Silent Hall (11 page)

Psander was clearly pleased to see them. “Come in, all of you,” she said, in her mask's powerful male voice. “Your reward awaits.”

The gate opened of its own accord, swinging back with a creak.
No!
Phaedra thought, horrified, as they rode through to the courtyard. The Gallant Ones meant to kill her – how could Psander fail to see that? With the gate open, what was there to stop them from ransacking everything inside?

Phaedra heard cries from up ahead. The villagers knew they were coming.

When they rode into the courtyard, the townsfolk were cowering in the entrances of their new tents, staring up at the riders with fear and hatred. Their eyes were no kinder to the islanders.
They think we're monsters,
Phaedra thought wretchedly.
They think we joined the Gallant Ones on purpose.

Phaedra heard the tower door swing open behind them. “Dismount, all of you,” Psander's voice boomed. “Dismount when you are in my hall.”

There was a loud clicking noise, and the Gallant Ones wheeled around. Above Psander's head, the walls of the tower were covered in crossbows, held by stone arms that aimed them perfectly at each rider, three to a man.

“Dismount,” Psander repeated. “I would highly recommend it.”

The riders alit from their horses. Phaedra could barely contain her relief, for all that it wasn't over yet.

“Tana does not ride with you,” Psander noted. “Charos, leave your weapons and come speak with me.”

Charos' eyes burned with fury, but he obeyed. The two spoke quietly for a time, while the others watched in silence. Were those crossbows real? Phaedra couldn't be sure. Surely Psander must have
some
defenses besides a simple gate. But how many of her defenses were psychological?

In the end, Hearthman Charos nodded and withdrew. Psander disappeared into the tower and returned with a sack of gold. She paid the old men and they remounted their horses. Phaedra let out her breath. They would leave in peace.

Narky, emboldened by the Gallant Ones' apparent defeat, took the opportunity to pester the riders about their extra horses and equipment, hoping to buy some of it cheap. Hearthman Charos did not bother to keep the disgust from his face while Narky suggested a price, but neither did he bother to hold up his side of the haggling. He still had his eyes on the crossbows. He signaled to his compatriots, and they unloaded the boar's bones and Narky's purchases of a clean halfspear, a packhorse and a pair of tents. Then they spurred their horses and galloped out toward the gate.

Criton eyed Narky curiously. “Where did you get the money to buy all that? I thought you gave all of yours to the fisherman.”

Phaedra did not hear his reply because Psander was already beckoning them, and Phaedra hurried to join her. Psander's male figure was still wearing that robe of fire, but when Phaedra concentrated and tried to look beyond the vision before her, she thought she could see the real, female Psander underneath, wearing a sensible grey dress with a low hemline.

“Congratulations,” Psander said. “I understand you lot made yourselves useful after all. I thought you might, though I must say I'm surprised to hear it was Narky who dealt the death blow.”

Narky stiffened. “If you didn't think I'd be any help, why did you bother sending me?”

Psander opened the door to the tower and ushered them in. “In battle,” she said, “it's better to have too much than not enough. Never use force unless you can use overwhelming force. Now come in. We have much to discuss.”

“We do,” agreed Phaedra, entering first and turning back to face the wizard. “Why did you want that boar so badly? You were willing to trade us and the Gallant Ones in for it – it has to be important.”

“Oh, it is,” Psander agreed. “But magic theory is too complicated to explain in an afternoon. Suffice it to say that the boar has some of Magor's power in it, power that I shall use to protect myself from Him.”

“I hope you plan on protecting us too,” Narky said. “If Magor didn't hate us before, He sure does now.”

“You will be safe with me,” Psander said magnanimously. “Is anything else troubling you?”

“Do you have time to tell us about the fairies?” Criton asked. “You told me Bandu used fairy magic, so you must know something about them.”

Both Psanders nodded. “I do, though less than I might. I never studied elf magic thoroughly, and a good deal less is known about it than about dragon magic, for instance. Even in the heyday of academic wizardry, we knew very little about the Kindly Folk.”

“Tell us what you do know,” Phaedra demanded, and then hurriedly added, “please.”

Psander smiled. “When I was young, there was a group of wizards who had built a tower upon an old fairy gateway in order to study the strange energies it emitted. I apprenticed there for some months, though my tasks were mostly mundane. The tower is gone now, as are the wizards who lived in it. So I hope you understand that I am no expert on the subject. In fact, there are no experts left alive in this world.

“You are familiar with the writings of the Tarphaean sage Katinaras, yes? His mesh analogy was very popular within the academic community. The accepted theory back when I studied at Gateway was that there is a second mesh between our world and that of the Kindly Folk, much like the one between us and the Gods, except tighter. It was thought that this mesh was so tight that the Kindly Folk and their prisoners could only travel through at very particular times, when the mesh is weaker due to various factors only some of which were well understood. Those who built Gateway were hoping that one day the gate would open and a fairy would step through to be captured and studied. Given enough time, it probably would have happened that way. But Gateway is no more.

“It's a terrible shame, because there is so much we don't know about the world of elves that we might have known had we been able to ask one.”

“The world of elves?” Criton asked. “Is there a difference between elves and fairies?”

“No,” Psander answered. “As far as I can recall, the Kindly Folk call themselves elves, whereas ‘fairy' is a human word. But my studies at Gateway were a long time ago. I can't even remember the source of that theory, let alone what evidence we have to support it.

“In any case, the fairy magic that came through at Gateway had a very distinct flavor, if you will, from the magic of this world. When I saw Bandu, it was like tasting a food you haven't had since childhood. I immediately thought back to my time there, and knew that this was something special.”

“So if Bandu uses fairy magic,” Criton asked, “does that mean she has fairy blood? Is she Elf Touched?”

“No.”

“How is that possible?” Phaedra asked.

Psander shrugged. “Humans are remarkable creatures. Dragons breathed magic. It grew on them like hair, without thought or effort. It is believed that fairies are the same. The Gods may actually
be
magic, without anything resembling bodies on Their side of the mesh. But we humans are different. We produce only the weakest of magical fields, and that field is remarkably generic. No particular form of magic is innate to us, yet through careful study, we can use them all. In truth, there is no such thing as wizard magic. We wizards are simply humans who use our knowledge of magic theory to harness and imitate God magic or dragon magic or, in some rare cases, fairy magic.”

She shook her head and let out an exasperated chuckle. “I say ‘we'. The fools who run around nowadays calling themselves wizards are not students of magic theory, only idiots who have learned some limited number of tricks and go about trying to impress people with them. Between the Gods, their servants, and our rivalries with each other, the community of academic wizards has been entirely obliterated. I am the last of the academics.”

Criton frowned. “I didn't learn magic by studying. My mother said I was born with fire in my lungs.”

“Yes,” Psander said, “the Dragon Touched are different. Even the little bit of dragon's blood that was passed down to you is enough to let you live and breathe your lesser magic almost like a dragon would. You can develop it, of course, with practice, and the rest of puberty should help you with that too. I say it's like hair, but in some ways a muscle is a more apt analogy.

“But,” she added, turning to Bandu, “what's really remarkable is you. You seem to have somehow hit upon an aspect of fairy magic without any study or even a drop of elf blood. Gods know how you did it, I ought to say, though somehow I doubt They do.”

Narky gasped. “You can't insult Them
all
like that!” he whispered urgently. “They're always watching us.”

“They are not,” said Psander, with eerie certainty. “Not here, anyway.”

P
sander regarded
their shocked faces with obvious pleasure. “As I said,” she continued, “dragons and fairies have never been my specialty. My research as a wizard was focused on the Gods, which is how I have been able to evade Their gaze for so long. The Gods we know and fear are not entirely omniscient. They are fairly localized, for one thing, and They rely to a surprising degree on Their followers and sacred animals to notice things for Them. They also rarely cooperate with each other, except against a shared enemy. Once, the dragons were that enemy. But some twenty-five years ago, the Gods turned Their gaze on the academic wizards.

“At first, when priests and zealots began to pick fights with us, we assumed that they were driven by ignorance, and fear, and mortal ambition. We were wrong. The Gods were behind every attack and every wizard hunt. The more secrets of the universe we unlocked, the more They turned against us. They destroyed our towers of learning and hunted us down one by one. It did not take long. What had once been a peaceful academic rivalry between wizards and priests became an all-out war, and it was not a war we could win.

“I did my best to stay out of sight during this time. I traveled for a long time, keeping one step ahead of the fanatics and one failed ward away from a divine smiting. In my travels, I gathered what I needed to build a place like this. Sometimes I had to pick through the ruins of my colleagues' homes, but in the end you can see the results of my labors.

“We are standing in a fortress designed to act as a blind spot for the Gods, a place that stands not against Them, but outside Their field of vision. We are near no cities, no great rivers or mountains, and yet this is not so wild a plain as to be considered Magor's territory. We are not on the sea, nor on any of Atel's roads. The wards I have placed on my walls are wards of invisibility to Gods, and to Their priests and zealots and sacred animals. That is why the birds do not sing here, and why mules and other sacred beasts may not enter my gates alive. If there were a God of sheep, you can be sure that the villagers would be living outside my doors rather than within them. It is only pure luck that I warded so heavily against Ravennis, for He has marked Narky and could otherwise have seen my hall through his eyes.”

“So you're hiding here,” Criton said. “And you can't ever leave?”

Psander nodded. “They would smite me the moment I stepped outside, and then all would be for nought.”

Narky frowned. “What do you mean, ‘all would be for nought?' This isn't just about your survival, then?”

To Criton's surprise, Psander looked completely shocked. “Of course not!” she said. “I didn't build this place to keep
me
safe! I built it to house the books I rescued. The Gods and Their servants wish to blot the academics and our findings from memory, and I cannot let that happen. If that means imprisoning myself, then so be it.

“I know that you do not all like me. You think I am manipulative and callous. You're not wrong. But my work has a purpose. When I ask you to bring me something like the boar, it is to strengthen my wards so that I may preserve some part of the knowledge we acquired before the towers of learning fell. I am not some petty hedge wizard who jealously guards her knowledge from the rest of the world. Everything I know and everything I have I will share with you, if you continue to help me.”

They all stood in shocked silence for a time. “I didn't mean to tell you all this so soon,” Psander said, “but my need is great. If you need some time to discuss this…”

“Yes,” said Phaedra, “that would probably be best.”

“Of course.” The wizard bowed her head, rose and withdrew.

“We
have
to help her!” Phaedra said, once the door was closed.

“Phaedra,” said Narky, “she's on
all
the Gods' bad side. If we help her and she fails, nothing in the world can protect us.”

“But she
shouldn't
fail!” Phaedra insisted. “The Gods are wrong to persecute her.”

“The Gods are wrong?” Narky repeated. “What's the matter with you? Since when do you say that sort of thing? You're always telling us what the Gods want, and how to keep Them happy with us – you're practically a priestess!”

“I'm not a priestess,” Phaedra corrected him, nearly in tears. “I just want to understand the way the world works. That's what theology is about. But that's also what academic wizardry was about! They were trying to see how it all fits together. We can't let all their knowledge disappear.”

“Phaedra's right,” Criton said. Psander was the only person he had met so far who knew anything about dragons. If she and her library were destroyed, he might be empty forever.

“Really?” Narky asked. “You're sure this is worth dying over?”

“Yes,” he and Phaedra said in unison.

“You're suicidal!”

“I don't know,” said Hunter. “Psander says They can't see this place, and we have two Gods that want us dead already: Magor, and whoever sent the plague. Unless that changes somehow, this might be the safest place in the world.”

For Narky, those were magic words. “I guess you could be right,” he said reluctantly.

Bandu shook her head. “Psander is bad. Gods are bad, but Psander is bad too.”

“Yeah,” said Narky, “but Psander doesn't want to kill us.”

That settled it. Bandu shrugged sullenly, but she did not object any further.

Criton was grateful to Hunter, and impressed too. It was easy to assume, with a man so quiet and so focused on combat, that he would have nothing particularly useful to say, but apparently the opposite was true. He certainly knew how to motivate Narky.

Phaedra took a deep breath. “So I can tell Psander we'll help her?”

“You tell her,” Bandu said. “I'm tired now.”

She left them there, closing the door none too quietly behind her.

“I'll talk to her,” Criton said. He had wanted to speak to Bandu alone anyway. There were questions he had to ask her.

He found Bandu sitting on the windowsill in the girls' room, looking out past the courtyard to the fields and mountains beyond. She had one of Phaedra's scrolls – a genealogy, Criton thought – and she had unrolled it partway and was fanning herself with it. She barely glanced at him when he entered the room.

“Bandu.” The girl went on fanning herself. “Um, can I talk with you?”

No head turn. “You can talk.”

Criton cleared his throat nervously, but she would not look at him. He soldiered on. “You remember what Psander said, about the Wizard's Sight?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, she said that you and I could see through her disguise because we had the Wizard's Sight. Do you remember that now?”

Bandu nodded absently. He wasn't sure she was listening.

“Bandu,” he said again, and she finally turned to him, looking annoyed. “Bandu, did you see my claws the first time you saw me, when you got on the boat?”

“What are claws?”

Criton lifted his arms, letting them shift back to their natural form. “These. And these, the scales. Did you always see them?”

She nodded again.

“And you weren't frightened?”

She shook her head this time.

“Why not?”

Bandu shrugged. “Why are others frightened?” she asked him.

“Well, because…” Criton broke off. It seemed so obvious, after Ma and her husband and everything. But somehow, no explanation came to him.

Bandu answered her own question. “Others are frightened,” she said, “because you don't look like one of our kind. Why do I care? Our kind hate Four-foot, and they kill their young. They kill their young! You don't need to be like them to be good.”

She was crying now. What was all this about? Criton sat down next to her on the windowsill and asked, as gently as he could, “What do you mean, they kill their young?”

She said nothing – only put her head in her hands. They killed their young. He thought of his own head, being held under water by Ma's husband. He had breathed some water in, and it was the most horrible feeling he had ever had.

Bandu's mood must have something to do with the dreams. She had been angry at Psander ever since their first night here, when the wizard had invaded their sleeping minds.

“Bandu,” he asked. “When Psander was in your dreams, what happened?”

She shook her head and would not look at him. “Bandu,” he said again, “what did you see?”

She said something then, but he could not hear her through the sobs. “What?” he asked, leaning closer.

Her words came back in a whisper. “My father,” she said.

He felt the water in his lungs again, cold and heavy and awful. “Father?” The word had to fight its way out of his mouth.

Bandu looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. “I kill her when I come out,” she said, “and he hate me. He not have your, your… ah!” She screamed in frustration, unable to express herself as she wished to.

“It's all right,” he prodded her, “go on.”

She took a few slow breaths. “For food,” she said, “not enough for food. He not want me, he wants another one like her. He says I am bad because I kill her, and not clean, and he wants another one, but nobody wants him with me. And not enough food, but he still has to give me some. So he pray for me, because he doesn't… doesn't?”

“Didn't,” Criton said gently.

Bandu nodded. “He didn't know what to do, so he pray. Then he takes me to trees and leaves me there.”

“Your own father?”

She nodded again, and new tears burst from her eyes. “He thinks I die. He want me to die, but afraid himself to. So he leave me.”

Criton did not want to hear anymore. It made him sick. A real father, leaving his daughter to die in the forest. Not a stepfather, not an imposter. Bandu's father. He felt nauseous. He wished he hadn't heard this, hadn't asked her about her dreams. It could not be. If Bandu's real father could abandon her in the woods, then maybe the man who had held Criton's head under the water really was… no. No. Criton had no father.

A little smile crept onto Bandu's face, even through her tears. “I not die,” she said. “I find Four-foot, and he takes care of me. We are friends, is better than father.”

The smile vanished, and her face contorted again. “Then I kill him too!”

She buried her face in her hands, and her whole body shook with her sobs. Criton put an awkward claw on her back. “You didn't kill him,” he said.

Her body curled so that her forehead touched her knees. “I kill him,” she said. “I take him on leaf – on boat – because I am scared of the water. And man hits him, and cut turns bad, and he die. Because I take him with me! I think water will cover island, will kill everything. But no water, only sickness. Kills people! Only
my
kind. His kind happy, they live, and only he dies because of me.”

She fell against him, sobbing even harder. “I kill Four-foot,” she cried. “I love Four-foot and I kill him.”

“No, Bandu,” he said. “It's not your fault. You thought you were saving him too. You weren't being selfish, you just didn't know. None of us did.”

She nodded a little, into his chest. He wanted to comfort her further, but his mind was distracted. How had she known that the people of Tarphae would drown? Nobody had known that. Nobody
could
have known that.

He tightened his arm around her, a little guilty to be so preoccupied with her magic instead of her emotions. But what knowledge had her fairy magic given her? This girl had seen what nobody else could see, and knew all sorts of things that she shouldn't have known. Somehow, she had known the island was going to drown. And she thought that made her a murderer.

“You didn't kill Four-foot,” Criton said, carefully bringing up his other claw to pat her head and stroke her short, fuzzy hair. “The fisherman, the man who gave him that cut. He killed him. The Gods who let the infection spread, They killed him. You did nothing wrong, Bandu. Really. You only did what you thought was right, what you thought would save him. It's not your fault at all.”

Bandu looked up into his eyes. Then she kissed him. She kissed him and would not let him go, kissed him until his shock subsided and he stopped wanting her to let him go. She kissed him until Phaedra walked into the room and gave a little squeal.

“I'll come back later,” Phaedra said in a hurry, and dove out of the room again. It didn't matter at all. Bandu kissed him, and she didn't stop.