Fire in the Mist (28 page)

With a WHUMPH! he was enveloped in a dense cloud of black smoke that sent him coughing and sprawling into the first three rows of sajes. This had the effect of dumping a number of well-dressed scholars into the laps of a number of poorly dressed roust-about types, and vice versa. Fighting broke out, and was only quelled when the leader of the litany stood up and knocked together the heads of the two nearest brawlers.

Silence crept back into the Basin and reclaimed its seat.

Medwind leaned forward, fascinated. In a marvelous, bizarre day, this was ultimate theater—and now, with an entrance worthy of Hoos hellspawn, more players joined the play. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been this entertained.

The smoke cleared to reveal an old, battered, downtrodden saje; a portly, effete scholar; and a muscular young redhead who had Medwind licking her lips.

"Has the call for the Bellmaster been given yet?" the scholarly fellow asked the leader in a whisper that carried beautifully to the top rows due to spectacular acoustics.

"A bloody long while ago, thank you very much." Flamboyus was furious. "Where the hell were you?"

"The bell tried to steal the Bellmaster's soul, and we had the very devils' own time getting him out of the belltower."

A soft murmur ran around the Basin at this news.

"Damned bell ought to be broken and recast, with better sajes in the mix," Medwind heard.

"Yeah," another voice noted dryly. "Let's just cook some nice guys into the bell. Great plan. You volunteering?"

The first was silent a moment. Then he said, "Nice guys? Let me give you my recipe for Three-Infants-and-One-Virgin Fricassee."

Medwind snickered, as did Nokar. He whispered into her ear, "Same response we get any time someone suggests recasting the bell. Three convicted necromancers went into the bell brew the first time. Not very nice chaps, really, and they keep trying to kill the Bellmasters—but it was hard to find a good grade of convicted necromancer back then, I suppose. I doubt we'd do better now. And volunteers are nonexistent."

"
You
want to volunteer?" Medwind asked with a grin.

"Have I given you my recipe for Three-Infants-and-One-Virgin Fricassee?"

"Right."

Down in the arena, the gray-skinned, sweating Bellmaster, propped up by three strong men, cleared his throat and began to address the crowd. "Fellows of the Sajerie—we face possible doom and annihilation from Mage-Ariss. I present to this gathering Kirgen Marsonne, who obtained news of this one week ago from a mage-student who flew into Faulea University on a wingmount to tell him."

Faia.
Medwind closed her eyes and shook her head.
Whether she meant to or not, she has managed to betray us, hasn't she?

KIRGEN, Faia's contact in the Sajerie, told the tale fairly—Medwind was grateful for that—and the sajes listened equitably. But what they were presented with was the suspicion (correct, Medwind knew) that the mages were plotting against them, and Kirgen's and the Bellmaster's real fear that the sajes were about to be wiped out for having done nothing wrong.

Kirgen finished his recounting of Faia and the wingmount's late-night ride. Medwind's "Flamboyus" stood quickly and announced, "We will now hear opening opinions. Hold applause and comments from the audience to a minimum. Hear what the speakers wish to say. Speakers, only one comment per person. Debate shall follow these initial statements."

Sajes moved into the arena one by one to give their opinions and offer courses of action.

The first speaker took his place at the center of the arena. He was portly and shopkeeperish, with a red face and beefy hands. His balding forehead shone with the sweat of nervousness at facing such a crowd, but he never faltered. "Despite the separation of mage from saje for all these hundreds of years, I for one do not believe the mages to be unreasonable," he announced. "I recommend approaching the mages with a detailed report of what we have heard and asking to hear what they have to say. I wouldn't treat one of my employees any differently if they had been accused of stealing from the till."

There were a few calls of "Hear, hear!" but most of the audience kept its silence.

A lean, elegant man followed the shopkeeper into the cleared circle. "Certainly, Rosbul, you treat all your employees with great fairness—but I will note that your employees are not rising up to destroy you. Now is not the time for generosity toward the mages. Now is the time to annihilate those who would destroy us without warning or parley, and save our own skins and those of our families in the process."

"War is the only answer," a young, tense man offered when he took the circle. "A quick, incisive strike that will take out the mages but not destroy the surrounding population seems most humane."

The fourth saje also favored war. The next two sajes in a row preferred some form of negotiation; they were followed by a crew of angry men who wanted to see Mage-Ariss wiped off the map.

Medwind listened to the procession of sajes and kept count of their opinions.
It seems to be running about four to one against peace,
she thought, dismayed.

Nokar Feldosonne noted the direction the speeches were taking, too. He grabbed Medwind's arm and pulled her to her feet; the two of them raced down the side of the Basin through the packed rows of sajes. She crashed down stone steps until her knees ached; she jingled like a burgher's purse and clanked like an armored warhorse, clambering over gorgeously dressed sajes and burly, short-tempered merchants impartially. In her wake she left buzzing protest.

When they reached the line at the bottom and took their place at the end of it, Medwind whispered to Nokar, "What are you doing, old man?"

"You've heard the speakers," he whispered back. "By the mood of the assembly, I'd guess the Sajerie will vote for a pre-emptive first strike against Mage-Ariss if you don't tell them what you know."

"I only suspect, Nokar. I don't
know
anything!"

"Then sell the Conclave your suspicions. But you'd better peddle your wares convincingly, or you won't have a home to go to—if they let you live to go."

Medwind wrinkled her nose. "Thanks so much. If I survive this, I may do
vha'atta
to your head after all."

While they waited, Medwind couldn't help glancing around the soaring wall of sajes that rose above and around her. Some noticed her, grinned at the costume, then frowned as they realized the person in it was female, not male. Those who noticed nudged the sajes next to them and whispered. The nudges and whispers spread through the crowd.

When finally the line in front of her was gone and Medwind stepped into the circle, a lump formed in her throat and her heart raced. Eyes, thousands of hostile eyes, stared at her with expressions that ranged from fury to disbelief.

They'll kill me,
she thought.

Flamboyus left his sideline seat again, this time approaching Nokar. "This is highly irregular," he remarked. "This woman has no voice in Conclave. Why is she here?"

"I'm waiving my right to speak, Burchardsonne. She will speak for me."

The burly man pondered for a moment. "Very well, Nokar, but on your head be it."

Nokar gave Medwind a sidelong look, and grinned ruefully. "So I've heard," he muttered. "So I've heard."

The old man rested one hand on the warrior's shoulder. "I've given up my voice and my vote for you, Song—and for the chance of preventing bloodshed," he whispered. "You will only get one chance to say anything here. Don't waste it."

She nodded solemnly, and as she took her place at center stage, she looked up into the crowd, slowly turning until she had seen the full round of sajes that towered over her.

Now, what do I say?
she wondered.
What can a warrior hope to say that will bring peace?

She took a deep breath and began. "My name is Medwind Song, of the Huong Hoos, ten years tenured mage in Daane University." She swallowed hard. She'd faced warriors in battle, and would, at that moment, have preferred the black-and-white simplicity of battle to presenting a bad case to a room full of the enemy. "I will tell you now that what you have heard so far is true. The murders happened, the saje-ring was found among the bodies, war against the Sajerie was planned, the Fendles have returned—and one of my students did fly to Saje-Ariss without permission to warn you of our plan of attack, and your danger.

"What that student did not know, and what you have not therefore heard, was the depth of apparent evidence we have against the sajes. We found the ring, true, but we are as knowledgeable as you about the ease with which a trinket can be tossed among bodies to deceive and mislead. The ring would have cast suspicion, but not conviction. However, each of the bodies was slain in the ancient saje ritual style of
mehevar
—the same necromantic ritual that is historically noted as the cause of the First Ariss War and the split between Mage- and Saje-Ariss."

There was a sudden undercurrent of angry whispering that spread through the assembly like flames through dry grass. One man, ignoring the Conclave rules, shouted, "
Mehevar
was developed by mages! Don't blame that on the Sajerie."

Medwind, frustrated, snapped, "We have only our histories to go by, and those claim sajes as the sole developers and users of
mehevar
."

"And our histories categorically state
mehevar
was purely the creation and technique of mages!"

Medwind nodded and looked into the eyes of her "enemies." She licked dry lips. "There are, to put it mildly, discrepancies in the historical records of the Magerie and the Sajerie. Mage lore says the Fendles are good; saje lore, that the Fendles are evil. Saje lore says the mages were torturers; mage lore, that the sajes were torturers. In our books, the Wisewoman was a hero; in yours, she was a devil. Now the past, which was dead and gone, is alive and walking among us once more in the form of the Fendles—and in the ritual of
mehevar
. There is truth to be found here—truth that must be found, but we will not find it among the tomes of history in the libraries of the Magerie or the Sajerie. 'What is the truth?' is not an academic question for us anymore, to be debated in learned letters and presented in papers. Now, in the balance with truth hang life and death for all of Ariss.

"We have a little time—I will tell you that there have been no
mehevar
murders in Mage-Ariss within the past fivedays or so, and while the Magerie waits and watches, it will not strike Saje-Ariss without additional cause. The ringing of the Conclave bell will undoubtedly cause consternation among my colleagues, who already feel threatened—it would be best if we move quickly to find answers, before someone panics. With great trepidation, knowing as I do the danger in this route, I suggest that we use some of the time we have to reach back into the past, into the days when the Fendles first lived and the war began between the mages and the sajes. I suggest that we look at the true past, and see the truth."

She glanced around the arena with pleading eyes, and prepared to make room for the next speaker.

"It is all very well, Medwind Song," one saje hissed, "to speak of looking into the past and seeing what really happened, but the histories are the only record. There is no other way."

She moved back into the center of the arena and crossed her arms over her chest in defiance. "Not so," she argued. "There is a way to visit the living past. It is a Hoos magic, and it is deadly—of the mighty Hoos Timeriders who go out, only half return... and of those who return, more than half come home without their minds. None who venture into the Timeriver walk out unchanged."

Another saje in the arena laughed, "Myths of barbarian magic! Ha! If there were a way to view the past, we of the University would have found it. Not a rowdy mob of horse-bound goat-herding tent-dwellers!"

Another saje responded to the insulter—"What you know about barbarian magic would sit on the point of a dagger and still leave ample room for what you know about everything else, Fondar. Be quiet and let the woman speak."

Titters echoed through the Basin.

Medwind swallowed hard and looked around her at the sajes. These were not some faceless enemy; they were people. That they didn't like her, or didn't trust her did not matter—but she had to make them believe her. The murderer of the mage-students might still be one of them; that was not impossible—any more than it was impossible that the murderer might be one of the mages. But Medwind's mind would admit no possibility that all of the sajes had conspired against Mage-Ariss. There were too many reasonable men among them.

She knew suddenly how Faia had felt, thinking of half the city unfairly condemned to death.
If I die, I'll die having done the right thing,
she thought.

"It is possible to see the past, unfolding before the Timerider's eyes as fresh as if it were happening that instant—and I know how to find the Timeriver," she admitted, "but I have never ridden it. Worse, the facts we need lie more than four hundred years behind us, and to follow the Timeriver so far upstream, while it branches and rebranches and meanders among the endless empty spaces of what-might-have-been must mean near-certain death. I cannot promise that I will find my way back. But if the Sajerie will anchor and tether me, I will go."

"Why not, if you can see the past, just look to see who killed your students?" one saje asked.

"The question is reasonable, and if there were no Fendles swimming in the lake at Daane, it is what I would suggest. Gods know, the trip would be safer. But the Fendles
are
here, and they are creatures of history—beasts whose significance has been lost or distorted through the years until no one knows any more what their presence means. They participated in the Mage-Saje War—and they are here at the beginning of what is about to become a second Mage-Saje War. Why? What do they mean? This is the price of history and lies, that we bury our pasts to hide the dirtiness of our foundations from ourselves, then forget whether our houses have been built on rock or sand. Now we must pay the price to find the answer."