He smiled at me, but when I didn’t smile back, he ducked his head down again.
“One thing I don’t understand,” I said, “is why I am only affected when I touch you. Without that, I feel nothing.”
His head shot up again. “Ah, now that I can answer. That is normal.”
“Normal?”
“For women. To be drawn to me in that way. It is the power of my blood – my seed – that calls to them. Of course, most women come to me freely. They want a child, or just the power of my seed to enhance their connection, so they offer themselves. If I like one, I take her to the room, the one with the bed. But…”
He frowned, and the head lowered again. “They tell me it is not a pleasant experience for them. Not painful, but… strange. Is it so for you, too?”
Strange. That was an inadequate word for that curious sense of dislocation, of falling from a great height. A mixture of exhilaration and unmitigated terror. I nodded.
“They showed me some tricks,” he added, suddenly eager. “A few of the older women. They said that it was unpleasant for them, so I owed them the same pleasure they’d given me. They taught me what to do. Kissing and so on. Drina, I would love to do the same for you, if you wish it. To give you some enjoyment from this, for you have had none so far.”
Kissing and so on? I’d read about such things but the thought of him doing that to me – or touching me at all – was abhorrent to me. I shuddered. “No.”
“Oh.” His face fell.
“I don’t want you anywhere near me. Not in any intimate way.” But the thought of kissing had reminded me of Arran, and for a moment grief washed through me like a tidal wave. His lips on mine – how I missed that, and his strong hands holding me, pulling me to him, holding me tight while he—
Stop it. No use thinking about it now. Arran was gone.
I found myself pacing about the terrace, although I couldn’t remember getting up. Ly-haam had swivelled round to watch me, his expression anxious.
Taking deep breaths to calm myself, I sat down again.
Ly spun round to face me. “Of course. Whatever you wish,” he said, but I couldn’t remember what I’d said.
I had another thought. “Did you find out why I can connect to your eagle? You said you would see what your people could tell you about it.”
“No. They do not believe it.”
“But I flew here on your eagle!”
“They think I trained her to do that. But it is not true. I left her there so that I could see you sometimes. I… I miss you, Drina. There is a kinship between us, I think. I wish we had met in a different way. But the eagle… you could not have ridden her without a connection, I am sure of it. A strong connection.”
“But your connection is stronger.”
“Well, yes, of course. I am byan shar. My connection overrides even that of my mother.”
“Your mother?” That was confusing. What did she have to do with anything?
“The eagle you flew – she is bonded to my mother. That is the primary bonding. You are a secondary bonding. That happens, sometimes, although usually within kin groups.”
“So your bonding is another secondary bonding?”
“No, no. It is called… I do not know the word, but it means like a god. A greater power. I can connect to every bonded beast, and to all those they are bonded with. They are in my head.”
He smiled at the astonishment on my face.
“You can hear them?” I whispered, appalled. “All of them? All your people?”
He nodded. “When I am stronger and have learned more control, I will be able to shut them out when I wish, as I can with you. But for now, they are there, all the time. It drives me insane. That is why I choose to be alone so much, why I went to Kingswell by myself. I needed to escape from them. But with you…” He raised his hands expansively. “It is good. Quiet. That is why I love being with you, Drina, because however dreadful it is, that terrible thing I do to you, afterwards the noise is all gone. There are no voices in my head, no beasts pulling at my mind. It is so peaceful.”
“That is an awful fate, to be the focus of everything.”
Another nod. “I am like the spider at the centre of the web.”
But I thought he was more like a fly, trapped and helpless, even more than I was.
~~~~~
That evening we ate more of the stew, and a couple of fish Ly had netted on the shore. He made more bread, a sweet kind with honey and dried fruit, which was delicious. He cleaned up again, and then divided the furs into two piles.
“It will be warm enough to sleep outside,” he said. “However, you may go indoors if you wish.”
Then he curled up on the floor, well away from the walls, and went to sleep.
I considered taking my share of the furs to some far corner of the house, but there was no comfort in those endless empty rooms and bizarre curved walls. Ly might be a strange boy, but he was not as alien as this house. So I found a wide seat far from his recumbent form, and made a neat bed with the furs.
Sleep was far from my thoughts, however. The western sky was still painted in desert colours, so I sat on the terrace steps watching the light fading imperceptibly to night. Ly’s energy still fizzed inside me from the night before, warming my belly and filling me with vitality. My body exuded health and my mind was clear. Even as he was drained of all his abnormal power, so I was full of it. It was similar to the surge of magic from the birds in the Imperial City. Something in me drew in magic – from my mother, from the birds, from Ly.
All my senses were enhanced. When we had left the castle that morning, the rattle of noise around me and the threat of Ly’s guards had blotted it out of my consciousness, but even through the turmoil, I’d been aware of something in the people surrounding me. Just as I could detect the mages’ vessels at Kingswell, so here I could detect – something. But what?
I let my consciousness float outwards, beyond Ly, for there was nothing left in him. Nor was there anything nearby, for the neighbouring islands were all deserted. But further afield – there! Something pricked at my mind. As I reached for it, I was deluged with many, many somethings. Too many to tease apart.
Back away. That was too difficult. I tried a different approach, scanning for one familiar presence. My eagle, as I’d come to think of her, was not too far away at all, sitting on a rocky outcrop on a small island. Through her eyes, I could see the castle and the dark shapes of buildings and clava along the shore.
The eagle clicked her beak in greeting. She was pleased that I was there. I probed a little further. Ly was not connected to her, since he was asleep, but there was a faint presence – Ly’s mother. I sensed anger in her – was she always angry like this, or was it because of me? Her mind was very different from Ly’s. Soft and weak, with no resistance. I could have marched through her thoughts and memories like trampling a field of wheat, or so it seemed. It was tempting, but if she became aware of me, it would inflame her even more.
But there was something else inside her, the oddness I’d been aware of that morning. Magic. She had a little magic inside her. It was muddy, not bright like the sun, as my mother’s was. Nor was it concentrated into one place, like the mages with their vessels. It was distributed all around her body, pulsing and moving, constantly flowing. Her blood – she had magic in her blood.
Was that what enabled her to bond with the eagle? Probably. But magic was something I understood. It was something I’d learned to reach out and take whenever I wanted. Could I take this woman’s magic from her? As soon as I had the thought, it happened. I felt the little trickle as it made its way to me.
I jumped out of her mind at once, terrified that she would realise what I’d done and make a fuss. But curiosity got the better of me, and I connected again. Her mind was unchanged, quite oblivious of me. I took a little more of her magic, and hopped away from her once more. The next time I went back there was bewilderment in her. Finally she had realised something had happened, but she
had not the least idea what it was.
She would be shocked when she worked it out. I hadn’t intended it, but I’d taken all her magic. She’d had so little that it had only taken two bites to deplete her reserves completely. Now she was helpless, and had no bond with the eagle.
I laughed out loud. That was easier than I’d imagined. The eagle was almost mine.
All I had to do now was find a way to break Ly’s bond with the beast as well. That was going to be much trickier.
~~~~~
I woke to find Ly crouched over his campfire, with delicious cooking smells tempting my nose. Eggs and mushrooms, fried up with some kind of yellow fruit, and yet another kind of bread on the hot stones. I was famished, I realised.
“You must have been up with the sun to gather all this food,” I mumbled through a mouthful of crusty bread.
He laughed. “No. It takes me no time. My people have connections to many things, not just beasts.”
It took me a moment to grasp his meaning. “Things like mushrooms? And eggs? And you have the same connections? So you just… know where to find things?”
He nodded. “Whatever I need, I can sense it. And animals come to my hands when I summon them. Would you like to see? There are some deer nearby.”
I nodded, and his eyes lost focus for a moment. Almost at once, he was back. “There. They will come.”
He bent to the cooking stones, deftly turning mushrooms, while I ate hot bread and waited patiently for the rest. After a while, he looked up, caught my eye and pointed. There they were, a doe and her kid, only a few paces away. I didn’t dare move, but they seemed quite unafraid.
“That is astonishing.”
He smiled, and shook his head. “To me, it is commonplace. Many of my people can do this. My father, for one. It is very useful.”
I could imagine. It made his hunting and gathering abilities a bit less impressive, but I was developing great admiration for his cooking skills. I could watch him for hours, cleaning and skinning and chopping, tossing this and that into the stewpot, seemingly at random. Or kneading and shaping his bread dough, bent over the flat stone he worked on with intent concentration.
He was so pleasant to be with, when he was like this. He was a serious boy at heart, nothing like the too-smiley, slippery character he’d portrayed when I’d first met him. Here he was not pretending, and he was comfortable with himself. I could get to like him, if only this side of him would last. Not that I would be staying long enough to care.
Late in the morning, we had a visitor. A small rowing boat appeared offshore, bobbing about precariously as a woman stood and yelled across the water to us. From the terrace, she was barely audible, but I recognised the voice anyway. No one else had quite such penetrating tones. His mother. Just what we needed.
I climbed onto the low wall edging the terrace and dangled my legs, ready to enjoy the spectacle.
“Little-Ly!” she shrieked. “Come out where I can see you, this second!”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. He was kneeling, busy gutting a fat fish, but he jumped up and poked his head above the wall.
“Come nearer! Don’t skulk like that, you silly boy.”
He descended the steps to the scrubby grass that fringed the perimeter of the house and took a few paces towards the shore. “What do you want, Mother?”
“Something’s wrong with Sunshine. I can’t feel her at all. Is she dead?” She waved her arms for emphasis, and the boat tilted alarmingly. The two oarsmen shifted to balance the movement.
Sunshine? The eagle, presumably, but what a trite name for such a magnificent bird.
“Wait… No, she’s fine. A bit faint, that’s all.”
“Well, why can’t I feel her? If you can, I certainly should—”
“Look, I’ve no idea, Mother. Is there any word from the—” A long pause. “The enemy? About the prisoner.”
Ah, quick thinking. He doesn’t want to use any words I might understand, like ‘Bennamore’. I chuckled inwardly. It was very useful, this ability to understand another language. More useful, perhaps, than finding mushrooms.
“Your whore, you mean? They don’t want her back, and who can blame them? They put an arrow into our messenger, that’s how civilised they are. We should take her out to the middle of the lake and tip her over the side. That’s all she deserves. Little-Ly! Come back! Don’t you sodomising walk away from me, you wicked boy!”
Sodomising? Well, we had similar swear words, I suppose.
Ly stomped up the steps to the terrace, his lips compressed into a thin line, and knelt down to continue work on the fish. His mother harangued him for some time, in colourful language which didn’t translate terribly well, while I tried very hard not to laugh. Eventually, the oarsmen headed the boat for the shore, and then she yelled at them, too. What a woman!
“They have gone,” I said, jumping down from the wall and moving across to a seat where I could watch Ly working. He was quick with a knife, and he soon had the fish gutted, and set about stuffing it with all sorts of things I couldn’t identify. His slender fingers moved deftly, lifting and pushing and barely spilling any of it.
“Yes. Thank the ancestors.” That was in his own language, I guessed.
“At least she didn’t come ashore.”
“She cannot. This is my island. Every adult male can claim an island, just as every adult female has a clava.”
“What did she want?”
I spoke casually, but I almost held my breath as I waited for his answer. He had no idea I’d understood every word. Would he lie to me, or prevaricate? Or would the new spirit of openness prevail?
“Something to do with her eagle.” He shrugged, still focused on the fish in front of him. “Not important.”
Oh, but there you were quite wrong, Ly. It was so hard not to smile at this glib dismissal. He had no idea what was going on.
“All that fuss for a bird?”
He looked up at me then, serious. “You cannot understand, perhaps… but such bonds are formed at the threshold to adulthood and last for life. People become very fond of their bonded beasts. Very close. A bond is special. Only death breaks it.”
Or me, I thought. But he had said nothing about the rest of it – the message sent to Kingswell, or the army, perhaps, and the messenger shot as answer. I wondered if they had killed him, which would be a great breach of protocol. But perhaps in war there was no protocol. Yannassia could be tough, I knew that. I burned to know more about it, but unless Ly mentioned it, I could not say anything.
Time for a change of approach. “She was very rude to you, your mother. All that shouting! Considering you’re her leader.”
Another smile. “That is not quite how it works.”
“No?”
He wrapped the fish in leaves, fastening them together with slivers of wood, then placed the parcel on the hot stone in the fire.
“There. That will take a while to cook. Come.”
He led the way down to the water’s edge, where he washed his hands and then sat cross-legged on the smooth pebbles that formed a narrow beach here. He pointed me to a flat rock nearby, where I sat and waited. I said nothing, leaving the talking to him.
“All the clans are separate. The elders make all decisions for their clan, and there is strict ranking. Everyone knows their place. Children are the lowest. The first fifteen years are the age of childhood. Five years with the mother’s clan, then five with the father’s, then another five with the mother’s clan again. My mother is trader clan, but my father is hunter clan. He taught me to survive on my own in the wild.”
His face softened as he spoke of his father. It was obvious that he had good feelings about him, and their time together. All that catching of rodents and finding of mushrooms and delicious cooking – all that came from his father, then. Interesting.
“My connection – my original connection – is with languages, so I expected to stay with my mother’s clan when I became adult. And then…” He spread his h
ands. “Everything changed. But not entirely. I am still bound by the conventions. The second fifteen years is the age of learning, and also of regeneration. So I must learn to be byan shar, and I must also regenerate the population, and breed a generation with enhanced connections. But I have no greater rank than before. I still live with my mother, and obey her.” A quirk of the lips. “When I can.”
I couldn’t suppress an exclamation of surprise. Obey his mother? What a dreadful fate.
“Do you have to do everything she says?”
“Well, not quite. But she makes the important decisions. For now. Sometime in the future I will have a wife, and then I will have to follow her wishes. I once thought perhaps you… But I see it could not work.”
Well, he’d got that right. I shuddered.
He must have seen the expression on my face, for he flushed and raced on with his story. “The third fifteen years is the age of strength, and also the age of harmony. By then, I should have full control of my powers, and the ability to unite all my people, all the clans. Then perhaps I will be a leader. And then…”
He fell silent, chewing his lip and staring at the ground.
“Then?” I said.
He lifted his head, and I saw a terrible bleakness there.
“Then we make war.”
18: Kissing
I stared at him, appalled.
“But why? And who will you make war against? Us?”
“Maybe. Whoever is seen as the weakest, I suppose. I do not know.” He rubbed his face tiredly. “It is a long way off, Drina. Fifteen, twenty years, perhaps.”
“But you don’t have to,” I said. “You will have the choice.”
“No. That is what the byan shar is here for, to lead the clans in war.”
“But I’ve read of other byan shar who became great religious leaders.”
“Women. If a woman is chosen, she makes peace. A man must make war. That is my destiny, Drina.”
He jumped up. “Let us go back. The fish will be ready to turn over.”
The Fire Mages' Daughter Page 17