May you be blessed with the Master's fire and light, Merley thought to the wind, as if it could bring the words to both Slava and the mountains, even though it blew the other way, towards Mierber. Well, right now it might be good to try to bless Mierber, too. If she did not, if she let sadness and anger rule her here and now, she might lose her tricky balance and prove Henna right that her "overly fervid" personality would bring her "inevitable downfall." Henna would not even appreciate the irony. Besides, Merley would never prove her right, in anything!
She should go. Soon Henna would be on her way towards the Novice tower, her yellow robe swinging around her hips in that special movement of hers, her feet dragging on the ground. Merley winced at the thought of the sound. Henna was not a sick woman. Everything from her cropped gray-brown hair and sharp eyes, to her ample hips and the inevitable rod in her hands emitted rigidness and health. Henna did not need to drag her feet, like that wrinkled old man yesterday morning had, his hands trembling, his eyes darting wildly left and right, bent twofold with the weight of his firebucket.
Merley crept out of the cranny, her right foot trying a protruding piece of stone while the fingers of her right hand slipped inside a crack in the wall. Her body shivered. It sometimes did when she climbed, the air inside her stomach floating to form a pulsing cloud, pushing up and pushing out, whispering that if she released her hold she could walk to the sky. She paused, taking a deep breath, then coughed as dust sprinkled her throat. So much dust. The building was buried beneath centuries of it, with stones and cracks that seemed to have been there forever, but never changed.
The moment she took control of the air in her stomach, the wind tugged sharply at her robe, so Merley had to flatten herself against the wall. The teachers said that air was treacherous; that the wind might caress her cheeks but in its dark, elemental heart, it still dreamed about destroying her wall and her world. Their world.
If it could, the wind would bash the tower walls until the whole tower was scattered into pieces, they said—gradually, stone by stone, or at once, in a flurry of mortar and torn scraps. Water would drench the walls until they decayed, and the soil of Mierenthia itself would engulf them. Air, water, and the soil where wildlife grew and thrived—only fools and reprobates did not fear them. Unlike fire, they were hard to command; like fire, they were terrible if unbound.
The wind howled, harshly, just as Henna's unmistakable figure appeared on the path. There was someone else with her today, but Merley did not know who, for she dared not look further. She flattened herself even closer to the wall. She preferred to not watch Henna and her companion, for somehow people always felt her eyes, even if they could not see her--and those down on the path would easily see her if they but looked up. "Byas eyes," an old servant woman had once said, and Merley's father had ordered her beaten for it.
The wind howled again, its voice a lonely lament amidst stone and faint morning light. Merley shivered, the stone wall hard and chilly to her breasts and stomach.
" ... from Balkaene," a voice drifted to her ears. "They said it attacked a man."
"Good." Henna's voice, hard as always, but today almost content.
"Others say the man attacked first."
"It does not matter. Anyway, it will die. I will ask Adept Brighid just in case, but I know what she'll say ..."
The voices subsided as their owners passed further away, and Merley clutched the wall even harder, panting, every breath a pain. Careful, careful now, do not fall. Why was she so affected? They were going to kill something, but was that truly news? Senior Bers did kill. They just did not talk about it in front of her.
The wind howled again, and she shivered. Like a halla it howled, full of anguish, like a wolf out of Slava's stories, alone, its head raised towards the glowing moons ...
It howled yet again, just as what looked like a bird with its wings folded appeared far in the sky—and for the first time in many days Merley ignored the flying wagon that was her main reason for climbing walls and towers. Her eyes were fixed on the Generalist tower, instead. Far to the right, where this tower stood, and downwards towards its basement, something had howled in misery while the wind had not blown at all.
Slowly, she crept further, passing the slit between the stones that—if she crept sideways—was just narrow enough to lead her to the loose stone. The loose stone opened towards what days afore might have been a chimney, and it in turn climbed down to the broom closet beside her room. She had wondered about that chimney, sometimes. It was cold and had been cold for perhaps decades or even centuries, yet something must have once burned in the present-day broom closet. What? Or who?
Whatever it was that howled raised its voice again, stronger now that she was closer to where the two towers met. A tear fell on Merley's hand, tingling. How could she have confused it with the wind? If she closed her eyes, she could feel it—hard, tainted stone walls enclosing, encroaching, crushing its quintessence, while grass, soil, green rustling leaves and mountain faded. Faded ... Blurred ...
Merley jolted her eyes open. Then she crept. A cobbled path ran between the Novice and Generalist towers, a narrow path, not at all wide like the street that separated the Acolyte tower from the novices who watched it every day and dreamed. No one ever dreamed about the Generalist tower, save in nightmares, and Merley almost felt sorry for its tall, dark, gloomy frame, where narrow windows watched her like empty eyes with dreams long ago shattered. But she was only almost sorry, for the howl came at her again, even clearer. Did no one else hear it?
Well, so what if they did?
She had reached the corner between the path and the street, where the tower's stone was most exposed and was currently not dusty but wet and slippery, weatherbeaten. Merley ran a hand along the edge, trembling. She had come to this spot only once before, for it was too perilous to walk the night so close to the teachers. It had not been wet and slippery before. What Ber tower, what tower of the Fire Masters, ever was? "There are edges, treacherous edges that creep up to us, of a world full of deceit and menace ..." Teachers' words, and for the first time in many days they rang somewhat true. This here was a tower's edge. A water-drenched piece of tower where water had never come before, or at least had not come for centuries. Merley felt another tear creeping and almost laughed with the irony of it. She was shedding water because she was almost sad, almost sorry that the tower could not withstand water any more.
Her thoughts returned to the prisoner. No one—no Ber—would care for a lonely, howling creature out from a world they knew not or else feared. They would be too afraid or too potion-afflicted to even look. To even think.
Well, she was not potion-afflicted. And as for fear ... Merley took a deep breath, and then, before she'd had a chance to think and possibly dissuade herself from the notion, extended a leg beyond the building's corner, shifted her knee so that her foot was underpinned by the wall, and shoved herself away.
She flew, for a moment. Then, just as the ground rotated, as the wind laughed at her face and something inside her screamed that the space between the towers was not that narrow, her hands gripped a ledge on the Generalist tower's wall. For some time, she just hung there, her lungs fighting for air, her eyes blurred, the rest of her body numb. Then slowly her feet found the crevice she had seen from the other tower, and as the creature howled again, she crept.
Along the wall she crept, and down an old, dead chimney, and then she did not creep but ran, for the chimney ended in a dark little chamber attached to a dark corridor with many doors and, behind the doors, whispers.
No, no voices. Please, no voices. She heard voices, sometimes, when she was sad or angry, voices humming, ticking, rippling, rising and falling, blending in a cloud of indistinct, exasperating noise that permeated everything.
"Cover you ears, little one," old Slava used to tell her when her father could not hear, old Slava who was her only confidante in this matter as in many others. "Cover your eyes at night when things walk better left unseen, cover your e
ars and mouth when things talk better left unheard and unanswered." But still Merley heard the voices, and she heard songs, too.
They were unwelcome, songs and music, here in the stone-walled heart of fire and its wielders, for songs were emotional, disruptive elements from the common world, and also a breath of a world much more subtle and perilous. Yet, things sang, mindless of the Ladies and Lords of Fire's will. The wind sang when it rushed towards the walls, and the walls sang in response when, at double Fullfire-Moons, the stones awakened. Water sang, even in the pipes, and soil sang when tiny shots of flowers and grass nudged their heads out to greet the Sun—and cried when heavy boots and metal hoes crushed them.
There were no flowers and grass and trees in the Mind. Only fire, Ber fire, tamed and chained like an ox in its plow. But Ber fire sang, too, and its song could wrench a heart away and break it.
She could hear them all, sometimes, when her heart was open and the world turned to shadows and blur; she could hear them now, and it hurt her.
So, she sang to herself, like she sometimes would, a song about a child sleeping in her cradle. Eyes like stars the child had and a sweetest face, and the singer of the song prayed that the child slept in peace, that the wild dreams were kept away, and that "they" blessed the child and never took her.
Merley did not know who "they" were, the ones the prayer was for. Someone, a woman she did not even remember, had sang this song to her long ago. She must have been a nurse Merley's parents had chased away before Merley could remember her face, a peasant woman perhaps, for the song was simple and yet imprinting. The song had soothed her, then, and it soothed her now as she hummed it in her mind, chasing away the other songs and the whispers.
But the howl never went away. The creature was crying, calling. Calling to her now, its voice in rhythm with her steps. So, she ran, hair and the black robe flapping at her back, creating wind where perhaps wind had never been, awakening the stale, old air from its dark slumber.
It called to her again when she leaned against the massive iron door of its prison and shoved it open just enough to squeeze herself inside a room full of blackness. It called, but this time the call was not a howl but a snarl, yellow eyes glaring at her as sharp teeth flashed with the reflection of her tiny conjured light, a chain clanging as the animal tried to charge at her.
She jumped back, and perhaps she would have made the tiny light erupt, would have sent fire to this fierce wild creature that so much wanted to assault her. Sounds and songs mingled in her ears again, and almost she did not know who and where she was—sounds of metal, wails and howls, sounds of burning ...
Perhaps she would have hurt the wolf with fire, had she not tried a song first, had she not sung one in her mind, again, to keep those sounds away that tried to claim her.
But sing the song she did, and though it started in her mind, the echoes reached her heart and stayed there. About a wolf the song was, about a wolf big and dreadful. She'd heard peasants and even some servants sing it to their babies in Balkaene when Father and Mother could not hear—though the peasants and servants, like Merley herself, must have rarely, if ever, seen wolves in this world ruled and "protected" by Bers. The big dreadful wolf should stay away from the child and the home, the song went. The wolf should stay away in the wildlands. And the wolf should know that one day the child would grow big and strong, that one day the child would go after the wolf and rid the world of him.
This wolf was large, his head rising to her waist. His neck was strong, his limbs lean and muscled. And yet, some of his fur was burned and the rest was matted with both dirt and blood, and strong his legs might be, but he stood on only three, the fourth hanging limp and useless.
"So the accursed child did grow strong, didn't it, big dreadful wolf?" Merley whispered, and something in her voice made him pause, the wild yellow eyes alien and yet full of something that spoke to her deeply.
They had called her dreadful, too, one who would destroy a man in his own home, and they had not once asked what her reasons might be. Giles of Laurent, a future High Lord. Merley's mother had been so anxious to marry her off to one such as him that she had not even asked Merley what she thought, but went straight to Father. Typical Mother, scheming, idolizing power and the male half of the world. Father had of course agreed, for an alliance with Laurent was much desired with Iglika cool towards Waltraud and Qynnsent hostile.
Politics, dirty little games with great stakes and crushed or broken-hearted pawns—had humankind invented anything more loathsome? Merley had refused, and Father, in his typical cold detachment said that of course that was her right, but not before she had met the man and talked to him in person. But it was not talking the man wanted. Many a night she had tried to forget what he tried to do but never could, and twice as many nights she had tried to forget how she had stopped him. But now, as eyes of challenge, anguish, and yellow wild fire bore into hers, she could not forget any longer.
"What did you do, big dreadful wolf? What did they do to you to cause it?"
The wolf lowered his head, and she made a step towards him. When the Bers had caught her, they had not chained her neck like his, only her limbs and her runaway heart as they threw her in a sealed Mierber-bound carriage. But she knew—oh she knew!—the wolf's look. Misplaced, alone, mistreated, angry, trapped at the mercy of those who never gave it.
"Well, you are luckier than I was. I had no one. You have me. Come here, puppy."
He growled, softly, and she was afraid, but still she crouched and beckoned. He growled again, but then slowly came, and suddenly Merley's shoulders shook as she wrapped her arms around his warm furry body.
She did not cry while her newly-conjured fire melted his chain, her thoughts and control such that a spark never burned him. She did not even cry when, free, he snuffed and then licked her face. A friend. She had none in the towers enclosed in tainted stone, and few of them elsewhere.
"Run!" She did cry when she had led the limping wolf through dark corridors, whispers, and gloom; when the Sun glared in her eyes and suddenly he shoved himself before her, shielding her, snarling at Henna and the others waiting in the courtyard. "Run, Dreadful, my sweet, you are not safe here!"
He would not. He stood by her like no one but her brother ever had. He stood by her, even though those against them had the strength and the power. But Donald was a future High Lord, while Dreadful was but a wildlands beast. The Bers had done little more than fine House Waltraud last year, when Donald had rushed into the Head Temple and punched Keagan in the jaw. Poor Donald, he had thought that something like this would stop the Head Adept Catechist, the man who had more fire than anyone except perhaps Merley herself, from burning her. They had let Donald go. They would destroy Dreadful.
So, she did the only thing that was right, even though it would break her new, precious friendship. She set some of her own fire to the wolf, a little fire but enough to hurt him. "Go away!" she screamed while her tears distorted his face and those of the Bers. "Go away, I don't want you here!"
He turned to look at her, and he must have read something in her eyes. Or, perhaps he did not read her eyes at all, but in some other, wolfish way, he understood; knew more about her than she wished him to.
"Go away, Dreadful," she whispered, and he limped past the confused Bers, a silver beauty despite the blood and dirt on his coat. He was gone before someone would reach out to catch him. For some reason, they seemed afraid of him.
"Be safe, my friend."
"Your friend?"
Time to clench her jaw and wipe the tears away, time to still the shaking of her hands and stare ahead with barely controlled contempt and defiance.
"Are you going to befriend a Lost One next time, you presumptuous little good-for-nothing? When Adept Brighid learns ..."
"I am not a good-for-nothing, as you very well know, Ber Generalist."
She should not have said it, perhaps; she had decided to make a new effort to live amongst the Bers, after the witch Esyld had literally c
hased her back here. Or, rather, she had decided to live here for a time, waiting to gather more knowledge, to become better prepared to investigate Bessove and those who flew in the sky with wagons.
But learn from whom? Merley blinked away new, angry tears. There was nothing the likes of Henna could teach her any more, and even the adepts could not teach her about raw fire. At the Head Temple fiasco twenty-six days ago it had been Merley the Novice, not Henna, nor anyone else, that Keagan had requested for his assistant. Oh, yes, requested. Forced, rather, even though before that it had been him who had insisted that Mierber's nobility should not know about her.
They had thought her dead, all of them. She had seen it in Donald's eyes, even in the eyes of the High Lord of Qynnsent, the enemy. Then, the Bers had shot her so that she could not show Donald that she loved him still, and now Henna was glaring at her because she had let a wolf live. She had no right to love, they had said. It was one of the very first things a Ber novice learned. Or, rather, she had to love everyone the same. Curse them! May the Lost Ones take them all! They had no right to tell her how to live! They had no right to take away lives and loves! They had no right!
"—a purpose." Henna's angry voice was saying something, something about Dreadful, her wolf. Something justifying killing him, mutilating him.
"A purpose?" Merley seemed to stop thinking, as she stepped towards Henna, and Henna made an awkward step back, her shoes shuffling dirt and pebbles. Merley laughed. Not watching where she was going, Henna had stepped off the cobbled path. Had Henna ever stepped off a path before? Merley remembered—paths in the yard, paths in the world, paths in the classroom. Paths in your mind, and woe unto you if you did not follow the exact meticulous route she had set for you. Henna was a good teacher; she made people forget all they had ever learned or known before. Had anyone before ever made Henna retreat?
Perhaps not. But then again, perhaps no one, ever, had watched Henna the way Merley watched her now. Oh, they hated Henna, yes, at least in those rare moments when they were not potion-afflicted. Every single novice must have at some point wished to wrap her or his hands around Henna's fat, soft neck and squeeze until her face glowed as red as the robe she would never achieve but always dreamed of. But they feared.
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