by Wen Spencer
Tinker considered. Yes, politeness came more readily to her when she spoke Elvish. It was only when she was using the very formal, very polite High Elvish that she noticed—and then it was because it felt like being handcuffed into being nice.
"I like speaking English with you," Windwolf said. "I feel like I can just be me—the male that loves you, and not the lord and ruler of our household. That we show each other our true faces when we talk like this."
"Yeah, I noticed that when Stormsong drops into High Elvish, it's like she puts on a mask."
"We speak so little High Elvish here compared to court. My mother says that this rough country is making me uncouth—I'm too plainspoken after being around humans so long. She expects me to come home wrapped in bearskins."
She couldn't believe that anyone could think of him, and all his smooth elegance, as uncouth. "Oh, please."
"If you're determined, you can be eloquently insulting in High Elvish. Court makes an art out of it. I don't have the patience for that—which has earned me a label of boorish."
"Idiots, they deserve a bloody nose."
"My little savage." He pulled her into his arms and kissed her soundly. "I love you dearly—and don't ever lose your fierce heart—but please, pick no fights, not until you've learned to defend yourself."
She skirted promising him anything by kissing him.
"Are you done here?" he asked much later.
"With this part." Reluctantly she slipped out of his arms to lift up the paper that had been covering the spell. "I dug through my grandfather's things and found his notes on this project. I need to compare this to what he has and then fix it. I'll finish it up tomorrow."
"Good," Windwolf said. "There is much we have to do and things I want to do. For instance, I want to talk to you about what direction we're going with the computing center."
"The what?" she asked before remembering. When she had returned to the Pittsburgh area during Shutdown, she had realized that technology on Elfhome was nonexistent. From electrical power to Pittsburgh's limited Internet, everything went with the city when it returned to Earth. In a fit of panic, she'd razed ten acres of virgin forest and drafted a small army to start work on building infrastructure. Since she had been kidnapped only hours into the project, she hadn't even gotten the chance to ask belated permission, let alone finish it. "Oh. That. I wasn't sure—you know—if you even considered it a good idea."
"I think it's an excellent idea."
"I haven't even thought about it since that morning."
"You left quite detailed plans." He brushed his hand along her cheek. "I made a few changes and had it finished. I'd like to expand it, though we probably should wait until the oni have been dealt with."
"But Pittsburgh is kind of stuck here now. What's the point?"
"The point is that Pittsburgh, right or wrong, feels too human for elves to make technology their own. It's like our cooks in Poppymeadow's kitchen; they can cook there, but it's not their kitchen, so they bow out and eat whatever Poppymeadow's staff makes. The changes I made to the computing center were ways to make it more comfortable for our people to use."
"Wow, I never thought of that." In truth, she hadn't been thinking about anyone but herself that morning. "How long do you think we can keep this level of technology, though, without Earth?"
"Once the oni are dealt with, we will find a way back to Earth." Windwolf promised with his eyes.
"Pittsburgh is never going back. The only way to affect all of Pittsburgh is from orbit. Even if we managed to start a space program, we'd have to get the alignment perfect so the enclaves stay here, and then sending Pittsburgh to the right universe . . ." She shivered. "I don't want that kind of responsibility."
"You and I can shake the universe until we find a way." He kissed her brow. "But first things first. Come, get dressed, and let me teach you magic."
Much to her surprise, he took her to the wide-open field where they had been building the new viceroy's palace. Oddly, a gossamer was moored here instead of at the Faire Grounds. They pulled to the edge of the abandoned project and got out of the Rolls. The entire thirty acres had been covered with sod.
"Why here?" She swung up onto the gray Phantom's hood. The windswept woman of its hood ornament— the spirit of ecstasy—seemed so appropriate for the Wind Clan. She wondered if that was how Windwolf had ended up with the Rolls Royce.
"The spell stones represent massive power." Windwolf settled beside her on the hood. "Poppymeadow would probably be annoyed if you lost control of the winds in her orchard."
There was a typical Windwolf answer. Did he sidestep the real question on purpose or was he teasing her with his very dry humor or did they just simply have a fundamental miscommunication problem?
"You're going to teach me how to fly?"
"No," he said slowly. "You will learn how, someday, but not from me, not today."
Her disappointment must have showed, as he actually explained more.
"I have sent for a sepana autanat," Windwolf told her. "But arrangements must be made, and such things take time."
"A what?"
"He trains the clan children in magic." He paused to search out the English word. "A teacher."
"Oh." She'd had so few teachers in her life that the idea of a total stranger teaching her was unsettling. "Can't you just teach me yourself?"
"I wish I could, but there are things I don't remember of the early lessons. And there were so many silly learning games we played that even now I don't understand why we did them. I suspect that they were to teach focus and control."
"What kind of games?"
He gave an embarrassed smile. "You will laugh." He stood up, squared his shoulders, and closed his eyes. Taking a breath, he raised his hands to his head, and eyes still closed, splayed out his fingers like tree branches waving in a breeze. "Ironwood stand straight and tall." He dropped his hands slightly so his thumbs were now in his ears, and he flapped the hands. "Gossamer flies over all." Hands to nose this time. "Flutist plays upon his pipe. Cook checks to see if fruit is ripe." He touched index fingers together. "Around and around, goes the bee." He spun in place three times. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."
He clapped five times and launched into the song again, faster this time, and then again, faster still. Windwolf was right; she had to giggle at him. He was so regally beautiful, yet he purposely used a childish singsong voice as he wiggled his fingers, spun in place, and clapped his hands. After the third round, he collapsed beside her, laughing. "Well, you're supposed to do that faster and faster, until you're too dizzy."
"What is that supposed to teach you?"
"I don't know." He lay back onto the warm hood to watch the clouds roll overhead, considering. "I think—it might have been staying aware of where your body is regardless of what you're doing. That is very important in controlling magic. There is much for you to learn, and not all of it has to do with controlling the winds."
She scoffed at that understatement. "I thought I knew a lot about elves, about clans and everything, but I'm finding that I don't know anything at all. Like I didn't know each clan had their own spells."
Windwolf considered her for a moment, sadness gathering at the edges of his eyes. "Yes, there is so very much you need to learn. I suppose some history can not hurt, and probably help make sense of our people."
She had heard one long history lesson from Tooloo, but Tooloo tended to twist things to her own unique way of looking at things. "Yeah, it might help."
"In the beginning all elves were much like humans, as evidenced by the fact that we can still interbreed," Windwolf started. "Perhaps—there is a chance—that the first elves were humans, lost through the gateways from Earth to Elfhome—or maybe humans are the ones that became lost. We were tribes scattered, hither and yon, and in our homelands, we practiced the magic that was strongest. Back then, magic was considered holy, and those that used magic were our priests, and they were the first of the clan leaders."
&nbs
p; This was different than what Tooloo had told her, in tone if not in fact.
"I don't understand," Tinker asked. "I thought all magic is the same. It's just a general force harnessed by the mechanics of a spell, right?"
"Yes and no. The Wind Clan spells have been refined for millennia, but they are based on certain natural properties. The Wind Clan, according to legends, started in the high steppe lands. For countless generations, those freeborn tribes used their magic, and were slowly changed by it. That's where the genetic stamp developed that allows you to key to one set of spell stones or another."
"But didn't the Skin Clan gather all those tribes together and force them to be the same?"
"They tried. They would conquer a tribe and do all they could to stamp out its culture. Burning temples. Killing the leaders, the scholars, and the priests. Skin Clan were ruthless masters, but we were not totally helpless. We managed to hide away some of our priests, keep them hidden for centuries. We formed secret societies that evolved into the clans. As slaves all we had to call our own was our life, our honor, and our pledge to protect and to serve. But those were weapons strong enough to overthrow the Skin Clan."
"So—since everything had to be kept secret—ceremonies like weddings were a big no-no?" If so, then her marriage to Windwolf made a lot more sense.
"Yes, we could not afford to be discovered. Simple words, whispered between two people, were all we could trust."
"How did the domana end up ruling?"
"The clan leaders realized that the only way we could win against the Skin Clan was to use their greatest abilities against them. Once the Skin Clan became immortal, they ordered all their bastards killed. We started to hide away healthy babies, offering up stillborn and deformed infants in their place. They were protected by the clan so that they could protect the clan."
Tooloo had told her a version of this, only somehow not as noble, not so desperate. Quick Blade, Windwolf's great-grandfather, had been one of the babies hidden away and had died fighting for his adopted clan's freedom.
"After we won the war with the Skin Clan, we suffered a thousand years of war among ourselves. Clan against clan. Caste against caste. Elf against elf. We had lived so long in slavery that we had no idea how to be free. It was the sekasha that held us together—they demanded that the clan structure be maintained when the other castes would have abandoned it."
"I would have thought it was the domana that kept the clans intact."
"The other castes feared that we would become cruel monsters like our fathers. The sekasha guard us—from harm and from ourselves. More than one domana has been put down by his own Hand."
"Why did sekasha want the domana in charge instead of just taking power themselves?"
It was as if Windwolf never considered the "why" of it. He frowned and thought for a minute. "I am not sure. It is the way they wanted it. Perhaps it was because with the domana's access to the spell stones, the sekasha's choices were limited to putting the domana in power, destroying the stones, or killing all the domana. While they are sekasha first, they are fiercely loyal to their clans. It is their nature to be so. And as such, it would go against their nature to weaken their clan."
"So the spell stones and the domana stayed."
Windwolf nodded. "And we have had what passes as peace for thousands of years—because of the sekasha."
Tinker glanced over to where Pony and Stormsong stood. Close enough to protect. Far enough away to give her and Windwolf a sense of privacy. Who was really in charge? On the surface, it would seem she was—but if she was—why was she stuck with sekasha watching her when she would rather be alone?
"In the Westernlands, the Wind Clan has only the spell stones at Aum Renau." Windwolf returned to his magic lesson. "On the other side of the ocean, there are other sets.
"What's the range of a set?"
"The stones can reach one mei; Pittsburgh is one-third mei from the coast."
It finally explained one mysterious elfin measurement. Unlike human measurements which were exact, the mei was said to be roughly a thousand human miles but subject to change. At Aum Renau, Windwolf had shown her how he cast a trigger spell. It set up a quantum level resonance between him and the spell stones, in essence a conduit for the magic to follow. Power jumped the distance. It had been his demonstration at Aum Renau that had given her the idea of how to destroy both gates. Magic, though, could be influenced by the moon's orbit and other factors, so the exact distance would be variable—which fit the quantum-based system.
The distance limit also explained why only two clans were coming to help them deal with the oni.
"So, the Stone Clan and Fire Clan each have a set of stones within a mei?"
"Yes."
"And spell stones from different clans can overlap." Tinker wanted to be sure she had it right.
"Yes. The domana's genetic key determines which one they pull from. The spells are slightly different. In the terms of battle, the Stone Clan is much weaker in attack, but they are superior in defense. Their specialty is mining, farming, and architecture."
Architecture was the forefather of engineering. It kind of made sense—her being Stone Clan and a genius in the hard science.
"Do we actually fight with them?"
"Yes and no. There has been no open warfare between the clans for two thousand years, not since the Fire Clan established the monarchy. To a human, that might seem like lasting peace, but my father saw battle as a young man, and our battles have merely become more covert. Fighting is limited to assassinations and formal duels."
The concept of elves wanting her dead was somewhat unnerving.
"You are under the queen's protection," Windwolf continued. "So you will be fairly safe from the other clans for the time being. I want to teach you, however, a shielding spell so you can defend yourself."
"Oh cool."
He laughed and distanced himself from the Rolls. "Have you been taught the rituals of prayer?"
She nodded.
"Good. First you must find your center, just as you do for a ritual." He stood straight and took a deep cleansing breath.
"Hold your fingers thus." He held out his right hand, thumb and index rigid, middle fingers cocked oddly.
She copied the position and he made minute changes to her fingers.
"Each finger has several degrees. Laedin." He tucked her index finger into a tight curl, and then, gliding his finger along the top of hers, showed her that there needed to be a straight line from the back of her hand to the knuckle. "Sekasha." He uncurled her finger to the second knuckle and corrected a slight tendency to bend at the first knuckle. "Domana." He had to hold her finger straight so she only bent the tip. "Full royal." This was a stiff finger.
"Bows to no one," Tinker said.
"Exactly. You must be careful with your hands. A broken finger can leave you defenseless.
"The first step is to call on the spell stones. You use a full suit—king and queen." These were thumb and pinkie held straight out. "Domana, sekasha, laedin."
Tinker laughed as she tried to get her fingers to cooperate.
"There are finger games you can play to get them to do this fluidly." He patiently corrected small mistakes in her hands. "In the base spells, correct positioning is not as vital, but later, a finger out of place will totally change the effect of your spell."
"This does get easier?"
"Yes, with practice.
"To call winds and cast the spells, you need to hold your hand before your mouth." He raised his hand to his mouth and demonstrated the desired distance and then dropped his hand to continue speaking. "Don't touch your face with your hand, but you should feel as if you're almost touching your nose. Also if you were to breathe out, like you were blowing out a candle, the center point of your breath would hit this center joint of your fingers."
"Okay." She held up her hand and found it was harder to not touch her nose than she thought.
"When I was little, my brothers and I would pract
ice fighting with each other and in the heat of battle, sometimes we ended up punching ourselves in the nose."
Tinker laughed.
"Now, listen to the command to call the winds, and then to cancel." He raised his right hand to his mouth. "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaae."
Tinker felt the tremor in the air around Windwolf, like a pulse of a bass amplifier, first against her magic sense, and then against her skin.
Mentally, she knew that his body was taking the place of a written spell; his voice started the resonance that would establish a link between him and the spell stones, over three hundred miles away. Despite everything she knew, his summoning of power out of thin air somehow seemed more magical than any act she'd ever witnessed.
He dismissed the power with another gesture and spoken command.
