The Makers of Light

by Lynna Merrill

  A gust of wind pulled his cloak, spilling snowflakes, howling as it met a certain corner of the temple's roof. Dominick had feared this sound during his first winter in Mierber, especially at night, when it was easy to believe it was the sound of the Master shouting angrily from the sky, despite Maxim's daytime affirmations that it was not so.

  "I wish you would shout," Dominick whispered to himself, then turned his back to the temple. He was learning many things nowadays, and one of them was that he could learn nothing from this place any more.

  He walked further, across the street, to the Mentors' dormitory that could not be a home for him any longer.

  "Come only if you have something urgent to report," Maxim had said, otherwise the old man would periodically come himself to the small apartment. Dominick wondered what Maxim had done that Dominick could come to this place at all. Usually those who had failed to be Mentors, if at all alive and free, were banished from the vicinity of their old temples. He stopped before the dormitory's stone steps but then went on, his misgivings lasting only for a moment.

  Dominick trusted Maxim with the information he was about to give him. He could also trust him with something as trivial as his own life.

  END OF BOOK TWO

  Also by Lynna Merrill:

  The Seekers of Fire, the first volume of The Masters That Be and The Weavers of Paths, the third volume of The Masters That Be:

  Expect The Shards of Creation, the fourth book in the series, in 2012.

  Excerpt from The Weavers of Paths,

  Chapter 1: One World

  Merley

  Evening 43 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706

  It was cold. Or, rather, Merley was cold herself, despite the fire burning behind the thick walls of the stove, and the naked little flame writhing abandoned in a metal plate on the table.

  The little flame could not warm her. Not like this, severed, outside of her body and mind, a tiny flame inside metal but not strong enough to melt metal—so a flame inevitably confined. It was just a token she had made for herself, a reminder.

  Merley turned a page of the book, yet another thin, almost transparent page packed with dense, miniature text. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes, but the words would not become more clear, either in appearance or in meaning. Her eyes felt as if they were filled with dust. They often did, these days, and not because of dust on the books themselves. No, Darius would never, ever let dust mar the large ancient tomes or their shelves. He had been carefully wiping all the dust every day, year after year.

  Why was she doing this?

  Merley tossed her head and stood, her feet weak from hours of stillness. She walked to the window, where the Sun had still managed to paint the clouds violet and pink, as if in challenge to the white snow that had been softly falling for hours. Like a blanket the snow was, gently but persistently enveloping the world.

  The world, and the Sun itself.

  Yet, she could feel the Sun, and she could hear the Sun, even though the eyes only saw a flash of color here and there amongst the blanket's threads. She felt the Sun, its smile distant and yet there for her; it was a kind smile like Darius's, and the thought of them both made her a bit warmer.

  Darius was the most wonderful man in the world. Others made fun of Darius, for Darius might forget to eat for two days when playing with some little device of his, or he could go out with mismatched shoes. Yet, Darius was not careless. He took most painstaking care of his devices and his books, and in the days since Merley had become his student, Darius had also taken care of her.

  And why did shoes have to match, anyway? Merley rubbed her eyes, then massaged her temples, this yet another fleeting thought inside a mind tense and restless. Did not shoes just have to be comfortable enough to walk? Did the Sun care for matching shoes? Did the snow? No, it was people, always people, who thought and said and did the little things, senseless, useless little things at first glance, and yet things that could cut and cut straight to the heart.

  A knock sounded on the door, and at first Merley smiled, then suddenly froze still, for the sound was unlike Darius's soft tapping. It was sharper, faster, more demanding, as if the person knocking was both in haste and used to doors being immediately opened.

  This person was not welcome. Beyond the window, the pink of the setting Sun was now washing out, and the white and gray of a snowy day was flowing into the blue and black of a silent snowy night. It was peaceful, or had been, for these past thirty days. But, often nervous and lost in her own thoughts, perhaps Merley had not paid attention; she had not always noticed, the fool.

  But the peace had been there, a certain slow quality of life, a certain silence breached only by the ticking of devices, Darius's soft voice, the song of birds, and the winds that howled out up on the roof. Even that howling was peaceful in its own way, despite the songs of mountains that it sometimes brought, with their longing and their simultaneously quiet and stormy sadness.

  At nights like this, Merley could not fall asleep, and sometimes tears flowed down her cheeks, for reasons she did not know clearly. She sang her own songs then, songs that came straight from a place in her that was truly hers and yet a place she could not reach always. Then, when in the mornings she tried to write the songs in a book, inevitably she could not. Instead, she wrote fragments of stories, her own fairytales that she did not show even to Darius.

  This knocking now, this urgent harshness, did not belong to the tall, faraway tower where nothing was ever urgent and harsh, where even the songs and noises she had heard all her life did not come easily. The knocking belonged to the world of Bers and humans, to the world of softly-dressed sharpness, honey-coated poison, noise, and constant misdirected haste.

  Seven strides, a hand on the latch, a door swung open—and this world stood before her just as outside the Sun went fully down.

  "What do you want?" Merley whispered, against Adept Brighid's smile.

  "Why, to see how you are doing, my dear."

  Brighid pushed back the wet red hood of her cloak. Drops of melting snow trickled down the woman's thick dark hair and down the garment, marring Darius's—Merley's—cleanly polished floor. Snow was usually clean so far from the center of the city with its loud, carriage-packed, filthy streets. But not snow brought in by Brighid. Everything Brighid touched, Brighid tainted, and Merley was going to personally clean the room after the woman was gone, to remove every little trace of her.

  Old Slava back in Balkaene had believed that if you swept the floor after a visitor had left, you would banish her or him forever. Old Slava had seriously scolded a scullery girl who had swept the kitchen floor once after Merley had been there for Slava's wondrous cookies. Merley had not believed you could truly chase away a person with a broom, and the girl probably had not wanted that, anyway—and Merley had gone back later. But could she go back again now? Had the broom perhaps not worked in her case, after all, and could it not work in Brighid's? Could not wishing Brighid gone with all her heart work by itself?

  "Won't you perhaps offer me a glass of water and a bite, lady Merlevine?"

  A bite. The word brought an image that was not that of the polite cake bites nobles offered to visitors, perhaps because Merley had been thinking of Slava just now. Slava's cookies it brought, together with their taste, so strong that it made Merley's mouth water, a taste of baked flaky dough full of freshly-churned butter, dressed with an exquisite layer of rose-petal jam.

  Merley swallowed, both the taste and the tears, everything blending in a bitter lump inside her throat. But tears were never a good condiment, and she was not going to cry before that woman.

  "No, I am not going to offer you anything," Merley said with all the calm she could muster. "I am a noble lady no more, even though it was "lady" you called me, and I am not bound by silly noble rules of politeness to offer food and drink to even an unwelcome guest. Who made those rules and why, anyway? They make no more sense than the rule of matching shoes."

  "The rule of matchin
g shoes, is it, now?"

  If Merley could swallow back words, she would have swallowed back hers. She should have said nothing of shoes, or of her wonderings. She had just uttered what had been on her mind, like she had easily become used to with Darius, but this was not Darius. Brighid was smiling again, obviously undaunted, her smile almost mocking and yet not entirely—a knowing smile, as if she were a nosy but not necessarily ill-meaning friend whom Merley had just presented with a secret of hers. It was not a secret, it was nothing special, and yet she felt breached. Anything she told Brighid, any access to herself she gave Brighid, was one thing too much.

  "I could tell you who invented these rules and why, Merley." Brighid slipped inside, a hand reaching out to close the door. Her nails were long, carefully shaped and painted. "I can tell you many things."

  Could she? Could she really? For a moment, Merley's curiosity was stronger than the repulsion she felt towards the woman. She had asked a question to which she expected no answer, a question to which she thought there were no answer, for she had learned to think that rarely were the rules of humans good or right, or made any sense. And good or right perhaps they were not, but were there explanations? Was there anything an Adept Humanist knew that could help Merley know this world herself, with its mingled paths and mingled lives, and noise and discord that permeated every breathing or non-breathing thing except perhaps fire? Was there anything Brighid could tell her that would make her understand why she could not find peace even here, amidst Darius's kindness, in Darius's peaceful home?

  No. Merley did not shake her head at herself only because if she did, Brighid would see and would know that Merley wanted to believe her. Merley did not know what Brighid knew about human rules and the world, but she knew that Brighid knew about her, about the restiveness that for a year had been her constant companion, her enemy and her friend—and she knew that Brighid would not hesitate to use it. Had she been a Brighid, "I can tell you all you need to know," would have been what she would have told a Merley, perhaps followed by "I can help you find your own place."

  "Why have you come, Adept Humanist Brighid?" Merley sat at her table, in front of her little confined flame, and Brighid sat across from her, the adept's eyes lingering on the metal plate.

  Both were silent for a while. Then, "Such a waste, my dear," Brighid finally said. "A flame with no purpose, at a time when flames are born in pain and die easily."

  "How do you know it has no purpose!" Merley snapped, then wished to bite off her tongue. She had done it again, she had shown emotion to a person who could harvest emotions like grain, and like grain, turn them to something of her own making.

  Strangely enough, Brighid did not immediately take the opportunity to do that. She just stared at the flame for a very long time, eyes half-closed, her long fingers clenched together on the table. She looked ... vulnerable for a little while, but not like Merley's mother, who wore vulnerability like she wore her beauty, like a garment carefully planned and sewn, constantly redesigned to fit her better throughout the years. Brighid, combed and manicured as she was, somehow did not seem to care for beauty in the same way Fallon or other noble women, young and old, did. And right now Brighid looked truly vulnerable—which for some reason made Merley afraid.

  "You are right, of course." Brighid sighed, her fingers carefully unclenching themselves. "All things that humans do have their purposes, I should know that. But not all purposes are equal, my child. Some are worthier than others."

  Merley remained silent. She refused to yet again ask why Brighid had come. As much as she wanted, she could not make her leave, either, for the room was not truly Merley's, and Merley did not have the power to welcome others or bid them gone. This room, together with the other one at the end of the corridor, where Darius slept, was not even Darius's. Neither was the study where the tiny devices buzzed and lived lives of their own.

  Everything owned by Bers was owned collectively, and even though one may favor some places better than others, or live in a room or a tower all her life, no one owned the room or tower. The Master, long ago, had been vehement that it would be so, the books said. In reality, in the centuries after the Master the rooms where Bers lived had become private, so despite the old rules Merley could indeed throw Brighid out of the room itself. But not from the tower. Brighid could stay at Merley's threshold forever if she so chose, trapping Merley inside, and Merley did not consider doing this to be beyond Brighid. She might as well hear what Brighid had to say.

  "Darius is not too well, I hear. You must be so worried." Brighid smiled again, a typical smile of hers, so motherly and concerned, and so devoid of vulnerability that Merley might have imagined it a moment ago.

  "Stay away from him." Rules be damned, she might be hesitant to throw that woman away from her own room, but she would throw her away from Darius's—she would throw her from the top of the tower if she must.

  "I am not going to intrude on dear Darius's much needed rest, dear. I indeed came straight to you without talking to him first for that very reason. What are you thinking? I only mean Darius well. I even sent Darius our most skillful acolyte, even though I would have wished to keep her for myself."

  The smile yet again, that dirty fake smile that only looked fake if you watched very carefully—or if you felt it. Merley must have felt it, for she was not watching carefully. She was not careful at all. If she were, she would not have said yet another thing she should not have said, would not have made yet another mistake. Couldn't she just have smiled and said that Darius had a slight cold, "nothing too serious, thanks for your concern?" Couldn't she have brushed the question off, as if it did not matter much? Obviously not. Now Brighid knew that even a small cold could worry Merley when it was Darius who was affected, and she knew how much the old man meant to her. Merley clenched her fists, hiding the sweat that had suddenly surfaced on her palms. Brighid could use all she knew.

  "I know what you are thinking. 'A Humanist can use and abuse,' you are thinking, and you are worried about the dear old man. You are right to worry."

  Merley said nothing this time; this time she knew that whatever she said would only make things worse. Words were not her weapons. She could burn Brighid—that she could do. The fire had suddenly started kindling inside her, chasing away the cold for the first time in days, making her hot, almost too hot to bear. She tried to breathe slowly, so that Brighid would not notice, and to control her stomach, which seemed to want to turn inside out. She had killed a human once for her own sake. If need be, she would kill another for Darius's.

  She squeezed her hands together beneath the table, the trembling hopefully invisible to eyes that were not hers. No matter what else, if need be, she would do it. And even if Brighid did not mean Darius harm at this time and in this place, would she not mean harm later, and did she not mean harm to someone or another all the time? Knowing Brighid, would not the world be a better place without her?

  Help the world. Kill her.

  Suddenly the room was so quiet that Merley could hear the big clock in the study through the thick stone wall, which should in reality be impossible.

  "Tick," the clock said, and "tack," and "tick" again, every sound in rhythm with the sudden wild thumping of her heart against her chest, and with the thumping of the fire confined inside her. Confined? Had her fire ever been confined? Merley blinked as if to chase the strange, confusing thought away. It was her fire, and inside her was its home. Inside her was where her fire always should be—except for those few flames she let out in the world. The flames she let out, the flames that warmed others, melted wolf chains or bench legs, the flames that maimed and killed—they were precious to her and always hurt a little, and yet they were never as strong, and never as painful or beloved, as the flames that never left her.

  "Tick, tack," the clock said once again, that dear, soothing sound suddenly sharp and pressing against her mind as if a fork had started scraping it from the inside. Merley shivered, unable to hide her body's reaction this ti
me. Perhaps it was all because the time was a minute to the hour, and soon the clock would strike. She could strike, too. Her head was suddenly free of ache and her stomach was stiff and stable. She could strike so easily.

  But "do you control it, or does it control you?" Brighid had said before. Her hands now shaking wildly, Merley suddenly stared at the woman as if she were seeing her for the first time, and stared for a long time after the clock had finished striking.

  "You have the right instincts, child." Brighid's voice startled her, even though it somehow sounded kinder than before. Merley jerked her eyes away, and suddenly the strength that had been keeping her still and staring drained away. She barely resisted dropping her head on her hands on the table. The flame in the metal plate faded.

  Brighid watched the plate in silence, then her eyes bore into Merley's, dark and deep, and hot themselves.

  "You are right to worry, and to doubt my intentions, even though presently I truly mean your master no ill. I need him, you see. But if there is one thing you should know about humans, one thing that would never fail you in dealing with them, it is doubt. Doubt me, Merley. Doubt Darius. Doubt yourself, for she who watches herself constantly is apt to notice whenever she is about to fall, and apt to find a way to stay up or at least to choose where she falls—so that she can scrape back up again."

  "Is this what you did? Chose where you fell?" Perhaps Merley should not have said this, either, but right now her mind seemed too faint and distant to berate her.

  "Perhaps." Brighid's voice was quiet. "Perhaps this is exactly what I did. But this is not a topic for today. Today, I have come to talk to you about Magic and mechanisms."