The Gossamer Mage

by Julie E. Czerneda

And once thought? The jostling didn’t help.

  Such ordinary discomfort. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or sob. Neither, given the state of things. “We’re almost there,” he began.

  The carriage stopped, along with all sound. Even the Eater was quiet.

  “Seems so,” his mother commented, then gave him a fierce hug. “Ready to see The Lady’s home, laddie?”

  Leksand squirmed. She’d know, being a daughter, what would offend a goddess.

  “Kin I take a piss first?”

  * * *

  There was nothing to see. Though the sun shone somewhere, perhaps everywhere else, here, at the end of the road, fog licked her boots and erased the fingertips of her outstretched hand. The made-team might stand in their traces, for all Kait could see from the now-essential anchor of a muddy carriage wheel.

  Silence, save for companionable waterfalls by the other wheel. She’d taken care of her own comfort in that regard, quite sure The Lady had other concerns. Courteous of Leksand to inquire, given everything else, but he was that.

  Moisture condensed on her skin, formed drops where it could. She ran her tongue over her lips, to find them dry.

  Not fog, then. She waved a tentative hand back and forth. The gray stuff flowed with the motion, as if dancing—

  A shadow loomed. Kait relaxed, hearing muted bells. The mage and her son, following the side of the carriage to rejoin her. “It wasn’t this thick when I was here,” Maleonarial said, frowning.

  “It’s not fog,” she informed them. Something tickled her ear. Flew up her nose, making her sneeze. “These are gossamers.”

  As if they’d waited to be named, the gray bloomed every color and flowed in its dance this way and that, giggling like spring and flowers and all the joy in the world. They stood immersed in a shimmering rainbow of gossamers too small to be otherwise seen and Kait thrilled to the wonder of it.

  “Here. HERE. HERE!” came the shrill and terrible shout.

  Black fume moved like stabs of lightning, reaching everywhere.

  Taking—

  * * *

  He was free.

  Why was it night? It hadn’t been night—

  And wasn’t, Leksand realized. With awareness came searing agony, for he wasn’t free. He stood rigid and unable to move, his mouth opened till the corners of his lips split and bled, while out poured what smothered color and stole light—

  How could the Eater, which had hidden in a pen, continue to vomit forth from his mouth, so that he couldn’t catch breath and felt darkness of another sort closing in—

  And why did he taste the sea?

  He couldn’t see the Eater as could the daughter, but nothing else would roll back the gossamer fog in huge arching waves, letting through the sun, revealing their boots and the mud of the road, and the dead stalks of reeds.

  Maleonarial turned to Leksand. Stopped in stunned horror. Blood flowed from either side of a mouth torn open, face convulsed in a rictus of soundless shout. He recovered and moved as the boy choked, unable to breathe. Supported him as he dropped to his knees and where was his mother, that she hadn’t come to her son?

  * * *

  Intended words. Consequential phrases. Passages fraught and a syllabus too dreadful to endure. Her Words, all for this moment.

  For the last, most perilous dictates to be uttered.

  Kait turned her back on her suffering son and the mage.

  . . . black plumes grasp and take. As before.

  She remembers.

  Took a step away.

  . . . gossamers break and are consumed. As before.

  She remembers. Remembers, once, how hope failed and all was almost lost.

  Took one more step, ignored by the Eaters for their prize was in reach and they left all else to seize it. Her Soul. Not a tower. Towering. Not stone. Clear crystal spires, shot through with topaz sparks, rising to the sky.

  . . . exposed as what shielded them since the days of ice and fire, for there’d been both, She tried both, She remembers, fall to the enemy.

  Feeds the enemy. Not enough. It hadn’t been. She remembers.

  Wouldn’t be. For what had been like Her, long ago and loved, had diminished to nothing more than appetite. Blind but cunning. An evil satisfied by nothing less than the end of things, and not even that.

  Crystal spires filled with roiling shadows, black and thick and purposeful. Her ears, the ones that heard beyond this world, filled with their screams of triumph. United, again. All the magic of the world, all the life, theirs to plunder. Again.

  She remembers.

  But this time is different.

  This time She is not alone.

  Kait Alder, once a humble daughter from Woodshaven, opens Her mouth to speak. “ ”

  * * *

  Her Soul. For a heartbeat, less, Maleonarial saw splendor beyond imagining or comprehension, as if he’d looked into the sun or the heart of the world.

  So that he cried out in anguish to witness the spires befouled, darkness spreading out in seething waves—

  Leksand heaved a breath, sobbed it out and coughed out blood. Maleonarial took hold of the boy and held him tight, having no idea what else to do. If this was the end, for what else could it be with gossamers disappearing and destruction spreading in all directions as if there’d been flames he hadn’t seen—

  Best this way.

  “Look at me, mage.” The command was rock against ice.

  He held Leksand and looked up, for how could he not, and Kait looked down at him in her bright yellow jerkin and cloak, her eyes become hard glittering gems.

  The answer to the question he hadn’t dared think.

  “No,” he whispered. “No.” But he’d known, hadn’t he. He’d never met Kait Alder, for she’d never left her forests and village. Only her shape stood before him. “Her Designate.”

  “Yes,” the roar of wildfire across grass. “As I became yours, for when you came and found what you called magic, what was left of me, you named me Lady and Goddess. And when you found those among you touched by magic, by me, you named them daughter and mage. You took from me like tiny Eaters, so I must take from you or dream myself into death.”

  Why weren’t they dead now? He tore his gaze from Her face, or She allowed it, to see they and the carriage, the muddy road beneath, were all that remained. Around circled darkness and hunger. Above mocked a disc of cold blue sky.

  Within was quiet as a tomb.

  “Why aren’t we dead?” he demanded, lifting his head. “Why save us, if we mean so little to you?”

  “You mean everything. You create gossamers.”

  More than his share—but the mage hesitated, feeling on the cusp of understanding. “Why do gossamers matter to you?”

  The murmur of raindrops through leaves. “Gossamers make magic.” Kait’s tender smile, those ancient, aloof eyes. “They were gone, once. I remember. The Eaters won and gossamers lived solely in my dreams of what was and would never again be, until you arrived and began to write them back into the world.”

  “Mistakes—”

  The crack of lightning through wood. “All else you make is the mistake, mage. Twisting My Words to serve petty needs. Squandering what little magic has returned, so I must replenish it.”

  The drip of snow melt. The distant call of geese, returning. “You create gossamers when you forget greed and fear. When you dare listen to your dreams and mine. Hadn’t you noticed, little mage? Gossamers like you.”

  This last in Kait’s voice, so Leksand stirred in his arms and tried to speak.

  “Easy, boy,” Maleonarial said gently. The wounds to the corners of his mouth weren’t life-threatening, but there was no telling the damage inside. “What now, Hag? We die together?”

  Wind across frozen w
astes. “Once, I’d the power to push the Eaters into the ocean. Since, My Veil and Fist kept them at bay.” An avalanche ripping trees from a mountainside. “Now, they have found their way past my defenses. All are here. Soon, they will have this, too.” Her hands indicated the tiny circle of road, then came to rest over her heart.

  Death it was.

  Leksand struggled to stand; Maleonarial steadied him. “W’came t’help.” Blood cascaded down his cheeks with every word, but he didn’t stop, or couldn’t. “Wha’kin we do?”

  “Laddie, ye did your share. You brought my enemy, our enemy, together and here.” Thunder rolled over a plain, freshening hope. “Only I can stop them. Not as this fragment. Most of me dreams, still. But you, Master Maleonarial, Hermit Mage and Scribemaster, you can awaken me.” An unexpected laugh, as if between friends. “You almost have many times before.”

  He avoided Leksand’s desperate pleading look. “I was trying to end you.”

  “No,” and Her Voice was the first soft breath of spring, moving the bells in his hair. “You’ve tried to restore me, for there was nothing good or natural in the taking from one another. Nothing good about gossamers being thought mistakes and twisted made-things being judged right. Now, mage, awaken the rest of me.”

  Impossible. Ridiculous. What was he supposed to write? Maleonarial pulled out his pen, fumbled for ink. Heard Her laugh and dared frown. “What?”

  “You’ve never needed to write magic. Only to believe in your intention.”

  It wasn’t that easy. Had never been easy. He fumbled to understand. “I believe.”

  “In magic. Now believe in yourself, as I do. As Leksand does. As Kait.” She went on tiptoe and he bowed so her lips met his forehead. Offering warmth and comfort, as a mother to a son. Belief, that too—

  And when Kait who was The Lady and The Deathless Goddess and what he’d yet to meet and couldn’t begin to comprehend smiled?

  What could he do but smile back.

  “Now, mage. The word you’ve always known, but not yet intended. My name.

  “TANANEN.”

  * * *

  Leksand watched comprehension light Maleonarial’s face. Watched the mage lift his hand and write in the air with swift sure strokes.

  Where he wrote, light followed, tracing Her Words so when Leksand closed his eyes, they shone still.

  When he opened his eyes, the world had changed.

  But what he saw first, all he saw, was the pile of glittering bronze ash where his mother had been.

  And he wept.

  * * *

  What slept beneath the earth awoke to its name.

  TANANEN.

  * * *

  The Eaters, ready to sup on all the magic in the world and bring destruction, did not see their doom coming, for it rose from the very earth to draw them down into a well both endless and dark.

  Having nothing else to consume, they began to feast on themselves, muttering with delighted pain and thwarted plans and so did not see.

  When flame followed, bringing an end.

  It was given to Maleonarial alone the chance to see what he had done.

  The crystal spires, cleansed, again rose brilliant and clear, with topaz glinting like sparks. Far above, flame writhed from jaws the size of mountains, wings owned the sky, and an eye like the sun, wild and bright, found him.

  Winked.

  Then vanished, leaving a laugh.

  He’d made a gossamer.

  And it wasn’t the euphoria of magic spent he felt, but something better, something warmer. Joy, it was, and with that he realized nothing hurt, nothing of him had aged.

  No taking. That’s what She’d wanted. Only giving.

  “I’m a Gossamer Mage.” Was there a bell remotely big enough? Maleonarial half bent, hands on his knees, laughing. “A gossamer!”

  “Sir?”

  At the pained sound, he straightened. Poor Leksand. An intention occurred to him, and instead of thinking too much about it, the mage sent his finger scribbling through the air. Small twin gossamers popped into existence, flying at Leksand, who tried quite desperately to wave them away.

  “It’s all right,” Maleonarial said, because it was, and the gossamers worked their tender magic on the boy’s cheeks, so that an instant later, there were no wounds at all.

  The gossamers pulled Leksand’s hair and vanished.

  Leksand felt his face in wonder, then his eyes dropped to the ground. “M’Mom. She died at home, didn’t she.”

  The signs had been there. Only Kait could see the Eaters. Only she heard the singers. Not because of a special ability, but because She’d been Tananen all along.

  “Yet was with us,” the mage offered, believing that was true too. Kait Alder may have given her life to The Lady in Woodshaven, but what possessed her had let her be Kait until the very last. “The Lady let her stay with you.”

  The boy sniffed, but managed a brave, if wan smile. “Aie.” He looked around. “What do we do now, sir?”

  Maleonarial put his arm around Leksand’s shoulders, feeling the inner strength of the Gift that came from Tananen.

  “I believe we’ve gossamers to make.”

  Fundamental Lexicon

  The world was once barren.

  Now it is not, for magic lives and breathes and loves again.

  We were once alone.

  Now we are not, for magic flows within those of us who dare to dream.

  Magic, once, was lost.

  Now it will never be, for magic is again part of the world and us.

  And the stories we’ve yet to write, together.

  INCIDENTAL POETRY

  Wendealyon herself escorted Leksand Loggerson to the hold lord’s closed door. “I feel the same,” the hold daughter said abruptly. “How can that be?”

  “We aren’t what’s changed.” People will want answers, Maleonarial had said before their ways parted. Tell them what we witnessed and were told. Share the truth we know. So Leksand paused politely. “I’ve told you what happened. Tiler’s was never abandoned to the Eaters. The Lady came as my mother to save you.”

  Her eyes filled with grief. “But . . . The Lady is gone.”

  No, his mother was. The Lady had never existed beyond a construct of smaller awestruck minds and that was a terrible truth.

  Yet not the only one. “Listen for Her. Do you not feel Her Presence? Her Words?”

  Grief faded. “I—do. I think I do. Yes,” with sudden confidence. Then a flicker of confusion. “She’s not the same.”

  No, She was again Herself, Tananen, the greatest gossamer of them all and the living fount of magic in the world, and the marvel? Wasn’t any of those things, Maleonarial had said, and Leksand believed.

  It was that She had a heart, one that valued and encompassed all that lived within Her realm.

  As for Her Gift?

  It might not comfort Wendealyon in this moment that some were born connected to magic, able to hear it speak, but from now on, Maleonarial believed, all would be.

  Leksand put his hand on the door. “If I may, Hold Daughter?” He lowered his voice. “I have experience in such matters.” And hadn’t he tasted saltwater, as the Eater abandoned its host to join its kind? Hadn’t he known its source?

  The lungs of a man, almost drowned.

  Wendealyon’s grief returned. “You’re as kind as your mother, Leksand, but there’s nothing to be done for him. We’ve tried. We must choose the next hold lord. As you said, much has changed.”

  Her Veil being no longer a guarantee of death for those from outside, though the attention of newly bold gossamers was a filter of itself. The Snarlen Sea was no longer a barrier to those of Tananen who sought a wider world.

  Or, just perhaps, to magic.

  The change, Leksand thought, was just beginning. “Allow me to try, please,
” he told Wendealyon, and bowed.

  To his embarrassment, she bowed back. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” And walked away.

  Leksand opened the door, greeted by the smell of sickness. Missed the pot, his Momma’d say as she’d wipe up the mess or have him do it, for somehow they’d be the ones helping whoever had the croup or worse.

  A fire burned in the grate. Lamps burned in every corner of what was a grand room, an explorer’s room, full of globes and books. Maps hung on the walls and one had been worked into a bedcover, as though the form supine beneath needed to know where he was.

  Or had forgotten.

  Leksand walked to the bed and sat in the chair left beside it. Insom stared up, eyes seeing what wasn’t there, his face writ in lines of anguish and despair.

  Leksand found the hold lord’s hand and held it tight. “I know, m’lord, that you can hear me,” he said quietly. “I’ve been in the dark well and almost lost hope, but I didn’t and you mustn’t for we’ve won.

  “The Eaters have been defeated. They’re gone, perished in flame.

  “Pylor knew you fought the Eater. More than anything, she wanted to save you.”

  A blink. A tear.

  Leksand leaned closer. “I’m here to help you, m’lord. Follow my voice and climb out. It won’t be easy.

  “But I’ll stay till you do.”

  * * *

  Tambler’s Inn in Alden Hold had a narrow raised stage for musicians, but few noticed, busy imbibing and embroiled in typically raucous conversation. Tonight, though, mugs remained midair and you’d have heard a pin drop, for on the stage, floating from side to side, was a singer the likes of which hadn’t been heard since before the days of ice and fire.

  When the last echo of song sank warm into hearts, the singer laughed and flew away through the ceiling.