Fire in the Mist (8 page)

The clouds startled Faia. She had always imagined them as dry and fluffy and warm—while they were, in fact, quite cold and wet. She could not see or feel or taste any difference between them and fog, actually, and she began to wonder if a difference existed. She discovered, too, that the world above the rainstorm was one of cold, brilliant light.

The sun had climbed from its place on the horizon to directly overhead when Medwind gave a signal. Abruptly they began to descend. Faia was once again battered by rain that stung her face and hands.

The travelers broke free of the clouds, and Faia saw an enormous city crowded onto a monstrous artificial hill built between towering cliffs and a huge bay. Surrounding the city was marsh, running along the base of the cliffs in both directions as far as her eyes could see. This was Ariss. And what an astonishing place it was. Faia had heard the word
city
before, but only at her first sight of the panorama below her did she begin to understand what it meant. Buildings piled on top of buildings to fill every inch of the raised ground; they spread from a massive pile of structures that lay at the city's center outward and downward in concentric circles. Walls defined the circles, and broad, white thoroughfares counterpointed them, running through walls and circles like spokes in a wheel. The whole metropolis was a giant mandala of towering white stone dotted with the green of parks and the blue of lakes and streams. And even though it was immense and terrifying, still Faia thought she had never seen anything more beautiful in her life.

As they drew nearer, she could overlook the walls—and the image of a city of white swiftly altered to that of a city of riotous color. Beneath the white walls and white buildings spread all the colors of imagination. Gaudy tents of red and green, gold and pink, purple and orange and brilliant blue filled the open marketplaces; rainbow pennants with fanciful devices flapped from windows and doorways; and the human occupants, in garb of colors and styles that defied description, scurried like overdressed ants through the broad, curving thoroughfares.

Her mount stiffened his wings into a glide and cruised toward the city's center at a gentle angle, following the lead of the other two wingmounts. The trio passed over line after line of walls; thousands of buildings lay beneath her, and more roads, that twisted and turned and doubled back until Faia doubted that she would ever have the courage to wander through those streets, lest she be lost forever. Unidentifiable and unlikely-seeming vehicles raced on the streets underneath her and soared through the air beside her—the drivers of the flying vehicles shouted and waved and cursed as the three wingmounts flew through their midst. Faia's stomach tightened from the tension and the strangeness of it all.

"Hold on tight now!" Medwind bellowed above the rush of the wind. "Landings can be rough!"

Just when I was beginning to think I liked this,
Faia thought dryly, and wrapped her arms around the wingmount's neck and locked her legs tightly against his belly.

The wingmounts began backwinging, bodies lurching wildly. All three came down stiff-legged in a white-fenced pasture within sight of a single, immense, gleaming white tower.

They bounced when they hit.

Faia paled as her own mount nearly threw her off while getting his feet under him. His legs windmilled, and he careened into the ground at a dead gallop, lurching twice more into the air before he finally pulled his wings in to his sides and slowed gradually to canter, then trot, then gentle walk. He carried Faia to the gate, and a large, well-kept stone barn.

Faia dismounted quickly, legs shaking. She seriously considered kissing the earth under her feet.

Lady of the Beasts—my thanks for safe arrival! Never, beloved Goddess, never give me reason to do that again!
she prayed.

The two city-women handed off the three wingmounts to a young stablegirl, who clucked her tongue at them and led them away to be cooled down and watered.

Medwind stretched, catlike, and grinned. "When the breeding program gives us one that can land without nearly crashing, then I'll believe wingmounts may become something more than a curiosity—or the Mottemage's personal fetish."

Jann laughed. "I'm sure every time I come in will be my last."

Medwind turned to Faia, and rubbed her hands together briskly. "So. Welcome to Ariss, known by those of us who aren't from here as 'The City of Fogs and Bogs.' You'll find out why all too soon." She chuckled. "We made it back in time to let you get cleaned up and still pick up midday meal from the Greathall if you hurry. Then we'll show you around campus, and get you lined up for testing tomorrow, and find you a roommate and a room. And we'll need to get your supplies together, too. I'll take a look at what you brought, so we can fill out the papers, and requisition the rest of what you need. I want you started in classes as soon as possible. After all, the sooner you get that power under control, the sooner the rest of us will be able to sleep again at night. But I'm ravenous—so let's stop by the bath house first, then eat."

Faia jammed her hands into the pockets of her breeches because she did not know what else to do with them. She wished that she had her staff with her. She could not have carried it on the wingmount—what would have happened to her had she fouled her mount's wings with it?—but she felt awkward now, standing without it. She shifted the weight of her pack, trying to get comfortable. Then she waited for the two women to lead her where they wanted her to go.

Medwind stood watching her. "Well—is that satisfactory?"

Faia bit her lip. "I did not realize we were pretending that I had a choice in any of this. But since you ask, yes, that is satisfactory."

Medwind looked startled, and an angry gleam lit Jann's eyes.

"The education you'll get here is worth a fortune, you ungrateful peon. Our own people work for years to pay for the training we have offered you for free. You ought to be thankful that we came and pulled you out of that little mud-hole country hamlet," Jann snarled. "That we went to the trouble to bring an ignorant peasant like you from the back country all the way to Ariss to teach you and train you—"

Medwind's face was a study in horror. Jann's fanatical loyalty to Daane University and all things related was legend, but Medwind wouldn't have credited her colleague with insanity. Not before this outburst, anyway. "Jann—" she whispered as she not-too-surreptitiously stepped on Jann's foot. "Think about this a minute."

Faia ignored Medwind, and stepped directly in front of Jann, so that she towered over the dainty red-haired beauty. Calmly, she crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Look, you shriveled, dry-dugged milk-cow, I did not ask to be here. I do not want to be here. You came and got me and made me come. I will be happy to return to a little 'mud-hole country village' any time you decide you do not want me here—but as long as I am here, let us not pretend that it is because you are doing me some great favor."

Jann backed up, her face dark and flushed. She glared at Medwind. "Did you hear what she said?!" she shrieked.

Medwind looked at her fellow instructor with an expression that suggested the woman had abruptly sprouted several extra heads. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders, and nodded. "Mmm-hmm."

Jann's voice became even shriller. "Aren't you going to do something about it?!"

Medwind always found Jann funny when she lost her temper. She arched one eyebrow and bit back a smile. "No," she said, after giving the matter considerable thought. "I don't think I will. Why don't you go ahead and get midden now, Jann; I'll take Faia over to the bath house, and meet you at the Greathall when we're done."

Jann's face was an ugly shade of red when she stomped away. Medwind watched her leave, wearing a thoughtful expression.

When she was out of earshot, Medwind sighed. "There are people I would rather have as enemies, Faia. Still, I can't say that I blame you for choosing to make her one. I just hope that you find you can live with your decision."

Faia looked startled. "I did not choose to make her an enemy!"

"Was what you said to her an accident?"

The young hill woman cocked her head and stared at the Daane instructor. "No. Of course not."

"And what effect did you think your words would have?"

"Well—I was fighting back—"

Medwind crossed her arms and leaned against a fence. "Actions have consequences, Faia. First rule of magic, first rule of life. And the second rule is this—you are the only one responsible for your own actions. Jann chose to be obnoxious. You chose to be obnoxious. The two sets of behavior are in no way related to each other."

"That is nonsense! She started the whole thing—I just treated her the way she deserved to be treated."

"Oh, no. That isn't the way responsibility works. Jann will have to take the blame for treating you badly—but you will have to take your own blame for treating her the same way. If you don't accept responsibility for your own actions, then you are forever chained to a position of defense." Medwind's head lowered, and she moved away from the fence and began to pace back and forth through the tall grass. Her shoulders were hunched and tense, and Faia thought she looked worried.

Finally the instructor stopped her pacing and glanced back up.

"Offense is a better position for a mage," she continued. "It gives power, but in order to take the offensive, you have to admit your own ability to effect change—and consequently, to make mistakes."

The look in Medwind's eyes became fierce. "You are far too powerful to blame somebody else for the things you do. Any action you take could have potentially overwhelming repercussions, not just for yourself, but for all of us. So you must learn to face the fact, always, that you choose to do what you do, and that everything you do affects not only you but others."

Faia snorted. "I did not choose to come here."

"Didn't you? You got on the wingmount of your own free will. We insisted that you come, but really, I don't think we could have forced you. Had you chosen, you could have resisted—leveled us the way you did Bright. You chose to take the path of least resistance, to make things easier for the boy you had with you, to leave the people of Willowlake who, you could see, would not have welcomed you. You chose to admit, if only to yourself, that you needed the training that we could provide."

Medwind flipped the bangs of her fine, black hair back out of her eyes, and tipped her head at an angle to study Faia. "First, actions have consequences," she said. "Second, you are the only one responsible for your actions. Those are your first two lessons as you join us."

Medwind stood an instant longer, staring at Faia as if she were trying to read her mind. Then, with a nearly imperceptible shrug, she turned and marched through the barn, leading Faia across the landscaped green in front to a busy street.

"Enough of that.... Let's get you clean and dry and fed. We'll have time to talk later."

Faia stewed along in Medwind's wake, keeping her anger under wraps. It did not seem that anyone was prepared to be sympathetic.

I am being blamed for Jann's nastiness. Just how did Medwind expect me to react when she treated me that way? Actions surely do have consequences, but sometimes you get caught up in the consequences of someone else's actions—then what happens is not your fault, is it? And no matter what Medwind says, I did not choose to have Jann treat me like an ignorant peasant. She did that on her own—I am what I am, and if they do not like that, well, Faljon says,
"Wool yarn will not/a cotton shirt make."

Her head began to hurt. There was a smell to the city of sweat, heavy perfumes, incense in a dozen ill-matched varieties, and cooking smoke. Spices both unfamiliar and somehow unpleasant mingled with the overwhelming odor of old fish—
Lady, how much fish could these people possibly eat to leave such a reek?
she wondered. And on top of that, there was barnyard stink and the all-pervasive scent of too many people crowded together.

But the smell was not the only thing overpowering about Ariss. Sound, too, assaulted senses used to lonely hills, to the cries of birds and the rush of wind through trees and over rocks. Here, two-wheeled machines whirred and beeped, their riders screamed obscenities at any who failed to move out of the way fast enough; street hawkers shouted nasal, sing-songed lies about their wares; horses clattered, metal-shod, over the stone street, dragging wagons that clanked appallingly; riders of flying beasts and flying rugs and flying crates howled at each other, and evidently beneath it all, every single person in the city talked at the same time.

Medwind caught her wrist at an intersection and suddenly darted across the road, dodging two-wheelers and horse-carriages with reckless abandon. One two-wheeler screeched to a halt a fingers' breadth away from running over Faia, and two others plowed into him. The ensuing tangle-up left irate riders casting imprecations and cursing vigorously behind the two running women. Faia felt herself to have been barely snatched from the fangs of death for the second time in one day.

Medwind was breathing hard from the run. "We shouldn't have done that, but it was another quarter-furlong to a designated crossing, and then the same distance back. The place where we're going is right over there. I didn't want to walk the extra distance."

Faia looked over at the big, single-storied stone hall that stood in front of the tower she'd noticed earlier, then at the street clogged with traffic, then back at Medwind. Her expression mirrored her disbelief.

Medwind grinned, her smile apologetic. "I do it all the time. It's not as dangerous as it seemed."

Faia took a deep breath and said with profound sincerity, "I do not wish to do that ever again. I would rather walk the length of the city."

Medwind laughed. "Oh, you'll get used to it."

Faia stared through the massive wooden doors, down the long stone corridor of the bath house, noting the patterns of light that scattered across the pale floor from the arched windows high overhead.

Medwind Song, standing quietly beside her, noted the look and said, "I'll never forget my first time in here—I came from the eastern plains, and I had never seen an indoor privy before, much less running water. I thought Rakell—she's the Mottemage now, but she was just a primary instructor then—was going to laugh herself into a coma. I didn't understand what the water chair was for, and had no idea the little rope pull made the thing flush. You should have seen me jump. The wall basin was a wonder—but the tub—I thought that had to be for watering livestock. It was a terrible shock for a barbarian kid when hot water came straight out of the wall—I was sure these folks had a direct line tapped into hell."