Mercedes Lackey: Lamma's Night (anthology)

I have sought for an answer, and found none, but in heaven nor hell nor all the lore that wizard-land knows. No gods have made their will manifest to me, not even at this final hour, as my hands go through motions that I have rehearsed so often that I could perform them sleeping or near-dead.

I stand within my circles now; my preparations all are made. I can see him, a shadow among the shadows, standing just outside the boundaries I have made. I can almost make out his face. I cannot tell what expression he wears. The hour of midnight is drawing closer, and I have begun my chants. In a few more minutes, I will speak that single word—

And I cannot at this moment answer if it will be "come" or "go."

Doranna Durgin

"Kenlan died a year ago," the woman told Dyanara. "And things've gone from bad to worse."

Dyanara looked into the stone-lined well; a sulfurous odor wafted up to sting her nose. She stepped back from the wooden housing of the well, her booted feet sinking into ground softened by spilled water. The local wizard should have taken care of this long ago, along with some of the unhealthy crops she'd seen as she walked into the community of Churtna.

That is, if he hadn't been killed, and somehow gone unreplaced.

The woman—her name was Parrie—squeezed one hand with the other, quietly anxious. "We'll pay you the best we can. I...I just don't know how much longer we can drink this water. The new well Tavis dug out back gave us just the same, only less of it." Her light brown hair was graying, her face browned and wrinkled by the sun, and her expression tight.

And no wonder. The house garden was stunted and browning, in this late spring when it should have been growing its fastest. The cow was ribby, the chickens had pecked at each other until fully half of them were bald, and the hayfield boasted sparse and stingy grass that would never be ready for first harvest. The entire homestead looked blighted, down to the thatched little cottage that served as home for this family.

The oldest was a youth almost ready to be out on his own; there were a handful of boys and girls in between, and then the youngest, a girl who looked to be ten or eleven and brightly interested in the arrival of a wizard. A woman wizard, with well-worn trews just this side of patching, and a loose, long tunic with the symbols of her House of Magic embroidered on cuffs and around the neckline. At thirty-four, Dyanara was hitting the strength of her powers, and the strength of her body had not yet started to wane; she was, if neither willowy and graceful nor plump and well-endowed, at least hardened by her travels into something of clean lines and self-assured movement. She looked down at the girl. Dyanara wondered if she, too, would have had such a family, had she chosen other than a wanderer's path.

"I will cleanse the well," Dyanara said, "but I do not work for nothing." Parrie's already tight lips thinned even further; she wrapped her arms around herself and waited for the bad news. They were strong arms, showing signs of hard work—a bruise here, a scratch there, an old thin scar that went from wrist to elbow. "If your wizard died last year," Dyanara added, "there will be others in need here. I must have someone to guide me to them." She looked at the girl "My fee will be the services of your youngest."

"Jacoba? You want..." Parrie trailed off, dropped her hand to the child's shoulder. Jacoba's hopeful face looked up at her with please shining through.

"Do you agree?" Dyanara asked, putting a little starch into her voice.

"Why, yes," the woman said, sounding a little bewildered. "Of course you may have Jacoba as guide while you bide here." Relief slowly relaxed her features.

Dyanara nodded briskly, and turned to Stumble, her pack donkey and travel companion. Purification of foul water... she'd have to try to follow the water to the source and take care of the problem there, or she'd be back here again before summer was over.

Stumble's pack yielded a few fragrant herbs and a crystal Dyanara used to trigger the state of deep concentration she'd need. She gave the herbs to one of the middle children, a daughter who'd been watching from behind Stumble. 'Tea," she said sternly. "Hold it for me."

Dyanara pulled a bucket of water and carefully soaked the well rope with it; she tossed the bucket back down into the well. Parrie and the girls watched, saying nothing.

Then Dyanara turned away from them, turned away from the noises of the little homestead, the call of one child to another, the mutterings of the chickens. Kneeling at the wooden well cover, grasping the sodden rope with one hand and the quartz in the other, she turned inward. Bonding with the water in the rope, she followed it to the pool of water that held the bucket. With the acrid tang of sulphur permeating her senses, she traced the water back as it seeped between rock layers, now a slow trickle, now a sudden free rush through open space. The smell/touch/taste of sulphur thickened, coating the inside of her mouth, stinging her eyes. There. A space that had been open, a little arch of rock above the water—now crumbled and fallen, a cave-in of nearly pure sulphur.

Dyanara held steady in the flow of the water, considering the choking rock. Then she turned to a new chant, and neatly, with no more energy than the task required, she moved the rock aside and anchored it in place, shielding it. Gently, she let herself be swept back in the current of the water, sending out tendrils of clarifying energy that expanded and grew until they and Dyanara arrived back in the well, in clean, sweet water.

She took a direct hop back to her body and opened her eyes to see the pink flare of light fading in her crystal. Setting it atop the well housing, she stood, brusquely brushing off knees grown damp from kneeling in front of the well. "There," she said. "That should do it." She wished she could as easily fix all the homestead's ills, but Parrie was delighted.

"Look, Jacoba, Sissy—we've got water !" She bent over the well and inhaled deeply. "It even smells good!"

"Draw some of it," Dyanara said. "We'll use it for that tea." The last of her tea, but a fair trade for the company, after the lonely days of the road. Parrie gladly bent to follow Dyanara's suggestion, her whole body shouting of her elation.

Dyanara looked past the well and into the stunted fields beyond. Something else needed fixing here. She felt its touch—and felt it flicker out of reach, beyond her ability to follow, or even to name, leaving only a lingering taste of decay in her mind.

Dyanara stood in the middle of the cart path with Jacoba beside her and Stumble browsing the roadside behind her. Before her was a man who was taking her entirely too much for granted, somehow assuming she'd leap at the chance to give up the patterns of her wandering life.

"You don't even know me," Dyanara said pointedly. She, Stumble and Jacoba were on their way to one of Jacoba's neighbors. She wasn't overly pleased to meet someone who wanted to sidetrack her. "Or I, you." He said his name was Balbas. He said he was Churtna's mayor. And he said he wanted her to stay.

"The wizard Kenlan..." said Balbas, and hesitated, apparently realizing he'd taken the wrong approach with his confidence. He was tall and brawny and in his strength, with furred arms and ginger chest hair poking out the top of his shirt. But signs of long-term strain grouped in frown lines between his brows, and Dyanara wondered if his forwardness merely spoke of how much he had to lose.

"Kenlan is dead," she said, and her tone gentled somewhat. "This, I know. What I don't know is how, or why." She flipped her long braid, brown with glints of sun-bronzed highlights, off her shoulder and down her back, and made a conscious effort to remove the stern traces from a face that took them on all too easily. Long straight nose, lean cheeks, a long jaw saved from plainness by the fine curve of her chin... all she had to do was lower her brow a touch and her expression went straight to imposing. Sometimes that was hard to remember.