"But I didn"t have any intention of-of-" He gestured weakly. "Of any of this until the moment I got here!"
"You did. In here." Lhel caught one of the light points on her fingertip and placed it on his chest. "Heart don"t always tell head. But body know. You learn that."
"Yes, I learn that," Arkoniel agreed, surrendering to her logic.
Lhel rolled off him and stood up. Her feet were bound up with rags and strips of bark but she showed no sign of minding the cold. Pulling the torn dress and the robe around her, she said, "Too much in they head, you Oreskas. That why you need me for the shaimari anan. Why you need me put those keesas"
shaimari back right."
"You"ll teach me?"
Lhel looked down at him and raised an eyebrow. "You keep pay?"
Arkoniel got up and straightened his own clothing. "By the Four, yes, if that"s your price. But can"t you come to the keep?"
Lhel shook her head. "No, lya right in that. I seen your king, read his heart. n.o.body knows, is better."
Sudden doubt leeched up through Arkoniel"s buoyant mood. "I saw you speak to Tobin and Ki in the road. They know you."
"Keesas knows not to say."
"You put Ki in danger, you know, revealing too much."
Lhel shrugged. "You don"t be worry about Ki. G.o.ddess send him, too."
This seemed to be the foundation of her reasoning. "She"s a busy lady, your G.o.ddess."
Lhel folded her arms and stared at him until he felt uncomfortable, then turned abruptly and motioned for him to follow.
"Where are we going?"
A chuckle floated back to him as she melted into the shadow of the trees. "You want have all lessons in the road, Oreska?"
With a resigned sigh, Arkoniel reached for his horse"s lead rein and followed her on foot.
Wizards saw well in the dark, and apparently so did witches. Lhel strode confidently through the trees with no path to guide her. Humming to herself, she seemed almost to dance ahead of him, brushing trees and stones with her hands as she went. Without the stars to sight by, Arkoniel soon lost track of the way and hurried to keep up with her.
She stopped at last under an enormous oak. "Cama!" she said aloud, and a soft glow issued from an opening in its side.
Following her inside, he found himself in a comfortable shelter. A light similar to the one he"d conjured glowed softly some twenty feet overhead where the cleft in the oak ended. lya and he had found shelters like this in their travels; ancient oaks often split without dying. Lhel had made herself nicely at home here.
A fur-covered pallet lay against the far wall beside a rumpled pile of what might be clothing; there were a few pots and baskets, and the fire pit and upper walls of the tree were well blackened with smoke. Even so, he could not imagine living all these years in such a place.
Lhel pulled a deer hide across the entrance, then squatted by the firepit to strike a flame in the tinder stacked ready there.
"Here, a gift." Arkoniel took a small pouch of firechips from his tunic and showed her how to use them.Flames licked up and she fed the little blaze from a pile of twigs and broken branches next to it.
She looked into the pouch and smiled. "Is good."
"How have you survived here?" he asked, hunkering down beside her. In this light he could see how chapped her face and hands were, and the thick calluses and chilblains on her dirty bare feet under the wrappings.
Lhel looked at him over the fire. The flickering light sank deep shadows into the lines around her mouth and struck reddish glints in the silver streaks in her hair. As they"d rutted wildly in the road, she"d seemed so young; here she looked ancient as a G.o.ddess herself.
"This good place," she said, shrugging out of the cloak and letting the torn top of her dress slide off her shoulders to hang loose about her waist. Her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s glowed in the firelight, showing no sign of the symbols he"d seen there before. She reached into a basket and offered him a strip of dried meat.
Arkoniel took it, still staring at her body as she found more food and began to eat. She was as filthy as ever, and had lost some teeth over the years. Those she had left were stained and worn. Yet as she turned to grin at him, she was still handsome, still deeply alluring...
Without thinking, he leaned forward to kiss her shoulder, inhaling her odor and wanting her again.
"How do you make me feel like this?" he whispered, genuinely mystified.
"How many year you be?" she asked around a mouthful of wizened caneberries.
Arkoniel had to stop and think. "Thirty-one," he said at last. It was nearly a life"s span for some men; for a wizard he was hardly out of his youth.
Lhel raised her eyebrows in mocking surprise. "Thirty-one year no woman and now you don"t know why you get hard?" She snorted and reached under his tunic to cra die his genitals in her hand. "You got power here!" Taking her hand away, she touched his belly, chest, throat, and brow. "Got power all places. Some can use. You can."
"And you"ll teach me?"
"Some. For the keesa."
Arkoniel moved closer until his leg was pressed to hers. "That day at the marsh I saw you do something that I want to learn. I was on the road, and you appeared- Lhel smiled slyly and made a pinching motion with thumb and forefinger. "I see you with your krabol."
Arkoniel stared at her a moment, then grinned sheepishly as he interpreted the hand gesture. "With the beans, you mean!"
"Beans." She repeated the word. "You think you move them-" Another less intelligible gesture, but he thought he understood.
"You"ve seen me trying to move them about. But how?"
Lhel held up her left hand and made a circle with thumb and forefinger. Rattling off a quick gabble of sounds that didn"t quite seem to be words, she pursed her lips and blew through her fingers. When she took her hand away Arkoniel saw a small black hole in the air in front of them, no bigger than a horse"s eye.
"Look," she offered.
Leaning over, Arkoniel peered into the spy hole and found himself looking at Tobin and Ki. They were sitting on the floor beside the toy city and Tobin was trying to teach Ki to carve. "Incredible!"
Lhel elbowed him sharply and closed the hole with a wave of her hand, but not before Arkoniel glimpsed two startled faces look up as one, trying to find the source of the voice that must have come out of thin air.
"I forgot that I could hear you through it, too," Arkoniel exclaimed. "By the Light, it is a. tunnel in the air!"
"What"tunnel"?" asked Lhel.
When Arkoniel tried to explain, she shook her head.
"No, it is-" She mimed what he finally understood to be opening a shuttered window. "Like that, with two side-" She pressed her palms tightly together.
Arkoniel pondered this with growing excitement. If a voice could go through so easily, then surely an object, or even a person, could as well? But when he tried to explain this to Lhel her eyes widened inalarm.
"No!" she warned, shaking his arm for emphasis. Placing her other hand on his brow, she spoke in his mind, as she had that day at the marsh. No solid thing that goes into a seeing window comes out again, on the other side or anywhere else. They swallow up whatever is put into them.
"Teach me," he said aloud.
Lhel took her hands away and shook her head. "Not yet. Other things more needful. You don"t be knowing enough."
Arkoniel sat back on his heels, trying to swallow his disappointment. It was not the magic he"d hoped for, but one that would take him closer to his goal than anything else he knew of. He would bide his time.
"What must I be knowing, then?"
Lhel produced a bone needle from somewhere in her skirts. She held it up for him to see, then p.r.i.c.ked the pad of her thumb and squeezed out a bright red droplet. "First you learn the power of this, and flesh, and bone, and the dead."
"Necromancy?" Was he so blinded by a single rut that he"d forgotten the darker roots of her magic?
Lhel gazed at him with unfathomable black eyes, and again she looked ancient and powerful. "This word I know. Your people call us this when you drive us out of lands that be ours. You wrong."
"But it"s blood magic-"
"Yes, but not evil. Necromancy is-" She struggled with the language. "Most worse dirty thing."
"Abomination," Arkoniel offered.
"Yes, abomination. But not this." She squeezed out another drop and smeared it across her palm. "You have blood, flesh. I have. All people. No evil. Power. Evil come from heart, not blood."
Arkoniel stared at her palm, watching the thin smear dry into the lines of her palm. What she"d said went against everything he"d ever been taught as a Skalan in his father"s house and as a wizard. Yet sitting here with this woman, feeling the aura of power that surrounded her, he sensed no evil in her. He thought of Tobin and the demon, and the lengths to which Lhel had gone to make things as right as she could.
Grudgingly, fearfully, he listened to his heart and guessed that she spoke the truth.
Had he been gifted with future sight, he would have seen the course of Skalan and Oreska history shift ever so subtly in that moment of uneasy realization.
Arkoniel found himself in the dual roles of teacher and pupil that winter, instructing his reluctant young charges each morning, then seeking out Lhel for his own lessons.
Tharin proved a stout ally in the former, for he refused to begin weapons practice until both boys had made an acceptable effort at Arkoniel"s lessons. This system met with some resistance at first, but as Tobin finally mastered his letters and could read a little, he suddenly developed a taste for learning. His enthusiasm increased when Arkoniel offered to teach him to draw. As far as Arkoniel could tell, it was the only skill he possessed that impressed Tobin.
Ki still fidgeted and sighed a great deal, but Arkoniel saw improvements there, too, though he knew better than to flatter himself as to the reason. For Ki, the sun rose and set on Tobin and he would strive at any task his companion set value on. Whatever the young prince chose to apply himself to, Ki threw himself into with a will.
There was no arguing that he"d had the desired effect on Tobin, either. The prince laughed more now, and the daily rambles on the mountainside put color in his cheeks and lean muscle on his long bones.
"ispatch riders arrived every few weeks, carrying letters from Rhius filled with reports of the growing unrest across the sea.
The Plenimaran shipyards are too busy for comfort, he wrote in one letter, and the king"s spies send word of great numbers of Plenimarans ma.s.sing along Mycena"s eastern border. I fear they will not limit themselves to coastal raids, come spring. May Illior and Sakor grant that we fight on other sh.o.r.es this time.
Arkoniel, who had no experience of war, found himself watching Tharin as these letters were read out in the hall.
Tharin listened carefully, brow furrowed in thought, then questioned the messenger in detail. How fared the garrisons at Atyion and Cirna? How many ships were anch.o.r.ed in Ero"s harbor? Had the kingraised another levy of soldiers, or provender from the countryside?
"I feel very green, listening to you," Arkoniel admitted one evening as he and Tharin sat up late over a game of bakshi. "For all my travels, I"ve led a sheltered existence compared to you."
"Wizards used to fight for Skala," Tharin mused, still focused on the gaming stones in front of them.
"Now it seems the king is only willing to have you fight one another."
"I hope to see that change one day."
At such moments Arkoniel was uncomfortably aware of the secret that divided them. The more he grew to know the man, the more he regretted that Tharin did not know the truth.
"I wouldn"t mind having you at my back," Tharin went on, gathering the stones for another toss.
Firelight struck the polished carnelians, turning them to fire and blood in his fingers. "I"m no authority on wizards, but I know men. You"ve got steel in your spine. And I don"t imagine old lya would"ve taken you on if she didn"t believe it, too. Or left that old bag of hers with you."
He looked up before Arkoniel could completely mask his surprise. "Oh, I"m not asking. But I"m not blind, either. If she trusts you, that should be good enough for anyone."
Neither said anything more about the matter, but Arkoniel was grateful to have the respect of this man.
He wished he were as certain of Lhel"s opinion of him. Arkoniel burned for her. He dreamed of her body and awoke stiff and hot in the night with no recourse but his own hand, a remedy far less satisfying than it had once been.
But she remained obdurate; he was only allowed to find her at her whim. No seeking spell could locate her and he was never able to find his way to the oak on his own. When he wanted her, he rode into the forest and, if she wished, she would reveal herself. If not, he came home frustrated and fuming.
Sometimes when he did find her, the boys were with her. Then the four of them would tramp through the snow, exploring the forest together like some peasant family. It was pleasant and he smiled at the picture they made, for in daylight Lhel showed her age and he felt more akin to Tobin and Ki than he did to her.
When he and Lhel did manage to meet alone, however, it was quite another matter. They coupled each time-he never did equate her "price" with lovemaking, nor did she-and each time was as frenzied as the first. She asked no tenderness of him and gave none in return, only pa.s.sion. Behind closed eyelids, Arkoniel saw visions of whirlwinds, thunderstorms, and earthquakes. When he opened his eyes he saw the power of Lhel"s G.o.ddess blazing in her eyes and in the dark whorls on her skin that she showed him only then.
As they lay naked together on her pallet afterward, she showed him whatever she was moved to in the way of spellcraft. Much of it seemed designed to overcome his natural aversion to blood magic.
She began by teaching him to "read the blood," as she put it. She would hand him a bloodstained bit of cloth or bark; by touching it with fingers and mind, he soon learned to identify the creature that had shed it. As these lessons progressed, he learned to enter the mind of the creature if it was still living, and to see through its eyes. As a fox he padded through a meadow and dug sluggish mice from their tunnels in the brown, ice-rimed gra.s.s. As an eagle, he circled the keep in search of stray hens. In the strangest of these explorations, he entered a trout swimming in the muted brown light under the river ice and saw a woman"s jeweled ring shining brightly among the silky strands of slime that covered the rocks.
As a final test, Lhel gave him a bit of her own blood, and he found himself inside her skin. The simple minds of the beasts had given him nothing more than a few visual images, cast in shades of grey. Settling in Lhel, however, he felt the intimate weight of her body around him, as if he wore her flesh as a garment over his own. He could feel the sag of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath her ragged dress, the ache that plagued her left ankle, the heavy warmth of their coupling between her thighs. After a moment"s dis-orientation, he realized that he was looking at himself through her eyes. His body lay on the pallet next to the fire, still as a corpse beneath the fur robe. With a mix of chagrin and amus.e.m.e.nt he inspected his own long, bony limbs, the jut of ribs under his white skin, the black pelt of hair that covered his chest and back, arms and legs. The expression on his face was ecstatic, like a temple Oracle"s when touched by the G.o.d.
For all that, however, he could not hear Lhel"s thoughts. That she would not share.
As his fear of her magic lessened, she began to impart a few rudiments about spirits and ghosts. "How did you make the change in Tobin?" he asked one day as the wind moaned around the oak.
"You saw."
"I saw you trade a piece of skin between them. Does it hold the magic?"
"It make skin one skin," she replied, casting about for the right words. "When Tobin is to be a girl again, that skin must come off." was not always the student with her. He helped Lhel learn more of his language, and showed her all the ways he knew to make fire. Comparing magics, they discovered that they could both call wind, and pa.s.s through any cover without leaving traces.
He taught her the Oreska method of wizard sighting, and in return she tried to teach him her "tunnel in the air" magic. However, this proved more difficult than he"d expected. It was not the whispered incantation, or even the patterned hand movements it required, but some odd twist of mind that he could not see and she did not have the language to explain.
"It will come to you," she a.s.sured him again and again. "It will come." i Arkoniel"s dismay, the one person at the keep whom he seemed to make the least progress with was Tobin. The child was civil and seemed determined to master what Arkoniel tried to teach him, but there was always a distance between them that seemed unbridgeable.
One thing Tobin did choose to share, much to Arkoniel"s surprise, was the spell he used to summon Brother. Arkoniel attempted it, but with no result. Brother answered only to Tobin.
When he asked Lhel about it later, she shrugged and said, "They joined by flesh. That you cannot learn by magic."
Arkoniel was sorry to hear this, for the spirit often found its way into his workroom. He had not seen it with his eyes since that day it had fooled him and spooked his horse, but there was no mistaking its cold, hostile presence. It seemed to enjoy tormenting him, and often came close enough to raise the hairs on his neck. It did him no physical harm, but more than once it drove him downstairs in search of Tobin.
G*
^7pring came early with little rain. As expected, King Erius signed a pact with Mycena and launched a campaign against the Plenimaran invaders there, leaving his trusted minister, Lord Chancellor Hylus, to oversee the court in his absence. One of lya"s infrequent letters mentioned seemingly in pa.s.sing that the king"s wizard, Lord Niryn, had also remained behind.