Wild Magic

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Reyna came into the sitting room, looking tired and mussed. He yawned, threw himself into a chair. “Ten kids and every one of them sick with something, toothache to colic.”

Faan gulped, ran from the room. •

“What was that about?”

Dawa shrugged. “She’s been sneaking looks at us all afternoon, Rey. Probably one of those kids at the school said something.”

Reyna swore and pulled himself onto his feet. “Where’s Tai?”

“Left a note saying she was going to see the Sibyl and she’d be back for dinner.” Jea came quickly across the room. “I’ve heard some talk, Rey. And Panote said Manasso Kunin came storming in, mad to his eyebrows about something that happened at school. Faan’s had a bad day. Maybe you better let her work it out herself.”

“I promised I’d be there anytime she needed help.” Reyna slammed the door behind him, leaned against it for a moment, then went up the stairs, his feet dragging; he should have explained things the first time she had trouble, but she was so young, only eight years old, how could he make her understand? And I was afraid, he thought, if she couldn’t accept it, if she pushed me away in disgust, k’laan! I don’t know what I’d do…

He knocked at her door. “Faan, I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Nayo!” The word was muffled by walls, but he could hear the panic in her voice.

“I’m coming in, honey. I don’t know what someone told you, but it’s wrong, they’ve made it wrong.” He worked the latch, pushed the door open.

She was lying curled up in the middle of the bed, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut.

He sat on the bed beside her, put his hand on her shoulder, agonizing as he felt the hardness of the muscles under his fingers. “What happened, Faan? You can tell me. You can tell me anything. I love you, bebe.”

She gasped, then pulled her hand away and clamped her mouth shut; the only sound was a faint whine that escaped through her nose.

“Someone told you what I do. That’s tight, isn’t it?” Silence.

“Diyo. And they made it ugly because their minds are ugly.”

Faan shuddered; at first she was pale, then flushed a bright red, then pale again. All the time her eyes were tightly shut, her face turned away from him.

“Honey, my bebe, I’m not going to ask you who said it, or what he said; I’m just going to say he doesn’t understand.” He smoothed his hand over her hair, pulled a wandering strand off her face. “Don’t you love me any more? Do you want to leave me?”

Faan gasped. She flung herself around and lunged at Reyna, butting her head against his breasts, hugging him. “Nayo, Mamay, nayo, nayo, nayoooo0… She started crying, sobs tearing out of her, shaking her whole body.

Reyna held her and wept also, much more quietly. She loved him still. She called him mamay. A joy flooded through him so intense, it was hard to tell it from pain.

Chapter 5. The Shaping of the Prophet begins

Wenyarum Taleza, High Maulapam and. Hereditary General of the Armies of the Amrapake of Zam Fadogunun, looked with loathing at his wife, snorted, and strode with military vigor to one of the windows on the east side of the cluttered sitting room. He was not a young man, but a vigorous one, handsome in a bony way, his blue-black hide gleaming with the oils from his morning massage. The only wars he’d fought were on a chessboard, but he never appeared in public in anything but his leathers and half-armor; they reinforced his sense of his own importance, fed his ambition which was as limitless as his lack of imagination allowed.

Penhari Banadah continued to ignore him, concentrating on the stitches she was setting in the lushly burgeoning floral pattern painted onto the canvas stretched across the frame. Leaves writhed in flamelike double curves, vines twisted in and out of elaborate knots and around heavy, graceless flowers; she used primary colors throughout, saturated, clashing colors that gave a nightmare vitality to the piece.

The robe she wore was wrinkled and stained around the hem from the mud she plowed through in her gardening. Her hair was neatly braided and wired into elaborate interlacing loops because her chief maid had scolded her into sitting down and letting it be done. She had the traditional face paint on, but only the min-

imum required by etiquette and her ears were as bare as her fingers. She disliked jewelry and never wore it unless she was forced to. With the bluntness her brother and her husband found disconcerting and distasteful, she’d say: I’m not a cow, I don’t need tags in my ears.

Over his shoulder Wenyarum said, “I should have poisoned you years ago.”

“You didn’t have the nerve then, you don’t now.”

“You shouldn’t be so sure, my dear.”

“Ha! Because my brother despises me? You know better. An attack on me is an attack on him. He’d have you garrotted before my ashes were cold.” She set the last stitch in the color she was using, pulled the needle free and began searching through the tangled skeins in her workbox for the strand she wanted.

He was silent for several minutes, scratching his long, gold-painted nails on the windowsill. She shivered but said nothing.

“Your brother’s patience has its limits. When it comes to the boy and what you’ve done to him.”

“Ah. The boy.” She laid the end of the yarn in a small fold of parchment, eased the parchment through the eye of the needle, ran the yarn through the canvas, then began setting stitches in the new color.

“He’s a mess.” He curled his hand into a fist, brought it down hard on the sill. “Kasso-coddled. Cries if he squashes a mosquito. Tchah! Disgrace. Why you put him in that school for milk-lappers…” He scowled at her over his shoulder, “Turning him into… “ He pulled his heavy mouth into an exaggerated pout. “Into a prancing kuash slobbering over those gelded do-nothings. He’s wasting his opportunities.”

She continued to set her stitches without bothering to respond. Apart from a mild satisfaction that he was so disturbed by his son’s idiocies, she was in-

different to both of them these days. Even the angry malevolence she’d felt from the moment morning sickness overtook her, through the difficult delivery that had nearly killed her, until she was able to pass the child to a wet nurse, even that scratchy free-form fury was washed away by the tides of her indifference.

“No more!” he shouted. “No katlin more! I’m getting him out of that nursery for fools. Sending him to the Cheoshim. Make a man out of him “-

Even a year ago she might have listened, then maneuvered to thwart him. Now she didn’t care. He could do what he wanted with the boy as long as he didn’t bother her.

“It’s time he was betrothed. He’s old enough,” Wenyarum said. “Make connections for him, allies.” He waited for an answer but got. none. “‘Rah! Woman, you’re his mother. It’s your business to find him a wife.”

She moved her shoulders impatiently. “From what you say, he wouldn’t be interested.”

“Chumvey! He will be if he knows what’s good for him.” He tapped his hand on the sill and glared out the window.

“You want a wife for him, ask one of those whores you’ve been tupping for years; she might know which girl’s not yours, I’m sure I don’t. Unless you find some titillation in the thought of the boy wedding a half-sister.” She looked at him stonefaced as he swung round and took a step toward her. “If you beat me, I’ll kill you and him, too.”

“Unnatural woman, he’s your child, born of your body.”

“And I nearly died of him. Unnatural child, tearing his mother in his gieed to be born.” She smiled at him, her hands clasped loosely in her lap.

“Tchah! If I hadn’t been besotted, I’d have repudiated you when I found you not virgin.”

“Besotted with power. Don’t you think I knew that? Don’t you think I know what this rant of yours is really about? As for the virginity, ask my brother. He might even tell you the truth, if he’s drunk enough. But be sure you’re tired of living because drunk or not he’ll slit your throat.”

‘Me Amrapake…”

“Oh, Famtoche wasn’t the first either, my father had that honor. I think I was four at the time. By my eighth birthday, I was too old for him, so he passed me on to my brother. And Famtoche pushed me off on you. And you took me and kept your mouth shut about my… shall we say imperfections… because you were ambitious. You’ve been paid well for your silence and your complicity, my dear husband. Get out of here. I want to see you again as little as you want me.”

He licked his lips, not daring to look at her. After a moment he swung around and stalked out.

Penhari let her eyelids droop shut a moment, then she shook herself and went back to her tapestry.