Prologue
The little gang of kids was not, as any casual observer would think, watching the storyteller. Instead their eyes were focused on the thin, frail boy who sat nearest her, who would make little sounds of annoyance whenever she lied. The children trusted him more than any adult, for he knew everything and could talk to the gulls by the river-port. His name was Avarn. He had slick black hair and vaguely effeminate features, which made the bigger boys pick on him, and disconcertingly pale blue eyes, which made them stop. No one, adult or child, strong or cowardly, could look Avarn in the eyes without feeling that to disobey him would be to disobey a king. And he was their king.
Sitting to his right, half a head taller than he but about a year younger, was his second-in-command. She had long, curly brown hair that she refused to put in braids, as all the other girls were made to do. Normally, her dark brown locks hung in front of her face, hiding her eyes behind the wispy curtain. But all of them, even those who had never seen, knew what the brown curtain hid. They were even more afraid of her. Her name was Karenna.
Finally the storyteller came to the end of her tale, unaware that she had been caught out in all the little human-superiority lies she had slipped in. All the children knew the real story; Avarn had told them often enough, and he would tell them again tonight. But for now they scattered, called to their separate homes for lunch by the tolling of the noon bell.
Avarn and Karenna didn’t scatter. They obeyed the bell only when it suited them. They went together down to the docks and walked along the riverside until they came to the place where the fishermen dumped their garbage. There were gulls there, hundreds of them, calling and screaming and fighting over a scrap of fish or a half-rotten skeleton. Avarn gave a call in their own language, and one of the gulls fluttered over to him. This gull flew badly, for he had broken his wing only last week, and Avarn and Karenna had barely been able to set it properly. He looked scrawny and harassed and when Avarn gave him a crust of bread from his pocket, the gull swallowed it hungrily.
Karenna smiled and stroked his head. The gull would have snapped at anyone else, but he knew Karenna, and knew that if he hurt her the boy with the water-like eyes would not feed him again. He was quite bright, for a gull.
At length, Avarn spoke. “Karenna,” he said quietly, “do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
She looked at her leader sharply; he had never said anything like this before. “No, of course not!”
He smiled and looked at her. “My parents aren’t my real parents.” This was a well-known fact; the two people who had raised him were an elderly leather-merchant and his sister, both kind if fading people.
“Neither are mine,” she rebuffed.
He shifted his gaze back to the gull. “I think,” he said softly, “I think there may well be something different about me. I think that I may not be here much longer.”
“Why?” demanded Karenna.
“I saw a lady yesterday, a new lady. She had long black hair like mine and she said she was my real mother, that I was special, and that tonight, after the story, I must go away to stay with her and her husband.”
“Your father?”
Avarn shook his head. “No. She said she didn’t know who my father was but she was lying.”
"How do you know she's your real mother?" Karenna demanded.
Avarn gave her a half-smile. "Karenna, it's me."
Karenna stayed quiet for a few moments, absently stroking the bird. “I don’t want you to go,” she said at last. She would probably be the only one in the village who wouldn't; even his adopted caretakers were slightly wary of him.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Then stay!” At her cry the gull squawked and threatened to fly off. “Why can’t you stay here, my parents can keep you, or you can hide with the gulls and tell them to attack anyone but me who comes near. Or we could—“
He held up a hand, and his eyes were serious. “Karenna,” he soothed, “I won’t be gone forever.”
“I’ll never see you again.” She was close to tears, but she fought them back.
“Of course you will,” he said. “I promise. Once I learn all I need to be a magician, for that’s what she said I was, I’ll come back to you. I promise, Karenna.”
“Is she a magician?” Karenna knew how rare that particular mage was, and the thought of Avarn as one made the idea of parting a little less bitter.
“Yes. And she says that’s why I can talk to gulls and things, because I have an afin…an affin-i-ty for them, for water and air things. She says she has an affin-i-ty for fire things.”
Karenna considered. “But what if, once you’re a magician, she locks you up in a tower so you can’t be a better magician than her?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Well then,” he said, “I’ll send a gull to come and get you and bring you to me, so you can free me from her and we can stop whatever evils she’s doing together.”
She liked the thought. “Like they do in the stories?”
Avarn smiled. “Yes, in all the best stories. But you have to promise to follow the gull when I send him.”
Karenna clasped her hands to her heart. “I promise.”
He put his hands over hers. “And I promise to never, never forget you, Karenna Morn.”
Chapter One
Tannar watched the young woman as she slept, wondering idly how much damage a well-placed hailstone could do to that long, willowy body. He decided against it, not only because a solitary hailstone in the middle of spring would be suspicious, but because he had been given specific instructions as to her safety. As he continued to watch her, scratching instinctively at the bronze bands around his wrists, he decided he didn’t really want to hurt her. He just wanted her to never have been born.
The wagon they were in trundled along in its caravan, the ground beneath the wheels growing muddy from the mounting rainstorm. The water dripping through the canvas overhead inevitably woke her and she started, drawing her bag closer to her body and glaring at him. He didn’t stop staring. There was something about her eyes…
“I’m Karenna Morn,” she said, snapping him out of his study of her.
“How nice for you,” he said, a little harsher than he had meant to. He couldn’t see her eyes properly now, she had stopped looking directly at him.
“What’s your name?” she asked. He wondered why she was so forward, introducing herself to a stranger, but perhaps knowing the name of the person you would be traveling hundreds of miles with in a confined space was some human custom he wasn’t aware of.
For a moment, he considered the hailstone again. “Tannar.”
She waited, presumably for a surname. He sighed. It wasn’t her fault, not really. It hadn’t been her idea to send him hundreds of miles from the mountains on this crazy task. “That’s it,” he said, waving his arms expansively, “just Tannar.”
“Doesn’t that mean Windstorm?”
He blinked. “How do you know Elemental?”
Her cheeks reddened, but not out of embarrassment. She averted her gaze. “I know a few words.”
He watched her with renewed interest. Maybe there was something special here. Avarn hadn’t mentioned any mage talents. Of course, Avarn hadn’t mentioned the eyes either. Tannar settled back, scratching at the flesh around his bronze wristbands again. This might be interesting after all.
* * *
Karenna didn’t like him. She didn’t like the dark, staring eyes and she didn’t like the way he kept scratching his wrists. It had been a mistake to look him that long in the eyes, she knew better. And the Elemental? She was smarter than that.
He still hadn’t stopped staring at her, but at least the rain had slackened off. She tried not to stare back, but his dark eyes sought hers relentlessly. She held her bag tighter, feeling for the comforting shape of the oblong wooden box inside. It was there, sure and solid. She resisted the urge to bring it out and open it; that would be foolishness supreme.
The wagon jerked suddenly, sending a wine barrel toppling down on top of her. It pinned her, some of the liquid sloshing through a crack onto her face. She spluttered, spitting the disgusting substance out of her mouth.
Tannar watched her for a moment, then leaned forward and shifted the barrel off her with little discernable effort. For an instant he was above her, his soft black eyes looking directly down into hers. That small, treacherous part of her, the part that had driven her to spend three years saving up to buy the box and its contents, purred like a cat near a hearth fire. And then he was back on his side of the wagon, and she was able to squash that part of her back into the dark corner of her mind that it occupied.
Slowly, she sat up, her hand still clutching the bag. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, and the traitorous part inside her wished that he would. With the strength born of long practice, she shut the door on those emotions and settled back to sleep.
* * *
That night the three wagons of the caravan drew together in a circle around the fire that one of the workmen had started. The handsome black coach that had joined them that morning sat a good distance away, its occupant not deigning to join his fellows. Tannar couldn’t blame him.
There were five other youths heading for the Dirantyr Training Academe, all of them sixteen and most of them, from the way they huddled together, had never been more than a few miles from home before. While the Dirantyri government made it mandatory that all of their citizens attend the Academe for two years, beginning at age sixteen, they did not provide transport for those who had to travel from the middle-lands or even the coast to where the Academe was situated on the westernmost boundary of the kingdom. So most students hitched rides on the supply wagons that streamed westward every spring, in caravans for safety.
The Academe would provide a somewhat higher degree of education than the reading, writing, and arithmetic that these children had learned at home, as well as generously training them in the basics of war-making such as archery, drill, and horsemanship. Of course, they would not do it for free. The cost was not exorbitant, but high enough to be felt, especially by families who already had trouble paying royal taxes. It was the cost, in fact, that kept many of the poorer children home, even with the threat of imprisonment. On top of that, Dirantyr was not quite as large and prosperous a nation as it would have its neighbors believe. But it knew how to use resources, and how to train its children.
Those students who wanted to join the army or showed talent for senseless killing would be sent to a different location for further training. Their families would be reimbursed for their “investment in their child’s education.” And for those who showed mage talents—well, half the teachers were mages of one kind or another, and all Possible Mages were earmarked almost from the first day of classes. This was not a country where magic was wasted.
But the five clustered around the bonfire didn’t look promising.
Tannar hated fire. But he could not be seen acting like he didn’t need its warmth, especially as the night was a chill one for spring. So he sat as far away from the dancing flames as he could while still being touched by the heat. Karenna, sitting directly across from him, apparently had no more love for the element than he did. She was perched on the offending wine barrel, watching the flames with a definite air of malice. A man next to her, scarred and carrying a sheathed sword—apparently some kind of security—offered her a piece of cheese. She turned to accept it, but as soon as he saw her face he started, dropping the cheese to the muddy ground. “You’ve got Gypsie Eyes!” he exclaimed, more out of surprise than fear.
Tannar tensed. If the caravan chose to make an issue of it, his job would get a lot more complicated.
“It’s just a fluke!” Karenna shouted above the rising din of panic. “My father had green eyes and my mother had blue, that’s all!” The group around her still looked skittish. “I’m not a Gypsie,” she insisted. Slowly they settled down, all of them giving the girl a wide berth. She looked around at her suddenly distant companions, then stared, dead-eyed, at the fire.
In a way he was not surprised that they calmed as quickly as they did. Once people got the idea of you as human fixed in thier minds, it was hard for them to change it, no matter their panic. He relied on much the same mindset.
Tannar had learned the price of compassion; the bands around his wrists spoke volumes about the folly of pity. And yet he felt sorry for her. So, inwardly berating himself for his stupidity, he caught her gaze and waited until she put her full attention on him. Then he shifted his head slightly and tucked a lock of unruly black hair behind one slightly pointed ear.
* * *
Karenna lay, pretending to be asleep, in the wagon that had been her home for the past three days. That first night had been terrible, the fear of attack pressing down on her until she couldn't sleep. But as time went on and no one noticed her eyes, she had relaxed. Yet even now that they knew, or at least one of them had seen, she wasn't afraid. Perhaps it had something to do with the other person in the wagon with her.
She heard Tannar’s breathing, steady and low, but it was not the breathing of someone who was asleep. It was more the breathing of someone who had only watched other people sleep. She opened her eyes a slit.
“Having trouble sleeping?” he asked. Karenna’s heart thumped at the unexpected sound of speech.
“Having trouble yourself?” she growled.
He, or rather, his silhouette, shrugged. “I’m not tired.”
No, of course you’re not, she thought. You haven’t slept for the past two nights in a row, ever since you joined. Why should this night be any different? The wagon wasn’t moving, the driver, at least, having the usual human requirements for rest. Karenna sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. It was dark, outside and in, and the thin layer of canvas and the homespun weave of her dress did nothing to stave off the cold. She shivered.
He cocked his head to one side. “Are you cold?”
Karenna bit back the urge to snap. At least he sounded like he meant it. “Yes.”
Wordlessly, Tannar slipped off the dark cloak she had always seen him wear and passed it across to her. Karenna took it reluctantly. The fabric was thick, soft wool lined with something that felt like silk. Her mother was a weaver, and so she knew the world of fabric inside and out, but she refused to believe that a boy with a silk-lined cloak would travel to the Dirantyr Training Academe in a rickety, leaky wagon. She wrapped it around herself, feeling the slick fabric against her skin. Definitely silk.
The cloak was not particularly warm, but it helped. “Thank you,” she said.
Again, the silhouette shrugged. “You can keep it if you like.”
Karenna gaped. Then, realizing he couldn’t see her expression, she said, “You’ve got to be joking.”
Tannar did not answer for a long time, and Karenna got the impression that he was staring at her again. She folded the cloak more tightly around herself, aware for the first time that she was alone with him in a small, enclosed space. “What?” she snapped.
He shook his head slightly. “Nothing,” he said, his voice softer than she had ever heard it. “Sorry for staring…yes, go ahead and keep the cloak, I don’t need it.” With that he lay down and rolled over so he wasn’t facing her. Karenna watched him for only a moment before doing likewise.
* * *
High in the mountains north of Dirantyr stood an enormous castle. Most of it was carved directly into the mountain behind it, and its spines jutted up to pierce the sky with more malice than any mountaintop. It was dark and looming and currently the home of two people only. One of them was in her study, pouring through huge leather-bound tomes as she always seemed to be doing. The other, her son, sat at a magnificent black piano in what passed for his bedroom. The ivory keys of the instrument glowed in the light of the roaring fireplace and the polished black surface gleamed. His fingers, long and thin, danced across the keys, sending beautiful music up to echo around the high, vaulted ceiling above him and through every room of the deserted palace.
His eyes, as he played, were closed, but when he finished, they opened. Pale, pale blue, they stared at the spartan room around him. Avarn stood, keeping one hand on the top of the piano, and listened. He could just barely hear it, the sound of another’s heartbeat, the sound that had constantly filled his mind for the past six years. It was faint now, and very far away, but he could still hear it. Slowly he smiled, and felt his way to his favorite chair next to the fire. Sitting down, he picked up a slim book and leafed through it until he came to his bookmark. He lightly ran his fingers over the pages; he could feel the slight texture of the ink, but without the owner of the heartbeat he had no idea what it said.
He sighed and gently closed the book, setting it carefully aside. His pale, pale blue eyes gazed unfocused into the fireplace as the heartbeat lulled him into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
Ravage stood in human form at the top of the cliff. Below him, the caravan was tucked in for the night, drivers and horses and pupils sleeping soundly. He could smell the all-too-inviting scent of warm flesh. Their numbers and the wagon-drivers’ whips may make thieves think twice, but his kind were beyond the mettle of such vagabonds.
Keesha, his favorite mate, padded up next to him on all fours, her magnificent black furred body gleaming in the light from the half-moon. She licked his hand and whimpered. Ravage smiled down at her, and then changed until he too stood on four legs instead of two. He knew the stupid, human stories about Werewolves only being able to change on full-moon nights. They were always cause for a laugh among his pack. He grinned, showing long yellow canines, and howled.
* * *
Tannar had been lying on his back, staring sleeplessly at the canvas above his head, when the cry rent the still night air. In an instant he was up and shaking Karenna vigorously. “Wake up,” he hissed.
She muttered something and rolled over. He looked around quickly to make sure no one was peeking through an open flap or rip, then doused her with a quick, controlled handful of ice water.
She came up spluttering, “What in the name of—”
“Werewolves,” he snarled.
For a moment she stared at him. “Oh god.”
He didn’t have time for her to come to grips. “Get whatever’s in that bag of yours and have it ready to defend yourself. The horses will have woken with that howl; the others won’t be far behind them.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to try to make sure that at least this wagon and horse survive to get us to the Academe.” He slipped quickly out of the wagon; the horses whinnied when they saw him and pranced nervously away, jingling their harnesses. Like him, they knew what approached. Then, in the eerie half-moonlight, he saw them; over ten huge, wolf-shaped animals charging the caravan. Their leader was a big gray he-wolf, with long, powerful legs and mad red eyes. He stared directly at Tannar and let loose a challenging howl.
There was no point in being subtle; the humans were only now waking up and it would be unlikely that any of them would be alive afterwards to report what he did. Massive storm-clouds gathered quickly in the previously clear sky and a great gust of wind shoved at the Werewolves, if not halting them then at least slowing them down. The enormous he-wolf locked eyes with Tannar for an instant and then, muscles bunching, he leapt at him.
A concentrated beam of powerful blue light connected with the Werewolf’s chest, sending him sprawling in the thick mud.
Tannar glanced over his shoulder to see Karenna, standing next to the wagon, her long brown hair streaming with water and her dress and cloak lashing back and forth in the driving wind. She held a wand.
* * *
All the occupants of the wagons, once they realized the danger they were in, rushed to the wagon that had been last in line as they traveled and was now nearest the center of the circle. Jataal watched them flock to him like chicks to be hidden under a hen’s wings, and watched the Werebeasts draw ever nearer. He sighed, climbed wearily down from the wagon seat where he had been dozing, and said, “Get into my wagon, you’ll all fit.”
They obeyed without question, even the wagon-masters. Jataal was a battle mage, now a retired warrior and professor at the Academe. He was also one of those who volunteered to guard the caravans that brought batches of students and supplies every year. He was, moreover, half the reason it had been nearly five years since the last Werebeast attack.
So it was to be Wolves this time, was it? Jataal drew his sword, a magnificent blade as scarred as he. One of the lead Wolves snarled and leapt at him. Jataal flicked his sword arm almost casually; the Wolf darted back, whining and licking a deep cut in its leg. The others approached more slowly.
Jataal swung his blade casually. “Come on,” he said, “it’s been awhile since I had a workout against live targets.”
* * *
Keesha howled mournfully over the body of her fallen mate, but only for a moment. The rest of the pack did what they were supposed to do; they converged on the heart of the caravan. Only two she-Wolves stayed with her to seek vengeance—Ravage’s other two mates. As one, they charged the boy.
He leapt higher than any man should have been able to leap, and landed several feet behind them. The three Wolves yelped and turned sharply, their claws digging into the soft earth. The young man smiled at them as they began to charge him again, then ran towards the cliff she and Ravage had just stood on, away from his fellows in the besieged caravan. Coward, thought Keesha.
Only when they had gone nearly forty yards from the wagons without catching him did she register that something was wrong. He came up short against the cliff wall and spun to face them, still grinning widely.
Before Keesha could tear his throat out, there was a strangled cry from the she-Wolf to her right. The damned girl with the wand had followed them. Keesha snarled a command for the remaining Wolf to deal with her, and didn’t look back again. She pounced on the boy, shoving him to the ground with her superior weight. Snarling, she clawed at him and tried to bring her tooth-filed mouth around to connect with his neck. He struggled, and he was stronger than she had expected, but fury filled her and made her stronger still. Just as she was about to close her jaws around his throat, something sharp and very cold pierced her side.
She moaned and backed off him, blood streaming from the wound. He lay in the mud, one hand closed around the hilt of a knife that had not been there before. The weapon looked as if it had been made out of ice.
Suddenly, Keesha realized what she had been fighting. Human wizards with wands she could deal with, but this was something entirely different. Without noticing that her remaining companion had fallen to a burst of blue magic from that same wand, she howled the retreat and ran. Her pack, yes it was her pack now, didn't even hesitate before following her.
* * *
Jataal watched the last of the Wolves scamper off with a small glow of satisfaction. Only one of them would probably die of the wounds he had inflicted, and that was a pity, but still. Not too bad for a man over three times the age of these youths.
He stretched, cracking his back, and coolly sheathed his sword. “You can come out now,” he said to those cowering within the wagon. Slowly they emerged, and Jataal did a quick headcount and frowned. Two missing. He glanced up, and saw a young woman with long brown hair trying to move into the group without attracting attention. His frown deepened. He looked around for the second absent youth. He could see a young man, near the cliff, moving as if dragging something out of sight.
If he had not been a battle mage and still coming down from the high battle always gave him, Jataal would not have been able to see what the boy was so carefully shoving into one of the niches the cliff afforded. Two Werewolf corpses. Slowly, the frown became a smile. That would be one worth watching.
* * *
Karenna had been lucky. Part of the cliff had been between them and the wagons, and the darkness and confusion of the attack had helped distract the workmen from the freak storm and flashes of blue light. She tucked her wand away inside her cloak and slipped in among the other students. One of the men, older and more scarred than the drivers, was checking that each student was all right. His eyes locked with Karenna’s for an instant, and she saw him smile, just barely. “You all right, miss?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He smiled his imperceptable smile again and moved on to check on the others.
“Quite the adventure,” said a voice from behind her.
Karenna turned to see a human girl about her own age with waist-length blonde hair and a fair complexion. She wore tight-fitting black trousers instead of a skirt and held a riding crop in one hand. All her clothes were black, come to that. The girl smiled like a snake with a bird’s egg, and extended a gloved hand. “I’m Shanna Liam, I’ve been riding in the coach.” Karenna took the hand gingerly, wondering if she was the bird’s egg. Shanna’s smile told her she was. “I wanted to say thank you,” she said.
“For what?” asked Karenna carefully.
“Why, for driving the Wolves away, of course.” Shanna’s smile didn’t even waver.
“I’m sorry,” said Karenna, easing away. “I think you must have—” she was interrupted by the arrival of Tannar, who glared openly at Shanna.
“Who are you?” he demanded. Karenna never thought she would be so glad to see him.
This time, the girl did not extend her hand to shake. “I’m Shanna Liam. My father is Maraso Liam, advisor to the king.”
“How nice for you,” said Tannar, as if she had told him her father was a common shopkeeper and not one of the most powerful men in Dirantyr. Karenna restrained a grin.
Shanna’s eyes narrowed, but the smile remained fixed in place. “And who, may I ask, are you?”
“You may not ask,” said Tannar, as he took Karenna’s arm and gently steered her away from the young aristocrat. Once they were a safe distance away, he said, “Friend of yours?”
Karenna scowled. “I bloody hope not.”
He smiled.
“So…” Karenna looked at him sideways. “That was some interesting weather back there.”
“So…” said Tannar without even glancing at her. “Those were some interesting flashes of blue light back there."
Karenna said nothing, but smiled quietly to herself.
I also liked Tannar, whom you characterized well (ie, staring, fiddling with wrist-thingies). Now that I mention it, Karenna was characterized well too. So you definitely have description and characterization going for you!
) so I'll end by saying that the detail about the corner of Karenna's mind--the one that purred like a cat--made me seriously wish I'd thought of it first. Brilliant, and I can't wait for more!
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