Storm Rising (14 page)

So today, rather than try to make anyone listen to him, he just took notes whenever he caught something he understood.
If I have a point I want raised, I’ll write it down and give it to Elspeth or Darkwind later
, he decided.
That’s still doing my duty by the Alliance as a whole, even if it isn’t accomplishing anything for Karse.

Right now, that was the only solution
he
could think of.

An’desha dropped another pebble into the water-table, and watched the resulting waves break up and disperse on the model. The elegant concentric rings quickly turned into a chaos of wavelets and counterwavelets amid the barriers placed there, and he shook his head in despair. He’d been told about this, but he hadn’t believed it until this moment. “This is too complicated even to see, much less measure and analyze,” he said bitterly. “And this is only a
model.
The reality is a hundred times worse!”

Master Levy gave him a sidelong, sardonic glance of approval. “For an unlettered barbarian who believes in curses and spellcasting, you show a surprising grasp of logic,” he said dryly. “And a remarkable understanding of the difficulties of measurement and analysis in a moving system.”

An’desha was not about to be goaded. “For a hard-headed statue who only believes in what he can see, weigh, and measure, you show a surprisingly flexibility,” he countered. “And besides, you know very well that I read, speak, and write more languages than you, so although I am a barbarian, I am hardly unlettered. Now, shall we dispense with the insulting small talk and get on with this?”

But Master Levy only sighed with frustration. “At the moment,” he admitted, “small talk is all I have to offer. I am venting my frustration in sarcasm. You are correct, the reality
is
too complex to calculate. I
haven’t been able to derive any kind of formula, and if I cannot, I doubt that anyone else would be able to.”

Unconscious or conscious arrogance that last might be; nevertheless, Master Levy was right.

“There must be a predictable mathematical progression in there somewhere,” An’desha muttered, staring at the table and the last of the fading ripples. “The result is geometric, so there
must
be a way to derive the formula.”

“I thought you mages were all certain that magic was entirely intuitive,” Master Levy said with amusement. “I confess that I was hoping by bringing you here and showing you the demonstration you might be able to intuit the formula. As one of our youngsters pointed out, intuition
is
a valuable tool, since it merely consists of being able to put together facts so quickly that the progression from premise to conclusion is no longer obvious.”

“Firesong is the only one of us with that particular affliction,” An’desha replied absently. “The rest of us are rather fond of logic. Though it is beginning to look as if his way of doing things may be the only answer right now.”

In truth, the reason he was here instead of at the
ekele
was that Firesong had not been able to “intuit” an answer either, and was rather short-tempered as a result. Things were already strained between them as it was, and on the whole, An’desha thought that his absence would be more valuable than his presence. Let Firesong rave at the plants in his frustration.

Ever since he and Karal had returned from their journey to the Iftel/Valdemar border, there had been stress in his relationship with Firesong. It was not, as he had first feared, that Firesong was jealous of Karal—or at least, he did not consider Karal to be a romantic rival. Which was just as well; it was rather difficult to prove such a nebulous negative as “Karal is my best friend, but I am not in the least attracted to him.” If Firesong couldn’t figure
that
out, he was less observant and less intelligent than An’desha had given him credit for.

It had taken An’desha this long to divine precisely what the problem really was between them, and it turned out to be something rather disconcerting. Something he knew
he
wasn’t going to be able to remedy, in fact.

Firesong did not seem to know how to deal with the “new” An’desha, an An’desha who was growing less dependent upon him with every passing day.

An’desha gazed down into the water-table as if the answer to his problem with Firesong lay there, as well as the answer to the question of what to do when the breakwater failed.

He doesn’t seem to understand that just because he saved my life, and helped me when I was so confused that I didn’t know how to cope with the smallest details, that doesn’t make us automatically lifebonded. It doesn’t even make us automatically best friends. I love him, and I owe him a great deal—but I do not owe him my total devotion for the rest of my life. No one “owes” that to anyone.

They had become lovers out of mutual attraction and An’desha’s helpless dependence on someone, anyone, who might give him the support and security he desperately craved. And to his credit, Firesong had been very well aware that such dependence was unhealthy and infantile; he had done his best to wean An’desha away from that clutching dependence and to help him grow a real spine of his own.

But was that because he wanted me to be independent, or because I was strangling him? Hmm. Good question. Only Firesong knows the answer. Certainly being strangled is hardly comfortable, but he did wean me away as gently as possible, rather than simply shoving me away. But was
that
because he liked me dependent, but not
too
dependent? Another good question.

Now—well, the old proverb said, “Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.” Firesong had gotten an An’desha who knew who and what he was, and what he wanted to do with his life—and now Firesong was the one who was unhappy.

He wasn’t exactly picking fights, but whenever An’desha said or did something Firesong didn’t expect, he was visibly taken aback. Startled, even shocked, as if An’desha had turned into someone he didn’t recognize. And when An’desha actually had a difference of opinion from him, Firesong would flash into a quiet and unobtrusive rage.

It never lasted more than a bare instant, and he never actually said or did anything except try to persuade An’desha that he was wrong—but that instant of rage was there. It was naked in his eyes and in the way he first flushed, then paled, then clenched his jaw hard and would not speak until the moment was over.

Firesong’s solution, which An’desha had decided to emulate, was to avoid such situations by avoiding An’desha except at meals and at night.

At night, at least, they were still compatible, and it was a good tension reliever for both of them. But for how long would that last?

He shook himself out of his reverie; Master Levy was staring at him with curiosity, as if wondering what it was An’desha saw in the water-table. “Well, I’m not getting anything done here. Perhaps, I ought to go take a walk and get some fresh air. Maybe I
will
intuit something that will help.”

“I will go back to my angles and instruments, and see if I can’t make something out of the result,” Master Levy replied, but he sounded discouraged. “One of our problems is that the waves are coming from outside, yet our models rely upon waves generated from the center outward. We can extrapolate the results by formulas based on that, but it is still not an accurate enough representation.”

On the whole, An’desha didn’t blame him for being discouraged. What they needed was a new way of looking at this situation, a new approach. That was how they had come up with the breakwater, after all, a new approach—a mathematically-derived analysis of magical energies.

“Say … how about this,” An’desha said quietly. “A
hoop that can be dropped into the water model to create a circular wave from the outer edge inward?”

Master Levy examined his hands and reflexively cleaned under his fingernails for the twentieth time this conversation. “Mmm,” he murmured finally. “That could help. I will put a student-artificer on the idea immediately. There are problems with the shortness of sampling time from the wave strike to edge reflection, but perhaps a large enough hoop could be made….”

Master Levy went on in the same vein for a while. They could come up with ideas, small ones that added up, but they never felt like a master solution. Now they needed another source of inspiration. The trouble was, they had run out of new cultural influences to provide such a source of new thinking.

We need a god to help us out this time. Unfortunately, since it is not likely that we will all be wiped off the face of the world when the breakwater fails, I doubt that She is going to be inclined to help us.

He shrugged and picked up his quilted Shin’a’in riding coat, pulled it on, and buttoned it up to his chin. He left the Palace workroom in a state of absorbed introspection, but he was not thinking about the mage-storms as he walked through the dead and deserted Palace gardens.

Odd. Not that long ago I would have been worried sick if Firesong had begun avoiding me. I would have been certain he was getting tired of me and was looking for someone else to replace me. I would have been in a panic at the thought of being alone. Now—

Now it simply didn’t bother him, in part because such avoidance also avoided confrontations between them.

And frankly, it wouldn’t matter to me if he did find a new lover.

That surprising realization stopped him, right in the middle of the path. He repeated it to himself, and it felt logical—right.

It would not matter to me if Firesong found a new lover. In fact, it would be something of a relief. I would stop feeling obligated to please him for fear of hurtful
response. A feeling like that has no place in a love affair.

Yet there was no one else
he
was even remotely attracted to! So what was prompting this sentiment?

Do I want to be—alone?

That felt right, too. Oh, he didn’t want to be alone forever, but a third realization came to him, on the heels of the other two.

I’m starting to find things out about myself—not just all the things in the memories of Falconsbane-that-was, but things about me. I need time to think about them. And it has to be time alone.

Poor Firesong.
He must be sensing that I want to be alone, and he’s thinking it means that I don’t want
him
around.

An’desha shook his head and started walking again, with his head down and his hands in his pockets. If only Firesong
would
find someone else, it would make things a great deal easier on everyone.

But the chances of that happening are not very good. There aren’t a lot of
she’chorne
around for him to choose from, and most of them are involved with each other. And the others—
He grimaced.
I’ll be charitable and say that the others are understandably warped by unfortunate early experiences. But that doesn’t make them pleasant or healthy to be involved with.

She’chorne.
When was the last time he’d heard, or even
thought
that word?
Back with the Clan, before Falconsbane—I hadn’t been making any attempts to court any girls in the Clan, so Grandmother started asking if I would at least consider courting one of the
she’chorne
boys.
Such an alliance, though it obviously would not be possible to produce children of the blood, was still considered honorable. More than that, such couples could pursue the adoption of orphans from within the Clan. In fact, many Shin’a’in Clans encouraged such alliances so that there
would
be couples available to adopt parentless children. By Shin’a’in standards, a
she’chorne
couple, with no children of their own to support, always had the resources to support
someone else, thus removing the burden from those with their own children to feed.

But that wasn’t what I wanted either, and she started in on how I was as shiftless and rootless as my father. …

There wasn’t much to examine in his relatively short “real” lifetime, but he’d been going over his memories, trying to find hints of what he was in what he had been. He’d also been examining the less-disgusting memories left to him by Falconsbane and all his previous incarnations, trying to find a common denominator.

There has to be more than one reason why Falcons-bane grabbed me to settle into. By now, there must be a lot of Ma’ar’s blood-children around, and at least a fair share of them should be mages. For that matter, given the way that Falconsbane and the rest used to ride out on little loot-and-rape expeditions just for amusement, there ought to be plenty of appropriate candidates out there. Somehow I have the feeling that there must be many common threads in my life and all of his … if only I can untangle them.

He’d already found one. Every single one of those previous lives had involved a person who, before Falconsbane moved in and took over, was someone who was despised or even abused by his natural family. Many of them had run away, seeking new lives elsewhere, actually seeking the implied power that came with being a mage so that they could return home and have revenge of one sort or another. That was why most of them had tried the fire-calling spell when they were alone; most of them had not yet found a teacher, yet had felt the stirrings of the power within them, and had decided to try it “just once.”

I wonder if having a teacher would have prevented Falconsbane from moving in? I wonder if the presence of the teacher would have prevented him from even trying?

Possibly; Ma’ar, the original of all the incarnations, had been one of the craftiest wizards of all time. Surely he would have hedged in his search for a new body with all kinds of conditions.

But what of that common thread of abuse, neglect, and derision? What if being despised and ignored was also a prerequisite to possession?
When I ran away from the Clan, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for— except a place to belong and a way to escape being forced into the life of a shaman. But I seem to remember that most, if not all of the others were actively looking for power when they ran. Some wanted real, bloody revenge, some just wanted to “show them all,” with “them” being the people who had offered scorn and mockery.

Now, wasn’t
that
an interesting thought? Had that condition actually caused them to somehow welcome Falconsbane, at least somewhere deep inside?

Being possessed, giving up your own responsibility for the sake of revenge—that’s beginning to make too much sense.