ZYGRADON (18 page)

Endor waited for him, when Mrillis returned to the healing house. The two
boys looked at each other for a few long moments, taking in the many changes that had
occurred over the winter. Then Endor gave him his crooked, half-bitter grin. They
laughed and leaped to slap each other's backs and grip forearms. Mrillis forgot his
weariness as his friend deluged him with questions. No one had forbidden him to tell
anyone. All Rey'kil would be involved in this venture, to one degree or another. No
matter what anyone said or who Endor's mother was, Mrillis knew his friend was Rey'kil
and loyal to High Scholar Breylon, if no one else.

"Destroy star-metal?" his friend yelped after hearing that proposal. "They'll kill
themselves and poison the whole world."

Mrillis didn't think so.
The Book of Stars and Beginnings
was made of
star-metal, after all. There had to be a way to make it useful. Why else would the Estall
allow star-metal to fall on the World for so long, if it couldn't be made useful?

"It's like some herbs Healer Aelix uses. They're poison when they're raw, but
when she dries them or cooks them or soaks them in wine, they become medicine," he
explained. "The Estall gave us those herbs--why not star-metal, too?"

"What's the use of a gift that can kill you?" Endor retorted. He snorted and
shook his red head and sprawled on his back across the end of Mrillis' bed.

"Well...fire is the same way, right? You keep little children away from it,
because they don't know how to use it without burning themselves." Mrillis rubbed his
forehead, hating the aching feeling that came from thinking too hard. He hated
admitting when he felt tired, or when the scorched feeling inside his head came back.
There was too much to do and learn, to waste time being sick and weak.

The next handful of days were misery. When Breylon or Le'esha weren't
around, some scholars and enchanters hounded Mrillis and Ceera, picking apart their
memories about the battle over the starshower like vultures stripping a corpse.
Sometimes Mrillis felt like his brain had been shredded and the inside of his skull
scrubbed clean with sand and embers.

He knew the leaders of the Rey'kil needed to understand what had happened,
down to the minutest detail, so they could use what he and Ceera had discovered. That
didn't help him fight the resentment he felt whenever a scholar or enchanter called his
name.

There were long stretches of time when Le'esha sent the children away, to play
and hide from the discussions of matters and theories high over their heads. The one time
Mrillis protested, that he needed to hear everything, she suggested that perhaps he had
done what the Estall had created him for--and he should be generous and share the
duties and glory with others.

That idea made Ceera laugh. So did Mrillis when he worked past his resentment
and the feeling he had been an arrogant idiot. So, he learned to enjoy the times when
every adult on the island was busy with meetings, and the children were free to play and
explore. Most of the time. There were the older boys to deal with when there were no
adults around to control them. Some believed no females belonged on Wynystrys unless
they were there to clean, cook and heal the men and students.

Mrillis was proud to guide Ceera around Wynystrys, to show her all the places
he had told her about. He still hadn't fully recovered his strength. After more than three
hours on his feet, he grew more tired than he liked to admit. When she became
impatient with his slow pace, he grew irritated enough to let her run ahead of him.

The watchtower on the highest hill of the island had a ladder going straight up
and steps spiraling up the inner wall, for those without the stamina or the courage to
climb straight up. Mrillis climbed the stairs slowly. He barely heard when Ceera said she
was going on ahead. He listened to her light footsteps pattering on the wooden boards
of the stairs.

The quiet felt pleasant, for a few minutes. Then, when he couldn't hear her
footsteps anymore, Mrillis felt a niggle of warning. He opened his mouth to call Ceera
back, and heard Endor call his name, from the open doorway of the tower. Grinning,
Mrillis waited for his friend to fly up the ladder faster than a squirrel, and meet him on
the stairs.

"Where's the little bird?" his friend asked.

Endor frowned when Mrillis pointed up toward the bars of light at the top of
the tower. Pillars held the roof above the wall and a wide platform resting on wooden
beams thicker than a man's torso provided space for twenty to stand or sit.

"What's wrong?"

"Nixtan and his friends are up there, playing at being sentinels and planning war
on all the beaches." Endor stood back and let Mrillis go ahead of him.

Endor and Nixtan had fallen into more than their fair share of fistfights. Mrillis
sometimes suspected his age-mate provoked the older boy deliberately. He couldn't quite
put all of his suspicion into words, but he sensed that Endor didn't like knowing that
Nixtan and Mrillis had once been friends. It didn't help that some of the bullies on the
island refused to forget that Endor was a half-blood, and they seemed intent on
punishing him for all the crimes his father, the Nameless One, had ever committed.

What mattered now was knowing that even if Nixtan was among those bullies,
the older boy might not stop them from picking on Ceera. He wasn't the friend Mrillis
had known just a few years ago, and might just be the ringleader in teasing her. Or doing
worse things than tease.

Mrillis braced himself for the first sign of trouble. He strained to hear Ceera's cry
of alarm or anger.

Nixtan and the boys he called his friends nowadays were fifteen and sixteen
years old and considered themselves Breylon's prize students. They punished anyone
who received more praise from the High Scholar than they did. Mrillis and Endor had to
be constantly on their guard. The older boys considered girls under the age of fourteen a
nuisance and treated every woman, no matter her rank, as a servant. If they didn't fear
the Queen of Snows so much, Mrillis could only imagine the disrespect and nasty tricks
they might have tried to play on Le'esha.

Ceera, without any visible guardians, would look like fair prey to those
arrogant boys. If she had some warning--

Mrillis nearly laughed aloud. He could warn Ceera, without Nixtan or the
others knowing. She could defend herself until Endor and Mrillis appeared. Mrillis knew
better than to hope the little girl would turn around and flee before she came face to
face with the bullies.

He reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall of the tower, kept
moving, and reached with his mind.

Where are you?

Nearly to the top.
Ceera's silent little giggle made the mental
atmosphere tickle.
You're too slow. I beat you!

The bullies are up there. They'll hurt you. Slow down and wait for us, will
you?

Too late.

Mrillis saw through her eyes. Four boys wearing mud-spattered cloaks walked
single-file down the winding stairs. Slow, cold smiles stretched their faces and they
watched the girl who had stopped on the flat platform, where a series of narrow
windows looked out over the open sea.

"They heard her and they came down," Mrillis told Endor. His chest ached from
the effort of talking and running. His friend nodded. The boys moved faster, struggling
to make as little sound as possible.

The wind picked up and howled through the slit windows piercing the tower at
every level. The resulting whistles and growls drowned the sounds of their soft boot soles
on the stone and wood. Mrillis reached for the Threads to pull power into himself to
feed his aching, weary muscles--despite Le'esha's warning that he could hurt himself if he
wasn't fully healed.

He didn't care. What good was his
imbrose
and ability to touch the
power flowing through the land if he couldn't help Ceera
now
?

"Little brats who go where they don't belong get hurt," Nixtan said. He didn't
grin when the other boys did, as if his words were more warning than threat.

Ceera folded her arms and put her back to the wall. There was plenty of room
to go around her and down the stairs. Taykal, the biggest of the bullies, glowered at her.
Mrillis guessed the black-haired bully had been about to accuse Ceera of blocking the
way. Her move took the smoke from his fire. If he couldn't demand that she get out of
the way, then he wouldn't have an excuse to push her. Knowing Taykal, he wanted to
push Ceera as close to the edge of the stairs as possible, to frighten her.

Endor and Mrillis climbed ten more steps in those few moments of silence.
Above them, the two sides glared at each other.

"Where's your keeper?" Nixtan finally said.

"Nursemaid," another boy snarled, earning laughter from the others.

Ceera glared at them and clenched her jaw tightly enough to make her teeth
hurt. Mrillis fought the urge to break the link between them. Seeing through her eyes,
feeling the reactions in her body, made it hard to keep climbing. Endor slowed and
gestured for him to look up. Just two landings, two more bends in the stairs ahead of
them, they could see the bullies, with Ceera between them and her rescuers. The
shadows hid Mrillis and Endor, but the sunlight slanting through the windows and gaps
between wall and roof put the older boys into clear view.

Wish we could throw fire at them,
Ceera thought to Mrillis.

He laughed, sharing her mental image of Nixtan howling and flying down the
steps, with flames crawling across his buttocks. His laughter echoed from all sides,
startling the bullies and Endor. With a shrug, the other boy continued up the winding
stairs and Mrillis followed, until they stood facing Nixtan.

"She doesn't belong here." Nixtan stomped forward and jammed his fists into his
hips. "Take the baby girl away before she gets hurt."

"If she gets hurt, it'll be your fault, and the Queen of Snows will make you pay,"
Endor snapped back.

"Gonna use blood magic on us?" Taykal sneered. "That's the only magic you'll
ever have."

"I don't need blood magic." He clenched his fists and took a step forward, to go
around Ceera. "I can pound your face flat before you can move."

Mrillis caught his arm to stop him. "We have permission to show the island to
Ceera," he said. "From the High Scholar."

"Liar."

A ball of blue light shot from Mrillis' clenched fist and hit Nixtan hard in the
chest before vanishing. The older boy gasped and staggered backward from the impact.
He slipped on the wet wood and went to his knees on the edge.

The feel of Ceera's mental hand linking with his jolted Mrillis from the shock of
what he had done. Their minds linked as easily as when they had merged to battle the
starshower. A streak of sparks shot from Ceera and slapped Nixtan, toppling him back
against the wall.

Go!
Ceera shrieked into his thoughts, half-laughing, as the other boys
scrambled to yank Nixtan to his feet.

Mrillis reached past Endor to grab Ceera's physical hand and dragged her down
the steps after him. Endor followed only a few steps behind, his cloak streaming out like
a horse's tail. Silence rang through the tower, muffling the sounds of their thudding,
sliding feet.

The three children bolted out through the open doorway at the bottom of the
tower and kept running. Across the clearing that surrounded the tower, down the slope
toward the beach, then along the sand until they reached the rocky headlands where the
sea crashed against huge piles of boulders. Ceera didn't ask questions--Mrillis had told her
about the hiding place in the middle of the pile, sheltered from storm and hot sunshine.
The three children climbed up and around and down a short tunnel. Finally, they
dropped to their knees in the pile of leaves and moss that carpeted the hole.

Laughter escaped them in snorts and giggles and gasps. They laughed until tears
filled Ceera's eyes and Mrillis felt dizzy. They lay on their backs, looking up at the tiny slit
of sky visible through the chimney in the rock, and let their bodies recover from their
headlong flight. The silence that fell on them sealed their friendship, as binding as any
blood vow.

"Show me how to do that," Endor said, after the silence had grown thick and
comforting and then faded again.

"I'm not sure how I did it." Mrillis sighed and rolled onto his side to look at
Ceera. "Do you know?"

The silver-haired child shrugged. "Thicker Threads, I guess. We needed to do it,
so we just...did it." She sat up and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms
around them and rested her chin on her knees.

Endor wanted them to show him how to see and touch the Threads, but before
they could get started, Kathal came looking for them. The warrior had followed their
running footsteps from the tower. He gave them some dignity by standing outside and
calling for them to come out, instead of climbing in after them. Mrillis appreciated
that.

"We should tell our Lady what happened," Ceera said, when the three children
had reached the sandy stretch of the beach.

"Now what mischief have you gotten into?" Kathal demanded.

"Nixtan and his herd of pigs were bothering Ceera," Endor said. "Mrillis hit him
with magic." He grinned and shrugged. "And then we ran, so they wouldn't pound us
into the mud."

"Mrillis hit him with magic," the warrior repeated. He rested one hand on
Mrillis' shoulder and the other on Ceera's--though he had to bend over a little to reach
the girl's. "Are you all right? You didn't hurt yourself? Those idiots didn't hurt you, little
one?"

It took the rest of the walk to Breylon's quarters to tell Kathal what had
happened and assure him the bullies hadn't done them any harm. To Endor's disgust, he
had to join the other students and teachers for dinner in the central dining hall, but
Mrillis and Ceera were to join Le'esha, Breylon, the head scholars and the Warhawk's
emissary for dinner in the scholars' private meeting room.