Fire in the Mist (30 page)

And from there to a meeting between several of Sahedre's "insignificant little nobodies," their identities lost long ago in the annals of history, as they discovered the truth about Sahedre and her Fendles. By this time, only six Fendles survived—and, of course, their creator, the Lady Sahedre, daughter of Onos.

Medwind watched scenes of their capture and the subsequent tribunal with exhaustion. The Fendles were consigned to the hell of Timehold, and Sahedre, in a fitting twist, was first transformed into another Fendle, then imprisoned with them.

The Timerope pulled her into the depths of the Timewaters one final time, and sent her careening headfirst into the swirling maze of possibilities, following the fragile line of overstretched, glowing thread that was all that could guide her back to her life.

Sahedre released a tremendous bolt of energy into the Mottemage's back, but the energy grounded in the filly on which the Mottemage had been working. The little animal took the brunt of the blast, twitched once and fell dead. The older woman toppled into the hay, while six of the seven Fendles launched themselves at her, teeth bared.

"Stop," Sahedre said, and the Fendles froze in place, still hissing and snarling.

The Mottemage rolled onto her back, stunned and held down by Sahedre's spell. She stared at the woman who towered over her, and whispered, "Why? Why, Faia?"

"Not Faia," Sahedre corrected. "I would that you knew the shaper of your death. Mistake me not for the ignorant child whose body I wear. I am Sahedre Onosdotte, four centuries ago a mage in these very halls. You would know of me as the Wisewoman. I have returned from hell and beyond to reclaim my place and my power, and as I do not think you would willing give me my rightful honor, I must kill you." She smiled slowly as she looked down on her captive. "Such a pity, too. You do pretty work."

Faia sensed a weakness in Sahedre's control of the hill girl's body. The Wisewoman's attention was fixed firmly on the Mottemage. Faia stretched as best she was able, reaching to reoccupy her own form, and drew what energy she could reach to herself. She released the energy in a formed bolt—a levinbolt—that she shot straight into the
persona
of Sahedre with a mental scream of rage. She simultaneously struggled to overthrow the Wisewoman—to force Sahedre out of her mind and her body.

Faia had access to almost no power at all, but Sahedre had been lulled into confidence by Faia's long quiet. The sudden mental howling and the internal warfare cost her the control of the spell that bound the Mottemage. The Mottemage leapt to her feet and shielded herself, and readied an attack against the ancient Wisewoman. Then she paused, an expression of doubt on her face.

Faia read the doubt, and realized her superior knew she was fighting Sahedre Onosdotte, but saw only the body of another student—Faia's body.

:Kill us!:
Faia pleaded, directing her terrified mindshouts at the Mottemage.
:This is all my fault, and I cannot stop her! Kill us, Mottemage!:

"Gods," the Mottemage whispered, "Faia's still alive in there."

Sahedre took advantage of Faia's sudden distraction. She shielded herself, hurled up a mental wall around Faia, then faced down the Mottemage. "Yes, but not for much longer, I think. She annoys me. But later I will deal with her. Now you will die."

"My shield is a good as yours."

"Irrelevant," the Wisewoman whispered. She smiled at the Fendles. "Attack," she told them.

All but the smallest of the Fendles—which hid in a corner and mewled—were on the old woman in an instant, their teeth and claws rending and tearing. Sahedre battered at the Mottemage's shield at the same time. Faia suspected the Mottemage would not long survive the combination of mundane and magical attacks.

Then a tiny, pale shape launched itself from the rafters, and with a yowl of rage, charged the Fendles. Flynn, barn nail in stubby-fingered paw, declared war on the big beasts. The cat leapt on the back of one Fendle and sank his teeth into its ear and stabbed his nail into its eye. The giant beast screamed and slashed at him with its claws; he leapt off and darted and lunged, avoiding its attack with near-impossible grace.

To Yaji, huddled in the corner, the arrival of the screeching cat was a catalyst. If a tiny cat could attack creatures many times its size, how could she cower and hide? She leapt on the Fendle Flynn had blinded, and sank her teeth into its throat. She snapped her head back and forth, hanging on in spite of everything the other beast could do, and did not let go until her enemy was limp and lifeless. Then she sought out another Fendle to attack.

To the Mottemage, the arrival of unexpected reinforcements was a lifesaver. Relieved for an instant of the harrying, she released a successful levinbolt against Sahedre.

Faia felt the levinbolt's searing pain, and her eyes blurred briefly. She struggled to wrest her body from Sahedre's control, but the weakness from the Mottemage's attack affected her as much as it did the usurper. As she regained strength, so did Sahedre.

Flynn, meanwhile, buried his nail to the hilt in the eye of a third Fendle, and the beast writhed in the hay, trying to dislodge the foreign body. Sahedre gestured at him and snarled, "Stop, cat!"

The cat glanced at her with contempt and followed up his attack of the downed Fendle. The Fendle's nose spurted blood, and it hissed and struck at the cat. Flynn leapt gracefully out of the way, and his Fendle ally darted in to close with the injured beast.

Forgot bedamned cats were immune to mind-control,
Sahedre thought.
Fendles will have to fight their own battles.
She noticed the little Fendle, Yaji, attacking her other fighters, though, and pointed at her.

:You—stop.:

Yaji froze in mid-leap and toppled into the hay. She lay unblinking while the fight stormed around and over her.

Rakell hurled another barrage of energy at Sahedre. Faia felt Sahedre's shield buckle again, and cheered.

Then one Fendle ripped through the tendon's at the back of the Mottemage's leg, and the older woman collapsed onto the blood-drenched straw.

Flynn, hissing and spitting from the back of the Fendle that had downed the Mottemage, failed to notice his third victim suddenly right itself and lurch at him from behind a mound of straw. He dodged as soon as he saw it coming, but he wasn't fast enough. His shoulder and side came away bloody. He screeched and dug his claws into that Fendle's remaining eye. The Fendle pinned him, and with one swipe of its claws, raked him open from throat to tail. Flynn twitched and flopped in the straw at the Mottemage's side, then lay still.

"Flynn!" Rakell croaked. The cat's destruction cost her what concentration she had left. The surviving Fendles felt the breach of her shields and were instantly at her throat.

Sahedre got in one good blow, and then a second. Rakell's struggles to keep off the attacking Fendles grew weaker.

:The Fendles are human!:
Faia mindscreamed at the Mottemage.
:If you change them back to their true forms, they die!:

The Mottemage looked surprised, and with the energy that remained to her, she struck at the Fendle nearest her. With an electrifying scream, it metamorphosed into human shape. The woman, returned to her own body, aged and died as horribly as had the human body Sahedre once wore. The Mottemage reached for another, and the mob of Fendles backed off.

The Mottemage propped herself up in the straw and glared at Sahedre. Weakened and bleeding, she still erected a tenable shield around herself—and loosed one oddly formed, startlingly accurate levinbolt that took Sahedre by surprise.

The Wisewoman toppled—and as quickly as she fell, the surviving Fendles turned traitor and attacked their ancient master, teeth bared, lead by Yaji, whose stop-spell had vanished with Sahedre's power.

Sahedre screamed and struggled ineffectually. Then she yelled, "I die! Oh, I die!" The melee ceased.

From under the layer of furry, biting bodies came the weak voice of the hill girl. "Mottemage, help me! Sahedre is gone!"

Faia lay on her back in the red-stained straw, body battered and bleeding, throat torn open, wide-eyed and helpless-looking. The Fendles backed away, and the Mottemage lowered her shields and bent down to touch her student.

Faia, still pinioned inside Sahedre's cage, tried to mindscream
:It is a trap!:
but Sahedre, prepared this time, skillfully muffled the thoughtcall.

Then the supine Wisewoman laughed and gestured into the air. The lines her finger traced were duplicated in blood on the Mottemage's face, then down the older woman's neck and chest. Flesh puckered and peeled; arteries spurted and soaked the straw and the dirt-packed floor.

:No, damn you, no!:
Faia mindscreamed at the Wisewoman—to no avail.

Faia struggled for control of her body—tried to shut out the Mottemage's screams—tried not to see her collapse. When Sahedre began her butchery on the suddenly defenseless and dying woman, Faia broke free of the Wisewoman's control with one last mindshout to the universe at large.

:Help her, someone!:

Then, unable to face her own powerlessness, and unwilling to watch the Mottemage's assured death, she released her grip on her senses, and pulled into the dark, safe loneliness of her mind.

The dark, sleek furry form of a single Fendle streaked out of the stables, across the road, across the greensward, and straight into the lake. It dove and shot like an underwater bolt for the far shore, then swam along that shore to the cove furthest from humanity. There it huddled in the water under the overhanging trees and cried.

I'll never go back
, Yaji wailed.
I'll never be able to go back! I'll have to hide here for the rest of my life.
 

What is going to happen to me?
 

MEDWIND struggled through the roaring current, swimming furiously after the pale yellow line of the contracting Timerope. She became trapped in an eddy and was thrown toward the dark mouth of an alternate stream. The Timerope bent, and she could see that it would break off if she fell past the point of the "island" of darkness that marked the bifurcation of the streams. She fought valiantly and corrected her course, only to be pulled toward yet another wrong turn.

I'm too too far from home. Most of the four hundred years of tangled, branching Timeriver is still ahead of me. My arms feel like lead, my breath won't come, and my brain insists I'm going to drown in this awful stuff. This—
she realized with despair
—this is why half of the Timeriders never come back.

She yearned for a chance to stop and catch her breath, but the legends and the reports of surviving Timeriders agreed that there was no way to pull out of the stream without breaking the rope.

All around her, the conversations of people long dead screamed and babbled. She found them even more disconcerting now that they were running in the proper direction. She dove through folk and events, trying not to see them, trying only to concentrate on the position of the riverbanks and the myriad tangles and crossings of the everbranching streams.

She fought on.

Somewhere, seemingly hours along, she began to develop a horror of getting the thick ooze of the Timeriver into her nose and mouth. She struggled to keep her head high, and her swimming worsened by another degree.

She had one hope. The closer she got to her destination, the thicker—and stronger—the Timerope got. It had been the thickness of a massive old oak when she left the Basin—only the thickness of a strand of finespun wool yarn by the time she'd reached Sahedre's past. Now, as she contended with the deafening roar and spuming Timeflows of a savage stretch of rapids, she noted the Timerope had attained the same girth as both of her thighs.

Bits and pieces of the history in which she swam began to look familiar. She placed herself about a hundred years in her past.
Three-fourths of the way back
, she told herself, elated.

Hope gave her strength, and she swam on.

The waters grew more placid, with fewer branchings. She had not realized how peaceful and uneventful the period preceding her life had been. She allowed herself to float in the river, attentive but relaxed, and let the Timerope drag her along.

The rope's girth continued to widen, and with a jolt she began to recognize events from her own early years in Ariss. She saw herself with Rakell, not yet the Mottemage, as her friend tutored her patiently, obviously hoping to change Medwind from a plains warrior to a cultured city-woman. She saw Rakell's succession to Mage-Ariss' fourth highest office, the Mottemagery of the University of Daane, and her own subsequent rise in stature in the Magerie.

The waters roughened, and multitudes of branches spread out in front of her again.

A sudden burst of images overtook her. There was Faia, and the leveling of Bright, and there, her runaway spell that freed the Fendles from captivity. There were the Fendles, murdering her students—she could see it plainly now—and planting the ring among the bodies. Faia on a rock, suddenly surrounded by Fendles—the water grew rougher, and Medwind struggled to stay above it and still see and hear what was happening—Faia, and one Fendle that became Sahedre for an instant, then died and crumbled to dust.

And Sahedre's voice coming from Faia's mouth. Sahedre gloating that she had overthrown Faia in the battle for control over Faia's body. Sahedre changing Yaji to a Fendle. Sahedre with the Fendles at her heel, in the stables, and Rakell and her damned cat Flynn and the Fendle Yaji fighting against the whole motley mob of them—fighting—

—and dying—

—and dead.

The massive Timerope convulsed and shriveled away to nothing, spewing Medwind out of the Timeriver and up into the waiting hands of her anchors.

Once out of the warm stream of Time, she shivered spasmodically. Then she sobbed and screamed to be let back into the River.

It was a bad moment for the sajes. Kirgen released his hold on the Timerope and stared with the rest of the sajes at the quivering, death-pale Timerider who lay helpless on the floor of the Basin. Medwind Song's breath came in ragged gasps, and her limbs twitched and jerked. She was obviously afraid of something, obviously grief-stricken by something—and obviously
changed
. Her face and body seemed younger, harder, more muscular. There was a feeling of depth and ancient knowledge to her that hadn't been there before. But those were subtle changes. The shocking alteration was one of appearance. Her hair, which when she left had been blue-black as ebonwood in starlight, was burned pure glowing silver by the river of Time. And her eyes, once the rich bottomless blue of autumn skies, were now the cerulean-white of ice... or moonstones. She had gone into Time a woman. She returned a raving, dying goddess.