SpringFire (12 page)

I considered, and she waited without moving. “What will you do if I say no?”

She sighed. “Please, just let me do my job. It will be easier for both of us that way.”

“What’s your job?” I spat the words out. “To bungle the healing so he can torture me more?”

Her eyes closed in a wince, as if my words struck a nerve. “No, truly not.” She held out her hand, palms facing me, in entreaty. “Honest told, I am here to help you.”

“And why would he—” I refused to speak his name aloud “—wish for anyone to help me?”

“I’m a healer, sworn never to harm but only to heal. Even Lord Rennirt doesn’t have the power to make me do otherwise. Here.” She took something from the basket and held it out to me. “See for yourself.”

I reached out a shaking hand and took what she offered. It was a poultice, warm and damp and fragrant. The scent of it seemed to cleanse the air around me.

“Go ahead,” she said, nodding encouragingly. “Apply it to your face.”

I felt torn. Rennirt had said not to touch it. Surely he would know if I did. On the other hand, this healer couldn’t possibly be here without his knowledge and permission. And in truth, the vibrations I felt from her were nothing but positive. Yet how could I trust her? Perhaps it was a trick. As I sat there, trying to decide what to do, she mimed holding something to her cheek. Almost of its own volition, my hand rose and pressed the poultice to my own cheek. Although it was warm, it instantly quenched the fire that I’d been barely managing to ignore. In relief, my whole body relaxed a little—a very little. I leaned back against the wall and half-closed my eyes. I still didn’t trust this woman.

“Ten minutes will do,” she said, now busy rummaging in the basket.

With the candlelight mostly behind her, I couldn’t tell much about what she looked like, other than having skin lighter than Rennirt’s and hair in braids like Shandry’s.

“I’m Soola,” she said, and somehow hearing her state her name disposed me ever so slightly more in her favor. I did not, however, return the courtesy. Rennirt hadn’t spoken my name yet, and if he didn’t know it, I certainly wasn’t going to make it any easier for him to discover. When I didn’t respond, Soola shrugged.

“When we’re done with that poultice, I have a special salve here. It will help the healing go much faster. If you do exactly as I say, it will be completely healed in three or four days. It’s up to you.”

I remained silent. There was nothing I wanted to say to Soola. And she let the silence between us grow until it felt like something alive, a palpable wall between us.

“Time,” she finally said, holding out a hand into which, after another moment, I placed the poultice. “You’ll have to let me apply the salve. It must be done properly, and you can’t do it yourself.”

I could if I had a mirror, I thought, then realized that a mirror was the very last thing in the world I wanted to see. Other than Rennirt himself. Our eyes met, and in that instant, I knew that she understood. I nodded slowly.

She turned around to get the candle so that she could see better. She handed it to me to hold while she extracted a pot from the basket. When she turned back to face me, I saw what I hadn’t before in the dim light: her entire face was scored with raised, black lines. I stared as she dabbed the salve onto my cuts with a touch so gentle I scarcely felt it. The lines on her face chased each other in interlocking swirls, a design so complex it could take years to unlock its secrets. Had Rennirt done this to her, or was it simply a custom of her people?

Involuntarily, my hand started to reach up toward her face. When she noticed, she caught my eye. I froze, but she nodded permission.

The lines really were raised; it wasn’t a trick of the candlelight. I stroked her cheek, wondering if the ridged scars felt my touch at all. She turned her head into my caress, and her eyes fluttered closed. A soft sigh escaped her lips.

When I let my hand drop back to my lap, she opened her eyes and said, “Yours won’t be like mine. Master Ganwin used a different technique. Once it’s healed, your skin will feel perfectly normal. The design will simply look like liquid silver. It will be especially beautiful in the moonlight.”

Beautiful?
Beautiful?
How could lines carved into my face be beautiful? I wanted to scream, but the tenderness of what had just transpired stopped me. I simply sat there and watched Soola pack up her things to go. She pounded on the door with her fist, though I doubted anyone could hear. To my surprise, the door opened moments later.

“I’ll be back in six hours for the next treatment,” she said, then she passed through the door, taking the light and any last shreds of my happiness with her.

To Lord Lorac~

It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that your son, Rennirt, is no longer welcome to study at the House of Willow. We have been lenient of his transgressions, not for your sake alone but for his as well. His power is mighty and he has great potential for good, if only he would discipline himself to his studies. We hoped that he would.

Alas, he has chosen to continue his dissolute and drunken behavior, going far beyond what is acceptable for a student and leaving us no choice but to permanently remove him from his course of studies and send him home to you.

Should you require further information, do not hesitate to call on us at Willow House.

~As ever at your disposal,

Pallan, Chief Sage, Order of the Willow

Over the next few days—I supposed they were days, for I had no way to know—it was the regular visits from Soola and the occasional meals shoved through the slot near the bottom of the door that made me sure I was not dead. Down in that dungeon, it was dark—dark and silent and lonely. I began to understand what it must be like to be both blind and deaf. Sometimes I tried to sing or at least hum, but the sound fell flat, as if none but a fool could stay alive down here for long.

I lay for long hours, lost in my maejic. It could not free me physically, but I found my mind could ride it deep into my memories to relive the times of my life.

The first time it happened was when I first tried to meditate. I cleared my thoughts—an easy thing in this black, soundless hole. I sought my calm center. Hard to do when it roiled, caged deeply in my soul. I tried to open my inner senses and was glad to find that I could. I wanted to be free, I begged to be free.

And whereas my maejic usually took my spirit outside myself, now it took me inward.

I found myself deep in a memory, so deep it was almost real. I was a tiny thing, still a toddler. It was evening, barely dusk with the feel of Autumn on the air. A few candles burned in wall sconces in the main room of our cottage, but the roaring fire on the hearth provided most of the light. Breyard couldn’t have been more than five, and he pranced naked around the room, battling some imaginary foe and making Mama and Papa laugh. I was warm and comfortable—and wet: I sat in a tin bath before the fire while Mama bathed me.

With sleeves rolled up past her elbows and her hair pulled back from her face, she looked young, not all that much older than I was now.

Papa sat in a wooden chair nearby. His hands were busy carving something, though from my vantage point near the floor, I couldn’t tell what.

Breyard stabbed the air in front of him with an imaginary sword.

“Ooof!” exclaimed Papa. “I think you got him that time.”

Breyard danced a little jig in glee. My chubby hands beat the top of the water, splashing it in all directions. Mama let out a small grunt.

“There, there, little one. Calm down, now. Tegar,” she said, looking up at Papa, “the water is cooling.”

Papa set down the things in his hands and crouched next to the tin bath, facing Mama. I looked from one to the other, Mama with droplets of water on her cheeks, Papa with his smooth, clean-shaven face and bits of grey beginning to show in his dark brown hair. They smiled at each other in an intimate way I couldn’t have grasped then but understood now.

Papa placed a hand on each side of the bath, as if he were going to pick it up. But he didn’t. He just stayed where he was, watching Mama finish bathing me in water that had begun to steam just a little. Every once in awhile, he gurgled at me to make me laugh.

When I came to myself in my dungeon, deep in the bowels of the earth, dark and silent, I wept.

Another time when my maejic took me back into the past, the memory was of an evening when I was about nine years old. I’d been sick during the day—I could taste the sour flavor of illness even now—and had awakened in a sweat that had soaked my bedclothes. I felt better, for the day’s fever had broken, but I was thirsty.

I threw back the damp covers and got out of bed. The cool stone of the cottage floor felt good on the soles of my sweaty feet. I padded to the pantry to get a drink. The cool water, dipped fresh from the cistern, slid down my parched throat.

Passing through the main room, I heard my parents’ voices float in from the yard through the open window. They liked to go outside on a warm night, once Breyard and I were tucked into bed, and chat under the open sky. I’d asked Papa about that once, and he’d said they liked to watch the stars dance to the moon’s music. When I asked if I could stay up to watch and listen, he’d kissed my forehead and said, “No, my sweet, you can’t. You won’t be able to see or hear it until you fall in love.”

But this night, my parents seemed to be having one of their rare disagreements. I stopped, unable to keep myself from listening.

“I still don’t like it,” Mama was saying.

“I don’t like it, either,” Papa replied. “But it’s for the best. We simply can’t risk anyone, not even they themselves, finding out the truth.”

“How will sending them away keep them safe? How can anyone in the world protect them better than you can?”

Papa’s sigh was so heavy I could almost feel its weight. “No one here can train them properly. At the academy, their thoughts will be filled with learning magic.”

Learning magic! My heart leapt. I knew they must be talking about Breyard and me. I didn’t stay to listen to any more, but dashed to my room, full of this secret. I got a fresh blanket from the chest next to my wardrobe and went back to bed. Just wait until I told Breyard in the morning!

But, of course, I’d forgotten the whole thing until now.

During the long, black, silent hours, I had to fight off hallucinations. Sometimes I rubbed my knuckles against the rough stone wall, trying to use pain to keep myself sane. How long would I be kept down here? How long would my maejic be able to stave off madness?

Each session with Soola grew in importance until it seemed she was the be-all and end-all of my life. Each six-hour interval between her visits stretched into eternity.

The last trip into my memories went to the Spring before I started at Roylinn Academy. Breyard, of course, was already studying there, so it was just Mama, Papa, and me.

Although it was past the time for Winter storms, a terrible blizzard had struck the day before. The snow was so deep we couldn’t see out the windows. Papa had spent much of the afternoon digging a path clear between the cottage and the outbuildings. We all slept in the front room that night, wrapped in blankets and covered in furs, the fire blazing to keep the room warm.

I’d awakened to find Papa putting on his heavy work boots. Mama lay next to me, still asleep.

“Where are you going?” I asked Papa in a whisper.

“To the lambing shed. Now go back to sleep.”

“Why are you going there? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Shh. You’ll wake your mother. I’m going because I’m needed.”

“How do you know?” I asked, confused.

“I just do. Now, please, my sweet, just go back to sleep.”

And now I sat up sharply, crying out in surprise. Papa was maejic, too! He must be!

My heart raced at the thought. It had always been a wonder to the people of our village that Breyard and I had such strong magic, since neither of our parents did. Now I understood the truth: Papa
did
have magic, and not just magic, but maejic, too.

Why then had he been so fearful about my maejic? Once he’d beaten me unmercifully at the mere suggestion, insisting that I never mention it again. When I’d recently discovered that I was maejic and that it was a capital offense, his reaction had made more sense.

Now there were so many things I wanted to ask him, but he was far from here, in a whole different world to which I might never return.

When Soola next came, she held her candle near my face. With a half-smile, she felt my cheek with her free hand. I almost flinched from her touch before realizing that it didn’t hurt. No burning, no stinging, no itching. As if it were back to normal.

“It’s healed,” Soola said in a soft, almost bemused voice. “You did well not to fiddle with it, to let the medicines do their work.” Her eyes moved from their examination of my cheek to my own eyes. “It
is
beautiful. No matter what you fear.”

I sucked in my breath in a tiny gasp. There were so many things I feared, but until now, I’d refused to use the word lest it bind me. Now that she’d said it, a torrent was loosed in me, freezing me in place and leaving me unable to speak as she stood up, pounded on the door, and left me. The door scraped shut with an air of finality.