She told the mountain what she wanted it to do.
The rock yawned, opening a deep black seam. Large enough to admit the Kavareen. The creature disappeared inside. She felt it travel deep down through mineral veins into the core of the mountain and then come to rest, a minute foreign particle in the greater body, encapsulated in stone so that it could do no more harm.
The mountain grew still again, returning to its dreams of deep time. Nora felt its heaviness settle into her own being. She could see no obvious way back to her own small, ephemeral, animal thoughts.
Then she became aware that Aruendiel was gripping her by the shoulders. At first his features seemed as small and abstract as a page of arithmetic problems, but gradually she noticed the warm human fear in his eyes and began to hear the words coming from his moving mouth, and the dry, sketched notations turned into a face again.
She discerned that he was asking if she was all right. “I guess so,” she said, although she could feel Sisoaneer’s power ripping away from her like the tide, and she had never felt so empty, sick, and forlorn in her life. She put her hand on Aruendiel’s shoulder, because she needed to lean on something, and he pulled her to him.
She let him hold her. He was saying something about an excess of magic, the intoxication of so much power, only the most foolhardy of magicians, and other things. He stroked her hair. His fingers felt warm and deft and yet oddly vulnerable, transitory. She started to cry.
“You are coming out of it now,” Aruendiel said, sounding relieved, although his brows knit as he watched the tear trickle down her cheek.
“You said everything here obeys her,” Nora said. “But a mountain—I can’t believe a mountain—”
He gave a slight shrug, or maybe a shudder. “It did. It obeyed her, so it obeyed you.”
“It was incredible, and I don’t ever want to do that again,” she said, gulping.
“Not until you have more experience.” He studied her. “What gave you the idea to send the Kavareen into the mountain?”
Tiredly, Nora made herself remember. “It was neater than seeing it go splat, I guess. And it was good to see something else eating the Kavareen for once. Why, what would you have done?” she asked.
“Sent the creature to sleep or bound its limbs with a shackling spell.” His mouth twisted with rueful impatience. “Either option would require enough power to tame a half-dozen thunderstorms.”
Or enough to awaken a mountain, Nora thought vaguely. Then, with sudden interest, she saw what lay under his words. “You haven’t given up on Hirizjahkinis,” she said. “You don’t want to kill it, either.”
“It’s difficult to kill a demon in the best of circumstances. And it’s almost impossible when the demon is already dead.” He paused, then added, “In any case, the chance of seeing Hirizjahkinis again is quite small.”
His tone was bleak, but Nora had the impression that he was trying to kill his own hopes more than hers. That was very like Aruendiel. Without thinking, she lifted her hand to cup his scarred cheek. Except for the faint prickle of stubble on his chin and jaw, his skin felt tender and unguarded under her fingers. His gaze flickered like a startled bird, and for a moment—she thought—he rested his face against her palm.
Then, gently but firmly, he disengaged. There was no other word for the way he leaned away from her and drew in his arms so that she had to step back as well. She grabbed for his hands.
“Aruendiel, I have to tell you something.” Nora took a deep breath, still smelling that faint elusive tang that belonged to his skin and hair. “Um. When we parted, when we quarreled—”
Aruendiel’s crooked shoulders seemed to stiffen. “I uttered a vile calumny against you then. It was false. I regret saying it.”
“Oh, I said terrible, insulting things to you—”
“Let us not mention them,” he said swiftly, like the blade of a skate slashing the ice.
“I would like to forget everything we said,” Nora said. “But I want to apologize first. It was the ring, you know, that damn ring. Raclin made me say all those things.”
She paused, picturing Raclin again, his face maddeningly delectable even when he was sneering at her. Raclin was saying something in her memory, but she raised her voice so that she would not have to listen. “I think about how awful it must have sounded to you, and I—I’m horrified. I would like to die. I would do anything not to have said what I said. But, Aruendiel, you have to understand, it wasn’t really me saying those cruel things. It was Raclin.”
She waited for him to respond.
“You did say them,” Aruendiel said. It sounded like a key turning in a lock.
“Well, I said them,” she clarified, “but I didn’t mean them. It was Faitoren magic.”
He sighed. “Do you remember the essence of Faitoren magic?”
“It’s illusion,” Nora said, as though that settled it.
“Faitoren magic,” Aruendiel said, more mildly than he usually corrected her, “draws upon your secret wishes. It’s illusion that is born in your heart and speaks truths that you would not say otherwise.”
She had the sensation that Raclin was choking her again. “No. Not this time. He made me lie. He made me try to hurt you.”
Aruendiel’s hands slipped out of hers. “You spoke the truth. You said that I’m ancient and disfigured, a corpse unnaturally vivified by magic. All those things are true.”
“No. No, they’re not. And if they were, so what? I wouldn’t care.” She was losing him, she could tell. “I love you, Aruendiel.”
There was no good, all-purpose word for “love” in Ors. The language had terms for various sorts and degrees of love—illicit sexual infatuation, for example, or the affection between parent and child, or the respect that a chaste and honorable wife owed her husband. Nora used the most powerful word for love that she knew, one that she had read only once or twice and had never heard spoken aloud.
Aruendiel’s head jerked back, and she saw a mixture of calculation and raw panic in his face that chilled her even more than what he said: “Then you are doomed to disappointment.”
Nora drew in her breath, hoping that no pain showed in her expression. “I can see that.” She knew for a certainty that it wouldn’t make her feel any better, but she asked anyway: “Is it because you and Sisoaneer—?”
Aruendiel frowned. “The nature of my relations with Sisoaneer does not concern you.”
“I think it does,” Nora said. “And not just because I’m her High Priestess.”
“We have reached an understanding, she and I,” he said.
“An understanding? How nice. What does that mean, exactly?”
“It’s better you do not know.” Aruendiel’s gaze swept past her. “It is your responsibility to please your goddess, High Priestess. You will not do so by prying into matters that are not your affair.”
“But I am very pleased with her.” The words came from behind Nora. She felt cool fingers twining through her own, and turned her head, startled, to meet Sisoaneer’s dark eyes. “I am proud of you, my priestess. You saved my people! You did even better than I’d hoped.” She squeezed Nora’s hand.
“I just used your magic,” Nora said roughly. She thought, I borrow your magic, you get Aruendiel. Is that the deal we made without my knowing it?
“And you used it with rare cleverness and skill,” Sisoaneer said. To Aruendiel she added, “You see? I chose well. Your pupil is not as clumsy and naive as you thought. She even saved you. I hope you have thanked her properly.”
Aruendiel inclined his head toward Nora. “My deepest gratitude,” he said curtly.
“And mine,” Sisoaneer said, with another squeeze of Nora’s hand. The fine, smiling lines around the goddess’s eyes showed nothing but kindness and understanding, too much understanding. How much had she heard of what Nora had said to Aruendiel? She heard many thi
ngs, Oasme said.
Nora looked away, training her gaze deliberately on a sheep ejected by the Kavareen near the hospital steps. After a couple of tries, the animal staggered to its feet and emitted a faltering baa. Nearby, one of the ganoi woman was sitting up, her whole body shaking.
“I should make sure everyone is all right,” Nora said grimly, pulling her hand out of Sisoaneer’s. She moved away quickly before she could collect any more of this excruciatingly unwelcome thanks and praise.
“Give them hot baths and send them to bed with whatever strong drink you keep around this place,” Aruendiel called after her. His tone sounded a shade less harsh. He was relieved she was leaving, no question. “It’s cold inside the Kavareen.”
But you won’t have to stay cold long, will you, Nora thought. She marched over to Uliverat, still prone on the ground and weeping slightly, to see what could be done.
Aruendiel was right: everyone who had been inside the Kavareen had chills, their teeth chattering, their fingernails purple. One of the pilgrims, an elderly man whom she had treated a few days earlier for a heart ailment, looked as pale as though he had been literally frozen. She conjured a fire. Very carefully—because she had never done this spell with anything out of sight range before—she summoned blankets from the hospital stores and passed them out.
She found Yaioni sitting on the library steps, cradling her left ankle and wearing a sullen expression. “The monster leopard attacked me, and you did nothing to stop it,” Yaioni said.
“I strengthened your arm,” Nora said, but the First Deaconess did not believe her. “I had to fight it myself, and I sprained my ankle,” Yaioni said.
“Do you want me to heal it for you?” Nora asked. “Or are you afraid that instead I’ll do a spell to cripple you?”
Yaioni smiled, eyebrows arching, as though she appreciated Nora’s line of thought. “I am not afraid of you. You are too soft and weak to hurt me, even though the goddess has given you so much power now.”
“Try me,” Nora said.
Yaioni looked past Nora and her expression twisted. “She is not angry anymore, is she?”
“No, she’s not,” Nora said, and then she turned her head to see what Yaioni was looking at. Aruendiel and Sisoaneer embracing.
They were a good twenty yards away; Aruendiel’s back blocked part of the view, but there was no mistaking how their mouths pressed together, or how tightly Sisoaneer’s long arms were wrapped around Aruendiel’s shoulders.
Nora took it all in within a fraction of a second, and then sat down on the steps to work on Yaioni’s ankle. She considered doing magic that would tie Yaioni’s ligaments into knots or turn her bones to powder or clot the blood in her veins like jelly. It would have answered to her mood, and she would have shown Yaioni just how soft and weak she really was, but after all—Nora reminded herself—it was not Yaioni who had been kissing Aruendiel.
And when, biting her lip, Nora called upon the goddess’s magic to repair the ankle, Sisoaneer’s power felt sweeter and more joyful than ever, as though she had swallowed a sky full of shooting stars. When the magic receded, Nora discovered that her cheeks were wet with tears.
Yaioni stood up, supporting herself with a grip that dug deep into Nora’s shoulder muscles; she put her weight on the ankle slowly and straightened with a faint growl of suspicion. “There is no pain,” she said, making it sound like a complaint.
“I can put some back, if you want,” Nora said.
Yaioni rolled her eyes and blew a small, cynical sigh from her lips. “I know you would like to.” She glanced around. “He is so old and ugly, that man!”
She spoke loudly enough that Nora could tell, without turning to look, that Aruendiel and Sisoaneer were gone.
“Who?” Nora said.
But Yaioni was having none of her pretended ignorance. “You know. He was the one you called to last night when we danced, wasn’t he?” She grinned. “You know him. The magician.”
“Him? Yes.” Nora tried to sound noncommittal.
“I don’t see how she could stand to kiss him like that.” An edge of anger in Yaioni’s voice. “As though she is starving for him.” Silently Nora gritted her teeth. “But she knew him long ago, when he was young,” Yaioni went on. “He must have been more handsome then. Perhaps she closes her eyes and thinks of what he used to look like.”
Nora shot to her feet, feeling a sudden urge to run very fast, as far away as she could. Yaioni had perfectly evoked the scene that Nora was trying not to think of, and behind it the shadowy, secluded past; the tender interlude Aruendiel and Sisoaneer had shared; the unreachable realm to which Nora would always be a stranger. Seven years. It was a long time.
“He had an accident,” she said at random and walked rapidly toward the hospital. Her face felt hard and brittle, as though it might shatter. She knew him long ago, when he was young. It occurred to her to wonder how Yaioni had acquired that piece of information, and then she realized that Sisoaneer must have told her, probably had been telling her all kinds of interesting details about Nora all along. Or perhaps everyone knew the old story except for Nora. Innocent, ignorant Nora.
That’s why Aruendiel came here, Nora thought, to see her. That’s why he disappeared last night, why he didn’t come to me after I saw him. Just now, when we were facing the Kavareen together, it felt easier between us, almost the same as always, and he held me, and I thought—
But whatever kindness he’d shown then meant nothing, Nora now saw. If his affection for her was unchanged, if concern could still show in his face, it only signified how shallow those feelings had been all along compared to the great love that he must have shared—still shared—with Sisoaneer.
She entered the hospital, shoving hard on the doors, as though they might lead to a refuge from her own thoughts. They barely missed hitting two people passing on the other side: Lemoes and a blanket-swathed pilgrim who shuffled beside him, leaning on his arm. Horrified, Nora began to apologize, but Lemoes shook his head and smiled.
“It’s all right. The baron has a good grip on me, and he wouldn’t let me fall. Isn’t that right, sir?”
The pilgrim lifted up a head of untidy, graying hair, said a sentence or two in his own language, and laughed with a sputter. His jowly face had a deflated look, no doubt from weight loss during his illness, but his black eyes looked unblinkingly into Nora’s.
“What does he say?” she asked.
Lemoes smiled awkwardly. “He says I shouldn’t let a woman knock me down.” The pilgrim added a few words in his own tongue, still chuckling. Lemoes, with a sidelong glance at Nora, did not translate them.
Nora made a couple of private guesses as to what the pilgrim had just said, none of them very pleasing. How satisfying it would be to levitate him upside down for just a moment, say.
Then she registered what Lemoes had first said. “The baron?” She looked hard at the pilgrim. They always looked different when they were up and moving, and their faces were alert and not fever-flushed, not glazed with sickroom sweat. “Baron Tesein?”
Lemoes nodded. “Yes, I’m just helping him get some exercise.”
“But, Lemoes”—Nora felt a stab of alarm—“he’s really sick. His wound was leaking this morning, he was burning up with fever. He shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“He’s fine,” Lemoes said mildly. “Look at him.”
The baron stared back with a touch of belligerence. His face was toadlike, Nora thought, but he also seemed to have a toad’s solidity. Nora smiled at him with polite goodwill, marveling.
She leaned toward Lemoes to whisper in his ear. “I thought we were going to lose him.”
Lemoes nodded. “I prayed to the goddess. She saved him.”
Chapter 22
Uliverat was going on again about the rudeness of the pilgrim from Sasgefao. This was the second time she’d mentioned it today. There was a
n excited flutter in her voice, and her lips pursed ominously at the end of each sentence as she selected the next round from her stockpile of ammunition.
Nora didn’t give a damn if the Sasgefaon had prayed to his own god in Sisoaneer’s temple. He had said thank you politely enough when Nora healed his ulcerated leg, and it was entirely possible that his god might be more satisfactory than Sisoaneer in any number of ways. But Uliverat was insistent that a deadly insult had been directed at the goddess.
Across the refectory table, she kept glancing at Nora. But if Nora met her eyes, however briefly, Uliverat looked away.
Uliverat was afraid of Nora. So was Oasme, listening dutifully to Uliverat with a fixed frown. He was more adept at concealing his unease, but he did not like to meet Nora’s eyes, either.
It was clear to Nora that the entire temple community had revised its view of her ever since she’d sent the Kavareen hurtling into the mountain. The ganoi fell silent when she approached. Oasme chose his words with ever more unctuous care. Even Yaioni now seemed more subdued.
Only Lemoes seemed the same, oblivious to the disturbing if blessed power of the High Priestess. But that was typical of his off-kilter, holy innocence, Nora had decided; either he hadn’t picked up on the cues from the others, or he assumed that his beloved goddess would protect him no matter what.
Nora chased a morsel of fish around her plate with a piece of flatbread. Her left hand was in her lap, buried in the folds of her maran. Under the table she slid her thumb over the length of her little finger and then wished she hadn’t.
It was stupid, absurd, and heartbreaking that they were so afraid of her power. Nora had never felt less powerful in her life, for all that she had healed four dozen pilgrims in the last three days, moved several tons of stone yesterday for repairs to the buildings that the Kavareen had damaged, and lifted the river from its bed this morning so that the ganoi could build the foundation for a new bridge. None of it was her own magic; it belonged to Sisoaneer, who had Aruendiel as well.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 29
