The Mageborn Traitor--Exiles, Volume 2

by Melanie Rawn

  But Alin and Tamos and Captal Adennos—she heard their voices so rarely. Gorsha she could talk to, and he would answer—most of the time, anyway. As the group of Prentices reached the broad meadow that was the site for the lesson, Cailet reflected that if she ever told anyone that she held lengthy conversations in her head with the long-dead First Sword, she’d be declared a dangerous maniac and locked up for the rest of her days.

  Of course, the gleeful enjoyment she anticipated from today’s little exercise was probably indication enough of a thoroughly twisted mind. She preferred to think of it as a slightly twisted sense of humor.

  At her signal, Josselin gathered the other Prentices around him. Cailet spent a moment concentrating, then strode uphill to the stepping stones she’d placed years ago in the creek in midmeadow. The land sloped downhill with the watercourse at a gentle angle between groves of tremendous pines, its grasses, flowers, and seeds sweet fodder for all manner of creatures. But those Cailet coaxed from the trees today with a soft spell were her special favorites.

  A small herd of pakka—local for pakassos—ambled out into the meadow. Four feet tall at the shoulder, with mottled hides ranging from slate-blue to silver, they looked an unlikely cross between deer and pony. Short, delicate antlers spread over decidedly horsy faces with huge, liquid brown eyes. Though they had no manes to speak of, their tails were extravagant silken plumes that arched impudently before falling all the way to the ground. Their most singular feature was a pair of furry little wing-stumps. Alin had seen other pakassos herds in his travels with Val, and, as a Waster long familiar with the oddities that still turned up unexpectedly in that part of the world, considered them yet another example of the effects of The Waste War. But Lusath Adennos, the Scholar Captal, corrected his impression: the pakkas’ winglets were vestiges of a time when they’d been smaller, and light enough to fly.

  Cailet walked slowly toward the matriarch, a lovely creature who fluttered her wings to show off the silvery glisten of her hide. Pakkas were shy as a rule, but Cailet had been coming to visit this little herd of twenty or so for a very long time on their migrations to and from Tillin Lake. The current empress was the daughter of the one Cailet had first made friends with seventeen years ago. The Captal approached with all due respect and was allowed to scratch the tuft of black forelock between the slender antlers.

  “Going a little gray, your ladyship?” she murmured. “Well, so am I! But not quite ready to give up pride of place to a youngling. Speaking of which, I see your First Daughter is getting to be almost as beautiful as you.”

  The pakka in question, paler than her mother, skipped over to demand attention. After a perfunctory baring of teeth and a switch of long black tail to let the youngling know who Cailet had really come to see, the empress sauntered off as if she’d grown bored. Her daughter butted Cailet’s hip demandingly; Cailet obliged, rubbing her back at each wing-joint. This was some sort of signal to all the little ones, who galloped up, skidded to an untidy halt near Cailet, and made her wish she had a dozen hands to stroke and scratch and pet.

  She could have brought them all to her with magic, of course. She’d done that with the empress’s mother, the first time she’d come exploring. But it was much nicer to call them and wait to see if they wanted to be friendly. They usually did. Only a few times had they shied back from her, always in spring after a hard winter. She guessed that they remembered being hunted up north for food, and regretted mightily that she couldn’t Ward them.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. The Prentices were staring—pakkas were rare in other parts of North Lenfell, and never seen in the South at all. “Come on,” she called softly. “They don’t bite.”

  Josselin held back, said something to Mikel, and walked off into the nearest trees as if to relieve himself. Cailet hid a grin and watched the other four hop the stepping stones. The older pakkas eyed them thoughtfully, but when they made no threatening moves a few of the animals strolled over to be given their due: crooning admiration and wing massages.

  Cailet gave the usual brief lecture on their habits, diet, and social organization, noting the pale kingly buck who immediately singled out Dessa for his regal notice. She’d lived all her life at Mage Hall but never seen a pakka close to, and by her blissful smile as she petted wings and tickled an upraised chin, she was as pleased with the reigning prince as he was with her.

  Cailet droned on, the information not as important as the time her discourse was giving Josselin. She answered a few questions, mentioned Alin’s speculation and Lusath’s certainty about the pakkas’ origins (though she did not give proper attribution, for which she silently begged their pardon), and finally got the Prentices round to talking about the magic of animals.

  “Magic?” Taigan asked, looking up from where she knelt to cuddle a fuzzy-muzzled yearling with iron-gray dapples on his hide and white wings. “It’s just instinct, isn’t it? I mean, the temperature tells them when to migrate, and their own trails through the forest tell them how to get there.”

  “Truly told,” Cailet agreed. “But think about this. About seventy years ago, a professor from Shainkroth College took a small pakka herd from Tillin Lake to Maidil’s Mirror. She made sure the area was exactly like the place they’d left—same forage, same elevation, same predators, same timing of the seasons. The pakkas were happy as St. Kiy with a full winecup until spring—when the professor expected them to migrate south to the plains around Ambraishir. They didn’t. They walked all the way across Sheve Dark to their old grounds at Tillin Lake. Now, is that instinct, or magic?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” Dessa smiled.

  “Captal. . . .”

  She half-turned. “Yes, Jored?”

  “Aren’t instinct and magic sort of the same thing?”

  “When the first magic you ever did popped out of your head, did you have to think about it? My guess is that you didn’t—any more than the pakkas had to think about where to go for the winter. It’s something about the way our brains are put together as Mageborns—just as it’s something about the pakkas’ brains that tells them when and where to migrate.”

  Mikel was frowning as he sat in the grass and snuggled a sleepy pakka on his knees. “But we have to learn how to use magic. They don’t have to learn how to walk from one place to another. They just know.” He listened to himself, and flushed crimson beneath his freckles.

  Cailet merely nodded, secretly glad he was still embarrassed about the incident in the stables. “It could be that ‘use’ is the wrong word. We learn to control the effects our magic produces. Those who cannot learn, or who never get the chance, or whose magic is too forceful to control, are the ones we say have Wild Magic. Point being,” she finished as she saw Josselin leave the forest—from a completely different place than he’d entered by, “that if magic is an instinct with us, we have brains enough and will enough to control it. If we don’t, our magic might just as well be Wild. Now, if you’ve all picked up enough fleas for one morning—”

  “He does not have fleas!” Dessa objected indignantly, stroking her king’s arching neck.

  Cailet grinned. “He may not, but the grass does—this meadow also feeds quite a few other furry beasts who aren’t as meticulous about bathing as the pakkas.”

  “They bathe?” Jored asked, blinking.

  “Very modestly, after dark, and with the empress on alert the whole time. Then they all gather and turn their backs while she has her swim. It’s quite a thing to see by moonlight.” She walked over to give the matriarch her respects as a good guest should. Fondling the tufted black ears, she said to the Prentices, “While we’re here, let’s see if there are any late berries.”

  “So that’s why we brought the sacks,” Mikel said, standing to brush himself off. The dislodged pakka sneezed, gave him a look compounded of disgust and betrayal, and trotted off to his mother.

  “Haven’t you learned the Captal’s Rule yet?” Dessa teased
. “Never do only one thing when you can do two. Or three. Or better yet, six.”

  An hour of berry picking was an unexpected treat. Cailet saw what she’d expected to see: Taigan approaching Jored for some time alone in the woods, and Mikel trying to decide if he dared suggest the same to Dessa. Josselin strolled over, a cloud-dappled pakka with a luxuriant slate-blue tail cantering along behind him. He nodded at Cailet, a gesture that could have been a sign of respect or greeting or apology for his long absence. She knew better. It meant everything was ready.

  Now all she had to do was relax beside the stream and watch.

  Mikel, who hadn’t quite worked up the gumption to get Dessa alone, was the first victim. Josselin grinned when the young man strode purposefully out of the trees, stopped, looked around in befuddlement, then shook his head and returned to the forest. After a few minutes, he repeated the performance, but this time chose another path into the trees.

  “Forgot Something,” Josselin said.

  “Forgot what?” Cailet asked.

  “Whatever,” he said cheerfully.

  “How vicious did you get?” She knelt by the stream to drink from cupped hands.

  “Not very. Nothing like the ones Dessa’s charming cousin Viko set for my group.”

  A loud sneeze issued from the place Taigan and Jored had disappeared. Then another. And another.

  “I may have left a few more of those around than absolutely necessary,” Josselin remarked as a fourth and fifth sneeze, both Taigan’s, sounded. He settled in the middle of the creek on one of the stepping stones, drew up long legs, wrapped his arms around his knees, and gave Cailet an innocent smile.

  Taigan sneezed again. Cailet shook her head. “She seems more susceptible than Jored.”

  “Or she hasn’t figured out yet that all she has to do is move away from that big boulder.” As Dessa came out into the meadow, heading straight for the stream, he said, “That was fast. I’m Thirsty shouldn’t’ve lasted more than ten feet or so.”

  “She’s like her father—once an idea gets into her head, it takes a team of Clydies to haul it out again.” They watched her stoop to drink. Cailet waved brightly, hiding another smile. “What else is in there?”

  “Oh, one or two things I’ve been saving up. But not many berries, truly told. We won’t be having pie tonight.” Josselin eyed her from his perch on a rock. “You set a few of your own, didn’t you, Captal?”

  “Whatever gives you that idea?” Her smile matched his for spurious innocence.

  An inelegant snort emanated from an elegant (if slightly imperfect) nose. “Talk about vicious! I told Mikel I needed to find a convenient tree—and not five minutes later, I thought I really did need one!”

  “Sorry.”

  “It was a bit frustrating, you know—that’s a good location,” he said, as if they were discussing the placement of shop wares on a display shelf. “I was all ready to use that log myself for a Stone in My Shoe.” He paused as Jored let out a yelp. “That’ll be the snake.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “It’s just a little one,” he said defensively. “He must’ve stepped right up to the bush.”

  “Taigan will protect him,” Cailet said, laughing. She stopped when she caught Josselin looking at her with an odd intensity. And when she caught him at it, he blushed. It wasn’t easy to see beneath his dark skin, but he definitely blushed.

  She leaned over for another scoop of water, then settled back on her heels again, boots sinking into the soft mud beside the creek, and tried to think of something to say. Suddenly Mikel came out of the woods for what was obviously the last time: he wore an expression as betrayed as the pakka that had gone to sleep in his lap, and he was scratching furiously at his rear end.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Cailet observed.

  “It’s not mine,” he defended. “I Warded for an itch between the shoulder blades, over where Dessa is.”

  “Shoulder blades is even less nice—impossible to get at!”

  Mikel marched down the slope, fire in his blue eyes that reminded Cailet powerfully of his father.

  “All right,” he snarled at Josselin, “fun’s over!” To Cailet he continued, “Do you know there’s a Ward in there that makes you think there’s a whole pack of hungry kyyos staring at you from behind the trees?”

  Cailet slanted a look at Josselin; the kyyos weren’t one of hers, so they had to be his. He shook his head. She arched a skeptical brow and said to her nephew, “I gather you were so startled—” A more tactful term than frightened. “—that you fell into a bush?”

  “With thorns,” he replied angrily. “The kind that sting!”

  “Console yourself with the thought that you’re the very first to realize the truth,” she said, smiling.

  “So there’s a purpose to this—other than keeping you amused for an afternoon?” Mikel aimed the question at Josselin, of course; not even ignition of his father’s temper could make him yell directly at Cailet.

  Joss tried to look innocent again—an effort ruined by the laughter glinting in his eyes. Cailet repressed a snort and answered her nephew with, “You know all the Wards at Mage Hall. You didn’t know any would be out here.”

  “Or anyplace I might happen to find myself in the future.” He began to look mollified. A little, anyway. “Oh, all right. I guess I understand.” And, as natural good humor reasserted itself, he added, “At least it didn’t take all day, like building that damned wall!”

  Cailet counted one success in the exercise, and hoped that another was now storming out of the forest. “Josselin, whatever did Dessa run into that’s made her this mad?”

  He squinted, counting the trees behind her furiously approaching figure, and bit his lips against a smirk. “I’m Stark Naked in the Middle of the Forest With No Idea How I Got That Way.” When Cailet arched a brow at him, he got defensive again. “It’s practically time-honored by now—it’s the same one Viko Worked and I fell for. Actually, I consider it very appropriate that his cousin—”

  Cailet interrupted, shaking her head. “—was your victim with the same Ward? Josselin, I don’t know if your sense of humor amuses or appalls me!”

  “Vengeance,” Mikel informed him haughtily, “does not become you.”

  Dessa was almost upon them, ready to chew Josselin up and spit him out—her explosive temper was definitely not taken from either of her parents, and Cailet suspected a certain First Sword was responsible. Gorsha protested at once: You never knew her grandmother! And Cailet recalled another hotheaded Garvedian: Leninor, Lusira’s first cousin, Mage Captal for twenty-six tempestuous years.

  But before Dessa could vent her fury, every pakka grazing in the meadow suddenly shrieked and bolted for the trees, winglets flapping madly in desperate instinct to fly. The empress stayed behind, tossing her deadly-sharp antlers until her charges were all hidden. Then, with an angry bellow that rang off the rocky hills, she galloped off and vanished.

  Cailet was so startled she sat right back into the muddy creek bank. Josselin lost his balance completely and fell with a splash into the water. Mikel spared a glance from his own astonished alarm to indicate a soaking was the least amount of justice he expected for those tricks with the Wards. Taigan and Jored came running, slowing only when they saw that everyone was unharmed.

  “What the hell—?” Dessa gasped.

  Josselin had picked himself out of the water, soggy boots slipping on moss-covered rocks. “Captal—I didn’t Work anything in the meadow, and nothing at all that would do this, I swear it!”

  Cailet said nothing. She stood, casting about with her magic. It was difficult—because right at the moment the herd had screamed, shadows had fallen across the sunlit meadow. She’d felt them, and the answering shadows in her own heart.

  Taigan and Jored had reached them now, asking anxious questions. Cailet only shook her head. She had no answers for them.

>   Jored, scowling his bewilderment, finally shrugged and said, “I guess something spooked them. After all, they can’t control their instincts.”

  Cailet cast him a quick glance to see if he was being sly. He wasn’t. Somehow, that made it worse.

  10

  “SO how are the miserable wretches doing? Cailet throttled ’em yet?”

  Sarra looked up from her office desk, where two letters delivered to her that morning lay open for comparison. Taigan and Mikel had addressed their correspondence to their mother, as dutiful children should, but the words were meant for both parents. So she read Collan both letters and waited for his reaction.

  He realized it at once, just as she had. “Mikel mentioned this Jored’s name four or five times, but Teggie doesn’t talk about him at all. She writes about Josselin Mikleine.”

  “And Cailet hasn’t said a word about either in any letter I’ve had from her in the last year—except that the roses we sent with Josselin are growing miraculously.” Sarra tapped the nub of her pen on the blotter, splotching it like a Maurgen Dappleback. “What do you think?”

  “How handsome is Jored?” He grinned at her from his chair by the hearthfire.

  Sarra gave an inelegant snort. “Meaning she’s your daughter and will naturally go for the best-looking specimen around? Well, from what I recall, he’s quite attractive, but Josselin’s more to my taste.”

  “Sweet Sarra my own, Josselin’s more to everyone’s taste. If this Jored comes in second, then Taigan would set her sights on him. Less competition for her own looks. After all, that’s why I husband you instead of Lusira Garvedian.”

  She laughed and looked around for something to throw. Nothing came to hand that wouldn’t stain the carpet with ink, so she settled for launching herself at him. A brief tickling match later, they subsided into a comfortable snuggle, Sarra in Collan’s lap with her legs dangling over the arm of the big, soft chair.