Fire in the Mist (20 page)

"Yes. I know. But I've watched her. I've paid close attention. She doesn't think the way you do, or the way I do. She's from a completely different world than either of us. And I don't think she would intentionally hurt anyone. Whatever she's doing, I'm sure she has a logical explanation for it, and I'm willing to bet that she is trying to help."

"Are you willing to bet your life? All of our lives?—because that's what you'll be doing, Medwind."

Medwind sighed, leaned against the window casement, and stared into the dark at the pale froth of pink fog below. "I believe in Faia. I don't really know completely why, but I do. She has principles and morals. She cares about people.

"She also doesn't understand the situation with Saje-Ariss, she knows nothing of politics, and she is as naive as a human being can possibly be. Deep in my gut, I don't think she harbors any active malice—but she could destroy us simply by trying to help." The Mottemage walked over and rested her hand on her prote[aage[aa's shoulder. "Medwind, we have to find her."

Medwind pressed her cheek against the cold stone casement and sighed. "You're right, of course."

"Mindsearch. Now, please, Medwind."

"As you wish."

Flynn lurked on the huge bridge-rock that stretched into the center of the lake—the cat was almost motionless, intent, thinking "invisible-harmless-not-cat" thoughts at the fish that swam ever closer, tempted by the twig he twitched in the water.

One big bluefish struck Flynn's lure, and with quicksilver grace Flynn stretched and caught and flipped it out of the water. He pounced, bit, cracked the spine, and began to eat, picking the heavy bones out daintily with his stubby, furry fingers. In his inscrutable way, he was grateful for the fingers, and for the delicate range of movements suddenly made available to him. He stopped briefly, spread his furry, claw-tipped hands and studied them. With a warm glow of self-admiration, he gave each finger a light wash before falling back to his feasting.

Two V's of water arrowed toward him, silent in the fog-shrouded dark. Two noses sniffed the warm scent of cat; four huge, round eyes watched him hungrily.

Flynn banqueted unaware.

Without warning, the ripples erupted into huge black shapes that lurched out of the still water to land on either side of the tomcat, trapping him on the rock promontory.

Flynn hissed and spat, yowled, swore, arched his back and raised his hackles, danced sideways—and frantically looked for, but never saw, an escape route. One of the man-sized beasts lunged in, huge jaws gaping, and retreated with five bloody slashes on its nose. The other, nearer the land, watched and waited.

Flynn turned in terrified circles, trapped on two sides by water and on two by the lake monsters. During one circuit, a huge paw ripped at him from behind, and his left hind leg became a mass of bleeding ribbons. He screamed in rage and pain. The monsters inched closer.

He crouched, shivering—damp, bleeding, terrified—and his furry fingers trembled across a long, thin object. It was a fishbone, remainder of his repast, which lay under his belly. He gripped it, tensed for a leap. From his right side, one monster charged. Hanging onto the bone, he launched himself straight at the face of the other beast, landing on its nose, driving his impromptu stiletto deep into one of the creature's eyes, raking his hind claws across its face.

It shrieked in agony and fumbled at the bone, while Flynn scrambled over the top of its head and raced three-legged down its back, across the rock promontory, and toward his tower home.

"... so, you see, we aren't trying to take over Mage-Ariss. We sajes are trying to quantify the stuff of life. We are unlocking the mysteries of the spheres; we're researching the history of Ariss and the whole of Arhel; we're doing investigations into the nature of magic itself. We aren't warriors—we're scholars."

They had talked for hours, while Faia observed Kirgen with every wile, guile, and subtlety she possessed. There was no indication that any part of his training had centered on violence, no indication that he bore animosity toward women, no sign of great desire for power to control others—and the faeriefire had led her to the person she needed to speak to. Faia trusted the faeriefires—so she felt she could trust Kirgen to be enough like his fellows to show her what she needed to see.

Her smile at Kirgen was radiant. "I knew they were wrong about the sajes. I know men, and they do not. So." She embraced him in a spontaneous hug. "Now I can tell them that they must look elsewhere for that terrible killer, that the Sajes are not responsible. I will not let them destroy Saje-Ariss."

Kirgen pulled her closer and hugged her gently in return.

The warmth and the tender strength of his arms around her felt so good. He smelled musky and masculine, still slightly smoky from his earlier mishap; she pressed her face against the smooth skin of his neck and felt hunger wakening in her belly that had been dormant since Bright burned. "Ah, Kirgen," she whispered, and kissed him lightly at the base of his neck, once, and then again. She felt his startled shiver.

His arms tightened around her, and his breath quickened across the back of her neck.

She ignored the twinges of her ribs and bruises and scrapes. It had been too long since she had felt something like this. Slowly, she twined one hand through the coarse waves of his hair, and slowly, she left a line of little kisses from his shoulder up his neck and along his jaw. His heart pounded against her breasts.

She turned to look at him—his eyes were wide and intent, his pupils huge. His lips trembled as he tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her into a careful, gentle kiss.

She closed her eyes and deepened the kiss. His rough stubble scoured her cheek; his lips caressed hers hungrily.

When she pulled away, he looked startled and disappointed. Faia shook her head and smiled, and began working as fast as she could at the lacings of his jerkin.

"Oh." His smiled uncertainly and stroked her hair and her back. "You're so beautiful."

She grinned impishly. " 'All women are goddesses/Once the dark falls,' " she told him. "At least that is what Faljon says. Just be glad you will not have to see me in the sunlight. You might change your mind."

"Whoever Faljon is, he isn't very nice."

"But he is usually right. He has one about men and the sizes of their—"

"I don't want to hear it."

She laughed and stood and tugged his jerkin off over his head. "—the sizes of their feet. But I will not tell you." She traced the muscles of his chest with her fingers and stroked the light coating of red hair that narrowed to a downward-pointing thread at his navel.

He stood, too, and fumbled with the laces of her jerkin. "I shall do that," she whispered, and removed it in one quick tug. She hissed at the sudden pain that pinched at her ribs.

He stared. "What's the matter?"

"I was trying to forget I fell off my horse." She grinned ruefully and rubbed her ribs. "My wounds just reminded me."

"Poor thing," Kirgen said, and bent over and kissed the spot she rubbed. His kisses crept higher, and became light, feathery nibbles. With a soft moan, he pulled her against him.

"Are you sure you want this?" he whispered.

"I'm sure," she said.

Faia suffered a momentary twinge of anxiety.
No alsinthe, though,
she thought.
I have none in my room at the dorm, I have none with me... but I can go to the market tomorrow and get some. Tomorrow will still be in time.

Besides,
she reassured herself,
it will only be this once....

The Mottemage watched Medwind Song, waiting in the tense stillness for her answer.

The barbarian frelle sat, as she had sat for nearly an hour, in a chalkdrawn circle facing a black mirror with tall white candles lit on either side of her. Her unfocused eyes stared into the ebon glass. Her breathing was so slow it was almost imperceptible.

Then she jumped a little, startled, and stiffened into intense concentration. Abruptly, Medwind chuckled. The sound fell like an anvil into the ice-bound silence of the room, shattering it into sharp, invisible shards.

Rakell's voice cut, another icy blade. "Well? What are you laughing at?"

Medwind shook her head gently and smiled up at her mentor from her seat on the floor. "Believe it or not, Rakell, my little joke was the true answer all along. She's found herself both boy and bed."

The Mottemage howled, "What! That brainless ninny! That idiot! What does she think she's doing—"

Medwind waved a hand to cut her off. "Actually, I can tell you what she's doing. She's having a good time... but she also seems to be concentrating on his intent and his honesty. It appears that she's invoking what little empathy she has on him to see if he was involved in the murders."

Rakell quieted. She stood, staring thoughtfully at the lean, dark woman on her floor, and her face clouded with confusion. "Dig deeper. Did she have a reason to suspect him?"

"It appears that she summoned a faeriefire to guide her to a trustworthy saje. The whole plan of hers seems rather juvenile and poorly thought out, but she apparently felt our decision to annihilate the sajes was unfair (
Which it was,
Medwind added to herself) and she wanted proof that the sajes—or at least most of the sajes—weren't involved. So she has questioned this young man at length, and is satisfied that he is innocent."

Rakell sighed. "And does she intend to sleep with all the rest of the sajes to determine
their
innocence?"

"I believe that the bedding was unplanned, Motte."

The Mottemage hit her head with the palm of her hand several times in quick succession. "Of course it was!" she snarled. "How silly of me. Gods save me from idealistic children! So she has proven his innocence to herself, and therefore she must fall in love with him?"

Medwind stretched and pinched out her candles. "She's a hill girl. They don't equate sex with love," she noted. "And, ethically, I have to admire Faia. She's going about it the wrong way, but she's trying to prevent what she sees as an injustice from happening."

"Not you, too, Frelle Medwind," the Mottemage growled in warning. "Don't you start with that 'poor innocents and sweet men' theme. I won't have it."

Medwind opened her mouth to protest, but the Motte cut her off. "And don't think I don't know about your 'secret' activities, either. I know all about the trapdoor in your room and your midnight visitors. Your taste for virile young men hasn't been a problem to this point, Medwind. And I'm very forgiving of your barbarian upbringing, and your heathen distaste for celibacy—but don't let that cloud your thinking on this issue." Rakell paced. "The sajes are guilty—maybe not all of them, but some of them. And the bastards need to be destroyed." She stared past Medwind out the window, eyes narrowed with hatred. "They're going to regret killing my students—my children. They're going to regret it, Med."

Faia's unbound hair spread across Kirgen's chest like a silk blanket. She nestled against him on his narrow cot, watching the smile play across his face.

"What are you thinking?" she asked him.

"Oh... that this would be a very nice place to be a hundred years from now. I could be content never to move again."

Faia laughed with delight. "So true. But just think. You would miss your classes on the so-important evocation of a cheerful number seven fire-breathing god—"

"Helpful fifth-level blue-smoke godling."

"As you wish. And I would miss my wonderful classes on how to renew rotted apples."

Kirgen chuckled. "That sounds exciting."

"Especially since my mother taught me how to do that when I was a small child."

The first gray light of dawn filtered through the fog into the room, and Faia propped herself up on her elbows. Her smile vanished. "You were wonderful, and this has been wonderful, but I must leave now, Kirgen."

"I suppose you must. When will I see you again?"

"I do not know that you ever will. We can hope, I suppose, but the situation in Mage-Ariss is very grave."

Kirgen slipped his jerkin back on, and handed Faia hers. "You're right." He sighed. "What should I tell the sajes? Should I tell them
anything
?"

Faia pulled on her own clothes. "You must—mmph!—do what you feel is right. I do not know"—her voice became muffled, then clear again as she worked her face free of the leather jerkin—"a good answer to give you. Maybe there is no good answer."

"Perhaps not. Faia—"

His voice broke, and Faia tensed. "What?"

"Thank you," he finished. "For not believing that all of us could be so evil."

Faia remembered Rorin and Baward and half a dozen other shepherd boys, and her brothers and her uncles, the dim and distant memory of her long-dead father, and the few men her mother accepted as lovers, and she smiled gently. "I
know
men. They do not."

"And now I know women," Kirgen noted. "They are not so frightening as I was led to believe."

There was a bloody, bone-chilling scream right outside the Mottemage's door, a long, high-pitched howl that froze both Rakell and Medwind in their places.

It quavered into silence, and Medwind whispered, "Merciful goddess, what now?"

Rakell ran to the door, summoning her shields around her as she went. "Back me up, Med," she yelled.

She flung open the door, hoping to catch whatever was out there off guard.

The steps were empty, except for wet, dirty, bleeding Flynn, who bolted into the room as if pursued by the nine dog-demons of Mejjora and ran under the lowest chair in the room.

From his hiding place, his blue eyes gleamed out balefully.

"Flynn?" the Mottemage croaked.

Medwind and Rakell traded glances, and Rakell stared back down the spiraling steps. As far as the curve, there was nothing, and even beyond, she sensed nothing, although the familiar power signatures of Daane instructors were nearing various doors. They'd been, she reasoned, wakened by the screams.

"It was apparently Flynn," she finally told Medwind, sounding disappointed that it wasn't one of the killer sajes—or worse.