by Myers, Karen
It’s the lack of memory, the shallowness of her remembered life. Things are still fresh to her.
His smile faded. The truth is, she scares me, too.
It made him uncomfortable with her. Her casual experimentation with physical magic spoke to his own childhood, when it was made clear to him that a proper Zan had nothing to do with physical magic, that it was both shameful and destructive.
Well, they were right about destruction. He was beginning to doubt them about the rest, however. He suspected he could learn, if she’d teach him, and he thought he wanted to. Why not be as strong as possible, in all the ways I can?
This was his tulqiqa, his wandering time, when he’d finished with his teachers and sought to create a nayith, a masterwork of his own. He wanted to see if one could work together in an organized way with other wizards. His own countrymen weren’t interested in the question, and so he’d looked for foreigners with different ways, to learn from them. He’d postponed settling with his clan, finding a wife, taking students.
And fate had given him something very strange—a wizard who might be able to work with him, but was nothing like his countrymen. She was stronger than he was, in magic, and more broadly educated. In just three years. Why can’t we build something like the Collegium and learn as quickly? Or maybe it was her special gifts.
She was his student, as much as he was hers, and he understood that relationship.
But was she even human? You forget, when you look at her, but those ears, those animal ears… His fingers twitched involuntarily and his mouth quirked. I wonder what they feel like. Are they moving around all the time under that hair, swiveling to catch the sounds?
And there was something else, he was sure of it, even if it wasn’t the tail he’d joked about. Eventually she’d tell him, he thought, when she was less self-conscious about her differences. You wanted foreign, you did, and that’s surely what you got.
Crippled, she is, with that chain around her neck, as long as she thinks it so. He remembered her bitter words that day in the wagon, when she was exhausted. Is that all she wants, to know her own story?
He felt her fascination with something she was reading. No, not so—the love of learning surely drives her.
As it does me.
CHAPTER 25
Penrys clucked her tongue to get Tak Tuzap’s attention. He pulled his horse to a stop and turned his head back to look at her, and Zandaril stopped behind them both.
“Three men around the corner, not moving. One of them’s Wan Nozu,” she told them.
“That’s the mill,” Tak said.
She surveyed the village again, most of the people behind them now. The Rasesni minds seemed unaware of their presence. Beyond the mill in front of them, there were few villagers.
“The sooner we’re off the road, the better,” Zandaril commented from the rear. The tension pull his deep voice higher.
Tak took the remark as an order and led their little troop forward. Their horses’ hooves were muffled by the dirt, but the harness clinked and the leather creaked. When they rounded the corner, a gust of wind blew wet leaves down upon their heads, and Penrys smelled the warning of winter in their scent.
There were lights showing, in the three-story mill building, and Penrys thought she heard the rumble of the wheel that must be there, on the far side where the stream flowed.
Wan Nozu waited by the turnoff, his pack resting on a boulder to keep it out of the muck. “This way,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”
He shouldered his pack and led them along the side of the structure, down the slope, until he reached a stable door, built into the underside at the lowest part of the building.
There were many stalls but few animals. A wagon shed with external doors was visible at the end of the main aisle, through an open doorway.
The other two men awaited them there. One was clearly the miller himself, as his brawny arms and air of proprietorship attested. The other bore a strong resemblance to him. His son, I expect. I hope they don’t suffer from helping us.
“No names, I think,” the miller said.
Zandaril dismounted. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Can’t tell what we don’t know, can we?” He unfastened and lifted the double load down from his mule’s pack-frame and separated it into the pack he would carry, and the one he would leave behind.
“A gift to you,” he said, waving at all their mounts. “Whatever’s left in the loads, too.”
Penrys dismounted and handed her reins to the younger man. He stared at her features for a moment before taking the horse.
She’d arranged her own pack and lifted it to her shoulders. Take the books and power-stones or leave them here to moulder away? Too late to change my mind now.
The books were wrapped in her spare clothing, but she still felt the awkwardness of their unyielding shape and the weight of the two small bags of stones.
Wan Nozu pointed at two cloaks, draped over the wall of an unoccupied stall. “We guessed at the length for you two. See if we got it right.”
Penrys picked up the shorter one. It was a dull brown, of a worn, densely woven wool that still smelled faintly of lanolin, despite its age. When she flung it over her shoulders, pack and all, and fastened it at her throat, it hung to mid calf.
The miller thrust an old front-brimmed leather hat at her. She was puzzled for a moment, and he shoved it on her head and drew up the hood over it. Ah. The brim keeps the edge of the hood from dripping on my face.
She nodded her thanks, and took the hat off to see about stuffing something inside to make it fit better.
“One more thing,” the miller said. “I don’t like to see you walk off all unarmed like that.”
“Pa, they’re wizards,” the son objected.
“Says who?” his father retorted. “They never said anything, did they?”
He glared at his son, and then turned back to them.
“These are for you.” He pointed at the thick walking sticks, leaning up against the wall. They were just well-hewn lengths of common hickory, but Tak Tuzap walked over and picked up a shorter one, clearly intended for him, with apparent delight. He stood next to Wan Nozu, and unconsciously mimicked his stance as he waited for the two wizards to finish.
Penrys commented unobtrusively to Zandaril. *Look at the two of them.*
He glanced over. *Best thing for him. We may have to leave in a hurry, and this way the two of them can get each other back here.*
“Y’know,” the miller said, “I can’t say the beasts will still be here when you return.”
Zandaril shrugged. “We understand—do what you need to.”
He added, quietly. “If any of our goods remain when you see these two again, see that they get the benefit, will you?”
The miller looked at the headwoman’s nephew and the boy, and nodded. “We’ll see the lad has a home if he makes it back here.”
“That’s all we can ask,” Penrys said. “Stay out of trouble, and we were never here.”
“You looked like you were sorry to see those mules go,” Penrys said, as they scuffed through the wet leaves afoot, headed north. “I thought you didn’t like them. Change your mind?”
“Did you see how well they held up on the crossing, with nothing but the grazing? They looked like they could go on forever.” Zandaril hesitated. “Never worked with them before, hardly ever see them in sarq-Zannib. I wonder what sort of mules our own horses would make. Winter-hardy ones, maybe.”
Tak Tuzap broke in, “You oughta like ’em—that’s our own bloodline, you know, the donkeys in ’em.”
He swaggered a bit. “All the traders working in Neshilik used to buy our mules. The army won’t—they want to breed their own, so we sell the donkeys. Only the jacks, of course, so they have to keep coming back. They like the ones in Neshilik best.”
Zandaril grunted thoughtfully and Penrys shared a glance with Tak.
“Last time you looked like that,” she told Zandaril, “you were making
plans to get those horses of Veneshjug’s away from me. What’s the matter—not happy without something to look after?”
“I do miss my herds, it’s true. Not just the horses back with the squadron, but the ones my nurti, my second sister, has charge of, while I’m gone.”
Wan Nozu spoke up. “Do you have many animals, Wizard-chi? I understand the Zannib take them up and back to their winter pastures.”
“Well, much of our wealth is in herds, but I’m a bachelor still, so my mother’s family holds them for me instead of my wife. My second sister is in charge of the family herds on the taridiqa. After all, some of them will be hers when she marries, so she takes responsibility for their well-being.”
Zandaril smiled to himself, then told Wan Nozu. “She’s very good about it, very serious. The best in our family in this generation. I’m always a bit afraid I’ll come home sometime and find her married, outside the clan maybe, and someone else looking after the herds.”
He waggled a finger at Tak. “I’d hate to to have to face any new brother-in-law tough enough that she couldn’t scare him away.”
Penrys laughed. “That bad, is she?”
“No, that determined.”
“Then you’d be better off being the one to bring any husband strong enough for her into the family, right? Get him on your side first.”
They all laughed softly, as the night air chilled around them.
From the secluded rock overhang that Wan Nozu had led them to, off the road, Penrys could feel the people of Gonglik over the rise. Even well past midnight, the glow of lights in some of the buildings reflected off the overcast sky, visible to their cold, fireless camp.
A thousand or more people were there in town, and many were Rasesni.
“There could be a dozen wizards there for all I can tell,”she told Zandaril in frustration. “I can’t go through that many of them, carefully, and there’s a risk I might alert any wizard, like you did with the false herdsman.”
“Can’t they find us easy, out here? No one around?” Zandaril asked.
“Yeah, but they have to be looking for us. Why should they think to?”
Zandaril’s lips thinned. “No security in that.”
“Got a better idea?”
Wan Nozu and Tak Tuzap were scouting on their own in town, trying to discover what restrictions the invaders had placed on the locals. Tak, in particular, was hoping to check the homes of his uncle’s associates, to see if there was anyone safe they could approach for news.
Penrys’s imagination had no difficulty painting a picture of what might happen to them if they were caught, and it did nothing for the shortness of her temper that she was forced to wait while they took the risk.
“Look,”she said, “Realistically, what’s the most we can accomplish for Chang? We’ve heard the same wizard rumors here that he did outside. If we find a wizard, however distant, we can confirm their presence, and then get out, back over the Old Ferry trail, the way we came. Preferably before our horses disappear.”
Zandaril was shaking his head well before she finished. “Never works the way you plan it. And not very useful for Chang, either. Best is we find out who the leader is, overall, what he wants, and the leader and number of wizards, and what they can do.”
He paused, struck by a thought. “No, best is we kill leader and wizards.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Why not plan big?” he said, with a suspicion of a smile. “Besides, worst is not so good. Worst is we are discovered and never get back.”
“No,” Penrys said, “Worst is we get captured, and then we discover who leads the wizards and he peels our minds of everything we know.”
That stopped the conversation for a while.
Penrys made an effort to lighten her mood. “At least, if we don’t come back, Chang will assume we found wizards.”
She slid her eyes to catch the expression on Zandaril’s face. “See? There’s more than one way to send a message.”
“Help me stay awake,” Zandaril said, as he nudged Penrys whose head had started to droop as she leaned against a rock.
Her head bobbed up again and she rubbed her eyes. “What do you suggest?”
“Tell me about the Collegium, maybe.” It seemed like a good moment to try and get her talking, he thought. Harder for her to dodge the questions when they were stuck together like this, just the two of them.
“What do you want to know?” He could hear the reserve in her voice, though it was too dark to make out her face.
“Well, what did you do there? Can you tell me?”
She paused. “I wanted to teach, the things I could do that they didn’t know. I thought they could learn, like you are learning, but they wouldn’t have it. Not even with Vylkar as my sponsor, and he was part of the governing body.
“So he arranged a different job for me, cataloguing the new works, rescuing the old ones that weren’t indexed yet. It was supposed to be a dull job, a thankless job, but it left me on my own to read everything I could.”
She leaned back on her elbows, on the ground. “The books that had hardly ever been opened… you wouldn’t believe it. Languages I didn’t know, languages no one knew. I made friends of two of the elderly librarians—they weren’t too sure who I was, exactly, or what I was doing there, but they were happy to have someone else to talk to. They helped me find a workroom to call my own, showed me where to get supplies. And so I began to experiment.”
Zandaril looked down on her where she lay, dim in the grass. “What sorts of experiments?”
“Things the books suggested. Old research projects that fizzled out. Requests from merchants—the Collegium turned down most of those, but I rescued a couple and worked on them. You see, the merchants expected to try things, and to fail, but to keep trying until something worked. That’s what they were used to, in business. Some of them, anyway.
“They didn’t understand that attitude, at the Collegium. You were supposed to focus on things that already worked, and make them just a little bit better, rather than set off after an unproven hunch.”
Her voice quieted. “I had personal notebooks documenting all the things I tried, and new projects to work on.”
“Where are they?”
“Back in my room, I imagine,” she said, “if they haven’t been thrown away by now.”
“But they’ll have missed you. Won’t they be searching? Your friends?”
“Vylkar must wonder, of course. His mother, too. I joined them for holidays, sometimes. They would feel… responsible.”
She stopped, and Zandaril wondered if she would continue.
“Friends, well… I’d scared some of them and the word spread. It’s funny—they like foreigners in Ellech, not like most places I’ve heard about. They find them interesting, and not that many make it upstream to Tavnastok, to the Collegium. But conversations still stopped when I walked into a room, and they’d make jokes about how good my hearing must be, with those ears of mine.”
She said, levelly. “I made them uncomfortable.”
“And so they did the same to you,” Zandaril commented. “And no surprise, an unexpected marvel in their midst.”
“More like an unexpected monster,” she muttered.
CHAPTER 26
“They’re back.”
Penrys twitched awake at Zandaril’s nudge. She could smell dawn in the air and the birds had started their aubade, but there was still very little light. She rolled out from under her one blanket and her cloak and pulled on her boots.
Wan Nozu and Tak Tuzap crept out of the woods and joined them, under the shelter of the rock ledge. They were tired, but she could see from their grins that they’d been successful.
“We did it!” Tak’s boast was whispered but intent, and Wan Nozu looked down upon him indulgently. Penrys could feel just as much excitement from the young man as the boy, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling at them and offending their pride.
Zandaril pulled cold
meat and bread from his pack, courtesy of their hosts in Lupmikya, and thrust it at them, patting the ground in an invitation to sit. “Eat. Talk. Take turns.”
Tak deferred to his elder and cut bread and meat for them both, while Wan Nozu began his report.
“It was really late, but the taverns were still open,” he said. “Not like the last time I was there—this time most of the houses were dark and quiet. No music… I remember there was music all the time, whenever I came. Not like home.”
He yawned and shook his head. “Sorry. Anyway, I went and listened to the talk in three different places, and Tak Tuzap went looking for his uncle’s friends. I’ll let him tell that part.
“They’ve got their army camped right on Harlin, where the river overflows in the spring. Except it’s not really a proper army, any more. They say that lots of the fighters stayed in Song Em, with their tribes, and only the real core came up through Wechinnat.”
Penrys said, “Which is maybe why there aren’t very many on the ground in the small villages like Lupmikya.”
Wan Nozu nodded. “The top man, the Commander, is a fellow called Tlobsung. He’s out there with the army. They’ve got the Gates blocked, like Tak said.”
“So who are all the Rasesni in town, then?” Zandaril said.
“All sorts of folk. They’ve taken over the temple buildings, even the old ones, and changed the names back to the Rasesni names. They’re full of priests, everyone says. Not sure what’s happened to the priests that used to be there.”
He looked uncertainly at Tak. “Probably nothing good. They control the warehouses and run supplies out to Harlin. Many of the big samke have people quartered on them—officers mostly. Even the smaller compounds have someone.”
Tak swallowed another mouthful, and burst in. “They brought craftsmen and all kinds of people. Families, too. It’s like a whole ’nother town.”
“That’s right,” Wan Nozu said. “It’s real crowded, even counting the locals who got away. And they left the old people in charge in the zopgep, the town council, only they report to Tlobsung, now.”