Fire in the Mist (27 page)

At last, the damned bell quit ringing. Yaji waited a moment, then dropped her shield.

The frelles were first among the unshielded or poorly shielded to regain their composure. They began organizing the mage students and directing them back into their buildings, instructing them to wait in their rooms to hear whatever news the frelles could glean. Then they took off toward the Greathall, where, presumably, the Mottemage or Medwind Song would arrive soon to tell them what the ringing of the saje bell meant.

Yaji ducked behind shrubbery and waited for the crowd to clear, then jogged across the greensward to the lake.

She could see Faia—and the Fendles. And she began to have a nasty feeling about the whole situation. Faia sat on the rock with her head thrown back and her mouth hanging open, as one of the Fendles stared into her eyes. The tableau held for several minutes, then shifted abruptly as the staring Fendle fell over, apparently dead. With uncharacteristic caution, Yaji angled into the undergrowth at the edge of the woods instead of going straight for the rock. Then she moved in as close as she dared, keeping low.

Faia stood and laughed wickedly and said something to the other Fendles that Yaji couldn't hear, and then Yaji had to shove her fist into her mouth to stifle a scream. The dead Fendle became, briefly, the corpse of a human woman that decomposed before her eyes.

Oh, gods
, she thought.
Oh, gods—

She closed her eyes and held her hands over her mouth. Faia's laugh, unspeakably evil, echoed across the lake. Yaji shuddered and closed her eyes tighter, wishing the awful sights and sounds she'd been witness to into oblivion. Suddenly, behind her, the bushes crackled, and she heard a gentle snuffling. Yaji opened her eyes and froze, praying that whatever was behind her would fail to notice her. Then a wet nose pressed against her arm, and she leapt and spun to face—

—Two Fendles. Two grinning, needle-toothed Fendles, with deceptively sweet brown eyes, that hissed at her and pushed her backward through the underbrush toward Faia. Yaji tried to remember how to draw up the attacking firebolt that her instructors had demonstrated years ago as part of the personal defense course, and failed. She fell back again on Faia's psychic protection shield, which, she noted grimly, didn't make any appreciable difference in keeping the very physical Fendles at bay.

A hand settled lightly on her shoulder from behind her, and Yaji squealed and spun around. She found herself facing her roommate, who studied her the way Yaji herself had studied insects that found their way into her picnic drinks.

"Faia," she shrieked, "help me out. Something is wrong with these be-damned beasts! Get them away from me."

"Faia? I know no
Faia
, child," her roommate said in a cool, cultured, oddly ancient-sounding voice. "I am Lady Sahedre Onosdote, the champion of womankind. And you, my dear, have seen too much for my liking."

"F-F-Faia," Yaji stammered, "this isn't funny. Stop it."

"Yes, of course. How forgetful of me." Faia/Sahedre nodded thoughtfully, then smiled at Yaji. "To you, I appear as your friend, Faia, since I wear her body. Trust me, she has no use for it now. But you... you have seen me dispose of my own old and ruined body, and I greatly doubt you would be inclined to keep your silence."

"Yes, I—"

The stranger in Faia's body cut Yaji off. "No matter. You present yourself in time to solve a pressing problem of mine. There were seven Fendles. Now there are only six. Some especially bright person might notice this, do you not think so, little girl?"

"No, Faia," Yaji said. "No one will notice.

"Little liar." The woman laughed. "And you must call me Sahedre. Faia is dead and gone and already forgotten. As you will be, if you do not help me."

One of the Fendles shoved its nose hard into the small of Yaji's back, and Yaji fell forward. Sahedre caught her roughly, and shoved her grinning face down into Yaji's.

"Pity the body with the magical talent wasn't yours. I'd have liked to wear your elegant little frame around, instead of this brawny peasant carcass. But after this is over, I'll save your body for one of my servants. It will do well enough." She looked at one of the Fendles. "Would you enjoy this as a gift, Mehandelia, for your hundreds of years of service?"

The Fendle chirruped sweetly.

"So," Sahedre smiled again. "We shall give you to Mehandelia. In the meantime..."

Sahedre whispered hissing syllables under her breath and stared into Yaji's eyes. Yaji tried desperately to look away or to shield herself, but she couldn't. She felt her bones melting with agonizing speed, and fire lanced through her muscles. Her face felt as if it were ripping in two. A blurry, dark brown mass grew between her eyes. Her fingers ached, and she stared down at them, horrified. Sharp black claws replaced her fingernails, and her fingers shortened and twisted and grew webbing. Brown fur grew out of the backs of her hands and her arms.

She screamed, "No! No!" and all that came out of her mouth were frightened chirps and squeaks. She fell to the ground and stood, four-legged and unable to stand back up on two legs. She glared up at the mage who now towered above her, and hissed furiously.
I'll kill her,
Yaji thought.
If ever I get the chance, I'll kill her.

Sahedre ripped Yaji's clothes off, and nodded at her with insane brightness. "You make a lovely Fendle, dear," she said.

Nokar Feldosonne shoved another heavy tome in Medwind's direction. "In this one, Sahedre is the Vaydia, the human incarnation of Terrs."

"Terrs?" Medwind looked over the paragraphs he indicated.

The old man chuckled. "Terrs is the goddess of death and destruction. She rips through saje mythology like a scythe-wielding fiend through a nursery, and she supposedly comes to live among us from time to time in the form of the Vaydia, the beautiful torturer and killer."

"Nokar, this is the seventh saje version of the "Wisewoman-and-Fendles" myth I've read, and
none
of them have a damned thing in common—except that Sahedre and the Fendles are always portrayed as evil incarnate."

"The germ of truth at the heart of the lies." The librarian nodded sagely.

"You don't understand. The Wisewoman is a Mage-Ariss hero—supposedly she saved the world from the encroaching evil of the sajes. In your books, she is the evil the world was saved from."

"At risk of my head, I'll note that the mages would have a stake in portraying her as a hero instead of a villain. She being female, I mean."

"Lay off the headhunter jokes, old man. I haven't done
vha'atta
in about fifteen years, and I'd hate to start back with a sorry specimen like you."

The old man cackled gleefully.

Medwind nibbled on the tip of her braid and stared at nothing. "The mages have a vested interest in portraying their own as heroes; the sajes have the same vested interest." Her eyes flicked over the ancient saje. "Which you must admit."

The saje nodded silent agreement.

"After over four hundred years, it will be impossible to know who lied. But I have to know."

"Well, I agree that knowing who lied will be impossible, but I fail to see any urgency in unraveling the matter now. Old myths are fascinating, but hardly a life-and-death issue."

"What if—hypothetically, of course—I told you that the Fendles are back, and swimming in our lake at Daane?"

The old man's eyes narrowed, and his gold-bound braids swung like pendulums as he leaned forward and planted his hands on the garnetwood library table. "Hypothetically, of course, I'd be inclined to go see for myself. Barring that, I, too, would want to know the truth behind the myths."

From the opposite side of the table, Medwind leaned forward in imitation of his pose, and her eyes locked with his. "Then help me find it. Help me find the truth, and stop a war, because somehow, all of this is linked together."

He started to agree—and the Conclave bell began to ring.

He winced, and beckoned her with one crooked finger. "It may all be linked—and your myths and Fendles may be at the heart of this mystery. But the time for looking through books has just passed. I'll break all precedents and tell you that if you would stop a war, you'd best come with me—there's not been a mage in Conclave since the Split, but the time may have come to join forces."

Medwind hurried to his side, and felt his bony fingers dig into the muscles of her upper arm. The the world turned simultaneously upside-down and inside-out.

When her vision cleared and the urge to retch had passed, she found herself in the midst of a giant bowl carved out of stone, with a solid stone roof arching high overhead. She was surrounded by a constantly shifting stream of sajes of all descriptions who appeared in puffs of colored smoke and ran wildly for the steps carved in unbroken rings around the sides of the bowl.

"Hurry," Nokar yelled over the riot that surrounded them. "We have to get out of the way so others can come in." He yanked with the fingers that were still embedded in her arm, and bemused, she followed.

They swarmed up the rows and rows of stairs, until their progress was blocked by sitting sajes above them. Immediately Nokar turned and sat, and Medwind did the same. Both gasped for breath. Beside them, sajes thumped down, and almost simultaneously, sajes took seats in front of them as well.

Watching the crowd pour in, an image struck the mage.
What bowl fills from the top to the bottom?
she thought abruptly.
A new riddle, and one none of the tribes could answer. I could garner a few trophies for
that
—though I'm sure the losers would scream foul. The idea of an arena such as this one would be rather foreign to my dear Hoos.

The Basin filled, and the steady stream of newcomers dwindled to a trickle, then to a few startling pops that dumped embarrassed late arrivals onto the arena floor in front of the watchful eyes of the full house. Then the smoke settled, and the arena floor lay empty.

Nokar jabbed her in the ribs with one bony elbow. "Keep quiet and don't call attention to yourself," he whispered.

"Dressed like this?" she whispered back. "You've got to be kidding!"

"No problem. We have a couple of male Hoos warriors affiliated with one of the other Universities. The gender differences in Hoos dress aren't significant to the untrained eye. As long as no one realizes you're mage, not saje, things will go well enough." Nokar fell silent and scanned the crowd.

Medwind relaxed a bit and let her own eyes wander across the crowd that filled the Basin.

Heavens,
she thought,
there are a lot of sajes. More of them than mages.
The realization made her uncomfortable.
Lots and lots more. What if
they
declare war on
us
? Not that the thought of odds slowed any of the Magerie down when all this started. The Mage Council seemed to think these men would be dirt beneath our heels.
The sheer masses of saje-qualified men seemed more overwhelming to Medwind tactics-and-strategy-trained mind every instant.
I think there would be less dirt beneath our heels than the Divine Councilmotte believes. And considerably more on our faces.

Too, the sajes were represented by a broader spectrum of society than were the mages. Medwind spotted plenty of the highborn university types she'd always equated with sajes scattered throughout the crowd. She also saw a broad slice of the poor and the foreign, of smiths and bakers and brewers, of hedge-wizards and holy-wizards, of merchants and tinkers and drinkers of ale.

When the bell rings, if they can come, they do,
she thought.
How odd. The Magerie loudly touts its egalitarianism, and throws out any who fail to maintain all of its nit-picky little standards. They'd be happy to be done with me if they thought they had the grounds. The Sajerie makes no lofty claims, yet opens itself to all.

A great, brawny gold-haired fellow in an odious purple-orange-yellow-and-black-patterned robe claimed the center of the arena and raised his hands, commanding silence. He got it.

In that robe, he could probably command the attention of the fishes in the sea and get it,
Medwind thought, distracted from her reverie and wickedly amused. She nicknamed him Flamboyus.

Flamboyus bellowed in a sonorous voice, "To the assembled, to the gathered, to the drawn—the compelled, the chivvied, the desired: Hail, welcome, well met."

The audience answered as one voice, "Hail, welcome, well met."

"The bell rings, terrors rise, and we come at the moment of distress, for darkness falls in daylight," the leader continued.

"Darkness falls in daylight," the assembly agreed.

Wordy, wordy, wordy,
Medwind thought.
And not very interesting. They could lose the liturgy and improve this production sixty>seventy percent.
But she droned out the responses with the rest of the patchwork crew.

"We call forth the Bellmaster, the Lord of Singing Metal, Leash-of-Ghosts. Oh, Walker Among Spirits Chained, Oh, Bravest Saje—tell us what we fear."

"Tell us what we fear," roared the assembled host.

Beside her, Nokar Feldosonne watched for movement like a hawk hunting mice. Nothing happened.

Everyone waited.

Time passed in silence. Individuals of the assembly shifted in their seats, or looked around the Basin, or sighed; all of them continued to wait. The expectant silence grew heavy with unborn doubts that hatched rapidly into bitter whispers.

"... a trick, a jest..." Medwind heard.

"... some fool prank to draw me away from my shop..."

"... have his hide, if I find out who..."

"... but how the hells could someone unwarranted ring the damned bell?" asked one.

"... bet the bell ate him," another suggested.

"Now there's a cheerful thought, Eumonius. You always do see the bright side of things...."

The whispers grew conversational, grew argumentative, grew to shouts, as the mob began to demand answers of Flamboyus, who was trapped at the center of all the attention. He raised his hands in a placating gesture and began to say something.