saw in Argentor was once of a kind with these, before they all changed to stone. Do you find talking about trees brings you to a peaceful state, Cephas?”
He grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever talked about trees at all. Unless Grinta the Pike’s advice on the killing of treants counts, though her technique is not peaceful.”
When Ariella laughed, he remembered that her voice had reminded him of bells the first time he heard it-bells on a weapon harness. Perhaps I don’t know what an inner place of peace is, he thought.
“You told me you knew thirty-one ways to block a morning star,” she said. “My own fighting style is less formalized than the ways you were taught, I think. But I wonder if any of those ways is a block of the
Cephas answered, “The Fluttering Leaf style. I’m no master of it, but I know it. It is better suited for …” He stumbled, not wanting to offend her. “For more delicate fighters than I.”
She arched an eyebrow. “By which you mean weaker. I am not as strong as you, Cephas Earthsouled, but strength does not win every battle.”
Cephas pictured bullheaded axemen and spinning silver blades. “I know. I’ve seen Shan and Cynda fight,” he said.
“Just so. Though I would not look to them to learn peace of mind. The Fluttering Leaf, now, when a practitioner of that art accepts the opening strike, what does he do?”
A thousand days of drills came to mind. “Well, nothing. The blow falls, and you fall before it. You hold no stance; you raise no warding shield. It passes over you.”
“You need to take every thought that comes to you and fall before it. Anything that rises up, let it pass by. Even the energy you call the earth-force. Let that flow away. To achieve a Second Soul, a windsoul, you must empty the one you already possess.”
Cephas tried. The first thing he realized was that trying to think of nothing yielded the opposite of the desired effect. A floodgate of memories, worries, idle thoughts, and unfocused observations was opened by his effort. Her voice sounded like bells.
“I grow more peaceful inside when you’re talking, Ariella.”
She smiled. “I will tell you, then,” she said, “that I myself express no other soul than the wind. I have never felt a need to listen for anything other than its call.”
Cephas said, “But you think you can teach me this trick?”
“It is not a trick, Cephas. It’s a
Cephas found that other thoughts ceased to press on him.
“Those genasi who take on more than one soul are one of the great proofs that we are all one people, despite the differences in our abilities and appearances,” she said.
“There are others? Other ‘great proofs,’ I mean?”
Ariella said, “The Firestorm Cabal actually makes one positive contribution. They have kept genealogical records that span centuries and track lineages across different worlds. They don’t publicize this, but their cabal was founded here, in the South. The genasi who first drew swords in the Second Era of Skyfire were Firestormers. They brought their records north and joined them with the annals of my people, and found that the clans and families are related in deep time. Their work is related to the third great proof.”
“What is that?” Cephas asked.
Surprising him, she blushed. Her silver cheeks turned the same blue iron shade that colored her crystal hair. “Genasi, no matter which soul they express”-she cleared her throat-“breed true.”
Cephas found he was at the edge of his experience. “Oh.”
She laughed. “The Cabalists believe the great clans of earthsouled and stormsouled and all the others should keep their lineages apart. They use words such as ‘pure’ and ‘inviolate.’ When couples of different expressions, well, have children together, for instance, the Firestormers say they’ve blurred the
Cephas asked, “This is widely believed?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. There are many who find the idea repellant, this programmatic separation of the expressions. I know I do. And my parents. My father is watersouled, and my mother most often expresses as fire.”
“Yet you are windsouled?”
Again came the laughter like bells. “My mother was born windsouled but found the fire suited her better. She is a famous chef in our city. My father has always been watersouled, as has one of my brothers. He followed Father into the Waveriders, the Akanulan navy.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Cephas.
“I have two. The Waverider is the eldest. My younger brother is windsouled, and says he will join the Airsteppers’ Guild like me. I think he’ll change his mind once he learns it’s something more than an adult version of the races he and his friends run among the skymotes.”
“The motes of Airspur host better games than Jazeerijah, then,” Cephas said.
She looked at him. “It’s when you talk about that place that I hear the wind in you the loudest.”
Cephas despaired of finding the peace of mind she described. “How did your mother learn the firesoul?” he asked. “You said she was not born with that expression.”
Ariella blushed again, even deeper this time. “Mother’s story …” she said, hesitating. In the short time Cephas had known Ariella, he had never seen her hesitate. “It has to do with a man she knew before my father. She says it involved ‘certain fiery circumstances.’ ”
Cephas pursed his lips. He did not quite know why that caused Ariella to blush and hesitate, but it gave him an idea.
“Well,” he said, gazing up at the trees, “perhaps what we need is something related to the powers the windsoul grants. If I learn to fly, we could seek ‘certain heightened circumstances.’ Though I don’t know what those could be.”
He felt her hand on his chest and thought of lightning.
“I know something we could try,” she said.
A time passed that was as endless as the span of a heartbeat.
After, he felt weightless. Ariella was in his arms, her limbs wrapped around him. She was no burden, though. She did not bear him down, but up.
Eventually, he opened his eyes and dared to look at her. After the first giddy moments when they untangled each other from their clothes, she had filled up every sense. But still, he suspected that he would never see enough of her, never hear her enough, never feel her strong arms clasped behind his neck enough.
She was watching him with a smile on her face that was gentle and mischievous both. He twined his fingers in hers and drew her hand to his lips. The silver tones of their skin matched perfectly. Silver tones?
He looked at her again. She raised her eyebrows, then glanced down. “Maybe we should put our clothes on and go introduce you to the others.”
He started to ask what she meant, but his voice failed him when he saw their clothes strewn across the glade, far below where they hung, clinging to each other while slowly rotating in midair.
She kissed him. “Welcome,” she said, “Cephas Windsouled.”
The WeavePasha’s scrying room had no doors and no windows, and he could count on the ringed fingers of one hand the number of people aware of the chamber’s location: himself, a regrettably deceased apprentice, and the eldest of his grandchildren, the powerful sorceress who served as his chief vizar.
So he was confident that he was alone and unobserved as he took a cross-legged seat in midair before one of the room’s many untidy workbenches. He swept aside various instruments of minor magic, but he took more care in setting aside a tray of crystal fragments, the clay handle and spout of an inert lamp, and numerous scrolls half covered in his own spidery handwriting. Finally, he found his favored scrying device, a mundane brass-backed mirror of questionable taste and little monetary value.
