“You mean it could happen again, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“I’m afraid so. If it’s any help, I imagine the need in those connected to you by wild magic would have to be overwhelming. It’s only happened once that you know of? No fainting spells as a child?” She shook her head. “Once in thirteen years, then. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you.” He smiled when she yawned outright. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you for supper.”
He was as good as his word. She was still tired, but forced herself to bathe in the stream and visit with the ponies. By the time the trainees had begun their meditation, she was in her bedroll, asleep.
The otter’s return awoke her late that night. She had brought Daine a sea urchin shell, one that was cleaned of its original inhabitant and dried.
“Thank you,” Daine whispered, touched. “I’ll treasure it.” The otter chirped her own thanks, and squirmed out through the gap in the tent wall. Daine smiled and snuggled into her covers, feeling the bumps of the shell with her fingers. I can heal, she thought. Ma, I wish you were here to see!
They moved out in the morning under a clear sky. Daine’s studies went on. Slowly, she honed her ability to speak with groups of animals so no other creatures might hear. She learned to put her will on four, then five, then six animals, to make them obey. She used whoever was closest: a flock of gulls, dogs in a village where the company stopped for eggs, harbor seals. Her greatest success came when a herd of mule deer came down to graze near their camp one morning. When Daine rose, she saw them. She watched, keeping Tahoi with her, simply enjoying the sight of deer so close to humans.
At Sarge’s “Turn out!” the flock prepared to flee.
“Stop!” Daine called, throwing up her arm.
The deer stopped and did not move until she said, “What’m I doing? Go on, scat!” She took her will off them, and they ran. Feeling pleased with herself, she turned around, to find the trainees out of their beds and staring at her oddly.
“It’s a good idea not to say anything out loud,” Numair murmured, coming up beside her. She looked up at him and was rewarded with a smile. “It keeps the uninitiated from noticing. Just a little professional advice.”
The Lioness walked over to them. “Congratulations, Numair. Your student learns fast.”
“I have a good teacher,” Daine said, and the mage tousled her hair.
“Come on, children, you aren’t paid to gawp like a bunch of yokels!” Sarge’s training voice could cut through stone, Daine was sure.
Evin was so close that she heard his soft: “We aren’t paid at all, yet.”
Sarge’s eyes flicked his way, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “Let’s move it or lose it, people!”
They pushed hard that day, stopping only once, to change mounts. By noon Daine felt as if her teeth would never stop rattling from the wagon, even though she’d switched to riding Cloud twice. About then she found a brush rabbit by the road: he’d been slashed by a goshawk and was dying. Daine took him into her lap, giving Mangle control of the wagon, and went to work.
The healing was harder than before, partly because concentration in a wagon traveling over a rutted road was more difficult than it had been in Numair’s tent, late at night. Several times Daine was banged out of her meditation. Finally she switched places with Numair, asking Spots to give her as easy a ride as possible. On a large and placid horse, her luck was better than it would have been on a pony, or than it had been in the wagon. Still, by the time she finished, she had drenched her clothes in sweat, and she had been working throughout the early afternoon.
Weary to the bone, she freed the rabbit. He thanked her and fled, promising to keep a better eye out for predator birds in the future. She watched him go, elated in spite of her exhaustion.
They camped on a wide, open space that ended in a bluff over a tumble of rocks. “Daine, look!” Miri said as they were caring for the horses. She pointed out to sea. Three long, sleek, gray shapes broke from the waves and plunged in again, then four shapes, then two. “Dolphins!”
Once her chores were over, she went to the edge of the bluff. This was her first sighting of dolphins, and she wanted to talk to them. Sitting on the grass, she reached for her magic—and felt it slip from her grip. Working on the rabbit had tired her to the point of being unable to bear down with her mind. She closed her eyes and tried again. Tahoi barked. One of the trainees loosed an ear-piercing whistle. “Concentrate,” she ordered herself through gritted teeth. “You can do this!”
Slowly she discarded every sound nearby, until the only one left was her own heartbeat. Bearing down, she pushed it away, and farther. Perversely, it hammered in her ears louder than ever. She forced it back one more time.
Numair saw her collapse.
“Alanna!” he roared. “Come quick!”
A wide, smooth path sloped ahead, bordered in wildflowers. At the top of the hill two people waited in the shade of an old and gnarled oak.
“Ma?” she whispered, her eyes filling, and the woman held out open arms. Daine floated up the path toward her. The man was unfamiliar: he stood by Ma lazily, wearing only a loincloth. He was very brown, heavily muscled, and carried an unstrung bow like a man born with it in his hand. With so much of his skin bare, she could see that there were streaks of green in his tan, a deep green that gleamed in his eyes. Strangest of all, she could see what looked like antlers planted firmly in his curling brown hair.
“New friend, Ma?” she asked dryly.
The woman laughed. “Still mothering me, Daine?”
A bolt of lightning shot through her chest once, twice.
Her mother’s face saddened. “No!” she cried. Daine fought, but a force was pulling her away.
“Ma!” she yelled.
“Sarra!” The man’s voice was commanding. “It isn’t time. Let her go.”
Suddenly she felt reality shatter. Now she hung in open air, high over a rocky bluff where ants gathered around a purple fire. She looked back toward the hill, and a Stormwing dropped between her and her mother.
He looked her over, a nasty grin showing filthy teeth. “Well, well—what a surprise. What brings you here, little pigeon? Aren’t you the darling Queen Zhaneh has offered so much to have brought to her alive?”
“Your queen can eat my arrows!” she screamed. “I want my ma!”
“Kiss my claws and say ‘pretty please,’” he taunted, and vanished. Daine fell to earth and back into her body.
Numair shook Daine as he held her. “You fiend!” he yelled. “What on earth possessed you? You were dead! I ought to kill you myself!”
“Numair, calm down.” The Lioness bent over Daine, looking white and drawn. “How are you, youngling? You gave us a scare.”
Daine grabbed her hand. “You’re the purple fire. You brought me back?”
“I gave you a direct jolt to the heart. We thought we’d lost you.”
“My heart?” She frowned, remembering. “It made too much noise. I wanted it to quiet down so I could talk with the dolphins.”
“Do you hear her?” Numair asked the clouds. “She wanted to talk to dolphins, so she stopped her own blessed heart! Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith!”
Daine sat up. “I never.”
Numair opened his mouth and Onua, behind him, covered it. “Not until you can talk without screaming,” she said firmly.
“Daine, meditation is done for control over body responses, and thus over the mind.” Alanna’s purple eyes were amused, but serious as well. “In cutting back the sound of your heart, you were cutting the heartbeat itself.”
“Well, I won’t do that again,” Daine promised, sitting up. “I feel like a mule kicked me in the ribs.”
The knight chuckled. “In a way, one did. I gave you quite a shot, youngster.” She reached a hand to Evin, who helped her get to her feet.
“Will you behave now?” Onua asked Numair. He nodded, and sighed as she took her hands from his mouth. “And men say we’re emotional,” the K’mir to
ld Daine. “Don’t do that again. I’d hate to find another assistant at this time of year.” Wiping her hands on her breeches, she went back to the trainees.
“May I ask why you couldn’t hear dolphins in the usual way?” Numair’s voice was dangerously pleasant.
Daine rubbed her eyes with her fists. “I was tired.”
“You were tired—ah. That makes it much clearer. Listen, magelet. The next time you’re tired, try resting for a while. If you simply can’t rest, go where you’ll get nice and chilled, or step into salt water.” He indicated the ocean below. “As you can see, there is quite a bit of it down there.”
“I don’t get it.”
He sighed. “Reductions in temperature or contact with salt water can act as amplifiers for magic.”
“So that’s why the whale songs are so loud in the water!”
“Yes, that’s why they’re loud. Daine, you must realize—these things you’re doing when you meditate are real. When you reduce the inner sound of your breathing, you are reducing your breath. When you quiet your heart, you’re slowing it down. Your body will react—understand?”
“Yes, sir.” She got to her feet with a groan. “Do people have visions when they think they’re dead?”
His control vanished. “I don’t know! I’ve never tried it!”
“Oh, well, I can see there’s no talking to you the rest of the night,” she said wisely. “Not till you’re out of this pet you’re in.”
“The pet I’m in?” he bellowed.
Definitely time to go groom the horses, she thought.
She fell asleep during supper, and slept through the night. She felt rested when she woke, an hour before dawn, with something already on her mind.
It was the Stormwing. He had been nastily real, in a way Ma and her friend had not been. Even now she could smell that thing’s reek, fouling the salt air—
Salt air.
There had been no scent to the hill in her vision. She had a good nose, and she would have remembered. There had been flowers. Ma always wore wood’s lily or sweet pea sachets, and Daine had smelled nothing at all. But the Stormwing had come when she was in the air over this place. She had smelled him.
Standing outside the tent, in a cold wind, she reached out.
She was too tired to go far—less than a mile, only part of her usual range. She brushed the mind of an albatross that wheeled just over the rocks, but that was as far as her senses went. At that distance, she could trust her eyes as much as her magic, and they told her there were no Stormwings about.
Cloud followed her to the ocean, as cross as Numair had been. Haven’t you had enough fun? she asked, gracefully picking her way down the bluff while her mistress slid and scrambled.
“Not near,” Daine replied. She sighed in relief when she reached the strip of sand between cliff and water. “Don’t distract me, either.”
I wouldn’t dream of it, the mare retorted.
If I think about it, I’ll only chicken out, Daine told herself firmly. Like as not it isn’t near as cold as it looks, either. Yanking off boots and stockings, she plunged into the waves up to her knees. Once her feet were numb she tried again, gripping a rock to keep from being knocked off balance.
There—far overhead, hovering behind a long cloud, a tiny dot of wrongness. The hackles went up on the back of her neck.
Why so far up? she wondered. He just hangs there, waiting. Watching?
She sat down. “Cloud, keep me from being sucked under!”
I will do no such thing, the mare replied. Come out this instant.
Daine turned and fixed her eyes on Cloud. “Now, please.” She used her will—just a touch of it. “It’s important.”
Grumbling, the pony waded in and gripped the back of Daine’s shirt in her teeth. I hope it rips, she grumbled.
Daine reached behind herself to grab the pony’s mane. If I go, you go, she retorted. Numb to the waist, she closed her eyes and sent her magic out.
There was her nasty friend, a jarring note in the sky. He was far from a single note, however. He was part of a thin, jangling chord that reached north and south where the waves boomed, as far as her hearing could go.
She dragged herself out of the water. “Get me to the others? Please?” she gasped, crawling onto Cloud’s back. “Not the trainees. Umm—”
To Numair’s tent? The mare sounded worried in spite of herself.
“Good. Yes. Have Tahoi bring Onua. It’s important.”
Just hang on and be quiet.
Daine collapsed over her friend’s neck. “Of course.” Cloud’s mane was delightfully warm on her face.
“I’m sure,” she repeated. All the adults were gathered around Numair’s small fire. “They’re up and down the coast as far as I can hear.”
“How can they stay in one place like that?” Buri asked.
“They have their own magic,” Numair replied, drying his feet from his own seawater dip, taken once he’d heard what Daine had to say.
“Can they see everything?” Alanna wanted to know. “Can they look through walls or stone?”
“I think they see like hawks,” Daine guessed. “I don’t know what they can do with their magic.”
“They can use only a little without being noticed.” Numair was still shivering. “If a sorcerer knows where to look, he can see the aura of their magic for miles. All they dare risk is the bit that holds them aloft.” He made a face. “Once I thought to look that far, of course.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Alanna said tartly. “I see magic too, and I never spotted them.” She patted Daine’s shoulder. “Good work.” She got to her feet. “I have to let Jonathan know. He won’t be pleased.” She walked away, far from the noise made by the trainees getting up. Within minutes a small fire blazed where she had gone, burning first orange, then purple.
Buri fed their fire more wood. “What now?” she asked the queen.
Thayet sighed. “I wanted to stay a few days at Buzzard Rocks, but maybe that’s not a good idea. We’ll move them along today, camp early at the Rocks, and go before dawn. Onua can ward the camp. There’s not much else we can do, once my lord gets Alanna’s message.”
“We’ve seen fishing boats and villages,” Onua said thoughtfully. “They aren’t raiding. They aren’t raiding, and they aren’t killing.”
“You sound almost sorry,” Buri commented.
“In a way I am. That would make sense.” Onua got to her feet. “They’re watching the coast like cats at mouseholes, but who’s the mouse?”
The Riders moved out briskly, and kept up the pace of the day before. Numair, apparently over his bad temper of the previous night, taught and questioned Daine on the habits of dolphins and whales.
Late in the day, when they took a side road to the village of Buzzard Rocks, Daine picked up a growing hum. With it came a feeling of otherness, though not that of monsters, or even of the water and tree sprites of the Royal Forest. She intended to tell Numair once they had pitched camp.
Their talk was postponed. When they reached the cluster of huts and sheds that marked the town, they found it was deserted. Thayet broke the trainees up into groups, and they fanned out to search the cluster of buildings. Daine and Cloud followed Numair, who did a search of his own.
“It happened fast, whatever it was,” he said, almost to himself, as he peered into barns, wells, and chicken coops. “Yet they did have a chance to pack and gather livestock.” Then turning he asked, “What’s the matter with your ears?”
She blushed and stopped rubbing them. “I keep hearing this—sound.”
“Oh?” His look was skeptical. “Hearing with your ears, or your mind?”
She listened for a moment. “With my mind. Sorry.”
“Is it like the Stormwings?”
“No—more like the undine, but not like her exactly. And I have this feeling, as if—I don’t know—when I see a juggler or something marvelous.” She looked up at him miserably. “I’m sorry—I can’t tell you anyth
ing else.”
“Don’t worry. Come on—maybe the others have learned something. Tell me right away if anything changes.”
They joined the Riders in the village square. No one had found any clues. “They had time to pack,” Alanna said. “It wasn’t a raid or disease—”
The hum turned into a roaring chime in Daine’s head. Selda shrieked.
They came in low over the beach where the fishing boats lay, giant things too large for birds. The mounts went crazy with fear, needing all their riders’ attention. Spots, Cloud, and Tahoi shrank close to Daine and Numair, who were frozen with awe. Selda’s ponies broke from her hold and ran into the rocks—five other ponies and Sarge’s General did the same.
Daine realized poor Mangle was having hysterics, and went to grip his bridle. “Shush,” she told him absently. “Calm down.” Trembling, he obeyed.
“Weapons!” barked Thayet. Those who could do so grabbed their bows.
The birds—if they were birds—banked and came for another pass, giant wings shining like dim gold in the sun. This time they gave voice to shuddering, screaming roars. One of them raked the cart’s roof with its claws, slicing the canvas as neatly as butter.
Daine saw what was about to happen. “Stop!” she called, to attackers and defenders.
Buri got in the first shot, Thayet the second. The great creatures were out of range, but already they were curving around again. “No!” Daine yelled now to the humans. “Leave them be!”
“We’re under attack!” Buri yelled.
“Don’t shoot! They don’t understand. If you’ll give me a second—” But she could see fifteen arrows were fitted to strings. She screamed her fury.
Ponies and horses grabbed for the arrows, breaking them in their teeth. Sarge’s Ox actually knocked him over. Daine wasted no time watching something she knew she could catch trouble for later. She ran toward the sea and the incoming creatures, waving her arms. “No! Stop! It’s not what you think! It’s not what they think!” Closing her eyes, she grabbed her power and threw it out like a net, pleading, Listen to me!
Wild Magic Page 14
