FIVE
WILD MAGIC
Seated at the table was the bearded man Daine had seen that morning. “I just got here,” he said in a deep, gentle voice. “I took the liberty of ordering refreshments from the cooks, by the way.’
Close up, he was a sight to wring any female heart. His close-cropped hair and beard were blue black, his eyes sapphire blue, his teeth white against the blackness of his beard. Daine gulped. She felt ten feet tall and clumsy. Her face was probably breaking out in pimples as she looked at him. He got to his feet and smiled down at her. “You must be Daine. You may not remember me from before—you were busy.”
Looking up into those eyes, the girl felt her heart melt like butter in the sun. “No, sir, I remember. You threw blue lightning.”
He held a chair out for her. “Sit down, please.” She obeyed and was glad when he sat again. Having him behind her was wonderful but terrifying. What if she had forgotten to scrub the back of her neck?
A cook entered with a tray loaded with cakes, fruit, and a pitcher of juice. Placing it on the table, he bowed to the man. “Your Majesty.’
“Exactly what we need,” the stranger told him, “My thanks.’ The cook bowed again and made his escape.
Daine gaped at her host. “You’re the king!” she cried. Belatedly remembering she ought to bow, or kneel, or something, she jumped to her feet.
Jonathan—King Jonathan—grinned. “It’s all right. Please sit. Otherwise good manners say I have to get up again, and I’ tired.”
She sat, trembling. This is a very strange country, she told herself, not for the first time. Back home, you couldn’t pay a noble to speak to a commoner!
The king selected a cake and bit into it. “Wonderful,” he said with his mouth full. “The Riders eat better than I do.”
“It just seems as if we do. We don’t have six footmen asking if you’re sure you don’t want a taster,” Onua teased. She poured juice for all of them.
King Jonathan snorted. “Don’t remind me.” He looked at Daine. “Seers can tell, sometimes, if the immortals will attack a place. You, however, are the first I know of to sense them nearby. Are there seers or fortune-tellers in your family?” He smiled at her, just at her.
Shed tell him anything for another smile. “Ma was a hedgewitch, Your Honor. She had the Gift for birthing, healing. Protection spells—not as good as Onua’s. She was best with plants. She never could see any future things, though.’
“Did she have the Gift from her family?” he asked.
She nodded, fiddling with the lacing of her shirt. “All the girls in her family was healers but me.” She swallowed a throat-lump, remembering how disappointed Ma had been that Daine couldn’t follow in her steps.
“What of your father?” His voice was kind, but the question hurt. The king saw it in her face and said gently, “I’m sorry, but I must know. If your father was a peddler or a vagabond, perhaps he sired other children with your ability. We can use more people like you.”
“Why? Sir—Your Majesty, that is?”
“Winged horses were seen in Saraine this winter.” The grimness in his eyes caught and held her. “Griffins nest in the cliffs of the Copper Isles. There are spidrens throughout the hill country this spring.”
Winged horses? Griffins? “Where do they come from, do you know?”
“The Divine Realms—the home of the gods. Four hundred years ago, powerful mages locked the immortals into them. Only the greatest gods have been able to leave—until now.”
An arm crossed Daine’s vision to pick up a cake, Numair took an empty seat, and the king went on. “Our neighbors—Galla, Scanra, Tusaine—report unicorns, giant birds, even winged people as small as wrens. We are plagued by monsters, ogres, and trolls.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “It’s interesting that a weak mage like Sinthya could send rare creatures like Stormwings after you. Where did he get such power? As far as we know, he had only one secret worth protecting: he was dealing with Carthak.”
“Carthak’s another country?” Daine asked, blushing for her ignorance.
“Across the Inland Sea,” Numair said. “They’re desperate. Their crops failed two years in a row—not enough rain, and tornadoes that ripped up the fields. There were food riots in the capital last winter. The emperor needs good farmland, and we’re the closest target.”
“Carthak has the university, its school for mages, and its library—the same library used by the mages who sealed the Divine Realms.” The king looked at Numair. “I think the Carthaki mages found those spells.”
Numair was rolling a cake into a ball. “And spells to compel immortals to obey humans. How else could Sinthya get Stormwings to chase me?”
“We have nothing like those spells,” Jonathan told Daine. “Sinthya’s papers vanished. Were searching our own libraries, but it might take months. In the meantime, the warnings foretellers give us aren’t enough. If we could send those with your ability to sense immortals to our villages and towns, we could better protect our people. If we can find your father—”
It had come back to that. She shook her head, humiliated.
“Daine?” It was Onua, who had given her trust and work that she loved. She owed this woman, at least, an answer.
She looked down. “I don’t know who he is. It’s in my name. Sarrasri—Sarra’s daughter. Only bastards are named for their mothers.” She spat out the hated word, but its taste stayed on her tongue.
“Why don’t you know?”
She didn’t look up to see who had asked. “Ma never told me. She never told anybody. She kept saying ‘someday, someday.’”
“Do you know anything?” Onua rested a hand on Daine’s shoulder.
She fought to get herself under control. “It was Beltane. They light fires, and couples jump over the embers when they burn down.” So they’ll have babies in the coming year, she thought, but she wasn’t going to say that.
“We do the same thing,” the king remarked.
Daine looked at him, startled “You never jumped over no embers,” she accused before she knew what she was saying.
The others laughed. She ducked her head to hide her blush.
“The ruler takes part in all great feasts, to show respect for the gods,” Jonathan told her gravely. His eyes danced. “Thayet and I do it every year.”
“I didn’t mean—I wasn’t trying to be—disrespectful—”
He patted her knee. “I didn’t think you were. Go on.”
“Ma wasn’t sweet on anybody, so she went walking in the wood alone. She met someone. I used to think it was a man that was already married, but when I asked last year, she said no. And I don’t look like anyone from Snowsdale. Most of ’em are blond and blue eyed, being’s we’re so near Scanra and all.”
The king sat back with a sigh. “Well, it was an idea,” he said to no one in particular.
“I’ll help if I can,” she said, knowing that she had disappointed them. “I just don’t know what I could do. And the warnings aren’t that, exactly. I know something wrong’s coming, but I knew that much about the rabid bear.”
“A rabid bear?” the king asked in horror and awe. “Mithros—that’s not something I’d ever want to see!”
Daine smiled. “I didn’t want to see him, either, sir. I just got to.”
“Did you get the identical sensation from the bear as you got with the Stormwings or the spidrens?” asked Numair.
“Oh, no. It was different. Bad, but in a brown kind of way.’
“In a what?” Onua asked.
“Well, animals—I think of ‘em in colors, sometimes” She tapped her head. “To me, bears feel brown, only this one had red and black lights. Very sick, he was. I get the monsters as colors too, but they’re gold with black and green lights in them. I never felt any real creature as gold.”
“I told you she has magic,” the mage told the king triumphantly.
“No!” she retorted, jumping to her feet. “Didn’t Ma test me and test me? Don’t you think I’d’ve grabbed at magic, if I had it, just to please Ma?”
“Easy, little one.” The king put a hand on her arm, guiding her back into her chair. “Numair believes—and I agree—you have magic. You may have no Gift, but there are other magics, ‘wild magics.’ The Bazhir tribes use one kind to unite their people. The Doi read the future with another. There are creatures we call ‘elementáis,’ whose very nature is composed of wild magic.”
Daine frowned. “Miri told me the sea people know about it. Some of them use it to talk to fish and dolphins.”
“Exactly. From what your friends say”—the king nodded to Onua and Numair—“your wild magic gives you a bond with animals. Your mother might not have recognized it. Only a few people know it even exists.’
Daine frowned. “Can’t you see it on someone, like them with the Gift can see it on other folk that have it?”
“I can,” Numair said. “And you do.” Daine stared at him.
Jonathan said, “He’s perhaps the only living expert on wild magic.’
Daine scowled at Numair. “You never mentioned this on the road.”
He smiled. “If you were trying to get a deer to come to you, would you make any sudden noises?” Her scowl deepened. “That’s different. I’m no deer.”
Jonathan took Daine’s hands. “Will you let Numair help you study wild magic? It may help expand your awareness of the immortals, for one thing.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to tell creatures to obey you?” Onua added. “All the way here you coaxed the ponies to mind you. You’re dominant—you proved that on the stallion, the day you and I met. Why prove it to each pony in the herd, if you could do it just once and never again?”
“Daine.” Something in Numair’s voice made her look at him, and only him. At the expression in his dark eyes, she even forgot that the king still held her hands. “I can teach you to heal.”
“Animals?” It came out as a squeak. “You mean—like Ma did humans? But how do you know if I can?”
“Because I saw you do it once.” That wasn’t Numair; it was Onua. “At the marsh, after the fight. You were holding a bird, and you fainted, remember?” Daine nodded. “I was looking right at an owl with its head cut almost off. The wound healed; he flew away. So did a lot of birds that shouldn’t have been able to fly. I think it happened because their need just pulled the healing out of you.” The K’mir nodded to Numair. “He can teach you to heal of your own will, without burning yourself up so you faint.”
All her life she had splinted, sewed, bandaged. Most of her patients had mended, but some had not. She felt the badger’s claw heavy on her chest. To fix her friends, like he’d fixed himself after giving the claw to her…
She looked at the king. “I still think it sounds crazy, but I’ll try.”
He squeezed her hands. “You will?” he asked quietly.
I’m in love, she thought, and nodded. “Oh, wait, I hired on with Onua for the summer.”
“That isn’t a problem,” said Numair. “The trainees will be going to Pirate’s Swoop. I live near there. Why don’t I just go along?” When the king frowned, he added, “Hag’s bones, Jon, there’s nothing I can do here right now that you don’t have a hundred other mages doing already. If I work with Daine, maybe I can devise a spell to warn people that immortals are coming.”
The king made a face. “You just say that so I’ll let you go.”
“You have too many mages eating their heads off around here as is,” Onua pointed out. “It’s not as if you can’t contact him if something comes up.”
“Whose side are you on?” the king asked. The woman grinned. He sighed and looked at Daine once more. Squeezing her hands, he let them go. “Thank you.” He got up. “Onua, Numair, keep me posted?” They nodded. “I’d best go then. I have to dance with the Carthaki ambassador’s wife.”
Numair grinned at him. “Wear iron shoes, Your Majesty.”
Daine said, “Excuse me—Your Majesty?”
The king looked back at her. “Yes, my dear?”
No one had ever called her that. She blushed, and managed to say, “I’m sorry I can’t help more. With the sensing, and my da, and all.”
Jonathan of Conté smiled at her. “If I’ve learned anything as a king, it’s been I never know when someone will be able to help me. I have a feeling you’ll be most welcome in this realm, Veralidaine Sarrasri.”
And he was gone, which was really just as well, because it was suddenly hard for her to breathe.
Onua patted her back. “He has this effect on most of us, if it helps.”
Numair rose, nibbling on one last cake. “No time like the present to begin. Daine, will you get Cloud, please? We’ll meet you by the stables.”
Dazed, she went out and called her mare. With the nights so fine, Cloud had asked to stay with the free ponies instead of being stabled with the trainees’ mounts. She came racing over at Daine’s summons and leaped the fence rather than wait for the girl to open the gate.
Overwhelmed by the day’s events, Daine buried her face in Cloud’s mane: it smelled of night air, ferns, and horse. “Things are so weird here,” she whispered. “You ever hear of ‘wild magic’? They say I have it.”
You have something, and you know it. Who cares what name it has? Or did you really think the wild creatures visit because they like humans?
“But magic?”
Did you call me to worry about the names of things? If you did, I’m going back. There’s a salt lick over by that big rock I want to taste.
“Daine?” Numair and Onua were coming. “Good, you have her,” Numair said. “If you can persuade her to come with me, I’d like to check your range with an animal you know well.”
“What do you mean, my ‘range’?” she asked.
“I’ve observed that when you say you ‘hear’ an animal, you actually mean hearing in your mind—not with your ears. I want to see how far I can walk with Cloud before you stop hearing her”
“But how will you know?” the girl asked reasonably. “Should I have her tell you when we lose touch or something?”
“No!” Onua said, and laughed. “Daine, knowing Cloud, she’d do it by kicking him. Numair will do a speech spell with me. You and I will sit here, and you tell me what you hear from Cloud, and when you stop hearing her.”
“If Cloud will do it,” amended Numair.
“Of course she will.” Won’t you? the girl asked Cloud silently. The mare switched her tail, thinking it over. Daine didn’t rush her. Sometimes, if she was too eager, Cloud would refuse just to keep her in her place.
Very well. The pony trotted off down the fence, away from the palace.
“I think you’re to follow her,” Daine told the mage with a grin
Numair sighed and trotted off after the pony. “Only one of us can lead here, and that has to be me,” he called.
Onua and Daine hoisted themselves to the top rail of the fence, and Onua held her palm out between them. In it glowed a ball of ruby-colored fire. “Numair will take a moment to set up his end of the spell.”
“Onua—if the kings on the bad side of these Carthaks, why does he have to dance with the ambassadors wife?”
“Politics,” Onua said. “We don’t have to mess with that, thanks be to Father Storm and Mother Rain. It means you sit down to dinner with enemies and ask how their children are.”
“Aren’t we at war, then?”
“Nah,” the woman replied. “We aren’t at war till both sides sign a paper saying it’s a war. The Carthaki emperor can raid us and send monsters against us, but there’s no war. Yet”
“That’s crazy,” Daine said, and Onua nodded. They waited, enjoying the night. Uphill the palace glittered, its lights blurring the stars overhead. Downhill lay the forest, dark, moist, and quiet. The free ponies had come to graze near the two women, their soft movements a comforting sound.
In the distance the girl heard the callings of a pack of wolves. Did I hear them on the road? she wondered. Not so close, that’s for certain. I wonder if they miss me, Brokefang and Rattail and the others.
Listen to these wolves. Is it hunt-song? No, pack-song. They’re just singing to be doing it, not to celebrate the kill.
If I could just run…dive into the forest. Go to them, be hunt-sister and one with the pack—
“Daine? Daine!” Onua was shaking her with one hand·
“Onua? What’s wrong?” Numair’s voice came from the fire in the K’mir’s other hand.
Great Goddess—I almost forgot who I am! “I’m fine,” she told Onua, forcing herself to sound calm. “Can you hear them?”
“The wolves? Of course,” Onua replied.
The pack had sensed her—their voices were approaching through the trees. The ponies snorted anxiously, huddling near the women and the fence. “I’ll be right back,” Daine said, and jumped into the meadow. “Calm down and stay put,” she ordered the herd. She walked until she was halfway between trees and fence, knowing the ponies would not come closer to the wolves.
“Go away!” she yelled. “There are hunters here, and dogs! Go!” There was that other way to speak to them, but she didn’t dare try it. Not after she had almost forgotten, just listening to them!
Their calling stopped: they’d heard a human and run. It was against their own better judgment to approach human dwellings in the first place.
Daine returned to Onua, glad that the night hid the sparkle of tears on her cheeks. “I’m too tired for this—I’m sorry. It hit me all of a sudden.”
Onua spoke into the red fire on her hand, then closed her fingers on it. The globe vanished. “Go to bed, then. Numair will let Cloud back into the meadow. I’ll get someone to come watch the herds, in case the wolves return.”
Daine watched her go. “I’m sorry,” she whispered though only the ponies could hear. They crowded around, needing reassurance after hearing wolves. She couldn’t leave them scared. It took her several minutes to pat and soothe them into calmness once more. It wasn’t their fault the wolves thought they’d heard a wolf-sister in the night.
She was climbing the fence out of the meadow when Numair and Cloud arrived. Cloud came right up to her, sniffing Daine all over for wolf smell.
“Are you all right?” the man asked, panting as he rested a hand on Daine’s shoulder. “I should have remembered you might be tired after this morning. I get carried away sometimes. I forget that not everyone has my academic enthusiasm.”
She stared at him, patting Cloud. He was a sorcerer. He’d cut his eyeteeth on the impossible. He’d understand if anyone did, she thought, and opened her mouth to tell him.
“’Evenin’, sir, miss.” A burly man climbed over the fence, holding a crossbow out of harm’s way. Two big dogs wriggled through the rails and came over, tails wagging, to sniff Daine. “Mistress Onua tells me wolves are near the forest rim tonight. Must be a new pack. Most of ’em know t’ stay clear of the palace. Me’n my lads’ll keep watch for a bit, to discourage ’em, like.”
Daine scratched the ears of both “lads,” dogs almost as big as Tahoi. Run, pack-brothers! she called to the wolves, under her breath, hoping they’d somehow hear her. Run and keep running—there are hunters here!
She and Numair said good night to the man, and Numair walked her to her new room in the barracks. She let herself in, waving to him as he climbed the hill to the palace. The chance to tell him the truth had gone.
Just as well, she told herself as she changed into her nightshirt. What he don’t know won’t hurt him—or me.
As she was crawling under the covers, three palace cats entered through the partly open door and climbed in with her. Daine smiled as they made themselves comfortable. It would have been nice, talking with Miri after lights-out, but this was better. Miri didn’t know how to purr.
She didn’t realize her new room was beneath the boys’ dorm until thunder the next morning crashed through the ceiling overhead: “Trainees, turn out!” She sat up, tumbling cats right and left and scaring an owl out the door. That thunder had been Sarge’s voice. It must have had an equally powerful effect on the male trainees. They were dressed and stumbling blindly on their way to the stable by the time Daine had pulled on her breeches. Neither Onua nor Buri, who slept in the girls’ dorm, could roar, but whatever they did seemed just as effective. The female trainees were just as quick down the stairs.
Once the stabled ponies were groomed and fed, the humans performed the same chores for themselves. “You’ll work afoot,” Onua told Daine as they ate. “Keep an eye on what’s low, hooves to hocks, but if you see a trainee misusing an animal or a problem with the tack, don’t be afraid to sing out. The rest of us will be mounted, so you’ll see things we miss.” She clapped Daine on the shoulder with a grin as she got up. “We’ll have some fun.”
Going to the meadow while everyone else saddled up, Daine was startled to find the queen already there, patting a savage-looking yellow dun mare. Soon the trainees, Onua, and Buri arrived on ponies, and Sarge joined them on a horse, a strongly built liver chestnut gelding. The four mounted officers put the trainees through a morning’s hard work, trying the ponies at different gaits—walk, trot, canter, gallop—with and without saddles. After lunch, everyone switched to his spare mount and went through it all over again.
Daine soon learned a polite “excuse me” went unheard. She also learned she wasn’t shy if she thought a pony had picked up a stone or had strained a muscle. By morning’s end she had developed a bellow—not as shattering as Sarge’s, perhaps, but loud enough for her purposes.
Numair found her after lunch “How’s it going?” he asked, leaning on the meadow fence next to her.
When she opened her mouth, a croak emerged She cleared her throat and tried again. “Fine. It’s all fine.”
“I was wondering—about that range-finding experiment”—he squinted up at the sky—“you’re too busy to try it now, I suppose.”
Cloud trotted over to them. Tell the stork-man I will go with him.
Numair looked oddly at Daine as the girl laughed at the pony’s name for him. When she caught her breath, she said, “No, don’t ask me. You really don’t want to know!” To the pony she said, “But there’s no hearing spell for me to talk to him with. I can’t ask Onua, not now. I shouldn’t even really try it myself, not if I’m to earn my pay with these people.”
The pony stamped impatiently. You act as if you’re the only clever one. I will tell the stork-man when I can no longer hear you.
Daine relayed the pony’s offer to Numair.
“You mean she’ll undertake the test situation without dealing through you? Can she do that?” he asked, fascinated.
“She says she can. I know she always finds me if one of us wanders off.”
“All right, then” He bowed to the pony. “Lead on!” As they walked off, Daine heard Numair say, “And no biting.”
The trainees left the stable with their spare ponies, followed by the queen and the other officers. Soon Daine was busy: she forgot about Cloud and Numair. The afternoon followed the morning’s pattern, with one difference: the officers were still fresh, but the pace had begun to tell on the trainees.
“Come on, Evin!” yelled the queen, circling the Player at a gallop. “Raiders won’t give you a break for lunch, laddy!”
“I don’t want to see air between butt and saddle, trainee!” Sarge roared at Miri’s heels. “You ride that gelding like he’s a separate creature! He ain’t! He’s part of you, so connect the parts again!”
Onua swooped down on a brunette, Selda, and scooped the bow out of her hand. Circling back, she told the girl, “An enemy might do that with an ax. Every time you have to concentrate on your mount you give a foe a chance.”
“Your stirrup’s too long!” Daine yelled at one of the men. “Stop and fix it!” He didn’t seem to hear. Within seconds Buri, slung low on her pony’s side, came up unwatched to grab the stirrup in question. The trainee’s pony wheeled away from the K’mir; her rider, Tarrus, slipped off and down.
Buri righted herself on her pony’s back and looked at Tarrus. “Your stirrup was too long, trainee. Fix it!” She rode off calmly.
“I’m sorry,” Daine said as the young man struggled out of the mud. She gave him a hand. “I tried to warn you—”
He grinned at her, his small, pointed nose quivering like a rabbits. “I figured I’d fix it the next break. Next time I’ll do it right off.” He looked at his behind and the backs of his legs, where he sported a coat of mud. “It’s an ill wind that blows no good. With a mudpack like this, my skin will be lily soft.” He fixed the stirrup and mounted up again.
Daine was tired when it came time to stable the trainees’ mounts at day’s end, but she knew she couldn’t be as tired as the others. They moved stiffly as they groomed and fed their ponies, without joking or arguing as the officers and Daine corrected them. Only when each pony had been tended and the trainees had retreated to the baths did the queen say farewell and trudge up the long slope to the palace. She had groomed her mounts while the trainees groomed theirs, still finishing with enough time to criticize their work.
“She does this every day?” Daine asked Buri as she followed the Rider officers to the barracks.
The stocky K’mir nodded. “In the fall and winter she can’t be out in the field. That’s the social season. She has to travel around being queen. She works with the trainees to make up for when she can’t be with the groups”
“But there’s times she’ll leave a ball or dinner to go to a Rider group in trouble,” Onua remarked. “Remember the pink tissue dress?”
Buri rolled her eyes. “Three hundred gold nobles that thing cost, just for cloth and sewing. Hat’s not counting pearls in the collar and cuffs—gray ones, almost perfectly matched in size.”
Daine whistled in awe. She couldn’t imagine a garment that cost so much. She couldn’t even imagine what such a dress would look like. “What happened?”
“Two years ago,” Buri said, “the Fifth Rider Group chased outlaws into a swamp and got bogged down. Thayet was visiting some earl nearby.” Daine winced. “And the dress?”
The two K’mir shook their heads as they led the way into the baths. “What happened to the group and the outlaws?” Daine asked as they undressed.
“The Rider group lost two. The outlaws didn’t make it, but Thayet and the Riders saved the village girls they’d kidnapped.” Buri plunged into the heated pool, and the girl trainees yelped as a wave almost swamped them. Onua and Daine entered more decorously. Buri surfaced and gasped, “Thayet always said it was worth losing the dress.”
“And the king wasn’t mad?” Daine wanted to know.
Onua replied, “He just told her next time, try to change clothes.”
It wasn’t until supper was almost over and the mage had come to the mess hall door that Daine remembered he’d gone off to experiment with Cloud. “Ready for lessons?” he asked, sitting next to her.
“How was it this afternoon?” she asked.
“We determined that your range, with Cloud at least, is a mile and a half. It may be more or less than that with animals who haven’t been exposed to you for a prolonged period of time.”
“You make her sound like a disease,” Evin commented with a laugh. “Are we going to need healers or something?”
Numair smiled. “No. But Daine, have you found that animals you spend a lot of time with are, well, smarter than others? Smarter in a human sense?”
She played with her spoon. A friend of Ma’s had said as much, when she had nursed one of his falcons. Some of the local herdsmen had liked her to train their dogs for that reason. “Is it bad?”
“No, how could it be? It doesn’t make your animals less able to survive in the wild; quite the opposite.” Numair took her food tray and stood. “Come on. We’re going for a walk.” He took her tray to the servants who cleaned up.
Daine rose with a sigh, tired muscles creaking. Miri winked. “If you don’t want lessons, I’ll take them,” the girl offered. “He’s cute!”
Daine followed her teacher, shaking her head. Numair was well enough, as men went, but he wasn’t the king.
The mage steered her out of the barracks and through the horse meadow gate. In silence they crossed the wide swath of green, letting their eyes get accustomed to the night. They had to stop every few feet while Daine greeted the grazing ponies and horses. Each time she patted them and excused herself, saying she would visit with them another time.
The horses stayed back as the man and the girl went into the forest along a trail. There was just enough light to follow it without stumbling into trees. Here, away from the torches of the palace, the dark-clad mage turned into a large shadow, a slightly ominous one.
The trail opened onto a grassy clearing. The animals who normally would have been drinking from the large pond in its center had fled on hearing them, but Daine could feel their eyes. Overhead a bat squeaked.
“Have a seat.” Numair motioned to a rock near the pond. She obeyed a little nervously. He came up behind her to rest his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to use my Gift, but through you. You must understand that. If I did this with the king or Alanna, they wouldn’t see what you will.”
“If you say so.” The hair on the back of her neck was standing up, and she was quivering. It wasn’t fear, exactly, because she wasn’t afraid of him. On the other hand, the dark was filled with strange currents that flowed into and out of the presence at her back.
He put his fingers on her temples. “Now, do just as we do when we’re meditating,” the soft voice over her head commanded. “Slow, deep breath—inhale.” He inhaled with her. “Hold it. Let it go, carefully. Again, in…and…out…” Eyes closed, she breathed at his command.
Her mind filled with vines of sparkling light wrapped in darkness—or was it the other way around? When the space behind her eyes was full, the magic spilled out of her. She felt it ripple through the clearing, soaking grass and trees. It dripped into the pond, following the water into the ground.
“Open your eyes!” His whisper seemed to come from inside her head.
She obeyed. The clearing, so dark before, was veined with shimmering fibers. All that was green by day grew from emerald threads now. Awed, she reached down and plucked a blade of grass. The needle of green fire that formed its spine flared, and went dark.
She gasped, remorseful. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Hush,” Numair said quietly. “Look at the earth.”
A pale bronze mist lay on the piles of dead matter under the trees. When she let the blade of grass fall, its spine turned the same dim bronze as it touched the ground. “It returns to the Goddess,” she whispered.
The stone beneath her and the other rocks she could see were veined with dark silver. An owl on a nearby branch gleamed with a tracery of copper fire. A vole grubbed beneath a bush near the spring, a point of copper light.
Daine looked at her hands. They were laced through with strands of reddish light, almost as if her veins had the power to glow. Intertwined with the red were strands of copper fire. She looked at the owl, at the vole, and at her hands—all the same shade of copper.
Half twisting, she managed to see part of Numair. He too was laced with red fire. In addition a white, pearly glow flickered over his skin like a veil. She recognized the light Tahoi had shown her once.
“Sit straight,” the mage ordered her quietly. “I have to remain in contact with you to keep the spell going.”
She obeyed. “I wish I could see this by myself.”
“You can learn. The vision is in your mind, like the power to heal. Just remember what your magic feels like, and practice reaching for it.”
“Reaching for it how?”
Something between them shifted, and she knew she looked into herself. At her center, deep inside, welled a spring of copper fire.
She called, and a slender thread rose from it to her. She caught it, opened her eyes and threw it out to the owl.
“You don’t need the hand motion,” Numair said. “In magic, the thought is the deed.”
“If you want it bad enough,” she added. “That’s what Ma said.”
“She was right.”
The owl glided down through the air. She held out her arm, and it perched, looking her over with solemn eyes. He was a barn owl a little more than a foot tall, with the white ghost-face of his kind and a powerful grip.
You called to me, night-sister?
His voice was cold and precise. It was also clearer than the voice of any animal she’d ever spoken to, except Cloud’s.
“Only to greet you, silent one,” she replied with respect.
“You don’t need to say it aloud,” Numair commented.
Daine shook her head. “Can we do this a little bit at a time?” she asked, not looking away from the owl. “Please?”
She felt him smile. “Whatever you say.”
The owl ruffled his feathers in disapproval. It is not for the nestling to decide the proper time for lessons, he said, and flew off.
“I heard that,” Numair remarked. “He’s right. And it’s time to stop.” The ending of the spell felt to Daine as if she were a waterskin and the water was trickling out. She opened her eyes.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
She didn’t reply. She felt a tickling in her mind—a feeling similar to the one caused by Stormwings, only faint and far more pleasant—and looked around for its source. It came from the pond. A tiny figure not much bigger than the owl, glittering with scales, was levering itself out of the water.
Numair saw what she was looking at. He spoke a word Daine couldn’t understand, and the clearing filled with bright light. The little female creature in the pond whistled shrilly and vanished into the water again.
“Her hair was blue.” Daine said it calmly. She had used up her excitement for the day. “She was all over scales and her hair was blue.”
“Undine,” Numair whispered. His dark face glowed with awe. “I think we just saw an undine—a water sprite.” He walked over to the pond and knelt beside it. “I’m sorry, little one. Won’t you come up again?”
“Maybe if you doused the light,” Daine recommended. She sat back down on her rock. Her knees felt a little weak.
“Oh—of course.” He said something, and the clearing was dark once more.
They waited until Daine was half-asleep, but the undine did not return. Finally Numair gave up his vigil and roused the girl. “I’ll have to tell the king,” he said as she stretched. “Or maybe not. She won’t harm anyone. They’re said to be incredibly shy of humans.”
“I noticed,” she said dryly.
He produced a globe of light so they could see the trail: they both were tired and needed the help. “To see a water sprite,” he murmured, steering her down the path. “We live in marvelous times, my little magelet.”
“What’s a magelet?” she asked, and yawned.
“Nothing, really. Well, ‘little mage.’ Isn’t that what you are?”
As they left the clearing, Daine saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Another tiny person, a green female, watched them go from the branch of a tall oak. She decided not to mention tree sprites to Numair just now. She wasn’t sure that she liked being called “magelet.”
The next day passed in the same manner—driving the trainees morning and afternoon—with one difference. As if her time in the undine’s clearing had opened a door in her mind, Daine saw glimpses of copper fire in every furred and feathered creature to come near her. It was very distracting until she got used to it. Most alarming were the flashes at the corner of her eye, the ones that made her turn to look.
“Why do you keep twitching?” the brunette Selda wanted to know. “You look like you have a palsy.”
Daine glared at Selda but held her tongue. The older girl was like some people back home, never happy unless she had something to complain about. Still, the comment was enough to make her guard herself so she wouldn’t jump at the hint of copper light. She came to like seeing it. Her only regret was that copper was the only magical glitter she saw—no blue or green threads, no bronze mists and pearly shimmers.
She had a fresh shock that day: when she saw Onua with the ponies, the same copper color threaded the K’mir’s head and hands.
“Why so surprised?” Numair asked that night, when Daine told him. They were on their way to the horse meadow once more. “She’s—what’s the K’miri term?—horse-hearted Did you think Thayet would commission just anyone to obtain mounts? The Riders depend on horses more than any other military company. Onua ensures they have the best.”
“Does she know?” Daine asked.
“Of course.” He boosted himself up to sit on the top rail of the fence. “She doesn’t have it enough that she needed training in it, like you. There are a few people here with it: a man and his grandson in the palace mews, two sisters at the kennels, some of the hostlers. Stefan, the chief hostler, has a lot of it. He breeds great-horses—the extra-large mounts many knights need to ride in combat. I trained him.”
Shaking her head, Daine sat on the rail beside him, looking at the animals grazing in the meadow. “And I only heard of all this two days ago.”
He tweaked her nose. “Being all of thirteen, of course you should be omniscient,” he teased. “Now, magelet—to work.” He pointed to a pony grazing by itself nearly three hundred yards away. “Call to it.”
She opened her mouth, and he clapped his hand over it. “Without sound.”
She glared at him. “Then how’m I supposed to call her?” she asked, his palm tickling her moving lips.
“With your mind. One thing I’ve noticed is that you tend to be confused about how you speak to and hear animals. We’re going to break you of the habit of assigning concrete manifestation to magical phenomena.”
“What?”
“Believing you actually hear or speak with your body when all of it is done with your mind. Call that pony.”
“‘That pony’ is a mare. Why can’t I just talk to her?”
He sighed. “A time may come when being heard will get you killed. Also, your mind needs discipline. If your thinking is more direct, what you can do with your thoughts will happen more directly. Learn to focus your mind: focus creates strength. Meditation helps you reach the same end.
“We’re doing spring cleaning up here.” He tapped her forehead with a long finger. “Once you put everything into its proper place—once you organize your mind—you’ll be able to find what you want quickly. Now call her, please.”
Daine clenched her teeth and thought, as loudly as she could, Come here, please! The mare continued to graze peacefully.
“Think of the magic,” Numair said calmly. “Try again.”
An hour or so later they gave it up and went inside. Daine’s head ached fiercely, and the pony had not come closer by so much as a step.
“We’ll keep practicing,” Numair said calmly.
“Lucky me,” she muttered, following him into her room. A large book lay on her writing table. “What’s this?” She opened it to a colored page and gasped in awe: it was a precise drawing of the bones of a wild pig.
“It’s a book on mammalian anatomy,” he said, sitting down on her bed.
“A book on what?”
He sighed. “I keep forgetting you’re not a scholar—sorry. Anatomy is what’s inside a body: muscles, veins, organs, and so on. ‘Mammalian’ refers to mammals. You know what they are; you just don’t know the fancy term. Warm-blooded animals with hair-covered bodies that suckle their young are mammals.”
“That’s most of my friends.” She said it quietly, turning page after page of drawings with fingers she had scrubbed on her shirt.
“Exactly. If you’re to learn healing, you need to understand how animals are put together.”
“I already know some.” Here was a bear’s skeleton; here the veins and organs of a cat. Every drawing was done with an eye to the finest detail.
“This book will help you to organize what you know and add to your present knowledge.”
She made a face. “Why? My friends don’t organize their minds. Everything they think about is all tumbled together, willy-nilly.”
“For them that’s enough,” he said patiently. “As animals they remember the past only vaguely. They are unable to visualize a future, apart from the change of seasons. They have no comprehension of mortality—of their deaths. They don’t learn from books or teachers, so they have no need to structure their minds in order to find what they learn. You, however, are human and different. If you do not find a way to organize your mind, at worst you might go mad. At best, you’ll be stupid.”
She made a face—she didn’t like the sound of either fate. With a sigh she looked at the page before her. The artist had drawn a bat, its frame spread so she saw how bones fitted together. “You’d best take this when you go. My friends come in every night. I wouldn’t want it soiled.”
“The book is spelled against dirt and tearing. It’s yours. I want you to use it, not admire it.”
It took a moment for her to realize what he’d said. “Mine!” she gasped. “No! It’s—it’s too valuable. The likes of me don’t keep such things!” Her fingers shook, she wanted it so much, but peasant girls didn’t own books.
He caught her hand, his eyes earnest. “Daine, listen to me.” He pulled her down to sit beside him. “You’re a student mage. You need books like this to do your work. I am your master. It’s my duty—in this case it’s my pleasure—to give you whatever books and scrolls I believe you require to learn. Unless you don’t want to learn?”
“Odd’s bobs, of course I do!”
“Good. Then get your book. We’ll start at page one.”
They ended some time later, when Onua knocked and stuck her head in. “We’re about to meditate. Come on, if you’re coming.”
“Do we have to?” Daine asked, closing the wonderful book.
“Spring cleaning,” he replied, getting to his feet.
She followed him to the Rider mess. She’d been surprised to learn that meditation was required of all trainees, not just Gifted ones. They worked at it every night before they went to bed, along with all their officers, Daine, and Numair, “whether we need it or not,” Evin commented once, in a whisper.
That day set the pattern for the next three weeks. It took Daine six days to learn how to deliberately call the nearest pony without using words. Numair then had her summon a pony farther away but still within sight, until she could do that. Next she had to call an animal from inside the barracks or stables, where she couldn’t see it: often that was Tahoi or one of the cats that slept in her room. She worked hard. Each task took less time to master.
Anatomy lessons she swallowed in gulps. Every spare moment she had went into studying her beloved book and memorizing its contents.
Meditation was the hardest. She did her best, wanting to control the copper fire that was her kind of wild magic, but clearing her mind was hard. Stray thoughts popped into her head; something would itch; a muscle would cramp, and she would have to start over. Often she fell asleep. The best thing about meditating with the trainees was the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one who was easily distracted or who dozed off.
Slowly they all grew used to their work. She saw it in the trainees before noticing it in herself, as their bodies hardened and the hard routine became habit. After two weeks she was taken off watching them on foot and put to teaching archery, something even the officers had to work to beat her at. It wasn’t until she saw that few trainees were falling asleep in meditation that she realized she no longer fell asleep, either. With practice it got easier to learn to think of nothing at all. The deep breaths emptied her thoughts and quieted her body rhythms. Her mind learned to drift. She began to feel as she had in the marsh, when she had listened for the hawk.
Is that what it is? she thought one night, lying awake in bed. She grasped the badger’s claw. “I wish you’d come and tell me,” she whispered, earning a curious look from the pine marten who had arranged herself and her kits on the girl’s blanket-covered legs.
If the badger heard, he did not answer the summons. “Typical,” Daine told the martens, and went to sleep.