The Makers of Light (35 page)

Dominick kicked at the lord's knee, but he raised it just in time, his own kick aimed at Dominick's ribs, which Dominick avoided, too, and he also once again avoided the man's knife. The man fought worse than before—anger, and perhaps fear for that witch of his, took their toll. Dominick felt the rush of blood to his own head, for a moment wanting nothing more than to fight him, to listen to the roar in his ears and to obey the only thoughts currently present inside his mind. The thoughts of killing and aggression, of winning and causing to desist—the only thoughts that had not blurred into a mist that he seemed unable to penetrate.

And yet, he must have had access to other thoughts as well, for something made him block another cold, calculated, and yet in a way wild and mindless blow, and perhaps the same something made him leap towards and through the opening he had come from, barely managing to push the stone back into place.

He leaned on the wall then, his legs weak, his wrist bleeding, his heart pounding and his mind desperately trying to tell him that yes, despite his father's words from long ago, he could run from a fight and still be a man. His father's words, his brothers' deeds—he did not need them. He had made the right decision, and yet the brute in him raged and tried to get its own way.

Killing a High Lord would not be easily forgiven. Although the Bers were weaker nowadays, they would still search and perhaps get to Dominick, as well as to Maxim and the Order of the Mother—they would get to the Dark Forest of people's minds itself, trampling Dominick's paths, burning, ruining the work of bringing the lost ones back, destroying those confused by today's troubled times or dooming them to wandering in darkness. And if the High Lord managed to kill him, instead, they were doomed anyway—unless Maxim managed to find someone to take Dominick's place, but whom would he find? Nigel? Oliver? Ardelia? Mentors they were, and they had saved quintessences in their time, but they were not true Mentors. He was.

Hours later, out alone in Mierber's cold night, Dominick wrapped the civilian cloak more tightly around himself and walked faster, a sense of direction now formed in his mind. Perhaps it was because he had thought again about the witch woman and the lord—and about his own father, a man he rarely thought of but whose wrong example and fool's words still contaminated his memories.

"
A real man would never have run; a real man would have fought.
"

That was what Varban would have said, could he have seen his son—because that was all Varban knew, and all Varban was, and all Varban taught his sons. Today, in the Healers' Passage, Dominick had fought when there should not have been a fight, and he had almost not stopped, almost proved himself his father's "
worthy
" son. Fortunately, he was a real
Mentor.

Lord Rianor of Qynnsent's father must have taught him differently, or Rianor must have ignored his own old man like Dominick had his. Many "
real men
" would have tried to blindly come after Dominick, and perhaps in a way Dominick had relied on this happening. Yet, lord Rianor had not followed Dominick but had gone back to play a game of thought with the Science Guild—and won it, together with her.

Dominick made a left turn at a corner where muddy snow had frozen in lumps, the direction he was going more than clear now. He was going there because of those two.

And if they were the people against him, the people who would poke into both Science and Magic, fraternize with
Bessove,
walk the Passage he had walked—if they would, directly or not, try to prevent him from gathering the lost ones to their pens away from darkness and peril—he would fight them, in a Mentor's way, until his last breath.

These two would not fight blindly like Dominick's father. They would think. They had just invented what could be called a miracle just by playing a
game,
and—had they the right values—they would have been worthy to fight
alongside
Dominick.

He was looking forward to the challenge of defeating them.

He walked, and then walked some more. He passed kilometers without feeling any tiredness, even though he'd had no rest at all this day. He stopped only when he reached Maxim's temple—his own former temple, the temple he had vandalized—was it only twenty or so days ago? So many things had come to pass—no, he had
done
so many things since then, for they had not come to pass by themselves—so many things that it felt as if it all had happened not recently but once upon a time, to another person, in another world.

He watched the temple now, a dark silhouette bathed by moonlight in the clear, freezing night, the occasional snowflake drifting towards it from the sky to hint of the storm to come.

He knew where the Qynnsent lord and his witch's game could lead to, and their game opponents' inventions also had their own place in this. He knew it all now, so bright and clear in his mind that it seemed that the thought had always been there, as if all the inventions were not others' but his own.

They were not, but he had his own ideas.

And now, after at least an hour of walking in the coldness, Dominick's head was clear enough of his own impulses. It mattered not that the witch cared for that man—or it should not—or, at least, it should only matter that she and the man had been so focused on each other that perhaps they did not know the implications of what they had done.

A gust of wind pulled his cloak, spilling snowflakes, howling as it met a certain corner of the temple's roof. Dominick had feared this sound during his first winter in Mierber, especially at night, when it was easy to believe it was the sound of the Master shouting angrily from the sky, despite Maxim's daytime affirmations that it was not so.

"I wish you
would
shout," Dominick whispered to himself, then turned his back to the temple. He was learning many things nowadays, and one of them was that he could learn nothing from this place any more.

He walked further, across the street, to the Mentors' dormitory that could not be a home for him any longer.

"
Come only if you have something urgent to report,
" Maxim had said, otherwise the old man would periodically come himself to the small apartment. Dominick wondered what Maxim had done that Dominick could come to this place at all. Usually those who had failed to be Mentors, if at all alive and free, were banished from the vicinity of their old temples. He stopped before the dormitory's stone steps but then went on, his misgivings lasting only for a moment.

Dominick trusted Maxim with the information he was about to give him. He could also trust him with something as trivial as his own life.

END OF BOOK TWO

Also by
Lynna Merrill
:

The Seekers of Fire,
the first volume of
The Masters That Be
and
The Weavers of Paths,
the third volume of
The Masters That Be:

Expect
The Shards of Creation,
the fourth book in the series, in 2012.

Excerpt from
The Weavers of Paths,
Chapter 1: One World

Merley

Evening 43 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706

It was cold. Or, rather, Merley was cold herself, despite the fire burning behind the thick walls of the stove, and the naked little flame writhing abandoned in a metal plate on the table.

The little flame could not warm her. Not like this, severed, outside of her body and mind, a tiny flame inside metal but not strong enough to melt metal—so a flame inevitably confined. It was just a token she had made for herself, a reminder.

Merley turned a page of the book, yet another thin, almost transparent page packed with dense, miniature text. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes, but the words would not become more clear, either in appearance or in meaning. Her eyes felt as if they were filled with dust. They often did, these days, and not because of dust on the books themselves. No, Darius would never, ever let dust mar the large ancient tomes or their shelves. He had been carefully wiping all the dust every day, year after year.

Why was she
doing
this?

Merley tossed her head and stood, her feet weak from hours of stillness. She walked to the window, where the Sun had still managed to paint the clouds violet and pink, as if in challenge to the white snow that had been softly falling for hours. Like a blanket the snow was, gently but persistently enveloping the world.

The world, and the Sun itself.

Yet, she could
feel
the Sun, and she could
hear
the Sun, even though the eyes only saw a flash of color here and there amongst the blanket's threads. She felt the Sun, its smile distant and yet there for her; it was a kind smile like Darius's, and the thought of them both made her a bit warmer.

Darius was the most wonderful man in the world. Others made fun of Darius, for Darius might forget to eat for two days when playing with some little device of his, or he could go out with mismatched shoes. Yet, Darius was not careless. He took most painstaking care of his devices and his books, and in the days since Merley had become his student, Darius had also taken care of her.

And why did shoes have to match, anyway? Merley rubbed her eyes, then massaged her temples, this yet another fleeting thought inside a mind tense and restless. Did not shoes just have to be comfortable enough to walk? Did the Sun care for matching shoes? Did the snow? No, it was people, always people, who thought and said and did the little things, senseless, useless little things at first glance, and yet things that could cut and cut straight to the heart.

A knock sounded on the door, and at first Merley smiled, then suddenly froze still, for the sound was unlike Darius's soft tapping. It was sharper, faster, more demanding, as if the person knocking was both in haste and used to doors being immediately opened.

This person was not welcome. Beyond the window, the pink of the setting Sun was now washing out, and the white and gray of a snowy day was flowing into the blue and black of a silent snowy night. It was peaceful, or had been, for these past thirty days. But, often nervous and lost in her own thoughts, perhaps Merley had not paid attention; she had not always noticed, the fool.

But the peace had been there, a certain slow quality of life, a certain silence breached only by the ticking of devices, Darius's soft voice, the song of birds, and the winds that howled out up on the roof. Even that howling was peaceful in its own way, despite the songs of mountains that it sometimes brought, with their longing and their simultaneously quiet and stormy sadness.

At nights like this, Merley could not fall asleep, and sometimes tears flowed down her cheeks, for reasons she did not know clearly. She sang her own songs then, songs that came straight from a place in her that was truly hers and yet a place she could not reach always. Then, when in the mornings she tried to write the songs in a book, inevitably she could not. Instead, she wrote fragments of stories, her own fairytales that she did not show even to Darius.

This knocking now, this urgent harshness, did not belong to the tall, faraway tower where nothing was ever urgent and harsh, where even the songs and noises she had heard all her life did not come easily. The knocking belonged to the world of Bers and humans, to the world of softly-dressed sharpness, honey-coated poison, noise, and constant misdirected haste.

Seven strides, a hand on the latch, a door swung open—and this world stood before her just as outside the Sun went fully down.

"What do you want?" Merley whispered, against Adept Brighid's smile.

"Why, to see how you are doing, my dear."

Brighid pushed back the wet red hood of her cloak. Drops of melting snow trickled down the woman's thick dark hair and down the garment, marring Darius's—Merley's—cleanly polished floor. Snow was usually clean so far from the center of the city with its loud, carriage-packed, filthy streets. But not snow brought in by Brighid. Everything Brighid touched, Brighid tainted, and Merley was going to personally clean the room after the woman was gone, to remove every little trace of her.

Old Slava back in Balkaene had believed that if you swept the floor after a visitor had left, you would banish her or him forever. Old Slava had seriously scolded a scullery girl who had swept the kitchen floor once after Merley had been there for Slava's wondrous cookies. Merley had not believed you could truly chase away a person with a broom, and the girl probably had not wanted that, anyway—and Merley
had
gone back later. But could she go back again now? Had the broom perhaps not worked in her case, after all, and could it not work in Brighid's? Could not wishing Brighid gone with all her heart work by itself?

"Won't you perhaps offer me a glass of water and a bite, lady Merlevine?"

A bite. The word brought an image that was not that of the polite cake bites nobles offered to visitors, perhaps because Merley had been thinking of Slava just now. Slava's cookies it brought, together with their taste, so strong that it made Merley's mouth water, a taste of baked flaky dough full of freshly-churned butter, dressed with an exquisite layer of rose-petal jam.

Merley swallowed, both the taste and the tears, everything blending in a bitter lump inside her throat. But tears were never a good condiment, and she was not going to cry before that woman.

"No, I am not going to offer you anything," Merley said with all the calm she could muster. "I am a noble lady no more, even though it was "
lady
" you called me, and I am not bound by silly noble rules of politeness to offer food and drink to even an unwelcome guest. Who made those rules and why, anyway? They make no more sense than the rule of matching shoes."

"The rule of matching shoes, is it, now?"

If Merley could swallow back words, she would have swallowed back hers. She should have said nothing of shoes, or of her wonderings. She had just uttered what had been on her mind, like she had easily become used to with Darius, but this was not Darius. Brighid was smiling again, obviously undaunted, her smile almost mocking and yet not entirely—a knowing smile, as if she were a nosy but not necessarily ill-meaning friend whom Merley had just presented with a secret of hers. It was not a secret, it was nothing special, and yet she felt breached. Anything she told Brighid, any access to herself she gave Brighid, was one thing too much.

"I could tell you who invented these rules and why, Merley." Brighid slipped inside, a hand reaching out to close the door. Her nails were long, carefully shaped and painted. "I can tell you many things."

Could she? Could she really? For a moment, Merley's curiosity was stronger than the repulsion she felt towards the woman. She had asked a question to which she expected no answer, a question to which she thought there
were
no answer, for she had learned to think that rarely were the rules of humans good or right, or made any sense. And good or right perhaps they were not, but were there explanations? Was there anything an Adept Humanist knew that could help Merley know this world herself, with its mingled paths and mingled lives, and noise and discord that permeated every breathing or non-breathing thing except perhaps fire? Was there anything Brighid could tell her that would make her understand why she could not find peace even here, amidst Darius's kindness, in Darius's peaceful home?

No. Merley did not shake her head at herself only because if she did, Brighid would see and would know that Merley wanted to believe her. Merley did not know what Brighid knew about human rules and the world, but she knew that Brighid knew about her, about the restiveness that for a year had been her constant companion, her enemy and her friend—and she knew that Brighid would not hesitate to use it. Had she been a Brighid, "
I can tell you all you need to know,
" would have been what she would have told a Merley, perhaps followed by "
I can help you find your own place.
"

"Why have you come, Adept Humanist Brighid?" Merley sat at her table, in front of her little confined flame, and Brighid sat across from her, the adept's eyes lingering on the metal plate.

Both were silent for a while. Then, "Such a waste, my dear," Brighid finally said. "A flame with no purpose, at a time when flames are born in pain and die easily."

"How do you know it has no purpose!" Merley snapped, then wished to bite off her tongue. She had done it again, she had shown emotion to a person who could harvest emotions like grain, and like grain, turn them to something of her own making.

Strangely enough, Brighid did not immediately take the opportunity to do that. She just stared at the flame for a very long time, eyes half-closed, her long fingers clenched together on the table. She looked ... vulnerable for a little while, but not like Merley's mother, who wore vulnerability like she wore her beauty, like a garment carefully planned and sewn, constantly redesigned to fit her better throughout the years. Brighid, combed and manicured as she was, somehow did not seem to care for beauty in the same way Fallon or other noble women, young and old, did. And right now Brighid looked truly vulnerable—which for some reason made Merley afraid.

"You are right, of course." Brighid sighed, her fingers carefully unclenching themselves. "All things that humans do have their purposes, I should know that. But not all purposes are equal, my child. Some are worthier than others."

Merley remained silent. She refused to yet again ask why Brighid had come. As much as she wanted, she could not make her leave, either, for the room was not truly Merley's, and Merley did not have the power to welcome others or bid them gone. This room, together with the other one at the end of the corridor, where Darius slept, was not even Darius's. Neither was the study where the tiny devices buzzed and lived lives of their own.

Everything owned by Bers was owned collectively, and even though one may favor some places better than others, or live in a room or a tower all her life, no one owned the room or tower. The Master, long ago, had been vehement that it would be so, the books said. In reality, in the centuries after the Master the rooms where Bers lived had become private, so despite the old rules Merley could indeed throw Brighid out of the room itself. But not from the tower. Brighid could stay at Merley's threshold forever if she so chose, trapping Merley inside, and Merley did not consider doing this to be beyond Brighid. She might as well hear what Brighid had to say.

"Darius is not too well, I hear. You must be so worried." Brighid smiled again, a typical smile of hers, so motherly and concerned, and so devoid of vulnerability that Merley might have imagined it a moment ago.

"Stay away from him." Rules be damned, she might be hesitant to throw that woman away from her own room, but she would throw her away from Darius's—she would throw her from the top of the tower if she must.

"I am not going to intrude on dear Darius's much needed rest, dear. I indeed came straight to you without talking to him first for that very reason. What are you thinking? I only mean Darius well. I even sent Darius our most skillful acolyte, even though I would have wished to keep her for myself."

The smile yet again, that dirty fake smile that only looked fake if you watched very carefully—or if you felt it. Merley must have felt it, for she was not watching carefully. She was not careful at all. If she were, she would not have said yet another thing she should not have said, would not have made yet another mistake. Couldn't she just have smiled and said that Darius had a slight cold, "
nothing too serious, thanks for your concern?
" Couldn't she have brushed the question off, as if it did not matter much? Obviously not. Now Brighid knew that even a small cold could worry Merley when it was Darius who was affected, and she knew how much the old man meant to her. Merley clenched her fists, hiding the sweat that had suddenly surfaced on her palms. Brighid could use all she knew.

"I know what you are thinking. '
A Humanist can use and abuse,
' you are thinking, and you are worried about the dear old man. You are right to worry."

Merley said nothing this time; this time she knew that whatever she said would only make things worse. Words were not her weapons. She could burn Brighid—that she could do. The fire had suddenly started kindling inside her, chasing away the cold for the first time in days, making her hot, almost too hot to bear. She tried to breathe slowly, so that Brighid would not notice, and to control her stomach, which seemed to want to turn inside out. She had killed a human once for her own sake. If need be, she would kill another for Darius's.

She squeezed her hands together beneath the table, the trembling hopefully invisible to eyes that were not hers. No matter what else, if need be, she would do it. And even if Brighid did not mean Darius harm at this time and in this place, would she not mean harm later, and did she not mean harm to someone or another all the time? Knowing Brighid, would not the world be a better place without her?