20 Coloine, very late (continued)

Jeddan came to stand next to me, thankfully not saying anything inane like “are you all right?” and held my shoulders so I didn’t fall down. I vomited until I was wrung out and empty, then I wiped my mouth and stood up straight. None of the villagers would meet my eye. That’s small comfort.

I walked away down the street so I wouldn’t have to see more killings. Jeddan followed me, still silent. He’s very good at quiet, which makes him a comfortable companion. I think we might become friends, even. At some point, I stopped, and looked into one of the shop windows, though I don’t remember what I saw there, and then I said, “Let’s go,” and we walked away from Erael without looking back.

We had to dodge Jeddan’s village on the way north, and I asked him if he wanted to get anything, and he said no, so we just kept going. Around sunset we stopped and made a fire; it’s starting to get cold at night, and I wish we’d thought to equip ourselves for sleeping outside, but not enough to go back. We ate, and then I started writing, and Jeddan asked about the book and was satisfied with the brief answer I gave him, which is that it’s a record of my journeys. Eventually he fell asleep, but it’s been another hour or so since then and I’m still not done.

The truth is that I’ve been thinking about the God-Empress, and Calassmir, and the army, the whole time we’ve walked today. Calassmir does have an army detachment there, because it’s only another fifty miles to the southern border of Balaen and there’s always been a lot of bandit activity down that way, what with the trade caravans traveling from the jungles where they harvest medicinal plants. But I don’t think it’s very big. If the God-Empress came on them unawares (and why wouldn’t she) they might not be able to put up much of a fight. And, as I wrote, capturing Calassmir puts her in a position to drive deeper into the heart of the combined countries.

The southern trunk route leads to Garwin, where the Myrnala branches south and west, and the Royal Road is named that because it goes all the way north to Venetry, the capital city. Either highway would put her in a position to conquer more Balaenic cities, and I have no doubt her ultimate goal is to rule the new world.

I just don’t know what to do. Time for a list:

1. I could warn whatever city is her next target. Both Garwin and…actually, I guess Hasskian would be the next city north of Calassmir…anyway, they’re both defensible and have military presences.
2. I don’t know what her next target is. If I guess wrong, it would be catastrophic.
3. I could just keep going to Colosse. Those cities are defensible and they probably don’t need my warning.

3a. i.e. I could take the cowardly, selfish way out.

4. I could find out what her next target is and warn them.

1 and its corollary 2 aren’t very sensible options. If I guess wrong, I’d be wasting my time in addition to risking catastrophe. And much as I just want to run to Colosse as fast as I can, I’d hate myself for taking option 3.

But 4…I’d have to sneak into the God-Empress’s camp, and hope to find some kind of drawing or plan because I can’t read Castaviran, damn it, and that’s incredibly dangerous even with the pouvrin. And I certainly can’t ask Jeddan to risk his life over this, so I’d be doing it alone. And even if I did succeed in learning the God-Empress’s plan, I’d still have to find a way to convince whatever city she’s attacking next that they’re in danger from someone they’ve never heard of, at the head of an army they’ve never seen.

So that’s settled. I’m going west to Calassmir. And I’m hoping the God-Empress’s army isn’t so enormous that they’ll have taken the city before I get there.

20 Coloine, very late (continued)

I had just enough time to realize the battle mages had entered the fight—villagers began collapsing, gray-faced, or screaming through flames—when Jeddan shouted and ran past me, throwing himself at one of the battle mages’ horses, and then through it. The terrified animal reared up, dumping the battle mage on the ground and knocking his board from his hands.

It shook me out of my stupor. I feel bad that I didn’t think to attack first, but the truth is I’m used to fighting from the shadows, protecting myself from discovery so I could live to fight another day, and attacking just didn’t occur to me until then. Then I lashed out with the fire-summoning pouvra, which I’ve gotten very good with; it engulfed another battle mage, who also fell off her horse, screaming and beating at herself. I didn’t take time to admire my handiwork, just bolted from my hiding place and ran straight at the leader, wrapped my arms around his leg, which was all I could reach of him, and worked the concealment pouvra on both of us.

I was hoping it would have the same disorienting effect it had had on the God-Empress’s soldiers back in Colosse, but I wasn’t able to look around to see because I was too preoccupied with not being shaken free by the leader. He was disoriented, because he dropped his sword and leaned down to beat at me. I squinted hard and exerted all my will to see him, his arm flailing around, and switched my grip to his wrist and just let myself go limp.

I had about half a second to realize this was a bad idea before he tumbled off his horse and landed atop me, knocking the wind from me and making me lose my concentration and turning us both visible again.

Terror at being pinned and helpless gave me the edge I needed to recover first, and I shoved him and scooted away only to have him grab my upper arm and pull me back. We struggled for a bit, but he was a lot bigger than me and soon he had me pinned again. “What are you?” he said, breathlessly.

I’d like to say I came up with something clever like “Your worst nightmare” or “Retribution,” but all I did was stammer out, “None of your business” which sounds even stupider when I write it. He scowled and said, “I think the God-Empress will want to know about you. Thank me for sparing your life.”

“Oh, she already knows about me,” I said, “and you’re a cocky bastard if you think I’m in any danger from you.” (See, I can be witty and clever. Sometimes.) Then I spun out a string of fire and looped it around his neck, crossing it in back like a garrote and drawing it close enough to singe his skin. He started to jerk away, came up against the fire, and froze. “Let me go,” I said, “or I tighten the noose.”

He wasn’t stupid. He let go of my arms and knelt in the street, holding perfectly still. I rolled to the side and stood and looked around. To my surprise, the fight was nearly over—and the Viravonians had won. They’d taken losses, but more soldiers than villagers lay dead in the street, and a couple of women were controlling the horses, and Jeddan was coming toward me, limping a little but otherwise unharmed. “I didn’t know it could look like that,” he said, nodding toward the line of fire.

“It took a lot of hard work,” I said. Then I returned my attention to the leader, who looked furious now. “Is the God-Empress with the army?” I said. He ignored me. I tightened the noose fractionally. “You know, that fire will burn a long time before it kills you,” I said. “Besides, think of this as a chance to brag about how she’s going to bring her army down on this village and burn it to the ground.”

“This village is nothing in God’s eyes,” he grated out. “She has greater conquests to make.”

“Really? What conquests?” I said.

“She is God. She will rule this land, Castavirans and invaders alike. You think you’ve won today, but you have only delayed the moment when she drags every person in this village into the street to peel the flesh from their bodies and feed it to the dogs.” He looked as if I would be first and he would hold the knife.

“That does sound like something she’d do,” I said. “Where is she now?”

He just glared at me. I said, “Fire. Neck. Lots of pain.” (I was bluffing. I’ve only just been able to bring myself to burn flesh, and I don’t think I could do it in cold blood. But I’m a really good liar and he didn’t know I wasn’t serious. I feel sick thinking about it now, like I was a child playing at war without understanding what it meant.)

He clenched his jaw, then said, “There is an invader city some three days northwest of here. It is to be her first conquest.”

I briefly considered my mental map. The only “invader” city anywhere near here was Calassmir. That scared me. Calassmir is on a couple of major trade routes, and the Royal Road and the southern trunk route both converge on it. If the God-Empress could take Calassmir, she could move her army easily through Balaen—I mean, along the Balaenic highways to any Balaenic city and probably a few Castaviran ones.

“What’s the size of her army?” I said. He clenched his teeth harder and looked away from me. “Talk,” I said, but he said nothing, and I had to either make good on my threat or give in. So I gave in. I dismissed the fire and shoved him toward Jeddan, who held him fast as easily as if the man had been a kitten. Jeddan’s got shoulders like a lumberjack. He might be a lumberjack. I still don’t know what he does for a living.

I hadn’t really thought about the God-Empress until that day—too busy surviving. When she’d disappeared in Colosse, we had no idea what had happened to her, though as I wrote before I was fairly certain she wasn’t dead. So whatever that th’an was that she did at the end there, it seems it took her to Viravon, to her army. All I know about the army is it’s about a third of the combined Castaviran armed forces, but since I don’t know how big that is, it doesn’t really tell me anything. On the other hand, if she’s attacking Calassmir, her army has to be fairly big, because Calassmir isn’t a small city. I wonder if she has any war wagons, or if Vorantor gave them all to Aselfos?

I’m stalling, aren’t I? Because I really don’t want to write what came next. Maybe I’d feel different if I really were Viravonian, because I know some of what the army has done here, the atrocities they’ve committed against helpless people, and even if the Viravonians don’t want revenge (which they do, true God help them) they have to be ruthless to survive. But I’m not Viravonian, and I can’t kill a man in cold blood, so when the black-bearded villager took the leader’s own sword and drove it into the man’s stomach, I turned away and threw up. I am never going to forget the look on that man’s face for the rest of my life.

to be continued…

20 Coloine, very late

It’s taken me nearly an hour to convince myself to write the events of the day. So much has happened that I’d rather forget, because I feel so guilty about it, guilty too because it was so easy to tell myself that the Viravonians have a right to defend themselves in the ways they’ve learned over the years are most effective. But there’s nothing I can do except move forward. And maybe I shouldn’t have started this entry this way, maybe I should have just written it out and let things unroll the way they did today. It’s one of those days where I feel every one of my choices was a bad one.

I only slept a few hours last night because I was up so late writing, but they were restful hours despite the mattress feeling thin, and Kasselen fed us a very good breakfast. (I don’t think I wrote that Jeddan and I stayed in his house. He was an excellent host.) Even so, I felt lazy, so we took our time packing our things—Jeddan has a backpack with essentials, including shaving tackle, and he makes a ritual out of shaving that I’m sure will become annoying when I’m in a hurry, but today it didn’t bother me—and then visited a few stores in the village.

I found someone to buy one of Audryn’s hair clips, only one because it occurred to me that Castaviran money would do us no good in a Balaenic town, so I saved the other to sell later. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough for an emergency. Erael is a very pretty town, as pretty as Jeddan’s village, and it makes me angry that they’re probably going to destroy each other because they don’t have the good sense to make common cause.

We were just about to head out of town when we heard horses coming toward the village from the south. That is, Jeddan heard the horses first, and pulled me to one side of the road to put us behind a stack of boxes displaying the last vegetables from someone’s kitchen garden. I resisted, and he said, “We haven’t seen any horses around here, just mules and oxen. And that sounds like quite a few horses. I don’t like it.”

I was impressed with Jeddan’s paranoia, so I stood with him behind the boxes and watched. By this time a lot of people had heard the approaching riders, and it was clear they weren’t happy about it. Mothers dragged their children off the street, storekeepers shut their doors, and soon the street was empty except for about twenty or twenty-five people lounging casually in doorways or on hitching rails. But their seemingly relaxed stances did a poor job of concealing tension. Some of them were standing very near posts or hammers or pitchforks, things that could become weapons under the right circumstances. All of them looked like people who expected a brawl to start soon.

It took only a minute or so for the riders to come into view, and by then we could also hear the ominous sound of a lot of marching feet, thudding echoes in perfect rhythm that to me screamed “soldiers.” Sure enough, six men (or women, I couldn’t tell at that distance) rode at the head of a double column of thirty or so soldiers. They were fully armed and armored, down to the chicken helmets, but their long-sleeved linen tunics were green instead of black and they wore short green surcoats bearing the falcon emblem over their steel mesh shirts.

The man in the lead had black stripes sewn to the cuffs of his shirt, three or four of them, and for some reason he was carrying his helmet in the crook of his arm instead of on his head. The other riders’ tunics and surcoats were white, and each carried a very familiar wooden board in his hands. (His and hers. Two of the mages were women, I eventually discovered.)

They rode right down the middle of the street, ignoring the villagers, who turned to watch them go but otherwise didn’t move. The leader raised his hand in a gesture that meant “stop,” and they did, right at a point where they were surrounded by villagers. I have no doubt he did that on purpose, and I can see why he thought he had the upper hand. Poor bastard.

He said, in a loud voice that carried the length of the street, “In the name of the most benevolent God-Empress Renatha Torenz, greetings. God requires that all Castaviran subjects contribute to the support of her army, which protects her subjects against enemy incursions. You will provide five hundred measures of wheat, four hundred measures of oats, two hundred bales of hay, and twenty casks of beer, all to be collected in three days’ time.”

“We need that food to survive the winter,” a man called out. He stood a little ways behind the leader (captain?), arms folded, leaning against a post as if he were entirely relaxed. His long black beard quivered in the brisk, chilly wind that had begun rising as the soldiers approached, as if in warning, or in omen.

“Your duty to God will bring blessings. She will not permit her servants to starve,” the leader said, not turning around.

“We went hungry last winter ‘cause of her demands,” the man said. “We won’t do that again.”

“If you refuse to give willingly, it will be taken by force,” said the leader. He gestured, and the soldiers began spreading out, drawing swords and choosing targets.

“Your choice,” the black-bearded man said, and to my surprise lightning forked out of the clear sky and struck the ground at six equally spaced points surrounding the soldiers, hitting some of them and making them fall. The bolts that didn’t strike targets radiated tendrils of electricity, making the other soldiers fall back.

I looked up to see where the lightning had come from and saw instead Lineta, leaning out of an upper window with her board and scribbling rapidly. Then she screamed as fire circled her, and dropped back inside the room, and then everything was chaos. Villagers leaped to the attack with their makeshift weapons, or took swords from dead soldiers, and as the lightning faded, battle was joined.

to be continued…

20 Coloine, early (continued)

We got a friendlier reception than I had at the Balaenic village, even if I did have Jeddan in tow; people hailed us and wanted to know if we’d had any trouble on the way from Kinis, which I gathered is the next Viravonian village south of Erael (once again I’m spelling their words my way, and I—damn it, I was about to write “I plan to get Terrael to teach me to read Castaviran as soon as possible,” but that reminded me I have no idea where he is, where any of them are, and learning to read is so far down the list of things I have to do it might as well not even be on there. And now I’m trying not to cry. It’s been a long day, and I’ve learned too many discouraging things, and I’m being stupid) anyway, Erael is the name of this village, and not one of them imagined I wasn’t Castaviran.

Of course I didn’t correct them, just said “I have news for the person in charge” and hoped they wouldn’t think it was too strange that I didn’t say “the mayor” or whatever it is their local government is. And they didn’t, because they led Jeddan and me to a large house and ushered us inside.

It’s obvious at even a casual glance that this is not a Balaenic village; everything’s made of planed wood painted white, though most of the buildings look like they could use another coat, and the roofs are a funny pinkish-grey slate I’ve never seen before. I doubt they came from very far away, because that would be far too expensive for the people who live here. I wonder if the quarry they came from survived the convergence. I wonder if the desert around the Darssan is plains now. I wonder if the Darssan is even still there. More things I don’t have time to investigate.

We waited for a few minutes, and then this old man with a short gray beard and long white hair came into the room. “Travelers,” he said, “my name is Wilfron Kasselen, and I am the elder of this village. Please, sit down. Do you have news from the south? Are there more strange appearances? And what of the pagan invader’s troops?”

That was a lot for me to take in all at once, so I decided not to answer any of it. “Elder Kasselen,” I said, hoping that was the correct form of address, “my name is Thalessi Scales, and despite how I look, I’m not Viravonian. I’m one of the…you know the village that appeared north of here? I am one of their people. I mean, of their country, not that I come from that village. If that makes sense.”

That stunned him, and he looked like he was about to shout, so I overrode him and said, “Ask me how it is I speak your language.”

He closed his mouth. Then he said, “I don’t understand any of this.”

“I’ll try to explain,” I said, and even though my explanation to Kasselen was longer than the one I’d given the council in Jeddan’s village, it was much easier because he at least knew about the shadow world, even if he didn’t know the details of the convergence. I didn’t tell him about the pouvrin, since that would have taken forever to explain, or how the final kathana worked, but it was still a very long story. The longer I spoke, the more intense his expression grew, until I reached the end of my story and said, “Could I have some water, please?”

He got up without saying anything and went to the door, where he called to someone, and then returned to his seat bearing a tray with a pitcher of water and three glasses. “So their world has joined ours?” he said, after a long silence in which we all drank some water and stared at each other. I wondered what Jeddan thought—he must have been bored, listening to me babble in a language he couldn’t understand. He really is very patient.

“It’s more accurate to say both worlds have returned to their original state,” I said. “We’re both invaders, in a sense.”

Kasselen didn’t like that, but he didn’t challenge me. “Then what are we to do?” he said.

That was the second time someone had tried to put the burden of decisions back on me. “You’ll have to work that out for yourselves,” I said. “I’m not the leader of this village. But you will have to find a way to come to terms with the Balaenic villages around here. And that might be difficult, because they’re afraid of magic.”

“A great challenge,” he said. “But what of the pagan invader’s troops? What has happened to them?”

“The God-Empress’s soldiers?” I said.

“We do not call her that,” Kasselen said, looking grim. “She usurps the place of God and wants to see us subjugated to her rule.”

“I know,” I said, “but what I don’t know is how she was going about it down here. I’d heard only that she has most of an army in Viravon, trying to maintain control.”

“Yes,” Kasselen said. “So what has happened to them in the convergence?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, I imagine,” I said. “Though they might have lost contact with Colosse during the coup.” He gave me a startled look, and I realized I hadn’t said anything about Aselfos’s uprising against the God-Empress, so I told that story. He looked happier when I was finished.

“They receive their orders from Colosse,” he said, “and with luck they will be in confusion, and we will have an opportunity to strike at them.” He stood up, so Jeddan and I did too. “We will give you a place to sleep, and food,” he said, “before you start your journey north.

I realized I was hungry enough that it must have been dinnertime, so we joined Kasselen for a meal, and it wasn’t until it was over that I remembered the most important reason I’d had for coming here, and asked if they had a way to contact the mages in Colosse. They

I’ve just realized it’s almost three o’clock in the morning, and my eyes are burning, so I’ll have to sum this up even though my conversation with Lineta was really interesting. Interesting, and depressing, and a little frightening—anyway. The conversation went all over the place, so I’ve rearranged the details so it makes more sense. I kept dragging it off course by asking questions, but in the end, this is what I learned:

Something really strange happened in Erael in the days since the convergence. It has five mages—two who live here, and three who were on their way to something relating to the Viravonian resistance Lineta didn’t want me to pry into, so I didn’t. And the day after the convergence, suddenly only Lineta was still capable of working magic.

Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, she has the same green-gray eyes I do, and Jeddan has. Cederic once told me that those eyes indicate a predisposition to do magic, but it can’t be a coincidence that those four other mages, who don’t have those eyes, all lost their magic at the same time.

I remember somebody, probably Terrael, said the worlds coming back together would restore the original requirements for magic; suppose the green-gray eyes are one of those requirements? Or that they indicate the innate ability to work magic Cederic’s research implied was part of the original world? It sounds silly, but based on

Oh no. Terrael’s eyes are blue. So are Sovrin’s. Oh, please let me be wrong about this. If Terrael…I can’t even imagine it. I’m not going to think about it anymore. It’s a stupid idea and it has to be wrong.

The important thing is that the loss of their mages has thrown this village into more turmoil than the convergence did, and they’ve (she’s) been trying to contact Colosse ever since that horrible discovery, to no effect. Lineta says the Firtha th’anest, whatever that is, is not only not responding, but acting as if it isn’t there anymore, and she doesn’t have any friends in the capital she might be able to contact.

I must have looked awful when she gave me the news, because she said a lot of comforting things I tried to be grateful for, because she was only trying to help. But I can’t stop remembering how the palace was coming down on our heads, there at the end, and that Aselfos’s troops were fighting the God-Empress’s soldiers all around us, and the God-Empress is who knows where—it’s impossible she’s dead, she’s too evil to die without taking a hundred innocent people with her—and I can’t stop imagining that everyone I love is dead, or thinks I’m dead, I’m not sure which is worse, but either way I just want to curl up somewhere and cry.

I hate feeling that way. I hate feeling helpless and weak, because I’m not weak, I’ve had a lifetime of fighting every challenge the world has thrown at me. They aren’t dead. I will find them. Cederic’s the Kilios, damn it, and there’s no way the Kilios is just going to disappear. So even if he’s not in Colosse when I get there, someone will know where he went, and I’ll chase after him as long as I have to.

There. I feel better now. I think I can sleep a few hours, and face breakfast, and then I can start planning a route to Colosse. And Jeddan and I can work on teaching each other pouvrin.

20 Coloine, early (continued)

“They were going to kill you,” Jeddan said. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

“They weren’t going to kill me, they wanted me to help defend the village,” I said.

He shook his head. “That was the council. There were a lot of villagers who wanted you dead. They’re afraid of any magic, and yours…I didn’t even know fire was possible.”

“Oh,” I said. “Then I really am grateful.” I probably would have escaped on my own before the villagers were a threat, but if not, I couldn’t have fought them all off.

“Like I said, you’re a fellow sorcerer,” Jeddan said. “I knew there had to be others, but I’ve never met any.”

“We’re called mages, and neither have I,” I said. “Can you teach me your see-inside pouvra?”

“I don’t know. Is…pouvra…what you call magics? Can you teach me yours?” he said.

“We’ll have to see,” I said, and then I remembered my actual goal. “But I don’t have time to find out. I have to be on the road again.”

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

That threw me. “No, you’re not,” I said, which sounded stupid then and it still sounds stupid when I write it now.

Jeddan was just a big dark shape against the trees, but I could tell he’d squared his shoulders like he was expecting a fight. “I’ve been studying magics—pouvra—for four years,” he said. “I was caught in a mudslide, thought I was dead, then I was sliding through it—between it—and I knew I’d done something I couldn’t bear to give up. Magic is everything to me, and I’m not going to lose the chance to learn more of it. And I know you want to learn what I know, too. So I’ll stay behind, if that’s what you want, because I’m not going to force my company on anyone. But I think you want me with you.”

It was true. I did. “You’re right,” I said. “We need each other. And there’s so much more to magic than you realize.” I looked around, remembered Jeddan couldn’t see in the dark, and reached for his hand, which is really big and strong. I keep forgetting to ask what he does for a living. “We’re going to find a place to sleep, and then in the morning we’re going to pay a visit to some people who may or may not be friendly. And they don’t speak our language. So you’ll just have to trust me, okay?”

“All right,” he said, but he sounded dubious. He’s been very patient since then, even letting the Viravonians take him to his own room rather than stay with me—I’m sorry, but even though I’m excited about meeting someone else like me, I draw the line at letting strange men share my bedchamber.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We slept under some trees that had already begun to shed their leaves, so with the dampness it wasn’t a very comfortable sleep. I probably shouldn’t bitch too much about the mattress I slept on last night, since it was far better than a pile of wet leaves on the hard ground.

In the morning, before we went anywhere, we shared some of the food and I told Jeddan my praenoma—return courtesy for courtesy and all that—and all about the convergence. Everything, not just the event and what came of it—all about th’an and kathanas and Castaviran magic, and what I knew about pouvrin, and that I was trying to find my husband and that’s why I was going north, or would be going north eventually.

Jeddan listened in silence, only interrupting me with questions once or twice, until I explained about my pouvrin, and then he got the kind of look you get when you find out your grandmother’s paste brooch is a twenty-carat diamond.

“Show me,” was all he said, and I demonstrated everything except the see-in-dark pouvra, which has no discernable effect and would only make me blind in the daytime, anyway. Then he just sat there staring at me, or past me, or something, until I said, “Are you all right?”

“I thought I was doing well with two,” he said, but in a joking way.

“It took me ten years to master all those,” I said. “But who knows what we might accomplish if we work together? It has to be easier than reading those old books.”

“I didn’t read any old books,” he said, and now it was my turn to look stunned. “Seeing inside things…it’s just a variation on being able to slip between them. I didn’t know it was impossible to learn a pouvra that way. I didn’t even know they were called pouvrin.”

“If you hadn’t already told me you were coming along, I might have kidnapped you,” I said, and he laughed, probably because there’s no pouvra in the world that would let me overpower someone his size.

Anyway. That took a few hours, and then we circled around the village and headed off south down the road toward the Viravonian town. I decided it would be best for us to approach it in the opposite direction to the one facing Jeddan’s village, in case they were also expecting foreign invaders. That took us about an hour and a half, between walking the couple of miles to it and then staying out of sight while we made our way around to the southern side. Then we just walked up the road toward it.

to be continued…

20 Coloine, early

I can’t believe it only took a handful of weeks for me to grow so accustomed to my big soft bed with all the pillows that this ordinary mattress feels thin and lumpy. I didn’t sleep well, and when I did sleep I dreamed of being in this enormous house with a million doors, looking for Cederic, and every new room I entered had ten new doors leading out of it. I miss him so much. I wish these Viravonians—but I want to bring this record up to date.

So I met with the council—it occurs to me now I have no idea what that village is named. Nor do I care. They seemed so reasonable, but it turned out they were just like every other isolationist hamlet on the borders of Balaen. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The first thing I did was demand the return of my things. They refused, trying to establish their authority over me, so I sat and refused to speak until Riona, exasperated, said, “It doesn’t matter, does it?” and called for a messenger to bring me the books and the clips. I half expected them to pretend the clips had disappeared, since they are fairly valuable—Audryn’s people must be wealthy for her to go around wearing that kind of jewelry so casually—but no, they brought everything back. I don’t know if anyone read the books, though I think not, or our conversation would have gone very differently. I was just happy they were undamaged.

The council meeting was far too long—it seemed everyone had to have their say, and their say was usually a repetition of what someone else had already said, so I’ll sum up:

Three days before, they’d experienced the same effects we had in Colosse—the pulling sensations, the confusion, and there had been some actual tremors, but (of course) they’d passed by late afternoon, and there were no lasting effects other than some furniture and boxes being knocked down. So it was a curiosity, but nothing anyone worried about.

The next day, some people came into town, people with hair like mine, armed with strange-looking swords, looking suspicious. (No detail on what “suspicious” looks like, but I’m guessing the Viravonians were being as cautious as anyone would be in investigating a village that appeared out of nowhere, from their perspective, and that probably looked furtive.) The council didn’t know how the first interaction began, but it was immediately clear that the strangers didn’t speak Balaenic.

It was, on the other hand, unclear (and here I have to commend the council for not just blaming the outsiders) how the altercation began, or why, but swords were drawn, people were injured, and one of the Viravonians used magic to help them escape. This made the villagers terrified and angry and, as a result, disinclined to give any stranger the benefit of the doubt. If I’d approached the village from the other direction, I’d have seen the fortifications they threw up to defend against the outsiders returning. They’d sent out a group of men with some military experience to follow the Viravonians, and of course they all came running back when they discovered a village where one hadn’t been before. That was two days before I showed up.

The whole time this discussion was going on, I was working out how much to tell them. Explaining about the convergence was probably a bad idea, given that they had no concept of magic except as something scary that bad people use to hurt good people. But I couldn’t think how else to explain about a Viravonian town appearing two miles down the road from them. And I also couldn’t think of a good lie that would help them understand the truth. So in the end I went with the truth, though I had to gloss over the details of how magic works to accommodate their lack of understanding on that front.

When I was done, they all just sat there, as I’d expected. Then one of them (I don’t remember their names except for Riona, and even she didn’t give me her surname or placename, so I couldn’t call her by any name) said, “I would say you’re lying, but no lie is that elaborate.”

I could think of several lies I’ve told over the years that were more elaborate than that, but I kept my mouth shut. Another one said, “So what should we do now?”

I didn’t realize at first that that was directed at me. Then I said, “That’s not my responsibility. You people govern this city. You need to decide.”

Riona said, “Will they have many…you said, mages?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but probably more than just the one. Maybe not many more. I got the impression that most mages go to the big cities for work. But magic isn’t feared in Castavir, so it’s certainly possible they’d have several.”

“And you will fight on our side?” said one of the councilors, a round-cheeked woman with silver hair.

That startled me. “I don’t know that it has to come to a fight,” I said, “and I have to leave in any case.”

“We have no way to communicate with them,” the woman said, “and they’ve already shown themselves to be aggressive. If you don’t fight with us, we will be overrun. Where’s your loyalty?”

“If you’re thinking like that, then you have a bigger problem than neighbors you can’t communicate with,” I said. “This is how the world is now. It’s not Balaen versus Castavir, or shouldn’t be.” But I already knew how this was going to end. I couldn’t guarantee the Viravonians wouldn’t be hostile; I already knew they were in rebellion against an empire that has been trying to crush them for over a century. True God alone knew how they’d feel about the new world the convergence had thrust them into.

“You’re right, it isn’t your fight,” Riona said, standing up to show the meeting was over. Since I am occasionally stupid, her giving in just then didn’t rouse my suspicions. “Thanks for explaining it all. We’re sorry for the misunderstanding. Can we do anything to help you on your way?”

Well, that had me suspicious, but it was getting late and I was tired from having slept on the ground for several nights in a row, so I just said, “I was hoping to sell these clips so I could buy food for my journey.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Riona said, and called for another messenger. While she was giving the girl her instructions, I talked a bit to the other councilors about the weather, and was there a larger city nearby where I might find transportation, and so forth. I wanted to ask them why they weren’t afraid of my magic, but decided not to remind them about it just in case it was all an oversight and they might try to execute me if they remembered.

The girl came back after about twenty minutes with a knapsack full of food, and I thanked Riona and the councilors and followed them down the stairs and out of the bakery—where I was seized by about a dozen hands that threw me down and wrapped rope around my body, tying my arms to my sides. I kicked, and shouted, and summoned fire, but they were ready for that and flung me from one pair of hands to another as they carried me off down the street, breaking my concentration.

to be continued…

19 Coloine (continued)

Eventually the crowd parted in reverse, and the short man came through, bringing with him a woman who looked to be nearly two feet taller than he was. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. She was maybe ten years older than I am, with short brown hair, and she had a dusting of flour over the upper part of her dress, just where an apron wouldn’t have protected her. And she moved with an air of authority that told me whatever else she might be, she was used to being in charge. I wondered why she hadn’t been at the front of this attack, but she said, “I thought I told you I’d deal with her once the rest of the council members got here,” which answered some of my questions.

Pitchfork man had the decency to look embarrassed. “Thought she might try to magic her way out,” he muttered.

“I told you if she wasn’t going to burn down the shed, she wasn’t going anywhere,” Riona said. “Sorcerers got only one magic in them.”

That was interesting, and I rated my chances of getting out of this alive much higher at that point, because they wouldn’t be expecting me to have any other tricks at my disposal. But then pitchfork man said, “Outsiders might have any number of magics. Who knows what they can do?”

“I’m not an outsider,” I said. At this point I had the beginnings of an idea of what was going on here, but I decided to make sure before jumping to conclusions. “I’m from Thalessa. I’m guessing you don’t see many people in this part of Balaen who look like me.”

Not that I look all that strange. Even though I wasn’t born in Thalessa, Mam’s family came from there, so my skin is darker than the villagers’, and my hair is dark blond instead of the brown most of them seemed to have. But I doubt most of those people have been more than thirty miles from their village in their whole lives, so any difference probably looked exotic to them. And if a Viravonian town had “appeared” somewhere nearby, full of blond-haired people who didn’t speak Balaenic, it would definitely have these people worried.

“She looks like the outsiders!” Yakon insisted.

“Where did you see these outsiders?” I said. “Did they come into town, or did you meet them outside? Maybe someone went to their village?” I probably shouldn’t have said all of that, but it suddenly occurred to me that a Viravonian town might have a mage who could contact Colosse, and I was so eager to reach Cederic I forgot to be cautious. And sure enough, this put everyone on edge. The pitchfork came back up, and Riona didn’t do anything to stop it. In fact, she looked as if she wanted to take hold of it herself.

“You must be an outsider, to know so much,” she said.

At that point I could see no graceful way out of the situation. Placating them was useless. I’d already decided I wasn’t going to run. So I took the approach I’d taken with the God-Empress—I can’t believe it was only two weeks ago; it feels like forever—and went with brazen audacity.

I stepped to one side, took hold of the pitchfork just where the metal met the wooden handle, and set it on fire. The man holding it shouted and yanked his hand away. Riona tried to step back, and I grabbed her by the collar and pulled her close as I threw the pitchfork down, praying I hadn’t burned my hand in that foolhardy move.

“I am not an outsider,” I snarled at her, “but you ought to be asking yourself, if I know so much about them, whether I might be persuaded to turn that knowledge to your advantage.”

“You’re a sorcerer,” Riona said. I was impressed she wasn’t afraid of me, but not impressed enough to let her go.

“I’m a mage,” I said, “and I know why these outsiders are here.”

She thought about it for a moment, then said, “Let me go, and we’ll talk.”

It wasn’t that easy. She had to convince the crowd to stand down. Then there was some discussion about a number of people who were supposed to be there but weren’t—the missing councilors, I gathered. Then she took me to her—I thought it was her home, but it was a bakery, and instead of living quarters above it was a big room with a lot of comfortable chairs that turned out to be where the town council met. There are four other councilors besides Riona, and they all just call her Chief, so I’m not sure if she’s the mayor, or first among equals, or something else. The important thing

Actually, the important thing is I’m falling asleep here. I hate getting behind in my record, but I’ll just have to finish it tomorrow. I hope Jeddan is being treated well, wherever he ended up in this place. I half expect to find him gone in the morning, even though he was pretty adamant about staying close to me. At least his first exposure to Castavirans is more pleasant than mine was, though unfortunately we don’t have Terrael and his Cap of Death to confer instant fluency on him. But all that can wait for morning.

19 Coloine (continued)

It was boring. I went over plans for escaping, plotted a journey to the Myrnala, wondered why the kathana hadn’t returned me to Colosse and was Cederic going out of his mind with worry yet, thought about pouvrin and whether I could create one based on a kathana or at least part of one. There are so many things I’d like to do with magic, now that I know how th’an and pouvrin are related—the enhanced hearing pouvra, for one, and the memory one so I don’t have to feel bad about making up bits of the conversations I record because I don’t remember everything exactly.

I also practiced the binding pouvra, the one I’d been learning just before the convergence that was based on th’an from Vorantor’s original kathana to bring the worlds together. I still have no idea how to make it do anything, but it’s the first pouvra I’ve ever created, and knowing that made me feel confident even though everything else around me was uncertain.

It must have been two or three very boring hours before the door opened, slowly, and someone stuck a pitchfork through the narrow gap, pointed at where I would have been if I’d still been tied up. I just stood and waited.

Gradually the head of the pitchfork was followed by the man holding it, who was followed by two other men. All three of them were looking down, squinting the way you do when you go from a bright room into a dark one, so I cleared my throat and then had to swallow a laugh because the pitchfork swung up really fast, and the three men all tried to move in different directions at once. Then it was less funny because the one man thrust the pitchfork at me, abruptly, and I had to step to one side because I didn’t want to reveal the walk-through-walls pouvra and just let it pass through me. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, raising my hands again.

In hindsight, their reaction was sort of funny—they looked exactly as if they’d just heard a dog comment on the weather. At the time, it was just baffling. The man with the pitchfork said, “How do you speak our language?”

That confused me so much all I could say was, “What?”

“It’s a trick,” one of the other men said. He had very short brown hair, as if he’d had his head shaved and it was only just growing back. “She only knows a few words.”

“What else can you say, outsider?” the pitchfork man said.

I looked the three of them over. They didn’t look like farmers—the pitchfork man was definitely not familiar with his “weapon.” But they also didn’t look like aldermen or councilors or whatever it was this town had for government. People like that have an air about them that marks them as different. I looked past the trio and saw a crowd gathered behind them, but no sign of anyone holding a position of responsibility. So I said, “I want to talk to your mayor.”

The pitchfork came a little closer to my nose. “That sounds like memorizing to me,” said the third man, who was shorter and skinnier than the other two and had a sort of nasally whine to his voice.

“I was born in Thalessa,” I said, “I’ve spoken this language all my life, and I don’t know why you’re so afraid of me, but I—” I was about to say I haven’t done anything you should fear and then I remembered the fire, so I shut my mouth.

“She’s a sorcerer,” the brown-haired man said. “We should kill her before she does like the last one did.”

“You’re from Thalessa?” pitchfork man said, ignoring his friend. “I was there once.”

“I haven’t been back in ten years, but yes,” I said. Actually, I was born in Venetry, and when my Dad lost his rank and his surname when I was two, we moved to Thalessa, but this man didn’t need to know my tragic history.

“She looks like them,” the short man said. “It’s a trick.”

“And even if it isn’t, she’s still a sorcerer,” the brown-haired man said.

Pitchfork man chewed his lip in thought. Then he said, “Yakon, go get Riona. She’ll have to make the decision. You—” He jabbed the pitchfork at me. “You may be Balaenic, or you may not, but either way you’ve got magic and I’m not letting you out where you can use it on folks.”

I nodded and kept my hands high. The short man ducked away into the crowd, which parted for him but otherwise stayed put. I guess this was more entertainment than they saw around here all year.

“So, how long ago were you in Thalessa?” I said, though I didn’t think I’d get a response. Sure enough, he just grunted and wouldn’t meet my eyes. So I just stood there and ran through more escape plans—conceal myself, step backward through the wall of the shed…which still left me without my books. I was in a position where I’d just have to see where things went.

to be continued…