Fire in the Mist Read online

  Yaji reddened. "You know what I mean."

  "Did I tell her we frolicked naked around his room and had wild, wonderful sex for most of the night? Of course not. After you told me that mages are not allowed to bed men or they get kicked out of training? I am not crazy."

  She stopped and stared into space. "Or am I? Oh, gods, we have to get to the market. No—I cannot go. You have to go to the market for me."

  "What for?"

  "Alsinthe."

  "Alsinthe, Faia?"

  "It is an herb. Brewed into a tea and drunk within a day or two after mating, it prevents the accidental birth of a child."

  The city-girl whistled softly. "Oh, Faia—what are you going to do?"

  "Probably nothing. It was really the wrong time of the month, I think—but my mother told me never to take chances."

  "This time, I'm afraid you'll have to." Yaji shook her head with regret.

  "Why so?"

  "You can't buy alsinthe in Ariss. It's called 'baby-not' here, and it's illegal. It's illegal to prevent the conception or the bearing of a child. Tampering with the gods' decrees, it's called."

  "The gods have blessed little to do with that." Faia sighed. "That makes as much sense and anything else in this accursed city, though. I suppose I should have guessed."

  "Faia, I'm sorry. What will you do?"

  "What can I do? I shall hope for the best."

  Kirgen sat in the outer office of Als Havburre, the Fourth Sub-Dean of Saje-Studies, Political, and kicked restlessly at a loose tile in the floor. He watched the shadows creep across the ranks of gray and yellow squares, one block at a time. He noticed the spider busily crafting a web in the dusty corner window. He sighed, loudly and intentionally, for the eighth time in a row, and watched the shave-headed clerk in the corner stiffen and flinch. He got up and paced back and forth near the clerk's desk, squeaking his boot sole each time he came up behind him, and was finally rewarded when the clerk's pen nib exploded from the pressure and splattered ink all over the clerk, his desk and his paper.

  "Look, you," the clerk snarled, "I've already told you—he doesn't meet with students on Tidedaes or Terradaes. I'll make an appointment for you for next Watterdae—"

  "And I already told you, this is an emergency."

  The clerk looked bored. "So you say. Tell me what the emergency is, and I'll tell him, and he'll decide whether it needs to be dealt with today or not."

  "I'll tell him. Not you."

  The clerk smiled around gritted teeth. "If you don't tell me, you won't see him."

  "If you don't let me in to see him, I'll keep you company for the rest of the day."

  They stared at each other across the desk, the clerk red-faced and scowling, Kirgen smiling with insane cheerfulness.

  "Excrement," the clerk muttered bitterly. "I don't get paid enough to put up with this." He opened the door a crack, leaned in and yelled, "Sir, student to see you. I can't get rid of him, and he won't let me get my work done until he talks with you personally."

  Kirgen heard a spectacular burst of swearing and some rapid-fire mumbling. Then the clerk said, "I know, sir. I tried to tell him, but he won't listen."

  The clerk's face returned from behind the door wearing an evil smile. With a mocking bow, he said, "Go right in. I'm sure the Sub-Dean will be delighted to see you."

  After Kirgen finished his story, the Sub-Dean stared at him in astonishment.

  "You're Kirgen Marsonne? Fifth level? Specialty path in Fire Elementals, minor in Chemistry?

  "Yes, sir."

  "Amazing that you've made it this far. Insanity usually shows up sooner." The Sub-Dean walked over to a little blackwood calendar that sat on one dusty shelf beside his desk and ticked the inner wheel through three cycles. "Let's see... the Brotherhoods don't get going again for another two Majors," he muttered to himself, "so you can't be pledging one of those." He turned back to Kirgen and his eyes narrowed. "Or are you already a member?"

  "Sir?"

  "Member of a Brotherhood."

  "Yes, sir." Kirgen drew the sigil of the Rat and Trap in the air, hoping the man might be a brother.

  The Sub-Dean looked at him with distaste. "I never approved of the Brotherhoods. Elitist, I thought. And silly. So this is some Brotherhood prank?"

  "No, sir. This is real, sir."

  "Girl flies on her horse to your bedroom window in the middle of the night and tells you all of Mage-Ariss is about to blast all of Saje-Ariss to eternity and beyond for some supposed murder plot we're suspected of being involved in. That's ripe. Have any idea how utterly ludicrous you sound?"

  Kirgen squirmed on the hard wooden stool and tried to look righteously indignant. "You can see the hoofprints outside my window if you like, sir."

  Sub-Dean Havburre snorted. "I just bet I can. Look—we trade with Mage-Ariss. If there were any gory murders over there, I would have heard of them. And as for the return of mythical beasties from the hells, I certainly don't think news like that would hide around waiting for you to bring it to me. I'll tell you what, though, young saje Marsonne. I'll run your story through channels, and if I get so much as a squeak that indicates there might be truth to it, I won't have you suspended for a term for barging in here disrupting my workday. Satisfied?"

  The Sub-Dean sat down at his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. Kirgen felt that he had been excused.

  He couldn't just leave. "Is there enough time to go through channels?" he asked. "What about the attack, sir? We're all in danger."

  "From mages? Please, Marsonne, haven't you learned anything? Sajes do things with their magic—mages just make things. They make pretty little flying horses and trees with three kinds of fruit and heavier-bearing wheat. We command the elementals and raise storms and travel from place to place in the blink of an eye. You're worried they will attack us?"

  "Yes, sir." Kirgen looked the Sub-Dean straight in the eye. "Yes, sir. I'm worried."

  Frelle Delis stood in front of her Advanced Botanicals class and announced, "Today, instead of your regular studies, you will be participating in a war drill. The frelles have written out the ritual that we will be following to charge our weapons in the coming battles. As students of magic and future members of the mage community, charging the weapons will be your responsibility, since you do not have enough experience to use them."

  The frelle scurried from student to student, handing out slips of drypress.

  "This is the ritual. We'll be using blackstone as a practice focus. It is stable and fairly inert—if you make a mistake, it won't destroy everyone in the room. However, it could still damage us all, so please pay attention to your technique. We will work with more dangerous materials as the battle date draws nearer—in actual battle, you will be focusing your energy on the mages themselves. By that time, you will have no margin for error—so please, ladies, remember that your lives and ours will eventually rest on what you do here."

  The work tables had been pushed back. Now Faia knew why. She had a sick feeling in her stomach as she watched the frelle place the blackstone focus in the center of the cleared space. They cannot ask me to do this, she thought, and knew that they not only could ask her to do it—but would.

  Faia took the drypress leaflet, folded it without looking at it, and slipped it into her pouch. Then she found a seat well away from the center of the room, and took it.

  Frelle Delis stopped and smiled brightly. "I want you to participate, too, Faia—not just watch. If you can't read the words, I'll be happy to help you."

  "It is not the reading, Frelle Delis. I think I could do that now. It is the drill."

  The frelle stared at Faia and the friendly expression in her eyes vanished. "What about the drill?"

  "After what happened in Bright, I swore I would never use the Lady's Gifts again—but I came here because the mages convinced me I would not hurt people if I knew how to use the Gifts, and I might hurt them if I did not." Faia's hands curled into fists which she pressed with all her strength into
her belly. The sick feeling would not leave. "The mages said they would teach me how not to kill. Now you want to teach me to kill." Faia stared at the ground, dejected. Tears blurred her eyes and down the back of her throat. "I cannot."

  Delis paled. "No one is asking you to destroy guiltless villagers. We are not at war against innocent people. This is war against sajes—people who tortured and slaughtered our people. My students." Her voice cracked, and she paused to catch her breath. Faia saw the instructor's anguish. Delis spoke again, softly but with intensity. "The Magerie needs every one of us to add our strength against that evil—evil so terrible that the Fendles left the gates of the hells to help us fight. We need you. In your heart, even you must understand this. If we die in battle and you have not helped us, our deaths will be on your hands."

  Faia wiped the tears from her cheeks and shook her head. She looked into Delis' eyes. "Your deaths will be on your own hands, Frelle Delis. You chose the path of war. If you are so afraid of dying in battle, perhaps it is because your heart tells you what you are doing is wrong."

  Frelle Delis pressed her lips together so tightly they turned white. She turned her back to Faia without another word, and directed the rest of her students into the center of the classroom.

  In a shaky voice, Delis told her students, "Form a circle about the focus, and begin by reading the chant."

  She stood to one side of the circle and watched.

  The students droned:

  "Hail, Kallee, darknight mother—

  We embrace your hungry glory

  And your sundering voice.

  Our cause is just;

  Lend us your sword."

  "Again," Delis said. "With more feeling." She demonstrated, and her voice rang with emotion, echoing among the high vaulted ceilings of the stone room.

  The student chanted again—and again. With each repetition, their faces changed. They became submerged in their instructor's anger—in their own fury at the death of their classmates—until the room crackled with energy. Delis was satisfied. "Better. Now you must learn the "Song of Mehtrys." This song will bring the power to the focus.

  She sang:

  "Atczhilloth, atczhilloth,

  Yetzhirah, breyiah."

  The students imitated the melody. When they went through it a few times on their own, Delis added the descant. The eerie harmonies and dissonances echoed off the high ceilings of the stone chamber and set Faia's teeth on edge. Delis split the group into two. The girls with very high voices she taught the second part. They practiced a bit longer.

  When Delis finally had them channel the energy they raised into the blackstone, the stone burned with an ugly red blaze.

  This is real magic, Faia realized. There is power here—as strong and as real as the power I draw from the earth and the sky—but it does not come from earth or sky. This is magic they feed with their own anger and fear—and hatred. This magic could not be used for good. It could never be turned from its intended purpose. This is the evil they most fear—and it is born by their own hands. She shivered, enveloped by the seething wizardry that her classmates had drawn down. The atmosphere in the room recalled to Faia a day when she stood on the side of the mountain, watching the sky blacken and the thunderclouds build—a day when she knew she had no shelter, and the sky was about to open up and devour her.

  After the class, Yaji came over to where Faia sat. The aura of compressed rage built by the ritual still clung to the city-girl—Yaji stared at Faia blearily for a moment, as if she were a stranger. The two walked down the long corridors to their next class; they were almost there before Yaji finally shook off the last lingering effects of magic.

  "Are you sick?" Faia asked.

  "I'm fine now. That spell just took a lot out of me."

  Faia nodded. "That was not good magic."

  "Would you just leave it alone?!" Yaji snapped. "Gods on hot rocks, Faia—the war is wrong, the instructor is wrong, the magic is wrong! You can't always be right, Faia. Nobody is always right. You just can't get along with anyone, can you?"

  Her roommate shrugged. "This war is wrong, and the instructor is wrong, and the magic is wrong. And I am right."

  "That will be small comfort if the Council executes you for treason after this is all over."

  "I would rather be right and die than be wrong and kill."

  Faia's roommate sighed. "I admire your courage," Yaji said softly. "I think you're an idiot—but I truly do admire your courage."

  After nonce, Yaji and Faia hurried back to their dorm. Once their door was locked and their shields were erected, Yaji sprawled on her bed with a sigh of relief. "I used to love to walk across campus at night," she told her roommate. "Now I feel as if I'm going to be sucked back into that horror that grabbed us every time I walk out of the room. And after dark is worst of all."

  "I know. My nightmares will not go away. I dream of that voice dragging me into a pool of lightless fire—and of blazing eyes staring at me—and every time I wake, I expect to find it was not a dream at all." Faia sat cross-legged on her own bed and brushed her hair absently, staring at the shuttered and locked window. "I wish I could just go home. I wish I could just go anywhere. I am so scared. If I could get this bracelet off, I would run away."

  In the two fivedays after the Council voted to destroy Saje-Ariss, Medwind Song scrambled to find some proof that she was right. The barbarian and the hill girl shared a high opinion of men, and a doubt that sajes were involved in the perfidy and horror of the campus's bizarre murders. Medwind suspected that the murders were tied into the Fendle prophecy instead, and had spent every waking minute in Mage-Ariss' libraries, looking for some substantiation for her theory.

  It had been a long, frustrating search. Medwind Song traced one finger down the index of her last available sourcebook, a little-known illuminated tome titled Magickal Historie of Ariss-Magera, by one Lady Melipsera. It was so old the sheepskin vellum it was written on was yellowed and brittle, in spite of the library's careful preservation, and the hand-calligraphed and hand-illustrated pages were faded and difficult to read. Medwind guessed it had probably been written only fifty to seventy-five years after the original incident with the Wisewoman and her Fendles. It was the only copy that existed, and one of Medwind's other sources on the incident made a brief reference back to it. Medwind held great hopes that at last, she could get to the heart of the ancient mystery.

  She sat in the dry cold of the book storage room in which the massive, gaudy tome was housed, wearing the white leather gloves the librarian provided and being careful to treat the pages with special reverence because the librarian was standing right beside her, watching her with eyes that would have made a starving raptor's look friendly.

  Once she unraveled the archaic spelling, she found an entry on the Fendles. Melipsera had the annoying habit of addressing her readers directly, and she was flowery, but Medwind's eyes immediately picked out details in the Magickal Historie account that hadn't been anywhere else. She read,

  Chapter 18—The Battle of The Ladie Sahedre

  Onosdotte and the Fendelles Againste the Sajes

  and the Forces of Eville

  Ariss was not, in yeare River-Five-Lion-Nine, splitte in twain as it is todae."

  Which would put the split a good twenty-five years later than conventional sources claim. Interesting, if she's right.

  Nor Ariss-Magera nor Ariss-Sajera were begat at that time; the citie was simplie Ariss, and renouwned far and wide for its graces and majestie. But alle was not welle, and thee must remember that I withe mine owne eyes saw what came to passe of these straunge events.

  For there was amonge the number in the Magerie one faire Mage, the Ladie Sahedre Onosdotte, who loved and was loved by alle. She taughte her especial and kindlie magickes and alle listened. But wicked Sajes amonge the scholars did take her magickes and perverte them, and did use them to make greate monstres and terrores, and they did kille babies and eate them in terrible rites, and they did seake to wrest
Ariss from the handes of those who loved the greate citie. And this did wounde the Ladie Sahedre greatlie, and did breake her heart.

  And withe her broken heart did she make magicke, and then did she weep greate tears. From these tears sprange fourthe the sweete Fendelles, faire creatures with sad eyes and greate pure hearts as broken from grief as the heart of their Mistresse.

  "Oh, please," Medwind muttered. "Spare me the maudlin rantings of the ancients. One more 'greate, sweete, pure, faire' word and I'm going to throw up all over this book."

  Which would be redundant, she decided. It reads like good old Melipsera already did.

  But, regardless the questionable origin of the "sweete Fendelles" from the Lady Sahedre's tears, there were Fendles. And somebody, somewhere, had to know what they were for.

  Medwind took a long, slow breath to strengthen her resolve and read on.

  The Ladie Sahedre challenged the eville Sajes to sette bye their eville, and joine with the Mages in the pathes of goodeness. In answer, the Sajes did mehevar upon the children of the Mages of Arisse, pure and innocent, and they did use them in their terrible rites, and they did kille them and gain power therebye, and did make their actions known to the Ladie Sahedre, with muche laughter and mocking.

  Then was battle enjoined of which thee shall never see the like (one hopes, Medwind thought, considering the current situation), wherein the Sajes and their eville beastiarie of monstrous heroes, their wind-devilles and fire-devilles, their smoke-demons and watter-wightes, did align againste the poor, noble Sahedre, daughter of alle that is goode, and her few smalle Fendelles. And the goode Mages of Ariss were appalled by the greateness and the wickedness exceeding of the Saje armie, and by the valiant fighting of the wise Sahedre and her loyal companiounes, and did lende their armes and their heartes to the battle. Then there was muche bloode and dying, and great anguishe.

  Alle this I saw withe mine owne eyes, that I mae tell thee trulie, whilst I was but a childe. And mine own mother did die in the battle against the Sajes, and mine own father did fight on the side of eville, so that now I knowe not whether he lives, nor care I, for I am not his issue, and he is no father of mine.