“He sent me away because I would not give up my weaponcraft and magery to be his queen, or so he told me then. I loved him dearly, and thought he loved me; there was no Rule requiring me to give up the sword as queen. I thought it his whim, and tried to talk him out of it, but he would not. I went into exile heartsore, like any girl whose betrothed turns her away. When he was imprisoned I knew it; he called in the way of our folk, though he had no need to call me. I would have come. When I took him from the prison where your folk had him, when I’d fought our way past the walls to safety, he told me he’d sent me away because of foretelling. Because he’d been told he’d need me someday. So he set conditions he was sure I would not understand nor agree to, to force me to refuse him, and then to leave the court. I had been honest those years, true to him and his memory: he had lied to make use of me. No love, no children, no freedom for my own life—”
It was the sort of thing the women talked about, back home, stories and gossips about unfaithful lovers, men cheating women of a promised marriage, women’s vengeance on them. The men, Gird had to admit, had their own gossip, muttered into their mugs of ale, or half-whispered from man to man during shearing time, with guffaws and backslappings. Still, it sounded just as petty from this magelady as from any village girl; he was surprised she hadn’t come up with something better.
“And for that injury you killed him?”
“For that, and for the king he was not. By Esea’s Light, he had enough of the old Seeing to know what went on. Marrakai would have helped him stop it if he’d wanted to, but he could not be bothered.”
“And from that act of—honesty—” Gird let the word trail out, and watched the blood flood her face. “You came here, and used your magicks on me. Why?”
“I thought you would not give me hearing, but kill me first. It was only to buy that much time—”
“And you found that time worth the cost?”
“It did you no harm,” she said.
“You.” Gird leveled both index fingers at her. “It cost you, mageborn lady. It cost you my trust.”
“But—
“NO!” He hammered the table with both fists. “No. You listen, mageborn, and then see if you want to dare our mercy. This you did, this use of magicks to charm me into listening, this is exactly what we despise. To keep yourself safe and put others in peril, to use weapons we cannot bear: this is unfair, unjust, and we will not let you do it.”
“What do you know about justice?” she snapped.
“More than you. I would not use my strength against a child to take what was not mine—no, not if I hungered. I know what fair exchange is—”
“You’ve been talking to kapristi—”
“Aye, and listening, too. Weight for weight, work for work, honest labor for honest wages, no chalk in the flour and no water in the milk: that’s fair exchange.”
“And what did you exchange for this wisdom?” She was still scornful, ready to be very angry indeed.
“What they asked for it: when we gain the rule, to bind ourselves to respect their boundaries evermore. To allow gnomish merchants in our markets, at the same fair exchange humans use.”
“That is all they asked?”
“ ’Tis more than they got from you, all these years, so they said. They want a peaceful, ordered land nearby, one content with its borders; they want fair dealing.” Someone came in then, an excuse to dismiss her. But he could not quite dismiss her from his mind. Her image clung there, disturbing. He wished she would leave; it was going to take all his influence to keep the others from attacking her. They might even think she had charmed him.
Several nights later he heard music from the far side of camp. Strings, plucked by skillful hands, and sweet breathy notes of something not quite like a shepherd’s reed pipe. A voice, singing. He stiffened. He knew that voice, knew that honeygold sweetness. Damn the woman, he thought. Her with her arts, she’ll get us all killed.
He chose a roundabout way to her; he could not have said why. Perhaps the sentries would be less alert, listening to the singing? But no. They challenged him, every one, with a briskness he found irritating rather than reassuring.
She sat well back from the fire, cradling the roundbellied stringed instrument and listening to another woman play a wooden pipe three handspans long. Gird watched her from the shadows. That long bony face, the hollows of the eyes—she had grace, he had to admit. Her hands moved, her fingers began touching the strings again, bringing out mellow notes from her instrument. They wove around the pipe-player’s melody and tangled Gird’s attempt to follow either instrument alone. One of the men began to sing, a horse-nomad song. “Fleet foot the wind calls, run from the following storm—” The magelady joined in, again that golden tone he mistrusted. Her voice ran a little above the tune, patterning with it, but in no mode Gird knew. He scowled, ready to be angry. All at once her eyes met his. Her voice slipped, and found itself again.
No. He would not listen to her. He would not look at her. She was betrayal, treachery: she had killed her own king. Magelady, born to deceit and mastery. He was himself: peasant: Mali’s husband. Mali’s dead, whispered some dark corner of his mind. Raheli’s father, then. Broad and blunt, and liking it that way—he would not let himself be seduced by mere grace and golden voice.
She was surpassing beautiful. He tried to think of her body as no more than the body of an animal, a sleek cow he had seen and coveted, a graceful horse. He focused on her hands, now racing over the strings to finger some intricate descant to the piper. It was not the same song. For how many had he stood here, fascinated, watching her? Those long-fingered hands, strong and supple, that long body. He met her eyes again, dark eyes older than her years, full of sorrow.
She knew. She knew he watched, and how he watched. Rage roiled up in him: she was charming him again, even now. He glared at her; she looked back, sorrowful and unafraid. Calm. Kill me now, her look said. I did not do this. Yet, if it was not charm, why wasn’t she disgusted at his interest? A peasant, a coarse man old enough to be her father—
Not so, came her voice in his mind. You are not so old, nor I so young.
No disgust? He was disgusted, with himself. How could he think of such a woman, as a woman, after Mali’s loyalty and Raheli’s tragedy? What had he fought for, if not to remove such women from power?
Time had passed, the fire only warm ashes under a dark sky. The others had fallen asleep. Only she remained awake, watching him as he watched her. Magicks, he thought disgustedly.
“Not so, lord marshal,” she said. Aloud, in her own voice, but quietly.
“Reading minds is magicks.”
“That, yes. The other—if it be magic at all, it is older far than mine.”
“I—would like to hate you.”
“With reason.” She turned away, and folded around the melon-bellied instrument a trimmed fleece. “But you cannot, lord marshal, any more than I hate myself. I did not come here to unsettle you.”
“Wind unsettles water,” he said, surprising himself. Where had that come from?
She laughed softly; it had an edge to it. “Yes—wind. But you are not water, lord marshal—Gird. You are what you said—good peasant clay. Do you know what the rockfolk say of clay?”
“No.”
“Sertig squeezed clay to rock. And rock squeezed makes diamond, fairest of jewels that gives light in darkness.”
He grunted, surprise and superstitious fear together. He had consented to be rock; the other, half dreamed of, still wholly terrified him. And diamonds were jewels, and jewels belonged to the wealthy, to such as this lady: he would not so belong. But his mouth opened, and he spoke again.
“I have dreamed of you.” He had waked sweating and furious; he had not spoken to her since.
She looked away. “I thought you might. I’m sorry.”
“You—you are like no one—”
“I am myself. Once—a name I will not use again. Now, what he called me, an autumn rose, a last scentless b
lossom doomed by frost—”
“You like that word. Doom.”
“Gird, I know myself, and my future: it is the chanciest gift our people had, but in me it is, like the others, strong. I will have no children; my time is past.” She met his eyes squarely. “And you, who have children—you think you could give me some?”
He felt suddenly hot. Now she was smiling, but it had no warmth in it.
“I know your dreams, Gird; your eyes speak of them. A mage-lady’s body—a magelady unwed—what is she like? You see the foreign shape of my face, my hands, and you wonder about the rest.” From musing, her voice roughened to anger. “Ah, Esea! You will believe it my magicks no matter what I do! And I have tried, if you had the wit to see it, to be invisible to you, to draw no eyes, least of all yours.”
“It was your sorrow.” That, too, came without his thought. Yet it was true. She had tried no charms on him or anyone, after that first meeting, but the stress of her sorrow drew eyes to her.
“Look, Gird: I will show you, and then if you are wise, if the gods are truly with you, you will know that in this I am honest.”
He opened his mouth, but her gesture silenced him, for she had thrown off her cloak, and begun unlacing her shirt. If he said anything now, someone might wake, and the explanations would be, at best, difficult. Her fingers moved quickly, deftly, stripping off her clothes with no more apparent embarrassment than he would have had in his own cottage. It should have been too dark to see her, but she glowed slightly, a light he knew was magelight.
She had the body he had imagined. Long legs, long slender body untouched by childbearing; her hips were like a young girl’s and her breasts—he ached to touch them. Even Mali as a girl had not had such breasts, the very shape of his desire. But through the beauty he had expected he perceived the barrenness she had claimed. Like some graceful carving of stone, set up in a lord’s hall for amusement: he could engender nothing there. His hands opened, closed; instead of the imagined softness and warmth, there was hardness and cold.
She wrapped the cloak around herself again, dimming the glow until he could just make out her face. “You see?” A thread of sorrow darkened that golden voice. “It is not you, Gird; it is a choice I made, long years ago: obedience to my king. Service, not freedom. Death, not life.”
“It’s wrong.”
Her brows rose. “You are my judge?”
“No, but—” There had to be a way to say it, that meant what he meant. “Serving things rightly, that can’t be serving death. Loyalty’s good, I’ll agree there, but it’s not all—what you’re loyal to must be worthy.”
“Wise clay, lord marshal.” Her voice mocked him, but her face was uneasy. “Where did a peasant learn such wisdom?”
“It’s only sense,” Gird said stubbornly. “Peasant sense, maybe: we serve life in our work. Growing crops, tending beasts—that’s serving life.”
“I erred, as I’ve admitted. A mistake, believing the king was true, and worth my obedience. A mistake I remedied, you remember.” Her voice had chilled again; he thought she did not truly believe it was a mistake.
“So you said.” He was grumpy, annoyed with his body which had not admitted what his mind knew—no comfort there. A man his age, to be so put out—he was disgusted with himself, and with her for rousing that interest. On the way across camp, he stumbled into one thing after another, knowing perfectly well it was his own temper making his feet clumsy.
Arranha. The old priest was one of them; perhaps he could explain. Gird sought him out, not surprised to find that Arranha was awake, peaceably staring at the stars.
“And how is the lady?” asked Arranha. Gird felt himself swelling with rage, to be so easily read, and then it vanished in a wave of humor. He folded himself down gingerly, to sit beside the priest.
“She is herself,” he said.
“Too much so,” said Arranha. “A bud that never opened, eaten out within. She has the body of a girl, but no savor of womanhood.”
Gird opened his mouth to let out surprise; his ears were burning. “She is lovely,” he said, after a decent interval.
“Cold,” insisted Arranha.
“Well—yes. And yes, I looked; she showed me—”
“She wants you?”
“No. I had never seen anyone like her—not to speak to—and I suppose—it was my own curiosity.”
“Natural enough.” Arranha shrugged that off, as he did other things Gird could not anticipate. “Which curiosity, I gather from your words, has now vanished. I would pity her, myself, were she not capable of better.”
Gird chuckled. “I thought you said we all were capable of better.”
“True. But great talents draw envy, even from tired old priests sitting up all night. Gird, she might have prevented much evil, had she listened to good counsel. It was not all heedlessness of love: she has the foreseeing mind. She chose not to listen; she chose in spite of her knowledge. She could not have saved the king, I daresay—from all I ever heard of him, as foolish a young man as ever sat on a throne. Not wicked, in any active sense, but silly and shallow. But she might have saved more than she did, and I can’t forget that. Nor should you. If she ever quits making a singer’s tale out of her lost love, she’d make you a fine marshal, but you’ll have to change her course.”
“I have enough to do, without teaching mageladies.” Arranha shrugged. “If a weapon falls into your hand, you either learn to use it, or your enemy uses it against you.”
Luap looked up as a strong, slender hand slapped down on the account rolls. He started to complain, but the look on the mage-lady’s face stopped the words in his month. She was white around the lips—with fury, he was sure—and he half-recalled hearing Gird’s bellow only a few minutes before.
“You!” she said, in a voice that had some of Gird’s bellow in it, though not so loud.
“Me?” He could not help noticing the hilt of her sword, her fine and reputedly magical sword. The jewel set in the pommel glinted, as if with internal fires. And every bit of metal she wore glittered, bright even beneath the cloth that shaded him from midday sun. Her eyes, when he met them again, seemed to glitter as well, fire-bright and angry. What could he have done? She had always seemed remote, but calm, when speaking to him.
“You,” she said, very quietly now, “you have mageblood.”
Luap shrugged, and looked away. “Common enough, lady; if you look closely, there’s bastards aplenty in this army.”
Her hand flipped this half-truth away. “Bastards in plenty, yes, but those in whom the mageblood stirs and wakes are few enough.”
He stared at her, shocked almost into careless speech. But he caught the unspoken question back, and tried to school his face. He could see by her expression that she wasn’t fooled, or maybe she could see his thoughts. She nodded at him, mouth tight.
“Yes. I do know. You have the magic, the light, and you know it. You could be what I am, were you not obedient to that—that churl out there!” Her arm waved. Luap felt a bubble of laughter tickle his throat. “That churl” must be Gird, whatever he’d done this time to anger the lady.
“It may be so,” he said, trying to keep even the least of that laughter out of his voice. “There was a time I thought so, but truly, lady, I have no desire for it now.”
She rested both fists on the little table and leaned close to him; he could smell her sweat, and the onion on her breath from dinner. It did nothing to diminish her beauty, or her power. “It has nothing to do with your desires, whatever your name really is. It is given to you, like the color of your eyes, the length of your arm: you cannot deny it.” He said nothing, facing her with what calm he could muster. Her eyes looked away first, but she did not move. Then she straightened up, with a last bang of one fist that crumpled the supply roll. “No. You are more than just a bastard, and you must learn it.”
Suddenly she was alight, blinding him at first, and then the heat came, scorching heat that blackened the edges of his scrolls. Without thou
ght, he grabbed for power, and threw a shield before him, swept the scrolls to safety behind him.
“Stop that!” he said, furious and frightened at once. She laughed, a scornful laugh he remembered from his earliest childhood, the laugh of one whose power has never been overcome. Above his head, the fabric caught fire, the flames hardly visible against her brightness and the noonday sun.
“You have the power; you stop me!”
It was challenge, challenge he had never expected to face, that Gird would never have had him face. And he felt within a surge of that uncanny power, whose ways he had never learnt, never dared to explore. But as he had startled Gird, perhaps he could startle her, and so he let it out, in whatever form it might choose to come.
It came as a fiery globe, that raced at her; she slapped it away, first with a laugh and then, when it surged again against her hand, with a startled expression. She drew her sword, now glowing as brightly as she, and swiped at the globe. Luap would have been fascinated, if he had not also been involved. He could feel a vague connection between himself and the globe, as if he had a ball of pitch at the end of a long and supple reed.
With a final pop like a spark from sappy wood, her brilliance vanished. Luap blinked. Her shadow stood behind her, lean and black; the sun was overhead—he realized then that he was alight as she had been. She was staring at him, her first expression changing to respect, and then awe.
“You,” she said, in a very different tone from her first approach.
“Yes?” Whatever was in his voice, it worked on her. Her mouth moved, but she said nothing. Finally she shook her head, and managed speech.
“Do you know whose bastard you are?” she asked. Luap kept his mouth shut tight; if this was where she was going, he was not going to help. But she nodded, slowly, as if this confirmed something she’d hardly dared imagine. “The king’s,” she said quietly.
Calmly. “You have the royal magery; it could not be anyone else— and I think you knew, Luap. I think you chose your name of war precisely.”
“And if I did?” he asked, relaxing slightly. The shadow behind her blurred, as if his light dimmed. He could not tell; his eyes still refused to answer all his questions.
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