Sorceress of Faith (11 page)

She
scanned the shelves. The books intimidated her a little

since
she couldn’t read the fancy cursive lettering. She leafed through one and
jolted when a couple of the pictures became three-dimensional. Then she put it
back with a sigh. She wouldn’t be in Lladrana long enough to learn how to read
the language. A pity.

For
an hour she indulged herself with the treasures crammed on the shelves—boxes
and bottles, rugs, goblets and instruments, and art objects of all kinds. She
found an elegant, gold-etched bottle that held all the scents of summer, a
flying carpet for short trips around the island, models of castles and people
and animals. Bossgond only stiffened twice during her explorations: once when
she picked up something like a wand, but longer, heavier, and feeling like
blood and death; again when she reached a big, open book that looked like new
pages had been added.

She
moved on to another table with a series of glass jars that looked a little like
terrariums, increasing in size from a large mug to a great globe of about two
feet. She touched the top of one in the middle and a sharp
ping
sounded
in her mind. Static electricity—from
glass?
—shot up her arm.

In
an instant Bossgond was beside her. Grinning.

“Very
good,” he said, rubbing his hands.

Marian
wet her lips, stared at the jars. Now that she’d touched one, they all
sang
to her, like a series of glass windchimes. “What does it mean?”

7

B
ossgond smiled.
“You are a Weather Mage.”

Her
pulse quickened. “Weather? Are you sure?” She’d always had that odd sense….

He
chuckled. “Very sure.” Taking the largest globe with both hands, he walked to
the conversation pit and set it in the middle. “You must start with this one.
When you reach Scholar status, you will be competent in modifying the weather
in the midsize jar. Your Circlet Test will be of fire, wind, wave and earth in
the smallest jar.”

The
one with plants and trees and tiny bugs. Marian gulped, knowing instinctively
that she could kill them all.

She
sat cross-legged in front of the large sphere.

“Look
into the glass,” he said.

She
did and caught her breath. There was a world down there! With continents and
oceans, mountains, streams, vegetation.

Bossgond
sat behind her, his skinny chest to her back, his legs framing hers. Marian
tensed.

He
clucked his tongue and placed his knobby hands on hers. His chest expanded
behind her as he inhaled deeply. “I was no better than average at this task,”
he murmured. “But I can show you how to direct your Power. Concentrate on the
world below. Do you see the clouds?”

Marian
frowned and narrowed her vision, and a portion of one continent seemed to
enlarge. “I see…buildings! There aren’t really people down there, are there?”
Her voice trembled in horror. She couldn’t do this,
wouldn’t
do this if
she might harm anyone! Mistakes would be terrible.

“Look
closer,” Bossgond said.

Marian
did. Concentrating, she focused her gaze until she saw a city of stone and
wood, with winding roads to manor houses and two castles on a hill. They were
all perfect little models, but they were models—as were the trees and animals.
There were no fake people. Her breath rushed out.

“Now,
back to where you see clouds,” Bossgond said.

She
“zoomed out,” noted fat cumulus clouds and some wispy ones. She hadn’t taken
any science courses in years, wished she recalled more about weather. She
smiled. Weather, with a capital W, was now her focus of study. She was a
potential Weather Magician. How cool!

“We
will try to move the clouds.” Bossgond’s hands tightened over hers. “
Feel
the essence of the clouds, their density and shape.”

Was
that like the exercise of “be a cloud” that profs in the Drama Department
taught? Bossgond’s mind led her to a cloud that showed gray at the bottom, yet
puffed up white and pretty near the top. It was humongous.

She
shut her eyes and focused on sensation. She seemed to be floating in the sky,
but not as she had before, not herself, Marian, but Cloud. She floated
stomach-down, and the portion of her body closest to the ground felt heavy and
full of liquid. For the first time in her life her ass felt airy. She couldn’t
prevent herself from thinking of it as a huge billowing cloud, and giggled.

Bossgond
hissed. His irritation nudged her, and control of the cloud slipped from her
grasp. It rained. Thankfully nothing happened to her real body.

“See
if you can move the cloud,” Bossgond said, disapproval clear.

She
pushed her cloud. Nothing happened, except that she got a visual of her hands
penetrating cool air. She tried something different. She was now separate from
the cloud and grappled to
encompass
it. With her mind she formed a tiny
membrane from air molecule to air molecule of the cloud, then
pushed
. It
moved. She pushed again, and it slid rapidly through the air. Having fun, she
set her mind against it and shoved. It turned into a streak of white.

“Whee!”
Marian cried. She was flying, chasing a cloud.

Bossgond
made a strangled sound and fell backward, away from her.

She
stopped, withdrew her consciousness from the weather globe and shifted around
to see what was wrong.

He
was holding his head as if he had a migraine.

“Bossgond?”
she asked.

The
mage winced. “You are Powerful. I didn’t expect you to be able to move the
cloud so easily, so fast and far. I never could,” he grumbled.

“You
have other talents.” Marian scooted behind him and started massaging his
temples, wondering why she felt compelled to reassure him. He grunted, then
sighed with pleasure.

“Of
course,” he said, but he didn’t sound as sarcastic as she’d expected. He huffed
out a breath. “You are a naturally gifted student in Power. It happens
sometimes, that there are geniuses.”

An
inner glow of pleasure lit her. Of course, she’d been a professional student
all her life and knew she learned quickly…not that this was learning so much as
revealing
, discovering something deep inside her, something she was
meant to be.

Bossgond
said, “Naturally the Song would bring someone innately Powerful to the Tower
Community.”

That
evening after another mediocre meal, Marian joined Bossgond in the ritual room.
He began to Sing the blood-bond ceremony and she joined in when she could. When
he picked up a small, sharp knife and strips of linen, she froze. What was she
getting into?

Bossgond
smiled reassuringly. “We will be bound together for four hours—the correct
amount of time for a bond between Master and Apprentice. There are both lesser
and greater bonds, depending upon the length of the binding. A Pairing-Marriage
bond is a full night and day.”

She
nodded and tried to relax as he took her arm and shoved up her sleeve, concentrating
on something else—like how glad she was that neither of them had drunk a lot at
dinner.

His
voice deepened with mystery, with mastery as he cut her arm. The pain was
slight, but she yelped and stared as he inserted a little tube in her arm. It
looked as if he’d encased a whole vein. Then he slit open his own arm and
captured a vein.

Exactly
how much blood would they be exchanging? This whole thing involved a lot more
than she’d realized.

After
they were linked, they finished Singing the ceremony, Marian in a low tone,
experimenting with using her voice and Power. Even before they snuffed the last
candle, she could feel his blood inside her, weighty with age, with Power, but
also…murky.

With
his blood came memories, strange and distorted and flickering too fast before
her mind’s eye for her to catch and analyze them.

As
the minutes passed, through Bossgond, Marian’s small tune merged with the
planet’s. Wonder grew inside her.

She
found herself panting, and regulated her breath—yoga breaths. Slowly, they left
the top ritual floor and descended to Bossgond’s study. He’d placed a small
desk and chair next to his larger one, along with the big glass sphere that
contained Marian’s planet.

His
mouth moved and a second or two later she heard his distorted voice, not
beautiful now, but beating at her ears.

“Study
the continents, the contours of the land, and especially the weather.”

Marian
stared at the sphere, but minutes passed before her eyes focused. She
swallowed. Everything was so overwhelming! She chose a cloud—studied it as it
floated over the continent, changed shapes, absorbed other clouds and became a
weather front. Her heart pounded dully in her chest.

Bossgond
fiddled with lenses on his desk. Glimmers of his thoughts came with the flow of
memories.

A
few minutes after the second hour, Bossgond abruptly quit his work and they
went back to the ritual room, where they relaxed in lounge chairs. This was
easier, as she didn’t have to struggle with the input from his mind as he
worked.

Slowly,
slowly, without the distraction of her studies or his, relaxing in the chair,
Marian regained her equilibrium and could snatch bits of Bossgond’s knowledge,
process it, understand it. Comprehension of the language came first, and she
smiled faintly. Lladranan culture celebrated the Singer—a prophetess oracle—and
the Song, what they called the Divine. It made sense that she “heard” the
language in her blood, trickling to her brain, opening new paths.

Too
aware of her own memories flowing to Bossgond, Marian let Bossgond’s most
personal ones zoom past her. She knew he’d had two long-term lovers, that the
relationships hadn’t been totally satisfying. He probably learned all about her
mother—and Andrew. Perhaps he could help with Andrew. At least Bossgond now
knew how much she loved her brother and why it was imperative for her to return
to Earth.

Then
Marian “saw” the northern boundary of Lladrana, the fence posts and magical
forcefield boundary strung between them. The fence posts blackened and fell,
the border gaped. Monsters invaded. Horrible, hideous,
evil
-looking
things that brought nausea, so she pushed the thoughts away.

She
experienced worms in the rain. Most died when they hit the ground, some
tunneled into the earth. Frinks.

Some
people opened mouths to the frinks, were consumed by them inside until they
turned into monsters within a human skin. Mockers.

From
a colorful whirl of views through the binoculars, Marian picked out Alexa—at a
graduation, at a funeral, hiking up a mountain trail at night, walking through
a silver arch.

Alexa
choosing a baton. Alexa in battle—grisly images…Marian shook her head sharply,
no! She didn’t want to see that. Not now, not yet.

A
new fence post—Alexa grinning, holding a helmet under her arm.

Marian
herself at her work-study job in the Engineering Department. On a date with
Jack Wilse. Talking to her mother. Hugging Andrew.

She
pulled her thoughts back to the here and now—to the shrouded room around her,
the cupboards that held the globes of Amee and Earth she’d seen the night
before. The clock showed three hours had passed and seemed to tick with her
heartbeat.

Bossgond
made a strangled noise. She glanced at him—a gray tinge had crept under his
skin. His breath was ragged.

“I
can’t bear it,” he mumbled. “Your world is too difficult to contemplate. Too
harsh.”

Marian
thought that being invaded by terrible monsters was worse than Denver traffic,
which she’d been thinking of. But she reached for the linen strips that bound
their arms together.

“No!”
Bossgond cried, sitting straight up. “This needs a delicate touch.”

She
understood him much better now, so she leaned back. As he began to chant over
the bindings, her blood slowed and dizziness hit her. He carefully separated
their arms. The tubes had dissolved. A hollow sigh of relief escaped him.

After
a few more chanting words, his hard fingertip ran up her arm, sealing her wound
and leaving cold fire in its wake. Bossgond wrapped one strip along her arm and
sang a simple healing tune that made Marian smile. She was feeling sleepier and
sleepier. Had Bossgond siphoned her own energy into himself, thinking it was
his right as her master? She didn’t like that thought or the dark parade that
followed. Maybe he’d been acting all day, and now she was about to become a
sacrifice. Bad. Very bad. How could she have been so gullible?

Darkness
swooped down on her.

M
aps tucked under
his arm, Jaquar followed Chalmon up his Tower stairs to his study. The other
Sorcerer radiated irritation, probably still upset at Jaquar’s behavior in
claiming Exotique Marian the day before. Or perhaps it was that Jaquar had
gathered a circle of Sorcerers and Sorceresses to watch the Dark’s nest, and
they were reporting to him.