The Vildecaz Talents: The complete set of Vildecaz Stories including Nimuar's Loss, The Deceptive Oracle and Agnith's Promise

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Yes, she has,” said Riast. “Which is why I am depending upon her now to do this other task for me.”

  “No matter how exhausting it is,” said Godrienee.

  “We’re all exhausted,” said Riast.

  “All the more reason not to push for results, which are likely to be faulty. You know the limits of such talents as Erianthee possesses, and the folly of compelling a result from the Spirits of the Outer Air.” She took Erianthee’s hand. “I also surmise that you would feel . . . shall we say unhappy? if your Shadowshow revealed those close to my son among the conspirators.”

  Riast flung up one hand impatiently. “Exactly my reason for asking her help. No courtier – magician or not – will tell me that someone close to me is plotting against me. The Duzeon has the talent and she has the advantage of not being of the Court, and so can – “

  Godrienee utter a single, impatient laugh. “You don’t really believe that, do you? She, of all your guests, has the least assurance of immunity, because she is an outsider. There is every chance that you would turn on her for telling you something you didn’t want to hear, which you could do with impunity. Various powerful members of the Court might do as much in your stead. Think, my son, of the peril you’re trying to place her in, and curb your demands.”

  Relief coursed through Erianthee to be followed at once by renewed worry. The Dowager Empress was right. She had voiced Erianthee’s concerns with a concision that Erianthee hadn’t been able to achieve. “Empress,” the Duzeon said hesitantly, disliking the prospect of arguing with both the Emperor and his mother. “I am sorry I can’t comply with – “

  ”There is no cause for you to be sorry,” said Godrienee. “You’ve done the right thing by refusing to give into his demands. If anyone should be sorry, it’s he.” She turned on her son once more. “I am giving Erianthee my protection, and for as long as she remains at Tiumboj Castle, you will not threaten her again.”

  Riast shook his head several times. “I don’t know what else to do, Mother. How am I to bring the Empire to strength and peace while my enemies can operate freely, secure in the knowledge that they are unknown and undiscovered? If you can think of something as reliable as the Shadowshows Duzeon Erianthee can conjure, I wish you would apprize me of it.”

  “What you say may be true, and it is possible that no one presently at Court has any talent to get you the intelligence you seek,” said Godrienee, “but there must be other means to get the information you need without harassing Erianthee.” She held up her hand. “No more now, Riast. There’s too much to attend to already. Don’t increase your own burdens while there is so much to do.” She tugged on Erianthee’s hand, prepared to lead her away from the Imperial Hall. “Come, Duzeon. My quarters are almost intact. We’ll have something to eat – real food, not magical – and then we’ll discuss what you are and are not prepared to do to help the Emperor.” She shot a last look at her son as she and Erianthee picked their way through the rubble, out of the Imperial Hall. “Don’t fret,” the Dowager Empress went on as they hastened along the corridor, “he’ll come to his senses soon enough.”

  “So I hope,” said Erianthee even as she wondered if she had actually gained a protector, or if the confrontation she had just witnessed was as much a performance as one of her Shadowshows.

  * * *

  “The animals are getting fidgety,” said Doms Guyon as he paced around the confines of the travelers’ hut.

  “So I see,” Ninianee said, stopping her preparation of their supper to watch him.

  “Two days standing in a stall when each of them is used to covering distance every day . . . There’s no room to exercise them in the snow and now that they are rested, they’re getting bored and restless . . . ” He let his words trail off. “I don’t know what I can do, short of bringing them in here and encouraging them to move about.”

  “They couldn’t fit through the door,” she pointed out. Privately she shared the restlessness of the mules and ponies, but she couldn’t give Doms the satisfaction of admitting it. He had been right about too much, and she hated the burden that gratitude imposed upon her. With all he had done for her, how could she refuse him anything? That understanding bothered her more than their isolation or the drouches hiding in the near-by woods.

  “They’ll need to do something,” he insisted. “They’re all getting stall-sour.”

  “What might that be? We’re snowed in. With drouches about, we can’t turn them out into the paddock, even if we could get the door open. I can try to calm them, if you like.”

  He halted in the center of the room. “We’ll need more logs by tomorrow night. I suppose we’ll have to find some way to get outside and take the wood from what’s piled at the side of the hut – assuming it isn’t covered by snow.”

  “So we will.” She gave the sausage-and-sea-grass soup a stir with the one spoon she had put in the chest, thinking as she did that their animals weren’t the only ones fretting at confinement. “But keep in mind while you’re hunting those branches, the drouches may be back. They smell living flesh in this hut, ours and the animals’.”

  He nodded. “I heard them wrawling this morning. They sounded fairly near, I’ll admit. The mules are more worried about them than the ponies are.” Then he knelt down beside the bench were she sat before the cooking-pot over the fire. “Two days and nights completely alone with you, though, that’s a precious privilege. I am glad that chance brought us here and the snow kept us in. That’s almost worth fighting drouches, or freezing. You’re much more valuable than any danger, you know.” His icy eyes were hot as the blue heart of a flame.

  “Don’t say that, and don’t flatter me,” she said without amusement. “Drouches would rend us limb from limb if they had the chance. And if we freeze, my father won’t be found.”

  “Then better we stay in and hope tomorrow the weather warms enough that we can leave, otherwise we’ll be cold and hungry by the day after. The day after that would be worse still. So we must make plans to leave.” He touched her face. “You have a journey to complete.”

  “Yes,” she said, stirring the pot with more vigor than necessary.

  He rose and started pacing again. “I know some spells that might make digging out of this place easier now that there is sunshine again, and the winds have died. They won’t last long, but if we’re ready to leave, we can get the snow in front of the byre door to soften and collapse. If we depart as soon as the spell works, we should be able to get away, providing we can get through the drifts. Luckily there hasn’t been any more snow since the storm rolled in from the south. But it is cold, and much of the snow is coated in ice, and that has made opening that door a task for many more people than Doms, or Doms and Ninianee.” He watched her as he continued to tread the limits of the travelers’ hut.

  “As we determined yesterday afternoon,” she said, perplexed that she should find his company so comforting when she knew he might well be amusing himself at her expense, for in spite of all he’d done for her among the Bindomajes, he had also left her without explanation – it was almost a year ago now, she realized – and didn’t bother to let her know he was in Valdihovee for months. He was too mercurial, she told herself, too aloof. It was folly to depend upon him, no matter how pleasant his company might be. If she decided to trust him it was possible that he would once again vanish without warning.

  “You look distracted. What’s on your mind?” He came up to her again.

  She said the first thing that came to her. “I’m glad the moon isn’t full.”

  He chuckled. “Truly. Who knows what kind of creature I would have to contend with? They can’t all be as pleasant as the Crag-lion. But you can’t tell me in advance, can you?”

  “No,” she said morosely, already anticipating her next Change.

  He saw that she was upset, and so he went to her again. “You can Change into anything, and it will not alter my feeling, Ninianee. Nothing you could do will – “

  ”Chang
e you?” she suggested. “What are you hoping for – my gratitude? You have as much of it as I am likely to give.” For the first time in two days, she felt exhilaration enlivening her – wrangling with him was driving away her morose thoughts. “I am not a contented person, and you cannot make me so. Do you think to turn me compliant by your promise to protect me? Do you suppose that I will succumb to you because of your – “

  ”I don’t expect you to be anything other than who you are.” He touched her face again, to turn her eyes up to his. “If you stopped being feral and contentious, then I might question my allegiance to you. But you, as you are now – you are what I want. And I know – much as you may wish it weren’t so – that I am what you want.”

  She studied him in silence, then said, “You’d best fetch your bowl. This stew is almost ready – such as it is.”

  “I’ll do that – right after I put more wood on the fire. It’s getting chilly again, and I want to keep the cold from coming down the chimney. We’ll have to keep the fire going to do that.” He went to the wood-tub, calculating the number of cut logs and branches they would need to get them through the night. “We could cast a warming-spell tomorrow morning,” he suggested.

  “A warming-spell,” she said, and laughed without humor. “How long would that keep us warm, I wonder? And how warm would we really be? The spell might warm the hut, but not enough to hold off the cold outside.” She reached for her own bowl and filled it, then, as he proffered his own, she put the rest of the stew in Doms’ bowl. “We have the last of the sausage for the morning, but then only hard bread. We’ll need to find an inn or some other shelter by tomorrow night.”

  He sat down beside her on the bench, braced his elbows on his knees and held his bowl between them. “That we will.” Bending forward, he sniffed the steam rising from the bowl. “Not too bad, considering.”

  “I thought about conjuring some herbs to improve the taste, but decided against it. We need all the virtue there is in the stew, and magical ingredients might lessen its nutrition.”

  “True enough,” he said, and lifted the bowl to sip a little of the stock in which it was cooked.

  She remained still, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Then she rounded on him. “How do you do it?”

  He turned to her, all surprise. “Do what?”

  “Deal with all of this so calmly,” she said with exaggerated patience.

  “Would fear or elation be preferable?” He picked out a wedge of sausage and bit into it.

  “Yes! No.” She glared at her stew to keep from looking at him again.

  He swallowed, then said to her, perfectly seriously, “You know how little good either fear or elation does in these circumstances. You always keep your mind on your purpose. I’ve seen how sensibly you deal with set-backs and problems.” He plucked another bit of sausage, biting into it with satisfaction. “The sensible thing to do now is to eat.”

  How she wanted to rail at him, to let go of all the worry and confusion that she had been holding within her since he had stepped in on her behalf with Hircaj Chogrun. But she knew he was right, and she could only agree with him – which was somehow worse. If only he didn’t cause such agitation within her. But that, she knew, couldn’t be dealt with now, not with drouches on the prowl, and masses of snow on the ground. Now she had to bend her attention to immediate problems. She set to eating this most austere meal, all the while hoping he would do or say something that would provide the excuse to give vent to the jumble of emotions within her. As she ate, she made herself put such considerations aside. There would be other times – better times – for such expostulation. When her bowl was empty, she said, “When I fed the animals, I saw that we’re running low on grain for them.”

  “I saw that, too, when I cleaned their bedding.” He tipped back his head to drink the last bits of the stew.

  “So there really isn’t much choice, is there? We leave tomorrow morning.” In a way, she was glad, for being kept confined in his presence was more unnerving than she wanted to admit, even to herself. She was so susceptible to him, though she couldn’t imagine why.

  “Don’t you think it would be best? We’ll make the most of the daylight, and provide us the best chance of getting far from this place, don’t you think?” he asked, wiping his bowl out with a cloth charged with a cleaning-spell. He handed it to her when he was done and sat down again. “Drouches usually don’t start hunting until late afternoon, do they, so we needn’t worry about them, assuming we get an early start. We can be at Gnocarnaz by mid-afternoon if we are on our way within an hour of sunrise and the road is fairly clear.” He regarded her in silence while she rubbed her bowl clean. “Good food, a soft bed, decent feed for the animals.”

  “I know, I know,” she said testily as she turned the small cauldron upside down to drain. She had never been to Gnocarnaz, but was fairly sure he had, for how else would he be familiar with the road they were traveling? “The oil in the lamps is getting low, along with all the rest,” she added, although he didn’t seem to hear. “Another reason to le – “

  Then he reached out and fingered one corkscrew tendril of her russet hair. “The first thing I noticed about you was your hair.”

  “It was windblown and no better groomed than a hayrick.” She lowered her head, pulling the tendril from his hand. She hated to acknowledge that she remembered their first meeting.

  “More as if you had inner lightning – a force inside you that you damped down so that it only came out in your hair,” he said, and poked at the fire with a long stick, watching the sparks fly. “There you were with your father, on the Duzine Wharf in Valdihovee, the wind off the Mautsarej Ocean. You were all in bronze and deep green-blue, shivering and trying to smile.”

  Suddenly she giggled, because when she was a child, she had thought the same thing about her hair, something she didn’t dare tell him. “Inner lightning – and that wasn’t enough to scare you?”

  “Quite the contrary,” he said before he kissed the corner of her mouth. “Ninianee,” he whispered.

  Caught unaware, she didn’t draw back, but instead rested her head on his shoulder. “What have I got you into?” She pulled away a little.

  “A chance to be with you,” he said at once.

  “But you could . . . This isn’t your seeking, Doms, it’s mine. I have to do this for my father.”

  “Then I do it for you,” he said quietly. “To be with you.”

  “Is that why you followed me? Were you with me then?” The amount of excitement Doms generated in her was frightening – she wished he didn’t have that much impact upon her, but she couldn’t summon up the determination to insist he stop talking to her.

  “I was as near as you would want me to be – if you had known.” His habitual underlying amusement was gone and all that was left was an expression revealing how deeply he cherished her.

  Now her throat tightened. “You don’t have to come with me, Doms.”

  “Fine official suitor I’d be if I didn’t,” he said, not moving from his place beside her. He resisted the urge to take her hand. “Don’t you understand yet that I prefer to be with you than anyone else? That if you were going from Haverartbow to Fah, I’d want to go with you.”

  “I may still do that – go from Haverartbow to Fah. And Pomig, and Ymiljesai. And the Drowned World.” Her attempt to make light of this failed utterly. She felt her eyes fill. “Oh, Doms – what if I don’t find him?”

  He put his arm around her. “If he can be found, Ninianee, you’ll do it.”

  “The Oracle said I would keep searching,” she said dreamily. “But there’s Vildecaz, and my Changing, and both need my attention, too.”

  “Your sister will be back at Vildecaz Castle in six weeks or so,” Doms reminded her. “She’ll manage the Duzky. She has Hoftstan Ruch to help her, and General Rocazin.”

  “And Poyneilum Zhanf, at least for the time being. I hope he will remain for a while once she returns,” said Ninianee. She knew
that Erianthee would be angry with her for leaving before she returned from Court, leaving the Duzky in the hands of a stranger, but Ninianee hoped her sister would understand. When she returned with their father, she’d explain it all to Erianthee.

  “He is a great help,” said Doms.

  “Well, he is,” she insisted.

  “I agree with you,” he said, dropping his arm from her shoulder. “I’ve known him most of my life, and I’m sure he’ll do his best for Vildecaz.” He turned on the bench, facing her. “I know you have doubts about me, and you hear many nefarious implications in everything I say, but for once, put them aside and listen to me without suspicion.” When he was sure he had all her attention, he continued. “I love you. If there were no magic in the Great World, there would be magic enough for me in you. I would abandon all the gods and goddesses before I would abandon you. I will not leave you – I tried last winter, for I knew if I remained at Vildecaz there would be no leaving you, ever. The Mautsarej Ocean wouldn’t let me go. I will be with you as long as there is breath in my body.” He took a deep breath. “I’d promise you all this, but a promise is paltry compared to my ties to you.”

  Ninianee heard him out, trying not to allow her usual uncertainty color what she heard. If she let herself, she could succumb to him as she would to an enormous flood. If all he said were true, she would be a fool not to. But try as she would, she couldn’t silence the niggling fright that if she allowed herself to yield to him and he left again, as he had done almost a year ago, she would be utterly bereft. She took his hand. “I will try to give credence to what you say, without qualifications of my own.” How stiff and unconvincing she sounded. “I want to be persuaded without feeling gullible or trivial.” Abruptly she kissed his hand. “This is my barrier to climb, not yours. I wish it were otherwise.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said quietly.