by Sharon Shinn
“I just wanted you to know—if there are no more unexplained fires tomorrow—the townspeople have agreed to release you the morning of the following day,” he said. “There will be no harm to your person. But you will be escorted some distance away and asked never to return to this place.”
“Do you imagine I would have any incentive to return?” Senneth said dryly.
“I wished—I had thought—I had hoped you and I could be friends,” he said miserably.
She tried not to laugh. “There was never any likelihood of that.”
“I know that I—I have offended you by displaying my doubt—by not believing in you wholeheartedly—but I considered and reconsidered, and I am sure—that is, I believe—”
She decided to take pity on him. “Degarde. This is why it is very difficult for ordinary men to befriend mystics. Because you are not quite sure. Because you will never be quite sure. And even if you were able to thoroughly, completely, absolutely convince yourself that there is no malice in me, despite my ferocious power, everyone around you would always wonder. You would constantly be forced to defend me. It would wear you out, you know. You are much better off not trying to be my friend.”
He stared at her hopelessly. “But I wanted to be.”
She reached her hand out and let him take it. “At least we will not be enemies,” she said. “I hold none of this against you, if that is any comfort to you.”
“Some,” he said in a low voice. “But very little.”
She pulled her hand away. “One way or another,” she said, “I will be gone soon. Try not to brood too much about how sadly everything went awry.”
“They won’t hurt you,” he burst out. “I won’t let them. They will banish you from Benneld, but no one will raise a hand to strike you or—or worse.”
“I am not afraid,” she said. “No one in this town has the power to destroy me.”
It was perhaps too confident a thing to say. Doubt flickered in his eyes, and then he turned away. “You will be held here one more day,” he said, his voice muffled. “And then you will be sent on your way.”
Degarde had not been through the door more than five seconds before Donnal was standing before Senneth again. “Rather a pathetic excuse for a man,” he commented.
Senneth laughed. “I am trying not to despise him, but in truth he is something of a lost soul.”
“But will they really set you free the day after tomorrow? What if no mysterious fires sweep through the streets? They will say it is only because the mystic is locked up.”
“I know.”
“Maybe I should collect some rags and kindling,” Donnal suggested. “I could get quite a convincing blaze going without much trouble, and you would be nowhere near it.”
“Tempting,” she said. “But unnecessary. Just stay to keep me company—or to take a message to Kirra if something dire befalls me.”
“If something dire befalls you,” Donnal said, “Kirra will expect me to remain beside you to help you fend it off.”
Senneth laughed. “Very well,” she said. “Then deal the cards.”
Seven
The following day was windy and cold, though the skies were breathtakingly bright. “It feels like the sun is mocking us,” Senneth remarked to Donnal a little before noon. “It looks very warm out there, but the window is cold as ice beneath my hand, and it rattles in the casement like it’s about to come loose and shatter on the floor.”
“Maybe the weather will be better tomorrow once we’re on our way to Ghosenhall,” he said.
“I don’t mind cold,” Senneth said. “But I do hate to travel against a wind. Or in the rain.”
“I don’t like wet weather, either,” he said. “One time Kirra and I were in Coravann when a storm came through—” He paused and cocked his head to listen. “Someone’s coming—no, a lot of someones,” he said. “And they’re agitated.”
Senneth turned to face the door squarely. “Can you tell what’s wrong?”
Donnal didn’t answer. He was already back in bird shape and circling the room at the level of the crown moulding.
The door was flung open and people poured in, all of them yelling. At first it was hard to distinguish any words except fire and market and main street. Senneth flung up her hands.
“One of you! Tell me what’s happened!” she commanded. Degarde, holding a knife in his hands, pushed himself to the head of the delegation.
“Fire!” he panted, running over to start sawing through her bonds. He didn’t make headway very quickly. “The tavern is burning—and the dress shop—and two of the houses.”
“And it’s spreading!” someone shouted from the door. Other voices joined in.
“We can’t keep up—not enough buckets—too many fires—”
“Come quickly! Please, you must help us.”
Degarde looked up at her, his hand clenching on the rope. “Please,” he whispered. “Even if you hate us all. You must save us.”
With an exclamation of annoyance, she twitched the rope out of his hand and set it to burning at a point very close to her body. Degarde jumped back and everyone crowded at the door gasped in surprise and dismay. As soon as the rope had charred through, Senneth doused the fire. The loop wrapped with the moonstone necklace was still knotted around her waist. “Let me pass,” she said, striding for the door, and everyone scattered before her.
Baxter was just outside the front door, holding a horse. Senneth jerked the reins from him and threw herself into the saddle. It was a tricky business racing downhill on a track half-mud and half-ice, but the horse obeyed her urgent commands until they drew close enough to town for him to see the flames and smell the smoke. Then he began to slow and pull sideways, resisting her exhortations. She didn’t waste time—she just swung out of the stirrups and hit the ground at a dead run. She could already feel the heat beginning to pool in her hands.
The instant she was close enough, Senneth lifted her arms and began to try to reel in the flames. Still pounding forward, she made a winding motion with her hands, as if rolling loose twine into a ball. Some of the flames bent her way; some of the smaller blazes blew themselves out.
In a few moments she was in the market square and fire cavorted all around her, rebellious and beautiful. Senneth spread her arms as wide as they would go, and then slowly, slowly, fell into a crouch. Resisting every inch of the way, the fire sank along with her. It dropped to the height of man’s head—to a woman’s hips—to a child’s ankles. Senneth fell to her knees and flattened her palms against the dirt.
Every single fire abruptly died.
She stayed where she was, arms splayed beside her, head bent, listening, waiting. All around her she could hear the excited buzz of conversation—astonishment, anger, accusation, bewilderment. What happened? Who did that? Is that the mystic? Someone was weeping uncontrollably. Someone else was offering loud prayers to the moon goddess.
Still touching her fingertips to the ground, Senneth lifted her head and gazed around her. Townspeople were clustered in ragged groups near the smoking ruins of half a dozen buildings. Some were gazing at their lost property, some were crying in each other’s arms, some were staring at her. She spotted Albert, Betony, Baxter, the boy Eric, and other somewhat familiar faces.
Her attention returned to Eric. A few days ago, he had been enthralled by her display of power; he had wanted to feel the touch of a mystic’s hand upon his skin. Now he was gazing around in fascination, his narrow face intent. As if remembering what each building had looked like before it had burned down, as if admiring the efficient handiwork of the flames, as if wondering what else might catch fire . . .
As Senneth watched him, he reached up to feel the charred edges of the dressmaker’s front wall. She saw him pinch the blackened wood to dust between his fingertips and almost smile.
Behind her, a woman’s voice rose in a desperate scream.
Senneth leapt to her feet and whipped around to see a small tumbling shape turn into a fireb
all and somersault into the bakery. Instantly the wood of the doorway began to smolder; the lace curtains at the windows were suddenly webs of flickering red and yellow.
“Halie!” a woman shrieked and raced in after the small child.
The whole building was suddenly engulfed in flame.
“No!” Senneth shouted. She couldn’t have said which of them she addressed—the mother running after her child, the townspeople who surged forward to rescue both of them, or the fire itself, roaring into sudden, ravenous life. “No!”
She flung her hands out again—she sucked in a great gulp of cold winter air. She gathered all the flames to her in one roiling, untidy mass. Her body spasmed with a sudden access of heat; her skin crackled as if her very blood ran with fire. For a moment it seemed as if she herself was an inferno, a swirling storm of primitive destruction. Then she wrapped her arms tightly around her body, smothered the mad flames against her skin, and felt the temperature around her drop by twenty degrees.
Julia staggered out of the shop, her face streaked with soot, clutching a squirming Halie in her arms. Julia was sobbing, kissing Halie’s cinder-swept hair, crying, “My baby, my baby . . .”
“Put her down!” Senneth called, starting in their direction. “Julia! Set her down! She is not safe to touch!”
Julia didn’t seem to hear. She knelt in the middle of the street, frantically patting Halie’s face and hands and clothing, looking for the burn, the mark, the scar. “Halie, my baby, are you all right, are you all right—”
Halie reached out a small, pudgy hand and set her mother’s shirt alight.
Julia screamed and fell backward, slapping at her shoulder. Free again, Halie chortled and took off at a run toward the stables.
Senneth caught her in five strides and scooped her up. Instantly, Halie began to wail, and she beat at Senneth with her small fists. Her hands were encased in fire; wisps of flame licked around her face, mingling with her hair.
“Down!” the little girl cried. “Want down!”
Julia had struggled to her feet and was limping up to Senneth as fast as she could. “What are you doing to my baby?” she shrieked. “You’re setting her on fire!”
Senneth squeezed Halie tight enough to hold her motionless and tamp down her unruly magic. “No,” Senneth said, her tone as compassionate as she could make it. “Halie is setting herself on fire. Halie has practically burned down the entire town. She’s a mystic, Julia, and she has just discovered her power.”
The next twenty minutes were a chaotic jostle of loud voices, angry words, shoving bodies, and ongoing excitement, all made more urgent and more exhausting by the acrid overlay of smoke and heat.
Senneth continued to hold Halie in her arms, despite the little girl’s determination to wriggle free, despite Julia’s fierce clasp on her arm, Julia’s continuing insistence that her child was not a mystic, there had been some kind of misunderstanding. But a number of townspeople had seen Halie set one fire or another, and dozens had seen her burst into flames and run inside the bakery, to emerge unscathed a few minutes later.
“It’s your little girl. It’s your Halie,” Baxter said heavily. “She’s the mystic. She set the whole town on fire.”
By this time, Donnal and Degarde and the rest of Senneth’s erstwhile guards had clambered down the hill and joined the people milling in the center of the ruined town. Donnal hung back from the rest, but Senneth saw him scanning the crowd, staying alert in case there was any trouble. Degarde pushed his way through the mob and took Julia in a comforting embrace. She turned and wept against his shoulder.
“My baby, my baby,” she cried.
Degarde gazed at Senneth over his sister’s shoulder. “How did this happen?” he demanded. “How did Halie become a mystic?”
“The way any of us do,” Senneth said. “She was born magic.”
“She never showed a sign of it until we met you.”
Senneth nodded, not allowing his hostility to anger her. This revelation had shaken his world; who knew if he would ever recover? Julia looked unlikely to accept the truth anytime soon, although until she did, there would be no way to start Halie’s education. “She touched me while we were all dining at Evelyn’s,” Senneth said. “I’m guessing that the fire in my blood woke the fire in hers.”
“You poisoned her—you turned her,” he said flatly. “You made her this way.”
Senneth shook her head. “If my touch was capable of turning random individuals into mystics, you and your sister and Albert and Betony and the whole of the Lirrenlands would be rife with fire mystics. Halie has always had this ability lurking in her veins.”
“But until we met you—” he began again. Senneth interrupted him.
“Your house is shrouded in moonstones. No doubt they kept her power mostly in check. You notice that none of these fiery episodes occurred within your walls—not yet, anyway. Now that she has discovered what she is capable of, she will continue to experiment. She will soon learn how far from the influence of a moonstone she must stand in order to summon fire.”
Her words made Julia sob even harder. Degarde spent a moment trying to calm her, whispering in her ear. Then he gave Senneth a long, somber look. Finally he asked, “What do you advise us to do? Neither of us knows how to deal with a mystic child.”
“You must find someone who can help her control her power. There are mystics in Ghosenhall who can teach your sister how to raise a child with magic in her blood.”
Degarde swallowed. “Can you stay? Can you help us?”
Senneth hesitated. “I am needed in Ghosenhall and I must be on my way today. You can travel with me, if you like.”
He looked helpless. “Today? But I can’t—there is so much to do to prepare for such a trip—”
“Tomorrow, then,” Senneth said. “But I cannot stay any longer than that.”
Julia gulped and pulled herself shakily from Degarde’s embrace. When she turned to look at Senneth, her face was so red and swollen that she was almost unrecognizable. “I will take her to my mother-in-law’s,” she said, with a forlorn attempt at dignity. “I believe she is a woman with some magic of her own.”
Degarde looked astonished, but Senneth nodded. “No doubt. Magic tends to follow bloodlines, and if no one in your family is mystic, then it is a trait brought to your daughter through the marriage bed.”
“My mother-in-law lives only a day’s ride away,” Julia said. “Much closer than Ghosenhall.”
“But how will we get Halie there without setting the entire countryside on fire?” Degarde asked.
“Bind her with moonstones,” Senneth said. “They will check her power.”
He stared at her, his eyes going first to the bracelet on her left wrist, then the frayed noose of rope hanging from her waist. “They did not check yours.”
She smiled. “I’m different,” she said. “In fact—” She balanced Halie on her left hip and started a slow, careful fire through the loop of rope still knotted around her body. She said, “You can use these moonstones to dampen Halie’s power while you return to the house. Otherwise, I imagine the forest will catch fire again before you even make it home.”
Halie stretched her arms out to Julia. “Mama! Mama!”
Julia reached for her, but Senneth pulled away. “I cannot release her until she is bound,” she said quietly. “Trust me, Julia, now that she has learned what she is capable of, you can never leave her unguarded.”
The severed rope fell to the ground at Senneth’s feet. Degarde retrieved it and slipped off the jeweled chain. “Wrap it in cloth before you give it to her,” Senneth directed. “Or it will burn her skin.”
This condition met, Senneth finally felt safe handing Halie back to her family. The little girl laughed and chattered in her mother’s arms. Julia pressed her lips against Halie’s smooth cheek and turned away from Senneth without speaking.
Degarde remained at Senneth’s side, his face a study in wretchedness. “What a terrible day,” he said. “W
hat a terrible week.”
“I am sorry for you,” Senneth said. “It is no easy thing to learn that someone you love has been touched by magic. Make no mistake, Halie’s life will be difficult. There are people who will despise her without even knowing her—people who would destroy her because they fear what she is. I hope you are not among those who hate her. I hope you will help her learn that magic can be a blessing and a gift.”
“She is my niece,” he said. “I love her. I will defend her with my life.”
Senneth put her hand out to touch him on the shoulder. “Then Halie is luckier than I was,” she said. “And I am proud to call you my friend.”
Before Degarde could answer, Donnal stepped up behind him. “Senneth,” he said. “There’s a group of men on horseback coming up the road. Strangers.”
Senneth dropped her arm. “I suppose the smoke and flames were visible for miles,” she said. “Maybe travelers have come to investigate.”
“I must go to Julia,” Degarde said. He offered Senneth a deep bow, paused to give her one last look of regret, and pushed through the clusters of townspeople to follow his sister.
Senneth turned her attention to the steady clopping sound of hoof-beats coming from the east, but the haze from the burned buildings was still thick enough that it was a moment before she could make out any travelers coming up the road.
Then one man materialized through the curling gray smoke, appearing like a shadow that took solid shape and substance as she watched. He was a big man on a big horse, and he carried a naked sword in his right hand. Except for the pride of golden lions embroidered across his sash, he was dressed all in black. His eyes and his hair were almost as dark as his jacket; there was nothing resembling softness or humor on his severe face. While he rode, he cast a quick, comprehensive look around the smoldering town, seeming, with a single glance, to read the entire story that had played out on the streets.
“I understand that there is a mystic in this town who is being held against her will,” he said.