Sunmaster, p.9
Sunmaster, page 9
"No! Is that something that happens a lot here?" Guilt swam over Rasim, but Irlin chuckled and shook her head reassuringly. That didn't help much, because it suggested the dragon really did have something to do with Rasim specifically, though.
"We have legends, as I think most peoples must. Ancient legend, from before Oyun's grandmothers' time. Have you no such myths?"
"That's what the oldest Northerners say about them having magic," Rasim said, looking for Kif again. "That they did, in their grandmothers' grandmothers' time. But you have magic."
"We do. Not as much as Golden Ilyara, and it is kept more closely to our hearts. The shamans search the hearts of every child in their fifth year. Some are set on the shaman's path, and some few others are given sorcerous training. Earth, air, and wood. Those are the domains of our sorcery."
"Why did you let Milu study with your earth witches when everybody else got locked up?"
"Oyun sensed imbalance in him," Irlin replied gravely. "As she did in you, sorcerer-child. Sorcerous imbalance is dangerous, distressing the very arms of the spiral itself, and so Milu's training is of great importance. In the large stone sorcerer, she sensed long-sleeping air magic, but no imbalance. The air god who might have guided him through the Great Spiral slumbers now, at peace as he works his little stone sorcery."
Rasim's eyebrows shot upward. "Telun? Telun might have been a skymaster? I wonder if he can learn it now, even though he's really old!"
Laughter creased Irlin's eyes. "Telun is certainly young enough to be my son. I wonder how ancient you must think me."
Heat coursed through Rasim's face. "Old to learn new witchery, I mean. Everyone in Ilyara thinks only little kids can learn it. Kisia capsized that ship by joining the Seamasters' Guild of her own choice at fourteen and starting to learn magic, but Telun's probably ten years older than I am. I'll have to tell Skymaster Arrat about his sleeping sky witchery, though. Maybe he can wake it up." He started looking around as if he'd see the master sky witch, although Arrat had remained on board the Waifia with most of its crew.
"Speak to Oyun first," Irlin said so sternly that a chill wrapped around Rasim's lungs. "Learn whether a new sorcery will unbalance him, and do not try without her assistance if she believes it will."
"Has she been helping Milu? Did he have to do that awful sweat tent thing?"
He could tell some of Irlin's sternness faded from the softening in her eyes, but her voice still sounded quite forbidding. "That is for Milu or Oyun alone to tell you. It is shaman's business, not mine." Then she tipped her head, and more gently, said, "I believe he was less imbalanced than you, Rasim. Earth and stone sorcery both rose in him naturally, but only one was nurtured. The other only needed tending to, to balance his spirit."
Rasim nodded. "That makes sense, I think. From what Oyun said about my witchery, that makes sense." A vague thought crossed his mind and he tried to put it in words, not sure he was succeeding as he asked, "Does anyone here ever want to be taught sorcery and not get to learn it?"
"Does anyone in Ilyara?"
"Well…" He blinked up at the Great Mare, taken aback by the thought. "Kisia and I were kind of talking about that. It's only orphans who study witchery at home, and I don't know if there are any, or many, people with families who might want to. Kisia's like a flagship, leading the fleet where it needs to go. She wants to be able to lead others to the guilds, if that's what they want. But you do it differently here."
"We are a herd people," Irlin said after a moment, with a brief, thoughtful smile. "We see our duties as to our families, our tribes, and our clans. Very few are chosen for the shaman's or sorcerer's paths, and most of them, I think, are chosen too young to have thought of much beyond being riders. It is, I think, more likely to dream of being the Great Mare or the King Horse, than to dream of being a sorcerer, in Shenryal. The Mare is a political position, and the Horse, her worthy consort. Those can be maneuvered toward in a way a shaman's role cannot be."
"In other words, you don't think so."
Irlin inclined her head, then lifted it to watch the dancers and the fires they danced around, their light and shadows ever-changing on her face. "I don't think so. But." She took a deep breath. "I believe I see where your thoughts ride, sorcerer-child. Perhaps there are those who covet sorcerous power, and have found a way to learn. Perhaps the danger from afar is, as you suggested, closer than we think." She pursed her lips and glanced down at him. "Your mother-captain says you cause trouble wherever you go. This is how. By making people think of questions they may prefer not to learn the answers to."
It was not a question. Rasim shrugged and fixed his gaze on the ground. "I don't mean to."
"You would have been a shaman, in Shenryal." To his utter surprise, Irlin leaned over and kissed Rasim's forehead. "Go enjoy the night, sorcerer-child. I will speak with my husband, and we will think on what to do with these thoughts."
"Thinking on thoughts sounds like something I would do." Rasim smiled and went back into the weaving, laughing, dancing crowd. The numbers of people had thinned out somewhat, but there were still a lot of them, often dancing so close to the bonfires Rasim didn't know how their clothes didn't catch on fire. If Lorens had gone to dance with Kisia, there was no evidence of it: she was with Bayar, the two of them sitting near a smaller fire and resting, their heads ducked close together as they talked. He caught a glimpse of the pretty girl he'd danced with earlier watching them, and had a funny feeling his own expression looked a lot like hers. Not sad or angry, exactly, but still a little dismayed somehow.
She looked away from the quietly chatting couple and met Rasim's eyes. A smile ran across her face and she waved, but turned and went into a nearby tent rather than coming over. Her mother, whose stern face didn't seem to be able to crack a smile, followed her. So did two or three other women with similarly stern faces. Rasim wondered if the smiling girl would grow up to look as strict as the rest of her family.
Prince Lorens reappeared without the orange drink in his hand anymore, and looking rather worse for the wear. He bounced off a couple of Shenryalans whose patient glances were underlined with a warning that he'd better be more careful, and Rasim could briefly hear his apology, shouted even over the sound of the celebration. The crowd parted to let Lorens through, and Rasim saw Desimi with his arm around a girl he thought might be one of Kif's granddaughters.
Rasim couldn't help grinning. That would be a good thing to tease Desi about later. People swirled around him, cutting off his view, but he was still grinning as he worked his way toward Kisia and Bayar. There were so many faces around him, people he thought he almost recognized from the meeting in the big tent earlier, some who smiled at him and others who scowled, and more who didn't seem to notice him at all. None of them looked particularly like hidden sorcerers, but then, Rasim couldn't imagine what that would look like. He didn't look like he could use four different kinds of witchery. Desimi looked like he could, maybe, but Rasim was still small and unobtrusive, and would go forever unnoticed if he would just stop making trouble.
But maybe that's what a good secret sorcerer would be, too. Nobody. Someone easy to overlook. Rasim gradually stopped trying to make his way through the crush of people and just watched them, feeling a little distant from the chaos around him. There was no way to tell who could use magic, just by looking at them.
Not unless you gave them the mindkiller drug, and ordered them to use their power.
Except that was stupid, because even if they had whole mountains of the stuff, they could hardly make every single person in Shenryal take it. Those who volunteered to would probably be the least likely suspects, and those who refused, well, Rasim couldn't imagine how he would even try to round them up.
He would have to think of a better solution. Brows furrowed in thought, he edged through the crowd again, until he got to Kisia and Bayar, who looked up with bright eyes. Bayar said, "Something troubles you, Rasim?" but Kisia gave a huge raspberry of exasperation and stood up to smack him.
"It's a party, Rasi. Stop thinking so much! Ow." She winced, rubbing at her side like her robes had cut into her ribs. "I'm all wrapped up under this robe. I don't know why, it's not like anybody can even see it. Ow." She pulled a bit of pin out of the robes and cast it away with another wince. "They forgot some of the fasteners, I guess. Why aren't you having fun?"
"I am having fun! I'm just thinking a lot."
"That's not fun." Kisia pulled Bayar to his feet, and he winced too, then made a show of wiggling like he was shaking out sore muscles.
"We've sat too long after dancing," he said solemnly. "Any Shenryalan child knows not to make such a mistake after a long ride. I embarrass my people."
"Probably not," Rasim said with a little smile. "You two look beautiful, you know."
Bayar bowed and Kisia dimpled, then frowned. "I don't feel so well." Her voice had gone strangely thin and distant, like it was being carried a long way on the wind. "Rasi, I don't feel so well."
"Kees?" Rasim reached for her, just in time to watch her eyes roll back and for her to fall in a rush of gold and crimson robes.
CHAPTER 11
Rasim surged to catch Kisia and realized Bayar was falling, too. He tried to catch them both and failed, although he mostly managed to get under Kisia, whose weight knocked him down, as well. His head bounced off the hard earth, but hers bounced off his chest, which seemed better. He rolled over, pushing her off him, and put his head to her chest, trying to hear a heartbeat.
He couldn't hear one, but he felt her shallow breath on his hair. "Sesin!" He put sky witchery into his voice and roared, silencing the entire celebration. "Sesin! Where's Sesin? I need a healer!"
Someone barked an answer, and suddenly old Oyun was there. She seized Bayar's head, sniffed his hair, and spat, her hands searching his torso until she came up with a dart. "Hinzjha."
Very nearby, Irlin made a terrible sound, like a scream that couldn't be voiced. It tore at her throat and shook through her, as if a lifetime of being the Great Mare couldn't allow her to also be a frightened mother. Rasim's thoughts flew at the word Oyun had used, taking it apart for meaning. She'd called Missio's power-boosting drug delzjha, wisdom-slayer, and hin meant many things. It was part of the word that meant the great spiral, part of the word that meant life, part of the word that meant horse.
His stomach twisted. Any of those were enough to tell him what the drug did. Spiral-slayer, life-slayer, horse-slayer; in the clans, they were all among the worst evils that could be committed. Kisia and Bayar had been poisoned, and he'd stood there and watched it happened without even realizing it.
Oyun had forgotten him already. She gathered Bayar in her own arms, a nearly impossible task, and snarled and bit at those who tried to help. They fell back, giving her space, and the ancient, gnarled shaman somehow ran to her tent, Bayar in her arms. Rasim knew she would bring him to the little spirit-walking tent within her own larger space, and also knew that whatever magic she had, if she could spend it on a life, it would be spent on the King Horse's son, and not on the Ilyaran girl who had only just come to Shenryal.
"Sesin?" He shouted with sky witchery again, watching people flinch and stare in awe at the vast sound. "Sesin, please, Kisia's been poisoned, I need your help, I need—"
A rush of skymastery reached for him in turn, as Karluk, the formerly enslaved sky witch, spoke to him. "She's on her way, Rasim. We went to watch horse races at the edge of the camp. I'll give you her voice."
Sesin spoke in Rasim's ear almost instantly, sharp with worry. "What kind of poison, Rasim? If I talk you through it can you purge her system?"
"I don't know! They call it life-slayer and Bayar's sick with it too and his mother thinks he's going to die."
Sesin swore. "Can you find someone who speaks Ilyaran and knows how it acts? What can I do from here?"
Rasim looked up frantically, searching the suddenly-quiet gathering. Irlin was gone, probably with Oyun and Bayar. Bikat stood between Rasim and Oyun's tent, holding himself as if only the need to remain calm for his people kept him from being at his son's side. "Bikat? Bikat, please, can you tell me how the poison works?"
The King Horse focused on him, his gaze almost relieved. Maybe having something to do, however little, was of some help to him. "It sets the guts against each other, twisting like a nest of poison snakes. Then it crawls to the heart, setting it afire, and finally to the mind, where it takes memory and speech from those few who survive it. They are forever bent in body and spirit, those who live." Bikat's deep voice sounded hollow, as if it had been dropped into a terrible bleak space from which it could never return.
"Did she drink it?" Sesin demanded.
"No. No, it was a dart. A needle."
"Ask if it matters whether it's eaten or injected."
Rasim did, and Bikat shook his head. "It is always the same, the belly, the heart, the mind."
Sesin cursed again when Rasim told her. "I don't know, Rasim. I don't know what to do. How long does it take to kill someone?"
He asked Bikat, and echoed his answer of, "A few hours."
"All right." Sesin's voice became determined. "Make her purge, Rasim. Force the water out of her belly so she throws up. Out of her bowels, too, if you can. Make her drink more water, if you can. And…" She made a helpless noise. "And clean her blood."
"I don't know how! I can't do that, Sesin! I don't feel the body the way you do! The way Kisia does!"
"Try." The healer's voice went even flatter. "Try, Rasim. We'll be there soon."
Rasim whispered, "Please hurry," and turned his attention to Kisia. "I'm sorry." He rolled her on her belly and sent water witchery to churn the bile in her stomach, forcing it upward. Stinking liquid splashed out of her mouth all over the ground, and she woke up for a few seconds, hacking and spitting.
"Sesin's coming," Rasim said. "Hang on. Desimi!" He threw the name into the air, asking witchery to carry it to the other journeyman's ears, and started to strip Kisia's magnificent robes off her. Someone yelled an objection and he snarled, "Unless you want dung all over this stuff, you should help." He twisted magic through Kisia's belly again, pushing more bile out, and threw the robes to the side as soon as he could.
She hadn't been kidding about being all wrapped up beneath them. Deep orange silk bound her from her armpits all the way to her hips, so snugly he didn't know how she'd sat in it. A flowing skirt fell from the wrappings' lower edge, and Rasim was about to rip the whole thing off when the pretty young woman who had watched Bayar put her hand on top of his. He froze. She reached, did something that seemed magical at the top of the wrappings, and the whole thing loosened instantly.
Rasim whispered, "Thank you," and she nodded, then pulled her own under-tunic off—Rasim didn't know how she did that, either—and slid it over Kisia's shoulders, tugging it down her body before taking the flame-orange undergown off the semi-conscious Ilyaran girl. Rasim whispered, "Thank you," again, and slid himself under Kisia's arm, surging to his feet.
The girl helped again, putting herself under Kisia's other arm and helped Rasim get her to a standing position. He said, "Toilet," in Shenryalan, and a flash of understanding rushed through the girl's eyes. She tugged toward a pot—not one meant for eliminating in, but it didn't matter just then—and hitched Kisia's tunic up around her hips as Rasim sat her over the pot. He whispered, "I'm really sorry," to her while the girl held her in place, and sent witchery coursing through her again, turning her bowels to liquid.
A roar of disgust and dismay filled the area, which emptied as thoroughly as Kisia's bowels did. Given the smell, Rasim couldn't blame them, but he was terribly glad it had worked, and hoped the sweat breaking on Kisia's brow was a good sign.
Almost as importantly, it cleared space for Desimi to crash at Rasim's side, his breathing rough, like he'd been fighting his way through the gathered crowd. His brown face was ashy with fear, and pale as it could be.
"Oh, thank Siliaria. Desi, can you purge blood? I—I can't."
"I've never tried." Desimi sounded as grim, as desperate, as Rasim felt. Rasim nodded, sending magic coursing through Kisia again and watching her color go from bad to worse.
"I don't think I can wring any more out of her without making her bleed," Rasim whispered. "Sesin says to purge her blood, but I don't…"
"I don't either. Lie her down." Desimi knelt beside Kisia as Rasim and the Shenryalan girl lay her down in a shivering ball. The girl made a questioning gesture at the chamberpot and Rasim shrugged uncertainly. She nodded and—very nobly, Rasim thought—sat and held the smelly thing to the side, in case they needed it again. Rasim said, "Thank you," and she nodded.
Rasim knelt on Kisia's other side, across from Desimi. The other boy had already called witchery, the same profoundly deep magic that had once pulled water up from below the Ilyaran palace and splashed it through the wide, bright halls. "It's not like clearing salt water," he said tensely. "There's so much more in it. I don't know what—I can't feel what—" Then he fell silent, his head bowed and his face tight with concentration, until he finally grated, "I've slowed her blood down. It's hard—I have to concentrate—but I can't—I can't feel it. I can't feel what I'm supposed to take away, to clean it. I don't know—" He looked up, his eyes brilliant with fear. "I don't know if what I can do is enough."
"It'll be enough," Rasim whispered. "It'll be enough. You're doing more than I could. I can't make…" He reached for Kisia, too, sending witchery toward her, and shivered at the care Desimi held her in, the way he slowed her heartbeat and the flow of her blood. "She doesn't feel worse," he whispered. "Let me see if I can get her to drink."
He looked around frantically for a flask, and the Shenryalan girl gave him hers without him having to ask. She was murmuring something, almost singing, a tune and words he didn't know, but he thanked her and dripped water onto Kisia's lips, soothing it down her throat with witchery so that she wouldn't choke. For what felt like horrible hours upon horrible hours, although it probably wasn't really very long at all, they kept doing that. Rasim fed Kisia dribbles of water, Desimi held her heart rate down, and the girl kept up her song. Eventually Rasim realized it was a prayer, and a sob choked him so hard that Desimi looked up in alarm. He shook his head, trying to swallow the tears, but Desimi gave him a short, nod of understanding, and looked back down at Kisia.
