Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar

Elrodie arrived and surveyed the scene with a teacher's eye. 'Yes, this is today's apprentice lesson, all right. And someone has done a very nice job of it.'

'But why is it in my kitchen?' Myrta asked.

Elrodie sighed. 'Either it's a practical joke, or we've got an apprentice whose control needs more work. I'll

clear this up for you, and then I'll have Master Quenten put a shield around your building for a few days so that no external magic can get in here. That should give us time to sort through the new apprentices and find out who's doing this. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience, Mistress Myrta.'

Myrta shrugged. 'These things happen, and it could be a lot worse. Just fix it, so that the cook can see what she's doing. A shield around this place should certainly take care of the problem.'

She broke out of his grip and ran, terrified, into the first hiding place she could find. What he wanted was only too clear—he wanted her to do what her mother had done, but he wasn't even planning to pay her. She remembered what her mother had said to her when she was a little girl, the one time she had spoken of wanting to do something else when she grew up. 'What else are you good for?' her mother had asked. Mother had been so angry that she had never mentioned the subject again, but she had resolved that she would rather die than be a harlot.

But maybe she was one; maybe if your mother was, you didn't have any choice, no matter how hard you tried. After all, why else would he treat her like that? It must be her fault somehow.

The air around her was turning colder and darker. Now snow was starting to fall. She huddled against the wall, her face pressed into her knees, and just let the snow cover her as the tears froze on her face.

Myrta walked into the bar to find Ruven complaining to Rose and Margaret.

'... I don't know what she made such a fuss about— I barely touched the girl. I wasn't going to hurt her.'

What girl! Myrta wondered. Please don't let it be anyone with protective or influential parents.

'Ruven,' Rose said patiently, 'you scared her. And you were going to hurt her.'

'What do you mean?' Ruven asked. 'I never hurt you two.'

Margaret sighed. 'Rose is eighteen and I'm nineteen. Leesa is twelve, much smaller than you, and a virgin. You were going to hurt her if you continued with what you were doing.'

Myrta's relief that this problem was confined to her own household was cut short by a stream of curses coming from the kitchen.

She hurried there at once. The kitchen looked normal enough, but when she joined Serena at the entrance to the pantry, she saw a great cloud of white before her eyes. For an instant she thought that someone had dropped a bag of flour, but then she realized that all the white stuff was coming straight down from the ceiling and it was cold.

'Ruven!' she called. 'Go tell Master Quenten that it is snowing in my pantry, and I would greatly appreciate it if he would give the matter his personal attention, since this appears to have come through his shields!'

Ruven ran out immediately, but it took a while for Master Quenten, who was not a young man, to come down the hill. By the time he arrived, everything in the pantry was covered with six inches of snow.

'I apologize for the delay, Mistress Myrta,' he said mildly. 'I stopped to check my shields on the way here, and they are intact. It's beginning to look as though whatever is causing this is here, not at my school.'

'Here?' Myrta said incredulously. 'Do you think I hire mages to wait on my customers?'

'Not knowingly, I'm sure,' Master Quenten replied. 'But tell me, who was in the building when this started?'

'I was,' Myrta said, 'along with the two barmaids, the cook and the scullery maid—and I believe that Ruven was indoors at the time as well.'

Ruven looked as if he would rather not have been anywhere near the house. 'I didn't do anything to her, honest!'

'To whom?' Master Quenten inquired, raising his eyebrows.

Ruven stared at him dumbly, and Rose answered for him. 'The scullery maid. It seems that Ruven fancies her, but she doesn't fancy him.'

'Indeed?' Master Quenten turned his attention to Rose. 'How old is this girl, and how long has she been here?'

'She's twelve,' Rose said, 'and she's been here about three weeks.'

Master Quenten looked around the kitchen. 'And where is she now?'

Margaret looked worried. 'I thought she was in here. She ran out of the bar crying when I came in and Ruven let her go.'

Myrta silently resolved to pay a lot more attention to Ruven's activities in the future.

Serena frowned, trying to remember. 'She ran in here crying, and ... I think she went into the pantry.'

Master Quenten hurried into the pantry. The snow stopped falling as soon as he crossed the threshold, and the clouds just below the ceiling thinned and vanished. The snow on the floor melted away from his feet as he walked the length of the room and reached down to grasp what appeared to be a sack of grain covered in snow— until he pulled the girl to her feet and began gently brushing snow off her hair and shoulders. 'I think we've found our mage,' he said calmly.

Leesa looked even more incredulous than Myrta had at the suggestion. 'That's silly,' she said. 'There aren't any mages—except in old ballads. My mother said so.'

'Indeed?' Quenten asked. 'Where are you from, child?'

Leesa looked at the floor. 'Haven,' she said softly.

'Valdemar,' Master Quenten said. 'That explains a lot. Until recently there were no mages in Valdemar; it was certainly the most uncomfortable place for a mage to be.' He shuddered at the memory. 'I was there once, briefly, and as soon as I crossed the border it was as if

there was something watching me all the time. I got out as soon as I could.'

He looked Leesa over carefully. 'So if you were born in Valdemar with a Mage-Gift, which you were—believe me, anyone with Mage-Sight can see it—you would never know you had it as long as you stayed there. But when you came to Rethwellan, whatever it is that inhibits magic in Valdemar would stop affecting you.'

'If it's so obvious that I'm a mage,' Leesa said disbe-lievingly, 'then why didn't that teacher who came here the last two days notice it?'

'That is a good question,' Master Quenten said approvingly. 'Elrodie has no Mage-Sight, so she would not have noticed—and I imagine you kept out of her way as much as possible, didn't you?'

'Yes,' Leesa admitted. 'Being around mages makes me feel funny—they're so noisy, yelling about how to make it rain, or how to make fog, until I feel like my head is going to burst.'

'You heard the instructions on how to make rain two days ago and how to make fog yesterday, right?'

Leesa nodded. 'I don't like hearing voices all the time. It was nice when they stopped.'

'So you didn't hear anything today?'

Leesa shook her head. 'No. Not until Ruven came in and grabbed me. Then I could hear him really loud.' She shuddered. 'At least my mother's customers paid her to do stuff like that!'

Master Quenten turned a measuring eye on Ruven. Myrta glared at the boy. 'Can't you tell when a girl is not interested?' she asked. 'Or don't you care?'

'He doesn't care!' Leesa said, suddenly furious. 'I told him to stop and I tried to get away from him, but if Margaret hadn't come in then . . .'

'You probably would have killed him,' Master Quenten finished calmly, 'and quite possibly leveled the entire building while you were at it.'

Leesa looked at him uncomprehendingly. 'I'm not a harlot,' she said. 'I'd rather die than be one.'

'Well, that explains the snow,' Master Quenten said.

'What do you mean?' Myrta demanded.

'She turned her perfectly justifiable anger at what was being done to her inward instead of outward. Part of her wanted to die, and part of her put the weather lessons of the last two days together. Precipitation and a low