Kait rested her hand on a likely pile, then shook her head. Too early to be shipping. Last year’s walnut and cherry would be dry and ready midwinter, no sooner.
A rail atop the side wall marked the bow. That, and the end of what light the firebowls cast, for beyond the night was overcast and black as pitch. She ran knowing fingers along the wood. No magic in this piece other than straight good growth. Woodshaven’s own, perhaps, though the northern holdings boasted forests of their own.
She looked over the rail, but couldn’t make out anything but a line of creamy froth in the black. She’d return at dawn, maybe see the fabled singer—
Something drew breath.
A long indrawn breath greater than any to fit within person or beast, and Kait gripped the rail, not knowing if she was in danger or—
The something exhaled, and sang.
It wasn’t music. Wasn’t meant for her. Wasn’t heard, as sound would be, but felt, as Her Voice should be, and Kait dared not move, this time in case she startled the singer and it stopped.
For the song held the flows of water and eddies of air, the rhythms of what lived. Kait listened with her entire being, so close to comprehending—
Too far from understanding, for this song wasn’t meant for her, and with regret, to save her sanity, somehow she pushed it away—
A daughter from Woodshaven, serenaded by a canal singer. Kait blinked away tears and swallowed laughter, happier than she’d been for too long. If what muttered in Tiler’s stones was evil, what sang out here in the night was—not.
Nor was it good, nor had to be. The singer belonged in the world, as what muttered did not, and to hear its song was a privilege as well as joy.
Surely now, The Lady would make Herself known.
But though Kait listened with mind and heart, of The Lady she heard nothing. Nothing yet, she reminded herself.
She looked toward the small group sheltered against the far wall. A firebowl lit their faces and knees. Two mages were among them, this Her Gift confirmed.
Kait walked briskly toward the group. One—
Her steps slowed. One was . . .
“Lass, ye come f’r y’trays? Thank—”
“No, Rid.” The one stood, a tall shadow, and she heard bells. “She’s come for me.”
Too many bells, and too strong, Her Gift. Kait reeled inwardly, as if she stood in the presence of The Lady Herself at last, even as She poured the glory of Her magic forth.
The others rose to their feet, looked at one another uneasily. The second mage, Her Gift a distant echo, said a name. “Maleonarial—?”
“It’s all right—”
“No, it isn’t,” Kait assured them, certain of that much. “You. Hermit mage. Come with me.”
* * *
For a second time he stood at the barge rail with a woman he’d just met, but this was no casual encounter. The feel of Her Gift was introduction and warning, for if one of The Lady’s commanded an intention, a mage had no choice but to obey.
He could hope she was here for a different reason. “Daughter,” Maleonarial began respectfully, pitching his voice for her ears alone, “Her justice was done and witnessed. Why do you seek me still?”
“M’name’s Kait Alder, I’ll thank you to use it, and I don’t seek you at all,” she replied, as low but blunt. “Last I heard you were hid’n in the hills. Now we’re on the same bloody barge? Have you no sense, mage?”
Baffled, he blinked down at her. “I don’t underst—”
“Bah.” A palm thumped the rail as if he weren’t paying attention. “Insom the Second’s sent his cousin to the school to learn about you and your magic. He believes you made gossamers that can kill.”
“I didn’t,” Maleonarial said heavily. The truth had to be known. “But they can.”
He was prepared for disbelief and argument, not her swift grab of his wrist and upper arm. She squeezed those as if testing the ripeness of fruit, then let go, taking hold of his chin, her other hand tugging a braid so bells jangled. Appalled, Maleonarial shook free. “Stop that!”
“You’re young again,” she accused. “How?”
“You know how. She did it.”
“Why, then.”
To punish him, he almost answered, but that asked for pity and Her Daughter would have none. “I—”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “We should move from the others. There’s room to sit over by the cargo. Do you have an extra blanket?”
The abrupt practicality stunned him. “Pardon?”
“Three, actually.” He couldn’t see her face in the dark. That didn’t mean he couldn’t hear a smile. “It’s grow’n cold, young-again mage, ’n I dinna wan’t’freeze m’buttocks. Do you?”
She put on the accent, coddled him as if he were as young as Harn, and Maleonarial wasn’t sure if he should be amused or offended. “I’ll get the blankets. Is there anything else?”
“Aie.” The word was the saddest sound he’d ever heard. Then, briskly, “But nought to be done about it. Let’s have our chat.”
* * *
Wrapped in blankets so only her nose peeked out, Kait listened to what chilled her beyond warming again.
“I made mistakes,” the strange mage said, his cadence measured, almost slow. Even if she hadn’t been told Maleonarial lived as a hermit, this would have informed her. Woodshaven had its share of folk who preferred to be alone, their home in the forest. Their voices too were thoughtful, not worn slick from overuse.
By “made” Kait understood he meant a living creation, for that was a mage’s portion of Her Gift. “Gossamers.”
“Yes. I lost count,” ruefully. “I believed their existence mattered only to The Goddess and my creaking bones. Then a gossamer I brought to life entered an angry man and gave him magic without cost. With it, he brought his spite to life, creating terrible, beautiful gossamers he set on his own people. Only one from Riverhill survived.”
Nim Millerson. It had to be. Kait pushed aside her pity. “Just his people?” she asked.
“Wasn’t that enough?”
Another full of anger, she judged, despite his careful words and distant manner. “A tragedy, aie, and my heart aches for them.”
“If The Deathless Goddess had a heart, She’d have stopped it. Saved them.”
Kait squinted at him. “A master like you, thinking The Lady’s everywhere at once, seeing everything? She’s not some myth, like the godlings of Ichep or Whitehold.” Had Her attention been pulled elsewhere? Tiler’s perhaps? “It’s good to know such gossamers have limits, even if they are those of malice.” She licked her lips, then dared asked, “What else could have stopped them?”
“What?”
Mutters in stone. Made-beasts turned to ash. A hold without gossamers or The Lady. A world empty—
Kait drew the blankets tighter. “You heard me, mage. Do you know what could harm a gossamer—or scare them away?”
“Nothing. They do as they will. That’s what a gossamer is.” He straightened a leg. Bells whispered at his every move, each a mark of magic.
More than any sane mage would have dared. Remember that, she warned herself, knowing what it meant, him again young.
She felt hope too. Maleonarial was a loremaster, or had been. He could have the answers she sought—but where to begin?
They leaned against what felt to be bags of grain, as if taking their ease. Private, this spot, though light spilled over their faces from the fires burning elsewhere. Those fires flickered with the beat of wings unseen in the dark, and Kait asked abruptly, “The singers. The dancers. Are they gossamers?”
“No one knows,” he said. “Every master has an opinion.”
“And yours?”
“That you’re full of questions, Kait Alder.”
“Aie. So I’ve been told,” she replied absently. She peer
ed at him. “The singer didn’t seem a gossamer to me. Her song—” How to describe it? “—was like hearing the heartbeat of everything wild at once.”
“You heard a singer.” It wasn’t disbelief, it was awe. “That’s—that’s remarkable, Kait.”
She had to ask. “How remarkable?”
“I can’t say. Only that neither I, nor any mage I know of, has heard a singer sing. There’s no record of it. Every once in a while, someone grows curious why we call them singers at all.”
“Because they sing,” she countered dryly.
“I believe you. It’s been a day of revelations.” A chuckle. “This morning I was assured by my colleagues dancers do indeed dance, especially to a cheery dockside ditty.” He spread his hands. “I swear it’s the truth, if one I didn’t expect.”
She regarded him. “Then what are they?”
“Ancient.” Maleonarial paused a long moment, then went on, his voice filling with wonder. “Perhaps as old as the world. When people arrived in Tananen, for yes, we weren’t always here, they found the canals, dug by dancers. When they put their boats into that water, singers took hold and towed them.”
“Not gossamers,” she concluded. “I wouldn’t call them normal beasts.”
“On that even masters agree.”
“Then they’re Hers.” A satisfactory answer, for once. “Her magic, made for us.”
His bitter laugh wasn’t that of a young man. “‘For us’? That I doubt. Now, Kait Alder. My turn for a question, if you will. What else do you alone hear?”
She’d the choice. To answer or no. The humblest daughter stood foremost in Her regard over a mage, even one such as Maleonarial. Some took that regard to believe themselves superior and demand favors; they’d be the same sort who’d no idea how food came on their plates, or what happened to their tidy pots of shit.
To Kait’s way of thinking, the two of them, daughter and mage, were Hers. Be it chance or The Lady’s need brought them together, together they were.
“I’ve heard evil. That’s why I’ve come. To find help to fight it.”
“‘Evil’—” He might have scoffed. Dismissed her words. Instead his voice turned grim. “Riverhill taught me evil can walk like a man. Where have you heard it?”
“From the stone of Tiler’s Hold. It breathes. Mutters in a dire voice, or voices. I—as do the hold daughter and senior acolyte—can hear it. We couldn’t make out words.” She swallowed. “Feelings, yes. Horror. Destruction and death. We call it the Fell. I saw it—” Kait stopped, having not meant to go so far.
Bells chimed as if alarmed. “Saw what?”
“During the hold lord’s audience, the Fell flowed from crevice and mortar like smoke. I saw it move outward, spreading as might lightning, or as water seek its channels,” she added, thinking that was apt too. “There was evil purpose to it, Maleonarial. It went toward—” her son “—the made-beasts in the hall. No one else saw, but I did. As the Fell passed over them, they were consumed.”
“Leaving ash or not?”
Kait took heart. She spoke to a master of magic, of such creations. “Yes. Ash.”
“That suggests the magic within them, giving them life, was taken.” He studied what he could see of her face. “Are you certain it wasn’t The Goddess?”
“The Lady isn’t evil!”
Relentless. “Does She not reclaim what is Hers?”
As life, from the mage. Kait covered her mouth with her hands to keep the terrible words unsaid. Was this why The Lady refused to speak to her? Because of her weakness, to be horrified Leksand, her son, her heart, was now promised? Would now give his life, for magic? Did She know Kait would give anything to have him back again?
“Who is the boy?” Gentle. Implacable. “I can tell his Gift is new. Untried.” A heavy pause. “Your son.”
She lowered her hands. “His name is Leksand. We’re taking him to the school.”
“Kait. I am so sorry.” The profound regret, from a master mage, from someone full of Her magic and all it granted, jolted her.
She recovered with a sniff. “Aie, well, there’s nought to be done ’bout it, is there. My task is to learn what’s to be done about the Fell, for Tiler’s and The Lady.”
It seemed, all at once, as though he moved away from her. “Are you Her Designate?”
She was tired, cold, and losing patience. “I’m Kait Alder. If you’re a master mage, can’t you tell?”
“The Deathless Goddess has her guises.” But Maleonarial settled, seemed again at ease in her company. “And makes Herself known in the least convenient way possible,” he complained. “A page shifts. A breeze when the air’s still. Things tumble—She’s taken my socks.” With affront.
Kait had to laugh. “A game we played each washday. I’d pin socks on the line and one’d be gone from a pair, sure’nuf. To turn up in my basket, or up a tree.”
They found themselves in a companionable silence, contemplating a deity who hid socks. Then Maleonarial said, without expression or warning, “I plan to kill Her.”
“Do you, now,” she murmured, somehow not shocked. “Why?”
“Why else? To stop all this. Stop The Hag taking our lives—your son’s life. I’ve dedicated mine to it.”
“Hid’n in the hills. Making gossamers.”
“Do you mock me, Daughter?”
“Not at all.” Though truth be told she thought him most likely as mad as rumor said. Still, what he wanted to accomplish—
Defend Me!
From this mage? No. However strange and powerful he was, The Lady played with him, stole his socks, restored him. Something more was going on between the two, whether Maleonarial knew it or not. It wasn’t her place to decipher what. Kait stifled a yawn. “Seems a bit drastic, by my way o’thinking. Killing. Should be another way, surely.”
“Ask Her for me.”
“To stop claiming mage lives?” Oh and there was a question no daughter would contemplate. Unless it was a fool, too far from home, who found herself in waters deep as the Snarlen Sea and alone. A mother, with a son—
“Even if I would, I can’t.” Kait rolled up the blankets as she stood, tucking the bundle firmly under one arm in case he thought to reclaim them. “The Lady hasn’t spoken to me since I came to Tiler’s Hold. I’d hoped She would once I left, but no. Not yet.”
Maleonarial rose with her, stood with inordinate patience for her to say more, but she’d nothing left. “We’ll talk tomorrow, mage, if you’re willing,” Kait told him. “I can’t see anything changing afore that.”
“Agreed.” The tinkle of his bells subsided until all Kait could hear was their breathing, the lap-lap of water, the whoosh of air across an unseen wing. The hoot of a distant owl. Muted voices. Good sounds, belonging here.
Her head snapped around.
That didn’t.
* * *
Curtains drawn, supper done, Pylor and Tercle each took a bench seat for their bed. Pillows helped, as did thick blankets, but they’d a long habit of napping on cots or tables during experiments. This was luxury by comparison.
In short order, a melodic snore filled the carriage, her colleague wrapped from head to toe. Tercle always could fall asleep at will.
Pylor listened with envy, unsure she’d sleep again. She stared up, eyes open and dry, feeling the dark press against her and she wasn’t lighting a lamp. Wasn’t giving in—
With a soundless curse at her own weakness, she reached for the coach light and ran her thumb across its knurled flint.
The wick caught. Warm golden light poured over her, soothing and safe. It took several moments before she could bring herself to turn down the lamp to a minimal glow, shielded from her companion.
She cursed her cousin for good measure.
What was he up to?
The freight wagon had been loaded with fourte
en porcelain urns, presumably one for each master at the school, though she’d not thought there were so many in residence. Each urn was a work of art and rare. Insom must have stripped his collection to provide them. The urns were individually wrapped then secured to one another and the wagon sides by rope and strap, the mass supported on thick netting to absorb the bounce and shocks of travel.
As if what was inside were more important than the urns themselves.
Unfortunately, short of smashing one, she couldn’t see inside. Each bore a lid comprised of a unique and beautiful brass clockwork, locked in place by hinged clamps. A small etched plaque named the intended recipient, but the styles were strikingly different, implying the masters would recognize their gift among the rest. Here a cluster of paper-thin frogs, there a waterfall flowing upward, some had pens, others stars, no two the same.
Except in what they lacked. She’d found no keyholes or dials; no moving gears or clue how the things operated.
Pylor had known better than touch one. Those from Ichep were known for their clever devices. Some were mysterious enough to appear magical, unfolding in intricate shapes at a musical tone, or themselves making music. There was always a mechanism to prevent tampering; poisoned needles weren’t unknown.
Easy to surmise Insom had had them made. Less clear was why. Gifts shouldn’t be impossible to open.
Unless—unless mages could open what those without Her Gift could not. Was that it? Did Insom want some display of magic to acknowledge his generosity?
What was in the urns?
* * *
In other lands, they worship gods or goddesses, ancestors or fire-eyed birds. These hear prayers. Offer comfort. Grant sweet respite at the end of life. Or hell’s fury, depending on your life choices.
In Tananen, The Deathless Goddess neither listens, nor comforts, nor grants anything but Her magic, now, in return for certain death later.
Little wonder She isn’t worshipped at all.
Maleonarial perched on a crate, safely out of range, as this surely the oddest of Her Daughters he’d encountered tore a verbal strip from her son for sneaking up on them in the dark. Kait’s accent thickened with her fury. “I left ye car’n f’yer uncle! Count’n you, m’lad—n’this?”
The Gossamer Mage Page 17