The two women stood in the doorway. It was still raining, but the fire under the stew still burned, and the stew did not seem to Myrta to have scorched.
"I think the stew will be all right," Elrodie said, confirming Myrta's opinion, "assuming I can get the rain stopped quickly." She sighed. "That shouldn't be too difficult; the apprentices have been practicing weather magic all week. By now I think I could stop rain in my sleep."
"Thank you, Elrodie," Myrta said. "I'll leave you to work in peace, then. I'll be in the bar when you're ready for me."
Elrodie nodded absently, already rooting in her belt-pouch for supplies.
The rain was stopped in short order, the kitchen cleaned up, and Serena even managed to finish a new batch of biscuits in time for dinner. Myrta went to bed in the early hours of the next morning believing that life was back to normal.
This belief lasted until the next evening, when she was interrupted just as she was about to get into the tub.
"Mistress?"
"What is it, Rose? It's not raining in the kitchen again, is it?"
"No, Mistress." The barmaid took a deep breath and said nervously, "This time it's fog."
Myrta put her gown back on and went down to the kitchen. Everything was normal in the other rooms, but at the kitchen doorway the air turned misty gray. The visibility in the kitchen was less than an arm's length, as Myrta discovered when she stuck her arm into the fog and her hand vanished. Cursing from the center of the room informed her that Serena was still managing, after a fashion. "I'll send for help," she informed the cook.
Elrodie arrived and surveyed the scene with a teacher's eye. "Yes, this is today's apprentice lesson, all right. And someone has done a very nice job of it."
"But why is it in my kitchen?" Myrta asked.
Elrodie sighed. "Either it's a practical joke, or we've got an apprentice whose control needs more work. I'll clear this up for you, and then I'll have Master Quenten put a shield around your building for a few days so that no external magic can get in here. That should give us time to sort through the new apprentices and find out who's doing this. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience, Mistress Myrta."
Myrta shrugged. "These things happen, and it could be a lot worse. Just fix it, so that the cook can see what she's doing. A shield around this place should certainly take care of the problem."
She broke out of his grip and ran, terrified, into the first hiding place she could find. What he wanted was only too clear—he wanted her to do what her mother had done, but he wasn't even planning to pay her. She remembered what her mother had said to her when she was a little girl, the one time she had spoken of wanting to do something else when she grew up. "What else are you good for?" her mother had asked. Mother had been so angry that she had never mentioned the subject again, but she had resolved that she would rather die than be a harlot.
But maybe she was one; maybe if your mother was, you didn't have any choice, no matter how hard you tried. After all, why else would he treat her like that? It must be her fault somehow.
The air around her was turning colder and darker. Now snow was starting to fall. She huddled against the wall, her face pressed into her knees, and just let the snow cover her as the tears froze on her face.
Myrta walked into the bar to find Ruven complaining to Rose and Margaret.
"... I don't know what she made such a fuss about—I barely touched the girl. I wasn't going to hurt her."
What girl! Myrta wondered. Please don't let it be anyone with protective or influential parents.
"Ruven," Rose said patiently, "you scared her. And you were going to hurt her."
"What do you mean?" Ruven asked. "I never hurt you two."
Margaret sighed. "Rose is eighteen and I'm nineteen. Leesa is twelve, much smaller than you, and a virgin. You were going to hurt her if you continued with what you were doing."
Myrta's relief that this problem was confined to her own household was cut short by a stream of curses coming from the kitchen.
She hurried there at once. The kitchen looked normal enough, but when she joined Serena at the entrance to the pantry, she saw a great cloud of white before her eyes. For an instant she thought that someone had dropped a bag of flour, but then she realized that all the white stuff was coming straight down from the ceiling and it was cold.
"Ruven!" she called. "Go tell Master Quenten that it is snowing in my pantry, and I would greatly appreciate it if he would give the matter his personal attention, since this appears to have come through his shields!"
Ruven ran out immediately, but it took a while for Master Quenten, who was not a young man, to come down the hill. By the time he arrived, everything in the pantry was covered with six inches of snow.
"I apologize for the delay, Mistress Myrta," he said mildly. "I stopped to check my shields on the way here, and they are intact. It's beginning to look as though whatever is causing this is here, not at my school."
"Here?" Myrta said incredulously. "Do you think I hire mages to wait on my customers?"
"Not knowingly, I'm sure," Master Quenten replied. "But tell me, who was in the building when this started?"
"I was," Myrta said, "along with the two barmaids, the cook and the scullery maid—and I believe that Ruven was indoors at the time as well."
Ruven looked as if he would rather not have been anywhere near the house. "I didn't do anything to her, honest!"
"To whom?" Master Quenten inquired, raising his eyebrows.
Ruven stared at him dumbly, and Rose answered for him. "The scullery maid. It seems that Ruven fancies her, but she doesn't fancy him."
"Indeed?" Master Quenten turned his attention to Rose. "How old is this girl, and how long has she been here?"
"She's twelve," Rose said, "and she's been here about three weeks."
Master Quenten looked around the kitchen. "And where is she now?"
Margaret looked worried. "I thought she was in here. She ran out of the bar crying when I came in and Ruven let her go."
Myrta silently resolved to pay a lot more attention to Ruven's activities in the future.
Serena frowned, trying to remember. "She ran in here crying, and... I think she went into the pantry."
Master Quenten hurried into the pantry. The snow stopped falling as soon as he crossed the threshold, and the clouds just below the ceiling thinned and vanished. The snow on the floor melted away from his feet as he walked the length of the room and reached down to grasp what appeared to be a sack of grain covered in snow—until he pulled the girl to her feet and began gently brushing snow off her hair and shoulders. "I think we've found our mage," he said calmly.
Leesa looked even more incredulous than Myrta had at the suggestion. "That's silly," she said. "There aren't any mages—except in old ballads. My mother said so."
"Indeed?" Quenten asked. "Where are you from, child?"
Leesa looked at the floor. "Haven," she said softly.
"Valdemar," Master Quenten said. "That explains a lot. Until recently there were no mages in Valdemar; it was certainly the most uncomfortable place for a mage to be." He shuddered at the memory. "I was there once, briefly, and as soon as I crossed the border it was as if there was something watching me all the time. I got out as soon as I could."
He looked Leesa over carefully. "So if you were born in Valdemar with a Mage-Gift, which you were—believe me, anyone with Mage-Sight can see it—you would never know you had it as long as you stayed there. But when you came to Rethwellan, whatever it is that inhibits magic in Valdemar would stop affecting you."
"If it's so obvious that I'm a mage," Leesa said disbelievingly, "then why didn't that teacher who came here the last two days notice it?"
"That is a good question," Master Quenten said approvingly. "Elrodie has no Mage-Sight, so she would not have noticed—and I imagine you kept out of her way as much as possible, didn't you?"
"Yes," Leesa admitted. "Being around mages makes me feel funny—they're so noisy, yelling about h
ow to make it rain, or how to make fog, until I feel like my head is going to burst."
"You heard the instructions on how to make rain two days ago and how to make fog yesterday, right?"
Leesa nodded. "I don't like hearing voices all the time. It was nice when they stopped."
"So you didn't hear anything today?"
Leesa shook her head. "No. Not until Ruven came in and grabbed me. Then I could hear him really loud." She shuddered. "At least my mother's customers paid her to do stuff like that!"
Master Quenten turned a measuring eye on Ruven.
Myrta glared at the boy. "Can't you tell when a girl is not interested?" she asked. "Or don't you care?"
"He doesn't care!" Leesa said, suddenly furious. "I told him to stop and I tried to get away from him, but if Margaret hadn't come in then..."
"You probably would have killed him," Master Quenten finished calmly, "and quite possibly leveled the entire building while you were at it."
Leesa looked at him uncomprehendingly. "I'm not a harlot," she said. "I'd rather die than be one."
"Well, that explains the snow," Master Quenten said.
"What do you mean?" Myrta demanded.
"She turned her perfectly justifiable anger at what was being done to her inward instead of outward. Part of her wanted to die, and part of her put the weather lessons of the last two days together. Precipitation and a low enough temperature generally produce snow."
"Lessons?" Serena said.
"Leesa," Quenten said, "fog occurs in nature when—"
"—the ambient temperature approaches the dew point." Leesa finished the sentence automatically, with the air of a student who had heard the lesson more times than she wanted to.
"You're a quick study," Master Quenten said approvingly.
Leesa just shrugged. Compliments made her feel uneasy. Since her own mother had never seen anything to praise in her, she figured that anyone who was nice to her wanted something in return. But she couldn't read this man; he didn't broadcast his thoughts the way most men she had encountered did. "What do you want?" she asked him suspiciously.
"I want you to come up the hill to my school, to live and study there, so that you can learn how to use your abilities without hurting anyone."
"I haven't hurt anyone!" Leesa protested.
"You're hurting yourself," Master Quenten pointed out. "You are standing here in dripping wet clothing, and by my reckoning this is the third day you've managed to soak yourself to the skin. Keep this up and you'll be sick. Do you have any dry clothes left?"
"Well, no," Leesa admitted after a moment's thought. "Everything I own is still damp."
"Come on upstairs," Margaret said, "and Rose and I will find something to fit you. We weren't in the kitchen during any of the incidents, so our spare clothes are dry."
"Good idea," Rose agreed. She glanced at Master Quenten to see if he had any objections, then took Leesa's hand. The three girls went up the stairs to the large attic room they shared.
"What you said about her leveling the building," Myrta said as soon as the girls were out of earshot, "you were exaggerating, weren't you?"
"No," Quenten said, as Serena shook her head. "She really could have done it. It's fortunate for all of us that the lessons the last few weeks have been basic weather magic, rather than say, how to summon a fire elemental." He looked at Ruven. "You, young man, have had a very narrow escape. And I wasn't joking about her killing you. If you hadn't let her go, if she had felt truly cornered and desperate, you would be dead by now. Think about that next time you're tempted to treat a girl worse than you would treat a horse."
"But horses are different!" Ruven protested.
Serena snorted. "Yes, they're bigger than you are, and they kick harder. Go back to the stables, Ruven."
"Shouldn't he apologize to her?" Myrta asked.
"Not if she can read thoughts," Serena said. "That's why I always say exactly what I'm thinking—I spent enough of my time in the Skybolts around Master Quenten and his mages to learn that you're much safer around mages if your behavior matches your thoughts. Since Ruven obviously doesn't understand what he's done wrong, any apology he attempted to make would be perceived by Leesa as an insult—and he's insulted her more than enough already."
"I see your point," Myrta said. "Ruven, you can go back to the stables now, and I suggest that you stay there."
Ruven, still looking bewildered, shrugged and went out.
Meanwhile Quenten was conferring with Serena. "You've worked with her for several weeks. What's your impression?"
"She's smart, determined, and a hard worker," Serena replied promptly. "I'll be sorry to lose her; it's not often you get help that diligent. But she's running scared from something—probably her mother's way of life."
"'I'm not a harlot,'" Myrta quoted softly. "'I'd rather die than be one.'"
"Exactly," Serena said. "And if 'I'd rather die' had been 'I'd rather kill,' we'd have a real mess on our hands. The sooner she's moved up to the school, the better."
"You're sending me away?" Leesa stood in the doorway, looking stricken. The fact that she was wearing clothes too large for her made her look even more like a helpless and frightened child.
To Myrta's astonishment, for Serena had never struck her as the motherly type, Serena limped over to Leesa and held out her arms, and Leesa took the step that closed the small distance between them and clung to Serena.
"Master Quenten is an old friend of mine," Serena said quietly. "We were Skybolts together, and I've trusted him with my life many times."
"Almost as many as I've trusted you with mine," Master Quenten pointed out.
Serena ignored him. "He's good people, and the school he runs is one of the best. You'll have a room of your own there, with a lock on the door—"
Leesa looked sideways at Master Quenten, who nodded.
"—and you'll have people to teach you how to use your powers. There are a lot of jobs that mages can do, and I think that you're going to be a very good mage."
"I think so, too," Quenten said, smiling at her.
"What's the catch?" Leesa asked, still suspicious. "Am I going to be a prisoner up there?"
"No, you won't be a prisoner," Master Quenten assured her. "Students are not allowed to leave the school grounds without permission, but permission is routinely granted when you have free time." He chuckled. "How many of our students do you get in your bar here every night?"
"Quite a few," Myrta said, "and even more on holidays."
"And I'll come up and visit you, too," Serena said reassuringly. "You're not going to vanish into a dungeon. Once you reach Journeyman status, you can go out and get a job if you're tired of studying. And by then, you won't have to worry about anyone's trying to rape you—you'll be able to defend yourself from idiots like Ruven."
Leesa looked up at her. "Truly?"
Serena nodded. "Truly."
"And you promise you'll come visit me?"
"I promise."
Leesa chewed on her lower lip, then decided. "All right, I'll go."
"Excellent," Master Quenten said. "You can share my horse on the ride uphill."
Leesa's eyes sparkled. Riding a horse was a real treat.
"But promise me one thing, Leesa," Serena said. "Even when you've learned how, don't turn that idiot Ruven into a frog. It's a waste of energy."
Leesa laughed. "I promise."
Chance
by Mark Shepherd
In 1990 Mark Shepherd began collaborating with Mercedes Lackey in the SERRAted edge urban fantasy series with the novel Wheels of Fire, (Baen Books). Also available from Baen is another collaboration with Mercedes, Prison of Souls, and a solo project, Escape from Roksamur, both novel tie-ins based on the best-selling role-playing computer game Bard's Tale. His first published solo work, Elvendude, appeared on the Locus bestseller's list In the works is a sequel, Spiritride, to be published in 1997.
He is not what I expected, and everything I expected, Guardsman J
onne thought as he made his way back to the camp. What I didn't expect was that he would look so tired.
It had been a candlemark since making the acquaintance of Herald-Mage Vanyel, and already Jonne was convinced that the gods had sent him to this place for a reason.
It certainly took Haven long enough to send a Mage; here on the Karsite border the battle had been raging for some time, and until recently had been limited to the more "conventional" elements of warfares arrows, swords, knives. These were the things Jonne knew well. Levin-bolts and mage-lightning, these were better left to the magicians.
But Vanyel, he is no mere magician. If the stories I've been hearing are true, he could level the entire town of Horn with a glance.
Jonne walked with a lightness in his step and a gladness in his heart, both of which were unfamiliar feelings in this war-torn land. He'd grown up in the area, with Karse just on the other side of the valley, and he'd become accustomed to the Karsites' occasional war threat. But Jonne and his family, comrades in arms and friends, had never felt as vulnerable as they had this war. Jonne's family owned a good piece of the land bordering Karse, including a number of crystal mines that were relatively untouched, so he had a personal interest in defending the border, as well as a patriotic one; lately the war had gone badly, and this was most certainly one of the reasons why Vanyel the Herald-Mage had been sent.
Perhaps there was another reason, which had nothing to do with the war, the Kingdom, or even with Vanyel's magical abilities.
Perhaps, Jonne thought, we were simply meant to meet.
There were other stories, about Vanyel's lovers, one in particular. They said he was shay'a'chern, that his loves were all young men. Jonne was in his thirtieth summer, had never married, but had also been drawn to the males of his village from an early age. He knew what he was long before puberty breathed new life into his body while torturing it with growth, but only recently he'd had a name for it: shay'a'chern. His experiences in youth and early adulthood were awkward, brief, and scarce, and had never grown into anything other than fumbling adolescent experiments. The last, of a few years before, with a young farmer having marital problems, might have become more than a single night. But the farmer had second thoughts, guilty thoughts connected to his religion, and had pushed Jonne out of his life and declared the whole affair a moment of weakness that he would not repeat. Jonne accepted the reaction, and his fate, resigned to a life of loneliness.
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