The Thief's Gamble

'Air, earth, fire and water.' Darni spoke up from the corner of the room. 'Wizards are born with an innate ability to comprehend and manipulate one of the elements. With training they can learn to manage the others. That's magic.'

'Well, there's more to it than that but basically, yes, that's how it works.' Shiv fixed me with a serious eye. 'But the magic surrounding these things has nothing to do with the elements at all.'

'So what is it?'

'If I knew that, I'd be in line for the Archmage's chair.'

'We know it draws on some kind of power.' Geris spoke up eagerly. 'It's stronger in some places than others, but we haven't been able to find any common factors. We're calling it aether, the source of the power, I mean. I've got a reference here…' He shuffled his notes.

Aether. A nice, impressive scholarly word meaning, if I remembered right,'thin air'. I suppose plain language would not instil the same kind of confidence.

'So what do you really know?'

'The only clues we have are fragments in Old Tormalin writings and the garbled traditions of the mystery cults.' Conall leaned forward earnestly. 'That's where I come in. I'm an initiate of Poldrion. It's a family priesthood, the shrine's on our land and the older people round here are quite devout so we've kept it up. I broke an arm last year and it festered, so I was laid up for nearly a season; I amused myself by collating all the records.'

Some people certainly know how to have a good time, I thought.

'I came across some instructions on what the priests called miracles, and I found I could actually make things happen by following them.'

'I know that sounds incredible—'

I waved a hand to silence Geris' interruption. 'No, not really. Most religion's a sham as far as I'm concerned but I've seen a few priests do things I couldn't explain. Go on, Conall.'

'Let me show you.'

The old boy was clearly dying to do his festival trick. 'Go ahead.'

He placed a candle in the centre of the table and recited a complex mouthful of gibberish. I frowned as the candle-wick began to smoulder.

'Talmia megrala eldrin fres.' He repeated himself and the flame jumped into life. I stared as it died.

'But what's to say Conall's not really mageborn and just hasn't realised it before?' I looked up at Shiv.

'You can't hide magebirth; it usually comes out in childhood.'

'You find yourself setting fire to your bedclothes or making the well overflow,' said Darni, his lack of emotion remarkable in the circumstances.

Shiv nodded. 'It'll come out somehow, even when people do their best to suppress it. Some talents appear later but the oldest age of emergence on record was still only seventeen. Conall's more than fifty. Anyway, I could tell if this was elemental. I'd feel it.'

I stared at the thin trail of smoke winding up from the candle. Something was tugging at the back of my memory.

'Do it again.'

Conall obliged and I found my lips moving along with him.

'What is it?' Geris was watching me intently.

'The rhythm,' I said slowly. 'Can't you hear it?'

I picked up a quill and tapped it out. 'One two-three, one two-three, one-two, one.'

'What are you getting at?'

I repeated the nonsense words, stressing the metre, wondering why no one else was getting it. I've always had a good ear for rhythm, having the harp in my lucky runes. The quill I was holding burst into flames.

'Shit!' I dropped it and we all gaped stupidly for a moment as it burned a scar into Harna's polished table.

'Shit!' Shiv quenched it with a brief green flash and we all began to cough on the acrid smoke of burned feather until Darni opened the window.

'All right, I'm convinced,' I said a little shakily.

'What was so important about the rhythm?' Geris was looking more than a little piqued.

'I'm not sure,' Conall said slowly, eyes narrowed in thought. 'We'd better look into it. What made you pick up on it?'

'My father was a bard,' I said reluctantly. 'I suppose I've got his ear. Anyway, a lot of the old elegies he used to sing me to sleep with had that kind of lilt.'

'Did they?' Conall was rummaging through his parchments to find a clean page and began making notes. 'What were they? Can you remember the titles?'

I shrugged. 'I've no idea. They were old Forest songs that he used to sing to me.'

Conall looked at me as if he were noticing my red hair and green eyes for the first time. 'You're Forest blood?'

'Half-blood. My father was a minstrel who came to Vanam, where he met my mother.'

'Where can we find him?' Conall poised his pen eagerly.

'Not in Vanam, that's for sure,' I said shortly. 'He stayed for a while, then went back on the road. He came back from time to time but less and less frequently. I haven't seen him since the Equinox I was nine.'

'What was his name?'

'What is this? Why do you want to know?' You learn to live without a father; this was not something I wanted to get into.

'We know so little, almost anything could be significant,' Shiv said calmly. 'We should follow this up. Forest Folk travel widely but their traditions are kept very close. They could have something the rest of us have lost over the generations.'

'If we knew your father's name, we could identify his kindred at very least.'

'Jihol,' I said curtly.

'Jihol?' Conall looked at me expectantly. 'And his epithet?'

'Sorry?'

'The descriptive part of his name. It's important if we're to find him.'

I stared at him and something stirred in the depths of my memory. 'Deer-shanks,' I said slowly. 'That's what my grandmother called him.'

Well, spat would be a more accurate description. I squashed the recollection of her contempt breaking into a rare family afternoon in the sun.

Conall was busily writing things down. Geris frowned and then smiled.

'That would make you…' He paused. 'If you're half-blood, that would make you Livak Doe-daughter.' He said this as if he was announcing my right to a Lescari throne.

'It makes me nothing of the kind,' I snapped, disliking the way this conversation was exposing my ignorance of what I suppose you could call my heritage. He looked hurt but I had no time to waste on his romantic notions.

'Let's get back to the game, Shiv. So you've found a different sort of magic, what's so important?'

'I don't know.' He spread his hands. 'It could be just a curiosity, or it could be potentially earth-shattering. We just don't know what we're dealing with and ignorance can kill.'

'What you mean is, you wizards don't like the idea of other people using magic, do you?' I sniffed. 'What's the problem? You still seem to know more about all this than anyone else.'

'But wizards can't do this sort of magic.'

'Geris!' Shiv and Darni spoke together in a rare moment of unity and Geris blushed.

'They can't?' That was an interesting throw of the bones. I looked enquiringly at Conall.

'Um, no. Even people with minimal elemental talent have proved absolutely unable to work the few things we've discovered.'

I laughed until I saw Darni's expression. They had found a new type of magic but his useless mage talents were still enough to bar him from it; what a kick in the stones. I suppose he had some excuse for acting like a dog with a sore arse at times.

'But other people can? Who can and who can't?' I was getting interested in this.

'We don't know. We can't find any common trait.' They all looked solemn and fell silent.

A question that had been nagging at the back of my mind popped its head up again.

'Does this have anything to do with why you couldn't get that ink-horn for yourselves?'

'Pardon?' Shiv was singularly unconvincing as he tried to look blank.

'You said you could get things by magic if you had seen them and knew where they were, Shiv. You and Geris had visited the old man, so why did you need me?'