Convergence (70 page)

"How dare you, sir!" Tamrissa's father hissed as Mirra went into that full pout she had so much practice with. "Such denigration is actionable, which you'll find out when I have you hauled into court!"

"Sellin' a daughter to a sadist and then tryin' it again means you deserve every filthy name a man can put lips to," Valiant countered, his growl becoming more pronounced. "You go right ahead and sue me, and then the whole city can know what you are. But right now, get out and take—
her—
with you."

"You'll be sorry you said that, darlin'," Mirra hissed while Tamrissa's father went pale with fury, her words obviously referring to the disgust she'd heard in Valiant's tone. "You're the one I want and the one I mean to get, but you'll be real sorry you spoke to me like that. Just wait and see if you're not."

Her head came up with a sniff and then she turned and flounced out, followed by Tamrissa's father after the man gave Valiant a small bow. He'd recovered control of himself so quickly that Valiant frowned, wondering what the man could be up to now. He was far from beaten, there was no doubt of that, but something much more important clamored for Valiant's attention. As soon as the door was closed he turned toward the stairs, but Jowi's hand was on his arm before he could take even a single step.

"Wait," she said, the intensity in her tone halting him more successfully than chains would have. "She won't speak to you now, and even more importantly won't listen. She's all locked up inside again, and needs time to get over the disappointment."

"But there's nothin' for her to be disappointed about," Valiant protested with a chill touching his insides. "Mirra was lyin', and she's got to understand that."

"She won't believe it," Jowi said, sympathy pouring from her like water. "I could feel that clearly, and even understand why to a small extent. Believing things leaves you open to being hurt, and she can't take any more pain. It's easier for her to simply refuse to believe, but give her some time. She got around the problem once, so there's no reason why she can't do it again."

"I'm willin' to give her all the time she needs, but we still don't know how much the testin' authority means to give
us."
Valiant knew his voice had gone lifeless, which fit the situation perfectly. "The longer I know that girl the more deeply in love I fall, but now she won't even talk to me. And I don't even know how long I have to change her mind. What if it's not long enough . . . ?"

Valiant let the words trail off, but no one added anything in the way of encouragement. Only Jowi and Coll were left in the hall with him, and they seemed to have problems of their own. The careful distance between them seemed deliberate, and the pain he felt in them seemed more than a mirroring of his. Maybe he ought to say something to them. . . .

But words of compassion refused to come, so he simply went upstairs to his room and lay down on the bed. Everything had been going so beautifully, and now . . . now they were dirt and ashes. He'd managed to bring her around once so maybe he could do it again, but how long would it take? He would have willingly spent years, but they might turn out to have no more than weeks.
Or days.

"Damn Mirra, damn that travesty of a father, and damn me for handlin' this so badly," Valiant whispered into the lonely silence of the room.
"But most of all, damn that testin' authority.
Damn . . . damn . . . damn . . . !"

thirty-nine

Lorand joined the other men in climbing into the first coach, leaving the second for the ladies. Everyone was unusually quiet this morning, except for the one time Ro spoke to Tamrissa in the dining room during breakfast. Tamrissa had apparently taken lessons from the now-absent Beldara Lant, her attitude telling everyone that she was entirely alone in the room.

"I can see you don't want to talk to me, but this you're goin' to hear," Ro had said once Tamrissa was seated with a plate of food in front of her. "Mirra was lyin', and so was your father when he said I betrayed you. I did nothin' wrong,

and
if you insist on believin' their lies, you're helpin' them

win
."

Unless Tamrissa had stopped up her ears she must have heard him, but not even a flicker in her eyes had supported that. She just went on eating quietly and calmly, ignoring Ro along with the rest of the world. Mardimil and Holter had looked faintly puzzled, but neither had asked any questions.

As the coach pulled away from the residence, Lorand's thoughts returned for the thousandth time to what had gone on between Jowi and him yesterday afternoon. The love-making had been as marvelous as he'd expected it to be, but nothing had gone right after that. He'd explained his point of view to Jowi—and then she'd explained hers. He hadn't expected her to be so desperate for security, and he hadn't been able to argue her point of view. If he'd been wealthy it would have been a different story, but as it was. . . .

Lorand took a deep breath and let it out slowly, staring at the landscape going past without seeing it. He
wasn't
a wealthy man, so it was impossible to argue with Jowi. He

hadn't
realized that her mother had actually
sold
her children, and the idea had disturbed him so much that he'd retreated to his room to rid himself of it in peace. He remembered wishing he were still back at the farm, where he'd had a small, secret room among the bales of hay in the barn.

Whenever his father had spent part of the day talking about the future he intended his sons to have, Lorand would take the first opportunity to go to his private place and make his own plans. He'd decided early that he would not spend his life working for his father to save him the cost of hiring a Middle to help with the harder jobs. In his private place he'd repeated his vow over and over, until he'd grown big enough to make his own plans come true.

Lorand remembered thinking about that as he began to cross the room, and then the craziest thing had happened. He'd tripped on and fallen over absolutely nothing, and ended up lying on top of the nothing. Feeling around finally gave him an idea about what it was, but that was even crazier. It felt just like the bales of hay which had contained his secret place, all the way down to the opening he would crawl through. The whole thing was a lot smoother, but more importantly it was also invisible.

It had taken awhile for Lorand's battered thoughts to realize what it was, which
was solidified air
. For some reason Mardimil must have provided the thing, and Lorand had been too relieved to have his favorite place back to wonder how Mardimil had known. He'd simply crawled inside, and spent some time telling himself everything
wasn't
lost. He'd come to Gan Garee to earn a High practitioner's position, and if somehow he actually managed to do it, all his problems would be solved.

He'd meant to thank Mardimil at dinner for his help, but Warla had made that announcement about Drowd and Beldara Lant and he'd forgotten all about it. Later Mardimil had disappeared and then there'd been that to-do with Ro and the woman and Tamrissa, and now it was really too late. Even if Mardimil hadn't looked distracted and withdrawn this morning, any thanks would seem like an afterthought about something trivial.

And besides all that, Lorand was too worried about what was ahead of them to spend time trying to thank someone gracefully. They'd gone in a different direction this morning, and now the coach was crossing a small bridge which seemed to lead out of the city proper. The road they traveled wasn't a wide one, and there were open fields on both sides of it. But not planted and tended fields. They'd been lying fallow for quite some time, and had gone mostly to grass.

A couple of miles up the road the coach began to slow, and then they turned off onto another road of the same size. But on this one it was possible to see structures in the distance, ones that didn't seem to be buildings. It wasn't yet possible to see what they were instead, but waiting until the coach moved closer didn't help much. Walls of smoky resin blocked easy sight of the things, leaving only hand-painted metal symbols of the various aspects to differentiate one section from another.

And those sections stretched out for quite a distance to both the left and right of the road. Their coach turned left, and a short way down it stopped in front of the symbol for Air magic. That made Mardimil the first to get out, which the man did without hesitation or comment. There was an opening in the resin wall behind the sign, and Mardimil disappeared through it as the coach began to move again.

Next out were Holter and Ro, both of them leaving the coach in the same preoccupied way.
We've become a group
of
strangers,
Lorand thought as he watched them go,
more so than when we first met. I'd wonder where all this was leading, but I don't think I want to know.

The idea was unsettling, but before he could fall too deeply into considering it, it was his turn to leave the coach-He stepped out onto a resin walk near the sign of Earth magic,
then
went through the opening in the wall with almost no hesitation. The coach kept on going, undoubtedly to the area to the left of this new road up ahead, where other coaches stood. There were also two ordinary buildings over there, one much larger than the other. A stable for the horses, then, and a posting house for the drivers. . . .

And then Lorand was beyond the wall, and all other thoughts left him. What had looked like structures from a distance weren't; thin, transparent resin rested on poles of the same material, acting as a flat-topped roof over almost every foot of the vast area. Some parts were sectioned off with walls, making both larger and smaller areas, and some of the walls were smoky rather than clear. There also seemed to be chairs in some of the areas, multiple chairs in one of them along with tables. Most of the areas had something other than furniture, though, and Lorand was so intent on figuring out what the something was that he almost missed the man walking up to him.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" the man asked with a friendly smile. He was a bit short of his middle years, a slightly rounded man not quite Lorand's size with a round face, brown hair, and mild brown eyes. "I'm Hestir, the Adept assigned to show you around. As you'll probably be the last newcomer, my job is almost over."

The man didn't seem terribly upset about that, and his easy manner led Lorand into deciding to take a chance.

"But I thought the others had until week's end to qualify," he protested mildly, as though only faintly curious. "Most of those in my sessions seemed rather determined, so I expected to see them arrive only a short while after me."

"Those in your session have been determined since they first arrived," Hestir responded with a dismissive laugh. "We've learned over the years that those who don't qualify by the third session at the latest usually don't ever manage it. There was one once, about nine years ago, who finally forced himself into qualifying at the last moment. Nothing came of it, though, since he couldn't quite get himself together for the competitions. But enough idle chatter, something I'm quite marvelous at. We'll start the tour over there."

"Over there" was an area to the extreme left, a large one with comfortable chairs surrounding a core of tables and chairs obviously meant to be used for meals or
snacks.
There were a few people moving around some of the areas, but this one was empty.

"When the others arrive, some of them will stop here for another cup of tea before beginning practice," Hestir
said,
the words more conversational than lecturing. "Behind that wall
is
a cooking area and a place for the servants, as those of us in this section take our lunch here. If you want a servant and there aren't any about, just ring that bell and one will come out from behind the wall."

Hestir had pointed to a small cowbell hanging from one of the posts by a rope, another length of rope available to ring it with. Lorand nodded as though ringing for a servant was the most usual and unimportant thing in his life, and Hestir smiled.

"Now, over here is our very first practice area," he said, leading the way to a series of smallish sections surrounded by smoky resin. "It's what you'll use to begin with, before you start the first of the competitions, but please don't confuse it with a warmup area. Those are arranged around the sections devoted to interactive competition, between that and the individual competition area."

"There are different kinds of competitions?" Lorand asked, surprised enough to stop where he was. "For some reason I thought there would be only one."

"A common enough
mistake
, and one I made myself in the beginning," Hestir said with a chuckle, stopping with him. "It takes a moment to realize that there are different parts to our aspect, more parts, in fact, than with any of the others. We must prove our strength in
all
of those parts, as well as in the two methods every aspect uses. The first method is, of course, competing with another applicant to show strength and speed. The first to complete the assigned chore is the winner."