“He’s not selfish,” Aris said quickly. Then, as Seri watched him without saying anything, he said, “Not in the usual ways, I mean. In times of shortage, he takes no more than his share. He lives simply, compared to any of the Khartazh officers.”
“Would you give a wolf credit that he eats less grass than a sheep?” Seri asked. “And I am convinced he took your power, made you less able than you were, risked not only you but all who depend on you for healing. For that matter—” She rolled over and stabbed at the soft duff with a twig. “For that matter, how do we know that no children have the healing magery? Suppose he’s stealing it from them? Before you could detect it, perhaps without knowing it—”
Aris shivered. He had a sudden vision of a hole in the bottom of the great water chamber . . . all the water swirling out that hole, eventually, if it were not refilled by rain. Had that happened to his power? Had Luap known, had he thought he was taking only a little, the overflow, and unwittingly taken from the very source? Or had he known—no. He could not believe that. He studied his hands, aware now of the signs of middle-age as clear in him as in Seri. “I think,” he said slowly, “that something never existed in Luap that Gird had . . . as if a young tree grew with a hollow core, as those giant canes do, but then thickened around it. No one could see, from outside, but if that inside were what Gird gave from, then Luap might have nothing to give. He might try—as he has—but no one can bring water from a dry well.”
“Whatever the cause, it was wrong,” Seri said. Then she sighed, and scraped her hair back, looking at him with worry in her eyes. “And there’s you. What are we going to do to restore your power? And the others; how are we going to find out how much else is wrong?”
Aris squirmed against the tree’s bark. It felt comforting, that great vegetable existence at his back. “If you’re right, the first thing to try would be the freeing of my own power. You say you noticed a change after we quit travelling?”
“Yes—within a year or so, at least.”
“Then we should travel.”
“But we can’t—we can’t leave the stronghold now!” He had never seen her so anxious. “I told you, I sense some evil. We can’t leave them here, without help—”
Aris tried to feel around inside himself, the self he had thought so familiar, and find the hole out of which his power fled. He could not; he felt opaque to himself, and wondered how long that had been going on. Years? He could not tell. “I don’t think I can free it here, so near him—and I don’t know how far we’d have to go.” When had they last been as far as the western canyons, the town beyond? He could not remember. Seri reached out and took his hand.
“You will do it, Aris. Look—let’s try the mountaintop.”
Exhaustion washed over him. “Today? Now?”
“Yes.” She held both his hands; he felt as if warmth and strength poured out of her and into him. Very strange; he was used to that process going the other way. “Now,” she said, pulling him up.
They reached the foot of the stairs without anyone commenting. Aris looked up the spiral. “All those steps,” he said. Then he grinned at Seri. “I know. Gird wouldn’t put up with whiners. If you’re beside me, and old Father Gird will help—” He felt better, ready to face the long climb to the first plateau.
They came out into the midday light, another day of blowing cloud. Aris felt the wind pushing him sideways, but fought with it until he reached the trail to the high forest. He looked up, wondering if the rocks meant to look unclimbable, or if it was his fault. He made it up, grunting and puffing. The backs of his legs ached. Seri came up as lightly as a deer, he thought. She spent more time out of doors than he did . . . and why? he wondered. When had that started? It wasn’t as if the mageborn were sickly, always needing him. But the accidents seemed to come just as Seri was starting somewhere, or when they’d planned a day away.
He headed off into the trees, taking the short way to the western watchpost. Seri caught up with him. “Let’s go north, to Arranha’s cairn.”
“It’s a long way,” Aris said; he didn’t feel like walking that far. Hard to remember that at first they’d come up every Evener to lay a stone on the pile.
“So? We’re trying to find out if either of us can come out of the fog up here.”
They had walked some distance when Aris realized he was moving more easily. He had warmed up, he thought . . . but it was more than that. He was breathing deeper, without strain; his head felt clearer. The racing patterns of light and cloud no longer seemed ominous, but playful. He noticed flowers in bloom up here that had gone to seed in the canyon below; he remembered years when they had always climbed the mountain to see the last wild-flowers bloom.
Seri swung her arms and did a slap-step. “It may have nothing to do with Luap, but I still feel happier up here.”
“And I.” With renewed strength, he probed at himself, feeling again for anything wrong with his power. Vaguely, fuzzily, he sensed something wrong there. He prodded it as he would have a sore spot: how deep, how big, how inflamed? The familiar sense of something resisting the flow of healing magery . . . but this time resisting the flow in . . . he wondered if patients felt this.
He did not realize he had stopped, until Seri took his hand to tug him on. “Don’t stop—it’s getting better.”
“Yes, but I—”
“A little farther. I’m feeling it too.” She went on, and he followed, until his head cleared with an almost audible snap. He blinked; everything seemed brighter, the colors of leaf and bark and stone more sharply defined. Seri slowed. They had been walking in mature pine forest, the trees spaced well apart, with the sun slanting in between them. When they stopped, Aris could hear nothing but the wind in the pine boughs overhead. There before them was the pile of stones; some had fallen in the years when no one came. Aris stooped to replace them.
Seri rubbed her head hard with both fists. “It feels strange, but good. And you?” She picked up another stone and placed it.
“The same. Rather like a long fever breaking.” Aris stretched out between two trees; he felt both exhausted and full of life. He wanted to eat a huge dinner, sleep, and get up well again. “And you were right,” he said to Seri. “I won’t accuse Luap, not yet, but something was interfering with my magery. It must have happened gradually—”
“And now,” Seri said, sticking to the practical, “what are we going to do about it? About him?”
“Do? I—don’t know. Did you find out what had been done to you?”
“Oh, yes.” Her expression was grim. “Good, loyal Marshal Seri had to be kept from taking Aris out on misguided quests: she had to be convinced we were needed here, even though I should have seen that everything I tried to do, Luap managed to undo.”
Aris thought about that. “I still don’t think it can be Luap by himself. Something else must be involved.”
Seri nodded. “And I think I may know what. Remember how the Khartazh worried at first that we might be demons in human form? All their legends said these mountains were full of demons. What if they were right?”
Certainty pierced Aris like a spear of ice. “And Luap didn’t know—”
“No—although I do remember Arranha saying once that the elves had given him some kind of warning no one could understand.”
“So you’re feeling of evil somewhere . . . could be that. It could have been spying on us all these years, making some plan—”