Unmasking
From Elemental Magic Anthology
CAROL BERG


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Chapter One
   



Water reveals truth. So Ezzarian mentors teach us on the first day of our schooling. Toss your conjured rose into a stream, and if it be but a glamored thistle or a clothed vapor, the water will unmask it. If the velvet petals float away from the thorny stem and yet fill the air with sweetness, you have worked true sorcery and not paltry illusion.

Water has caused the downfall of many a slacker among those of us training for our part in the demon war; mentors do not hesitate to throw a student and his or her creation into the nearest pool or stream to test enchantments. Not that we have so many slackers. When the gods have given your race the sublime gift of true sorcery and charged you to stand between the unwary world and the invasive evils of the rai-kirah, even the youngest students take their preparation seriously. Some of us just fail.

Of course, no heady matters of truth or illusion had sent Kenehyr and me to the pool in the Wardens' Grove that night. Spring in Ezzaria brings incessant rain and cool mists to our forests, and the completion of our day's training exercise—a difficult Search scenario that had led us through a conjured city the size of Zhagad itself—had kept us late, leaving all the temple purification to my partner and me. By the time we had cleansed ourselves, the vessels and cups, and the mosaic floor of the open-sided temple, and we had stood in the rain to complete our chants at each of the temple's five porticos, we just wanted to get warm.

"Aelis will have our heads for this," I said, already having second thoughts as I followed Kenehyr downhill through the dripping woodland toward the encarda. We named the pools "fire spouts" because the water rose from the depths of the earth so hot that all but the most foolhardy bathers used enchantments to protect their skin.

"Who's to tell her?" my partner called over his shoulder. "All the Wardens are sent off south to work with some swordmaster, and no one else dares come to their pool. My mind is set. Hot. Bath."

"After my wretched performance today, she already believes me hopeless. If she hears I've trespassed a restricted grove for a bathing party…" Joelle, she would say, are you determined to fails' "She'll not allow me beyond the border until I'm thirty."

Before Searchers could begin their work to seek out those souls possessed by demons, they were required to serve an apprenticeship in the outside world. Those few months ensured that our long years of training in investigation, languages, customs, geography, and sorcery could be brought to bear not only in conjured scenarios, but in real cities and villages… amid strangers who knew nothing of the dangers that threatened them… amid filth and corruption… in places where Ezzarians were known as naught but odd barbarians from the forests beyond the southern mountains. But before we were allowed to cross the Ezzarian border we had to pass five rigorous days of testing.

I was already two-and-twenty, the age at which most of the power-born had taken up their duties in the war, and I held superior proficiency in every Searcher's discipline, even the physical skills that often posed difficulties for women. Yet every time I attempted a full testing scenario, my carefully constructed enchantments collapsed. Had we been on real missions instead of training exercises, Kenehyr could have died for my errors and the victim remained in thrall to the rai-kirah. I should be studying, practicing, working to rid myself of flaws. My mentor would rightly have my head for this frivolity.

"How are we to do this?" I said, hopping over a fallen branch to catch up with Kenehyr. "Polluting an encarda with clothes would compound—"

"We'll shuck them. We can take turns, if you insist, or I'll close my eyes while you get in. For certain, I've little to hide." Pale light gleamed from my partner's hand as he left the path, slipping and sliding down a steep embankment. His laughter rippled through the night like a swarm of glowflies.

I sighed. There would be no dissuading him. Kenehyr could work exquisite spells. With his Comforter's enchantments, he could create mind links over vast distances, binding a possessed victim to those who could rid the ravaged soul of its demon. He could also sing like a lark, could craft riddles and puzzles with the finest minds in Ezzaria, and would stand fast at a friend's shoulder until the end of time. But he could only hold one thought in his head in any instance. Once he had set his focus, holy Verdonne herself could not budge or distract him. He was going to the encarda. Unless I was willing to give him up to Aelis or lie to her, I might as well follow.

"At least slow down and stay quiet," I said, yanking at my sodden skirt as it snagged in the gooseberry thicket. "A quiet trespass seems somehow less heinous than a noisy one. Perhaps it will make me feel better."

"Not as much better as the pool will leave you. You take life much too seriously, Searcher." He paused to wait for me, his dark eyes merry in his round face. Slight, soft, and smooth-skinned, he might have been a boy of twelve. But indeed he had lowered his voice and dimmed his handlight.

Kenehyr refused to proceed with his own testing until I could be ready, which left my failures more of a guilty burden. Whatever victims of the rai-kirah he might succor—the Suzaini merchant who would one day come home from his shop in an inexplicable rage and murder his wife, or the kindly Manganar woman who dreamt of burning her fields and her children, or the Derzhi lord who could feel the urge at any moment to flay his slaves—must hold out against their creeping madness because Kenehyr was not yet available to bring them help. Because his partner was as thickheaded as a talentless tenyddar.

"Tomorrow I'm going to persuade Aelis to pair you with someone else," I said abruptly. "I swear it."

"Silly girl, what pairing would suit better?" He held a dripping fir branch so it would not slap me in the face. "Kenehyr, who cannot see, if he happens to be eating, or hear, if he happens to be working magic, and Joelle, who can juggle complex sorcery, maps, cities, languages, weapons, demon signs, signal messaging, and a victim's contentious family members, while yet taking time to glory in the fine weather. We are meant to be together just now, partner fair." Then he smiled in that way he had, as if he knew some magical secret that even our mentors had not guessed.

The night seemed deeper as we descended into the grove, where the boles of the oaks grew thicker than five men could circle with their arms, and the scent of sulfur tainted the damp. As we slipped through creeping wood sorrel and the knee-high larkstongue that would bloom in brilliant blue spikes come summer, I found myself spreading small enchantments to mute the sounds of our passing, as if we were engaged in yet another training exercise that required a stealthy approach.

As we neared the heart of the grove, I laid my hand on Kenehyr's shoulder to slow him and on his lips to quiet him. With a quick gesture, I summoned finer senses, stretching my hearing through the trees. Hurried, muffled footsteps approached the pool from the far side. Someone besides two cold, wayward students intruded here. Yet the Wardens were in the south, and their training grounds were forbidden to all others…

We Ezzarians kept well hidden in our forests, safely tucked away behind the craggy barrier of the mountains so that we could prepare for our difficult work unhindered by the common wars and politics of those we protected. We remained ever on the alert for intruders, especially in our particular settlement, so near the mountains. Strangers could bring corruption—paths for unseen demons to insinuate themselves into our ranks.

Pressing Kenehyr to wait behind an ash, I slipped forward, loosening the dagger sheathed at my waist and readying my supply of defensive enchantments. A Comforter's safety was his Searcher partner's responsibility.

I settled onto the spongy litter of the forest floor and crept to the boundaries of the clearing at the grove's heart. A man stood bent over beside the steaming pool, heaving deep breaths and resting his hands on his knees as if he'd been running. A lantern, hung from a branch, suffused the rising steams and mist with a golden glow, as if this were divine Valdis himself come to the Wardens' Grove.

He straightened, unknotted his belt, and pulled off his common brown tunic and shirt, easing my concerns. The straight black hair cropped about his face and neck, the copper hue of the skin he was rapidly baring, and the slight angle to his dark eyes named him wholly Ezzarian. Long arms and shoulders knotted with muscle, his lean face intelligent and intense, he was the very image of a Warden—a warrior destined to step into the living landscape of a possessed soul and do battle with demons.

Odd that I didn't recognize him, though. A scar marred one high cheekbone. His black brows angled downward more than most. And surely I would remember that long, clean jawline. As one of the power-born of Ezzaria, I had been schooled with most of the student Wardens, certainly those near my own age as this man was, and certainly all who trained here in the northern forests. Who was he?

He stripped off his boots, breeches, and leggings, though not without a glance about the grove, as if to make sure none witnessed his brazen immodesty. My own cheeks heated. Yet, indeed, my eyes refused to look away. A man's body was so… different.

This had seemed such a harmless adventure when Kenehyr had proposed it, and I'd been so tired and cold and discouraged. Now here I was, shamelessly intruding on a man's privacy.

He dropped to one knee, calmed his breathing, and bent his head. Spreading his arms wide, he murmured words I could not distinguish. Prayers. Fire's daughter! What if he was no student, but a true Warden, purifying himself after a demon battle?

Dismay, embarrassment, and self-reproach scorched my heart.

To intrude on a man when he was trying to put his world back in balance, to reconnect himself to sanity and light and the gods, was inexcusable.

When he rose and stepped into the pool, I jumped up, intending the splash and his immersion to cover my retreat. But he had scarcely dropped beneath the steaming surface when he lunged right back out again with a choked cry. Coughing and gasping, he crawled away and huddled in a quivering, dripping knot, his curved spine rigid with pain.

Abandoning caution, I sped across the clearing and dropped to the flat rocks beside him. "Master Warden, do you need help? Could I fetch someone?"

Before my concern was half spoken, he bounded to his feet, snatched up his clothes, and backed away, knocking the lantern with his head. His face could have fired my father's kiln. "Goddess mother!"

"Forgive my intrusion," I said, bowing my head so as not to embarrass him further. The yellow light danced wildly on the wet rocks. "When I saw—I thought you must be injured."

"Why have you come?" he said, his voice harsh.

"No excuse but curiosity, Master Warden," I said, my cheeks aflame, my stomach curdling in humiliation. I stood and folded my hands properly at my back, keeping my eyes averted. Gods, I felt like a chit scarce out of reading school. But lying was useless—Kenehyr couldn't lie if his life depended on it—and more complete truth would only compound my offense. "I've never seen a man's body… entire."

The choking noise that followed this confession sounded distressingly close to laughter. "What is your name?"

Humiliation slid toward despair. He'd never ask so personal a question unless he planned to report my violation.

"Joelle, sir. My mentor is Aelis of the Searchers."

"Power-born!" His shock erased my last hope. What might be excused for one of lesser responsibility would not be ignored in my case. "Well then… go on. Get out of here."

"Of course." I spun in place and marched away, attempting to retain some dignity. Spying on a Warden… sweet Verdonne… I'd be forty before I got into the war. Forty! What a damnable, rotten, horrid day.

Kenehyr met me at the verge of the trees. "Stay out of sight, fool," I mouthed through clenched teeth.

"He's not going to see me," said my partner at a volume that had me cringing. "He's gone."

I whirled about. Naught remained but steam and mist and the swaying lantern.


Every hour of the following morning, as I reviewed Kuvai dialects for our next exercise, I expected to be summoned before a mentors' tribunal or at least before Aelis herself. I spent the afternoon sparring with another aspiring Searcher, and when we broke for water and rest, Kenehyr waited in the doorway of the practice arena. My heart faltered.

"Shall we try again for our hot bath?" he said, all innocence. "We could rendezvous at midnight."

"Absolutely not," I said, pushing past him so I could sit on the bench outside in the welcome sunlight. "There are reasons for the rules. Everyone deserves privacy for their prayers and cleansing, Wardens most of all. We trespassed for naught but childish amusement."

Kenehyr joined me on the bench, instantly sober. "We may be students, Joelle, but we are not children. Enjoyment is no betrayal of our purpose. Besides"—his more usual mischief sparked his eyes—"the fellow wasn't exactly following the rules either. His hands were filthy. Some of us who are not constructed so… advantageously… as Wardens, do manage to keep ourselves clean at the least. Or perhaps you didn't notice his hands."

"Begone with you, troublemaker," I said, shoving him stumbling off the bench, resenting the laughter he raised in me. "Aelis is bringing some retired Warden to assess my knife work next hour. The last thing I need is a fool's distraction."

As it happened, I hadn't noticed the Warden's hands—a matter that disturbed me almost as much as hearing they were dirty. A Searcher must stay alert for even the smallest details. What kind of Warden would bring dirty hands—the very emblem of corruption—to a sanctified pool? And I had felt sorry for the man!


My mentor, Aelis, enjoyed hammers. Whenever she was not teaching in the temple or the practice arena, one could find her engaged in some building project about our settlement, whacking away at a loose joist or asserting her mastery over shingles or beams. Her father was a carpenter, one of the eiliddar or skill-born—those judged to have too little talent for sorcery to stand in the forefront of the rai-kirah war as Searchers, Comforters, Wardens, or the like. My own parents were eiliddar too, my father a potter, my mother a spelltasker whose small enchantments kept my home settlement free of vermin.

All Ezzarian children were tested at age five to determine their natural level of melydda or talent for sorcery. Though all attended reading school together, valyddar—the power-born, like me—were immediately assigned mentors and guidance to determine our true calling. The skill-born apprenticed in crafts or teaching or spellmaking, whatever fit their particular skills and interests. Those few of us born without melydda—the tenyddar or service-born—left school at ten and were assigned to work the fields, care for beasts, hunt game, or the like.

Early on the hazy morning two days after the ill-fated venture to the Wardens' Grove, I found Aelis repairing a fence around her brother-in-law's horse pasture. Using a hefty sledge, she slammed an iron wedge into the end of a log as I crossed the field to join her. No man could deliver blows with more authority. The crack split the rail near halfway down its length.

"You should be writing your review of your last exercise," she said by way of greeting. "Your investigation was flawless. Not one in twenty Searchers would have discovered that the child had slain her father. And the wards you wove to keep Kenehyr and the child hidden from her mother and her clansmen were inventive and perfect. But you must explain why they failed in the end. I cannot take you further until you understand it."

I blotted my face with my damp sleeve. "I've not come about the exercise, mistress, or about me at all… or at least not with regard to my studies… or failures. It's about someone else. Of course, it was my own fault for being there, and I'll accept the consequences, but I cannot let it go… because of the risk. It's about a Warden…" Aelis rested her arms on the fence as I told her of the encounter.

I had wrestled with the dilemma through two long nights. The Warden had not reported me. He had been hurt… and grieving, I thought, as his cry echoed in my memory. Yet of all Ezzarians, Wardens must avoid the least taint of corruption, lest the demons they fight gain a foothold in their own souls. And though failure to report a petty trespass was a small matter—and polluting clean water with dirty hands only slightly worse—we were taught that small corruptions could signal larger ones. Even if it meant restriction or dismissal, I could not ignore his violations to hide my own. The threats we lived with were very real.

"I don't know of any Wardens who've come to our temple to work of late," Aelis said when I finished my tale. "We've not so many in all of Ezzaria that his identity should be a mystery."

"He's none I've met, mistress." At least her concern bolstered my wavering conviction. The tale had sounded so silly.

"I'll discuss the matter of the Warden with Galadon." Swiping at the mixed gray and black strands of hair the damp had stuck to her knotted brow, she reached for her sledge. "Were you a child, Joelle, I would restrict you to your quarters outside your training time. As it is, I need to give deeper thought to the consequences of your actions. For now, resume your studies."


Though I returned straightaway to the house where I'd been fostered since coming to train with Aelis, I made very little progress on my assignment. In a dismal fret, I mulled what I might do with myself did Aelis recommend termination of my training.

At midmorning, a pounding on the door announced a runner. "A Searcher is returned from Azhakstan and is resting at the Weaver's," said the slim girl who proudly wore the woven belt of the Weaver's official messenger. "He'll share news in the schoolhouse at noontide."

My skin prickled with excitement. The visit of a countryman newly returned from the outside world was not to be missed. Fresh news, new books, tales of adventure… Everyone in the settlement would be there. "Thank you, Cadi," I called after the child, as she ran off to the next house. "Wish your mother a fruitful day for me."

But I had scarce donned my cloak when my conscience got the better of me. Kicking the door shut, I sat down to work again, forbidding myself diversion until I understood why I kept failing at the thing I desired most in the world.

Throughout the long afternoon, I sketched diagrams, wrote explanations, explored alternatives, seeking some imperfection that could have caused the test to collapse. The whole scenario had been fraught with risk. Such dire evils. So many people involved. Every decision I had made in the ill-starred exercise had been designed to protect Kenehyr and to secure the young Derzhi victim and her family. The child's mother could not be allowed to know that her young daughter had actually done the murder, lest she slay the child and free the demon. The members of her clan who lived close by must be kept out of the way, especially the girl's brother and the clan warriors; children and those who lived in violence were especially vulnerable to a displaced demon. With ruthless precision I had constructed barriers of enchantment to warn of intruders, to disguise our activity, to deflect physical and spiritual attacks. I had turned myself inside out to be certain of every detail. But at the end, as Kenehyr laid hands on the child to trigger his linking magic, the girl had cried out in fear for her dog, of all things. My impregnable circle had collapsed, the clan warriors had seen us, and the rai-kirah taken warning. I thanked holy Verdonne yet again that the disaster had been but a grand illusion. A roused demon could have ravaged both the child's soul and Kenehyr's.

I tapped my pen on the smooth oak table, then threw the implement across the tidy room. Perhaps I should resign myself to cooking or repairing clothing or digging vegetables like an unschooled tenyddar. What use having "extraordinary melydda," if you caused more harm than you healed?

Another knock on the door roused me from my uneasy meditation. "The Weaver summons you to meet with her and Aelis, Joelle," said the solemn Cadi, her cheeks flushed. "Just after lamp-lighting, if you please. And you are not to speak of this summons to anyone."

Why were they making the meeting secret? And what did the Weaver have to do with anything? A village Weaver did not involve herself in matters of mentoring or discipline. My heart sagged into my stomach as Cadi vanished into the stand of white-trunked birches. They would not dismiss me for trespassing. They could not.


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Chapter Two
   



As the evening mists began to rise, I hurried out of the wood and cut across a soggy pasture toward the whitewashed reading school, the records house, and the Weaver's cottage. Stragglers called greetings to me as they strolled down the main track from the gathering at the schoolhouse back to their homes or work.

Ezzarians built their homes and temples deep in the forest, clustered together where the abundant life fed our power for sorcery, and each of these unnamed settlements chose a Weaver as its guardian. Though always a woman power-born, she did not stand in the war or fight demons directly. Rather she wove protective enchantments into the trees—wards that would rouse us when intruders, especially unseen demons, entered the wood. Only the Weaver slept outside these protected boundaries, lighting her lamp each eventide to assure all that her wards held secure.

Though I returned their waves, I did not join my friends and neighbors to share news, as I would on any other day. A glimpse of Kenehyr engaged in conversation at the schoolhouse door sped my steps across the road. Kenehyr could sniff out a secret from a doorpost.

Unfortunately my partner caught sight of me and met me as I swung my legs over a sheep fence. His black tunic was sweaty and his chin-length hair disheveled. An angry scratch reddened his cheek.

"Is your conscience sufficiently eased, partner fair? Gruffyn says I'll spend the next sevenday sparring as reward for our midnight trespass." Kenehyr hated combat training, and his mentor knew it.

"I didn't mention your name," I mumbled. "I just needed—"

"Spare me your reasons!" he said. "I can reconstruct them for myself. So what is to be your penance? Let me hear it, so I can take some satisfaction as Gruffyn chases me about the arena with sharp objects."

"I'm left to stew," I said. "I would far rather be fighting. After an entire afternoon working at it, I've come up with exactly no way I could have prepared for the dog. I thought perhaps I would find Aelis here and talk to her again."

He shrugged tiredly. "She's gone into the Weaver's house with the Searcher."

"Oh… well then…" I stammered, relieved that I'd not need to lie to him. "I suppose I'll go there to find her."

"Shall I accompany you, lest she have her favorite hammer to hand?" A smile twitched the corner of his mouth as he nudged my shoulder with his. "You know I'm not so angry."

"No! I mean… I need to face up to this myself. If they're going to dismiss me, then I must come to terms with it on my own."

"It won't come to that, partner fair. You just haven't found your way yet. But I've faith that you will. Only for you would I put up with another year of Gruffyn."

I kissed him for that. Right in the middle of his damp, grimy cheek. Right in front of every passerby who would be scandalized at such unseemly behavior between two not married. But no woman had ever had such a partner… such a friend. And, truly, it cheered me inordinately to walk on to the Weaver's house, leaving Kenehyr with his mouth open and naught coming out of it.

I worried sometimes that Kenehyr might feel some… fervor… for me that I had not experienced for him as yet. For me, the disciplines of training—the need to stay clearheaded—precluded such personal indulgence. Yet, if we chose to marry, as happened with many pairings who worked out in the world, I took comfort that holy Verdonne herself could offer me no better man.


The Weaver's lamp hung from the eaves of her stone cottage, alongside drying fleeces dyed blue and red. Its new-lit fire washed the oaken door with gold, as Dai herself answered my knock. Her cheeks crinkled in pleasure, deepening the fine lines about her coal-dark eyes. "Welcome, Joelle. Come in. Come in. Too long has it been since you've come to weave with me."

All power-born Ezzarian girls learned to weave. The rhythm and intricacy of it teaches much of spellmaking. Anyone could understand that. But I found it a tedious craft and could never guess what colors and patterns might appeal to anyone.

"Blessings of evening and springtime, Dai. I'm sorry to have neglected to visit, but my head is jammed full of work just now. Soon, perhaps, I'll have more time for other pursuits." Too soon, if Aelis had given up on me. A friend had told me that Dai had once trained to be a Searcher. Perhaps she had failed, too.

Gold glints in the Weaver's eyes seemed to pop against my skin like sparks from a bonfire. "When the day comes you feel the need, I will delight in welcoming you back to the loom."

Dai drew me into a warm room smelling of tea and splashed with color. Rugs of scarlet and goldenrod softened the stone floor. Cushions of emerald and indigo graced the wooden chairs and benches. And all the colors of Ezzaria—the amber of our barley fields, the myriad greens of our woodlands, the pure white of our stone temples, and the variegated hues of our magics—lived in the vibrant threads of the weavings that covered the gray walls.

Aelis glanced around when I walked in. Her scuffed leather breeches and muddy boots hinted she'd come directly from her fence-mending. Beside her stood a square-jawed Ezzarian of middle years—the Searcher, I guessed, though he was no one I knew. Gray had touched his dark spiky hair, yet his shoulders and chest were broad, and his belly tight and flat like that of a younger man. His sun- and wind-scoured face spoke of long sojourn in Azhakstan, the desert land of the Derzhi horse warriors.

"This is the student who encountered the unidentified man," said Aelis, returning her attention to someone seated behind her. "She is quite capable of all we require. But I still believe someone more experienced—"

"We need young people clearly in their prime," said their hidden companion, a woman. "Encountering them in a homely setting will lure him into the trap, make him confident. We must give our quarry no reason to doubt his conclusions. Too old and he will suspect deception. Too young and he will blame immaturity. And we've no time to recall a person with the proper skills, the proper age, and more experience."

Dai nudged me gently toward the others. Their conversation had already confused me, but when I recognized their seated companion as the queen of Ezzaria, I was completely confounded.

"Blessings of evening, Lady," I said, when I recovered my wits enough to stop gaping. "I'd no idea you were come to our vale."

"Blessings of evening and springtime, student."

Queen Tarya, her black braids twisted tight about her head, welcomed me with a frankly examining eye and an outstretched hand. Though her short, thick fingers were stained with blue dye, as if she had been working alongside the Weaver, their solid, confident warmth spoke the language of pent power. In every way, our queen lived as any one of us, yet the conduct of the demon war—the safety of the world—rested in those woad-stained hands. Power, intelligence, and determination, not birth or family, brought an Ezzarian queen to her office.

"I understand you did not attend Evrei's gathering this afternoon," she said. "I should think an aspiring Searcher would be eager to hear his tales."

"Of course I wished to attend, Lady," I said. "But I felt obligated to work on my studies. To abandon work for sheer enjoyment seemed—" I broke off, my cheeks heating when I realized how foolish I sounded. How could I name hearing news of the world frivolous, when my greatest desire was to serve humanity's cause by living in that same world?

My mentor's bony face hardened in disappointment. "I told you of her flawed judgment, Lady."

"Overzealous studying is not an insurmountable flaw, Aelis." The queen's wry smile discounted every report I'd heard of her inflexible sobriety and earned my dearest gratitude.

Politeness bade me speak to the Searcher, who had raised his wiry brows and pursed his lips in amusement. I placed my fist on my heart and closed my eyes. "Lys na Joelle, Master Searcher," I said, offering him my name in trust.

"I am honored, Joelle," he said, bowing politely and placing his fist over his own heart. "Lys na Evrei." Though Tarya had already spoken his name aloud, his gift gave me permission to address him by it. Names held immense power, giving entry to the soul. Rai-kirah used them to enthrall the unwary.

"My apologies, Master Evrei," I said. "I did wish to hear your reports, but I've reached an unhappy impasse in my work and chose to hammer away at the problem while the events were fresh in mind. Naught but foolish pride, I think."

"I understand," he said, gravely. "Mistress Aelis, if you think I might be of some assistance with Joelle's training while I remain in country, please let me know. Such talents as I've heard described should not be left idle."

Aelis nodded, her lips thin as willow whips. Talent, she would say, is no measure of success.

Tarya waved us impatiently to the benches drawn up near her. "Searcher Evrei has brought disturbing reports from Azhakstan, Joelle," said the queen, once we were settled among the bright-woven cushions. "We need your help to counter a threat to our borders. Are you willing to interrupt your training to aid in such work?"

"Of course," I said. "If you and Mistress Aelis agree… if you think… if I could possibly be useful." My help?

Tarya accepted a cup of tea from the Weaver. "Evrei, if you please…"

The Searcher leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees, his big, well-scrubbed hands clasped loosely between. "In summary, the sleeping giant to our north is stirring. Half a year ago, the Derzhi Emperor commanded his son Ivan to subjugate the kingdom of Hollen, as he had tired of tithing to the factors who control grain shipments through Holleni seaports. Hollen fell in less than a month. Rumors have long hinted that Prince Ivan has a yearning for glory and an iron hand. Reports out of Hollen confirm it. When Kozur joins his fathers, Ivan will be a different kind of emperor. Restless. Dangerous. He casts his eyes beyond the Empire's borders, while gathering loyalties from their most powerful clans and most influential factions… such as the Derzhi Magicians' Guild."

Now I felt the shiver of true danger. Few people in the world besides Ezzarians bore any trace of melydda… a seer or hedge-witch here or there, a woman who worked healing potions, a man who predicted the weather… But among the horse clans of the Derzhi had grown up this clique who named themselves magicians. Most of their work was sleight of hand and common trickery, but a few possessed talent enough to generate impressive illusions.

Such insignificant power was no threat to our work. But their jealousy… Reports said the Guild ruthlessly hunted down rumors of sorcery within the Empire and eliminated the practitioners, lest their own prestige be diminished among the horse clans. Searchers and Comforters who worked inside the Empire were extremely careful never to leak hints of their talents and never to cross paths with the Guild.

"And so to our current problem," said Queen Tarya. "The problem Evrei did not report to today's gathering."

"On my journey home, I rested one night at a hostelry in Karesh," he continued, speaking mostly to me. "So near our border I pay close attention to the other guests. When I noted two men wearing the yellow badge of the Guild on their vests, I paid especial attention. The two were awaiting a third companion who had been assigned to 'cross the mountains and assess the nature of barbarian sorcery.' They marveled at their companion's talent at 'impersonation,' such comments leading me to believe that he can craft an appearance very like to ours."

A kiss of mountain winter stung my skin. "The man I saw in the Wardens' Grove! Verdonne's child, do you think he was a Derzhi spy?"

"We must not ignore the possibility," said Tarya. "You saw this Warden come out of the water, did you not? Was he changed… unmasked… by the pool?"

I closed my eyes and recalled the stern face that had glared at me through the mist and lamplight. The copper skin and black hair. The dark, wide-set eyes. His body's speech expressing pain and embarrassment, not arrogance or apprehension. "When he came out of the water, his back was to me, and he looked up only when I spoke. Yet I would swear on my mother's head no change had occurred. He appeared true Ezzarian, Lady."

"And what were the nature of his enchantments?"

I blinked, and my stomach knotted. "I don't think—I mean, I didn't sense any enchantments. I was—I can't say."

A Searcher's senses must remain ever alert to spellworking without one thinking constantly about it. On any stroll through the village, the common wards and spells brushed my skin like a cat's fur tickling my ankles. Had the man truly used no enchantment to enter the pool, or had I, distracted by the sight of him, merely failed to perceive it?

Aelis sighed and kneaded her brow with two fingers. "Try to remember, Joelle. If he can maintain his appearance through immersion or with undetectable enchantment, we have an entirely more serious matter than unmasking an illusionist."

The human face was highly resistant to change. To mask it with illusion was difficult. To alter it with true sorcery—a transformation of the features—was one of the most difficult of all workings, a level of sorcery we did not believe existed outside a very few of our own practitioners.

"I'm sorry," I said, chagrined. "My memory tells me he was Ezzarian and used no enchantments at the pool. But I cannot swear to it." I rose, expecting that my usefulness was ended.

"Sit down, girl," said the queen. "Your lapse of attention means only that you've no choice but to engage in this venture. You would recognize the face you saw?"

"Indeed yes, Lady." Straight-backed, I sat again, trying to cool my flaming cheeks.

"Your mysterious Warden may or may not be the Derzhi spy." The queen pinned me to my seat with her black gaze. "But in either case, we face a dilemma. To seek out this spy and slay him for naught but possibility is blatant murder, a corruption of our values and purposes that I cannot allow. Yet to permit a member of the Magician's Guild to wander Ezzaria and gain any idea of our true capabilities risks our safety from this day forward in increasingly dangerous times…"

"… and so we must deceive him and send him back misinformed." My conclusions took voice as if Tarya had dug them out of my head and dropped them in my lap.

The queen looked satisfied and turned to the others. "Dai, the Weavers must account for the possibility that the spy is already among us, as well as the possibility that he is on his way through the mountains—a much more difficult task than we thought."

The Weaver stood, arms folded, behind Aelis. "Weavers' wards throughout Ezzaria can be tuned to direct the spy wherever you wish. He will believe he chooses his own path."

"And you say you've chosen a reliable subject to bait our trap?"

"The young man I've recommended is eager to help and quite intelligent."

"It is more important that he be obedient," said the queen.

"That is unquestioned. It is his life he offers." Dai's response was uncharacteristically curt. Again the gold sparks from the Weaver's eyes pricked my arms like spiders' feet, though we no longer stood near her great lamp.

"Just so. We will be very grateful." The queen accepted Dai's implied rebuke in astonishingly equable fashion. Tarya might dye her own wool and clean her own kitchen, but her decisions were our law. I'd never imagined village Weavers holding much place in her councils.

"Aelis, you will prepare Joelle," said Tarya. "Evrei, you will instruct the tenyddar in his duty. Here is our plan…" As I listened in increasing dismay, my sovereign queen laid one Ezzarian man's life and our land's security in my incapable hands.


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Chapter Three
   



"Dai vouches strongly for this man," said Aelis as we halted at the edge of the trees. We overlooked a soft fold of the green foothills, where a thatch-roofed hut squatted beside a tidy field of vegetables—straight rows of cabbage, feathery carrots, onions, and numerous other plants I could not identify so early in the season. The vale smelled of mud and spring greenery and the deep, clear stream that watered its length. "Evrei reports that he seems steady, understands his duty, and will yield to your direction. But he is tenyddar—ever a risk for corruption. You must be vigilant. Tell him no more than necessary."

Having no melydda of their own, the service-born could shape no internal barriers against demon infestation or nefarious enchantment. It was no fault of theirs, only unfortunate truth.

"Was he told that I am… untested?" It seemed only fair to inform a man standing on the verge of a cliff that the person holding his rope had a habit of losing her grip. My stomach had not stopped gnawing itself for the entire revolution of night and day since Queen Tarya had given me my mission.

"Evrei told him you were Searcher-trained and would arrive by sunset. No more." My mentor grabbed my shoulders and swung me around to face her. I thought her fingers might leave holes in my bones. "I did not favor your selection for this task, Joelle, yet you possess every skill necessary to succeed. Your failures are not bound up in your talent, but in your fears. You arrive at the point of commitment and withhold."

"But I—"

"The queen believes that the reality of responsibility will push you the final step. I pray her insights are keener than mine. Now go. The Weavers' web may already be drawing our quarry to this place. Search your heart and mind. Practice and be ready. And if your test comes, hold back nothing."

"I'll do my best, mistress. I swear it."

"I know you will." She laid her bony hands on my cheeks, kissed my forehead, and smiled kindly. Yet the ridges of worry on her brow did not soften, for the same reason my stomach ached as she disappeared into the forest. When had I ever done less than my best?

Thunder rumbled from the mountains. The granite ramparts that shielded Ezzaria from the violent world seemed to have moved closer in our few hours' walk from the settlement. The gray masses covered half the northern sky, mists coiling upward from green notches and rifts that seamed the lower slopes. I shifted the pack on my shoulders to ease the bite of the straps, and hoped the rain would hold off until I reached shelter.

Did not favor your selection… your fears … you withhold … Aelis's judgment dogged my steps as I tramped through thick wet leaves of burdock and milkweed that left my boots and leggings soggy. Halfway down the steep hillside, a rock rolled out from under my foot, and I stumbled and hopped to keep my balance, twisting my ankle. The next rock I encountered, I kicked out of the way. And the next.

Aelis was wrong. Of course I was afraid—of demons, of violence, of death. What shame in that? We were taught not to throw our lives away. But I had never shaped a plan around my own safety. Everything I wanted in the world was to serve in the demon war… to crush the rai-kirah who distorted human lives so dreadfully… to prevent the horrors they wreaked.

The mist settled into a light rain. The hut was situated slightly above the field, atop a modest knoll beyond the stream. Crossing the field instead of going around clotted my boots with muck. And then my slimed boots skidded on the bridge of twin logs, near toppling me into the deep-flowing water. By the time I reached the top of the knoll and faced the thatch-roofed hut, its neat wood stacks, and the open shed that covered piled crates and casks, a worktable, barrows, and tools, frustration had me near bursting.

I reminded myself that another human being awaited me—a man powerless and barely schooled, who must depend upon my talents and judgment for his life. I marched up the well-trod path and rapped on his door, straightening my back. The least I could do for the fellow was demonstrate a bit of confidence. "Greetings of evening!"

The soft rain whispered in the thatch. Down below a fish plopped in the stream. A shiver raced up my back. Sweet Verdonne, what if the spy had arrived early?

With the proper techniques, those of us power-born could temporarily extend the range of our senses, even without the interplay of sorcery. But even heightened hearing could detect neither a scritch nor a breath from within. Summoning a blasting spell to one hand and a light to the other, I pressed down on the iron latch with my wrist and nudged open the door. "Greetings of evening…"

My handlight thrust back the shuttered gloom to reveal a single cramped room, unoccupied. The meager furnishings—a straw pallet rolled up in one corner, a square table and stool, a wooden chest, and a few shelves holding a variety of dishes and boxes—seemed undisturbed. Casks had been shoved into the corners, and copper pots and a pile of wood sat beside the blackened fire pit dug right into the center of the stone floor. The place smelled of straw, damp, and smoke—unsurprising, as a hole in the thatch served as the only chimney. A bleak, barren room.

What had I expected? Tenyddar left school at ten. They lived wherever they were needed, did what they were told. So why wasn't the fellow here to meet me? All the previous evening, and all this day, Aelis had reviewed the techniques I would need to carry off this deception, but they were worthless if the man could not interpret my instructions.

Wind gusts rattled the shutters, heralding another squall rolling off the peaks. Deafening thunder followed hard upon the lightning. Rain and hail soon battered the hut.

I pulled the door shut, shoved aside the scraps of wood that littered the table, and set down my pack, allowing my handlight to die. Melydda should never be wasted on mundane tasks. A heavy winter cloak hung from a hook beside the door. I appropriated a second hook for my own dripping cape, then searched for a lamp to stave off the early dusk.

Net bags filled with onions, aged turnips, and yams dangled from the rafters. Tools and implements adorned the support posts. I shifted an ax, a straw broom, and several other tools out of the corner where they stood beside an ale cask. The next corner yielded naught but a barrel of flour and a small wooden box of salt. Pegs in the wall above the wooden chest supported an unstrung bow and a well-stocked quiver. No lamp anywhere.

As the rain moderated, I reopened the door to admit the murky daylight. A fire was laid in the pit, and so I shifted my search to flint and steel.

The shelves yielded wooden bowls, spoons, small crocks of butter and honey, and a few packets of herbs, but no flint. Exasperated, I knelt beside the wooden chest and raised the lid.

"What do you think you're doing?" The words were softly spoken, but very precise. His body filled the doorway, only its dark shape visible against the rectangle of cloudy twilight.

I dropped the heavy lid, jumped up, and mustered my composure. "The Searcher told you to expect me this afternoon."

"He said you'd come at sunset. He didn't say you would walk into my house uninvited or slop my floor"—he brushed his foot on the stone floor, where even the gray-blue light from behind him showed my muddy footprints and the spreading puddle from my cloak—"or pry into my possessions."

My cheeks heated. "It was raining, and I was hunting a lamp."

"I don't keep lamps in my clothes chest," he said, slinging something from his shoulder into one of the copper pots by the hearth. The odor of fish wafted about the room. "Do you?"

He stomped his muddy feet on the threshold, sat down on a bench just inside to the left of the doorway, and proceeded to remove his boots.

"You'll find what you want above the door," he said, shoving his boots under the bench.

Indeed a lantern-shaped blotch sat in a shadowed niche above the lintel—a perfectly sensible location. He must think me an idiot.

"When I knocked and you didn't answer, I thought perhaps the sp—I thought you might have come to harm."

"Then I suppose I must thank you for the intrusion."

He lifted the lamp from its nook and crouched beside the dark firepit. In moments a steady orange glow appeared among the ashes. A taper flared and transferred the spark to his lantern. A simple enchantment. But then I remembered that he had no power for sorcery. "How did you—?"

As the lamplight flared yellow and revealed his face—lean, intelligent, brows that angled more than most, scar on his right cheekbone—my words caught in my throat, and I slammed my back against the wall, splaying my left hand where the blasting spell yet twined my fingers. My feet demanded to run, my hand to release destruction.

But necessity and duty strangled my fear with caution. I folded my fingers inward and held them tight. Let the spy reveal himself.

"Banked coals," he said. "No sorcery required. There exist useful skills beyond magic, you—" When our eyes met, guilt wrote itself plainly on his every feature. "Ah, powers of night, it would have to be you."

I picked carefully among the comments that came to mind, trying to sort out how much he knew. If he was the Derzhi spy, and Evrei had revealed the queen's plan, then he had already learned a great deal about Ezzarian sorcery—too much and I must prevent him leaving this valley. My soul chilled at the imagining.

Yet, he could simply be the man Dai knew—a tenyddar who had been trespassing in the Wardens' Grove. "You're not a Warden," I said.

"No." Abandoning the lamp, he returned to the open doorway. He ran his fingers through his wet hair, cropped short about his face and neck. "This business you need me for… Dai said it was of great importance and that time was critical. I can still do what's needed. That night in the grove—I never meant—I did nothing but enter the pool with prayer and respect."

"Your hands were unclean," I said.

"Ah." He extended his hands in front of him, and examined the wide palms and long graceful fingers as if they belonged to someone else. Even from across the room I could see the calluses and grime. "Soak them in lye, if you will, and perhaps that will clean them to your satisfaction, for neither soap nor prayer nor anything else I know will do it. Work the land for a few years—" He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. "Forgive me, mistress. If my violation leaves me suspect, then report me as you must and find someone else to do whatever it is you need. I would not risk your corruption or your failure in a critical task."

His quiet anger resonated with sincerity. It was tempting to believe him. Yet in a matter of such importance, I dared not relax my vigilance. A spy who could hold an illusory mask so long—keeping his face so distinctly Ezzarian and so exactly as I remembered it—might have wandered through our settlements for days and learned many things. He could have wit enough to take up Evrei's mention of Dai's name and speak smoothly of cleanliness and corruption. What tenyddar would be so well spoken?

"So tell me why you went to the pool," I ventured. "Perhaps if you explained, I might overlook your trespass."

"No." He did not raise his voice, but neither did he hesitate.

"But—"

"My reasons are my own, like the contents of my chest. If I am formally charged with corruption and must prove myself, I might consider exposing my soul to the first student Searcher who barges through my door and demands it. Report me or not as your conscience requires. Just make up your mind what you want to do. These fish will spoil if I don't cook them soon."

We glared at each other across the fire pit, and I took no satisfaction when he turned away first, spitting a breath of exasperation. I would discover nothing if I didn't push. "How do you know Dai?"

Resting his back on the doorpost, he closed his eyes and folded his arms across his body. "She is my mother's cousin. What does that have to do with my trespass?"

Hoping for a better view of his face, I strolled across the room and perched on his stool, as if I'd no concerns worse than a tenyddar who had violated a sanctified pool. "You agreed to assist me, did you not? To do what I say?"

"Yes." His answer cracked like a dry stick. "Dai said a tenyddar was needed for some unusual kind of mission to secure the border. The Searcher said you would explain what I needed to know."

So far, so good. I toyed idly with the straps of my pack. "I've no desire to walk half a day to consult with Dai. But I can neither judge your possible corruption nor conjure illusions to protect you if I don't know something about you."

He blinked and stared at me, clearly puzzled. "Isn't that what Searchers do? Expose corruption? Ah"—his face cleared in understanding—"so your methods are not entirely sorcery then. You learn to interview your suspects and weigh their answers, listening for telltales of wickedness. Examine their faces as they speak. Watch their reactions. Pry. Spirits of night…"

His indignation seemed genuine. But I had worked hard to avoid reliance on instinct. Facts and evidence were an investigator's best tools. I pushed on. "So tell me something that does not violate your privacy. Mere stated kinship is useless, but I've studied weaving with Dai… know her a little. She's never mentioned you until now."

Even across the room I felt his resistance. But he answered. "Dai traveled to our settlement when I was five to confirm my testing. My parents were… disbelieving."

As would be the parents of any child judged tenyddar, I would imagine. Clearly the man knew something of Ezzarian customs. Yet his frank, unemotional reference to the disaster that had shaped his life unsettled me. The service-born stayed apart, even in reading school. I had never actually spoken with one of them about what it was like to live powerless among a people whose sorcery defined their every moment, every activity, every choice. But how could any man comprehend the true meaning of being tenyddar and not rage at the gods every hour at the gift they had withheld?

"Go on," I said.

"She would have had no reason to mention me. She visited our house from time to time when I was a boy, and looked in on me occasionally after I finished reading school and was sent south to work. More often since I was sent here, so close to her own settlement. I think, perhaps, she arranged my assignment here." He stiffened and his face took on a sudden distress. "Gods, you won't report her for that? Dai doesn't know about the pool… what I've done. You must believe that. All she's done is offer me her friendship all these years."

"Of course, Dai would never countenance a violation," I blurted. "She's recommended you highly."

Sentimental idiot, your task is not to reassure him. "Come." I stood and waved him out the door, where pink and white lightning flickered in the boiling sky, giving me an idea of how to finish this. "Before it rains again. Show me what you do here in the vale."

"What I do? You want to see the field? So late?" Agitated as he was, my request seemed to confuse him thoroughly, which was exactly what I wanted.

"The twilight will linger for a while yet. I must judge whether my plan will work here."

Shaking his head, he returned to the bench and shoved his feet in his boots. "I do hope you'll tell me about this mission," he said, yanking the laces tight. "Dai told me she would withdraw the wards about the valley. I'll say, it's unnerving not knowing what's like to fall on my head at any moment."

"Of course I'll tell you." What I could. What was necessary. If he was who he claimed to be.

"I don't know what you want to hear," he said, as we walked out his door and headed down the path toward the stream, the log bridge, and the field beyond. "This is my fourth season in this valley. Dai's told me your settlement's grown by half again since they brought student Wardens there to train, so you need a larger food supply. It's the first time I've opened up a new field on my own…"

Why had I assumed a tenyddar would be tongue-tied and sullen? As he spoke of using the natural vegetation to decide what to grow here, of breaking virgin ground with only the settlement's mule to help, of expanding his plot by half again each season, of his second season's bounty and his third season's disaster when rain pushed planting late and wild pigs and early frost combined to ruin his harvest, his discourse was articulate and unreserved. I learned more of Ezzaria's land and seasons in that hour than in all my two-and-twenty years.

"… and so this winter past I began the logging for the fence, hauling birches from that forested notch on the mountain behind the house. Now planting's done, I can get back to it, start the building, cut more timber. Notched rails are easy to tear down if I'm sent somewhere else. I'm not permitted to leave behind anything I build." Indeed, our law forbade those without melydda to shape anything of permanence, whether a spoon or a buckle, a fence or a child's mind, lest they leave their creations flawed and thus at risk for demon corruption.

He halted by the log bridge. "Forgive my prattling. Having three visitors in a sevenday has unbridled my tongue."

A wind gust snapped my hair into my eyes. The sky rumbled and flickered.

"You enjoy this work—farming." I stepped onto the wet log, and when I wobbled, he gave me his hand—rough, warm, steady.

As I set my footing, I felt his hesitation. Then he gave a small shrug. "I am happy to do what I'm given to do. And there are undeniable satisfactions. But… no."

Had not the approaching storm chosen this moment to abet my design, this frank—and wistful—avowal might have precluded its execution. But in that very instant, jagged forks of pink and orange split the sky overhead, illuminating the soggy landscape with summer's brilliance. Using its cover, I released my own thunderous bolt from my left hand straight into the man's chest, toppling him into the swift-flowing water. As he yet held a firm grip on my other hand, I crashed right on top of him… and made sure he was fully submerged.

When I splashed backward and relieved his legs of my weight, he burst above the surface, spluttering and coughing and pressing one hand to his heart. He would likely have scorch marks on his shirt and a bruise the size of my fist just above his breastbone. "Mistress!" he croaked, gasping for breath. "Were you struck?"

Water cascaded from his dark hair and over his fine cheekbones and long jaw—all entirely unchanged from the moment before my blast. I felt no hint of enchantment. If he was a Derzhi illusionist, I was a sprig of knotweed.

We sat facing each other in the chilly water, and I felt like crowing in relief. My jellied knees and fluttery stomach told me I'd been more frightened than I'd guessed. "I'm quite well now," I said, grinning even as he wheezed and grimaced. "As are you."

"What do you—?" Even in the failing light, I saw his expression freeze. He surged out of the water and climbed the steep bank in giant steps. "I hope you're satisfied, Mistress Searcher," he said, bowing stiffly, his shoulders still hunched from the impact. "Unless you have further tests for me, I'll be inside where it's warmer and drier."

As I scrabbled my way up the sodden, weed-choked bank, I mumbled and groused that he had no reason to be offended. I hadn't actually injured him, which I'd come awfully close to doing when I recognized him—which was his own fault for bathing where he didn't belong.

By the time I had slogged halfway up the muddy knoll, I had gotten over my annoyance and was searching for words to explain why I'd had to be sure of him. It must be a constant frustration to a tenyddar, to be forever suspect, to be kept forever ignorant, to know that anything you built must eventually be destroyed. I'd never considered how difficult such a life must be.

But by the time I reached the hut, I had set aside my apologies. Whatever offense the man might have taken at my testing was wrongheaded. I had to be sure of him. Ezzaria was in danger, and personal sympathies must not confuse our priorities. We needed to prepare. Somewhere lurked a true Derzhi spy.


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Chapter Four
   



"Everything—the fish, the cheese, the kale—excellent," I said, scraping the last bits of the savory fish from my bowl. "Who taught you to cook?"

"No one." He held out his hand for my bowl and spoon.

My host maintained the close-mouthed sobriety he had assumed since my strike on the log bridge. Perfectly polite, strictly correct in his preparations—from providing a separate basin and towel for handwashing to his careful cleaning of the fish and greens and disposal of the waste—he demonstrated no emotions of any sort. I would have been more comfortable if he had thrown something or yelled at me. But I would not apologize for doing what was necessary.

My dishes—implements I had brought with me to avoid using anything he had made—soon joined the other clean bowls on his shelf, and he carried the washing water outdoors and dumped it where it would not sully the stream. I did not need to follow him to believe all was done properly.

"Beginning tomorrow I will take on the cooking and cleaning duties," I said, as he sat down on his bench to remove his boots.

He looked up, genuine surprise breaking through his restraint. "Why? Dai herself could not be more careful. I do understand the risks of what I am."

"It is naught to do with your practices, which are impeccable." No matter how obedient he might be, his role would require his active participation. I could not shield him from the truth. "We believe a spy has broached our border for the specific purpose of investigating the nature of Ezzarian enchantments. Our purpose is to demonstrate our incapacity for true sorcery and send him back where he came from. Derzhi see all females as subservient. He'll never believe a serving girl would have power for sorcery."

"Derzhi! The 'someone' you thought might have done me harm… a Derzhi warrior." His deep-set eyes widened with the surge of understanding. "And the Weaver has removed the wards around this valley. So he is allowed to come here apurpose, because I am tenyddar."

He slumped heavily against the wall and stared at me in utter desolation. "I am to be served up to the Derzhi to prove that Ezzarians have no war skills. Dai warned this venture could cost my life, but she never said—sweet Verdonne, the Derzhi take slaves… chain them… cut off their feet…"

"You are not to be served up and dragged off to the Empire," I said quickly. I'd not realized he knew so much of the outside world. Fear wasn't going to help us weave a convincing deception. "The spy is not a warrior, but a magician. We yet believe the mountains sufficient to keep the Empire out of Ezzaria. Trees, rocks, and a few patches of arable land are not worth their trouble. But if the Derzhi Magicians' Guild comes to believe that barbarian Ezzarians possess true sorcery, they might convince the Emperor that we are a threat. So we need to send this fellow back with a different view."

"How are you going to convince him of that—bind me to a post and let him have his way with me until he is convinced I can't conjure a drop of spit?" His eyes near drilled a hole in my forehead. "Gods and spirits…"

"I'll not let it come to that." Aelis and I had discussed innumerable tactics. Unfortunately none ensured that this man would remain undamaged. All I could do was help him understand the need.

"You'll but play a part," I said, jumping up from the table and warming my chilly hands at the fire. "Rumors of Ezzarian sorcery have persisted for decades, too long for us to convince anyone we've no power at all. So the queen believes we'll do better by making the Guild believe that we can do no more than they—that a male Ezzarian in his prime can work simple illusions and naught else. We'll show him some tricks and send him home laughing at us. My Searcher's training has taught me to work enchantments through another person's body—make it appear as if that person is working magic. You'll be able to see fire shooting from your fingers."

"At age seven, I might have appreciated that." His short laugh was fraught with despair. "Don't mistake me, mistress. I'm willing to do whatever's needed. Of course, I am. Grateful for the chance to serve—pitiful as that sounds. But I can't see why you would jeopardize your outcome with so complicated a plan. Certainly we can't risk one of the power-born, but surely one of the skill-born could do this more convincingly than I…"

He paused for a long while, leaning his elbows on his knees and pressing his forehead into his fists. Better if he worked it out for himself.

And so he did. Eventually he raised his head enough that his chin rested on his fists. "… But if your deception fails, and the spy… presses… hard enough, one who can work even a bit of true sorcery might cast some spell to save himself. Whereas if the subject has naught to yield, our secret is safe. And a Derzhi would not think twice if the serving girl were to vanish into the wood. It is clever. I'll give you that."

"We're not going to fail. My mentor reviewed my plan. I've only to develop the details and execute it."

Another abortive laugh. "Could you at least use a different word?"

From the bench beside him, he picked up the bits of wood he'd rescued from his table—thin, odd-shaped little pieces of varying lengths that I had assumed were kindling scraps. But he arranged the pieces carefully on the table as he straddled the stool I had vacated. Some he turned crossways to each other and fitted together, so that they formed a latticework no bigger than his two fingers together.

"So how do we manage this?" he said, his eyes fixed on his odd little business.

"We must settle a few things here at the beginning. Be attentive; I'll keep things as simple as possible."

"I'll do my best to keep up." I heard a trace of irony—amused?

More likely resentful. The man was so difficult to read. He seemed intelligent, as Dai had indicated, and sincere in his intent. I wish I'd known he was Dai's kin. I'd have asked her more about him.

I tore my eyes from his long, sure fingers and gathered my thoughts that seemed to be scattered from the Wardens' Grove to his carrot patch to an odd, hollow ache beneath my breastbone to the delicate oddments in his hand. I had no time to tiptoe about his pride.

"Names and stories, first. You are Bran. You call me girl. My actual name will be Teleri, and I came with the land and the hut when they were granted you by our chieftain. You must treat me—"

"Our chieftain?"

No mistaking the amusement this time. Better to hear than despair or bitterness. It reminded me of Kenehyr, and for the thousandth time I regretted that I'd been forbidden to tell my partner of this mission. Surely he could have advised me how to teach an inexperienced vegetable farmer to stay alive.

"Derzhi believe us to be barbarians. We'll not show him differently. You must treat me with contempt, as he surely will, while portraying yourself as bold and skilled in magic…" I recited the other bits and pieces of the history I had devised so that we could present a coherent and unenlightening story as to "Bran's" position in life. Then I moved on to the more important matters.

"The spy may approach aggressively—attacking or trying to take us captive right away. We'll deal with that if it comes. I've been trained to fight and, with your help, should be able to take care of one magician. But that will be our last resort."

I held back a number of things, such as the prearranged signals that could bring aid within the matter of an hour. Such signals required spellworking, and the less he could reveal to a determined questioner, the better.

"We've evidence that he may try more subtle means," I said, "perhaps even trying to pass as Ezzarian. So I'll warn you—"

"—to keep conversation general, and not back him into any corners with detailed questions. Our purpose is not to expose him. I do have a smattering of common sense." He glanced up. "Would you like to sit here at the table… Teleri? I could move back to the bench."

I had been circling the small open space beside his chest and rolled pallet. "No. I think better when moving. That was good to call me Teleri. We should use only our false names from now on."

He pressed another splinter, the size of a small nail, into his little construct. "You've not asked my true name."

"That's not necessary." I folded my arms across my breast. "I've come up with three illusions for you to use—"

"Somehow it would be a comfort if the enchantress holding my life in her hands knew my name," he said, glancing up from his scraps.

He behaved like the yarn in Dai's loom—apparently pliable, but coming up knots even here at the beginning. "It is for your protection," I said. "What I do not possess, I cannot yield. Now, we should—"

"Would it not induce me to even more caution, lest my talentless weakness jeopardize your safety?" With a knife pulled from his belt he began to notch the edge of a thin strip of pine the length of his middle finger. "I know your name. You gave it at the encarda. I would never presume to use an ill-gotten prize, but I'd like to give you some assurance. Unless—" He looked up sharply. "Do you prefer not to know it?"

"That makes no sense. It makes no difference if I know your name." His reference to the incident at the encarda threatened to fluster me entire. "Come, we really must practice. We'll master one of the sequences of false magic tonight and the others in the morning. We've no idea when the spy will arrive."

He laid down his knife and his oddments, and held out his hands, fingers stiffly spread. "Teach me, mistress."

"No, no, you mustn't hold them out so oddly. Or look at them so intently." This was going to be more difficult than I'd thought. "Go back to what you were doing. Let me consider how best to go about the teaching."

He returned to work with his knife and slips of wood, but he continually glanced my way. "What now?" he said.

"Keep on with it." I waved him off, watching until his glances became less frequent. The moment I felt his focus actually shift away from me and onto to his work, I carefully, delicately claimed his right hand. Commanding a person to yield control of his body could end up a nauseating wrestling exercise. It was far easier to accomplish it by subterfuge.

He sneaked another glance at me, but without focus. He did not yet feel what I'd done.

"Pretend that an unwelcome visitor has cast her eyes to your clothes chest," I said softly. "You wish to prevent her from prying. So move your right hand as if to protect the chest."

Brow knotted, he pushed his stool away from the table.

"No!" I snapped. "Stay where you are."

"But how—?"

"Do as I said. Move your hand."

He settled on the stool again and waved his right hand. Straightening his three long fingers, I induced a sharper, quicker motion than he'd begun and shot a stream of orange flame from his appendages to encircle the wooden chest.

"Spirits and demons!" His stool crashed to the floor as he jumped to his feet. His flailing left arm sent his knife and his wood slivers flying, while he stretched his right arm until his shaking hand was as far from his body as he could put it.

"To end it, curl your fingers."

"I cannot," he said harshly.

"Begin the motion! Do it!" When he managed a jerk, I finished it, sweeping up the enchantment in his tight-closed fist. The tether of fire vanished.

The flames from his fire pit paled beside the scarlet of his face. His chest rose and fell rapidly. His mouth and jaw might have been forged steel.

"Again!" I said sharply, before anger or fear spilled out of him. "Right hand… move it."

I could not have said whether it was terror or compliance that made his hand twitch, but I grasped the motion and repeated the sequence. No matter how strong the link between us, I could not induce movement from absolute stillness. Fortunately, few people had self-command sufficient to maintain perfect stillness.

"Again. This time, the ale cask. Do not look at me." The rope of flame encircled the barrel in the corner.

"Now the fire pit itself. Use a grander gesture…" And the small efficient fire left from his cooking burgeoned near as high as the thatch, before we tamed it again. No scorch marks marred his walls or floor, nor was his thatch at risk. Illusory flames did not truly burn.

"The movements must be as seamless as a dance," I said, moving around behind him, "and your eyes must never rest on me." We repeated each variation twenty times over before I called it enough.

He stared at the hand lying in his lap as if it were some creature crawled out of nightmare. I had prepared words to soothe his fear and to answer questions. But the intensity of his quiet stilled my tongue. When he moved at last, he was out the door so fast he didn't even stop to put on his boots.

I debated whether to follow. He couldn't mean to go far without boots. But I should have made it clear that he was required to remain with me at all times. Goddess save us if he blundered into the spy.

Yet forcing my presence on him as he considered what I'd told him… what he had guessed… what I had just done… would surely be cruel. He was so fiercely protective of his privacy. I'd used these skills frequently in training—and often without forewarning—but the subjects had ever been the humanlike conjurings who populated our temple exercises, or my mentors or fellow students, people who understood the limits of what I did. I had never practiced on a living human person who had not been taught the secret workings of sorcery. Whatever he felt from it—fear, confusion, humiliation, excitement—must be near overwhelming.

I picked up his spilled wood bits and laid them on the table, noting how precisely they had been cut and smoothed, notched and fitted. Though I could not imagine what they were, every piece was purposeful: some thin, flat strips, some the splinter-like sticks, some grooved, some delicately carved with repeated shapes of whorls and spirals. I took my hands away quickly, feeling as if I were spying on him naked again.

After some interminable time—likely not more than an hour—I had fidgeted myself out of sympathy. It was irresponsible of him to vanish for so long without even a word. Chafing for occupation, I laced up my own boots—still sodden from my dunking—grabbed the lamp, and went out to assess my prospects for the night. A serving girl who did not share her master's bed would sleep in the shed, not inside the house.

The sky had cleared. Stars pricked the night's dark canvas, and the air smelled sharply clean as it does only after a storm. Searchers and Comforters who had lived outside Ezzaria claimed that the stench of cities assaulted the senses, worse even than their noise. Our mentors could not waste their conjuring skills on such things in our test scenarios, so I had ever tried to imagine what it might be like. Stink and clamor seemed such a small price to pay for the variety of marketplaces and temples; the throngs of people so different from our kind; the great houses, shops, and artwork one would find in landscapes so different from green forest and hills. From my first days in reading school I had longed to see such wonders, resenting the simplicity of Ezzarian life where the only marvels were those we conjured for the demon war. Yet how much more confining must our life seem for those who had no magic? Tenyddar were forbidden to cross the borders or to interact with non-Ezzarians.

Blast the man! Was that the truest risk of his kind—not so much that they were a channel for demon infestation, but that they created such a distraction when one got involved with them? A responsibility akin to children… only they were not at all childlike.

I rounded the corner of the house and poked through the clutter of his shed. Even so mundane a venue as the work shed bore his stamp. Neat stacks of slender birch trunks, some of them already cut to length and notched for his fence, took up half the broad shelter. From the rafters hung the hooks and ropes he used when he hauled the logs down from the mountainside. No wonder he was muscled like a Warden…

Shocked at the unseemly imaginings that crept into my head, I set to work. First I cleared out a small space snug to the house wall and a stack of crates, then grabbed an armful of leafy branches from a heap of trimmings and piled them in my corner. Empty flour sacks and seed bags pulled from a cask made a softer layer atop the branches. As I worked I sorted through phrases about duty and necessity, composing a reminder that his obligations must keep him at my side.

His bare feet made little noise on the path up from the bridge. Rather it was his hard breathing that first warned me of his return. It sounded as if he'd been running.

"I am capable of making my own bed," he said from the verge of the shed.

"Teleri's proper place is out here." I arranged the last of his seed bags on the pile. My carefully contrived reprimand stuck in my throat, and now, he stood ten paces behind me. All I could add was, "Are you all right?"

He didn't respond.

I turned to read the answer for myself, but he had vanished. Confounded man. Had I insulted him again? He needed to tell me what he was thinking.

I'd scarce got to my feet before he'd come back again, his arms laden. He set my pack beside my bed and pushed a woolen bundle into my arms. "You'll need these. Nights are cool here all year. If you require more, you can use my winter cloak. Tomorrow I'll build a partition to give you a bit more privacy."

"That's not what you need to be—"

"After we finish my practicing, of course. For the other illusions."

Sweat dripped from his face and hair. His feet and worn leggings were splashed with mud halfway to his knees. Yet such solemn dignity enveloped him in that moment that my entire being ached for the beauty of him. I had no name for the yearning that waked in me.

"Thank you… Master Bran," I said, attempting to hide my confusions as I dipped my knee. All I could do was play my part. "Nevaro wydd."

"Nevaro wydd, girl," he said, and the beginnings of a smile illumined his face. But he took the lamp and padded quietly away before I could glimpse its fullness.

Nevaro wydd… sleep in peace. I feared that might be impossible.


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Chapter Five
   



The night in the shed was not the most uncomfortable night I'd ever spent. Searchers in training spent plenty of time living rough, from the arid northern slopes of the mountains to the sticky, insect-plagued fen country that bordered the jungles of Thrid to the south. I felt snug and safe in my little corner of the tenyddar's shed. But truly I did not sleep overmuch. The birch limbs cracked and poked every time I shifted position, as I fretted about the mistakes I'd made with the tenyddar and the many lessons I yet needed to teach him. My doubts and frustrations—and my misconceptions about him—had led me into prideful, overbearing behavior that had no place in the person I was striving to become.

As the outlines of barrows and crates slowly emerged in the gray light, I was ready to get up and strive to do better. If only the morning weren't quite so cool…

I tucked the soft wool blankets under my chin, rolled over to ease my aching back… and then sat bolt upright. A hands-breadth separated my nose from the tenyddar's knees.

"I wasn't sure whether to wake you," he said, retreating immediately toward the stacked timbers. "But it seemed my serving girl ought to have my breakfast out by now. I've thinned three rows of beans and set a span of fence already."

"But it's only just—" Far later than I'd imagined. Golden sunlight shimmered beyond the shady boundaries of the shed. "Just so. Give me a moment and I'll be along, Master Bran."

"Good." He rummaged through the birch rails.

I threw off the blankets, noticing for the first time how beautiful they were. Despite wear that had left the edges frayed, the colors held true—deep vibrant reds intricately patterned with rich hues of pine and healthy earth.

"Where did you come by these?" I asked, but he had already set off down the knoll, a notched trunk across his shoulders. I would wager this was not his mother's weaving, but Dai's. My finger traced a deep green thread. Warmth and comfort settled into me—an enchantment so faint as to be unnoticeable to one who was not looking for it, a gift from a friendly kinswoman to a lonely child.

Over my shift and leggings, I donned a shapeless tunic suitable for a despised serving girl. By the time I struggled into my damp boots yet again and gave up on taming the hair that had escaped my braid in the night, the tenyddar had returned to retrieve another slender trunk. From the shelter of the stack of crates, I watched him work, strong and sure and entirely self-contained.

He called to me over his shoulder as he retraced his route down the hill. "My cold-store is in the stream bank just down from the back of the shed. I've eggs need to be used." No mistaking the cheerful underpinning to his direction. He was enjoying this part.

The bank he spoke of did not border the stream that traversed the valley floor through the middle of his field, but a rill that trickled down from a great green cleft in the mountains. It joined the wider flow downstream from the log bridge. After splashing my face with the breathtakingly cold water, I located his eggs, along with a wheel of cheese, a side of smoked bacon, and a basket full of sorry-looking apples, in the stone-lined larder tucked into the steep bank. I stuffed four of the apples in my pockets and, though I'd truly have preferred a slab of the bacon, took three of the eggs.

As I rolled the thin flat stone back across the mouth of the cold-store, a sensation like the flutter of moth wings tickled my ears. I spun and gazed up the steep, forested cleft, stretching my sight and hearing to the barren heights beyond the wood. I could not pinpoint the disturbance that had roused me at such a distance, but I caught sun glints just above the dark line of the trees. Metal. Moving downward. The spy was on his way.

I scrambled up the bank and up to the empty house. Cursing the tenyddar's diligence, cursing my choice not to push him the previous night, I deposited the eggs and pelted down the path. He was working at a near corner of the field where his rail fence had begun to take shape.

As I sped across the bridge, he straightened up and leaned on a bow saw, mopping his brow with his sleeve and eyeing my shabby attire. "This isn't news of breakfast, I'd guess."

"He's descending the cleft behind your house, just entering the wood. It's too steep for a horse, which means we've—How long?"

"Half a day," he said. "Likely no more than that for a determined Derzhi, though it's a rough go down the notch. He'll not see sky till midafternoon, when he comes out of the wood."

"We must prepare a few more illusions or we'll never convince him. Last evening… perhaps I should have explained more."

"Don't trouble over last evening," he said softly.

But he'd had every reason to be angry and afraid. "I am a student, it's true, but it's only my final testing that I've not accomplished as yet—and those exercises are much more complex than this. I excel at every Searcher's discipline. The queen would not have sent me did she not believe I could keep you safe."

"Dai told me you would match her skill some day. I've rarely known her seeings to be wrong." He waved toward his half-raised rail. "Should I keep working as you begin?"

"No," I said, puzzled at his reference to seeings and Dai's equating of a Searcher's skills with those of a Weaver. But then, who knew exactly what Weavers did?

He nodded. "Then I'll cover these, lest a rain come."

He laid his saw and hammers on a length of canvas beside his ax and iron wedges, tossed a few iron spikes into a canvas bag hung from his belt, and dropped the bag next to the tools. After folding in the ends, he rolled the canvas, tools and all, into a long bundle.

When he stood up again, he dropped his hands to his sides, flaring them slightly as if giving me a gift. "Do as you will with me."

Such responsibility laid so gracefully in my hand. Neither my first combat training, nor my first day in the temple, nor even my first sight of a demon-possessed victim brought into Ezzaria for healing had humbled and terrified me so much as that gesture.

Necessity forced me stumbling ahead. "You must—To do this requires—I must be able to take control of your hands over these next days to work our illusions. I can do so when you are preoccupied, as I did last night, but that can be slow and unreliable. Which means you must learn to yield control. That can be difficult, and I understand if it makes you angry, but we've no time for you to grow comfortable with the idea."


"So that's why you're treating me as if I've glass bones. Blessed spirits, I thought I'd been too forward or too thick skulled." He riffled his hair, relief and apology softening his serious demeanor. "I wasn't angry last night. Certainly not. Truly it was a wonder—to see fire magic happening as if I'd done it myself. Something so marvelous, so immense. Something I'd imagined so often, yet believed that in all of time I would never see. A bit frightening, too, I'll confess, though I've had this belief—well, no mind to that. When I get so wrought up in thinking about how things are in the world and with me, I just need to go. Just to do something lest I burst, which would be a most unpleasant sight, I think. So I run. It clears my head. Settles my mind." He held out his hands. "Take them. Do as must be done. I've naught else to give."

"I'll do my best for you," I said. "I swear it." And though I meant what I said, I wanted to kick myself for speaking it aloud, and to kick him for forcing such an oath out of me.

Never, never, befriend a player in a combat scenario. I had etched that rule on my soul long years before, when girlish sympathies and sentimental misjudgments had caused my earliest failures. Were the subjects Derzhi torturers or Ezzarian farmers, I gave everything I could.

Yet indeed, this man was possessed of a profound grace. I scarce touched his grimed and callused hands, and they were mine.


"So when your little signal spell wriggles my right thumb, and I give you control of my hands, you'll make the fire rope. Wriggling my left thumb signals the apparition—whatever object you think fits the occasion. And the scents… you'll signal with a finger to my nose, along with your promise not to poke my eye."

"That happened only once, and you jumped," I said, grimacing at his sidewise grin. "And we'll only do scents inside the house." I wished I could feel some hint of good humor. My plan that had felt so solid when I discussed it with Aelis seemed, of a sudden, flimsy as moth wings.

We sat on the log bridge, basking in the late-morning sun, as if our test were not bearing down on us from the north. We were eating the soft old apples I'd pulled from my pocket, or rather I was eating, as he'd finished three in three bites each, half the seeds and core as well, and tossed the tiny remainders into the grassy distance.

"I've a thought about the scents," he said, hesitantly.

I didn't really want to hear. Better to stop thinking for a little while, to rest and recover here in the sun, so we could be fresh when the challenge came—so my stomach might stop devouring itself. We had reviewed every scenario I could devise, and practiced the illusions until they seemed to engrave themselves in the air. The tenyddar had heeded my direction without complaint, repeating his stories and practicing his movements without reservation. Indeed, his performance had astonished me. He had incorporated my enchantments smoothly into his body's own language, and when I triggered one of my signal spells, he opened himself so completely to my will that I felt as if I could walk into his skin and share it with him. He deserved to be heard.

"Go on," I said.

"This Bran would have no reason to make the girl's cooking smell better. Come the end of a work day, I can eat sour cabbage and old beets. But scent attracts beasts. It would be useful to a hunter to lay down a scent to attract prey—apple, acorns, clover, honey."

"Yes, that makes a lot of sense." Assuming this spy did not try to capture us right away, we could make something of it. We talked for a while of possible scenarios, then fell quiet again.

Useful. . . that was an important distinction I'd not considered. Like jugglers or acrobats, members of the Derzhi Magicians' Guild created entertainments. Derzhi warriors lived for their pride, and would no more use a magician's illusion to bait a beast than they would use an acrobat to fight a battle for them. But a barbarian farmer would have no such luxury. His enchantments would be useful—devised to improve his life. Or to defend his property.

I had designed the fire rope and the scent illusions as lures—minor evidence that Bran could work sorcery. The heart of my plan lay in the illusion of solid objects—magic that could be clearly unmasked in front of the spy. I intended to use a jeweled pendant, or some similar valuable that would appeal to the intruder. Drop such an apparition into a pot of water, and it would reveal itself as no more than a length of yarn and a stone—and Ezzarian sorcery as petty illusion. I stared through the deep, clear stream to the moss-covered stones beneath its silken flow, and like a night-blooming lily, heavy with scent, a new plan blossomed in my head. Far more dangerous… but far more convincing.

"We need to work on one other illusion," I said, jumping up. An anxious survey of the mountains and its dark rift revealed no telltale of the spy. He would be well hidden under the canopy of the wood. We'd not see him—and he'd not see us—until he emerged from the trees and walked into the valley.

"A fourth illusion! Because I've learned my lessons well?" My companion's quiet smile instilled such a burden of dread in my breast, 1 could scarce breathe. Duty demanded dreadful deeds. Mortal deeds. Dai had warned him.

No. We would not fail. I would not allow it. I closed my eyes for a moment and stripped away the weakness and sentiment that could cloud my resolve. Only then could I inhale, and answer, and begin the lesson. "You've done very well. I'll signal this one by clenching your fists, and instead of your hands, I'll need you to yield me everything…"

Once I had built the trigger spell—the link from my fists to his that would tell him that the time had come—I taught him to grant me his entire body as a canvas for my spellmaking. Only then did I create the new illusion. A few tweaks of the enchantment itself to create a truly fearsome result and the soft-spoken farmer stood in his vegetable field clad in armor of fire. His breastplate blazed as a whorl of scarlet, his chausses and greaves gleamed orange, and his helm scalded the eye with the yellow of the sun at midmorn.

"We're out of time," I said, dismissing the illusion with a twist of my will. The sun had begun its slide downward from the zenith. "I'd like to practice more, but we dare not let him see. If we come to this, you will engage the spy wherever he might be and fight him with whatever skill you can muster."

The tenyddar's smiles and wonder had long vanished. He did not question. Did not ask why I had created so warlike an illusion. Did not ask how an untrained farmer might "engage" a Derzhi of any ilk, or why I had not told him how or when we would use this, as I'd done with each of the other illusions. Did not remind me that I'd said I would defend him against physical harm. He must have guessed I wasn't going to answer. Silent and expressionless, he nodded, hefted his bundled tools, and struck out for the hut.

I fenced my heart in steel and spoke no comfort to him. Not just his safety, but Ezzaria's, depended on my talents, wit, and will, and on his continued obedience… and good heart. Surprise and fear and righteous anger would enable him to use the armor and make the spy believe. Until then, we could afford no comfort and no distraction.


The spy arrived with the sunset, skittering and sliding down the last steep drop out of the trees. He waved and hallooed in a friendly manner when he caught sight of us beside the shed, where the tenyddar had set out more birch trunks for notching.

As we watched the slender figure climb the knoll, I broke out of our roles for one last time. "Give thought to every word, every action, for the sake of those souls we protect."

"I'll do as I've sworn, mistress, and I will obey your commands and yield to your wisdom on every matter save one—I'll not be used as if I'm no more than a post or a rail to be put in a fence." The tenyddar set aside his ax, closed his eyes, and clenched his fist over his heart. "Lys na Gareth. It's only right you know my name."


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Chapter Six
   



"I'm called Haine." The slight, dark-haired man drained the wooden mug and smiled blissfully as he wiped his mouth with a ragged sleeve. "Never tasted such fine ale. Water may be the root of life… but it's no compare to the best of the barley after such a journey as mine. I should have guessed my kin would do right by me."

The red-gold light enhanced the coppery hue of his skin—so like to Ezzarian skin. His eyes, dark brown, not black, and with only the slightest angle to them, hinted at Ezzarian roots, rather than claiming them. But then, the newcomer did not claim full blood.

"You say your mother was Ezzarian," said the tenyddar—Gareth—standing cool and wary a few paces in front of his door. "It's rare for any Ezzarian to intermarry, even one wayward enough to venture the filthy world. Especially a woman. Our gods frown on it."

I, the serving girl, stood humbly to one side, trying to cool my fury. Inexplicable fury, for I could not even begin to explain why Gareth's revelation rankled me so sorely.

"I guessed as much," said the spy, tossing me his mug and flashing a most charming grin as I snatched it from the air to prevent it from dropping in the dirt.

His teeth gleamed evenly white in his rich-hued skin. And his movements were quick and sharp, like the expressions that danced across his angular features.

"Mam didn't have so much as one Ezzarian friend. She didn't tell me much, as she died when I was a brat. But I remember her saying her people didn't like their ways talked about, and I should only ever come here if I was desperate. An Ezzarian man came to my shop once, and I tried asking him about Ezzaria and if he knew my mam, but he closed up tighter than a miser's fist. Not one of you I've ever encountered wished me so much as a good morrow, so I've long called a pox on the lot of you."

He held up his hands defensively. "I'm just being honest, Goodman Bran; you know your own people well enough. But since the Guild took up their mission, I've learnt the true meaning of desperate."

My every sense stretched to its limit. I tasted the air around the newcomer, listened to it, smelled it. No enchantments masked his face or tainted his actions. I was as sure of that as I was of my own name.

"We care for no man's opinion of our ways," said Gareth. "What is this Guild you speak of?"

Truly the tenyddar was better at this than I'd any reason to hope. He could almost have fooled me with this staunch and guileless manner. He held out his own empty mug without so much as a glance at me. I took it, then scurried over to the cistern and ladled water into the mugs, rinsing and emptying them while Haine talked.

"The Derzhi Magicians' Guild," he said. "Sorcerers—the finest in the Empire. They serve the Emperor and the Twenty Families, raking in gold by the cartload for their magics. But they aim to keep it all to themselves. On one hand, a man can't get into the Guild lest he's got Derzhi clan connections—and my da was a Fryth sweeper who didn't stay around even long enough to see me birthed. And on the other hand, if the fellow practices a bit of sorcery outside the Guild, he's marked and warned off. If he's good at what he does"—he snapped his fingers and a shower of rose petals swirled about him like a whirlwind, drifted to the ground, and vanished—"he's marked for dead. I've been on the run for most of a year. You can see what I've come to."

In cheerful chagrin, he spread his arms. His ill-fitting breeches had lost their knee-buckles long ago, and his shabby layers of shirt and tunic, stained and threadbare, hung loose on his slight frame. The metal I'd glimpsed in the morning sun was likely the battered hilt of a sword that dangled from a greasy rucksack. The dagger sheathed unobtrusively at his waist appeared better kept.

Gareth clasped his hands at his back and strolled around Haine. "Our life here is not so easy."

"I feel a shameful beggar," said Haine, seeming wholly unembarrassed by the scrutiny. "To have spoke so ill of Ezzarians while I prospered with my bead shop, and now that I'm in penury to ask those same folk for sanctuary. But I'm healthy and willing to work, and have skills to offer, so I asked myself who would appreciate them more than kinsmen and fellow sorcerers?"

Only forewarned would I have recognized this subtle gambit. With his frank and engaging speech, plausible story, and unprepossessing body—on size alone, Gareth could snap him like one of his wood splinters—it would have been so easy to take Haine at his word. Surely our goddess and her son must have been watching out for us when Evrei caught wind of this plan.

"You seem a right fellow, Haine," said Gareth, reclaiming his position between the stranger and his front door. "And I've no grudge against words spoke in ignorance. But no matter your skills or blood claim, I cannot give you leave to make free of our land. Only my chieftain can do that, and if you've brought Derzhi on your heels, he'll have your skin off your bones before you can whistle."

"I've left the pursuit in the wastes, I'll swear it," said Haine, waving northward. "So I'd be grateful if you could point me to your town where I might parley with this chieftain. Even better were you to guide me there yourself…"

Gareth snorted. "Leave my fields just when the beasts get a hunger for tender plants? Not for my own mam would I do that. And it's worth my life to let you wander Ezzaria on your own."

"What of the girl then? She could take me." Haine's sharp gaze crawled up my leggings and across my breast to my face. I averted my eyes and felt the urge to wash.

"Girl's bound to the land," said Gareth, with a huff of derision. "Not allowed to go elsewhere. Besides, she's got the wit of a tree stump and is as like to lead you off a cliff as to anywhere you'd want. No, we'll wait right here for Ogul's son. He's to bring a mule and help me break a new field come the new moon. He'll decide if his da wants to see you or not. 'Til then, you stay where I can see you."

Three days until the new moon. We'd see how eager Haine was to meet other Ezzarians.

"Fair enough," said the spy, cheerfully. "I'll work for my keep. Teach you some magics, if you like."

"You'll get no thanks for it," I mumbled, just loud enough to be heard—my own opening play. "Bran don't know the word."

"Quiet your sour tongue, girl, and move your lazy bones," snapped Gareth. "Our guest and I need supper—bacon, cheese, and new bread. Put his things in the house, and make him a bed. He's to sleep inside." He motioned Haine to drop his rucksack by the door and follow him. "Keep your magics. I doubt a half-blood Fryth would have much to teach an Ezzarian in the way of sorcery. Come and I'll show you what work needs done…"

I dipped my knee and jogged off to the larder for bacon and cheese, scarce able to suppress my satisfaction—Gareth could not have played it better. As I cooked bacon and bread, the men strolled about the field. Though I fretted at not hearing their every word, my role precluded my being with him at every moment. Three days, I'd wager, and we'd have this done.


The first rounds of bread came off the hearthstones at deep twilight, a perfect time for our first test. Gareth and Haine lingered beside the new span of fence. My blood pulsed hot in my veins as I sped down the path toward them. Rousing will and magic, I brought forth a shadowy beast far across the vale.

"… by end of summer, I should have the new field harrowed. I can fence it over winter. I've no shortage of trees, but I could use help with the felling—"

"Supper's on, master," I blurted as I joined the men. And even as my conjured sow wandered down the distant hillside and toward the field, I wriggled my left thumb… and Gareth's.

To his credit, he jumped only a little and recovered nicely. "Interrupt me again, thimblewit, and you'll go to bed hungry."

He waved me aside and turned back to Haine and the field, squinting into the dimness. I had prepared him for what he'd see. "Ah, Valdis's hammer, a blighting pig!" With a grand gesture appropriate to the size of the task, he swept his hand outward, yielding me control…

… and my sinuous, golden rope of flame looped about the field. As it settled into a knee-high, burning barrier, the shadowy sow squealed in fright and lumbered away.

"Oh, well done!" said Haine, approaching the fiery boundary sprung up ten paces from his feet. He crouched and held his hand near the fire… then plunged it in, laughing as the flames danced around and through his fluttering fingers. "Wouldn't do for baking your girl's bread, though."

"The appearance is enough," said Gareth. Though his voice remained cool, excitement brightened his eyes and curved his lips once Haine's back was turned. The spark died quickly when his gaze flicked to me. "This will do until I get the fence built. Let's to supper."

I trudged up the hill behind them, feeling hollow and guilty inside. That's why I resented Gareth telling me his name. As if he wanted me to know him. As if I dared consider his wishes or his needs or anything but what I must do with him.


My mediocre cooking provided ample demonstration of Master Bran's scorn for his serving girl. Haine's attention never wavered from our sparring. I'd vow he could have recited every word we spoke on any matter. Once the men had finished their meal, and I sat in the corner eating bacon rinds and burnt corners of the bread, the visitor probed Gareth about Ezzarian life, expressing hopes and eager curiosity about his chosen "sanctuary." Did we trade? Work metal? Herd beasts? How were chieftains named… the strongest in magic, perhaps? His investigation was well done. Subtly done.

Bluff and hearty, Gareth incorporated the misguiding tales I'd taught him into his own words, gaining confidence with every exchange. When Haine's questions ventured beyond our preparations, the tenyddar blithely invoked Ezzarian custom to explain his reticence.

The spy asked Gareth why he had no wife. To my amusement Gareth responded solemnly that as soon as he had earned enough to buy himself a goat, his chieftain would reward his diligence with a bride. "What of your own family, Haine? What came of your wife and children when this Guild chased you from Vayapol?"

The goat story was Gareth's own invention. Perhaps it was a part of his private imaginings, for in truth, his kind rarely married. It was not a matter of law. No evidence claimed that children of tenyddar would inevitably inherit the parent's impoverishment. But who would ever risk such a grief?

"I never could choose one woman to settle with," said Haine, picking his teeth with a splinter from the woodpile. "They're like beads—so much variety, all desirable. Being a beadmaker as I was, I always had my pick of the ladies." He waved his hand as if scooping a hole in the air, but when he held out his hollowed palm, beads of stone and glass and delicately engraved metal filled it. Every size. Every color.

Sensing an invitation, I crept forward and knelt by his stool. "Oh, so pretty," I said, gasping. "Such like the goddess herself must wear as she walks the holy wood."

When I glanced up, he winked and flashed his teeth, deepening the attractive creases alongside his mouth. "Go ahead. Touch them. I'll guess Master Bran doesn't gift you such pretties."

"Nawp. He never would," I said and fingered the beads. Their texture was excellent—metal, glass, and stone entirely distinct, though the relief of the engravings felt muddy. The metal beads felt warmer, the stone and glass cold. I dropped my voice low as if Gareth weren't sitting on the bench five steps away. "Master Bran only wants to take. Not give. But I won't, and the law forbids him forcing me."

Gareth's stillness near paralyzed the room. This was not part of our planned story. I wanted him unsettled. Haine would notice it.

Haine picked out a few of the beads and tossed them to Gareth. Caught by surprise, Gareth snared only two. The remainder bounced onto the floor at his feet.

"Watch closely!" Haine said, laughing. He poked thumb and forefinger into the handful of beads and slowly drew them out again. Clasped between was the end of a string. He pulled out an entire length of string threaded with every bead I had touched. After knotting the ends, he dropped the necklace over my head.

"Oh, good sir," I gasped as I fondled the beads. "I feel like a chieftain's consort!"

"Perhaps you were chased out of town because your beads were false," said a scowling Gareth. He snatched the loose beads from the floor, but Haine vanished them right out of his hand before he could inspect them closer.

The spy shrugged and laughed. "The beads in my shop were true for the most. I've a hand with tools and fire, as well as magic. Come, show me something finer, Bran. If you can."

A brazen challenge. I retreated to the corner by the ale cask, fingering the necklace, relishing the opportunity. I twitched my right thumb.

Gareth did not jump when his own thumb responded, but rubbed his mouth thoughtfully. Without even a glance at me, he held his palms a handspan apart, then closed his eyes and brought his hands together sharply, just as we had practiced. When he opened them again, an emerald the size of a walnut lay in his callused palm. I'd seen only one emerald in my life, so I was not so sure of it. But imperfection was a part of our game.

Haine applauded and reached for the emerald. He ran his fingers over the facets, pursing his lips as he exposed it to the firelight. He nodded in approval. "Nice work. Edges not quite sharp, but clean, nonetheless. And a good, deep color. Alas"—he scraped a dirty fingernail across one edge—"hardness is difficult to get right."

"My cousin once sold one of my gems to a woman in Karesh," boasted Gareth.

"If one could rely on a ready supply of ignorant buyers, we would all be rich. I'll advise you not to test your luck in a real marketplace, unless you relish farming with one hand." Haine tossed the emerald into the air. His catch was awkward, especially for a man with such clever fingers. Thus I judged it no accident when the fumbled gem fell into my basin of washing water. "Ah, pardon…" He pulled out a dripping gray pebble, grinned, and flipped it back to Gareth. So he knew of water's unmasking.

Clutching my false beads, I buried my satisfaction and drew two mugs of ale.


It must have been near midnight as I waited for Gareth in the thick scrub that surrounded his latrine. Once he had served necessity, I stepped out to meet him. He started like a sparrow, his dagger in hand swifter than Haine could juggle his beads. I'd filled his ale mug neither so deep nor so often as the spy's.

"Verdonne's child," he sighed, when I raised just enough pale light he could recognize me. "I'm not made for this." His hand trembled as he sheathed the knife.

"You did well today," I said allowing my light to fade, lest Haine's raucous snores be false. "Exceptionally well. Just two things. Tomorrow we go boar hunting, as we planned. And Bran must continue to demonstrate his disdain for Teleri… but also clear jealousy of Haine's attentions."

"Jealousy? You're not thinking of—"

"Just follow my lead." Ezzarian modesty had no place here. "Remember all we've practiced. Remember obedience."

Gareth's hand touched my elbow as I turned to go. Even through my sleeve I could feel his blood racing. "He's good, isn't he? With the magic?"

"Very good. But it's all illusion."

"You'll take care with him, watch yourself with whatever this is you're planning to do? I think…" Uncertainty slowed his tongue. "I think he suspects you're not what you pretend. And he walks like a Warden."

A good thing the darkness hid my own worries. "Don't think overmuch. Just play your part as you've done. I'll take care of the rest."

He laughed a little as we set out across the hillside toward the hut. "I should have known I'd get no enlightenment. I just don't see—You've the skill to make me seem something I'm not. You've the wit to put all these stories and tricks together. And you've the courage to put yourself in the way of danger and corruption to protect Ezzaria—naught can cleanse the way Haine looks at you. How is it you're yet a student?"

"Searchers' testing is much more complicated than this." Though I was well practiced at humiliating confessions, I saw no benefit in undermining his confidence with my history. "I can do what's needed."

"I'll not renege on what I've sworn. I just…" His voice took on a note of urgency. "I feel the need to know you. When you appeared at the encarda, so kind and lovely, offering your help, I thought that holy Verdonne herself—"

"And then you learned I was but another trespasser." My cheeks could have cooked our breakfast.

"But you didn't run away. You revealed yourself—jeopardized your own future—to aid me." He halted just below the crest of the knoll. "I've never played a part in fateful events and likely never will again, no matter how this ends. But to understand the other players—to understand what drives this brave, determined Searcher who commands me—might help me understand my own part."

Had his request stemmed from simple curiosity or fear, I might have bristled and refused. But his desire to find order in a terrifying world struck some respondent chord in me, as a harper's fingers pluck a stretched wire and bring music, where another's elicit only noise. Against all intent, I sat on the grass in the midnight dark and told him of my training, my hopes, my doubts, and my failures… even to the illusory Derzhi child who had murdered her illusory father, and the collapsed enchantment that had condemned her to madness. "… but we've only one spy to deal with here and no rai-kirah. We're not going to fail."

"What was her name… the child?"

"Sonya… Sachka… something like. My partner knows their names. I did my best for her."

He sat on his haunches beside me, little more than an outline against the starry sky. "Perhaps you didn't fail. Perhaps she couldn't be saved."

"I won't believe that."

"Dai once told me something—a seeing she had. Doesn't matter what, but it got me thinking. I'd heard that jumping into an encarda without use of magic was the first trial in a Warden's training—a test of strength and faith and possibility. Since Dai's seeing, I've trespassed a Warden's encarda twice a year. Twice a year I jump in, thinking this time it won't scald me, this time I'll manage to stay in the water more than a heartbeat, this time I'll discover… something. Twice a year I fail. It's a fierce hurt, to be sure, and likely naught will ever come of it. But I've come to believe it's the trying that's important. The caring." He stood.

"I trust you. And I thank you for your caring… and for trusting me. Good night, mistress."

He strode off toward the house and in moments the door closed behind him. I stared after him for a long while… telling myself that a tenyddar farmer could not possibly have explained a puzzle I had been trying to unravel for so many years. Never in all my training, in all my thrashing, studying, and analyzing, had I ever considered that some of my tests had been designed to fail.


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Chapter Seven
   



"You will come, girl," snapped Master Bran in our tenth argument of the morning. "You don't eat if you don't work. And women's work is what men say." He grabbed the bead necklace and with one great wrench snapped the string, sending beads flying all over the trampled ground in front of the hut. "What their masters say."

I grumbled wordlessly and rubbed my stinging neck. Haine watched us as he buckled on his swordbelt.

We were going pig hunting, and Teleri was commanded to go along to haul back the meat. It had not been difficult to act out my disgust for the task—death, blood and entrails, the sheer difficulty of maintaining the cleanliness our people prized. Thank the goddess and her son, my conjured sow would prove elusive, and we had no intention of bleeding our true quarry.

I snatched up the frame harness Gareth had dropped in the dirt in front of me and jammed my arms through the worn leather straps. As he struck out for the wood beyond his field, I spat on the ground behind him. We had both taken on our roles with extra vigor on this day.

Haine shrugged and grimaced in friendly sympathy. With a twist of his hand he vanished the scattered beads. "I'll replace them tonight," he whispered with his gleaming smile. Then he bowed to me, shouldered the boar spear we had given him, and followed Gareth down valley.

Mist coiled out of the hollows like smoky fingers of dawn, dampening skin, cloth, and leather alike, yet my throat felt as parched as the deserts of Azhakstan. I saw no evidence that Haine judged me anything but a besotted maidservant, but Gareth had been right about one thing. Though the spy behaved like a cocky magician—part juggler, part sorcerer, part scoundrel—he carried himself with the confidence and reserved strength of a warrior. No matter his small frame and dark coloring, I'd wager his father was no Fryth servant, but purest Derzhi. There was no measuring the danger in a physical confrontation with one of the warrior race. I swallowed bile, hefted the frame, and hurried after the men. We would need all the strength, faith, and benevolent possibility we could manage.

The day sped by. Haine seemed impressed by Bran's laying the scent of acorns to attract the sow and then quickly surrounding the rooting beast with a rill of flame. But when clumsy Teleri dropped the pack frame and rattled the butchery knives, thus sending the illusory beast charging straight at our blind, it was Haine who raised our protective fire to the height of a man and endowed it with a searing heat that convinced the mind it truly burned.

The sow, of course, turned tail and barreled into the wood. We gave chase, but came up with naught but one broken spear and a brace of rabbits. I was grateful for the overcast sky. Large, complex illusions could appear transparent in full daylight—especially at such close quarters.

Gareth shoved me stumbling up the path as we slogged back to the hut in the steamy afternoon. "Fool of a girl. I should bind you to Ogul's mule when it's brought—to show there is no difference between you."

"Do it!" I spat. "I would sooner bed the mule than you."

Haine stayed out of our bickering. He had been quite companionable all day, allowing Gareth to lead the futile hunt, helping me gather dill and garlic shoots along the way, and expressing naught but whimsical humor when Gareth insisted he skin and gut the rabbits fifty paces from the stream. "I've known no gods so enamored of inconvenience," he'd said. "I always thought Mam had it wrong that we must be mindful of every puddle."

Once we arrived at the hut, Gareth retired to the shed to repair his broken boar spear, while I built up the fire and put water on to boil. Haine borrowed oil and sharpening stone and sat next the fire to hone his sword and dagger. "Your master is a strange one," he said after a while.

I dropped the disjointed rabbits into the pot. "He's a prideful devil," I said. "His head is rock. And he's a wicked liar."

"Ahhh… I think you favor him, Teleri. Is it you who refuse his desires, or he that refuses you?"

"I hate him! My da worked this land, but drank himself to death before he had it half broke, and he never paid the chieftain a fee for it. Ogul decreed I had to stay with the land till I was wed and my husband could pay the fee. Then he gives the place to Bran Prickhead, who'll have none of me within the law, as he's lusting for Ogul's daughter. What man'll ever look my way, thinking Bran takes his pleasure with me?" I whacked the roots off three leeks and dropped them into the pot. Casting an anxious glance at the doorway, I lowered my voice. "You oughtn't trust him. Nor Ogul, neither."

As I chopped garlic, enchantment teased my skin. Two quick footsteps and a solid weight draped round my neck. I looked down to see a necklace of blood-red glass beads laid on my breast.

"Oh, noble sir…" I touched the gleaming strand of purest illusion.

"I told you I would replace the others," he said, running his hands along my shoulders. "I was right that red would look fine with your dark hair and dark eyes. You are quite a pretty girl, you know."

"Bran won't let me keep them. He'll—" I snapped my mouth shut and tucked the necklace inside my tunic. Catching Haine's hand, I tugged him downward, until he crouched beside me. "He's no friend of yours, great sir. No friend of any stranger comes to Ezzaria."

"I'm not afraid of him." Haine pulled back, eyes glittering in the firelight. His smile chilled me deeper than flames could touch. "I've skills beyond beadwork."

"You ought to fear him," I said, my shivering no playacting. "He's got such magics—" I broke off and stirred my soup until the splash near doused the fire.

Gareth's boots thumped outside the door.

Haine's breath teased at my ear. "What magics?"

And so was my fish hooked. Scarce containing a ferocious joy, I planted a quick kiss on Haine's stubbled cheek. "Come to the bridge tonight when he sleeps."


At supper, Gareth eyed Haine and me, one and then the other, as if he knew something had changed. "I must mark the new field tomorrow," he said, spearing a chunk of meat with his knife and pointing it at Haine. "But first I'll show you the birch grove up valley. Fell enough trees, and you can eat another day. I'm done filling your belly for no return."

Haine rose from the bench, passing me his empty bowl. "I'll not dispute that, kinsman. You've treated me better than I'd any right to expect. But for tonight, I'm swagged, so I'll bid you fair dreaming—and you, too, Teleri."

"You're not to wish the mule anything, Fryth. She's naught to you." Gareth's ferocity heated the room as if he'd raised Haine's fiery wall.

"As you say, goodman."

While I knelt at the fire pit, cleaning pots and evaluating the possibilities of the next few hours, Haine retired to the corner by the flour cask and rolled up in Gareth's winter cloak. Head propped on his rucksack, sword and dagger within reach, he was soon snoring.

Gareth drank the last of the rabbit broth from his bowl and offered the dish to me with a shrug and an apologetic smile. Wound tight as I was, I could not do the same. I jerked my head in the direction of his own pallet and mimed that he should stay awake.

He understood. After wiping his knife on a rag, he rose and stretched. "Finish your chores and get you to bed, girl," he said. "We've a full day tomorrow, even for lazy sluts the likes of you." His insult bore a harshness entirely at odds with the hand that so gently settled on my hair. Such comfort flooded from his touch, such care and apology and… forgiveness… that I almost dragged him from that hut and sent him running for safety.

"May devil spirits carry you to everlasting fire this night, Bran Prickhead," I muttered.

I finished my cleaning, banked the coals, and did not so much as glance the tenyddar's way as he retreated to his own corner of the hut.


Haine's footsteps squelched on the muddy path long before I made out his trim shape moving through the dark. I waited on the verge of the sloping stream bank, one of Dai's wool blankets spread on the grass beneath me, the laces of my shift undone. Magic thrummed in my fingertips, in my head, in my spleen. Every mezzit of the vale was laid out in my mind, along with its scents and tastes and the slightest variation of its air—a map to guide my feet and my senses, so vivid that I marveled the spy could not see it waiting with me in the dark, right alongside the monstrous presence of my fear.

The deep water burbled and slopped underneath the bridge… and he was there, kneeling on the blanket, just behind me. The muffled clank of metal on rock and the aroma of grimed leather spoke of swordbelts and rucksacks. Good. That suggested he saw an end to his mission.

"Are you wearing your beads, pretty girl?" His silken voice touched me just before his hands.

"Aye, sir." I neither flinched nor shuddered as his fingers glided down my neck and located the necklace. The crimson glass began to glow. "Oh, blessed Lady, they are so beautiful."

He stretched out beside me on the blanket, leaning on one elbow, and idly traced the line of my cheek and my bare arm with his clever fingers. After a brush of my hip and thigh, he stroked the length of my leg through my woolen leggings. "Such a sweet thing you are to warn me of your heartless master. I've brought you another gift."

He withdrew his hand, and a loop of brilliant green appeared in the night, casting its glow on his sharp face. Faceted beads, like tiny emeralds—ten strands of them bound together—dangled from his finger. "They're for your ankle. Though"—he yanked them back from my grasping fingers—"it would be a shame not to see them against your smooth skin."

"Oh, sir!" Eager—loathing—I giggled and shucked my leggings. "They're so lovely."

I reached again for the beads. Again he dangled them out of reach. "First tell me of your master's fearsome magics—and of this chieftain, Ogul."

Sighing, I bent forward as if the stream or the bridge might overhear. "Ogul has been chieftain of this north country near forty summers. He fears all who live beyond the mountains. He forbids us to cross, and he gives his sons and favorites these border lands, teaching them his most fearsome powers to make war. Tomorrow Master Bran will lead you to the birch grove, making sure you get confused as to the way. Then he'll don his magical armor—"

"Armor?"

"Aye, armor of fire and sorcery. Naught can harm him when he wears it. He'll bind you in the birch grove, and only when you are half mad and half starved and swear on your mortal life to carry the tale of our monsters and haunted mountains back to the Empire will he let you go."

"He has done this before with… strangers?"

"Aye." I shifted position and nestled close to him, where I could not avoid his unwashed stink. "You must leave here tonight, get safely through the mountains before he wakes. You could take me with you. I could show you the easiest paths."

"Run away?" He cocked his head to one side, as he stroked my bare leg with the emerald beads, charging my body with revulsion. "I don't think so. Not yet. I've questions must be answered."

"Can I have the beads now, sir? They shine so." I stuck out my bare foot, scarce able to breathe as I waited.

"Soon, pretty girl." Smooth as a hunting cat, he sat up, pressing close enough to cup my chin and rub his thumb across my lips. "Tell me: what kind of magics do Ezzarian women wield?"

I crushed a glimmer of panic. He was but probing in the dark. He'd see no evidence lest I gave it to him.

"None but what the men teach us." I shoved his hand aside and flounced away from him in a pout, turning my back and kneeling up as if ready to bolt. "Always men must do as they please. My da said he'd teach me magic when I was gone twelve, but he drank himself dead before that. Bran would rather yell that I'm stupid and lazy than teach me to make fire to keep wildcats away. Sure you're as bad as the lot of them… teasing me to get what you want."

Quick as a weasel his body enfolded me from behind, legs and arms like straps of steel confining my limbs. His hand gripped my hair and yanked my head back onto his shoulder. "I don't believe you," he whispered in my ear.

I spat on his cheek, twisting and writhing to get loose. Yet when I wrenched one leg out from under me, I did not slam my heel into his groin. Neither did I conjure snakes to crawl up his shirt nor spark true fire from my hand to set his hair aflame. Rather I scratched his arms and bashed my head into his chin, whimpering like a powerless serving girl. "Devil spirit!"

Haine chortled and with effortless strength wrestled me onto my back, straddling me so that I felt the vile heat of him through my thin shift. But what froze my gut was how he pinned my hands to the earth beside my head, his palms pressed flat with mine, our fingers interlaced. I could not make a fist.

He throttled my rising wail with a grinding kiss, then held his face nose to nose with mine. "Something is very odd about you, Teleri. I've seen it since the beginning. Tell me what magics lie within these clean fingers, or I shall snap them off one by one."

"Naught, Master Haine. Naught…" And I babbled and moaned to please him.

Praying I could initiate the armor spell with power alone, I stretched my melydda to the hut where my rescuer waited, his heart galloping, sweat dampening his back. Pressing my will against his natural resistance, I reached for control…

… and like a worn bowstring, my magical tether snapped, blinding me for a moment with its recoil. He was too tight. Too focused.

Haine gripped harder and thrust a knee between my legs. "I'll wager I can persuade you to tell me what I want to know."

Seven times over, I cursed myself for linking the signal to my hands. Without the signal, Gareth did not know to yield me his body. But I had neither time to wait for opportunity nor weapons to break through his barriers. I was no Comforter like Kenehyr, who could bridge vast distances to speak in a listener's mind.

Despairing, I averted my face from Haine's hard lips and scratchy chin. But as I swallowed my disgust, thoughts of a Comforter's enchantments reminded me of the weapon that had been given me in trust. Using his gift to force submission would violate that trust, yet he had told me to take what I needed of him. And so again I stretched out my melydda to the hut, and this time I bound my enchantment with all the power of Name: Gareth.

When he came roaring down the path in his fiery armor, he might have been a blazing meteor shooting through the night sky, or divine Verdonne's son Valdis, waging war on the Nameless God.

In one furious motion, he dragged Haine off me. Overbalanced, the two men slipped and slid down the bank, grappling in a blazing knot. No matter his strength and size, a tenyddar was unlikely to best a trained warrior, even if I had cloaked him in true fire rather than illusion. Yet in those first few moments as I scuttered away and drew Dai's blanket about my quivering shoulders, I thought he might actually prevail.

Gareth took the spy to the ground, but Haine twisted out of the bigger man's grasp and scrambled up the bank toward his sword. With a ferocious growl Gareth pounced, but snared only Haine's legs. The wiry Derzhi twisted loose again, and this time booted Gareth in the face. By the time Gareth recovered and sprang to his feet, Haine had drawn his dagger.

They crouched low. Haine danced here and there, never still. His blade glanced off the gleaming mail at Gareth's neck. Gareth caught the wrist of Haine's knife hand and grabbed for his throat. But they lost footing on the muddy bank, stumbling and sliding downward.

A thudding blow and a bitten cry told me when Haine's blade struck home. As with the emerald, the solidity of the illusion was ephemeral and could not long resist steel. Indeed, I had planned it so.

Another strike landed true, stalling Gareth as if he'd collided with a tree. Growling, he shook it off and engaged Haine yet again, obedient, as he had promised. The brilliance of his flaming coat seemed to dazzle the spy. Haine repeatedly swiped his eyes with his sleeve or hand, and numerous strikes missed their mark entire. The illusory heat seared my skin, even at a distance.

I clenched my jaw and held my magic tight bound. Think, you cursed fool of a Derzhi! End this. The damnable, snarling warrior just didn't seem to recall how close he was to the water and the very answer he'd come here to learn. If Bran could work true sorcery, this armor would surely be its manifestation.

"Stop! Please stop!" I shrieked. "Master meant only to fright you." I grabbed a handful of stones and pelted the struggling pair… and made sure some flew off course and into the water. The largest one made a great loud thunk and splash. And then I bolted. Haine's interest must not revert to me. A roundabout course took me into the stream on the far side of the bridge, where I could peer under the logs without being seen.

Haine had disengaged and backed up the bank a few steps.

Gareth, breathing hard, one arm clamped to his middle, advanced warily. Haine feinted, appearing to overbalance. But when Gareth rushed in to take advantage, Haine slammed the pommel of his dagger into Gareth's head. Gareth wavered, stunned. Planting his foot on Gareth's chest, Haine threw his weight forward and toppled the bleeding man backward into the stream.

Water reveals truth. The blazing illusion was snuffed out.

Gareth emerged with a great gasp, shoulders hunched, arms flailing. Slipping and staggering, he lunged forward, but stumbled hard to his knees before reaching the bank.

As Gareth heaved and coughed and struggled to rise, the Derzhi darted up the bank and retrieved his sword. Winded himself, he stepped and slid downward, sword raised, the tip circling as he approached the kneeling man.

"Come, surely you can do better than this, Ezzarian. Sorcerer. Farmer." With every word, his scorn swelled. "Will you allow your drudge to buy your life, Goodman Bran? Will you die for your pitiful secrets?" He touched his edge to Gareth's neck.

Gareth did not move, save in the struggle of his breathing.

Ah, holy ones … I could not aid him. As a Weaver defends her settlement, I must maintain the barriers that kept Ezzaria inviolate. Humankind needed our gifts lest the innocent suffer from demon madness… and the life of one tenyddar, no matter how faithful, could not even shift the scale.

In a move that stopped my heart, Haine whipped his sword in a sidewise blow. Gareth crumpled without a cry.

Haine climbed out of the water. When he reached the top of the bank, he spun in place, calling out, "Teleri! Here's your pay, pretty girl!"

I did not answer, did not move, did not breathe.

A loop of sparkling emerald flew through the air and fell to earth halfway down the bank. Then Haine snatched up his rucksack and strode northward toward the mountains.

As the spy's footsteps and merry whistle faded, the night fell dead. The flowing water nudged the still form toward the bridge. Even so, I dared not move, but near shredded my ears with listening. Only when my senses detected no lingering trace of the Derzhi did I fly from my hiding place.

When I lifted Gareth's head and shoulders from the frigid water, blood leaked from the side of his skull. "Get up. Come on. I'll help, but goddess save me, I can't carry you."

He weighed like lead and remained limp as a rotted fig as I hauled him onto the muddy bank. "Wake up!" I mumbled. "You swore to obey me, so wake up. Breathe."

I rolled him onto his back, tapped his cold cheeks, and blew into his mouth again and again. And at last, in a blessed explosion of coughing and choking, he spewed water and gasped for air.

I risked a faint handlight, using my body to shield it from Haine's likely route up the mountainside. Goddess… Gareth was bleeding everywhere. Besides his head, three… four… separate gashes on his arms, another in his shoulder, another in his thigh. A bone-deep slice across one palm. Nothing mortal as long as I could get him warm and stanch the blood.

His eyes dragged open, cloudy and confused. He coughed and shuddered.

"That's better," I said, smiling in relief. "Keep at it." I reached under his arms to drag him farther up the bank. That's when I noticed the dark fluid welling from his side. Goddess mother…

I clamped his pale face in my hands until he focused on me. "Have you medicines at the house?" I said. "Teravine? Yarrow? Shavegrass?" Sorcery alone could not heal such a wound or put blood back where it belonged, but my enchantments could enhance the effects of medicines.

"Tin box. In the chest," he croaked, squeezing his eyelids shut as if the words were blows.

I shook his chin hard enough to jar them open again. "Have I your permission to open the chest?"

The weak smile brought his face back to life. "Whatever you need of me."

I tied one of my abandoned leggings around his lacerated hand. Then I balled up the tail of his shirt in his other fist, positioned it over the hole in his side, and tied the second legging about his middle to hold it in place.

"Press as hard as you can bear. I'll be back before you can blink." I tucked Dai's damp wool blanket around him and let my light die.

As I stood to go, his bandaged hand touched my ankle. "We did well? He believed?"

"Marvelously well. He saw your greatest illusion unmasked. Now stay awake until I get back."

My bare feet pounded the path. Gareth's side and his dreadful hand were going to need sewing. Once I slowed the bleeding, I'd need to get him up to the hut. But in no wise could I do this all myself. Wrapping enchantment about my will, I sent out the call to Aelis. An hour, and help would be here. So why did my mind refuse to declare victory?

Stretching my senses into the house, then past its walls and up the notched mountainside, I listened, felt, tasted—nothing. The spy was gone, and Gareth would live if I stopped dawdling. Surely it was only Gareth's wounds that left this soured taste upon the air, and the memory of Haine's heated touch that roiled my belly.

I hurried into the shed and grabbed my rucksack and the second of Dai's blankets. The enchantments of her weaving might bring Gareth some healing benefit. Inside the house I lit the lantern and grabbed a tin basin, a flask of clean water drawn from the cistern, and the winter cloak Haine had left crumpled in the corner. Then I dropped to my knees in front of the wooden chest.

Ah, Verdonne's child … It was a man's soul I found carefully tucked away amid folded shirts, winter leggings, and worn linen towels. At least twenty well-used books filled the corners, their titles an incredible range—histories, fables, works on astronomy, on tools, on the sea and the weather, on the uses of herbs and the structure of the human body. Stacked with them were journals—the thin booklets of bound parchment we used in reading school—pages and pages written in a careful hand. And in a box lay the answer to the mystery of the wood slivers—a wooden sailing ship the size of my two fists, lovingly detailed, lacking only rigging to complement its three masts. I felt as if Haine's knife had pierced my own breast.

I grabbed the linen and a painted tin box containing a few vials and packets, bundling them with the basin, flask, and blanket. Making sure not to damage his work as I closed the chest, I snatched up the lantern and ran.

Gareth had vomited while I was gone, and now sat up, his head resting on his knees. His skin was cold and damp, the beat in his wrist racing. I threw the second blanket over him and set the lamp close.

He groaned and buried his eyes in his unbound arm. "Head," he whispered. "Goddess mother… like hot irons."

"He must have whacked you with the flat of his blade." Ever grateful for the goddess's gift of magic, I set to boiling water for steeping his dried yarrow.

"Why?" he mumbled. "Why didn't he finish me?"

"He likely—"

My hands fell slack. Of a sudden, the night pressed in upon our little circle of light, all my uneasiness taking shape in that simple question. The bead anklet lay gleaming faintly in the trampled sedge. I snatched it up and used it to focus on the Derzhi, scouring the vale for some sign of him.

I neither smelled nor heard nor saw nor tasted him. Had this been two days previous, I would have declared our venture finished. But somehow, with my spirit so full of Gareth, I sensed the weight of malevolence directed his way. Every instinct, every pin's weight of logic in my bones, told me that our enemy approached. Haine. Creeping our way ever so quietly to see what we would do with Gareth's wounds. Healing enchantments wrought fundamental changes in the body—always sorcery, never illusion.

The knife in my breast twisted. The spy must be given to believe that Bran could not heal himself, and that Teleri either could or would not heal him. A devoted Teleri would not abandon Bran before he was dead, and it was too late to pretend indifference. Yet I dared not be here—dared not risk Haine questioning me—for all the reasons Gareth had guessed. No matter that I would give my hands or eyes to protect this man, we had to play one more scene.

"You damnable, cursed, stubborn pig!" I screamed and flung the basin across the stream.

Gareth raised his head, wincing at the movement, the noise, and the light. "What?"

"Did you not think I'd notice that Iola gave you this?" I waved the painted tin box, scattering the precious vials and packets across the mud and water. "Bran Prickhead. Bran Cheatheart. Bran Devil. Chasing Ogul's daughter while I slave at your hearth."

I had vowed to use my knowledge and talents to save lives, to save minds and souls, which were life's essence. To lose the subject of your scenario meant failure to a Searcher, and in fear of failure—and the pain it must bring—I had ever sought an impossible perfection in my work, withholding my heart while pursuing my own flaws. But Gareth had been right. Some tests were fated to fail. Some victims could not be saved. You had to embrace them and care for them and keep trying.

"Ah," he said, softly, glancing here and there into the night. Then he forced his voice into a loud, quavering croak. "Teleri, I can explain!" Brows raised in good humor, his dark eyes flicked from my face to his bandaged hand, where he wagged his thumb. Offering. Yielding. "You're bound to me, girl!"

Tears coursing down my cheeks, I claimed his hand, dribbling weak fire from his fingers, and at the same time kicked him flat. Then I rolled him back into the water, turned my back, and walked away.


From my hidden vantage across the valley, I could not decipher all that ensued. I saw the dark, slight shape return to the stream. I heard splashing. I heard Gareth's screams. I heard Haine rage in frustration. For every moment of an interminable hour, I prayed. But I did not stop it. Just because I knew a man's name and that he built ships and read books and tested his faith in steaming pools could not change what had to happen. I stayed and I watched and I cared.

When the dark shape vanished into the north beyond the range of all my senses, I ran. And when I found the stubborn farmer still breathing, I sat in the water and held him as it washed us clean, wrapping him in all I could of warmth and care. "Bravely done, son of Ezzaria. Bravely done."


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Chapter Eight
   



"Ready for final testing… Joelle, are you sure?" Aelis's hammer rested against the fence in rare idleness.

"Absolutely sure. Our venture did not conclude perfectly. Haine might yet carry some suspicion about Ezzarian women. But he believed he saw the best magic our men can do—illusion—unmasked. Gareth's ordeal proved an Ezzarian man could not save himself with sorcery. And thanks to Gareth and Queen Tarya and you, when the test came, I did not withhold."

My mentor nodded.

Now for the more difficult part of this meeting. "Mistress, I know I've spent years of your time, years of everyone's indulgence. But once my testing's done… instead of moving into the field right away, I'd like to spend some time with Dai. She sees things others don't, and she protects far more than village boundaries. I feel the need to sit at the loom and learn from her. I can't explain…"

Aelis sagged against the fence. "Well, Verdonne's child be praised. You've pulled your head out of the bog at last."

I had no idea what she meant, until later that afternoon when I announced my plan to Kenehyr. "… and I know this means delaying your own field work or starting over with a new partner."

He grinned, leaned his mouth next my ear, and whispered. "Don't let on I've told you, but I've been working with Kirsa for six months now, since Aelis told me you had the makings of a Weaver, if you ever got your head out of your… bog… and saw it. Sorry as I am to lose the fairest of partners, Ezzaria—and the world—will be the richer."

He must have seen my bewilderment.

"You do know they reserve our strongest to defend Ezzaria?" He chortled and crowed and then kissed me straight on the lips. "Now go to him. You've been twitching since you heard they'd brought him here."

Still trying to take in what all this meant, I hurried through the birch grove, bright with new green and dappled sunlight. The house of healing was quiet and spare—a few tidy beds rowed on an expanse of polished wood, great windows that flooded the room with light. He was the only patient on this day. The attendant smiled and left us alone.

I watched him sleep for a while, and a fevered warmth raced through me when his first groggy glimpse of my face suffused his own with pleasure.

"Never thought you'd come here, mistress."

"They say you'll be abed another fortnight, so I didn't want you to feel dull." I slipped Kenehyr's book of sailing ships under his pillows, then scowled in mock severity. "Besides, we've a few things to settle."

The cloud that shadowed his poor bruised face forbade me prolong my teasing.

"First, to remedy a dreadful rudeness." I laid my clenched fist on my heart. "Lys net Joelle."

Embarrassed, pleased, he stumbled through the response. "I am honored… by your trust… Joelle."

"And second, you've left me with a pestiferous curiosity. You never told me what Dai saw."

He burst out laughing, only to gasp and clutch a pillow fiercely to his bandaged middle. I raised a hand to summon the attendant, but he shook his head. "No, please, I oughtn't laugh anyway. It's just… Dai is so wise, but in this instance, her sight is surely flawed. A fellow who ends up twice drowned and his gut holed like a sieve is not what she thinks."

I arranged his pillows to support him better. "Let me judge. As I'm to be Dai's student, I need to weigh her insights."

"You're to work with Dai?" An inordinately cheery smile replaced his grimace. "Then, who am I to argue?"

He dropped his gaze as he turned his mind to his story. "When I turned ten and walked out of reading school, knowing I could never return, I was near inconsolable. Dai was waiting for me. She told me she had seen something in her weaving, and that I must hold to it through every day." He glanced up, wincing as if sure I would laugh. "She said my life would be the key to the war's end."

A flutter of moth wings brushed my skin. I did not laugh. "That is a wonder. What else did she say?"

"Nothing." His brow drew tight. "So often I've wished she'd not spoken. I study the books she gives me. I keep strong and live with what honor I may, so as to be ready. But what vegetable farmer ever ended a war? So twice a year…"

"… you jump into an encarda, believing the pool might wake some dormant melydda inside you."

A trace of scarlet livened his pale cheeks, and he smiled ruefully. "Many years have gone since I believed that. No, I've just felt that if I kept at it, as with my running and my reading, then the goddess would have ample opportunity to tell me whatever she wished—even if it was only that I would ever be tenyddar and must spend my days with turnips."

I smoothed his rough hand that had found its way to mine. "Sometimes the Lady's course is very hard."

He raised our joined fingers to my lips. "Ah, mistress, speak no ill of holy Verdonne. I'm thinking she did reveal a path on that night in the Wardens' Grove. I'd like to follow, if you're willing. As to where it might take us… what comes, comes."

What we'd done these past days would not end the rai-kirah war. At most it would stave off the dangers of the world for a few more years. But Gareth's faith had changed whatever part I was to play in the war—and in all my days of living. Perhaps a vegetable farmer could not end a thousand-year war by himself, but who said he had to attempt it alone?

I bent close then and made it clear that I was more than willing to explore the goddess's path. When we caught our breath, we talked long of books and ships and magic, and I sat with him as he drifted back to sleep, leaving my hand in his, lest he dream himself alone. Then I hied off to the Weaver's to begin my work anew.