by Jean Johnson
Pelai heard the crunching footsteps a moment later. Whoever it was hurried at a fast pace, twice as fast as their own steps. After a moment, she made out the taga-clad figure, and raised her voice. “Healer Robyn?”
The woman slowed, squinted, and called back, “Doma Pelai?”
“Yes. Tipa’thia . . . ?” Pelai asked, drawing closer. Close enough to see the Healer stop and bow her head. Grief crawled over her skin in a cold shiver.
Robyn lifted her hands, conjoined palms angled up and pressed together along the edges of her little fingers. As she spoke, she pressed those palms together, symbolically closing the book of the life she discussed. “I’m afraid Giasenno Tipa’thia has passed in her sleep. Goddess grant her a much-deserved rest, after such a long life.”
Pelai echoed the gesture, miming the closing of a book. Her eyes stung with grief. “She lived a full life, as well as a long one; may she be granted rest.”
Beside her, Krais did the same, murmuring, “May her life’s story be an inspiration to all who are waiting to be reborn.”
Robyn arched a brow at that. “I didn’t know your father was a reincarnationist.”
“My mother is,” he demurred. “My father’s agnostic about it.”
“Somehow, that makes sense,” Pelai murmured dryly. Grateful for the brief distraction from the grievous news, she sniffed to clear her nose, her mind calming down. “Robyn, am I needed in Tipa’thia’s chambers?”
The Healer shook her head. “We’re already tending to the body, so there’s nothing for you to do. We will send word to her family in the city as well, and will arrange to return her things to her kin with the help of the mages at the Temple. Your only duty until the memorial is to tend to the Fountain’s needs, and the memorial will be a week from now.”
“Did the Elder say what she wished done with her shell after she left it behind for the Afterlife?” Krais asked the Healer.
Robyn nodded. “Her wish was for her shell to be cremated and used to help fertilize the tulip garden. She left plans with the Temple gardeners for mourners to bring bulbs or potted flowers to add to the collection.”
Pelai nodded. Having known Tipa’thia was ill for months meant that she could think clearly despite her sorrow; most of her grieving had been done while her mentor still lived. “The Elder Mage loved Aian tulips. She always said they were deceptively simple, and incredibly exotic. And she was a pragmatic woman, so using her bones and ashes to fertilize the soil for them makes the most sense.”
“Have you considered your own shell’s needs? Both of you?” Robyn asked politely, eyeing the two younger Mendhites. “You may be young, but tragic accidents happen.”
“I once thought I would have some sort of memorial marker for my great deeds, and just leave my useless shell to be dumped in a mass grave,” Krais murmured. “Lately . . . I’m beginning to think I should try to give back to the world, instead of just assume everything is mine to take. I think perhaps having my body cremated to help a garden grow would be appropriate.”
That sharpened Pelai’s interest. “And the deeds marker?”
“I have committed no deeds good enough to be worthy of one,” he demurred.
Robyn frowned at that. “Didn’t you and your brothers bring down that rogue mage of Port Ellor, Mahen Garen, two years ago? The one who was holding the whole village hostage by experimenting upon their children with transformation magics if they didn’t indulge his slightest whim?”
“Mahen Guron,” Krais corrected quietly, looking away. “And my brothers and I didn’t do anything heroic. The real heroism came from the mages who unwarped the children, allowing them to live as themselves, and the Healers who unwarped their minds, giving them what they needed to recover from the trauma of their transformations. My brothers and I just attacked someone as a group, three against one. That’s hardly heroic.”
The Healer drew in a breath to argue. Pelai quickly raised her hand. “Thank you for attempting to defend his actions as heroic, Healer, but he is not your patient; he is my penitent. Now . . . if I am not needed in Tipa’thia’s quarters . . . then I am needed at the Fountain, to make sure it still responds to me fully after her passing.”
“Of course. Goddess bless you in your Guardianship . . . Elder Pelai’thia,” Healer Robyn stated formally, bowing as well as addressing the younger woman by her new title. “The old Guardian has passed. Long may the new Guardian live.”
“Thank you, Healer,” Pelai murmured. She didn’t feel like an Elder in that moment, but she expected that confidence in her new rank would come with time. Breathing deep, she squared her shoulders, nodded to herself, and gestured for Krais to follow her. “I’ll see you some other time, Robyn. Thank you for your efforts in making Tipa’thia’s last few nights comfortable.”
Nodding, Robyn headed back the way she had come. Pelai and Krais followed her for some of it, but detoured to keep going on the path rather than duck into the northwest wing attached to the sanctuary of the Temple proper. Only when they were alone did Krais speak. “My condolences, and my congratulations, Pelai’thia. Tipa’thia will be missed, but no one—not even my father—has doubted your ability to fill her duties as the Elder Mage of Mendhi.”
“I find that reassuring,” Pelai admitted. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her name having the suffix of rank attached to it, but suspected that, too, would grow comfortable in time. “However, I suspect he will not like the way I will oppose his Partisan agenda.”
“He will not believe you have Mendhi’s best interests at heart if you are not striving to put our nation first among all others,” the eldest Puhon son warned her. “And there is nothing wrong with wanting that for the nation.”
She shot him a look. They had already gone through this argument. Krais held up his hand, staving off her scorn.
“I know that there are wrong ways to go about it. That is, I realize it now,” he allowed. “I am simply trying to share with you my father’s mindset. He doesn’t see that what he wants is wrong . . . and to be completely fair, the goal isn’t wrong. He just . . . doesn’t see that his methods to attain that goal are wrong.”
Opening the door into the back hall, Pelai shook her head. “Partisans are near-impossible to argue with. They refuse to admit that other viewpoints are valid, and outright ignore that some of them are more logical and viable.”
“The reason why the Partisan movement has spread so far is that there is no real opposition to them. No single group that is strong and organized enough to challenge their beliefs—a case of might makes right. Father refers to the few other groups as if they are juveniles who don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s very . . . authoritarian . . . Why are we stopping in front of the mural?” Krais asked her.
Pelai stroked the image of the swan. It shifted, opening the entrance. “Come in, but stay back by the walls. You may be magically suppressed, but I don’t want you messing with any of the runes physically. There are certain safety spells that might be triggered, and you have zero defenses right now against any automagic attacks.”
“Cheerful,” he muttered, but followed her into the dimly lit room. The door slid shut behind them with only a faint whisper of sound. Moving around the spirit-screen wall, he stopped and blinked, staring at the glowing runes hanging in midair and the pulsing sphere wrapped in layers of runes at the heart of the long, low, square chamber. “Goddess. . . . This is remarkably beautiful . . .”
“Tipa’thia told me it always made her think of pastel beams of light scattered on velvet black,” Pelai murmured, wending her way among the runes. They formed a sort of insubstantial, transparent maze that nonetheless needed to be navigated. “Not that we use velvet much in Mendhi. It’s too warm a fabric, most days. But I heard that in Aurul, off to the northwest, they wear it in the winter months.”
“I’ve seen some of the priests we helped to return home wearing velvet robes,�
� Krais confessed. “The one that was brought to represent the people of Mekhana, he wore multiple layers of the stuff. He might have overheated if he hadn’t had runes stitched into the fabric for comfort, I think. If you had seen him, you’d know just how much wealth he wore.”
She nodded. “I know what he would have looked like. I saw other priests of Mekha via scrying spells when I visited their kingdom six months ago. They’re not all that far from the Sun’s Belt region, but they are placed high in elevation, and their winters get very cold and snow-laden. All that fabric keeps them warm in winter.”
“You visited them?” Krais asked. “You were allowed away from your duties for that long?”
“It was a quick trip, through specific magical means you don’t need to know about, for tending to a magical problem the people of Mekhana were suffering,” she stated, approaching the edge of the Fountain. “Tipa’thia authorized it, and I wasn’t even gone a full day, so Dagan’thio didn’t need to know a thing about it. He still doesn’t.”
“I hope they were grateful for your help with their problems,” he called out to her. “The Mekhanans, I mean.”
“I ended up not being as much of a help as they’d hoped. Their Fountain is . . . chaotic. Particularly compared to the very orderly ways of our own,” she admitted. It wasn’t much of an answer, but then most of her attention stayed focused on the Fountain.
Everything looked and felt normal. Cautiously, she lifted her hand to the terminal boundary . . . and felt the magics accept her presence just fine. Relieved, she withdrew her hand. She didn’t need to be in the Fountain at the moment; she needed instead to check on all the runes sorting and controlling the flow of energies that spewed from the singularity point, making the sphere look like a constantly rippling opal bead the size of her family room.
Turning away from the Fountain, she began pacing around the room, her eyes gauging the runes and comparing them to her memories of the way they had looked over the last three years of her apprenticeship. Nothing stood out at a cursory glance, so she spared a bit of attention to ask a question. “Do you know what happened to that Mekha priest? The one that attended the Convocation? Guardian Alonnen would probably like to know if he’s headed back to his homeland, where he could cause trouble for the ex-Mekhanans.”
“I do know something of what happened, actually,” Krais confessed. “I heard he sold his velvet robes to some priest of a water god for a lot of gold. He then accepted the Gods’ commandeering of our ships to be given a ride away from Nightfall, but he said he was not returning to Mekhana. He claimed he wanted to go to Aiar or Guchere, or basically anywhere far from his original home, just so that he could start a new life in a new land, rather than return after his god was dissolved at the Convocation. I think he took a berth on the fourteenth ship of the fleet, but I can’t be sure—I know he boarded our ship so he could take a mirror-Gate to the next, and had plans to string a few Gates . . . but I don’t know where he went after that. I just know he had no intentions of returning to Mekhana.”
“I suspect that was rather wise of him. The latest reports from their Guardian of the turmoil in their land spoke of ex-priests who didn’t flee finding themselves killed by rioting citizens, shot with crude spells, or the engineering weapons their people craft intead of spells, or hung from trees . . . even a few that died from hard-flung stones. The southern stretch of their land has organized itself into an incipient kingdom, but the midlands and northlands are still beset with fighting. Alonnen thinks the far north has lost territory to their eastern neighbors, not just to internal strife, but he’s having difficulty getting that end of ex-Mekhana to communicate with its southernmost kin.”
“The history tutor my father hired for myself and Foren—he retired before Gayn needed him—used to say that a civil war is anything but civil,” Krais said, watching her from his place by the exit. “As terrible as war is when waged between two nations, war within a nation is worse. Brother turning against brother, mothers against daughters. . . . Every writing I’ve read on the subject mentions how it leaves deep wounds within the culture. It’s such a personal battle, because the winner knows the loser’s weaknesses, and uses those to punish their errant citizens. I pray that never happens to Mendhi.”
“Pray instead for the Pashai,” Pelai called back over her shoulder, examining yet more runes.
“The who?”
“The people of Pasha, one of the kingdoms of Shattered Aiar, to the east,” she explained. “They’re embroiled in a civil war right now. Guardian Daemon has been keeping the rest of us abreast of it. So far, it hasn’t been too devastating, but that’s because there are too many contenders for the throne of their late king to really mount any large armies. So it’s all skirmishing while they try to eliminate each other.”
“Ugh,” Krais muttered, the sound just loud enough to echo slightly in the quiet of the Fountain Hall. “Royalists. I’d rather be a Partisan. At least with our Hierarch, he or she always has eight other Elders who can choose to band together on an issue to oppose their rulings. With Royalists, you just have to hope whoever inherits the throne is compassionate and sane, because the only way to depose them is by arresting or killing them, and hoping your rebel forces are strong enough to oppose any loyalists—birthright does not guarantee intelligence or leadership skills.”
“True . . .” Pelai slowed, frowning at a set of dark brown runes. They seemed to be pulsing oddly. She watched for several seconds, and tried to remember what the control runes were supposed to do with the Fountain’s magic. Something about gardens? No . . . that wasn’t it. Sighing, she gave up and turned back toward the Fountain. “I’m having trouble with one of these runes. I’m going to have to go into the Fountain and try to trace the problem from within the system. Do you need me to conjure you a seat?”
“A cot would be nicer.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t I know it. I am attuned to the Fountain, but I do not have full control over all of its systems. We never completed all the tattoo transferences.”
“Tattoos?” Krais asked, curious.
She gestured vaguely at the pastel markings around her even as she made her way back through the maze of hovering glyphs. “The system has been set up to be regulated by a sort of tattoo-based awareness. If I have a tattoo for it, I am aware of what it is doing, and can sort of . . . massage the area to get it flowing correctly.”
“Sort of like standard Painted Warrior tattoos, but . . . it’s an indirect effect?” Krais asked.
“Indirect, yes, if you mean as in it has nothing to do with my actual body and actions, yes,” she admitted.
“I didn’t see any unusual tattoos on your skin,” Krais pointed out. “Are you sure you’re attuned?”
“The very first spell is a spell that hides them—here, have a look,” she added, and held out her mostly bare arms. Her Disciplinarian tattoos were once again covered by leather bracers, the cloth ones having been left behind when she swapped from sleepwear to her daily clothes. But with a little bit of concentration, she let the illusion cloaking the newest ones drop.
Unlike all her other tattoos, the hidden ones glowed with energy. An entire book’s worth of character-glyphs decorated her hide in patches and paragraphs that had been scribed in some of the writing marks from Mendhi’s Middle Ages, well after primitive pictographs were used to literally represent words and actions, but long before the phoenetic lettering they used today had been officially adopted. The ideograms condensed a great deal of information into a very small area, but one had to be a dedicated scholar, a librarian, or a high-ranked mage to be able to read them. Most of her spare time in her early twenties had been spent learning the Middle Text runes, since translation spells didn’t always convey the full depth of meaning inherent in them.
She didn’t know if he could read the writing without a spell. Not all powerful mages bothered to learn, even here in Mendhi. She did know she was t
oo far away for him to easily see the individual characters, but that didn’t matter. The point of showing him her control runes lay in showing how each grouping of runes glowed pastel, obscuring the non-glowing inks bound into her skin. That was the biggest reason why they had to be hidden, on par with hiding the fact that there were runes that could control the magic of a Fountain directly.
“That’s . . . very colorful,” Krais observed tactfully. “You can turn it off now—or hide it. I imagine the first Guardian to have those things had to wear black cloth outlander garments to be able to sleep at night, before figuring out they needed to be hidden.”
The dry observation caught her off guard. Chuckling, Pelai nodded. “I imagine he or she did. I don’t know who came up with it. I just know it makes regulating the magic as natural and easy as breathing—something I can do either consciously or unconsciously. That in turn allows me to be the Elder Mage, directing magical efforts across Mendhi.”
“You said you don’t have full control?” he asked. “Is that dangerous?”
“Not under normal circumstances,” she reassured him. Another bit of thought made the glowing runes dim and vanish, though of course they still decorated her hide. Or perhaps her soul. “It’s just time-consuming, because I will have to check repeatedly in person on the Fountain every day, to make sure nothing is being blocked, or starved, or backed up. Too much pressure from excessively throttled and regulated magic can be dangerous, just as too little control can be dangerous.”
“Will you be picking an apprentice to train under you?” Krais asked.
“Are you thinking you’d be picked for the job?” she asked dryly.
“I doubt I’d ever qualify,” he retorted. “Even Father knows that only the most scrupulous of mages are considered for apprenticing to a Guardian. My stupid willingness to do anything to make Mendhi great, including the willingness to commit murder, disqualifies me immediately.”
“You have changed,” Pelai told him, approaching the boundary between the regular spaces of the Fountain Hall and its magic-saturated center. “I remember you being annoyed Tipa’thia would not pick you three years ago, when she decided to start training her successor.”
