Or so he had thought. For suddenly, he felt power building inside of him, like floodwaters gathering behind an earthen dam. He tried to resist. Qirsar knew he did. He had spent years disciplining himself, refusing to give in to the temptation to use his powers. But that had been a matter of choice, of denying himself the luxury of laziness. This was something else entirely, like holding one's breath until the urge to breathe overmastered one's will. He struggled against it, but he knew from the start that he would fail in the end. It was too much; there seemed to be a greater force at work, as if the god had chosen to punish him for a lifetime of abnegation.
"She's right, Oren!" he managed to say. "You must leave! Now!" "But, Papa-"
"You feel it, too?" Aiva asked. He could hear the strain in her voice. "Yes. I can't fight it much longer."
"Fight what?" Oren asked, gaping at both of them, looking so terribly young.
Before Giraan could answer, a wind began to rise, making the candle flames dance and rattling the chairs and tables. Aiva's wind. That was one of her powers: mists and winds. And fire.
"Leave now!" Giraan shouted, though it took all his strength to make himself heard over what was fast becoming a gale. And in making that effort, he felt his control over the storm of magic raging within him waver. It was only for an instant, but that was enough. He heard the rending of wood as if it were thunder, and he saw a crack open in the roof of his home.
Aiva's wind keened like a wild beast, extinguishing the candles, so that the only light in the house came from Panya, the pale moon, whose glow filtered through the trees.
Oren was on his feet, his eyes wide with fear, but still he wouldn't leave. "What's happening?" he cried. "I don't understand!"
"The fever is attacking our magic," Giraan said. Again his grip on the power failed. It was all he could do to direct the magic at the table by the bed and not at his son. The table crumbled as if hammered by some unseen demon. "We can't control it!"
"My god!" Oren whispered. "Seslanne!" He backed toward the door. "I'm sorry…"
"Don't apologize!" Aiva told him. "Go to her!"
Giraan tried to pour out the magic inside him by calling upon his other power, knowing that he could do no further damage to the house with language of beasts. But he hadn't the control. He knew that he was speaking gibberish to the wild creatures in the woods around Runnel- wick, but still shaping power coursed through his body. So he wasn't at all surprised when the ball of fire flew from Aiva's side of the bed and crashed against the opposite wall. Immediately, flames started to climb the wood, licking at the ceiling and filling the room with thick smoke. Between her fire and winds and his shaping, their home would soon be a pile of charred ruins.
"We have to get out of here!" he said, taking her hand.
"What's the use?" she said, coughing.
"Maybe Besse can find a way to help us."
"Besse will be sick before long."
Rather than argue the point further, he pulled her out of the bed and toward the doorway. More power slipped out, but he managed to direct it. He heard the ceiling above the bed groan and collapse. Another fireball crashed into the floor near them. The wind howled at their backs. They made it outside, though not before both of them had been singed. Aiva fell to the ground, gasping for breath, and Giraan dropped to his knees beside her.
He could feel his power spilling over and it was all he could do to keep directing his shaping magic at something other than himself or Aiva. All around him tree limbs were shattering, splinters of wood floating down like snow. He could hear birds crying out. Wolves howled in the distance. Fire shot into the sky from Aiva's hands and still the wind blew, buffeting the trees. Looking toward the marketplace, Giraan saw that the sky was aglow with fire magic. Voices cried out in pain or fear or both.
"How many are sick?" he whispered.
"Giraan."
He crawled to Aiva's side. Her eyes were fixed on the sky above her, but he wasn't sure that she could see anything.
"I can't stop it," she said. "I'm so tired, but I can't stop. It's like I'm bleeding."
He couldn't either. The dam had broken. Trying to stop the flow of power now would be like standing in the center of Silverwater Wash at the height of the thaw, and trying to hold back the waters with his hands. His shaping magic still battered the trees and the remains of his home, but he could feel it weakening. The fire rising from his beloved was dimming; her wind had slackened.
"Aiva, no! Fight it!"
"I don't know how, Giraan! Do you? Can't you help me?"
She sounded so frightened, so weak, so far away. Clenching his fists, feeling tears on his cheeks, the wheelwright looked up at the fiery orange sky and roared in his anguish. Because he didn't know how. He couldn't stop his own magic from flowing, much less hers. He couldn't stop any of it. It seemed that his entire village was at war with a foe they couldn't see or understand. He could hear it so clearly now: the screams and the rending of wood; the sounds of a town under siege. His nostrils stung with the smoke of a hundred fires. And he could do nothing but kneel there watching the light in Aiva's eyes die away. After years of holding his magic inside, he could feel it lashing out at his home, at his trees, at the earth beneath him. But it was of no use to him in this fight.
He saw Aiva's lips moving. Giraan. She was saying his name, but she hadn't the strength to make herself heard.
"Yes, my love. I'm here." But even as he said it, he felt himself fall onto his side. He was too weak to kneel anymore. V'Tol. Magic. Life. It was leaving him. He was nothing but an empty vessel, a husk.
"Why, Qirsar? Wasn't it your will that we live thus? Did we fail you in some way?"
But no answer came. Just the cries from the village marketplace, and that baleful orange glow flickering above the trees.
She sat on a small rise overlooking the river, gazing northward, her hands working the rushes into place. Occasionally she reached for her blade to thin a strand or cut off a frayed end. But she never looked away. She didn't have to, not with hands as deft and sure as hers. She'd been weaving baskets for more years than she cared to count. She knew her craft. Just as she knew magic.
From her perch above the gently flowing waters, she could see and hear her spell at work. Let the Qirsi dismiss Mettai blood magic as a lesser power. Let the Eandi-her own people-make outcasts of the Mettai. Lici knew just how potent her magic could be.
Now the people of Runnelwick knew it as well. Their cries floated up to her. The glow of their fires danced in the night sky. The forest swayed with their winds and shuddered with the power of their shaping magic. All because Lici had decided that it should be so. They were her puppets, her playthings. She could make them do anything she wanted.
She lifted a hand. "Look," she whispered to the night. "No strings." Then she laughed.
Her cart horse stamped and shook her head. Lici had left the cart outside the village, venturing into its lanes on foot. That way they'd think her poor, they'd buy her baskets out of pity, out of desire to do good. That was what she had decided, and she'd been right. They were as stupid as they were weak, and now, because of this, they were suffering the fate their kind had earned so long ago.
She was but a feeble, old woman-a Mettai, no less-and she had done this to an entire village of Y'Qatt. One small cut on her hand. One among so many. Yes, let them laugh at blood magic. Soon enough every Y'Qatt in the Southlands would be trembling.
Chapter 3