Fire in the Mist
Page 9
What she had hoped for more than anything was just to be able to drop into bed to sleep without any conversation.
That, obviously, was not to be.
Her new room bore heavy marks of its other occupant. All the walls were covered with papers, parchments, diagrams, and fancy scripts in brightly colored inks; the desks and the "spare" bed were equally inundated by beakers and athames, books, ledgers, odd jewelry, scrying balls and mirrors, candles, chalk, ink and jars of exotic ingredients. Projects in all stages of completion (except, Faia noted, for completion itself) littered the floor, the chairs, and the tops of every article in the room that didn't move. The doors of both of the room's wardrobes were open, displaying overflows of Yaji's brilliantly colored finery. A bell lute lay on Yaji's unmade bed.
Underneath the mess, it was a large, agreeable room. Pale wood paneling over one of the stone walls added warmth, and the desks and beds and wardrobes of the same pale wood were well made, and fancier than any Faia had ever used. The single window was glazed with tiny diamonds of pale rose glass, and was flung open to reveal, in the last shadowed stretches of daylight, a wooded park and the leading edge of the lake that lay across the grounds. There were two pentacles painted side by side on the floor, properly oriented with their leading apexes aimed north. Yes, she decided, it was a very nice room.
Still, Faia had never seen such an abundance of junk in her life. Tactlessly, she admitted as much.
"Do you never clean in here?"
"This is organized the way I want it. I like to have my work spread out and undisturbed."
Faia nodded. "Well, I like to sleep lying down, and unless you move this stuff, I will not be able to." She looked closer at the equipment that littered her bed. "Some of these things of yours are a waste."
Yaji glared at Faia. "Oh, really? You know so much about magic, do you?"
"I know what works. A bowl of water serves as well as one of those pretty crystal globes for scrying, and you can change the water's ingredients to suit your purpose. There is nothing wrong with dried herbs if you cannot get fresh—but this time of year, fresh can be had, and cheaper, too. And what in the Lady's Name do you intend to do with a jar full of butterfly wings?"
"It's a spell I'm developing myself. For beauty."
Faia snorted. "You misuse the Lady's creatures for your own vanity, and you will find the price high indeed."
Faia started shoveling Yaji's things without ceremony into a heap in the middle of the floor.
"Wait a minute!" Yaji yelled. "I didn't tell you you could move my things!"
"No, you did not. And I did not ask." Faia continued excavating through the mess in search of the bed.
"But that's all mine!" Yaji wailed.
"You are welcome to help move it."
Faia was not in the mood for any more of Yaji and was not, she thought, going to be able to tolerate any more of anything this day. She found the covers on the bed, pulled them back, then stripped to the skin.
"What are you doing?" Yaji asked.
"Going to bed."
"It's almost time for nonce, and afterward, evening studies. You can't go to sleep now. And you can't intend to leave all my belongings on the floor."
Faia crawled between the covers and pulled them over her. "Good night, Yaji."
"Look, you, I have an entire set of lessons I have to do tonight," Yaji mewled, "and I'm in no temper to work them while crawling over and around some slumbering giant."
"Pity. Then work them elsewhere."
Faia closed her eyes and feigned sleep. Yaji's voice nattered on, but the words drifted by without ever connecting. And soon, Faia wasn't feigning at all.
Nightmares crawled through Daane University that night—crept from student to student, slithered from instructor to assistant, until they touched, briefly, every single soul. They were weak and tentative nightmares, new-hatched dragonlets hesitantly breathing flames for the first time. But like new-hatched dragonlets, they held the promise of becoming much bigger.
The first tentative ray of sunlight fell through the rose-tinted window directly on Faia's face. She woke, pushing away the last clinging shreds of an unrecallable bad dream, and thought the sunlight and the breaking day pleasant—until her eye caught her new roommate, dressed in an obnoxiously frilly pink cloud of a nightgown, sprawled on the other bed.
Yecch. Here I am, then, and there she is, and things could only get worse from this point.
Faia rose and pulled her tunic over her head. She crept to the window.
Outside, it was beautiful. The endless rains were gone, and the sky had cleared, and promised sunshine. The lake that began on the other side of the campus greensward beckoned invitingly. In the still morning air, its surface reflected the silhouettes of the ancient, gnarled trees that dipped to its edge, and the horsetail whites of cirrus clouds high overhead. Boulders, worn smooth and round by near-eternities of passing time, stretched along the shore like a line of lizards crawling out of the shadows to sun themselves. Little blue hovies skimmed and dipped and circled in the pink dawn, chasing insects.
I'm sure I'm not supposed to wander around here without telling someone what I'm doing—but I don't care. Let the rest of the world find me if it can, Faia thought. I'm going to go see that lake.
The deed was as simple as the idea. Faia tugged on the rest of her clothes and her boots, shoved her rede-flute into her pocket, and sneaked out the door.
At the water's edge, she pulled off boots and socks and dropped them on the first boulder she passed, and stepped barefoot into the lake. She laughed as slippery, chilly clay mud oozed between her toes.
Faia reveled in the crisp bite of the morning air and the startling heat of the just-risen sun on her cheeks. It was glorious to wander, free of watching eyes and whispers and stupid curiosity and stupider bigotry. She squelched along the muddy lake edge until she was out of sight of the dorm and the tower. The tiny splashes of her steps stirred up clouds of clear-winged dew-flies; each misstep on the moss-covered rocks that alternated with the mud underfoot sent minnows and crayfish careening in front of her, disturbed by her passage.
Ahead, one huge flat rock cut far into the water; she had seen the point of it from the dorm window, but had not imagined how much more of it there was. To Faia, the rock looked like it had once intended to make itself into a bridge, before it had wearied of the task and quit partway. She clambered up on it, wary of snakes, and crawled along its length. From that vantage point, she could see that the lake was longer than it appeared from shore. It curved back on itself, and extended northeast into a wilderness of huge trees and tangled thickets—in the midst of giant metropolitan Ariss, that dark and secluded piece of forest sent a chill shiver down Faia's spine. For an instant, she felt terribly isolated, and imagined herself the prey of some great, deadly beast.
Then the feelings were gone, and she laughed at herself. The "wilderness" could cover no more than a few hundred square estas. Her sudden flight of fancy had to be nothing more than her sensing the incongruity of an untended stand of trees in the midst of a city manicured to within a fingers' breadth of hysteria.
She relaxed and enjoyed the solitude. There was no one visible. Not on the lake, not in the woods—nowhere. The noises of the city were still audible, but Faia found she could block them out. She concentrated on the tiny susurration of water against the rock, and the chirp of birds, and the lazy drone of insects.
Sunlight warmed the boulder and slanted across her exposed face. She rolled over to lay on her back, and pulled out the rede-flute. Closing her eyes against the glare, she put the flute to her lips and tried a few notes. They carried softly across the water, and picked up echoes from backwaters of the lake.
She played the "Shepherd's Lullaby"—slow, measured, soothing—and then worked variations on it, liking the harmonies of the echoes the water reflected back to her.
The ball of pain she had carried around inside of herself since Bright shifted, and slightly loosened its gr
ip. She sat up, realizing that she felt good. She wished she could make the feeling last. She centered herself, and brought up the circle of earth-energy, and let it move from the rock through her and back into the rock. She changed her music, into the intricate instrumental for "Lady Send the Sunshine." She sang the words in her mind as she played.
On the Wheel of
Life I ride,
Circle round from
Birth to death.
Choose my spoke and
Live my life,
Glad for times of sunshine.
Lady shears and
Lady cards;
Lady spins and
Lady dyes.
Lady weaves our
Lives to cloth and
Lady sends the sunshine.
For the moment
I rejoice,
Whatever the
Moment brings.
Cry for sorrow,
Laugh for joy for—
Sometimes I have sunshine.
Lady shears and
Lady cards;
Lady spins and
Lady dyes.
Lady weaves our
Lives to cloth and
Lady sends the sunshine.
I have known the
Pain of birth;
I will know the
Pain of death.
Days between are
Mine to cherish—
Storm and snow and sunshine.
Lady shears and
Lady cards;
Lady spins and
Lady dyes.
Lady weaves our
Lives to cloth and
Lady sends the sunshine.
When she concluded the music, she sat motionless, eyes closed, letting the energy she'd built flow through her.
I am where I need to be, she told herself. And I can be miserable here, or contented—but I cannot go back to Bright, and I have nowhere else. So I might as well be happy.
And indeed, she felt happy. Or, if not exactly happy, then free at last of the dark burden of Bright's annihilation.
The sound of bells drifted across the water—deep, rich peals that signaled this first major event of the campus day. As those bells rang, others from across the city began to clamor, too.
As Medwind Song had explained to her the day before, this was the signal of rising time. In the dorm, the rest of the students would be opening their eyes, dragging out of their beds, and readying themselves for antis, and then for morning classes. Faia sighed. The bells meant that in a few more minutes, she would have to leave her tranquil hideaway. She would have to go back and face yesterday's mocking students and yesterday's displeased instructors and the unknown and terrifying ordeals of classes.
So it is, so it must be. When the next bells rang, she would go back. Until then, she had no intention of leaving her protected circle.
She played the rede-flute, eyes closed, until the peculiar sensation of being watched drove her music to a faltering halt. Skin prickling, she opened her eyes—and froze. The music had drawn an audience that rested, almost submerged, in the lake, and stared at her with winsome brown eyes.
Otters?
They appeared to be. Blunt-snouted and whisker-faced, they floated in the shadow of an overhanging willow. She counted seven of them.
They were scattered along the bank, up against huge, gnarled roots and low-hanging branches. She measured them against the monstrous, ancient willow, and rubbed her eyes with confusion. They must be enormous! But they cannot be as big as they appear. I have misjudged the size of the tree—otherwise the beasts would be as long as a tall man.
Deceptive, those distances—and that had to mean that the lake was smaller than it seemed, too. A miniature dark forest—the illusion of untamed wilderness—and I will bet that means that this lake is just like the rest of the campus and the city. Artistically planned to just the right, safe scale, manicured and trained to be a play forest. She felt somehow betrayed. Ariss had seemed friendlier when she thought that there were a few places uncontrolled by people.
There were still the otters, however. She had loved the antics of the little beasts since she was a tiny child. She watched them watching her. Then, recalling games she had played with the highland otters around Bright, she whistled a few notes, then played a brief trill with the rede-flute. The trill imitated as closely as she could the rolling speech of the creatures. Immediately, one of the otters chirped back, its deep contralto warble an odd mockery of the normal soprano call. The beast swam out of the shadow in her direction, while the other six hung back, watching.
She was forced to upwardly revise the scale of the tree and the lake. The "otter" swimming towards her was exactly as huge as her first seemingly impossible estimates had made it. Mother of us all! How can that be? she wondered.
She longed to stay and lure the creature closer—but the bells began to ring for antis, and she had missed nondes the night before. She was starved.
Maybe they will still be here after classes. I shall come back and look for them then.
With real regret, she grounded her shields and turned her back on the swimming otter to hurry toward the Greathall.
* * *
Even before the first bells rang, Medwind Song was up and preparing for the day. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and pulled a gold-and-bone ornament from a rack that rested on her dressing table. She fitted the pin through the hole in her left nostril and surveyed the result.
This morning she only vaguely resembled the Daane University instructor she'd so obviously been the day before. Gone was the bright red instructor's uniform, exchanged for a brilliantly colored and precisely patterned Huong-tribe staarne. The tribal costume wrapped at wrists and waist and flowed in sweeping folds to mid-thigh. Under it, blue-dyed leather Huong breeches met curl-toed, quilted boots. Gone was her plain, straight hair style, replaced by myriad braids woven into a midnight-black crest that ran from the top of her head to the nape of her neck. Her deep blue eyes were lined by black esca, in the Huong-sacred cat-pattern of the senior magician. And now the curving insignia of the Huong-revered sslis dangled from her left nostril.
It was this last item that especially drove the Mottemage crazy. The gold-and-bone nose ornament was the sort of barbaric flourish Rakell tried to suppress in her university. The Mottemage said she was striving for unity among her students and professors; Medwind Song thought she was actually trying to achieve homogeneity. Medwind didn't approve of homogeneity.
The instructor listened to the first bells ring across the city and grinned at herself in the mirror. She decided to sit next to Rakell during antis to see if she could give the administrator a bad case of indigestion. If she could, it would be sweet revenge for Rakell's insistence that she wear the idiotic red school suit during her search for Faia.
She padded down the spiraling tower steps three at a time, hoping to get to the Greathall before the call to antis rang—there might, after all, be an extra sweetroll for her if she was early—passing other, correctly garbed instructors, who apparently had the same plan in mind. They saw her battle dress and gave her knowing smiles as she sailed by.
"Rakell annoy you again, Med?" one called, and laughed.
"Just a little," Medwind admitted. "If she annoyed me a lot, Thea, I could do much better than this."
"Skyclad at High Nonce?"
The barbarian instructor snorted at the idea. "Nothing of the sort. I'd just teach Flynn to mis-play the violitto. I've heard that cat sing—he's tone-deaf as hell."
"Remind me never to make you angry at me! Still, giving Flynn hands wasn't her best idea, either," the other woman agreed. "If that lunatic cat starts playing bad music, it will be her own fault."
The stairwell filled with chuckles.
Medwind continued her headlong bounding down the steps.
Without warning, a wave of blinding pain caught her between the eyes and sent her staggering against the wall. She missed her footing and fell heavily down several steps
before hitting the landing. She was conscious of the frightened, inarticulate cries of her colleagues. From all around her, groans and sobs echoed against the cold stone. Red light pounded through her tightly shut eyes, and the scent of blood and fear assailed her nostrils. She was aware of an alien elation—of sheer delight at the misery she sensed. Medwind's breath came fast and sharp, and her fingernails dug into her palms as she willed the torture to stop.
The horror surrounded her and suspended her inside its timeless, eternal self—It has always been this way, and will always be, she thought—and abruptly, the horror and its attendant thought were gone.
Silence roared in on heavy feet to fill Medwind's overloaded consciousness. She opened her eyes, and saw nothing but brilliant, awful white. Scent vanished, and sensation with it. Medwind felt she'd been transmuted into bodiless light, as if she were on the point of vanishing.
Then the absence of sensation disappeared too, and she was aware of the throb of a twisted ankle and the taste of blood from her bitten lip, and of aches from arms and knees and back that had careened against stone. She was back in the stairwell with the rest of the instructors, who were beginning to shake themselves and move around. She met their eyes, and saw only stunned disbelief, and terror, and Üxwbewilderment.
Litthea Terasdotte, a city-born, civilized instructor—well-dressed, petite, black-eyed, and blonde—bit her lip and glanced at Medwind. "What happened?"
Medwind sat on the step and rubbed at her throbbing ankle. "Don't have any idea, Thea. Nothing like that where I come from—not ever."
Thea nodded. "Nor here. That was bad."
"Bad—intentionally crazy. Evil."
"Evil. Yes, definitely evil. But it's gone now."
Medwind felt a thrill along her nerves, and in the pit of her stomach something lurched. From the back of her mind, she felt echoes of the thing as it laughed. She shivered involuntarily, and shook her head. "Not gone. Just waiting, I think."
Faia sat in the Greathall, listening to spoons clicking on bowls and teeth, and the shuffle of leather soles on stone, and the occasional rustle of a cloth-covered rump shifting uncomfortably on a hard wooden trestle. All around her, eyes fixed on plates, fingers stirred food listlessly, voices were mute.