Lies and Prophecy

by Marie Brennan

  I was sitting with Ana and Geoff, two friends from Liesel’s Wiccan circle, and trying not to ask myself whether Small-Scale Control might not have been a better choice after all. Geoff, a telekinetics major, didn’t even seem to be paying attention. The way his brown fingers danced over his port looked more like he was playing a game than taking notes. My own hand ached with cramps, and class was only half over.

  “We’re going to see Mindstorms with Michele this afternoon,” Ana murmured to me, while Townson scrawled an equation on the screen that dominated the lower end of the lecture hall. “Want to come?”

  It took me a moment to place the title. “Is that the one about First Manifestation?”

  From the far side of Ana, Geoff gave an affirmative grunt. “And her ‘we’ doesn’t include me. Too many dead people, too many crazy people. Sheffield’s class was bad enough.”

  I would be starting that class tomorrow morning. I wondered idly if Sheffield would give extra credit for seeing the movie.

  Did I want to see it? I remembered my grandmother’s stories about living through First Manifestation as a little girl, and believed that any retelling of that history had an obligation to the truth, no matter how harsh. It was the chaos of Robert’s sister Deirdre, replicated on a worldwide scale: half the adult population suddenly in possession of psychic gifts they had no idea how to control. In the weeks after that moment, before the first rush of power faded back to more manageable levels, whole cities had gone up in flames. The violence might bother Geoff, but it had to be included, or the story was a lie.

  But violence wasn’t a guarantee of truth. “Is it accurate?”

  “Very,” Ana said. “Or so Michele says. They had a whole team of people doing postcog on Welton’s old house, things like that.”

  “Oh, shit.” The words came out involuntarily, and too loud; a buzz-cut Latino guy in the row ahead twisted in his seat to glare at me. I lowered my voice. “I forgot it was about Welton.”

  Geoff snickered quietly. “Got a problem with our saintly founder?”

  “No, I have a problem with the actor.”

  “Gosselin?” Ana said in surprise. Then her eyes widened in understanding. “Because he isn’t a wilder.”

  The irony was that Henry Welton—geneticist, wilder, and namesake of our university—was the very man who identified the source of our gifts. His colleague Alexander Krauss designed the test to measure its genetic cause, the newly-activated sequences in previously junk DNA, but Welton realized what those genes represented, and why people treated him as if he were no longer entirely human.

  He wasn’t. And to a lesser extent, neither was anyone else.

  The entire human species carried a genetic inheritance from the sidhe.

  It was just a theory, of course. Welton, operating as much on psychic intuition as science, posited another realm—the Otherworld—that separated from ours ages ago, probably during the earliest years of the Iron Age, leaving behind no clear record of their existence. Just remnants of legends, some of them more accurate than others. The Celtic legends came the closest, and so he called the strangers of that distant past the sidhe. They interbred with humans, and after their departure their legacy spread across the planet, eventually diluting to a tiny remnant, a blip in our long chain of DNA.

  You’d never guess it, looking at somebody like Geoff. His wrestler’s build wasn’t at all what we envisioned of the sidhe. But wilders’ Krauss ratings were so high their gifts kicked in at birth, and it showed in physical ways, too. You couldn’t come within ten feet of a wilder, couldn’t even look at one, without knowing there was something inhuman about him.

  As I’d just been reminded that morning. And nobody had yet invented the technomagic that could convey a presence like Julian’s in a movie.

  Down at the bottom of the lecture hall, Townson was saying something about convection. I hadn’t caught a word of it. “Sorry,” I whispered to Ana, shaking the stiffness out of my hand. “I can’t really bring myself to watch some actor in makeup pretend to be Henry Welton.”

  “They could hardly get a real wilder,” she pointed out. “They’re all busy with more important things than movies.”

  Like being Guardians, running the government facilities that raised and trained wilder children—and in one anomalous case, going to college. I wondered what Julian thought of Mindstorms. Robert’s doomed freshman-year attempts to find his roommate a hobby had established that movies weren’t Julian’s cup of tea, but he probably knew about this one. Was it an insult? Did he even care?

  I had more immediate things to worry about. Fire leapt over Townson’s desk. He’d conjured an asymmetrical flame into being, demonstrating how it licked against but didn’t melt the block of ice in his hand. Effect limits, indeed. I wondered if he’d planned that to grab wandering attention like mine, or to scare away the faint of heart.

  I wasn’t so easily scared. PK didn’t worry me the way Grayson’s class did. My pyrokinetic abilities more or less ended at a candle’s worth of flame, but I didn’t need power for this, just control. And that, I could get with practice.

  If I paid attention. “I know,” I said sideways to Ana, focusing on Townson and applying my stylus once more. “But I’ve got to unpack anyway. Let me know whether it’s any good.”

  Her shrug was just visible out of the corner of my eye. I wondered if she thought I was being sensitive, because of my friendship with Julian. Ana wasn’t among the people on campus who had a problem with him—if she had been, Liesel wouldn’t have hung out with her—but neither were the two of them more than acquaintances. I doubted she knew the full extent of the problems he’d faced when he came to Welton, and how many of them lingered even now.

  Well, class wasn’t the place to point it out. And if I was sensitive, than so be it. I had enough to keep me busy anyway, without spending an afternoon watching a fake wilder.

  ~

  The stacks of Talman Library were standard college issue, which meant they were gloomy and full of shadows, the perfect setting for a creepy suspense flick. Despite the atmosphere, though, I liked Talman. The musty scent of books reminded me of home, and my parents’ library room.

  I could find my way to the divination section blindfolded, but had to check the map for the CM shelves, when I went after class the next day. They took up most of the fourth floor, row after row of books: mostly recent works, but also some pre-Manifestation antiques, useful mostly for historical interest, but occasionally applicable to modern magic. I trailed my hand down a row of spines, fingertips tingling with the faint psychic traces left behind by previous readers. Sometimes those helped me understand the texts. I could use their aid now.

  The section I wanted was small, just two shelves near the floor. I spotted the familiar blue spine without having to check call numbers, and pulled it out. The old alchemical symbols for the elements decorated the cover. I wondered, as I stuffed it into my bag, whether I was making a mistake. Revisiting the past might not be my brightest idea ever.

  This time when the hairs rose on the back of my neck, I anticipated the cause. I rose to my feet just as Julian walked by in the main aisle. He saw the movement and turned to face me, robbing me of the fun of startling him in revenge. “Hey,” I said, coming forward, so Julian wouldn’t look at where I’d just been, and wonder what my interest was in childhood CM pedagogy.

  “Kim,” he said in greeting, and scanned the shelves around us. “Extra research already? Or an assignment from Grayson?”

  “Just being prepared. What about you?”

  A nod of his head, toward the back of the building. “Theories of power containment.” He paused, then said, “You’re going to be fine, Kim.”

  It stopped me dead. I blushed, staring blindly at the shelf to my right. “Am I that obvious?”

  “Midway between Liesel and Robert, I’d say.”

  Meaning one would notice, the other would not. I didn’t need Julian to tell me I was an open book to my roommate; Liesel had mad
e that clear in Dusseldorf. “I just … this is new to me.” Which was a lie, but I made sure my shields were good before I said it, and crouched to scan a bottom shelf, so he couldn’t see my expression.

  Julian either believed me or was willing to let it pass. “Most things are, when you start learning them. Though I guess divination was different for you.”

  “That was new to me once, too.”

  “Not like this,” he said. “You’ve got a natural talent for divination—a strong one. One of the strongest I’ve seen.”

  Stronger than a wilder’s? But they tended to be good at everything, not great at one thing. Still— “I’m not that good. Not in the same league as, say, Madison, or Bradley.”

  “They’re professors; they have more experience. But give it time.”

  He was standing close to me, now, and I didn’t quite trust myself to look up. The flattery was a nice boost for my ego, but it only made me dwell more on CM. I reached out to grab a book, to cover my embarrassment, and realized just in time that I’d been staring at a row of Arabic-language texts. Sighing, I pulled my hand back, and tilted my head inquiringly toward the exit. Julian shrugged agreement and followed. “Yeah, well,” I said. “I’m not spending much time on divination this term—Historical Tarot on Fridays, and that’s it, other than Div Club. Assuming I even have time for meetings. How about your schedule? What have you been up to today?”

  “Combat Shielding this morning, Power Reservoirs in the afternoon. You?”

  And I thought my schedule was ambitious. If I didn’t miss my guess, both of those were grad-level courses. Julian, with years of training behind him, had tested out of the basic requirements and gone onto bigger things. “Sheffield’s class and CM.”

  We reached the circulation desk. I slid my book across face-down, so Julian couldn’t see the title. “What did you think of Grayson?” he asked.

  “She scares the crap out of me,” I admitted. “But it’s weirdly reassuring, in a way. I honestly believe she could do the basics she’s teaching us in her sleep. And I like her style. Very simple, no flashiness or wasted time.” To Robert’s eternal disappointment.

  Julian nodded, leaning against the desk, facing away from the student there. “That’s because she was a Guardian.”

  The word sent a thrill down my spine, which I tried to hide. Guardian. I’d grown up on the same stories everyone else had, outrageous action flicks wherein the hard-bitten, lone Guardian single-handedly defended New York City against some sorcerer’s unleashed demon. Then I’d looked further, into the reality, which was more like the magical equivalent of an EMT. Not as glamorous, but a lot more useful.

  And a dream that wouldn’t let me go.

  But you needed a strong background in CM to qualify. At present, I wasn’t even within spitting distance. Hence the book in my bag, and my schedule for this term.

  “How do you mean?” I asked Julian as we went out into the bright sunlight. Our nice first-day weather, a day late. “Do they teach Guardians to work like that?”

  “Teach, no. It just happens. They usually work under pressure, so they don’t waste time on a fancy personal style. After a while, they strip everything down to the bare necessities.”

  “To them, and past,” I said. “I swear I saw Grayson cast a circle at the end of class with about half the usual process.”

  Julian’s eyes weren’t on me. They rarely were. “She’s strong. That’s part of why she can do it that way. Most people don’t have the power to operate on a reduced procedure. But it’s strength of mind, too, as well as strength of gift. New Guardians have trouble, until they’re in a situation where they have no time for the full thing. Then they cut it down, because they have to.”

  Strength of mind. I bit my lip, thinking. How much could it make up for lack of gift?

  By the end of this quarter, I’d have my answer.

  As usual, our fellow students—with varying degrees of subtlety—were giving Julian, and therefore me, a wide berth. He watched them out of habit, but I’d learned to read his body language, in the absence of the usual empathic cues. His attention was on me. Which was not where I wanted it, not while I was thinking about something so personal. What had he been talking about? Stripped procedures. “Sounds good to me,” I said. “Robert may want to be the next de la Vega, but I like Grayson’s way better.”

  A faint smile touched his lips. “Yes,” Julian said, “I think Grayson’s the right teacher for you.”

  Because she’d train me, or kill me trying. I sighed. “I guess I’ll find out.”

  ~

  I’d wanted a cobra for my birthday, and I’d gotten one.

  That image—last night’s dream—made me think of the quote I had taped to the top of my screen, Professor Madison paraphrasing Mark Twain. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and prophecy. Not words you expected to hear out of the woman teaching your intro divination class, but I knew what she meant. Like statistics, you could twist prophecy around to mean practically anything you wanted it to. The point of divination, she said, was not to find some fixed truth, but to open your eyes to possibility, and to help yourself think ahead.

  The question wasn’t what the cobra foretold, but rather what I was going to do about it.

  I recalled it distinctly: me, sitting in my old green armchair, holding the snake just behind its head so it couldn’t bite me. I’d been stuck between triumph at finally getting what I wanted, and a sneaking suspicion that wanting it had been a Bad Idea.

  I chewed on the meaning of the snake in between classes, and tried to put it out of my mind during. Ceremonial magic, or Guardianship, or maybe something more. Parental approval? Whatever it was, the cobra hadn’t bitten me. I’d taken no harm from getting my desire.

  Or maybe I’d just woken up too soon.

  I fished in my bag and pulled out the library book I’d gotten the day before, gliding one hand across the familiar blue cover. The Yan Path, by Yan Chenglei. Subtitle: Early Foundations in Ceremonial Magic.

  Inside, the pages were just as I remembered. Some parents sent their kids to math camp or Suzuki violin lessons; my mother got me a Yan Path teacher. Child-sized lessons in the principles of Western ceremonial magic, designed to familiarize your daughter or son with the basics before their gifts even kicked in.

  It worked just fine, too. Right up until I manifested, and tried to do the exercises for real.

  Loud music from across the hall covered the sound of Liesel’s key in the door, so that I jumped when she came in. I didn’t bother to try hiding the book, though. She knew about the Yan lessons; in fact, she was the only person I’d ever told about them in any detail. When she cocked a curious eye at the open text, I held it up so she could see the cover.

  Echoing my own thought from the library, she asked, “Is that a good idea?”

  “Who knows. I can’t decide if it’s comforting or stressing me out.”

  Liesel took the book from my hands and paged through it. “Doesn’t look like much.”

  “It isn’t, really. You learned more than this from Charbonneau last year. It’s just….” I gestured, trying to shape the words I couldn’t find. “The book isn’t the problem.”

  “Your memories are.”

  “Yeah.” I watched as she put away her shoes and bag and fetched her hairbrush. Tidy as always. That our suite was at all livable so soon was her doing; she’d even stacked my half-empty boxes neatly in the corner, out of the way. Liesel’s pictures—a mixture of family and the Alps—were already arranged above her desk. Me, I hadn’t unpacked my books yet.

  The lamp haloed her golden hair as she brushed it out. Saint Liesel, I’d dubbed her during freshman year. Martyr Liesel, if you let her. She was the most seelie person I knew, helpful and kind to a fault.

  And her empathic gift meant I didn’t bother trying to hide much from her. “What if nothing’s changed? What if I go to do my first practical for Grayson and it fizzles like before?”

  She paused i
n the middle of braiding. “What if it does?”

  My gut clenched at the words, a familiar mix of dread and disappointment. I’d spent a year living with that feeling, after my gifts manifested, before telling my mother I was done with Yan lessons, and fleeing with gratitude to divination.

  But I had to know whether I stood any chance of becoming a Guardian. And that meant facing up to the dread, and seeing if I could push past it.

  If my attempts fizzled … Liesel let me think it through, her fingers going about their task without needing her attention. “If I rock the theory, and fail completely at the practical,” I said, “I can still get a C plus. And I won’t fail it completely. I’m not baseline incapable; I just suck. So I guess I’ll work my ass off and see what happens.”

  “And when will you tell your parents?”

  By which she meant my mother. I let out a noise that was half-sigh, half-grunt. “When I have to?” Liesel gave me a chiding look, and I said, “Yeah, I know. But if I tell her now, there’ll be all the expectations again. She’ll try to hide them from me, because she really doesn’t want to put pressure on me—”

  “But she does it anyway.” Liesel tied off her second braid. She looked like a sweet German milkmaid, except for the t-shirt that said Empaths Do It With Fühlung. “You can’t hide it forever.”

  I bit my lip, then said, “How about this. Let me get through the first practical. See how that goes. Then tell her.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Her agreement sent a wave of relief through me. I shot her a suspicious look. “Are you playing mind-healer on me?”

  She put one hand to her cheek, all innocence. “I have to do my homework, don’t I?” My sudden jerk made her laugh. “That was a joke. We’re not allowed to use fellow students as guinea pigs without you signing a waiver—at least for class purposes.”

  “Comforting,” I muttered. “It’s freelance meddling.”

  “And free for the asking,” she said. “I don’t like you being stressed any more than you do.”