“I suppose that’s something,” said Seri. She frowned. “So you don’t think you’ll be able to teach anyone?”
“I don’t know. Some child, perhaps, will be born with the talent, and I can help train it. But it’s not like reading or writing—it’s not something everyone can learn more or less well—and since I didn’t have someone to train me, I really don’t know what the training should be like.” Aris leaned away from the fire as a gust sent smoke into his eyes. “Nobody wants to hear that, though: Luap is still convinced I could teach other mageborn to heal, and the other Marshals still hope I can work with the granny-witches. They don’t want me to be the only one—and I wish I weren’t.” He struggled with the sorrow that always came when he thought of that, of being the only one who knew what he knew. He could share his skills by using them, but he had no one who could understand what his life was like, what it felt like to hold that power in his hands and pour it out.
“We can’t let him ruin it,” Seri said. For a moment he didn’t know what she meant. She nudged him with her elbow. “Luap, that is. We can’t let him ruin what Gird wanted.”
“How can we stop him, if the Council of Marshals can’t? And it’s not all his fault. Remember what Rahi and the Autumn Rose were like before you worked on them?”
Seri ducked her head. “They should be friends; they should have been friends all along. You know that.”
“Yes, and I know they weren’t. That started before we came, a long time back, from all the tales. What I meant is that it’s not only Luap who has strayed from Gird’s dream. It’s a lot of them, even Rahi. They never saw it clearly, maybe.” Aris wondered again why not, when it seemed so obvious to him. They were older; they had known Gird in the war. Why couldn’t they all have seen that what he wanted was good? A swirl of night wind brought flames snapping higher from their fire, and a gout of sparks lifted into the dark. Aris tried to keep his mind from following them, from the trance of light, but remembered that only Seri was here. He need not worry. He lifted his hand, in one of their childhood signals, copied badly from the huntsman, and let himself go.
Sparks flying on a dark wind . . . he felt the glittering heat, the potential fire, in each spark, and its frightening vulnerability. So small against the cold, the dark, and yet so bright, so hot. Were there sparks of darkness as potent? Could darkness spread, as fire spread, from its sparks? He let that thought go, and rose instead with another gout of sparks, high above the starlit land. Most sparks lit no fires; most died to ash in the cold wind, and most that fell found no fuel.
He came back to himself slowly, slipping from trance to the ordinary musing of any mortal around a fire. The ideas that had seemed so definite against the dark slipped out of his mind. The fire crackled, hissed, murmured. Behind him, one of the horses stamped and blew. He felt his skin tighten all over, fitting itself to him again. Where had he been? Only a thin blue flame danced above the coals; he could not at first remember why he saw the fire from below, why he was curled on the ground instead of a bed. Then he felt Seri’s hand on his shoulder, solid and warm, as if she were the hearth in which a great fire burned. He took a long breath in, smelling the leather of her boots, the wool of his own shirt, the firesmoke, the horses nearby, even the wet herbs near the tiny creek. When he looked up, the stars seemed like a scattering of sparks . . . but sparks that would not die, that would never go out.
“And what did you bring back this time, Ari?” Seri’s voice was almost wistful. He had never told her a story she liked better than one from his earliest childhood, and he had never been able to tell that story again. Like all the visions that came with light, it existed only in the moments of the trance itself, and his memory faded more quickly than a meadow flower.
“The sparks,” he began, letting his tongue wander free. “If Gird’s wisdom brought light, then the sparks flew out . . . but not all minds held the fuel to kindle them. Some would burn bright, but quickly die. Some would catch no spark at all. Many would come to the fire for warmth, but fear the sparks flying, lighting in themselves. . . .”
“But I feel it,” Seri said. He turned over to look at her. He could see it in her, as he could feel it in her touch.
Aris pushed himself up. “You’re right. You do.”
“And so do you!” She sounded almost angry.
“I hope so. I used to think so, but—”
“But you’ve been listening to them. To him.”
Aris shook his head. “No—it’s not that. I think—I think Father Gird saw things from his own side—as a peasant—and so for peasant-born it’s a little easier to catch his vision. It all fits. When I try to think like you, I see it clearly, but when I try to see it like Lady Dorhaniya, or Luap, I see other possibilities. Gird didn’t have any reason to trust magery; even with me, he wished my healing would work some other way. He had no place for magery in his mind, no place it would serve the dream and not harm it. He agreed my healing was good, but he would not have agreed that being able to lift stones by magery was good. He would think how they could be used to hurt people. What I know is how much the magery hurts if you don’t use it. Again, he understood that about my healing power, but I don’t think he realized that it’s true of any magery. It’s like—suppose someone said to you, ‘Don’t lead. Don’t learn. Don’t question anything.’ ”
Seri had been scowling, but at the last her face changed expression. “No one could tell me that! I have to, it’s the way the gods made me—”
“Yes, and the mageborn who have magery are that way, just as you are eager to learn, curious about everything, quick to lead. Remember our childhood? You got whacked with a spoon often enough for being—what did the old cook say?—nosy, bossy, always asking questions. You couldn’t help it, but what do you think it would’ve felt like if you’d tried to change?”
“I suppose . . . I’d have felt trapped, like a wild animal tied in a barn. Ugh!” She shivered. “Why did you have to say that? I don’t like to think about it.”
“But when I tried not to heal, you said you understood. . . .”
“I knew you were unhappy, and I knew you would never do anything wicked, Aris, but I didn’t imagine—gods forgive me, but I didn’t really think what it might be like. I was thinking of the people who needed you, that you could heal.” She leaned against him, as she had in childhood. “I’m sorry, Ari. It just never occurred to me.”
“It’s all right.” He leaned back, comforted by her presence, by the familiar warmth and smell of her. “But can you try to understand, now, why it’s so hard for the mageborn who have those talents to leave them unused?”
“I suppose.” The doubt in her voice had no real solidity; he knew he had won his argument. He waited. In a few moments, she spoke again, slowly, thinking it out aloud. “And I suppose it’s as bad—or worse—for Luap. Is that what you’re saying? He’s a king’s son by birth, but he never got to be a king’s son. They didn’t know he had the magery; he never had training in its use. Yet he has it, and it’s as restless in him as your healing is in you, or my curiosity is in me. I wonder if the royal magery would be stronger?”
“Arranha says it is, that when it comes it either comes in full or not at all—and that Luap has it. I don’t think Gird ever knew how hard it was for Luap, or recognized how determined Luap was to be loyal to Gird.” He felt Seri shift against his side, and then relax again.
“I suppose,” she said again. “I would think that for Gird—but then, Gird never asked me to do anything but be what I am.”