The Makers of Light (8 page)

She jumped back, and perhaps she would have made the tiny light erupt, would have sent fire to this fierce wild creature that so much wanted to assault her. Sounds and songs mingled in her ears again, and almost she did not know who and where she was—sounds of metal, wails and howls, sounds of burning ...

Perhaps she would have hurt the wolf with fire, had she not tried a song first, had she not sung one in her mind, again, to keep those sounds away that tried to claim her.

But sing the song she did, and though it started in her mind, the echoes reached her heart and stayed there. About a wolf the song was, about a wolf big and dreadful. She'd heard peasants and even some servants sing it to their babies in Balkaene when Father and Mother could not hear—though the peasants and servants, like Merley herself, must have rarely, if ever, seen wolves in this world ruled and "
protected
" by Bers. The big dreadful wolf should stay away from the child and the home, the song went. The wolf should stay away in the wildlands. And the wolf should know that one day the child would grow big and strong, that one day the child would go after the wolf and rid the world of him.

This wolf was large, his head rising to her waist. His neck was strong, his limbs lean and muscled. And yet, some of his fur was burned and the rest was matted with both dirt and blood, and strong his legs might be, but he stood on only three, the fourth hanging limp and useless.

"So the accursed child did grow strong, didn't it, big dreadful wolf?" Merley whispered, and something in her voice made him pause, the wild yellow eyes alien and yet full of something that spoke to her deeply.

They had called her dreadful, too, one who would destroy a man in his own home, and they had not once asked what her reasons might be. Giles of Laurent, a future High Lord. Merley's mother had been so anxious to marry her off to one such as him that she had not even asked Merley what she thought, but went straight to Father. Typical Mother, scheming, idolizing power and the male half of the world. Father had of course agreed, for an alliance with Laurent was much desired with Iglika cool towards Waltraud and Qynnsent hostile.

Politics, dirty little games with great stakes and crushed or broken-hearted pawns—had humankind invented anything more loathsome? Merley had refused, and Father, in his typical cold detachment said that of course that was her right, but not before she had met the man and talked to him in person. But it was not talking the man wanted. Many a night she had tried to forget what he tried to do but never could, and twice as many nights she had tried to forget how she had stopped him. But now, as eyes of challenge, anguish, and yellow wild fire bore into hers, she could not forget any longer.

"What did
you
do, big dreadful wolf? What did they do to you to cause it?"

The wolf lowered his head, and she made a step towards him. When the Bers had caught her, they had not chained her neck like his, only her limbs and her runaway heart as they threw her in a sealed Mierber-bound carriage. But she knew—oh she knew!—the wolf's look. Misplaced, alone, mistreated, angry, trapped at the mercy of those who never gave it.

"Well, you are luckier than I was. I had no one. You have me. Come here, puppy."

He growled, softly, and she was afraid, but still she crouched and beckoned. He growled again, but then slowly came, and suddenly Merley's shoulders shook as she wrapped her arms around his warm furry body.

She did not cry while her newly-conjured fire melted his chain, her thoughts and control such that a spark never burned him. She did not even cry when, free, he snuffed and then licked her face. A friend. She had none in the towers enclosed in tainted stone, and few of them elsewhere.

"Run!" She did cry when she had led the limping wolf through dark corridors, whispers, and gloom; when the Sun glared in her eyes and suddenly he shoved himself before her, shielding her, snarling at Henna and the others waiting in the courtyard. "Run, Dreadful, my sweet, you are not safe here!"

He would not. He stood by her like no one but her brother ever had. He stood by her, even though those against them had the strength and the power. But Donald was a future High Lord, while Dreadful was but a wildlands beast. The Bers had done little more than fine House Waltraud last year, when Donald had rushed into the Head Temple and punched Keagan in the jaw. Poor Donald, he had thought that something like this would stop the Head Adept Catechist, the man who had more fire than anyone except perhaps Merley herself, from burning her. They had let Donald go. They would destroy Dreadful.

So, she did the only thing that was right, even though it would break her new, precious friendship. She set some of her own fire to the wolf, a little fire but enough to hurt him. "Go away!" she screamed while her tears distorted his face and those of the Bers. "Go away, I don't want you here!"

He turned to look at her, and he must have read something in her eyes. Or, perhaps he did not read her eyes at all, but in some other, wolfish way, he understood; knew more about her than she wished him to.

"Go away, Dreadful," she whispered, and he limped past the confused Bers, a silver beauty despite the blood and dirt on his coat. He was gone before someone would reach out to catch him. For some reason, they seemed afraid of him.

"Be safe, my friend."

"Your
friend?
"

Time to clench her jaw and wipe the tears away, time to still the shaking of her hands and stare ahead with barely controlled contempt and defiance.

"Are you going to befriend a Lost One next time, you presumptuous little good-for-nothing? When Adept Brighid learns ..."

"
I
am not a good-for-nothing, as you very well know, Ber
Generalist.
"

She should not have said it, perhaps; she had decided to make a new effort to live amongst the Bers, after the witch Esyld had literally chased her back here. Or, rather, she had decided to live here for a time, waiting to gather more knowledge, to become better prepared to investigate
Bessove
and those who flew in the sky with wagons.

But learn from whom? Merley blinked away new, angry tears. There was nothing the likes of Henna could teach her any more, and even the adepts could not teach her about raw fire. At the Head Temple fiasco twenty-six days ago it had been Merley the Novice, not Henna, nor anyone else, that Keagan had requested for his assistant. Oh, yes,
requested.
Forced, rather, even though before that it had been him who had insisted that Mierber's nobility should not know about her.

They had thought her dead, all of them. She had seen it in Donald's eyes, even in the eyes of the High Lord of Qynnsent, the enemy. Then, the Bers had shot her so that she could not show Donald that she loved him still, and now Henna was glaring at her because she had let a wolf live. She had no right to love, they had said. It was one of the very first things a Ber novice learned. Or, rather, she had to love everyone the same. Curse them! May the Lost Ones take them all! They had no right to tell her how to live! They had no right to take away lives and loves! They had no right!

"—a purpose." Henna's angry voice was saying something, something about Dreadful, her wolf. Something justifying killing him, mutilating him.

"A purpose?" Merley seemed to stop thinking, as she stepped towards Henna, and Henna made an awkward step back, her shoes shuffling dirt and pebbles. Merley laughed. Not watching where she was going, Henna had stepped off the cobbled path. Had Henna ever stepped off a path before? Merley remembered—paths in the yard, paths in the world, paths in the classroom. Paths in your mind, and woe unto you if you did not follow the exact meticulous route she had set for you. Henna was a good teacher; she made people forget all they had ever learned or known before. Had anyone before ever made Henna retreat?

Perhaps not. But then again, perhaps no one, ever, had watched Henna the way Merley watched her now. Oh, they hated Henna, yes, at least in those rare moments when they were not potion-afflicted. Every single novice must have at some point wished to wrap her or his hands around Henna's fat, soft neck and squeeze until her face glowed as red as the robe she would never achieve but always dreamed of. But they feared.

Merley did not fear, now. Perhaps she would fear later, like after that time with Giles. Perhaps a cold hand would creep inside her very being, gripping, twisting, smothering until all flame had died—until all she could feel was terror and coldness, and all she could do was run.

But she did not fear now.

Henna clutched her rod and swung, and were this another time, Merley would have ducked. Or, were it yet another, earlier time, she would have endured. Now, she just narrowed her eyes and
thought.

About the Sun she thought—about the blazing wildfire that shot through the sky every day, fire that even Bers could not stop and even Bers yearned for. About fire that burned so strong that it tore the night to rags and scrapped it far beyond the Sunset Lands where no human foot had ever encroached. About fire fiercer than anger and more merciless than hate; fire that would burn for her if she but asked it, if she but thought the thoughts it would hear well, if she but dared sing a song for it.

Merley had no time for a song, so she screamed instead, and the voice was both her own and alien, echoing with a sharp, devastating beauty along the cobbles and up the tower walls. Henna's hand shook, the rod clanging as it met the cobbles.

"Witch!"

Merley laughed. The sounds of doors, other voices and running feet were but a mindless blur around her, as she focused on the only voice that mattered—Henna's voice, usually hard as steel, now trembling like steel suddenly shattered.

"Witch? I have been called that before. So have many of you here, I am sure. What are you going to do to me, Henna? Burn me? You are late by a year!"

Henna stood silent, trembling, hands pressed to her temples. With her shoulders hunched she looked thinner somehow, and smaller, her yellow robe hanging from her like a shapeless bag. There was fear in her eyes, and there was hatred, and suddenly Merley did not want to laugh any more.

Such persevering things, fear and hatred; somehow, they always found a way, even as love and life were so easily broken. She had feared and hated Henna before, and now Henna returned the favor, the result being that in the grand scheme of things—there where the world was but an anthill and both Merley and Henna ants scurrying along their little paths—fear and hatred still existed, had remained. It did not matter who feared and hated whom, after all.

But that was in the grand scheme of things, an aberrant concept in itself that Merley never shared with others. In the small scheme, here and now, what mattered was that somewhere far a wolf howled, still alive, and Merley found the strength to smile, even though somehow Brighid had appeared beside her.

"You are free to go, Henna." Brighid's calm, silk-like voice. Slowly, Henna turned away, but behind her another yellow robe lingered; a man, his hands twisted as if to conceal something in his palms. Once again, Merley lashed out without even thinking. He cried out, flames dancing on the sensitive skin between his fingers, a dart rattling on the cobbles before him, another one becoming stuck in his boot. Then, his piercing eyes became mellow, complacent. He nodded to her, but it was as if he were not seeing her at all.

Potion of Dispassion. His boot's leather must have been thin. A night's diluted dose only kept you constantly docile, but the doze concentrated in a dart ruined your mind for several hours.

Like, twenty-six days ago, they had ruined hers.

Adept Brighid raised a hand to stop the other yellow-robed figures, just as Merley would have lashed again, and again, taking out as many of them as she could before they got her, fighting, fighting this time until the end ...

"My child."

Merley froze, her current concept of fighting suddenly challenged. It was, in a way, easy to shoot fire at people who would wound her with darts. It was simple, at least. It required nothing more than strong Magic, a skilled aim, and anger, and it fed on anger, even if the anger was as wild and uncontrolled as hers. Wild, uncontrolled anger actually
helped.

Not so against Head Adept Humanist Brighid. Merley stared at her dark, heavy-lidded eyes, which was not an easy feat, for Merley was also trying to keep the dart-wielders in her peripheral vision. She had seen Brighid in action twenty-six days ago. With Brighid, anger might only work if it burned even hotter than Merley's but quieter still, less wild and more pointed, concentrated.

Brighid met Merley's stare and smiled at her.

"Adept Brighid."

No generalist burned this time, but for a fraction of a second the woman seemed to wince at Merley's voice, for somehow Merley had put what would have otherwise been angry fire in the words. Like a song, almost.

"Adept Brighid, the last person I heard you call '
my child
' was the High Lord of Qynnsent. I am obviously not him, and he is not my brother, either. Nor you my mother. Or his."

The second time Brighid did not wince. She smiled, brightly, and the shadow of a wince melted away. Merley was not even sure there had been one.
Careful. Be careful.
But Merley was angry and she did not feel like being careful at all.

"An impeccable straightening of family relations, as can certainly be expected from a noble lady." Brighid was still smiling. "Old habits die hard, don't they, even when they are no longer applicable. I am your mother, my dear, what other mother do you have? Before Him who watches and blesses us with fire and light, I am both your mother and the Lord of Qynnsent's. But"—she lowered her eyes, as if in emotion—"your brother he is not. I know who he is, Merley. But for a mere chance in petty political Noble House interplay, but for a fickle game of alliances and matches,
he
could have been the man you killed. Or, the man you loved."

"Oh, wouldn't that have been nice!" Merley almost shouted at Brighid, almost sent a wave of fire at her. "You wish someone had killed him for you so that you would not have had to face him last quarter? And what do
you
know about love!"