by Dawn Cook
Strell grinned as he licked the spoon clean. “You aren’t supposed to know how to make candied apples. It’s a plains secret. Did your mother teach you her recipe? It’s a good one.”
“Then keep your fingers out of it,” she said tartly but was too pleased he thought it good to be angry. Going back to her dough, she rolled the rectangle into a squat log shape and began to cut slices. Strell hovered over her shoulder, trying to snitch a bit of unattended dough. She skillfully thwarted his attempts, surprised when she was unable to find her usual contentment in their silent, long-running game of thief and guard.
She was tired of being silent. Tired of the pattern her days had fallen into. Bailic knew one of them had come in search of the book of First Truth. Thanks to Strell’s skillful acting and distractions, the man had been deceived into thinking Strell was the latent Keeper, not her. For the last four weeks, Bailic had been trying to teach Strell enough magic so he could open the book for him. And though she had mended all her stockings and made a new skirt while eavesdropping on Strell’s lessons, she had learned little about how to manipulate her hidden source and tracings. The idea had been that Useless, the last Master, would secretly teach her, and she would perform the magic for Strell without Bailic knowing, buying time until the Master found a way to kill Bailic. But Useless hadn’t returned to teach her anything, Strell was running out of excuses, and Bailic was growing impatient.
It was all Useless’s fault, she thought, her lips pressing together in misplaced frustration as she thunked the knife on the table to warn off Strell’s reaching fingers. The Master had introduced himself to her last fall with the pseudonym Useless. She would just as soon keep using it, seeing as it seemed to be more appropriate than his real name, Talo-Toecan. Useless had flitted away on his raku, batlike wings with only his whispered promise to return. He wasn’t ever coming back. Counting on him was—useless? She should take things into her own hands. Soon.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly, not sure how Strell would react. His cautious plainsman nature made him more inclined to follow a wait-and-see approach rather than her try-and-see philosophy. “The snow isn’t that deep yet. We could make it to the coast. Then we won’t have to stay the winter here. It’s not too late.”
Strell took the toast off the fire and set it on a plate for her. “There’s snow on the ground. It’s too late,” he said shortly, stretching to reach the butter tin.
“Still,” she said. “If we get enough blankets from the annexes—”
He looked up from buttering her toast, a wary, knowing look in his eyes. “You’re thinking about stealing your book back, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and Alissa flushed for Strell having guessed her plans. He leaned halfway over the table towards her. “Just what are you going to do?” he asked. “Go up to his rooms under some pretense and snatch it?”
“Useless isn’t coming back,” she protested.
“What about the ward on Bailic’s door?” he asked. “You’d be trapped until he gave you permission to leave.”
Her breath hissed out in vexation. He wasn’t even listening. Grinding her teeth, she continued to cut the rolls. “I can break any ward,” she grumbled.
“You cannot,” he said, shooting a glance at the open archway and the dining hall. “You have no idea what you’re doing with your source and tracings.”
“I’m not going to go into Bailic’s room.” Turning from her almost lie, she settled a roll upon the baking stone. “Today,” she finished softly.
“And even if you did manage to get out of his room, what’s to stop him from taking it back? It’s winter, Alissa. There’s nowhere to go! The coast is a three-week trip from here in good weather. The snow is up to my knees.”
Alissa wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m tired of waiting,” she said plaintively.
“But to risk your life for it? It’s just a book.”
“It isn’t just a book!” Alissa shouted, unable to fathom herself just what kind of a hold it had on her. Ever since pulling it from its hiding spot, it seemed as if it contained something she needed. But she wasn’t missing anything. Confused and wanting to end the argument, she dusted her hands free of the flour and picked up Bailic’s half-empty tray.
Strell was right behind her. “Where are you going? We aren’t done with this yet.”
“Upstairs to the practice room,” she said with a forced brightness. “You’re late, you know. Why don’t you take the tray up for me?”
“I will, and stop trying to change the subject.” He pulled the tray from her and set it down. Alissa slumped where she stood. “Be reasonable, Alissa,” he coaxed, his tone abruptly softening. “There’s nowhere to run, even if you could get your book. And if he catches you, he’ll kill you for it. He’s killed for it before.”
Miserable, she caught her breath. Reminding her of her papa’s death wasn’t fair. “I know, Strell,” she said. “Just stop.” Her eyes flicked to his as he took her chin and gently turned her to him. The soft concern in his expression surprised her. It almost seemed he understood. Perhaps he did. He knew loss. It was easy to forget, when he never let it show.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “But you had some plan to take it, didn’t you?”
She lowered her eyes. There was nothing she could say. If she ever found her book unattended, she didn’t know if she could stop herself.
Strell let go of her and turned, seeming as frustrated as she. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said with a quiet urgency, “except wait. Master Talo-Toecan knows what he’s doing. He will come up with an idea.”
Talo-Toecan, she thought darkly. He was Useless to her, now and forever.
An aggressive hiss came from the rafters, and she glanced up to see Talon’s feathers raised like the hackles of a dog. She was glaring beyond them to the open archway to the dining hall. A faint shout echoed into the kitchen, and Alissa and Strell exchanged a worried look. “That’s Bailic,” she said, putting her untouched toast on his tray. Her appetite was gone.
“Well, there’s no one else it could be, is there.” Strell had said it as if making a jest, but he immediately picked up the tray and turned to go.
“I’ll finish my rolls and be up in a moment,” Alissa said, her earlier bluff and bluster evaporating in the cold shock of reality. Bailic had broken the conditioning that kept Keepers from using their wards to harm, emptying the Hold of students and Keepers with his self-taught lessons of murder with magic. If she couldn’t keep her desire for her book hidden, Bailic would realize he was being deceived. Anonymity was her only defense until Useless tutored her on how to use the maze of tracings that lay in her unconscious.
“Will you be all right until I get there?” she asked as he went into the dining hall.
“Yes. I’ve got it.” Strell turned and gave her a tired smile. “I won’t forget my lines.”
She returned his smile, but it vanished quickly. She had coached Strell endlessly on what her source and tracings looked like so he could answer Bailic’s questions properly, but she worried when she wasn’t up there to catch any possible mistakes.
“I’ll be fine.” Strell gave her a solemn nod, clearly pleased to see her slip into the unaccustomed role of meek and mild. The slight clattering of the dishes seemed loud as he left.
She turned back to her rolls and blinked. One was missing. He had stolen it right out from under her nose. It was the second time this week! “Strell!” she called loudly after him. “Burn you to ash!” But a smile crossed her face as his laugh came echoing back. Next time, she would catch him.
A sharp snap broke the silence, and she pulled her head up, wondering what it was. The kitchen was empty except for her and Talon. But the small bird was staring at the narrow door leading to the expansive kitchen garden. It was really more of a walled-in slice of wood and field, but there were a few herbs that had yet to go wild.
The tap came again. She straightened, not in fear but curiosity. Glancing at Talon, she wiped
her hands free of flour. It had sounded almost like the peck of a bird. She tiptoedto the door and held her breath as she leaned closer, listening. A third tap echoed thinly. This time she heard a small rattle as something clattered against the stone sill on the other side of the door.
Someone was throwing stones at the garden door.
Immediately she reached for the handle and pushed. It wasn’t Bailic, and it wasn’t Strell. That only left one presence: Useless.
A thrill of excitement tinged with relief went through her as she stepped outside into the cold, clasping her arms around herself. He hadn’t forgotten her. The postdawn chill seemed to catch in her nose, and puffs of air marked her breathing. The sun was shining on the upper reaches of the Hold, but the ground was still in shadow. She looked across the silent lumps of snow the dormant vegetation made. Where was he?
“Here,” a low, deep voice whispered, and her gaze darted to the tall, unclimbable wall surrounding the garden. The wall stood higher than two man lengths, and perched upon it like an errant goat was Useless.
The raku was in his human form, dressed in a yellow shirt with overly expansive sleeves and a matching pair of trousers. He had no coat, but he wore a sleeveless vest so long it went down to cover his unseen boots. It was bound tightly to his waist with a black scarf, the ends of which reached the top of the frozen wall. He let a handful of pebbles drop, and Alissa struggled to pull her eyes from his hands. His fingers were long, looking as if they had four segments rather than three. His eyes, too, couldn’t hide his raku nature and were a startling gold. Though not seeming old, he clearly was far from youth, his short cap of white hair and eyebrows making him appear older than his lightly wrinkled face would make him look otherwise. Even standing atop the wall he possessed a quiet strength that Alissa envied. And he had promised to teach her.
“Useless!” she exclaimed, knowing he wouldn’t be here if Bailic could see him from the practice window. She gathered her skirts to step into the snow, but a rough sound stopped her.
“No,” he said, motioning her to stay. His eyes traveled up the Hold’s tower, and his thin lips pressed together as if in worry. “Tonight,” he whispered. “Wait up for me.”
“Tonight?” she repeated, then caught her breath as the Master dissolved into a gray mist. There was a tug on her awareness, jolting her. “Useless, wait,” she cried, stepping out into the snow as the mist grew and solidified into the massive bulk of a raku.
She stopped dead in her tracks with an instinctive fear. He was as large as six horses put together, with teeth as long as her arm and eyes as big as her head. She swallowed hard as the sinuous beast turned his head to her and raised an impossibly long finger to his snout, clearly admonishing her to be quiet. His muscles bunched under his golden hide, and Alissa stepped involuntarily back to the threshold as, with one downward push of his wings, he became airborne. The Master headed east over the trees towards the unseen, abandoned city of Ese’ Nawoer, a morning’s walk away.
Alissa bit back a cry of surprise as Talon darted out over her head with a screech of outrage, following the huge raku as if driving it away. Tonight? Alissa thought as her toes turned cold and the chill settled into her. He was coming back tonight?
2
An irregular drumming shifted the air as Bailic waited, his pale fingers tapping the arm of the chair. It was the only noise in the narrow practice room. “He will be late again,” Bailic said, not caring that he was talking to himself. He rose to stand before the row of tall windows. Meson had once told him the roofs of the long-abandoned city, Ese’ Nawoer, were visible from here. For Bailic, though, the spectacular view was a blur of blue, brown, and green in the summer, shifting to blue, brown, and white in the winter. Right now it was gray with the unrisen sun.
His nearly pink eyes were almost useless and abnormally sensitive to light, but it was only in the strong sun he could see much of anything. Even so, he avoided the sun as his transparent skin burned frighteningly fast. His hair, too, was the color of faded straw instead of the dark brown all plainsmen had, and so he kept it cut close to his skull to minimize its tendency to make him look old. As if to make up for his lack of color, he had taken to wearing black. Reluctant to abandon his stolen Master’s vest, he wore it open over his traditional Keeper garb of a gray, wide-sleeved tunic and trousers. He had donned the soft-soled shoes the Masters had insisted on behind the Hold’s walls, not out of respect but for his occasional need for stealth. A puckered scar ran from behind an ear, across his neck, and under his shirt. It had been a parting gift from Talo-Toecan more than a decade ago, and it still hurt when the air was damp. Raku score was long to heal.
The windows here were large even by the Hold’s standards, and if not for the wards on them, it would be frigid. Until the wards fell with the first spring rain, the only thing to pass them would be the amber morning light the Masters of the Hold had delighted in. Beneath the openings was a wooden bench running the entire length of the room. It lent the chamber the feel of a roofed balcony. This had once been a pleasant spot in which to study or practice. Now it was empty and hollow looking, all the amenities stripped away.
Well, almost all, Bailic thought as his eyes slid to the soft chair tucked by a distant window. Positioned to catch the first ray of sun, the chair was a silent reminder of the girl. It had appeared the second day of the piper’s instruction amid much consideration and shifting.
Bailic’s eyes narrowed—the only show of disgust he would allow himself—as he recalled the pathetic display of the piper and girl discussing at great length the chair’s final placement. It was her cursed bird who finally settled the matter by swooping in to settle on the back of the chair and preen in the morning sun. So now it sat just beyond the limit where his sight began to blur to inconsequentiality.
His chair was tucked into the darkest corner. A third seat sat alone at the long, black table, scarred from centuries of students’ abuses. It was the piper’s. Bailic remembered it was as uncomfortable as it looked, and still the infuriating man kept falling asleep in it.
As he waited for the sun to rise, Bailic sat ramrod straight on the edge of the long bench and fumed. A short, white thread decorated his sleeve, and he plucked it off, drawing it through his fingertips to gauge its quality. First rate, of course. There was nothing else the girl could have found in the annexes to work with.
His ill temper softened as he let the thread fall. The leavings from her stitching had been finding their way to the hem of his sleeve or sash for weeks now. It wasn’t right for a commoner to listen to the instruction of a Keeper, but the sight of her bowed head and flashing needle was a bittersweet reminder of his sisters, a contented gaggle of consummate skill and gossip. He ignored her, as the one time he commented on her work she hadn’t shown up the next morning. And the sight of her domestic serenity was a pain that served to temper his resolve further.
Her silent presence in the corner had become an unexpected reminder of all he left behind, all he escaped, all he couldn’t return to. He was a plainsman, but his pale skin and hair ultimately forced his expulsion before reaching twelve summers; he looked too much like a foothills grubber to be accepted. Reviled and shunned by his own parents, he fled to spare them the exorbitant bribe price necessary to “quietly escort” him from the plains. One of his few regrets was that he had tried to get them to love him, even as he ran away.
Unwilling to live among the barbarous foothills people—as if they would have let him—he had wandered into the mountains. It was to have been a noble trek to his death. Instead, he found the Hold, his maturing abilities drawing him as heavy skies draw rain. Here he met Meson, and after gaining a broken nose and cracked rib, learned a grudging respect for the smaller but tenacious folk the foothills produced. His resentment had lingered, hidden even to him until Meson showed his true, traitorous nature by charming away the only woman Bailic could love: a dark, beautiful woman from the plains who didn’t care that his skin was paler than the moon and his hair wa
s the color of straw.
Meson, the coward, had abandoned his responsibilities as a Keeper while Bailic stayed and became more powerful under the tutelage of the Masters. It was then that Bailic’s idle thoughts began to spill from his fantasy to his reality. He would take what the Masters taught him, bending it to rule the plains and foothills so as to make a place for himself. But not until he taught them the meaning of pain, giving them tenfold the hurt they caused him. They were deserving of it.
The two factions were well balanced for conflict; they hated each other almost as much as he despised them. But war never materialized. They were just clever enough to know where to draw the line. Bailic needed something to tip the scales. The abandoned city of Ese’ Nawoer would do nicely. He was sure the book of First Truth was powerful enough to wake the cursed souls there, and then he would demand their allegiance as history claimed was his due.
He would send them into the foothills and plains, planting the seeds of madness. The souls of Ese’ Nawoer would whisper their fears and guilt into the thoughts of the unsuspecting, inciting war. The delicate balance between the plains and hills would crumble, and they would be at each others’ throats by summer’s end. When their numbers were sufficiently reduced, he would save them. They would call him the great peacemaker, and he would use his strength to drive the souls of death back into the mountains. But everything has a cost. He would have their allegiance for their freedom from death’s hounding, or they would return to their hell.
The book’s power, though, was merely a promise when it was closed. Only someone it claimed could open it, and then only when enough lore was gained to insure its knowledge could be utilized. With the exception of Talo-Toecan, the piper was the sole individual who could access the book, and the piper was late—again.
Frustrated, Bailic ran his hand over the short bristles atop his head, ending with his fingers clenched at the base of his skull. Progress the last four weeks had been thin. It should go faster now that the basics were out of the way. Especially if Bailic continued to ignore the painstaking philosophies the Masters had pounded into their students along with the more desirable skills.
