Sorceress of Faith

by Robin D. Owens

  “We may not have that luxury,” Jaquar said. “Not if the maw spews out more sangviles, as well as the other horrors—the slayers and soul-suckers and renders.”

  “And dreeths.” Venetria shivered. She’d barely survived a battle with one of the winged lizards.

  Chalmon scowled. “Yes, we must be prepared to sacrifice the Exotique, for the good of Lladrana, for the planet Amee herself. Knowledge is more important than one life. If worse comes to worst, we could attach a reporting orb to her and send her with a destruction spell—perhaps she’d be able to untie that weapon knot you have.”

  “I would go myself, if I could,” Jaquar said.

  Venetria looked at him sharply. “You are the best plane-walker. You already tried. Do you think the shield applies to all planes?”

  Again Jaquar’s laughter was bitter. “It applied to as many as I could reach within the limits of the spell—twenty or so. I’m not sure exactly where or what the physical location is, but it’s big.”

  Making a note, Chalmon said, “Other things to research—the shield, whether it is only magical or is physical also. Where the nest could be. When the Exotique comes, I’ll train him or her.”

  “No! If she’s female, like the last one, she will want a woman as teacher!” Venetria said.

  “The new Exotique is mine,” Jaquar insisted.

  Now Chalmon barked laughter. “All of us will want to work with someone so Powerful. This is exactly why we need the Marshalls to Summon her. We don’t work well together.” He shot a glance at his lady. “Sometimes not even those who are intimate with each other.”

  Jaquar’s heart tore. His father and mother had been an excellent team, stronger together than apart. Perhaps that’s what had drawn the sangvile to them.

  Chalmon and Venetria sniped at each other, then Chalmon faced him.

  “We’ll call a Gathering for tomorrow at the Parteger Island amphitheater to discuss all this,” Chalmon said. “I’ll move the process along.”

  Venetria sent him a fulminating glance, then looked back to Jaquar. “What is the Marshalls’ price for the Summoning?”

  Jaquar said, “I promised them objects, not favors. Some books, most of which are duplicates in all our libraries. Whatever magical weapons we have. Old battlespells.”

  “A price easy to meet,” Chalmon said.

  Venetria nodded. “Yes. I think I only have two weapons in my Tower—what of you?”

  “One,” Jaquar said, but it was an incredible one, something that perhaps only an Exotique could handle.

  “I have four,” Chalmon said.

  “Of course you must pretend you’re the best,” Venetria said. And then they were arguing again.

  “I’ll coordinate with the Marshalls as necessary in the days to come,” Jaquar said. He wouldn’t lie to the Marshalls, but he wouldn’t welcome them unless he had a use for them.

  With thumb and forefinger, Jaquar tapped the crystal and Chalmon and Venetria disappeared. An hour later he had sent the contract and books as first payment to the Marshalls for the Summoning.

  Then he crossed to his armchair and sat again, letting the soft, old leather settle around his body. He wondered if the other Circlets had forgotten one very important thing, and if they had, whether he could take advantage of it.

  The Singer, the Oracle of Lladrana, had prophesied that the next Exotique would be best suited for the community of the Tower. The Singer had also told them of the time of the next Summoning—when the Dimensional Gates between Lladrana and the Exotique land aligned. The Marshalls knew this. It was tomorrow night.

  In all the history of the Tower, the Sorcerers and Circlets had never come to an agreement in a day. Chalmon was too optimistic. He wouldn’t be able to forge a plan amongst all the individual personalities of the Tower.

  Jaquar sank back into his chair to sleep. It would be a long time before he could face his bedroom adorned with the quilt his mother had made and the landscapes his father had painted.

  He would not argue with the rest of the Sorcerers and Sorceresses at Parteger Island, had no intention of compromising. The Exotique was his. For knowledge. For vengeance.

  Colorado

  The next evening

  Power hung in the air like a fine mist ready to condense into dewdrops. It shimmered with every ripple of chimes, every strike of the gong—the music only Marian could hear, had heard for the past month. Now the sounds reverberated in a pattern that set her nerves humming as she finished taping a ten-foot red pentagram on her living room carpet.

  She took a shaky breath as she connected the last line of the star-shaped pattern and sank back on her heels to calm her excitement. She wiped her damp palms on the sweats she’d put on after her bath. Biting her lip, she examined everything again. She’d had to scramble to craft the ritual, to get the herbs and tools. There’d been no time to practice.

  No negativity, not now. No doubts. So she shoved them aside.

  Soon the exact moment of the full moon would finally come and it would be time to act. To perform a ritual that would bring great change into Andrew’s life and her own. To ask for what she wanted most, a miracle—a healthy brother.

  In order to clear enough space to tape the pentacle, she’d had to stack books around the edges of the room, evidence that her hunger for knowledge had burgeoned until it was nearly a craving. She felt like the Chinese Dragon, ever pursuing the Pearl of Wisdom. Someday she’d find just the right knowledge that would make her whole, or set her free: the key to herself.

  Marian stood and put away the tape. She checked the alcove where her hamster Tuck sat blinking at her in a corner of his plastic cage. He seemed to feel something unusual, too, since both his cheek pouches were huge with food.

  “Nothing to worry about, Tuck.” She smiled at him, then rubbed her arms. Crossing to the door of her garden-level apartment, she pushed aside the small curtain over the door’s window to look out. Twilight was falling.

  Hands on her hips, she scanned the rest of her preparations; her altar was fine, the notes for her ritual were on her PDA in the pentagram. A small spiral of smoke from the incense burner twisted, sending lily-of-the-valley scent through the room. The smoke sparkled silver.

  Marian blinked, narrowed her eyes and stared. The glitter in the powder shouldn’t carry up into the smoke, and she thought she’d seen a flash for an instant. Maybe. Maybe not. Tonight was a night for stretching all she was, experiencing all she could.

  With a sigh she looked at her gray sweats, still wavering between doing the ritual in a gossamer crocheted cotton broomstick gown or nude. She should be less self-conscious, able to accept her plumpness as pleasing.

  Just as she was about to shuck her sweats for the gauze dress, the telephone rang. She glanced at the clock and bit her lip. It was only an hour before the full moon and she’d wanted to be at the climax of the ritual when that occurred. She debated answering the call. Hesitated. Then she ran across the living room floor, hopping over the star-points to reach the kitchen and pick up the telephone.

  “Hey, sis.” Andrew’s light voice floated across the line, and she smiled.

  “Hey back.”

  There was a heartbeat’s pause. “Is everything okay there? I had a feeling…” he said.

  “Everything’s fine.” She eyed the red-taped pentagram on the floor.

  “Candace isn’t giving you grief over anything, is she?” Their mother had asked Andrew at the age of four not to call her any variation of “Mommy.”

  “She wanted me to attend a benefit tonight, but I…wanted to study.” She was studying, learning.

  Andrew groaned. “Yeah, the Colorado Charities. Sent her a check for them, and one for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation of Colorado, too. She didn’t say thank-you, but I believe she was pleased. I don’t have much contact with her anymore. Might be better for your mental health if you backed away, too.”

  “I will, soon,” Marian said.

  Andrew’s snort came through the
phone line. “Wrong. You’re always trying to reconcile with her. It’s a girl thing. Or maybe it’s just that you think a perfect life should have mother-daughter happiness. Too bad your dad didn’t leave you as well off as mine did me—you wouldn’t be at her beck and call over that college fund.”

  He didn’t offer her money from his trust fund, and Marian was glad. “How are things going with you?” she asked.

  “I get it, previous subject closed. I’m doing good, sis. Turned in the new game project today and I’m going off on sabbatical.” He paused, then words rushed from the phone. “I’m in remission right now, but—uh—I’ve had a few incidents—”

  “Andrew!” Fear spurted through her.

  “—and I want to try out that program we talked about last year, the one set on Freesan Island in the San Juans. Sort of a retreat, and they want us to minimize contact with outsiders. The codependency thing, you know.”

  “Andrew!”

  “So I won’t be available or calling you for about six weeks.”

  “Did you do another check on these people? The system?”

  Andrew laughed. “You always have to be in control, sis. Not an issue I’ve ever had.”

  No, Andrew had always been at the mercy of his condition, his workaholic father and a series of stepmothers, most of whom found him distressing.

  He continued. “The camp’s A-Okay. I know you’re frowning—”

  The warmth in his voice almost made her smile.

  “But they aren’t after my money and won’t sell me to labs for experimentation,” he said. “Dr. Chan recommends the program and you know how much we both trust her. I also had my financial advisor and my private investigator check it out.”

  “They’ll be careful with you?” Oops. “Tuck worries about you.” Now she knew he was rolling his eyes.

  “Sis!” A slight pause. His voice deepened. “I’m a man. I know how to work around my health issues. I plan to live life, not merely exist.”

  “All right, all right. You have my blessing. Go and enjoy yourself.” She didn’t know why those phrases rolled from her lips. But they both knew the day-to-day risk he lived with.

  “Hey, I was the one with the funny feeling, not you. Make sure Tuck takes care of himself. Oh, and you take care of yourself, too. Uh—by the way, will the weather be good?”

  A familiar feeling whispered through Marian. “It should be pleasant but cool to start off with, then showers. Take your rain gear.”

  “Will do. Love ya. Bye.” He smooched into the phone and hung up.

  When Andrew left Colorado for California, he’d made it clear that he wanted to live as much as he could on his own. He wanted her to pursue her studies in Boulder as she’d planned, so she’d made herself let him go. He had been as desperate to live independently as she had been. Currently he had a housekeeper, a nurse who specialized in caring for people with MS. The matronly woman had separate quarters in his home. Andrew had a car and driver.

  Their sibling relationship had actually improved. If he wanted her with him, he knew all he had to do was call.

  Tuck rattled in his cage and brought her back to the moment. She studied the pentagram and found her pulse thumping fast. Andrew had phoned just before the ritual. Surely that was a bit of magic in itself. Further, he was trying another new program—could this ritual influence that? She didn’t want to think about what Andrew would do when the disease became more debilitating.

  Andrew’s telephone call had thrown Marian’s timing off. She’d have to hurry through the first part of the ritual, use her notes on her PDA. Not perfect. Perhaps she should delay the ritual until next month? She wanted to, to ensure it would go more smoothly, but she dared not.

  She walked around the star to her bedroom, stripped out of the soft cotton pants and shirt and folded them. Then she freed her still-damp hair and fluffed it, enjoying the feel of the strands as well as the slight tugging on her scalp as she ran her fingers to the shoulder-length ends.

  Returning to the living room, she lit the candles, drew the outer circle, summoned guardian spirits. Palpable energy charged around her. The chanting she’d heard in her dreams sounded as if it came from her stereo, until she couldn’t tell if it was real or only echoed in her mind.

  At the last minute, on impulse, she put the plastic ball with her hamster into the center of the pentacle, too. After all, when Andrew’s and her own life changed, so would Tuck’s, even if he only dimly sensed the alteration. He was an essential part of her life, so he should be included.

  She stepped into the center of the pentagram and lifted her voice in counterpoint to the music. Lightning flashed. Incredible. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Energy raced through Marian, making her feel powerful, like a goddess, and she laughed. A bright carnelian-red ribbon of light unrolled, then curled around Marian and Tuck. She stared at it in disbelief.

  She grabbed Tuck’s plastic sphere. With one small tug, they were swept through a hole, like thread through the eye of a needle.

  Power spiked and whirled and changed. She lost her connection with Mother Earth. That deepest connection she’d felt all her life, snipped.

  They were somewhere else, in a wind-whipped corridor of dust brown. A corridor to where?

  Tuck’s ball was torn from her grasp and she screamed. She looked, listened, reached with all of her senses, flailed arms and legs and couldn’t find him. He’d been her companion for two years. She cried and grieved.

  Adrift and alone in pummeling, whistling winds, she felt terror rip through her. Felt no links to anything. Not the earth, not the trees, not the moon or stars. All that she’d recently realized had spoken to her of her place and her life had vanished.

  She reached mentally, emotionally for Andrew. Screamed and heard silence again.

  Nothing.

  3

  She found herself on a cold floor.

  Marian didn’t believe her senses. It felt as if she was on stone, not the threadbare carpet in her apartment. The scent of the room changed from lily of the valley to jasmine and sandalwood. As she inhaled, the air felt more humid. The space around her seemed larger, sounds echoing.

  When she heard ragged breathing not her own, she squeezed her eyes shut, sure she was dreaming. Maybe experiencing out-of-body travel, though that had never happened before. She must be safe in her apartment. She didn’t want to think otherwise.

  People started talking—not in English but in what sounded like mangled French. As part of pleasing her mother, Marian had learned French and spoke it like a native. This wasn’t true French. She thought her heart would jump from her chest it pounded so hard. This couldn’t be happening. If she kept her eyes closed, it would all go away and she’d be home and safe and never dabble with magic ever again.

  With one singing ripple of chimes, her whole body arched involuntarily. Despite her will, her eyelids flew open.

  A circle of faces peered down at her, all slightly Asian in appearance with dark eyes set in golden-toned skin. Marian gaped. An older woman with golden streaks of hair at each temple and compressed lips held up both hands palms outwards.

  “Vel coom,” she said.

  With only a little deciphering, Marian translated the word into “Welcome.” She wasn’t sure what to do. She still couldn’t connect to Mother Earth, let alone Andrew. Of course this whole thing could be a hallucination, or worse, madness.

  What should she do?

  “Vel coom!” the woman shouted, gesturing for Marian to get up.

  Why didn’t the woman help her? Marian squinted and saw flowing lines of—energy? electricity? the Force? between her and the circle of richly robed figures. There were at least sixteen people surrounding her, evenly spaced along the large circle, pairs dressed alike. Swords were sheathed at their hips. From what she could see, the figure on the floor beneath her was a huge pentacle—a star in a circle—larger than hers, about fifteen feet.

  She licked her lips and felt the dampness. The floor was cold fl
agstones under her, not carpet. Her breath caught in her throat as her mind spun with possibilities that she really didn’t want to consider, sorting and analyzing. Her brain told her she wasn’t on Earth, and she was in the midst of strong magic.

  And she was lying in a big circular stone room, with wooden rafters and high windows around the top.

  She wanted to think of anything except that she was in a different place. Naked.

  Just the thought of her nudity made her flush—probably from her toes to her hairline.

  The people continued to stare.

  Since it didn’t look like they were going to approach, it was time to put reality to the test and rise and—she gulped—pretend she wasn’t ashamed of her body.

  Marian stood with shoulders back, hips tucked, stomach sucked in, hoping her blush wasn’t as red as it felt. Keeping within one point of the star, she walked about five feet to where the others stood, outside the circle of flowing red energy-lines. Visible magic. If she weren’t so scared, she’d be impressed. Everything looked fascinating, would be fascinating, if she could engage more of her mind than her emotions. But dreams ran on emotions. This had to be a dream.

  Her brain said it was, but her senses contradicted that notion. Her emotions spiraled out of control until she controlled the panic gritting her teeth. Act logically! Observe, at least.

  The women were all as tall as she—at least five foot eight—the men taller. They all had black hair, dark eyes and golden skin—and silver or golden streaks of hair at one or both temples.

  Marian pointed to a gray cloak a woman wore and made the motion of swirling it around her. Unfortunately, in response to her actions most of the men’s gazes locked on her breasts. She wanted to melt into the floor.

  Marian cleared her throat. Was this real? Why were so many people here if she’d only needed one teacher? “Where? Um—when? I don’t know—May I have the cloak, please?”

  The woman who’d spoken earlier stared at her, frowning.

  All she wanted to do was find a corner and hide. That thought reminded her of Tuck and she forced back tears. He was gone. What chance did a hamster in a plastic ball have in the winds of that corridor?