Illumination
Terry McGarry
Tor Books, hardcover, August 2001
Copyright © 2001 Terry McGarry
"McGarry's first novel
demonstrates a powerful skill at storytelling and a creative approach to the metaphysics
of magic. Strong characters and surprising plot twists make this tale of high
adventure and personal discovery a solid addition to any fantasy collection. Highly
recommended." --Library Journal
"A strong debut by a writer
not afraid to subvert the dogma of magic or plumb the depths of the human soul."
--Faren Miller, Locus
CHAPTER ONE
SUNSET THROUGH the high, round window draped the attic in shadows. Liath, tracing
invisible designs on the floor with the feather end of a quill, had lit no lamp.
Where the feathers brushed, they left a faint, shimmering blue trace. The darker
the room grew, the clearer the traces.
If this were a casting, with
binding materials, the phantom light would blaze around the quill.
It would guide her hand as she painted kadri and inked borders
along the blocks of wordsmith's marks inscribed on vellum or
sedgeweave or parchment. As she filled in her lines with pigments,
the blue guiders would be absorbed into tangible saffron, ochre,
verdigris. When she could no longer see the patterns in her mind's
eye, the illumination would be complete.
These dim echoes of her
guiders were a new thing. Each movement--of hand, or foot, or
quill--left a trail through the dark air as if through still water.
Every motion has a
consequence.
Through the floorboards she
could feel the vibration of life: tavern life, village life.
Cottars and crafters, traders and herders, gathered from miles
around to drink and game, gossip and dance. She had gone to sleep
to the sound of sorrow and celebration each night for twice nine
years. The first roll of beater on drum out front, the laughter of
children scattered by the broom whisking the road clear for
dancing, called her down to her celebration. For once, at least,
she wouldn't be on duty; there'd be no hauling fresh kegs in from
the coolhouse or negotiating the slippery cellar steps to fetch a
cask of some ancient sweetwine.
When she reached for the pull
string on the trapdoor, a muffled tide of laughter surged up. She
eased back on her haunches. Go, then, it seemed to say.
Go on your journeying, as you long to. But every motion has a
consequence. You will be leaving Keiler here.
Memory cast another kind of
light against the gathering shadows: the flickering of the fire in
her local triad's cottage. She had sat there last night, sipping
valerian tea after her three-day trial. Hanla, the illuminator
who'd trained her, had left to bring news of Liath's success to her
family. Hanla's son Keiler had gone to replace materials in the
binding house out back. Graefel had sat with her in silence for
some time, but of a sudden he'd said, "I'll tell you a wordsmiths'
secret. About your name."
An illuminator--trial-proven
or not--should be told no more of scribing than anyone else in
Eiden Myr. Song was for binders, painting for illuminators,
scribing for wordsmiths. Graefel's triad was ever mindful of
tradition. Yet his blue eyes, cold and flat as an animal's, held no
remorse.
"The ciphers inscribed during
a casting form words," he began. "And names are words. Words that
can be spoken."
This seemed a strange thing
for him to point out. Wordsmiths scribed in the Old Tongue,
everyone knew that. A tongue was a spoken thing, by definition. Why
did he look so stern?
"Your name, unlike most, has
extra ciphers in it. One might call them shadow ciphers, because
they don't sound when 'LEE-uh' is said aloud. You carry them with
you--a hidden part of yourself, like your innermost thoughts. Were
I permitted to tell you which ciphers they are, still I could not
tell you what they signify."
He was looking at the fire,
not at her. Its glow carved the planes of his vulpine face, glinted
in his russet beard.
"Perhaps there will be an
extra portion of pain in your life, or perhaps it will be luck, or
joy," he went on. "Whatever it is, Liath, you must meet it head-on.
Ciphers are the strongest power in the world...and those will be
with you the rest of your days."
Liath had followed his gaze,
as if this mysterious future could be glimpsed in the embers'
running, molten depths. But suggestions of pattern slipped too
quickly into chaos, leaving only warmth and brilliance.
The attic trapdoor thumped
open. "Why are you sitting up here in the
dark?"
Hanla's swarthy face
was lit by lampglow from beneath.
"I see guiders without a
casting," she answered. "I was trying to understand."
"Ah." The illuminator's
chunky frame briefly shut the light out as she squeezed through the
opening, then sent rhythmic, crazy shadows dancing on the angled
ceiling when she sat on the edge and swung her dangling legs.
"Second thoughts about your journeying?"
Liath blinked at the Khinish
woman, at the brown eyes she had bequeathed her son and bindsman,
Keiler, while Graefel, his father and wordsmith, was the source of
his red hair and angular face. Keiler had been a second brother to
her, a brother who shared her magelight, as birth brother Nole did
not; a brother who understood magecraft, as her family could not.
How could she tell his mother, her teacher, what lay heavy on her
heart?
"You think I didn't feel the
same way when I took the triskele? I knew the cost. I remember my
trial every time I look toward Khine." Hanla's expression had
softened, but her voice was brisk. "You will learn magecraft we
don't know. You'll bring home skills we cannot teach you. It's the
reason plants go to seed on the winds, the reason we breed stock in
other towns. Magecraft stays healthy only as long as we journey.
Eiden Myr is a body, and we are the blood flowing in it."
Liath refrained from mouthing
the last words with her. "You settled down," she said.
"Yes, and far from home, just
as you fear. The Neck is my home now, not Khine."
They could have been sitting
in the cornfield doing lessons in the rich soil. Those sunsoaked
days, the golden nights of stories and camaraderie in the tavern
below, already seemed a world away.
Liath glared at the tear-
blurred shapes of stored clothing, blankets, tools; a spare cot, a
two-legged stool, a crate of pewter goblets they never used. Always
tongue-tied and stupid about anything but tavern business, she
could not speak.
Hanla gestured at the
forgotten quill, still twitching in Liath's hand. "A dozen years
ago we caught you doodling with a stick in the dust. Now your
guiders shine without a casting, begging to be used, though you've
scarcely recovered from three days of trial. That is what you must
reckon with, my dear. Consider Roiden."
Liath thought of Roiden, a
bitter man, hunched around a flagon of Finger wine, eyes tracking
her as she did her chores. He'd lived in the village all her life,
but she avoided him, ashamed of her own light; she ducked away from
those eyes when they caught her listening, rapt, to rovers' tales
of the wild places--the plains below the Belt, where the wind spoke
in eerie song, the dark wet woods and marshes of the Legs, where
weird lights burned and weeping trees were older than memory. The
places she could not wait to go.
Spirits take Roiden,
she thought--angry at his pain, at the guilt he'd caused her. "I've
considered him," she acknowledged. Then, levelly, "I remember
Pelkin."
Hanla nodded. "And your
sister doesn't. That's a sadness on you, is it?" When no answer
came, she said, "Your mother will bear this, Liath. As she bore it
before."
All the old words, the same
words, and none of them "Keiler."
"Let's go down," Liath said
abruptly, rising. The quill--not a true quill, since those were
stored by binders, but a shed feather from some pigeon trapped in
this attic long ago--dropped to the boards in a soft blue sparkle.
Liath ignored it. "An ale and a dance or two will set me right."
The greatroom was full of
strangers, unfamiliar faces and garb amid the wrights, the
hillwomen, the cowherds--all the folk her eye picked out with
recognition. Lately there had been more travelers than usual, all
going to the Ennead's Holding--all but one runner, a slight, pale
lad of no more than nine-and-five who'd come from there. His cloak,
unlike the wool of ordinary folk, shifted and shimmered in the
lamplight. Nine velvet colors, sewn in triangles so expertly that
they seemed one piece of cloth. Weatherwarded, so the cloak was
untouched though the boy looked tired and travel-worn. He sat shyly
by himself, watching the celebration with dark blue eyes; he showed
no signs of being a reckoner, the eyes and ears of the Ennead. Not
far from him, Liath was surprised to see Lowlanders, Southers from
the look of them--thin build, dark hair, horsehair vests over
shirtless brown skin, soft breeches not suited to this climate.
Come up all the way from the Weak Leg? No Southers had been through
in some time.
Old man Marough roared at the
sight of her. "There's our little mage now!" He bulled his way
through the crowd to slap her too hard on the back. "Hanla, where's
that triskele? If she hasn't earned it, no one bloody has."
Hanla forced a tolerant
smile. "When it's time, Marough," she said. "We have our
traditions."
He snorted: There's no
countenancing mages. But relief had made him expansive. Liath
had saved him a great deal at her trial. "Drinks on me until the
triskele is taken, then!" he said to the room. "You'll get that
sorrel for it, Danor, that one you've been eyeing since Sweetbriar
foaled. Meira's just done shoeing her."
Marough's sons and nephews
left their stones games and their ales to cluster round her, clasp
her arm; she stopped them before they lifted her on their shoulders
to parade around the room. They were a rough lot, always headed for
trouble. Liath had broken up more brawls with them at the center
than she cared to count. Still she couldn't help but smile.
Then she locked eyes with her
mother, standing by the pantry door. Geara n'Breida l'Pelkin, Geara
Publican, stout and blond, had drunk all comers under the table in
her youth. This had been her mother's tavern when she pledged
Danor. The Petrel's Rest was a legacy of daughters; Liath would be
the first to break the chain. Her sister Breida, who loved horses
and Galf n'Marough with all the passion of her nine summers and
two, might or might not be the second, though she was named--
contrary to custom--for a grandmother, the Breida who had passed
the tavern to Geara. It was Nole who had inherited the inclination
for affable hosting. By rights he should take over when the time
came, instead of helping Megenna run her family's craftery in
Orendel. He would make a grand master of the house: his big frame
would fill out as he aged, his beard would come in thick and red,
he would be Danor all over again. Plump Breida, flirting
unsuccessfully with the Ennead's runner boy when she should be
collecting cups, was a gentle, fearless child who would mature into
a comely woman. Liath would stay as she was--whip-thin, too tall,
all gangly limbs, her only graces a pair of thoughtful gray eyes
and the pictures in her mind.
Geara had not been there for
the trial, though there'd been plenty of gawkers, folk hoping the
prentice's luck would rub off on them. Danor had brought their
youngest the first day, but thereafter they'd stayed in the tavern.
Liath had seen neither of them since she stumbled home at dawn,
bleary after dozing off in her chair in the triad's cottage--only
Breida, snuggling close to her in their bed. Drowsily she'd
demanded a full account; at full light, she'd thumped Liath as
she'd gotten up, for letting her fall back asleep before the end of
the tale.
Marough's middle son pushed a
cup of wine into her hand. "Anything you ever need!" he said. "I
owe you, Liath Illuminator!"
"Not 'Illuminator' yet," she
said. "Not till I take the triskele." Geara seemed to be listening.
Was that pride on her face? Acceptance, after all these years?
"But everyone knows your
magelight's special. Sarse and Aunt Sharra heard Graefel say so."
Geara turned on her heel and
disappeared into the pantry.
"Aunt Sharra said--"
"Tarny, your brother's won
two more rounds at stones." Hanla smiled innocently, slipping in
beside Liath. "You'll have a snail's time catching up."
Tarny's thick lips pursed. He
looked across the room, then back at Liath, and with a cry of
frustrated petulance he launched his rangy horseman's body into the
crush of people.
Hanla followed Liath's gaze
toward the pantry. "It's love that's broken her heart. She doesn't
hate you."
"Only my talent."
"Yes." There was no more to
say; there was no mending this. "Now, have your ale, eh?"
Dance rhythms drifted in from
outside, local drummers joined by logbeaters from the next valley
and a gourdsman from Drey. Oriane and Taemar, Danor's fiesty
parents, pinched her cheeks and insulted the ale, to remind her she
was both child and publican still; they made ribald jokes because
someone had to, they said, with Geara's merchant sisters away.
Danor's brothers ran the brewery in Iandel now. They had carted
their parents in late that afternoon, laughing and shouting loud
enough to rouse Liath from exhaustion, and then taken over in the
cookroom. Oriane and Taemar cherished all their Clondel
grandchildren, though Nole resembled them most, and Breida was
their sentimental favorite. They tried hard to make up for what was
missing.
Burly, red-bearded Danor
banked the fire against the nighttime chill through the open door,
and a sweetness of birch smoke filled the room. The crowd grew
boisterous as full dark came on. Demick the smith juggled winter
apples while his sister played the spoons. Children crawled under
tables, untying boots and goosing stonesplayers. Porl the
carpenter, never easy at rest, attempted to pull a wobbly stool out
from under Naragh Cobbler, who threatened to dump her lentil stew
over his head if he didn't leave her in peace. The weavers, just as
bad, were arranging a trade with a downriver tailor. Iandel
dairyfolk complained of weeds come over from the Clondel water
meadow, giving their butter a foul taste, and was Graefel's triad
too busy with their prentice to see to important matters? Galf and
the millers' younger son, trying to impress Breida, batted a bean
sack around the room until Geara chased them out; Drey folk laughed
uproariously over some mishap in Orendel. All celebrated the end of
sowmid planting, the hard days of ploughing done and only warm
weather ahead of them now.
Liath sat in the close,
smelly tavern, and let them toast her, and raise her on their
shoulders, and howl when Hanla said it was still not time for the
triskele; and drank sips of the wine they pushed on her, and
listened to their speeches, and table-wrestled all comers as she'd
always done, with her wiry arms muscled from lifting barrels and
her hands rough and strong from mopping and brewing, hands that
followed the blue guiders in her mind when her tall Norther body
had been bred for this, the keeping of a public house at the base
of the Aralinns, where winters were hard and friendships easy,
where no one ever forgot the magecraft that spared them illness and
fire and drought, the Ennead that kept them safe from the Great
Storms.
Old Drolno Teller told the
story, from his choice spot by the hearth. At the first sound of
his voice, pitched in ritual tones, the drummers fell quiet and the
dancers clustered in, sinking cross-legged to the floor or clearing
space to sit on tables. Youngsters were pulled into parents' laps.
Liath sat outside with her teaching triad, on the bench below the
sunrise window--listening with them, as she had done since she was
six, to the story of their craft's founding. Of how sea and earth
and sky, once united, could no longer abide together, and separated
into three parts, begetting sons and daughters of their rage and
love: fire, cloud, wind. Where skyfire met earth, the barrier
between sea and sky, Galandra was born--the first mage, the
peacebringer, who could soothe the contentious spirits. Earth loved
her for her justice and her beauty, and fashioned itself in her
image, that they might be pledged--and became Eiden, the figure of
a man spread on the waters. All folk were Galandra's children, born
of her by Eiden. Those who took after Eiden became caretakers of
the ground and the creatures on it. Those who took after Galandra
became mages, arranging themselves in threes, after the first
spirits. Their charge was to keep the spirits in harmony: settle
the earth when it had bad dreams, persuade the sky to release
hoarded water, calm the winds when they grew rambunctious or cajole
them when they grew torpid. Whenever three mages worked together,
the spirits were united once more. "And three become one," Drolno
finished, the time-honored words.
Hanla echoed "And three
become one" as she draped the triskele-heavy chain over Liath's
head and called her Illuminator. Keiler winked at her over his
mother's shoulder. Graefel bowed low. Hanla gripped her arms, hand
to elbow, forearms tight, in the sign of friendship and respect
around the Neck.
"Make us proud," she said.
When they announced that the
thing was done, there in a private moment off to the side, Liath
took another thumping from Breida, and had to dance with nearly
everyone as consolation for the spoiled show. When she'd had
enough, breathless and footsore, one more tapped her on the
shoulder, and she turned to see her brother's beaming ruddy face,
petite Megenna on his arm.
"You've done it," he said,
unnecessarily, and gave a tug on the tuft of hair at her nape, all
that was left of her long auburn braid. "And now the pea will leave
the pod."
"I'm sorry, Nole."
Journeying, she would not be here to illuminate at his pledging, to
raise the first ale.
He shook his head with a
smile. "We'll still be here, pea."
Shyly, Megenna handed her a
battered cup. It was the pledgeware, she saw--they held its mates.
"To your future, then," Liath
said, raising the cup.
"To all your shining days,"
Nole said, raising his.
"May you come safe home to
us." Megenna touched her cup to theirs.
Three toasts given, they
drained the cups. This was good ale of their own, none of that
smoky yarrow-gruit stuff the Curlew in Orendel had traded them. A
sweet taste of home to carry on her tongue through the days to
come.
Breida slipped out, in a
nightshift under her cloak, and hugged them all. "Galf's promised
me a ride," she murmured into Liath's shoulder, "and Mother's
making me go to bed."
Liath smoothed red-gold hair
from her sister's face. "Then dream of Galf, and riding, and
perhaps tomorrow the dream will come true."
Breida smiled, started to go,
then faltered. "Don't leave without saying goodbye to me," she
said, and ran inside.
"Never," Liath whispered to
the empty doorway.
In a set formed by her
parents on one side, Keiler and the millers' daughter across from
her and Nole, and Graefel and Hanla on the other side, they danced
a figure as complex as a kadra, the paths of their bodies ringing
and intertwining each other to the intricate cadence of the drums.
Rounding with the women in the center, Liath grasped her mother's
callused, sweaty hand in her left and Hanla's broad, smooth hand in
her right; she danced hard, fueled by jealousy at the way the eyes
of the millers' daughter lingered on Keiler. She was swung by her
bearlike father, who danced as if on air; by her tall, solid
brother, who delighted in spinning her hard and fast; by Graefel,
polite and precise; and by Keiler, who held her too loosely. The
wine and the incessant beat, the sweet night air and whirling
dance, wove together in a binding older and brighter than the
stars.
The drummers took a rest,
sitting on the blocks and logs that were their instruments, and the
dancers trickled back inside. Sweat cooled on Liath's flesh, and
she shivered. The pewter triskele lay heavy on her breastbone--cool
when she was hot, it seemed, and warm when she was cold. Three arms
radiating from a central point, curving into a shared periphery:
three in one.
Liath acknowledged the
drummer Lisel with a smile--after the events of her trial, they
shared a bond nearly as strong as healing--then paused to ladle
water from the barrel by the front door. When she straightened,
Keiler was leaning against the shingled wall, surveying her with
wry amusement.
"You've held up well," he
said. "Still on your feet and able to put two words together."
She smiled at the russet hair
and brown eyes. Did he ever wish he could sing with the drummers,
add melody to their rhythm? He would always sing alone. Did hearing
the rousing drums and having to save his beautiful voice for
binding ever make him sad?
She didn't know how to broach
the question. At first light, she would be gone, time only to cut a
stout walking stick, pack some food. It was too late.
"I loved my journeying,"
Keiler said, with that quick eagerness--as if it had just occurred
to him and he must tell someone or burst. "I'd do another, if we
weren't the only triad in these parts. At least you didn't have to
spend the last year preparing your journey truss. I never want to
work that hard again." He laughed at her expression. "You'll love
it too, and you'll come back and tell me all about it and make me
jealous."
Tell my mother, she
wanted to say. Perhaps he would, some late evening, resting from
his bindsman's labors. Binding was the hardest physical work in
magecraft, all the vellum to cut and soak and stretch and pumice,
pigment to grind, quills to cut, ink to mix. So many times, she'd
wanted to help him, stand by him with the sun on his muscled,
shirtless back and ask how it was done, how she could help. So many
times, she'd tagged behind him up the bindsman's road, pretending
he wasn't pretending he couldn't see her, watching him collect
catsclaw sap and goldroot, oak gall and pokeberry, bugs and clay.
He was only two years her senior--a year younger than Nole--but
he'd taken the triskele young, trained by his aunt, his parents'
binder, then journeyed till Befre stepped aside to make a second
journeying herself. Would he walk with her, now, up the bindsman's
road, if she asked him to?
They stood in silence,
watching the moon's downward arc. Then, "I'll miss you, Li," he
said, and kissed her, awkward and too quick, as if it was something
he had been planning to do for some time and wasn't sure how to
handle when the moment came.
Still on her feet and able to
put two words together. She opened her mouth to say them: I'll
stay--
Keiler's eyes focused past
her, and brightened, and he raised a hand and drew to his side the
millers' daughter. Ferlin. Liath could smell her before she saw
her, that sweet dusting of new flour, and a hint of perfume, as if
she washed her golden hair in blossoms.
Probably
chrysanthemums, Liath thought. Probably has head lice.
"We're to be pledged at
midsummer," Keiler said. His gentle smile made him look older than
the boy she'd grown up with. It was nothing like the lopsided grin
he wore around her. "We won't announce it till you've left. Didn't
want to step on your celebration."
"It not very big news
anyway," Ferlin said. Too sweet, too demure. She knows,
Liath thought. And she knows she's won. "Megenna and your
brother are all the talk around here these days. And your trial, of
course...."
Liath's heart had known that
she could not pledge him, not while he was triaded with his parents
here. Liath's heart had known that she couldn't wait on him season
after season, until Graefel and Hanla freed him to triad again;
that she couldn't wish that their aging be speeded. Liath's heart
had known all this. Now Liath knew it, too.
She gripped the ladle tightly
so she wouldn't put a finger to her lips, searching for a memory of
the last kiss she would ever have from him. Then she hung it back
in the deep, cool water, and gently replaced the barrel's lid.
A tremendous crash shook the
walls, followed by a roar of voices. She whirled, thinking,
They've turned the great table over, and It's a brawl,
but something's wrong. The tavern was a living thing. She could
sense its moods. This wasn't high spirits or old surly grudges;
this was something new and foreign and mean.
A jug smashed to dust against
the doorjamb as she came through, and Growl the ginger cat streaked
out, ears laid flat. He looked to have just escaped Melf
n'Daughan's cruel hands; the boy looked up at her from a crouch,
grinning wickedly. She would have cuffed him, but the greatroom was
in an uproar. Marough's sons were at the middle of it, and his
brother Daughan's older boys, but scuffles had broken out all
around the central commotion. The great table was off its trestles,
the benches toppled. Older men and women, hooting and jeering, had
pulled stools, stones boards, and smaller tables off to the sides;
one old couple still bent over their game. Meira and Sharra were
taking bets on the outcome, but then Meira swore, dumped
tallysticks on Sharra, and waded into the fray. The runner boy
cowered in a corner. A sheepherd's dog braced on the floor beside
him, barking. In the doorway, a grinning drummer struck up a
frenetic beat on a handblock.
Straining to see who
Marough's lot were fighting with, Liath made out long dark hair,
vests over bare skin.
Geara was stretched up to
pull sliding wooden slats down over the back shelves. "Mind
yourself, Liath."
A standing lamp toppled; in
the puddle of spilled oil and brandy, the flame flared up. It
consumed the brandy and the oil, blackened the nearest rushes, and
died away against the floorboards. The firewarding had held.
The biggest man in the
central clump of bodies came stumbling backward out of it, reeling
from a blow. He doubled up when he hit the wall: Danor, flung out
like a rag.
Leave it, he mouthed
at her, unable to get a breath.
Liath dove in.
Stop the wranglers and you
usually stopped the brawl. Tarny was raising a stool over a
Souther's turned back. Liath hugged him from behind and wrenched
him around so that the stool came down through empty air and
crashed to the floor--something else for Porl to fix, that would
make him happy. Tarny twisted in her hold and tried to land a blow,
but she slid her arms up around his shoulders and locked her hands
behind his neck, keeping her head low in case he made a grab for
her hair. Just loud enough so he would hear her over his own
elaborate swearing, she said, "Calm yourself, now, Tarny, it's just
Liath."
All the fight left his body.
"That's it, then," he sighed.
She released him and stepped
away, looking for Sarse. The Souther had turned at the sound of
wood splintering, slit green eyes burning in a brown face. Below
that, with a snick that pierced the tumult of the room and a
wink of barbed metal that cut the gloom, a knife came out of a side
sheath.
The others--three men and a
woman, there were five in all--had also drawn knives, and now
backed into a circle, with a larger, ragged circle of Marough and
Daughan's clan around them. The drummer's block scraped to a stop.
All shouts and laughter ceased.
"Brawls are all well and
good," Liath said quietly, "as long as someone helps clean up. But
we don't draw blades in this tavern." She put herself just in front
of Tarny, reaching back a fending hand but not quite touching him.
"They're the cheaters," Sarse
n'Marough whined.
Two of his cousins started
for the Souther, but Danor, recovered, grabbed each by the collar
and hauled them back.
Voice pitched to reason with
small children, Geara replied, "Well, we'll never know that now,
will we, with your stones and tallysticks all over the floor."
"It was never a question of
cheating," said the Souther facing Liath. Her eyes blazed
with contempt. "It's a question of who are the sheepherds and who
are the sheep."
"I don't care what it's a
question of," Liath said. "Put your knives away. You can kill
people with those."
A grin spread slowly across
the Souther's face, white against the sun-dark skin. "Yes," she
said. "We can."
The moment balanced on the
edges of those blades. Blades that were not made for shaving
carrots or working wood. Hooked things, evil--meant to maximize
harm. It would take only one more drunk, headstrong wrangler to set
the lot of them on the strangers, knives or no. Behind her, a plank
creaked.
Tarny's shifted weight drew
the knifepoint upward--not gut, but heart. But the Southers kept
their circle tight.
The woman's brow quirked, and
her gaze dropped to the opening of Liath's shirt. "You're a mage?"
The knifepoint lowered a tad.
"I took the triskele
tonight."
An unspoken signal rippled
through the little circle. Liath raised a hand, catching Marough's
eye: Hold them off, let this end. Two days ago, her tavern
or no, he would not have heeded her. Now he swept sons and nephews
back, clearing a path to the doorway abruptly vacated by the
drummer.
Liath caught a glimpse of
trim fox-colored beard outside. Flanked by Hanla and Keiler and a
score of villagers, Graefel Wordsmith stood ready to intervene.
Good, Liath thought.
Let Graefel sort this. It was what mages did: sort out
disputes, settle troubles, heal bruised pride as well as broken
bones. Let Graefel clean this up; leave her to clean up her tavern.
The Southers sheathed their
knives and filed out in two pairs, their back guarded by the woman
Liath had spoken to. She cast Liath a final look before she crossed
the threshold: evaluation.
"Were they cheating at
stones?" Liath asked when they'd reassembled the trestle table and
the players were sorting through the wet debris for pipes, pouches,
stones, tallysticks.
Sarse n'Marough scuffed a
foot in the rushes. "Probably weren't, most like. But they said we
were!"
"That's not exactly what they
said," cousin Erl n'Daughan put in slowly.
Geara handed three of them
brooms and gave rags to the rest. "You have all night to worry over
who said what, but not unless I see a tidy greatroom in the next
few breaths."
Liath set lamps and benches
to rights, Tarny pacing her like a puppy. Danor drafted him and a
cousin to fetch fresh ale, sending the millers' older boy down for
wine and Liath with him for a cask of the fruit brandy Geara's
mother used to make. Sarse followed his brother.
From the back of the cellar,
Liath could hear the voices out by the coolhouse. Sarse and Erl
were goading Tarny. He was a coward, they said. That Souther could
have spit Liath like a pepper on a frystick, and Tarny just
standing there like a fool. The Souther would come back for Liath
in the night, didn't he know that? Didn't he see that look the
woman gave her on the way out? And he just let her walk away!
The cellar shadows rubbed cold against Liath's flesh.
She stood the brandy cask on end and shouldered past the millers' son. It was
clear, now, who'd goaded this brawl into life. Spirits take me for not seeing
it sooner. She flew up the stone steps and broke through the storm doors in
back to see Tarny just rounding the side of the building.
Erl and Sarse were
snickering, not far behind him. She caught up, hauled them back
much as her father had, cursed them and continued past at a jog.
"Tarny! Stop!"
The Southers' leader was just
lifting her pack from where she'd braced it against a barrel in
front. Looking past her, one of the men saw Tarny. He shouted a
warning, intermingled with Tarny's shout of rage. In one smooth
movement, like a dance step perfectly timed, the woman drew her
blade and turned. Tarny saw it--but he was too big, too lumbering
to pull up once he had launched himself. The woman's eyes went
wide; she saw that he was unarmed, she recognized a drunken
lumbering fool when she saw one, but too late. Tarny ran up on the
blade.
They stood for a moment,
frozen, as if balking at an embrace. Then Tarny staggered back and
sat down hard in a puff of dust. He stared at his belly, where the
metal-banded grip protruded.
"You idiot!" the Souther
cried. All arrogance had fled that voice; it spoke horror. As if
she'd never meant to use that knife of hers. As if she hadn't
really known she could.
Yet she'd turned with the
lithe coordination of trained reflex.
There were screams. Some
people ran away; some people ran to Tarny. "Don't pull it out!" the
Souther called, straining forward against the grip of her fellows.
They dragged her off, surrounding her.
What Liath had witnessed
struck home. The night went very pale. She could feel the crowd's
shock bloom into rage, but she couldn't summon any words against
it.
When vision returned, Tarny
lay on the ground and Hanla was holding a red-soaked cloth around
the base of the knife in his gut. The Southers stood off to the
side; why hadn't they fled? Villagers and travelers milled around,
staying well clear of mages and Southers, clearing off farther as
Marough and Meira and the others tumbled out of the tavern.
"You can heal him," the
Southwoman said. It wasn't a question. She was looking at Liath,
though Graefel stood before her, his authority a barrier between
them and the villagers.
Tarny turned his face to
Liath, imploring. He opened his mouth. Only blood came out.
"Our triad can heal him,"
Liath said. The spiritlorn fool--
"No," said Marough. He turned
to Liath, too. "You."
"I'm not the--"
"You do it, Liath," Hanla
said. Her dark eyes burned.
Only a day. It had been only
a day. Yesterday afternoon they had stood like this, surrounded by
gawking townsfolk, as the drummer deposited shattered heartwood in
the middle of the casting circle, at the end of her trial. Broken
by Tarny, who rushed headlong through the world, leaving a trail of
debris behind him. Trial castings were considered lucky. Marough
had not wanted her to do it--he hadn't trusted an untried mage. She
was the publicans' daughter, a child, beneath his notice. He'd
never minded her and never would; he wanted the illuminator, he
could not afford to make reparation for this if it were not mended.
But the drummer knew that the only hope lay in the fortune of a
prentice's first castings. Then, as now, Hanla had stepped aside.
Not Hanla pushing her to test
herself. Hanla deferring to the brighter light.
Now Marough gave the order.
"You fixed his mess before,"
he said. "You do it again."
Keiler was running down the
road from the mages' cottage, where he'd gone to fetch a sack of
binding materials. He threw the sack down and with his hawthorn
stick traced a circle in the dust around Tarny. It didn't matter to
him who did the illumination. They must begin.
Liath walked to the near side
of the circle. She sat down cross-legged. She closed her eyes to
slow her spinning mind. When she opened them again, Tarny's wound
was bound against the bleeding; the blade had not been withdrawn.
Hanla was standing outside the circle. Graefel and Keiler sat on
the dirt-scratch arc to form two points of a triangle, and Graefel
was bent over a wood-backed sheet of vellum--animal skin, for an
animal casting, as all flesh was animal. In the silence, his quill
point scraped the leaf with the sound of a death rattle.
It was as if her trial had
resumed after a brief hiatus. As if it had never ended. Perhaps it
would never end.
"It was Tarny, on that
blasted roan." Drummer Lisel, voice thinned by outrage. "He knows
we practice down there, he knows there's no wardings!"
"He lost control." Cousin
Erl, because Marough, the father, was too disgusted to bother
speaking. "It's a bloody drum, is all! No one was hurt!"
Lisel laid the fragments
on the casting ground. An assortment of fruitwoods--pear, bayberry,
apple, cherry. Shattered by the hooves of the horse that bolted,
the horse Tarny shouldn't have been trying to ride in the first
place, a horse kept for breeding but famously unbreakable. Liath
knew this drum; Lisel had played it all her life. A masterly piece
of work, the woods cut at angles and joined painstakingly into an
instrument of rich variety. It had been crafted by one of her
forebears, passed down from mother to daughter. Generations of
finger oils were rubbed into this wood. The drum had sounded at
rituals and celebrations for as long as anyone could remember. It
was irreplaceable; a copy might be made, if Lisel had the skill,
but it would not be this drum. Even Marough knew it.
It was only her trial.
They had made winter wheat grow high, cast fire without strikers,
herded a raincloud overhead and persuaded it to release its burden
of water. But to mend so intricate an object...it couldn't be done.
The slightest flaw would ruin the timbre.
Hanla said, "With Liath,
it can be done."
Liath backed away from the
fractured wood, shaking her head. Lisel was fitting the pieces
together, holding them in place. "I can't," Liath murmured.
"You can," Hanla said.
Tarny, still conscious,
groaning past the bloody rag Meira had jammed between his teeth.
The calm, determined scritch of Graefel's pen across the page. The
rustling of Keiler preparing her brushes and pigments, the smell of
linseed oil. The beating of her heart, too fast. Her fists clenched
around their own trembling. The silence of a crowd too large to
keep silent.
They had said she had the
brightest magelight in these parts in memory. They had invested all
their pride in her, all their hopes. After her trial, they believed
she could do anything.
It was magecraft that made
the wranglers so reckless. If they couldn't be healed, they
wouldn't be so irresponsible with their bodies, with their horses.
All the fights, the broken bones...Every motion has a
consequence! she wanted to cry. Let Tarny bear the
consequence of his!
It was an accident. She was a
mage; she had been called.
Graefel passed the vellum on
to her.
The grain of each wooden
segment ran in a different direction. Each was a different size and
thickness. Grain must be matched precisely to grain. The joins
would hold, as they had done for countless years under countless
poundings, if the grain was mended right.
Keiler handed her a
selection of reed pens and the oak-gall ink he'd provided Graefel.
When the kadri were outlined as her guiders showed her--the symbols
for growth, for depth, for smoothness and strength, resonating into
a unity--he gave her cornsilk brushes and held out a palette of
plant pigments bound by catsclaw resin. A bowl of water allowed her
to vary the intensity of the pigment as she laid it down--first a
wash, then the coloring for depth and shadow. Water pigments worked
differently from those bound in oil or wax; the lay of the sedge
showed through, both symbol and background visible, one illumining
the other. It was like painting with light itself.
Keiler anticipated her needs: tallow-soot ink, a
sharp goose quill, horsehair brushes, oil-bound pigment. This would be work more
of intensity than complexity; Graefel had scribed only one large initial requiring
historiation, and she would fill the border with a fine mesh for knitting together
what was torn. She must work quickly, lest Tarny's lifeblood soak away into the
dust.
Centering herself over her
tools, shutting out the crowd, the smells, the scrutiny, she
awaited the formation of the guiders. Her magelight would show the
way to mend this horror and make a dying man whole.
Only the knotwork remained. All Graefel's ineffable
words, whatever grace and power was building in Keiler's unvoiced song, would
be for nothing if she did not weave true.
Her guiders led the pen.
They burned so bright she feared she could not see the page; and
yet she could. The world coalesced into a place of flux and
stability, curve and line, the straight, strong pen and the fluid
ink. In all those breaths, which were but a moment, Liath's
training entered her completely, seamlessly, and she was herself no
longer, but the vehicle and vessel for the patterns she
completed.
Suddenly, her guiders were
gone.
She could not summon them.
The circular knotwork
flowed easily, down one side, across the bottom, up again, and then
into the interstices between the powerful words the ciphers formed,
patterning them into a wholeness that would amplify the strength of
their own connections. Woodflesh into woodflesh, all in its place.
How could there be fear when aiding such a thing? It was no more
than the wood itself wanted, to be whole, to be as it was. There
was no simpler task than to put things back as they were meant to
be.
This is what I do, this is what I am, she had
thought. This is what I take with me into the world.
She looked up at Hanla in a
panic. I can't, she mouthed.
Hanla pursed her lips. This
was nonsense. Do it.
I can't! A blinding
ache spread from her eyes into her head. There were no guiders. So
often she had wondered if she had any talent at all, if the
magelight wasn't some other Liath existing inside her, nothing to
do with the artless publican she knew herself to be. But hadn't she
mended what could not be mended? Hadn't Graefel himself, the one
she'd always tried to please, stared gaping at what they wrought at
her trial?
All proven, all tested, the
triskele bestowed, the impossible acknowledged. All fled in one
terrible moment.
She had not forgotten the
kadri. She knew the symbols, their derivations, their resonances.
Her hand knew how to draw the borderwork, the crossweave fillers.
She was highly trained, the knowledge permanently embedded. But it
was not enough. Without the magelight, she didn't know which of
nonneds of kadri were the right ones, she couldn't feel her way to
the appropriate borders or fills. Her art was not one of intellect.
A guttering magelight might not cripple a wordsmith; she didn't
know. But without that inner light an illuminator was helpless.
"Hanla, please--" She broke
off into a moan, sagging back.
Hanla shoved her from the
circle, swearing, snatching the precious vellum from her, taking
her place.
Bumped off to the side, Liath
watched the casting continue. She did not know whether it could
succeed, thus interrupted. Perhaps they should begin again--cast
passage.
Her dreams seeped like
spilled ale into the dirt.
They laid the sedgeweave
on the broken drum and clasped hands over it, and Keiler voiced a
tune so sweet and fulfilling that it seemed to bind their souls
even as the inscribed, illuminated leaf turned to a breath of white
smoke beneath their twined fingers.
As the sun set and her
trial ended, the drum sealed into a wholeness, and the awed drummer
took it in trembling hands and brought forth a sound as resonant
and true as any it had made through the generations.
Tarny did not watch as his
flesh worked the barbed knife out and knit around the hole where it
had been. He looked only at Liath. She looked away, at the midpoint
between his terrifying face and the wound that should have killed
him: where the vellum lay, vibrating to Keiler's hoarse, piercing
bindsong, illuminated in another's practiced hand. The vellum
became a fleshy, liquid thing, and knit into itself, tighter and
tighter, until it seemed a small scab on Tarny's ribs, and knit
again into nothing, and was gone.
Tarny sat up, and the weapon
fell into the dust. The Southers had long since slipped away.
Liath could scarcely
believe it. That such intricate mending was possible with a
casting, that such power could be brought to bear...why, they could
heal the very spirit of Eiden Myr, should it ever fall ill....
You healed him, thank the
spirits, she tried to say, and I'm sorry, and I don't
understand, but she could not speak past the ache in her head.
Keiler's supporting arm would withdraw if she did, and she wanted
to savor it, just for a moment, before her failure rose up to meet
her.
"You are the strongest
mage I have ever met," Graefel said. Hanla beamed like a proud
mother beside him. Keiler looked as if he'd never seen her before.
"By rights you should go to the Ennead, not on a journeying."
Her stomach clenched. Her
grandfather Pelkin had warned her of this. The Ennead demanded
lifelong devotion. To go there, to ward against the Great Storms,
was the highest calling; few left the Ennead's Holding again except
as proxies, servants of the Ennead, and then they traveled for a
lifetime. For nine years and three Liath had prepared for this
trial, for the journeying to come. For nine years and three she had
dreamed of the exotic lands she would see, the new castings she
would learn. For nine years and three she had dreamed of that, and
of the homecoming that would follow. She could not go to the
Ennead's Holding, to that stony, windswept place at Eiden's Head.
She could not spend her life in their service.
Graefel sighed. "But the
Ennead call whom they wish, and thus far they have not called you."
The ghost of a smile might have touched his lips. "Your reprieve is
secured, and you'll be on your way with our blessing."
The strongest mage he had
ever met... His words had warmed away the fatigue of the three
hardest days of her life. With Graefel's hard-won praise, she felt
she could do anything.
"It wasn't perfect," Hanla
said bitterly. "I could feel it. He'll always have trouble with his
food now."
"We did what could be done,"
Graefel said, toneless. He did not look at Liath. "We'll try again,
when he's stronger."
"What happened to
you?" Hanla could be brusque, but she rarely angered.
"I don't know." Liath's voice
broke. "It's gone. It's just gone."
"It doesn't go. It can't. The
only thing that can cut you off from it is coring and sealing, and
only the Ennead can do that. I can still sense your magelight,
smell it. It hasn't gone anywhere."
"I'm sorry..."
"You abandoned a casting at a
crucial time."
"I'm sorry--"
"You could have healed that
boy properly!"
"He shouldn't have jumped on
that knife!" Liath got up, staggered, shoved Keiler away. They were
angry because she had failed to repeat the impossible, when she had
lost the core of herself. Gone, just like that, without reason. She
had only now come into her own. How could it just go?
Her eyes fell on the Ennead's
boy, watching them wide-eyed from the edge of lamplight. He must
have come out to see the casting and not budged since.
Coring and sealing. Cutting
the magelight's connections to the spirit and sealing it off, as if
in a cask. It could not be extinguished or extracted, but it could
be contained. No one knew what happened to a mage thus sealed. Some
said you lived as a shadow, without feeling or volition. Some said
you sickened and died. Some said you went on as if born a child of
Eiden, perfectly able to take joy from tilling soil or tending bees
or spinning wool. Some said it was a story to frighten naughty
prentices.
If it could be done, perhaps
it could be undone, no matter how it had happened to begin with.
She opened her mouth to
address the boy, but Marough's clan chose that moment to gather
themselves and head off home. Tarny struggled in the grip of Sarse
and Erl. He stopped by Liath. They glared at her--she heard Meira
say, from up ahead, "No thanks to that"--and left Tarny to
stand on his own.
"They said she was going to
hurt you," he said softly. "I'm sorry, Li. On Eiden's breath."
Liath rubbed her face
wearily. How could she mark him for a fool when he had meant to
protect her? She didn't understand it--he'd never looked after her
when they were growing up, in fact he'd bullied her--but she hadn't
understood the wild idiocy that put him on the blue roan's back,
either. It was their way to be headstrong louts, to goad each other
into ever grander stupidity. Perhaps the only way to tame them was
by healing them. Perhaps now he would be Hanla's pet.
"It's all right, Tarny," she
said. "You're all right."
Geara stepped out of the
tavern.
"I know you would have done
it if you could," Tarny said.
"But I couldn't." She watched
her mother warily. "And I didn't. Leave me alone, Tarny." She
winced. "Please."
He sulked off to catch up
with his cousins. Geara moved over to stand by the runner boy. Nole
looked out an upper window, rumpled and confused, roused from
sleep. Graefel's crystalline eyes bored into her. Hanla said
stiffly, "It will all come right. You'll be yourself in the
morning."
"Come inside, love," said
Geara. For a moment, Liath thought the words were for her. But it
was the Ennead's boy she drew with her back into the warmth and the
light.
Graefel said, "I do not
accept this." He gestured to his bindsman, then to the casting
circle still etched in the dirt. "A candle, Keiler. In the center.
Now."
"Don't do this." Hanla's
whisper carried clearly across the new distance between them.
"We'll test her tomorrow. She's fatigued, or it's the drink." But
it wasn't fatigue or drink. Hanla knew that. Hanla had seen her
work when she could barely stand for exhaustion. Hanla knew her
inherited tolerance for drink. "Let it go, Graefel."
He would not. He ordered
Liath back into the circle, ordered Keiler to hand him fresh
materials. The earliest casting of all: igniting a flame. Not the
simplest, but the first taught, the deepest ingrained. Liath could
feel the man's anger across the casting ground--it could have lit
that candle by itself. But when he ordered her to receive the leaf,
no guiders would come. He could not ignite the magelight inside
her.
"Draw them anyway," he said.
"Hanla, tell her which."
"She knows which."
"Help her."
Hanla let out an oath, but
when she leaned close her words came in the measured tones of the
teacher, coaching her to do what had been rote since she was nine-
and-three. "What is the fire when the light has gone?" she said in
Liath's ear. "What is the flame when there is no heat?"
Liath drew the distillations,
candle and flame, air and earth abstracted to their essences,
rendered in a symbology that flensed from flame all but its
intrinsic flameness, then joined it in a weave of other symbols,
other distillations. Air when there is no wind. Lightning when
there is no flash. Earth when there is no substance. She made flame
of its constituent elements; she joined flameness itself to wick,
to wax. The materials were correct, the kadri precisely rendered,
the meditation clear in her mind. But there were no guiders. Keiler
sang. There was no flame.
"Try again."
"Grae--"
"Try again."
She tried again, and again,
and again, until tears stained her cheeks, until the reeds bent in
her cramped hand. Still there was no flame. Still Graefel said,
"Again."
"There are no more sheets,"
Keiler said. He was hoarse.
"Then bring a tallow candle.
Use vellum."
He would not relent. He would
grind her into the ground beneath the boots of his icy rage, he
would kill her before he would see her fail.
Again, and again, until
Keiler said "There is no more," and it was true, unless Graefel
sent him to the binding house. He seemed poised to do so. He looked
at Liath as at a stranger who had kicked him in the road, without
motive, without excuse. His crystal eyes burned red around the
blue.
"Graefel." Hanla
hauled him to his feet. He shook her off and stalked away with a
gesture of profound disgust. Hanla started after him, then seemed
to remember Liath, sitting in the broken circle. "Perhaps it's for
the best," she said, patting her absently on the head as if she
were still six years old.
For the best?
"It's my fault, really." The
Khinishwoman watched her pledgemate up the road. "I loved him so
much." Then she was gone, to follow him, comfort him, Liath
forgotten.
It was madness. Her teaching
triad had shattered into incomprehensibility. She got up, dusted
off her breeches, looked to Keiler for support when dizziness swept
her. He steadied her, but Ferlin's pure sweet voice rang out down
the river road, calling him to the mill, calling him away. "I'm
sorry, Li," he said. His voice wove into the echo of Tarny's, and
was gone.
Her father was in the tavern,
as always, awaiting her return. Nole, embarrassed for her, had
withdrawn from the window--a good brother, granting her privacy.
Even the gawkers had drifted away. Liath stood alone in the road.
For a moment, the skin of her
back itched, as if someone were watching her, and she turned, her
heart racing-- If it was him, if it was Pelkin, come back
from nine-and-two years of exile-- But it was only Roiden,
bloody vindicated Roiden, grinning at her before he faded back into
the shadows. Her grandfather had stayed a world away, as he was
told to.
She looked toward the golden
light falling through the tavern's open door as it had fallen all
those years ago.
Geara stood in that light.
"Come inside," her mother
said. This time the words were for her.
Liath walked toward the door,
and turned: turned down the quiet alley, past the midden heap and
the old copper vats, past the coolhouse and the croft; took the
little path through gorse and thistle, into the trees, where it
became the bindsman's road. Up into the hills the path went,
branching off to this thicket or that one, where this binding plant
grew, or that one. The way grew steep; exposed roots formed a rough
set of steps. A faint breeze stirred the brush around her. She
hiked hard, the triskele thumping against her breastbone, and at
last came out at the small overlook that had been cleared when
Clondel was a new village, with no triad to look after it, so long
ago that only tellers knew the history.
She tucked herself into the
choice spot at the base of a wind-bent tree, hugging her knees to
her chest. Below her, the cluster of buildings along the road was
growing dark as lamps were extinguished, the triad's cottage last
of all but the tavern. Beyond it stretched pastures and orchards
and fields new-tilled and newly fallow, bordered by the silvery
Clon and wide Ianda, rambling sedately toward their confluence in
the Heartlands. Behind her the hills shrugged into the Aralinn
Mountains. At the end of those mountains was the Ennead's Holding.
In good weather, it was a threeday's journey to the pass and
through on horseback.
The wind that brushed her
face carried the chill of a new day. The winds had names, but no
one remembered them anymore.
Perhaps the Ennead did.
Perhaps they would teach her.
Liath looked out over the
dark village, trying to burn into her eyes the contours of a place
she knew every corner of in her heart, and saw the big lantern
outside the Petrel's Rest go out, leaving only the little nightlamp
over the door to light her way home.
Copyright © 2001 Terry McGarry.
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