Aris snorted. “Except the time you were playing those tricks on your Marshal.” He could feel her suppressed chuckle; it finally erupted into a gurgle of laughter.
“Yes . . . well . . . even then he didn’t ask me to be different, just reminded me that I was too young to know all the background, and too old to get away with it.”
“I’ve always wondered—what did Father Gird do to you?”
Seri laughed again. “What do you think? Gave me a couple of smacks and told me to be glad he hadn’t used his full strength. Told me to behave myself. If I wanted to be a leader, I’d have to set a better example to the junior yeomen—and that was true. It took me longer than I like to remember to straighten them out. They were a lot wilder than I was. ‘Think you’re clever now, lass,’ he said to me, ‘but what’s to come of them if there’s a real danger, and you’re not there, and they won’t trust the Marshal, eh?’ Made me think, it did. He left me there another half-year, then put me in that grange down near yours.”
“Good for both of us,” Aris said.
“He thought so. You’d be a steadying influence on me, he said, and I’d be sure you didn’t walk off a roof in a trance.” Aris felt the twitch of her shoulder. “Come to think of it, he never did believe you could take care of yourself, any more than I do.” As if on cue, Aris yawned, a great gaping yawn he could not smother before she turned and saw it. “And you can’t,” she said. “You were off there wherever you were, and you’re half asleep now. Go on. I’ll wake you to watch later.”
Aris wrapped himself in his blanket, and slid into sleep as comforting as a hot bath, just wondering if Seri would wake him, or sit up all night thinking. The grip of her hand on his shoulder woke him to dark stillness; her other hand came across his mouth, warning. Before he moved, he felt some dire magery nearby. He slid a hand free of the blanket, and touched hers, tapping a message. Her hands left him, and he reached down and slid his own knife free. Where had he left the sword? Where was the danger? And from whom?
It felt like nothing he knew, no mageborn he had ever been near, not even his mother’s last lover. Cold, ancient malice, a bitterness no love of life could touch . . . iynisin. Of the timbre of the elves who had so delighted him in Fin Panir, but of opposite flavor, this magery mocked all he had admired.
“Here’s your sword . . .” Seri breathed, barely audible above the pounding of his heart. Aris flung the blanket aside and stood, staring into the darkness. He could just feel the warmth of the banked fire on one leg, but no gleam of coals lit the dark, and the stars’ light seemed feebler than it had. The wind had died; he could hear nothing but felt one cheek colder than the other, proving the air moved. He felt Seri’s movement at his back, a shifting from leg to leg more menacing than nervous. Then her quiet mutter of explanation: “I felt it first, then something dimmed the starlight. The horses aren’t moving. Nothing is. I woke you—”
“I feel it,” Aris said. “iynisin.” Saying the name aloud took great effort, but when it was out he felt less frozen. He bent and folded his blanket, felt around until he located the rest of his pack, and put it all well aside, in case they had to fight.
“The elves said that was a legend.” Seri’s voice wavered; he realized that she was really afraid. Seri? it was absurd; Seri had never been afraid.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Aris moved to her voice, and leaned against her. His hands prickled; he laid one on her arm, and felt the demand of his healing lessen. She could not be sick—was he supposed to heal her fear? He let the power free, and felt it move from his palm to her arm, driving away whatever hindered her light.
Her light. Even as he withdrew his magery, knowing it had been enough, Seri burst into a glow as different from magelight as sun from starlight. Shadows fled away from them; Aris saw his own, black and dire, stretch to the edge of their hollow before he too caught light. His, though he had never seen it before, he knew to be magelight, the same as Arranha’s. It had the quality of lamplight or firelight; he knew without trying that he could kindle wet wood with it at need. But Seri’s . . . Seri’s was light only, the essence of vision, of knowledge, of inward seeing and outward seeing. Aris pulled his mind back from its favorite pastime, and had a moment to think how they must look, two glowing figures on a dark wilderness.
Then he saw the iynisin. All around the hollow, everywhere he looked, the blackcloaks, the beautiful faces eroded by hatred to shapes of horror. He could not tell how many, but he felt the weight of their malice as if each glance were a stone piled on his flesh. As if they knew the very moment of being seen, they spoke—two of them, voices clashing slightly as if they read from a script.
“Foolish mortals . . . you have chosen an unlucky place and time to indulge your lust.” Aris said nothing; Seri muttered, but not aloud. The iynisin went on. “You stink of Girdish lands, mortals; you trespass on ours. As we cursed your dead leader, so we may curse you, if we do not kill you and feed on your flesh.”
This time Seri answered them. “If you think you cursed Gird, you haters of trees, you erred; he died beloved of the gods.”
“And his line died with him.” One of the iynisin came closer; Aris could not see that the others moved. “Only sunlight spared him the full power of the curse, but that much held. And he ventured out only near dawn . . . it is long until dawn, mortals, and no sunlight will save you.”
Aris felt a burst of gaiety, unexpected and irrational. “Then we shall have to save ourselves,” he said. “With the gods’ help, if they find us worthy of aid.”
“You cannot stand against us,” the iynisin said. “See—” He pointed to the cluster of trees around the spring, where the horses were tied. Beyond, on the brow of the hollow, all the iynisin pointed downward. Aris stared: in the light he and Seri made, the trees shriveled, twisting in on themselves; their wood groaned and split. The new green leaves blackened, as if scorched. Under the trees, all the little green things that sheltered there shriveled as well. In the trees, one of the horses made a noise Aris had never heard. He felt Seri’s back shiver against his; his sword felt loose in his grip as sweat ran cold down his sides.
“You call yourself a healer,” another iynisin called. “Heal that, boy.” They all laughed, a sound so close to beautiful that it hurt the ears worse than simple noise. Aris’s hands itched, then burned; his healing magery demanded that he do something. But he could not go to the trees or the horses without leaving Seri, and he would not leave her. Could he do anything at a distance? He flung his power outward, toward the trees, but if it worked at all, it was the flurry of wind that whirled dead leaves from dead stems.
Not that way. The voice in his mind sounded impatient, like a master whose prentice had just done something wrong for the fifth time. I’ve never done this before, he thought back at it. Think! it bellowed. “Father Gird!” Aris said, almost squeaking in surprise.
“He can’t help you,” the iynisin said. The others laughed and sang. “He’s dead . . . dead . . . dead . . .” And on that refrain they came forward, their black shadows streaming away behind them. Aris had just time to think what a ridiculous way this was to die, when he felt Seri lunge away from his back, and he nearly fell backwards into her. That stagger saved him; the blade aimed at his throat missed, and he had his own back up by then. He had not had as much training in weapon skills as Seri, but she had insisted that he go beyond the basics required of all yeomen.
His sword clashed on three; he was too busy to be scared, but a corner of his mind insisted he had no chance against so many. He had no time to remember exactly what he’d been taught. He had to thrust, swing, and thrust again; an iynisin blade slid past too fast for his response and he felt it burn along his side. He sagged to one knee; another blade caught his swordarm, slicing deep; his fingers opened, and the sword fell. He heard Seri gasp, and a dark form leaped above him. He grabbed a boot, and yanked; the iynisin fell, cursing, kicked back then scrambled out of reach. His hands itched, intolerably; he had no strength to withhold the healing magery. It leapt from hand to hand, almost brighter than his mage-light, scalding first his wounded arm, then burning along his bones to reach his wounded side. With an intolerable wrench, his rib reknit itself, and the organs within returned to health. So that’s what Father Gird meant, he thought, reaching for the sword.