Circle Of Magic - Tris's Story Part 2

Sniffing them, she blinked - the smell was in the soot.

Niko crouched at the cellar's edge, staring into it as he smoothed his bushy moustache. In spite of their hot climb, he looked cool and elegant. He made a sharp contrast to his red-faced, sweating pupil, clad in an ill-fitting green muslin dress.

Tris fumbled to re-pin her curls up and out of her way. "It looks like the tower shattered, doesn't it? But how? A mage?" she asked.

Niko looked up at her. For a moment, she wasn't certain he'd heard the question.

Then his dark eyes softened. He caught a hairpin that leaped from her hand. "I should have made you wear a hat."

"It would be in the ocean by now. What did this?"

He sighed. 'No one should be able to work destructive magic here. The magic protections were in the foundation. This - whatever it was - destroyed even those spells. See how the stones spray outwards from here? The force pushed them away from itself."

Tris crouched beside him, interested. "Where were the protection spells?"

"You can't see them?" he asked. "They're all around -what's left of them."

She wiped her face on her sleeve. "You see magic, not me."

He stared at her, shocked. "But it's easy -I haven't taught you how?"

Hot and itchy as she was, she had to smile. "Well, last week we were picking up after that earthquake. Two weeks before the quake you were running everywhere, trying to find the source of all the disaster omens the seers were getting. Before that, we studied tides and stars." She flapped her skirts to give herself a little cool air. "No - I don't believe we ever worked on seeing magic."

"Really, I had meant to be organized in your studies," he muttered. "Unfortunately, events have swept us along... And for now, I still don't have time for that particular lesson." He thought for a moment, then stuck out a hand. "Give me your spectacles."

Tris shrank back. "I need them."

"It's just for a moment."

Slowly she took them off, and pa.s.sed them over. Now she couldn't even see what he drew on the inner surface of the lenses with his finger.

At last a breeze swept by, ruffling her hair. Three curls promptly jumped out of the pins holding them, and voices came to her ears:

"My boy, I had begun to think that something had gone amiss." The voice was a man's, crisp, almost metallic.

"Forgive me, my lord. This is the first moment I've been sure of my privacy. I'm in place." Another male voice, and one that was somehow familiar. Not very familiar, like Frostpine's or Niko's, but it was a voice she'd heard before. Youthful, sure of itself...

"We are not yet ready to move. Await instructions," the crisp voice ordered. "Do your part, and your debt will be paid."

The breeze was gone, and the voices with it. The sound was replaced by something that cheeped faintly, a real noise, not one plucked from the air by some weird power inside her. She looked around. Was there a bird up here?

Niko yanked out his handkerchief and gave her lenses a going-over. "Don't you ever clean these?"

"Of course I do!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed the spectacles when he offered them, and shoved them on to her nose. "Now what?"

"Don't look directly at that heap of stones," he ordered. "Look at them out of the corner of your vision."

Obediently, she turned her head, putting the rocks at the edge of her left eye - nothing.

She twisted her head at different angles, without results. Niko make a choked noise that could have been a laugh, or sneeze. She glared at him.

Silver flickered at the edges of her lenses. With a gasp, she turned to stare. The silver vanished. Slowly she looked up, staring at a cloud as it wandered overhead.

There, at the edges of things, was a glimmer of moon-pale light.

Soon she had the trick of it: she had to look at everything in general, and nothing in particular. With her eyes just slightly unfocused, she could see flickering bits of light everywhere on the rocks around them: symbols and pieces of letters. "How long will this last?" she wanted to know. "The magic on my specs?"

"As long as you have those lenses," he replied. "Just remind me to teach you how it's done before you get new ones."

Something cheeped again. Tris peered for its source. Was she hearing things?

"Remember I said I needed your help?" he asked, getting to his feet. "To find out what happened, I need to see into the past. It's one of the great spells - if I do it alone, I'll be so drained I won't be able to move afterwards, let alone go to Pirate's Point. If you would lend me some of your magic, it will be easier."

She blinked at him. "What do I have to do?" She had lent some of her power to Sandry once, but she had no idea how it had happened.

"I'll call it forth, as long as you agree to let me do it. Not just in words, Trisana. You must agree from within. You have to trust me."

She looked up into his eyes, set in their heavy fringe of black lashes. Trust him? He was her teacher. He had seen inside her, and told her she wasn't crazy - after her family had said that she was for years. Because of him, she lived where she was wanted; she could ride the winds. "Sure, Niko."

He took her hand. Immediately she felt something - a tug, or a twist. Through her spectacles, she saw a thread of light run through her fingers and into his, where it joined a river of fire inside him. The air tightened. Still holding on to her, Niko picked his way around the tower, one hand held palm-out in front of him. Pearly threads spun away from his fingertips, pa.s.sing through air and stone around and ahead of him.

Once he and Tris had come full-circle around the hole in the ground, they stopped.

The threads continued to flow over the land, until they covered the entire hilltop like dew-wet spiderwebs.

When he released her, she could still see the thread that connected them. It followed Niko as he stepped to the edge of the cellar, drew his belt-knife and made a cut on both palms. "Any time you need to give a spell extra strength, seal it with blood," he explained casually, as if it hadn't been his own flesh he'd gouged. "Since we are mages of principles, we use our own. Some have been known to use the blood of others, willing or not." He watched as crimson droplets fell into the gaping cellar.

"Should I ever hear of you indulging in such practices, Trisana, you will regret the day you met me."

Tris had one hand over her mouth. She didn't like blood, and there was something about Niko's coolly cutting into himself that made her stomach roll. "You don't have to worry about me, Niko," she told him once her belly settled. "Honestly."

He smiled grimly. "I trust not." Taking a deep breath -Tris felt her own lungs expand - he closed his eyes.

A flickering image appeared in front, around, and in some spots even through him. In it, the tower was whole. Two men in hats and cloaks walked into the picture. They carried something large and heavy, wrapped in canvas. A door opened in the tower's base, and a woman in a Guard's uniform beckoned them inside.

"It's Whiner and Gruff Man and the Drinker!" cried Tris. "It has to be!" The night before, she and the others had told Niko about the conversation they'd heard on the wall.

The vision wavered, breaking up; Niko was shaking. Tris glared at the glowing line that still ran from her to him, until it thickened and shone more brightly. The man took a deep breath, and stood straighter. The tower reappeared. The men walked out of it, the uniformed woman behind them. The men's burden was gone, but one of them carried the free end of a cord that led back inside. He put it down, and helped his companion kill the guard. They didn't see a burst of fire that set the cord ablaze. The flame ate its way along the cord and into the tower as they dropped their victim on the ground, and argued. Then came the blast. For a moment Tris thought she could see the tower come apart, stone by stone, each piece etched in fire.

The image vanished. Tris closed in as Niko staggered, and put an arm around his waist. Helping her teacher over to a large rock, she got him to sit.

"What was that?" she asked him, when he was settled.

He fumbled for his water canteen, and drank from it thirstily. He needed both hands to steady it.

"I don't know," he replied at last, pa.s.sing the canteen to her. "I've never seen - or heard - of anything like it, not in all of my fifty-three years."

They rested for a while, talking. At last Niko got to his feet. "I don't think I could work that spell again, but I should look at Pirate's Point anyway," he said. "Let's go."

She was following him to the stairs when she heard the cheeping sound that had caught her ear before. Now it was close by, and growing faint rapidly.

"Wait," she called. Carefully she searched the tumbles of rock on her left. In a niche made by stones gleaming with traces of magic, she found a birds' nest. One chick was still alive - she'd been hearing its peeping cries. It shared the nest with a dead brother or sister.

"A starling, I think," Niko said, looking over her shoulder. "They sometimes have a second brood in midsummer. The parents are probably dead, if they nested here. This one will die soon."

Tris looked at the nestling. That's not right, she thought, digging for her pocket handkerchief. He didn't ask to have his home destroyed. Kneeling, she flattened the linen square on a rock, and reached for the nest.

"Tris, think a moment," ordered Niko crisply. "You can't save it."

"Why not?" With a gentleness that she rarely showed to people, she eased both hands under the wad of twined gra.s.s-stems.

"Because it's nearly dead now. See how young it is? It barely has pin-feathers. If it lives, it will need warmth and hourly care. It isn't ready to survive on its own."

"Then I'll help. I'll feed him - I'll do whatever I must." Resting her hands on the cloth, she drew them away gently, until nest and occupant rested on the handkerchief.

"It's not his fault his parents got killed."

Niko sighed, and offered his own pocket handkerchief. "You can return to Winding Circle. As I said, even with your help, I can't work a second timespell at Pirate's Point. If the site looks like this, though" - his wave took in the sooty wreckage all around him - "I think we can guess what happened. Hold the nestling up." He opened his water canteen, and carefully poured a tiny amount of liquid into his palm. Gently and precisely, using his fingers as a slide, he rolled a few drops of water at a time into the bird's open beak as Tris raised the nest for him. When the chick closed its mouth and sank back, Niko told Tris, "Now cover it. Keep it warm, and out of draughts - I know that much. For the rest-"

"I could ask the dedicates at the Air temple. They keep birds." Slowly, a bit at a time, she got to her feet, and tucked the covered nest into the corner of her elbow.

Looking down at his student, Niko grinned. "Actually, try Rosethorn. She often finds nestlings in her garden. She's even raised a few."

Tris stared at him. She was terrified of Rosethorn. The auburn-haired woman had a sharp tongue, and a quick temper.

"Do you want to be running to the Air dormitory every hour? Rosethorn will know what to do. I still doubt it will live-"

"He."

"Tris, no one will be able to tell until it's ready to mate what s.e.x it is."

"Then it might as well be a he as an it," she told him stubbornly. "Its are dead things.

Shes and hes are alive."

"Oh, very well. I haven't time to argue. If you insist on trying to save it - him-"

"I do." Tris gulped, thinking of what lay ahead. "I hope Rosethorn will help me."

"She will. She likes birds much more than she likes people. Let's go, then. You need to feed and settle him, and I need to go to Pirate's Point."

Steadying her new charge with her free hand, Tris followed Niko down the stairs.

CHAPTER THREE.

If Tris had looked across the thousand feet of water that separated the island from the land, she would have seen three people on the rocky slope below Winding Circle's walls. One of them was Daja, dressed as she had been at breakfast, in her lightest brown cotton breeches and s.h.i.+rt, with a crimson mourning band around her left arm.

With her, in the red habit of a Fire dedicate, was her teacher, the smith-mage Frostpine, and his white-clad novice, Kirel.

Frostpine was black like Daja, his skin a few shades darker than hers. What hair he still possessed grew in a lion's mane around a s.h.i.+ny bald crown; his beard sprouted wildly from his chin. The sleeves of his habit were rolled up and secured with ties, revealing a pair of arms that rippled with wiry muscle, and big, strong hands. Kirel was half a head taller, white-skinned and blue-eyed, with long fair hair. Big-bellied and heavy-armed, he was the kind of young man who looked as if he belonged in armour, with a two-handed sword slung across his back. Before they had left the cottage, Daja had made sure Kirel was slathered with ointment to keep him from burning in the sun; a bottle of the stuff was in one of the baskets on the mule that the men had brought with them.

"Take off your shoes, and get on your hands and knees," Frostpine told her. "The more of you that's in contact with the ground, the better."

She thought he was crazy, but she obeyed, placing her sandals to the side. Out here, the sun beat down like a hammer. She was already sweating enough that the drops tickled as they rolled down her cheeks and back.

For a moment she thought she saw a fis.h.i.+ng boat at the corner of her eye, off Crescent Island. When she took a quick glance, there was nothing to be seen.

"Remember what we did once, hiding lumps of different metal under cloth?"

Frostpine asked.

Daja'nodded. "You made me guess what was under the cloths, and I knew what metals they were because of my magic."

The mage's hair bounced as he nodded. "Do the same thing now. Search under you for any trace of metal. Not raw metal, but metal that's been handled, and worked."

Sweat dripped on to the dirt from her face. "It's too hot."

"Too hot?" he cried, white teeth flas.h.i.+ng in a broad grin. "Child, we are black!"

Black people are made for heat, to thrive in it - just as pallid boys like Kirel are made for snow and frost."

Kirel halted. He had been walking a hundred yards away, holding a long metal divining rod out in front of him. "I hate snow," he retorted calmly. "And if you weren't crazy, Frostpine, you'd hate this weather as much as I do." Reaching up, he tied back his hair with the braids that hung on either side of his face.

Daja covered her grin with her hand. She loved working with these two. They were as relaxed and cheerful as the men of her own family had been, joking about work as they got it done.

Frostpine shook his head. "Shurri and Hakoi," he muttered, calling on the G.o.ddess and G.o.d of fire, "defend me from people who don't know how to have fun. Let's give it a try, Daja."

With a nod, she put her hands palm-down on the raw earth. For some reason trying to smell metal helped her to find it, so she sniffed deeply. Was that a trace of...?

She inhaled again, and yelped as the scents of copper, iron, silver and gold flooded her nose. Eyes watering, she sneezed, and kept sneezing. A hand gently pushed her aside; a handkerchief was tucked into her fingers. Three more bursts pushed themselves out of her lungs, making her wonder if it was possible to suffocate while sneezing.

The earth quivered under her, then s.h.i.+fted. Her throat closed with terror: earthquake!

Her sneezes halted abruptly as she thrust herself backwards. The last shake had been just ten days ago - were they about to get another?

Small dirt clods rolled downslope. Wiping her eyes, she saw Frostpine standing where she had knelt. His arms were stretched out, his hands parallel to the ground. He shook them, gently, as if he sifted ore through a screen. Below him, the patch of ground shook, gently, in the same motion.