The fire wrapped around me again and I heard a voice crying out, "Forgive me! Forgive me, but let me die!" And when I could bear it no more I shed the skin and stood gasping as if I had run seven miles.
When the roaring in my ears faded I could hear birds singing in the willows, so quiet had everyone become. "Let him go," I echoed.
"We have no choice," Laeno said quietly.
"You have plenty of choices!" I shouted. "You are not the only Kaltaoven in the world. He was not the only byal-dónen. Is this what we come to when we hide in our villages and fear to speak to each other in the marketplace? You could have a dozen children with the skill to craft skin-songs and you would never know it because you cling to this... this sad abomination. My own clan wasted a generation doling out second-hand skins. Why do we never talk to each other!"
I had heard Eysla behind me translating my words for the Marchalt and the others, and as if summoned he now came forward with one of the Kaltaoven phrases he had mastered, "Geol-dón pen-deah. I would make a bargain."
I walked away to cool my anger and heard him distantly speaking of making Wilentelu a meeting place for all Kaltaoven. Of sending word out and bringing people together. Teachers, traders, skin-singers, suitors. And there would be work for those who chose to take it on. I remembered what he had said to me that day in his garden, If I could have two of these people in every company of soldiers.... And I wondered what might be set in motion today.
After a time, Laeno came to me where I stood apart. "Is it something that can be done?" He seemed unsure what to ask. "To... to release him from the skin?"
"I can try, if that's what you choose." I was growing ashamed of my earlier words.
"We didn't choose this," he protested. "Amyen chose his own path."
I wanted to ask whether Daolesh and the others had made their own choices to wear the old byal-dónen's skin. But perhaps they had, given the choices they knew. "I can try," I repeated.
They brought me Amyen's skin-cloak and I sat holding it in my lap. There was a part of the death-song that we sang when skinning a beast for a cloak that bade farewell to its spirit. And there were songs for funerals, for sending human spirits on their journey. I took the part of a skin-song that bound the power into the skin and turned it inside out, then braided the three together. As I sang it I could feel unseen things loosening inside the cloak. It only needed one last push. I whispered, "Lyev-gaal adye, it's time to go," and the cloak crumbled to dust between my fingers. A breeze lifted the dust of Amyen and scattered it across the grove and up until it disappeared against the sky.
Crosswort Puzzle
by Michael Spence & Elisabeth Waters
Michael Spence and I have been collaborating on and off since we were in high school. Our first joint published story was "Salt and Sorcery" in SWORD & SORCERESS 16 in 1999. Eight years later, we're still trying to get Stephen to pass his Senior Ordeal, but Michael has finished not only his comprehensive exams but also his dissertation ("Secular Theology in the Fiction of Harlan Ellison") and graduated with a PhD in Systematic Theology—all with the indispensable support of his wife, Ramona, who can outdo Melisande at kick-hubby-into-motion wizardry any day, and to whom this story is appreciatively dedicated. So at least we've made some progress, even if only in the Real World. Since graduation Michael has ventured into Internet-based radio, storytelling, and criticism; see his website "Brother Osric's Scriptorium" (http://marscreativeprojects.com/brotherosric).
The Internet may bring the world together, but, as this story reminds us, the world has been coming together for a long time. Be careful what you allow in; there are things a lot worse than computer viruses.
#
If looks could bring on a dark and stormy night, Laurel's glower would have plunged the College into a monsoon.
She slammed the door to the resident advisors' house behind her. Stupid sister-in-law, she thought. Bad enough that the rest of my family thinks I'm some kind of whiz-kid mage, now she thinks she has to balance them out by calling me an idiot. Idiot. Idiot!
She made it as far as the statue of Tertullian in the northwest courtyard before she slumped to the ground. Moonlight cast the statue's shadow on the stone pavement, and in that shadow she sat, face in her hands, wrestling to hold back tears.
I'm such an idiot.
* * * *
"Laurel, how could you do such a thing?" Melisande was normally the most serene young woman that Laurel had ever met. She never, ever lost that calm. No wonder Stephen loved her. But now she was shaken, and her eyes, catching the late Monday afternoon sun, looked as though they were trying to find their way along the narrow line that divided scorn from horror.
"Thing? What 'thing'? I saved time. I got the job done faster. That's what they're always talking about in business classes, isn't it? 'Work smarter, not harder'?" Laurel sat on the sofa, feet up on an ottoman. The living room was small, like their previous apartment, but whereas that had been cramped, this was cozy. Chairs and the sofa formed a half-ring opening onto the fireplace; lamps adorned the wall in strategic locations; flowers decorated the long, narrow table behind the sofa and the low, wide table in front of it; and—mirabile dictu!—the only books in the room were Melisande's. Stephen's had been banished to his new, adjoining office. "We could have been poring over those applications until tomorrow afternoon, there were so many!"
"Yes, I understand," her sister-in-law replied. "But there's a reason why you're supposed to check each item. Yes, it takes longer. And yes, sometimes you want to pick them all up and throw them out the window—"
Laurel broke in, just as Melisande was pantomiming that throw. "Which would be interesting, given that I work in the Customs Building, right on the harbor, and my office window is over the water."
Melisande's arms halted mid-mime and returned to her lap. "Um... all right. So then it's not only out of your hair, it's either on the bottom or waterlogged and ink-run. Neither of which does a thing for your performance record. So—" She paused, and an eyebrow went up. "Tell me again why you chose the Customs Ministry for your internship?"
"It was either that or the Signal Corps—and tending signal fires and testing scrying relays is such fun. And since—thanks to Edward—Stephen can't use his magic, he can't pass his Ordeal, and Grandmother's geas still keeps me here until he does pass it. If she hadn't modified it to allow Stephen and me to go into the city during the day, I wouldn't be able to do an internship at all, and there's no way I can go overseas. So I thought I'd let overseas come to me." She grimaced. "They said there'd be clerical work, but I just thought that would be good experience. I hadn't done that much of it before, and now I know I never want to do it again!"
"Do what again?" came a tenor voice from the opening front door. They turned to look as Laurel's manipulative, snake-in-the-grass, thoroughly-ex-boyfriend Edward entered with a double armload of packages, followed by her brother, Stephen.
Laurel scowled. "Oh, you do not want to hear the answer to that."
Melisande quickly spoke up. "Laurel was having a difficult day at the Customs office."
"Desk work?" said Stephen. "I suppose so. You never really liked that sort of thing."
"Well, it's been okay, if boring. But your wife thinks I caused some kind of disaster today."
"Oh?" said Stephen, as Edward headed toward the kitchen with the packages. "Which kind?"
His wife threw a small cushion at him. "You're not helping. She's screening applicants for commercial agents, and I'm afraid she may have let in something that we don't want."
"And that would be—"
"Crosswort."
From the kitchen came Edward's voice. "Crosswort?" He returned to the sitting room to join them. "I hope you're not saying you don't want that," he said. "We just brought you several ounces of it for Easter dinner."
"Well, no, I don't mean that. Of course we need it. I mean maybe some bad crosswort. One of the applications Laurel approved today sounds suspect."
"But why?"
asked Laurel. "It didn't look suspect."
"That's the problem. You didn't give it a long enough look." She turned back to her husband. "Last Thursday they assigned her to process application forms from people who take dock-side delivery of imported goods on behalf of the people who actually ordered them."
"And...?"
"She was supposed to do a reference check on each of them, using the customs library."
"Good grief," said Stephen. "Each one?"
"That's why the job requires a mage and why I'm interning there," said Laurel. "I do a Summon-and-Bind spell that links the form to the appropriate books, and use the spell to check each entry on that form. Normally it works fine, although it takes time because I have to do a spell for each item on each form. It's quicker than pulling down the different volumes and flipping through them—but it still adds up to a lot of time, since all agents have to submit fresh applications for each shipment."
"So she tried to reduce that time, and—"
"Well, today I had to! We got a huge pile of applications, and there just wasn't any way I could get them all done by the end of the day. I'd still be there, working on them, and probably wouldn't get finished until tomorrow afternoon, by which time there would be still more of them."
"Hmm. So you shortened the checking routine," said Edward. "How?"
And you have the right to interrogate me? she thought. Boy, what a relationship this turned out to be. Boy meets girl, girl likes boy, boy uses his Talent to damage girl's brother's brain during brother's Senior Ordeal, girl realizes boy is basically pond scum. Your classic romance story. And since his atonement for his crime is to help heal the almost-permanent damage he did to Stephen, I'm still stuck with him.
Shooting him a glare, she said, "I figured that the primary entries we were concerned with were—" she ticked them off on her fingers, "—who was applying, what they were importing, and where it came from. So I worked up a batch spell that would go through all the applications, focusing on those three items and looking for—" she manually counted again, "—whether the agents had criminal records or complaints against them, whether the proposed import was on the Ministry's list of goods we don't want brought in, and whether the country it came from was on our we're-at-war-with-or-soon-will-be list."
Edward nodded. "Seems like an efficient method to me. I like it."
She scowled. Trying to make nice, are you? Forget it. You took away Stephen's magic, and now you have to help him get it back. But even with magic, you'll never have me for a friend again.
Stephen looked thoughtful. "So far, so good. What's the trouble?"
"That's just it. It isn't so good," said his wife. "Tell us about the crosswort application."
Stephen's eyebrow went up. "Imported crosswort? Someone doesn't like the domestic kind?"
Edward joined in with, "How did you notice it, if you were using a batch spell?"
"I did look at them, you know," Laurel retorted. "I didn't just cast the spell over them sight unseen." To her brother she said, "From what I understand, we don't have a large surplus. If everyone in the realm makes Easter lamb with the traditional recipes, we might wind up with a shortage afterward. It seemed to make sense to me. But that's why I remembered it."
"So what was the problem?" asked Stephen. "The agent?"
Laurel shook her head. "Hawick & Scarborough—reputable, well-established. 'Official Supplier to His Majesty,' et cetera, et cetera."
"And they'd be acting for..."
"The Royal Guard. That's another reason I remembered this one. It isn't every day something royal crosses your desk. I assume it's for Easter dinner."
"So what's the problem?"
"The problem," said Melisande, "is that the shipment is coming from the province of Dreismark in Grestig. That's what the problem is."
The men wore blank looks. Edward said, "So Grestig exports crosswort. Doesn't sound unusual. What's the problem with that?"
Melisande harrumphed. "With Grestig, none. But the soil in Dreismark province has something in it that does strange things. Flowers are okay, but some of the other plants.... You know that normally crosswort has a slight euphoric effect?"
"That's right," said Edward, "in larger amounts it's used to treat melancholia. I suspect that's also one reason it was ordained for the traditional Easter dinner—besides adding flavor, it would also lift everyone's spirits. So?"
"So," Melisande shot back, "for a few people this herb has the opposite effect—they wind up deeply melancholic, even suicidal. And when it's grown in Dreismark province, that would be all people, not just a few. This stuff is dangerous—possibly deadly."
Stephen let out his breath slowly. "Wow. And the Royal Guard ordered this? Wouldn't they know what they were doing?"
"I have no idea; I don't think it's common knowledge. Maybe there's someone in the Guard who does know; and then the question becomes, who and why? Or maybe Hawick & Scarborough placed the actual order, and they need to be checked out. But whatever the case, someone's about to be seriously drugged—and today's events helped to make it happen." She looked at Laurel. "Your 'batch spell' looked for political problems, but not for health problems. I'm sure the Customs library has documents on them—and the regular check would have caught this."
The room was silent for a long moment, and then Edward said, "So what can we do about it?"
He looked at Stephen, who shrugged. "I don't know. Ordinarily I'd go to Lord Logas; he's the advisor to the King. But he and Lady Sarras are away for the next two weeks with an investigation of their own. I suppose we could talk to Grandmother—"
Melisande broke in. "Not unless we have to. I don't think Laurel would want her here—her comments would probably start at 'idiot' and get stronger from there—"
"Idiot?! Is that what you think of me? Well, you can—" Laurel couldn't finish the sentence. She jumped up and ran out the front door.
Stephen turned to his wife. "What was that?"
Melisande's face was ashen. "Oh, no. Oh, no. And I'm supposed to be the Sensitive here. I didn't pay attention—"
"She'll be back." Stephen held her as tears started down her face and Edward beat a hasty retreat, closing the door quietly behind him. "Um...if that thing about Dreismark isn't common knowledge—and this is the first I've heard of it—how do you know about it?"
She searched her pockets for a handkerchief, found it, and wiped her eyes. "My mother the gardener." She buried her face in his chest. "What do we do now?"
"First we wait for Laurel to come back."
"Do you think she will?"
He smiled, lowering his face to kiss the top of her head. "You forget the geas. She has to."
Melisande laughed softly amid her tears. "Thank the Lord for domineering relatives."
* * * *
The next morning, Tuesday, Laurel—who had indeed returned, but had gone straight to bed without a word to anyone—got up, dressed, and immediately went to work so she wouldn't have to face anyone over breakfast. Her day was quiet, without incident—and also without any shortcut techniques. It was early evening before she made it back to the College and home, where Melisande was waiting for her with tea and cookies.
She was on her second cup before she was able to speak. "I'm sorry."
"No," her sister-in-law replied. "I'm sorry."
"But I was an idiot. Grandmother would have been right."
"That's why. I should have realized that you'd feel that way and react badly to the word." She smiled. "I'm sorry. Really in-Sensitive of me."
Laurel heard the capitalization and chuckled. "But typical of me, I guess." She stood, went over to Melisande, and gave her a hug. "Thank you."
Sitting down again, she asked, "So what do we do? I checked, and the shipment comes in tomorrow. If we can't do anything about that, we have only three days to figure out an answer before Easter Sunday."
"Can the authorization simply be cancelled?"
"No, it's in the system now. We can't handle this through pa
perwork."
"Is there some kind of transformation spell that could change the crosswort into something else?"
Laurel snorted. "I'm a Strong talent, but not that strong. You're talking world-class wizardry. Besides, I've no idea how to make it selective; I'd wipe out all the crosswort in the realm."
Melisande put down her cup. "Council time. Stephen!"
He came in from his office-library and, seeing his sister, went over to give her a hug. "How are you feeling?"
Laurel smiled sheepishly. "Idiotic. So what do you think we can do about this?"
"Well," he said, "probably the first thing we need to do is get word to the palace and the King's guard detail." At that, Melisande's eyes widened and she started to say something, but he went on. "If this is really a plan to make him and his household vulnerable, then somehow we need to shore up his defenses."
Again his wife tried to interrupt, but he continued. "And that means contacting the chief of the Palace Guard and filling him in. If we can get him to believe us—"
Melisande waved her hand in front of his face. At last he stopped, and his eyes followed her hand as she pulled it back. "Why," she asked, "are you talking about the Palace Guard?"
"Well, if the King's in danger, doesn't it follow?"
"It might, if the attacker were already there. But that's unlikely. He'd have to get past the Harbor Guards first, then the City Guards, and then the Guards at the palace gates. All that before he could even get inside the palace grounds. Laurel, how much crosswort is in that shipment?" Laurel told her, and she said, "There. We're talking about several companies at least. Whoever's planning something, they aren't in place yet."
Laurel nodded. "And they're feeding their weapon to Guardsmen throughout the city. 'An army marches on its stomach,' after all. It is what it eats."
Stephen looked thoughtful. "Well, yes... but I'm guessing the saying means that the food had to get to the army, not that it had to be high-quality."
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXII Page 23