by Dawn Cook
“But remember what happened the last time?” the anxious man pleaded. “We nearly lost the both of you.”
Lodesh gazed at Alissa. He knew his look wasn’t far from hunger, and he didn’t care if Reeve saw it. It was as if she was the only one who could save him from a life alone and afraid to care. “Alissa,” he said evenly, “is already a Keeper. She can’t also be a latent shaduf.”
His head bowed, Reeve said nothing.
Lodesh closed his eyes as he gathered strength. That night had thrown him into a self-imposed seclusion, convinced anything he cared about would be ripped from him as was his mother and then Sati. It had been a small task to learn how charm could be used to keep an unhealthy distance between himself and any who would try to reach him. He was quite secure. Safe, untouched—and alone.
Reeve stirred. “I just worry, Lodesh,” he said slowly.
“I have to ask,” he whispered. “I don’t care if she answers. But I have to ask.”
Finally Reeve managed a smile, but disquiet still haunted his eyes. Lodesh blew in relief as Reeve put a hand on his shoulder, giving him his blessing even as the west wind slipped under the trees, bringing with it the sound of a horse ridden hard.
It was Earan, red-faced and sweating, who reined up before them. “Lodesh,” Earan panted, sounding cross. “Your presence is required in the citadel.”
“I’m busy—” Lodesh began, frowning at the lathered state of Earan’s trembling mount.
“Now, little brother,” Earan snapped. “There’s been an accident. A wall under construction has fallen. Uncle and Father were under it. Uncle is dead. Father is alive but isn’t expected to make it through the night.”
“Father . . .” Lodesh whispered, his sight going vacant and his pulse quickening.
“You do remember Father, don’t you?” Earan said with a sneer.
“Enough,” Reeve said coldly, and he whistled sharply. Frightful thudded in under the trees, his neck arched and his bony head high. Dazed, Lodesh vaulted onto his back.
“Alissa.” Lodesh turned to see her alone and small in the very center of the grove, her arms clasped tightly about herself. She had heard everything and looked frightened.
“I’ll see her and Kally to the Hold,” Reeve assured him, his eyes full of grief. Lodesh knew it wasn’t for the Warden, nor even for his father, but for him. “Go!” Reeve shouted, and Earan yanked his horse about with a squeal of protest. Lodesh and Earan bolted from the shade of trees and into the blinding sun.
Slowly the man who had raised Lodesh moved to replace the moss torn up by the hooves, stomping each clump into the earth as if his life depended upon it.
14
Strell focused upon Talo-Toecan. “I’m not sure I understand,” he said as he ran a shaky hand across his cheeks. The thick stubble was harsh against his fingertips.
“I’m not sure I understand it myself,” the Master said “I’m not sure I understand it myself,” the Master said somberly. Settling farther into his chair, Talo-Toecan sent his gaze from his cup, to Lodesh, and finally to the pot of tea upon the hearth in the Keepers’ dining hall. Grimacing, he topped off his cup. Lodesh had made the tea; Strell knew it wasn’t as good as Alissa’s had been.
Is, he thought furiously, feeling himself tighten in panic. As good as Alissa’s is. She wasn’t gone if Talo-Toecan was right, just misplaced—Wolves, she was lost in the garden.
It had only been this morning that Talo-Toecan had swooped down on his bat wings, nearly knocking Strell over as he stopped him from running to Ese’Nawoer. In all fairness, the only reason Strell agreed to return to the Hold was Talo-Toecan’s assurance that he knew what had happened. Now that Strell knew, he wasn’t quite sure he believed it. It sounded too unreal.
Why not? he decided with a hopeless chortle. The idea that Alissa had shifted herself to the past was only slightly more insane than the idea that she could turn herself into a raku. He forced his breathing even as his grief arose anew. She had gone back using a septhama point. Sand and Wind, he hated septhama points. They had something to do with ghosts, and he hated ghosts. The plains were full of them. “You say she finished her shift where the septhama point originated,” he said. “Why didn’t you warn her it could happen?”
The Master scoured his forehead in an unusual show of weariness. “I didn’t know it could be done,” he whispered.
“How could you not!” Strell cried in frustration. “You are her teacher!”
Lodesh turned from arranging the fire, shock in his eyes at Strell’s accusation.
“Yes,” the Master admitted, his eyes narrowing. “But I’ve done the same thing myself, as recently as just this morning, and never ended my shift anywhere but where I expected to. The patterns don’t cross. It’s impossible to run them simultaneously.”
Strell slumped in on himself. “Where did she go?” It was a weary, heartfelt question. Exhausted and drained, he watched Lodesh turn his back on them and needlessly arrange the fire.
“There’re numerous septhama points at the firepit,” Talo-Toecan said. “It would be difficult to know for sure which one she fixed on. I wasn’t paying that close attention.”
Lodesh cleared his throat. “It can’t be any more than five hundred sixty years, Strell. The Hold is only that old.”
“The firepit was constructed long before the Hold,” the Master said. “The garden was built around it much as the Hold was built over the holden. I don’t know where she is.”
“Did she get there safely?” Strell breathed, not caring how old the firepit was.
“I don’t know.”
Strell closed his eyes. “Can she get back?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Talo-Toecan said again.
Struggling to keep himself intact, Strell breathed in her scent lingering in her chair. He had lost her. He would get her back. “I can feel her, sometimes. How is it I can do that?”
Talo-Toecan stirred. “I don’t know.”
15
“Are you sure, dearie?”
Alissa smiled as she pulled herself in from the window. “Yes, Mavoureen. I like this room.” Turning her back upon the distant roofs of Ese’Nawoer, Alissa felt a wash of satisfaction as she sent her gaze over the familiar walls of her room.
The bed looked about the same, though the spread across it had clearly seen better days. Before the fireplace was what once was a chair. Now it was more suitable for firewood. Actually, all the furniture, sparse as it was, was mismatched and old. Only the shelves above the hearth had any shine to them, and they practically glistened under the varnish that Mav was energetically dusting. It seemed as if this was the forgotten backroom where the old furniture went when new was commissioned.
“The room next is empty too,” Mav said, continuing her efforts though there was no dust and never would be. “No one thought to offer you these, seeing as their chimneys connect.”
“I don’t mind.” Alissa shook out the moth-eaten curtains. Still no dust. The Hold’s nightly sweep for dust was a blessing.
“You’d be the first Keeper who didn’t,” was Mav’s tart reply. “Perfectly fine room going empty because you might hear your neighbor tending his fire.”
“There’s no one in there,” Alissa added. “You would think at least one of these rooms would be used.”
“Not them Keepers,” Mav said caustically. “Darn fool sensitive if you ask me. Always harping on this or that.” Then she blinked and smiled at Alissa with her clear, old eyes. “Present company excepted, of course.”
Alissa grinned back. “Course.”
“I’m surprised Lodesh, the dear boy, didn’t want to show you these rooms himself. His room is only three down,” she murmured as she pulled back the spread to find there were no sheets. “Good thing I brought up clean,” she said, ripping the cover free with such gusto that Alissa didn’t have the heart to tell her she usually slept in a chair before the fire.
Alissa took the spread as Mav extended it. “Lodesh stayed at
the city,” she said. “Didn’t Kally tell you?”
“No.” Mav snapped a sheet over the cot, and it settled with an enviable perfection. “The child hardly said two words to me when she got back. Mumbled something about potatoes and then ran to the storeroom annex. Didn’t she get the gray?” She turned, her green eyes glinting in ire.
“Oh, yes,” Alissa quickly reassured her. She went quiet, concerned for Lodesh. The loss of his father would be hard, even if they were estranged.
Mav grumped in relief, and together they shook out the blanket. The prickly sound of wool filled the air. “There, that’s done,” Mav said, patting the horrid, tiny pillow. “There’s a necessity at the end of the hall,” she said, laboriously bending to peek under the bed. “But you have a chamber pot if you’d rather. Can you ward your own windows when it rains?”
Wincing, she shook her head. Useless hadn’t shown her how yet as it “wasn’t needful.” She could remove them, though, as he wouldn’t risk her flying into a warded tower balcony.
Standing by the bed, Mav’s brow furrowed in thought. “No reason to give Earan any more fuel for his fire. Have Lodesh ward them for you until Redal-Stan rectifies the situation.” She gave a harrumph. “If he ever does. The inconsiderate beast seldom remembers anything that doesn’t revolve around his comfort.”
Alissa nodded, embarrassed to have admitted her ignorance.
“Just wait until I get a hold of Lodesh, the scamp,” Mav grumbled. “Leaving you and Kally to make your way back alone. I thought I taught him better.”
“Reeve brought us back,” Alissa said as she began to lay a small fire for later. “It wasn’t as if Earan gave Lodesh much choice.”
“Earan? What about Earan?”
Alissa thought she would have to arrange for more wood soon, especially if she went without window wards. She wasn’t going to admit to anyone she hadn’t been taught how to work them yet. “Haven’t you heard?” Alissa continued. “The entire Hold is buzzing with it.”
“Heard what, dearie? No one tells me anything, except how the potatoes should have been cooked.”
Still at the hearth, Alissa knelt and craned her neck, trying to spot where the flues joined. “A wall fell upon the Warden and his brother. It killed the Warden outright,” she said into the chimney. “Lodesh stayed because his father isn’t expected to make it through the night.”
Satisfied the flues really did join, she backed out of the immaculately swept hearth. “Did you know the Warden was Lodesh’s uncle?” she asked, but got no response.
“Mavoureen?” she said, turning to find her collapsed in a frighteningly small heap of flour-dusted cloth.
16
“You cold, cruel, inhumane piece of foothills—” “Earan!” Lodesh shouted, looking up from Mav lying unconscious upon Alissa’s bed.
“I’m sorry,” Alissa whispered. She stood with her hands clutched about her arms. “I didn’t know she was your grandmother.”
Earan paced, the sound of his booted feet going through the thin rug to the floor. He halted aggressively before her. Alissa raised her eyes, running them up his rumpled clothes. They looked slept in. “Everyone else knows,” he mocked.
“As you pointed out, Earan, she isn’t from here.” Rising from Mav, Lodesh removed his outer jacket. He glanced about, then tossed it to the rickety chair.
Earan’s face grew ugly. “To callously tell an old woman her sons—her only children in the world—are dead. It’s a wonder she’s alive at all!”
Lodesh stiffened. “That’s enough.”
“I’m so sorry,” Alissa whispered, slumping in guilt. “I didn’t know.”
Several voices whispered in the hall, but no one looked in, reluctant to get involved in a Keepers’ argument. The hand Lodesh put on Alissa’s shoulder was trembling. “Alissa has hardly left her side these two days,” he said. “Tending her all this time.”
“Probably waiting for the chance to stick a knife in her and steal her shoes.” The huge Keeper began pacing, looking like a caged fox Alissa had once seen at market. “An addlebrained, rogue Keeper sends the last elder of my house into a death state so deep all I can do is watch her die. It’s her fault. And you’re defending her!”
Lodesh’s fingers moved spasmodically and slipped from Alissa. “She may recover,” he said, “and she is the last elder of our house, not yours.”
Earan spun, his face flushed. “You never gave a breath of consideration to those that birthed you. Mucking about in the field with that worthless man, ignoring your responsibilities, and fostering your attentions on a no-account stand of trees!”
Alissa felt Lodesh’s grip upon his emotions slip. “I have listened to you for two days as we settled Father’s affairs,” he said softly. “Shut up or leave.”
“I’m not leaving.” Earan’s ringed finger went out and stabbed towards Alissa. “She is.”
Knowing Mav’s real kin should take over, Alissa obediently stepped to the door, halting as Lodesh took her arm. Her mournful gaze rose to his, and she read the anguish of what she had wrought with her careless, thoughtless words. Earan was right. It was her fault.
Her face must have shown her thoughts, because Earan adopted a confident stance. “See,” he demanded. “She knows she killed Mav as surely as having given her poison.”
“Get out, Earan.” Lodesh’s voice was so cold it was frightening. The tension in the room swelled. The whispering in the hall turned to an expectant hush.
“Don’t tell me what to do—little brother.” Earan stepped closer. His hands clenched.
“Get out,” Lodesh demanded, “before you do something as foolish as your words are.”
“And I expect you think you can make me?” Earan’s face twisted as Lodesh stood toe-to-toe with his brother towering over him. Alissa held her breath, afraid. Lodesh didn’t move, and finally Earan stepped back. “I’ll leave,” he said with a sneer, and her breath eased from her. Then she froze as she felt a ward go up. “After I dispense a Keeper’s justice.”
“Earan! No!” Nisi cried in horror from the hall.
“Don’t be a fool!” Lodesh shouted.
“It’s my right!” Earan bellowed. Face twisting with anger, he sent a burst of energy at them. There was a flash and boom of sound as Alissa defused the strike with a ward of light and Lodesh did the same with a ward of sound. Her heart pounded, and she fell back to the hearth, shocked Earan had attacked her.
“Stop it!” Nisi cried in the doorway, her hands over her ears. “Stop it, both of you!”
Earan’s face was ugly. There was a tug of a second ward. Alissa gasped a warning.
Redal-Stan appeared beside Nisi. “What under my Master’s Wolves is going on!”
Earan nearly fell in his haste to spin about. “It’s my right!” he shouted wildly. Then he caught himself. The resonance of his ward across Alissa’s tracings vanished.
No one said anything as Redal-Stan’s unhappy gaze went from Earan’s stained boots, to Nisi’s wide eyes, to Alissa’s frightened ones, to Lodesh’s tense stance, and finally to Mav, unconscious on the bed. His jaw clenched, making him look old. “Would anyone,” he said tightly, “care to explain why I was disturbed from my morning’s studies with tales of feral men within the Keepers’ halls?”
Earan stroked his beard and glared at nothing.
“I see.” Redal-Stan entered and took an aggressive stance in the middle of the room. “Earan,” he directed to the large man, “you’re excused from your duties for no less than four days beginning now. You may use your newfound time to scrape the front steps.”
“The front steps!” Earan took a protesting step back. “That’s a student’s punishment!”
Redal-Stan closed the gap between them. His face held a severe anger, and Alissa’s eyes widened. “Which is exactly whom you were acting like.” Earan opened his mouth. Redal-Stan took another, unnerving step forward. He arched his nonexistent eyebrows. Only a finger width apart, he whispered into the startled man’s fa
ce, “You wish to discuss it further— Keeper?”
Suddenly pale, Earan swallowed. His eyes bore into Alissa for an instant, frightening her with his hatred, then he stormed out in staccato of boots.
Redal-Stan sighed. “Nisi?” he said gently, and she jumped. “Have Kally send my breakfast tray here, if you would. I’ll be some time meting out punishment, and have no wish to let my breakfast go cold in the interim.”
“Yes, Master Redal-Stan,” she said, and she slipped away. The remaining Keepers trailed behind her in a rustle of hushed conversation.
Hunched, Redal-Stan moved to Mav. Alissa felt a stab of hope. He hadn’t been able to help yesterday. Perhaps today he could.
The Master watched Mav’s pupils shrink as he lifted her lids, and he counted her breaths and heartbeats. He felt her cheek for her warmth. Mav seemed to be asleep, sleeping so deeply and profoundly that nothing could rouse her.
Alissa had seen this before, lived it, and by the strength of Strell’s compassion and her will, survived it. She felt cold, recalling last winter when she burned her tracings so badly she had no recourse but to retreat into her unconsciousness to escape the pain. Lost among Mistress Death’s fog, she had abandoned any desire to return to a world where only heartache and suffering seemed to exist, until Strell’s whispered words broke through to light the path back to the living.
Alissa knew she could find Mav and bring her back. She had spent the last two days trying to convince Redal-Stan to let her try. At first, the Master refused to believe Alissa had been hurt badly enough to have gained Mistress Death’s attention and yet lucky enough to have slipped her snare. Showing him the memory of the burn she had endured finally convinced him, but he still refused to let her try. Today, though, perhaps.
Redal-Stan straightened from Mav, glanced at Lodesh, and cleared his throat. “Lodesh, join your brother on the front steps for this morning. Maybe you can come to an understanding.” Pausing, he looked about Alissa’s stark room with its ugly, castoff furniture. “Maybe not.”