FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  The theater had always seemed like a waste of time to me. I’d seen a few shows, but none like this one, a mixture of made-up play and plenty of opportunities for the performers to show off unrelated talents. I wasn’t particularly fond of children, but these ones put on an interesting, if confusing, show. There were several lengthy sword battles, and the littlest troll kept wandering off when he was supposed to be terrorizing a village. Everything was exaggerated and dramatic, and it wouldn’t have been hard to laugh at it, but I didn’t think it was supposed to be a comedy. I just clapped when everyone else did at the end of the scenes and tried not to jump to my feet every time someone came into the tent.

  They surprised me, too. One of the older girls sang a song about a maiden who fell in love with a dragon, and her voice was beautiful enough to have commanded any stage in Tyrea. Rowan was wiping tears from her eyes by the end of that one.

  You trust too easily and you cry too often, I thought, but there are far worse things. I turned away before she could catch me watching her.

  After a tumbling act put on by two brothers who would probably be great performers once they got their timing right—and stopped punching each other when things went wrong—the show concluded with a troll being run through with a collapsing sword and roasted over a fire made from orange and yellow fabrics. Rowan gave them a standing ovation.

  By the time the play was over, the smell of another meal was filling the tent. Rowan ran over to the performers to congratulate them and ask about their costumes, and I walked around the inside of the tent, examining the walls and trying to figure out why I hadn’t sensed people near the ruins. There were no known or registered sorcerers among any groups of Wanderers, but this protective magic was strong enough that there had to be one here more powerful than Jein.

  After supper, during which I stayed quiet and tried to remember everything Rowan was saying about us, we sat with Jein and drank strong, hot tea. The woman was charming and kind, but had a hard edge to her and avoided speaking to me. She had magic in her, and could surely feel mine. Perhaps that made her wary.

  Several of the children came to say goodnight to Rowan before their parents bundled them off to bed. “I heard there was a performance this afternoon,” Jein said. “The children are always so happy to have a fresh audience. It’s good practice for when they’re older, but we don’t always have time to watch.”

  “So you travel and perform shows?” Rowan asked. “All of you?”

  “We do. We also do a little trading along the way, and yes, we always travel together, though not usually so late in the autumn. People want shows in the summer, when life is easy and fun. Most have no time for them when things are harder, though entertainment would probably do them more good then. It’s more difficult to travel in the colder months, too.” She glanced toward the tent’s roof, where rain was still beating out a steady rhythm. “Obviously. Normally we would be at home now, settling in before the snows come.”

  I knew what Rowan was going to ask, and I didn’t want her to. I thought I could guess the answer. “Why are you traveling now?” she asked, oblivious to my warning look.

  Jein sipped from her cup. “Things have been difficult for us, particularly the past two years. The… I don’t know whether he calls himself the king yet.”

  He doesn’t, I thought. Not until our father is declared dead.

  “In any case, our home was a little too close to the capital city, and has been taken over as a military training ground. It’s nothing to him to displace a few people who hardly pay taxes and won’t swear loyalty to him. There were…” She swallowed hard and shook her head. “It’s better for us to be here.”

  She took us outside into what had become a light drizzle and led the way toward one of the wagons. “No sense you two sleeping on the floor of the hall,” she said, and opened the door. The tall, hard-topped structure was cold inside, but they had set up a soft bed in the back with several heavy blankets, and left us a tall candle with twelve hour-markings on it.

  “We’re not displacing anyone, I hope,” Rowan said, and picked up a soft-looking purple blanket to wrap around her shoulders.

  “No. Not right now,” Jein said. “We’ll hope the sun shows his face in the morning. I’m growing tired of lamps and torches.”

  After she’d gone Rowan asked, “You won’t sleep, will you?”

  “Probably not. I don’t want to change here, and sleeping as a human means I can’t be sure of waking quickly if there’s a problem.” There was more to it, but nothing she needed to know.

  “What if we took turns keeping watch? I can stay awake for a few hours while you get some rest.”

  I wanted the first watch, but she insisted that I needed sleep more than she did. “Can’t have you dozing off, can we? Besides, I don’t trust you to wake me up to take my turn.” She pulled a pillow to a spot beside the door and sat with her legs crossed under her skirt, flipping through a book of plays she found lying on a box of larger volumes. The candlelight picked out the red in her hair, making it glow. I looked away and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I probably won’t sleep,” I said, but lay down and pulled a blanket up to my shoulders. “If I do, wake me after three hours.” She nodded.

  I felt myself drifting, and realized that Rowan may have been the only person I would trust while I closed my eyes—not because she couldn’t be a threat, but because I believed she wanted to help me as much as I wanted to keep her safe. I yawned. I won’t sleep, though.

  Chapter XXI

  Aren

  WHEN I OPENED MY EYES again nearly six hours had melted off of the candle. I sat up and looked around, thinking that Rowan must have fallen asleep, but she was standing with the door cracked open, looking out into the courtyard.

  “What’s going on?” I rolled out of bed and went to her. The floorboards were cold on my bare feet.

  “The rain stopped, the stars are out. That’s about it. Everything has been quiet.” She turned toward me, and the candlelight shadows accentuated the way the orange sweater clung to the curves of her breasts. I wanted to reach out and run my hands over it, to pull her close and feel the heavy wool over the softness of her body. The wide neckline had slipped off of one shoulder. I tried not to stare. Maybe I do need more sleep, I thought, and rubbed my eyes.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  She shrugged, sending the knit fabric a little lower down her arm. “You needed sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  Rowan moved toward the bed. Her bare skin grazed my arm as she squeezed past. “Everything is fine. We’re safe here for now, and I’m perfectly capable of staying awake to keep watch. But now it’s your turn.” She handed me the blanket she’d been wearing and crawled into the warmth of the bed. “You try to take everything on yourself, and that’s not good for anyone. You’re going to have to trust someone some time, you know.” She rolled so that she faced away from me, and in a few minutes her breathing became deep and slow.

  I pulled the blanket tight around my shoulders and stepped outside. The clouds had cleared, and with all of the lights out in the camp, the stars filled the sky. I closed the door and sat on the wooden steps, gazing up. In spite of everything going on in the world around us, I found myself feeling content for the first time in years, happy that for the moment, Rowan and I seemed to be safe.

  A light appeared in the largest tent, moving around with whoever carried it. A lone figure stepped into the courtyard, holding something in each hand, and walked toward me.

  “May I?” Jein asked, and I moved over to make room for her on the wide step. Her thin frame didn’t take up much space, but I gave her plenty. I also kept one hand near my knife, concealed under the blanket.

  She handed me a mug of something warm. “Thought a hot drink might make you more comfortable out here.”

  “How did you know I was awake?” I lifted the drink and inhaled the steam. Some kind of cinnamon tea.

&nbs
p; “Sometimes I know things.” Jein took a long sip from her cup. “Doug.” She looked sideways at me.

  My fingers tightened around the knife’s handle. “How long after we arrived did you know who I was?”

  “Part-way through supper, though I suspected sooner. There were rumors in a few towns we passed through. Your family may be trying to keep it quiet, but gossip travels so quickly.” She quirked a silver eyebrow at me. “Something about you stealing a woman from your brother, and that you may have killed ten men in your escape. Is that right?”

  “Not entirely. But that’s not how you knew who we were.”

  “No. It gave context, an idea of why you might be traveling in a rainstorm with a young lady, but I’d have known without that. It’s part of our magic.”

  “‘Our’?” As I’d always understood it, magic was a highly individual thing. It couldn’t be shared any more than physical strength or intellect could.

  “Indeed. None of us are particularly gifted, the way you are, but when we work together, we can protect ourselves.” Jein sipped her drink again. “It’s something we’ve picked up out of necessity. Whatever small magic the members of our community possess, we pass on to the leader when the need arises. Me, now.”

  She didn’t offer to explain further, and though I was curious about this idea, I didn’t ask. If she didn’t trust me with the information, I couldn’t blame her.

  She turned to me again and gave me an appraising look. “We used it tonight. The men who were following you were gone, but we could have kept them away if they had been nearby.”

  “I’m sure.” I remembered how invisible they’d been to me, and wished I could know how to block Severn as effectively. The trick at the cave had worked in that moment, but I needed practice. “And yet you invited us in.” I took a small sip of tea. It was strong and sweet, and the cinnamon burned my throat. I waited, but felt no ill effects.

  Jein set her cup down and leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees. “Foolish, I know. You’re a dangerous person. You could kill me right now just for knowing who you are.”

  “I could. I think I won’t.”

  “But I don’t imagine your brothers would show us any mercy if they found out you’d been here.”

  “True.” The sky overhead turned from black to deep blue, and the stars began to fade.

  “And there’s your companion,” Jein continued. “She gave me the assurance. We don’t teach that to just anyone, but her friend obviously thought she’d need it some day. I could have turned her out, or you, but we take our duty to offer aid where we can quite seriously.” I recalled hearing that the Wanderers worshiped several gods, and each band had a particular favorite, but that they all answered to one who rewarded compassion. I wasn’t familiar with him, personally.

  “A password seems like an easy security measure to overcome,” I said.

  Jein smiled. “Can you remember it?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, and the words wouldn’t come. Incredible. I had heard of protected words, and thought they were only stories.

  “So I had reason enough to think she came by the words honestly, and meant us no harm,” she concluded. “If only it were so easy for you to know our intentions, eh? Perhaps you can see now.”

  As I looked at her, her defenses softened. I didn’t probe deep into her mind, certain that she’d shut down and throw us out if I did. But her peace and calm radiated from her, and no ill will. My grip on my knife loosened. “Thank you.”

  “Hmm.”

  The ruins became clearer, silhouetted against the lightening sky. Members of Jein’s group rose and began their morning tasks, criss-crossing the yard, talking and laughing softly together. Jein closed off my awareness of her again, but not before I felt the pain that flickered through her mind as she watched them.

  “When you said your home was taken over for military training, that wasn’t everything, was it?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I didn’t think it was appropriate to say anything more, though. Your w—” She smiled. “I almost said your wife. I like her, she lies well. But yes, there was more. It was fortunate that we’d just returned from our summer circuit, and almost everything was still packed. There was no warning. None of our defenses alerted us to danger. There might only have been ten or a dozen of them, but they came down on us like a winter storm. It was all confusion and screaming. Burning. I think the one leading them would have been happy to see us all dead.”

  “But you got away.”

  “We were twice this many a month ago.”

  That would make somewhere around forty dead or lost. My stomach clenched. “The leader of that group. You don’t know who he was?”

  “Not for certain. But I think you might. Massive fellow, rode a white devil horse. Arms like oaks, laughed as he set fire to our homes.” Her voice cracked, but the expression on her face didn’t change.

  I knew. Wardrel was four years older than me, born to one of our father’s secondary wives. His magic wasn’t especially powerful for a member of our family, but what he lacked in talent he made up for in physical strength. He was cruel, without reason or purpose. Severn had tried to kill me when I was a child, but it was because he felt threatened. When Wardrel killed my dog, it was because he enjoyed it—both the killing and my reaction. Our father sent him away after the mangled body of a servant’s child was found in a cellar room, but Severn brought him back not long after our father disappeared. He thought he could control Wardrel.

  It seemed he’d at least found a use for him.

  “One of my brothers,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I had no idea anything like this had happened.”

  Jein’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “You had other things to do, didn’t you?”

  “I suppose I did. I haven’t been home much in the past year.”

  “Doing your brother’s work.” Jein took a thin, curved pipe and a packet of herbs from her pocket and prepared a smoke, taking her time with lighting it. “It makes me wonder why you’re here now, traveling with this girl you took from him. And she seems to be unafraid of you. Have you changed so much?”

  “No.” I remembered what I’d told Rowan the previous day. “She trusts too easily. And she doesn’t know anything about me.”

  “And yet here you are, guarding the door while she sleeps. Protecting her. Doing what I presume you think is right instead of what your brother wanted.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’d imagine it is.” Jein pulled deeply at the pipe, and sighed a sweet-smelling cloud of smoke. “May I offer you a piece of advice?”

  A baby cried somewhere in the camp, and a pair of women walked into the largest tent, talking quietly.

  “Of course.”

  Jein spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. “Where you come from is nothing. My people, my family, we only look ahead. We’ll find a new place, and we’ll build a new life. I hope that you will choose to do the same.”

  She patted me on the arm, then stood and went back to the tent. I sat for a few more minutes, watching the displaced and broken community start their day’s work. I finished my tea and went inside to see if Rowan was awake.

  With the rain over and the Wanderers heading in the direction we’d just come from, there was no reason for us to stay with them any longer. We made ourselves useful while we could. It seemed only fair after all the Wanderers had done for us. Rowan assisted with cleaning up after breakfast and held a few babies for their busy mothers while I helped take down the tents and got our horses ready for our departure. She made the children promise another performance when she met them again, and Alys joked that they were going to steal my wife away and turn her into a true Wanderer.

  Rowan laughed. “Maybe when I get tired of him, I’ll find you and do just that.”

  Maybe you will, I thought. It was as good a place for her as any, and Jein was right. Rowan was a convincing liar. She loved a good story, and she’d probably be a great performer. These peop
le wouldn’t force her into marriage, or anything else she didn’t want. She could have a good life with them.

  And then she turned to me and smiled, and I found myself hoping she’d forget all about it.

  Chapter XXII

  Rowan

  MY INJURIES FROM THE ATTACK had healed, but by mid-afternoon I was more sore than ever from riding. Lessons at Stone Ridge and hours spent on horseback in the woods hadn’t prepared me for this. My headache had grown steadily worse since we left the Wanderers, and we hadn’t passed a heartleaf tree since the border. Aren seemed deep in thought, and didn’t speak unless I did first. I had a lot of time to think, and it wasn’t making me any more cheerful. There were still too many questions about my past and my people, and not enough answers that I liked, no matter how I looked at it. I didn’t want to think about any of it, so I kept my mind occupied with easier subjects.

  “Can you tell me about unicorns?”

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t know. Anything.” I wanted to hear him talk. His voice was pleasant, and his accent was even better. At least that was one aspect of life in Tyrea I could easily get used to.

  “They look like horses,” he said. “But with a horn. And magic.”

  “That’s very helpful, thank you.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “Fairies?”

  “They’re around. Don’t see them too often.”

  “Does that mean you have seen a unicorn?”

  “No.”

  Those questions weren’t getting me anywhere. I decided to move on to something else. “So, I think I’ve been pretty good about not asking questions—”

  He snorted.

  “—about where we’re going. I’d like to have some idea. Not that the past few days haven’t been exciting and interesting, but I think I’ve reached my geographical limit for traveling blindly away from home with a stranger. All you’ve told me is that we’re going to get some help for me. Maybe.”