Laurell Hamilton - Nightseer

Keleios’ brown-gold hair lay in a loose braid down her back. Any mirror Keleios passed told her she was like a ghost of her mother. The only thing that saved her was her father’s elven blood, which thinned her face and let Keleios look like herself. She was dressed all in brown, except for the glimpse of snowy linen at the collar of her tunic. She wore trousers laced close to her legs with crisscrossing bandages. Boots came to her knees, hardened leather soles and soft hide. Keleios knew her mother, ever feminine, would have been horrified. But her mother had been dead for eighteen years. It was a long time to worry about someone’s opinion.

Keleios touched the small pile of dry bark shavings and twigs. Fire had been the first sorcery she had ever called; it was still the easiest. It flared like a falling star and landed in the wood. The flames leapt and crackled round the dry kindling. She placed two slightly larger sticks on top of the flame, and the fire slowed to work on the thicker wood.

The world had fallen into silence. Only the wind still blew through the roses.

Keleios poured water in a small empty pot. She had not been able to get the right kind of wood for this particular fire, so she planned to cheat. She placed a fire-protect spell on her hands. It glimmered briefly just behind her eyes, then she could not see it. It was a matter of trust that when she picked up the fire, it would not burn her. A matter of trust and confidence in her own sorcery.

She scooped up the fire in one hand. The blaze flared in the wind, sparking against the darkness. Keleios looked at the fire, concentrating on its wavering orange-red depths, studying its heat without fearing it. She concentrated, and it flared a tiny column of burning. Another thought and it burned to the low orange of embers. It flickered stronger, following her thoughts.

She nearly lost concentration, distracted by the fire’s dance in the shining surface of her arm guards. She drew her mind back to the work at hand. It was a bad sign, being distracted by light. It spoke of dream sickness. She was vision prophet as well as dream, so she was doubly at risk.

Keleios touched the flame briefly, curling it to her will. Her concentration was pure. She was ready for the levitation.

It was a different sort of spell from calling fire. Instead of calling something out of nowhere, one touched an object with nothing and made it move. There were no lines of power, no dim glows, to let one know that one was on the right track. The thing either moved or it didn’t.

The water-filled pot floated upward, then hovered above the flame. She waited. Even with magic fire it took time.

The water began to simmer. Keleios reached her free hand to the small earthenware bowl. She took tiny but equal amounts of anise seed and fragrant valerian root from it.

She placed them gently in the bubbling water.

Keleios checked the time by the clock tower and its striking of the quarter hour.

More waiting. Keleios had had potion to ward off nightmares, nearly a week’s supply, but she had run out last night. A potion that merely allowed a peaceful night for a frightened child blocked prophecy in a dream prophet.

Keleios was courting dream sickness and knew it. Too much fragrant valerian was poisonous, and she knew that, too. She had the beginnings of dream sickness already. She was easily distracted at odd moments and caught herself listening to voices that were not there. She was being foolish. Fear makes a person foolish from time to time.

An evil dream was waiting for her. She was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream, afraid not to dream. Keleios hated prophecy. From its first touch prophecy had never helped her. It was the most useless of magics.

Whatever waited for her was something awful. She had never felt such a crashing on her mind, not even when she dreamed of her mother’s death. This would be worse; she

wasn’t sure she could face it. It was a child’s fear and she cursed herself for it, but she could not bring herself to have the dream.

The tower clock struck. She set the pot on the white gravel pathway to cool. She flung the fire into the darkness, and it vanished in a cascade of sparks. She canceled the fire-protect spell. Conserve sorcery—it had been a rule drummed into her mind these last three years. Though sorcery was instant magic and powerful, it was easily depleted and left the spellcaster drained and magicless.

She thought of cold, the cool autumn cold that first blows near the door in November. Not too cold, or she would freeze the potion solid and ruin it. She wanted only to cool it.

Keleios secured cheesecloth over the pot with a string and strained the liquid into the cup. A little water from the fountain restored the volume lost in simmering.

Keleios held the cup in her hands. Another dreamless night lay in her hands. The moon rose free of the castle towers. It bathed the rose garden in silver and grey and blackest black. The towers were midnight silhouettes against the rising moon.

The tallest tower soared black and perfect, velvet in the moonlight: the tower of prophecy. It mocked her, tall and menacing, a challenge.

Keleios squeezed the wooden cup in her hands, and it cracked, spilling the potion down her hands and forearms. Her decision was made. She would go to the tower tonight, unguarded, with nothing but her skill to protect her. Anything was better than this cowardice.

Keleios rinsed the potion from her golden bracers. The water would not rust them. They were magic and never needed polishing. Stains ran from them like the water that sparkled down them now. They were a good piece of enchantment. She half-whispered, “I am a master enchanter and master dreamer, regardless of what council says.” Tonight the words seemed empty.

Three years ago she had been a master. Then she had discovered she was a sorcerer. At the age of twenty a totally new magic poured out of her hands. It was unprecedented, impossible, but true. And the Council of Seven, ruling body of Astrantha, had seen fit to strip her of master rank, until she mastered this new talent. They had sent her back to Zeln’s school. She was a journeyman again, and had been for three long years.

Was one little word so very important? Did she need to be called master to be one?

Keleios knelt and plunged her arms into the fountain’s bowl. She splashed water on her face and gasped from the sudden cold.

The small frog dived frantically with a wet plop.

Keleios blinked up at the moon. Water trailed down her neck into the linen undershirt.

She felt better, her mind cleared. These doubts were their own poison. To doubt one’s magic at all was a very dangerous thing.

She wiped the water from her eyes and smoothed some of it back into the loose braid of her hair. She dried her hand on her pants. It was one of the benefits of wearing the inexpensive hide. She began gathering up her spell components.

The second moon had risen small and dim, yellow beside the white mother moon. This time of year it would be the small hours of the morning before the red moon rose.

Three moons for three faces of the great Mother, or so some of the very ancient legends said. The All-Mother was Cia, the healer, all that was good; Ardath, she who balances the scale of heaven; and Ivel, destruction incarnate and hatred made real. Astrantha and its neighbor across the sea, Meltaan, were countries that believed in all faces of the Mother equally. They called it the law of balance. If you were registered as a follower of Ivel, or one of her dark children, you could literally get away with murder.

Keleios had come to understand the law of balance but never to agree with it. There were a handful of times when Keleios had sought blood price in secret, because some acts were not to be tolerated no matter what land you lived in.