Fire in the Mist (12 page)

Then the feelings were gone, and she laughed at herself. The "wilderness" could cover no more than a few hundred square
estas
. Her sudden flight of fancy had to be nothing more than her sensing the incongruity of an untended stand of trees in the midst of a city manicured to within a fingers' breadth of hysteria.

She relaxed and enjoyed the solitude. There was no one visible. Not on the lake, not in the woods—nowhere. The noises of the city were still audible, but Faia found she could block them out. She concentrated on the tiny susurration of water against the rock, and the chirp of birds, and the lazy drone of insects.

Sunlight warmed the boulder and slanted across her exposed face. She rolled over to lay on her back, and pulled out the rede-flute. Closing her eyes against the glare, she put the flute to her lips and tried a few notes. They carried softly across the water, and picked up echoes from backwaters of the lake.

She played the "Shepherd's Lullaby"—slow, measured, soothing—and then worked variations on it, liking the harmonies of the echoes the water reflected back to her.

The ball of pain she had carried around inside of herself since Bright shifted, and slightly loosened its grip. She sat up, realizing that she felt good. She wished she could make the feeling last. She centered herself, and brought up the circle of earth-energy, and let it move from the rock through her and back into the rock. She changed her music, into the intricate instrumental for "Lady Send the Sunshine." She sang the words in her mind as she played.

On the Wheel of
Life I ride,
Circle round from
Birth to death.
Choose my spoke and
Live my life,
Glad for times of sunshine.
Lady shears and
Lady cards;
Lady spins and
Lady dyes.
Lady weaves our
Lives to cloth and
Lady sends the sunshine.
For the moment
I rejoice,
Whatever the
Moment brings.
Cry for sorrow,
Laugh for joy for—
Sometimes I have sunshine.
Lady shears and
Lady cards;
Lady spins and
Lady dyes.
Lady weaves our
Lives to cloth and
Lady sends the sunshine.
I have known the
Pain of birth;
I will know the
Pain of death.
Days between are
Mine to cherish—
Storm and snow and sunshine.
Lady shears and
Lady cards;
Lady spins and
Lady dyes.
Lady weaves our
Lives to cloth and
Lady sends the sunshine.

When she concluded the music, she sat motionless, eyes closed, letting the energy she'd built flow through her.

I am where I need to be
, she told herself.
And I can be miserable here, or contented—but I cannot go back to Bright, and I have nowhere else. So I might as well be happy.

And indeed, she felt happy. Or, if not exactly happy, then free at last of the dark burden of Bright's annihilation.

The sound of bells drifted across the water—deep, rich peals that signaled this first major event of the campus day. As those bells rang, others from across the city began to clamor, too.

As Medwind Song had explained to her the day before, this was the signal of rising time. In the dorm, the rest of the students would be opening their eyes, dragging out of their beds, and readying themselves for
antis
, and then for morning classes. Faia sighed. The bells meant that in a few more minutes, she would have to leave her tranquil hideaway. She would have to go back and face yesterday's mocking students and yesterday's displeased instructors and the unknown and terrifying ordeals of classes.

So it is, so it must be.
When the next bells rang, she would go back. Until then, she had no intention of leaving her protected circle.

She played the rede-flute, eyes closed, until the peculiar sensation of being watched drove her music to a faltering halt. Skin prickling, she opened her eyes—and froze. The music had drawn an audience that rested, almost submerged, in the lake, and stared at her with winsome brown eyes.

Otters?

They appeared to be. Blunt-snouted and whisker-faced, they floated in the shadow of an overhanging willow. She counted seven of them.

They were scattered along the bank, up against huge, gnarled roots and low-hanging branches. She measured them against the monstrous, ancient willow, and rubbed her eyes with confusion.
They must be enormous! But they cannot be as big as they appear. I have misjudged the size of the tree—otherwise the beasts would be as long as a tall man.

Deceptive, those distances—and that had to mean that the lake was smaller than it seemed, too.
A miniature dark forest—the illusion of untamed wilderness—and I will bet that means that this lake is just like the rest of the campus and the city. Artistically planned to just the right, safe scale, manicured and trained to be a play forest.
She felt somehow betrayed. Ariss had seemed friendlier when she thought that there were a few places uncontrolled by people.

There were still the otters, however. She had loved the antics of the little beasts since she was a tiny child. She watched them watching her. Then, recalling games she had played with the highland otters around Bright, she whistled a few notes, then played a brief trill with the rede-flute. The trill imitated as closely as she could the rolling speech of the creatures. Immediately, one of the otters chirped back, its deep contralto warble an odd mockery of the normal soprano call. The beast swam out of the shadow in her direction, while the other six hung back, watching.

She was forced to upwardly revise the scale of the tree and the lake. The "otter" swimming towards her was exactly as huge as her first seemingly impossible estimates had made it.
Mother of us all! How can that be?
she wondered.

She longed to stay and lure the creature closer—but the bells began to ring for
antis
, and she had missed
nondes
the night before. She was starved.

Maybe they will still be here after classes. I shall come back and look for them then.

With real regret, she grounded her shields and turned her back on the swimming otter to hurry toward the Greathall.

Even before the first bells rang, Medwind Song was up and preparing for the day. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and pulled a gold-and-bone ornament from a rack that rested on her dressing table. She fitted the pin through the hole in her left nostril and surveyed the result.

This morning she only vaguely resembled the Daane University instructor she'd so obviously been the day before. Gone was the bright red instructor's uniform, exchanged for a brilliantly colored and precisely patterned Huong-tribe
staarne
. The tribal costume wrapped at wrists and waist and flowed in sweeping folds to mid-thigh. Under it, blue-dyed leather Huong breeches met curl-toed, quilted boots. Gone was her plain, straight hair style, replaced by myriad braids woven into a midnight-black crest that ran from the top of her head to the nape of her neck. Her deep blue eyes were lined by black
esca
, in the Huong-sacred cat-pattern of the senior magician. And now the curving insignia of the Huong-revered
sslis
dangled from her left nostril.

It was this last item that especially drove the Mottemage crazy. The gold-and-bone nose ornament was the sort of barbaric flourish Rakell tried to suppress in her university. The Mottemage said she was striving for unity among her students and professors; Medwind Song thought she was actually trying to achieve homogeneity. Medwind didn't approve of homogeneity.

The instructor listened to the first bells ring across the city and grinned at herself in the mirror. She decided to sit next to Rakell during
antis
to see if she could give the administrator a bad case of indigestion. If she could, it would be sweet revenge for Rakell's insistence that she wear the idiotic red school suit during her search for Faia.

She padded down the spiraling tower steps three at a time, hoping to get to the Greathall before the call to
antis
rang—there might, after all, be an extra sweetroll for her if she was early—passing other, correctly garbed instructors, who apparently had the same plan in mind. They saw her battle dress and gave her knowing smiles as she sailed by.

"Rakell annoy you again, Med?" one called, and laughed.

"Just a little," Medwind admitted. "If she annoyed me a lot, Thea, I could do much better than this."

"Skyclad at High Nonce?"

The barbarian instructor snorted at the idea. "Nothing of the sort. I'd just teach Flynn to mis-play the violitto. I've heard that cat sing—he's tone-deaf as hell."

"Remind me never to make you angry at me! Still, giving Flynn hands wasn't her best idea, either," the other woman agreed. "If that lunatic cat starts playing bad music, it will be her own fault."

The stairwell filled with chuckles.

Medwind continued her headlong bounding down the steps.

Without warning, a wave of blinding pain caught her between the eyes and sent her staggering against the wall. She missed her footing and fell heavily down several steps before hitting the landing. She was conscious of the frightened, inarticulate cries of her colleagues. From all around her, groans and sobs echoed against the cold stone. Red light pounded through her tightly shut eyes, and the scent of blood and fear assailed her nostrils. She was aware of an alien elation—of sheer delight at the misery she sensed. Medwind's breath came fast and sharp, and her fingernails dug into her palms as she willed the torture to stop.

The horror surrounded her and suspended her inside its timeless, eternal self—
It has always been this way, and will always be
, she thought—and abruptly, the horror and its attendant thought were gone.

Silence roared in on heavy feet to fill Medwind's overloaded consciousness. She opened her eyes, and saw nothing but brilliant, awful white. Scent vanished, and sensation with it. Medwind felt she'd been transmuted into bodiless light, as if she were on the point of vanishing.

Then the absence of sensation disappeared too, and she was aware of the throb of a twisted ankle and the taste of blood from her bitten lip, and of aches from arms and knees and back that had careened against stone. She was back in the stairwell with the rest of the instructors, who were beginning to shake themselves and move around. She met their eyes, and saw only stunned disbelief, and terror, and Üxwbewilderment.

Litthea Terasdotte, a city-born, civilized instructor—well-dressed, petite, black-eyed, and blonde—bit her lip and glanced at Medwind. "What happened?"

Medwind sat on the step and rubbed at her throbbing ankle. "Don't have any idea, Thea. Nothing like that where I come from—not ever."

Thea nodded. "Nor here. That was bad."

"Bad—intentionally crazy. Evil."

"Evil. Yes, definitely evil. But it's gone now."

Medwind felt a thrill along her nerves, and in the pit of her stomach something lurched. From the back of her mind, she felt echoes of the thing as it laughed. She shivered involuntarily, and shook her head. "Not gone. Just waiting, I think."

Faia sat in the Greathall, listening to spoons clicking on bowls and teeth, and the shuffle of leather soles on stone, and the occasional rustle of a cloth-covered rump shifting uncomfortably on a hard wooden trestle. All around her, eyes fixed on plates, fingers stirred food listlessly, voices were mute.

Suddenly, there was a clatter from the front of the hall, and heads lifted dully. Faia turned to look too, and saw a barbarian in exotic attire beating on an empty wooden mug with a spoon. It was not until the barbarian began to speak that she recognized the woman as Medwind Song, the tall, red-garbed instructor who had brought her to the university, then stuck her with Yaji.

Song shifted from one foot to the other, then cleared her throat.

"I know you felt the disturbance this morning before
antis
—I understand that all of you are upset."

Disturbance?
Faia wondered.
What sort of disturbance?

"I just wanted you to know that the Mottemage herself is tracking down the source of the Sending. She feels that the mindscream was a random impulse, and was not directed at us—that it was, most likely, an accidental projection from some young woman who suddenly opened up to her
getlingself
, and was overwhelmed and frightened by the experience. None of us feel that you have anything to worry about—and we think we will be able to find the person responsible and bring her under control so that this won't happen again. Until then, please try not to let this incident disrupt your studies."

Getlingself... ,
Faia thought,
getlingself... What by-the-Lady could that be?

The instructor returned to her seat, and the students resumed eating. The silence had been broken, though, and gradually, they began to talk in whispers. The noise level in the Greathall rose.

Yaji, sitting opposite Faia and determinedly ignoring her, turned to the girl sitting to her left and said, "I don't believe what Song said for an instant. Do you?"

The other girl tried to pretend Yaji was not speaking to her, Faia noticed. Then she changed her mind and shrugged. "I guess I might. I remember when I turned twelve and my
getlingself
woke up one day. I was sick, and wanted water so badly—and I wanted it so hard the water came to me. It scared the life half out of me."

Getlingself... Lady's Gifts,
Faia decided.
Why couldn't they just
say
Lady's Gifts?

"Of course it did," Yaji agreed. "My question is, did it scare the life half out of everyone else in the city at the same time?"

"Well..."

"No," Yaji interrupted. "It didn't, of course. So that story they're giving us to keep us quiet and happy is just that. A story."

Faia could not suppress her curiosity any longer. "What are you talking about? What happened this morning?"

Yaji's eyes riveted on hers, and other girls along the table turned and stared.

"What do you mean, what happened?! Didn't you feel that awful mindscream this morning? That torture?" Yaji's voice was shrill enough that other students down the table and from several other tables turned to see what was going on.