First Truth

by Dawn Cook

  What, Bailic seethed, had he missed?

  21

  Aribbon of sun stabbed through the narrow windows, snaking its way down the steps, showing with a glaring harshness all the nicks and imperfections the hard stone had acquired through its centuries of use. The damage ought not to have been as bad here, above the ninth floor, but the native stone the tower was constructed of was softer than the marble used in the lower floors. Bailic sat and fidgeted on the uppermost step, his back against the railing. Perhaps he ought to abandon his attempt to search their rooms this morning. But there was bound to be something there that would reveal who had a Keeper parent, and they had to make the noon meal soon.

  He edged farther down the step to pull his slippered foot out of the moving band of sun. A wash of irritation passed through him, and he sent a small tendril of thought down the long Keepers’ hall at the foot of the stairs to seek out his two guests. It was difficult to find them, situated as they were in the very center of the Hold’s strength. For although the Masters built it, the Keepers had dwelt here the most, making the Hold their own. Finally he detected a whisper of presence. He narrowed his concentration and placed them still in her room.

  A faint, laughing jest shattered the silence, and he straightened. He hadn’t really needed to do a mental search of the Hold to find them, arguing as they were. Bailic caught a few words and smiled, sure his wait was almost over. If the girl got her way, they would be having carrot stew for supper. If the piper won, it would be potatoes.

  Bailic took a quick breath, releasing it slowly to steady himself. He was used to waiting, but waiting on two such fools was aggravating. Giving in to his jitters, he dabbed a cloth at the new welt on his cheek. Though it was nearly half a day since he acquired the whip mark, it was still oozing. Raku score was tenacious. It probably wouldn’t heal until spring. The thought of wearing another scar inflicted by Talo-Toecan rankled him to no end.

  The noise in the hallway increased. Bailic tucked the cloth away and stood. He glanced upward, wondering if he ought to go farther up and let the stairway hide him, but his eyes narrowed as he reconsidered. They wouldn’t see him unless they started up the stairs, and he had told them not to. Besides, it was his Hold. He could be anywhere he pleased.

  The girl’s voice grew steadily closer, and Bailic tugged his vest down and straightened his sleeves. They turned the corner and continued on downstairs, her prattle interspersed with the plainsman’s laugh as he gently teased her. Slowly the sound of them faded. Still Bailic waited, listening until even the memory of their voices was gone.

  “Good,” he whispered, ghosting down the stairs. He ought to have taken the ward off Meson’s room a long time ago. But there had been no reason. He knew the book wasn’t there. Meson hadn’t visited the Keepers’ hall on his last day on earth.

  Reasonably sure they wouldn’t be coming back any time soon, he strode confidently down the hall to Meson’s old room. Bailic’s pulse pounded in his ears, and he felt a flash of annoyance with himself. This small theft of knowledge was nothing compared to what he had done to his fellow Keepers in the past. He must have been alone too long. His steps slowed as he neared the last door. With a quick glance behind him, he settled himself. He would save the piper’s room for last.

  Bailic reached out and pushed open the door. It swung into her room without a sound. The ward was in the sill, not the door. The rule had been hammered into them, only the Navigator knew why. Bailic peeked in, finding the room much the same as when Meson had called it his own. The drapes were open and the fire was banked. One of the two fireside chairs was dangerously close to the hearth in his opinion. Satisfied that the girl’s bird wasn’t present, Bailic closed his eyes and settled himself. Modifying Meson’s wards had always been difficult for him.

  Taking three practiced breaths, he forced his tension away, finding a calm, relaxed state. His source and tracings seemed to drift into existence, and Bailic settled into the light trance he always found helpful. The first crossed loop of power was quickly put into play, and he calmed himself further. He had thought long on how to modify this particular ward. Bailic was confident he knew the pattern Meson had set. All he needed was to duplicate it exactly, then add a juncture or two to break the flow and hence the effectiveness of the ward.

  “Simple stuff,” Bailic murmured, allowing his source’s energy to fill the proper pathways. Satisfaction eased through him as his ward settled into place. It was an exact fit. He had guessed properly. Not releasing the ward from his mind, Bailic opened a channel to break the perfect pattern. Immediately he felt the change. Now, instead of burning him, the humming flow of force would be harmlessly directed away. This was a skill he had honed while ripping wisdom from his fellow Keepers. It was laughably easy to do when there wasn’t someone trying to incinerate him at the same time. “I should have done this ages ago,” he muttered, squinting into the girl’s room.

  The sunlit chamber looked vulnerable. Everything she had was in this room. It was his for the taking. Squinting from the sun, Bailic strode forward. The nullified ward buzzed a warning, and he ignored it. The ward hadn’t been removed, only modified. It was powerless to affect him now.

  Bailic’s foot touched the floor.

  Sharp pain shot up his leg, exploding into his skull. “No!” he cried, instinctively jerking himself backward. His balance gone, he stumbled, falling back through the door. There was a dull thunk as his head hit the far wall. He clawed at his head, trying to free the fire that seemed to consume him from inside. Reeling, he slipped to the floor. Agony raced through his tracings, burning him. There had been a second ward.

  Bailic lay on the floor, gasping, waiting it out. There was nothing he could do. Slowly the fire retreated until all that remained was the pain from knocking himself into the wall. “The Wolves should hunt you,” he gasped, his head pounding.

  Slowly Bailic pulled himself up to a sitting position. Before him lay the girl’s room. The door was still open in invitation, and he gritted his teeth in anger. How could he have been so foolish. There had been a second ward. Its warning buzz had been shrouded by the first. The skill needed to balance one ward within another should have made it impossible.

  “I’ll remember that little trick,” Bailic groaned. Moving like an old man, he slowly rolled to his knees. A harsh buzzing between his ears ebbed and flowed with his motion. He rested on all fours for a moment, catching his breath. Unsteadily, he gained his feet, leaning heavily upon the wall. He cautiously reached to feel the back of his head. There was a lump but no blood.

  “Curse you, Meson,” he rasped, glancing back into the untouched room.

  Bailic staggered to the stairway and laboriously climbed the single flight to his room. Stumbling in, he pushed his door shut and collapsed in his chair before the balcony. The drapes were open, and he turned from the glare. Only now, safe in his room, was he bold enough to examine his tracings. His chest tightened in fear as he imagined the worst. Closing his eyes, Bailic unfocused his concentration.

  “Wolves,” he whispered, feeling his breath slip from him. It was worse than he imagined. He had never been burned this badly before. Black against black, coated in ash stood his tracings. Nothing would flow through them until they healed, and nothing could hurry the process.

  There was a story of a Keeper who had fallen unconscious while under a ward of such magnitude. The burn had never healed, leaving the man as a commoner. Bailic froze where he sat, wondering if this was to be his fate. He took a deliberate breath, steeling himself to try to use his tracings, to determine if he had burned them into an unusable tangle of nothing.

  Carefully he made the smallest ribbon of thought to connect his source to his blackened tracings. Agony thundered through his head as the incoming force pooled up, unable to flow through accustomed channels. He gasped and closed his eyes in a dizzy nausea, reaching out to find the chair arm. “Bone and Ash,” he breathed, stoically waiting for the pain to ease. He had known it would hurt, but this wa
s almost unendurable.

  His limbs begin to tremble as he mended the opening in his source and the inflow of power stopped. Taking a slow breath to settle himself, he watched intently as the pool of force gradually slipped into his tracings to seep away. Bailic slumped in relief. They were still usable, or would be in time. He would heal. He hadn’t damaged his tracings beyond repair.

  “Fool,” he muttered as his mood turned to one of self-recrimination. “Great skill isn’t much good if you can’t use it.” What was he going to do now? Never had he burned his tracings so deeply. He didn’t know if it would be days or weeks before his pathways were clear and he had the use of his skills again. His disastrous assumption at Meson’s door had reduced him back to his first tools of cunning and trickery. It didn’t matter, Bailic thought darkly. He would have his answer in the end. And the sweet simplicity of a well-planned deception was often more satisfying than brute force.

  Bailic rose to close the curtains. The need for the dark’s comfort overrode his need to see. His body protested, and feeling ill, he shuffled over to pull them shut. Slowly he collapsed back into his chair. Sure now his fatigue had its roots in the burn across his tracings, he wondered if he could leave his guests alone while he recuperated, reluctantly deciding he couldn’t. Losing his ability to use his tracings would set him back soundly. He wouldn’t compound his mistake by ignoring them.

  His spying would be severely curtailed. If he wanted to know where his guests were, he would have to laboriously track them down on foot. Also forfeit was the ability to create wards. This was a hard blow, as he relied heavily upon knowing he could dominate any situation with a quick thought. Fortunately the wards he had crafted or turned to his use over the years would hold as a matter of principle, and that was what happened to him.

  “Curse you,” Bailic repeated softly, his fingertips falling from his temples. His eyes rose to where Meson’s hat sat on its shelf, mocking him. How could he have guessed how devious Meson had been? “But I gained one of your secrets,” he added. Though it had cost him dearly, he finished silently.

  It wasn’t fair, Bailic thought bitterly. The Masters had never taught him it was possible to balance wards within one another. “You’ve been dead for fourteen years, Meson,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

  22

  “Salissa?” Strell called from the far side of the warm kitchen. “Toss me a few of those apples, will you?”

  Alissa looked up from her biscuits in mild irritation. He knew she hated him mangling her name. “You must wait until my hands are full before you ask for things,” she said. Wiping the flour from her fingers, she stretched to reach the bowl of small, yellow fruit.

  His eyes glinted merrily as he held up an apple. “Wait up. I guess I have enough.”

  “No, you don’t.” Grinning, Alissa threw three in quick succession at him. Hard.

  Strell ducked in mock fear, and the apples sailed over his head to hit the floor in a series of conspicuous thumps, spinning out through the archway and into the dining hall. Silently laughing, they continued their dinner preparations. Neither of them would go retrieve them. It would be an admission of guilt. Besides, Alissa thought, Bailic would probably be there, and they kept their contact with him to a minimum despite his efforts to insinuate himself in their lives.

  Much to Alissa’s surprise, Bailic was lavish in his praise of their cooking talents. She honestly believed his thin frame was filling out. His morning and noon meals he took in his room, so they suffered his presence only at dinner unless he came down to spy upon them—which was often. Dinner was in the barren hall off the kitchen. It could have been a pleasant spot, as it had a view of the garden through the tall windows behind the wall of drapes. The expansive openings were completely unshuttered. They let in an enormous amount of light when Alissa discovered them and pulled the drapes, but no cold. Clearly there was a ward at work.

  If Bailic ever wondered about their lack of curiosity as to how the heat remained inside with the windows unshuttered, he never let on. It was like early summer in the Hold, and it still shocked Alissa to find snow whenever she looked past the curtains. Bailic steadfastly ignored this incongruity with them, making no comment the night he slipped into his dinner chair without his usual housecoat. His lack of explanation of the Hold’s unusual warmth was suspicious at best.

  Strell slid his pan of baked apples into the oven. Turning, he clapped his hands, making Alissa jump. “That’s done,” he said loudly. “How are your biscuits coming?” Leaning over her shoulder, he feigned a grab at the dough with one hand and snitched some with the other.

  “Stop it!” she cried. She couldn’t say why it bothered her, but it did, and clearly Strell knew it. He moved as if to sneak another bit, and grinning, she brandished a wooden spoon.

  Giving up, he levered himself up onto a tabletop with a dramatic sigh to made a big show of scraping the bowl of the last crumbs. “I’m going to tell one of your new stories tonight.”

  “Really?” Alissa smiled, delighted he thought them good enough. “But they aren’t new. Just because you haven’t heard them, it doesn’t follow that Bailic hasn’t.”

  “True.” Strell set the bowl down with a clatter. “But it’s a good wager he hasn’t.”

  Pleased, Alissa slipped into the dining hall for the apples, returning to dump them into the slop bucket.

  “Hey!” Strell elbowed her out of the way and plucked them free. “Those are still good.”

  She stared at him. “They’re bruised.”

  “Applesauce.”

  Her eyes rolled. “We’ve plenty. I don’t want to make more.”

  Strell carefully polished the apples—worthless things by Alissa’s account—and set them on the counter. “I’ll do it.”

  Alissa shook her head. This was not new. Strell never threw anything out if it was remotely edible. He was annoyingly careful with food.

  “How long till your biscuits are done?” he asked as he leaned to stir the soup.

  “Few moments. The only thing left is your baked apples.”

  “Then we will say they’re dessert.” Breathing deeply of the steam, he ladled the soup into a large tureen. Striding to the archway to the dining hall, he hesitated, carefully balancing the tureen in one hand as she checked on her baking. “Ready?”

  “Almost. Go on. I’ll be right there.” Alissa smiled, eager to have a moment to herself.

  With a sharp nod and a happy hum, Strell vanished into the dining hall. She started as she recognized his tune. It was of a man who couldn’t eat meat, but whose wife could, and sighing at the jibe at their meatless diet, Alissa collapsed in a nearby chair. Strell was a bit trying at times.

  Bailic’s smooth voice broke the peaceful stillness. “Are you tired already, my dear?”

  She jumped to her feet and spun around, finding his tall, unmoving shadow by an unused table. By the Hounds of the Navigator, she thought, how did he get in here? She was facing the archway to the dining room! Then she remembered the seldom-used passage directly off the great hall. Somehow Alissa felt guilty, and she had done nothing wrong.

  She glanced up, her eyes sliding from the angry welt he sported across a cheek. It had appeared the day after they arrived, and it still looked raw and painful, a week later.

  “Bailic isn’t downstairs yet!” Strell shouted from the dining hall, and she felt herself flush.

  Strell appeared in the archway with a clatter of booted footsteps. Silently he turned from Bailic to her downcast eyes. “I’ll finish here, Salissa,” he said tightly. “Why don’t you go check on the fire?”

  Alissa slipped gratefully out between the two men. Talon chittered a welcome from the mantel, and Alissa ruffled her feathers in passing. Safe in the empty dining hall, she leaned her forehead against the cool stone of a tall window and looked morosely out past the drapes. The fire sent a thin rectangle of light into the herb garden. Snow was sedately sifting down in an inaudible hush, gentling a thicker blanket over the dormant herbs
and fragrant grasses. The snow never seemed to stop. She sent her finger to intersect the window ward, intentionally instigating its warning jolt in an effort to distract herself.

  When they first arrived, she had been eager for spring and the chance to make the extensive garden as it should be, fool that she was, she thought sourly. Seeing her papa’s murderer hadn’t grown any easier; she was just getting used to it. Alissa wasn’t ashamed to admit she had been using Strell as a buffer, a task he seemed to readily accept and take very seriously.

  There was a small scuff and she stiffened, steeling her face into a bland expression. She turned expecting Bailic, slumping in relief to find it was Strell. “I hate it when he does that,” he murmured uneasily.

  “So do I,” she whispered as Bailic entered close on Strell’s heels.

  Dinner was quieter than usual. Only Strell persisted in trying to bring a sense of normalcy to the evening. Alissa knew he was beginning to despise Bailic as much as she, and she appreciated Strell’s efforts. His flagrant behavior let her fade into the background, something she never would have dreamed she would ever want to do. But Strell was a consummate actor, and by the time the fire had settled to a steady warmth, even she wondered if he didn’t enjoy Bailic’s company. Bailic was, she admitted, quite the conversationalist, having the most interesting views and ideas. Being sharp in wit and quick to laugh at Strell’s jests, she could understand why her papa had liked him. It was frighteningly easy to forget who he was.

  As Alissa cleared the baked apples from the table, Strell rose with a stretch, resettling himself at his usual performing spot upon the hearth. A dark, uneasy tune lifted from his pipe to set the mood, and Alissa blew out the candles to further it, leaving only the fire to light the room. Bailic eagerly moved his thin frame to the uncomfortable-looking high-backed chair that had appeared without comment before the hearth their second night there. Alissa settled herself at her usual spot at the table and worked on mending a hole in her stocking. Contrary to Strell’s claim she was to help entertain, he had never insisted, something she was extremely grateful for.