The Makers of Light (18 page)

"I cannot heal," she whispered. "What use is fire if it cannot do what is most important? If it does not help at all?"

Linden knelt in the snow, and Rianor knelt beside her, both of them running their hands (one hand in Linden's case) along the wolf's body, talking soothingly to him. Blake was sniffing the wolf's muzzle, and Merlevine of Waltraud—no, Merlevine of the Bers—stood slightly aside and watched them.

Rianor and Linden did not get in each other's way. When he had first started working with her, it had been difficult to work at the same time on the same thing. Either her hands would not be where he wanted them, or she would be standing where he wanted to stand himself, or there could be various other little things that made it so difficult and irritating to work with someone else. But it had been much different when they had tested the elevator—and it was different now. It gave him a peculiar feeling that he had never felt before—as if something was opening inside him and was making him lighter, as if doing this with her could almost make him fly.

"There is a belly wound, but it should be fine if he keeps the bandage on." Linden leaned further over the wolf and tried to wash the wound with alcohol. The wolf snarled at her, and before Rianor could even think about it, he grabbed her and hauled her behind himself. The wolf snarled at him, too, then stopped and simply watched him. The animal seemed to know that the lady was Rianor's and thus out of bounds. His eyes were yellow and wild—alien eyes, so different from humans'—and yet he bore himself with human-like pride and understanding.

"No! Dreadful! Please do not bite." Merlevine, grabbing the wolf's head in her hands as if there were no danger to her, pressing her cheek to his. Then, towards Rianor, "Dreadful is his name."

A Ber who said "
please,
" to an animal at that, and a woman who was not afraid of a wolf's teeth. Rianor had not known her well when she had still been Emery of Waltraud's daughter, for she had spent too long a time in Balkaene. The one he knew was Donald, but she seemed quite different from him.

"I will wash the wound. Linde, will you please prepare a new bandage? Lady Merlevine, you be careful with touching him. He might not want to keep his teeth in his mouth." Rianor washed it, the Ber girl still holding the wolf's head, while Linden finished the bandage and started kneading the wolf's limp leg with her fingers.

"Poor puppy. It is not us you need to bite, but whoever did this to you." Linden's eyes were shiny, her voice rougher than before. She did not cry often, and Rianor did not want her to have a cause to cry, but the shine in her eyes was beautiful. She raised them towards him and then towards the Ber girl. "The leg is broken. It needs adjustment and a splint to heal properly."

Silently, Merlevine rose, her fingers clenched together, her own eyes focused and intense. She walked towards the fence on the edge of the cliff, where a single metal bench was installed by the City Councilors for those nobles brave enough to sit there. She stared at the bench, unmoving. Then, suddenly, Linden started shaking beside Rianor, fighting for air until one of his hands dashed and tore the coat button at her throat.

"It is so hot ..." She sagged in his arms, her breaths short and ragged. "I need to make it cooler ... Rianor ... The river ... The snow ..." She closed her eyes while, his thoughts racing, he grabbed a handful of snow and rubbed her forehead. Her eyes jolted back open just as both Blake and the wolf started howling, her hot skin growing colder under Rianor's caress. Then it was Merlevine's turn to sag. She had come back to them, a piece of metal in her hands that a moment ago had been the upper part of the bench's leg. It was glowing red at the end where it had been attached to the bench. It now jangled as it slipped from her fingers and met the frozen ground.

She had detached a piece of metal from the bench.
She had done it in just a moment, while Rianor himself could
never
do it with his measly dagger. But there was no time to think about it now. He extended a hand and gripped her arm before she would meet the ground. His other arm still around Linden, he had Merlevine lean against him, throwing the emergency kit blanket over her slender shoulders. The wolf, no longer howling, pressed himself to her other side, warming her better than any blanket, while Blake licked Linden's face.

A dog per woman, but only one man. It was strange, having two women in his arms. Not apt to use his High Lord status to take advantage of serving girls and such, Rianor did not have extensive experience with such arrangements. He could feel them both now, and in a slight way he could feel the Magic tingling between the two of them. Very interesting, and yet ... They were both beautiful to his taste, and half a quarter ago he would have been interested in either one. Not so today.

And what was he doing, thinking about such things now of all times? The Magic might be doing something to him, too. How stupid exactly was it of him to put Linden into such a situation? He should have taken her home at the very first sign of danger, no matter how much he—or she—wanted to help the wounded wolf. He should indeed take her home now, no matter what happened to the wolf and the other girl. Perhaps he should even kill the other girl. She was dangerous in many ways—as a Waltraud, as a Ber, as a murderess. It did not matter how kind and vulnerable she looked now.

Of course, other Bers might know where she was, and someone might have seen him and Linden coming. Killing a Ber would not be forgiven even of a High Lord. It would be even more dangerous for Linden, for a lady she might be, but she was
just
a lady. Besides, he did not want to kill the girl. She opened her eyes just as he was lowering her to the ground, his arm still around her.

He would have left her here unconscious with the wolf, hoping that she woke up, that the cold and snow did not kill either of them. If wolves protected their people like dogs did, she would live ... And then, later, if she tried to come after Linden, he could play the hated games Bers and nobles often played—he could blame Merlevine's attitude on the Qynnsent-Waltraud enmity, as well as on tens of other otherwise useless details of Mierenthia's politics. Rianor pulled Linden, presently weak and dizzy-eyed, closer. He had suddenly realized that, even if worse came to worst, he still had an option.

Merlevine stared at him, so close that he could feel her breath, her eyes dark and terrified.

"What are you doing ..." He sensed something even as he heard her words and felt her body tense, and had this feeling lasted longer than a moment, his instinct would have been to throw her to the ground and stab her. For a moment there, he knew she had wanted to attack him.

"I ... thank you." She pulled away from him now, her hand brushing his, then sighed and tried to rise to her feet as he wrapped both his arms around Linden.

"No, don't hold her like this. You, Qynnsent lady, can you hear me? Lean and press both your palms to the ground. Well, press one, if you can't the other. No, don't touch him; you should not touch a person while you are in this condition."

Linden pulled her hands away from Rianor's waist, but did not lean to touch the ground. "I can hear you." She turned her head towards the other girl, her shoulders now stiff and straightened, her eyes narrowed. Still, her skin was too hot and her eyes glossy.

"Do what I say, then!"

"Why would I?" Both women were staring at each other now, and something seemed to pass silently between them. Rianor did not know if it was Magic or something womanly that he, as a man, did not understand. "I don't know you, Ber lady, and I don't know your purpose. Neither do I know what effects such an action would have, or why."

Something flickered inside the Ber girl's eyes. "Of course you would want to know the effects. The effects are that you will feel calmer and possibly it will save you from fainting. But do you really want to know
why?
"

"Yes." They stared at each other again. "But
you
don't know why, either, do you?"

The Ber looked distressed now; she looked angry, and yet she was not motioning to do anything. Linden seemed to have struck some sensitive cord with her. How could she have said something like this to a Ber?

For a moment there was nothing but silence.

"Rianor." Linden tore her gaze from the Ber and looked at him. "I think I feel better, my lord. We have a splint, too, so let us adjust Dreadful's leg. Blake, love, come and give me your paw, I want to know how a healthy leg should feel to the touch."

Rianor knew how a healthy dog's leg should feel; he had often examined Blake thoroughly since Blake had been a little puppy. He had wanted to know what Blake was and what Blake needed. However, he now let Linden, inexperienced as she was, handicapped as she was, straighten the wolf's leg by herself, even though it was risky for the wolf for she might do it wrong, and risky for her for she might get bitten. He would not do it, himself. He could not afford to spare the tiniest amount of concentration from the Ber and what she might do.

The Ber seemed to sense that. She met his eyes with a look full of so many mixed emotions that they were almost impossible to define, then blinked, tossed her hair aside, and knelt beside Linden. Rianor saw her stroke the wolf's head, talking to him, holding him so that he would not turn to bite Rianor's lady.

With an inward sigh, Rianor knelt beside the girls, Blake on guard beside him. Upon his check Linden's adjustments of the wolf's leg turned out to be correct; she was an incredibly fast learner.

"So fire is of use, after all," Linden said, her voice soft, "You did use your fire to get us a splint, Ber lady. I hope you will fix that bench later, though; it does not deserve to be crippled."

"Yes, fire, our blessing and our curse." The girl stared at the distance, down where the river curved between its white banks. The snow was falling harder now, cold whiteness gathering on their faces, the twilight of the coming evening blending with the darkness of the Ber girl's eyes. She was there beside Rianor and Linden, and yet, for a moment, it was hard for him to see her. It was as if for a moment she were unreal, there and yet somewhere else.

"Fire, power, metal, the dream that our hearts always dream. Or so some Bers say." She sighed, and she was fully there again, just a tired girl blinking away snow and tears. "I sometimes wonder, however, if we are truly dreaming this world, or if it is dreaming us."

"Does it matter, after all? We are here. We exist." Linden, her own eyes a blend of yellow darkness and light, as the rays of the Wind Moon, today early in the sky, fell in them. "All that is left is to know more about the world, so that we can improve it and thus improve ourselves."

She smiled, and Rianor caught her hand, suddenly plagued by the strange notion that if he did not, she, too, would become unreal. Both Blake and the now-bandaged wolf howled as the second moon rose. Linden shivered, and he pulled her closer to himself, wrapping his coat around her. It was so risky, talking like this to a Ber. And yet ...

"Is it true, then?" He looked at the Ber girl. If she answered, the risk might be worth it. "Is it true that even you Bers do not know the world? You ridicule Science, but is it because
you
do not know everything about it? Do you, Ber Merlevine, know how your Magic
works?
"

"How it works?" She sighed, pulling her cloak more tightly around herself, watching them. Ber wore cloaks, like commoners. "
To show the people that they are people themselves, even though they are so different from them in other ways,
" his mother had once told him.

"I do not know how it works," the Ber girl said. "My master might. Or he might not; I have to ask him. I might tell you his answer if we ever meet again. Or I might not." She stared at the distance again, one of her hands on the wolf's head, fading sunlight and rising moonlight dancing on her, shifting the outlines of her figure. She was truly beautiful, but in the snow and pale light her beauty was in some way skewed—as if this were not her place, as if her beauty did not know how exactly to manifest itself. Strange.

"You know," she looked at them again. "I like you two, with your precise, detailed, tinkering Science, with your misguided belief that you can learn what is important about the world in this way. But, you know,
how
something works doesn't matter. What matters is that something does work, or that it doesn't, or what the consequences of that are to the world. I don't know how fire works, but I can make it, feel it, and control it. What can
you
do?"

Rianor saw Linden's eyes narrow, felt her fastened heartbeat, matching his. So
these
were the people who ruled the world! The people whom he had hated and accused of many things throughout the years—but never of ignorance.

He had believed the Bers all-powerful once. He had blamed them for his parents' deaths because he thought they were withholding information, that if all healers—if all people—were taught what Commanders were taught, perhaps someone would have known how to save the Qynnsent lord and lady. Later, Rianor had blamed the Bers for hiding Magic and ridiculing Science. But he had always assumed that they had enough knowledge themselves.

Linden raised her chin, her eyes glowing amber. "Didn't we just show you what we can do? If you don't know, ask Dreadful! We can show you more if you wish!"

She waved her good arm, then pointed at the other one. "I can show you this, too—the result of either Ber malice or Ber lack of knowledge of fire!" The snow was melting on her cheeks, and unlike the Ber she did not look skewed or as if she did not fit in—the opposite, she fit in right here with Rianor, amongst the snow, trees, the hill and the distant river. Beautiful the Ber might be, but Linden was more beautiful than her. She was more beautiful than anyone.

She was also risking her life, and perhaps that was the most important reason that made Rianor's voice calm.

"What my lady and I can do should not concern you, lady Merlevine."

For some reason the Ber girl lowered her gaze, then looked at him with her eyes both hard and shiny.