The White Mists of Power (3 page)

He brought the water bucket over to the chair. The fire was burning brightly now. Shadows danced across the walls. Light caressed the chairs, the bed, and the table that made up most of Seymour’s possessions. The man’s face was haggard in sleep. His mouth was slightly open, and his features had sunken into his face. His body was covered with cuts, and his skin hung raggedly around several wounds. In the forest he had been moving. Here he seemed almost dead.

Seymour dipped several clean cloths into the water. He wrung out one and dabbed the man’s face. The man twisted and moaned, but did not wake up. Seymour gripped the man’s chin to keep his head from moving. Much of the blood was old and encrusted, and most of it came from scratches, probably caused by thorns. As Seymour cleaned away the blood, he saw how the scratches were layered: a scratch near a scratch near a scratch. The man had been running for days. He must have been very fit when he started.

Seymour ripped back the man’s shirt and cleaned his chest. Here the skin was covered with bruises as well as scratches. One thick red area wouldn’t come off, and it took Seymour a moment to realize that the man had an old, blurring tattoo.

Seymour continued cleaning and tending, working his way down to the man’s legs. His thighs were scratched, but his knees were in tatters. The man had to have fallen a lot. The skin had almost scraped off, and the knees themselves were swollen. Even after wiping the dirt and blood away, Seymour couldn’t tell if there were other injuries. The scraping looked similar enough to a burn that Seymour called an herb witch ice spell his mother had taught him. Seymour could feel the power running through his hands, coating the man’s kneecaps with ice. The man shivered once, and sighed deeper into sleep.

Seymour folded the dirty rags and set them in a corner. Then he grabbed the bucket, took it outside, and walked through the grass to the brook. He could hear the hounds baying, the cries of the retainers as they tried to urge the dogs forward. The retainers would have to get Dakin–and they would have to replace these hounds. By then, Seymour hoped, the trail would be cold.

He poured out the water on the side of the brook, crouched, and filled the bucket again. The water here wasn’t deep, but it was cool and fresh. Without it he wouldn’t have been able to survive as long as he had in the hut. He didn’t know what he would have done if there had been a drought, like the one the land had suffered through 20 years before.

He glanced back at his home. The hut still looked abandoned. The grass was tall and, except for the worn area near the side where he usually walked, looked undisturbed. No smoke rose from the chimney, and the place appeared dark. He would have to leave it soon. Once Lord Dakin realized who had tricked him, he would begin a search for Seymour and the man. Within a few days the lord would find the hut. Seymour sighed. He didn’t want to go to the city, but he didn’t know where else to go.

When he went back inside, the man was still sleeping. Seymour set the water bucket in its place beside the door. He took the carrots, peas, and beans he had set aside for his dinner, mixed them with herbs and a few potatoes, added water, and poured them into the pot that hung over the fire. He puttered around the hut as the stew cooked, preparing the bed and cleaning a few dishes so that he could share his meal with his guest.

As the scent of herbs and cooking vegetables filled the hut, Seymour heard a groan. The man had raised his head and was rubbing the back of his neck.

“You will be for a few days.” Seymour ladled some stew into two bowls. Steam rose from the mixture, and in the half-light the vegetables looked very bright. He brought the bowls over to the man, pulled up a chair, and sat across from him.

The man took his bowl and ate quickly. Seymour did not offer him more, knowing that a stomach that had been empty and stressed for several days could take only a little nourishment at a time. When the man had finished, he flexed one leg and then the other, but did not flinch, although the movements had to have been very painful. “You bandaged me.”

“You took an awful risk. Dakin’s hounds–” The man stopped himself. He gazed into the fire and shuddered once. Finally he faced Seymour again. “I’m Byron, late of Lord Dakin’s service.”

Seymour smiled. “I’m Seymour. Also a former member of Lord Dakin’s household.”

“You’re a wizard?”

“A magician.” Seymour took another bite of stew. “My father was a wizard, but a great talent like his comes once in a century. I survive on a little talent and a handful of luck. This is the second time I’ve outwitted Dakin’s hounds.”

Byron laughed. The sound was deep and warm. Seymour felt as if he had just found a fire on a cold and rainy day. “And Lord Dakin would have us believe his hounds are invincible,” Byron said. “He’ll be furious to see they’ve been beaten by a stick and a piece of bloody cloth.”

“He’ll know whose stick that is.” Seymour took a final spoonful of stew. The food had lost its rich flavor. “He gave it to me a long time ago and let me take it with me as a ‘goodwill’ gesture when he sent me to the hounds.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then Byron gripped the armrests on his chair. He slowly pulled himself up, putting some of his weight on his legs. Seymour hurried to his side, planning to catch him if he fell. Byron grabbed Seymour’s arm and stood completely. Gradually, Byron released his hold on Seymour, tottered for a moment, and then steadied himself.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” Seymour said.

“I wanted to see if anything was broken. I fell more times than I’d like to remember.” Byron glanced at Seymour. “In fact, you tripped me.”

Byron looked at the bed in the corner of the room. Seymour had restuffed the pallet to make it thick and covered it with two heavy blankets he had found in the hut. “It’s yours. I couldn’t.”

Seymour put his arm around Byron’s waist. Seymour could feel the ridges of Byron’s spine. “Let’s go slowly.”

“No, Seymour, I–”

“No arguments. You’re taking the bed.” Together they moved across the room. Byron used Seymour’s shoulder to steady himself. His grip tightened with each step they took. By the time they reached the bed, Seymour knew that his shoulders would be bruised.

Byron collapsed on the blankets. “This is soft.”

“My one luxury. Someday I’m going to have a whole room full of luxuries.” Seymour bent over to help Byron under the blankets, but the younger man had already fallen asleep.

Seymour sighed. Byron had said very little about himself. And now they seemed to be linked somehow. A hound bayed, the sound faraway and melancholy. Seymour shivered. He wished that he would wake up with the dawn and discover that the whole day had been a long, crazy dream.

iii

The Enos stood at the edge of the forest. Green tendrils of moss caressed her shoulders, touched her back. A moment before, something had pierced the earth and drawn magic. Weak magic, poor magic. She closed her eyes and reached for the source of the earth’s pain. The magician, the young one, the bad one. And beside him, the white mists of power. She could feel the hounds’ paws scratch the dirt, move toward them. The land remembered the blood, the violence from the last death.

Time circles traveled across her mind. The magic would not hold the hounds. The white mists would die, pollute her land. The land would know even more violence, would come to love it. She felt the weight of blood pour over her shoulders, seep into her skin as blood would seep into the dry earth. She would change, no longer steady, no longer constant, seeking to fulfill a hunger that came from the outside: the sweetness of blood.

With an apology to the Old Ones, she reached into the earth, grabbed the tip of the magician’s staff, and filled it with the image of the white mists. His scent coated the land, every pine needle, every bramble, every blade of grass. She wiped the real trail clean and then clutched the tree for support.

She sent a silent apology to the Old Ones. They would understand. They would have to. She was guarding her land. They couldn’t punish her for guarding her land.

The tree bark scratched her skin. She felt old, older than the land itself. She was guarding her land, but she was also helping a human, doing the forbidden. She hoped that her simple action had not caused the final time to begin.

iv

Seymour twitched in his sleep. He knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t free himself from the images. He was running, running as fast as he could, his feet slipping in the fresh spring mud along the river, the hounds baying behind him. He had to get deep into the forest–deep enough that they wouldn’t find him–before he could cast his spell. Branches hit his face, his arms, causing the skin to sting. More than once he got a mouthful of bitter leaves and had to spit them out. Behind him, the hounds wailed, a long, thin sound that turned into a high, sustained note that cascaded into song. A song. Someone was singing. Seymour grabbed the sound as if it were a rope and pulled himself into wakefulness.

His back ached from the thin pallet he had placed in front of the hearth. Sometime during the night he had covered himself with a cloak, but he was still cold. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat up.

The singing continued. A tall, thin man was setting a bowl on the table. He tilted his head from side to side as he worked, his voice running up and down in scales. He looked so different from the man who had crashed through the brambles the day before that Seymour hesitated before speaking.

“Byron?”

The man looked up. His dark hair fell across his forehead and his eyes sparkled. “Good morning, Seymour. Did you sleep well?”

“Not as well as you, I think.” Seymour stood slowly. His limbs felt stiff, aching from the hardness of his bed. Byron was moving easily as if he hadn’t been injured at all. “Last night you could barely walk.”

Byron sat down at the table and pulled a bowl in front of himself. “I’m still sore, but I figure the more I move, the quicker I’ll heal.” He ate a berry from his bowl. “The food’s good. Come on and sit down.”

“In a minute.” Seymour walked to the water bucket, poured some water into his basin, and splashed his face. The coolness felt good and wiped the last trace of sleep from his mind. He had never seen anyone heal so fast. Even his mother’s advanced herb-witching spells couldn’t cause such rapid healing. He patted his face dry and pulled a stool over to the table. Byron had filled Seymour’s cup with water, and had filled the bowls with berries from the back of the hut. Seymour took one and let the sharp sweetness roll over his tongue.

Byron laughed. Seymour remembered the warmth of the sound from the night before, but then he hadn’t heard the music. The deep rills of Byron’s laugh had the same richness the scales had had a moment earlier. “No. I’m probably in more pain now than I have been in years.” He took a breath, and for an instant his skin seemed to turned pale. “It’s all in the mind, though.”

He gazed down at his food and swayed a little. “In the mind,” he repeated, as if to himself. Then he looked up at Seymour. “Years ago, I worked with an Enos who taught me that the best way to overcome illness was to believe that you’re well. If I concentrate on how badly I feel, I’ll be useless.”

Seymour remembered the tattoo on Byron’s chest and wondered if it was Enos-made. “Well, it’s good to see you moving around,” Seymour said. He wondered what else Byron had learned, if he had learned Enos tricks for healing or Enos magic. He would ask on the trip. Somehow he had to tell Byron that they had to leave. The magic wouldn’t hold forever, and Lord Dakin would discover the hut. Seymour wanted to be in the city by then.

“More water, Seymour?”

Seymour nodded. Byron reached behind himself and grabbed the pitcher. As he poured the water, sunlight glinted off a slender silver band on his right hand. Seymour hadn’t noticed the ring the night before. “Gift from Lord Dakin?”

Seymour felt a chill in the word. He ate a few more berries, unable to taste them. His father had often used that cool, dismissed tone, especially in later years when he had realized that Seymour would never be a great magician. His father had never believed that Seymour could do spells more complicated than the hearth spell he had used when he arrived in the hut. And yet he had made his staff into Byron and fooled the hounds. Seymour’s father would have been surprised.