Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) (18 page)

Faia listened as first Edrouss Delmuirie, then Bytoris, then Geos, told tales that were at times full of adventure, at times funny or sad, and she grew wistful—not for their stories of the open road, but because those stories roused in her memories she had long forgotten.

At last she said, “My father always talked about the joys of the road, and the wonders of travel to faraway lands.” She stared down at the fire, then looked back into the darkness again, feeling the weight of memories. Her father had loved to travel, and had passed his wanderlust on to her. When she thought of seeing new places, she thought of him, and she missed him. She recalled one of the Great Philosopher’s sayings that her father had always liked, and repeated it to her comrades. “Faljon says, ‘More friends / makes fewer miles.’”

“Faljon…” Delmuirie shook his head and said, “Are people still quoting Faljon?”

Bytoris said, “My father quoted Faljon. My mother said Faljon had been some back-country root-eater, and that he was nothing compared to Terrfaire—but I always liked his sayings.”

Faia lay back on her bedroll and tried to find a comfortable position. “I learned Faljon from my father, too.”

Bytoris smiled a tiny smile. “Faljon is the sort of philosopher fathers love, I suppose. Plenty of admonitions to work hard and avoid doing stupid things.”

Geos chuckled. “You know who I remember quoting Faljon? That same old man I thought of yesterday. The wool trader. He quoted Faljon, and told stories, and gave us—”

“Milk candies,” Bytoris interrupted. “I remember. Your entire life seems to have focused on those milk candies.”

Geos snorted. “Not so. I liked the stories, too. He always started them the same way, with a little poem—and when he recited the poem, the children would gather round.” He closed his eyes and frowned, quiet for a moment. “I remember some of it, but not the important bits. He always said, ‘Little chickies and chirries, the world goes ‘round like a ball, ‘round and ‘round…’”

He paused, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “And when one side’s up the other side’s down,” he added after a moment’s thought. He sighed deeply again, frustration written on his face.

“I can’t remember any more of it.”

Faia said quietly, “I can. It went:

Like a ball the world

Goes ‘round and ‘round.

When one side’s up

The other side’s down.

When the good side’s down,

Then evil rules,

And the world is a place

Of villains and fools.

But the good will triumph

And evil will fail,

And about it Kin Kinsonne

Will tell you the tale.

She clasped her hands together and swallowed hard.

“That was it,” Geos said. He beamed and slapped his thigh. That was it exactly! So you knew him!”

Faia nodded. A few hot tears rolled down the corners of her eye and she brushed them away with a quick backhanded swipe, embarrassed that anyone should see her cry. She caught Bytoris staring at her, and thought she must look ridiculous, brought to tears over such a silly poem. “He was my father,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone anywhere remembered him.” The tears slipped down her cheeks, hot and fat. “It’s almost like having him back, to know that someone besides me still thinks of him.”

Bytoris coughed and looked down at his hands. “Your father’s name was Kin Kinsonne?”

Faia nodded.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I did.” It was Faia’s turn to look away. “They all died with my mother, in the plague that destroyed Bright. I’ve been alone since, except for my daughter.”

“Ah. I was my mother’s only child.” He rested the knuckles of one hand against his lips and stared into the fire. “The gods do love their tricks.”

“The gods often get blamed for what can only be attributed to blind chance,” Gyels interrupted.

Bytoris glanced at him. “I have heard some say that, but I don’t believe it.” He returned his attention to Faia. “Perhaps since you are without family now, you will not find what I have to tell you unwelcome. Perhaps.”

Faia heard unexpected awkwardness in his voice. She raised an eyebrow. “What might that be?”

“Well, some of us knew Kin Kinsonne better than others.” Bytoris glanced from Geos to her, and said “My colleague’s jibe the other day was nothing but truth, though he didn’t know it. My mother always insisted I say my father died in the wars. But Kin Kinsonne was my father, too.”

“But your name…”

“Bontonard children get their public names from their mother’s patron deity. My mother’s deity has always been Caligro Sehchon, god of engineers. She is a water engineer in District Virlatch-Sodin.”

“You’re certain he’s your father?”

Bytoris looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed. “My mother seemed to be sure. And he always called me ‘son’ when he came into town.”

Faia felt sure the world was going to drop out from under her. “You’re my brother?” she whispered. The world seemed to sway beneath her.

“Perhaps I should have said nothing.” Bytoris looked away, and even by the ruddy firelight, Faia could see his face grow duskier. “Maybe you didn’t want to know this about your father.”

Faia’s heart pounded in her ears, in her fingertips, and as she took it in, she began to think she must surely burst. “I have a brother?” she asked again. “I’m not alone?”

“Then you aren’t angry?”

Faia was crying. She shook her head vehemently. “I left to take the sheep to the upland pastures for the summer. When I returned, I was alone—my family… my village… everyone I ever knew… died in that plague—”

Bytoris nodded; he seemed relieved by her reaction. “You’ll find quite a large family waiting for you in Bonton. I have a wife and a multitude of children—and I confess myself pleased to discover that I have a sister.”

She couldn’t take it in. “I have a brother again,” she whispered, over and over. “I’m not alone.”

“You are very much not alone.”

Even after the fire guttered down, after all the others in the tent were sleeping soundly, Faia lay watching the stars that crossed the little smoke hole at the top of the tent. Sleep eluded her—her thoughts circled wildly and would not quiet, no matter how she tried to calm herself.

One part of her was elated that she had a living brother, though Bytoris shared no past with her. She had grieved for her family, and in Bytoris she could see resemblance to her long-dead brothers and to her sister. With him alive, they seemed to her not so completely lost. Another part of her, however, was deeply unhappy. By the simple fact of his existence, Bytoris had taken away from Faia pieces of her past that she had clung to, and made lies of some of her memories. Her father was not the man she had thought he was. Bytoris appeared to be older than her, but younger than her oldest brother or sister. So there was no question that her father had kept his two families at the same time, in violation of even the liberal Kareen laws of public bonding.

Bytoris is my blood kin, she thought. Blood kin should matter; Bytoris should be someone to rejoice over, not someone to regret.

But she lay there remembering her own brothers—her
real
brothers, she thought—and how it was growing up with them. Playing in the hayshocks; stealing handpies from the cooling racks; climbing onto the back of the neighbor’s giant plowhorse as it ambled past the fence while it grazed, and sitting astride it pretending to be riding from town to town, selling wool.

She closed her eyes.

And all the towns we imagined were Bright. Over and over, endlessly—our world consisted of one tiny village repeated in our minds a thousand times, the back of a fat plowhorse, and the stories we told each other.

Mama and Da loved us; we had homespun to wear and good food to eat; we knew Bright would make room for us when we grew up. That was enough, and we were happy.

To give Kirtha the family and the childhood and the way of life I knew, I would have given up my magic, my accomplishments, everything I have ever had in the world until this moment.

And now I find that my world was not as perfect as I thought it; that if I had given Kirtha my childhood, I would have given her a lie.

Faia lay in her bedroll, watching the flickering lights of the fire and hearing the droning snores of the men. The world of memory held her while she searched through all she recalled of her own past, looking for signs that would explain the place where she found herself, and the truth she had discovered.

“UP! Hurry! We must pack and leave, quickly, or the thief will get too far ahead!” Gyels untied the first of the tarps from the supports, so the icy mountain air blew across Faia and the rest of the sleepers.

Again.

She’d lost track of the number of camps they’d set up, and had no idea of how many actual days they’d been pursuing Thirk. Faia felt like she’d been hiking forever; the journey got worse daily. First they’d run out of the First Folk road, and then, for no apparent reason, Thirk had turned east toward steeper, rougher terrain before heading south again. He seemed to have picked the most dangerous, horrible route he could come by. Faia wondered how he was even surviving—but then she’d think of the chalice. He had magic—of course he could survive. His pursuers, meanwhile, struggled endlessly, becoming too weary to think or to question or to do much more than just put one foot in front of the other, plodding in the wake of the hunter Gyels.

They camped on cliffs and slopes so steep each of them pitoned loops of rope into the stone and slept with the loops wrapped around them. They ate sparingly—their rations got slimmer the further Thirk led them from the lowlands, and they became daily more aware that they could run out of food long before they reached the gentler climes of the lowlands. Gyels killed a mountain goat once, and they all ate from that for several days.

Hardship piled on hardship. Faia’s ribs got better, but her nerves got worse. Once an avalanche nearly buried all of them but Gyels, who was—characteristically—far ahead, tracking. They heard the rumble barely in time and ran forward, slipping and sliding. The torrent ripped past them, only handbreadths away, tearing rocks and scrawny trees from their beds and roaring down the mountainside with the debris.

Then at nondes, the night they ate the last of the goat, something above kicked rocks down at them; they got a bad fright, though only Delmuirie was hit, and he was lucky. The rock that struck him was small enough that it only bruised his leg instead of breaking it. Gyels went off looking for the cause and reported back that a goat had knocked the rocks loose—but Faia wondered. The rain of rocks had been so regular, and had felt so intentional.

What worried Faia more than starvation, more than danger, was the inescapable feeling that they were being watched.

She’d mentioned it to each of her fellow travelers. Gyels scoffed—he was, he said, as keen-eared as he was keen-eyed, and if anyone had been spying on them, he would have discovered it. Geos and Bytoris didn’t believe it simply because neither of them could imagine anyone but themselves lost and wandering through the mountains in the endless, awful darkness. Edrouss Delmuirie listened to what she had to say. He didn’t say what he thought, or give any indication whether he believed her or not—but he did listen, and he did start watching behind the group as it traveled.

“Onward, already,” Gyels growled. He’d come up behind Faia and the rest of them while they finished eating a light antis; he was in a miserable mood, as he had been the past few days. He’d begun to make his advances toward her more obvious, and Faia had found his pushy certainty that she would come to her senses and fall into his bedroll sooner or later increasingly less attractive. At last she had flatly rebuffed him—and the entire expedition was now paying the price, by being forced to live with his foul moods and the increased pace at which he drove them forward.

Faia, sitting on a flat, cold stone, jumped; Delmuirie turned and snarled something about moving when he was good and ready; and Bytoris threw a tiny scrap of smoked fish on the ground in disgust and stalked off.

Only Geos remained outwardly unmoved. He ate the rest of his dried meat without saying anything, though the look he gave Gyels when the hunter turned away was murderous.

Gyels glanced back at Geos in time to catch the look, and his expression became thoughtful. He said nothing about it, though. Instead, he turned back to Faia. “You want to capture Thirk, don’t you?”

“We’re never going to find him,” Faia said. She pressed her hands to her face and sagged forward. “This is hopeless and it’s horrible. If he does something that is going to destroy the world, I suppose he is just going to have to do it.”

“You want to turn back?” Gyels smiled—but his smile was cold and mocking. “Silly creature, we’re almost to Bonton—surely you realize that’s where he’s been leading us.”

“Leading us?” Bytoris snarled. “He’s been wandering in circles in the mountains for gods only know how long. We’ve been following—but only a fool would say he’s been leading.”

Faia nodded agreement.

They loaded up in unhappy silence and started off. Gyels’s promise that they were near civilization meant nothing to Faia, for she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. She was doomed to wander in darkness until she died. Doomed to the wilderness, and the cold, and unending night.

She felt that way for nearly an hour—and then the Tide Mother rose from behind the mountains, and the sky began to pale and grow pink. Faia saw the sliver of the sun peeking out from behind the Tide Mother’s vast bulk. She and the Bontonards and Delmuirie stopped right where they were, on a shale-covered downslope, and hugged each other and wept. Daylight! It became possible to hope for a nearby city, for more food, for their success in catching Thirk and rescuing the chalice—for
anything
, with the Month of Ghosts truly past.