Sheri Tepper - Jinian 01 - Jinian Footseer

by Jinian Footseer(Lit)

  Murzy put down her needle and pointed to the window in the tower. `There's bridge magic, Jinian. And window magic'

  I couldn't think what she was talking about. I stood there, staring at the window. Then I walked out into the corridor and stared at another window. Then back into the tower room, where the six of them chatted and clucked like hens. And then, quite suddenly, I began to get a glimmer.

  A stone wall: which implied a builder, which implied a closed space, which implied protection from an outer world, or retreat from that world, or hiding from that world. And a window cut through: wide, with a welcoming sill, on which one might curl up on pillows to dream away a morning or long evening, looking out at the light making patterns beneath the trees. A window was a kind of joining, then. A kind of linkage between worlds. And a wind would come in, and light could come in, with tough, translucent shutters standing wide but ready to shut against bitter blast or hard rain. Gray of stone, blue of sky, with the bright green of new leaf blowing against it. Hardness of stone, softness of air. Shadows moving across the window. A memory of firelight, with soft breezes moving from the window to the fire. And in this room, welcome. Murzy nodded to me, picking up her needle again.

  Breathless with what I thought I knew, I left the room and ran away down the stone corridor, finding the hidden entrance to the stair that twisted down inside the tower. At the third curve was a window, a narrow slit cut through the wall to peer down at the castle gate from an unsuspected angle, high and secret, hidden in the shadow of the tower. Suspicion. Fear. Stone within and without, the broken gravel of the hard road making on obdurate angle at the edge of the wall, edged with more stone, the spears of the raised portcullis making fangs at the top of the gate. Not joining, but separation.

  I nodded to myself, fleeing downward once more, through the hidden door at the bottom and then down ancient ways to the empty dungeons at the bottom of the keep. There was one where a slit window at the ceiling fed a narrow beam of pale light reflected from a slimy pond outside. The wall sweated moisture, a dank smell of deep earth and old mold lay in the place, and a green ooze covered the wall. Here the light lay upon the ceiling, reflected upward, wavering, a ghost light, gray and uncertain, lighting only the stone in a ceaseless, agitated motion, without peace.

  I looked at that watery light for a long time before climbing back up to the room where they waited. Murzy nodded to me once more, not failing to notice the stains of slime on my hands, falling into the common folk nursery talk they often used when it suited them.

  `Tha's been adown the deeps? Nasty down there.'

  `I've been discovering window magics, Murzy. It came to me all at once.'

  `Well, if it comes at all, it comes all at once.'

  I sat down at Murzy's feet, suddenly adrift from the possession of knowing, the certainty of action. I knew, yes, but what was it I knew? `Different,' I said to her, feeling my way. `Different windows. Magic, because they have an out and an in, because they are linkages of different kinds. Because they are built. Because they are dreamed through and looked through. But - something more, I guess...'

  `Well, there's actually going through a window, isn't there? Or calling someone through a window. Or summoning.'

  `Summoning?' I thought about that. Summoning. Through windows. Of course. `If one summoned through a window - if one did - what answered the summons would be different, depending on the window, wouldn't it?' I wasn't sure about this, and yet it made a certain kind of sense. I might have summoned something into the dungeon very different from a thing I could summon into this room now.

  `Think of calling to a lover,' said Margaret Foxmitten dreamily, her needle flashing in the sun. `Calling from this room. Think of calling something from the dungeon. Think of summoning a presence. Into this room. Into the dungeon.'

  `Ah,' I said, getting some misty idea of what they were getting at. `If I... if I wanted to summon something frightening or horrid, I'd call something out of the dungeon through that high, watery window. And I would lead it in again through the open portcullis.'

  `You could do that,' said Bets. `Or you could find the tiny, square window which looks out through an iron grille over the pit where ancient bones were dropped. You might call something in through that window more dreadful still.'

  `But,' said Murzy, `suppose you wanted to summon Where Old Gods Are?' Where Old Gods Are was the name of a very powerful spell they had taught me.

  `I would summon through this window, here,' I said, opening the shutters and looking out on the peaceful pastures and the blowing green of leaves.

  `Good,' said Murzy, packing up her work. `Think about that.'

  I thought about it for some time, putting bits and pieces of it in place in my head. Not all of it connected to other things I knew, but some of it did. By that time it was dark, so we returned to Schooltown and the Festival.

  So, came Festival morning and they decked me out like the Festival Horse, all ribbons. Murzy had given me a new blue tunic with a cape to match, and Bets Battereye spent most of the previous evening braiding my hair wet so it would wave. `We want you to be a credit to us,' she said, yanking bits of hair into place. I thought it unlikely I'd be much credit to them bald, which is what it felt like, but I'd learned that uncom-plaining silence was best in dealing with the dams. Come morning, the hair was brushed out into a wavy cloud, then they dressed me up and told me to stay in the room and stay clean until they came for me. So I pulled a chair over to the sill, and opened the case ments wide. I could see people going by, and it put me in a fever of anticipation, but nothing would hurry them so I spent the time practicing summons and distraints.

  It was a good window for summoning, broad and low, with a wide sill overhanging a fountain-splashed courtyard. Smell of water on the stones - that's important for some summons. You know the smell? That first smell of water on dry earth or dry stone? That's the grow smell. Water, earth, and grow smell make one of the major triads of the Primary Extension of the Arcanum. That's not secret. Everyone knows that. Gardeners use it all the time. Beneath the window was a herb garden with the shatter-grass, bergamot, lady's bell triad. There were five other triads within sight or smell, too, including two other majors, making seven all together. Not bad for a mere learner, and more than enough to call up something fairly powerful if I'd liked.

  Sarah brought me a hot nutpie. `I know you're starving, but patience a bit longer, chile. We've called the Healer for Tess. Poor thing, she's no younger than she was yesterday, and it tells upon her. Still, give us a bit and we'll be ready to go festivate with the rest of the town.'

  At which I fidgeted, sighed, cut a slice of my pie, and laid out the summoning tools once more. Murzy said there was no such thing as practicing too much.

  What would I practice this time? Lovers Come Cal-ling, that's what. The window was perfect for Lovers Come Calling, so I would have window magic and the summons reinforcing one another. First the Pattern. Two hairs from my head. Mirror. Bell. Coal from the fire. Spidersilk for winding, binding. Spidersilk? Murzy's sister Kate kept her place entirely too clean. Finally I found some at the corner of the chimney. Then lay it all out in proper form. Whisper the words... Pause. Ring the bell. Pause. The words again. Pause.

  There was a brown, round little man in a clean cook's apron passing below the window, herding half a dozen boys before him. He looked up just then and called, `Happy Festival to you, lassy.' And the boys stopped, looking up. Stocky boys. Jeruval and Flot boys. Ordinary boys. Meaning nothing to me at all. They paused and went on incuriously, while one of them remained behind, mouth open, staring up at me. He was small, smaller than I, one of those boys who get their growth late, with his shoulders just beginning to widen. His face was serious and quiet with ruddy hair in one thick wave across his forehead. His eyes dug deep at me, as though he would understand everything they saw by sheer determination. The last of the words of Lovers Come Calling was. still on my lips.

  Only then I realized what I had done. I had call
ed. He had come. There was something else necessary, some final thing. I struggled with it. The spell was not complete until something was given between the two. A token. Something given as a token. Without thinking, I leaned out the window to put the warm slice of nutpie in his hand. He took it, bit it, smiled a small, rather puzzled smile, and then was dragged away by the little brown man.

  And I sat as one lost forever, betrayed by what I had done.

  Margaret Foxmitten came in behind me, stood there. I could feel her eyes examining the Pattern on the sill. `Did I see someone leave?' she asked. `Just now?'

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  `Who was it?'

  `I don't know,' I croaked. `I don't know, Margaret.'

  `The more fool you,' she said. `Now you're trapped and no way out of it. You've done Lovers' Call and someone's come in answer. Think of that.' She went out into the corridor, calling for Sarah to come hear what Jinian had done. I was too sunk in misery to listen. Misery and delight, of course. I was in love. Only thirteen, but in love. I wondered who he was.

  I wondered if I would ever see him again. For if I did not, likely this love would haunt me until I died. No one could break the call unless we were both present and consenting.

  `Now what've you done!' demanded Murzy, bustling into the room. `What's this?'

  `I was practicing,' I said lamely. `And I practiced Lovers Come Calling. And he came.'

  She just stood there looking at me, a very curious expression on her face, almost as though she had known already what I had done, or perhaps what I was likely to do. `Well,' she said at last. `We'll go out into the town. If you see him again, tell one of us right away. At least we can find out who he is.'

  But, of course, I didn't see him again. I don't remember much about Festival. We had some good food, I do remember, and there were fireworks. Most of the time I spent thinking about the boy, reconsidering his appearance and his smile, wondering what his name was and where he might be found. The morning after, we were in the wagon headed home once more, and I said to Murzy - trying hard to sound plaintive, though I was really put out that so little had been made of the whole thing - `Murzy, why did I do such a silly thing?'

  `Well, chile. You've made some difficulty for yourself, truly. Which is something we all do, so no sense fretting overmuch about it. Take it as a lesson and profit therefrom, as Grandma used to say.' She sounded so righteous and solid. It made me angry.

  I fumed about that for a time, deciding at last that it wasn't worth getting huffy about. As one of Gamesman caste, I ranked the lot of them and could have made their lives miserable when we returned home. I considered doing this, but I knew it would end making mine worse. So, in the end I only asked, `What do I do now?'

  Murzy considered this seriously. `Well, for a few years, nothing much. Keep close to us, Jinian. You'll go on with your schooling from us this next few years. By the time you're grown, we'll know more. We'll find something out...'

  And that was the total I could get out of them on that subject, however much I tried.

  Later, however, as I considered the matter, I realized that when one practices the wize-art, one should stop somewhere short of the last word or phrase. Or something should be mimed rather than done. Or One must use an inert ingredient rather than an active one. It was not the very worst way to learn such a lesson - death would have been that. But it was not a comfortable way, for now I was haunted by the boy, the small, serious boy with the narrow, searching face. When I lay down to sleep, I thought of him. When I woke, I reached for the cool space in the bed as though he should be sleeping there. In the night he touched me, making me flame and start awake. When I looked into the mirror, I saw his face behind my own. We might have been brother and sister, both fair and ruddy-haired, as unlike Mendost and dark-lovely Mother as could be. As time went by, I felt more and more akin to him, to this stranger, this unknown boy, this mys-lerious, lost boy. Oh, he was my true love, no question about that, but it would have been better not to have known it for some years yet - until I was old enough to do something about it.

  3

  Margaret and I got to talking on the way home. She wasn't that much older than I, and she seemed more sympathetic than the others, so I had someone to talk to about him. We rode along, me talking, sighing, she nodding. The thing that worried me most was that it would be a love unreturned, for such is the power of Lovers Come Calling that it will summon one who is loved but who has no feeling at all in the matter.

  When Margaret had taught me the spell, she told me she had seen it happen. An Armiger came to a Wize-ard woman in the Northern Marshes - it was Mar garet's kinswoman, and Margaret was there at the time - saying he had found no maid to suit him in all his flights and wanderings, for none was so bright and pure and kind as his dream told him maids should be. So he paid well, in gold, and the Wize-ard laid out the Pattern on the doorstep of her place and summoned up who should come.

  And there were noises in the wood of a horse, crippled and dragging a foot, and came from the wood a maid leading her mount, pure and pale and kindly as the sun. And it was the true love the Armiger had longed for, so that his heart started out of him and he turned blue as ice in the heat of the day.

  But she was betrothed to King Froggmott of the Marshes, so said Margaret, and cared no whit for the Armiger's pleas. And so he could do nothing but serve forever in sight of her and suffer; or go elsewhere in the wide world and suffer; or take his life and love to the world beyond, which he did, falling to his death from a great height upon her doorstep. `At which,' said Margaret, `she cared not at all except for the mess it caused the servants.'

  Oh, she had used to tell me that story and we had giggled together at the foolishness of that Armiger. I did not now. I understood how the Armiger felt, and how evil a thing it would be to love in that way one who loved not at all in return. And yet, one would have to accept it at the end and do what one could to go on living.

  Except, I vowed to myself as we jogged along, one could make a potion. A potion to guarantee he would love me, truly and forever. I vowed to do it if necessary, chanting to myself the list of ingredients of the love potion Murzy had taught me to make until I knew them as well as my tongue knew my teeth.

  4

  My thoughts on that trip home made me wonder why it was that Murzy and Margaret and the others were all pawns. When I asked Margaret, she said, `Jinian, Gamesmen are all panoplied up with their banners and helms, fringes flying and Heralds announcing them to all and his cousins. They attract a lot of attention and they die by the dozens. Stupid pawns stumble in where they're not wanted or worse, where they are, and they die by the hundreds. But pawns who are never around when you're looking for someone to do something dangerous; pawns who seem gray and dull and quite a bit boring, why, Jinian, no one even sees them and they live practically forever.'

  I began to understand. Though I was Gamesman caste in the Demesne, there would come a time I could leave it and perhaps could become as hard to see as Murzy herself.

  By the time we reached home, I had resolved to be a good student, to be invisible as the wind, and to get away from the Demesne as soon as possible. All these good resolutions merited me a great, joyous surprise. Mendost had gone away! He had gone Armigering for some Demesne north - Dragon's Fire, Mother said - and was likely not to be back again for many long seasons. It was like Festival all over again. Without Mendost to put them to deviltry, both Poremy and Flot were fairly decent. Without Mendost to upset her, Mother was, if not exactly reasonable, at least unlikely to fly into screaming fits without any reason at all. She wandered about a lot, not seeming to see anything, and drank far more wine at table, passing into sodden sleep instead of into her rages. Garz left for some reason or other. Bram Ironneck was, as always, remote, and often simply gone. Elators have that habit, I'm told. If I could flick from one place to another, any place I had ever been or could see in my head, I would not stay in one place, either.

  It was the best time I could rem
ember in the De mesne. Everyone let me alone. I spent most of the days with one of the dams learning one or more of the magics or stories of the old gods or songs or verses or matters of practical value. At the end of a few seasons I had only dipped the tip of my tongue in the brew, as Murzy said, but it made me thirsty for great gulps of it. There seemed no end to the wize-art, and yet it went on all around us, all the time, as everywhere as air, and as little regarded.

  Naturally, just when I was beginning to be really happy, something had to happen to spoil it all. Men dost came home. He came home, not alone, bringing with him a Negotiator from the Dragon's Fire De mesne, seeking to ally our Demesnes through marriage between King Kelver and Jinian, the only sister Men dost had to offer. It did not seem to matter to him at all that I was barely fourteen years old.

  Naturally, I said no.

  Predictably, Mendost threatened to kill me painfully if I didn't do what he and Garz and Mother were agreed was a good idea. Mother had a fit at what she called my `intransigent stubbornness' and hit me hard across the face in front of the whole family and assorted hangers-on.