Fire in the Mist

by Holly Lisle

  Yaji dipped delicately into her spiced stew and studied the girl from under her eyelashes.

  Not likely that she was responsible for that rush of Power, no matter what the rumors are. She doesn't have the look of a mage. More likely she's someone who might know who was responsible. And they're going to stick her with me until they find out what she does know—which, from the look of her, could take forever.

  Yaji wrinkled her nose. She hated the idea of sharing her room with anyone; she'd had roommates, and had managed to, well—"encourage" might be the right word—she'd managed to encourage them to ask for transfers in short order. She supposed if she had to share, a powerful mage, even an untrained one, would have been livable. After all, rooming with a real Power would have reflected some glory on her.

  But rooming with a peasant—

  Yaji smiled slyly. It shouldn't be any problem to get a timid country mouse to ask for a transfer. A few demonstrations of Yaji's magic would scare her off in a hurry.

  Faia tried to count the number of people she saw in front of her in the Greathall, failed, and was reduced to estimating the way she would have estimated the size of another shepherd's flock.

  More than eight hundred people! More than in the villages of Willowlake and Bright together. The shepherd with a flock that size, she decided, would need a pack of sheepdogs, two assistant shepherds, and horses to ride while chasing after the whole mess.

  Every single person in the huge hall was a woman, Faia noticed—and all of them were staring at her.

  She straightened, presenting to them the same aura of fearlessness she had presented to the mountain lion that attacked her flock in the highlands. At that moment, not Faljon's words, but her mother's, came back to her. They were the words Faia heard when she made ready to take her mother's flock to the highlands alone for the first time, when she was fourteen years old.

  Faia, wolves sense weakness, test for it, watch for it—and if they are not stopped by something stronger than they are, the weakest of your flock will die. With wolves, you have two tasks to perform in order to be a good shepherd. First, you must be stronger than they are. Second, you must make sure that they know you are stronger.

  Faia imagined the women before her transformed into a pack of wolves. These were her enemies. She could respect them, as she respected the wolves—they had strength and cunning and courage, perhaps—but she could never forget that they only waited for her weakness to cull her out of their midst. She could see the hunting look in their eyes. The hunger was there. She was not one of them, and that meant that she was either a stronger predator... or prey.

  She would never let herself become prey.

  So she strolled calmly through their midst to the empty seat Medwind pointed out, ignoring them as only a great predator can ignore lesser predators. She took her seat at the end of the table without faltering, and spooned some of the foul-smelling stew into a bowl. Then she forced herself to eat the noxious stuff, even though the spices made her throat burn and her tender eyes water. She ignored the fragile, raven-haired beauty who sat across from her, and the young women who sat to her right. She was not a wolf as they were wolves—but neither was she prey. She was a solitary predator, and greater and more deadly than a pack of wolves.

  She kept reminding herself of that.

  * * *

  A tentative ray of sunlight peeked through the clouds and shone into the study in the Mottemage's private quarters. The light shimmered through half a dozen colored crystals that hung on the windowpane, then fragmented and bounced off of carelessly piled stacks of books and got lost amid hundreds of oddly shaped and colored candles. One of the fragments of light made it far enough to flash off the side of a delicate, fan-tailed goldfish that swam in a miniature fountain in the corner of the room.

  The sunlight never reached the tawny, gold-pointed, blue-eyed cat who sat on a gargoyle that adorned Rakell's oak end table, patiently trying to strike a quicklight on the starter strip on the side of the box. The cat looked out the window as the fragile beam vanished behind the clouds. He gave an enormous sigh and returned his attention to the quicklights.

  "Flynn, put the damned firesticks down and go catch some mice or I'll slice you into tidbits and feed you to the fish." The voice was husky, scratchy—and very stern. The cat's tail twitched and his ears flattened back for the briefest of instants before he thought better of it. Then he dropped the matches and arched fluidly off the end table, neatly missing the various books and pieces of magical paraphernalia and art objects that covered the floor.

  "Mottemage, I wonder at the wisdom of giving a cat hands—even rudimentary ones."

  "As I have wondered at someone else's wisdom in giving humans hands. I assume it will all begin to make sense to me in some far future life." The raspy voice laughed.

  Medwind had to search for a moment before locating the owner of the voice. She finally found her—a woman with graying hair that still held a touch of its original auburn, and blue-fire eyes that were, even at that moment, lit by inner amusement. The Mottemage curled deeper into the heavy brocades of the chair and snorted.

  Medwind thought the snort sounded more than a little like that of one of the Motte's pet wingmounts, but she shielded that errant impression carefully.

  "Your new peasant prote[aage[aa and her screaming aura must be giving you a headache by this time," the Mottemage observed.

  Medwind grinned. "She is a little loud. I just left her at midden, facing off the entire campus as if they were a pack of wolves."

  "I know that, dear. I could feel the tension from here."

  "The amulet she wears amplifies her emotions. She's a very weak empath, if she senses emotions at all—and I don't think she's aware that she's projecting. But even when she was fully shielded at Willowlake, I could pick up her grief, Rakell."

  The Mottemage took a long draw on the huge silver stein she held, sighed deeply, then grinned at her favorite. "Motte Rakell, Medwind, dear. I don't care if you are a damned barbarian—you can remember the formalities with me... or I'll turn you into a neutered wingmount. You'd hate that. So—get the girl to quit wearing the bloody amulet, if it's what's making her emotions scrape across the back of my mind that way. She's grating on my nerves."

  Medwind chuckled. "I'll take care of it, my'etje."

  "Don't give me any of you foreign nicknames, either, you. I could still eat you and a dozen of your ilk for nondes." Motte Rakell flipped a page of the mammoth tome that rested on her lap, and focused for a moment on the contents of the page. Her eyebrow flicked with interest, and she glanced up at Medwind.

  "Hand me one of those plants, Med."

  "Which one?"

  "Doesn't matter. This looks interesting, and I want to try it."

  Medwind picked a small, sickly looking philos off the windowsill, thinking that there weren't many people in the world who could wreck a philos. The Mottemage could—she put her love and her energy into animals and people; her plants got taken care of on the sly by any of the instructors or students who could slip the poor green martyrs something when she wasn't looking.

  Motte Rakell picked up the yellowed plant and rested her fingers on the glossy, heart-shaped leaves. She closed her eyes, and for a moment, nothing happened.

  Then Medwind saw the plant's shape change. Its flat leaves curled in on themselves and grew long, shiny spines along their inside surfaces. Its stalk pushed out hairy, dew-covered needles which thickened and darkened.

  The spiny stalks began to move up and down on their own, slowly, while the spiny leaves spread open like toothed jaws.

  The Mottemage opened her eyes, studied the results of her experiment critically for a moment, then smiled. She handed the potted plant back to Medwind.

  "Now the damned thing will feed itself," she growled. "Careful how you pick it up or it may try to make you its next meal."

  Medwind gingerly carried the plant over to the windowsill and returned it to its place.

  "Now," the Mot
temage said from her perch in the brocaded chair, "why are you interrupting my rest?"

  Medwind searched for a chair that wasn't occupied by books, papers, paraphernalia, or cats, and gave up. She settled cross-legged on the floor, then nodded. "As a matter of fact, I wanted your opinion on something."

  "Your hulking country mage."

  Medwind grinned ruefully. "I want to room her with somebody other than Yaji."

  "Yaji has the only open room."

  "I know. But I think she would be willing to take in someone other than Faia."

  The Mottemage's sarcastic snort was not lost on Medwind. "Of course she'd be willing to share with someone other than your big, ignorant peasant. And what would she learn from that?"

  "I'm not worried about what Yaji will learn at this point. She isn't living up to her potential because she's lazy and self-indulgent. I am worried about how her hostility will affect Faia—and Faia has suffered so much already."

  "Yes, she has. And Faia has already proven that she's a big girl who can take care of herself."

  Medwind watched the Mottemage out of the corners of her eyes, studying her thoughtfully. "How do you mean?" she asked.

  "Did you think that Jann wouldn't come racing in here looking for blood after her little fight with Faia? That story, in a dozen variations, is making its way around campus right now, by the way. Faia has garnered a bit of support for her attack. Apparently Frelle Jann has been stepping on toes other than ones wearing peasant's boots of late." The Mottemage smiled slowly. "No, Medwind. Your prize pupil may not make rooms full of new friends in the next few days, but I think you'll see that she won't become a stepping mat for Yaji, either. And I think she may be just the medicine that will boost Yaji into living up to her potential."

  Medwind sighed. "As you wish, then, Motte Rakell."

  Medwind rose and prepared to leave.

  "By the way," her superior said, "it's nice to see you without that damned bone thing sticking through your nose. I hope you've gotten rid of it for good."

  "Only for today."

  The Motte sighed excessively and rolled her eyes in mock-dismay. "Too bad."

  As Medwind left her superior's apartment, she heard Rakell shouting again. "Flynn, you infernal beast, if you strike that quicklight, I'll hang you by your whiskers and rip your tail off with my bare hands!"

  Medwind grinned. The Mottemage deserved Flynn.

  The trees arched overhead, leaving the forest floor in twilight gloom even at midday. A slender young woman, dressed in student robes, lay on the ground. Her wrists and ankles were bound with ropes clumsily twisted from vines. A wad of cloth torn from her robe and shoved in her mouth kept her from screaming. She struggled, and lashed out magically at her captors. Rocks, leaves, twigs, and other detritus from the forest floor spun in a miniature tornado that the group clustered about her shielded themselves from, then effectively ignored.

  The leader of her captors mindspoke the others. :Have you readied her for the ritual?:

  One of those spoken to groveled. :Oh, yes. Yes—and is she not lovely? Surely you will find her fair enough, and young enough, and mighty enough—:

  The first speaker regarded the groveler with disdain, :I will find her all of these things if this works. If not, you will find me someone more suitable.: The leader studied the intended victim with sudden displeasure. :Why does she fight? Why have you not subdued her? Why, you snivellers?!:

  :We have not the strength to control her mind. She is strong, and we are still weak.:

  :If this fails, we will be weaker still.:

  :There is still mehevar.:

  The leader was suddenly thoughtful. :There is. But we will try this first.:

  The leader leaned over the student and stared into her eyes. The aura of wicked magic pervaded the area. The girl's eyes grew huge, then narrowed with concentration. After an instant, miniature bolts of lightning erupted from her body and leapt at her captor. The leader, however, fended them off without apparent difficulty. The girl appeared to realize she was lost, and struggled harder, fighting to free herself from her bonds, to rid her mouth of the gag—then abruptly, she lay still, staring up into the eyes of her tormentor. Her color changed to ash-white, and when she failed to blink, the leader backed off, swearing.

  :She's not breathing,: one of the observers mindwhispered. :Look at her—she's dead!:

  :She was defective,: the leader noted bitterly. :There was a weakness in her heart—she would have been useless, even for mehevar. Thank the gods the weakness manifested before I took her over. But now I have wasted all of that energy for nothing.:

  The leader snarled at the followers and demanded, :Nevertheless, some power may linger from her death. Glean off what you can, then use the energy to find me someone more suitable. When you are finished, dispose of her body in the woods. And hurry. I weary of this long wait.:

  Chapter 4: THE SAVAGE, THE HEATHEN, AND EVIL AWAKENED

  :COME here,: a gentle voice whispered into the minds of the students studying in their dorms and the library. :Come here,: it requested, so reasonably, so faintly that mages and students felt only a sudden slight tug, an impulse to go to the lake. :Come here,: it crooned into the souls of mages and hedge-wizards scattered throughout Mage-Ariss.

  Several University mages looked up from their work, frowned as their concentration was interrupted by a sensation as slight as the whine of a stingfly heard from another room—and then, when the passing strangeness that caught their attention did not recur, turned back to their work. A few students went so far as to look out their windows toward the darkening sheet of water over which the sun set.

  The pretty girl who ran the Aelere District herbal supply shop on Five Round Way put down her mortar and pestle and herbs when she heard the call. The fertility decoction she was making for the wealthy young wife of the district banker would wait. She looked at her bondmate, and with a puzzled expression, kissed him. "I'm going out for a little while," she said. "If the baby wakes up, I have some nut-milk already prepared. That will keep him happy until I get back."

  Her mate looked at her, surprised. "Where are you going?"

  Her expression became troubled, and she averted her eyes. "I don't have something I need," she told him. She knew it was an evasion, but still, it felt like the truth when she said it.

  He nodded, not liking the look in her eyes, but not knowing what to say to keep her from going.

  Out on the Sookanje periphery, in the little blue cottage beside the Woolcloth Makkenhaus, the neighborhood's new hedge-wizard wrapped her divining cards in the middle of a reading and told her client, "I'm sorry, but something has just happened in the spirit realm that requires my attention. Will you be able to come back—" she looked on her filesheet and made a notation, "about sixth bell tomorrow?"

  The client nodded, bewildered. "Well, I suppose so. But couldn't you just tell me now about the man in my future—" She discovered herself talking to an empty room. The pretty young card reader was gone. "Well, I never—" the older woman muttered. Then she shrugged. The ways of the magical folk were frequently beyond explanation. Quietly, she left, locking the door behind her.

  A child three weeks away from her adult initiation heard the call, quit floating objects around her room (a newly acquired talent she had not yet announced to her parents, since they were hoping she would take an apprenticeship in the weaver's makkenhaus, and since they had often spoken badly of the city's mages), and slipped out of her bedroom window. She ran through the city streets in her nightrobe.

  A delicate ebony-skinned house-bruja, out tending her plants in the darkness, put down her watercan and followed the rich unspoken promises of the voice without a word to the family and friends who sat laughing and chatting in her house.

  And walking from the wingmount stables to an appointment with a friend in the senior students' dorm, one apprentice heard the call, and felt it more clearly than any of the rest of her classmates. To her, it was a soft tickle at the back of her ne
ck, a sudden rush of excitement, the promise of something—well, wonderful—waiting just over there. :Come here,: she felt—and having lacked much of anything wonderful in her life for a very long time, she complied. To the voice that beckoned to her soul, Amelenda Tringdotte responded by turning off of the path and drifting across the quad toward the woods surrounding the Kie Lake with a boneless, liquid gait. Her student robe flowed around her ankles, her hair lifted and danced around her face. She looked very young and very beautiful—but only Flynn, the cat with hands, was out on that part of the grounds to notice, and because Flynn was deeply involved in paying court to a round-eyed, jet-black queen, he paid her little attention. No one else noticed her at all her.

  So when Ame entered the woods, she did so unremarked.

  "Well, this is the room."

  Yaji elbowed past Faia and shoved one of fifty identical doors on the long, narrow stone hall open and stomped in. Faia followed behind her in time to see Yaji flick her fingers in the air to set lamps all around the room blazing with cool white light. When she looked startled, the other girl smirked.

  "Ghostlights," Yaji said. She didn't need to add dimskull to her curt remark. Her tone implied it.

  It had been an exhausting day, and Faia felt drained. Medwind Song had grabbed her following midden for a whirlwind tour of the campus, a flurry of introductions, a mountain of paperwork, and then dropped her off in the tender care of her new roommate.

  The new roommate was visibly unhappy with the news. The girls in the other room of the bath house had been right. Faia sensed impending trouble.

  Medwind had not been willing to listen to any arguments when she went about confirming the rooming assignment for the two young women. Yaji had attempted to bargain a trade, Faia for any other student—an action that left Faia feeling very much like a wormy sheep at market—and when Yaji discovered Medwind was unshakable, accepted her fate with sour humor. And Faia had found herself toted along in the other student's wake as if she were carrion three days dead.