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His eyes snapped open. She stepped back, her heart thudding with horror. He smiled.
Alanna threw her covers aside and rolled out of bed, shaking. Lurching to her feet, she ran out of the tent with Faithful just behind her. Once outside she stood panting in the cold night breeze, feeling chills as it struck her sweat-soaked body.
“The first magic you learn is fire-making,” she told her pupils. They were in the desert not far from the village. Alanna didn’t want to be near people or tents, in case of accidents. A warrior of the tribe stood a safe distance away, his bow strung and ready. The hillmen were too near for anyone to risk going far without a guard.
Alanna put a twig down on top of several others. “It’s easy for anyone who has the Gift at all to make a fire or to create light,” she went on, feeling uncomfortable. She had taught combat arts to pages and squires before, but never sorcery; she was worried that she might do something wrong. “You look at what you want to burn—later you won’t have to look at it—and you picture it burning. Then you want it to burn.”
“What if I don’t want it to burn?” Kara asked.
“You have to want it to burn,” Alanna said. “Otherwise why would you be trying this spell?”
“Oh.”
“The source of all your magic lies in your own will,” Alanna continued. “Things happen because you want them to. It’s like anything else in life—becoming a warrior, or a good shaman, or a good cook—it will happen if you want it badly enough. If you focus your will, and see that thing burning in your mind, then what you want becomes real. The thing will burn. Kara, you try first.”
The taller of the girls squinted at the pile of twigs, sweat pouring down her face as she concentrated. A tiny puff of smoke drifted up, but it soon died. “That’s good for the first time,” Alanna told her. “I couldn’t raise a little smoke when I first tried. All right, Kourrem.”
Kourrem scowled at the twigs; her eyebrows knitted together. At last she shook her head. “I don’t think I want it badly enough.” She sighed.
“You want to be a shaman, don’t you?” Alanna asked her.
Kourrem’s face lit up. “Yes!”
“You can’t be a shaman if you can’t do this. Even Akhnan Ibn Nazzir could light a fire.”
Kourrem’s eyes widened with alarm. In the next moment sparks flew from the pile of twigs.
Alanna grinned. “See?” She waited for the flurry of sparks to die out, then pointed to Ishak. “You next.”
Grinning smugly, the youth pointed at the wood. It flared up in a spout of flame, instantly consumed. Alanna looked at him for a long moment, itching to slap the cocky look off his face. She knew the emotion was unworthy of her; Ishak had simply wanted to show off a little. Getting her temper under control, she nodded. “I forgot you already know some fire-magic. Before we go any further, I’d better find out exactly what each of you can do.”
“I can do fire and light,” Ishak announced. “I can find things. Sometimes I can see things that are going to be.”
“He dreamed that you would make our lives good,” Kara put in eagerly. “We laughed at him because he said a woman who was a warrior would be the one. That was the day before Halef Seif brought you to our tribe.”
Alanna nodded. “What about you, Kara? Have you seen things become different because you wanted them to? Do you see pictures in the fire?”
“Things move when I am angry,” Kara whispered, blushing. “Sometimes they fly through the air. Then I am beaten.”
“She makes the wind blow,” Ishak volunteered. “And it rains when she cries. Not always, but sometimes.”
“Weather magic,” Alanna said. “As a shaman you’ll find it useful. Kourrem?”
“I don’t know,” the youngest of them admitted. “Sometimes I see balls of colored fire, and I play with them. The old people like me to come when they’re sick; they say I make them feel better. I thought it was because I tell them stories, but—” Her eyes were hopeful as she looked at Alanna.
Remembering how Duke Baird had tested her on the day Jonathan took the Sweating Sickness, Alanna held out her hand. “I slept badly last night,” she told Kourrem. “I still feel tired. Take my hand and make me feel better.”
Kourrem reached out, then pulled her hand back. “I don’t know how.”
“Find your own strength, and then shove some of it through your hand into me,” Alanna instructed. “Go on.”
Kourrem obeyed. The next moment Alanna felt a tingling energy flooding into her body, making the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up. She yanked her hand away, and shook the tingling out of it. “I was only a little tired,” she told the girl, who looked as if she was about to cry. “You didn’t need to give me so much!” She looked at them, bracing her hands on her hips. “We need to think about what you should learn,” she admitted. “You each already know something, or you couldn’t control your magic as well as you do.”
“How do you know that?” Kara asked.
“Because Ishak could have burned up all four of us without any control,” Alanna replied. “Because if you couldn’t rein in your magic, the village would have been destroyed by winds and rain. And Kourrem could have blown me apart with what she did just now.”
“Then why do you take such chances teaching us?” Kourrem demanded. “You didn’t know I wouldn’t hurt you, did you?”
Alanna grinned. “I may not be able to raise the weather or see the future, but I know something about protecting myself; and each of you, if I must.” She scratched her head. “I think we’d better practice the focusing exercise I taught you. Then you’re going to get the tents I asked for and set them up by mine.”
“Why do you want us to set up tents?” Kara asked as they sat on the ground obediently.
Alanna settled beside them, crossing her legs beneath her. “As my apprentices, you should properly live with me,” she replied. “But since there are three of you, I had the tentmaker give me one large tent for the girls and one smaller one for Ishak. Oh, stop that!” she cried as they threw themselves on her, hugging her frantically.
After the evening meal, the apprentices went to furbish up their new homes, and Halef Seif came for Alanna. “The night is cool,” he told her. “Will you go riding with me?”
She didn’t need to be asked twice. It took them a few moments to saddle their horses and tell the sentries which direction they planned to take. Once free of the village, Alanna drew a deep breath of relief. She could smell desert plants, dust, and horses—a dry, reassuring scent that told her more than anything else her life was very different these days.
“I want them to sit with me at the campfire,” she said abruptly, keeping her voice low in case predators, animal or human, were near. “That’s their right as my apprentices, isn’t it?”
“Two of them are girls.” There was little light with which to read his face, and his voice was bland.
“I’m a girl, too.”
“I have noticed.”
Alanna suspected him of teasing her. “I don’t care if they’re three-headed toads,” she whispered tartly. “They’re all going to be shamans, and the tribe must learn to—”
The Bazhir hissed for silence. Faithful was erect in his cup on Moonlight’s saddle, his fur standing up, his tail lashing. Alanna tuned her ears to the night sounds and heard it—rock falling against rock as men made their way through the small gorge just below. Soundlessly she and Halef Seif dismounted; with a touch, she made Faithful stay put. She followed the man to the edge of the gorge, where they flattened themselves on the ground, peering over.
Her eyes had adjusted to the moonless night, and now she could see the shadowy forms of five hillmen stealing along the ground below her. One tripped on a rock and cursed softly while his companions hushed him; Alanna sneered, knowing she would have received months of punishment duty if she had made such a mistake even as a page.
“Raiders looking for our herds.” Halef’s breath stirred the hair by her ear; had s
he been a few inches farther away she could not have heard him. “I think we will not disturb the guards.” He made as if to rise, then flattened himself beside her once more. “Some light would be useful—shaman.” He was smiling.
Swiftly Alanna reached inside herself, finding that small bit of fire that always burned deep where only she could find it. She drew the fire out, feeling a rush of excitement as it grew swiftly to meet her need. Violet-colored light burst from her palm, making everything brighter. The hillmen yelped, shielding their eyes. Halef Seif scrambled down into the gorge, screaming war cries. Pressed for time and needing both hands, Alanna looked around frantically. Spotting a stone, she pointed at it and gave her magic the command. She didn’t know if it could be done, but there was no time to think. The violet fire streamed into the big rock, filling it as it had filled her. For a moment it seemed to flicker and die—then it became part of the stone, a huge beacon shining on the battleground below.
