by Dawn Cook
Grimacing at the slight jibe, Alissa shifted uncomfortably and sipped her tea. Perhaps she could risk complaining of a minor pain. Useless might run a ward of healing for her, clearing everything up with him never knowing the difference. She would have done it herself, but she hadn’t been given permission to work the complex ward without supervision.
“Finding and fixing a memory in your thoughts is the first step,” Useless said. “But it’s an important one. Engage the ward before that, and you’ll slip into a long, unproductive sleep. There’re several methods to fix a memory. The easiest is to use one of your own.” He looked up as she fidgeted. “The second is to be gifted one by another. The third is to use a septhama point.” He leaned to top off his cup.
She thought about that. The word septhama was familiar, but she couldn’t see how it related. Septhamas were a blessedly rare group of individuals whose tracings were almost complex enough to make Keeper but had been malformed. Usually stemming from Keeper parents, they had the ability to do one thing, and one thing only. And even that was rather pointless. “I give up,” she finally said.
Useless didn’t even try to hide his smile. “You’re aware septhamas can modify the pattern—the flow of psychic energy imprinted after a tragedy—so as to make the corresponding physical manifestation of such energy more pleasing to the general populace?”
Alissa nodded, finding slight relief as she leaned to adjust the fire. Why didn’t he just say they got rid of ghosts?
“Well, a septhama point is that stored energy, which in this case functions like a memory residing in a place or a thing.” He hesitated. “Or more rarely, a person.”
Her gaze went distant, recalling that Strell’s broken pipe had such a memory on it. Rising, she went to the opposite side of the fire to nudge back a stick she had intentionally pushed out.
“What are you doing?” Useless asked in wonder. “I’ve never seen anyone so reluctant to sit still since I—” His voice cut off. Arms clasped about herself, Alissa glanced up to find her teacher’s lips pursed and his eyes knowing. “You damaged your tail,” he said.
Panic mixed with shame, and she looked away. He would be so angry! “Uh, no,” she warbled.
“Your wing, then?” he guessed, and she nodded, cringing at his heavy sigh.
“I’m fine,” she said, returning to her spot and sitting on the edge of the bench. The pain swelled, and she reluctantly got to her feet.
“You were sporting in the heavy updrafts behind the Hold again, weren’t you,” he said, though it really wasn’t a question. “I told you to be careful. Do you know how many young rakus have ended up at the bottom of that rock face?”
She said nothing, content to let him believe what he wanted.
“You’re the only one left, Alissa,” he lectured gently. “You must be more careful. Why do you think I’ve been teaching you what only an experienced Master should know? I’m not going to last much longer, and I won’t let a millennium of study die with me.”
“Useless,” she cajoled, not liking to hear him speak like that. His eyes meeting hers were full of a patient understanding, surprising her.
“Shift and show me what you did,” he demanded in a soft voice. “It can’t be worse than anything I’ve done. I’ll run a ward of healing on it, or better yet, you can. The practice will do you good.” He shook his head and fussed with the fire, his long fingers perilously close to the low flames. “Though I ought not to have taught it to you in the first place,” he finished.
Alissa’s excitement at having been granted permission to practice the tricky ward was blunted by worry. Perhaps his understanding attitude would become anger after seeing what she had done. Still, she hurt, and having a three-day acceleration of healing would be a relief.
The sun had since vanished, and feeling a chill, she stepped awkwardly up onto the stone bench and from there to the long, neglected grass. Making no comment, she removed her slippers so as not to break them down to nothing with the rest of her clothes when she shifted. Useless didn’t care if she wore shoes or not, but her foothills upbringing made her uncomfortable without them. The loud pop as they hit the bench made her jump.
Despising disorder, Useless arranged her slippers neatly. “You should be more careful with your footwear until you can fashion them yourself,” he said, clearly recognizing they weren’t the shoes she had on when she left the Hold that morning.
“Useless?” she asked, curious. “Why is it my hurt shifts with me? I would think that since I was in a completely different form, it wouldn’t show at all.”
Useless sipped his tea. “You shift to your idea of yourself, and your mind knows you’re hurt. Oddly enough, that’s one of the reasons we live so long. You are,” he said, “literally as young as you think, or in this case, as your thoughts remember you to be.”
Her brow puckered in disbelief. This was far beyond her original question, but she fastened upon it greedily. “So if I shifted thinking I was ten years old, I would coalesce as that?”
The warm sound of her teacher’s laugh slipped like a sunbeam about the weedy shrubs and overgrown grasses of his expansive garden. “No. You would show up as your rightful age, but your youthful appearance will persist for ten times longer than you might imagine. Your mind can’t be fooled, but it’s slow to accept change. Pain, though, makes a very strong impression, which is why it shifts with you.”
She nodded in acceptance. It made sense, as much as any of it ever did.
Knowing Useless would take the chance to evaluate her skill at shifting, Alissa went through the preparatory steps with a measured slowness. Eyes open, she visualized her source with her mind’s eye. Deep in her awareness was a sphere of white so stark as to be possible only in her imagination, a gift from her papa before he died. It was bound by silvery gold threads, glittering like glory itself. She had never been able to see what lay past the threads. Useless had once told her it was because limit-bound thoughts had a hard time with infinity.
Surrounding her source, but seeming to be twisted half an angle away, sprawled her tracings. The bluish black lines spread out in all directions, connecting and fracturing into a maze of astounding proportions, looping back at the limits of her mind. Being empty of all but the smallest energy, they were hard to see. Only the gold tracing they were shot through with gave evidence that they were there. That would change.
Alissa slipped a thought into her source. A glowing ribbon darted from it to make the curving jump to her tracings. From there it circled back, crossing against itself to make a twisted loop before returning to her source, leaving a humming circle of energy running through her mind. It was the beginnings of everything. She didn’t care that Useless called her tracings her neural net and the first loop the primary circuit. She only knew together they made wards.
From here it was simple to direct the force into the proper pathways. Chosen tracings burst into light as the energy filled them, making the far-flung, complicated pattern needed to hold her soul together as she destroyed her body and fashioned mass about it again.
There was a familiar feeling of perfect disconnection as the chill, dark garden winked out of existence. She knew from watching Useless that she had vanished into a mist that grew as she pulled energy from her source to make the additional mass for her larger form. In a moment the garden was back, but she was viewing it from a perspective two man lengths higher.
“Very nice,” Useless grumbled, clearly pleased at the quickness of her shift. In his opinion, she spent far too much time existing as only a thought. “Now, show me what you did to yourself. Skin your wing on a cliff, did you?”
“No,” she said into his mind, being incapable of verbal speech now. Twin feelings of wanting sympathy and wanting to be left alone warred within her as she extended her wing.
“Oh, Alissa,” Useless breathed as the rip came to light. A pattern resonated across her tracings and held steady as Useless made a ward of illumination. The globe rested in his long fingers to sho
w the bone and blood within them. “You should have come to me right away.”
She said nothing, thinking the reason she hadn’t was obvious.
“How did you ever get back up to the top of the cliff with a rip like this?”
Her shoulders shifted in a shrug. She couldn’t look at him, wishing he had gotten angry instead of sympathetic. Lies of omission were still lies.
Brow furrowed, he went to stand under her wing. The glow from his light shone through the rip. She snaked her neck under her wing to see, lifting it out of his reach as he threatened to run a finger along the cut. “Put your wing down,” he said dryly. “I’m not going to touch it.” She heard his sigh. “It would have been better had you run a healing ward before shifting,” he said. “Human back muscle heals differently than wing canvas.”
“You told me not to run a healing ward alone,” she said, feeling her shoulder ache from holding her wing extended for so long.
“That I did.” He came out from under her wing, his features sharp in his light. “I suppose if you’re brave enough to chance the rock face’s updrafts, you’re ready to run a healing ward on your own.” He grimaced. “Lay your wing on the ground. I’ll hold the ends together the best I can as you run it. Even so, you’re going to have a scar. I imagine the indignity of having to explain it to your future students will be punishment enough.”
Surprised at his attitude, she sent a docile thought into his. “You aren’t angry?”
Useless gave her an unfathomable look. “Accidents happen. Especially when playing in an updraft that strong. Tell me next time you want to try the rock face. You should have a spotter.”
“Yes, Useless,” she said, relieved he was taking it so well.
“Go on,” he encouraged gruffly. “Put your wing where I can reach it.”
She crouched, angling her wing around the overgrown shrubs. Useless drew his light closer and left it to hang in midair. Her breath escaped in a pained hiss as Useless pushed the torn edges together. His long fingers were gentle, but her nausea rose. She closed her eyes, not wanting to watch her flesh knit together.
The sight of her mindscape eased her sick feeling. She set up the proper pattern, holding it steady when she felt a light, familiar touch on her thoughts as Useless checked it. Almost she could feel his satisfaction. Only now did Alissa release the ward, and her tracings went dark.
It was like bathing in sunshine. Warmth eased through her, the ward pulling behind it a sensation of tingling whispers, soothing away the pain from her scrapes and the headache she hadn’t realized she had. The sensation backwashed at the limits of her body, then returned to her wing, slipping through her like water through hot sand.
Alissa drooped as the throbbing pain in her wing turned to the mild ache of a three-day-old wound. All too soon the ward had spent itself. She sighed, reluctant to move, only now realizing she had slumped to an undignified, foolish-looking sprawl on the damp ground.
“Feel better?” Useless said sourly, jerking her back to awareness.
“Rather.” Embarrassed, she sat up and looked at her wing. The tear had been replaced with a long, raw-looking scar, black from the fire behind it. Alissa sighed. It was ugly, but at least it didn’t hurt as much.
“No flying until at least one more healing ward,” he said as his light went out and he returned to his spot at the fire. “And you will wait the required three days between them. It takes that long for your body to recover its reserves. Trying sooner will do more damage than good. That will give you a total of nine days of healing in five days: three days accelerated, three days unassisted, and another three days accelerated. Understand?”
“Yes,” she thought as she settled herself on the grass. They had been over this before, but now his words had a practical meaning. She found herself more comfortable in her raku form, so she stayed where she was, not caring that the earth was damp with dew. Crouching, she rested her chin on her forearms to stare into the fire, watching with her more sensitive eyes the patterns of heat shift and stream upward, rolling along the ground to backwash against the benches.
“Now, where were we?” Useless prompted. Alissa could tell he wanted to join her in raku form, but there wasn’t enough space around the firepit for two such hulking beasts. Besides, someone had to finish Lodesh’s tea.
3
Strell kept his features impassive as he sat before his wheel and worked his cold, gritty clay. It was too dark to be spinning clay; the shadows were thick in the Hold’s second, unused kitchen, and he didn’t have a candle. But he had been born with clay beneath his fingernails and could throw a pot by feel alone. Though having made his way as a musician and storyteller for the last seven years, this was his first craft, the one he turned to when his thoughts were heavy.
Strell’s gaze lifted to the shadowed lump of Alissa’s shoes upon the nearby drying table. He had found them outside the garden wall where she had shifted and abandoned the earth. Her shoes and he seemed alike in that way: dusty and worn, set aside while she learned new limits that he could never see. Tomorrow, he would return them to her. He would like to put them next to his, under his bed, someday. Strell straightened, feeling his back crack all the way up.
He had been so worried, especially after finding her bruised and scraped in the middle of a new clearing. Flying was a learned skill, and she had only a few months to practice it. Thankfully, it seemed only her pride had been hurt. Even so, he had wanted to lift her up and carry her back to soft cushions and warm compresses. But he knew she would be embarrassed and so had contented himself with holding her hand. He might have done more if that cursed bird hadn’t shown up.
Sighing, he kicked the wheel up to speed and formed a pleasingly proportioned bowl. Talon or Lodesh. Someone always interfered, leaving him frustrated and out of sorts but still in Talo-Toecan’s good graces. It didn’t help that Lodesh was so blessedly charismatic. Alissa would be inhuman if she didn’t like Lodesh.
With a rough savageness, Strell forced the bowl into a tall vase. It was not a move that lent itself to a smooth transition, and only the base stood firm as the vase wobbled. All Lodesh had to do was wait, Strell brooded. And wait was exactly what the Warden of Ese’Nawoer was doing. Neither commenting on or ignoring Strell and Alissa’s stymied relationship, Lodesh waited, content to be a friend to both of them, knowing if he forced his hand he might alienate Alissa. Time was Lodesh’s guarantee he would win Alissa’s affection, and the cursed man seemed to rest easy in the knowledge.
Nearly four centuries ago, while the Warden of Ese’Nawoer, Lodesh had built a wall about his city. Wisdom had prompted its construction, but fear kept the gates closed against the women and children who desperately sought sanctuary there against a plague of madness. The inhabitants of the city turned a deaf ear to their locked gates, even when the pleas for mercy turned to a mindless, savage rage, and mothers beat their children to death before turning on themselves.
The city remained untouched by plague, but the blood on their doorstep cursed the people to eternal unrest until making amends for their crimes against humanity. Alissa had since freed them, but Lodesh, the builder of the walls and the holder of the blame, remained cursed.
It seemed unfair to Strell that the clever man could turn something as damning as a curse to his favor, allowing Lodesh to accompany Alissa in her recently expanded life span as Strell couldn’t.
Strell, though, had his own guarantee. Alissa loved him, not Lodesh. All Strell had to do was convince her teacher to bend the rules again. And after having kept Alissa alive last winter while biding with an insane Keeper, changing the mores of a raku seemed an easy task.
Strell and Lodesh had evolved a strange, competitive friendship, each sublimely confident they would ultimately win Alissa and therefore not threatened by each other’s presence. That Lodesh thought he would gain Alissa meant nothing to Strell. He knew the Keeper was mistaken.
The wheel creaked and complained in the chill silence as it slowed. Eyeing his vase
, Strell ran a cord under it to loosen it from the wheel. Fingers spread wide, he lifted it free and tossed it to the barrel of waste clay. It hit with a solid slap, collapsing into an unusable shape.
Cleanup was quick from long practice, and before it became much darker, he found himself in the Hold’s upper rooms. A soft fluttering over his head as he passed through the dark great hall pulled his fist up, and Talon lighted upon it. “Hello, old one,” he murmured, running his fingers over the bird’s markings, gray with age. He and Talon got along quite well as long as he kept his distance from Alissa. Humming the bird a soothing lullaby, he went into the Hold’s smaller kitchen. If Alissa was with Talo-Toecan, then he and Lodesh would prepare the evening meal alone. But it was late. Lodesh had probably already finished.
Quiet in the soft-soled shoes Alissa insisted Strell wear inside the Hold, he found Lodesh sitting unawares as he often did, legs stretched out to the hearth, slumped on one of the kitchen’s hard chairs. The Keeper’s fine clothes looked startlingly out of place, yet he evoked a feeling that here, of all places, was where he felt most comfortable. Lodesh was waiting, simply waiting.
“What’s for dinner tonight?” Strell asked quietly so as not to startle him.
Grunting, Lodesh straightened and turned. A wisp of a mischievous smile was about him, clear even in the shadow light from the hearth. “What would you say to roast duck?”
Strell started in surprise, then grinned. “M-m-m,” he sighed, tossing Talon to the thick rafters. “With the skin crispy . . . cooked so the meat falls off the bone, begging to be eaten.” Gaze unfocused, he collapsed into a chair across from Lodesh.
