Ynamynet’s father had died from such ill-feeling when the girl was only two. Father had not shown any talent—he had none, being Twice Dead—but when in his cups he had spoken in unwise praise of rulers gone by and the order they had brought the land. Happily for his family, Father had been far away from home, and murder did not travel beyond that tavern’s own walls.
Instead of living in isolation, those with magic’s mark lived cheek by jowl with those who would be willing to destroy them, and the Chamber of Transformation was often nothing more than a spare bedroom consecrated to this purpose. Fevers, even killing fevers, were not uncommon in these days without magic. Ynamynet wondered if in their deepest hearts the Never Lived sometimes longed for the days when a talented healer could ease the sufferer on the road back into life.
Deaf Trolog, one of the Once Dead, often posed as such a healer. Indeed, he was knowledgeable about many forms of non-magical doctoring. His abilities and knowledge made him welcome anywhere illness came, be it high hall or low cottage. Although Deaf Trolog dispensed medicines wherever he went, his real intention was to sniff out those cases when the fever in question might actually be the bane, for the bane did crop up among the Never Lived, although not as commonly as it did among families that knew and revered their heritage.
“The sorcerers took what they wanted in those days,” Deaf Trolog would laugh in the flat, braying fashion of those who cannot hear themselves. “They spread their seed around a good deal, so their gifts arise even from dry soil.”
But although Deaf Trolog occasionally was able to find and save one of those who bore magic’s mark, his most honored role was tending those from families like Ynamynet’s own where the spirit mark was common, and the risk of death from the bane was high. Deaf Trolog was the one who brought infusions and other treatments to the Chamber of Transformation, and he was the one who pronounced verdict upon the survivors—often before the pain wracked victims were even sure themselves whether they had retained their gift or not.
“Twice Dead,” his voice would croak, or sadly, “Truly Dead.” Occasionally with a glow of triumph in his voice, “Once Dead!”
From the time she was six, Ynamynet was present for these proclamations whenever possible, watching, waiting, learning what she could for when her own day came.
Ynamynet’s resolve to be proclaimed Once Dead was shaken only once, on the day one of her elder sisters passed through the bane. In the years between Kiriel’s ordeal and this, one other sibling had died from the bane—a sister two and a half years younger than Kiriel. Two others siblings had survived, both as Twice Dead, and then Leniti’s time had come.
Leniti’s gift was slight, manifesting as an erratic ability to divine sources of fresh water, veins of metal, even missing items. Leniti was a cheerful young woman who described the sensation of her talent, on those rare occasions when it flared into life, as if she was hearing the song of the living earth. Even when her talent was dormant, Leniti moved as if a trace of the earth’s song still lingered in her ears. Though she was as plain as a sparrow, her movements to that unheard song made her strangely beautiful and loved by all.
The bane came upon Leniti when she was eighteen and Ynamynet was twelve. Leniti went into the Chamber of Transformation almost cheerfully.
“I hardly know my talent is there,” Leniti said with a giggle, her eyes wide with fever. “Surely I won’t miss it when it is gone.”
Ynamynet did not scorn Leniti for intending to let go of her talent. Leniti was in love with her husband, who she had married two years before, and her entire soul was given to him and their infant daughter. There was no room for the intense concentration on sorcery to which Ynamynet had devoted herself. Besides Leniti’s talent for divination was slight and erratic, hardly something worth dying for.
But the talent seemed to have other ideas or, perhaps when forced to meet her own spirit face to face in the Halls of Self, Leniti had learned how much that seldom heard song mattered to her. Given no recourse for escape, the fever mounted higher and higher. Leniti tossed and turned, screaming fragments of argument to an unseen auditor. She knew no one, not even her husband or her babe—or the younger sister who knelt at her bedside day and night.
Leniti’s pain was so great that Ynamynet found herself praying that death would come as a release. Once she came to herself to discover that her hands had lifted a pillow, and that without conscious decision she was raising it to smother Leniti’s tormented screams into silence forever.
Hot with shame, Ynamynet laid the pillow aside, and instead pressed snow packs against her sister’s burning flesh, not even pausing to mop away the water that resulted as snow turned instantly into water.
Perhaps it was the snow and winter’s cold that saved Leniti’s life, their combined force that kept the fever from consuming her. Perhaps it was Deaf Trolog’s hovering care, for as the bane grew more fierce he rarely left Leniti’s side. Perhaps Leniti’s own spirit was equal to the battle against whatever it was that sought to devour her innermost self.
They would never know, for Leniti could not tell them. Although Deaf Trolog pronounced her Once Dead with complete assurance, Leniti came forth from her battle completely insane. She had kept the song of the earth in her ears, but never again did she give the least indication of knowing anyone or anything around her.
Watching Leniti move about to unheard music, Ynamynet doubted her own resolve. She wondered if Kiriel’s spirit would forgive her if she broke the solemn vow she had made upon the soft earth mold of his grave.
Ynamynet’s time came in a whisper of voices and an ache in her bones. She was fourteen. Despite all the times she had sat vigil in the Chamber of Transformation, Ynamynet did not recognize the signs of the bane’s rising when they manifested so intimately.
“She is possessed by the bane,” Deaf Trolog said with certainty, and over his shoulder Ynamynet saw her mother’s face go dead white.
“It can’t be,” Mother cried in a voice that said she knew the signs all too well. She added in desperation, as if saying so might make it so, “Ynamynet is too young!”
“Now, Mahlli,” Deaf Trolog said, “you know as well as I do that the bane comes when it will with no sense of human time. Ynamynet has shown great interest in all things of sorcery since she was hardly big enough to look over the table’s edge. There are some who say that interest summons the bane.”
There were indeed some who believed that the bane did come more quickly to those who showed interest in sorcery, but as she was hustled off to her time in the Chamber of Transformation, Ynamynet couldn’t help but think that her own circumstances were dreadfully unfair.
Kiriel, she thought, the very one who got me into this, he lived until he was twenty, untouched and untainted. I bet for all the time he spent with his nose in books and his fingers blue from copying, still he had some fun. I bet he even kissed somebody—probably more than one somebody. I remember how the girls cried at his funeral.
Pervaded with a deep sense of being a victim, Ynamynet collapsed onto the bed. That sense rose within her as the fever twined into her nerves and sent red hot shafts of pain to penetrate her core. Pain surged up the marrow of her bones and made every beat of her heart undiluted agony.
Ynamynet tried to remember the knowledge she had garnered from her long study of the bane. She struggled to remember her goal. Once Dead. Alive with abilities intact.
Her sister Leniti’s voice came to her ears, singing one of the oddly musical pieces that were her only utterances since arising from this very bed. Ynamynet amended her goals, each thought shaped as a hammer blow of pain against the anvil of her fevered body.
Once Dead. Alive. Abilities intact. Sane.
Ynamynet understood now what Leniti had faced, the lure of the song of the mark set in her spirit. That song had been so potent that it had washed away the pain, made everything else unimportant until Leniti had followed it into a place without pain—with power—but with nothing else.
Leni
ti’s song faded, but in its fading notes Ynamynet saw her own spirit mark outlined against a vision of her body. This image stood on outspread feet, head thrown slightly back, arms spread wide. It was a woman translucent: skin a pale glow, holding in taut muscles stretched and red with blood; bones lay beneath, hard, white, and solid. Intertwined within this all, carrying with it a burning fiber of agony, was the mark of magic upon her spirit.
That mark touched every muscle, insinuated itself into every nerve, every bone. It permeated the shafts of her hair and the fluids in her organs. As Ynamynet had vowed to make the magical arts her life, so the spirit mark touched every part of her life. And as the bane fed upon that spirit mark, so it also touched every part of her living self and made that life a throbbing, beating scream of pain.
Ynamynet heard herself scream, heard her mother’s voice calling for more ice, felt the sawdust covered chunks set against her naked flesh, but the cold could not soothe her. The pain was inside the skin.
“Inside! Inside! Inside!” she screamed, and tried to rake open her skin with her fingernails, but they were blunt and dull, and would not cut. Deaf Trolog had seen this before. How many times had Ynamynet herself cut some suffer’s nails, calm and clinical, never realizing why it was done?
Ynamynet screamed and nearly choked as a fever reducing infusion was poured into her open mouth. She’d done that, too, even feeling a certain gratitude that she need not force open jaws locked tightly shut to get the necessary medication in.
She moaned. Why did they try? Why didn’t they just let the fever have her? She didn’t want to die, but she didn’t really want to live either, not when living meant being Twice Dead and a failure. How good it would be if someone pitied her and took her life. Then she’d just be dead, and not alive and a failure or dead and a failure just dead . . .
Ynamynet remembered holding the pillow in her hands when Leniti had been sick, and wondered if she had been responding to some unrealized prompt from the sufferer who had been in her care.
“Pillow! Pillow! Pillow!” Ynamynet screamed, trying to make them understand, but her throat was raw and scratched from too much screaming, and all that came out was a shrill, high wail.
Ynamynet looked down at herself and at the spirit mark intertwined with her body, nailed into place with her own hopes and desires. If she let it go, separated it from herself, then the bane would no longer have anything extra to feed upon. Robbed of the extra fuel of her physical self, the bane would burn her talent away, and Ynamynet would be free. Free. Alive. Free.
Twice Dead.
Ynamynet fled into hallucination, but the pain was always with her no matter where she ran or who she sought. Eventually, pain took a face, and that face was that of her brother, Kiriel.
“Hey, Nami,” Kiriel said softly with that warm, understanding smile Ynamynet found she still remembered. “Having a hard time of it?”
“You know I am,” Ynamynet replied. She tried propping herself up but her tortured muscles wouldn’t let her. She fell back against the pillow, cool linen instantly hot against her face. She was vaguely aware of efforts being made to ease her suffering, but she couldn’t seem to care. Only the pain mattered.
Kiriel took a seat on one of the chairs pulled up beside the sickroom cot and slouched comfortably. Ynamynet found herself resenting that easy slouch. She found herself resenting Kiriel.
“It’s all your fault,” she said. “If you’d done it right . . .”
“Done what?”
“You were going to be Once Dead. You were going to be the next sorcerer. You were going to be a king. You failed though. You gave up. You left your destiny to me. I was only six!”
“Did anyone ask you to step in?” Kiriel asked. “Did anyone ask you to be a hero?”
Ynamynet stared at him. “Someone had to do it.”
“We all hate you, you know,” Kiriel said. “The bane is agony enough—you know that now, don’t you? Imagine suffering, imagine dragging yourself to the surface from time to time. Instead of finding loving hands and concerned faces, there’s this cold, clinical little girl sitting there. There’s not a drop of compassion in you, is there? You’re cold. So cold . . .”
“I had to do it,” Ynamynet said. “You let us down. I had to learn how to defeat the bane if ever again dragons were to fly and we were to raise jeweled cups on high. You remember the tales. You remember the songs. I had to do it.”
“You had to?” Kiriel laughed, the sound short, curt, and bitter. “Well, then maybe you belong in that jeweled hall, drinking wine from human skulls. But we hated you, Ynamynet, hated you to the bone. Ah . . . You were so cold, so cold, so cold . . .”
Ynamynet didn’t feel in the least cold. Her body burned and Kiriel was gone, but she didn’t even remember his being there. Pain beat at her, thunder drumbeat in every limb, every organ. She summoned the vision of herself, and saw the body was fading, the bane now clearly visible, no longer merely running along her spirit mark, but an entity in itself, burning, burning, burning.
It’s going to be over soon, she thought, and felt no surprise. I can still untack the spirit mark from my physical self—I think. I must. I must try . . . Surely living is better. Didn’t I learn that from all those bedside vigils? Living is better, even living without power. Even . . .
And then Ynamynet remembered what she had learned, and she knew that her only hope for success lay within the very thing for which Kiriel and the others hated her.
Cold.
She was cold. So cold. Cold flesh did not feel. Cold things did not burn. Cold and heat were opposites. Where one was gathered, the other surely could not be.
Ynamynet gathered cold into herself. She iced her flesh, cemented her joints with frost. She forced heat from her bones and her body, channeled it into the burning thread of the bane. Her fingers grew numb, so she pushed with them as if they were sticks strapped to her hands, until her hands were as blocks of wood strapped to her wrists. The wrists grew cold, and then the elbows, but still she pushed, winnowing every ounce of heat from herself, giving heat to the bane, seducing it from herself and her spirit mark, feeding the bane’s fire until it burned out.
And left her cold.
Ynamynet came to consciousness to hear Deaf Trolog braying triumphantly, “Once Dead! Once Dead!”
She opened her eyes, and found her mother sitting on the edge of the bed, her gaze alight with hope and joy. Various sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins, crowded around the doorway, all aglow with joy and pride.
Mother looked down at Ynamynet. “You did it, my child. You did it!”
Ynamynet managed a faint smile, but although the searing waves of bane agony were gone, she still felt weak, sick, and wrung out . . . All that, and something else.
“How do you feel, darling?” Mother asked.
“Cold,” Ynamynet whispered, and knew that never again would she be warm. “So cold.”
STARCHILD WONDERSMITH
Louise Marley
Louise Marley is a former concert and opera singer who now has great fun writing fantasy and science fiction, often with musical themes. Her published novels include The Glass Harmonica, The Child Goddess, and Singer in the Snow. She lives in Washington State with her husband and son and a white Scottish Terrier. Louise loves hearing from readers, and can be reached through her website at www.louisemarley.com.
“WELL, SON.” Puck Smith stopped the car. “Here we are.”
Star and his parents gazed out at the glass and steel rectangle of his new school. A crowd of kids were filing in through the double doors. They mostly wore denim, Star saw, and every one of them carried a backpack.
Star had carefully chosen his sunset shirt and his favorite pants, violet with stars on the legs, but he could see now they weren’t going to work.
“Mom,” he said. “I need different clothes. And a backpack.”
“Oh, honey.” When she leaned forward, the sleeve of her caftan sent spangles of light drifting over his shoulde
r. “Maybe you should wait until . . .”
“No, Mom.” He took a deep breath, and opened the car door. “I’ve waited long enough.”
Crystal sighed. “Oh, dear. I suppose you’re right.” She held out one of her special containers. “But don’t forget your lunch.”
Star took the container. At his touch, wisps of scented steam curled around his fingers, sparkling in the sunshine. Dismayed, he said, “Mom! I can’t take this!”
“He’s right,” Puck said. “It breaks the Rules.”
“Oh, the blessed Rules!” Crystal cried.
“We have to protect the Normals,” Puck said sternly. “You know that, dear.”
Star said, “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Crystal’s eyes reddened. “But—what will you do about lunch?”
“There’s a cafeteria.”
Puck said, “It’s not too late to change your mind, Starchild.”
“Dad. It’s Star, okay? Star Smith.”
“Right, son. Star. We know.” Puck took the lunch container and laid it on the seat. “But you’re still one of us.”
“I know. Thanks, Dad.”
“We love you,” Crystal whispered, tears in her voice.
“I love you, too, Mom.” Star swung his legs out of the car. The silver stars on his trousers glittered in the sunshine. “ ‘Bye.”
Star watched his parents drive away. Then he turned, touched the whistle in his pocket for luck, and started up the sidewalk toward his new life.
It had been a hard decision to change schools.
Children of Magic Page 19
