The Gossamer Mage

by Julie E. Czerneda

  How could anything—anywhere be safe? She hunched, letting them talk.

  “I could try. One or two might listen. The rest? Will only see priceless gifts, no matter what we say. The life of a mage foments greed, not forethought. And, with respect to you both, we’ve no proof without opening an urn—which we can’t and mustn’t do.” A shrug set his impossible weight of bells in motion. “My return will preoccupy the masters, for a time. I suggest we keep the urns concealed as they are until we learn more. Damesen, if you’d order your people to keep silent?”

  Pylor looked up. “I’d order them far from here, if I could.”

  His face softened. “Have them wait for you in the hold, Damesen. There are good accommodations and Alden will be agreeable. The fewer outsiders approach the school, the better.”

  “Is that all you can say?” She found herself on her feet, cup rolling along the deck. “All you can do? You’re the great Maleonarial. The hermit mage! Use your magic to help us. Save my cousin. Protect us! Or do you require payment before you help others?”

  “Damesen. Pylor—Sit.” Kait retrieved the cup. “Dinna insult him again.” And there was no missing a command issued by one of Her Daughters. “We’re in this together. We’ll survive or not, together.”

  The mage gave Kait a considering look, before holding out his long-fingered, graceful hands to Pylor. “With these, The Goddess lets me create with magic, and yes, I’ve the skill—and life left—to do more than any living mage. That’s the easy part. The hard, sometimes impossible, part?” The fingers curled into empty bowls. “Knowing what to create. I don’t.”

  “Then what good’s magic?”

  Maleonarial ducked his head, bell-riddled braids restless. Lifted it, eyes clear, voice steady. “A question I ask myself every day.”

  The little snort from Kait signaled her belief they wasted time. She wasn’t wrong. Pylor gathered her sorely scattered wits—and courage. “I’ll do as you say. Hide the urns. Keep them secret. But make no mistake, by taking them to the school, by bringing the boy there, we continue to do what the Fell wants done.”

  Kait’s eyes flashed. “Until we stop it.”

  * * *

  A lust for destruction. No, a hunger for it—

  Overpowering, those feelings. Their voices. She’d heard the Fell, in the urn. In all the urns, their inchoate mutters filling the wagon like doom itself.

  Would hear them still, Kait feared, if she hadn’t learned from the singer how to push away what wasn’t meant for her kind. The dark wet hunger was hardest—

  She stared down in stark horror, for an instant convinced her hands and arms had been consumed—but no, just lost in the suds—

  “Momma? Are you all right?”

  Leksand. Part of this madness, but how? Hiding a shudder, Kait made herself look up. Smile brightly. “There you are,” she said, as if surprised. Drying her hands, she let herself fuss with his scarf. “I’m fine, m’lad.”

  His hands caught hers. “You aren’t. I can tell.” Peering into her face, his dear eyes warmed with concern.

  “Aie, and how could I be,” she told him, letting her voice shake, knowing her eyes were moist. “My wee babe, off into the world.”

  “Oh Momma.” Leksand gathered her in his arms, his chin on her head—as he could now. “It’s your footsteps I seek to follow. To be a good person and honest. To serve The Lady and Tananen, as you do.”

  “Proud I am.” And was, yet for the first time she wished Leksand born a girl instead, able to serve, if not in guaranteed safety, then at least through a natural whole life.

  Better still, been among the twain, those born owning neither sex or both or somewhere between. The Deathless Goddess left such children in peace, choosing those at the first bleed or whisker to receive Her Gift—why that was so—

  —was piss under the barge. Kait sniffed and pushed them apart, aiming an eyebrow at the waiting piles. “Proud, aie, yer in time t’do some work.”

  His eyes shone as he stripped off his best jerkin and folded it carefully, then rolled up his red sleeves.

  “Here now.” Bense bustled toward them, flapping a towel as though to shoo Leksand away. “I’ll not have a mage clean dishes.”

  “I’m no mage yet, sir,” her son replied with a cheeky grin, snatching the towel. “And excellent at dishes. Ask m’Mom.”

  “A’times,” Kait agreed, pretending to cuff his ear. “When he minds what he’s at.”

  Later, she would remember standing at the wagon gate, washing trays and cups and spoons with Leksand, joking and chatting with Bense and the others who knew nothing of the evil brooding nearby.

  Remember it as the moment she made her commitment with body and mind and heart to defend them from it. Became Kaitealyon, “Promised to the Lady,” in truth.

  Willing, should The Lady ask, to relinquish all she was.

  * * *

  “Master?”

  Maleonarial cracked an eyelid to find Leksand gazing down at him. The boy looked vaguely disapproving to catch him in a nap. “Old habit,” he explained, rolling easily to his feet. “What can I do for you, Leksand?”

  Warm brown eyes, so like his mother’s, shifted to look toward the funeral wagon and his skin paled beneath its freckles. “I came to—I mean I—” Leksand visibly settled himself, then spoke with quiet dignity. “Harn told me, sir, you and the scribemaster were close friends. You must be very sad to lose him. I came to say I’m sorry. As I should have last night, when we first met.”

  “Thank you.” Empathy, manners, as well as Her Gift. The masters, those few who valued such attributes, would be pleasantly surprised. But nothing about Leksand explained what Insom—or what the damesen claimed possessed her cousin—wanted with the lad.

  Nothing about Kait explained The Lady’s continued distance from such a fair and true daughter. Darkest thought? For he’d plenty. The Hag bided Her time, intending to unleash Kait as Her Designate at the school, to end them all in order to deal with the evil in the urns.

  The Deathless Goddess not known for restraint.

  “Sir?”

  The mage shook off his mood. “Shall we see if Alden’s in sight? Your new home? We must be almost there.” Another habit of his hermit days, to pay attention to the sun’s path across the sky.

  “Yes, sir. Master, sir.” With the hint of a grin, “M’lord former scribemaster, sir.”

  He laughed and resisted the temptation to ruffle the lad’s hair. “I’m none of those now. ‘Sir’ will do.” He grinned. “Unless you’re willing to try ‘Mal’?”

  Leksand raised both eyebrows in feigned shock. “M’Mom’d clip m’ears. Sir.”

  “And mine. Let’s not risk it then.”

  Together they went to the front of the barge, joining those gathered to watch their arrival. Maleonarial was unsurprised when a wide gap opened to grant them the rail. The wind. Servants’ gossip. As easily slow the singer as stop word of him spreading.

  For a wonder, the sun had broken through the clouds of the past days in time to add welcoming sparkles to the water and brush warm bronze over the low rolling hills of Alden Holding. The canal bent ahead, on its way to meet the headwaters of the Helthrom, disappearing behind rows of planted forest on the far shore. Alden Hold stood a distance from its port on the canal, a wide boardwalk connecting the two across a vast expanse of marsh.

  One of Alden’s hold lords had tried to dredge a channel to solid land. Dancers filled it each night until he stopped.

  The hold itself was a whimsy of tile and brick. Small towers capped with spires marched along its wall and grew like a forest within, no two the same shape or size. To the center of the hold they rose in modest extravagance, affording a view for the courts of hold lord and hold daughter. Without, tile-roofed cottages clustered tight to the wall like bees to a flower and it was said most had cut doorways through to sav
e steps to market.

  Alden Hold being a peaceful place, of special interest to The Deathless Goddess and thus decidedly of no interest to anyone else.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s—nice,” Leksand announced after a moment’s study. “Not grand, like Tiler’s Hold, but nice.”

  The faint praise of the young and impressionable. Maleonarial chuckled. “Don’t let appearances fool you. Alden Holding is smaller than most, but richer than any, even Tiler’s. Its wealth comes from us. Mage scribes.”

  The boy’s mouth rounded in an “oh” of thought. “But—that’s it?”

  Best not swell his head too soon. “It’s sufficient.” Alden provided what physical necessities the school and students required beyond inks and parchment, from clothing and luxuries, to servants and groundskeepers. In return, the masters paid a pittance from their earnings to the hold lord, amounting to a truly stunning sum, and for their part did their best to keep students out of Alden’s pubs and gossamers outside its walls.

  Magic not welcome in the hold. Long and hazardous familiarity with the school had taught its neighbor magic was best kept away from their homes and families.

  Another service Alden Hold provided the school was to be its gatekeeper. Students’ relations and friends said their farewells to their mage-to-be within the hold. Those come for the services of a mage scribe were informed a message would be passed and request recorded. They were welcome to wait for the result.

  The foolishly curious or recklessly bold were sent on their way. While the merchants and innkeepers of Alden might lose some business, no one argued. Better that, than needless risk.

  There being no place in Tananen as perilous as where magic was taught to those not yet able to control it.

  “Once we enter the hold,” Maleonarial informed Leksand, “we’ll be introduced to the hold daughter, Affarealyon. You too. She’ll ask your business on her land. By your answer, she’ll decide if you may pass through or be sent home.”

  “But, sir. Everyone’s said I can’t go home. Can I?”

  Would he have sounded this wistful, had he not come from a dreary place? Where the only question was how soon his father’s scant patience would wear thin, and the only defense to outrun his brothers, which he’d refused to do.

  Brothers who might recognize this renewed version. A thought—

  —to be put aside. His family—his father—had demanded a share of his supposed wealth. As a student, what his magic earned went back into the school. As a master?

  By then, he’d learned a mage has neither family nor ties, only magic and The Goddess and the ever-shrinking remnants of life.

  “The truth, Leksand?” The mage put a hand on the lad’s shoulder. “No. Once we receive Her Gift there’s no home for us in Tananen but here.” A nod to the waiting dock, the boardwalk beyond, and the hold. “No place Tananen will be safe from you, young mage—” with a press of that hand, “—but the school.”

  If there.

  A sober look. “What’s the school like, Master Maleonarial? Like my village—or Tiler’s Hold?”

  The mage school was nothing so simple and in no sense kind, but some lessons had to be learned for yourself.

  “Better than either,” Maleonarial promised, gaze rising to the familiar smudge on the distant hill.

  “There’ll be magic.”

  Fundamental Lexicon

  The world was ever thus.

  The mage school, and there is but one, lies in Alden Holding because it can be nowhere else in Tananen. Those who tried, failed, The Deathless Goddess making it plain where She wished mages to learn Her Words, and where She did not.

  Mage scribes, being contrary, claim their school is where it is because of a central location, moderate climate, and Alden Hold being amenable to their presence.

  Loremasters and historians point out the school has been rebuilt following catastrophe on the selfsame spot since records began. Again, mages have an answer. Or rather, a question. Why change?

  We were left alone.

  And yet have never been, for should the mage school be destroyed, as has happened over time, there is always a new one. Always new students and masters, however reluctant, to teach them. Always daughters to restore any of Her Words lost. Always magic, demanding to be written.

  Magic, once, was not written at all.

  Now it is, by mage scribes trained at the school, the only school there is, in the only land with magic left in all the world, and the real question to be asked, that no one ever does?

  Is why.

  DREADFUL SYLLABUS

  Axe-throwing at dusk, then dreaming through dawn had cost her chance to glimpse the singer. Now they came into port at Alden Hold and try as she might, Kait couldn’t discern if the haze across the oncoming sky was wing or chimney smoke.

  Smoke, she decided, as the barge lost momentum and coasted shoreward, and found herself relieved. The song continued its seductive thrum deep inside her, if she let herself think on it, and when she did think on it, because how could you help it, it was all a daughter from the mountains and forests could do not to long to stay on this barge and travel the canal through these languid heartlands, ferried by slow beating wings, for the rest of her life.

  Then, because she did think on it, up welled the echoes of the Fell’s dark mutters and dire hunger and nothing was right. Her mouth turned sour. Her skin burned. Kait gasped—

  “Best we be off,” her uncle stated, rubbing a hand over his face, and didn’t know he’d saved her. “Canna recall t’last time I slept inna t’day. Shameful.”

  “It’s done you good,” Kait assured him, catching her breath. She slipped her arm through his and pulled him close. Felt the real of him and the love.

  What seethed inside the urns hated both.

  Ferden let out a sigh, milky eyes aimed at the sun. “I’ll mis’im, Kaitie. Won be t’same. Won be home.”

  “I know.” She rested her head on his shoulder, took in the comforting scent of leather and wool and family. Too soon to talk of arrangements and plans, but Kait vowed Ferden Haulerson wouldn’t make the sad trek back to Woodshaven alone. Perhaps the young farmer, Nim, who needed company and a place, or one of the damesen’s staff, ready for a quieter life.

  She refused to think of her own journey, if she survived to make one. First see Leksand to the school and safely in the care of its masters. Deal with what snuck along with them, as she’d sweep soil from a floor.

  Then—

  She’d left her son before. She’d pretend this was the same, that was all.

  All at once, here he was, his gift box under one arm, face glowing with excitement. Kait smiled. “You look fine. Just fine.”

  Leksand gave a proper little bow. “My thanks, Daughter Kaitealyon.”

  Making it not the same at all. But Ferden, wise in good-byes himself, pointed to shore. “D’ya see t’logs, laddie? Those came fr’m our forests, th’did.”

  A distraction, but Ferden could be right, Kait judged. The wooden dock was massive, supported by whole logs driven deep below the marsh. They’d not shipped any in her time, but trees that size? Woodshaven was renowned for them.

  The dock, Alden’s port, was broad enough to house buildings that had the look of warehouses, with a covered area for those waiting to board. Empty now, but she’d been told at dawn tomorrow the blue barge would arrive. Abandoned by its singer, it would fill with those willing to drift all the way south. Anyone in a hurry or heading in other directions would travel the road west, to the canal on the far side of Alden Holding, where orange and yellow singers plied courses opposite to their brethren here.

  Did the singers ever meet?

  Their barge eased close, reeds clattering as the hull rode over them.

  If their singer clung underneath, did the reeds tickle it?

  Or did the singer l
et go and sink to the bottom of the canal, leaving mere surface dwellers to their busyness until ready to move again?

  Kait kept asking herself such innocent questions, pushing aside all else.

  Workers waited with hooked poles to guide them to a stop, then hurried to attach ropes at front and back. The gate dropped into place with a thud that made Leksand jump, which made Ferden chuckle. Only one gate, the canal too wide here to bridge, and by the haste of the crew, they’d even less time before the singer took hold again.

  “Dolren, where are our teams?”

  Kait looked over her shoulder. The damesen stood by her carriage, cane tapping the deck as she confronted Insom’s servant. Who, by his downcast eyes and hunched posture, hadn’t an answer, there being no horses or oxen waiting on the dock. Though there remained a gull on the carriage roof—

  “Momma—” Leksand’s voice trembled. “Do you feel it?” He took her hand. “Do you see?”

  “Aie. I see.”

  Together, hand in hand, they watched horses grow from the barge deck, each white and more beautiful than any horse, made or not, Kait had ever seen. Necks curved with pride as willing brown eyes regarded their new world. The creations of a master.

  Maleonarial.

  * * *

  Fitting, the respectful, nay, awe-struck silence attendant their departure. The wagon carrying the scribemaster’s body went first, its driver replaced by his own and the younger mage, his companions riding alongside. Pylor held to a strap as her carriage began to move, but these weren’t any made-horses. These were exquisite, with a pace smooth as glass, and eerily familiar.

  Saeleonarial’s wagon had been pulled by such a team; no doubt Maleonarial had known or found out.