Элейн Каннингем - The Wizardwar

He moved closer. "Vishna never told me your name," he said softly.

A puzzled expression crossed her face, bringing another stab of guilt and pain to the young jordain's heart. His birth mother had lost so much of herself that she could no longer remember her own name!

Another possibility occurred to him. Perhaps his mother did not know her name because he did not know it. Tentatively he reached out to the small woman. His hand lowered to her shoulder and went through. She was no more substantial than the mist.

Matteo whirled toward the peasant. Benn was gone. Indeed, he had never truly been there.

The jordain took a long, unsteady breath and considered his situation. These disturbing encounters were illusions somehow plucked from his own mind. Apparently the Unseelie folk had no trouble bypassing his jordaini resistance!

On a logical level, Matteo knew he bore no guilt for his mother's decision or for the children lost to the young peasant and his wife. These were choices made by others. Vishna had often warned him not to take responsibility where there was none, telling him that it was a form of pride.

Pride, Matteo suspected, could be his downfall here.

He held out his hands, fisted them, and turned them this way and that. His own form seemed nearly as wraithlike as that of his unfortunate mother. A moment of panic gripped him. If he could not count on his strength and his warrior skills, all was lost!

Pride again, he realized. As a jordain, he had dedicated his life to developing the strength of mind and body, but here, logic had little footing. And strength? Matteo lifted a hand to his jaw. It ached from the blow Benn's image had dealt him. Here illusion ruled. The calm, pragmatic certainty of a jordain was as out of place here as the white robes of Mystra on a tavern doxie.

Soft, mocking laughter sang softly through the mists, coming at him from all sides. Matteo snatched out his daggers and whirled this way and that, watching for the attack. No dark fairies came, and as he considered the sound, he realized that the voices sounded more mortal than fey, that they were all the same voice. The laughter was a young man's, deep in pitch and derisive in tone.

With a sudden jolt, Matteo recognized the sound of his own voice. His disembodied thoughts had taken wing and were mocking him.

"Calm certainty," he said, repeating in disgust the description of himself. This was as much an illusion as anything he had encountered! For nearly a year, since the day Kiva had entered his life and shattered his assumptions, he had been wracked with doubts about the jordaini order. He was no fit jordain, no matter what comforting lies he told himself.

A sudden bright truth came to him-a moment of epiphany that turned a year of turmoil on its head. Perhaps certainty was not the reward of faith, but the opposite of it! Perhaps faith meant keeping on, despite doubts. He had done that, and he would continue to do so. His doubts did not invalidate his life's task; paradoxically, they confirmed it

The laughter died away. Matteo permitted himself a smile at this small triumph, then marshaled his thoughts and focused on his lost friend. If the mind was so powerful in this place, perhaps he could conjure Tzigone by force of will.

He almost tripped over her small, huddled form. With a glad cry, he sank to the ground and gathered her into his arms.

The jordain was not prepared for the jolt of power that sizzled over him. Somehow, he managed to keep his hold on the girl. The strange magical surge enveloped them both, sending their hair crackling around their faces and scorching their garments. The tattered remnants of Tzigone's apprentice robe blackened and steamed, but she herself seemed unhurt. Matteo blessed the jordaini resistance that protected them both.

Tzigone's enormous brown eyes searched Matteo's face, registering but not quite accepting his presence. She looked dazed, and her smile was a faint ghost of her old insouciant grin.

"Mind if I smoke?" she said, batting away the curling wisps that rose from her singed clothes.

Perhaps it was surprise, perhaps the tension of their surroundings, but Tzigone's remark struck Matteo as wonderfully absurd. He laughed aloud from the sheer delight of having his friend back.

The wry half-smile dropped off Tzigone's face. "I knew it," she muttered, disconsolate. "You're an illusion. The real Matteo has less sense of humor than a slug."

"Somehow, I can't be offended," he said, still grinning.

"Tell me about it," she grumbled. "Goddess knows, I've tried!"

"It's me," he insisted as he framed her small face with both hands, "and I can prove it. Do you remember when we were chased by the wemic?"

A smirk tweaked her lips. "You thought wemics could climb trees, seeing that the bottom half of them is lion. Would you be frightfully disappointed, dearest illusion, to learn that griffin kittens can't purr?"

"Do you remember this?" he persisted. Before she could respond, he bent down and gently kissed her lips. Nothing of this nature had ever passed between them-surely she would have to know this was no memory-conjured illusion.

Tzigone's eyes widened, and a familiar, urchin grin spread across her face like a quirky sunrise. "It is you! It has to be! Who else could possibly believe a kiss like that would be worth remembering?"

She hurled herself into his arms, clinging to him with a fervor that belied her teasing words.

The Unseelie mists deepened around them, and the chill seemed to sink into Matteo's bones. With sudden certainly, he realized that the magic had indeed slipped inside him, trying to find something to twist and control and torment.

Suddenly he was intensely aware of the girl in his arms in a way he had never been before. The heat and the need were compelling, disturbing.

He searched his heart for the truth of this. There had been moments when he was intensely aware of Tzigone as female, and he had felt an occasional twinge of intrigued curiosity. But that was not the heart of their friendship.

This triumph was short-lived, for a sudden heaviness settled upon him-the obsessive weight of the debts that first shaped and defined their relationship. He glanced down and noted Tzigone regarding him with an equally troubled expression. On impulse, he decided to turn this latest test into a joke.

"You take your debts seriously," Matteo reminded her. "If I get you out of here, the price will be an entire year without any infraction of Halruaan law."

She wriggled out of his arms. "Before you talk about price, you need to see something."

Matteo followed her through the mist, keeping close on her heels for fear of losing her.

She stopped abruptly and turned to him. "Dhamari is gone. I think I know why." She stepped aside, giving Matteo a full view of the mist-veiled horror.

A Crinti woman sat propped against a steep-sided conical mound, her head lolling to one side. Her face was black with dried blood. Where her eyes had been were dark, empty holes.

"She tore them out with her fingernails," Tzigone said dully. "Whatever she saw here was more than she could face. Dhamari is gone, and she is here. It was a trade, Matteo. A trade. I won't take my life at the cost of yours."

"That's not how it will be," Matteo said sternly. "We are here together, and together we'll leave. We have to trust in that and in each other."

A silvery sword clattered to the ground between them, sending them both leaping back in surprise. Matteo recognized the sword as the weapon Tzigone had stolen from a swordsmith shop the day they'd met and later hidden behind his horse's saddle. Possession of a stolen sword had earned him a night in the city prison.

"Which one of us did that?" he wondered, pointed to the sword.

"Does it matter? The small betrayals add up," Tzigone said, her usually merry voice troubled. "How many times have I stolen your medallion?"