Warrior and Witch (14 page)

Mirei’s arrival had changed that, like so many other things. It was here that she had confronted the Primes, with the rest of Starfall watching, in an attempt to show them what she had achieved. The Primes, off balance and fearing what she might destroy, had attacked her. The conclusion of the ensuing battle had taken out the roof.

Now, the upper reaches of Star Hall were gone. The vaults of the center crossing were shattered; the rubble had been cleared away, but no rebuilding had happened yet. Satomi wasn’t sure what to
do
about rebuilding. Their understanding of the Void was changing; their representation of it should, as well. And a part of her liked the starlight now visible above the jagged stumps of the walls. The stars were the eyes of the Goddess; they had come down and danced about Misetsu, the first witch, when the Goddess gave her the gift of magic, here in the mountains now called Starfall. For all Misetsu’s later flaws, that had been an unsurpassed miracle.

They had arrived at the dais. There were ritual words for this, too, but Satomi did not use them.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked the young woman gently.

Eikyo swallowed hard, and then nodded.

She wouldn’t insult Eikyo’s courage by asking again. “We’ll be back later. I suggest you meditate; it’s what you’re expected to do anyway.”

“I hear and obey, Aken,” Eikyo whispered. Satomi had to fight not to flinch at the words. They were the traditional response, spoken in answer to the words she herself had not said. Eikyo had prepared too much for this not to reflexively come out with her memorized responses, even when they were not necessary.

Satomi touched her on the shoulder, then exited out the south, through the hall of Air.

Naji was waiting outside, looking both apprehensive and excited. She had never done this before, and no one had told her what they had planned. “Now we wait?” she asked Satomi quietly.

“Inside,” Satomi told her. “We return at midnight.”

They had to maintain the appearance of the thing. One aspect of this affair everyone had agreed on, without quibble: As few people as possible should realize that Eikyo had not really been tested.

The Primes and Naji met again shortly before midnight, and Koika, who had the best knack for it, cast a spell over them all that would keep Eikyo from noticing them until they were in position. Anyone watching from the facing windows of the main building should see her doing so. To a student, it always looked like the Primes appeared out of nowhere. Someday, Satomi hoped, they
would
, with Void magic translocating them to their places.

Then they dispersed to their doors again. Satomi entered through Earth again, with Koika.

“Here we go,” the Earth Prime whispered, and they went inside.

Eikyo was kneeling on the dais, hands clasped in meditative prayer. The tension on her face had smoothed out in her trance, Satomi was glad to see. At least the girl had not spent all this time worrying.

When the other women were all gathered around, with Satomi on the dais next to Eikyo, Koika sang a short spell to make them visible again.

At which point they diverged from ritual.

Satomi touched Eikyo on the shoulder again. “We’re ready.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Naji move in startlement. As Eikyo surfaced from her trance and stood up, Satomi turned to face the Heart Key. “I’m sorry to have misled you,” Satomi told her, but with her body language she communicated a different message. She was not sorry at all; she was the Void Prime, and Naji should not even think to question her.

“I don’t understand, Aken,” Naji said, but her tone was confused rather than challenging.

“We will not be carrying out Eikyo’s test tonight,” Satomi told her. “Though everyone must think we have, which is why we’ve carried out this deception.” She gave the Key a coolly reassuring smile. “It’s no fault of yours, don’t worry. In fact, I don’t doubt you’ll have your chance to test students; there are others besides Eikyo who will need assistance before Shimi returns.”

“
If
Shimi returns,” Koika said. Arinei glared at her. A stickler for protocol, the Fire Prime would defend to the last moment the distinction between suspending and removing Shimi from authority, and Satomi could have kicked Koika for raising that issue now.

Instead she turned to the others, pretending she did not see Arinei’s anger. “We’ll need to stay in here for a while. Eikyo, please come with me; I have a few last things to say to you.”

She drew the girl aside, back down the arm of Earth. It didn’t matter which way they went, but the student had long shown an affinity for that Ray; the least Satomi could do was to put her in the place where she would feel most comfortable.

“Do the students still use the code of five?” she asked Eikyo, keeping her voice low. In the crossing, the three other Primes and Naji were trying to settle down to wait; unfortunately, Star Hall was a space for ritual, not relaxation. There wasn’t even anywhere to sit.

Eikyo’s blue-gray eyes went wide. “Aken?”

“The code of five,” Satomi repeated. “For passing secret messages. It’s an ancient tradition—if by ‘ancient’ I mean that it predates
my
youth, at least. Do you know it?”

“Y-yes, Aken.”

“Good. I want you to use it whenever you communicate with me.”

Understanding dawned on Eikyo’s face. Then she frowned. “But—won’t the Cousins know?”

“I don’t think so. Those few of them who were once students won’t recall it, and the others have had limited opportunity to pick it up. Besides, you have to know to look for it, to see that a message is buried within, and they’ll have no reason to suspect you. It seems the most reliable way to communicate. Understand?”

Eikyo nodded wordlessly.

“Good. Notify me if anyone says
anything
about the doppelgangers; that’s the main thing. But also pay attention to what they say about us, the witches. Anything that seems to be more than routine talk.” Satomi sighed in frustration. “I wish I could give you something more specific. I want to know how they live, how they think—what lives are being lived, out of our sight, and whether we need to be concerned about them. Or even how those fives could be improved—do they feel mistreated? Questions like that. Trust your judgment.”

“I will, Aken.”

Satomi reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “You will do fine, Eikyo. And we
will
bring you back. I swear that, before the five faces of the Goddess.” Here in Star Hall, the words carried extra force. Satomi did not make vows lightly, and even less would she do so in this ritual space, with the light of the Goddess’s eyes shining down through the shattered roof.

When she judged that enough time had passed, Satomi called everyone together into the center of the Hall. The Primes raised up columns of coruscating light from the Elemental symbols marked into the floor; Satomi, from where she stood on the dais with Eikyo, raised Naji’s for her. It was one of the authorities they had stripped from Shimi, a minor, showy sign of a Prime’s power.

Eikyo lay down on the floor, trembling, so that everyone would be where she would have been, had the ritual gone on as usual. They had to maintain appearances, after all. Especially now, at the end. Satomi sang, quietly, the words of a spell to render her unconscious. With one last sigh, the student—soon to be a Cousin—passed out.

The Primes and the Key stood around her in a ring, poised on the columns of fight. Now was when Satomi would discover whether her authority and presence were enough to keep Naji silent for these next, crucial moments.

She looked the Key in the eye and said, “What I do now is necessary. Do not interfere.”

And without waiting for a nod, she began the spell that would overlay Naji’s memory of this time with the ritual that should have happened.

Because as few people as possible should know that Eikyo’s failure was a he.

Naji realized what the spell was before Satomi was far into it. Her face went white, but her obedience held; with the other Primes there, saying nothing in protest, she bowed to the will of Starfall.

They had come in as usual, according to the words Satomi sang. They put Eikyo through the tests. First the verbal challenge; then the trials of the Elements themselves. The young woman had seemed to do well. Failure came, as it always did for Cousins, at the end. When they opened her to power.

Her mind broken by the onslaught of force, Eikyo had begun to speak incoherently. Satomi strung together an appropriately muddled set of sentence fragments. There were volumes and volumes in the archives of Starfall, recording the words spoken by new Cousins; no one knew if they had any importance. Witches had tried, from time to time, to extract meaning from them, but they’d met with little success. They seemed to have no more significance than the rantings of ordinary madwomen.

Eikyo had broken in this manner. And then, when the flood of words stopped, she had fallen to the dais, unconscious, her memory and self lost forever.

The intricate net of power built, drawn through the focusing structure of Star Hall, shaped by Satomi’s words and voice. Eikyo had failed. Tragic, but true. Any other memories that contradicted those events were to be forgotten; any details Satomi had neglected to supply were to be filled in.

Finally, the names of those the spell should affect.

“Naji,” Satomi sang, and then before anyone could realize what she was doing, “Arinei, Koika, Rana.”

The spell flared outward, to the four women around her, and settled into place.

Because as few people as possible should know the truth.

Now only two did.

Satomi waited in one of the smaller outbuildings of Starfall for Nae to come.

On the bed behind her, Eikyo slept. It was a small kindness given to those witches who failed, who became Cousins; they were given drugs, to keep them asleep until they reached their new homes. There would be as little reminder as possible of what they had lost.

Nae entered without knocking.

Old without being elderly, thin without being frail, the woman was the closest thing the Cousins had to their own leader. Nae’s face had weathered and hardened until the lines on it seemed carved by a knife. She looked impassively down on the figure in the bed. “What was her name?”

Nae alone, of all the Cousins, would know for certain who this young woman had been. “Eikyo.”

The Cousin thought it over. “Kyou, then. Where was she raised?”

The loss of memory was thorough, but it helped for the new names of failed witches to be at least close to what they had once held. “She grew up in Abern. Seshiki Hall. Insebrar would be good, I think.”

She was treading on the older woman’s toes by making the suggestion, but Satomi wanted Eikyo somewhere specific. Tsurike Hall in Insebrar was where Kasane had given birth to the daughter now called Mirei; it was from there that the infant doppelganger had somehow been spirited across the land to Eriot. One of those two domains might contain clues as to how that had happened, and Tsurike Hall seemed a good place to start.

Fortunately, tradition dictated placing new Cousins as far from familiar places as possible, to minimize the risk of anyone recognizing them. Nae nodded in acceptance of the suggestion. “What talents did she have?”

“She’s very organized,” Satomi said. Traits like that didn’t always survive the transition, but—with a jolt of startlement she hoped Nae did not see, Satomi remembered that Eikyo was
not
a Cousin, and would retain everything of who she had been. It was easy to forget that this was a charade.

All the better. I’m less likely to give the truth away.

“Very organized,” Satomi went on, gathering her wits. “And she has a good memory—that is, she will learn things easily. Some kind of administrative position, perhaps.” She conveniently left out Eikyo’s talent with plants and animals. If the young woman was to tell her anything useful about the Cousins, she’d have to be among them, not out in the wilderness.

Nae gazed down at the sleeping girl, expression unreadable. Satomi wondered how
she
felt about these occasions, when she took charge of someone Starfall would no longer keep. Did she mourn their failure? Rejoice at the addition? Was she bitter at the witches, and glad to see one of their number fail?

Questions like these were why Eikyo was asleep on the bed.

Satomi drew herself together, putting speculation aside. “I’ll have a cart waiting outside before dawn,” she said. “Notify me if there’s anything you need.”

She said it every time and, every time, she heard not another word from Nae on the subject. Just a brief message from wherever the new Cousin was sent, informing her that the woman had arrived safely. The former students vanished into their ranks without a ripple.

But not this time.

Satomi left Nae there, and returned back to the main building—but not to her room, nor her office.

The Primes’ offices were all within a short distance of a high, open-air patio that extended across the roof of one of the lower parts of the building. The door to this space was not locked, but ironclad protocol meant that only the Primes ever spent time outside on its flagstones; others came there just to deliver messages, and then only when the messages were important.