that much, somehow.'
Marise nodded unhappily. 'We have to find someone who can bind your halves into one.' And the only way to do that, she realized, was to return to where she had been trained. Where both—all three of them—had been trained. The Library.
There was only one flaw in that plan, which Efeon pointed out reluctantly but firmly. The Library was easily a two-week journey. Two weeks in good weather, barring unforeseen incidents. Two weeks when Marise would be away from the village.
'We swore an oath,' he reminded her. 'Or at least, half of me did. To protect the village. You can't do that if you're not here.'
Marise refused to hear it. 'They survived after Aginard died, before I came. They can do it again. There are villages that have nothing more than herbalry to ward off bandits, and they've done fine. But if you were to go to the Library alone—Efeon,
For the first time since that first dawn when he had carried her to bed, Efeon touched her, bending to his knees to look into her tear-filled eyes. He must have seen stubbornness there, because he simply sighed and sat back on his heels.
'You would return to the village the moment the Librarians were convinced?' He saw the mutiny in her expression, and his narrow lips finned even more. 'By the ether, Marise, you would turn a stone to water with your stubbornness!' He shook her, not gently. 'You will heed me, damn it, or I will tie you to a post like a dog in need of whipping!'
She gasped, her brown eyes widening, and Efeon dropped her shoulders as though the flesh had burned him. Whirling away, he paced the length of the cottage, fingers running through his red-brown hair, leaving it standing on end.
'You can't go on like this,' she said, forcing her breathing back under control. 'You're dangerous. To yourself, to me.' She used her sharpest weapon. 'To the village.'
Efeon stopped in his tracks, and Marise knew that her guess had been valid. The two halves making up the whole of Efeon had fought, had killed each other, over the village.
Perhaps the stranger had been a wandering wizard as she herself had been, finding this place to his liking. Perhaps he had been looking to use the village for evil means, or simply wanted to settle down in a bed already made comfortable by Aginard. It was impossible to know, with Efeon still blocking so many memories. But the village was the prize, and while those halves still fought, there was the potential for one or the other winning control. If it were Aginard, the village would have two wizards. An uncomfortable situation at best, but one they could possibly work around. But if it were the stranger—Marise shivered. She would have no choice but to complete the work begun by Aginard. She would have to destroy the person living within the shell of her beloved Efeon.
He moved to her side, his long-fingered hands playing in her hair. 'What if I become violent?' he asked, echoing her thoughts. He bent to look at her, his brown-green eyes shadowed with pain. 'Alone, on the road... Marise, what if I hurt you?'
'We have no other choice. You can't stay here, and you'll need me with you to face the Librarians.' She put her arms around his neck, drawing his head to her chest as one would comfort a child. 'You won't hurt me, my river fox. You're my magic wish, my good-luck charm, and you could never bring me ill.' He sighed, and she felt one warm tear drop onto her bare arm.
The morning crept into the cottage through the open door, the sunlight stretching across the plank floor to touch Marise gently against her eyelids. She jerked upright, shocked out of her slumber.
'Efeon, we're late.'
There was only silence in the cottage.
Marise threw the light cover off and hurried to where Efeon slept, already knowing what she would find. The bedframe was bare, his blanket carefully folded. The worn leather pack she had given him the night before was nowhere to be seen. He was gone, gone without her, and Marise knew with a painful certainty that she would not catch up with him.
She might have birthed him, taken him from the ether and given him form and a name, but in the end he had made the decision of how he would live, and what he would live with. Could she blame him? Marise felt her lips twist in a wry smile. Of course she could. She could blame him for being a stubborn male, for wanting to protect her, for clinging to vows that only half of him had made—for being the man with whom she had fallen in love.
Retracing her steps, she stood over the worktable. Her hand shaking, she opened a small wooden box and withdrew three long strands of red-brown hair.
'My wish, river fox. That someday you find your way to wholeness. That one day you will find the road home again.'
A Wanderer of Wizard-Kind
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Pigs could eat almost anything, but Sula wasn't sure about feeding her pig dragon bones. The time she had fed a nestling gryphon to her then-pig, Kara, the pig had given birth to kits instead of piglets, and had grown wings and learned to fly. Sula had brought the pig down out of the flower-nut tree with an arrow fletched with pegasi feathers, but oh, its meat had tasted strange, like storm sky, and not proper pig at all.
Sula had found the bones that morning while foraging farther afield than usual, in among fringes of the forest. Her now-pig, Kiki, was in the last month of pregnancy before farrowing, and needed bone meal. Sula brought the bones home before she noticed the red fire flecks in them that meant they were dragon bones.
If her Kiki should grow scales or a black heart from eating dragon bones, or farrow lizards, that was a loss Sula could ill afford so late in a gnawing cold winter. She had better burn the bones instead.
So it chanced that Sula was out in the weather, tending a blood-red fire of dragon bones and shifting away from the magic-tainted smoke on a morning when frost ferned the iron-hard ground and the chill wind froze the
