Magic Steps tco-1 Read online

  She wasn't sure, but she thought Zahra softened a little. "He should have told us," she said gruffly. Looking at "Pasco she added very firmly, "Immediately.”

  "It's not harrier stuff," muttered Pasco.

  Zahra looked rueful. "It's true, my lady," she confessed to Sandry. "Most of what gets talked of here is harrier business — Provost's Guard," she explained.

  Sandry nodded. "I understand. When I lived at Discipline, almost all we talked about was magic." It wasn't quite true, but it might help mother and son to relax, if she didn't act critical. "Now, perhaps we should get to the problem. Once we've sorted that out, we can talk about Pasco's education."

  "This way," said Zahra, leading them through the house. They walked into a gallery around the inner courtyard. From there Sandry could see the airborne captives, three young people in their teens, all in breeches and shirts, each holding a padded baton. They seemed to be practicing a defense against two attackers on the open ground, Watching them intently from a bench near the low fountain at the center of the courtyard was a tall, slender old man with gray hair combed straight back, a long straight nose and heavy brows.

  He thumped the ground with his cane. "No, no, Reha! You're leaving yourself open for a side attack! Pay attention!"

  Sandry ducked her head to keep anyone, from seeing her grin. She felt a prickle of respect for Pasco. By her reckoning from, his story, his cousins had been, in, the air for at least ninety minutes. He must have been really determined when he danced them, up there, she thought.

  Zahra stepped forward. "Excuse me, Gran'ther," she announced. "Lady Sandrilene fa Toren has come to help Pasco unravel this" — she glanced at the hanging trio—, "difficulty."

  The Acalons turned and bowed to Sandry. Even the three in the air tried to bow. This time she'd thought ahead; she raised her handkerchief to her nose to hide her grin at the sight of those three swaying bows.

  The old man shot a look at Pasco. "Was there no one of our own standing you could bother with this?" he demanded sharply. "I am sure my lady is far too busy to undo your tangles."

  Sandry curtsied to the man Zahra had called "Gran'ther." "Actually, I'm honored to be the mage who discovered Pasco's talent," she remarked solemnly. "Not everyone gets to find unusual magics." Perhaps a white lie on her part would make Pasco feel better, and get his family to think of this as an opportunity, not an embarrassment. "I look forward to being his teacher."

  "Teacher!" barked the old man. "Since when does the nobility teach?"

  "My lady, this is my husband's father, Edoar Acalon," Zahra said quietly. "He is the head of our house."

  Sandry walked over to the three who hung in the air. Halting beside the old man she answered him. "Since she is the mage who discovered his talent, and there no dance-mages at Winding Circle."

  With a nod, she turned her back on Edoar Acalon, making it impossible for him to argue with her. Focusing on the captives, Sandry walked around them, thinking hard.

  "I don't think I've seen anything like this before," she remarked slowly. She had Pasco's measure by now. He was capable of forgetting his scare the moment his cousins were earthbound again. She had to reinforce his fright, or he would be skipping lessons before she could say "Duke's Citadel." "None of us ever hung anyone in midair."

  Pasco gulped, she could hear him. "You can't fix it?" he cried. "But you have to! I don't know how to get them down!"

  She wanted to take pity on him, but something warned her not to let him relax just yet. It's not what I would have chosen for his first lesson, she admitted to herself, but it's what we have—and maybe it'll stick longer this way

  Sandry shook out her skirts, letting Pasco stew a little more. His mother Zahra stood at parade rest, her eyes never leaving Sandry's face, while the old man leaned on his cane.

  "If you didn't know how to get them down, you shouldn't have put them, up there," Sandry remarked at last.

  "It was an accident!" cried Pasco. "I told you how it happened!"

  "It's all right if you don't know you're a mage," a girl pointed out.

  "Don't help, Reha," muttered Pasco.

  "But he does know," replied Zahra woodenly. "Lady Sandrilene told him. He was supposed to tell us, and take lessons with her."

  "Of course he knew," Sandry added, her voice cool. "You had to dance, didn't you? You had to think of a tune and hum."

  "I want him arrested!" cried Vani, pointing at Pasco. "He knows magic and he did it to me, and that's against the law! I want him harried!"

  "You will be silent, Vanido Acalon." Gran'ther Edoar's voice was splinters of ice. "You have said more than enough today."

  "Please get them down," Pasco begged Sandry. "I'll do whatever you say. I'll take lessons, whatever you want. Please"

  Sandry looked at Zahra. "Have you a private room we can use?" she asked.

  The woman nodded, and led them back into the house. Sandry followed, towing Pasco. When Zahra showed them into a small chamber just off the gallery, Sandry thanked her and closed the door.

  "Sit," she ordered Pasco. "Take some deep breaths. It's just you and me here. Calm down."

  Pasco nodded and sat on the floor, inhaling and exhaling loudly. Sandry looked around. From the scent of Incense and the statues of gods in wall-niches, she guessed they were in the family chapel. She recognized most of the gods: Larks own patroness, Mila of the Grain, the earth goddess, and her consort the Green Man; Yanna Healtouch, the goddess of water and health; Shurri Firesword, the goddess of fire and warriors; and Hakkoi the smith, god of forges and the law. She paused before the only unfamiliar statue: a man with a hawks head, feet, and wings in brown and blue feathers, and a long black coat. A sword and dagger hung from the belt at his waist. In one hand he carried a lantern, in the other a set of manacles. From the number of votive candles and half-burned sticks of incense around the niche, he seemed to be very popular in this household.

  "That's Harrier the Clawed," Pasco informed her. His voice was steadier. "The god of provosts, guards, and thief-takers. He takes apart secrets and puts them away against the starving time. There're shrines to him in every coop—every guardhouse. And here."

  Sandry turned to look at Pasco. "First things first," she said. "You need to learn to meditate. Or at least, you need to be able to clear your mind if you're handling magic. Now's as good a time as any to start."

  "But Vani and them," he objected.

  "They've been up this long, a bit longer won't hurt," Sandry replied firmly.

  Pasco rubbed his face with hands that trembled. "Why did this happen?" he whispered. "All I want is to dance. Not to be a mage, no, nor a harrier neither. Just a dancer. Now I can't even do that without something going awry."

  "The quicker you learn to control your magic, the sooner you can dance and not worry," she pointed out. "So calm down, and we'll start." He swallowed hard and nodded, looking at his hands.

  She was about to teach him the proper way to breathe when she realized that she had almost forgotten some thing very important. "I need to ward us," she said tersely, silently cursing herself. How could she not remember that meditation with an untrained mage would cause his magic to spill all over? Her teachers had been careful to ward her and her friends when they first began their studies.

  She dragged her red thread from her belt purse. I'm not ready to teach anyone, she thought as she pulled away the loose end. What else am I going to forget?

  "What's a ward?" asked the boy.

  "It's like a fence that keeps magic in. Or other things out if that's what you set your wards against. Now hush." thrust her irritation with herself out of her mind and began to lay her thread down in a circle that would enclose both her and Pasco. Once it was complete and she had stepped inside, it took but a touch of power to break the thread from the spool, then join the ends to close her circle. Shutting her eyes, she raised her power until it formed a bowl that enclosed them completely.

  Once that was done, she settled on the floor next to Pasco, arrang
ing her skirts. "Until you control your power, meditation will make it spill all over," she told him. "Don't meditate without an older mage present until I say you can."

  "Oh, splendid," he grumbled. "Another thing I can't do now without a nursemaid."

  Sandry shook her head. If he was in the glooms, nothing she could say would improve his mood. It was better to get on with the lesson.

  As if he could hear Sandry's thoughts, the boy grinned sheepishly. "You're more patient than Mama, lady. She would've smacked my head by now, and told me to" — he stopped. What his mother would have said was probably too vulgar for the lady—, "to quit being a chufflebrain."

  Sandry giggled. "Chufflebrain—my friend Briar says that. Now. On to serious matters. Close your eyes, and don't think about anything but what I tell you."

  She taught him how to breathe: inhale to a count of seven, hold for a count of seven, exhale to the same count. Getting him to empty his mind was another matter. He shifted on his haunches; his fingers tapped out a drumroll before she stopped him. From the way his eyes shuttled behind his lids, he was thinking of something with movement to it—not what she wanted.

  When she sensed that his body at least was more relaxed than it had been when they started, she said, "Now, think a moment. How can you undo what you've done out there?"

  He looked at her, startled. "'Undo'? Why—that means doing what I did, only backward."

  She smiled at him. "It does, doesn't it?" Reaching over, she touched her thread circle. It broke; she felt the power in her ward draining back into her. A nudge of her finger, and the thread rolled itself up. She then reattached it to the spool in her belt-purse. Glancing up, she saw that Pasco was staring at her. "Surely you knew I was a stitch witch," she remarked, amused by his wondering look.

  "I heard you was more than that," he said, scrambling to his feet. He offered her a hand. She took it, and let him pull her to her feet. "I never thought you'd fuss with plain old thread."

  She led the way out. "Thread's as important to me in magic as dance steps will be to yours," she told him as they emerged into the courtyard gallery.

  "— why the gods gifted a flibbertigibbet like my grandson with magic," Edoar Acalon was telling Zahra, who was seated beside him.

  The girl Reha made a shushing noise and flapped a hand wildly at Sandry and Pasco. Sandry shook her head. It seemed there were reasons why her new student thought that nothing he did mattered.

  "Oh, look, it's tippy-feet, finally? Vani cried. "You'd better get me down from here, Pasco!"

  Sandry halted before the three airborne Acalons, eye ing Vani as if he were a bug she might swat. "What did you do to reach this point?" she asked Pasco.

  He moved to a spot three yards in front of the captives. "I did a triple step left and a triple step right," he said, half to himself, half to her. "I was humming music. And then I did that beautiful swan leap the Capchen dancers were practicing—,"

  "I knew it!" shouted Vani. "You were ogling dancers while I did the work—,"

  Sandry had heard enough. She pointed at him and ordered, "Be silent," putting a twist of her power into it. Vani's mouth snapped shut. Everyone could hear sounds in his throat; he fought to move his jaws, but he could not open his mouth. "A swan jump?" Sandry asked Pasco. "A jump goes up. Aren't your cousins up enough already?"

  "He should jump down," offered the dangling girl, interested in spite of everything.

  "Haiday, shush," said Zahra.

  "If you think about the results before you try some thing, you can save yourself problems," Sandry told Pasco. "It sounds like you really need to look before you leap."

  "Jump down, jump down," Pasco muttered, turning to view the courtyard.

  Sandry could tell when he realized the benches were too short, and followed his eyes as they rested on the gallery wall. Its waist-high top was the same height as his cousins' dangling feet. Pasco ran over and climbed onto it. "I do the steps, and the humming, and I jump down," he said triumphantly.

  "And while the ones in the air touch the ground, what happens to those of us who are on the ground already?" Sandry inquired, thinking, Maybe he has some brains after all.

  Reha and her sister ran into the gallery. Pasco's mother and grandfather stayed where they were, their eyes calmly on him.

  "What do you do when you aren't sure you can control magic?" asked Sandry patiently. He'd never work things out if she fed him the right answers. Of course, that meant she had to think of the right kinds of questions, those that would lead him to the answers. "What if you don't want the power getting away from where you wield it?"

  "But—," Pasco began to protest. He went quiet. Sandry waited, hoping this meant that he'd learned he shouldn't argue, but use his head.

  It seemed she was right. Pasco closed his eyes and inhaled, counting, and held, counting, and let go, counting. Twice more and his lips began to move as he talked silently to himself.

  Then he opened his eyes. "I don't know how to, to put that warding thing on, that you do with the string," he pointed out. "Do I have to learn now?"

  Sandry grinned at him. "It would take you weeks to learn how to do a proper warding," she said. "Only think how inconvenient for your cousins if they were up there all that time. When you need a spell you can't do, it's a good idea to ask an older mage to help. Specifically, you had better ask your teacher."

  Pasco bowed his head. "Lady Sandry, please will you ward them?" her asked.

  She drew her red thread from her belt-purse. "Stay right there. I have to include you in the ward." He obeyed, holding his position atop the gallery wall, as relaxed as if he stood on solid ground.

  Here there was no way she could lay her thread flat as she had when they meditated. Instead she walked through the gallery and around the captives, letting her thread drape over the low wall. When her circle was complete, she stood back and called on her magic. The scarlet thread rose until it stopped six feet above the ground, at waist level on the cousins in the air. Sandry let her power surge, enclosing her, Pasco, and the captives in an unseen bubble. Everyone else was outside.

  "Now, Pasco," she told him quietly.

  He took a deep breath, then began to hum. Nimbly he danced three quick steps left and three more right, then leaped. It seemed as if he floated to the ground, touching as lightly as a feather on the ball of one foot.

  Vani and the girls did not land that gently. They dropped.

  Pasco faced Sandry. "It worked!" he cried, giddy with excitement. "We did it!"

  She plucked at her thread. It broke, still hanging in midair, and she wound it onto her fingers. "That's what happens when you think it through," she told him. "Now, lets go talk about lessons." She, Pasco, and Zahra had reached the door to their part of the house when Gran'ther thumped his cane imperiously on the courtyard tiles. They turned. Vani was clawing at his mouth, trying to get it open.

  "He really shouldn't be left that way, my lady," Zahra murmured.

  Sandry shrugged, and snapped her fingers. Vani's mouth flew open. He lunged forward, bent on mischief, only to fall flat on his face. Gran'ther had reached out with the head of his walking stick to trip him. "You will come with me," he told Vani, getting to his feet. "I have several things to say to you, and to your parents."

  Sandry curtsied to the old man, then walked into the house with Pasco and his mother. "We need to set a time and place for Pasco's next lesson,” she told Zahra. "I think he's seen that he really needs to study."

  * * *

  Alzena raced up the rickety steps of the inn and pounded at the door to their room. She could hear Nurhar scramble to open it.

  "Be more careful," Nurhar told her once she was in side. "What if you draw attention?"

  "Two roughs are trying to cut each other to pieces downstairs," she snapped, at him. "They wouldn't notice aught else if the place was on fire. She turned to the mage." The brother, Qasam Rokat. He's come out of his Silk Place house. We can take him easily when he returns." Her grin, bared long, yellow
teeth. "He is sweating."

  The mage looked up at her. There was an emptiness in his eyes that gave her the jitters. "Is there salt for me?"

  "No," she said cruelly. The dragonsalt they fed him kept him dreamy for most of the time. "It's time for you to wake up and earn your next dose."

  "Yes," he replied. "But a taste will clear my mind."

  "Work first," she told him, sharp-voiced. "When we have Qasam Rokat's head, then you can have salt."

  He had not blinked. That made her uneasy. "I have to see the place."

  "We know that," she snapped.

  "I don't like it," mumbled Nurhar as he positioned the carry-frame on the rickety bed. "It's too public." He lifted the mage into the frame. There was so little of him—he had no legs and his body was skeleton-thin from his long use of dragonsalt—that Alzena could pick up the mage at need.

  "It has to be public," Alzena retorted, fastening the buckles that held the mage to the left side of the frame as Nurhar did the right. "The Rokats have to know that nothing will stop us."

  Once the mage was settled, Alzena and Nurhar dressed in beggars' rags. They covered their clothes and their curved swords with long, patched cloaks that could be stowed in a carry-sack once they were clear of the inn. There was no sense in allowing the locals to wonder how three beggars could afford to rent rooms—even at a pit like this.

  Once Nurhar had settled his cloak, Alzena helped him to strap the carry-frame on his back. "All ready for a stroll, Grandpa?" she asked the mage.

  I'm ready to die," he whispered. “I'll be readier still in an hour."

  "Too bad," Alzena told him.

  "I need dragonsalt."

  "Shut up," Nurhar growled, opening the door.

  "Help us kill the rest of our prey, and you'll have more dragon salt than you know what to do with," Alzena hissed in the mage's ear as she followed him and her husband out of the room.