Feast of Souls (6 page)

Her gaze is the one thing about her that never changes, never weakens. Diamond eyes. He meets them with brutal honesty. “No book learning can help you now, Kamala. The part of your soul that is to be tested soon is a creature of instinct, that will not benefit from intellectual knowledge. Giving it facts will gain it nothing. Some believe it even hinders the process, by distracting it from the business it must focus on.

“I have prepared you as best I can. Soon you must go off alone, to that place where Death will seek to claim you. The key to defeating him is something you must discover on your own, else it has no value.” He paused. “Trust me. All other ways have been tried by Magisters, and this has proven the best for training.”

And no woman has ever won that battle. Or chosen to come back, once she knew the price.

“This is how it is always done, then?”

“Yes.”

“With you?”

He tries to remember that far back. “Yes. Though I was not as headstrong an apprentice as you, and I probably annoyed my Master a good deal less.”

She gives him a wry smile; for a moment her face seemed young again. “Not like your house hasn’t benefited from my presence.”

Fair enough
, he thinks, and he smiles despite himself. In his quest to find new things for her to work on he’d let her have free rein with the house. The walls veritably vibrated now with the residue of powers awakened and bound to their substance, and the result was something far more elaborate and refined than the crude stone structure he had built for himself so long ago, if not always to his taste.

If you die I will need to start chopping wood again.

“No woman has ever survived this,” she says quietly. Her tone makes it clear it’s a question… and it’s the first time she has ever asked such a thing directly. He is about to give the easy answer when he hesitates and thinks suddenly,
No. She deserves the truth. At least that much, to take with her into Transition
.

“No woman has ever been presented as a Magister.” He picks his words slowly, carefully, not wanting to say too much. That is always a danger. An apprentice who learns the truth might react badly. There are a few on record from the early days, when teaching was different, who bolted and ran as soon as they were informed. One almost got away before his Magister hunted him down, and was going to spill the precious secrets he had learned to all the townsfolk, as an act of misguided philanthropy. It was a wake-up call to the sorcerous community. No one takes such chances now. “It is generally said that none of them survive Transition. I am not so sure anyone knows this for a fact. A percentage of those who gain the power of a Magister are driven mad by the process, and must be destroyed by their teachers. It may be that women have gotten that far. No one speaks of failed apprentices.”

“Why are they driven mad?”

He shook his head with a faint
tsk-tsk
sound. “Now now, Kamala. You know I’m not going to tell you that.”

“That’s on the list of things I’ll understand when I get there.”

“Yes,” he says.

Soon. Very soon.

She sighs, and the unbrushed corona of her hair sends a few red tendrils down across her eyes. She pushes them aside with a careless hand, not much caring what it looks like as long as it stays out of her way. Her casual disregard for her own appearance should have resulted in a less appealing creature than what stands before him, he reflects. But Nature is cruel that way, and will resign the princess in her ivory tower to a lifetime of paints and curling irons trying to mimic that natural beauty which, in a moment of whimsy, she granted a peasant-born whore. Kamala’s lean and athletic frame might not please men seeking dumplings in the cheeks of their women, but any man who values the spark of fire in womankind, whose desire to possess is aroused by independence, who is drawn to fierceness rather than languid beauty, will surely find her maddening.

If she ever walks among mortal men again
, he reflects darkly.
That has yet to be seen
.

“So what is my lesson today, Master Ethanus? Or does it even matter anymore? Shall I simply move the clouds about, back and forth, until my athra is exhausted?”

She voices the question lightly but he does not answer her lightly. His eyes fix upon her with a sudden and disarming solemnity. Her tentative smile flickers out like a candle flame in a gust of wind.

“Yes,” he says. “Move the clouds.”

He sees her tremble, but she voices no questions. Good. She understands.

She goes outside. He follows her. Twilight has come and the sky is a resonant blue, agonizingly beautiful, that shivers black about the edges. The clouds are misty ghosts that gather about the face of the full moon just above the crowning of the trees. A perfect night for such an exercise.

He watches as she takes her place in the center of the clearing, facing the moon. He can sense her reaching inside herself to the source of all power, a process she once described to him as “turning one’s soul inside out.” He can see how much effort it takes her to do it this time, and how weak the result is. Her life force is nearly exhausted, burned out in a handful of years by magical exercises designed to empty her soul of all its natural strength at an unnatural pace. She is young still, strong in body, but almost lacking in that inner fire that keeps a human body alive. Tonight… tonight that last precious spark will go out. And if she is lucky, if she is strong, if she is above all else
determined
… something else will take its place.

Whether she can endure living with that
something
is another question entirely.

With a grace that seems more ghostly than human she raises up her hands to the heavens, as if she would implore the clouds to move of their own accord. It is not an easy task he has set her, for despite the showy tricks of witches in drought season, weather is hard to manage. One must take the power in a single human soul and weave it into the very substance of the earth and sky, until no star shines and no breeze blows without that soul shivering in resonance. Then, and only then, can one alter small parts without unbalancing the whole.

He sees her take a deep breath. He wonders if it will be her last.

He did not plan to watch her any more closely than this, using the eyes of his earthly body and no more. But the bond between apprentice and master is strong even in mundane arts, and a thousand times stronger among those who share the secrets of soulfire. Without need for conjuring a Magister’s sight he can see her power arching upward into the heavens, a blast so pure, so brilliant that for a moment it blinds him. What potential she has, his fierce little strumpet! He watches with satisfaction as she weaves her power into the substance of the wind, noting the skill with which she binds each separate layer of the heavens to her will, so that when she bids the clouds to move there will be no single wisp left behind. How well she has learned the arts of the witching folk! If only she would give way to reason, and save herself while there was still time…

But it has been too late for that for a while now, and even as he forms the thought he sees her falter. Only a shiver at first is visible, along her outstretched arms, but inside her he knows it is as if ice has suddenly filled every vein. He remembers it from his own Transition. He remembers what kind of panic takes hold of a man’s soul when the spark of life that has burned within him since birth sputters like a dying candle. He remembers the prayers one voices—useless!—as if any god who has watched one squander one’s power for years will feel sympathy for such last-minute regrets. The heart clenches in one’s chest like a fist, as if fighting to keep hold of those last few precious drops of life. But by the time that moment comes it is too late. The mortal life has been consumed, and the figure of Death hovers over his newest charge, pausing but for one precious instant while the fires of the athra sputter into darkness—

He hears her scream. Not a sound voiced by her flesh, but an agonized howling of her innermost soul. It is at once defiance, fear, determination—raw stubbornness, which has always been her strongest trait. Yet even that is not enough now.
You must be willing to leave behind what you are
, he thinks,
and become something so dark and terrible that men would cringe in horror if they knew it walked among them. And you must choose that course of your own accord, without being shown the way; you must want it so much that everything else is cast aside
.

Does a man truly cast aside everything? he wonders. A woman must. Nature has prepared her to bring life into the world and nurture it, and the very essence of her soul is shaped to that purpose. Such a soul cannot manage Transition in its natural state, nor survive the trial of the spirit that will follow. Can Kamala strip herself of all that the gods gave her in making her a woman, can she hunger for life so desperately that the lives of others are as nothing to her? It is a trick men are born to, for Nature has fashioned them for war, but women must learn it unnaturally.

You were meant to bring life into the world
, he thinks.
Now, to survive, you must bring death
.

She is on her knees now, shaking violently as spasms of dying engulf her soul. Ethanus can hear her desperation screaming out across the heavens. He even hears his name, voiced as a prayer—a plea for the information she needs to survive—but he makes no answer. Each student must find his own way to the Truth; that is the Magister’s tradition. To do otherwise may bring weaker students through Transition safely, but it cannot make them fit for what comes after.

Forgive me, my fierce little whore. And forgive the gods, who have decreed that all birth must be agony.

And then—

He can sense it in her. A sudden awareness of something outside herself. Beyond the clouds, beyond the wind, beyond the parts of the earth that man has given names to. A source of power outside herself, like but unlike the athra whose flow trickles to a stop within her soul. She grasps at it but it eludes her.
No
! she screams. I
will not fail
! Another spark takes its place and she focuses her will upon it, desperate to lay claim to it before her flesh expires. Ethanus can taste her determination on his tongue, the sudden elation of understanding. This, this is what she was meant to discover—this foreign spark that is not soulfire, but might be bound and made to take its place. Why did Ethanus not simply tell her that? Why has he not taught her the tricks she needs to tame it? Now she must wrestle with Death even as she races to weave a link between herself and this distant power, so strong that no force wielded by man or god can ever sever it.

And he knows it before she does, when she has won. He knows because he has watched other apprentices expire at this point, consumed at the very threshold of immortality. In them the final sparks within their own souls had died before they could claim this new power, and Death had dragged them screaming into oblivion. In her… the ice within her veins cracks… the strangled heart dares a new beat… the breath that has been all but choked off by the force of her trials draws inward once again, bringing warmth to her lungs. He knows before she does because he knows what signs to watch for. She… she knows only that awareness of a foreign power throbs within her now like a second heartbeat, and that her flesh draws strength from it, easier with each passing breath.

When she is sure of what she has done, and sure it cannot be undone, she looks at him. There are tears in her eyes, red tears, for her body has squeezed forth blood in its exertions.
How appropriate
, he thinks. There were tears in his own but he wiped them away before she could notice. He does not want her thinking to question what emotions spawned them.

“I live,” she says, and in that phrase are captured a thousand things unsaid. A thousand questions.

“Yes,” he responds. Answering them all.

“I am… Magister?”

He gazes at her for a moment. Loving her, as he had not expected ever to love.
Look one last time upon her in her innocence
, told himself,
for you are about to destroy that innocence forever.

“You may use the power as you will,” he says quietly to her, “for whatever purpose you like. You will not die. You have learned to draw your athra from other places, other sources. So it shall always be for you. When one source fails, you will find another. No Magister who truly desires life has ever failed to do so.”

“Then what?” she said. “What’s wrong? You spoke of a trial. Is that over?”

For a long moment he just looks at her. Fixing in his mind the picture of what she is now, before (the Truth makes her into something else. A creature of legend, by virtue of her sex. A creature of darkness, by virtue of her choice.

“But one more thing,” he says. “One final lesson.”

She waits.

“Know this, Kamala: that there is no source of athra in all the universe which can sustain you, save that which is contained within the souls of living men.”

The distant clouds move across the face of the moon. The clearing is dark and silent.

“Now,” he says, “you are a Magister.”