Lamma's Night (anthology)

'What of your song?' Benzamin asked. 'And the kioko magus Aloren?'

Maakus glanced at the child, who stared back.

'The kioko magus Aloren? She learned that the spirit was one of evil, and died bravely in the process of destroying it.' He swallowed a bit, and cracked a shaky smile.

'Indeed,' Benzamin said.

'Long life, High Lord.'

'Long life, madrigal.'

Maakus never looked back.

Benzamin sighed as the door shut, turning to smile down at the child Allaya. It had been too dangerous to keep her original name.

'I'm gonna go study my books, sir,' she said.

'Do that, dear.' He thought for a moment. 'Bring your friend in, will you?'

She nodded and ran out. Not a minute later, the door reopened and a boy entered. Green eyes met Benzamin's own, his young face solemn.

Benzamin sighed again. He had made so many mistakes in his life. Aloren had only been one of them.

'Is there something you wanted, sir?' the initiate asked.

Benzamin stared long and hard at the child, thanking the gods for the gift he had been given.

'No,' Benzamin told the boy. 'I just wanted to make sure you'd taken your bath. Dismissed.'

Jesamen bobbed his head once, turned, and left.

A Choice of Dawns

Susan Shwartz

I forced out the last words of the invocation with the last breath in my aching lungs and stood panting. My hands were shaking, and sweat dripped down my ribs beneath my robe. The circle I cast glowed about me. Sweeter than the wine in the Cup, keener than the edge of the Blade I held was the awareness that my time of silence, of exile, of helplessness had passed. Even though the spell from the strange book I had found—or that had been found for me—was gray, and a darkish hue at that, I had not been blasted.

Not yet.

The fumes of herbs and incense burning at the cardinal points did little to ease my need for air, and other Words—either of Welcome or of Banishment— remained for me to utter—I had only to choose.

The months I had spent in the house of the wizard who was supposed to be dead, or lost, or borne off on dragon's back (depending on whom I asked) had completed my healing. It was not my strength to complete a Great Workings I feared: it was my judgment.

Would I compound an old folly with a new? Bad enough I had accepted the village's offer to bide here. Worse that I had not fled the first time I heard that voice whispering to me as I studied or swept or, worst of all, just before I slept—in the vanished wizard's very bed. I might have recoiled when the bittersweet fragrance of lilacs I had not cut wafted from my plate.

At least, see where you have journeyed. Curiosity, as much a besetting sin of mages as pride, stirred in me as it had when I first read the spell and a prickling along my spine told me this was a ritual I could survive performing.

Again, I raised my arms. The sleeves of my robe fell back, exposing the scars, paler now, that braceleted my wrists. Let them be a caution to me—please!

The mists outside my glowing circle wreathed up, then faded. I stood in a clearing surrounded by dark trees. A sickle of silver moon gleamed barely above the treetops; other light seemed to rise from the land to greet it. The circle was not of this world at all, until I slashed it with my sword.

The Great Workings can be lonely, a loneliness that can prove fatal if a mage must pause and wait between incantations.

I heard no footsteps, but I knew when he drew near. Wind blew, stirring, even within the circle, the grains of sand and earth I had so carefully poured out. It brought with it the scents of rain on lilacs and wood ash, the scents of the wizard's house and the flowers with which he had wooed me.

And was it all that unlikely? Even changed as I was, I was surely not that uncomely... was I? Just because one man, eager for power, had made me believe power was the only reason anyone could want me didn't mean someone had drawn a heated brand across my face and soul—did it? Or was it that my power was now mine, guarded against anyone who might coax me into yielding it? I was more than an instrument to gain power or glut desire: I was myself.

I saw him then, and that 'myself' dwindled into a feeble, malformed thing. He was slender, with eyes as changeful as a troubled sea—with his troubles, or mine? He smiled at me, and his eyes flickered. Oh, he remembered too: the dreams, teasing at the edge of my mind and my body's awareness.

I had but to slash the circle with the Blade, hold out my hand, speak the Words, and bring him back to all he had lost. Before the rite, I had put lavender-scented linen sheets upon his bed (now mine). I had set out porridge and bacon (magecraft is hungry work) by the hearth I had swept. There was enough for two, not just for the meal, or for the winter, but for all our lives if I could trust him.

But if I chose wrong, ah, then he would own not just the bed and the food and the village that had welcomed me, not just me—body, heart, and prisoned soul—but all that he could seize and drain the life from.