Robert Redick - The Red wolf conspiracy

It was a thriving enterprise. The girls nearly always consented. Marriage to a wealthy stranger felt like charity once you believed you deserved nothing more than contempt.

The Mother Prohibitor was a lanky, quick-moving old woman; in her red rector's cloak she put one in mind of a scarlet ibis looking for dinner among the tanks of newly hatched fish. When Thasha opened the door of the glass house enclosing the tanks she looked up sharply, and gestured with a dripping hand-net.

"My eyes begin to fail me," she said, in her surprisingly deep voice. "Look at their tail spines, girl. Are they yellow?"

Thasha gathered her cloak and knelt by the tank. "Most are yellow-tailed, Your Grace. But there are some with green stripes. Very pretty fish, they'll be."

"We must catch them. Those green ones. All of them, right now."

She held out the net. Thasha noted the great emerald ring on the woman's pale hand. Girls gossiped about that ring: it bore the words DRANUL VED BRISTФLJET DORO-Where thou goest, I follow fast-in silver Old Arquali script about the priceless gem. Some girls thought the phrase a magic charm. Others held that it was the motto of a secret order, not the Lorg merely but some guild of crones scattered across the world and elbow-deep in the plots and schemes and stratagems that ruled it. Thasha felt the old woman watching her. She took the net from her hand.

The tank was shallow, and Thasha caught the dozen or so green-tailed hatchlings in a matter of minutes, dropping them one by one into a bucket next to the Mother Prohibitor.

"They will not be pretty fish, Thasha Isiq," said the old woman when she was done. "They will not be any sort of fish much longer. The Accateo now specializes in bili catfish, these yellow-tails. A more succulent meat, they have. They fetch an excellent price, and the Slugdra ghost-doctors will also pay for their intestines, which they use in love potions. There, Sister Catarh has brought your street clothes."

Thasha looked up quickly at the Sister in the doorway, who set down a bundle tied with string, bowed and withdrew.

"I will thank you not to grin like an imbecile," said the Mother Prohibitor. "Get up! So you're leaving. Did you meditate this morning on your tragically altered fortunes?"

"I did, Your Grace."

"You're lying, naturally," said the old woman, her tone matter-of-fact as she churned the water of the tank with her cane. Thasha bit her tongue. Legend held that the Mother Prohibitor felt a needle in her side whenever a girl lied in her presence. Thasha hoped for a few more opportunities.

"Failure," the Mother Prohibitor was saying, "is not an accident. Not a thug who grabs you in an alley. It is a liaison in a darkened house. It is a choice."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Be still. The bane of that choice will pursue you. Though you flee to the ends of the earth, it will dog your heels."

Really, thought Thasha. We live just nine blocks away.

The Mother Prohibitor took a letter from her robe and studied it, as one might a fruit gone suddenly and swiftly rotten. "Failure withers the lives of those who choose it. That is why it has no place in our curriculum. Only two girls this century have left in disgrace. I praise your good father"-she raised the letter-"that he has kept you from becoming the third."

"He sent for me!" The words burst out of Thasha before she could stop herself.

"While you wear that robe you are a Lorg Daughter, and will obey me," said the Mother Prohibitor. "Yes, he sent for you. Do you know why?"

"Perhaps he misses me, Your Grace. I know he does."

The old woman just looked at her.

"Are you of the faith, child?" she asked. "Do you believe that there is a Tree in Heaven, the Milk Tree as we name it, and that this world of Alifros is but one of its fair fruits that in time must ripen and fall, or be picked by Rin's own hand?"

Thasha swallowed. "I don't know, Your Grace."

The old woman sighed. "The truth will find you, if you are half the young woman you seem. Go now with our blessing, and know that the voices of your sisters old and young will be raised in song, that the Angel who guides all honest pilgrims will bring you safe to distant shores."

Stunned, Thasha lowered her eyes. She had expected curses, humiliation. In the school hymnal, the canticles for dropouts read like death sentences. To invoke the Angel of Rin…

"Do you see that box on the workbench? Bring it here. I have two gifts ere you depart."

Thasha fetched the box, about the size of a hatbox. At the old woman's command she untied the string and lifted the lid. Inside was a buckled leather pouch, and within the pouch, a book. Thasha turned it in her hands. The book was old and very thick: four inches thick, but not heavy in the least. Its smooth black leather bore no words at all.

Thasha was struck first by the paper, which was so thin she could see her hand through a page if she lifted it alone, but sharp and white when laid against the rest.

"Dragonfly-wing leaf," said the old woman. "The thinnest paper in the world." Taking the book from Thasha, she opened it to the first page and held it up:

The Merchant's Polylex: 5,400 Pages of Wisdom

13th Edition

"You will remember the number thirteen," said the Mother Prohibitor. Then she ripped out the page. Greatly confused, Thasha watched her tear it into many pieces and drop them into the bucket with the dying catfish. "Have you seen a Polylex before?" the woman asked.

"Lots of them," said Thasha. "My father has-"

"The newest edition. Of course he does. Every sailing man of means owns a Polylex, if he owns any book at all. It is a traveler's companion-an encyclopedia, dictionary and history of the world, written and rewritten over centuries and published anew every twenty years. What are you thinking?"

Thasha blushed. "I'm sorry, Your Grace. My father says the Merchant's Polylex is full of rubbish and rot."

The Mother Prohibitor frowned, so that her eyebrows met like crossed knives. "This particular copy is rare. Some would call it priceless. Keep it near you-and read it now and again, girl. Decide for yourself what is rubbish, and what is gold. Now put it away, and show me that hand of yours."

Thasha knew which hand she meant. The old woman turned it palm-up and traced the old wound with her fingers. Thasha's mind was a-whirl. Why would the Mother Prohibitor make her such a gift when she had barely dodged disgrace? Why were they talking at all?

"Somewhere in the Polylex," said the Mother Prohibitor, "you will find a legend from the old kingdom of Nohirin about another girl with a wounded hand. She was called Erithusmй, and she was born without fear. She laughed at earthquakes, crawled under elephants' feet, ran into burning fields to admire the flames. But on her sixteenth birthday the king of Nohirin came with his warriors and took her away to the north of that land, a place of ice-sheathed mountains, and ordered her to enter a high cave and fetch out what she found there.

"The king knew well what she would find: a magical weapon called the Nilstone, one of the great horrors of history. None knew whence it came. Out of the gullet of a dragon, said some. Fallen from the moon or a wander-star, others claimed. But all agreed that it was evil. The king's own great-grandfather had hurled it into the cave, and for a century no one who ventured within had returned alive. But fearless as ever, Erithusmй went in, braving pits and ice-weirds and darkness, and at last she found the Nilstone.

"It lay surrounded by frozen corpses-all the men the king had sent before her, slain the instant their fingers touched the cursed device. But when the girl lifted it she felt only a tiny pinprick on her hand. And when she took it from the cave she was possessed of powers beyond any mage in Alifros. With a word she scattered the king's army; with a snap of her fingers she called up a gryphon to bear her away. For three years Erithusmй flew from land to land, working magic such as none had ever seen. Here she quelled a plague; there she made springs flow where sandstorms had raged the day before.