Fire in the Mist Read online

  "I don't hate them. I just don't need them. Men are a sign of failure."

  "Failure?"

  "If I fail to win my place as a mage in one of the Universities, or in the Greater Council of Ariss, I'll be expected to have at least one child. I suppose I'll have to consort with a man then. Full mages are above those base needs, though—and I have no intention of being a failure."

  "Do you not want a bondmate and children? And have you never had a brother, or boys who were friends?"

  "I had a brother. His name was Abenyar. He lived at home with my mother until he showed signs of magical ability. When his talents manifested, he was transferred to the saje side of the city and barred from returning. I haven't seen him since he was eight.... He ceased to be my brother when he left to become a saje." Yaji's voice held a faint tinge of regret. "And no, I don't want children."

  Her voice became bitter. "All my life, I heard from my mother how dreary it was raising babies, being kept from the life she could have had—according to her, should have had. Every time a townswoman came to her door, wanting a spell or an amulet, I watched my mother die a little. She let everyone know that she could have been here, designing new plants or new animals, working on better systems of research—developing cures for illness, or wards against growing old, or even finding the spell to counteract death—but instead, there she was, working birth control spells. Successful mages maintain their concentration—how could a mage ever work and still find the time to bond to a man or mother a brood of squalling brats?"

  "Why did she leave the University, if she loved it so much?"

  "She was seduced by some ignorant merchant boy, and she got pregnant. The University refused to continue her training. The Mottemage who was here then threw her out."

  "So you do not like men because your mother does not like men. But have you thought that your brother is on the other side of the city? That if the mages destroy the city, they will be killing your brother, too?"

  "Abenyar isn't my brother anymore," Yaji said, but her voice cracked when she said it.

  Faia felt a moment of triumph. Yaji did care about her brother. Now all that was necessary was to make Yaji admit it. "You and your brother must not have gotten along," she said, trying very hard to sound solicitous. "That is very sad. A brother is a wonderful thing. My brothers and I had such fun—we used to ride the plow horses and chase the sheep and the goats, and we sat in the barn in a cave we hollowed out of the hay and told ghost stories. Denje used to steal Mama's handpies and bring them out to us. We sat in the dark, smelling of hay and animals, and ate until our faces and hands were sticky with pie juice, and told of the One-Eyed Woman's Lover, and Piebur's Spirit, and the Horse Who Comes for the Dying." Remembering her brothers and her childhood in Bright, Faia's eyes filled with tears.

  "Ben and I took Mother's airbox once," Yaji whispered. "Right after we both discovered we could work magic. We flew it around the courtyard and over the back wall into the main city. We got lost and ended up with the airbox stuck on the top of a building and Mother spent the whole day looking for us. It was the most fun I ever had.

  "The sajes came and took Ben away just a few days after that," she added. "I cried for months. I never saw him again."

  "You cannot let them kill him," Faia said.

  "What if he's one of the killers?"

  "Do you think he is?"

  "No."

  "I do not, either. And I do not believe it is right to kill good people who have done nothing wrong. If the mages do what they want, they will kill many innocent people."

  Yaji sighed. "Yes—you may be right. But what can we do?"

  "I have an idea. I will go to the saje side of the city, and I will talk to some of the sajes. I can tell when someone lies—not magically, but by signs my mother taught me to look for—I will know after I have talked to these sajes if they are involved."

  "That's stupid. If they're involved, they'll just kill you."

  "If they are not involved, they deserve a chance."

  "I don't think dying is a good way to test your theory."

  Faia grinned. "Neither do I. But if I am wrong, I can fight. I will not die easily, I think."

  Yaji laughed, startled. "There is that," she agreed. "But I want to come with you."

  "Could you steal and ride a wingmount?"

  Yaji wrinkled up her nose and shuddered. "I hate horses. Horses that fly were creatures created by women with evil minds."

  "Ah. Then I think perhaps you should stay here."

  "What if whatever it was comes to get me again? I can't fight it off by myself."

  Faia sat up and rested her chin on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. "Yes, you are right.... I know! We shall set a trap. Any magical thing that attempts to enter the room will look for the weak part of the shield. So we will make a weak part in the shield which will funnel into a mirror drain—"

  "A mirror drain?"

  "Two little mirrors that face each other. A pentacle is drawn on one, and reflected into the other—the reflections go on forever, gettting smaller and smaller. We hill-folk use them to trap spirits."

  "Do they work?"

  "Usually only once per bogan—so if we get anything, do not touch the trap. I will clean it out when I get back. You won't be able to get the nasty back in if it gets out."

  "Not a problem. I wouldn't dream of touching your spirit trap."

  "Then get two mirrors and let us get started. It is getting late."

  "You aren't going tonight."

  "I'm going as soon as you get those mirrors and tell me how to find the place I want."

  "You're crazy."

  "No... but someone is. I just want to know who."

  Chapter 6: WINGMOUNTS AND OTHER ODD PASSIONS

  THE driving wind bit into her cheeks, and the cold, miserable fog soaked through Faia's erda as if it were not there. She struggled to keep the wingmount under control, wishing with all her heart that she had paid more attention to the commands Medwind Song had used to direct her beast that first day.

  "You can't get lost." Yaji's voice echoed in her memory. "The city is built in a circle. Faulea University is the saje-training center. That's the place you want to find. It's across the circle from here—if it weren't so damned foggy, I could even show it to you. Even if you miss it, Faia, all you have to do is fly back around the circle until you see the towers here.

  "Fly along a rim road, not one of the spoke roads. It will take you longer, but you won't fly over the city's hub that way, where the administrative mages and sajes have their posts—the border is guarded heaviest there, so if you avoid it, you'll have less chance of being spotted."

  Faia had been unsure. "What do I look for? How do I recognize their university?"

  That had been the smallest worry, apparently. "It's built like Daane—all of whitestone, and it will have a Greathall, rows of dorms, big blocks of classrooms, and the towers for the instructors and the senior magicians. Just watch for the towers... but stay away from them. That's where the university's powerful sajes will be."

  Faia had nodded. It had all seemed so sensible and so simple.

  Stealing—no, "borrowing"—the wingmount, had been ridiculously easy. They were stabled in quarters separate from the horses, but still across the throughway on the other half of the campus. Traffic was light because of the fog, and there were no guards at the wingmount stables. The Council Regents policed the lake and the dorm doors and patrolled the grounds. Faia had simply slipped down knotted sheets out of her window, thanked the Lady for the fog, and ran like a dervish across the throughway, then crept to the stable.

  It seemed odd. The horses are guarded, she noted. Why not the wingmounts?

  The beast she stole had been reluctant to leave its nice, dry, warm stable, and getting it off the ground in the heavy fog had been frightening.

  She recalled her first and only other experience with wingmounts in vivid detail. Mostly, she recalled landing. Suddenly, Faia tried hard n
ot to think about landing.

  But her question about the lack of guards on the wingmount stable was answered. No one but idiots and the desperate ride a wingmount in full daylight. Who would expect someone to try flying one of the beastly things at night?

  She discovered she had more pressing problems, anyway. With the dull red gleam of the Tide Mother making pink gargoyles of the obstacles in the fog, and the dim flickers of light that appeared briefly through the city's windows and then disappeared again into the shrouded darkness, Faia wondered how she could ever hope to find the saje university—or even her way back. Anything that might have been a landmark was occluded by the pervasive mist.

  She wished she could see clearly—and realized suddenly that she might actually be able to do that. She recalled thinking that clouds had felt very much like fog on her first flight. She had flown above the clouds. Perhaps she could fly above the fog.

  She urged the wingmount upward. He seemed happy to comply. They rose steadily through the murk—

  —And suddenly they were above it. The final wisps and tatters fell away, and an unsuspected world lay below them. It was a silent, storm-tossed ocean of pale pink, its eerie, twisting waves reflected against the starry black of the sky—an ocean that stretched away in all directions except for the thick black line of the cliffs that ran far to the east.

  The hub of Ariss, situated on the peak of the mound on which the city was built, sat slightly above the fog-line, a tiny island full of danger. All else was buried—except, Faia noted with glee, for a dotting of towers that peeked their crenellated heads out of the mist.

  The towers all look alike to me. But not all of those towers belong to the saje university. Some, Yaji said, are for other kinds of training schools. So which of those hold sajes?

  Faia remembered the two sajes she'd seen standing on the bridge in Willowlake. She brought their images back to mind—two gaudily dressed men with long hair and long, gold-decorated beards. She damped down her energy as much as she could and called a tiny faeriefire, then gave it their image, and instructed it to take her to them.

  The faeriefire shot off directly toward the right front tower of the saje square, and she urged the wingmount after it.

  No sooner was the faeriefire darting toward its destination than she had second thoughts about her solution. The faeriefire would go, not just to the university the sajes occupied, but to at least one of those sajes. It would find them wherever they were and hover right in front of them until she arrived, or worse, until they followed it back to her—and they would be powerful instructors—with unknown tempers.

  Faeriefires were willful things—some of her folk had said they were elder spirits; some, that they were disguised woodsprites; and some, that they were the very eyes of the Lady. They would help one who beseeched them properly—and they had never failed Faia. But she still feared they could abandon her if she annoyed them. Did she dare call the fire back?

  Did she dare let it continue on its own?

  No, she decided. She didn't.

  She concentrated. :Someone at the same place, but a student. Someone I can trust. And the person that I need to speak to.: The faeriefire sped on, course unchanged. :Please,: she begged.

  The faeriefire slowed. The wingmount overtook it, and then the green beacon led them down into the fog. Faia could see forms of trees, the bulky masses of buildings, then what seemed to be a greensward—a clearing—and then the ground came up, her mount backwinged wildly, and Faia lost her seat and fell, hitting the ground solidly.

  For a long moment the pain was everywhere, and points of brilliant white light whirled around the insides of her eyes. Then the pain pulled itself in and settled companionably in her stomach and ribs. She gasped for air like a beached fish.

  The wingmount snuffled at her gently.

  "I am dead," she groaned.

  The faeriefire darted around her head.

  "Leave me alone."

  The faeriefire began swooping back and forth between her and one pair of closed windows in the nearest building, a few yards away, from which flickering light emanated. The wingmount, concerned, gave her a nudge with his nose.

  "A lot of good it does for you to worry now," she whispered, and forced herself to sit up. "That was a terrible landing."

  She stood, groaned again, then walked slowly to the window, leading the wingmount. As tall as she was, she wasn't tall enough to see inside. The faeriefire had come to rest on the outside sill, however, so she knew (or hoped) she was in the right place.

  There was nothing nearby she could move to stand on. There were no shrubs or close trees to climb. There was merely the building, the window, and the grass.

  "Stand still, you," she told the wingmount. She steadied herself against the building and climbed onto the beast's back. Carefully, she stood on the tiny saddle.

  There! Clear view!

  A thin, redheaded young man in voluminous blue velvet robes stood facing the far left corner of the room. She could make out the jutting, hairless line of his jaw, and the patterning of freckles across the backs of his hands and the curve of his cheek.

  He raised a black metal staff high over his head with his left hand, and with his right, reached into one of an assortment of small jars that sat on a stand at his side, and pulled out some powder. This he sprinkled into the brazier at his feet. Orange smoke puffed into the room. He repeated the process, this time gesturing with his staff at one of a dozen chalk scrawls that lined the walls. The smoke turned bright yellow.

  She could hear him chanting, but the words were unintelligible. Another wave, another toss, and the smoke turned green. He began to sway from side to side, and the volume of his chanting increased. He picked up a stack of silver disks and tossed them into the air, where they hung motionless. He tossed the staff into the air and it came to rest mid-air with the coins. He waved his arms in a manner that began to remind Faia of an irate farmer chasing cows out of his corn, shouted another string of gibberish, and dumped a handful of bright blue powder into the brazier.

  The smoke turned blue. The coins and the staff began to circle through the air. Then, ominously, the brazier sputtered and the airborne objects crashed to the floor. Thick black clouds poured from the little brass pot, and the unlucky saje, wheezing and coughing, grabbed a ceremonial broom from the wall and began beating at the source of the smoke.

  Faia saw him bump his work table. Several jars smashed to the floor, their powdered contents scattered everywhere—including into the blaze in the brazier.

  There was a loud WHUMP.

  The wingmount shied. The faeriefire flickered and vanished.

  Faia tumbled to the ground and landed like a rock.

  She lay in silent agony, unable to pull in enough air to breathe, much less make noise.

  The windows above Faia flew open and acrid smoke poured into the pink-fogged night. The young saje leaned out the window and gagged and coughed.

  Faia, temporarily helpless, stared up at him.

  He noted first the winged horse, then the fallen girl on the ground beneath him. His eyes grew round.

  "My gods—" he wheezed between fits of coughing. "What—are you?"

  The Revered and Most Noble Mottemage, Frelle Rakell Ingasdotte, holder of the Lifetitle of Geste-Motte, Chair of the Mage-Ariss Committee for Life-Experiment, Head of Daane University, and fourth in line of succession to lead Mage-Ariss, couldn't sleep worth a damn.

  Flynn had bounced on her face earlier, teasing her out of bed by landing on her and then darting for the tower window, until she finally walked over and looked out. The view had been spectacular—her tower surrounded by an ocean of pink fog waves; the massive architecture of the central hub of Ariss lurching like a behemoth from the storm-tossed sea silhouetted against the lurid red-purple of the planet Tide Mother; one of her prize wingmounts soaring off towards Saje-Ariss with Daane's most promising new student aboard....

  It had taken second and third looks before she could believe that
last.

  She mixed a healthy dollop of cream with the fifth of the steins of deep-burgundy Zheltariss, sloshed the contents around until the drink was marbled-burgundy with wide white stripes, then took a long, slow pull of the concoction.

  "There is always a reason, Flynn," she intoned. "This shit doesn't happen but for a reason." She took another drink. "I just want to know the gods' bedamned reason!"

  Flynn leapt onto the windowsill next to where she stood and looked longingly at the small pitcher of cream.

  "Here," she snarled, and pushed the pitcher to him. "Drink it. You would anyway when I wasn't looking." She turned her face back to the window.

  "I can't believe Faia is a traitor—but that was her on Makketh, flying straight for Saje-Ariss. Even if she hadn't conjured a faeriefire, I'd have recognized her power signature." Rakell buried her head in her hands, and sighed deeply. "None of this makes sense. The killings started just before she got here... but after she destroyed Bright. She claims the killer, whatever is was, attacked her and Yaji, but miraculously they survived when no others have. I felt the shielding, but not the attack. Now she sneaks out in the night to the other side of the city. Why? She knows enough of our plans to destroy us if she is a traitor. How can she not be a traitor?

  "Flynn, what kind of a monster is she?"

  Flynn, head buried to the shoulders in the cream-pot, made no reply.

  "You're just a cat anyway, hey, Flynn? You wouldn't know the good guys from the bad guys if they wore signs. Just as long as you get fed, you like 'em."

  Flynn lifted his cream-coated face from the emptied pitcher and blinked at her owlishly. With great care, he began his bath.

  The Mottemage managed a slight twist of a smile, then returned her attention to the window, scanning the sky for her prodigal student.

  The redheaded saje shed his blue velvet robe with a quick shrug, and tossed a little rope ladder over the window. An instant later, he'd climbed down to kneel on the wet grass next to Faia, where he studied her with an expression of mixed curiosity and concern.

  "Are you hurt?" he finally asked.