(Take it. Hold it. Use it.)
She imagined twisting the thread around her fingers, pulling it out of the stream and knotting it into the spell she wanted before sliding it through the slot in the pipe. The pipe sealed itself as she removed her hand. The spell waited, trembling slightly as if in anticipation. With a mental touch, she set the spell in motion. She felt it slowly slither forward, and she felt the feather-light shock when it struck the mirrored wall and was reflected back. It was only just a little faster when it struck the opposite side of the mirrored wall, and the shock was just a little stronger. Each time afterward, it was just a little faster and just a little stronger.
Soon, it was beyond her power to control. Soon, the shock of it striking was thundering in her very bones faster than her own thundering heartbeat. Soon, Shasta was wiping the sweat from her face.
The pipe was glowing a dull, sullen red. She pulled away from the heat of it as far as the trap spell allowed. Timiyon’s hand in hers was limp and dry. At this rate, air was the lesser of their worries. Something had to break, soon, and Shasta worried that it might be her or, worse, Timiyon.
* * *
* * *
The last thing Shasta remembered was being so hot that the sweat dried on her forehead before she could wipe it away. She opened her eyes and then winced and wished she hadn’t. The familiar wooden ceiling of Timiyon’s house spun and danced, and she hurriedly slammed her eyelids shut. The skin on her face and arms felt tight and tingly cool, and she smelled mint and grease. Heat sickness. The new workers at her father’s farm from farther north were warned about too much sun and heat, and she often helped the local Healer deal with the few who ignored those warnings. Now she knew how they felt.
Then came the gentle hand on her shoulders and the cool spout to her lips and the cool, cool water filling her mouth. She drank two full cups of water and another of broth before she was laid back down. She tried to rest, she knew she needed to rest, but she had to look and find Timiyon.
Timiyon was lying in the next bed. Dmiri, the town’s Healer, was holding a sick feeder to his lips, just as she had for Shasta moments ago. Dmiri pointed her out to Timiyon, and he turned and smiled and waved weakly at her.
Shasta laid back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
* * *
* * *
When Shasta next opened her eyes, the early morning sunlight through the windows was brightening into day. Timiyon was propped up on pillows, resting but not sleeping, since he twitched nervously during his afternoon naps. She reached across and brushed his arm with her outstretched fingers, and he turned his head toward her and opened his eyes. (Sorry.) Her fingers were clumsy through the bandages, but the message was plain.
He smiled in honest relief. (Not your fault. I didn’t expect the spell to generate heat. An experienced Mage would have known that.) His hands were similarly bandaged, but he seemed to manipulate through them much better than she did, as if he had done this before.
(We escaped.)
(Yes, we did. Thanks to you.)
Shasta felt the heat rising to her cheeks. (What happened?)
(You remember the merchant with the guard and the strongbox? He was the goldsmith who made the tokens. His guard was the Mage who set the trap.)
That got a double-raised-eyebrow look in reply; she might have suspected them of many things, but she didn’t expect this. (How did they find them?)
(They were eating dinner in the common room when you triggered the trap spell unexpectedly, so they decided to flee. Mage complained about his stomach and said he had a potion, so both returned to their room. They packed their gear and snuck down the back stairs; when he stepped into the sunlight, about when the spell broke, he collapsed. Goldsmith screamed, brought innkeeper, innkeeper called Guard, and Guard brought Jayan. Goldsmith was in shock, babbling about Vkandis’ punishment.)
(Punishment?)
(Mage was Karsite black-robe.)
Shasta waved her hands to interrupt him. (Black-robe?) She remembered hearing whispered tales about them.
Timiyon nodded. (Black-robe. Vkandis priest. Demon-summoner. Corrupt. Fled to Rethwellan when Solaris became Son of the Sun.)
(So what happened?)
Timiyon sighed. (They already had plan to escape across border, meet allies, then release us. They didn’t know it was the two of us, the delay could have killed us. When you started your spell, the trap spell drew magic from the Mage. Spell went out of his control, like runaway team of horses. Very clumsy. When the spell broke, he collapsed. Healer says shock. He is in Guard custody, still unconscious.)
(Was it Vkandis’ punishment?)
Timiyon shrugged his shoulders and then winced. (Who can say? My little knowledge of godly intervention is that it is usually more dramatic, or more direct.)
Shasta smiled, showing lots of white teeth. She was more certain than Timiyon: the Mage was now in the same state as they had been, lost in the dark. Vkandis’ punishment, certainly.
(The Heralds will deal with her.)
(Goldsmith?)
(Talked all night. Jayan is very happy.)
Shasta leaned back on her pillows, then suddenly sat up again and looked toward Timiyon. (Thayler?)
(Awake, nervous. Can’t sleep, nightmares. Terrified of the dark. He needs a Mindhealer.)
(Guilty?)
(Was, not now. After Solaris, he confessed, paid fines, accused several prominent nobles of crimes, all in secret, then moved here to escape them.)
Shasta cocked her head and raised just one inquiring eyebrow: And you knew this how?
Timiyon sighed. (I have a confession to make, myself. I didn’t retire here at random. The Crown suspected people like Basidi would use their positions here for criminal purposes, and I have experience in these situations. I was more than just a supply officer, I was a special investigator for Lord Martial Daren himself, and that took me to some very bad places and I learned some very bad things that I didn’t want to burden you with. I am sorry that you were involved with that.)
Shasta dismissed his apology with a slight smile and a slow wave of her hand. After all, he was the one who taught her that her Gift included a responsibility. (Basidi?)
Timiyon grinned, showing his own less-than-white teeth. (Quite guilty. He spent all day confessing to Vkandis. He returned after sundown and confessed to the Guard. Jayan said it was a long list of crimes. Smuggling, helping nobles escape Sunsguard, bribes, extortion, no slaves, though.)
(Merrow?)
(Just as guilty. Still in Karse. Sunsguard alerted.)
So that was the why and the who. Shasta was still curious about the how.
(Goldsmith made gifts for them. Mage put trap spell on trinkets, trigger spell at night. Trap left them in darkness and silence for a candlemark, then release. Vkandis follower sees Vkandis punishment.)
(Why do this?)
(Why? Arrogance. Revenge. Thayler named names, his was one. Basidi and Merrow promised help to escape, took money, reneged.)
(But why did the spell trap us?)
(Spell originally created to trap Mages.) He pointed directly at her. (Are you a Mage?)
Shasta pictured the magic around her, not just random bits and pieces of magic, but the warp and weft of magic threads. She could touch them, she knew which ones to touch and which ones to avoid, and she could use them. She stretched out her hand and plucked a single thread of magic from a nearby ribbon and twisted it into the desired shape; a mote of bright white light hovered above her palm for several seconds until she released it. (Yes. Mage.)
(Then spell worked. You have Mage Sight?)
Shasta nodded, hesitantly. Not exactly. It wasn’t Mage Sight as the Mages described, it was something else. (Not Mage Sight. Mage . . . Touch?)
(Mage Touch, interesting. Something new.) Timiyon sighed and smiled. (Dmiri says we should well enou
gh to get up and move about by tomorrow. I am looking forward to it; there is a bottle of fine wine I would be pleased to share with you. After all, it is, or it should be, customary to celebrate the completion of one’s Journeyman Trial.)
Theory and Practice
Angela Penrose
Bruny missed her fingering again, and the slow, mellow ripple of harpsong she’d been working on turned into a twanging wad of sound that jabbed her ears and made her jerk her hand away from the strings with a grimace.
She glanced across the room to where her roommate, Seladine, reclined on the bed with a book of history in her lap.
“I be that sorry,” Bruny said. She rubbed her forehead, where a headache was growing, and glared down at the harp. “This one line do be fighting me something terrible.”
Seladine gave her a rueful smile and closed her book with one finger marking her page. “You’ve been working hard,” she said. “Maybe do something else for a while, let it rest a bit, and then try again later?”
Bruny shifted on her stool and leaned back against the wall of their room. The stone was so cool it felt like leaning on a mountain—the walls of the Bardic Collegium were as thick as her arm was long, at least to the wrist, so the students didn’t drive each other to murder when they were all practicing at once. Generations of students had roughed up the walls of the dormitory rooms, chipping and carving a bit here and a bit there, to make them echo a little less.
Practice rooms were lined with tapestries to absorb sound, but sleeping rooms were bare stone boxes unless the students themselves brought in soft goods to hang. Bruny had come a little over a year ago with two changes of clothes, her toothbrush, her comb, and nothing else. Seladine’s landed family was wealthy by comparison to Bruny’s, who were sheep tenders in the Tolm Valley far to the north, but even Seladine hadn’t come to Haven with a wagonload of tapestries.
And this time of year, with auditions for the Midyear Recitals looming over all of Bardic, the practice rooms were always full.
“I do have that rhetoric piece I should be doing,” Bruny said while staring up at the much-gouged white plaster ceiling. A stack of worn, cloth-covered books teetered on the low table next to her narrow bed, the sight of them—ignored all day since classes ended—sending thorns of guilt through her. “And music theory be glaring all up at me, with Bard Breeanne may’p thinking like a nice sleep wi’book neath pillow be enough to memorize all!” She groaned and got a smirking nod in return from Seladine. “But the trials for Midyear be one week acome, and I be not ready!”
She paused, then said, “I am not ready,” with a scowl at the grammar book half-hidden under her bed. She knew she needed to learn to speak the way people in the capitol did—the way everyone else outside the Tolm Valley did, it seemed. Bards were known as great orators as well as great musicians and singers. Seladine had pointed out—gently, carefully—that by the time she graduated, Bruny needed to be able to speak like a lady, or she’d never find a place in a great house.
That did be one more thing—was one more thing—to fret on, but right then she didn’t have space in her head for those worries. Graduation for her was at least four more years away, as late as she’d started. The coming trials loomed so huge, she couldn’t see anything else beyond them.
“If you work yourself into a muddle, you’ll stumble at the trials even if you do master your piece,” Seladine pointed out. “You work so hard, and that’s wonderful—you’re determined to catch up as much as you can, and I admire that, honestly. But there are limits, and I think you’ve reached them. You can only stuff so much into your brain at once before your head explodes!”
Seladine slipped a feather into her history book and laid it on her bedside table. “Come on, it’s nearly dinner time. Let’s go see what there is to eat, and after we’ll take a turn around the garden. After you’ve had some food and fresh air, you can come back and torture your fingers some more.”
Bruny scowled, but she set her harp carefully in its case. It was borrowed from the Collegium, and she’d be that mortified to let it come to damage. Although sometimes she was sore tempted to bash it against the stone wall.
She followed Seladine out of the room and up the hallway, watching how the older girl walked and trying to copy her.
Seladine was a lady—not a titled lady, but still, her landowning family was gentry, and she’d been raised to all the ladylike manners and ways Bruny lacked. She walked smoothly and gracefully, her head high but not stiff, her shoulders straight—not slumped forward, nor pulled so far back she looked like a child trying to impress a bully. She made the rust-brown trousers and tunic all Bardic students wore look like something a lady would wear to work her embroidery and drink wine in a salon, while Bruny’s always seemed wrinkled or stiff. Her tunic was always either puffed too high over her belt or pulled down so far she looked like a corn cob ready to shuck.
Seladine had helped her so much in the last year, showing her how to braid her hair to keep it neat all day—which had felt odd at first, because in the Tolm, only men braided their hair.
She’d shown Bruny where everything was, helping her organize her studies for the classes that always seemed likely to bury her. Bruny had learned to read and figure as a child, and a bit of the history of her people, and in the Tolm that was enough. When she’d come to Haven, she’d imagined she’d learn more songs to sing and may’p learn an instrument. There was that, to be sure, but so much more—language and history and mathematics and rhetoric, religions and law and politics and mythology, composition and music theory and ensemble and music history, plus Gift training, and with so much more to come that thinking too hard about having to learn all of it gave her the cheebies.
They cut through a courtyard, a checkerboard of brown-speckled flagstones and gaps where sweet herbs grew. Two groups were taking advantage of the early evening shade to practice outside—one a trio of horns, and the other a group of seven who were playing different kinds of pipes while taking turns singing.
She knew the students in the larger group; she’d performed with them the previous year. Making music with a group was a joy she’d not had back home, and the pipers had welcomed her among them—a particularly generous act, since she’d only been playing her vertical pipes for a couple of months at the time and could barely play “Silly Sheep.”
Delvan, who played the double clarinet, had worked out a simple part for her that required only three notes and proper timekeeping. With some determined practice, she’d mastered it well enough that she could relax while she played and let her Gift float free. She’d been the only Gifted member of the group, and the others had seemed happy to have her, even with her baby-level playing.
She caught Delvan’s eye and waved as she followed Seladine across the courtyard. He raised an eyebrow at her and kept playing, but just as she stepped through the doorway back into the building, she heard the pipe music slide to a stop. Dinner called to everyone, even determined music students.
* * *
* * *
After dinner, Seladine went off with her own friends, a group of older students who were all looking forward to graduating and going out into the world. Seladine pointed a finger at Bruny and said, “Garden! At least twice round!” before vanishing into the milling after-dinner crowd.
Bruny took the two loops around the garden, walking between the low, clipped hedges and beneath the spreading trees. She was sure Seladine had meant for her to take a ladylike stroll, but she set out at a rather fast stride. It was good to get some late sun and feel the breeze, though, and she slowed down some to listen to other students, singly and in groups, playing and singing here and there.
Soon enough she turned back to their room, finding it empty. Good—Seladine wouldn’t have to pretend to ignore Bruny’s sausage-fingered jangling on the cursed harp.
She played for an hour, practicing the one tricky place over and over. Thought of the tria
ls next week sent panic bubbling up in her gut.
She set down the harp and spent a dutiful hour with music theory, one eye on the striped candle, determined to give her most difficult music class a proper go before returning to her harp, determined to master the song. She continued until Seladine finally returned and scolded her into bed.
* * *
* * *
At lunch the next day, Delvan slid onto the bench across the table and said, “Ho, Bruny! We hardly see you anymore—what have you been doing?”
Tessy, who played a bone flute so sweetly Bruny fancied she could call birds out of the trees, sat down next to Delvan and smiled and waved at her. Students flowed into the big, timbered hall, surging between the long tables, calling to friends. The squeak and thump of shifting furniture and the clank and clunk of cups and plates merged into a raucus song, like a thousand geese gossiping.
“Practicing, what more?” said Bruny with a tight smile. “Trials just a few days acome, and my song do be fighting me hard.”
“I’ve seen you practicing with your harp,” said Tessy. “It’s wonderful that you’ve gotten so good in such a short time. I remember you were so worried about catching up, and see, you have!”
“Oh, nay! I still be struggling like a lamb in the spring mud! The harp be that difficult, but I do be determined to master it!”
Tessy and Delvan exchanged a quick glance, and Delvan said, “I see. Well, you’ve clearly been working hard. Best of luck!”
“Thankee! I did hear you all at your practicing yestereve, and it sounded that grand.”
Passages Page 26