C. S. Friedman - Magister 01, page 36
The girl was clean in the way that peasants were clean when they expected to be in good company: hair washed, face scrubbed, hands pink and raw, but with telltale lines of ingrained dirt any place that water did not easily reach. Had Kamala looked like that once? A lump caught in her throat as she saw the girl’s fingernails, each with a thin line of dirt tucked down tight against the flesh, where a casual washing could not easily reach. No doubt she thought herself truly clean. Kamala had once, when she had achieved such a state.
The girl came hesitantly into the great room, like a deer might enter an unfamiliar meadow, watching on all sides for predators. Yet unlike a deer she would not run, Kamala knew that. She had come to meet the wolves.
Go back! she thought to her. Unable to move or even speak, simply staring at her in pained empathy. There is nothing here worth what this will cost you. Trust me!
The girl was wearing a simple linen gown; it was probably the finest thing she owned. A line of rings had been sewn down both sides and a cord laced through them so that, by drawing it tightly, she might impose a more adult curve upon her waist. It was an unnatural illusion on so young a child, but it brought her the notice she desired. Several of the men turned to watch her as she threaded her way through their company, and the inn’s owner, normally so protective of his patrons, kept his distance as she approached, having not yet decided if she was a creature to be welcomed or expelled.
Finally she came to where all could see her, and in a voice that seemed surprisingly steady to Kamala (but how one struggled to sound fearless, when one was most afraid!) “I am looking for Master Beltorres, please.”
Some of the men laughed and some of the whores whispered, but a bearded man in an eastern-style doublet looked up at her words. “I am Beltorres. Who and what are you?”
The girl bit her lip as she curtseyed. Pain lanced through Kamala’s heart as she watched the motion. Had she looked this awkward herself when she had tried to impress Ethanus, aping noble mannerisms that so obviously did not come naturally to her?
“I am called Selti, sir, if it please you.” Again the awkward curtsey. “I have a message for you from Master Hurara.” She took a piece of carefully folded vellum out of her sleeve and offered it to him. With a smile he took it from her, brushing against her hand briefly but suggestively as he did so. The girl blushed but smiled, and did not back away. The lump in Kamala’s throat turned to a burning ember. She could feel the power inside her, angry and indignant, urging her to act in the girl’s defense. This is her moment, she told it. Her choice to make, not mine. The power was not convinced, and it roiled molten in her gut. She knew what the girl intended. She could smell it on her. She also knew where it would lead.
“Well then,” Beltorres grunted. “I suppose I may have to visit the harbor after all.” With a hearty laugh he threw the paper into the fire. “Business is as business does, eh?” He grinned at the girl; it was the kind of exC. 8. JFriecjman pression one might see on a hungry hyena. “Stay about a bit, I may want to send an answer back.”
Kamala drew in a sharp breath as one of the whores reached out for the girl, laughing softly as she did so. How many times had she looked back on her own life, wondering what single moment she could have changed to make it into something different? This was the girl’s moment. Clearly she knew it, too. Kamala could see it in her eyes. She could smell it in the room’s thick air, the fear of a girl not yet past the threshold of womanhood, the perfumed amusement of whores surrounding her, and the eager sweat of the men watching… it was all she could do to keep hold of the power inside her. Gods alone knew if she released it now it might do what it had done in the streets of Gansang, only ten times worse. Not because killing these men was qualitatively worse than killing a handful of ruffians, but because these men were far more likely to be avenged.
But she wanted to kill them. She really did. She wanted to kill any man that would put his hands upon a child, whether she was willing or not. And with him any woman that would draw such a girl down into a circle of whores, as these were now doing, plucking at her coarse linen dress and the body beneath with whispered laughter as one of the men reached over to feel for himself what was beneath the homespun packaging—and the girl stared at them in a daze, trembling, wanting their favor and the coin that might come of it but too young to know how to handle such attention.
“Let her go.”
The words came from behind her, shattering her mood like glass. Kamala turned about just in time to see the owner of the voice approaching. He was a young man dressed in a woodsman’s costume, simple in cut, but made of the kind of quality cloth only the richest men could afford. He was blond and fair-skinned and passably handsome, with piercing blue eyes that shone like ice as he stared at the tableau before him. They were all frozen now, looking back at him, merchants and mercenary captains and whores and serving girls and the one little girl in the center of it all, her face now leached of all color.
“Let her go,” he repeated.
The one man who had been reaching out toward the girl paused in his motion, but did not withdraw. “This is not your business.”
“It is now. Let her go.”
The man spread his hands, palms upwards, and grinned. “No one has put shackles on her. Or forced her to join us in the first place.” He looked at the girl. “You are here of your own will, yes?”
Kamala held her breath. At that age, she remembered, the only way one could deal with some things was by denying they were happening. By asking the girl to acknowledge her situation in words, to give him permission to use her as a whore, this man had just laid waste to all her defenses.
Kamala saw the girl begin to tremble. For all the accustomed hardness of her heart, it was more than she could handle. But the blond stranger moved again before she could act, crossing in front of her and spoiling her view of the group. Breath held, she watched as he waded into the midst of the painted women, reaching out to the child’s arm and pulling her out from among them. A couple of the men jumped angrily to their feet and the one that had been fondling the girl cursed loudly. But the stranger stared them down. There was fury in his eyes, and death, and in the end none of the pampered crowd had the courage to test him.
Kamala released her breath in a long, soft hiss as he passed by her again, taking the child with him. While all the eyes of the place were upon him she gathered the shadows of the room about her so that she might follow him unobserved. She also conjured a vague cloud of foreboding to gather by the door itself, and to prevent the men inside the inn from choosing to do the same. Simple spells of little substance, but sometimes those were enough.
By the time she left the inn the stranger had gone some distance from it, and had just released the girl from his grasp. She looked more angry than afraid right now, and was staring at him with angry, hollow eyes.
“Go home,” he was saying. “This kind of place is not for you.”
But she didn’t move. The small eyes were filled with tears. “They would have paid for me,” she protested. The words were voiced in a tone of desperation that twisted like a knife in Kamala’s gut. It seemed to have a similar affect upon the stranger. For a moment he shut his eyes, and his jaw clenched visibly as he struggled to rein in his emotions. “You want to be paid?” he said. “Is that the only problem? You weren’t paid? Here.” He fumbled for his purse. “Here. I’m paying for you. Is that good enough?” He spilled out a handful of coins into his palm and held it out to her; his hand was trembling. “Take it,” he urged, and when she still did not respond he cried out, “Take it all!”
He cast the money out from him, in the direction of the road. The girl stared at him for a moment, then ran to where the coins had fallen and got down on her hands and knees to gather them up. He turned from her, too pained to watch. Kamala saw him waver slightly as he did so, and he reached out to a nearby tree to steady himself. So he was not nearly as strong as he seemed. That was interesting. The scene in the great room must have been a bluff, albeit a fierce one. The man Kamala was looking at now could not hold his own in a brawl against so many. Which spoke eloquently for his courage in confronting them, she thought. Or else his lunacy.
She waited until the girl had collected her prize and run off toward the road to Bandoa, then stepped quietly out of the shadows. She waited until the stranger saw her there before speaking. It was a long moment of waiting, for his thoughts were clearly elsewhere.
When at last he noticed her standing there she asked him quietly, “Why did you do that?”
“Do what? With the child?”
She nodded.
He suddenly looked very weary. “What business is it of yours, boy?”
“Few men care about such things.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. It was almost a smile. “Well then, I suppose I am not like most men.”
Kamala took a few steps closer. “You can’t help her, you know. She will just come back here tomorrow. Or find another place like it.”
The truth of her words seemed to settle like a weight upon his shoulders. He sighed heavily. “I know. The words of one man mean very little in this world, don’t they?”
Something about the tone of his voice made Kamala catch her breath. He is accustomed to his words having more weight than this, she thought. Accustomed to having the power to change things.
Intrigued, she reached out to touch the fabric of his sleeve. He looked at her curiously but did not move away. The fabric was fine and smooth to the touch, such as only master weavers could produce, and clinging to it were echoes of its owner’s past history. She tasted status, wealth, and a fierce independence. He has argued with someone in authority while wearing this, she observed. Often. Beyond that were more subtle traces, unfamiliar to her, that she had to work to unravel. When she finally realized their source, the breath caught in her throat. Not even Ravi’s possessions had hinted at such a birthright of authority. There was only one possible explanation for it, and that one so outlandish, given the circumstances, she was hard pressed to believe it.
“You are not what you seem,” she said at last.
“Nor you,” he said quietly. He had been studying her while she did him, she realized. And she had been too preoccupied to take her usual precautions. Her heart skipped a beat as he reached up to the woolen cap she wore, but she made no move to stop him. He removed it. Wild red hair fell out into a fiery cloud about her face, not the long feminine locks he had expected, perhaps, but still not a boy’s style by any means.
“Now perhaps it is my turn for questions,” he said. “I shall begin with… what gives you such interest in the girl’s fate?” When she did not answer he said, “On the other hand, a woman traveling in boy’s attire… shall I guess?
She flushed. It was something she had never done in response to any man other than Ethanus, and she raged at herself for letting her guard down that much. “Guessing is a dangerous pastime.”
“Is it?” The blue eyes were no longer icy, but warm, like a mountain lake in summer. “The deer in the forest that has never known man does not fear the crossbow. While the one that has been hunted before, and wounded, warns young ones to flee at the first sign of human presence.” Again a faint smile flickered across his lips; not a leering expression, or a cruel one, but oddly compassionate. “Am I wrong?”
For a moment she was speechless. “Are you likening me to a deer?”
“A wolf, then.” He chuckled. “The observation is still valid, yes? Even though in the latter case the mother would also rip out the throat of anyone trying to hunt her.”
Regaining something of her composure, she raised an eyebrow. “Am I a deer then, or a wolf? Make up your mind.”
“Women can be both at once.” He grinned. “That is why men go mad trying to understand them.”
She was about to respond when the door to the inn swung open. She saw the stranger’s expression harden and she turned around quickly to see what new trouble was looming.
It was the owner of the place. He looked about himself nervously, as if expecting trouble, which at least confirmed that her spell was working. In one hand he held a travel pack, woolen blankets bound around a bundle of supplies that had clearly been hurriedly and inexpertly tied; in the other was a small leather purse.
He glared at the stranger, then cleared his throat and spat upon the ground. “I think it best you leave now.” He hefted the bundle and threw it toward them; it raised a small cloud of dust as it fell to the ground just short of the blond man’s feet. “I pride myself on maintaining a peaceful establishment; remember that if you come here again in the future.” He threw the purse to him as well, and this time it made the distance. “Your money, minus last night’s room and board. And a small commission for my trouble this afternoon.”
His eyes narrowed in warning as he glanced at Kamala, then he went back inside the inn. The traveler hefted the purse in his hand as the door slammed shut, as if remarking upon its light weight. “I suppose it is just as well I have this back, given that I threw most of what I had at that girl.” He looked at Kamala. “I do hope I haven’t gotten you in trouble here.”
She shrugged. “If so, I can deal with it.” The owner could not fail to offer her hospitality, with her sorcery wrapped around his heart, any more than the sun could fail to rise in the morning. But she was not about to tell him that.
“My name is Talesin,” he offered.
She mused upon that for a moment, wondering just how much she wished to reveal to him, then said, “I am called Kovan.”
“A boy’s name.”
She took her cap back from him and put it back on, tucking her wild red hair back into it. “Well, I am a boy, yes?”
His blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight. “And what would you call yourself if you masqueraded as a girl, Kovan?”
She hesitated. The open warmth of his manner was hard to resist, but not so intoxicating that she forgot the position she was in. Magisters were hunting her, probably the nobles of Gansang were as well, and then there were her dreams to consider. Might this pleasant young man, so far out of his accustomed noble element, perhaps connected to one of those forces? It was a chilling thought.
“I cannot decide,” she said, masking her unease with a flirtatious tone. “Choose something for me, Talesin.”
“Well, then.” He made a show of considering the question. While he did so, she reached out with a tendril of sorcery to take the measure of his soul. If he had secrets she would know them soon enough.
But the moment she touched him she knew that something was wrong. It was not just that there was sorcery wrapped around him like a cocoon, though there was. Men of rank often had Magisters’ spells cast upon them for one purpose or another, and the fact that this man had one only confirmed her suspicions about his true social station. But beneath that… beneath that was a soul like nothing she had ever known before. Touching it with her power was like grasping hot embers. The moment she made contact with him a searing magical heat shot up her arm and into her flesh, and she could no more analyze it in that moment than she could have kept her hand in a blazing fire to count the embers.
It took every ounce of strength in her soul to keep her surprise from showing on her face, and to fight the instinct to step back from him. Was his soulfire so much stronger than that of other men? Or was it simply so unfettered that it roared like wildfire along any magical conduit she gave it? In all her years with Ethanus he had never even hinted at such a phenomenon. She did not know what to make of it.
“Lianna,” he said, bringing her back to the present moment. “In the land of my ancestors is it the name of a goddess of great beauty, with a spirit like fire. Her touch shatters the ice on the great rivers, so that spring can come again. Will you bear that name, when you pretend to be a woman?”
She managed to smile calmly, though her heart was pounding fiercely. “A fine name. I will try to do it justice.” Gently she drew her hand from his grasp; his warm fingers were like velvet to her touch.
“So where are you from, most lovely pretender?” His tone was casual, but she sensed with instinctive certainty the question was anything but that. “If you do not wish to share your origins, then perhaps… tales of recent travels?” The answer mattered to him, she realized. It mattered very much.
He is connected to my nightmares somehow. He must be. The thought chilled her, especially as she was afraid to try to read him again with sorcery. Instead she reached out with a tendril of power—carefully, this time, oh so carefully—and wound the strands of a new spell about him. Not trying to break through the spells that were already there, simply adding one more to the cocoon. If you are searching for someone, I am not her.
If you seek the answer to a mystery, I will not provide it. It was a simple safeguard, but it would suffice. Unless he was a Magister himself he would not be able to think past it… and she knew from the touch of his soul that he was not that. Magisters were chill in their soul’s essence, more like a corpse than the fire of a living man. Stolen life might fuel a Magister’s power, but it could not warm the ice which was at his core.
Once that precaution was taken, she found she could breathe again.
What are you? she wondered. Born to wealth but lacking more than a handful of coins, born to power but traveling like a mendicant, born to a bloodline of great renown yet unwilling to use your own name for fear it would be recognized … or am I misreading all those signs? Are you something else entirely, that sorcery has obscured?
She wished she dared use her power to investigate the matter. But she feared establishing any sorcerous contact that would make her vulnerable to his heat again. Not because she thought it would hurt her. It was clearly not a malign power. But because even the memory of it now stirred a strange longing in her, almost a hunger, and that frightened her. This was surely what a moth must feel like, she thought, just before it cast itself into a flame. Fluttering about the dancing light, feeling that blissful warmth upon its wings, an ecstasy of heat… and then, suddenly, unexpectedly, consumed.
