By now it’s restrained fury.

Hallei Raith to Alysei Athal astin Velain, king of Valdyas, in Solay.

Athal,

You’ll know by now that Dushtan sent me off with the wounded while I was out, and you’ll have guessed that I was furious. On hindsight It’s all for the best, though. I could take your sister along myself instead of waiting for her to come to me. Also, your brother needed a bit of protection against — well, I’ll be charitable and not call her a leech, but she does stick, like one of those little fishes that swim in the wake of a big fish to be safe from enemies and eat the crumbs it leaves. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, daughter of a Síthi whore and a Khas commander, who sneaked on board our ship with her little brother. Sad but all too common story: her mother died when the boy was born, officer took her instead. It did give her protection, and the protection of the most powerful man around is what she craves, paying for it with the use of her body. She’s been hanging on to Aidan ever since he was in the hospital, it seems. Pregnant, too, but not by Aidan though she claimed so; we’re sure of that now.

This girl is really something– she can get through closed doors. None of us realised at first that she was gifted at all, but Cora had her in the house for a few days (she has now fobbed her off on the Temple of Dayati) and discovered it. Seals don’t keep her in any more than locks do. We tried to leave her behind several times but she kept coming back to Aidan, convinced that she was his second wife (or at least his concubine).

Anyway, we’re in Turenay now, about to come your way again. I suppose you’re staying there for a bit to clean up? (Yes, I’m assuming that you’ve won; what else?) It would be such a disappointment to miss you at sea. I realise that I’m still pissed off that I didn’t get to finish the work with you, but to keep Solay for you and kick it back into some semblance of order is good compensation. Ayneth is already talking about finding gifted children, all of them, Síthi, Khas, half-and-half, you name it, and setting up a school to get some knowledge into them so they can live together as people rather than as enemies. Perhaps it’s precipitate, but she was livid when I told her what the Khas do with gifted children and wants to avoid that at all costs.

We’re staying here for the feast (of Timoine, in case you’ve lost track of time; it happened to me when I was down south) and will travel by Valdis in hopes of seeing Raisse. And I do like being able to reassure myself that Lenay is still standing before I leave it perhaps forever. Better so than to have stayed away without ever unequivocally having left.

I hope this reaches you earlier than we do; expect us by Midsummer.

Raith

I got up in the middle of the night to write this because it haunted me so much that I couldn’t sleep (granted, sore throat and clogged sinuses made me sleep badly anyway). Also, caterwauling drunken carnival-goers gave me dreams of witches.

Hallei Raith, in Kushesh, to Alysei Ayneth astin Velain, in Veray.

Darling Ayneth,

Writing this in great haste– my next message will come with the report of –hopefully– victory. A large Valdyan fleet has been sighted and it has the royal standard on one of its ships, not a warship but one of the big fast freighters. This probably means that it’s really Athal himself and not his envoy, because (one of the sea-captains tells me) those ships are the most stable in the water while still making good speed. I can’t see Athal’s mind at all, of course, and it’s too far away really to see someone else clearly, no way I’m going out of my body again before the big battle, and only then when it’s absolutely necessary. I can’t afford to be weaker than I could be.

But I want to get the Feast of Naigha off my mind before things happen that might make me forget it.

Bebakshi asked me to celebrate the Feast with her, and her man Rovan, and some of their friends, because she’d heard that we don’t really celebrate it as a feast in Valdyas but she and her man wanted to celebrate the Iss-Peranian way. I said yes, intrigued, and she asked how many dead they’d have to lay the table for. This puzzled me: lay the table for the dead? It seems that they celebrate the feast by having a meal with the living as well as the dead. I didn’t know exactly who to count as “my dead”, so I counted the ones I cried for when they died: Tarin most recently, and your mother, and Raneth who fell in Ildis, and Ruyin of the Order, and my father’s sister Halla who brought me up.

So, two hours before midnight the feast started in our fish shop, cleared and decorated, full of lights, and large tables had been set out full of food. There were place-settings for about fifty people, though only twenty living people were present. I didn’t know most of them, but everybody had come on the invitation of someone they knew. The two women I married on Midsummer were there, the pregnant one very pregnant by now, and I could see that she was gifted and must have found a master. “Bebakshi says she can tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but I don’t want to know, if I wanted I could see for myself but I’ll see what it is when it comes out.” I also saw the two men I’d married inadvertently when I thought the eunuch was a girl.

The thirty plates for the dead had been put very close together– which figured, for me, they wouldn’t need room to sit because they’re only spirit. Someone brought a large basket of small packages of food wrapped in leaves, with a note that could only be from Mehili by the handwriting and the wording. “Is that a traditional thing for the feast?” I asked, but it wasn’t, though “better than the other stuff we’re having”. One of the Iss-Peranians warned me, “if that’s from Mehili, she” –the pregnant woman– “shouldn’t be having it, because there’s a lot of brus in it.” In that case I shouldn’t be having it either, or at least choose between it and wine– and when I said that, the Iss-Peranian said that if I’d only smoked brus before and not eaten it, I’d better stick to wine. He’d left his girl in Il Ayande because she’d smoked so much brus that she was in fact never sober, though she only did it after a battle or when she’d had a bad fright or on very big feasts. Mehili smoked just as much and it didn’t seem to hurt her! But then there are also people who can hold their drink and people who can’t, probably the same thing.

I sat with Rovan, who was uneasy– he comes from Rychie Tal-Serth, brother and son and grandson of priestesses of Naigha, so he’s a bit closer to our way of dealing with Naigha than I am. Though I’ve probably seen her in a starker aspect at the wall of souls. I don’t doubt that Naigha was there, a civilised version of her, but in a different civilisation than the one we grew up in.

When everybody was there, Bebakshi and a eunuch and a young boy I’ve seen around the horses and elephants started to dance. It was a dance for the gods, that was clear. It made Rovan even more uneasy: Bebakshi had danced for him as a woman does for her husband, and it had almost made him break the vow to his mother that he’d bring his bride home first and only then bed her. Me, it reminded a little of the dance of the king of Jomhur, though it was in many ways very different. Looking back, I’m practically sure that it was the dance that brought Naigha.

After the dancing most of the women went off to the kitchen at the back of the house, leaving me and the pregnant woman’s wife in front with the men. “You have a woman at home, right?” she asked, and I said “yes, but she’s not pregnant that I know of.” “Doesn’t make a difference– I suppose you can’t cook?” I had to say that, indeed, I can’t– I’ve always either been around people who cooked, whether or not they were servants of mine, or bought my food ready-made. Then she told me that there was an annoying man –still a boy, really– who thought he was doing a good deed by ‘rescuing’ her from being a troop whore. “But you’re married!” I exclaimed, but the boy didn’t seem to accept that. And she had to earn a living! “Send him to me,” I said, “but not tonight of course.”

Then more food came, and still more, hot and cold, more than enough for fifty people. Every now and again someone went up to the dead people’s side of the table, put food on some of their plates, and seemed to talk to them.

All of a sudden there was a great noise outside, as if a hundred fire-arrows at once hit something very close. All the Iss-Peranians and Síthi rushed outside, and the Valdyans followed a bit more cautiously. The whole sky was full of coloured lights, ten thousand stars, some spraying from a single point, some falling, making beautiful patterns. Fireworks, someone said; the Síthi make them, but these had come from Albetire.

We went in again when it was finished to eat more. After a while Bebakshi came and led me to a group of five plates apparently reserved for my dead, and I served them, thinking of each one as I filled the plate, even giving Alyse a bit more of the sweet, Tarin of the spicy, and Ruyin no sweet at all, as I remembered them. I didn’t know –still don’t know, perhaps will never know– in how far they were actually there in the spirit, and how much was just my memory taking shape.

We sat around talking, couples were cuddling and dancing close, people who weren’t couples danced too, I think even I danced at some point but I’m not sure. It was the kind of party when you say things you don’t remember when it’s light. And it was light quite suddenly, as happens in this part of the world. The three dancers went outside and danced again, differently but still for Naigha, and we could see other groups of dancers on the square doing the same.

Afterwards the remains of the food were thrown in the fire– which Bebakshi had stoked extra high with her mind, like on the Feast of Anshen. She’s learned so much since then! I think she’s well on her way to being a master, doing things (out of my sight, mostly) that can only be Guild runner’s work.

I spent most of that day asleep, and most of the next five weeks or so waiting, having strategic meetings, seeing advance troops leave towards the west, seeing more and still more troops coming from the south, east and north, until yesterday when someone spotted the fleet that Athal is more than likely to be on.

So we’re going to fight, and to win. I wear your locket on my skin so you’ll be with me whatever happens. I know you’re thinking of me.

Raith

Some people expected it to be a trap –even Raith did– but nobody expected it to be this. And not even I expected the other thing until I was on the bike the day after this session and thought about it. I think it was sparked by the GM saying something like “she’s actually quite happy in her quarters in this city”.

Hallei Raith in Kushesh to Alysei Ayneth astin Velain in Veray. Sometime near the Feast of Naigha.

Dearest Ayneth,

I hope you can read my scribbling, because I’m only now regaining the use of my right hand after four days of uselessness. And of my left hand, and both legs, and some more embarrassing parts of my anatomy.

Remember I was so curious about the ships? Beguyan sent a little scout boat out, and when it hadn’t come back after three or four days we all got worried, so I went to have a look, out of my body because they were too far away to see without doing that.

I could find Erian (a journeyman of ours) and Lan (a master of the other side) and Sashila (dandar, gifted enough, but not aligned to anything we know) quite easily, but they were under the strange veil we’d seen earlier. The ships were a lot closer now, so easier to see, but the veil made it impossible to see much detail except which one the people I knew were on. I could also see Valdyan-looking flags flying from each one, and something that looked very much like a royal standard on the one with the scouts on it. But it definitely wasn’t Athal or I’d have recognised –well, perhaps not him, because he loses all his gifts while at sea, but some of the people with him. I thought for one moment that it might be Reshan, I don’t know his seals, but I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have come openly. Athal wouldn’t have either, come to think of it.

You know me: I’m terminally curious. I tried to poke a hole in the veil to see through, and surprisingly it turned out to be easy– except that something started to suck me in immediately and I had to choose between resisting (and not learning anything) and going along (and not knowing whether I’d ever get out). I went in, of course, and the veil closed behind me with no sign of my passage. I couldn’t reach Bebakshi any more, or see my body.

All the scouts were there. Tied to the biggest mast. There was also a cage on the deck of the ship with about a dozen gifted Síthi (and one dead Síthi) in it. All other people I could see were Khas. One was a mage, in what I think was the steering cabin with one other man. I could still talk to Lan and Erian with my mind, thank Anshen, and they told me that the whole hold of the ship was full of Khas; it was a trap, and now I was trapped as well. “How long before you die?” Lan asked, and I thought about that for a while (strange how one thinks more slowly, though more clearly, without one’s body) and told him a day. The longest I’ve been away from my body was a bit more than that, but not in such a hostile space as this one, and I did come out of it very battered.

That reminded me that I really had to do something. I explored the ship a little. When I observed the mage (without him seeing me, I didn’t dare to come too close at that point) I saw that he was a youngish man, frantically doing something that apparently kept the veil-seal going, and at the same time talking to an older man who was pacing up and down in the cabin, as far as there was room for it. It wouldn’t even be hard to take him out, I thought. All the scouts, and also the Síthi after Sashila had asked them in their language –must really learn at least some Síthi as soon as I get the opportunity–, said that I was free to use any anea of theirs that I needed. I gathered it, while I focused on the mage in the cabin, and made it into something hard with a sharp point, and when it was on its peak I threw it with all my might.

It hit. The mage faltered and fell, and about half the seal fell with him, but it wasn’t weak enough for me or anyone else to get out. Again– and this time he lost consciousness, went blue in the face, and the seal was gone. There was hardly anything left of me then, only a spark, it seems. I don’t remember much after that. I think it was Erian or Sashila who told me what else happened: Lan seems to have proposed doing something that our Guild doesn’t approve of but if I’d prevent it we’d all die, and I seem to have said that even if I had the strength to prevent it I wouldn’t do so. Then he ripped anea from all the Síthi with force and kept me alive with it, while the ship sailed on, after a while with another seal but much weaker. Erian says it was more than half a day before they –we– got close enough to shore that someone (Bebakshi?) could get at me and pull me in.

I came to my senses, well, some time later, with Bebakshi and some other people hovering over me anxiously. They already knew it was a trap; I still don’t know whether whatever I did was useless after all. Apparently the Khas mages had been taking anea from the gifted people on board –the Síthi– so eventually they’d have drained them dry; but Lan keeping me alive must have killed a dozen people, and I don’t know whether I actually saved more lives by killing the mage and making myself so weak that I couldn’t come back to warn.

It wasn’t long (though, being paralysed almost from the neck down, and without much use of my mind either, I lost any notion of time) until the ships arrived at the harbour– seemingly unsteered, without stopping, the flag-ship crashed into the harbour, and some other ones behind it, and a messenger came running to say that there were two more on the salt-flats. Lan was standing on the prow of the flag-ship cloaked in the power of the Nameless. “Is he warning us or is he with the enemy?” Beguyan asked, and I said that he’d saved my life twice over so I’d be surprised if he was with the enemy. There was a lot of chaotic fighting then, lasting for days I think, and in the end all the Khas were either dead or captured, but not easily.

According to Beguyan it wasn’t a trap to capture or even weaken us, or take the city, but to make us not trust our own reinforcements any more. But, as I said before, any real Valdyan reinforcements would come uncloaked.

They brought me Lan, barely alive, and still in the tatters of his cloak, which I couldn’t have touched even if I’d been fit. Who did I know of the Nameless who I– well, not exactly trusted, but thought could be depended on to handle this? “There’s a man called Arin,” I said, “a trader living near the harbour. Get him. And his apprentice– his journeyman.” It took some time, but eventually the elder and the younger Arin were brought in. “I don’t dare,” he said, “Let the boy do it, he’s just become a journeyman, he can handle it. I haven’t exactly been– well, I can’t.” Afraid that the Nameless would burn him? I’d never have put him down as suffering from feelings of unworthiness. The younger Arin had no such qualms and he did his best on Lan. The fiery tatters came off eventually, not without difficulty (and sweat, and I think a few burns on the young man’s hands). Lan was breathing more easily now and someone took him away. Once again, someone asked “is he a hero or a traitor?” and once again I wasn’t completely sure. But ultimately, he did it for the king. According to Beguyan, Athal will have to deal with him.

After the fighting was over Mehili came with wine and brus. I said at first I’d only have some wine, but she kept imploring me to smoke, so I passed on the wine– I know by now that I can’t stand both at once. After we’d shared the water-pipe for a while we were more than sisters– sharing so deeply that our minds were almost overlapping. She’s only just not gifted, I think; sometimes I think I’d like to be able to give her that final push, sometimes I’m convinced that she’s better off without that burden.

Now I’m going to write something that’s very hard to write, and I wish I could ask you face to face but I’m not sure that I’d have the guts to actually do it. I’ll take a deep breath; here goes:

If the rumours are true and they are going to offer me the governorship of Solay, will you come and join me? Don’t be afraid that you’ll lose me if you say no; if you say no so will I, because I don’t think I could do it alone anyway. You have the gift of putting things together, whereas I only have a gift for either keeping things together or calling wind and lightning to break them apart.

I don’t see how I can fit in Valdyas any more anyway, not after all of this. If I survive the final battle, which isn’t at all a given in the light of what we’ve seen lately, I won’t be the same woman who started out from Lenay last year. Never before has anything changed me so much in such a short time, not even finding out that you loved me.

Raith

It looked like another round of the waiting game… until things started happening. And of course when things start happening, they all happen at once. This letter was written with interruptions (marked with a <hr>).

Hallei Lenye Raith, in the city that she now knows is called Kushesh, to Alysei Ayneth astin Velain in Veray.

Dearest,

The new moon has come and gone but no sign of the eclipse. Perhaps the priestess was mistaken about the time or the place, or perhaps I misunderstood her. Good, because Athal isn’t here yet. The last I heard was that he had left Valdis, at least.

It’s been so boring here that I have to amuse myself by learning all the patterns of air and water and weather between here and Solay –it’s just too far for me to reach– because there’s only so much claim one can lay on apprentices’ time and attention and learning capacity. Useful, of course, but a way to pass the time more than anything else.

Bebakshi and I have two rooms in a house that used to be a fishmonger’s shop. The shop itself is deserted– I receive visitors there if they’re not familiar enough to take them upstairs. It’s a palatial apartment as housing goes in this city, much better than a bit of tent with only a cloth between us and the rest. Bebakshi is almost a journeyman now; I’m trying to come up with something to test her. Mostly we’ve been working as a team, standing on the tower that looks out on the sea. The soldiers are used to us by now.

When we were on the tower just now, I saw something in the north-west that looked for all the world like ships. Rather a lot of ships in fact. It was too far to see clearly –the soldier on watch didn’t see anything at all– so I sent Bebakshi out, warding her, for practice. She could only see that I’d been right about rather a lot, between twelve and twenty ships, and they didn’t seem to be normal Khas but she couldn’t tell whether it was the Valdyan fleet or at least part of it. I went out myself and couldn’t see much more, mostly because there seemed to be a kind of veil over the ships. They were of various sizes, some with two masts and some with three, and there were gifted people aboard but not as many as one would expect if they were Valdyans and many more than one would expect if they were Khas.

Beguyan would have to know about it, of course, and I caught him in his map-room so I could point to the location on the map. He started giving orders immediately, to send out scouts and possibly to get people ready to fight if it was the Khas. Then he told me that he’d heard that the Khas haven’t only occupied Solay, but driven all the people from the upriver villages into the city as well. He could think of three reasons to do that: to keep me and Athal from setting the city on fire; to keep the people from providing us with labour for siege engines and such; and to protect them, which he rather thought wouldn’t be a reason for the Khas but it would be for him. Did I think it would be a good idea to conquer the land behind the city, seeing that there were no civilians there anyway, so we could surround it? I didn’t see why not, and I didn’t think Athal would object either, so it was decided.

When I came back to our fishy house there was a Valdyan man standing there, faintly familiar and stinking of the Nameless. He said his name was Arin– as if I believed that, from the way he pronounced the name. I took him into the shop, and there he told me that he had an apprentice ready for his journeyman’s trial and he had heard I had one like that too. It didn’t have to be a life-and-death duel, they could both come out journeymen in the end. I said “I’ll put it to her”; he seemed surprised that I couldn’t just accept for Bebakshi, but that’s the Guild of the Nameless for you. The more I talked to him, the more familiar he became. He’d just arrived on a ship to do some trading– he tried to get me to buy bottles of wine from Tal-Nus (real glass! the original seal!) which made me homesick, but didn’t tempt me, not much anyway.

Upstairs Bebakshi was nowhere in sight. I wrote the bit of letter about the ships until I heard her giggling. She’d hidden herself the Valdyan way, very impressively if I couldn’t see her. She agreed to a formal fight, promising not to use anything she’d learnt as a dandar but only what I had taught her or what she’d known before her training started. I called to “Arin” and found him in a small house near the harbour in the company of a gifted boy and another person who wasn’t gifted. He agreed to come right away, with his apprentice, to discuss terms.

Arin arrived with not only his apprentice, a lanky boy who called himself Arin too and looked fourteen at most, though he admitted to sixteen (Bebakshi didn’t want to fight anyone under fifteen, she said), but also one of those fabled bottles. Tal-Nus indeed, and sealed by Moryn himself. He was selling them for a hundred and twenty riders, but had brought this one to seal our agreement. We drank to it, with wine that didn’t seem to have suffered from travel: the apprentices a symbolic sip, I about half a cup, and Arin himself three cups at least. I suddenly realised how I knew him: I’d thrown him out of Lenyas once because he had a brothel in Lenay where he kept his women captive, and also because of some allegations of theft from wine storehouses that couldn’t be proved. Ruyin or Rovin or something like that, not quite of the House-that-Fell but closely tied to it. Well, if he wanted to go by “Arin” now, that was all right with me.

I suggested going to the salt flats if the apprentices were going to have a formal duel, and that’s where we went, where they couldn’t hit anything by mistake. I implored Bebakshi –again!– not to use lightning, to keep the boy whole if she could.

The younger Arin drew a circle in the sand, and I checked whether one of the apprentices had a knife by mistake –they’d agreed bare hands and bare minds, Arin could handle a knife though not a sword, and Bebakshi didn’t know how to use weapons at all. I let the elder Arin make the inner seal: if something breached my seal from the inside his would be useless anyway. His was cloudy, not so easy to see through; mine a half-globe of solid air, hard and completely transparent.

Young Arin started by stripping to his loincloth and posturing –strutting! like a young cockerel– in Bebakshi’s direction. It seemed to throw her a bit, and through the cloudy seal I could see her sitting on her hands, so to speak, not to use her dandar abilities. It went on for some time, then all at once they were fighting like children in the school-yard or half-grown kittens. More iterations of that –I’d have to make an effort to recall everything and frankly I’m too tired to make an effort– and suddenly Bebakshi remembered what exactly I had taught her and made the whole arena dark. And light again before Arin expected it. It gave her the advantage all right, but after a while they were fighting again, this time more seriously.

Lots of people had come to look at the fight, mostly Valdyans of both Guilds. I could hear someone saying “it’s a formal duel! just like old times at home!”

Eventually Bebakshi succeeded in driving Arin into a corner, or rather under an edge, but he came back strongly and was only checked because Bebakshi accepted Anshen, completely, and had his power to draw on.

She pulled him up. Excellent form. She had the grace to give him the opportunity to make one last effort, and yes, he crossed the line to journeyman too. Even when the seals fell away, I couldn’t go and congratulate Bebakshi, because a very large man with a bushy black beard took her in his arms first and then held her at arm’s length to scold her. On the other side, Arin was being scolded by an Iss-Peranian girl. I’d heard from the elder Arin that the boy had a girlfriend who had trained as a dandar for a year and a half– but only when the fight had already started. This must be her. Bebakshi’s man, on the other hand, I’d never seen before. I got the opportunity to talk to him later: Rovan, from Tal-Serth, a smith who makes tools for the glass-blowers. Not gifted at all, and very skeptical about it, “does she have to join the Order now?” when I told him what it meant that had just happened. Exactly the right man for her, I’d say; I hope they both make it. She doesn’t want to sleep with him until they’re married, and they can’t marry until they’re back in Tal-Serth because he wants his mother to marry them, but she does intend to bear his children.

Bebakshi is back from walking to the sea-front with her Rovan. There’s a little wine left and we’re going to drink it. Still no news of “my” ships. I do hope it’s Athal after all.

Things I have learned:

• To speak two, perhaps three kinds of Iss-Peranian.
• To handle really large amounts of weather.
• What “swearing like a trooper” means exactly, and how to do it myself.
• That most people in the world are various shades of brown; pale like us is rare.
• That gods have different habits in different countries, but are still the same under whatever they use instead of skin. Just like people in fact.
• To be civil to servants of the Nameless. And their tactless apprentices.
• To say the name of the Nameless with impunity, when necessary.
• Patience, oh gods, patience.

Sealing this letter now even though it’s not really finished, because if it is the Khas and we do have to fight I don’t know when I’ll be able to send it otherwise.

All my love,

Raith

Ayneth’s letter and Athal must have travelled on separate ships after all, because it has arrived and he is nowhere in sight yet. (Also, the eclipse hasn’t arrived yet; I’ll correct the priestess’ estimate after the fact.)

In the westernmost port before Solay, probably almost the Feast of Naigha

Dearest,

You can’t imagine how touched I was when I got your letter with enclosures. Or perhaps you can– you’ve always been the imaginative one of the two of us. I couldn’t help crying, and when Bebakshi looked puzzled I gave her the letter to read but she couldn’t, of course (though she can understand quite a lot of Ilaini now), so I had to give her a summary. She thought you looked sweet in the picture, but even more strong, and I think she’s right. That painter has caught you exactly as you are in my mind. And the silver locket! I’d forgotten that your hair was so red.

Since my last letter there hasn’t been much fighting: the only Khas sort-of-army we met was only a few thousand strong, which I’d have thought a big army if I’d stayed in Valdyas but it’s a very small army for what I’m used to now. There’s been lots going on that wasn’t fighting, though: for one thing I saved an elephant’s life. Perhaps many people’s lives, too, but I’m less sure about that.

I’ll start at the beginning. Remember the juicy land I wrote about, where I married three hundred people or more? We didn’t stay there long, because there was something very wrong in the air, and the ground, and the trees– the fruit was rotten on the branches, the plants weren’t growing as they should. The air tasted like copper, as if you’re sucking on a penny. I had to tell myself very firmly that it wasn’t all my fault; after all, it was already too hot a summer (well, a dry season, they don’t have any proper summers here) before I started messing with the weather. When I tried to find out what was happening I couldn’t see anything at first, only wrongness: wrongness that was somebody’s doing, as if it was a curse. The most plausible people to have done it were the Khas mages with all the power they get from killing gifted children.

I wrote that last sentence with stubborn bitterness, but it made me shudder the moment I finished it.

Athal could heal this land, I think; I couldn’t even touch it. In the meeting we had to discuss strategy I said, very tentatively (at least for me), that we had to leave right away, that nobody should eat any fruit or vegetable growing here or drink any water from the ground– that last was easy because it had finally, mercifully, started to rain. I’ve never been obeyed so promptly, not even by my own servants.

I can’t remember much of that journey, because it all blends into one in my memory: it was mostly rain. After a while interesting patterns of mold started to appear on the silk of our elephant-litter curtains. All my writing-paper got too wet to be any use, that’s why I’m writing this on scraped parchment someone found for me in the city. The soldiers stripped and marched in their loincloths, or nothing at all, to avoid being chafed by wet cloth. Every time we stopped, the doctors or the hospital orderlies came to ask me to help people breathe who had been overcome by the damp.

The elephants didn’t seem to mind the rain much, but at one point one of them fell over, crushing the people who had been walking beside her, and couldn’t get up, though another elephant tried to help her. I went to see if there was anything I could do. I got a horrible fright: from the ground, or perhaps under the ground, to a height of a few feet, there was no anea at all. As if the cursed ground was sucking up everything! That was the elephant’s plight: having fallen, she couldn’t get at the spirit of the world. “She’ll die if we don’t get her up,” I said –suddenly I knew that for a fact– and immediately I had lots of soldiers around me to help with that while I got what spirit I could from the higher air, made a funnel of myself, and poured it to where the elephant could reach it.

I think it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but eventually we had the elephant standing on shaky legs and getting stronger every moment. Bebakshi snuggled up to her– it was almost embarrassing, like lovemaking in public.

The blighted land must have ended somewhere, because we ended up at this port city, already conquered by a combined force of Iss-Peranians and Valdyans. I talked to the Valdyan commander, a former Eraday, who told me that there had been about eighteen thousand Khas holding the city, who the Iss-Peranians “had treated as Lord Moryn would have”. She was very bitter about it– she won’t ever forgive Moryn, she said. (I’m practically sure that I will, when I’m back, however angry I was with him before I left.)

Now we only have to wait until Athal arrives: here, at least, there is solid ground that he can sit on and get his strength back. Oh, and we have to wait for your eclipse, of course. Isn’t it the moon creeping in front of the sun and hiding it? Then it would have to be at the new moon, which must be in about a week. Though someone (perhaps even Bebakshi) told me that it’s perfectly possible to have an eclipse in Valdyas while the sun stays in full sight here.

I want autumn, damn it. Or spring. Or even one of those half-hearted Ryshas winters when it’s grey and drizzly and won’t become properly cold, or stay properly warm. This too-hot-or-too-rainy is getting on my nerves. I almost wrote “I wish you were here” but that wouldn’t be true, I wish I were with you.

Raith

This is part II of the letter from Dasht.

A young woman came to see me: Tarin’s widow, though I don’t think they ever got married. “You’re of the–” she said, lacking a word, but she meant the Guild of Anshen. “What Tarin was of, too, and you’re going to have a feast, right? Are you going to commemorate him?” I reassured her that we were; would she like to be there? She nodded, relieved, and told me how she’d always been just on the edge of being one with Tarin when they made love– I could see that she was just on the edge of being gifted, too. “I’ve heard from other people that if you’re both like that, like you and Bebakshi, they can really get inside of each other!” And realising what she’d just said, she added hastily, “not that I think you and Bebakshi do that, together I mean, of course.” I couldn’t do anything but grin and tell her “I have someone at home, and yes, that’s the way it is.”

She told me a little more: she’d had her eyes on another Valdyan soldier first, but that one didn’t even look at her, while Tarin had gone out of his way to meet her and claim her for himself. They’d planned to settle down together after the war. “Would you like to come to Valdyas anyway?” I asked and offered her a place at the castle– after all, it can use one more woman who is good at cooking and cleaning, and I did owe her because Tarin had saved my life, several times in fact. Why, yes, she wouldn’t mind that, “and then the baby can be born in Valdyas too”. That didn’t show yet, though I could see it when I looked closely. I resolved to ask Mehili to have the girl assigned to me, but I didn’t get round to it until we were travelling again.

This was a slow and uncomfortable march through the canyon: the Valdyan troops first, then the officers and doctors and such (and me), then the rest of the army, then the camp followers. The worst part was the place where Bebakshi had broken boulders from the rock face that the animals had to scramble over, unless it was the place where the bottom became so narrow that the biggest elephant (not ours) had to squeeze through, or the place where the stream along the bottom was so wide that everybody got their feet wet. Not to speak of the nights, when we on top of our elephant were comfortable enough but the troops had to find a bit of rock where they could lie or sit down– a hundred thousand of them.

It took about five days to get from one end of the canyon to the other –no Khas here, our army had probably got them all– but at the other end we were rewarded: a very green juicy-looking land on gently rolling hills, with trees and flowers and bright-coloured birds (and drab-coloured birds, which seemed to sing more astonishingly beautifully than the others). There was a cool, moist wind from the sea and the smells were overwhelming. The vanguard had put up a pavilion for us to use while the camp was made: very useful, because of the countless bugs that all seemed to have a taste for exotic Valdyan blood. I got close-fitting clothes of thin but dense fabric to wear that nothing could sting through or crawl into by the wrists and ankles, and I was still bitten a lot on hands, feet, ears and face. The pavilion had bug-proof netting and strong-smelling incense burners to keep most of the critters away.

I hadn’t been sitting down in the pavilion for half a moment when a young Valdyan officer came up to me, “excuse me, you seem to be the only Valdyan woman here of the right age…” and then he blushed and faltered, but I knew what he meant: after all, it was the Feast of Anshen. To the day, as it turned out. He wasn’t the only one who wanted to get married– more people came to ask. Obviously, nobody wanted to go into the big battle without being married to the person they loved. Even an Iss-Peranian-looking man who asked “do you also marry two men, or two women?” and I had to explain that while it’s not unusual or indecent in Valdyas that two men or two women set up together, marrying in front of the Mother is to do with having children.

The young officer (looking at his sergeants with a look that said that they, not he, should have done the reconnoitering) led me to a wellspring in a copse, though “the bushes are wrong, leaves like hands with eighteen fingers!” Pretty enough: this particular bush seemed to be growing from a kind of wooden pot that was its root or perhaps its trunk, and the leaves were firm and shiny. There were also vines dangling from the trees, but the Iss-Peranians kept me from touching those: they stung.

By the time I was installed under the hands-with-eighteen-fingers bushes, there were about a hundred couples waiting to be married. At the end of the day there must have been two hundred. Yet I don’t think I said the same words twice– the Mother was at my side, and Anshen too, because most of the people were soldiers. Over half were mixed couples– mostly a Valdyan man with an Iss-Peranian woman, some the other way round, and some Iss-Peranians with a husband or wife from another kingdom than their own. I realised at one point that one of the earlier couples had been not a man and a woman, but a man and a eunuch, but the Mother had given me words for them so it must have been all right.

The very last were two Iss-Peranian girls, one visibly pregnant, who said “you’ve married Arin and” well, a name I couldn’t understand and can’t recall, “could we get married too? She got pregnant, you know, those things happen, and it’s about children anyway, so why not?” I said “this is such a strange day, the gods allow anything,” and indeed, there were words for them too.

It was close to midnight, and Jerna came to get me for the Guild meeting. I let Bebakshi light the fire; formally it was my job but I thought I might be too tired and I knew she’d like to do it. She didn’t use lightning as I’d thought, but dance: she undressed, did a dance that attracted everybody’s attention, especially of the men, and took that anea and turned it into fire to light the wood-pile with; very impressive! Then she got dressed matter-of-factly and sat down, a satisfied grin on her face. We must have done the usual Guild-meeting things, but the only thing I’m sure of was commemorating Tarin. When we were done with the business stuff and got down to eating and drinking, people’s husbands and wives and sweethearts joined us, and later many left in twos and sometimes threes, and I think I went to sleep under the anti-bug netting in the pavilion, because I woke up on the back of the elephant again, having been hauled up fast asleep.

We had to travel fast, Beguyan said, because the rainy season was about to start; in fact it should already have started, but something was very wrong with the weather. I refrained from saying what I thought: that any strangeness or wrongness in the weather was very likely my doing. If you have strange weather in Valdyas, think of me, and remember that I am not doing it on purpose, or at least not for that purpose. And be sure that I’m thinking of you, too: all that marrying makes me long for you more than ever.

Much love,

Raith

Raith thought she was shaken by the previous battle, but this one shook her still more. Some of the fighting details may be off, especially the order in which things happened, but I think the gist is there.

This is Part I; Part II (much more cheerful) tomorrow or otherwise ASAP.

Somewhere in (I think it’s called) Dasht, on the road.

Darling Ayneth,

If my handwriting is shaky it’s because I’m on the back of an elephant again, and though they’re much smoother in movement than a horse (or even a ship when there’s any wind at all) they don’t exactly stand still. Strangely, either nothing happens or everything happens at once, with lots of travel in between.

I trust my letter about the battle with all the lightning, and the one with Bebakshi and the king of Jomhur (that makes it look as if they’re a couple, but nothing could be further from the truth) reached you in good order. That was around the feast of Timoine, and now it’s just been the feast of Anshen, and in that whole season nothing much happened except that I acquired apprentices. More than a dozen of them! Valdyan soldiers, a few Iss-Peranian soldiers, even two very young women –the younger no more than twelve years old, I think– who are Iss-Peranian camp followers. I started them all at the very beginning, even Bebakshi, and Jerna the sergeant who was already almost a journeyman when she joined up; now her gifts are so much in disuse that she wants to learn all over again. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter that some are going much faster than others; they all learn from each other, too.

After we left the King of Jomhur’s city we travelled for almost the whole season, with only a few small skirmishes along the way that I didn’t have to help with. I didn’t have anything to do except teach lessons whenever apprentices turned up in the time between their watches, and I tried to write letters but there was little to write about and no way to send them, so I gave that up quite soon. Just as I thought I was getting fat and torpid we came in sight of a kind of plateau which (from two day-marches away) looked as if we’d have to fly to the top, elephants and all, but Beguyan said there was a pass through it, a canyon between two sheer mountain-walls. It looked the ideal place for a trap. There were indeed Khas somewhere around, but we couldn’t see whether they were in the canyon pretending by magic to be in the wood, or in the wood pretending to be in the canyon. Understandably Beguyan didn’t want to risk a few thousand troops to find out. So I took Bebakshi and two of my best apprentices out in the spirit, all the way to the canyon, to see if there was anyone there that we could drop a rock on to scare them off.

Being two day-marches away from your body in the spirit isn’t very conducive to dropping rocks, of course, but Bebakshi hit one of the sides of the chasm with lightning and rather a lot of rocks dropped anyway. Boulders, even, with a very impressive crashing echo. Nothing moved, however, not even birds, and we turned back –the other two hadn’t entered the canyon, they couldn’t go so far by themselves and I couldn’t manage to take more than one person along– only to find that we were locked in. It had been a trap after all. An impenetrable wall that looked like glass at first, with strange inclusions, but coming closer we saw that it was a wall of ryst made out of fear, or at least with a lot of fear mixed in. When I came closer still, I could see that the fear was attached to people’s souls– dead people, most of them very young. I’m not afraid of the dead –I’ve seen enough with the pox, and I’ve been in a few battles– but this was so horrible that I needed all Loryn’s skills to cope. If I’d had a body at the time, I’d have wanted to wash it!

I had the sense to call on Naigha then, in what I remember as a very small and shy mind-voice, but it was enough: she came. I pulled one of the souls out of the wall and handed it to her. She took it in her arms and it disappeared. That felt like a good thing, so I encouraged Bebakshi to do the same, and she had the sense to start at the bottom so the whole wall would collapse. And yes, so it did, eventually, after we had picked up souls and passed them to Naigha one by one for what felt like days. I could hear her voice thanking us, “I’ve been waiting for some of these for a long time”. Later I heard –and remembered hearing it from someone before, perhaps Athal– that the Khas burn their gifted children as soon as it shows; presumably the mages take that anea to make themselves stronger.

As soon as the wall crashed, I felt myself being reeled in like a pike on a fishing-line, and hurriedly took Bebakshi by the nearest bit of anie, I think her spirit ankle, because nobody was reeling her in. I came to my senses on my own bed quite unable to move, or make a sound, or use my mind to speak to Tarin who was bending over me solicitously. “You were unconscious for two days!” he said. As soon as my body did what I wanted a little more, I asked about Bebakshi and was told that Sashila was taking care of her. That worried me for a bit, but Bebakshi came in soon enough, in slightly better shape than me, saying that she and Sashila had made up, more or less, but that they’d never be friends again.

I felt that there was something people weren’t telling me, and when I asked about it they were evasive, saying “that can wait”, but I didn’t want to wait, whether or not I could do anything about it right away. It turned out that rather a lot of Khas were camped near our camp’s west gate, led by a mage, presumably the one whose wall of souls we’d destroyed. “I can’t do anything about that right now,” I said, and before I fell asleep again sent Bebakshi with the patrol going to investigate the chasm because she could move about and use her mind to communicate, which was more than I could manage at that moment.

When I was feeling better –it must have been that evening or the next– I went to look at the Khas at the west gate. There were a few thousand of them with the mage prominently in centre front: tall, gaunt, clearly challenging me. We exchanged a few looks and had almost got to the testing-blow stage when the mage openly challenged me to a duel, minds only, without weapons. At that point I noticed something strange, and when I paid attention I saw that this wasn’t, as I’d thought by the looks, an old man, but an old woman. She reminded me –or perhaps the Loryn-imprint in me– of nobody so much as of Loryn’s old teacher.

I didn’t feel up to duelling just yet, and had to think about whether this was really the best option –after all, Beguyan would need me at Solay and this mage looked very strong– so I said “I’ll tell you in the morning”. I was about to turn and let her stew for a bit when she lashed out at me, and I made a rope of ryst to catch her with. She bit into it, gnawing it right through, and was loosening it when I set it on fire. That took her by surprise, but not long enough for me to do anything before she had punched it into a ball which she hurled at me, flaming. I was already slamming a seal around myself when Tarin leapt in front of me and caught it full in the chest.

There wasn’t much left of him. It made me so angry that I didn’t know what to do, but some of my apprentices put a seal around the whole Khas camp– of the airtight kind that Vurian used to teach. It needed maintenance, but I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, not with Tarin to have a wake for. Someone –perhaps I did it myself– sent for the priestess of Naigha.

Two of the Khas from our own army came to say that this mage wasn’t keeping to the rules, which meant that whatever I did in the morning they wouldn’t desert us. So far, so good. In the morning only the mage was still standing in the camp, surrounded by dead bodies. As soon as we let the seal down she took a deep breath and raised a wind. A storm. A hurricane. Obviously, she hadn’t seen me at Erday, I stood there while everything else was being blown away and took all that anea to myself. I prayed to Anshen, asking whether I had to keep strictly to the rules, but here Anshen is completely the god of war, nothing of justice or righteousness about him, and he made it very clear that I would be allowed anything that made us win this war. So I flattened her with the wind, the sheer power, dealing her a blow for Tarin first, and then wanted to hit her for each of those children but there was hardly anything left to hit and I had to let all my anger blow away to sea with the dead bodies.

Spent again, I had servants wash and feed me again –I could definitely get used to that!– and then Bebakshi came back, in a worse state than I was, and told me there had been a terrible battle. They’d kept the Khas back in the canyon until I’d dealt with the mage and then let them run past and attacked them from both sides, but for every fallen Khas ten of our soldiers had fallen. Now the canyon was more or less clear, though there was still some fighting. Soldiers were coming back into the camp, some wounded, some completely worn out, and the camp-followers took over immediately. For the moment, the women were running the war.

No, I’m not getting fat and torpid. My body is as wiry and trim as ever in spite of the stodgy soldier food, and my mind is perhaps leaner still, ruthless but no longer rash, with all embellishments burnt and blown away. You may not like me much at first when I come back, but I pray to the gods every day that you’ll still love me.

Raith

Written after the two letters to Ayneth and sent with the same ship. It should reach King Athal before he leaves Valdyas, but with the stormy weather we’ve been having lately it’s not entirely clear how long it will take to get to him.

Jomhur, just after the feast of Timoine

Hallei Lenye Raith to Alysei Athal astin Velain, king of Valdyas. In haste.

Athal,

I’ve been writing to Ayneth a lot, and she ought to get all the news in two letters I’m sending with this one –you can read them as far as I’m concerned, nothing in there that’s not suitable for a king unless you mind a bit of sappiness– but I remembered just in time that there are things I want you to know before we go to battle together, so you won’t have to do all your preparation the moment you set foot on dry land.

Those Khas have real mages. I’ve seen some; I’ve fought one hand-to-hand, and one from a distance, and they’re not to be sneezed at. They can do lightning at the very least. I must admit that I didn’t give the second a chance to show what he could do, because we were quicker with the lightning that time. Once you take out a unit’s mage, they lose morale and will surrender the moment you assert your authority. It does help to be a man– they don’t think much of women, and they can tell the difference even in splint mail. I can do the precision hitting, you and Beguyan will have to do the being-surrendered-to.

There are so many Valdyan soldiers here that I suspect that you hardly have an army left, but you don’t have to worry: it will of course look good if you arrive with a substantial guard, but I think we have quite enough troops to take Solay even without another Valdyan battalion. It is true that the Valdyan troops are reckoned to be braver than the Iss-Peranians, probably because they’re all volunteers fighting for their king and the Iss-Peranians are conscripts, or at least driven by necessity.

Oh, and if you see Ayneth after you read this, please reassure her that I do not intend to bring my dandar apprentice back to Valdyas, however much she (my apprentice, not Ayneth) may want to. I admit that we have become a sort of friends, but certainly not lovers, and anyway nobody can take Ayneth’s place with me, not even for a short time while I’m far away from her. I think it might be best to try and find the woman a place in Solay once we’ve taken it, where she can be useful out of the way of her enemies.

I’m longing to see you, to fight side by side with you, and to get the whole thing over with. It’s exhilarating to work with such big stuff, but it puts me in a very awkward position –the great mage that everybody is a little afraid of– and I’m looking forward to being merely the baroness of Lenay again, solving trifling problems like “what shall we live on now that our house and vineyard have fallen down the hole where Erday used to be?”

Raith

Lots of things happen, but no substantial fighting: the next bout of that, barring skirmishes, will probably be at the gates of Solay.

This letter, and the previous, will probably arrive at some time, unless someone sinks the ship.

Dearest Ayneth,

If someone had told me that war is mostly waiting, I’d have laughed at them, even though I’ve done some fighting in Valdyas. But that was fighting, not actual war, I know that now.

After we’d ended up back in the camp with a couple of thousand Khas prisoners-of-war, meek with shock (or probably because they’d lost their mage and their commander, whether or not those were the same person), there was suddenly nothing to do. We couldn’t enter the city yet, even though the occupying Khas had panicked at the shape of the clouds, and the hot sand-storm, and the lightning –there had even been some lightning strikes in the city itself, not of my or even Bebakshi’s doing, but simply a side-effect of the storm– and surrendered as one man because obviously the army of the Alliance had powerful mages (I still can’t get used to people being afraid of me). That news hit us like a cold bath: everybody had expected to fight and the anticlimax was disconcerting.

Bebakshi came for a lesson, but we got distracted and spent an hour or so making ourselves invisible to one another. I could see her if I looked hard enough, but our kind of camouflage seems to confound dandar and she tried to trick me into revealing myself by exuding… it was most like a smell, and a little like a feeling, that made me think of an early autumn morning in Lenyas, a high wind and racing clouds, and desire to go out for a walk or a ride. I knew –but I’m perfectly conscious that I probably wouldn’t have known if it had been without warning– that it wasn’t real, so I could treat it like a test and resist, but barely. I put so much effort in resisting that I almost missed Bebakshi overexerting herself, close to fainting, but I caught her in time. That’s one of the first things she’ll have to learn: to keep herself in check! The servant who was just coming in to bring the tea, a girl called Azireh, had never learned to resist compulsion, and she stood at the door caught in a wonderful dream, or so she said when we woke her up.

I got the bag of vervain I’d given Bebakshi, but the leaves smelt wrong somehow, with an acrid undertone. She’d recovered enough to see for herself and pointed out that there were strange leaves mixed in with the familiar ones– a bit browner, a bit more pointed. “Tobacco,” she said (that is: southweed). “Sashila must have put that in! She’s the only one who knows about it!” What would have happened if we’d drunk tea from that, I wondered, and Bebakshi said that we’d have been very sick for a few days, so Sashila could say “I told you so” because obviously Valdyan semsin didn’t agree with dandar. The stuff is poisonous, but not very dangerous if you only drink a cupful of a weak infusion, mostly very uncomfortable.

Well, if that was all; a stupid schoolgirl prank. Bebakshi took it more seriously, though, and stormed out to put paid to it. I don’t exactly recall what happened then, but at one point I was taken to what I can only call a courtroom, where a bored-looking officer was officiating. Sashila and Bebakshi knelt in front –shackled, in the sun– but I got to stand in the shadow to give evidence. Eventually I got Bebakshi back, exonerated. She started out still full of vengeful feelings, but when I asked what would happen to Sashila we discussed various kinds of punishment –she was surprised, almost shocked, that I as “princess” of Lenay didn’t cut off the heads of people who displeased me– and she went to Beguyan to plead for mercy. That must have gone sour at some point too, because later Sashila came stomping into my room, for all the world as if she was wearing heavy metal-shod boots, and told me “I have an apprentice too! And her name is Ysella!” What that was supposed to accomplish I’m not sure of– did she think I’d be envious? Or angry? I don’t approve of dandar much, though I’ve come to understand them a little more from Bebakshi, but I’m not going to stop a silly Valdyan girl from trying to become one; that’s not part of my mandate, for one thing, and by now I know better than to meddle.

We did get to the city eventually, almost at the same time that the king of Jomhur disembarked from a ship that we’d already seen coming. He was a bit peeved that he hadn’t been the one to liberate his city– but there was nothing Beguyan could have done to prevent the city surrendering to him before the king arrived. Except postpone the fighting, I suppose, and that wouldn’t have been a good idea.

King Aheste –at least I think that’s his name, I didn’t ask him how to spell it– is a friendly, worried man, middle-aged, mild-mannered, not gifted that I could see (but more about that later). He invited our party of officers and officials to dinner, apologising for the state of his dining hall (and indeed one side of it was still in ruins). The food was simple, mostly bread and fruit, but a welcome change from soldiers’ grub. After we’d eaten the king said “now I want to show you something very few outsiders have ever seen” and a party of men and women came in, naked but painted, who danced without any music except the sound of their bare feet on the flagstones.

It was merely entrancing at first, then it started to dawn on me that this was not a performance, it was as much semsin work as any weather-working of mine had been; spreading protection over the hall, the palace, the city– and farther away than I could see. I was reminded of Athal who protected most of Lenyas as his journeyman’s trial, but this was stronger and more solid, woven into the fabric of the world. People started to leave and wanted to take me along, but I declined, taken up in the shape of the dance. When only the dancers and the king and I were left, the king stripped naked and joined the dancers. How could I have thought that he wasn’t gifted? But he wasn’t, not himself, it was only that the shape became his shape, the movement became his movement, the king and the country and the protection being all one thing.

You know me: I want to know what things are made of, how they are structured, and part of my mind couldn’t resist trying to find out. If I could handle the world like that, I could make people gifted! But every time I thought I had it in my hands the shape of it changed and it escaped me.

It lasted the whole night, and eventually I must have slept because I woke up with my head on the table, alone in the empty ruined dining hall. I ate some stale bread and leftover fruit and went in search of somewhere to borrow a horse, but there was a young soldier at the palace door who had apparently been waiting for me since the evening.

I should really write about the transformation of Bebakshi, who cut her hair from waist-length to almost as short as mine, and our girly afternoon of trying different styles of paint on our faces –she can look like an expensive whore in Essle without any effort; any face-paint is wasted on me, and she’s pronounced my hair hopeless– but there’s a ship leaving shortly and I want you to have this. If you catch Athal before he’s off, you could ask him about the Jomhur dancers, I suspect that the play the Khandihan put on was of the same kind. Tell him anything you think he’ll want to know; I don’t mind if he reads this letter, because there’s nothing unsuitable in it (hard to write unsuitable things, anyway) and he knows me almost as well as you do.

With love,

Raith