by Holly Lisle
Yaji, however, was determined. "How did you do that?" she finally asked.
Faia pretended ignorance. "Do what?"
"With the apple. That's advanced work. I mean, I've been doing magic for years, and I've never been able to rejuvenate an apple."
Faia's response was a mild rebuke. "I have been doing magic for years also, Yaji Jennedote. Has it occurred to you that maybe I am better at it than you are?"
Yaji snorted. "Not a chance. How could you be? You don't know anything."
Faia laughed, an explosive belly laugh that brought a flush of deep red to Yaji's cheeks. "Perhaps I do not know anything. But I can do things. That is better, I think."
"I'm sorry I asked."
"You only asked so that you could laugh at me, or tell me that I did not do my magic correctly."
There was a long pause. Then Yaji answered with a gentle rebuke of her own. "I only asked because I have never had any luck with that particular assignment, and I was hoping you could help me."
Faia walked along in silence, feeling suddenly small and petty. "Oh," she said. She walked further, staring at her feet, at the campus, everywhere but at Yaji. Finally she added, "I am sorry."
Yaji shrugged. "I suppose you had every right to think what you thought."
"Yes."
"Look—I'm sorry, too. I admit that I didn't want to room with you. Don't take it so personally. I didn't want to room with anyone—"
"I heard about that."
"You did?"
"Mmm-hmm. Two girls in the bath house yesterday referred to you as 'Her Bitchy and Immaculate Highness.' They thought it very funny that you should be stuck with me."
Yaji was suddenly incensed. "You think that's funny—what they said?!"
"Not really. The things they said about me were equally unkind and also untrue—and they had never even seen me. I hoped they were wrong about you, too."
Yaji walked slowly up the steps to the dorm, her fingers trailing on the stone rail. "They were," she said slowly. "They didn't know it, I guess, but they were wrong about me. I took a lot of grief from everyone when I came here. My mother was expelled from Daane—expelled because she was pregnant with me. The story got around, and a lot of my fellow classmates decided that the fact my mother was a local hedge-wizard instead of a great university mage made me a failure, too. I was a lot better at magic than everyone else, though, so when my roommates mistreated me, I got even. I did really awful things to them. Pretty soon, no one would room with me. I liked it that way."
"I see."
"It's hell being an outsider—not having any friends."
Faia raised one eyebrow and looked sidelong at Yaji. "No!" she said. "I cannot imagine."
"That was a stupid thing to say, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
Yaji, a few steps ahead of Faia, stopped dead at her own doorway and stared at her new roommate. "Gods! You just say whatever you think. That's an awful habit." She touched three spots on the door, and muttered a short string of syllables, and the door opened. Yaji stepped across the threshhold, snapped her fingers, and the ghostlights flickered on. She stared at her roommate in the cool white light. "Why are you really here, Faia?"
Faia paced across the room, avoiding Yaji's mess, and sat down stiffly on her own bed. "I am here because my village was destroyed by Plague, and because I grew angry and created a firestorm that melted the very stones into a puddle on the ground. The fine people here did not think I should have done that, so they sought me out and brought me here to make sure I did not do it again."
"Not really." Yaji's expression indicated that she expected Faia to admit to the joke any second.
Faia stretched out on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. "Really."
Yaji stared at her as if she were trying to see straight into Faia's brain. Then she shrugged, and began pulling books off her shelf. "Whatever you say, Faia. Anyway, we have homework to do. Since you can't read the books, I might as well help you with it."
Faia imitated Yaji's shrug. "Whatever you say, Yaji."
Several frelles stretched out in their private lounge, reading by soft white ghostlight. Four sat at the little wooden table in the far corner, submerged in a tight and vicious game of Three-and-One, played for stakes. Their voices rose at irregular intervals, crosscurrent to the readers, and they received dark stares and dropped their volume again until the passions of the game overrode their caution. Two Idargga players clicked their stones across the board, wordless as statues and nearly as motionless. In the near, offhand corner, one group chatted over tea and hardrolls.
All of that Jann saw as soon as she entered the lounge. None of the frelles in the room that evening ranked her, either. She smiled slowly. Good, she thought. Then I can have peace and quiet and put my day behind me.
The tea-and-rolls group looked her over, and Tella and Delis grinned and waved. "Bring a book, or come to talk?" Tella called.
"Either." Jann went over to join them. She took a cup and poured herself tea, then curled into one of the stuffed, round-backed chairs. "I just want to ground out—today wasn't one of the good ones."
Delis and two of the very new instructors—both of whom had been Jann's students before being taken on staff—laughed heartily. Delis said, "Yah—the story about your day is already making the rounds. I hear you and the child hill-wizard crossed staffs again, and she rubbed your face in the dirt."
Jann's back stiffened. "Hardly. I asked her to rejuvenate an apple, and she did. It was a classroom assignment."
Delis giggled. "Oh, certainly." The blonde girl grabbed another hardroll and looked around at the other frelles. "From what I heard, Jann here told that brawny heathen that she would never be a mage and took her up to the front of the class to humiliate her. Handed her a rotted red fodder apple and told her to fix it. So the girl takes the apple and stares at it like she's never seen an apple before—like so," Delis held out her hand and widened her eyes in mimickry, "and then she draws in enough power to run every ghostlight in the city. Then, does she rejuv the apple? No! She transforms it. Red fodder apple becomes gorgeous yellow pedigreed eating apple—and in front of everyone, she takes a bite of the damned apple—
"—No, she didn't!—"
"—That's crazy!—"
"—Yes, she did. And then tosses off some impudent remark about doing that when she was a little child."
The group surrounding Jann laughed. "Students are such an agony to the fundament," one remarked.
Tella chuckled. "I wouldn't have thought the girl capable of much of anything, no matter what the rumors said she did up in the hills. She doesn't look bright enough to find her own shoes in the morning."
Delis agreed. "Evidently she's a bit smarter than she looks—"
Jann blocked out their cheerful remarks. She heard only the laughter of her colleagues, and not the empathy. The laughter grated deep into her soul, and cut her pride to ribbons. Faia has embarrassed me—humiliated me, Jann thought. Twice now, she has made me into the butt of jokes that are bantered back and forth among the other students and my colleagues. I will extract payment for this. She owes me.
Chapter 5: NIGHT-BOGANS AND MYTHS REBORN
YAJI took nearly an hour to get ready to do homework. Now, dressed in a black-and-gold robe, with her face hidden deep in the folds of a gold velvet cowl, she was carefully chalking along the circumference of one of the dorm's pentacles. Faia, still wearing her shepherd's clothes instead of the robe Yaji had offered, and seated on her bed, watched curiously.
"... and for the first level pentacle," Yaji was saying, "you have to sketch the outside circle first, drawn sunwise. You say,
"By Ehahe, by Vastee, by Glarinia,
Within the circle, about the circle,
By the Eye above, and the Sun her partner, her lover—
Once, twice, thrice.
Once, Ehahe,
Twice, Vastee,
Thrice, Glarinia.
So be ye within this circle."
; "Close the circle, and start with the southwest point of your pentacle, drawing to the north point. Name each wall of your pentacle, like this:
"This, the wall of sound...
This, the wall of the sight...
This, the wall of touch...
This, the wall of taste...
This, the wall of smell...
To enclose me...
"Then you go back over each of your lines again, and rename them with the spirit lines.
"This, the window to Listening...
This, the window to Othersight...
This, the window to Bringing...
This, the window to Knowing...
And this, the window to Remembering...
To set me free."
What a total waste of time and energy, Faia thought wonderingly. She asked her roommate, "You go through all of that every time you want to work a spell? My gods, it is a wonder you accomplish anything."
She could see Yaji's back go up instantly. "Setting the circle prevents the intrusion of any unwanted elementals, and controls the spell so that it doesn't get out of hand," the slender girl said in a haughty voice. "If you haven't been setting a circle before you work, it's a wonder there's enough left of you to scrape off the floor."
"And since there obviously is, I must be doing something right," Faia countered. She stood and walked to the center of the other pentacle. "My way works just as well, and does not take so damned long. I close my eyes and see myself reaching down through the earth until I find an energy line. I connect my feet to that. Then I see my head stretching up until I feel an air energy line, and I connect my head to that. Then I run air energy down to my belly, and earth energy up to my belly, and I let them mix until I have filled with the power—and then I form a white ball out of this with my hands and spread the sphere out until it surrounds me.
"It takes longer to explain it than to do it." She closed her eyes and quickly mimed the making of a ball that grew invisibly until her arms were spread out straight. There was energy within easy reach in the city; it felt good to find it and hold onto it. When she touched the heartbeat of earth and sky, her beloved hills did not seem so far away.
Yaji sniffed. "And which gods do you invoke during this quaint little procedure of yours? Whom do you honor? Your method may be fast, but it's inelegant. There isn't any art to it... or any beauty."
"Inelegant?" Faia was hurt. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and glared at her roommate. "If you want art, paint a picture. If you want magic, be practical. It is like that silly outfit you are wearing—"
"My ceremonial robes," Yaji corrected in a knife-edged voice, "have the blessing of hundreds of years of tradition. Unlike your outfit, they wouldn't be suitable for wearing while mucking a pigsty—but since I don't plan to muck any pigsties soon, that shouldn't be a problem."
Faia refrained from pounding her roommate into paste with her fists only by sheer willpower. Her face went white and her voice grew strained. "Mucking pigsties?! This is shepherd's dress. You earn the right to wear it, if you have the gift of Tending. In Bright, a piddling little pretender to magic like you would have ended up digging potatoes and washing squalling babies with the rest of the Talentless. You would have had none of your silly clothes and fancy airs there!"
"Piddling little pretender to magic!" Yaji shrieked. "Piddling... little... pretender—I'll show you who's a piddling little pretender, you horse-faced, cow-assed cretin! Any gift that includes chasing sheep around a field like a dog isn't much of a gift." Inside her circle, Yaji began drawing symbols in the air.
Faia spread her arms out and closed her eyes. Around her, the air flickered with bright points of visible energy that coalesced into a glowing blue half-sphere whose edge followed the pentacle at her feet.
As the energy accumulated in a visible ball around Faia, Yaji stopped drawing symbols in the air and stared. "By Gatho's Balls," she whispered in horror. She had never actually seen a shield before. She had not realized until she saw the shield that such a feat was possible. It was not possible for her, she knew. "I quit," she said, and stepped out of her pentacle without a further word or gesture.
Faia, eyes still closed, felt a jolt as her roommate's circle shattered, and the ungrounded energy that was released bounced around the room. At the same instant, she felt the sudden arrival of a presence—a curious, somehow dangerous presence. When it sensed her awareness of it, it vanished without a trace.
That was odd, she thought, and opened her eyes. The bright blue glow that surrounded her startled her as much as it had Yaji. She sucked in her breath, and began to ground her energy. I could have cooked her, Faia realized. I almost did. When they told me that I needed to learn control, I did not realize how very right they were.
Yaji sulked on her side of the room. Faia regretted the fight, but did not really want to talk to Yaji in order to resolve it. So she climbed into her own bed without a word, and forced relaxation upon herself until she fell asleep.
Medwind commandeered one of Rakell's chairs for herself. She removed a stack of texts and manuscripts, a globe of crystal the size of a morka egg, and Flynn, who fixed her with the feline version of the evil eye before he stalked over to Rakell's unoccupied chair and curled up in it. "We off duty?" she yelled toward the kitchen.
The Mottemage yelled back, "Do wingmounts fly?"
"Thank the gods." Medwind slid into the chair and put her boot-shod feet up on the table next to the gargoyle and the goldfish and leaned back. She wriggled more comfortably into the chair and closed her eyes. "What a d'leffik day!"
"I imagine that is the kindest thing that could be said about it." Rakell came out to the sitting room with two giant bowls of crisped corn and two huge tankards of tare-ale. She plunked one of each next to Medwind's feet on her end table, raised her eyebrows, but refrained from comment, and chased Flynn out of her chair. Flynn spat and swore creatively in the ancient tongue of cats and demanded to be let out. "Get the door yourself, you sorry beast," Rakell snarled. "That's why I gave you hands in the first place."
The cat glared at her, then stalked over to the door and jumped up, hung on the door, and twisted. With his hind legs, he pushed against the doorjamb. The door popped open, and the tawny cat dropped to the ground and exited.
Medwind shuddered. "It makes my skin crawl, watching him do that."
Rakell sighed. "Not mine. I just wish that he would close the damned door when he let himself out, and that he could let himself back in."
"He can't get back in?"
"He can work the latch well enough, but the little business with the hind legs only works for pushing. So he can only open doors that swing inward."
"So you still have to tend the door for him."
"Yah." Rakell took a sip of her ale, and chewed with meditative concentration on her crisped corn. "Even if the modifications had worked so well that he opened and closed it for himself every time, I still wouldn't give another cat hands."
Medwind laughed and took a swig of her ale. "Don't tell me the mighty Rakell admits she made an error."
Rakell laughed. "Never. My technique was flawless—my results were exactly what I intended. I simply never realized what firebugs cats were. I cannot keep Flynn out of my quicklights, no matter what I do. If there were more like him, the city would burn to the ground inside of a week."
"It's a stone city."
"I can't imagine that making the slightest difference, somehow." Rakell curled up in her brocaded chair and stretched—a movement Medwind found disconcertingly reminiscent of the absent cat.
The barbarian munched corn chips and asked, around a mouthful of them, "So, what did the Council say?"
"They'll 'look into it.' They say a few of the local junior hedge-wizards went missing last night—they aren't willing to speculate on a connection—but all the missing, including our two, are young, pretty, and magically adept." The Mottemage stared out her window at the brightening stars.
"How, exactly, are they goin
g to 'look into it,' did they say?"
"They're sending over Council Regents tomorrow to interview everyone who knew Enlee or Amelenda. They want to see if they can establish any connections. They're voting on sending out patrols."
"In the meantime, we sit and stare at the four walls and hope for the best? That sounds about as useful as their usual ideas."
Rakell waved her tankard at Medwind. "You lack sufficient respect for the Council."
"The Council—yourself excluded, dear Rakell—is made up of a bunch of doddering, neutered ninnies who insist on sitting on their hands, blocking progress at every turn, and keeping the magic of this city locked into patterns four hundred years old, no matter how insufficient to our needs those patterns have become."
"Med, you insist on thinking of gender-specific magic as aberrent. I assure you, it is highly efficient and functional. Your own distaste for celibacy is all that keeps you from admitting that."
The barbarian grinned around her ale. "My 'distaste for celibacy,' as you so lightly refer to it, is no minor detail. I'll give up men when you give up horses."
Rakell sputtered, "I don't like the parallel you've drawn there, Frelle Medwind."
"I was not implying any significant parallel, Mottemage." Medwind munched on her corn chips and smirked, though.
"Never mind. I won't let you draw me into one of your convoluted little sex talks. I want to know if you have any idea what happened with our students. With your outlander skills, I thought perhaps you would have some insights I don't have."
"I'm as lost in the fog as you are. That horrible business this morning was like nothing I experienced before—"
There was a burst of magic that screamed across both mages' nerve endings, cutting short whatever the barbarian had intended to say. Medwind pressed her hands to her temples; Rakell shut her eyes tightly and clenched her teeth. The effect was the magical equivalent of fingernails dragging across a slateboard. It brought both mages to their feet, ready to flay the perpetrators.
