A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume I

by Sharon Lee

  “I am sorry, Master Lute.”

  “Sorry mends no breakage,” Lute snapped. Moonhawk felt a sharp retort rise to her tongue and managed, just, to keep it behind her teeth. After all, she reminded herself, Lute, too, had taken losses—not only Rowan, but Veverain, was gone beyond him.

  “Your pardon, Lady Moonhawk,” his voice was formal, without the edge of irony that often accompanied his use of her title. “That was ill-said of me. I find the Goddess entirely too greedy, that She must always Call the best so soon. How are the rest of us to find the way to grace, when our Rowans are snatched away before their teaching is done?” He sighed.

  “But that is matter between myself and the Goddess, not between you and I.”

  Moonhawk inclined her head, accepting his apology. “It is . . .” she said formally, and bit down on the last word before it escaped, silently cursing herself for fool.

  “Forgotten,” Lute finished the phrase, tiredly, and looked past her, up into the starry sky. “There must be something,” he murmured, and then said nothing more for several minutes, his eyes on the clear glitter of stars, for all the world as if he had entered trance.

  Finally, he shook himself, much as a Witch might do when leaving trance, to re-acquaint herself with the physical body. He brought his eyes down to her face.

  “I must try,” he said, soberly. “Rowan would want me to try.” He extended a hand and touched her lightly on the sleeve. “You are a Witch and have the ear of the Goddess. Now would be a good time to pray.”

  VEVERAIN SAT AT the table where they had left her, hands tucked around the empty tea cup, shoulders slumped. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks shining with tears in the lamplight.

  Seeing her thus, Lute paused, and Moonhawk saw him bring his hands up and move them in one of his more grandiose gestures, plucking a bright silk scarf from empty air. Another pass and the scarf was gone. Lute took a breath.

  “There is something that may be attempted,” he announced, and it was the Master Magician’s full performance voice now. “If you are willing to turn your hand to magic.”

  Veverain opened her eyes, looking up at him. “Magic?”

  “A very old and fragile magic,” Lute assured her solemnly. “It was taught me by my master, who had it from his, who had it from his, who had it from the Mother of Huntress City Temple herself. From Whose Hand the lady received the spell, we need not ask. But!” He raised his hand, commanding attention. “For this magic, as for any great magic, there is a price. Are you willing to pay?”

  Veverain stared into his face. “I am,” she said, shockingly quiet.

  “Then let it begin!” Lute’s hands carved the air in the same eloquent gesture that had lately summoned the scarf. Stepping forward, he placed an object on the table: a small, extremely supple leather pouch. Moonhawk had seen thousands like it in her life—a common spellbag, made to be suspended from the neck by a ribbon, or a leather cord.

  “Into this bag,” he intoned, “will be placed five items evocative of Rowan. No less than five, no more than five.” He stepped back and looked sternly into Veverain’s face. “You will choose the five.”

  “Five?” she protested. “Rowan was multitudes! Five—”

  “Five, a number beloved of the Goddess. No more, no less.” Lute was implacable. “Choose.”

  Veverain pushed herself to her feet, her eyes wide. “How long?” she whispered. “How long do I have to choose?”

  “Five minutes to choose five items. Listen to your heart and your choices will be true.”

  For a moment, Moonhawk thought the other woman would refuse, would crumple back onto the bench, hide her face in her hands and wail. But Veverain had been woven of tougher cord than that. She swayed a moment, but made a good recover, chin up and showing a flash, perhaps, of the woman she had been.

  “Very well,” she said to Lute. “Await me here.” She swept from the room as if her faded houserobe were grand with embroidery and the stone floor not thick with dust.

  When she was gone, Lute looked up at the beam with its dangling bunches of herbs, reached up and snapped off a single sprig. It was no sooner in his hand than it vanished; where, Moonhawk could not hazard a guess.

  That done, he went over to the table, pulled out the bench and sat, his hands flat, apparently content to await Veverain’s return in silence.

  Moonhawk drifted over to the wall-bench and settled in to watch.

  “HERE,” VEVERAIN SAID, and placed them, one by one, on the table before her: a curl of russet-colored hair, a scrap of paper, a gray and green stone, a twig.

  “That is four,” Lute said, chidingly.

  “I have not done,” she answered and raised her hands to her neck, drawing a rawhide cord up over her head. Something silver flashed in the lamplight; flashed again as she had it off the cord and placed by the others.

  “His promise-ring,” she said quietly. “And that is five, Master Lute.”

  “And that is five,” he agreed, hands still palm-flat against the tabletop, in an attitude both quiescent and entirely un-Lute-like.

  “What will you do now?” Veverain inquired. Lute raised his eyebrows.

  “You misunderstand: it is not I who will do, but you. If you expect that you will sit there and be done to, pray disabuse yourself of the notion.”

  “But,” she stared at him, distress growing, “I am no Witch. I have no schooling, no talent. How am I to build a spell?” Moonhawk could only applaud the housemother’s good sense. By her own certain reckoning, it required some number of years to become proficient in spell-craft.

  Lute, however, was unworried on this point.

  “Have I not said that I have the way of it from my master and all the way back to She who first received the gift of the Goddess? I am here to guide you. But it is you who must actually perform the task, or the spell will have no power.”

  “I will—put these things in that bag?” Veverain asked. “That is all?”

  “Not quite all. Each item must receive its charge. The best technique is to pick up a single item, hold it in your hand and recall—in words or in thought—the connection between Rowan and the object. In this manner, the spell will build, piece by piece, each piece interlocked with and informed by the others.”

  Which was as apt a description of spell structure as she had ever heard, thought Moonhawk. But Veverain had no glimmer of Witch-sense about her and the tiny flickerings of talent she sometimes caught from Lute were not nearly sufficient to build and bind the spell he described.

  Even if such a spell were possible.

  At the table, Veverain glanced down among her choices, and put forth a hand. Moonhawk leaned forward, Witch-sense questing, shivering as she encountered the raging gray torrent of Veverain’s grief.

  Veverain’s hand descended, taking up the bright lock of hair.

  “This is Rowan’s hair,” she said tentatively, and Moonhawk felt—something—stir against her Witch-sense. “When we had kept household less than a year, he was chosen by the Master of the Vine to work a season at Veyru in exchange of which we received a vineman of Veyru. The Master of the Vine came with a delegation and petitioned my permission for Rowan—as if I would have denied him such an opportunity! We had been together so short a time, and Veyru is no small journey—I joked that I would not recognize him when he returned. In answer, he cut off this curl and told me that I should always know him, by the flame that lived in his hair.”

  Carefully, she put the lock into the small leather bag. Lute said nothing, sitting still as a statue of himself.

  Veverain chose the gray and green rock.

  “When Rowan left home for that season in Veyru, he bore with him this stone from our land so that wherever he was, he would always be home.”

  The stone joined the lock of hair in the bag and there was definitely something a-building now. Moonhawk could see two thick lines of flame, intersecting at a right angle, hanging just above Veverain’s head. She held her breath, staring, and Veverain
picked up the scrap of paper.

  “The winter after Rowan returned from Veyru was a bitter one. We spent the days in the window, a book between us, while I taught him his letters. He learned to read—and write!—quickly, nor, once he had the skills, did he rest. He read every book in the village, and came back from the vineyards one evening to tell me that he had determined to write a book on the lore of the vine, so that the young vinemen would have a constant teacher and the old a check to their memories. He wrote that book, and others, and kept his journals. More, he passed his skills to other men of the village, who have taught their sons, so Karn need not forget the cure for a vine blight encountered in my mother’s time.” She hesitated, fingers caressing the scrap.

  “This paper bears his signature—the very first time he signed his name.”

  Lingeringly, the scrap of paper went into the bag and Moonhawk very nearly gasped. The third interlock was a bar of flame as thick as her arm, burning a pure, luminous white.

  Carefully, Veverain picked up the scrap of wood.

  “This is a piece from our vines on the hill. Rowan loved the vines, the grapes, the wine.”

  A fourth bar of fire joined the first three, blazing. Stretching her Witch-sense, Moonhawk found the other woman’s grief significantly calmer, less gray, melting, like heavy fog, in the brightness of the spell she built.

  For the last time, Veverain reached to the table, and picked up the scarred silver band.

  “This is Rowan’s promise-ring,” she said, so quietly Moonhawk had to strain to hear. “He wore it every day for twenty-five years. If anything on this earth will remember Rowan, this will.”

  The fifth bar of fire was so bright, Moonhawk’s Witch-sense shied from it, dazzled. So, the thing was built, and a powerful spell it was, too. But it wanted binding and it wanted binding now, before the heat of it caught the timbers of the house.

  At the table, Lute moved. His right hand rose, the fingers flickered, and there between finger and thumb was the twig he had broken from the herb bundle.

  “Rosemary, Queen of Memory,” he intoned, solemn as a prayer, “keep Rowan close.” He placed the sprig in the bag. Reaching out, he took up the rawhide cord on which Veverain had worn Rowan’s ring, and began to tie the spellbag shut.

  “In love, memory; in life, love.” His hands moved more complexly now, creating two elaborate knots, and half of a third. Sternly, he looked at the woman across from him.

  “Once this bag is sealed with the third knot, the spell is made. Once made, it cannot be unmade.” He extended the bag, the final knot incomplete, the spell burning, dangerously bright, above the woman’s head.

  Veverain took the cord in her two hands, and with infinite care made the final knot complete.

  “Sealed with my heart, that I never forget,” she said, and pulled the cord tight.

  Above her head, invisible to all but the staring Witch, the flaming bars wheeled, blurred and vanished, leaving behind, for those who could hear such things, the definitive snap of a spell sturdy-built and bound.

  “Stand,” Lute said, doing so himself. Veverain rose and he set the bag on its rawhide cord about her neck. “Wear it. And never forget.”

  From the floor, a flash of white-and-black ascended, landing light-footed on the table. Tween the cat bumped against the housemother’s arm, tail held joyously aloft.

  Veverain smiled.

  “HAVE YOU MASTERED the counter yet?” the magician asked his apprentice as they walked toward the high village in the morning. Behind them, their hostess was already engaged with broom and dust rag, the windows flung open to receive the day.

  “You know I haven’t!” his apprentice retorted, hotly. “If you must know, Master Lute, I don’t think you ever made that counter disappear in the first place—you merely entranced me into believing you had done so!”

  “Ah, very good!” Lute said unexpectedly. “You have learned a basic truth of our trade: People make their own magic.”

  Moonhawk faltered, thinking of what had gone forth last night. “Master Lute, the spell you made last night for Veverain . . .”

  “An illustrative case,” he said, refusing to meet her eyes.

  “No,” she said, and put a hand on his arm, stopping him. Determined, she waited until he met her eyes, though she did not compel him do so—indeed, she was not certain that she could compel him to do so, Witch though she was.

  The black eyes were on hers.

  “I wanted you to know—the spell you made for Veverain was true. I saw it building; I saw its binding.” She took a breath. “It was well done, Master Lute.”

  “So.” He sighed, then shrugged. “But that does not change the original premise—people do make their own magic, just as many see only what they wish to see. Now, about the disappearing counter . . .” He flipped his cloak behind his shoulders and showed her his hands.

  “If you wish to make counters appear and disappear, you would do well to supply yourself with several of the same color and hide them about your person. I, for instance, keep several green counters behind my belt—” A flourish, in the grand style, and there they were—four green counters held between the fingers of his left hand.

  “Your belt!” protested Moonhawk. “You never—”

  “I also,” Lute interrupted, implacable, “keep several behind my collar.” Another grand flourish and there were four more—yellow this time—between the fingers of his right hand.

  “Master Lute—”

  “And when you are done with them, why, it’s a simple thing to put them away.” A shake of both hands and the counters were gone.

  Moonhawk drew a deep breath.

  “Of course,” said Lute, “it is often wise to keep a counter or two elsewhere than upon one’s person. Like the one I store behind your ear.”

  “Behind my ear!” she cried, but there was Lute’s hand, brushing past her cheek, and then reappearing, triumphantly displaying a red counter.

  Moonhawk sighed.

  “Master Lute?”

  “Yes, Lady Moonhawk?”

  “You’re a dreadful master.”

  “And you,” Lute said, turning toward the village, “are an impertinent apprentice. It is a good thing, don’t you think, that we are so very well matched?”

  Certain Symmetry

  THE MORNING OF the sixth and final day of Little Festival dawned in pastel perfection, promising another pellucid day of pleasure for festival-goers.

  Pat Rin yos’Phelium Clan Korval, a faithful five-day attendee, had failed through press of pleasure to greet the dawn from the near side—and likewise failed of observing it from the far side, as he was most soundly asleep, and remained so for some hours beyond.

  When he did rise and betake himself to his study, he found the day’s letters and packets piled neatly to hand, the screen displaying his preferred news service, and a pot of tea gently steaming next to a porcelain cup.

  Pat Rin poured for himself and settled into his chair, rapidly scanning the news summary.

  The results of yesterday’s skimmer races at Little Festival were, inevitably, top news. It could not be otherwise, with both the thodelm of yos’Galan and the nadelm of Korval entire in participation.

  Pat Rin sighed, gently, and sipped his tea. One’s mother was annoyed, however courteously she had accepted one’s cousin’s instruction in the matter. He sipped again, savoring the blend, and allowed his gaze to wander from the screen for a moment.

  One’s cousin had proven . . . unanticipated. One encountered an edge—and a precision of cut—which had not been noted before cousin Val Con’s departure for the scouts. It might be that scout training had produced this surprising alteration in the unassuming—even shy—halfling Pat Rin recalled. Or, as one’s mother contended, it might simply be that Val Con was coming into his own, that genes would tell, and by the gods it had seemed for a long and telling moment as if her brother Daav himself had stood before her.

  Well.

  Pat Rin had some more tea
, and set the cup aside. He would need to acquaint himself with this new iteration of Val Con. No doubt this skimmer race victory would bring to him any number of gentle inquiries as to the . . . availability . . . of the nadelm. He made a note to speak—unofficially, of course!—to cousin Nova regarding Val Con’s current standing with regard to the marriage mart. In the meanwhile, his own business beckoned.

  He brought his attention once more to the news screen, noted that several of his more minor investments were performing with gratifying efficiency; read with bored interest the listing of contract-marriages negotiated and consummated; learned of a brawl in mid-Port between the crews of a Terran freighter and a Liaden tug; scanned the list of performances, contests and displays scheduled for this, the last day of Festival, and—blinked.

  Fal Den ter’Antod Clan Imtal had died.

  Pat Rin called for more information and quickly learned that Fal Den’s kin had published a suicide to the Council of Clans and had declined, as was their right, to provide particulars. Business partners and allies of Clan Imtal were advised that the Clan was in full mourning; that the viewing box and pleasure tents held by Imtal would be closed for the remainder of the season; and that those who had been engaged in Balancing accounts with Fal Den should soon find themselves satisfied.

  Pat Rin closed his eyes.

  He could not name himself a close friend of Fal Den ter’Antod, but he had certainly known the man, and had placed a certain value upon him. Neither a great beauty nor a great intellect, Fal Den possessed charm and an engaging forthrightness of manner that made him an agreeable and even welcome companion. His faults included a belief in the forthrightness of others and a rather thin skin, yet despite these he capably managed both an impeccable melant’i and the not-inconsiderable interests of his family on the Port. To believe that Fal Den was dead, and by his own hand . . .