by Faith Hunter
Holding the blanket with one hand, he took the bread. It had a peculiar glazed texture, a scent like honey. His fingers trembled as they broke off a piece and stuffed it in his mouth, crumbles of crust flying. An unknown seasoning flooded his mouth, reminiscent of anise and nutmeg, as sweet as cake. The bread softened and he swallowed easily. He imagined he felt strength and healing flowing out to his limbs from the single bite.
"I don't know any Darkness, boy. Not one," he said after he swallowed.
The boy flipped his black braid out of the way. "Mama's not a Dark One. She said you know her as the Mistress. And she's not finished with you yet."
Despite himself, Lucas felt hope wash through his bones like a warm flush of life. "The Mistress?" he breathed. "Here? How?"
The boy shrugged. "She's always been here."
But that wasn't possible. The Mistress was a Being of Light. Not a seraph precisely, but similar. Unless… He felt the flicker of hope quiver and die. He had been deceived.
* * * * *
"The meeting will bore the pants off you, I warn you," Rupert said.
"There's no way to learn what Lucas was involved in before he was kidnapped, without going. And I promise to keep my leggings on," I added dryly.
The real reason I wanted to appear at the Save Mineral City meeting was to do a mind-skim on all present, but this other excuse worked pretty well too. I hoped I'd be able to tell whether any of the humans present had gone over to a Dark Power. I wasn't certain I could parse out a specific Darkness, or that I could recognize Darkness on a human who wasn't bleeding, but I wanted to try.
The day was half gone, squandered. I had completed nothing on the spring lines, no stone cutting, no stringing. Once again, I was totally involved in Lucas' life, just as when I had first set eyes on him, fell madly in love, and could think only of his blue eyes, firm chin, and full lips. I had wasted my time and desperate emotions on the man, but love is blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid. Now I was doing it for Ciana. Or so I told myself.
Afternoon was plunging into a false dusk of lowering clouds and a cold so intense, it penetrated my layered clothing and my insulated leather cloak. Walking sticks in hand, Rupert, Audric, and I trudged over rutted snow, our hobbled boots gripping the slick ice. Rupert was still wan, a painful-looking, purple lump in his hair above one ear, bruises on his chest and arms, but he was determined to stick by me, having decided that from now on we would travel in groups, for protection. Jacey was running the store, being watched over by her eldest stepson, Zeddy, a big, strapping kid.
We entered the old Central Baptist Church, passing between the double-wide doors into the sanctuary, a cavernous room, and took seats midway back. There were about two hundred people gathered, most up front where they could hear, the church's loudspeakers having given out before I was born and never been replaced. Its heating system was on the fritz too, and the collective breath of the crowd was a faint mist three feet off the ground.
At the front, on the dais, stood Derek Culpepper, the developer wanting Mineral City to move. Rupert said, "He presents himself as a philanthropist with no thought to profit."
"A humanitarian? All motives altruistic? How novel," Audric said.
The lady in front of us swiveled in her pew and hushed us; chastened, we fell silent. Culpepper was short and bowlegged, and had more money than taste. He was wearing a lemon yellow suit and mustard green tie, a perfectly hideous combination with his carrot orange hair, purple shirt, and orange socks.
"Do you think he dressed himself or had it done by mob vote?" Rupert whispered, drawing another irritated glance from the stout woman. We all sniggered softly, trying to keep silent. Up front, Culpepper strode across the stage and preened, posing in a three-quarter view, chest out, like a rooster ready to crow. "This town faces the most frightening challenge since Mole Man went into the earth and gave himself as a sacrifice, both for us and to save the seraph. The ice cap has grown larger every winter for the last three decades, and hasn't melted completely in over seventy-five years.
"At the last meeting, I offered to buy out the town property at fair market value, and to provide land and loans for rebuilding, well below the frost line, in the foothills. Three of the town fathers have visited the site, looked it over, and testified to its beauty and bounty, flowing with two streams, ample water for wells and farming, and lush with growth four months out of the year. Four months!" he shouted, throwing an arm skyward, much like a jaundiced John Travolta in an old Pre-Ap movie. The film had played for months on satellite TV and had many of the young men dressing in tight clothes and learning how to dance. Rupert stuck a finger in the air and smothered a chuckle.
"How long will the town fathers wait to act on my offer? Until snowmelt? Until the ice cap starts to slide? Until the danger grows more menacing? If they do, the buying price drops drastically, or the offer may disappear from the table entirely."
"Thank you, Derek," said a bored voice from the far side of the dais. "I think all us dumb mountain folk understand you made a fair offer on our town. Fair, that is, considering the ice cap that could shift and crush it flatter than one of my competitor's biscuits."
Everyone laughed and I craned my head, spotting a tiny black man, bald and ancient, in the row of elders and elected political officials. It was the baker from across the street, the baker who now had a wall to repair, thanks to my uncontrolled use of energy this morning. Shamus Waldroup, a man with family ties to the town for over a hundred and seventy years. I sank down in my seat, hiding from his line of sight.
"Now, listen you here, Waldroup," Culpepper said. "I'm not finish—"
"Nope, you listen. Lessen you got some new information to add, you can sit down. You took up mostly the whole meeting last week, and we got a lotta business to cover. So sit down and shut up." The crowd laughed easily, as if used to Waldroup's abrasive tones. "Next speaker on the list is Esmeralda Boyles. You here, Essie? Essie?"
"I'm here, I'm here. Give a old woman a chance, will you?" a voice croaked. To my left, an elderly woman moved down the aisle, talking even before she got to the stage. "I'm old, I'm tired, and I ain't selling," she shouted as she shuffled. "I ain't moving. I ain't going nowhere. Soon's Lucas Stanhope is fount, I'll take his advice to hire mages to melt the ice cap in a controlled melt. It'll cost the town less money and I can keep my family land. That's all." She hadn't even reached the dais before she turned around and moved back to her seat.
Some of the crowd burst into applause and the rest shook their heads. The crowd was split fifty-fifty on selling. Waldroup, who seemed to be in charge, called another speaker, Elder Culpepper. If I could have sunk lower in the pew without sliding to the floor in a boneless sprawl, I would have. It was the kirk elder who had given me the withering look when I took Ciana to pray.
Culpepper took the stage wearing brown robes like a prophet of old, and bowed his head a moment before siding with his son. Big surprise. Personally, I thought appearing in his robes of office at a secular, political meeting was cheating, but nobody asked me.
After his opening statement, I closed off my mind and relaxed, settling on the hardwood pew, head rocking against the shaped, curled back. I breathed in, first smelling the massed bodies, wet wool, old wood, the damp of melted ice and snow. With my second breath I took in the scent of soap, varied perfumes and lotions, and the underlying alcohols and oils that composed them, along with dim tangs of excitement and adrenaline. My sense of smell was acute, surprising me, but maybe a heightened olfactory sense was a mage-trait. It wasn't like I practiced in public. Until now, my gifts had been private.
I breathed out worries, fear, and the discomfort of the bench beneath my thighs. Breathed in calm and peace and the faint smell of leather from my cloak and from all the boots, the oils and tannins that had been worked into them. Breathed out the awareness of the gathered crowd. Breathed in the strength and stillness of stone. Old, quiet stone. Stone that still carried the strength of the deeps.
The old church'
s outer walls were made from stone, hundred-pound rocks blasted from nearby hills. The sanctuary stood on a single huge stone, the heart of an ancient mountain. The roof was newer, some sixty years old, made of local slate. Stone above and around and below. Stone surrounded me, rich and deep and cold and solid. I relaxed and fell into the serenity of stone.
Sighing, a half smile on my lips, I reached beneath my cloak and tunic and took hold of the small amulet that offered calm and peace. I didn't often draw on the small carved rose, as the pale pink quartz was tied too closely to memories of my sister. Rose, ever the peaceful, gentle twin, had worn a curved, sharp, black onyx thorn, for a fierce fighting spirit.
The rose deepened my sense of tranquility yet again, and on the fifth breath I was so relaxed, I could have slept. My eyes still closed, I opened my mage-sight, seeing the roseate glow of my lids, the brighter network of capillaries through the thin flesh like a map of a river system, flowing with my blood. I could hear the drone of the elder, the shuffle of boots on scarred wood, the breath of the crowd like a soft summer wind. I opened my eyelids.
With mage-sight, I looked at the crowd. There was nothing, no taint, no blemish of Darkness. I pushed harder with my sight, sending out a vigorous probe. And still nothing.
I sat up in the pew. The room glowed softly with life and heat. The breath of the gathered was still a mist, but now it glowed a soft green, the color of new leaves. The walls, long in need of paint, glowed warm peach with delicate blue tracery, looking much like my eyelids until I realized the peach and blue were the colors of stone and mortar behind the wallboard. The inner walls had stood in contact with the outer for so many years that the ground-up gypsum, paper, and paint had taken on the strength of the rock. The inner walls glowed, picking up the colors of the stained-glass windows, seven of which remained, even after the clash that had rocked nearby mountains in Benaiah Stanhope's battle. I turned my sight to the crowd.
Beside me, Audric looked strangely lifeless, like a mannequin, the only one in the room who didn't glow with power of some kind, his flesh appearing untouched, wholly plastic, except for a pale glow at his neck, centered in the lightning bolt, hanging bright and silver. All the others in the room glowed with energy, their flesh unglamoured and human, a soft, fragile, fluctuating light of life, in shades of yellow, green, brown, soft orange, and blue, the colors of their auras in mage-sight. I turned back to Audric and then looked down at my hand. Below my glamour, my own flesh glowed with the pearled nacre of mage-power. But of Audric's gift and nature, I could see nothing. The lightning bolt was a powerful amulet.
On my other side, Rupert was muddy gold swirling with rivers of blue, rose, and green, like ocean jasper. He twitched, trying to stay awake, and sat up straight, forcing his thighs onto the ungiving wood, pain keeping him alert. I didn't wonder how I knew what he was doing. I knew Rupert better than I knew myself.
As unobtrusively as possible, I swiveled my head and let my gaze flow across the crowd like a breeze. There were no shadows, no places of Darkness or even of simple darkness. Every place in the old church glowed with power, with light. But then, Audric had hidden his true nature beneath a glamour even a mage couldn't penetrate. There had to be a way to see more, on a deeper level. Neomages had long used their gifts to protect themselves, to fight evil, standing beside the second-unforeseen. There had to be a better way to seek out Darkness.
When my neomage training was interrupted at age fourteen, when I was sent away from my kind for my own sanity's sake, my training had been interrupted as well. I had never finished any part of my mage studies and had never seen a reason to continue them all alone in the hills. I would never be allowed to use my gifts except for survival against humans, the survival of trickery, deceit, or violence. There was so much I didn't know.
But what if I could combine a mind-skim with my neomage-sight? Perhaps that was what trained mages did. I released the quartz rose and found the distinctive shape of the black-and-green-jade bear, strengthening the incantation that kept my flesh damped. I opened my mage-sight wide and skimmed hard, blending the two senses.
And nearly fell off the pew. The world rolled and sloshed as if caught in an eddy. I was inundated with sight-smell-otherness. For a long moment I thought I might lose my last meal. Finally, the new world I was sensing settled, and when I wasn't overwhelmed with my body's reactions to the otherness, I sent out a deeper, more comprehensive scan. The images and the smells pounded like a stiff uppercut, knocking me for a loop. A wave of vertigo slammed me. I swallowed hard, closing my eyes, holding the breath tight inside, unmoving. A hand took my wrist, offering stability, Audric, a solid tree of endurance and strength. I held my breath a long moment, both the breath in my lungs and the neomage breath that moved through me with a heartbeat of its own. When I released them, easing them out between my lips, the world steadied.
I considered the blended scan and realized I had just pulled in a new combination. New for me anyway. I'd have probably learned how to do it years ago if I had stayed at Enclave. Okay. So combining senses was possible, if disorienting. I'd take it slow this time.
I opened my eyes and skimmed slowly. Gradually, I reopened my mage-sight, drawing on the bear to keep me hidden, and using its stored strength to help balance my gifts, like opening a dam through a sluice gate instead of dropping the dam walls all at once and getting inundated. Audric tightened his grip on my wrist to steady me.
Carefully, I sniffed around the room, seeing the life beat of each being, blood flowing in blood vessels, a collective breath stirring the soft mist. Heat and life writhed and glowed, matter vibrating with intensity. Audric was no longer glamoured to my sight. He glowed with a warmth of purity and purpose, as steady as a boulder, a tested strength. He smelled of strength too, a familiar mage-strength. That seemed important for an instant, but the thought skittered away, overpowered by the brighter images of the crowd.
I smelled deeper scents as I breathed: mold in a far corner, bat droppings from the attic, peppers, onions, and moonshine on the humans. The water at my feet was snowmelt, not from a well, not from the earth, purified by stone and pressure, but water that had passed through the air and was useless to me. And then I caught it. The fainter-than-a-shadow-at-night hint of sulfur. I swiveled my head. The smell was coming from the doorway, carried on wind wisping under the front door. It was moving. I followed it with my mind as it shifted from the door to a window along the side wall. It had to be nearly night outside. Spawn!
My hands clenched, reaching for my blades. Audric's grip tightened, stopping the motion. I turned my gaze to him and his mouth moved in a silent No. I shuddered with the need to fight, to draw spawn blood. I broke out in a hot sweat. My heart rate doubled. I forced myself to relax under the pressure of Audric's fingers. Against the compulsion to battle, I turned my scan to the crowd. I could do this. I could. But a dull ache in my temples foretold a killer of a headache. The stink of evil faded.
Pushing the fatigue and pain away, I reached into the crowd and instantly felt several somethings. I identified some as stone I had worked, each filled with an incantation for a specific need. One was for freedom from mild pain, another was for peace, a third was for protection, and there were others as I counted. Seven amulets altogether, most of them well drained, but still leaking a bit of comfort. Amulets I could sense with the blended scan. Could other mages and seraphs sense them as well, proof that a witchy-woman was nearby, operating without a license? Not good. I'd been stupid. But I hadn't thought about leaving tracks of my gift in and on the townspeople. I'd have to consider how to hide myself better.
Even if it means not using my gifts in stone I work? How can I not use my gifts?
The thoughts of covering my tracks I pushed aside, and centered myself again, reaching out to the gathered, scenting and searching. I caught a bit of magery not my own. It was earth magery, the gift of life and all things growing. It smelled warm and green, like sunlight on spring leaves. I turned my head, placing the scent, and saw
a brightness at the front, on the pew where many of those who had signed up to be speakers sat. I narrowed my concentration, focusing down on the left, on the man on the aisle seat. In a yellow pocket, Derek Culpepper carried a freshly charmed object. His fingers caressed it as I watched, his bones glowing with the power it pulsed into him.
The ache in my head expanded, as if I had stared too long at the sun, and I pulled my eyes away from Culpepper, knowing I should stop, but needing to scan the rest of the room.
I moved my senses to the other speakers, finding nothing of interest. Scanning the seats behind the developer, I stopped, surprised. It wasn't a Darkness—not exactly—more like a phantom of a shadow overlaying an aura. The shadow shifted lazily back and forth, as if searching to gain entrance through the aura into the body and soul beneath, but not in a hurry to do so. It danced over the woman in a slow waltz of menace. I blinked, recognizing Jane Hilton. She was scowling, her eyes fixed on Derek Culpepper. I held my scan on her a long moment, considering. Was she under threat by a Darkness? Flirting with a Power, hoping for some gain? Had she been involved in Lucas' kidnapping? Bargained with a Darkness, hoping to save him?
A stab of pain pulled me back from the scan. With the last moments of power, feeling the drain on the bear amulet, I raced my eyes over the remaining crowd. A second shadow hovered over the pew to my right, near the tiny old woman who spoke while she walked, but to her side. I bent forward and craned my neck.
The scan snapped off with a blinding flash and a spear of agony right in the center of my head. I gasped and crumpled, and Audric pushed me into my seat before I fell into the aisle and had to claim womanly vapors or some such excuse.
I lay my head against the pew and Audric released my wrist to slide his massive arm around my shoulders, cradling me. Tears sprang to my eyes with the pain and with the knowledge of what I had seen just as the scan failed. Maria. Sitting beside Elder Culpepper. Maria, polluted with Darkness.
