingertip. “Sign of wisdom, sir,” he opined.

  “Sign o’t’bottle, mor’lik, y’fool.”

  Familiar once, if no longer, their companionable banter, and Maleonarial let it wash over him. Of those he’d abandoned, these two had deserved better from him. “I didn’t think it would take this long.”

  The pair gazed at him, knowing what he meant. “To do what, sir?” Dom asked, softly.

  “What I’ve yet to do.” Something cold followed the words, spun embers from their homely little fire. A beat of the singer’s wings, he told himself.

  Or opinion.

  “We’d Sael,” Domozuk offered. “He was a fine scribemaster.”

  Rid spat over his shoulder. “A right good boy.”

  “Kind,” Harn added.

  The mage nodded. “Better.”

  “No,” Domozuk objected, bushy eyebrows knotting together. “Sir.”

  Rid lifted his mug. “Aie.”

  They tried to rewarm his heart, restore him in their lives, thinking they recognized this younger self.

  Unaware how much he’d changed. How impossibly distant from friendship and hope he’d gone. Seeing no way back, Maleonarial said helplessly, “I’m not staying.”

  “Xareonarial.”

  He blinked, remembering sharp features and a slim build, brilliance along with a self-conceit rare even among those who thought of themselves first as a rule of survival. A cruel streak—

  “What of him?”

  “He made master soon after you left. Made a name in Xcel. Came back fuller of himself, if you can believe it.” Domozuk added another bundle of sticks. Renewed, the fire lit his cheeks and reddened his nose. “Saeleonarial refused to make Xareonarial his successor. He said a scribemaster should care more for the students than the robe.”

  “I’m not staying,” Maleonarial repeated. “The masters able to focus will elect whomever doesn’t run fast enough. If Xareonarial wants the job, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  “M’gonna ’ead back ’ome.” Rid’s expression was stark. “Y’ought.” To Domozuk.

  Harn, forgotten, looked up. “What of tomorrow?”

  Dom shrugged. “Tomorrow is what it is. We’ll take the scribemaster home. We’ll see what our places will be soon enough.”

  Maleonarial wanted to tell them. That if—when—he ended The Hag, mages would lose Her Gift and if that meant the end of magic, so be it. Harn could sing for his supper and be happy. There’d be no masters or students. No hapless captives in attics.

  Once-powerful mages like Xareonarial would find themselves judged for their real worth, as all should be.

  But he couldn’t tell them what might be a hollow dream, any more than give them what they thought would help.

  The rest of the meal the four sat staring into the fire and it wasn’t a mutual silence of trust or comfort.

  It was the silence of those unsure of a future.

  * * *

  If The Lady was anywhere, She must be here, on a canal in the heartlands of Tananen, Her domain.

  Yet remained silent. Why? Kait would be back to her first assumption, that the flaw was in her or her actions, save for her growing suspicion Insom’s caravan wasn’t what it appeared.

  Nor was everyone on the barge.

  Those with Her Gift know one another.

 
Pulling her fingers inside her sleeves, Kait worked her way to the front—the bow. Feeling the draw himself, if not yet understanding why, Leksand would have come with her. She’d prevailed on him to stay with his great-uncle, truly blind come nightfall despite their clever trick with the axe, and with Nim, who seemed a good person and lost. Bitters, Nanse, and Senert vowed to enlighten and inform their visitors from far off wee Woodshaven with stories. Ferden had laughed and offered to trade eerie tales from the mountains.

  New to them, all this, but her kin weren’t overwhelmed. She took pride in that.

  Overwhelmed summed her feelings. By day or night, the world stretched to the horizon on every side, its immensity plain, and a daughter from Woodshaven could be forgiven for feeling smaller than a fly’s speck.

  And no more significant. Who was she to defend The Lady? To ferret out the truth about muttering stones? About this caravan?

  The fool too far from home, that was who.

  You did your duty and prayed it was enough. The Lady was silent, but Her Gift was not and since coming on the barge Kait had sensed those others, as they would sense her and her son. They hadn’t come to her—

  With Leksand safely occupied, Kait let herself be drawn to them.

  The crew distributed firebowls and fuel as the sun set; meal done, the drivers, and Dolren, huddled around a pair. Pylor had retired to her carriage with Tercle, drawing the curtains. Presumably Kait and her kin were welcome to sleep beneath it.

  Kait exhaled, saw her breath. She’d find blankets.

  She wound her way among goods wrapped against the weather, stepping over tiedowns and flaps. Clearer, the aisle between the freight wagons, but the tall conveyances cast disquieting shadows.

  And looked too much like stone.

  Better the open sky, however dark and cold, and ordinary things. What people made with their hands and machinery. What was needful to make what they made. Odds were some cargo came from across the sea, through Tiler’s Hold. Some might be from as close as Woodshaven, there being a strong demand for fine lumber.