A Wizard's Sacrifice

by Amanda Justice

“Geram!” Bethniel cried as the lieutenant swung his staff at the other assailant. The man hit the cobbles. Geram grabbed her hand, and they ran, turning this way and that down side streets until they reached a lane bustling with shoppers and wagons.

  “Thank you, lieutenant, and thank Elesendar you were nearby!” She studied the milky clouds covering his eyes. “How did you do that?”

  He stumbled, catching himself on the staff. “Would you mind keeping your gaze on the street, Highness? It helps me see.”

  She noticed a pressure behind her eyes, an urge to scan the cobbles ahead and the path through the bustle. It was an intrusion, but she didn’t mind, not from Geram. She trusted him, even though he was a Listener—one able to Hear the thoughts Lathans chose not to express. He’d been captured and imprisoned in Lordhome with Ashel, where he’d lost his sight and somehow had become psychically linked to her brother. “The vision-stealing—is that how you beat them off?”

  “It’s borrowing, Highness, not stealing. We use what tools we have. May I escort you home? The streets aren’t as safe as they were.”

  She took his arm, and they paced toward the gate. “I suppose it was foolish of me to take that shortcut home, but I’m awfully grateful Elesendar put you in the same neighborhood.”

  “I was visiting some old comrades from the Dagger.”

  “Vic’s friends, the ones who had a baby?”

  “The same. I’m afraid they’re having a rough time. Neither has found work, though Maynon hopes the Potters will take him back. He was apprenticed with them before he became a soldier.”

  “So many of the Guilds are culling ranks. I’ll put a word in with the Kiln. It isn’t right that two decorated heroes and their child should go hungry.”

  “It isn’t right that anyone should go hungry, Highness.”

  “True. How is Ashel? I hope he’s in Mora by now.”

  Geram grinned, his teeth bright in a dark brown face. “He says to try wearing plainer clothing next time you go slumming.” After a moment, he added, “He also wants you to know there are rumors of squatters in the eastern Kiareinoll.”

  “Squatters?”

  “He heard about it at several way stations in the east, and the cavalry outpost on the Mora road was going to investigate.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Culled from Guilds, he’s heard. Whoever they are, they’re cutting trees for homesteads.”

  “What? You can’t just farm the Kiareinoll willy-nilly! There are rituals, sacrifices, rules to follow, or they’ll get themselves killed!”

  “I’m from Alna, Highness. The way of trees is a mystery to me.”

  “It’s a mystery to all of us, lieutenant, which is why the forest must be treated with respect and reverence. Those people are putting themselves in danger, and if too much land is cleared, Fembrosh’s retribution will strike more than the squatters. I must speak with the Ruler.”

  He stopped, a hand on her arm, concern etched deeply over milky eyes that fixed on her face, as if he could see her. “Ashel doesn’t want the queen to know about our connection.”

  “Honestly, Ashel—forgive me, lieutenant, but this is directed at my brother—I don’t understand this sudden animosity you have for Mother! She’s never been very, well, motherly, but that never used to bother you any more than . . . than it ever did. I wonder sometimes if you left town just so you could get away from her. In any case, it’s silly to hide this ability from her.”

  Geram’s face hardened. “It’s not an ability, it’s a curse.”

  “Is that from him or from you?”

  “Both of us. And both of us ask you to keep this secret.”

  “Selcher probably knows already.”

  “I can hold my own against her.”

  She laughed, and Geram winced in a way that made her think Ashel’s shoulders were jerking toward his ears too. “Selcher has been our family’s Listener since my grandfather reigned, and there’s no one she can’t Hear. Ashel, you’re a fool if you think she doesn’t already know about you two, and you know that what she knows, Mother knows.”

  “Please, Highness. Do not be the one to tell the queen about us. Ashel says, tell her you heard about the squatters in a tavern, or saw it in a report to Fensin—anything, but do not admit how you learned it.”

  “If I lie, Selcher will Hear it.” She calculated the distance to Mora. “I’ll say I learned it from Ashel, but imply it was in a letter. A fast courier could have come from the eastern Kiareinoll. Mother won’t be surprised he wrote to me instead of her.”

  As they passed the city’s east gate and trudged along Manor Road, the seed of an idea took root. Bethniel had climbed this hill to and from the city since she was seven years old. She knew the roads and countryside around Narath as well as she knew the city itself. She had traveled the verdant lands west of the Lathalorns and frolicked in the surf of the Yuslobna Kein, but she had never trekked into the vast wilds of the eastern Kiareinoll. She had visited the Eldanion court, traversed the Kragnashian deserts, and climbed the Lorn oc Re, yet she’d never seen the ancient, massive groves where Elesendar joined with the old mothers, or heard the lupears howl, or felt the thunder of a steed herd’s approach. If she were going to rule all of Latha and rule it well, she should know the greater half of it.

  Determination and certainty settled her mind. “If there are squatters in Fembrosh, they must be dealt with. I’m going east, lieutenant.”

  Guildless

  Aldevaer’s Arpeggio in D minor, twenty-fifth measure. Wineyll’s tongue skipped through the sixteenth notes, dipping and climbing the registers. Her flute, hollowed from mine crystal, turned the melody into a symphony as each note resonated through the flaws. When her father had given her the instrument, he’d said no Trainer silversmith could make an instrument to match it. As proof of his words, when they’d performed together, audiences had listened, jaws slack with awe.

  Alone in a practice chamber, Wineyll cloaked herself in the flute’s harmonies. The Arpeggio was the most difficult piece she knew. She’d spent months mastering the variable dynamics and the triple tongued measures so she could fly through without a flub or slur for her senior levels. At the examination, even Master Grumblin had given her a standing ovation, and forgiven her for the moth hatchlings she’d left in his desk as a prank.

  Her tongue, tired from hours of practice, slipped, and an accidental glissando marred the passage. It had been two years since she’d played the piece. Sighing, Wineyll set down the flute and flexed her fingers and jaw. Silence settled over the practice room, and screams and cajoling whispers echoed between her ears.

  A rap sliced through the memories, and the practice room door opened on an apprentice.

  “Reyendal wants to see you,” he said. “You’re to meet him in the Music’s office.”

  A fist squeezed her chest. “Where?”

  “The Music’s office. The Harmony’s there too.” The boy’s frown, serious and sympathetic, launched her heart into a faster rhythm. Hands shaking, she wiped down her flute, tucked it into its case, and made her way to the Music’s chambers. Pockets of apprentices and students loitered in the hallways, the groups falling silent as she passed. Two years ago, they would have greeted her with jests and plaudits. Head bowed, her hair shielding her from their stares, she hurried onward.

  The trio that led the Minstrels Guild sat in chairs on one side of a table, an empty space on the other side—their exact positions the day they’d expelled her father. Dread clogging her throat, she stood in the same spot he had and Listened to their judgment.

  It wouldn’t come from the Music. His thoughts were as confused as ever—for years, Wineyll had Heard the masters’ private complaints that he ought to step down, but Harmony Silnauer had managed to keep the senile old man in place at the top. Melody Reyendal, as always, would follow Silnauer, and Wineyll knew the outcome before anyone spoke a word. Beneath her pitying smile, the Harmony’s thoughts s
eethed with scorn.

  “Thank you for coming so promptly,” said Reyendal. “Do you know why we’ve called you here?”

  Her heart drumming, she replied, “No, sir.” She’d make them say it.

  He cleared his throat and spoke aloud. “I’m afraid we must suspend—”

  “Expel,” interjected Silnauer.

  “We are forced to expel you from the Guild,” Reyendal said.

  “Why, sir?”

  He flipped through a ledger. “You were journeyed nearly a year ago, and yet you have not earned back your salary, much less your room and board. This organization is not a charity.”

  Anger struck the timpani in her chest. “You granted me a leave of absence when the throne asked me to help rescue Prince Ashel. I’ve only been back a month.”

  Reyendal glanced at Silnauer. “Yet since your return, you haven’t earned a single crystal.”

  “I haven’t been assigned any gigs. Did the Guild rules change while I was gone? I thought journeyed minstrels weren’t allowed to manage our own bookings until we’d gained two years in the field.”

  “That’s the problem. It seems no one wants to book a suspected traitor.”

  “I’m no traitor!”

  “Yet rumors abound that you collaborated with Lornk Korng in the maiming of Prince Ashel—your own brother in the Guild.”

  Cold rippled over Wineyll’s skin. “If Ashel were here, he’d tell you I did everything I could to save him.”

  “He is not here, and I find it unlikely he would vouch for you,” Silnauer said. “Whatever his flaws, Prince Ashel recognizes that this Guild’s primary mission is to spread Elesendar’s word and live according to His prescribed virtues. You, like your father, seem to have forgotten our purpose. Your father indulged in pleasures of the flesh outside the sanctity of marriage, one of Elesendar’s most sacred commands. You permitted yourself to be seduced by Lornk Korng, then you did his bidding during the battle of Olmlablaire. As a result, the prince lost his hand and any ability to serve Elesendar as a minstrel.”

  The Harmony’s vile accusations were accurate, but none were true. Or supposed to be known. Geram, Ashel, Vic—they’d all promised no one would know. Fury roiling, Wineyll tore through their minds to find out who’d betrayed the secret. Silnauer swayed, her lips a rictus as she tried to block Wineyll’s rifling, while Reyendal sat as dumbly as the Music, his memories as easily shuffled as a deck of cards. There she found a letter, scribbled on a scrap of dirty parchment, delivered by a shamefaced prison guard. “You believe the Relmlord?” The question came out as a scream.

  “Your impertinence seals your fate,” snapped Silnauer.

  Reyendal cleared his throat again. “Wineyll, I hope you can appreciate the difficulty of this decision. We have known you from infancy. You were one of the brightest stars in our ranks. It is with the deepest regret and disappointment that we must rescind your Guild membership, but you force our hands.”

  Her body trembled with disbelief they would do this, even as Reyendal’s words echoed the hollow regrets he’d pronounced to her father.

  “We are not unmerciful,” Reyendal continued. “We know very well that a young person such as yourself, who has known no home but this Guild, will need time to arrange employment elsewhere. You may keep your bed in the dormitory for another month, but by the spring equinox, you must leave.” His chair squeaked against the floor, and he came round the table. “The case, please.”

  He may as well have kicked her in the gut. Unable to breathe, she hugged the flute to her chest. “My father gave this to me.”

  “All instruments are Guild property.”

  “But he said it was mine.”

  “As long as you earned it. You cannot work as a minstrel any longer, Wineyll. You’ll have to find another path.” The Melody pulled the flute from her grasp, and she felt as if he’d yanked out her heart.

  “You should consider Alna,” Silnauer said. “I believe the Courtesans there might welcome a pretty young woman with experience, particularly from so adroit a mentor.”

  Wineyll’s gaze locked on the Harmony as a wave of memory struck her.

  Silnauer’s lips tilt in scorn. “How quickly did you learn your craft in Traine? You had a master of some renown, or so I hear.”

  Cheeks burning, Vic stares at Silnauer. “What have you heard?”

  “Enough to know what sort of person you are. I see no place for heretics within an institution designed to revere Elesendar. Yet the Courtesans in Alna might admit you.”

  Dismissed, Wineyll stumbled into the hallway, still enveloped by Vic’s memory from an encounter she’d had with the Harmony years ago, soon after she arrived in Latha. During the battle of Olmlablaire, Wineyll had dug into Vic’s mind in order to subdue her, because the Relmlord said if she succeeded, he wouldn’t take any more of Ashel’s fingers. Yet one by one the severed digits had dropped to the floor while Ashel begged her to leave Vic free, so Lornk Korng could be stopped. Ashel would have sacrificed his tongue to keep Vic out of Lornk’s hands, and she would have drained Vic’s mind entirely to spare her Guild-brother more agony. In the end, Ashel lost his fingers and his favored place in the Guild, and Wineyll was left with another woman’s memories that would swamp her own now and then, flushing out her other failures.

  Like all those massacred nomads. She, more than any other Lathan, should undertake the Penance the Relmans demanded. Vic had taken her on the secret mission to rescue Ashel because she could weave illusions and place them in others’ minds. She’d sworn she could hide a raiding party, so the company could steal the horses they needed. Because she’d failed, they’d been forced to kill the nomads down to the last baby.

  She trudged to her room as if hauling water in the Badlands. The Guild’s paneled chambers, filled with music and chatter, were the only home she’d ever known, but maybe this wasn’t the home she deserved. She ought to undertake the Penance, but did she have the courage to face the relatives of the massacred? A hero would, but Wineyll was no hero. She’d proven that at every turn.

  True Gift

  Quills scratched and tapped, each rap on an inkwell a counterpoint to the gentle squeak of nibs and slither of papers. Once Ashel’s songs had held theatergoers enraptured. Now his lectures entranced students. Their gazes danced from desk to board, lectern to pointer, and he rewarded their attentiveness with a smile. Color rose in young women’s cheeks. The young men copied the tilt of his lips. The admiration warmed him like the sun, and he launched the next topic as confidently as he’d begin a new verse.

  Then, one pair of eyes dropped to the thumb hooked round his belt. He’d begun hanging the fingerless stump there—not in the swagger people took it for, but because he didn’t know what else to do with it. Another gaze descended to the lone digit, and his gut clenched, toes curling in his boots. Like a flock of birds coming to roost, all eyes in the room wheeled from his face and landed on the maimed hand. Heat rising up his neck, Ashel rapped the pointer against the board again.

  “‘What can we know of the way of trees?’ What does that line of scripture mean?”

  A student raised her fingers. “It’s the reason Lieutenant Grossmont gave for choosing to make a treaty for Landing with the erin instead of the cerrenils. He figured humans couldn’t begin to understand the way a plant thinks, but the erin were at least sapient animals.”

  Ashel chuckled. “That’s a heretic’s answer. I’m looking for the scriptural meaning.”

  “But why do we have to view it through that lens?” she persisted. “Maybe he was just being practical. How can we communicate with trees?”

  Ashel’s amusement died as he remembered Vic making the same argument over ale, amid raucous laughter and chatter in the Cobblestone’s tavern.

  “We don’t,” he replied as Master Jahant came in and took a seat. “Not in the way you and I exchange ideas. But troopers who served in the war will tell you the cerrenils listen and will help, if it sui
ts them. And when they choose not to help—what can we know of the way of trees? That line refers to the Kia, to the mystery of the old mothers. We know nothing of the cerrenils’ thoughts or motivations. But can we ever completely comprehend why our friends love us and our enemies hate us? Even Listeners can’t completely know those answers. Yet we have faith in our loved ones, and a kind of faith in our enemies too. ‘What can we know of the way of trees?’ The answer is: nothing. It’s not knowledge but faith that’s important.”

  “But,” the girl said, “how do we know Elesendar told Lieutenant Grossmont to found the Erin Alliance?”

  “There’s that word ‘know’ again. Heretics will say they know the Elesendar is a spacecraft. They’ll point to the Logs and say, ‘These are historical records of the United Mineral mining ship LSNDR2237, which was sabotaged, leaving the crew marooned here almost three thousand years ago.’ Adherents to the Faith of Elesendar will say, ‘He is the Father of humanity, the cerrenils are our Mothers, and the Logs are allegorical and metaphorical, not factual.’ What heretics think is merely a ship in orbit around this planet, adherents believe is a god watching over our world. The truth is, neither heretics or adherents really know, and both groups must rely on faith, because we lack evidence either way.”

  “What do you believe?”

  Master Jahant’s eyebrows rose, but Ashel smiled. “The Logs make sense only when read as allegory, but ultimately, nobody but Grossmont ever knew his true state of mind. What’s important isn’t whether Elesendar truly spoke to him, but that Grossmont believed He did—he had faith—and after he met with the erin, they came out of the highlands every spring and allowed themselves to be shorn. You can choose to believe Grossmont was a pragmatist—or a lunatic for that matter. But I guarantee the Weavers bless him for a saint.”

  The class laughed, and Ashel dismissed them.

  Expression cheery, Jahant forded the outward flow of students. “Wonderful to see a history lesson garner such rapt attention, though our colleagues in Narath might be unhappy to hear you discussing heresies.”