Brinlin Isle

by Robin Stephen

  Chapter 2

  The town of Lan Dinas was built on the fertile stretch of land between the seaside and the warmlake. It was not a flat expanse of space, but sloped. The streets all ran on angles, cobbled and narrow and steep.

  From her window in the second story of the house that belonged to Embriem, Marim imagined she’d be able to see the warmlake if it not for the fog. The house was situated at the top of High Street, with a large back garden that opened up to the steep hillside that separated the city from the harbor. Marim gathered it was a fine house by the standards of Lan Dinas, though it was simple and modest compared to the elaborate architecture of even the more subdued estate houses in the Administrative City in Deramor.

  She’d been in this house for three days. Any hope she’d had of changing Captain Tommin’s mind was long dead. The treacherous man had lied to her about his plan to stay in port for several weeks. His ship was gone. Embriem had told her. It had sailed away mere hours after she left its deck.

  Standing in front of the open window, Marim watched Kix flit about in the summer warm, fog-choked air. It was a risk, letting him out, but her tessila was growing stir crazy with too much confinement. First, the weeks on the ship after the incident, during which Captain Tommin had diplomatically suggested she stay in her cabin as much as possible so as to give the crew little reason to dwell on how she’d almost gotten them all killed. Now, she was spending every waking moment with the boy whose life she was supposed to save.

  It was an early morning in late summer, the sun beginning to light up the heavy air with its slanted rays. The fog had a smell: a dusky, coppery scent that somehow reminded Marim of swimming in the river behind Tessili Academy on a sunny day. It was an odd association, since the sun had not so much as touched her skin since the ship had plunged into the bank of fog that clung to Cynnes Tarth.

  Three days. Could it really only be three days since she followed Embriem to his house, prepared to meet a boy with a simple case of wasting or worms? She’d been pleased then, following Embriem up the steep street to his house, thinking how she’d woo the people here by treating their small ailments, one by one. She would be more careful than she’d been with the sailors. She would keep Kix hidden, pretend to collect herbs and mix tinctures, then use her healing magic to banish their ills and heal their wounds. Not until she’d gained their trust would she tell them she was Tessilari.

  It had seemed a good plan, right up until the moment she saw the boy.

  On the walk up to the house, Embriem had introduced himself and explained his son’s trouble. He’d asked her if she would be willing to stay in his home and monitor the boy until he was well again. Although the man’s manner was distracted and his clothing a little untidy, his shirt was of a fine, heavy material, his boots of soft, supple leather and his tone and manner that of a gentleman. She’d accepted his offer without hesitation. She had nowhere else to go, after all.

  They’d reached the house, and Embriem had given her over to a servant who led her to this room. She’d unpacked a few things and freshened up. An hour later the same man had come again and led her to a large, dim sitting room where young Tassin awaited her examination.

  She’d gone downstairs with a sense of ready confidence. This had shattered and fallen to pieces the moment Embriem had turned to her from beside a low couch saying, “Marim, this is my son, Tassin, who I’ve brought you here to help.”

  The sight of the boy had taken her breath away. He was much, much too thin. His head seemed huge, his eyes overlarge, his wrists and elbows and knees thick knobs in withered limbs. His eyes were a brilliant, startling blue, his hair light and fine, as if spun of sunlight.

  “Tassin,” Embriem said, “this is Marim. She’s a healer, a very good one. She’s come a long way to help you get better.”

  The words were not true. Marim felt her heart clench at the hope in the man’s voice. She was not a good healer. She wasn’t a bad healer either. She was merely a weak healer. She was weak at healing because her magic was weak in all applications. She was, as far as she knew, the weakest Tessilar in existence.

  It was part of why she’d left Masidon. She was tired of being the one everyone pitied, tired of failing at the simple spells everyone else could toss off without effort. She’d thought if she went where there were no other Tessilari at all, she would be the strongest by default and thus her skills, modest as they were, would no longer seem so pathetic.

  Only that wasn’t how things were working out. First, the disaster on the ship. Now this.

  As she’d stared across that room, Marim felt horror take root in her chest. This was not a boy with worms. This was not a boy with a wasting disease. This was a boy with the hunger, and the hunger meant only one thing.

  Feeling like the worst sort of imposter in the history of the world, Marim examined the boy: touching his thin wrists, feeling the weight of his starved gaze on her skin. She wore a blouse with a high collar. Still, she had to resist the urge to pluck at it, to make sure it covered her neck. She’d gotten through that initial introduction somehow, mumbled something about checking her sources, and hurried from the room.

  Now, watching Kix turn in flight, Marim felt the heavy stone of dread in her stomach. Three days watching the boy wither before her eyes. Three days casting desperately about for some answer, some solution, other than the one that was both obvious and impossible. She’d read through her entire spellbook, knowing it would do no good. And it hadn’t. It only reminded her how much basic magic continued to be beyond her ability.

  She moved to the desk. Its surface was bare except for a slim cherry wood case. She reached for this and opened it, feeling the spark of magic in the clasp as it recognized her touch. With her heart in her throat, she lifted out the three smooth leather tablets and lined them up to read.

  The first bore the crest of Tessili Academy in the lower corner, and it was blank. She’d wiped it clean after she’d reported her safe arrival in Cynnes Tarth and the academy had confirmed receipt of her message.

  The second was covered in writing: all the frenzied questions she’d flung at Professor Liam since she’d discovered Tassin had the hunger. His answers were sympathetic and practical, but not terrible helpful. “You can boost him with active vitality spells, but do not overextend yourself. He must find a tessila or he will die.” Her reply, “There are no tessili on this island.” His response, “Then he is lost. I’m sorry, Marim.”

  The third tablet was blank except for the question she’d written at the top three days ago. “Made it to Cynnes Tarth. Have met a boy dying of the hunger. How is this possible?”

  Professor Liam was learned and wise. He’d studied tessili and magics his entire life. She should accept his word, admit to Embriem she could not help.

  Yet Marim found she could not do so. Not yet. She’d asked Embriem’s gardener if any brillbane grew on the island. The man had seemed puzzled by her query, but said he would look out for it and ask around.

  Besides, there was still the third tablet. It remained empty. As she stared uselessly at the blank space below her question, she felt the stone of dread turn into a boulder. Absently tracing the texture of the scars on her throat with an idle finger, she murmured into the quiet of the room. “By Delari’s breath, Coll. Check your tablet already.”

  ✣

  She waited for a quarter of an hour, hoping. But the third tablet remained lifeless, no reply appearing beneath her query. At last, she could delay no longer. She returned to the window and looked out, straining for a glimpse of Kix’s bright yellow hide in the glowing air. She could feel him out there, flying in loops. He’d gone farther away than he usually did. She called him back with a mild sensation of alarm. He could be impulsive – a trait they shared.

  He came indirectly, taking long, coiling detours. He did not want to spend another day hiding in her sleeve. He wanted to fly, to find other tessili and play chase. He didn’t like the fog or the quiet, empty landscape. He wanted sunlight and the riv
er and dozens of brillbane bushes to perch on instead of just the one the stitchring allowed him to reach.

  She spoke to him as he made his grudging return. “And I want my scars and your scars to disappear. I don’t want to be weaker than even a first year initiate. I want you to be able to shift.” She could feel the cool tickle of the fog on her face as she leaned out the window.

  At last, Kix landed on her outstretched hand, gripping her thumb with his tiny pinpricks of talons. He cocked his head to regard her with a brilliant black eye. In this light, the marred scales around his shoulders and across his back stood out. She felt the familiar clench in her heart at the visible evidence of his maiming.

  They were both scarred, but the worst damage was internal.

  She spoke to him, her words coming out harsh with her disappointment at not hearing back from Coll. “What we want and what we get are two different things.”

  Kix settled his wings with a grumpy air and crawled up her sleeve to sulk. Marim checked herself in the mirror, adjusted her collar one last time, and went downstairs.

  She found Tassin in the sitting room, curled on the low couch where he’d spent most of his time since she’d arrived. His appetite was beginning to wane – a sign the end was growing near.

  Marim regarded the boy’s tousled head from across the room, feeling a deep sadness turn over within her. She remembered her own time with the hunger, the terror in her parents’ eyes, the fleeing to her grandparents’ cheesery and the desperate days that followed as first her mother, then her father, developed the same affliction.

  She’d been five years old, and hadn’t understood what was happening. She only knew she was in pain and her parents stank of fear and she was not allowed to go outside or see her friends or speak to anyone.

  Then, one evening she went to bed to thrash and shift endlessly on the narrow cot her grandparents had set up for her in a small storage room, hunger clawing her from the inside. In the morning, she awoke not to the shelves of maturing cheeses and the scent of clover and whey, but a sun-filled bedroom with a vaulted ceiling, huge bright windows, and potted brillbane growing on every side. She’d been too weak by then to wonder much at the change. She hadn’t known a word for the plants, then, or the tiny, flying creatures that filled the air, their brilliant hides catching the light, but she’d been unable to take her eyes off them.

  There had been a man sitting in a straight wooden chair pulled up to her bedside. Wearing a soft brown robe, he’d watched her with kind eyes. He’d set a cool hand on her forehead and spoken in a low, soothing voice. “They’re called tessili. Do you like one of them in particular?”

  She’d noticed Kix, then. The yellow tessila had seemed aware of her as well. Too enchanted to remember how weak she was, forgetting her hunger for the first time in days, Marim sat up, half convinced it was a dream. Kix wheeled on the air and came to her. As he alighted for the first time on her outstretched hand, something broken in Marim’s soul healed itself clean over.

  Kix had looked at her. He was perfect, then, his hide not yet marred by the scars of the harness. She was not yet scarred either, though she would have been if she’d know how she’d come to be in that place. She smiled at the tiny creature, feeling suddenly full of warmth and potential. His name filled her mind like one, perfect, plucked note on a harp. Kix. His name is Kix.

  The man, his face benevolent, reached for a tray waiting on a side table. “How about something to eat?”

  She ate with gusto, but not desperation. Her hunger had been cured, somehow, by Kix.

  She didn’t know then, wouldn’t know for years, what had happened. In the coming days, she would learn the rhythm of the academy, and the place would swallow her whole. She had only a scattering of pale, muddled memories of her time there. She’d certainly had no way of knowing one of the other students, someone she shared mealtimes with and passed in the quad, had crept into her grandparents’ house that night, murdered her parents, and stolen Marim away.

  Now, decades later, Marim looked at Tassin and felt the old, familiar conviction creep into her mind, dark and slippery and full of heavy horror. It was a thought that had nested next to her heart for years.

  She should have died of the hunger, like Tassin would. It would have saved the world an awful lot of grief.

  But Marim had not died. Not then, when she’d come so close. Not later, when she and Kix had hovered between life and death for days, not a few weeks ago when her idiocy had trapped Captain Tommin’s ship in the first of the two trials and they’d drifted, doomed.

  Now, standing in this dim room, she seemed to hear Professor Liam’s voice in her head, answering her now the way he’d done when she’d confessed this dark conviction to him before she left the academy. He’d taken her outpouring in stride, saying, “If it hadn’t been you, Nylan would have taken a different initiate. The same thing would have happened.”

  But was it true? Nylan had chosen her for some reason. Perhaps another girl would have fought harder, managed to free herself, refused to do what Nylan said, died instead of unleashing a horror on the world. “What happened was not your fault,” Liam said. “Surely you can see that.”

  On the couch, Tassin shifted, turning to look at her with his feverish eyes. Marim shook herself, pushing her heavy thoughts to the corners of her mind. This boy was not dead yet. For now, she would do what she could.

  She went to him and sat, taking his hand and mustering the best active vitality spell she could manage. She focused on the weave of the magic, pulling and dragging at her scrambled bond with Kix. She released the spell and it took, giving Tassin a small boost of life.

  The effort left her breathless. Marim leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The room was silent and cool, filled with the smell of polished wood and the distant spice of the fog.

  They sat a moment, breathing, until Tassin spoke up, surprising her. “Is that a brinlin?”

  Marim’s eyes flew open. She stared down at her sleeve in horror. Kix had poked his head past her cuff to fix his keen eyes on Tassin. The tessila withdrew as soon as the boy spoke, scrambling up the inside of her sleeve, his needle-sharp talons pricking her tender skin.

  Tassin looked a little better. His eyes were clear and alert, and he was staring at the spot Kix had been as if he’d seen a unicorn. He waited a moment, then looked up at her with expectation.

  Marim, mouth dry, couldn’t find any words. His blue eyes held hers for a few heartbeats.

  There was a quiet shuffle at the door. Baret the gardener peeked into the room. “Sorry to interrupt, young miss. But I’ve been looking and asking all over for the plant you mentioned. Is this it?”

  ✣

  Vailria could never smell the sea without experiencing the strange blend of joy, desire, nostalgia, and loss she associated with Tommin. It was a heady cocktail, always accompanied with an aftertaste of bitterness. This morning the rush passed in an instant, while the sharp flavor of disappointment lingered.

  It was a long walk from Vailria’s little house on the shore of the warmlake up to the harbor. As she crested the rise that separated town from sea, the air and the fog took on the scent of brine. She continued down, walking and straining to see through the fog. When one of the great merchant vessels occupied the port, its many masts would tower high into the misty air, dwarfing the local luggers and barges tied up nearby.

  Today, there was no such vessel waiting in the docks. Vailria already knew this. Six months, he’d been away. And now, she’d missed him. She didn’t understand. Usually, when Tommin put in at Cynnes Tarth, he lingered for weeks. His ship was massive, which meant heaps of cargo to load and unload. She’d walked the holds with him herself, running fingers over bolts of exotic fabric, breathing in the dusty tang of the spice hold. All day, he would trade and barter, buy and sell. All night, he would be hers.

  At the start of each such interlude, being with Tommin was all joy. But the weeks would pass and the sailors would grow restless and each day
her heart would grow a little heavier with the dread of what must come. Finally, he would say the terrible words. “I must leave with the morning tide.”

  Then they would have the conversation – the one they’d had over and over these 30 years. He would ask her to marry him. She would refuse to wed a man she did not see for months or years at a time. She would ask him to stay. He would say, “Another trip or two. Then I’ll have enough put by. I’ll repay my investors, sell this ship and everything left on it. We’ll start our new life. Soon.”

  The first time he’d said it, they’d been 19. And she’d believed him. She still believed him, each time he made the promise. She believed him when he was there, a flesh and blood man lying in the tangle of sheets beside her. It was when he was gone, reduced to nothing but a shade in her mind, she found herself filled with doubt.

  Sometimes she decided she could not wait any longer. Sometimes she decided to make him stay, to set her hand on his arm and give him a little nudge in the right direction. She fantasized about doing this when he was away. It would be so easy. And after it was done they’d both be happier, she was sure.

  But she hadn’t done it. She would never do it. It wasn’t that she could not, or that she believed she would regret it, after the fact. It was the slippery reality that if she intervened, if she touched her lover’s feelings for her in any way, she would never have the satisfaction of knowing he’d stayed because it was what he chose.

  Still, 30 years was getting to be a long time to wait. And now, this anomaly. Tommin and come to Cynnes Tarth. His vessel had docked and his men had come ashore but he’d left before she had time to come to him.

  She’d been in Gol Ledrith making her quarterly report to the Circle and fulfilling various other social and professional obligations. When she saw he was near, she’d been disappointed to know she would miss his first few days in port. But she’d thought they’d still have several weeks. Or maybe, at last, he would stay and they would have the rest of their lives.

  Only his ship left again the very day it put in. Everyone in Lan Dinas was talking about it, rumors flying about a conflict with the port authority. Captain Tommin was well known and well liked in town. Her first day back, Vailria spent the whole day listening, trying to understand. But it was groundless gossip. No one knew anything for certain.

  Now, here she was, standing on the stone quay and gazing at the heavy waters of the ocean as if they could tell her what it meant. Was it a message? Was Tommin telling her they were through?

  Nostrils full of brine, Vailria paced back and forth along the docks several times before realizing she was only torturing herself, coming here. Pulling her cloak in around her body, she turned and started back up the road that led to town.

  Outside the harbor, she passed the Rooster’s Comb. It was a tidy pub with a painted sign out front, a large door, and heavy furniture arranged on the patio for a view of the muffled, heaving sea. A man was outside, sweeping. He looked up as Vailria approached and went still, his broom stopping mid sweep.

  Vailria knew the man, and her blood curdled at the sight of him. Cockram. Brother of Adni. A man who feared his own potential and was made mean by that fear.

  Her cloak had a passive echo spell woven into the fabric. It didn’t make her invisible, particularly not when she had the hood down, but it did smudge her a bit. Most people would not approach her when she had it on, and also would not remember seeing her if she did not speak to them or do anything interesting.

  She would have walked by Cockram and continued back to town without stopping, but he surprised her by calling her name just after she passed. She stopped, but did not turn to look at him. Instead, she closed her eyes and felt at the air between them, studying it for clues.

  Cockram’s voice was a sneer when he spoke again, throwing his words at her unguarded back like poison darts. “Looking for your handsome captain?”

  Vailria’s heart began to beat a little faster. She felt a spark in his words, and understood. This man knew something. Something he did not intend to tell her.

  Angry now, she turned and opened her eyes. Vailria was skilled in the passive arts, but direct and effective manipulation required touch. She took a step towards the patio, hazarding a guess. “Why haven’t you delivered the message he left for me?”

  Cockram leaned on his broom and watched her with his mean eyes, unapologetic. He looked smooth and well groomed, his sleeves rolled up and his forearms round with muscle. “The lady misunderstands me. I deal in brews, not words.” As the sunlight shifted on the swirling fog, a gold pin in his neck scarf seemed to sparkle.

  The anger was alive now, burning in Vailria’s belly. She wanted to charge forward, grab this man’s arm, and make him tell her what he knew.

  But she could not. Even if it was not a violation of the Circle’s laws, it was too dangerous by far.

  He was playing with her. Nothing she could do or say would change his mind. She would not give him the pleasure of making her ask twice. Knowing that Tommin had left word for her was enough. Vailria would simply wait. She was good at waiting. Jaw clenched, she turned to go.

  She could feel the man’s delight in the pain he was causing her, rank on the breeze as rotting fish. As she took her first step away, he spoke in a speculative tone, basking in his own cruelty. “Tell me, Vailria. Why, after all these years, has Tommin never offered to take you with him?”

  Vailria did not answer, did not look back. She wove a passive blurring spell and released it as she walked away, angry with this man, angry with Tommin, angry with herself for coming here.

  She didn’t bother to wait and watch her spell find its target. She was confident in what it would do. Vailria had power over memories of herself. The one thing she could reliably manage without touch was to wipe herself away, smudge any recollection in a person’s mind in which she featured.

  She walked briskly into the fog, but Cockram’s final question chased her all the way back to Lan Dinas, filling her with worry.

  It wasn’t true, Tommin had asked her to leave Cynnes Tarth. Once. Long ago. Before he’d known what she was. Since she had explained, he had never asked again, because it would be the same as asking her to die.

  As Vailria skirted the town, keeping to quiet side-streets where no one would see her, she wondered if Cockram was merely being cruel, or if he knew her secret.

  ✣

  Cockram watched Vailria fade into the fog, feeling the cold prickle of unease across his skin. Something about that woman filled him with dread.

  She was walking away when he felt a strange trembling on the air. The gold pin he always wore in his neck scarf gave an odd twitch, as if tapped by an invisible finger. At the same time, he felt a sensation of vertigo. The fog seemed to grow suddenly thick. He stared at the empty street, filled with the vague impression he’d just been buffeted by a stiff wind.

  Absently, he touched his pin to make sure it was secure, then snatched his fingers away with a curse, staring down at them in surprise.

  The pin was hot. So hot, he could see two tiny red welts rising on his thumb and forefinger where the metal had burned him. He could also smell the flat scent of singed cloth.

  In a convulsive jerk, Cockram dropped the broom and snatched at his neck cloth, pulling it free so the pin went flying. Holding up the fabric, he could indeed see a small, smoldering hole punched through in several places where the pin had penetrated.

  He tossed the cloth onto a table and stood in the quiet morning, breathing hard. Vertigo washed over him and his mind felt suddenly muddled – blank of all thoughts but a series of vague impressions.

  He stood, utterly still, for a long moment. His breathing slowed. The fog was a whispering touch against his skin. He shook himself and looked around.

  His outdoors tables stood quietly nearby, their benches snugged up beneath them. But why was he out here at this time of day? He looked around for clues, and saw the broom at his feet.

  Stooping, he picked it up. He nee
ded to sweep the patio. A light storm had blown in off the sea in the night, leaving debris all over the stones.

  Comforted by this explanation, Cockram began to sweep again. He returned to work as if he’d never stopped. Then he pushed a pile of leaves into the street, he saw a glint on the stones a few feet away. Curious, he stepped forward to take a look.

  It was his rooster pin, caught in a crack between pavers. As Cockram laid eyes on the thing, he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise for reasons he could not explain.

  He began to sweat. His mind balking and bucking like a spooked horse, Cockram felt a sort of disbelieving vertigo. He gazed down at the pin. It was solid gold, shaped into the form of a tiny rooster perched on a stump. It was rendered in breathtaking detail, the workmanship the finest he himself had ever seen.

  He could remember the day he’d found the pin, hidden in a wooden box tucked beneath the false bottom of a locked chest in his father’s closet. He’d been seven years old then, made rebellious by the death of his father followed so quickly by that of his sister. He’d stolen the pin, guessing correctly his mother wouldn’t miss it. He’d kept it under his pillow for a time, a thrilling secret. Then he’d gotten tired of fearing he would lose it, and put it back.

  It wasn’t until the death of his mother shortly before his own wedding day that he found himself looking at his father’s old chest and remembering the pin. He opened the false bottom, heart thrilling with hope, and found that familiar, worn box with its strange emblem. He opened it, removed the pin, and stuck it into his neck scarf.

  He’d worn it every day since.

  Now, he turned to look at his neck scarf tossed on one of the table tops, shifting in the sluggish breeze. Had he grown too warm? Pulled off the scarf and forgotten the pin? It made sense, but it didn’t feel right. He was careful with the pin, protective.

  Bending, Cockram picked the pin up. It was warm, and his fingertips were tender. The pin felt somehow alive beneath his skin, sending little tingling pulses up his arms. As he puzzled at this, the memories came back in a rush.

  Vailria.

  As if he’d heard a shout, Cockram whirled towards the road that connected Lan Dinas to the harbor, but it was empty. No woman walked there, watching him with flat eyes. It seemed to Cockram Vailria was everywhere in Lan Dinas, always tucked out of sight, listening, watching. Stranger still, no one else seemed to take much note of her.

  He’d spoken to the rector about her more than once, and Dinon kept a list for her as he did for anyone who showed one of the signs the Directive bade him watch for. The woman lived on a little house on stilts, built out over the very water of the warmlake. Thus, she earned one mark practically by default.

  But that was the only mark they could pin on her. She was aloof and antisocial. She was unpleasant and unfriendly, motivated by her own inexplicable agenda. But each time Cockram brought up her candidacy, Rector Dinon said the same thing. “We direct the hand of Tristis to cleanse Vestima’s lingering rot. That is the sole purpose of the Directive. Without three marks, we cannot act. Do not let your dislike for this woman cloud your judgement.”

  Down in the harbor, one of the small bells clanged as a local lugger glided in from sea. Picking up the neck cloth, Cockram stared at the smoldering holes punched through the fabric. This would count as evidence of one inexplicable deed. But he needed three of those, observed within one month’s time, before Dinon would bring another mark against Vailria and test her with the ring or the rod.

  Annoyed, he shoved the scarf into his pocket, stuck the pin through his vest’s lapel, and headed for the cloister.

  ✣

  Rector Dinon was a tall man with the lean build of one who walked much and ate little. His eyes were gray, overhung by severe brows drawn together in sympathy.

  Embriem had never disliked him until today. While he himself was not particularly fervent in his devotions, he had always looked on the work of the cloister with vague approval. The sisters did a lot of good among the poorer circles of Lan Dinas, caring for the sick, educating any child who appeared at the cloister school with a desire to learn.

  He was aware that, in some cases, the sick could not be healed. With wasting diseases in particular, a person could linger long on Tristis’ doorstep, one foot in this world, one in the next, for months sometimes. In these cases, with the family’s consent and Delari’s blessing, the sisters would administer the death serum to release the afflicted from suffering.

  Embriem could remember the first time he heard the tolling of the death bell. He’d been a boy, following his goras to the warmlake, when that aching note throbbed through the fog.

  The tone of the bell had arrested him, echoing in his bones and tugging at his heart. He’d stopped short in the street to watch the somber procession go by. Rector Dinon, younger then, walked in the lead, his rich red robes muted by the fog. Behind him came the sisters in their black. At the very back, the physician in white. All of them walked with heads bowed in prayer.

  He’d watched them go by, then hurried to catch up to his goras. The bell had gone out of his mind. Only later did he remember, when his father said to his mother, “Did you hear about the cobbler’s boy? They’ve sent him on to Delari at last.”

  His parents had been in their sitting room, Embriem passing in the hall. He’d stopped in the doorway, feeling something strum in his sternum. The cobbler’s boy had nearly drowned in the warmlake. They’d pulled him out and pumped the water from his lungs and he’d begun to breathe on his own again. But it had been weeks and he hadn’t woken. “Sent him?” Embriem said, interrupting, which was rude, but unable to stop himself.

  His had parents turned to look at him. His mother had given his father a hard look, then gestured to her footstool. “Come in and sit down.”

  She’d explained to him, then, how sometimes the kindest thing, the loving thing, is to let a person go.

  Now, staring at the empty chair in his office Dinon had occupied a moment before, Embriem sat still, his thoughts all but fuzzed out by anger. Dinon had come to his house, knocked on his door, and asked to speak with him. Embriem had let him in, answered his questions, then listened as he spoke, his disbelief growing with every word that passed the man’s lips. Yes, it had been seven days. Yes, Tassin had grown very thin. Yes, the physician’s tonics did not help. Yes, Embriem loved his son and wanted to do right by him.

  Then the terrible words, the pernicious suggestion. “In the church’s experience, with these aggressive forms of the wasting, the last few days are very painful. It might be kindest to release Tassin before he arrives at that point.”

  Embriem had stared at the man, speechless. When he found his voice, he’d asked the rector to leave.

  Dinon had said nothing at first, only smiled a kind, sad smile. Rising to go, he paused on the threshold. “Word has reached me the healer from the ship may be Tessilari. Did you know?”

  Embriem, too overcome to speak, made no reply. The rector, red robes rustling, drew the sign of Delari’s love in the air, turned, and left.

  Embriem did not show him out. He remained in his seat, stunned, angry, lost. His eyes felt hot, his head thick. It was outrageous for the rector to have come to him so quickly. Surely, there was still time.

  Down the entry hall, he heard the front door open and close as the rector left. He seemed to hear his mother’s voice. Sometimes the loving thing is to let go.

  Embriem sprang out of his chair as if it had grown hot. He rushed out of his office, energized but aimless. That word, Tessilari, stuck in his mind. He’d heard the term before, of course. He even had a book in his library about tessili. His father had brought it home years ago, a curiosity he’d found in the collection of a deceased man whose entire library he’d purchased as a unit. Certain he’d never be able to sell the odd tome, he’d given it to his son.

  Here, on Cynnes Tarth, the Tessilari were a distant rumor. Some believed they were a myth. But the guideglobes that allowed vessels to cross
the two trials and survive the difficult voyage to Masidon were real enough, as was the magic that made them function.

  Hurrying down the hall, Embriem made for his library. It took him a few minutes to find the volume. Tucked up on a high shelf, its spine cracked with age, he felt a strange sense of relief as he eased it into his hands.

  The cover was plain leather with the word “Tessili” pressed into the front. It was a journal more than a proper book – the tale of some long-dead person’s journey to Masidon. The inside was much as he recalled, though the drawings were more primitive, smaller, and less detailed. There was a sketch of a brillbane bush and quite a few of tessili, either in flight or perched on twigs or branches.

  For a moment, Embriem lost himself leafing through the ancient pages. How old was this book? Dozens of years? Hundreds? He’d found it fascinating as a child, poring over the illustrations and descriptions many a rainy evening when he could not go outside.

  It was not a thick book. He was nearing the end when he turned a page and saw a heading that made his heart throb with painful fear. It read, “The Hunger.”

  Embriem felt ice in his veins. The words seemed to shift on the page, blurring as his focus wavered. He blinked, drew in a deep breath, and read.

  In some cases, the bond between tessili and human happens spontaneously. In other cases, the human is first afflicted with the hunger – a condition where the bonding pathway opens, but has no target. When this happens, if no tessila is available or receptive, the human will develop a voracious appetite that cannot be satisfied. The body will metabolize itself, leading eventually to death. Most often, this occurs in children around the age of five. But when one person develops the hunger, it can trigger the same affliction in other receptive humans with whom they come into close contact. Since the ability to bond is hereditary but may not manifest in those who are not exposed to tessili, it’s not uncommon for entire families to develop the hunger at once.

  Embriem sat a moment longer as the ice in his blood gave way to fire. Anger surged through him, hot and quick.

  Leaving the book on a table, trembling with rage, he went in search of Marim.

  ✣

  Marim thanked the gardener and sent him on his way. She stood for a moment after he left, preoccupied by the sour sensation of dying hope. She glanced at Tassin, but the boy had slipped into a light doze.

  The plant wasn’t brillbane. She held the sample in her fingers, turning it in the low light. She could see why the man had brought it to her. The leaves were thick and rounded. They connected to the stem in the right pattern. But they were much too small, and with none of the characteristic waxy coating.

  Marim knew it was hopeless. According to both Professor Liam and the general query she’d sent to the tableturie, brillbane did not grow outside the valley of Deramor. It could be cultivated in greenhouses, but it did not thrive in such conditions. The magic of the tessili raised on greenhouse brillbane was not as potent. It was why the Tessilari were so excited about the new wild tessili population beginning to thrive. Many old powers, thought lost forever, were being rediscovered.

  If there was no brillbane on this island, it meant there were no tessili. But if there were no tessili, why did this boy have the hunger?

  Liam’s theory was that old, old Tessilari blood ran in the boy’s lineage. His aptitude for magics had somehow been triggered by mere happenstance. It happened, of course. Marim herself had never seen a tessila until after she’d been taken to the academy, but her hunger had surfaced anyway.

  Still, Tassin looked as native to the Fog Isles as a person could. His fine hair, blue eyes, pale skin dashed over with freckles, light lashes and brows, soft features. If he had Tessilari blood, it did not show.

  Turning, Marim stared at the boy with an increasing sensation of hopelessness. Outside, the fog shrouded the view. Marim felt stifled, trapped, and useless. What was she doing in this place? Why was she pretending she could save this boy when she could not?

  Kix was on the other side of his stitchring, dozing in the unfiltered rays of sunlight that fell onto his brillbane bush. She pictured the academy, how it must look right now, with its green quad and its plentiful brillbane and all the tessili wheeling on the air as they flew in looping patterns.

  She thought of Coll – the way he’d looked when she’d last seen him, standing and watching her leave, his dark eyes unreadable. He’d grown so tall last season. Though his magical ability had surpassed hers long ago, she was still the one he came to when he was excited or upset or wanted to show off. It had been that way since the moment he arrived at the academy, a frightened, lonely boy with a past that made the other students whisper about him when he wasn’t there, and shy away when he spoke to them.

  Marim knew how that felt, and he knew she knew. It was what connected them.

  Heart leaden, Marim wondered what she would do when Tassin died. No one else would want her services as a healer if she lost her first patient. Captain Tommin had said he would return in a year or so. By then, he’d be ready to cross back to Masidon. He would allow her back onto his ship, to take her home.

  It was generous of him, considering. But still, what would she do for a year in this place? How would she keep Kix hidden and secret? Already, her tessila was growing impatient with the way she was constantly restricting his movements.

  Marim was stirred out of her thoughts by the sound of rapid steps in the hall. She turned to see Embriem, and the expression on his face made her heart leap with fear.

  The man was angry. Furious, even. He paused on the threshold, glanced at Tassin, and gestured for Marim to follow him.

  He led her into the back garden. The fog with its smell of summer teased her hair and clouded her vision. Embriem led her a short distance up a stone path, then turned. His words were sharp and hard, but not loud. “When were you going to tell me the truth? Or are you simply using my son’s affliction to keep a roof over your head?”

  Marim was so surprised, so hurt, tears sprang to her eyes. The accusation, accurate at its core, stung like the crack of a whip.

  She felt her grip on herself slipping, the anger uncoiling from where it always rode lashed around her heart. Kix, feeling the sudden surge of her emotions, woke up.

  But no. Embriem was wrong. Marim may not have found a way to help Tassin, but she’d been trying. She stared at Embriem, disbelieving. What right did he have to accuse her this way? She had done nothing since she’d set foot on this island but try to unravel the mystery. It wasn’t her fault there was no solution to be found.

  Too angry to be diplomatic, she hissed a reply through clenched teeth. “Your son would be dead by now if not for me. I have been boosting his vitality multiple times a day, draining myself to keep him going while I try to figure out where to find a tessila for him.”

  Embriem, taken aback by her anger, stared for a moment in silence. Marim stood seething. Why was she always the one forced into the role of villain? When Kix stirred, stretching his wings in preparation for coming back through the ring, she didn’t try to stop him. She reached into her cloak and shifted the stitchring so it hung free of the fabric.

  Embriem’s eyes followed her movement. When Kix burst through the stitchring and wheeled through the air to land on her shoulder with an angry hiss, Marim felt a small ripple of satisfaction at the expression of utter shock on the man’s face. He took a step backwards.

  Good, Marim though, woozy with the cost of the spell that had brought Kix back to her. Let him fear me.

  But the active vitality spells she’d been using to boost Tassin must have been taking more of a toll than Marim had realized. Instead of recovering from the stitchring’s draw, Marim grew dizzier, her vision beginning to dim. She wobbled on her feet. Embriem, probably acting on reflex, reached out a hand to steady her.

  She gripped his forearm. It was hard and firm. The wooziness faded and she found her balance again. She was about to let go, about to step back and away, when she felt something t
hat made her go still with horror.

  There was a rip in Embriem, a tiny tear through which his life force was beginning to leak. It was invisible, a flaw in the fabric of his very being. Marim recognized the feeling of it, because it was a milder version of what was killing his son.

  Overtaken by new horror, Marim raised her eyes to the man’s face. “Oh, Embriem.” She could barely speak for the tightness in her throat. “Not you too.”