O
ne morning Samek looked up from the silver vase he was polishing when Tildi appeared at the door of the white-painted dining hall.
“Can I do f’r ye, girl?”
“Oh,” Tildi said, feeling so lonely she didn’t know how to express it. She had been drawn by the sounds of clinking dishes and cheerful voices, and finally dared to come in. She approached the big, coarsehaired man. “You don’t have to do anything for me. Can I help you?”
He flicked the cloth and turned it over. “Gorra, yer just starved fer sommat to do, arrren yer? Hae yer no’ lessons enou’?” he asked.
“I do. I just wanted to be useful.”
She reached for a polishing cloth and a silver cup. The butler shook his shaggy head. “Nae, don’ do tha’. The housemaids’ll think they’ve no go’a do ennythin’ anymair. Come on down and sit wi’ us here.”
Tildi hopped up on the bench across from him. The room smelled of salt and lemon juice, rising bread, soap powder, drying herbs and sausages, and, she was fairly sure, a whiff of beer from the big man opposite. It was a little early to start drinking, in her opinion, but he was so nice she didn’t want to offer a scold.
If Liana was surprised to find her master’s new apprentice sitting on a heap of folded towels, chatting with the butler, she didn’t show it. She came in with a basketful of bright red mushrooms and sat down beside Tildi, offering a friendly smile before setting to work peeling and paring them into perfect slices.
“A dot of butter here and there, bake them, and they’ll be delicious,” the housekeeper said. “Have you ever eaten Kolsh mushrooms before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Tildi said, with interest.
“They’re sweet and juicy and not like any you’ve ever had. They come from the forests far to the northwest. Olen put them in the garden many years ago. They’re at their finest now, while the weather’s hot, not like the white-and-brown ones that are best in spring and fall.”
“How many years ago?” Tildi asked. “Liana, how old is Olen?”
Liana chuckled. “I don’t know. I think he is as old as time. He’s lived the calendar around and partway back again, I think. That way he’s just remembering things, which makes it more accurate than trying to see into a future that hasn’t happened yet.”
“Is that possible?” Tildi asked, reaching for a knife to help. Liana whisked it out of her reach.
“I don’t know. You’re the apprentice wizard; you tell me.”
The other servants came through, carrying baskets and heaps of linens. When they spotted Tildi, they hesitated, then came forward and sat down at the big table. Tildi guessed that Samek or Liana had made a surreptitious gesture to them to behave as if nothing was out of the ordinary. She was almost desperately grateful.
“Cloudy today,” one of them observed.
“Out of the ordinary for this month,” said a footman, taking the bowl of silver polish and a rag from Samek, who started tucking the cleaned items into a box lined with linen towels. “Would it be fine this time of year where you live, Tildi?”
“Yes, it would,” Tildi replied, keeping her hands firmly folded in her lap. Her fingers itched to be doing
something,
but it was no use. Olen’s staff weren’t going to let her help with a single task. “We get a few hard storms during Blackberries, but it’s clear weather from now until then.
We’re farmers. We welcome the long growing season. It’s good for grain and our orchard.”
“Aye, my old dad’s a farmer outside ’er Jaftown,” said one of the scullery maids, chopping up onions at the far end of the long table. “He counts on this month to dry out the fields.”
Tildi relaxed. This was the kind of conversation she was used to having, not high-flown discussions on the position of the stars. Someday she might be comfortable with those, but in the meantime, she felt as if she had come home.
“Peaches are my favorite,” one of the housemaids said, with a dimple in her cheek. “Peaches, and you can keep everything else …”
“Tildi!” Olen’s voice shouted. It seemed to come from everywhere. Tildi looked up.
“Oh, he’s in one of his moods,” Liana said indulgently. “Go on. He’s in his study.”
Tildi sprang up and headed for the stairs, but her master was on the way down. He had on a tall, dark hat, and he swung a cloak around his shoulders. One of the footmen followed him with a tall staff with a luminous orb on top. “Get your cloak. Hurry.”
Tildi dashed up the long flight and all but tumbled down them trying to get her cape on while she ran. Samek must have followed her up at Olen’s shout. He stood at the door, in a posture of exaggerated attention, and waved her out. At the bottom of the grand steps, Olen was swinging into the saddle of a horse whose coat was the same shade as Silvertree’s bark.
“Easy, Sihine. Hurry, child. The Madcloud is coming this way.”
Tildi looked up at the sky beyond Silvertree’s canopy. As the staff had said, it was lightly overcast everywhere but in the southeast, where a dark blanket gave the light a horrible green hue.
A groom swept her up and placed her on the back of his saddle. Olen’s cloak closed over her. Tildi felt the horse give a mighty leap. She clung to the wizard’s back as Sihine’s powerful muscles under her swelled and relaxed, but she heard no footfalls on cobblestones. She could hear Olen’s voice, but any meaning was drowned out by the flapping of his cloak in her ears and the whistling of the wind.
After an eternity of semidarkness, the horse’s hooves clattered suddenly on stone. They trotted to a stop.
“ … Can see it properly from here.” The cloak swung aside, and Olen looked down over his shoulder at her. “Did you hear a thing I was saying?”
“No, master,” Tildi said. She looked at the landscape. Towers and the tops of evergreen trees protruded above a thin layer of gray mist. The only shelter they had from the sudden chill winds was a leafless tree behind them. They must be very high up. Over them the sky was a sickly gray-green, and a wind was stirring the thin grasses under her feet. “Where are we?”
He slid out of the saddle and helped her down. “We are on the east side of the river valley above Overhill. This is wild country, a band of marshes and forests between the city and the farmlands. I am hoping to intercept the Madcloud and direct it away from Overhill.”
“What is the Madcloud?”
“What? Hasn’t it ever attacked the Quarters? It’s a lightning storm that travels about of its own accord, often sailing right into the teeth of prevailing winds. It is a most destructive force. You’ve never seen it?”
“Thank Nature, no!”
A blinding stroke of white erupted in the distance. Tildi jumped. Olen counted quietly to himself until a distant crackling boom was heard.
“Still a way off. Good. Gives us time to prepare.” He dropped into his lecture mode, and peered at her under his large eyebrows. “Now, Tildi, you may guess that a wizard receives many requests, among which are pleas from farmers to change the weather. It’s raining too much, it’s not raining enough, they want more sunshine, and, of all things, they want me to put off the sunset in harvest times! Do you know, one of the most dangerous temptations of power is not to avoid doing wrong, but to do all the things people want you to. Not only are few paths ahead of you good choices, but not every path you do take is the right one. That’s to be expected. You’re fallible. Good judgment will keep you from making terrible mistakes. You must learn to say no when the time is right. You’ll be better off refusing to take an action if you are not certain of all the potential outcomes.”
Tildi frowned. “How could I know all of them?”
“You can’t! But you should know as many as are reasonable. In that you may take the advice of others you trust to be as wise or wiser than yourself.”
“That’s
everyone.
”
“Do you see, you have justified my faith in you,” Olen said with a chuckle. I have met so many who always know best, you see. Most of them are dead.”
“Dead?” Tildi blanched. “That would put me right off trying!”
“It shouldn’t,” Olen said, taking her by the shoulder and turning her firmly. “A judicious attempt, guided by wisdom … Look, here comes the cloud. You can see its rune within it, can’t you?”
“Yes.” The clouds that she had seen once she had left the Quarters usually had faint, light-colored sigils somewhere on their surfaces, changing and shifting just like the clouds themselves, but this was a violent display of colors at war with itself. It made Tildi feel a little queasy just to look at it. Lightning shot out of the roiling black mounds in all directions, like an injured cat striking out at anyone who might try to handle it. Tildi felt a hunger in it. It wanted something badly. But what could a cloud possibly want?
“The rune is spinning out of control. This is an entity without purpose. It was set going for no particularly good reason except that the incredible fool who made it, could,” Olen said, with a grim set to his jaw. “What is it doing here, of all places?”
“Doesn’t it just wander, like all weather?” Tildi asked.
“To start with the second half of your question, that is a misconception. Weather does not wander. It has many reasons for going where it does, and doing what it does. If you are so inclined, I will send you one day for a couple years’ apprenticeship in Levrenn with my friend Volek, whose specialty is weather-witching. But we do not have time for a lesson in that at this moment. We are concerned with a storm that does not wander, the Madcloud. Many have studied this phenomenon over the centuries. It seems to go where it is attracted, though no one has yet divined to what. I believe it to have a tropism for natural power, yet I don’t know what could have drawn it here: nothing has changed in this area in many months. I would have expected it to go toward the volcanoes in the north, or south if a tidal wave arises.” He shook his head. “We have no time to speculate. It will pass over the city if we do not redirect it.”
“Can’t you … ?” Tildi held up her hand and closed it the way Olen had done to extinguish the fire-demon.
The wizard’s curling eyebrows rose high on his forehead, but he didn’t scoff at the question.
“Tildi, a
heuren
is a mere speck of power. This cloud is a powerful spell, combined with a force of nature. To destroy it would upset the balance of nature, to be undone only by a host of wizards, or perhaps one of the Makers. I hope one day it will simply rain itself out, over the ocean or mountains where it can hurt no one. In the meanwhile, the best that we can do with it is drive it away.”
“Is it safe?” Tildi asked, as a lightning strike blasted apart a scrub bush clinging to the mountain. Rocks, dislodged by the bolt, rumbled downhill. Other rocks were knocked loose. Birds, disturbed by the fall, flew squawking into the sky.
“
Safe?
” Olen exclaimed. “Of course it is not safe. A wizard must always do what must be done. There is no choice. Our responsibility is to undertake the jobs that we can take. Yes, we may be killed by this storm, but what are two lives against all those in Overhill? You don’t strike me as one who shirks a job just because it is unpleasant.”
“No, that’s true …” Tildi mused. But turning a storm? “It’s taking a great risk.”
“All magic is risk-taking, Tildi.”
“I don’t like to take risks. Well, not many,” she said, after a moment’s thought.
“You took many risks coming here, didn’t you? I know something of smallfolk, you see,” Olen said, bending down and putting a hand on her shoulder. “You thought I might not accept you as an apprentice because you’re a girl, isn’t that right? But you came anyhow. I honor you for that. It shows the proper chance-taking character.”
Tildi wanted to say that wasn’t exactly the way it had happened, though he was right about his conclusion, and she was so relieved that she didn’t want to throw in the many other facts that had gone into her decision. Still, her conscience troubled her, and she opened her mouth to confess that it wasn’t she who had applied to him for an apprenticeship in the first place.
“No time!” Olen snapped out. Tildi closed her mouth. Her private griefs would not concern him. He brandished his staff at the storm. “Here it comes. Do you have a wand?”
“No.”
“Must see about getting you a wand. Are you carrying a pen? No? There, draw your knife. You know how to create wards now. Draw them as large as you can. Picture them filling the sky. You must protect the city. Keep that in your mind. It will inform your wards.”
Tildi pulled her knife out of the sheath at her belt, but held it up uncertainly. This mere wisp of metal—how could it stave off a force of nature that was the size of an entire valley? The Madcloud came closer. Red lightning shot from its underside. Far below them, underneath the mist, Tildi heard shouting and the crackle of flame as unseen woods caught fire.
“Begin!” Olen boomed. He held out his staff and began to chant.
“Fornai chnetech voshad!”
The disk touched the sky and thick silver lines began to flow from it as the wizard swept his arm across, up, down, and back. The lines formed into a gigantic word-phrase that said “Protect!” on their side. Tildi knew that the reverse, the side facing the oncoming storm, said something that approximated the word “Away!” in the strongest possible archaic terms. Hastily, she began to draw her own ward.