Fire in the Mist (33 page)

Close,
she thought, repressing panic.
If Sahedre had felt me, she could have had me. Who is left that I can talk to?
she wondered.
Whose mind is still safe?

Her delicate psychic probe skimmed from colleague to student, from student to friend, all across the campus. She darted down, a hummingbird seeking nectar, and flitted back in revulsion each time. Every mind—every single mind in the university—was poisoned by Sahedre's control.

How can she force them all—
Medwind started to wonder.

And the telltale horror of the start of another sacrifice for
mehevar
invaded her skull.

That's how. Gods! Will it never end?
In answer to her own question, she thought,
No, it won't. She'll kill forever, because that's where she gets her strength. As long as Sahedre lives, people will die to feed her.

Medwind's mind rang with the pain and the fear of the victim—Frelle Jann, she realized, noting familiarities of shading and character in the tattered and dying soul that screamed for mercy. The barbarian fled back to her distant body, too weak to witness the torture and annihilation of another colleague without embracing madness.

As she fled, she felt a lone mind, frightened and surrounded by darkness, weakly and futilely protesting the killing.

One survives in Daane who has free will? Who is it? And where is she hiding?

But she was already headed back to her body, and too weak to reverse long enough to identify the protester. She found herself, still leaning against the tree, propped up by a saje on either side, weak and sweat-slicked and shaking. It was more effort than she could imagine, just to speak. "Sahedre had—all of th-th-them in mind-thrall," she whispered. "I b-b-briefly touched one mind that had managed to hide from her—but I didn't have—time to r-r-reach into it." The chill of the breeze on her wet skin, the coldness of the swamp water on the parts of her that were submerged, and the hard shiver of fever-wrack gripped her. Her limbs shook and her teeth rattled.

The librarian knelt beside her and gripped her hand. He rested his wrist lightly on her forehead, then laid his fingertips on her neck to measure the pulsing beat of her blood. His eyes darkened with worry. "We need to get her out of this swamp," he told Burchardsonne. "Fast—or she's going to die."

Medwind smiled up at Nokar. In Hoos, she told him, "Just leave me. Old man, I'd m-m-make you one of my—husbands if I h-h-had the chance. I like you. But I'm n-n-not g-going—to survive this. You get rid of Sahedre. Then make sure—I get a—good Hoos f-f-funeral—with l-l-lots of horses and all. And honor f-for my head."

"Sheepshit," Nokar snapped back in Hoos. "Don't give
me
your noble-warrior-dying-bravely act. You're going to survive—we need your help to get rid of Sahedre." He did a sudden double-take. "You'd really take me as one of your husbands?"

Medwind managed a faint grin. "Yah, old man. Even make you—a H-H-Hoos warrior if you—survived the w-w-wedding night."

"You'll live now just for that, by the gods. I claim Hoos honor on your word. Your husband, huh?
There's
a hell of a way for an old man to go down in glory."

In Arissonese, he told Burchardsonne, "I'm taking Song to Demphrey's healer's station out on Tenth Round in the Ka district. Find Demphrey and send him along. If you come up with anything that will win us this war, contact me there. Otherwise, I'll find you when I can."

Medwind heard this with fading interest. She felt the old man's fingers once again on her shoulder, but noticed only the first part of the wrenching of the universe before darkness overtook her.

For an instant, Faia had felt someone else, someone not tainted by the bloodlust in Sahedre's soul, who went questing through the darkness she occupied. She reached out, cried out briefly for release—

And then the light of that other soul vanished, and she was left again in empty blackness.

There is something on my face. Crawling.
It itched and tickled, but she didn't have the strength to brush it off. She opened her eyes, and found herself eyeball to eyeball with an enormous roach.

Medwind Song, rising to consciousness out of what seemed an eternity of fire and pain and darkness, did not find this a good omen.

"A-a-agh!" she groaned. The roach scuttled off.

It was replaced in the narrow circle of her vision by the flowing beard and locks and wrinkled visage of Nokar Feldosonne. This seemed an equally bad omen, for it indicated that the horrors she began to recall were not phantasms brought on by too much booze, but real events.

"I liked the cockroach better," she croaked.

"Nice to know I'm appreciated. Healer Demphrey says you might live. He says you need rest."

"How is the war going?" She didn't really need to ask. She could hear the howling of the wind, the lash of torrential rains, the steady thunder of explosion as fireball after fireball battered the saje city.

"We're losing badly."

"Then Healer Demphrey can—well, no, he probably can't. It usually isn't anatomically possible. But he can keep his advice to himself." Medwind managed to pull herself up on one elbow. The world spun wildly, but she ignored it. "Look, Nokar, I have to go back. There is someone in Daane that I might reach. I think I know where to look."

Nokar brushed stray hairs off Medwind's forehead. "It's no good, Song. You've been under Demphrey's drugs and spellings for almost four hours. In that time, Burchardsonne has sent dozens of Mindspeakers into Daane. Most fell into Sahedre's clutches and died. The few who made it back report that there is no one under her shield who is not in her thrall. And in that time, she's done half a dozen
mehevarin
, and expanded the shield to encompass about a third of Mage-Ariss."

"What happens when the shield is attacked directly?"

"The damage bounces back directly onto the senders. Burchardsonne lost two units that way. He won't try a third."

Medwind lay back on the slab she occupied and stared up at the reed thatch poking between the wide-spaced ceiling beams. "I see."

"We've lost this one, Medwind." Nokar sighed. "And this one is for the whole of Arhel, I'm afraid. Sahedre is unstoppable."

"I see." Medwind closed her eyes. "I'm going to sleep a while, old man. Don't wake me up if the world ends. I'd rather not know."

She felt dry lips brush her cheek. "I'm glad you're going to rest."

When goats have kittens,
Medwind thought. She gave a very good imitation of a woman drifting off to sleep. When she heard Nokar sigh again and walk away, she summoned what little energy she could and sent her mind searching back along the path she'd traveled earlier.

The spark of light was returning. There had been others, casting back and forth at a distance, but this one was coming straight to Faia. She could feel it as if it were the full blaze of the sun breaking through a pinhole in her prison.

She stretched out and greeted it.

:Who are you?:
she whispered.

:Medwind Song. And you—are
Faia
! Of course. She must have forgotten about you.:

:She did not need to forget about me. She has me trapped and helpless—I cannot harm her, and she cannot put me to work, so why should she waste any of her precious energy to control me? But you—what are you doing here?:

Medwind sent the tiniest flutter of a laugh into Faia's mind.
:I came to see if you would try to rescue us.:

:Hah! I would be astounded if I could rescue me. Not much hope of that, I am afraid.:

Medwind's next comment was long in coming, and thoughtful in tone.
:It would be the same thing. Let me tell you what I've found out about her, and you see if there's anything you can use.:

Faia listened patiently, only interrupting once to remark—
:This fiend had a
daughter
? Easier to imagine a blood-spider suckling its young than her a mother.:

:Nevertheless, the death of her daughter Beliseth was the start of this whole disaster.:
Medwind's thoughtvoice wearied.
:I must go. I am too weak to stay any longer. Faia, there is nothing else that we can do from the outside. And you are the only one left on the inside. If our world is to survive, it will only be because of you.:

Then she was gone, taking the light and hope of her presence with her.

Faia, in her blind cage, was vaguely aware of Sahedre surrounding her. If she concentrated, she could hear the other woman's now-unguarded thoughts.
Maybe Medwind Song was right. Maybe Sahedre has forgotten about me,
she thought. An idea occurred to her. She wondered if she could steal through Sahedre's memories for a look at the child, Beliseth, without alerting her mother.

Stealthily, she extended a thin fiber of thought into the other woman's mind. She kept away from Sahedre's noisy, angry awareness, and concentrated on the darkened backways of her past. Beliseth was not hard to find. All Sahedre's past thoughts were wrapped around her. Every waking moment was overlaid by pictures of a sweet-faced green-eyed child with soft blue-black curls that tumbled half-way down her back. In the clearest memories, she was about eight, growing early into beauty. Faia could sense her mother's enchantment and adoration of the child. Younger images of Beliseth were fuzzed slightly by time, but even as a young child, and before, as a toddler, there was never anything but love in the memories Sahedre held of her daughter. Faia rummaged carefully, and found Beliseth again as an infant, round and pink and dimpled, and even deeper, located Sahedre as she concentrated on the movement in her belly, the first delightful quickenings of life.

Faia backed out, and held her breath. An idea occurred to her, breathtaking in its simplicity—and in its cruelty.
Could I do that, even to Sahedre?
she wondered.

She stretched a little, peeked out through the eyes Sahedre controlled, saw what was left of the bodies of instructors and other women's small children in piles around the Greathall—all victims of Sahedre's
mehevar
and her pursuit of the destruction of Ariss.

I could be that cruel,
she decided grimly.
This time, to this woman, I could be that cruel.

She drew in passing surges of the power Sahedre had forgotten to guard, stored it, hid it, squirreled it away. She waited until Sahedre's energy began to lag, until the madwoman began to cast about for another sacrifice to increase her strength. Then, with feigned amazement, Faia screamed a sudden mindshout that tore across the Wisewoman's consciousness—
:I am pregnant?! I am PREGNANT! And she is a girl!:

She dumped her carefully tended images of Beliseth as an infant and Sahedre's memories of pregnancy back at her.

Sahedre's concentration shattered. She paused everything and sent her awareness careening into Faia's belly, into her womb—and the shout came back,
I
am
pregnant! Oh, I am! Oh, Beliseth, I shall have you back! I shall!

—And Faia's mind scrambled for her body, flowed back into the cells that were her soul's home. She
reached
—deep into the center of the earth, and up into the sky—and
pulled
. She drew the earth's pure energy inward and expanded, forcing the dark and sullied presence of Sahedre smaller and smaller and tighter and tighter, until the other woman had no place left to hide.

Sahedre snapped out of her distraction, and still full of
mehevar
and hatred, resisted. She pressed against the hill girl's spirit, attacked Faia's determination to destroy her, shot insinuations of weakness and unworthiness into Faia's heart.

But Faia's magic was not drawn from the malice of others, or from their deaths. Faia drew her strength from the near-infinite energy of earth and sky, and her confidence from the assurance, finally, that she was doing right.

Sahedre lost ground. She lost control of legs and arms, of eyes, of tongue—and her shield crumbled, and her mind-thralls broke free from their chains—

Ariss rang with the Wisewoman's furious mindscreech, as her soul was forced completely out of Faia's body—

—Into nonexistence.

There was silence.

And standing alone in her own body, in the sudden startling light after the tenebrous gloom of Sahedre's soul, Faia was beset by niggling worries.

What did she mean, "I
am
pregnant?"

IN the dark, cold water of the lake, Yaji's flesh and bones suddenly burned in agony and her breathing became short and labored. She shrieked and chittered, and floundered to shore. Dragging herself up the muddy bank, she collapsed. Her black claws retracted and the fur on her short, twisted limbs thinned. The limbs themselves began to stretch.

Human,
she thought.
I'm becoming human again.

She watched the wonderful transformation through pain-blurred eyes.

When it was done, she lay drowsy and content for a few minutes. Then her situation made itself apparent to her.

She sat up. "I'm naked," she remarked in a conversational voice to the overhanging woods and the lapping waters of the lake. "I'm naked. I, Yaji Jennedote, have been lying in mud. I am on the far side of the lake, with nothing between me and the University but more mud and woods with thickets and brambles and snakes and gods-only-know-what else in them. And I can't swim!"

"The war is over, Medwind!" Nokar's voice in the room was jubilant.

Medwind Song, lying on the table, did not move.

"Medwind?" His voice dropped a whisper. "Medwind?"

He ran out of the room and grabbed the Healer. "She isn't breathing! Demphrey, godsdammit, she isn't
breathing
!"

Demphrey said softly, "The war is over, man. It's over."

"
Demphrey
," he shrieked, "
she isn't breathing!
"

The words penetrated the Healer's relief, and he snapped into action. They raced back into the room. "Force air into her lungs," Demphrey told Nokar. "Put your mouth on hers, hold her nose closed, and breathe for her."

He watched the old man while his own fingers felt urgently for a pulse. "Yes, that's right. Keep breathing for her." He probed along her neck and at her wrist a moment longer. "Nokar, I can't feel her pulse. I'm going to have to jolt her heart with a lightning sprite. When I tell you to back off, do it, or you and she are both going to end up dead."