Mercedes Lackey: Lamma's Night (anthology)

"Does he?" Dyanara said, saving her place in the book with a finger. "Not to me, he doesn't."

"He's afraid of you," the girl said simply.

Dyanara hid her smile and instead raised an eyebrow.

"He is . Ever since the cat liked you. And the house, too." She hesitated, then added, "Lammas Night is tomorrow. It'd be a hurtin' bad sign if Sennalee had to start the celebration with silk rot."

Lammas, the month of ripening. Lammas Night, the dedication to renewal of life and earth. No, Sennalee would not be happy to start the celebration of harvest and life with her corn sickening. "Then we'll have to make sure Sennalee's corn is all right before then," Dyanara said. "But this morning, I'm working on something else."

Jacoba gave her an uncertain look, unused to such delay. "Go," Dyanara said gently. "I'll take care of the corn."

She bent her head back to the book. Another moment's pause, and she heard the careless slap of Jacoba's feet as the girl ran down the path. Sennalee's corn , she told herself, and went back to her reading.

Though the rest of the cottage might have fallen to ruin around them, the books rested untouched on sturdy shelves against the back wall. Spelled against damage from fire, damp, and creature, the books almost hummed to themselves as they waited to be read. Kenlan's neat, tiny script filled the book margins, detailing his thoughts about the theories and spells within.

Dyanara chose volumes at random, skimming, hoping to trip or stumble over something that didn't seem quite right. Something that he shouldn't have been tooling with—and something that might tie into the community's miserable growing season. Something dated from last summer....

In early afternoon, she paused for tea and corn-bread, and to return her first stack of books to the shelves in exchange for her second. In the middle of a deep yawn and well-deserved stretch, she smelled a hint of a newly familiar fragrance. A spring fragrance, bringing immediately to mind a belled, scarlet-fringed blossom, and coming to her on an intimate breeze.

Dyanara dropped out of her stretch, her gaze darting around the cottage. Nothing. She gave the bookshelves a critical eye, and then she saw it. Another blossomed token, sitting atop the spine of one of the thickest books, waiting for her. Dyanara hesitated, and scooped it up with a gentle hand.

The flower turned to mist and fading scarlet; the scent lingered. She looked at her hand, looked at the book again. "I can take a hint," she said aloud, and pulled the book from the shelf.

" Mrrp " said the little gray cat, winding between her legs. Dyanara stepped over it and put the book on the table, opening it to thick pages. The calligraphy was ornate but exacting and easy to read, and when she came to the spell for banishment, she recognized it immediately. No wonder Kenlan was getting pushy; it was a spell for Lammas Night—for releasing souls to the heavens. Souls like Kenlan's, as benign as it seemed to be, that haunted this cottage.

But meddling in souls was no wizard's business.

She stared at the page, thinking about that school-bred injunction. A breeze brushed against her, a suspiciously convenient breeze, and it flipped the thick page over. The next spell was identical to the first but for a single word, which immediately caught Dyanara's eye. Meant for the mage-born, this spell would not free Kenlan's soul, but would instead bind him to the earth again. Give him flesh, and bring him back to Churtna. To... Dyanara, She thought again of her dream, and the look in his eyes as he'd touched her arm. Please , the breeze whispered, playing with the loose tendrils of her braided hair.

Dyanara's hand was shaking as she abruptly closed the book on both forbidden spells. "Meddling in souls is no wizard's business!" she said, out loud this time, and loudly as well.

But could she leave him stranded, forever tied to this cottage and the little gray cat who loved him? Had he done anything to deserve that, which she would not have wished on her most evil foe? And... she was a practitioner, quick and efficient. He was the scholar, the seeker. Alive, could he help her heal this place?

She couldn't know. The real question was, did she dare to find out? Dyanara looked from her shaking hand to the thick book of spells. No. She didn't have time for this. Tomorrow was Lammas Night, and Sennalee's corn was ailing. Dyanara swept out of the cottage, snatching up her pack on the way. She didn't turn around to eye the piteously mewing cat, or respond to the beseeching breeze that slipped through the thick, still air of summer, renewing her goose-bumps. As she stalked away from the cottage, the breeze faded, leaving her with nothing but her thoughts.

And those thoughts, unfortunately, kept those goosebumps right where they were.

"Kenlan?" said Sennalee, while Dyanara prepared to deal with her corn. "He was always a little distracted, but he was a good man."

"Kenlan?" Balbas said, looking up from the wax tablet he was laboring over, surprised to see Dyanara in town. "Had his mind on something the last month or so he was alive. Seemed worried. But yes, I trusted him. He was a good man."

"Kenlan?" Jacoba's mother prodded a hen away from the side of her house and retrieved the egg the noisy bird had been sitting on. "Why, I liked him well enough, what I knew of him. He was always kind to Jacoba. He asked an awful lot of questions about the season's crops right before we lost him, now that I think about it." She sighed. 'The best any of us could figure—the way we found him inside that circle on the hill—he was fussing with magic that was too big for him. That was a sorrowful thing, his death. He was—"

"A good man," Dyanara finished for her. "Do you think... Jacoba could show me that hill?"

The bright moon disappeared behind another clump of fast-moving clouds, taking light from what had been a bright night; in another moment, it was back, flirting, washing the hillside with silver light— and then not.

The wind lifted Dyanara's loose hair and sent the ends dancing into tangles, pulling against the circlet at her brow. She had exchanged her trousers for a long, loose dress of gauzy linen, belted at her waist with woven hempweed. Spellcasting clothes, as dictated by her need to formalize any casting so serious as this one. The dress skirt snapped and belled with the wind, but the rustle of the material was lost in the sound of the trees—creaking as they bent, leaves flipping and hissing against one another, fluttering to the ground when they lost their grip on parent wood.

I should be with the village. They need their wizard on Lammas Night of all nights . But she wasn't. She was here, and she was still facing her decision. Send him on his way, or... Or trust him. Bring him back. Find out if his sweet touch on her arm felt as good in person. Find out if his sharp blue eyes looked at her the same way they had in her dream. If he could, at least, help her.

Dyanara closed her eyes tightly, and turned into the wind, letting it tug the hair away from her face, feeling it streaming back behind her. She'd spent too many lonely years on the road to be making this sort of decision—and to be making it wisely. Were the tokens, the gentleness—the look on his face—all a ruse?

She took a deep breath. She didn't have to decide now. She'd be in contact with him, she'd know him by it, before she finished the spell. She just had to be strong enough to make the right decision when the time came.

She'd made her circle of rocks, the only thing that wouldn't blow away in this fitful wind. The book of spells rested by her feet, but she wouldn't need it—she knew the spell by heart. Both versions. She raised her arms above her head, standing tall and straight, feeling the power gathering at her very intent, letting it wash up from the ground at her feet through her body to spill out to the heavens. Don't let me down, Kenlan , she thought, half prayer, half warning—and began. Chanting softly under her breath, the words a mere touch of her breath against her lips, she drew Kenlan's earthbound spirit to the circle.