“Look at you. Maleonarial returns.” An unsteady chuckle. “Be grateful, boy. We should all be. For The Goddess needs Her scribemaster.” The historian closed his eyes, as if falling asleep. “Snap!”
The made-flies were quick after all.
In a spray of blood and bone, Pageonarial’s head fell from sight. Leksand cried out, but it wasn’t from shock, or not shock alone.
The made-books were turning to ash from the bottom up. Those above broke loose and scampered for the ceiling, but any touching the wall became ash themselves. The rest were consumed even as they fled back to the chair and desk, and bubbles dissolved in midair—
Maleonarial thrust his pen, vial, and parchment in a pocket, taking Leksand by the shoulder to push him to the door.
“We’ve work to do.”
There was only one reason The Hag needed a scribemaster at the school. Page had the answer after all.
Alden’s bargain.
Fire.
* * *
At home, she’d cheerfully threaten the lot with a frying pan, the heavy black one.
At home, Kait thought with some impatience, she wouldn’t need threats in the first place.
“I tried to tell them, Kaitealyon,” Harn said miserably.
She nodded her thanks at him, then put fists to hips; the way a few backed up, they remembered the pose. “There’ll be no writing magic till I say so.”
“If you expect us to stay out here,” a student near the front called, “let us make what’ll keep us warm.”
Another student shouted from back, “Master Xareonarial! Teach us how to write your made-cloak.”
By the smug look on that master’s face, a favored pupil had earned a reward.
Fools.
“You’ll wait for the scribemaster.” Domozuk had gone from determined to fierce, Kait grateful for his presence beside her. “And that isn’t you,” pointing a thick finger at he who’d looked ready to step forward.
A few other masters averted their faces, but she caught their grins. They were no better than their students for mockery and petty disputes. Were none here true friends? Then again, how could they be, Kait thought, for the very nature of mage scribes split them apart. The more talented among them aged out of sequence with the less. The most sought-after masters packed up and left, earning their living—and the school’s—throughout Tananen.
Leaving those who found the school less demanding of their skills and life, if less lucrative.
Whatever their flaws, Kait intended to save everyone of the restive crowd before her. Unfortunately, while many had run outside at Daisy’s alarm without coats, cloaks, or in some cases, shoes? All had a pen in hand. She didn’t see ink, but presumably they’d pockets for such things.
After being on the upper floor, she’d no illusions about what a frightened mage might create to save himself. Or what would happen next. So far, she’d glimpsed Eaters flowing by windows, or flickering along the mortar of walls. No sign outside, near the masters. With luck, if any did emerge, they’d feed on the made-sheep and unseasonable plants and whatever lived at the sunken end of the chains first.
Frightening the mages as they did.
It was then Kait realized the uneasy murmur of complaints and protests had stopped, everyone staring up, at something behind her.
She turned.
In time to see Daisy become ash and drift away.
* * *
Leksand held himself still, though the press and draw of the pen felt like something alive, scoring through parchment and clothing into his skin. “There.” A pat on his shoulder freed him.
Maleonarial set the parchment strip on the floor. Pink made-mice erupted from the dark blot of ink that had been words, Her Words, words Leksand had in his mind, but didn’t know how to use. After the upper floor, he wasn’t sure how he felt about such power.
The made-mice ran faster than any mouse he’d seen, naked tails erect, scattering in every direction. As they ran, they whistled in shrill harmony, a puzzle solved when the mage grabbed one to show him. The tail had holes like a flute. “I call them splits,” Maleonarial said, dropping the wee thing as it tried to bite. When it landed, it bounced, split, and two began to run in opposite directions, whistling. The mage bent and caught both, tucking them in a pocket. “Handy when I wanted the library to myself. I was a student once too, you know,” when Leksand continued to stare at him.
A troublesome one, no doubt. Leksand blinked, wondering how he could have missed the streaks of gray in Maleonarial’s black hair. “Why make them now?”
“Snacks for our guests. And they’ve other use. Come on.”
Moving quickly, he brought them to the main doors of the dining hall. Beyond were the rest of the mages, meaning his mother too, and Leksand reached for a handle.
But Maleonarial wasn’t interested in going outside. He’d gone to the frame around the door, feeling along its outer edge. The wood—butternut, Leksand judged—was carved into fantastical shapes but other than the artistry involved, the piece looked no different from any other around the room.
“Ah.” Fingers pressed, so, and a narrow opening appeared in the upright. Maleonarial hooked a finger inside, pulling forth a black twist of string. “This, Leksand, is the scribemaster’s end of Alden’s bargain. Can you make a spark?” His voice was calm, but he’d a strange, reckless air about him. “I trust a lad from the mountains travels prepared.”
Wordlessly, Leksand produced flint and steel.
“Good. We need to do this together, so—” Maleonarial took an empty glass from the nearest table and turned it upside down over one of the splits from his pocket. He nodded outside. “I’ll go to the gathering hall. When your split expires, light the wick and run.”
He opened one of the doors, pausing to look around the empty dining hall, and it wasn’t regret, Leksand thought.
But farewell.
Then Maleonarial was gone with a rush of chill fresh air, leaving him alone with the Eaters.
Who weren’t a threat to him, not directly. Maleonarial had assured him, on the way down the twisting staircase, an Eater had to know its prospective host. Which wasn’t the helpful thought he’d planned, since the mere possibility of being possessed, of being a puppet of ancient evil—
Leksand shifted the flint and steel to his other hand, rubbing sweat from his palm. He bent to take a closer look at their timekeeper.
The split put its front paws on the glass, tilting its head to look back. Other than the made-horses, and glimpses of oddities during the audience with Tiler’s Hold Lord, he’d little experience with magical things. “Unless you count gossamers,” he told it. “There’s a goodly number in our forests.” Nonetheless, he could see the perfection of this creation. The split was more than a whistle with feet. Dots of deeper pink decorated the skin beneath the fine hair. The whiskers curled upward, their delicate tips glittering—
Why make curled and glittering whiskers at all? Why think of pink dots?
Because Maleonarial could. Because he’d such fine and deliberate control of Her Words and magic he could make anything but chose to make everything—perfect. Craft. Skill. This called to Leksand as nothing about mages had—might he, one day—?
The split became glittering ash.
It wasn’t an Eater come to feed. It mustn’t be.
Leksand dashed to the door frame, came close to dropping the flint, but didn’t, struck hard and true, sending a shower of sparks over the twist of black string.
It flared white hot in answer.
* * *
Those gathered in the commons would have spotted him on the bridge, had they not been transfixed as the Eaters consumed Daisy. His proudest accomplishment, the one that made him scribemaster and cost him a year. Maleonarial felt nothing but gratitude for the distraction.
And for Leksand Loggerson. No time
to summon trusty Domozuk to help, or Kait, but he’d no doubt of the boy. Urgency beat through his bones; shortened his breaths. The Eaters had reached the upper floor—they’d taken Daisy from this roof. If they’d any chance, if it wasn’t already too late, it had to be done now.
He entered the hall, forced to stop and let eyes blinded by sunlight adjust to the relative gloom. As in the dining hall, he heard ghosts, felt memories. Saeleonarial’s laugh. The intricate splendor of Her Words and triumph of piecing them together—
The sickening moment he’d realized if mages were to stop dying for splendor and triumph, She had to end, and it was up to him.
His fingers found the catches quicker this time. Brought out the wick. He’d no trusty flint and steel, but no mage scribe used sparks to start fire.
Maleonarial formed the intention, checked it, then knelt with his pen filled with ink and ready, his eyes on the pink within his lightly closed fist.
And when the split became ash, he wrote what burned.
* * *
The concussion knocked her back, sent others to the ground. As Kait found her footing, she realized there must have been two blasts, for both main buildings of the mage school had collapsed in a mass of tumbling stone and roaring flame. The destruction spread in a wave, every building being linked to its neighbors, and none remained whole.
Good thing her son hadn’t moved in.
Which was shock talking, she knew full well, because there was nothing good about this unless—
SCREAMS!
—not heard, but felt. Not from lungs, but from what writhed and burned, and Kait would have felt pity even for the Eaters if their death cries weren’t threatening to boil the brain in her skull—
Silence.
She moved encased in it, oblivious to those around her, needing to be sure. Flinched when a billow of black smoke crossed her path, but that’s all it was and she settled again.
Searing heat forced her to stop short of where the made-swan had greeted them, but that was close enough. Kait closed her eyes and listened.
Wind—
But it wasn’t.
Breathing. Each breath steady as stone and slow as seasons. As if the world itself drew in, let out, what wasn’t air at all.
Undisturbed. Untroubled.
Asleep.
Nothing more. She felt tears of relief spilling down her cheeks. Nothing more.
Hands grasped her. “Momma! Are you all right?”
A deeper voice, “Daughter, are the Eaters destroyed?”
Kait opened her eyes, smiled at faces blurred by tears, and nodded.
“Aie.”
* * *
Momma wasn’t all right, not yet, Leksand told himself. She wouldn’t leave the flames, for one thing, as if despite her assurance the Eaters had themselves been consumed, she kept watch nonetheless.
If she’d stop watching, he’d be able to tell her. How masters came to an end. How they succumbed to age while too young to die and how could it be kinder to write what could sever a head and leaving it staring up from a pool of—
“Leksand.”
Leksand turned from his mother. “Pardon?”
“I said isn’t it incredible?” Harn repeated patiently. “Maleonarial—and you—will be in history books across Tananen. This will.” Grinning, the other waved an arm in case it was possible to miss the ruination to every side save one.
On that, the field and the gate and the road to Alden, people busied themselves. Made-horses sped messengers to the hold, though the twin pillars of smoke would take the news first. Three of nine masters, including Xareonarial, had also fled, to avoid being picked as scribemaster during the laborious period to come.
Of those remaining, one had made himself a shelter shaped like an amorous flower, another like a living furred hide, and more living constructions were popping into existence. Students huddled over parchments, pens working. Made-pigs, made-toads, made-firemoths.
“Why are they doing that?” Leksand demanded, listless. He didn’t look at Harn, because Harn no longer was Harn, but someone much older who should be Harn’s uncle or father. “Why aren’t they helping one another?” The staff were. “Why make useless things?”
“They can’t help it. I couldn’t, if not for doing magic most of the night. And—they’re afraid to be cold.”
“It isn’t cold.” It was hot, so hot they risked eyelashes staying this close.
Harn made a sound; he didn’t listen. Threw up his hands and left him.
Leksand didn’t care. His name hung in Alden’s hall. It didn’t belong there or in histories. He’d struck a flint at the scribemaster’s command. Managed to escape. Stood now as much a slave to the result’s raging beauty as his mother, for there was nought else to do—nought else left—
As if she’d heard her name in his thoughts, Momma stirred, fluffing herself like a waking bird. “Tsk. Laddie, you’ve scorched your hand.”
He made himself smile at her. “An ember caught me. It’s nothing.” But nothing would do save his mother produce a clean strip of cloth, like magic herself, to bind the angry red score. “Feels better,” he said when she was done and regarding him a little too intently.
“The school will rebuild. It always does.”
“It’s n’that.”
She looked to the crowd of useless, self-centered mages and snorted. When her gaze returned, her face was set and stern. “You didn’t risk your life for them, Leksand. You served and defended The Lady. You’ve helped save Her.”
Leksand opened his arms and gathered her up, resting his chin on her head. As long as he could remember, she’d known the words to lift his heart.
As long as he could remember, he’d told her what burdened it. “I don’t want to be like them,” he whispered. “Goddess forgive me, I don’t want Her Gift any more.”
He felt her stiffen, being a daughter, then sigh, for she was more.
“Aie.”
* * *
Maleonarial didn’t watch his made-swift disappear into the clouds. It would find Affarealyon, most likely on the road and halfway here, and speak to her with his voice. He’d sent the hold daughter the blunt truth. “I invoked Alden’s bargain to destroy the evil we brought here. As my final duty as scribemaster, I charge you to care for those left homeless, knowing this is no light burden.”
Then, more words had tumbled from his lips before he’d known he’d say them, or thought them, but they too were true. “Wait before you rebuild, Affar. There may not be another mage school.”
Not if he could help it. With the end of the Eaters, the end of the school—with a body still hale and whole—was he not free to continue his quest? To end The Hag’s rule over them. To save the Saels and Pages and Harns and the hapless fools wasting life to magic themselves warm when blankets were on carts heading up the road, because the feeling magic gave vanquished the fear and grief this day deserved.
End The Hag and magic, to keep poor battered Leksand where he now stood, in his mother’s arms. Send him home. Both of them. He’d trust Kait could keep the boy from writing long enough for his mission to succeed.
Maleonarial strode faster toward the pair, ignoring the sparks and soot flying through the air like so many made-flies, the ground and pond painted red with flames’ reflection. He’d make them a team for the carriage. If they left now, they could catch a barge—
Why was the cook heading for the pair too?
With something under her arm—
He broke into a run.
* * *
“Harrr.” The cook held Insom’s box out to Leksand, her sweat-drenched face beaming.
He didn’t reach for it.
She thrust it at his chest with louder, less pleased “HAAARRR,” as if to say she’d lugged it around long enough and he’d bloody well better be grateful.
“Th
ank you, Nelisti,” Leksand said quickly, taking the thing after all. “Thank you very much.”
“Narr.”
Kait watched her walk away, a cook without a kitchen. “Hardly’s family has a bakery. I wonder if she knows. What do you think, laddie? Leksand?”
He was no longer beside her. She looked around frantically.
There he was, walking toward the burning building, the box in his hands. She ran to catch up, half skipped to keep up. “What are you doing?”
He showed her the box. “I don’t want any of this.”
Fair enough. “N’need t’cook ourselves, laddie. Ye kin toss it from here,” Kait suggested, heart aching at the despair in his dear face.
He stopped and she caught a reassuring glimmer of an earlier self in his abashed, “Oh, aie.”
But as he lifted the red and black box, with its brass edges and catch, Kait remembered the feeling she’d had in the carriage, and the sealed inkwell belonging to Insom and Pylor’s father before him. “Wait!”
Leksand raised an eyebrow at her, looking now about to laugh. “Why?”
She didn’t hear or see anything.
They’d hidden before. “Take the inkwell and throw it first, into the hottest part of the fire.”
His face went sickly pale. With exaggerated care, Leksand set on the ground the box that had accompanied them from Tiler’s Hold to this moment, an object that, in hindsight, seemed determined to follow and find him. Kait watched him remove the lid and take out the gleaming metal inkwell. He stood and threw it with the same powerful arc that drove many an axe blade deep in the old pine at home.
Sparks shot up when it landed, in the towering flames of what had been a staircase, and Kait dared breathe again. “Let that be the last.”
The lid flew next, then Leksand grabbed the box and aimed it at the fire. He hesitated to nod a greeting to the mage, who joined them and stood silently by. “I’ll not need this. I’ll not write Her Words.”
The Gossamer Mage Page 31