The Gossamer Mage

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Elsewhere? To Tananen’s west spread the inhospitable fen called The Lady’s Tears; beyond and in every direction, the jagged soaring rock of Her Fist.

  To the south, beyond Her Veil, the Snarlen Sea.

  Yet Tananen was bounded by nothing so common as sea, fen, or rock. Magic edged it, held it, defined it. Tananen was where The Deathless Goddess’s gift answered a mage scribe’s intended words, and only there could life born of that magic survive. Traders from across the Snarlen Sea, astonished by living wonders, would scoff at warnings and steal or barter for such treasure, only to watch it turn to ash and blow from their decks the instant their ships crossed that unseen line.

  Those of Tananen stayed there. For who would leave a land of magic?

  And who could be sure they themselves were not creations of The Goddess, to turn to ash beyond Her reach?

  Maleonarial had stood at the sea’s edge once, his worn boots lapped by bitter water, his heart worn and bitter too, wondering if it were true, wondering if he’d turn to ash if he swam too far toward the rising sun. Would She notice?

  Or was every mage the same in Her eyes, and death Her intention?

  He stirred the pot. Wisps of acrid steam danced over the surface of the cooling ink, teased at patterns, pretended secrets. Would it could be that easy . . . that his answer could be found by looking instead of dying a little more.

  Maleonarial snorted to himself. The Deathless Goddess made the rules. As mage scribe, he made the choice. He closed his eyes to half slits and shivered inside his cloak. This old man would see another dawn. By that light, he’d write again.

  If one more dawn was all She’d give him, maybe that was all he’d need.

  * * *

  Hooves splashed through puddles; wheels flung dollops of mud. Any section of wagon or clothing not sodden or muddied was soaked by wind-driven rain. With luck, he’d die soon.

  The Deathless Goddess was being difficult. Saeleonarial’s beard was now fully gray and the last of his hair had been left in the stableyard, but his heart, that contrary organ, cheerfully pumped icy blood from his hands and feet through the rest of his body. Merchants and traders claimed those over the sea prayed to their gods, sought their attention and favor. In Tananen, no one in their right mind tried for Hers.

  Cushions made no appreciable difference to the hard seat; sitting shoulder to shoulder only made the bouncing worse. The Designate of The Deathless Goddess, it turned out, would see where they were going. Accommodating that requirement brought Saeleonarial out on the wagon box, since he wouldn’t abandon poor Rid to such company alone.

  For at the sight of Leorealyon’s ruined face, Nim had shuddered and closed his good eye. Domozuk had cursed in his own tongue. Harn, after flinging himself to the back of the wagon to spew into the rush of dark road, had clung to the gate and refused to turn around.

  Rid had given that visage a thoughtful look, then spat to one side. His hands on the reins eventually stopped shaking, but he never glanced around, even when their shoulders touched.

  Saeleonarial shivered inside his heaviest cloak, this time not from the chill. It wasn’t the empty, dark sockets or living horrors that could peer from them that filled him with dread. He knew who’d be looking back. Her. As well take pilgrimage to Her Soul and abase himself before the great, watchful tower.

  Should have worn the wig, he fussed to himself.

  The broad road that drank goods from the Mouth took the shortest path inland. Straight and paved with massive stone, it occasionally lured foreigners and local fools. They, and their unfortunate horses, were soon gasping as the road heaved itself up the steep slope without regard for such frail beings. If they persisted, they’d be drenched and blinded by spray as the road passed through Her Veil, deafened by the hammering of the great waterfall itself as it drained most of Tananen to the sea. If they passed that challenge?

  The Deathless Goddess knew who belonged. Those who didn’t, never left Her Veil.

  Rid Smithyson had guided his matched whites through the gate of Tiler’s Hold onto the second road that left it. This, though paved and wide, twisted its way up the sloping pass like a demented snake, sometimes almost touching itself again. A longer route, but safer. There were places to pull to the side and wait, for downward traffic had right of passage even over couriers. The team knew the road well, and had made good speed between the tight turns. They’d passed Her Veil at some distance, hardly noticing the lick of spray.

  Sunset had caught them on a civilized road, with civilized traffic, lit by lantern, moving by rules. Heading to yet more civilization and comfort. Even the horses had hesitated when Rid asked them to turn off onto the narrow dirt excuse that led to Meadton. But the land was level here and the rains, however uncomfortable for passengers, hardly slowed them.

  They’d be there by dawn . . .

  The lead horse cried out and stumbled. The wagon jolted and Saeleonarial grasped in vain for a handhold, fingers slipping on the wet wood. Aged bones and the hard road beneath would be a disaster. But the Designate had him, hands like metal hooks. The driver hauled on the reins and worked the brake, alternately cursing and pleading until his team staggered to a safe halt.

  The rain and wind chose this moment to ease as well. Rid snugged the reins and hopped down, splashing forward to find the trouble. Pointless to join him, the scribemaster knew, fretting. If the lead was lame, they couldn’t slow to its pace. Favorite or not, the animal would have to be abandoned.

  “A canal dancer blocks the road.” Though flat and lacking intonation, the soft voice was Leorealyon’s.

  Saeleonarial blinked. He hadn’t expected conversation from the Designate. Though this made no sense. “Impossible.”

  Canal dancers cleared the waterways that connected the three mightiest rivers of Tananen: the Helthrom, Pactrom, and red-tinged Nathrom. More traffic moved through the heartlands by barge than by any road. The immense dancers—a ridiculous name, since the beasts were long, flat, and shelled—crept along a canal’s bottom and ate whatever silt and mud or worse had accumulated, deepening and widening the channel as they went. Their wastes appeared on shore each morning: tidy, serpentine mounds, odorless when dry. Superb fertilizer. Though, like most non-farmers, Saeleonarial did his utmost not to make any connection between his supper and the filthy beasts.

  “Dancers stay in water,” he pointed out.

  “She takes the road tonight.”

  Of course. In nights of heavy rain, he remembered with dismay, the dancers availed themselves of darkness and mud-slick to slither overland from one canal to the next.

  No one knew how long ago they’d been written. Magical creatures could not reproduce and most—mages being both practical and leery of expending more of their own lives than necessary—were written with a finite lifespan. Canal dancers were a different matter. Although the mage scribes claimed credit for the useful beasts, there was no proof they were the work of men. Like air, water, and magic itself, they could well be creations of The Goddess.

  And tonight a damned nuisance.

  By the paired lanterns on the wagon’s roof, he just could make out the round rumps of the last of the team, some lines of harness. The lead horses could, of course, see in the dark. They were written that way.

  Not a comfort to discover the Designate could too.

  “Can’t we go around it?”

  “Na.” The unhappy denial was from Rid as he came to stand by Saeleonarial’s boot. The driver swept off his wide brimmed hat and clutched it to his chest. In the lantern light, his stubbled face was grim. “M’beauty slip do’in ’is best ta stop n’time. Leg’s ’ole, but e’ll be sore come morn. ’At beastie, it’s filled the road. And na inna hurry te move.”

  “What could—” Nothing could budge a dancer. Ships rammed them all the time. Heedless barges went aground on them. Nothing harmed or perturbed the creatures.

 
Nothing natural.

  He turned to the Designate. “Can you move it?” His mouth was dry despite the rain.

  Topaz glittered. “Can you sing?”

  “Sing.” The worms must have ruined the mind as well as the eyes.

  “She is a dancer.”

  A dancer. The name had real meaning?

  Stay stuck on the road, or try the improbable. Saeleonarial sighed heavily, then rapped his knuckles on the peephole behind him. It slid open, Domozuk’s face filling the gap. “Trouble?”

  Anxious, the three in the back. No time for reassurance, had he any to offer. “We need Harn up here.” The student was a decent tenor, if prone to singing too early in the morning, a habit his other masters lamented.

  A lurch of the wagon, a thud and feet hurrying forward. Not only Harn; all of them. With confidence he most assuredly didn’t feel, Saeleonarial explained the situation, ending: “Sing to it. Hurry.”

  “Sing to it? M-my lord?”

  “You heard him.” Domozuk gave the frightened young man a push. “Go on.”

  Harn balked. “Sing what?”

  “She is a dancer.”

  The student stared at the Designate, then hastily averted his eyes. “A dancer.” Shaking his head, he walked into the darkness, a hand on the loose rein for guidance.

  An interminable wait. What was he doing? Had he run off? The scribemaster controlled the urge to call out to the boy.

  Then, song filled the night, unsteady at first, growing more sure. A ditty from Tiler’s wharves, rude and lively. Saeleonarial’s lips twitched. What better for a creature of the canals?

  Well done, boy.

  At the second line of the song came a rhythmic grind and whoof, grind and whoof. Like no dance he could imagine, but the creature was moving! The horses startled but stayed still. Harn raised his voice and kept singing.

  “She dances. There is room to pass.”

  “Rid.”

  “Aie.” The driver shoved his hat back on and returned to the head of the team. His voice could be heard, coaxing them forward, comforting them as they pulled the wagon past the canal dancer. Grind and whoof! Saeleonarial covered his nose, grateful he could only smell it, not see. After a pause to let everyone climb aboard, Harn still singing at the top of his lungs, Rid clucked the horses up to a slow trot.

  Harn stopped singing. The scribemaster sighed. They were clear.

  “Faster.” The Designate’s eyes retreated into their socket caves. “There is no time to waste.”

  Saeleonarial nodded and huddled in his cloak. Rid clucked again and the horses resumed their fluid pace. The wagon lurched from side to side, bounced through ruts and potholes.

  No time to waste and too much time to think.

  The canal dancer was a creation of use, if not beauty. What had attacked the farmers, if not a bear . . . was a creation of harm.

  Maleonarial . . . he wouldn’t have done such a thing. Couldn’t have.

  Be truthful, old man. If only in your heart.

  Of them all, only Maleonarial could.

  Against his will, Saeleonarial considered the other side of his old friend, the mage scribe of astonishing, even terrifying, skill and imagination. The greatest hold lords for clients. Loremaster. Scribemaster. There’d been nothing he couldn’t bring to life, it seemed. Yet twelve years ago, at the peak of power and wealth, Maleonarial had walked away from Alden Hold with only the clothes on his back.

  The other masters were convinced he’d walked away from magic too. Wasn’t Maleonarial past his two hundredth bell?

  The scribemaster shook his head gently, so the bells of his hat merely whispered. We were all too small for him, he thought. Too bound by self-preservation. Too selfish. Maleonarial had never feared the price. He’d write magic until The Lady stripped the last life from his fingers.

  But what magic?

  And why?

  Fingering his gray beard, Saeleonarial earnestly hoped it was nothing capable of disemboweling farmers.

  * * *

  Cil crept along the road that was his village. Buildings of wood and stone lined either side, connected by raised walkways to keep pants and pretty hems from the mud. He wasn’t welcome inside. He wasn’t welcome on top. There was room beneath either building or walkway to hide and crawl. They didn’t like him there, but they liked him less in sight.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight he went down the center of the road, in plain view. Bold-Cil. Brave-Cil. His village, not theirs.

  They—those not gone hunting—those not lying dead in the road—cowered inside. Trembled. Hid in the dark. No lanterns. Oh no. They’d learned. The spites liked lights.

  Almost as much as flesh.

  Cil twisted to his full height. Threw out his misshapen arms. Gave his snort and wheeze of a laugh. “My village!” he shouted.

  “My village . . . my village . . . my-yy . . . vill . . . age . . .” The echoes mocked him.

  They had to see him, had to know.

  He’d make them.

  The dead couldn’t help. He’d tried the meat, to spit nothing but bile.

  The village held more life. Life dozing in boxes and stalls. Life fenced and caged and waiting. Life he wasn’t supposed to touch. Not his. Stay away.

  “My village,” he crooned to himself. “Mine.”

  They’d see him soon. They’d know he was important. They’d know what he could do.

  Before they were meat too.

  * * *

  If the horse traders of Meadton had thought to cheat them, one look at the Designate by torchlight turned them into honest men. Or wiser ones, Saeleonarial mused. The weary, muddy whites had been led off to a livery Rid reluctantly pronounced acceptable, and the wagon harnessed to a pair of made-oxen. Unlike their humble namesakes, these were monsters of their kind, one stride the equal of three for any horse. They would not need rest, or food, or water on the journey. The weight of the wagon, driver, five passengers, and supplies would be as nothing.

  Of course, the made-oxen would turn to ash in a few hours, being that close to the end of their intended lifetimes. The mage scribe who’d written this set hadn’t returned to write replacements for the traders. From the pinched look of Meadton itself, and the alacrity with which Insom’s haughty courier left for home once the made-oxen were hitched, the scribe wouldn’t be back at all.

  “Aie. Tol ye, din I,” Rid commented, having made a thorough, silent inspection. “Hard-mout. Like’n pull off m’arms.”

  “They’ll go in the right direction.” Obedience was always written into something powerful. Mage scribes were nothing if not careful of their own skins.

  The driver chuckled. “S’long as I na ’ave t’argue w’em.” He sobered and glanced around. Domozuk had taken the lads to find food. The Designate sat on the wagon box; still for the moment, eyes empty of all but shadow. “I’d argue w’ye, boy. Stay ’ere. You’re too frail for’t. Send ’unters. ’Ere’s som inna town.”

  So was he a boy or a frail old man? Saeleonarial kept his smile within his beard. “No need for hunters. If there was a monster made, it’s ash by now. As for the mage . . . after that much magic, we’ll be lucky to find him hale enough to explain himself.”

  Rid tipped his head toward the wagon. “She’d argue w’ye on t’at.”

  Warned, the Scribemaster knew what to expect when he looked up at the Designate.

  Burst from their socket lairs, the worm eyes of The Deathless Goddess shattered the torchlight, for beneath each lid was a topaz, faceted and clear. All of them stared down at Saeleonarial, as if to see every hair on his face, every sin in his past, every imagined trespass in his doubtless short future.

  Under that inspection, the scribemaster stiffened. “There could be an explanation,” he insisted. “Mistakes happen. Even to experienced masters. It’s my duty to deter
mine if this terrible business at Riverhill is a matter for fines and compensation, for discipline—”

  “For death,” countered the Designate in her toneless voice. “Her Gift must not be used for harm.”

  Harm. The word from this ruin of a vital, young woman, doomed to die herself when the worms finished their task, shuddered through his heart. His writing. His creation. Tears filled his eyes and the shards of light that were hers became all he could see, became all there was. Hands clawing at his chest, Saeleonarial began to fall.

  Arms caught him. “’E’ll na last the trip!”

  The scribemaster could hardly believe his ears. Rid? Dared confront the Designate of The Deathless Goddess?

  “He must.” Utterly cold. Utterly confident. “Therefore he will.”

  * * *

  Guided by a mage scribe’s intention, magic could change what lived. Or it could produce something that had never lived, modeled on what did. And, every so often, guided by imagination and will, an exceptional intention could create something never before seen. Most such were dead before their misshaped hearts could beat. The school counted that a very good thing, given the inordinate amount of imagination and will exceptional students possessed.

  Most such were dead.

  But not all.

  Gossamers, the survivors were called. They sprang from intentions that were more than the words of their making, that drew from something deep and unvoiced within the mage scribe. A need, perhaps. An unguarded whim.

  For unlike all other creations, a gossamer was willful. Unpredictable.

  With a magic all its own.

  Phantasms. Wonders. Large or small. Grotesque or glorious. Flesh or . . . not. Some lasted the moment it took to snare a heart, vanishing in a swirl of glittering bronze ash. Others could be immortal, for all the masters knew, since few lingered near buildings, preferring freer places. Those that stayed were harmless mischief-makers, perhaps amused by their effect on unmagical beings. Goddess Blessed, such gossamers were called, and no one would harm them.