At least she could stand in sight of daylight for this task.
Beyond the fallen grate, a cold spring drizzle wetted the fighters. The men of Idris fought better than Osyr had planned. Green and gray mingled with bronze and black, and over it all lay the screams of riding-beasts and men, the stink of fresh blood. Bodies lay trampled in the mud, but Tegan saw no children. They would have fled the battleground, and if the gods were kind, they had scattered.
Her arm ached with the demon’s longing. Now, before Osyr’s battle was won or lost. Now.
Tegan held the foil-wrapped stone close to her lips. “Ninidh?” she whispered. “Ninidh, do you hear me?”
Noya came to sit beside the Lady Idane when the silver quiverleaves were going gold on the high slopes, Noya sent out in skirts for provisions but was back in her breeks now, and happier for it.
“What news from the pass, Noya?” the Lady Idane asked.
Noya settled close to her feet of her lady, snuggling in like a puppy, and the lady stroked her hair. She has never stroked mine, Tegan thought. She finds more fault with me than with anyone here. Tegan looked down to hide the envy that might show on her face, and resolutely picked through the beans that would be tonight’s dinner, discarding the odd pebble or twig here and there.
“Men are leaving the lands of the Lord Idris, for his wizard has found a mine there and they say that strange humors rise from the ore. Others are traveling there to work the mines, having heard that the pay is good.”
The Lady Idane nodded, and Tegan knew that Matana, who had a gift for alchemy, would not be in camp by morning, but on her way to test the ores for safety or for useful essences.
“In far Salton-on-Fen,” Noya said, “they say a Nereid lives near a spring, and has enchanted it so that all who come there tell her secret things.”
“Nereid? Hmph. Meredith is setting herself up as a Nereid, is she? A flashy one, for news to travel here this fast. Well, that’s an old name for us, and not so far off,” the Lady Idane said. “True, we need water and stay close to it, but any creature does. Water stays low to the ground and goes around what it can’t go over. It follows whatever course it must take, but it wears away the strongest stone, in time.”
“It works by stealth, then,” Tegan said.
“Yes, stealth,” the Lady Idane asked, her eyes not on Tegan, but on a pattern of light and shadow cast by the branches overhead. “Stealth, deception, the skill to turn aside a blow and direct it elsewhere, the ability to let an enemy see what she fears most, and fight herself rather than you.”
The lady carried the Sword of Stealth, one of the twelve, Sightblinder, its story told one night by the fire, Matana singing of all the half-remembered Swords of legend.
Hidden or no, the Lady Idane carried it, wielded it at times. Tegan closed the knowledge in herself, the questions. How did you come by this? For what purpose do you carry it?
Tegan felt the lady’s attention focused on her. She felt as exposed as a bug turned up from under a stone. Noya had gone off on some task, had slipped away without a sound. Her absence left an intimacy between them, Tegan and the lady.
“Ask yourself. What did the boy in the clearing really see?”
The lanky boy had stared at a green wall, and seen-
Reflected in a haze of red, crimson livery, the brotherhood he had not yet chosen. He had seen himself a Red Temple guard, drug-crazed and desperate for the next coin, terrified that the man beside him might be more crazed than himself, that his “brothers” would turn on him and cut him down.
When I fight against Noya, I see-grace like a darting swallow flying at sunset, speed I will never have. I see my faults, not hers.
“He saw his own faults, my Lady.”
Idane smiled and stayed silent for a time.
“The seasons change so quickly. It’s almost time for some of us to move back into the lowlands for the winter,” the Lady Idane said.
Some of us. Not all of us. A few girls came to the summer camps every year, fewer remained for a winter’s training. So Tegan had learned. Noya would stay, certainly, and Havoise and little Jibben. But would she be with them when they went to the winter caves and learned letters and lacework, and things of leechcraft that a visitor from the White Temple taught?
Tegan’s fingers found a pebble, rough in the smooth beans. She tossed it toward the stream, got up and walked away, feeling the Lady Idane’s measuring gaze on her back.
Outside the mine, Osyr’s banner wavered, dipped, and fell. A shout went up and the banner rose again. Tegan caught sight of Seagus, his red beard red with blood. He threw Osyr’s banner to one of his men and roared with triumph.
Release the demon now, if ever she were to be released. She felt power gathering, drawn to the beacon in her hand.
“Come forth, Ninidh,” Tegan whispered.
The demonstone grew hot. It burned against Tegan’s palm like a coal. She struggled to hold it and opened her hand. A puff of smoke rose from her singed flesh.
The smoke drifted upward. Tegan could not take her eyes from it, from the swirling forces that circled the confines of the cave. They drifted on currents of desire and release, and centered themselves in the fetid air.
Transparent as blown crystal, a woman’s form took shape in the mouth of the tunnel. It floated above the filthy floor of the cave, and laughed a laugh like shattered ice.
Ninidh. It was Ninidh. The demon spun like a whirlwind. She darted into one of the tunnels. Tegan heard her cooing at what she found there. Ninidh returned, her ghostly hands filled with raw gems in all the colors of moonlight.
The demon glided toward the shattered grate, and freedom.
“Stay!” Tegan shouted.
A demon’s voice laughed and a demon’s wild joy filled the cave.
Stay? With all the wide world before me, and all these gems in my hands? Almost, mortal, I would let you live, for the joy you have given me when you unlocked my powers.
Tegan gripped the demonstone in her fist. It had grown cold as ice.
That bauble? The demon danced around Tegan like a whirlwind. I’m not in it now! You have freed me!
Tegan slashed at the transparent form with her sword, a foolish weapon against a demon. The sword would not serve her for this.
What would?
Tegan had sought strength in skills of seduction garnered from the Red Temple. She knew the way power moved among the world’s divided kingdoms. She knew how to use the weaknesses of men or women as needs be. Nothing she had learned could help her leash this demon, this evil wraith that Tegan had hoped to bind against a greater evil.
Blow after countered blow, the sword growing heavy as lead, the heat of the autumn sun on her shoulders, and old Caedrun’s voice grating in her ears, “Strength! Strength and speed, Tegan, make the sword light in your mind and you will find it easier to wield.” Until Tegan wanted to cry, and would not, because the Lady Idane had come to the edge of the clearing and was watching, seeming not to watch.
Had the lady sighed, shaking her head in frustration? Tegan couldn’t really see anything in the shade but the brown on brown of autumn leaves. There had been frost at the edge of her blanket this morning.
In a match against Noya, thinking, this is useless. I will never best her, I will never fit in here, with these women of grace and laughter who are always at ease, always accepted, ever the gentle word comes to their lips and at times I can’t speak at all.
Noya will stay and I will go back to the beanfields. I will carry my sister’s baby on my hip, not a sword.