Ashley wound the well-handle. The mechanism creaked as rope twisted tight around the spindle, bringing his laden bucket to the surface.
“Ashley, why doesn’t the Dovecote have more servants? Surely there’s enough money in the coffers, with all the healing work the Gifters do? Why doesn’t the Rector employ another ten?”
“Are you tiring of it?” he asked.
Tabitha nodded. It wasn’t so much the work she was doing, which was simple enough, if burdensome. It was the work she wasn’t doing because of it—touching the Light essence, learning the ways of the sprites, the spells and patterns that had been her mother’s art, all forbidden by the Rector. She had yearned for it for so long, and to be so close to it, yet denied it, was a grinding frustration. The nine-and-a-half weeks that stretched before her to Yearsend seemed to stretch forever.
Ashley swung his bucket to the rim of the well, and unhooked it from the rope. His expression was sympathetic.
“It’s supposed to teach us humility, this sort of work.”
“How much time do you spend learning humility, and how much learning magic?”
“Hah!” Ashley laughed. He looked around the yard quickly. “The Rector is keen on humility. Even when I’m not a ghost, I have to run errands to Levin town, collect faded essence, copy scrolls. Then there’s the Meditation, which is three hours. I have one, maybe two hours a day when I’m trained in the Light. It takes a long time to perfect anything, and even longer to learn new spells, especially with the meagre amounts of essence we are allowed to use. Sometimes I despair of ever being allowed to become a full Gifter. It is said that in the old days, it took but a year to reach full Gifter status. I’m coming up on the end of my third year now, and still haven’t mastered all that I need to.”
“Is that because there’s more to learn, or because you are given less time to learn it?”
Ashley shouldered his bucket, and Tabitha walked with him from the well. He considered her question for a moment. “I’ve heard that the more extreme spells have been outlawed by the Rector, so we don’t learn those any more. Only the spells of healing, light, and warding are taught, but the level of perfection required of us seems to rise every year. I know my spells work as they are, yet the Rector always finds fault. He is the Rector, so I suppose he knows what he is doing.”
“How is it that you have meagre amounts of essence to work with? We’re in the Dovecote!”
“The Rector—is very strict with the sprites. Like yesterday morning, even with the bloom of Light we had during the Morningsong, we got no more than usual for practice. The extra was sent with Father Onassis to assist Keegan in Fendwarrow.”
They approached the sloping wall of the main Dovecote building. A rope dangled from somewhere beyond the high curve of the roof.
“You had more sprites than normal?” Tabitha asked.
“A whole wave of Light,” Ashley answered, a smile on his lips. “We still can’t figure out why it happened. It was as if the sprites unified in a great pattern for a moment, and when that fell apart, the Hall was filled with Light. The Rector couldn’t explain it. He became quite angry, and accused one of the older Gifters of using the forbidden spells.”
“Something like the Spriteblind spell?”
Ashley stopped so abruptly that water sloshed from the bucket, wetting both of them.
“Damn! Sorry, sorry,” he apologised, setting the bucket down with both hands. “What do you know about the Spriteblind spell?”
She didn’t know why she had spoken of it, only that she had wondered about the forbidden spells of old, and the song-scrolls her mother had left. When she was silent, Ashley bent to tie the rope to the bucket, but he continued to watch her as he did so. Tabitha had the unnerving feeling of fingers brushing over her mind.
“I don’t know much,” she said. “It was mentioned once, by my mother.”
And I haven’t forgotten that pattern or the words.
Ashley was watching her intently, his eyes wide.
“You know the Spriteblind spell,” he pressed.
How does he know?
She couldn’t deny the outright truth. Besides, she wanted Ashley to be her friend. It wouldn’t do to begin a friendship on lies.
“I know something of it,” she hedged.
“Teach me. Please. I’d give anything to learn that old spell. It’s one of the forbidden ones.”
He wants me to teach him? I’m the one who needs to learn spells, and they won’t teach me until Yearsend.
A possibility bloomed in Tabitha’s mind like a spring flower.
“A trade,” she said, smiling broadly. “I’ll show you the patterns of the Spriteblind, if you teach me the first spells you learned.”
The excitement slipped from Ashley’s face.
“Oh, I can’t, Tabitha! I would have to defy the Rector’s order, and I’d also have to steal Light essence for you to experiment with. I’d be in such trouble if I was caught. I’d be expelled!”
“I know Truthfury and Flameburst as well.”
“The burning carriage. That was you?” His jaw hung with slack incredulity, then he caught himself. “We all thought it was the Shadowcaster, that he started a fire to drive you out of it. You cast the Flameburst?”
Tabitha gave him a little nod. The intensity of his gaze was unnerving. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, or excited.
“Hah!” He exclaimed, and clapped his hands. “Hah! I knew it. I knew it! Damn them, they make it seem so complicated, and shroud it all in mystery. Yet a raw novice can master the old spells.” He looked around suddenly, as if worried that someone might have heard his outburts.
“I wouldn’t say that I’d mastered anything,” Tabitha warned. “The fire went all over the show, not where I had intended.”
“But you cast it, nonetheless!” he exclaimed. “How much training did you have from your mother?”
“I saw the pattern once before I used it on the Kingsbridge. Mother never taught me, it wasn’t allowed.”
“Hah! I knew it! Simple as the Flicker spell. Or otherwise you’ve got an enormous talent for being a Lightgifter. Spriteblind, Truthfury, and Flameburst,” he repeated slowly, grinning, “for the spells of Courier, Healall, and Shield.”
He’s offering to trade!
Three basic spells for the three she knew. It seemed an unbalanced trade, until she considered the risk Ashley would be taking to train her. She wasn’t sure she could remember all three patterns perfectly, anyway.
“When?” she asked.
“I can’t risk it until this week has run its course, I have too little time. If I were caught while I was supposed to be on ghost duty I’d have double punishment, without a doubt. But on Saturday, I’ll come and find you.”
The flaw in her plan became glaringly apparent.
“Oh dear! I don’t have a moment free from dawn till the Evencall, Ashley.”
“But after the Evencall?”
Tabitha shot him a puzzled glance. She knew that once the Evencall was sung, the corridor to their bedrooms was barred by an oak door; the men’s corridor likewise. There was no way to meet after the Evencall.
“Do you sleep in the women’s wing, in one of the servants rooms?” Ashley asked.
“Yes, but –”
“Then I’ll find you. Make sure you stay awake on Saturday night. I’ll come when I’m sure the others in your wing are asleep.”
He shot her a broad, dazzling smile. “Now get back to work, ghost, or you’ll still be sweeping come dinnertime, and I will be wanting food, not dust, to fill my belly.”
He laughed, grabbed the rope, and began to scale the sheer wall. Tabitha swung her broom at him in mock rebuke, but he had already scaled the rope beyond her range. She noticed that the rope had knots tied into it at regular spaces. When he reached the domed level of the roof, he stood, and dragged the bucket up after himself.
She hoped she was never set the chore of cleaning the windows to the Hall of Sky. It looked terrif
ying.
About as terrifying as the consequences of being caught in the spell-trade, she mused.
She hefted her broom in her hand. She was determined to wade through the slow week of chores without losing hope. Saturday held a solid promise. She really was going to become a Lightgifter.
* * *
Tabitha lay in bed, listening to the gentle breathing of her roommates, trying to stop the room from swirling in and out of focus.
The chores which had been stacked upon her throughout the week had left her feeling exhausted long before the Evencall was called each night, and although she had fallen into her bed with the intent to sleep, her misgivings about the meeting with Ashley had kept her awake, so that she never slept enough, and each morning was more of a struggle against the clutching blankets.
Now that the meeting was upon her, her nervousness had given way to fatalism. If she was caught, so be it, she could not go on at the Dovecote without learning something of the Light, and who was the Rector to punish her for wanting to be a Lightgifter anyway? Ashley did it for his own reasons, it was his problem if he was caught, that guilt wouldn’t be hers.
She knew also that these were irritable thoughts born of her tiredness, but that didn’t stop them plaguing her mind.
Maybe he won’t come at all, then I can sleep.
But her curiosity wouldn’t allow her to sleep either. Saturday night stretched on, the moon rose, the room spun lazily in her vision, and Tabitha truly began to believe that the young half-knot wouldn’t come.
A single sprite stung her nose with a small puff of Light and warmth. She felt the faded essence slide down her face like a grain of sand. A flickering illumination and an area of thicker shadows beyond the door told her that someone waited in the corridor.
Ashley. He didn’t forget.
She slipped from the bed, her heart suddenly racing. She wore a tunic and leggings already, having donned them before pretending to retire. The servants did not alter the rhythm of their sleeping susuruss.
Ashley held a delicate swarm of Light in his hand, bound in a Flicker spell. The flame threw strange patterns on his face. He placed a finger on his lips, and led Tabitha down the corridor, away from the Hall of Sky.
The last doorway before the baths was the entrance to the laundry room, where Ashley ducked inside. The residual heat from the bath-furnace next door warmed the room through one cracked and distended wall. Hanging robes on a line appeared eerie in the wavering light, like a company of disembodied Gifters witnessing their furtive arrival.
Stacks of laundry were piled on the floor and the high table. Two disused garment-stands stood in a corner, looking like harshly-pruned fir trees. Ashley pulled the door closed with infinite care. He dropped some towels on the floor and shifted them to seal the bottom of the doorjamb, before approaching Tabitha.
“We’ve got to be as quiet as mice,” he whispered to her. “I don’t want any of the women to wake, or to see the work of light under the door.”
Tabitha nodded to show that she understood.
“Can you summon the essence?” Ashley asked. He offered his palm to her, where the sprites played in the binding of the Flicker spell.
She reached for the Light, and called out softly in the words of the summoning. The pattern was a simple double-loop, the only one she had known before her mother’s song-scrolls. She had summoned before, on the Kingsbridge. Yet this time, it didn’t work. She tried again. The sprites remained in Ashley’s left hand, an unbroken Flicker spell.
She looked at Ashley with pleading eyes. “Why doesn’t it work?” she asked, a little louder than she had intended.
“Shhhh.” He tapped his right hand against his Gifter’s orb, where it glistened against his throat. “You must focus your will in the Lightstone.”
She had grown into the habit of keeping hers hidden, since the Rector’s command. The more she thought about the orb, the more it cast a soft glow through her neckerchief.
When she tried again, the sprites came to her hand with ease. They danced over her upturned palm, waiting for a spell command.
“The Healall. What’s the pattern?” she asked.
In an instant, Ashley had the sprites in his hand. Tabitha bristled.
My sprites.
She summoned them again, repeating the pattern and command. The sprites began to leave Ashley’s hand, then curved up and back to his palm, where they remained.
“The clearer your pattern, the tighter your focus, the more success you will have wresting control from me. But wait!” he cautioned, hiding his Light-laden hand behind his back. “Let me show you the pattern. We can test your will another time.”
Of course, he needs the sprites to demonstrate with.
Tabitha subdued her gritty jealousy.
Mercy, I’m more tired than I’d care to admit.
Ashley brought his hands together, then drew them slowly apart again. The Light was stretched to form a surface between them. As Ashley’s mind guided the sprites, so they resolved into a recognisable pattern, like an enlarged honeycomb.
“But that’s so simple!” she exclaimed, suddenly ecstatic. “It’s the same six-sided thing. It’s like a badly made sheep pen.”
“Shhhh. There’s a twist in it, see?” He focused on the sprites for a while, and the pattern changed to hold only one hexagon, enlarged. There were two twists in the pattern, opposite each other.
“Let me try.” Tabitha tried to summon the sprites from his hand, but he kept them firmly in his command.
Ashley gave her a warning look. “A good healer makes a very fine network, so fine you don’t see the individual patterns, it just looks like a haze of Light. The more times you can repeat the pattern in your spell, the more powerful the healing.”
Tabitha wasn’t interested in his explanation, she wanted the Light back. The Ring warmed on her finger, and the laundry room filled with detail and sensations.
What had been empty darkness began to swirl with faint currents, as if the air retained the disturbances of people long gone. Heavy scents of soap, fabric, the wood of the table, warmed mortar, even the faint odours of the hanging robes came to her. Tabitha’s enhanced awareness brought an overwhelming flood to her senses.
Ashley Logán had become sharply defined, she could see every detail of his face, every nuance of his patient expression. In his hand, the Light essence appeared brighter and more delicate than ever before. Tabitha could identify individual sprites, the tiny spinning particles, little containers of energy, harbouring a fleck of Light within. Fine tendrils of Ashley’s will wrapped around the essence, holding it in his command. It was a simple thing to part the threads of his command with her own, and then to summon the Light through the gap created.
It’s just a matter of seeing what you’re doing, she marvelled.
The Light formed a sphere around her right hand.
“What shall I heal?”
Ashley looked surprised, then frustrated.
“Why don’t you heal your own tiredness?” he grumbled.
She was going to snap an answer at him, but she knew he was right. Her mood was as unstable as ever; she had gone from being angry to joyous to angry again in a few moments.
“I can cast the Healall on myself?”
Ashley nodded.
“How do the sprites know what to heal?”
“Any lack or discomfort within is really just a lack of Light. The sprites will fill that deficit. The more you can hold the target in mind, the more concentrated the healing is, but once they’re in the pattern of the Healall, the sprites will heal that area on their own. Don’t worry too much, you’re going to make mistakes in your first spell, just try it, see what happens.”
Mistakes? I’ll show him a first spell he won’t forget.
Tabitha recalled the pattern which Ashley had demonstrated. The Healall spell grew between her hands, a lace of Light, growing ever finer as she repeated the hexagonal fundamental at its edges. She sensed the delicate shapes and
was able to refine them long after they had become too small to see with the naked eye, as her demand drew more awareness from the Ring.
Yet the increased sensitivity had a side effect—awareness of the very small brought awareness of the very big as well. Her senses were wide open, and she was aware of things beyond the limits of the room. A woman turned, restless in her bed. The Hall of Sky was quiet, the Source a flickering giant of pure moonlight. Men snored, the kitchens smelled of flour, oil and thyme. The Dovecote was a smooth dome capped by clean windows. There were roaches in the drainpipes, ants marching through the foundations.
She had reached her limit. The Healall pattern rippled, like a pool of reflected sunlight, then seperated all at once, guided by her dispersing attention.
Zing!
There was a brief flash, and the smallest sting of warmth, but nothing more. Streaks of light flew past her head like hurried fireflies, and disappeared into the ceiling. Almost all of the Light had missed her, and Tabitha felt no less tired than before. But the sudden abandonment of the sprites left a room as black as pitch.
“Bugger,” Ashley said in the darkness. “I think you’ve used up all the Light essence.”
“Is that normal?”
“No,” he whispered. “No, the essence fades, one spell-casting is never enough to drain all the Light from it and make clear essence. You must have sent the sprites all through the Dovecote, everywhere but here.”
“So my spell was a flop?”
Ashley chuckled. “I think you may have made the air better to breathe.”
He’s being nice.
“How much of a flop?”
Ashley’s gentle laughter bubbled through his words. “I have never seen such a disastrous spell. The weave was tight, but even my worst mishaps have not had such a wide focus. You were supposed to heal yourself. How big do you think you are?”
Tabitha was glad it was dark. He couldn’t see her red face. They sat for a while in the dark without speaking.
The Riddler's Gift: First Tale of the Lifesong (The Tale of the Lifesong) Page 43