by Sharon Shinn
“She’s afraid of him,” Sosie replied. “But I think—if Annie and the baby are alive—she’ll defy him and help us.”
Senneth nodded. “Good. For the short term, I’m going to put a ward on this room. A—a spell of protection. Only you and your sister and your mother will be able to leave and enter the room. Unless there’s someone else you can count on who might come by at some point to help.”
“Hadda,” Sosie said. “She hates my father.”
Senneth nodded. “It will be a while before your sister is strong enough to move. But when she is—I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave here. Go someplace safer.”
“I know,” Sosie said. “We had planned—we were going to leave this week—but then the baby started coming—”
“It will be difficult,” Senneth warned. “Not just because your sister will be weak, but because the baby is not like other babies. That pitcher he broke—that won’t be the only thing he breaks. If he has the power to lift and hurl objects across the room—well—”
“How can we keep him safe?” Sosie burst out. “Or us? And if we go somewhere and people are afraid of mystics—”
“I know,” said Senneth. “You’re going to have to learn to control him.”
Sosie stared at her. “I don’t know how to control magic. I don’t have a mystical bone in my body. Annie, either.”
“I know,” Senneth said again. “You’re going to have to go someplace where someone can help you. I’m going to draw you a map to the house of a woman who lives not far from Rappen Manor. She’s a mystic. She can teach your sister what she needs to know. But I don’t know how long you’ll be safe with Aleatha. There are—there are a lot of people these days who hate and fear us. As soon as you can, I think you should take your sister and her baby and travel to Ghosenhall. Aleatha can give you names of some friends there. So far, the king has protected mystics. You will be as safe there as you will be anywhere.”
“We’ll go there,” Sosie whispered.
A small crashing sound came from across the room—something little tipped to the floor, Senneth guessed—and was followed by a “Damn it!” from Kirra. Senneth could not repress a smile. “What you’re going to have to do,” she said, “in order to even make it safely to Rappengrass, is to check the baby’s power.”
“How do I do that?”
“Bind him with a moonstone. Wrap it in a piece of cotton and tuck it inside his crib, or tie it around his waist. Don’t let it touch his skin, or it will burn him.”
Sosie’s eyes dropped to the bracelet glowing diamond-white around Senneth’s wrist. “You’re a mystic. You’re wearing moonstones, and they don’t seem to burn you.”
“I’m different,” Senneth said.
Kirra called in a low voice, “And the sooner you get that piece of moonstone, the better. I wouldn’t want him to fall asleep without it. I’m guessing his power will be even wilder when he dreams.”
Senneth nodded, watching Sosie. “So, do you understand? Do you realize what you must do?”
“I think so. Give my nephew an amulet, stay here in this enchanted room till my sister is healed, then run to a mystic in Rappengrass. Then, when everyone is strong enough, go to Ghosenhall—where we might be safe, but we might not.”
Senneth smiled. “How old are you, Sosie?”
The surprise showed on Sosie’s face. “Seventeen.”
“It’s hard to have to do so much when you’re so young,” Senneth said. “Hard to have to be so responsible. But I can see you’re strong enough. I can tell you won’t fail them.”
Sosie tilted her chin up. Her cheeks were streaked with dried tears, and her lips were red from the many times she had bitten them during this grueling night. “No,” she said. “I won’t fail them.”
“Listen,” Senneth said. “Do you have something—a rock, a necklace, something hard and pretty and small, something that you like? Not a moonstone,” she added.
Sosie nodded, bewildered. “Yes—a stone I found down at the river one day when I was a little girl. It was washed smooth by the water, and I thought it was unusual, so I kept it.”
Senneth nodded. “Is it in this room? Do you sleep here with your sister? Good. Get it now.”
Sosie dropped Annie’s hand and stepped away from the bed. Senneth glanced down at Annie, who was now sleeping, and laid her hand on the pale forehead. Cool, but a reasonable coolness. Her pulse felt strong and unfaltering under Senneth’s touch.
Sosie was back beside her in a matter of moments, holding out an egg-sized piece of rose quartz. “Excellent,” Senneth said, turning it over and over in her hands. She closed her fist around it, feeling against her palm its imperfect smoothness, marred by shallow faults and tiny pitted dimples. It had formed in the churning fire of the earth, turned to icy stone in the clutch of a stern mountain, and been tamed to a silky beauty by the relentless patting of the river’s hands. It was an elemental thing with elemental energy, and Senneth woke every memory of power in its crystal veins.
She extended her hand to Sosie, whose face showed awe and wariness. “This will give you some—protection—when you need it most,” Senneth said. “Carry it in your pocket, or in a bag on a cord around your neck. When you are in need of comfort, or hope, or courage, or physical strength, put your hand around it. It will not fail you.”
Somewhat gingerly, Sosie picked the quartz stone from Senneth’s hand. By her expression, she received a definite jolt when her fingers touched the rock, but it was not an unpleasant one. “How long will its—its power last?” she asked.
Senneth shrugged. “Years. Forever. It is not the kind of power that ever fades.”
Sosie glanced down at her sleeping sister. “Can you make one for Annie as well?”
For the second or third time in this hellacious night, Senneth smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I can. Give me something she cherishes that you can take with you on the road.”
Kirra was watching this little enchantment with great interest, but she made no comments and asked no questions. “Is the baby asleep?” Senneth asked.
“Finally,” Kirra said. “Once you’re done bespelling rocks, perhaps Sosie can go hunting for a moonstone to tuck into the cradle. I don’t want him to have nightmares that manage to manifest themselves.”
Sosie reappeared at Senneth’s side, a small chunk of fool’s gold in one hand and a delicate moonstone necklace in the other. “I’ll wrap this up right now and lay it by his feet,” she said. “And then—and then—I don’t know what then!”
“And then you’ll sleep,” Kirra said.
“No,” said Sosie, “first I’ll clean up Annie.”
Sosie was still bending over the baby’s bed when a small commotion at the door caused the two mystics to hurry that way. There was a small, round, white-haired woman arguing before Justin’s and Tayse’s crossed swords. Behind them, the main room still burned with pillars of implacable fire.
“Let me see her! I’ve come to help! Gone one day, one damn day of the whole month, and it’s the day poor Annie needs me, and I come here to find the whole house on fire and crazy men at the door. Let me through, I say!”
Senneth peered around Tayse, who was so big he blocked most of the door. “Are you Hadda?” she asked.
The woman leveled hot blue eyes on her. “Yes, who are you? What are you doing in there? How’s my Annie?”
“Let her in,” Senneth said.
Two steps behind her came Annie’s mother, deathly pale and shaking with fear. She came just to the threshold, not chancing either the drawn swords or the magic loose inside the room.
“Is she—I heard the baby cry—but is Annie—” she whispered. Her hands twisted before her, tangling in her apron.
“Annie is sleeping, but she lives,” Senneth said in a gentle voice. “If you want to come in, you can. Your husband and your sons will not be allowed into this room.”
The woman’s face brightened. “She’s—alive? She’ll be—she’ll be fine? She’ll be
my old Annie?”
Senneth held back her fresh surge of anger. “The baby is mystic,” she said. “I don’t know if he spilled any power into Annie’s blood. She’ll live, I’m fairly certain of that, especially if she has good nursing. But I can’t guarantee she will ever be—the way you remember her—or the way you want her.”
A little sob escaped the woman, and she stood in front of the Riders, trembling and indecisive. Senneth could actually see her shift her weight from foot to foot, as if she would come forward, as if she would back away.
“Hadda and Sosie will care for her, as much as they’re able,” Senneth said. “But she will need you, I think. My friends and I must leave this house in a few minutes, and we will be gone from the town by morning. We cannot help her any more than we have. She needs you.”
A moment longer Annie’s mother paused on the threshold. Senneth chanced a quick look around the main room but couldn’t see any of the men of the household. Chased out, perhaps, by the heat of the steadily burning furnishings. Or down in the tavern even now, telling their tale and gathering a coalition of like-minded men to go hunting mystics.
From inside the bedroom, a muffled exclamation from Hadda and a short, sharp cry from Annie. “I must go to her,” the woman decided, and brushed by the Riders and Senneth to hurry to her daughter’s side.
Tayse kept his body facing outward, ready to absorb any hostilities that came from the main room, but he turned his head to give Senneth a look of inquiry. “Truly?” he asked, in a voice edged with disbelief. “We’re leaving in a few minutes?”
She almost smiled. “There’s not much more we can do here. Or, rather, there are hours of things left to do, but they are mundane chores that other women can handle. We had best leave while we can, is my thinking.”
“Should we even stay the night in this town?” Justin asked.
She sighed. “I hope we can. But I don’t know.”
Kirra appeared at Senneth’s shoulder. “I’ve said our good-byes,” she said. “That Hadda—no one said so, but I’m guessing she’s got a hint of magic in her hands. We can safely leave our patient with her.”
“Then let’s go,” Senneth said.
She pushed between Tayse and Justin, Kirra one step behind her. Once in the main room, she paused a moment. It was tempting, but she really couldn’t leave the house filled with sorcerous fire. A wave of her fingers, and the flames were doused on the curtains, on the wooden rocker, on the sturdy beam in the center of the room. A half turn, and she was facing the bedroom doorway again, mouthing new spells for a different kind of fire, safe for some, hazardous for others. She had no idea how long it would be before Annie was well enough to travel, so she bewitched the room for six months. For which period of time, neither Annie’s father nor her brothers nor any neighbors except Hadda would be able to enter that room . . . and by the time the spell had faded, they might have given up trying. She shrugged a little and pivoted toward the front door.
“Time to leave,” she said.
Cammon scrambled up from a seat on the floor where he had been leaning against a wall. “Trouble outside,” he said.
She looked at him. Behind her, she heard Tayse and Justin draw their weapons again. “How many?”
“Fifteen men, maybe. I can hear them arguing—and boasting—‘Send the mystic out, I’ll see if she frightens me!’ Things like that.”
She nodded. “They’ve probably been drinking, too.”
Tayse edged past her. “I’ll go first.”
She strode ahead of him. The fire in her blood, which had calmed to a charcoal sludge in the last twenty minutes or so, had sparked again to a yellow-gold heat. “Oh no,” she said, yanking the door open, “let me.”
She stood in the doorway a moment, the light behind her, letting them see her, getting a quick look at them. Hard to see in the dark, but she thought Cammon’s guess was accurate: fifteen or twenty men, grumbling, posturing, feeding off of each other’s fear and bravado, ready to fight it out with the mystic.
Well, let them try to take her on.
“That’s her,” said a familiar voice—Annie’s father—and suddenly the mob of men was swelling toward them, voices ugly, faces snarling, hands suddenly silver with weapons. Tayse and Justin pressed the women between them; Cammon had his back to Kirra’s. Senneth waited until the oncoming men were almost close enough to be slashed by the Riders’ swords and then flung her arms up over her head.
Instantly, the whole throng tripped backward as men shouted out and cursed and rubbed their hands across their faces and fell back even farther.
“Stand away from us,” Senneth said in a commanding voice. “We will do you no harm if you let us pass.”
“We’re the ones will do you harm,” one of the bolder men called out, and a few of the others raised their voices in agreement.
She was furious again, suddenly and violently, and fire poured through her in a blind and painful rush. She made a pushing motion with her hands, and the mob stumbled back even farther as the men cried out and fell to the ground and jumped up again, hopping on the hot ground, choking on the burning air. She pushed again, incinerating the air between them, making them feel as if flames were licking at their feet and skin. A few of them turned and ran then, too afraid to stay and fight; ten or so remained, even angrier, milling around as if trying to find a cool breach in her defense, a safe place from which to launch an assault.
“Witch!” came from many throats. “Mystic! Sorceress! The Pale Lady damns you to her icy hell!”
“Get away from my house!” Annie’s father shouted, coming as close as he dared till heat drove him back a pace or two. Senneth could see the sweat speckling his face. “Get away from here! Leave my daughters alone!”
She hated him so much that her head almost split apart. She made fists and then snapped her fingers open, spraying him with fire. He howled and danced backward; she did it again. Then she made two thin tubes of her hands, one stacked in front of the other, and blew her hot breath through them, and Annie’s father stood in a living column of flame.
Everyone else in the whole clearing stood silent and unmoving as stone.
“Do—not—challenge—me,” she said in a deadly voice. Annie’s father screamed and jumped in his cage of fire, turning from side to side, desperate to escape. He wouldn’t die—she thought—but he would be singed and drained of sweat by the time this blaze burned out. “Do not follow me. Do not enter that house and try to harm those girls or take that baby. Stand back!” All the men scrambled back another two or three feet. “We’re sleeping tonight in the barn behind Markle’s tavern. If anyone—anyone—attempts to disturb us, I will burn down every building in town. If anyone leaves tonight, riding for help, I will stop him before he’s twenty yards away. We will be gone by morning, and you can tell what tales you wish then.”
And she turned on her heel and stalked through the scrubby forest, back toward the road, toward the town. Behind her, the tower of fire still burned on no fuel but fury, as if it would burn till the end of time.
CHAPTER 19
NO one spoke to her as they made the short trip back and flung themselves inside the barn. Donnal was on his feet, looking from face to face. “What happened?” he demanded.
Only Kirra would answer. “Senneth didn’t like the father’s attitude and put on a display,” she said. “A few townspeople came to add their voices to the protest, so she made the display even more impressive.”
Donnal’s eyes traveled to Senneth’s face and back to Kirra’s. “What about the baby?”
“Mystic-born,” Kirra said, “but he’ll be fine.”
“What about that man?” Justin asked. “How long will he burn?”
Senneth saw the expression that crossed Donnal’s face at that question. “Maybe an hour,” she said shortly. “He won’t be harmed. Much. How’s the raelynx?”
It took Donnal a moment to realize she was addressing him. “Edgy. I think he can sense your moods.”
&
nbsp; “Tonight, I don’t think you have to be a wild creature or an impressionable mystic to sense Senneth’s mood,” Kirra said.
It was too hot in here—too close—she couldn’t breathe. “I’m going outside for a while,” Senneth said, and headed for the door. Behind her she heard Justin ask, “I suppose we post a guard tonight,” and Tayse reply dryly, “I suppose we do.”
Outside, the frosty air was not even remotely cold enough to chill her blood. She wanted to find a river of winter ice and throw herself through the hard surface into the sluggish, frigid water below. Her skin was so hot she would turn the whole creek to steam; she would fill the whole forest with fog.
Her skin was so hot she might catch these harmless woods on fire just by brushing against a bare tree limb or setting her foot carelessly on a pile of withered leaves.
She pushed through the undergrowth, paying little attention to where she was going, trying only to put some distance between herself and the barn, herself and all living creatures. Gods, but her head screeched in agony; she wanted to reach up and rip it from her shoulders, toss it aside like a toxic ball. She knew from bitter experience that once the fire receded from her veins, leaving her spent and powerless, her head would feel even worse.
Hard as that was to imagine.
Suddenly, in the middle of her heedless charge away from the settlement, she was too weary to take another step. She sank to the ground right where she stood, by chance landing on a soft pile of pine needles, and pulled herself into the smallest possible shape. She hated them all, these smug, stupid, self-righteous townsfolk who dared to declare themselves better than someone else—dared to pretend their religion, their humanity, their bone structure made them right and everyone else wrong. Dared to say, “You’re different, and you deserve to die.” Well, she was different, and she would show them who deserved death.
She pulled her knees up and laid her cheek on the curved bones, cradling her head in her arms. But the problem was, she did not believe in exercising the power in her body to carry out such sentences. How was she any more capable of judging good and evil, of meting out punishment and reward, than these grim, fearful, and arrogant men? She hated them, but they hated her; maybe she was the canker, the witch, the atrocity they believed. And if she was not what they thought her—if she was not evil—she could not give in to evil impulses. She could not kill them all from a sense of vengeance. She could not allow herself to be guilty of such crimes. She did not want to be either as terrible as they thought her or as merciless as she thought them.