“How do I play this?” Senneth asked Tayse, the consummate tactician. “Start small and build, or just open with conflagration?”
He considered. “Open big, but save something for a final showdown. Awe them, and then terrify them.”
“Any chance the boy could really be better than Senneth?” Darryn asked.
“No,” Senneth, Kirra, and Tayse all answered in unison.
Senneth laughed. “And if he is, then I’m certainly bringing him back to Ghosenhall, whether or not he wants to come! Anyone with more power than me should definitely be in service to the king.”
When it was full dark, Senneth and her party emerged from Eddie’s tavern to find a sizable portion of Carrebos’s population already lining the main street. An iron brazier had been set in the middle of the road. Ward and Jase stood right in front of it, tending a small fire, while the townspeople waited a respectful distance back. Senneth made her way through the crowd with quite a contingent following her-Tayse, Kirra, Donnal-the-dog, Darryn, Sosie, Eddie, and Eddie’s wife. None of the spectators appeared worried, Senneth thought. They all looked like they had come out for an evening of rare entertainment.
She couldn’t imagine another city in Gillengaria that would be so complacent at the notion of witnessing a duel between mystics.
She stepped up to the brazier and smiled at Jase. “Do you require a little fire to begin with? To get your own fires going?”
He eyed her uncertainly. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried to start one on my own. But I can put out any fire that’s set.”
“Let’s see, then,” Senneth said. She held up her hand, closed her fingers, and tamped out the blaze.
There was a small ripple of response from the crowd, but she wasn’t done yet. She raised her arm and offered a quick twist of her wrist, and every window of every building in town went dark. Candles blown out, hearth fires extinguished, light and heat smothered at every source. The murmuring of the crowd grew louder.
“Ah, but we need a bit of fire, don’t we, just to see what we’re doing,” she said. Pivoting slowly on one foot, she pointed at building after building-the taverns, the shops, the cottages-and reignited each separate flame inside each one. Then she made the circle one more time, spinning a little faster, setting fire to objects that had never been meant to be torches. A short pole holding a merchant’s sign. The tall chimney of a two-story boardinghouse. A bare, scrubby tree lurking on one side of the road. A cart. A wine barrel. The coals in the brazier sprang back to life.
Undaunted, Jase whirled around just a second or two behind her, dousing each unnatural blaze, leaving the hearth fires unmolested and the candles primly flickering.
She had to laugh. “Very good,” she approved. “Now, can you put this one out?”
She set herself on fire.
“Mercy!” someone shouted, and she felt the whole crowd shift back. She viewed the world through a wall of violent colors, orange and red and yellow and black. Her clothes writhed with flame, her short hair was a crackling wick. She felt the tickling heat on her skin, breathed the scorched air-she knew she was burning-but she felt relaxed, familiar, ordinary. She was always a degree or two away from combustion anyway; she harbored fire in her heart, felt it running always through her veins. Sometimes it surprised her to think she didn’t always exist surrounded by a prismatic inferno.
She felt Jase’s magic tugging at the flames, dampening them to short little licks of fire. She let him succeed for a few minutes, enough for the crowd to notice, enough for Jase himself to feel a little thrill of accomplishment. Then she flung her arms upward and a column of flame shot above her head, reaching so high no one on the ground could see the end of it. She pivoted again, more quickly this time, and gestured. Here. Here. This place. Here. And each time she pointed her fingers, something else erupted into fire. Eddie’s tavern. Ward’s inn. The house of some poor onlooker, who instantly started wailing. The whole street was hemmed in with heat; every intent face was illuminated by the erratic, dramatic light.
Jase gamely stabbed his own hands toward a few burning buildings, and the fires went cold. But for every one he put out, Senneth started two more. He waved his arms and scrambled around her, but he could not keep up. Another house consumed by fire-another. She made one broad sweeping gesture, and every structure in the town suddenly burst into flame.
This audience knew magic, but even they were beginning to grow fearful. And she wasn’t done yet. Make it spectacular, Tayse had said. So Senneth reached out-not laying her hand on a soul-and one by one set spectators on fire. Jase. Ward. Eddie. Sosie. Anyone who stepped too close.
Then she raised her voice over the excited consternation of the crowd. “You must realize by now that anything I touch with sorcerous flame will only burn if I want it to,” she said. Indeed, Sosie and a young man at the front of the crowd both appeared utterly delighted, lifting up their incendiary hands and turning them this way and that. “Yet I hope you will believe me when I say I could bring this whole town down in a matter of minutes and no one-not even this talented boy-could stop me.”
Abruptly she lowered her arms and all the fires vanished, except the small one twinkling in the brazier and an uneven halo glittering around her own fair head. “I truly possess a great deal of power, and I have the absolute confidence of the king. Anyone who wants to travel to Ghosenhall would be welcome to leave with us when we return. We would be glad to have you in our army. We know just how formidable a weapon magic can be.”
Of course, that unleashed a maelstrom of conversation as everyone in the crowd began speaking at once-though most of them were talking to their neighbors about the extraordinary sights they had just seen. A few pressed closer to speak with Senneth herself, but she turned first to Jase, who had darted to her side the minute fire fell away from his body.
“I hope you aren’t too disappointed,” she began, but he was skipping in place.
“I want to learn that!” he exclaimed. “Can you show me? How do you make it burn without burning? Without hurting?”
She laughed but had no time to explain before others pushed between them. “Come see me tomorrow,” she called to Jase. “I’ll show you some basic exercises.”
Then she was swallowed by the people of Carrebos, who seemed, for the most part, to be thrilled by her exhibition and suddenly willing to share with her their own tricks and abilities. Even the hostile Ward came up to clap her on the back and express his admiration. It doesn’t make sense to me, she thought as she smiled and nodded. When I want to be convinced a person is worthwhile, I want to listen to his arguments and understand his mind. I don’t suddenly trust him because he’s put on a gaudy display of power and might. But Tayse had counseled her correctly, and it was just such a gaudy display that had won her friends throughout the town of Carrebos.
CHAPTER 20
THE next day Senneth and Kirra spoke to even more mystics, all of them suddenly eager to hear about the opportunities in Ghosenhall.
“I’m jealous,” Kirra said. “Perhaps I should challenge a shape-shifter to see who can take the most forms in the shortest amount of time.”
“You’d lose that one,” Senneth observed. “Donnal’s faster than you are. Maybe he should run that competition.”
Kirra pretended to be insulted. “Well, then, I’ll see who else can transform another human to animal shape,” she said. “I’ll bet I’m the only mystic who can do that.”
“I’ll bet you are. And tolerant of magic though the townspeople seem to be, perhaps that’s not a skill you should put on display, since it’s generally considered an abomination,” Senneth said. “You might have the distinction of being the first mystic stoned to death in Carrebos.”