"Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lee Sharon, Miller Steve)The Wine of Memory“WELL, HERE’S AN improvement,” the magician said to his apprentice, watching her walk the red wooden counter across the backs of her fingers. The counter reversed itself, returned along the thin, ringless fingers to the end of the hand, Moonhawk looked up with a grin, as proud of mastering this minor bit of hand-skill as she had ever been of learning any of the true-spells taught in Temple. It had taken days of almost constant practice to teach her muscles the rhythm required to move the counter smoothly across her own skin. It was the sort of thing one might do while walking, which was Lute’s stated reason for teaching her this skill first. They had been walking for two days. “I do believe you are ready to learn something a little more difficult,” the magician said now, and looked around him. The road was empty. The road—the track, really, Moonhawk thought—had been empty for two days. Of all the people on Sintia, only Lute and Moonhawk found the village of Karn a destination of interest. “The season is early,” Lute murmured, seeming, as he so often did, to be reading her very thoughts. “When summer is high, this road will be crowded with folk who have business in Karn.” “It will?” Moonhawk frowned after her Temple lessons, recalling the long tales of provinces and products she and the rest of the Maidens had been obliged to memorize. Karn had certainly not been on any of those lists. She sighed and looked up. Lute was watching her with that particular expression that meant he was receiving the Goddess’s own pleasure from her ignorance, which he would not, of course, enlighten until she asked him. “Very well,” she said crossly. “Whatever comes out of Karn, Master Lute, that the world should walk for days to have it?” “Wine, of course,” he answered, setting his bag down in the road with a flourish. “The best wine in all the world that is allowed to those not in Temple.” She blinked. “Wine? But wine comes from Mandnel and Barbary…” “From Astong and Veyru,” Lute finished. “Fine vineyards, every one. But the Temples are thirsty. Or greedy. Or both. No drop of wine from those four provinces escapes to a common glass. That wine comes from Karn." Almost she frowned again, for it was not his place to pass judgement on the Temples—and by extension the witches who served the Goddess there. But she remembered another lesson from her days as a Maiden in Temple. The wine cellars at Dyan Temple were large and an accurate inventory of vintage and barrel very close to the heart of Merlot, the Temple steward. Inventory was considered the sort of practical, useful work most needed by Maidens who were, perhaps, just a bit prideful of their magics. There had been one season when Moonhawk had spent a good deal of time in the wine cellars, inventory list to hand. “Attend me now,” Lute said, tossing his cloak behind his shoulders. Moonhawk moved a few steps closer, her irritation forgotten. “Perhaps you think you have mastered the counter, but the counter may yet be the wiser, eh?” He smiled, but Moonhawk didn’t see. All her attention—and all her witch sense—was focused on his long, clever hands. “Now we enter the realm of magic, indeed. I am about to reveal to you the method for making a counter disappear.” He extended his empty right hand, frowned and flexed the fingers. “First, naturally enough, one must make a counter appear.” And there, held lightly between his first and second fingers was a bright green counter. How it had come there, Lute and his skill knew. Certainly, Moonhawk did not, having neither seen the movement that would have retrieved a cleverly hidden counter nor felt the surge of power that would have been necessary to create a counter. Or the illusion of one. Lute extended his hand. “Please verify that this is indeed a common wooden counter, such as might be found in any gaming house on Sintia.” She took the disk, felt the smoothness of the paint, the rough edge of wood where the caress of many fingers had worn the paint away. No illusion, this. She handed it back. “I find it a common wooden counter,” she said, for she must also practice the eloquence of his speech, which served, so he said, to divert the attention of an audience and give a magician valuable seconds in which to work. “Such as might be found in any gaming house on the planet.” “Excellent,” he said, receiving the token on his callused palm. “A common counter.” He tossed it lightly into the air, caught it on the back of his hand and walked it negligently across his fingers. “Behaving commonly.” He flipped his hand, caught the counter between thumb and forefinger and held it high. “Now, behold its uncommon attribute.” Moonhawk stifled a curse: There was nothing between the magician’s thumb and forefinger but sunshine and cool spring air. Lute lowered his hand and smiled. “Another lesson that may be practiced as one walks. Though we haven’t far to walk now. Tonight, we shall eat one of Veverain’s splendid dinners, sample somewhat of last year’s vintage and sleep wrapped in soft, sweet-smelling blankets.” Moonhawk stared from him to the red wooden counter in her hand. “I’m to practice? Pray what am I to practice, Master Lute? I saw neither pass nor Witch power.” Lute smiled. “You saw that it was possible.” He bent and retrieved his bag. “Come. Veverain’s hospitality tugs my heart onward.” THE TRACK CURVED ’round a grove of dyantrees, and there was Karn, tidily laid out along two main streets and a marketplace. To the east of the village lay the fields; to the west, the winter livestock pens. Behind the village rose a hill, showing terrace upon terrace of leafless brown vines. There were folk about on the streets, and Lute’s stride lengthened. Moonhawk stretched her own long legs to keep the pace, the red counter forgotten for the moment in the pocket of her cloak. “Ho, Master Lute!” A stocky man in a leather apron raised a hand. “Spring is here at last!” “And not a moment too soon,” Lute agreed with a smile, crossing the street to where the man stood in the tavern’s doorway, Moonhawk a step behind him. “How came the village through the winter?” The man looked sober. “We lost a few to the cold—oldsters or infants, all. The rest of us came through well enough. Except for—” The man’s face changed, and Moonhawk caught the edge of his distress against her Witch sense. “You’re bound for Veverain’s?” he asked, distress sharpening. “Of course I am bound for Veverain’s! Am I a fool, to pass by the best food, the snuggest bed and the most gracious hostess in the village?” “Not a fool,” the man returned quietly, “only short of news.” Lute went entirely still. Moonhawk, slanting a glance at his face, saw his mouth tighten, black eyes abruptly intense. “Our Lady of the Snows has taken Veverain?” he asked, matching the other’s quiet tone. The man moved his hand—describing helplessness. “Not—That is to say—Veverain. Ah, Goddess take me for a muddlemouth!” He lifted a hand and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “It was Rowan went out to feed the stock one morning in the thick of winter, and when he didn’t come back for the noon meal, Veverain went out to find him.” He paused to draw a deep, noisy breath. “He’d never gotten to the pens. A tree limb—heavy, you understand, with the ice—had come down and crushed him dead.” Lute closed his eyes. Moonhawk raised her hand and traced the sign of Passing in the air. “May he be warm, in the Garden of the Goddess.” The tavern-keeper looked at her, startled. Lute opened his eyes, hands describing one of his elegant gestures, calling attention to her as if she were a rare gemstone. “Behold, one’s apprentice!” he said, but Moonhawk thought his voice sounded strained. “Moonhawk, here is the excellent Oreli, proprietor of the justly renowned tavern, Vain Disguise.” Oreli straightened from his lean to make a somewhat inexpert bow. When he straightened, his eyes were rounder than ever. “Lady.” Moonhawk inclined her head. “Keeper Oreli. Blessings upon you.” He swallowed, but before he could make answer, Lute was speaking again. “When did this tragedy occur, Friend Oreli? You give me to believe the house is closed. Is Veverain yet in mourning?” “Mourning,” the other man repeated and half-laughed, though the sound was as sad as any Moonhawk had ever heard. “You might say mourning.” He sighed, spreading his hands, palm up, for them both to see. “Rowan died just past of mid-winter. Veverain… Veverain shut the house up, excepting only the room they had shared. She turned us away, those of us who were her friends, or Rowan’s—turned us away, shunned our company and our aid. And she just sits in that house by herself, Master Lute. Sits there alone in the dark. Her sister’s man tends the animals; her niece tilled the kitchen garden and put in the early vegetables. They say they never see her; that she will not even open the door to kin—and you know, “A convivial man, Rowan,” Lute murmured. “He and Veverain were well-matched in that.” “Is she still alive?” Moonhawk asked, somewhat impatiently. “Her kin say that they never see her, that she will not open the door. How are they certain that she has not been Called, or that she has not taken some injury?” “We see the hearth smoke,” Oreli said. “We—the care basket is left full by the door in the morning. Some mornings, the basket and the food is still there. Often enough, the basket is empty. She is alive, that we do know. Alive, but dead to life.” Moonhawk frowned. “She has been taking care baskets since Solstice?” Oreli raised a hand. “A long time, I know. The baskets usually are not sent so long. Forgive me, Lady, but you are a stranger here; you do not know how it was… how Veverain cared for us all. When our daughter was ill, we had some of Veverain’s baskets—hot soup, fresh bread, tiny wheels of her special cheese—you remember Veverain’s cheeses, eh, Master Lute?” “With fondness and anticipation,” Lute replied, somewhat absently. He glanced at the sky. “The day grows old,” he murmured. Abruptly, he bowed to the tavern-keeper, cloak swirling. “Friend Oreli, keep you well. I hope to visit your fine establishment once or twice during our stay. Immediately, however, the duty of friendship calls. I to Veverain, to offer what aid I might.” “You must try, of course,” Oreli said. “When she turns you away, remember that the Disguise serves a hearty supper. And that Mother Duneper will gladly house you and your apprentice.” Lute inclined his head. “I will remember. But, first, let us be certain that Veverain will refuse us.” He turned, cloak billowing, and strode off down the street down the street at such a pace that Moonhawk had to run a few steps to catch him. VEVERAIN’S HOUSE was at the bottom of the village; a long, sprawling place, enclosed by a neat fence, shaded in summer by two well-grown dyantrees. The trees, like their kin at the bend in the track, showed a pale green fuzzing along their limbs; at the roots of each was a scattering of bark and dead branches—winter’s toll. When the dyantrees came to leaf, then it would be spring, indeed. Lute pushed open the whitewashed gate and went up the graveled pathway, Moonhawk on his heels. The yard they passed through seemed neglected, ragged; as if those who had care of it had not come forth with rakes and barrows to clear away the wrack of winter and make the land ready for spring. There were some indications that neglect was not the yard’s usual state; Moonhawk spied mounds which surely must be flower-beds under drifts of dead leaves, more leaves half-concealing a bird-pool, rocks set here and there with what might prove to be art, once the debris was cleared away. Gravel crunching under his boots, Lute strode on, to Moonhawk’s eye unobservant. He was also silent, which rare state spoke to her more eloquently of his worry than any grandiose phrase. The path curved ’round the side of the house, and here were the neat rows of the kitchen garden put in by the niece, a blanket over the more tender seedlings, to shield them from the cold of the coming night. A few steps more, and the path ended at a single granite step up to a roofed wooden porch. A black-and-white cat sat tidily on the porch, companioning a basket covered with a blue checked cloth. Lute paused on tine step, bent and offered his finger to the cat in greeting. “Tween, old friend. I hope I find you well?” The cat graciously touched his nose to the offered fingertip, then rose, stretched with languid thoroughness, and yawned. “Tween?” Moonhawk asked quietly. Often, over the months of their travel together, she had deplored the magician’s overfondness for words; yet, confronted now with a Lute who walked silent, she perversely wished to have her light-tongued comrade of the road returned. Lute glanced at her, black eyes hooded. “It was Rowan’s joke, see you. The cat is neither all black, which would easily allow of it being named Newmoon; nor all white, which leads one rather inescapably to Snowfall. Indeed, as Rowan would have it, the cat lands precisely between two appropriate and time-honored cat names—an act of deliberate willfulness, so Rowan swore—and thus became Tween.” He looked down at the cat, who was stropping against the care basket. “Rowan loved a joke—the more complex the jest, the louder he laughed.” He shook himself, then, and mounted the porch, stooping to pick up the basket. The cat followed him to the door, tail high. Lute put his hand on the latch, pushed… “Locked.” “Surely you expected that,” Moonhawk murmured and Lute sighed. “A man may hear ill news and yet still hope that it is untrue. Optimistic creatures, men. I did not hope to find Rowan alive, but…” He let the rest drift off, raised his hard and brought sharp knuckles against the wood, then drifted back a step, head tipped inquisitively to one side. The cat settled beside him and began to groom. At respectful intervals, Lute leaned forward to knock twice, then three times. The door remained closed. “Well, then.” He set the care basket down, slipped his bag from its carry-strap and shook it. Three spindly legs appeared, holding the bag at a convenient height. Moonhawk watched closely while he opened the clasp and put his hand inside: Lute’s magic bag held such a diverse and numerous collection of objects that she had lately formed the theory that it was not one bag, but three, attached in some rotating, hand-magical manner undetectable to her Witch senses. “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Break the lock?” He looked at her. “Break the lock on the house of one of my oldest friends? Am I a barbarian, Lady Moonhawk? If things were otherwise, it might have been necessary to resort to lockpicks, but I assure you that my skill is such that the lock would have suffered no ill.” She blinked. “Lockpicks? Another hand-magic?” “A very powerful magic,” Lute said solemnly, and withdrew his hard from the bag, briefly displaying a confusing array of oddly contorted wires. “By means of these objects, a magician may learn the shape and secret of a strange lock and impel it to open.” “It sounds like thieves’ magic to me, Master Lute.” “Pah! As if a thief could be so skilled! But no matter, we need not resort to lockpicks for this.” He replaced the muddle of wires in his bag. “No?” said Moonhawk, eyebrows rising. “How then will you open the door? Sing?” “Sing? Perhaps they sing locks at Temple. I have a superior method.” He snapped his bag shut and hung it back on the strap. “Which is?” “A key.” He displayed it; a rough iron thing half the length of his hand. “A key,” she repeated. “And how came you by that?” “Veverain gave it me. And Rowan gave me leave to use it, if by chance I should arrive during daylight and find the door locked.” He gestured, showing her the lowering sun. “It is, I see, still daylight. I find the door—alas!—is locked. Bring the basket.” He stepped up to the door, key at ready. Moonhawk bent and picked up the care basket, settling it over her arm. A sharp snap sounded, Lute pushed the door open and stepped into the house beyond, the cat walking at his knee. With a deep sense of foreboding, Moonhawk followed. “VEVERAIN?” LUTE’S VOICE lacked its usual ringing vitality, as if the room’s dimness was heavy enough to muffle sound. “Veverain, it’s Lute!” Moonhawk stood by the door, letting her eyes adjust; slowly, she picked out a table, benches, the hulking mass of a cold cookstove. “Let us shed some light on the situation,” Lute said. A blot of darkness in the kitchen’s twilight, he moved surely across the room. There was a clatter as he slid back the lock bars and threw the shutters wide, admitting the day’s last glimmer of sun. Details sprang into being. Dusty pots hung neatly above the cold stove; spice bundles dangled from the low eaves; pottery was stacked, orderly and cobwebbed, on whitewashed shelves. The table was dyanwood, scrubbed white; the work surfaces were tiled, the glaze dull with dust. “Well.” Face grim, Lute shed cloak and bag, and dropped them on the table. Crossing the room, he pulled a lamp from its shelf and carried it and a pottery jug to a work table. Moonhawk walked slowly forward. Despite the light from the windows, the room seemed—foggy. It was also cold—bone-chilling, heart-stopping cold. She wondered that Lute had put aside his cloak. She set the care basket on the table and pulled her own cloak tighter about her. Lute had filled the lamp and was trimming the wick with his silver knife. Moonhawk shivered, and recalled the neat stack of wood on the porch, hard by the door. “I’ll start the stove,” she said to Lute’s back. He looked ’round abstractedly. “Yes. Thank you.” “No,” said another voice, from the back of the room. “I will thank you both to leave.” Moonhawk spun. Lute calmly finished with the wick and lit it with a snap of his fingers, before he, too, turned to face his hostess. “Veverain, have I changed so much in one year’s travel? It’s Lute.” “Perhaps you have not changed,” the woman in the faded houserobe said, with a lack of emotion that raised the fine hairs along the back of Moonhawk’s neck, “but all else has. Rowan is dead.” “Yes. I met Oreli in the High Street.” Lute went forward, hands outstretched. “I loved him, too, Veverain.” She stared at him, stonily, and neither moved to meet him, nor lifted her hands to receive his. Lute stopped, hands slowly dropping to his sides. “Leave me,” the woman said again, and it seemed to Moonhawk that her voice carried an edge this time, as if her stoniness covered an emotion too wild to be confined for long. Perhaps Lute heard it, too, or perhaps his skill brought him more subtle information. In any wise, he did not leave, but stood, hands spread wide, and voice aggrieved. “Leave? Without even a cup of tea to warm me? You yourself said that I should never want for at least that of you. The thought of taking a cup of tea at your table has been all that has made the last day’s walking bearable!” “Have you not understood?” And the untamed grief was plain to the ear, now. “I say to you that “Rowan is dead,” Lute repeated gently. “He is beyond the comforts of tea and the love of friends. We, however—” He gestured ’round the room, a simple encircling, devoid of stage flourish, and Moonhawk was absurdly relieved to find herself included—“are not.” There was a long moment of silence. “Tea,” Veverain said, and her voice was stone once more. “Very well." “I’ll start the stove,” Moonhawk said for the second time, and went out to fetch an armload of wood. When she came back to the kitchen, some minutes later, Veverain was in Lute’s arms, sobbing desperately against his chest. MOONHAWK IT WAS who made tea in Veverain’s kitchen that evening, and served it, silently, to the two who faced each other across the table. She carried her own mug to a wall-bench and sat, quietly watching and listening. “I cannot,” the woman was saying to Lute, “I “Yes,” Lute murmured, “but surely Rowan would not have wanted this—that you lock yourself away from kin, take from your neighbors’ kitchens and give nothing—not even thanks!—in return. Rowan was never so mean.” “He was not,” Veverain agreed, her fingers twisting ’round themselves. “Rowan was generous.” “As you are. Come, Veverain, you must stop this. Open your house again to your well-wishers. Tend the garden your niece has started for you, clear the flowerbeds and rake the gravel. Soon enough, the vines will need you, too. It will not be the same as if Rowan worked at your side, but—I promise!—these familiar things will soothe you. In time, you will—” “In time I will forget!” Veverain interrupted violently. “No! I will “Veverain!” Lute reached for her hands, but they fluttered away from capture. “You do not understand!” Her voice was shrill with agony. “Before you first came to us there was in this village a woman called Redfern, her man—Velix—and their babe. That summer, there was an illness in the village—many died, among them Redfern’s man and babe, she grieved and would speak to no one, though she accomplished all her usual business. In the fall, she shut up her house and went to her sister in another village. Two years later, she returned to us, with a new babe and a man she had taken in her sister’s village.” Veverain’s fluttering hands lighted on the cooling mug. Automatically, she raised it to her lips and drank. “I saw Redfern in the street,” she continued, somewhat less shrill. “We spoke of her babe, and of how things had changed in the village in the years she had been gone from us. I mentioned Velix, and she—she “Veverain, this is not the way to honor Rowan.” Moonhawk had never heard the magician’s voice so tender. Veverain turned her face away. “You have had your tea,” she said, hardly. “There are houses in the high village who will be happy to guest you.” Moonhawk saw Lute’s shoulders tense, as if he had taken a blow. He sat silent for a long moment, until the woman across from him noticed either the absence of his voice or the presence of himself, and reluctantly turned her face again to his. “Lute—” He raised a hand, interrupting her. “How,” he said and there was an electric undercurrent in his voice that Moonhawk did not entirely like. “How if you were shown a way to return to life at the same time you honor your vow to remember?” There was hesitation, and Moonhawk saw, for just a instant, the woman Veverain had been—vibrant, strong and constant—through the diminished, grief-wracked creature who sat across from Lute. “Can you work such a magic?” she asked. “Perhaps one of us can,” Lute replied and stood. “Excuse me a moment, Housemother. I must consult with my apprentice.” “FORGET?” LUTE REPEATED. “But it is the possibility of forgetting that is terrifying her out of all sense!” “Nonetheless,” Moonhawk said, with rather more patience than she felt, “Forgetfulness is all I have to offer. I know of no spell or blessing that will insure memory. I only know how to remove such pain as this, which is become a threat to a good and decent woman’s life, she suffers much, and I may ease her—will ease her, if she wishes it. But I think she will choose instead to honor her vow.” She hesitated, caught by a rare feeling of inadequacy. “I am sorry, Master Lute.” “Sorry mends no breakage,” Lute snapped. Moonhawk felt a sharp retort rise to her tongue and managed, just, to keep it behind her teeth. After all, she reminded herself, Lute, too, had taken losses—not only Rowan, but Veverain, was gone beyond him. “Your pardon, Lady Moonhawk,” his voice was formal, without the edge of irony that often accompanied his use of her title. “That was ill-said of me. I find the Goddess entirely too greedy, that she must always call the best so soon. How are the rest of us to find the way to grace, when our Rowans are snatched away before their teaching is done?” He sighed. “But that is matter between myself and the Goddess, not between you and I.” Moonhawk inclined her head, accepting his apology. “It is…” she sand formally, and bit down on the last word before it escaped, silently cursing herself for fool. “Forgotten,” Lute finished the phrase, tiredly, and looked past her, up into the starry sky. “There must be something,” he murmured, and then said nothing more for several minutes, his eyes on the clear glitter of stars, for all the world as if he had entered trance. Finally, he shook himself, much as a Witch might do when leaving trance, to re-acquaint herself with the physical body. He brought his eyes down to her face. “I must try,” he said, soberly. “Rowan would want me to try.” He extended a hand and touched her lightly on the sleeve. “You are a Witch and have the ear of the Goddess. Now would be a good time to pray.” VEVERAIN SAT AT the table where they had left her, hands tucked around the empty tea cup, shoulders slumped. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks shining with tears in the lamplight. Seeing her thus, Lute paused, and Moonhawk saw him bring his hands up and move them in one of his more grandiose gestures, plucking a bright silk scarf from empty air. Another pass and the scarf was gone. Lute took a breath. “There is something that may be attempted,” he announced, and it was the Master Magician’s full performance voice now. “If you are willing to turn your hand to magic.” Veverain opened her eyes, looking up at him. “Magic?” “A very old and fragile magic,” Lute assured her solemnly. “It was taught me by my master, who had it from his, who had it from his, who had it from the Mother of Huntress City Temple herself. From Whose Hand the lady received the spell, we need not ask. But!” He raised his hand, commanding attention. “For this magic, as for any great magic, there is a price. Are you willing to pay?” Veverain stared into his face. “I am,” she said, shockingly quiet. “Then let it begin!” Lute’s hands carved the air in the same eloquent gesture that had lately summoned the scarf. Stepping forward, he placed an object on the table: a small, extremely supple leather pouch. Moonhawk had seen thousands like it in her life—a common spell-bag, made to be suspended from the neck by a ribbon, or a leather cord. “Into this bag,” he intoned, “will be placed five items evocative of Rowan. No less than five, no more than five.” He stepped back and looked sternly into Veverain’s face. “You will choose the five.” “Five?” she protested. “Rowan was multitudes! Five—” “Five, a number beloved of the Goddess. No more, no less.” Lute was implacable. “Choose.” Veverain pushed herself to her feet, her eyes wide. “How long?” she whispered. “How long do I have to choose?” “Five minutes to choose five items. Listen to your heart and your choices will be true.” For a moment, Moonhawk thought the other woman would refuse, would crumple back onto the bench, hide her face in her hands and wail. But Veverain had been woven of tougher cord than that. She swayed a moment, but made a good recover, chin up and showing a flash, perhaps, of the woman she had been. “Very well,” she said to Lute. “Await me here.” She swept from the room as if her faded houserobe were grand with embroidery and the stone floor not thick with dust. When she was gone, Lute looked up at the beam with its dangling bunches of herbs, reached up and snapped off a single sprig. It was no sooner in his hand than it vanished, where, Moonhawk could not hazard a guess. That done, he went over to the table, pulled out the bench and sat, his hands flat on the table, apparently content to await Veverain’s return in silence. Moonhawk drifted over to the wall bench and settled in to watch. “HERE,” VEVERAIN SAID, and placed them, one by one, on the table before her: a curl of russet-colored hair, a scrap of paper, a gray and green stone, a twig. “That is four,” Lute said, chidingly. “I have not done,” she answered and raised her hands to her neck, drawing a rawhide cord up over her head. Something silver flashed in the lamplight; flashed again as she had it off the cord and placed by the others. “His promise-ring,” she said quietly. “And that is five, Master Lute.” “And that is five,” he agreed, hands still palm-flat against the table-top, in an attitude both quiescent and entirely un-Lute-like. “What will you do now?” Veverain inquired. Lute raised his eyebrows. “You misunderstand; it is not I who will do, but you. If you expect that you will sit there and be done to, pray disabuse yourself of the notion.” “But,” she stared at him, distress growing, “I am no Witch. I have no schooling, no talent. How am I to build a spell?” Moonhawk could only applaud the housemother’s good sense. By her own certain reckoning, it required some number of years to become proficient in spell-craft. Lute, however, was unworried on this point. “Have I not said that I have the way of it from my master and all the way back to she who first received the gift of the Goddess? I am here to guide you. But it is you who must actually perform the task, or the spell will have no power.” “I will—put these things in that bag?” Veverain asked. “That is all?” “Not quite all. Each item must receive its charge. The best technique is to pick up a single item, hold it in your hand and recall—in words or in thought—the connection between Rowan and the object. In this manner, the spell will build, piece by piece, each piece interlocked with and informed by the others.” Which was as apt a description of spell structure as she had ever heard, thought Moonhawk. But Veverain had no glimmer of Witch-sense about her and the tiny flickerings of talent she sometimes caught from Lute were not nearly sufficient to build and bind the spell he described. Even if such a spell were possible. At the table, Veverain glanced down among her choices, and put forth a hand. Moonhawk leaned forward, witch-sense questing, shivering as she encountered the raging gray torrent of Veverain’s grief. Veverain’s hand descended, taking up the bright lock of hair. “This is Rowan’s hair,” she said tentatively, and Moonhawk felt—something—stir against her witch-sense. “When we had kept household less than a year, he was chosen by the Master of the Vine to work a season at Veyru, in exchange of which we received a vineman of Veyru. The Master of the Vine came with a delegation and petitioned my permission for Rowan—as if I would have denied him such an opportunity! We had been together so short a time, and Veyru is no small journey—I joked that I would not recognize him when he returned. In answer, he cut off this curl and told me that I should always know him, by the flame that lived in his hair.” Carefully, she put the lock into the small leather bag. Lute said nothing, sitting still as a statue of himself. Veverain chose the gray and green rock. “When Rowan left home for that season in Veyru he bore with him this stone from our land, so that, wherever he was, he would always be home.” The stone joined the lock of hair in the bag and there was definitely something a-building now. Moonhawk could see two thick lines of flame, intersecting at a right angle, hanging just above Veverain’s head. She held her breath, staring, and Veverain picked up the scrap of paper. “The winter after Rowan returned from Veyru was a bitter one. We spent the days in the window, a book between us, while I taught him his letters. He learned to read—and write!—quickly, nor, once he had the skills, did he rest. He read every book in the village, and came back from the vineyards one evening to tell me that he had determined to write a book on the lore of the vine, so that the young vinemen would have a constant teacher and the old a check to their memories. He wrote that book, and others, and kept his journals. More, he passed his skills to other men of the village, who have taught their sons, so Karn need not forget the cure for a vine blight encountered in my mother’s time.” She hesitated, fingers caressing the scrap. “This paper bears his signature—the very first time he signed his name.” Lingeringly, the scrap of paper went into the bag and Moonhawk very nearly gasped. The third interlock was a bar of flame as thick as her arm, burning a pure, luminous white. Carefully, Veverain picked up the scrap of wood. “This is a piece from our vines on the hill. Rowan loved the vines, the grapes, the wine.” A fourth bar of fire joined the first three, blazing. Stretching her Witch-sense, Moonhawk found the other woman’s grief significantly calmer, less gray, melting, like heavy fog, in the brightness of the spell she built. For the last time, Veverain reached to the table, and picked up the scarred silver band. “This is Rowan’s promise-ring,” she said, so quietly Moonhawk had to strain to hear. “He wore it every day for twenty-five years. If anything on this earth will remember Rowan, this will.” The fifth bar of fire was so bright, Moonhawk’s Witch-sense shied from it, dazzled. So, the thing was built, and a powerful spell it was, too. But it wanted binding and it wanted binding At the table, Lute moved. His right hand rose, the fingers flickered, and there between finger and thumb was the twig he had broken from the herb bundle. “Rosemary, Queen of Memory,” he intoned, solemn as a prayer, “keep Rowan close.” He placed the sprig in the bag. Reaching out, he took up the rawhide cord on which Veverain had worn Rowan’s ring, and began to tie the spell-bag shut. “In love, memory; in life, love.” His hands moved more complexly now, creating two elaborate knots, and half of a third. Sternly, he looked at the woman across from him. “Once this bag is sealed with the third knot, the spell is made. Once made, it cannot be unmade.” He extended the bag, the final knot incomplete, the spell burning, dangerously bright, above the woman’s head. Veverain took the cord in her two hands, and with infinite care made the final knot complete. “Sealed with my heart, that I never forget,” she said, and pulled the cord tight. Above her head, invisible to all but the staring Witch, the flaming bars wheeled, blurred and vanished, leaving behind, for those who could hear such things, the definitive snap of a spell sturdy-built and bound. “Stand,” Lute said, doing so himself. Veverain rose and he set the bag on its rawhide cord about her neck. “Wear it. And never forget.” From the floor, a flash of white-and-black ascended, landing light-footed on the table. Tween the cat bumped against the housemother’s arm, tail held joyously aloft. Veverain smiled. “HAVE YOU MASTERED the counter yet?” the magician asked his apprentice as they walked toward the high village in the morning. Behind them, their hostess was already engaged with broom and dust rag, the windows flung open to receive the day. “You know I haven’t!” his apprentice retorted, hotly. “If you must know, Master Lute, I don’t think you ever made that counter disappear in the first place—you merely entranced me into believing you had done so!” “Ah, very good!” Lute said unexpectedly. “You have learned a basic truth of our trade: People make their own magic.” Moonhawk faltered, thinking of what had gone forth last night. “Master Lute, the spell you made last night for Veverain…” “An illustrative case,” he said, refusing to meet her eyes. “No,” she said, and put a hand on his arm, stopping him. Determined, she waited until he met her eyes, though she did not compel him do so—indeed, she was not certain that she could compel him to do so, Witch though she was. The black eyes were on hers. “I wanted you to know—the spell you made for Veverain was “So.” He sighed, then shrugged. “But that does not change the original premise—people “If you wish to make counters appear and disappear, you would do well to supply yourself with several of the same color and hide them about your person. I, for instance, keep several green counters behind my belt—” A flourish, in the grand style, and there they were—four green counters held between the fingers of his left hand. “Your belt!” protested Moonhawk. “You never—” “I also,” Lute interrupted, implacable, “keep several behind my collar.” Another grand flourish and there were four more—yellow this time—between the fingers of his right hand. “Master Lute—” “And when you are done with them, why, it’s a simple thing to put them away.” A shake of both hands and the counters were gone. Moonhawk drew a deep breath. “Of course,” said Lute, “it is often wise to keep a counter or two elsewhere than upon one’s person. Like the one I store behind your ear.” “Behind my ear!” she cried, but there was Lute’s hand, brushing past her cheek, and then reappearing, triumphantly displaying a red counter. Moonhawk sighed. “Master Lute?” “Yes, Lady Moonhawk?” “You’re a dreadful master.” “And you,” Lute said, turning toward the village, “are an impertinent apprentice. It is a good thing, don’t you think, that we are so very well matched?” |
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