The Gossamer Mage

by Julie E. Czerneda

  * * *

  Worse and worse and worse.

  The spites came back and ignored them. Ignored him!

  His most and best and biggest lay stupid in the road like the rest. Cil kicked it and wept his rage, but it ignored him.

  The old dirty mage had done it. He rose, wiped snot and tears from his face, and knew what to do about that.

  “Make you meat. Make you nothing!”

  He would, too. He was strong. He could kill a calf with one blow of his fist. He didn’t need a hammer.

  A fork. A fork would do better. Cil went close, closer. Raised his big hand and his small hand to take it, to use it, to stick it in the gut.

  What was this?

  The old dirty man didn’t move, didn’t run.

  He smiled.

  * * *

  The monster from the meadow was as much under the Designate’s whim as the rest. How long that protection would last?

  How could there be magic without words? Without cost?

  As scribemaster, he was appallingly uninformed. More time in the archives, Saeleonarial promised himself, fist against his chest. And in bed. No more time like this.

  If there was time left at all.

  Nim and Rid held Cil’s larger arm, Domozuk the smaller. They’d stopped his attempt to attack Maleonarial.

  While Maleonarial—

  “Old fool.” Saeleonarial feared to touch him, so frail he seemed, so worn.

  “Nice hat.” Little more than a hoarse whisper. The gentle mocking smile, though embedded in wrinkles and without bottom teeth, hadn’t changed.

  They were a year apart—a year! Friends since that first day at the school. How could he be so aged?

  As for the obscenity of bells he wore . . . what had he been doing?

  The shift in Maleonarial’s eyes meant it was time.

  “Designate.” The bow was more a dignified stagger, knuckles white on the pitchfork Maleonarial used for support. Harn, after a glance at the scribemaster, offered his good arm.

  Saeleonarial turned. He must witness this, though he’d take no joy from that duty. Nim, with every right to anger, was as gentle as he could be. There was no justice or vengeance possible here. Only the prevention of anything more.

  Or anything, if he could imagine it, looking around at what had been Riverhill, worse.

  Cil, who’d struggled frantically, mouthing incoherent threats and spit, closed his mouth and stilled at the approach of the Designate. When she stopped before him, he bent slightly, as if bowing to a great lady, then stared up at her. The uncanny eyes, topaz and moving as if to memorize his face, didn’t appear to disturb him. Instead, he looked enraptured.

  The Designate stooped to press her perfect lips to his.

  Cil aged no better than he’d lived, his body shrinking in on itself, growing shriveled and more deformed, cheeks caving in, hands become wizened claws. The men holding him let go in horror, but only when the Designate ended their kiss did he fall.

  What was this? Saeleonarial blinked. Had he seen a faint plume of ash as the sad corpse met the ground? Before he could be sure, a breeze danced through silks, tugged his beard, and whisked away any trace of glittering bronze.

  The waiting monsters lifted their heads. The long ones closed their eyes and burrowed head first into the ground, debris and rubble toppling into the massive holes left by their bodies until nothing was left on the surface but the mud road, golden barley fields, and the river. The made-flies rose in a swarm, circled once, then rose to the sky to fly off in all directions, the sun sparkling on their tiny wings so it seemed for an instant that the air itself shimmered. The beast from the meadow rubbed its horn-capped head against one leg, then stretched like a cat. After a long and careful look at each of them, as if memorizing their shape, it curled on itself and bounded away, leaving no trail at all through the grain.

  They were wonders again.

  That’s what they were. Wonders made the world deeper, wilder. As it was meant to be. Saeleonarial’s heart burst with the joy of it. He smiled and took one last breath.

  Musk.

  Musk and laughter and droplets like gems . . .

  * * *

  All this. All this and the Ancient Hag stole the best of them. With a cry, Maleonarial dropped to his knees. He gently removed the belled hat, then flung it aside as he cradled his friend’s head against his chest. The rest stood by; Domozuk silently wept.

  “I am not done,” the Designate said in her lifeless voice.

  “I am,” Maleonarial snarled. “Leave us be.” Almost to himself. “Let me be.” Hard to breathe. Nothing didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt as much as this. All this.

  “I cannot.”

  The voice . . . it wasn’t the same . . . he looked up.

  And saw . . . only the words of Her language could capture the face before him, and those words had no sounds to be uttered, no descriptions to recall. Only intention. Only magic. Only life. His mind could not encompass it . . . hold it . . . the face shimmered and faded and he didn’t know if that meant he was dead or now wished to be.

  “This was your doing.” The voice became the clash of rock against ice. “Your intention. All this.”

  Saeleonarial chilled in his arms and The Ageless Bitch mocked him. She was destruction and death. “You lie,” he croaked, and coughed blood.

  “I cannot.” The roar of wildfire across grass.

  “Leave me be.”

  “I cannot.” Rain and thunder. “You wrote that which could steal from Me. It was your intention that found haven in this shattered child. Your will that brought his fear and hate to life.”

  His gossamer, after all.

  Magic without cost.

  His triumph.

  Empty of all but grief, Maleonarial closed his eyes and rocked slowly. “Let me die, then.”

  “I cannot.” The crack of lightning through wood. “To reclaim what was taken, it must pass through My Gift to the world.”

  Lips pressed against his, at first dry and cold, then searing hot. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t . . .

  He tasted ash.

  * * *

  A dream. More vivid than most. Not so strange as some, especially after eating that rubbery shelled fish Sael’s brother brought . . .

  Maleonarial kept his mind at sleep’s safe edge, unwilling to challenge, unwilling to know, not yet. He let himself feel nothing but comfort. Which was strange of itself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d awakened free of pain, rested and peaceful, without his bladder threatening to burst or his lungs itching to cough.

  “I think he’s awake.”

  “Shh.”

  “We kin na let him sleep the day.”

  The rarity of voices in his camp, let alone unfamiliar ones, pushed him from safety to the cold truth. No dream.

  No Saeleonarial.

  Riverhill. All of it. His doing. His intention.

  Maleonarial lay still, feeling the cold trace of tears.

  “Awake at last!” A known voice.

  So much for peace. He opened his eyes to find Domozuk’s pocked nose too close to his own. It disappeared before he could object, revealing a blue sky inhabited by one distant, soaring hawk.

  He saw a hawk.

  No, he couldn’t see a hawk. Maleonarial distinctly remembered losing the better part of his sight two hundred bells ago.

  But he saw a hawk. No, two hawks. A pair, lazily circling.

  He sat up.

  Another surprise. He hadn’t been able to sit without propping himself with his arms for at least a hundred bells. At the thought, he raised his hands.

  He hadn’t had hands like these since his first bell.

  A breeze slipped past his face, drying the tears. Maleonarial surged to his feet.

  Rid looked up fro
m the small fire he tended and grinned. “I na seen the mat’o’it.”

  Domozuk and two others—the villager and a mage student cradling a bandaged wrist—stood waiting. Maleonarial looked around. They’d moved away from the village. The only reminder of Cil’s work, his work, were the shapes lying on a makeshift brier. One was wrapped in the robes of a scribemaster, the other, smaller and twisted, in strips of fine velvet. A tidy bundle of lavender silk lay at their feet, tied with jeweled ropes.

  Ash on his lips. He’d never known her name.

  The dead and the living. Himself, made new again. He’d need a mirror, but his hands, his stomach, most of all, the vibrant pent-up energy that had been the bane of lessons when he’d first come to the mage school, told the tale.

  The Deathless Goddess had taken what remained from one life, and given it all to him.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it, sir, if I hadn’t seen it.” The bright-eyed student quivered like a coursing hound about to run. “They’ll want to know everything. The other masters.” A less bright glance at the briar. “My-my lord Scribemaster always believed you were innocent, Master Maleonarial. He always spoke up for you. You’ll prove him right.”

  “Will I?” How peculiar, to hear a rich timbre to his voice again. “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Harn, sir. M-my lord.” This with a crimson blush. “Harn Guardson. For now.”

  He remembered. To so badly want to be renamed. To no longer be Mal Merchantson, but Maleonarial. To intend dreams and write magic.

  To begin paying life to The Deathless Goddess.

  Maleonarial nodded a greeting to the villager, now clad in an assortment of clothing, including a weather beaten coat that must belong to Rid. “And you, sir?”

  “I’m na ‘sir.’” No blush here. The unbandaged eye held a glimmer of curiosity, though the face was drawn with grief. “Nim Millerson. I’m from—was from Riverhill. The scribemaster came w’me to—to end things, ’s my guess. He was a good man. Brave.”

  A hint of accusation. Why hadn’t The Goddess restored Saeleonarial, the deserving? Maleonarial nodded. “He was. This”—he thumped his now-solid chest—“is nothing I earned, Nim Millerson. The Deathless Goddess would have back what—” he didn’t know the poor cripple’s name “—what magic was taken and used here. She chose to give me his life so She can take it again, each time I use Her Gift. It’s Her way.”

  So he could live, knowing what his intention had done. All this.

  Why? he wondered for the first time. Why must it be through a mage scribe’s intention? Why did She need to reclaim Her Gift at all?

  Maleonarial felt his now-strong heart begin to race. She’d given him a second lifetime in which to stop it. To let young Harn learn magic without penalty. To keep men like Saeleonarial fit and well through their best years, instead of bleeding them dry before their time. All he had to do to release magic into the world, was bring death to She Who Couldn’t Die.

  As quests went, it had all the hopeless glamour a newly young man could ask.

  “So,” Maleonarial said cheerfully. “We need horses. Who has a pen?”

  Fundamental Lexicon

  The world was always thus.

  Those who sail from Her Mouth know certain truths. The sun rises in the east, winter begins with the solstice, and the jagged rocks of The Brutes crush any cast on their unfortunate shores, spitting the remnants back to sea as flotsam, feeding gulls or caught in nets, the cries of birds echoing those of grief.

  Until Insom Fisherson, heir to Tiler’s Hold, is swept overboard on a fine summer’s day. Strong and determined, he clings to the rocks, drinks the blood of gulls, and waits. When he sees a passing fishing boat, he leaps into the waves and swims till eager hands heave him to safety. He is hailed a hero.

  We were the first here.

  Insom rejoins the living and if there’s a strange look in his eye, if he refuses to sleep without a lamp burning near, none can claim to know what he’s endured, for no one else has touched The Brutes and lived.

  If, on his triumphant return to Tiler’s Hold, the stones of the wharf shudder once beneath his feet, no one notices over the cheers of the crowd.

  And if, a week later, a horse rears, frightened by something beneath its feet, and falls, killing the hold lord, Insom the First, none could claim it other than accident. All agree their brave new lord, Insom the Second, who’d been Insom Fisherson and alone survived The Brutes, is the luckiest man in Tiler’s Hold.

  Magic, once, was almost lost.

  At that year’s highest tide, in the dead of night, Insom leaves warmth and light behind because he must.

  Stands at the ice-slicked limit of the wharf, clothed in bitter wind and sleet because he has no choice.

  Stretches his arms to the unseeable horizon where vast waves smite The Brutes, each larger and stronger than the last. Waits till water surges up and over, water turning black as the deepest depths—

  Cries out in a voice that isn’t his.

  To his helpless horror, is answered.

  CONSEQUENTIAL PHRASES

  Gray stone, some hauled and shaped, the rest gifted by cliffs to either side, filled the yawn of Her Mouth with a tower of unyielding might, its seaward side broken by the outpouring of Her Veil through a massive colonnade, emptying the Helthrom and thus the rest of Tananen’s great waterways into the Snarlen Sea. The stone wore a slick of dark green in summer, glistened with icicles in winter, and at no point could it be climbed.

  Where the thunderous cascade of Her Veil was little more than mist, a single broad gate had been cut low into the ever-shadowed northern cliff, the damp cobbled tunnel beyond well lit and wide enough for three freight wagons to pass one another without touching. More hospitable stone stretched along the curve of land and into the harbor as breakwater and wharves, offering haven to fishers and traders. Gulls cried above fish markets, and warehouses and inns crowded the lowest reach behind those, for nothing moved from ship to shore without intervention, and only here could shore be reached at all.

  Leave Her Mouth and go west, past the rabid boil of waterfall, and you entered The Hunger, a treacherous narrow strait bordered to the land side by abrupt mountains and from the sea by The Brutes, a string of bleak rocky outcrops like the peaks of drowned mountains themselves. They could have been, for the roiling water of the strait was of unfathomable depth. The Snarlen Sea spent itself upon The Brutes, waves pounding day and night; at winter’s highest tide, those waves grew high enough to crash over the outcrops to fill the strait with a terrifying roar.

  Go east, staying close, and the curl of cliff provided sheltered water and safe passage to and from Her Mouth. Freighters flying the flags of Lithua and Ichep, or the fiery pennants of far-off Whitehold Isles, took the passage in their season, filling Her Mouth with their shouts and songs. At all times of year, save winter’s high tides, fishers from Tiler’s Hold eased their chubby craft past the larger ships, to go out and around The Brutes seeking the vast shoals gathered at their feet.

  A noisy place, full of life and its boisterous rackets. Under it all, you wouldn’t think to hear the stone. To catch it breathing. Hear it mutter to itself. Tell itself secrets.

  Promise itself revenge.

  But there are those, here, who can.

  * * *

  The tower and its surrounds comprised Tiler’s Hold, Tananen’s bastion and sole gateway to the world. One look at its seaward face muted ambition but in truth it mattered not who thought to conquer here, or sought to elude watchful eyes. The Lady waited beyond Her Veil, ever vigilant, and no one born outside of Tananen crossed into Her domain alive.

  Kait Alder supposed that explained the lies on the map.

  Leorealyon had brought word of this newest addition to the hold lord’s collection, urging the three Daughter’s Prospects to go and look at it. As that was the last request of a woman who’d become
her friend, the last friendly smile and final twinkle of those wise-beyond-her-years eyes—

  Kait’d come early, to see the map alone. Better than grieving in her chambers and far, far better than listening to those who viewed the sacrifice of the best of them cause for joyful pride.

  Pride? How dare they. While a hold’s acolytes stood ready to be spent by The Lady at Her need, these had escaped Leorealyon’s fate by being less.

  Not a truth to say aloud. Not by a newcomer here.

  Belonging took work as well as tact. Kait refused to think of open sky, mountains, and forests; refused to summon memories of guile-free faces, shared work, and laughter. She learned what they taught, ate what they offered, spoke as they preferred. Would make this her home, should that sacrifice be asked—

  Even if Tiler’s Hold was as hollow as a rotten tree.

  Oh, there were people enough. At times, she felt all Tananen crowded these halls. The Daughter’s Quarters alone housed more than Woodshaven—

  But where were its gossamers? She’d never been in a place without a shimmer of bronze, a giggle in the dark, some unexpected utterly distracting wonder—which gossamers were, after all. Everyone knew they were Hers and to be cherished, even the sly ones who pulled hair or tormented livestock or lured the unwary from their duty. Tricky to predict which, no two gossamers the same; once any gained such repute, the word spread where not to tread alone.

  Or didn’t. Woodshaven folk weren’t above a trick or two themselves when it came to unwelcome strangers, and she’d watched for the same here. Then hoped. But she’d found none and she couldn’t ask, could she?

  Having lost The Lady, too.

  Since the first spot of menses, Her Words had been part of Kait, Her Voice a constant gentle warmth. Guiding, reassuring, good. The Lady’s Gift, that connection, granted to those few who would serve Her. Their duty, to hear what was truth. Preserve it. Share it, so Her magic continued.