Maleonarial stepped where she could see him. His face was set in stern lines, but he gave a small bow. “Agreed. The problem at hand is to be rid of our unwanted guests.”
“Canna drown them.” At their raised eyebrows, Kait felt her cheeks warm. “They come from the sea, don’t they?”
“It’s unclear.” The historian’s white shaggy brows collided in a frown. “The Brutes are theirs, but—these archives,” the books hummed, “hold the writings of Tananen’s greatest minds and thinkers, every known treatise on magic and mages—those that survived the school, though for some copies were made. I’ve found nothing to suggest the Eaters can cross The Hunger—an apt naming, Enyon notes—of their own accord. They must wait for a person—a host—to reach them.”
“Hence the beheading of sailors,” Maleonarial supplied.
“Yes. Though Nicti—no—” as another book prepared to move, “states ‘evil can be called to evil.’ I’d no context till now,” Pageonarial apologized, as if they’d found fault. “We must assume Insom’s Eater was able to call more to the hold.”
“More reason to be done with these, then,” Kait urged, envisioning tendrils of smoke crossing the land. To hide a shiver, she tugged at the quilt. The books refused to budge.
“But why come here in the first place? Why fourteen urns? Why just the masters, when we’ve students as talented. Is there any clue?” Pageonarial’s voice rose as she gave the hardest pull yet and the books scampered in every direction. “Mal?”
Kait savored her small victory as she folded the quilt. No need to tell the owner what had been on it, or where it had been—
Her hands stopped moving as the answers slid into place.
“What is it, Daughter?” the mage asked her.
“I know why.” As surely as if their dreadful muttering finally made sense. “Why here. Why you.” She looked up, horror writ in her face.
“They’re hungry.”
* * *
Pageonarial hunched in his chair, which growled protectively, and Maleonarial didn’t blame either, shaken himself. “You think they’ve come for the school’s magic—Kait witnessed the Eater taking it from made-beasts in Tiler’s hall,” for the old master’s benefit. The chairs whined. “Her Gift is a conduit, not magic itself. Why the—” but he knew, didn’t he. “Only masters move throughout the grounds and buildings without question.”
“Only masters can command students to write intention upon intention. They would and gladly, without the questions we would ask, without our—” Pageonarial passed a trembling hand over his eyes.
“—our appreciation of Her toll,” Maleonarial finished, full of bitterness. Bad enough The Hag, now these Eaters?
“A snack,” Kait said, clutching the quilt in both hands. “All the made-things here. All you could make. Your students.” She thought of Leksand; he could see it in her eyes. “It won’t be enough. I’ve felt their hunger. It’s—bottomless.”
“But what else—” Pageonarial fell silent and the mage didn’t need to ask why. Since there’d been mages, every moment a school stood on these grounds, mistakes had been made. The result filled the border marsh and hills behind, hidden and sly, bold and full of frolic, each a glimpse of breathtaking wonder or gasp of the strange.
“Gossamers,” Maleonarial said for him. “The Eaters are here for the school’s gossamers.”
Kait bit her lip, then nodded. “Aie. I believe they know it, too. Gossamers abandoned Tiler’s. Yours have begun to flee, but I don’t know if they can. Not from this.”
“We’ve each made our share of gossamers. Would they know to run from possessed masters? Are we to betray them?” Pageonarial closed his eyes, then opened them. “Gossamers are Blessed by The Deathless Goddess. Will She not save them, Daughter?”
“I don’t think She can,” Kait replied. “Not alone.”
Maleonarial heard the words like a call and wasn’t the only one. The historian struggled to his feet, helped at the last by an obliging boost from his chair. “Then we must aid The Goddess! To work!” He waved as he tottered to his desk, which bounced happily to be in use, then calmed to welcome its creator. Books stampeded to follow, racing one another up the desk’s pedestals as if each were utterly convinced of its worth.
Maleonarial held in his doubt. “We’ll leave you to it, Page. Call for us the moment you have something more.”
White hair and bells, a head bent over books. The confident dismissive finger twirl.
Reassuringly familiar.
He and Kait walked down the corridor. With both holding lamps, the upper floor seemed smaller; with what they now believed, what slithered from their path vulnerable rather than dangerous, poison and teeth notwithstanding. “Do they outlive the mage who wrote them?” Kait asked suddenly, stepping over a made-cat that hissed and twisted and stared at them with hot angry eyes, then snapped up a pin-nipper in one gulp.
“They don’t outlive the school’s made-cats.” He raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t think we left those confined unprotected, did you? Once a week, mauls clear the empty rooms. Students make an abundance of them.”
She lifted her lamp and looked ceilingward. “What about—”
He drew her arm and lamp down. “Best not.”
“Aie,” hasty agreement. A step later, “The hold daughter warned me Alden could destroy the school. That she would, if the Fell escaped. But what’s up there—” her voice caught “—Maleonarial, that’s to kill people. Mages and students.”
“With whatever they might have created, yes. It’s called Alden’s bargain. A last resort if—when magic goes awry, as has happened.” He glanced down at her. “Affar has a level head. She won’t take lives if there’s any other choice. Nor would I.”
“Nor I,” she said very quietly, and he felt it again, in the echo of Kait Alder’s voice, in the way a made-cat backed away.
The edge of a question—gone.
Halfway down the stairs, Kait asked. “What of Harn?”
A daughter would sense the weakness of Her Gift in the boy, the way Her Words faltered in his mind.
It wasn’t as a daughter she asked. Maleonarial stopped on the next landing. “In my time as scribemaster, we’d a student much the same. Tobin Piperson. He fell behind, tormented by what he couldn’t do, mocked by the rest. I put him to work with the inkmaster, for Tobin had talent there. But it wasn’t enough. It never is, Kait. Her Gift must be used. Resisting? We learn that to survive. But to be unable—it would be indescribable agony.”
In the lamplight, she looked smaller, or had she hunched against a blow? “Tobin?”
The Hag had no mercy. Why should he? “We found him floating in a pond.”
“Not Harn.” Kait took hold of his jerkin, shook him with surprising strength. “You will not let that be Harn.”
Maleonarial gripped her shoulder. Bent over her to say, his voice harsh, “The help he needs is the death of The Goddess. Help me do that. Help me save them all.”
By lamplight, her eyes glistened, then an unexpected smile deepened the corners of her lips. Releasing his clothes, Kait patted his chest. “Well, ye kin start by check’n on the poor lad—make sure he’s rest’n. Then get some yerself, mage. T’morrow we ha t’save Tananen.”
Of its own volition, his hand left her shoulder and if a master of his years could recall the sensation? He’d just been comforted and sent to his bed.
“Where will you be?” the bewildered mage asked, the least of so many questions or was it the most important?
Her smile vanished. “Keeping watch.”
Having made no promise to obey Kait Alder, after they parted ways Maleonarial found himself pulling up the hood of his cloak and heading for the back door from the kitchen. And if he cursed to himself as the cold night air hit his face, it was more because she’d made him do what he knew he should.
However d
amned inconvenient, with Eaters on the doorstep.
Harn wouldn’t be in the room he shared with other students. Maleonarial had read the looks. Nor could the desperate would-be mage have followed the order he’d thoughtlessly given, to seek the supervision of a master, because he’d kept those masters in the hall.
Harn would try to write on his own.
Some things never changed. Students driven to write alone and in secret had the choice of risking the mauls who prowled the perimeter of the buildings by night, albeit the toothless variety who howled and slavered lovingly until the afflicted student fled inside.
Or they risked Slog’s pond, where the mauls didn’t patrol. Cruel, perhaps, to imply Tobin had ended his own life, but the result would have been the same whether the student jumped or had been pulled in while trying to write an intention: a floating corpse, drained of blood.
Rid had found Tobin, that next morning; the driver wouldn’t speak to a master mage for months.
Maleonarial didn’t need a light. The paths were populated with made-ants that gave off a faint glow at any approach. Besides, he knew the way.
He paused to look back. The upper floor was dark, its windows replaced with metal shutters. With the chill, windows on the staff floor should have been closed and snug, but one was open.
Kait, keeping watch.
She wouldn’t see him unless she leaned out, but the mage found himself, again and unexpectedly, comforted.
The only other sign of life was the light limning the curtains of the kitchen. The cook, up to bake, and Maleonarial thought wistfully of bread pudding.
Before continuing on his way. There were three ponds here, impoundments of Helly Pelly Creek, deepening with each weir until the last was—
No one knew how deep. Toneonarial had made what slipped into the water twenty years ago, and at intervals it dug down, piling reeking muck like a canal dancer.
Perhaps that’s what Toneonarial intended, but what he created was in no other way the same. The students named it Slog for no better reason than the name sounded less frightening; the masters had grates installed at once, because it was, in every way. In this one pond, the water never cleared. Around it, for a distance that kept expanding, implying an unusual pattern of growth for a made-beast, tentacles reached out, waiting. They resembled grass, or windblown leaves, or the stone of a path. Even snow.
Any living thing, made or real, that touched a tentacle would be snared and dragged into Slog’s lair, to surface later, drained of whatever life-giving fluid had filled it. Rotting corpses being unpleasant to see floating around, there was a grapple and chain, a very long chain on a hand winch, to retrieve them.
Toneonarial had spent the rest of his life, the few months it took him to use up what life he’d left, on the upper floor. By the time Maleonarial was scribemaster, three attempts to remove Slog had failed, the latest costing Alden Hold a seasoned engineer and three of her crew. Alden Hold, understandably, declared the monster the school’s problem, recommended stronger grates, and left.
Slog was a stationary risk; groundskeepers put markers a generous distance beyond the last known reach of tentacle, presuming common sense. Which inspired students of a certain risk-prone mindset to consider it a game, of sorts, to dash past markers and back again.
Or to sit by one, at night, to write magic alone.
Harn was where he’d expected, a hooded silhouette, a hand lamp by his feet. The light touched, but didn’t penetrate, Slog’s pond, and Maleonarial, seeing how far the markers had spread in twelve years, watched where he stepped and cursed The Hag under his breath.
Quiet, the night. He could hear his own pulse and Harn’s anxious huffs of breath. Hear the scratch of pen to parchment. And before the mage could move faster, to stop the intention—
It flowed into life. Glowing bronze, aflame with sparks of laughter, what might have been a rabbit-sized butterfly but was more like an ache of the heart spread itself and lifted into the air and away.
Gossamer.
Harn bent over and wept.
Afraid to startle him closer to Slog, Maleonarial walked forward quietly, then crouched to grasp Harn’s arm. “Easy,” he soothed as the student did, indeed, start wildly. “It’s me.” He lowered himself to the ground. “I’m sorry, Harn.”
“Because they’re all I can write?” No longer tremulous and uncertain. This was a grown man’s voice, deep-throated and bitter; in the lamplight, his shoulders were wider. Harn had left youth behind.
How many intentions had he made?
“No,” Maleonarial said calmly, hiding his pity. “I apologize for not being here with you sooner. For whatever reason, Her Gift in you is different.”
“Flawed. Weak.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. Kaitealyon reminded us of The Lady’s love for Her Blessed Gossamers. Maybe this is the magic She wants from you.”
“It’s not magic anyone wants.” A shoulder hunched further. “Did you hear what they call me? Rost and Callen and the rest? The Gossamer Mage. Because I can’t hold Her Words in my head. Because they slide and slip out of order the harder I try, the faster I write. Because I’m useless and make useless things.” Harn surged to his feet, throwing his handful of pens at the pond.
Maleonarial rose with him, bringing the lamp. By its light he saw a patch of ground move as though interested. He took hold of Harn’s arm again, to pull him back.
Harn shook free. He’d gained height and weight, was able to look Maleonarial in the eye and as strong, but any fight left him. “Leave me, master,” he said, too quietly.
“Kait would box my ears,” the mage assured him. “Come, Harneonarial. Cook’s in the kitchen, I for one am hungry, and you’ve done magic enough for the night.” For several, by the age of him. “Tomorrow, we’ll see the inkmaster. Time we both had master quality tools, don’t you think? It could help—”
“Yes!”
Faint, the hope that pen, ink, or parchment would make any difference, but he’d guessed rightly Harn would take any offered.
Maleonarial looked up at a shuttered window.
As would he.
* * *
A word with Ansibel, the servant who came to call her to breakfast, produced a welcome change of simples and a bright yellow jerkin with colorful embroidery around collar and cuffs reminiscent of the sashes worn in Alden. Nothing to be done about her pants or cloak, and Kait felt like a flower out of season, but Ansibel promised her clothes would be washed and returned to her room.
Including those in the bag, Kait having removed the made-thrush and set it on the windowsill. Ansibel merely shrugged at the mess inside, as if nothing new.
Here, it likely wasn’t.
The room, by the pleased look Ansibel cast the neatly made bed, was likely hers. She could take no credit, having not slept in it, but somehow the lack of sleep didn’t matter.
Kait went down the stairs to find Leksand busy eating breakfast, box again on the windowsill.
“G’morn, laddie.” She bent to kiss his cheek, taking the seat across from him. Places were set for more. “Where’re the rest?”
He glanced up over a forkful of egg. “Dom said until there was a new scribemaster, he was staying abed.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I think he’s too sore to get up and won’t admit it. I sent a tray with Hardly.”
Kait nodded, helping herself to tea. “How’s it work?”
“We help ourselves,” he informed her, cheerful as any hungry youngster at the prospect. “Nelisti left eggs and sausages in the pan. There’s a pot of porridge, bread, and such. She saved me bread pudding.” He looked longingly at the bowl. “Would you like some?”
“Kind o’ye,” she grinned. “But yer t’one grow’n.” She liked rolling the words off her tongue as she would at home. Liked this unanticipated bit of privacy—but. “I’ll get my plate, then.” She lo
wered her voice though they were still alone. “There’s ought you need to hear.”
He sobered. “Aie.”
Over breakfast, Kait told her son of Pageonarial, if not the upper floor. Of what the historian had to tell them, if not that he’d had himself confined in order to hide. She left out Alden’s dreadful bargain in hopes to never think of it again, though she had, through the long night, but did speak of Maleonarial going to seek out Harn, though she couldn’t speak to the result.
She finished what she was willing to say before Leksand tucked into the pudding, glad his appetite remained unspoiled while she forced food between her lips.
“I’m glad Harn has help,” he told her between mouthfuls.
“Aie. If we don’t take care o’those suffer’n, what good’s the rest?”
“‘The Lady loves best those who care for others.’” He smiled at whatever showed on her face. “You recited the Tenets of a Daughter’s Wisdom in the kitchen for the entire week before leaving for Tiler’s. Ferden and I couldn’t help but memorize them too.”
Kait laughed; there was nothing for it. “As if that lot gave a pig’s snot.” She pretended to frown. “Which is fine for me to say, student-prospect, and not you.”
A spoonful of pudding lifted. Returned slowly to the bowl as Leksand gave her a somber look. “Momma, do you believe we can stop them? That Master Pageonarial will find an answer to the Fell in his books?”
“We—” Seeing Tercle approaching, Kait warned her son with a glance. “G’morning.”
“Don’t ‘g’morning’ me, Kait Alder,” with a fearsome scowl. “We were up all hours watching for your damned owl. And saw nary a one for our trouble.” Tercle stood at the end of their table, glaring at the place settings. “Where’s the damesen?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Leksand replied. “I was first to breakfast, according to the cook.”
“Nor have I.” Kait pointed to a seat. “Join us? No owls,” she promised.
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