The Sorcerer's Plague

THUNDER MOON WAXING, YEAR I 2 I I

What are we, Grandfather?"

Besh sat back on his heels, wiping beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and looking over at the boy. "What are we?" he repeated. "We're sheep, of course. Why else would we live in the highlands and eat roots and greens?"

Mihas giggled, but quickly grew serious again. Whatever had taken hold of the boy's curiosity didn't want to let go.

"You know what I mean," he said. "What kind of people are we?"

The old man leaned forward again, his knees and elbows cushioned in the soft black earth as he pulled clover and thin sprays of grass out of his garden. The goldroot looked healthy, the tops of the tubers firm and plump. In another half turn he'd harvest them. The time for pulling weeds had long since passed. Was it then vanity that had him crawling about in the dirt, peering into the shadows of the root greens? Ema would have thought so. She would have teased him day and night had she seen him now, an old man too proud to share the earth with clover and grass.

"Grandfather?"

"We are Mettai, Mihas. You know that."

"But what does that mean?"

Besh sat up again. "Why are you asking me this?"

Mihas looked down at the ground, kicking at a clod of dirt with his bare foot. His fine long hair, black as a raven's feathers, hung over his forehead, concealing his eyes.

"Do you remember the peddler who came through here just after the dark of the moons?" the boy asked.

"The old Qirsi?"

"Yes, him. He said something."

"Come here," Besh said, waving the boy over to him.

Mihas walked to where his grandfather was kneeling and sat beside him, looking solemn.

Besh smiled to show the boy he wasn't angry with him. "What did he say to you?"

"He said we were like the creyvnal, that we really didn't know what we were."

"Perhaps he meant it as a compliment. The creyvnal is a powerful beast. Wouldn't you like to have the body of a lion and the head of a wolf?" He smiled; Mihas didn't.

"The creyvnal isn't real, Grandfather. Even I know that."

"You're right. It's not real. But still, the peddler was also right, in a way. The Mettai are like the creyvnal."

"How?"

"Well, we're Eandi. We have dark hair and dark eyes, we live long lives, we're strong like other Eandi. But like the Qirsi, we can use magic."

"But did he mean that we're not real? I mean, I know we are. But was he saying that our powers aren't real?"

Besh eyed Mihas briefly. Then he reached for one of the clovers he had pulled from the ground and held it out to the boy.

Mihas frowned.

"Take it," the old man said.

The boy held out his hand and Besh placed the clover in his palm. "What does `mettai' mean?" he asked. "Do you know?"

"You mean the word?"

"Yes."

"It means blood of the earth."

"Good. Put some dirt in your hand with the clover."

As Mihas did this, Besh pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and dragged the blade across the back of his own hand. His skin there, tanned and brown from the Growing sun, was scored with dozens of thin white lines, all of them running parallel to the cut he had just made; evidence of a life spent drawing upon earth magic. Like rings within the trunks of the great firs and cedars growing in the forests around Kirayde, the lines on a Mettai's hand could be used to judge his or her age.

A man could even trace the history of all his years, if only he could recall the conjuring made whole by the blood that flowed from each of those scars. Some would claim that unnecessary conjurings like this one were a waste of blood and earth, that they were frivolous expressions of Mettai power. But wasn't there value in helping a boy find pride in his heritage and in the power that flowed in his veins? Besh had been conjuring for most of his sixty-four years. This, it seemed to the old man, was as valid a reason as any for drawing forth his blood.

He let the blood well from the wound for several moments before carefully gathering some on the flat of his blade. He held the knife over Mihas's hand, balancing the blood on the steel.

"Blood to earth," he murmured. "Life to power, power to thought, color to clover."

He tipped the blade, allowing the blood to drip off the knife and onto the boy's hand, where it mingled with the earth and the flower. For a moment nothing happened. Then the blood and soil, blended together now in what looked like rich crimson mud, began to swirl slowly in the palm of the boy's hand. Four times it went around, and then it vanished into the roots of the flower.

An instant later, the soft pink hue of the clover gave way to brilliant sapphire. The flower appeared to come to life again, its color dazzling, its leaves opening once more. In the center of the bloom, amid the blue, there appeared a small spot of bright yellow, as perfect and round as the sun in Morna's sky.

Mihas laughed aloud.

"If our magic isn't real," Besh said, "how do you explain that?" The boy reached for another clover. "Do it again, Grandfather!" "No. Once is enough. One should never trifle with Mettai magic." "Can you teach me?"

"Not yet. You know that. When you begin your fourth four you can start to learn. And when you complete that four, you'll have earned your blade. All right?"

Mihas nodded, looking glum. No doubt five years seemed an eternity to the child. Little did he know how quickly the time would pass.

Besh glanced at his hand. The bleeding had slowed. Another scar to mark the years.

Sixteen fours. How quickly they'd gone by. Many among his people lived to be this old. He wasn't so unusual in that respect. If anything, he was more fit than most. Sixty-four was said to be a powerful age for those who reached it, a time of wisdom and enhanced magic. For most it was actually a year of endings. How many men had he seen live out their sixteenth four only to weaken and die soon after?

Besh had no intention of being one of them. He planned to guide Mihas into his power. Better him than Sirj, the boy's father. The man would make a mess of it, and in the process he'd do the same to the boy. Besh had never liked Sirj's father-he was as stubborn as he was stupid, and he could never manage to keep his mouth shut. It was bad enough that the man had built his house just next to Besh and Ema's back when she still lived and Besh still worked as the village cooper. But that Elica should marry the man's son… Besh shook his head. He would have spit at the thought of Elica's fool of a husband had Mihas not been there, watching him. No, Besh couldn't die yet. Once Mihas came of age he could go and join Ema in the Underrealm, but not before.

He licked the blood from the back of his hand and from his blade, as was proper. A Mettai never wasted blood, and by licking the wound, he stopped the bleeding. From what he'd heard over the years, he gathered that this wasn't true for other Eandi or for the sorcerer race. But it worked for a Mettai every time.

"Can I see your knife again, Grandfather?"

"Have a care with it," he said, handing it to Mihas, hilt first.

Mihas's brown eyes danced in the sunlight. "I always do. You're the one who's always cutting himself."

Besh had to laugh.

Clever boy. His mother's child. Dark-skinned and long-limbed, like Elica and like Ema, and as quick as both of them. Ema would say that the father of such a child couldn't be all bad. As far as Besh was concerned it meant only that Elica's blood was stronger than her husband's.

The old man turned his attention back to the clover and grasses intruding upon his goldroot, and for a long time he and the boy said nothing. The sun burned a lazy arc across the sky, blue save for a few feathered clouds. Swallows darted overhead, wheeling in the light wind, chattering and scolding like children at play.

"Are you the oldest person in Kirayde?" Mihas asked suddenly.

The boy was sitting in the dirt, still toying with the knife. The blueand-gold clover lay on his knee, a prize that he would show his mother and father.

Besh laughed at the question. "No," he said. "I'm not the oldest."

He turned and sat, stretching out his stiff legs. An old man shouldn't kneel for so long, Ema's voice scolded in his head. If you're not careful, you'll wind up bent and lame.

"That little girl you play with, the one with so many older brothers." "Nissa?"

"Yes, Nissa."

"She only has four brothers."

"Only four?" Besh said. "I thought it was more than that. Anyway, her grandmother is older than I am. And so is the herbmistress."

"She is?"

Besh raised his eyebrows. "Is that so hard to believe?"

"Not really. I just…" Mihas shrugged. "If you're not the oldest, then why are you one of the village elders? Nissa's grandmother isn't."

"No, she's not, but the herbmistress is. Truly, Mihas, I don't know why the other elders chose me to join their circle. But I do know that there's more to the choice than just a person's age."

"Oh." Mihas turned the knife over in his hands. "What about Old Lici? Is she older than you?"

Besh glanced at the boy again, but Mihas seemed intent on the blade. Most likely he was curious and nothing more. Besh had seen several children shouting taunts at the old woman just a few days before, and he had warned Mihas to stay away from her. When the boy had asked him why, he hadn't been able to give a good reason. This was the first time either of them had mentioned the woman since then.

"I believe she is older," Besh said, trying to keep his tone light.

Apparently he failed.

"You don't like her, do you, Grandfather?"

"I don't really care for her one way or another."

"It seems like you don't like her."

Clever indeed.

Mihas was right. Besh didn't like the old witch who lived at the southern edge of their village. Or more to the point, he didn't trust her. He might even have been afraid of her. Besh had been no more than a babe suckling at his mother's breast when Lici first came to Kirayde, but he'd heard others speak of her arrival enough times that he could almost claim as his own other people's memories of that cool Harvest day.

Lici was but eight years old at the time, a pretty girl with long black hair and fair features. But something dark lurked in her green eyes-the memory of tragedy, some said-and for some time she refused to speak. It was clear to all that she had wandered alone in the wild for many, many days, perhaps as long as an entire turn of the moons, and that she had been without proper food and clothing for all that time. She was emaciated. Her arms and legs were covered with insect bites and scarred as if from brambles, and her hair was matted with filth. Most likely she had kept herself alive by eating what roots and berries she could find.

Many speculated on what might have happened to her. Some assumed that she had survived an outbreak of the pestilence that claimed the rest of her family and village. Others wondered if she'd been the lone survivor of an attack by brigands. There were darker suggestions as well-even then, when Lici was but a child, a few wondered if she might have been responsible for whatever doom had befallen the rest of her people.

To Besh's knowledge, though, the full tale of Lici's past was known only to two people: Lici, of course, and a woman named Sylpa.

Sylpa had been the leader of the village elders at the time Lici came to Kirayde. That first day she took Lici in, and during the years that followed raised the girl as she would a daughter. Gradually, as Lici's strength returned, and the memories of whatever tragedy she had endured faded, she began to speak. She took her lessons with the other children and grew to womanhood. Besh remembered thinking her beautiful when he was a small boy and easily impressed by long silken hair and eyes that sparkled like emeralds. But he also recalled that, even then, he never spoke with her, or rather, that Lici never spoke with anyone other than Sylpa.

She rarely smiled, and she had a discomfiting habit of looking a person directly in the eye as she walked past in utter silence. Though Besh dreamed of marrying her, he also began to fear her.

Over time his fascination with her waned. He married Ema, had children of his own, made a name for himself among the Mettai as a skilled cooper and wise leader, and eventually was selected as one of the elders. Lici never married. She had suitors, including an Eandi merchant who saw her one morning as he drove a cart loaded with his wares into the village marketplace. He returned to Kirayde several times during that one Planting season, hoping that this dark, beautiful Mettai woman might deign to speak with him. She did not. After a time, he stopped coming.

When Sylpa died, Lici left the house they had shared and built for herself a small but in a lonely corner of the village, near what villagers called the South Rill. She still spoke with no one, but she began to teach herself to weave baskets. The Mettai of the northern highlands had long been known for their basketwork, and Kirayde had a master basket- maker who could have offered her an apprenticeship. But as with everything else, Lici did this alone. And she did it brilliantly. Within only a few years, her craft rivaled that of the village's master. Soon, peddlers were coming from all over the Southlands to buy Lici's baskets.

Some in the village began to say that the woman was growing rich off her craft, that she hoarded gold and silver pieces the way a mouse hoards grain for the Snows. It may well have been true, at least for a time. Nevertheless, Lici remained in her tiny hut, wearing old clothes that had once been Sylpa's, and eating the roots and greens she grew in her small garden plot. Then abruptly, just a few years ago, she began to turn the peddlers away. Suddenly it seemed that she had no interest in trading any of her baskets. The peddlers offered more gold. They offered jewels and silverwork, from the Iejony Peninsula, and blankets from the cloth crafters of Qosantia. They stood outside her door and pleaded with her for just one simple trade. Lici refused them all.

To this day, no one in the village knew why.

Besh thought it a fitting end to her years of prosperity, and he was surprised that others didn't recognize it as such. The old woman had spent her entire life in shadow, marked by the gods for some dark fate. Perhaps she meant well. Perhaps she chose solitude and behaved as she did because she never had the chance to learn any other way. Truth be told, Besh didn't care.

He didn't want to have anything to do with her, and he certainly didn't want Mihas going near her.

"It's not that I don't like Lici," he told the boy at last, watching the swallows dance overhead. "I just think you'd be better off staying away from her."

"But why?"

"It's hard to explain. She's… odd."

"Is it because her parents died?"

Besh looked at the boy, wondering how much he had heard about Lici's past.

Mihas leaned closer to him, as if fearing that others might hear what he said next. "Nissa's father says that wherever she walks, four ravens circle above her."

Four ravens. The Mettai death omen. That was as apt as anything Besh might have thought to say about her.

"Nissa's father may be right."

"Then why is she still alive?"

"There are many deaths, Mihas. Some are slower than others." The boy frowned. "I don't understand."

"That's all right. Just do as I say and stay away from Old Lici." "Yes, Grandfather."

Besh stood slowly, stretching his back and legs. "We should go home," he said.

Mihas scrambled to his feet. "Are the roots ready yet?"

"Not quite. Next turn, perhaps."

The boy nodded and handed Besh the knife.

They started walking back toward the house Besh shared with his daughter's family. They hadn't gone far, however, when Mihas suddenly halted.

"Oh, no!" the boy said, and ran back toward the garden.

"What's the matter?" Besh called after him.

Mihas stopped beside the goldroot, bent down, and lifted something carefully out of the dirt. Then he started back toward Besh.

"What did you forget?"

"My clover," the boy said, holding it up proudly for Besh to see. One might have thought that Mihas himself had changed its color. "I want to show Mama."

Besh knew what the boy's mother would say about the flower, but he kept his silence and they walked back home.

The house stood in a grove of cedar on a small hill just east of the marketplace. It was larger than most houses in Kirayde, though to an outsider, someone from one of the Qirsi settlements along the wash, it would have seemed modest at best. A thin ribbon of pale grey smoke rose from the chimney, and two small children chased each other among the trees, giggling and shrieking breathlessly as they ran.

As Besh and Mihas drew near, Elica emerged from the house bearing an empty bucket, her long hair stirring in the breeze.

"It's about time," she said, glancing at Mihas and then fixing Besh with a hard glare. "What were you doing all this time?"

"Taking care of the goldroot. Can't an old man tend his garden without being questioned so by his daughter?"

"Not when there are more pressing chores to be done." She held out the bucket to Mihas. "Fetch some water from the rill, Mihas. Quickly. Supper's going to be late as it is."

The boy stopped just in front of her, but instead of taking the bucket, he held up the clover, beaming at her.

"What's this?" she asked, taking the flower and examining it. "Grandfather did it!" Mihas told her. "It was a clover and I asked him whether our magic is real and he did that!"

Elica fixed Besh with a dark look, but then smiled at her son. "It's lovely. Such a bright color. Now, please, Mihas. The water."

"All right, Mama."

He grabbed the bucket and ran off, still clutching the clover in his free hand.

"You should know better, Father!" Elica said, sounding cross, as if she were speaking to one of her children. "No good can come of teaching the boy empty magic. And anyway, he's too young to be learning blood craft."

Sometimes Besh thought that Elica might be just a bit too much like her mother.

"I taught him nothing," he said. "I showed him a bit of magic. And it wasn't empty. That Qirsi peddler who came through here earlier in the waxing had him wondering if Mettai magic could do anything at all. I wanted him to see that it could."

"So show him something useful. You could have brought him back here and started my fire. You could have healed one of the children's cuts or scrapes. Elined knows they have enough between them to keep you bleeding for half a turn. But no. You choose to color a flower."

Sirj, Elica's husband, stepped around from the back of the house, his shirt soaked with sweat, a load of unsplit logs in his arms. He wasn't a big man-he was only slightly taller than Elica-nor was he particularly broad. But he was lean and strong, like a wildcat in the warmer turns.

"What are you going on about, Elica? I could hear you all the way back at the woodpile."

"It's nothing," she said.

Sirj didn't say anything. He put down the wood and regarded them both, waiting. His house, his question. He was entitled to an answer and both of them knew it.

"I colored a flower for Mihas," Besh finally told him. "I wanted to show him some magic. He was asking if Mettai powers were real."

Sirj eyed the old man briefly, his expression revealing little. It might have been that he knew Besh didn't like him, or maybe he was no more fond of Besh than the old man was of him. Whatever the reason, theirs had never been an easy relationship. But after a moment, Sirj merely shrugged and continued past Besh and Elica into the house. "No harm in that," he murmured.

Besh and Elica exchanged a look before following him inside.

Their supper consisted of smoked fish, boiled greens, and bread. Annze and Cam, the young ones, spent much of the meal teasing one another across the table and, after being chastised for that, feeding their fish to one of the dogs that ran wild through the village and in and out of nearly everyone's home. Except Lici's, of course. Even the dogs knew better than to bother her.

After they had finished and Mihas and the little ones had been put to bed, Besh lit his pipe and went out to smoke it in the cool evening air. He walked to the stump Sirj used for chopping wood, sat down, and gazed up into a darkening sky. Panya was already climbing into the night, her milky glow obscuring all but the brightest stars. No doubt red Bias was up as well, following her across the soft indigo, but Besh couldn't see the second moon for the trees.

After a short while, Elica came out, walked to where he sat, and rested a hand easily on his shoulder.

"It's a clear night," she said.

"For now. The fog will come up before long. It always does this time of year."

She nodded. Then, "I'm sorry about before, Father. I shouldn't have said what I did. Sirj is right. There's no harm in showing Mihas some magic now and then." She kissed the top of his head. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm too much like Mother."

Besh smiled. "There are worse things."

"I suppose."

Elica started to walk away.

"He asked me about Lici."

She stopped, turned. "What did you tell him?"

"Same thing I always do: Stay away from her. But he won't be satisfied with that for much longer."

"She won't be alive much longer," Elica muttered. Immediately she covered her mouth with a hand, her eyes wide as she stared down at Besh.

"Forgive me, Father. I shouldn't have said that. It was cruel. And I didn't mean that because she was old-"

Besh began to laugh.

"You think it's funny?"

The old man nodded. "Yes, in a way. Mihas asked me today if I was the oldest person in Kirayde. That's how we ended up speaking of Lici." He took Elica's hand. "It's all right, child. You're right: She won't be with us much longer. And-Bian forgive me for saying so-perhaps that's for the best." He gave his daughter a sly look. "I, on the other hand, intend to stay around for a good many years. So don't go selling off my pipe- weed any time soon."

She kissed him again. "Good night, Father. Don't stay out too long. It's getting cold."

Besh gave her hand a squeeze, then watched her walk away. After some time his pipe burned out, but still the old man sat, enjoying the air, and the darkness, and the sounds of the night. A few crickets, the last of the season, chirped nearby, and off in the distance a wolf howled. In recent nights Besh had heard an owl calling from the hills north of the village, but not tonight.

Eventually he began to see thin strands of mist drifting among the dark trunks of the firs and cedars, and he stood. The cold night breezes were one thing, but as Besh had grown older he'd found that the nighttime fogs chilled him, bone and blood. He retreated into the house and made his way to bed.

None of the rest would remember.

Why should they? Most hadn't even been alive at the time; those who were had been too young to understand.

But she knew. Oh, yes, Lici knew.

She could still see it all. She could see houses that had long since been broken by storms and snows and howling winds. She could see copses and clearings that had since given way to homes and garden plots. She could close her eyes and summon an image of Kirayde just as it had appeared that first day. She could walk the lanes past house and plot and tell any who cared to listen when each had been built or first tilled. She could go to any person in the village and give the year, turn, and day of his or her birth.

Lici remembered all of it.

They thought her crazed. She never married or had children, she didn't speak to them, she refused to prattle on about nothing or smile greetings that she didn't mean. And so they called her mad, they called her a witch. The children mocked her and their parents scolded them in turn. But then those same mothers and fathers ignored her, as if she were nothing more than a spider spinning webs in her tiny corner of the village. Did they really think that was better? Would they have chosen silence over taunts had silence been all they knew?

How long would it take them to realize that she was gone? Who would be the first to notice? Would they think that she had wandered off by accident? Would they think that she had drowned herself in the rill or gotten lost in the night mists? Or would they know that she left them by choice? Might there be one among them who would even guess her purpose? Would any of them know why she had chosen this night? Probably not. But it amused her to imagine the possibilities.

Sixteen fours. Sixty-four years. To the very day. That was long enough for anyone to stay in one place, to live among the same people, to turn over in one's head the same thought again and again, to direct every moment of every day toward a single purpose. Sixteen fours. Some said there was power in the very number. Indeed. Lici had power in abundance. And she would need all of it.

She had learned her craft well. Not basketmaking, though she also had much skill at that, but rather the blood craft, the magic of her people. The white-hairs thought that Qirsi magic reigned supreme in the Southlands, and perhaps they were right. But the magic of the Mettai was no trifle. And in the hands of a master, even one as old as she, it could be a mighty weapon.

At last her waiting had come to an end. She had planned and waited, she had suffered indignities both glaring and subtle, she had trained herself in both her crafts, pushing herself harder than any master would push even his most prized apprentice. All in preparation for this night, which was both an ending and a beginning. Kirayde would be lost to her forever, and despite all that she had endured here, the thought saddened her. This had been Sylpa's home and so had been as much a home to Lici as she could have expected after Sentaya. Now, though, she would begin a new journey, a new life, if one as old as she could ask for such a thing. She had hungered for this countless long years.

From her but by the rill she could see the mist gathering about the village, shifting and elusive, glowing like a horde of wraiths in the white and red radiance of the two moons. It was nearly time. She had her baskets packed and ready in her old cart. She could see the nag from her doorway, gleaming white in the moonglow, shaking her head impatiently, ready to be on her way. The creature would be a good companion in these last days.

She had enough food to keep her going until she could trade for more. And though she tried to think of items she would need that she might be leaving behind, she knew there was nothing.

She had but one purpose now. That was all that remained. She could almost smell the Silverwater and the trees that surrounded the place. The gods knew she remembered the way, even after all this time.

Some things could never be forgotten. Or forgiven.