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Authors: Sharon Shinn

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BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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“It almost sounds like magic,” Kirra said. “All those things you describe.”
Senneth nodded. “Yes, that’s what I was telling Cammon the other day. I would like to take him to the Lirrens sometime and see if he could read the people for me, and tell me the whole lot of them are mystics.”
She fell silent, but no one else spoke; it was clear she was still thinking about some part of her tale and debating whether or not to go on with it. Her eyes were fixed on the fire. Tayse wondered if she was watching some picture in those flames that no one else could see.
“In fact,” she said slowly, “in fact, I sometimes wonder . . .” She glanced up at the crumbling walls around them and then back at the fire. “If the Lirrens get their power from the Dark Watcher, and they are mystics, might not all of us derive our power from some god or another? It takes no great stretch of imagination to look at me and say, ‘You are a child of the Bright Mother, a descendant of the sun goddess herself. You can control flame because the Bright Mother herself is built from fire. You can will a room to fill with heat, you can create warmth from the cold bones of your own body, because you draw from that primordial source. Anything to do with flame or destruction or even creation, when it comes from the life-giving warmth of the sun, you can shape or summon with your hands.’ ” She looked up briefly, sending her glance around the faces in the circle, and looked back at her small fire. “I more than half believe it,” she said.
Tayse stared at the fire and wanted to be shocked and wanted to be disdainful, but he found himself both unsurprised and free of scorn. It made as good an explanation as any, and he was a man who needed explanations before anything ever seemed possible to him. She was descended from a goddess; well, why not? It was true she was not an ordinary woman.
He had never had much truck with deities. Ghosenhall had been an agnostic city since Tayse was born into it, and a king’s man placed the royal family above all other commitments. There might be gods, and other folk might worship them, but they did not matter much to Tayse or his fellow Riders. Truth to tell, the gods had not seemed to matter much to any of the people of Gillengaria, until the Daughters of the Pale Mother had started whispering tales of witchcraft.
Into the hushed room, Kirra’s voice came, equally hushed. “If it is true all mystics derive their powers from one god or another, then what god has touched me?”
Senneth looked at her. “I think the Wild Mother watches over you and Donnal and any who can shape-shift. The Wild Mother was the one who cared for all living creatures, who made the ox strong and the hare swift. She was never revered much, my grandmother said, because people did not understand her. They couldn’t determine what power she might give them—they already had dominion over animals as far as they were concerned—so they did not particularly worry about doing her honor.”
“And was she a healer as well?” Kirra asked.
Senneth smiled. “Ah—well—it has occurred to me more than once that you might have a very mixed heritage. Perhaps one of your ancestors was descended from the Wild Mother, and another from the Dark Watcher. You are blessed because you have two sets of skills, and two goddesses who guard you.”
“What about me?” Cammon said.
She regarded him thoughtfully. “I am not so sure about you. I am not, perhaps, conversant with all the gods. But I think you might derive your powers from the Lady of the Waters, who dwells in the riverbeds and the depths of the ocean. Water responds to every wind and every change in season—winter freezes it, spring releases it. If you blow on the surface of a pond, you send ripples in every direction. So you might call it a sensitive medium. But, as I say, I am not entirely certain.”
“This is ridiculous,” Justin began in a contemptuous voice, but Tayse cut a hand through the air to silence him, and he said no more.
“Are there other gods? And mystics with other powers?” Cammon asked.
“There might be. I don’t know,” Senneth said. “I only know the bits and pieces I have put together from tales my grandmother used to tell. And, as I say, I could be completely wrong—but it is a theory that seems to make sense to me.”
“But then—why would—how did—why did the gods choose some people to bless with power, and not choose others?” Kirra asked.
Senneth smiled. “I don’t know the answer to that, either! My guess is—oh, some time ago, centuries ago, the gods saw that the faith of the people was failing. And they decided to walk through Gillengaria, either together or apart, to try to reclaim their people. I don’t know if they showed themselves only to the devout, or if they walked naked and terrible through every settlement and invited the villagers to look at them. I don’t know if they selected one person in this town and another person in that town, and laid their hands upon the chosen, and transferred some of their own power into those bodies. I don’t know if they took human lovers to produce children that were half mortal and half divine. I don’t know if the whole exercise was a jealous competition to see which god or goddess could win the most converts. I don’t even know if it happened. I just know that there are a handful of us in Gillengaria who appear to have been touched with an inexplicable power, and I know that the gods have all but disappeared from our land. And I cannot help but wonder if there is a connection.”
“You say the gods have disappeared,” Cammon said. “But the Pale Mother is all around us, at least here in the south. Does that mean she won the competition, if there was one? Does that mean her—her children have some kind of mystical power?”
“I don’t know that, either,” Senneth admitted. “I have never heard of one of the Daughters displaying any kind of special ability. Maybe the moon goddess has no power, and so she is the most jealous one of all. Maybe that is why she hates the descendants of her brothers and sisters with such passion—why she wants to see them all banished or murdered, because she knows they have power, and she has none. Or maybe there were never any gods, and they never walked through Gillengaria. I don’t know. It is just something I have wondered.”
She glanced at Cammon. “But it might explain some things— why you could locate this building, for instance. You are sensitive to magic—or perhaps you are sensitive to divine power. This shrine is a place of divinity, and so you could perceive its existence.”
“Yes, well, you can always twist a consequence to match a theory,” Justin said, unable to contain himself any longer. “But to think—to hear you say—that you and your friends are
gods—
”
“I didn’t say we were,” Senneth said mildly. “I don’t think even the gods are gods in Gillengaria anymore. I just think they left some traces of themselves behind.”
“I believe it,” Donnal said quietly, and the others all looked at him. He had sat so quietly this whole time, in his accustomed place beside Kirra, that it was as easy to forget he was in the room as it was to forget the raelynx. Neither of whom should be overlooked, Tayse reminded himself.
Donnal went on. “There is a temple to the Wild Mother on Danalustrous lands, which I found one day by accident. A small place, completely open to the elements after so many years of neglect. I didn’t even know what it was the first time I came across it. But there was”—his hand made a half circle in the air—“a mosaic that took up an entire wall. Broken and fallen to pieces by now, of course, but you could tell it had once been beautiful. It depicted every creature that runs or flies across Gillengaria—hawk, hound, rabbit, fox, fish, cat—every one of them. As if this was the one place in the whole land all of them could be safe.
“I found that place one winter when I’d been hunting, and I’d gotten hurt, and I needed shelter for the night. And when I staggered in, and rested against that wall, I felt—I can’t explain. But I knew it was a place of power. And inside it, I healed faster than I believed was possible. I woke in the morning, and my wound was almost gone. I knew it was a holy place, and I went back as often as I could after that. I did not know what kind of offerings to bring, or even what god had once sheltered there, but I would sit, and I would meditate, and I would feel myself grow stronger.”
“You never took me to such a place,” Kirra said.
He smiled at her. “I will take you the next time we are on your father’s lands.”
Justin threw his hands in the air and leaned back against his packs. “Magic and superstition!” he burst out. “Old tales and crazy notions born of a fever on a cold night!”
Donnal looked at him, his dark face neutral. “Very well, then, how do
you
explain it?” he said. “Because you have seen what we are all capable of. The fire burns without fuel—I can take any shape I desire. If we were not touched by gods, gods who are still in some sense present in this world, then how do you rationalize the things that you know we can do?”
“It might be magic, but it is not divine,” Justin said flatly. “I can’t explain the difference, but I know there is one.”
Tayse held up a hand, bent on stopping the argument before it could properly begin. “It doesn’t matter,” he said to Justin quietly. “It cannot be proved or disproved, and since we have not been asked either to contain them or exorcise them, we do not have to care how they were made. Myself, I find it a story no worse than other stories—true or untrue—but it does not matter. What matters is that the king trusts them, and he has given them to our care. As long as they carry out their mission and do not betray the king, they can think what they like, and we can keep our opinions to ourselves.”
“Yes, but does the king know this bit about being children of the
gods
?” Justin demanded.
Tayse turned his eyes thoughtfully toward Senneth. “I don’t know. I have no idea at all what the king knows about these people, or how he came to choose Senneth for this mission.”
Senneth grinned. “No, I have not shared my theories with anyone except the five of you,” she said. “Certainly feel free to repeat them to King Baryn if you think they will have some bearing on how he views me.”
“I am more interested right now in how he knows you at all,” Justin said.
“My father had done some services for him for many years,” Senneth said. “I was in and out of the royal palace more times than I could recount for you, when I was a child. The king, as you know, does not view mystics with any revulsion. He seemed intrigued to learn that I had left my father’s house for such a reason.”
“And how did he learn of it?” Tayse asked.
Senneth’s eyes flicked to Kirra. “Malcolm Danalustrous told him, after I had spent some time tutoring his daughter. In fact, the king summoned me to his side for the first time more than ten years ago, and he asked me if I would exercise my abilities on his behalf.” She shrugged. “Since then, every year or so, as my wanderings have taken me, I have made a visit to the royal palace to give my greetings to my king. I suppose he does not think it is so very bad a thing to have a mystic in his employ whom he knows and trusts. The arrangement has suited us both.”
It sounded plausible enough, but, to Tayse’s ears, still a little too glib. What kind of service had her father provided to the king? Nothing even remotely military, or Tayse would have known about him. Perhaps he was a farmer or a merchant trader—perhaps he dealt in fine velvets and silks, or wines imported from Arberharst and too expensive for any but the royal table. It was her right not to be specific, of course—they had all left certain details out of their stories—but still, there was something about her explanation that seemed to skirt the truth.
“I have not seen you before, on any of these many visits you made to the king,” Justin said suspiciously.
“No, and I have not seen you, either,” she replied. “I imagine there might be more than one visitor to the royal palace who is not brought down to the guardhouse and introduced ’round to all the men.”
Kirra giggled; Justin looked furious. “Enough,” Tayse said. “There is no point in baiting each other over any of this.”
“Well, he couldn’t make it more clear that he hates and mistrusts all of us,” Kirra said. “He should at least pretend to respect us if his
king
finds us worthy of his regard.”
Justin looked hot to reply, but Tayse stared him down. “I think we could all work a little harder at pretending to respect each other,” Tayse said, and this time it was Senneth who stifled a laugh. “But for now, perhaps, we should call the conversation ended. Turn in for the night, work harder on our civility in the morning.”
There was a moment’s silence while the four mystics nodded and seemed to realize, suddenly, that they were exhausted, and while Justin struggled to contain his stirred emotions. He was a King’s Rider, and a damn fine one, but there were days Justin was still a gutter boy fighting for his life and hating everyone in the world who did not have to fight equally as hard.
“Should we post a guard?” the younger man asked eventually in a cool, professional voice. “I could take first watch.”
Tayse could not help a smile. “I’m not sure the sun itself will be able to find us by tomorrow morning,” he said. “I think we can all sleep tonight without fear.”
Senneth looked at him, and her smile was easy to read.
The sun will find us easily enough, because she will come looking for me,
her expression said. Tayse shrugged and almost smiled back, then turned to unroll his blankets and lay himself down for the night.
BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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