by Dawn Cook
Dismissed like an errant schoolboy, Bailic stood, tremblingwith rage. Student, indeed, he seethed. Scrape the front steps. Talo-Toecan ranked his ambitions as a student’s prank. “You may be through with me, winged demon,” he said with a snarl, gripping his book with a white-knuckled strength, “but I’m not done. Hear me, beast? I’m not done!”
“Get out,” Talo-Toecan growled, not turning around.
Bailic left. Stumbling through the muck of spring, he went east to Ese Nawoer, cursing the mud that weighted his feet, cursing the sun that burnt his skin, cursing the fact he had no horse, but most of all, cursing that whore child of a foothills girl. The book was an awkward load, heavy to begin with, but matters were made worse because he carried it open. He knew that to shut it meant his death; its protective influence would end. But his anger gave him strength, and it wasn’t until he was amongst the chill, shadowed streets of Ese’ Nawoer that he slowed, his footsteps hissing to shocked stillness with what he found skirting the edge of his awareness.
They were here, he thought with a thrill striking deep within him. The souls of Ese’ Nawoer. And they waited for direction; he could feel it. Like the scent of sand-scoured lightning after a desert storm, he could feel them, and their guilt and despair filled the chinks in his hate until it was strong again.
Bailic’s laugh echoed from the buildings until it sounded as if the city laughed with him, mocking and triumphant, full of ironic failure and last-moment treachery. Let Talo-Toecan mourn over his last Keeper like a woman over spoilt soup. He had a city of dead to raise.
“Come, then!” he cried into the faultless sky. “I’ll be ready for you, Talo-Toecan!”
30
“Talo-Toecan?” Lodesh called. “I’ve found the piper!” Jiggling impatiently, he waited as his longtime friend descended on wing from his rooms to the garden below. Lodesh glanced worriedly at Strell. The gangly man was under a ward of sleep, sitting with his head cradled in his hands. If the afternoon went as Lodesh thought, the piper would be sorely tested today—as would they all.
In a swirl of gray, Talo-Toecan shifted to his human shape and stepped to the firepit where Lodesh had arranged Alissa on the bench in the sparse shade of an overgrown, leafless shrub. “I will have to fumigate,” Talo-Toecan said around a sigh.
Lodesh straightened in astonishment. “Beg your pardon?”
“My room.” The Master slumped onto the bench, showing all his 855 years. “You saw it. Ink stains on my desk. The furniture has been replaced with that horrid, stiff wood. All my unwarded papers and books have been rifled through.” Disgust twisted his face. “He stacked wood in my bedchamber to the ceiling. I’ll never get the slivers out.” Talo-Toecan gestured weakly. “His writings, though . . . It’s a shame. Astounding ideas. But he wanted to implement them dangerously fast—and for all the wrong reasons.”
Quite sure he wasn’t comfortable with the direction the conversation had taken, Lodesh cleared his throat, and when Talo-Toecan looked up, he nodded questioningly at the piper.
“Let him sleep,” Talo-Toecan said. “He will gain nothing by watching Alissa go insane.”
Lodesh smiled faintly. “She may yet best the beast. Don’t lose her until she’s truly lost.” Snatching her hat from the weeds, he tucked it under Alissa’s head as protection from the damp. It looked new, cut to the traditional Keeper style, and his eyebrows rose. If it was Alissa’s—as it must be with that sprig of mint tucked in the band—this might have been what gave them away.
Shrugging, he seated himself at the fire, stretched in the sun’s warmth, and closed his eyes. A shutter banged in the wind to shatter the peaceful quiet, and he cracked an eyelid at it. “We still need a third,” he reminded the despondent Master. “As you say, two have no chance, but with three, we might hold her until a way can be found to return her awareness.”
“It’s a very thin maybe,” Talo-Toecan grumbled.
Lodesh sat up, interested again. “Can you remove Bailic’s ward?”
“I taught it to him,” the Master said. There was a small resonance across Lodesh’s tracings as the raku broke Bailic’s hold on the piper. Strell stirred, rubbed his chin, and looked up, blinking profusely.
“My,” Lodesh quipped, running his eyes over Strell’s rumpled clothes and stubbled cheeks. “Rather a scruffy looking fellow, isn’t he?”
“Talo-Toecan?” Strell said, his voice cracking. “By the Wolves. What are you doing here? Where’s Alissa?”
With tired-looking eyes, Talo-Toecan pointed out her small figure on the cold bench. Strell rushed to her side, skidding to a halt, his hands outstretched, seeming not to dare touch her. “Is she all right?” he asked frantically.
Talo-Toecan sighed. “No.”
“Bailic! Where’s Bailic?”
“On the road to my city,” Lodesh said, not pleased at how much the piper cared for her. Strell wasn’t the only one who liked the young woman, but Lodesh wouldn’t push his own claim until she remembered him.
Strell ran his gaze over Lodesh, clearly confused. “Who are you?”
Lodesh concealed his feelings with a hard-won expertise. “Talo-Toecan, how much time do we have?”
The Master glanced at Alissa and frowned. “A bit. Knowing her, it won’t be long.”
Smiling, Lodesh approached Strell. “Then allow me to introduce myself. I am Lodesh Stryska,” he gave Strell one of his extravagant, citadel bows, “Keeper of the Hold and Warden of Ese’ Nawoer.” Taking a half step back, he regarded the dazed piper with an amused expression.
“You’re Alissa’s Lodesh,” Strell breathed, his eyes darting from Lodesh’s ring to the city’s seal around his neck, and finally to the silver flower embroidered on his shirt.
“Aye, most assuredly Alissa’s.”
Strell flushed as if having forgotten his manners. Clearing his throat, he inclined his head slightly. “I’m Strell Hirdune, the last of the family once carrying that name, Keeper of nothing, Warden of even less.” Grimacing, he met Lodesh’s proffered palm with his.
“Hirdune!” Talo-Toecan rose from his seat. “That’s the erratic line Keribdis has been trying to erad—”
“Hirdune, Hirdune,” Lodesh interrupted, looking at the sky. “I’ve heard that name before. Ah, yes,” he exclaimed, brightening. “My youngest sister, the headstrong snippet, ran off with a man from the coast by that name. A crafts-man of some sort, away to make his fortune.”
Talo-Toecan stopped short, clearly unaware that Lodesh was trying to distract the piper. “Lodesh,” the Master said. “You’re jesting. There’s no Hirdune in your ancestry.”
“I’m sorry,” Strell apologized. “It must be someone else. I’m from the plains, and my family has been gone these seven years.”
“No.” Lodesh rubbed his temple, lost in thought. “It was, oh, three hundred eighty-eight years past—I believe.”
Strell blinked.
“Warden,” Talo-Toecan warned. “Has he not suffered enough?”
Grinning, Lodesh clapped Strell on the back. “Sit down. I’ll explain.” He took Strell by an elbow and led him to the bench. The piper dragged his feet, seemingly loath to leave Alissa. “We have time,” Lodesh assured him. “And we can sit so as you can see her.”
Though obviously unconvinced, Strell sat, perched on the edge of the bench. Talo-Toecan resettled himself as well, poking at the fire with a short stick, his fingers almost amongst the coals. Lodesh eyed the two cups with their cold tea, and mumbling of thimbles, made a cup of his own. “Would you like some tea?” he inquired lightly.
Talo-Toecan sighed in exasperation, and Strell jumped to his feet. “Tea?” the plainsman shouted in frustration. “Do I want some tea? I want to know what’s going on!”
“Piper,” Talo-Toecan grumbled, “sit down.”
“No! I have sat. I have listened. I have watched as things progressed until—” With a tormented cry, Strell sank down. “It’s all my fault,” he whispered. “I fell asleep.”
“You
fell asleep!” Talo-Toecan pulled away from the bright embers, his eyes glinting dangerously.
“Right in the middle of Bailic’s lesson, and now she’s dying,” finished Strell, his expression haunted and empty.
Lodesh’s gaze shifted from the incensed Talo-Toecan to the piper. “No one said she was dying,” he interjected.
“She’s not?”
“Here.” Lodesh shot a warning glance at the raku, who was muttering voiceless threats under his breath. “Let me explain. Talo-Toecan uses such big words, it makes my ears hurt. There’s nothing you can do right now,” Lodesh asserted gently as Strell gazed at Alissa. The emotion-filled look of the piper wasn’t wasted upon him as it was on Talo-Toecan, and Lodesh felt a stab of shared sorrow. “As you guessed,” he said as Strell met his eyes, “Bailic finally made the correct assumption.”
“I fell asleep,” Strell said with a moan.
“Yes, you fell asleep,” Lodesh said sharply. “It’s done. Let it go. It was a miracle the deception lasted this long.” Faintly, he added, “Be glad it wasn’t fear or cowardice that betrayed you.” For a moment there was silence, broken by the trill of a bird convincing his ladylove of his charms. “Anyway,” Lodesh continued as the serenade ceased, “Bailic gave her the First Truth, and push gave way to pull.”
“I still don’t understand,” Strell whispered.
The plainsman looked so confused that Lodesh couldn’t help but smile. Turning to Talo-Toecan, Lodesh set his cup down, placed his hands quietly in his lap, and formally asked, “May I give him the knowledge of what has passed?”
The Master grimaced. “Might as well. I don’t expect we’ll survive to speak of it again.”
Strell paled. “I didn’t know the book was that dangerous.”
“It isn’t,” Lodesh said dryly. “He’s being histrionic.” Talo-Toecan’s eyes narrowed, and Lodesh leaned toward Strell. “Can you keep a secret?” he whispered, and Strell stiffened in surprise.
“Lodesh . . .” Talo-Toecan said in annoyance.
“Well,” he exclaimed, his eyes wide and wondering in mock concern. “I had to take a blood oath. Shouldn’t he be under some kind of obligation?”
Talo-Toecan regarded Strell tiredly. “We don’t have trappings for a blood oath. And I think our good piper will know to keep his mouth shut.”
“Really?” Lodesh said with a false innocence.
“I will hunt him down if he breathes a word to anyone not already wise to it—providing we survive, of course.”
Strell gulped. “I promise. Just tell me.”
Giving Strell a sidelong glance, Talo-Toecan threw his twig into the flames. He looked at Alissa, then back to Strell, clearly waiting until he was sure the man was listening. “Not all rakus are sired as such,” he said, his golden eyes locked upon the piper’s. “A rare few, usually the most inventive, the most headstrong, are born to man; only later do they find their wings.”
Strell’s face went slack, and he began to blink slowly.
“There you go again,” Lodesh complained, slapping his knee in disgust. “Always starting at the end, never the beginning.”
“Alissa isn’t a Keeper of the Hold?” Strell whispered.
“No, not anymore,” Talo-Toecan admitted. “She never really was, actually.”
Strell gulped, seeming unable to say the words. “She’s a . . . a—”
Lodesh jumped to his feet, unable to contain himself. “Yes, my good man!” he shouted. “She’s a Master of the Hold. A dreamer of the skies!” Taking a grand pose, he made an elegant flourish towards Alissa’s small, mud-smeared shape. “A golden menace,” he continued, “that sends terror through the hearts of the bravest men.” He paused. “She will be—a raku.”
“She always has been,” Talo-Toecan interrupted, shaking his head at Lodesh. “Being a Master isn’t a state of being but a state of mind, quite literally. Alissa was born human with a neural pattern commensurate with that of a raku’s. She just needs a push to become one fully.”
“Uh . . . How?”
Lodesh grinned at the disconcerted piper. “It was Talo-Toecan’s book.” Then he turned solemn. “Are you sure, Talo-Toecan? You really want him to know the entirety, not that drivel you usually feed your students?”
Talo-Toecan gestured absently, his gaze lost in the fire.
“Very well.” Lodesh refilled his cup. Glancing at Alissa, he decided she was too unaware to notice a resonance, and he chanced a warming ward. He took a long pull at the steaming tea smelling of cloves. Setting it down with exaggerated care, he cleared his throat. “The First Truth,” he began, “explains how to change matter to energy and back again.”
“Like—when you use your source and tracings to make a cup?” Strell guessed.
“Um, yes.” Lodesh looked cautiously at Strell, genuinely surprised at the piper’s matter-of-fact attitude while discussing matters that, to him, were considered privileged information known only to Keepers and those who taught them.
“I told you,” came Talo-Toecan’s tired voice. “He knows too much already. He may as well know it all.” Plucking a twig from a nearby bush, he began rearranging the coals. “Alissa has no sense of circumspection, none at all.”
Shrugging, Lodesh continued. “Making a cup is the basic concept. It’s a relatively simple task to draw from your source and bend it to your will to form matter. Any Keeper worth his source knows at least one something to make. ”
Strell gestured to Alissa. “So this happens often?”
Busy with the fire, Talo-Toecan harrumphed, and Lodesh chuckled. “No,” he said. “A set of tracings such as hers is begot from mankind only once every raku generation. Alissa has the ability to go beyond the simple shiftings of matter and energy. She can do it to herself.” Expecting Strell to be impressed, Lodesh settled back on the bench and regarded him with raised eyebrows. “It sets her above Keeper status,” he added.
“Herself?” Strell mumbled, his eyes vacant. “Why would that be any more difficult?”
“Well,” Lodesh hesitated, “there’s a problem. Transforming one’s own substance to energy and back to mass again is an all-or-nothing affair. Once begun, there’s nothing left to hold one’s essence, one’s soul if you will. It’s only when possessing a highly intricate set of tracings that it’s possible. Even then, I understand it’s difficult.” He glanced at Talo-Toecan with a knowing look. “You must have a very strong will to maintain your existence for even the breath of time it takes to fashion mass about yourself again, giving your spirit a place to reside.”
“She will go mad,” Talo-Toecan said to no one in particular.
Strell shifted, running an uneasy hand through his hair. “You do this, Talo-Toecan,” he said, “and you don’t go mad.”
Lodesh snickered. “I know many who would argue with you over that, Strell.”
The Master acknowledged Lodesh’s comment with a long, slow look. “I was sired a raku,” he explained. “My first shift was to a human form.”
“I see.” Strell sighed.
Realizing the bedraggled man hadn’t a clue, Lodesh added, “It’s only the first time that there’s any danger. The slate is wiped clean and must be reconstructed. Talo-Toecan learned as a stripling. His first shift was from a young raku into a small child, and as you may know, there isn’t much difference between a small child and a beast.”
Talo-Toecan looked up in irritation, paused, then thoughtfully nodded his agreement. Taking a deep breath, he added, “She will be as a true beast, Strell, with only the barest recollections of her past. We must remind her of her humanity and force her to destroy what she has awoken, thereby ensuring it never gains control again. The sooner the better, for the longer she remains such, the less likely she will remember at all.”
“How long?” Strell breathed, his face lined in torment.
“If she flies under starlight, the lure will be too strong. They never come back from that,” Talo-Toecan said stoically. In the silence, the songbird trilled and
was, in turn, answered.
Lodesh watched Strell stiffen, gaining control over his fear with a slight tremor, burying it deep as Lodesh had done himself so many times in the past.
“May I sit with her?” the plainsman asked in a whisper.
Talo-Toecan stirred. “Yes. But as soon as she begins to shift, I want you over there.”
Strell’s eyes followed Talo-Toecan’s pointing finger. “There?” he questioned. “What can I do way over there?”
“She will be a great deal bigger, Piper,” Talo-Toecan grumbled. “You want to be closer? Fine. Just be sure you don’t back up any farther than that when she tries to eat you.”
Strell swallowed. He went to kneel beside Alissa, brushing a wisp of hair from her cheek with a tenderness so obvious, it was painful. Lodesh steeled his features into impassivity. Rising, he beckoned Talo-Toecan out of earshot with a subtle gesture.
“It was nice of you to give him hope,” Talo-Toecan muttered as soon as there was enough distance between them and the piper, “but it might have been kinder to have told him the truth.”
Lodesh went straight to the crux of the matter. “How many successful first transitions have you heard of without using the holden?”
“From young raku to human? Uncountable. We use the holden more from tradition than need. A wild, human six-year-old is no match for even one Master. Fear alone keeps it from running, and sentience is quickly returned. But a first shift from adult human to adult raku? None.”
“But,” Lodesh continued brightly, “in theory it can be done. You only need to keep the beast grounded until you can return them to memory.”
A wave of pain washed over Talo-Toecan. “Keeping a feral raku grounded is impossible. I tried to save Connen-Neute. I wasn’t enough then, and I was younger.”
“You were alone but for me and Redal-Stan. The sun was setting,” Lodesh reminded him gently. “There was no way to save him.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Talo-Toecan said bitterly. “Don’t you understand! I—am—alone. I have no idea what I am doing. Keribdis won the lottery to oversee such an event, with all the combined skills and strengths of the Hold at her disposal. I know I have made mistakes in Alissa’s schooling, but, blood and ash, Lodesh, I can’t even say what they were!” He looked to the sky. “I’m an architect,” he whispered, “not a nursemaid.”
