Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar

Revyn nodded and drank obediently, then slipped back down under the quilts. The dream of Chylla was still so strong, so clear in his mind and his heart.

Eser smiled again and nodded to himself. The lad would heal soon, and then they could talk again about his resistance to the training. He stood and slowly headed towards the door. A weak voice stopped him.

'Eser? How long before I can resume my training in the House of Healing?'

The Healer tried unsuccessfully to hide the happiness in his voice as he turned to the bed again. 'You won't be able to visit the sickrooms for at least another week, until your strength is back. We can still give you some lessons here in your room, though. Would you like your lute? You can begin to practice again in a few days.'

'No, I don't think so,' Revyn said drowsily. 'Chylla told me I was better off playing a different kind of music.'

The School Up the Hill

by Elisabeth Waters

Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper's Price, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She has sold short stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award, and was published by DAW in 1994. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Authors Guild. She has also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, where she has appeared in La Gio-conda, Manon Lescaut, Madame Butterfly, Khovanschina, Das Rheingold, Werther, and Idomeneo.

The voices were particularly loud today. All day the instructions, unspoken and impersonal, were dinned into her brain. 'This is how to make it rain . . . now you do it.' She spent the entire day resisting, trying to block them out.

These voices weren't so bad, though; at least they weren't men wanting her to do things she had no desire to do—men who saw her as a thing, not a person with feelings.

Then twilight came. She had always hated twilight, when her mother's customers started arriving. She had never liked her mother's customers and had resolved at a young age that she was going to find some way to live without selling her body. And that was before she started hearing what they were thinking.

Some of the customers wanted her in addition to her

mother—or instead of her mother. And when her mother started thinking that it was time she began earning her keep, she ran away, as far and as fast as possible, until she found a place where she felt safe.

But still twilight made her uneasy, and her resistance to the commands weakened. . . .

Myrta lay back in the tub in her room and relaxed. Maybe it was a bit self-indulgent, but she really enjoyed a bath in the early evening, before she had to busy herself with the rush of customers the inn got every evening, particularly in the bar. The town of Bolthaven had been built around the winter quarters of a mercenary troop. When the Skybolts moved out, their garrison had been taken over by a mage-school, the largest White Winds school in Rethwellan. Now instead of drunken mercenaries, the bar got student mages.

Sometimes this created problems: a mercenary could be asked to leave most of his weapons back at the barracks, but a mage's abilities were always with him. And if the mage was young enough for practical jokes and/ or foolish enough to get too drunk. . . . Well, the school had a policy for that; they'd send down a teacher to stop whatever was going on, and the school would pay for any damage done.

Myrta heard running footsteps in the hall and a quick tap on her door. One of the barmaids dashed into the room before Myrta had time to say 'enter.'

'Excuse me, Mistress, but it's raining in the kitchen!'

Myrta surged out of the tub, splashing a fair amount of water around the room as she half-dried herself, threw on the nearest garment, and ran for the kitchen.

It was indeed raining in the kitchen. A thin layer of cloud had formed just below the ceiling, and rain dripped steadily from it. Fortunately, the brick floor in the kitchen sloped slightly to a drain in the center, so that water was running out as fast as it fell; and the stew for tonight's dinner was cooking in the fireplace, so the rain wasn't falling into it. But the floor was getting rather wet and slippery, and the biscuits the cook had been

rolling on the center table were a total loss. The table's surface was being rapidly covered with flour-and- water paste, and the cook was cursing steadily. Serena had been a Skybolt until an injury left her with a permanent limp. Myrta counted herself very fortunate to have Serena in the kitchen; she was a wonderful cook, and she wasn't frightened by the occasional magical mishap. Frequently angry, but never frightened. The new scullery maid, on the other hand, was cowering in the corner by the fireplace. She looked wet, miserable, and terrified.

Poor girl, thought Myrta, she's not used to the hazards of Bolthaven yet, and she can't be more than thirteen years old—if that. 'Serena, I think both you and Leesa had best go get into dry clothes. I'll send up to the school and have them deal with this.'

Serena stalked out, still grumbling. Leesa scuttled after her, hugging the wall, trying to stay as far as possible from everyone else. Myrta closed the door behind them, sent the barmaid back to her regular duties, and went out to the stables.

'Ruven!'

'Yes, Mistress?' The stable boy, a stocky lad of seventeen, appeared from one of the stalls.

'I need you to run up to the school. Present my compliments to Master Quenten, and tell him it's raining in our kitchen.'

'Raining in the kitchen, right.' Ruven wasn't terribly bright about anything but horses and mules, and thus he tended to accept everything, however outrageous, as normal.

He dashed off, and Myrta returned to the bar to wait for help to arrive.

Elrodie, one of the teachers at the school, was there within half an hour. In addition to being an earth-witch, she was also an herbalist. 'Master Quenten wasn't certain how much salvage would be required for tonight's dinner,' she explained, greeting Myrta. 'Let's go see the damage.'

The two women stood in the doorway. It was still

raining, but the fire under the stew still burned, and the stew did not seem to Myrta to have scorched.

'I think the stew will be all right,' Elrodie said, confirming Myrta's opinion, 'assuming I can get the rain stopped quickly.' She sighed. 'That shouldn't be too difficult; the apprentices have been practicing weather magic all week. By now I think I could stop rain in my sleep.'

'Thank you, Elrodie,' Myrta said. 'I'll leave you to work in peace, then. I'll be in the bar when you're ready for me.'

Elrodie nodded absently, already rooting in her belt-pouch for supplies.

The rain was stopped in short order, the kitchen cleaned up, and Serena even managed to finish a new batch of biscuits in time for dinner. Myrta went to bed in the early hours of the next morning believing that life was back to normal.

This belief lasted until the next evening, when she was interrupted just as she was about to get into the tub.

'Mistress?'

'What is it, Rose? It's not raining in the kitchen again, is it?'

'No, Mistress.' The barmaid took a deep breath and said nervously, 'This time it's fog.'

Myrta put her gown back on and went down to the kitchen. Everything was normal in the other rooms, but at the kitchen doorway the air turned misty gray. The visibility in the kitchen was less than an arm's length, as Myrta discovered when she stuck her arm into the fog and her hand vanished. Cursing from the center of the room informed her that Serena was still managing, after a fashion. 'I'll send for help,' she informed the cook.