Will
"I'm afraid I couldn't get it permanently," said Vance as Tama turned the book over in her hands. "But then, you probably won't need it permanently."
"I'd hope not!" she laughed, opening it and flipping a few pages. "I've never heard of having to rename a baby."
"Me either." He was lucky that Ranell had been a willing accomplice in spiriting the name-book away from the Stronghold's collection; he would have felt bad leaving the next morning without doing something nice for Tama. "It gives the origins and meanings for all the names, too."
"I saw that. This should be fun." She closed the book, bent down a little uncertainly, and caught him up in an unexpected hug. "Thank you!"
He didn't have a chance to figure out how to hug back before she stood up again, so he settled for smiling. "You're welcome."
"I wish you didn't have to go," Tama continued, taking a chair. "It's been so much fun just talking."
"I'll be back," said Vance. "You know that. And anyway, you have plenty of other people to talk to."
"Yeah, but I haven't talked with someone just all the time like this since . . ." Her expression grew distant. "Since I met Yaren."
A bubble of something like alarm rose in Vance's mind. "Huh. I'll bet you haven't really had the chance since then either," he said, hoping he didn't sound put off.
"Not really," she agreed. "I used to talk all night with some of my friends in the trades, sometimes. Then I got here and I was mostly too busy to do that with anyone but him."
"I can see how it would be hard to talk privately with more than one person at once," said Vance, and got the expected smile.
"Sometimes we'd stay awake all night because we couldn't stop talking about stupid stuff," said Tama. "We'd be drinking varala all the next day but we'd always do it again."
"Sounds like fun."
"It was," she said, distant again. "It was a lot of fun. And I miss it more than I thought I could."
Vance saw the shine in her eyes and kept quiet. He knew he wouldn't be able to say anything of any help, and he knew he appreciated silence instead of counseling while he was regrouping.
"At least it's getting down to missing now," said Tama. "Before . . ."
"It was worse," he said, and she stared farther off into space than usual, looking deep in thought.
"It was . . . I thought . . . all that stuff about 'nothing and need' in the prophecy books," she said finally, in a rush. "I kept thinking, if he was so important, how could it happen? It didn't make any sense."
Vance had heard the story of the books from Irina and Ranell, who had been just as stunned. But they had thought about it, and come up with some things that made a little sense. "Does it now?"
"Some," said Tama. "I don't think it'll ever get to the point of having, well, a point, but it's getting closer."
"Good," said Vance, hoping she realized that he meant it was good to heal, not to rationalize.
"What I thought of," she continued, "was the demo. Whatever happened, I was supposed to be the one using the machine. It would have worked the first time if I'd been up there with him, I know it would. I was reading the book a lot a couple of months ago to see what it said about babies, and it didn't, but I realized the girl who saw all this didn't know what kind of person I'd be. There was a choice right at the demo itself, but I'd never have made the choice that kept him alive unless I was a completely different person."
"And that choice was to use the machine," Vance put in.
Tama nodded. "I didn't do it, so the demo wasn't going to work. If I had volunteered then, we'd have known what I was going to do, so I'd have been hooked in sooner. I'd have felt the shooter before anything happened and that would have proven the machine wasn't evil. But when it didn't happen, something had to make me use it. And that was why."
"But you didn't have to use it," said Vance. "That was another choice."
"No, it wasn't, really," she said. "And I think you know why."
"Because like it or not, people are afraid of us," he said. "And if it had been left at just the attempt, everyone would have assumed we had something to hide."
"I couldn't just let them win," said Tama with finality.
"Absolutely not."
"And then," she said after a short silence, "there's the other obvious thing involving me that wouldn't have happened without him." When Vance didn't comment, she went on. "It's like some kind of cliché, I know. It makes me feel, I don't know, shivery to think that maybe this kid is going to be important."
"You said there wasn't anything in the books about children," Vance pointed out.
"There wasn't anything about Laric getting killed, either," Tama countered. "Not even obliquely, from what I can tell. And that was a huge factor in how the whole thing avalanched. But the timeline of the books stops at the demo, so there probably wouldn't be anything in it about kids anyway."
"There are a lot of things even someone like Myrithe probably can't predict," said Vance.
"Or doesn't want to," Tama added. "Could you imagine knowing everything that was going to happen in your life, down to the moment?"
"I used to wish I could have done something like that," he said. "Then I started wondering if knowing would do any good if I couldn't have changed it."
"Or if you'd want to change it, knowing what would happen as a result," said Tama, and he couldn't help giving her a questioning look. "I didn't mean you personally," she amended quickly. "I meant in general. Like if someone knew that they would be basically bankrupt for fifteen years but then be able to make just enough money to live doing what they always wanted to do."
"Or have every member of their family die within the same year, but also meet their future husband or wife and be madly in love with them forever."
"Or lose the person who mattered most to you, but have his child eight moons later," Tama said quietly.
"Or—" Vance hesitated, not sure he should continue, then saw Tama's expression. "Or be permanently paralyzed but able to move anyway, be a slave and then be freed, nearly die but end up helping people."
"And make friends you never would have known otherwise," she said.
"Is that you or me?" Vance asked.
"Actually, both." Tama's face had the look of epiphany. "And that's something else," she said thoughtfully. "If he hadn't woken me up snoring like he was, I probably wouldn't have met you."
"Though whether that's important remains to be seen," said Vance, suppressing a smile at the thought that his comment about snoring at their sunrise conversation had been more accurate than he could have known.
"I prefer to think friends are always important," Tama told him.
"I like that way of thinking." He was going to have to come back often, he decided, to make sure he was still thinking that way. I could get used to that.
"It's a dress," said Lesana, looking distastefully at the garment she held at arm's length.
"It is a robe," Myrithe corrected. "It is the type worn by mages in the times when magic was practiced as a craft."
"They're pretty," said Ranell, inspecting hers. "Did you make them?"
"Of course."
"It's brown," Lesana continued. It was at least not one of the colors that clashed horribly with her red hair, but it was still ugly.
"It's earth-colored." The correction came from Ranell this time. "I'm imagining that helps with the casting."
"It is more the plants used in the dyeing that help," said Myrithe. "Most of them enhance the conductive properties of the fibers in the cloth, and do not affect the color, but those that differ for each attunement do indeed give the correct color."
"What's it made of?" Ranell asked, and Lesana stopped listening as soon as Myrithe began to speak. She could hardly have cared less what kind of process it took to make the thing. She would rather have had a blue-green robe like the one Myrithe was wearing, and skrak the attunement properties. But she knew how little experience she had, and she also knew she needed all the help she could get. She'd been surprised that the council had voted in favor of carrying out the plan immediately. There had been only one no vote, and she hadn't been surprised by that, but the overall result had been unexpected.
More unexpected had been her own reaction. She had thought she would be happy, but all she had felt was sick—and she knew it was more than just the early hour. It was time to decide, and she was no closer to knowing what she wanted than she had been at the start. She had taken a few steps in the direction of the medic bay, stopped, and turned around. Myrithe had never mentioned a possibility of damage to an unborn, only loss; and that was unrelated to the spell. She could go through with the working without breaking her promise, and take whatever came. If fate left the child untouched, she would bear it, and they would raise it; if she lost it, she would still be able to have others if she chose. She didn't want to decide, only to know what she was facing. And right now, the working needed all the attention she could give it.
"You should both put them on now, or you will be changing outdoors," said Myrithe, bringing Lesana back to the job ahead.
"All right." Ranell shrugged, and made ready to toss the robe on over her head.
"Ah—"
"What?"
"Without your other clothing," said Myrithe, looking uncertain as to how embarrassed she should be.
"Any of it?" Ranell asked faintly.
"That is best, yes."
Lesana stood for a second in disbelief, then glanced around the room. The windows were curtained, and nobody else was likely to be around. Her eyes landed on Ranell, who looked to be thinking the same thing. Oh, skrak it. We're both women either way, she thought, and bent to get her shoes off. Straightening, she noticed that Ranell had politely turned the other way, and that Myrithe wasn't watching either of them. Not wanting to look rude if she wasn't the first to be through changing, she turned around before getting out of the rest of her clothing.
The robe was easy to put on, and surprisingly comfortable. Whether it was suited for the temperature would be another matter, but the fabric was light and the color didn't seem as dark now that she had it on. Lesana figured out the fastenings by covertly studying Myrithe's robe, and found that the garment had somehow been made to fit her without her ever having been consulted. It was even the right length, which was hard to find in clothing that fit her other measurements. She looked toward her feet and wondered if these robes were made to expand.
"I don't feel any different," Ranell said. She certainly looked different; the cut and trim of the robe brought out a figure Lesana hadn't realized was even there, and its color was just enough darker than her skin to give her a glow that even Tama could envy.
"You will not, until you perform a spell," Myrithe told her. "We will go to the site with my powersink, so it will be during the combining that the robe will acclimate to you."
Lesana was surprised that she had actually understood that. "We're transporting?"
"Yes, to the site," Ranell answered. "The two of us took a roller out there yesterday, mapped a place, and left the roller and came back here. It's perfectly safe."
"I wasn't worried about safe," Lesana lied. "I just wondered if it was a good idea to be doing this and going straight into the working."
Myrithe studied her for a moment. "As I said, I have a strong powersink to use. My own energy will not be depleted. And I think you should remember that for power to bear fruit, you must pursue it with your whole heart."
Prophet babble. Just what she needed right now. "Anything else I should do first?"
"Besides preparing to transport, nothing I can think of." Myrithe glanced around. "Shall we go?"
They formed a triangle on a small round rug, with just enough space between them for Myrithe's hands to work the spell. She fished a carved piece of ivory out of some hidden pocket in her robe—Lesana vowed to locate all the secret storage areas in her own, once this was over—and linked herself to it. The transport spell was simple to cast, but took more energy the farther away its other end was, and still more if the destination were infrequently traveled. Myrithe's fingers traced a knot of magic-strands in the air and tied it off, and the piece of ivory glowed as the weaving rose above the three of them and expanded into a ring. With an audible fizzling noise, the ring descended, encircling them in a column of light; and then the light and the sound disappeared.
They were on a low hill covered with grass and small patches of wildflowers. Not in Jarrinn proper, then, Lesana thought, putting a little distance between herself and the other two and looking around. The city began not far away, in the direction of the ocean, with a row of unharmed buildings on one side of a nearby street and a mess of burned timber on the other. Their vantage point wasn't high enough to see many individual structures, but what had once been the industrial district was off to the left as they faced the sea. That much was easy to identify by the shape of the destroyed buildings: tall and square, with a few undamaged chimneys poking up here and there. They didn't know how much harder they might have to work when the spell reached that part of the city, but they were prepared to take it a piece at a time.
"We will combine," said Myrithe, beginning the spell that would tie their energies together. Ranell was ready first, and easily caught the lines of power reaching toward her. Lesana saw her eyes widen, and the spell-threads vibrate a little, before it was her turn. Then, as her skin seemed to shrink, tingling with energy, she understood. The robe, she thought. A moment later, she was back to her normal self, feeling both the magic threads and the threads against her skin a little more acutely than before. She could have warned us.
<She could have warned us better,> Ranell said in her head, and she had to work hard not to laugh.
"Are we established?" asked Myrithe, then answered her own question. "Yes. I will begin once I say this. We could not prepare a border for so large an area, nor for a working that does not begin in the center of the area. Therefore, the first of us to tire will end the spell. The other two will not know when this happens, so we must have a signal."
"We could make a circle, and squeeze each other's hands," Ranell suggested. "For a signal."
"That will do." Myrithe knelt to begin the spell, so that her companions had to scurry into position. When she tapped the ground, the threads began by connecting her to the earth, but then multiplied and shifted to contact the nearest bare skin of each caster; namely, their feet. Lesana felt her toes begin to buzz; apparently Myrithe hadn't yet worked out how to avoid that happening at the start of a combined working. She mentally twitched at her connecting strands as she felt hands slip into hers on either side, and the tingle obediently subsided.
The web expanded, clearing a circle of space around them. From there, Lesana felt one of the others—Myrithe, most likely—tugging it into a fan, spreading outward into the city while holding still on the far edge. She was surprised to be able to feel the boundaries of the purified area in her mind, and wondered if it was something Myrithe had done or just part of the spell; none of their practices had been on an area even this large. For a moment, she was fascinated by the spread of the rootlike tendrils. Then the work caught up with her.
She felt it first as a twinge in her shoulders, and tried relaxing them. It worked for a moment, but then the unease migrated to her hands, and grew. She resisted the urge to grab for support; that would end the spell, and they had barely gotten through their side of the outskirts. With every gain in land, it got harder to keep her hands from shaking. This had never happened before, but neither she had ever done this large a working before. Until now, her experience had been limited to candlelighting, water purification, and the occasional security spell. Myrithe had trained in the magical arts for years in her own time, and Ranell had practiced for the better part of a year before gaining the expertise to bring Myrithe back. Lesana was finding out exactly how important endurance was, and how much she didn't have.
<Are you all right?> asked Ranell.
Lesana managed a sharp nod, bringing with it a dull ache in her temples. She wished she could answer the same way, through the mind, but that wasn't her domain. Concentrating got harder, and so did not shaking.
They reached the edge of the worst contamination. Lesana felt her knees begin to shake, and the boundary's advance slowed to about half speed. She could hear her own breathing over the hum of magic, and she felt as if she might fall, but the energy kept flowing, and the border kept advancing. The spell was working; she was not.
There has to be something I can do, Lesana thought. The other two were standing as if rooted, not even breathing hard. She widened her stance, trying to solidify her legs, but they refused to cooperate. What she really wanted was to sit, but so long as her compatriots were standing, she had to be as well. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to think with the part of her that wasn't being systematically drained of all its energy. She was attuned to the earth. It wasn't having any problems being stable. She thought of it, thought of borrowing its strength, becoming one with it.
A jolt shot up through the soles of Lesana's feet, jerking her fully upright as it traveled skyward through her body. Once the initial pain was over, she realized that not only hadn't she been harmed, but she was having less trouble standing straighter. And the boundaries of the clear space in her mind had grown larger in the previous second than they should have. What was that energy? She settled back into being part of the earth, and it happened again. This time, she didn't snap back to herself, but rather hung as a sort of observer as the power flowed through her. She could feel it moving along the links toward Myrithe and Ranell, and how the "border" of the treated land grew larger faster than should have been possible. Whatever she had discovered, it was helping, not hurting. She opened her eyes and saw that the other two looked confused through their concentration. Well, they were about to be even more confused, she thought, and imagined herself sinking even farther into the earth.
The energy-streams connecting her to the ground widened, seeming to burn channels through her. Lesana stiffened, her body arching with unexpected pain, watching as the cleaned area expanded in her mind. This was what Myrithe had meant, then, about the power bearing fruit. And for the spell to work, she would have to pursue it with her whole heart. If only she knew how much that would be! She opened herself to the energy, gradually at first, judging how far to reach by how soon the pain ebbed, so that soon it became almost constant. When another kind of pain ran through her, twisting deep inside, she didn't notice. She reached deeper into the earth, feeling the power flowing within her, and something spilled out onto the ground.
Tama sat in the library, looking over the book of baby names. She hadn't been able to find her own, not surprisingly; there were probably few people who would want to give their child a name that meant "nothing." Then again, some of the names in the book had meanings just as dubious. Jedra apparently meant "spoiled," Synal "shadowed," and Tirom "lame." She had known people with those names, and they hadn't been accurate any more than hers.
Her chair suddenly quivered, as if someone were stomping on the floor nearby, but she couldn't sense anyone else there. A second later, she was the one quivering, and then it became a feeling of falling, punctuated by jolts she felt more in her mind than her body. The book fell from her hands as she clutched the arms of the chair, fearing more for the baby than for herself. All her senses, bodily and otherwise, seemed scrambled, so that she couldn't tell whether the building was falling or she just felt like it. She didn't know what this was, but if it didn't end soon, she was afraid she might scream.
It seemed to last for minutes, but Tama was sure it was only a few seconds before her personal earthquake stopped. When it did, she stayed where she was, assessing every part of herself and the part that was not quite herself for possible damage. Finding nothing beyond a racing pulse and a slight case of the shakes, she turned her attention to the problem of what in starak had just happened. It was hard to analyze something that hadn't felt properly physical; if anything, it had felt not Power related, but magical. She wanted to know if that were really the case, but it wasn't going to be possible so long as there was no one else around to compare herself to, to find out whether they had felt it too. She stood up to go find someone, and the book fell from her lap. Apparently, the strangeness, whatever it had been, hadn't jarred the physical world, or it would have fallen before now. She crouched to pick it up, not wanting to bend over, and set it on the chair as she got back up.
As she was standing, something fluttered in her middle, and she froze, fearing a second episode. Nothing happened beyond another flicker of movement, and understanding blossomed in her mind. Whatever had passed over her had not only not harmed the baby, it seemed to have awakened him. Tama stood, entranced, one hand over her belly, waiting for more. Naming the baby could wait, she decided, as another flutter sent a thrill through her. She stayed there for a long time, and the wonder diminished not at all.
"Lesana." Someone was shaking her by the shoulder, and it hurt. Her whole body ached, probably at least partly from her uncomfortable sprawling position on the ground. She shifted, and opened her eyes. Ranell's face came into focus, with a panorama of rubble behind it, and everything came flooding back.
"Where's Myrithe?" she asked, struggling to sit up.
"She left as soon as it was through," said Ranell, offering a hand. "Another powersink, I think."
Lesana took it gratefully. "So it worked?"
"She thinks so. But none of us will be able to tell until somebody does some tests." Her look changed, becoming more inquisitive. "Where did that burst of power come from?"
Lesana tried to remember. She had been thinking of stability, not energy. "I don't know. It was like something blasted me through the feet and just kept on going."
"Through the—" Ranell's eyes lit up, at least insofar as that was possible given the drained state both of them were in. "You pulled power from the earth," she said, managing to be awed and excited at once. "You aren't supposed to be able to do that. Nobody's done it for hundreds of years."
"Yeah, well, maybe that's why I feel like a roller just drove over me," said Lesana. She rocked forward, to stand, and fell back when it made her dizzy. "Uyah. Could you help me up?"
"Sure." Ranell rose, then took both her hands for support as she got to her feet. "It probably doesn't help that you're starting your week," she added.
"But I'm not—" Lesana stopped, looking down. The bloodstains on her robe made her stomach knot as an odd calm descended over the rest of her. She remembered it all now, the cramping ache that had been buried under the rush of power inside her, the feeling of something barely tangible slipping away. She looked back at Ranell and knew she had to tell the truth. "I'm—not starting my week," she said, letting her meaning come through her eyes.
Ranell's hand went to her mouth. "Oh Mora," she whispered. "Oh Mora, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be," said Lesana. She felt almost weightless, not sad at all; but the feeling wasn't relief. "I knew it might happen. I decided to let fate choose." Or did I? she thought, watching the shimmer rise in Ranell's eyes. One future for thousands. It sounded like a good bargain. "I'm okay."
"I hope so," said Ranell, looking so miserable that Lesana found herself reaching out, hugging her tightly. It was ridiculous for a moment; she should be the one crying, if anyone was. It was her loss, after all.
No; that wasn't true, not entirely. She had experienced it physically, but she was far from the only one involved. Ulith had as much as said what he would have liked to have happen, and she had gone and done the exact opposite. The thought that she was likely to have hurt him made her hurt too. And there was the baby—if it could have been called that so soon. She knew it couldn't have felt anything, but that didn't make the emptiness any better. Lesana felt the shoulder of her robe dampening against Ranell's face, and then felt her eyes burning, and for once she didn't try to fight. They stood on the carpet of grass, clinging to each other, mothers of a landscape and nothing more.
Myrithe waited. It was not now; now was too soon. But it would be close. With her magic and her Power, she could see the lattice of time laid out like a glimmering tree, the roots of the past and the leaves of the future meeting at the glowing trunk of now. Here and there, as decisions were made, bundles of twigs snapped together into single branches, and branches split into fans of possibility; and the moment in which she resided kept moving forward. And somewhere in the crown of the tree, surrounded by blurs of uncertainty, a lone, bright path gleamed, unchanging. About a year from now, it would come to pass. And today had made it certain.
Myrithe waited. She knew more time had to pass before it would be over, but the end of her term of office would come soon. She had waited nearly a thousand years. A few more would scarcely matter.
Ulith was sitting at the table when Lesana came back to her rooms. From the look of him, he had heard what happened, though she didn't know who might have told him. "What did they say?" he asked, his voice thicker than usual.
"Everything's fine," she said, closing the door. The medics had been surprised to find almost nothing amiss; according to them, it was as if something had simply erased the child from her womb. "Just the obvious."
He looked relieved, but far from satisfied. "Are you all right?"
"I said—"
"I mean are you happy," he said. "Are you having any problems accepting this, that sort of thing."
"Well, I don't know how—"
"Because I'm not all right," said Ulith, and she had to look away. "You kept your promise, I know," he continued. "That's fine. If you weren't ready to make a choice, it's probably better that it happened how it did. But you know what I think, you know what I wanted. It's just hard to have something like that dangled in front of you and then find out it's not there after all."
"I'm sorry," said Lesana, not knowing what else to say. "I should have told you."
"It would have been nice," he said, distinctly bitter. "Even if I couldn't have changed your mind."
You can't change it if it's not made up, Lesana thought.
Ulith got up and came slowly toward her. "But you're all right, and that's what's important. I don't know what I'd do if . . . Mora, you know what I mean."
"I know." It wasn't only her he'd miss, she thought, and for the first time, she let herself think beyond the beginning of a child, past the carrying and the labor to a small, nameless stranger holding their hands. The picture almost made her ache with love and regret, both unexpected. This must have been his image all along, she realized. No wonder he had been so certain of what he wanted.
"And," he said, "to tell you honestly, I thought you would abort it."
Lesana shifted her gaze to the floor. "I thought I would too," she said. "I almost went. I guess . . . "
"Yeah. I know." His tone said that he knew what she was thinking, and that he didn't blame her for only knowing it now.
"I didn't." Or maybe I didn't want to know. She felt Ulith's arms around her shoulders and leaned back against him. He was still here, still solid and real. She didn't know if he forgave her, but he hadn't left.
"I still love you, you know," he said, and she thought she might cry. She fought it this time, waited until she knew she could speak without the danger.
"I love you too."
One hand passed over her flat stomach. "Maybe one day," Ulith said, bending to brush his lips against her ear. "We can try again."
Lesana caught his hand, holding it against her. "Not can," she said, tilting her head back to look upside-down at him. "Will."
Copyright © 2001 by Katherine Foreman.