Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXVI

by Unknown

  "I concur." Shtasith sounded just as ragged.

  "No!" Every bit of the panic Cluny had pushed aside rushed over her. "Come on!" She struggled with Crocker's pocket, couldn't quite figure out how to extricate herself from it. "My folks! And the magistrix! And Hesper! We hafta see if—!"

  "Steady, sophomores," a gruff voice said, and Cluny stared to see Master Gollantz congealing in front of them, squatting down, putting a hand on Crocker's shoulder. "You'll do none of them any good if you pass out from standing too quickly."

  Just seeing him made the shivering inside Cluny firm up, but— "Master!" she finally got out. "How...how...how—??"

  He held out his other hand, the chunks and scraps of what looked like it had one been a walnut resting in his palm. "This appeared on my desk not half an hour ago. I apologize it took me so long to recognize your work, Sophomore Crocker."

  Crocker coughed a laugh, dropped back to sit on the grass, Cluny turning her stare from Master Gollantz to him. "I just kept hoping Mistress Evantrue wouldn't notice I'd sent it."

  Cluny's shivers started again. "Oh, Crocker! I...I was so wrapped up in seeing my family, I...I let you guys down!"

  "Hey." A smile creased his pale, round face. "You got a family likes having you around, so me and Teakettle, we got your back. I mean, we're partners, right?"

  "Hear that, Mother?" Hesper's voice came from across the lawn, and looking up, heart leaping to hear she was still alive, Cluny went cold to see the unicorn, golden light glowing from her horn, standing beside Mistress Evantrue, the magistrix clambering upright and brushing at her robes. "A wizard and her familiar should be partners."

  "Hmmm?" Mistress Evantrue swayed on her feet. "Oh, yes, of course, Sweetness."

  Shtasith hissed, and Master Gollantz stood, defensive magic crackling the air around him. "Eva?" he asked.

  "Hmmm?" She looked over with a pleasant little smile. "Oh, hello, Hieronymous. A lovely evening, isn't it?"

  "She..." Cluny struggled to find a word for what she was sensing from the magistrix. "She's...empty."

  Hesper touched Mistress Evantrue's leg with her horn. "The wild magic." She sighed and shook her head. "I tried to tell her that such forces by definition can't be controlled, but, well, that only set her to sucking the life from me even faster to power her mad desires...." The unicorn looked at Master Gollantz. "She will remain titular head of Healing Arts, Hieronymous, but I shall take over her actual duties."

  Master Gollantz's face wrinkled into a scowl. "This is not the way we agreed to handle this!"

  "True." Hesper gave something that looked very much like a shrug. "And yet, it appears to have been handled." She touched the magistrix with her horn again. "Mother? Come sit down."

  "Hmmm? Oh, yes, of course, Sweetness."

  "Damn it, Hesper!" The fury in Master Gollantz's voice made Cluny suddenly realize that, even with everything that had happened her first year at Huxley, she'd never seen the magister truly angry till now. "Priceless books destroyed! Innocent bystanders imperiled! These students could've been—!"

  "No one died, Gollantz." Hesper sounded tired, guiding Mistress Evantrue back to the blankets. "This is the best possible outcome for all this, and you well know it." Mistress Evantrue sat, the smile still floating on her lips, and Cluny found herself looking directly into Hesper's eyes. "I will, however, apologize to you, Cluny, and to your familiars. Once my mistress learned the truth about you, nothing I did could stop this encounter. My only hope was to guide it somewhat and pray your grasp of wild magic was greater than you thought."

  "But—" Cluny's mind whirled, came to rest on the only thing she found important. "My folks! Are they—??"

  "Of course." Hesper's horn glowed, and the meadow seemed to take a breath, everyone sitting up, Cluny's eyes wavering to see her parents leap to their paws, their tails bristling.

  The waves of fear striking her whiskers finally shook her from Crocker's pocket, sent her scurrying down to his knees. "It's all right!" she called, magically amplifying her voice and filling it with calming vibrations. "We had a little incident, but everything...everything's fine now!"

  Her father was blinking, his gaze focused past her. "Something to do with your new friend?"

  "Who?" She turned, her ears drooping; she'd forgotten all about—! "Mom, Dad, this is Master Gollantz, the head of Huxley College. I...I didn't think he'd be able to make it..."

  Master Gollantz smiled and sat. "Wouldn't've missed it for the world. Your daughter..." He looked over at her. "I honestly cannot imagine Huxley College without her."

  So many emotions overcame her, she had to cover her eyes, but warmth embraced her: her parents rushing forward, Crocker leaning down, Shtasith's hiss in her ears, her whole family taking her in and holding her.

  Wisdom of Winds

  by Pauline J. Alama

  Moontide knew that the winds were more dangerous than dragons, and that she needed a dragon to teach her the new dance that would let her change them. But getting a dragon to communicate with her, let alone teach her anything, demanded even more of her than she had expected.

  Pauline Alama's fantasy epic The Eye of Night (Bantam Spectra 2002) was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award. Her short fiction has appeared in three prior volumes of Sword and Sorceress, as well as Realms of Fantasy, Abyss and Apex, and anthologies such as Witch High (DAW 2008). A former medieval scholar, she fled the doomed ivory tower to return to her native New Jersey, where she lives with a supportive husband, a gifted son, two telepathic cats, and a collection of obsolete computers. She would like to thank the Writers of the Weird, especially Sidney Nesti, for thoughtful comments on this story.

  #

  The dragons nesting in the sea-cliffs on the northern coast were huge and swift and terrifying, but not as terrifying as the winds had been the past year and a half.

  The winds had laid houses flat in Sternhaven, broken the proud pinewood masts of the fleet, blown boats out to sea and never returned them.

  The dragons, on the other hand, mostly kept to themselves. When the wind blew seaward, they would fly out over the waves. The fishermen sometimes saw them dive like lightning to catch something out of the sea; at other times, the gleaming green shapes would fly higher, wheeling under the sun, and pass beyond the horizon, farther than any fisherman would go.

  Occasionally, when the wind blew landward, the dragons would fly inland and prey on deer or cattle, or take the topmost apples from an orchard with surprisingly delicate claws. But they would fly away swiftly after these raids, wary of the two-legged creatures that could answer their fire with fire. Only rarely did they kill a human being—usually some reckless adventurer who trespassed upon their lairs, as Moontide intended to do.

  * * * *

  It had begun with a storm: a storm that plucked trees from the earth more easily than a housewife pulls carrots from her kitchen garden. Clearstream, the wise-woman of Sternhaven, and her two learning-women danced the Circle of Winds as they always did, seeking the pulse of the wind and inviting it to dance past the town, away from the fragile houses and frightened people. In years before, the wind had consented to dance with them; it had whipped the learning-women's hair and skirts, but after playing with them, it had allowed itself to be led away from town, weary with reveling, sleepy with music, turning aside from destruction. But now the wind crossed their path, almost battering them as they trod the patterns recorded in the tiled circle. It neither danced with them nor left them in peace.

  It's no use, Moontide thought to herself, even as her lips continued to form the song they had once trusted to save them from the hurricane. The song and the dance are the same, but they've lost meaning.

  They danced through the night as rain pelted their faces almost horizontally, as if someone were flinging the sea at them in handfuls. At last they were so tired that they could no longer dance without stumbling, no longer keep their voices true to the melody. Clearstream signaled time to rest. They crept to her cottage on the outskirts of
Sternhaven and collapsed by the cold hearth, too worn to kindle a fire.

  As Moontide groped for the right words to raise her doubts without offending Clearstream, the younger learning-woman, Saltspray, spoke first. "Why didn't the winds change? They always used to, at least a little."

  Moontide added, "I didn't even feel the wind answer us—not even to answer no. It's like talking to a stranger blown ashore from a foreign land. The winds don't understand us."

  "Something is different this year," the wise-woman said, "as if the wind had given up the dance we know and returned to a forgotten one. There are older dancing circles left by our ancestors in the hills and woods, and in the ruins of the Old Town. We must study those and relearn the old dances till we find the one that speaks to the winds this year."

  "But how do we know any of these dances has power?" Moontide asked.

  "They've been tested by time. You should know; you danced the wind down with me often enough, Moon," said Clearstream. That was certain; Moontide had been learning-woman under Clearstream for nearly twenty years, and even Saltspray, who was only nineteen, had danced the ancient wind-songs with them for four seasons. As for Clearstream, she'd been wise-woman for thirty years, since Moon was a child, and a learning-woman for thirty years before that. None of them should have felt so much like awkward beginners as they'd felt that night.

  "I mean, how did our ancestors know?" Moontide said. "How did the women who first tiled the circles know where to mark them, what dance to trace in them? Someone must have started it, before there were any circles."

  "This is the circle of Windwise, a wise-woman of long ago," said Clearstream. "It was old already when my teacher's teacher was a learning-woman. Windwise taught the dance and embedded its patterns in the tiles to preserve all she had learned of the winds."

  "But how did she learn it? Don't you see? If she could learn the song of the winds in her own time, then we can learn to dance with the new wind, just as she learned to dance with the old one."

  Clearstream's brow creased. "Rash deeds in old times may have won the knowledge we treasure. Yet often rash deeds win no reward but death. The Naming of the Wise-Women lists but few deeds of Windwise; her life was short."

  "What does it say of her?" Moontide persisted, for Clearstream had withheld this final teaching from her, the song that tells of the lives of all the wise-women that went before them.

  "It says she became the dragon's daughter so she might hear the wind-songs dragons sing to their young."

  "Then we too must go to the dragons."

  "No," said Clearstream. "If we disturb the dragons, we'll draw their anger down on Sternhaven."

  "Then we'll take care not to disturb them. There must be a way. Windwise found a way."

  "Even Windwise, the song says, paid the price of knowledge in a dragon's belly. It's too dangerous."

  "This is too dangerous," Moontide muttered as the unappeased wind rattled the shutters of the little house. In time they went out and danced again, but when the wind finally subsided, she knew that it did so in its own time, not in rhythm with their dance. They had won nothing.

  * * * *

  Moon left the younger children with her mother and took to the road. She had only walked a short way before she heard footsteps behind her, too quick and light to be Clearstream. She called without looking back, "Salt, you can't come, too. One of us has to stay and help the wise-woman."

  "Then you stay, and I'll go," said Saltspray, catching up beside her.

  "It's too dangerous."

  The girl said, "That's why I should go in your place. You belong here with your husband and sons."

  "My husband and sons go to sea every day. They may not be here much longer if I don't find them a better wind."

  "My father's a fisherman, too—and my brothers—and Keelspeed." Salt blushed as she named the young fisherman; it was the closest she'd ever come to admitting any special preference for him. "I need this knowledge as much as you do."

  "Do you think I won't share what I learn?"

  "If you die in some dragon's lair, who'll bring your knowledge back to Sternhaven?"

  Moontide hesitated, unable to deny this flaw in her plan. "What will Clearstream do without us both?"

  "She'll appoint two more learning-women, of course, and tell them we were good-for-nothing troublemakers. Didn't you say she chose you after Dayraven quarreled with her?"

  Moontide put an arm over Saltspray's shoulder. "Come, then. I doubt I could stop you anyway."

  * * * *

  They traveled up the coast on foot, slow as it was, for Sternhaven could spare them no boat with so many of the fishing fleet lost in the storms. "This was easier when I was eleven," Moon panted, laboring over a crag.

  "You've made this journey before?"

  "Seahorse and I did, when we were children. I suppose it was the first sign we belonged together. My big brother dared us to steal a dragon's egg, and we didn't want him to call us cowards. We blundered around the coast, tripping on jagged rocks, shouting and giggling—more noise than the dragons wanted to hear. The only ones we saw were flying away from us.

  "The closest we came was a mother with twin dragonlets under her wings. They were too young to fly, I guess, and she wouldn't leave them. She spat fire at us—a boat length away, I got blistered. We ran as fast as we could till I turned my ankle on a sharp drop. Then Seahorse stepped in fewmets, and we started dreaming awake. How we managed to get home without wandering off a cliff, Great Mother only knows."

  "My mother should hear this. My brother and I only took the boat out looking for raiders, and she gave us a tongue-lashing that just about flayed the skin off us," Salt said. "She wouldn't have known what to do with you."

  Moon smiled; Salt's mother was her childhood friend. "Actually, we asked your mother to come along, and she gave us one of those looks. You know. But at least she didn't tell on us."

  Salt giggled. "So, um, what do they look like?"

  "Fewmets? Like smooth gray stones, but they shimmer if the light hits them just right. They don't smell like the spoor of a beast, but like wood smoke and chicory. Of course, if you can smell them, it's probably too late."

  Salt peered suspiciously at the rocks along the next ledge before pulling herself up. They did not shimmer. "What about dragon eggs?" Salt said. "What do they look like?"

  "I don't know," Moon said. "We never saw one."

  * * * *

  Toward sundown, they came to a flat, mossy bank with a scrubby beach plum tree. Moon grabbed Salt's arm hard. "Stop. Fewmets."

  Salt stopped halfway through a step, one foot in the air. She backed up, then cautiously padded around the silvery droppings, scrutinizing them. Moon moved slowly, torn between the need to watch her feet and to scan her surroundings for the dragon.

  "Look at that bigger oval," Salt said. "It's like the others, but a more purplish shade of gray. Do you think that might be an egg?"

  Moon peered at it skeptically, then turned away. "What mother would leave an egg with a pile of her wastes?"

  Salt shrugged. "Who knows what a dragon might do?"

  They clambered only a boat-length farther before Moon hissed, "Salt! Down!" She pushed her companion onto the rocks and covered her with her own body as the dragon swooped low over them. She braced herself for the agony of fire, but it never came.

  Curious, Moon risked lifting her head to look at the glistening green dragon, which, having passed over them, was turning its vast body around slowly, with an odd wobble about the distended abdomen. The dragon hissed, but no fire issued from its mouth. The shining beast gathered its wings for another sally.

  "Quick, Salt!" Moon pulled the young woman along to the ridge over the sea.

  "But—" Salt protested.

  "To the water!" Moon shouted, and pulled her over the edge.

  They hit the surface of the bay with a crash and plummeted down. Salt kicked upward, but Moon held her back. "Stay. You should be able to breathe now."

 
"Under water?" sputtered Salt, then laughed with sheer relief to find it was true. Their heads were in air, although the waves rolled over them. "Marvelous! How long have you been able to do this?"

  "I learned after I had my first baby. It changes the way you know air, somehow—sensing the baby breathing inside you by some deep mystery in the watery depths of your body."

  "Can you bring us close enough to the surface to see what the dragon's doing?"

  Moon tried, but it was no use; as long as water remained between her eyes and the air, she could see nothing above the surface but unfocused light. Besides, the current was driving them away from the place where they'd encountered the dragon. When at last they came to shore, they were in an unknown cove. Uncertain how close they might be to the dragon's lair, they chose a hiding place carefully, a cave in the cliffside above the high tide line but too small for a dragon. There Moon set about teaching Salt to keep do-not-notice spells over them so they could take turns concealing their movements when they went dragon-watching.

  "Maybe tomorrow we'll find a real dragon's egg," Salt said as they settled down to sleep.

  "I doubt it," Moon said thoughtfully.

  "Why not? I can do a finding spell—it's the first spell Clearstream let me work alone."

  "You can't find what's not there," said Moon. "Luckily, we don't need an egg; we need a mother dragon, and I think we've already seen one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did you see the big belly on the one we startled?"

  "You mean—we've been wrong about dragons. We haven't known the first thing about them."

  Moon nodded. "They bear children the way we do. That dragon is with child."

  * * * *

  The next day, they made their way cautiously along the rocks, one of them chanting the do-not-notice spell at all times while the other led the way, seeking handholds and keeping watch for dragons. Moon was taking a turn to chant, half distracted by the fear that nimble Salt would lead her on a path that her forty-year-old limbs couldn't take, when Salt suddenly whispered, "Quiet!"