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“You mean it could happen again, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“I’m afraid so. If it’s any help, I imagine the need in those connected to you by wild magic would have to be overwhelming. It’s only happened once that you know of? No fainting spells as a child?” She shook her head. “Once in thirteen years, then. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you.” He smiled when she yawned outright. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you for supper.”
He was as good as his word. She was still tired, but forced herself to bathe in the stream and visit with the ponies. By the time the trainees had begun their meditation, she was in her bedroll, asleep.
The otter’s return awoke her late that night. She had brought Daine a sea urchin shell, one that was cleaned of its original inhabitant and dried.
“Thank you,” Daine whispered, touched. “I’ll treasure it.” The otter chirped her own thanks, and squirmed out through the gap in the tent wall. Daine smiled and snuggled into her covers, feeling the bumps of the shell with her fingers. I can heal, she thought. Ma, I wish you were here to see!
They moved out in the morning under a clear sky. Daine’s studies went on. Slowly, she honed her ability to speak with groups of animals so no other creatures might hear. She learned to put her will on four, then five, then six animals, to make them obey. She used whoever was closest: a flock of gulls, dogs in a village where the company stopped for eggs, harbor seals. Her greatest success came when a herd of mule deer came down to graze near their camp one morning. When Daine rose, she saw them. She watched, keeping Tahoi with her, simply enjoying the sight of deer so close to humans.
At Sarge’s “Turn out!” the flock prepared to flee.
“Stop!” Daine called, throwing up her arm.
The deer stopped and did not move until she said, “What’m I doing? Go on, scat!” She took her will off them, and they ran. Feeling pleased with herself, she turned around, to find the trainees out of their beds and staring at her oddly.
“It’s a good idea not to say anything out loud,” Numair murmured, coming up beside her. She looked up at him and was rewarded with a smile. “It keeps the uninitiated from noticing. Just a little professional advice.”
The Lioness walked over to them. “Congratulations, Numair. Your student learns fast.”
“I have a good teacher,” Daine said, and the mage tousled her hair.
“Come on, children, you aren’t paid to gawp like a bunch of yokels!” Sarge’s training voice could cut through stone, Daine was sure.
Evin was so close that she heard his soft: “We aren’t paid at all, yet.”
Sarge’s eyes flicked his way, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “Let’s move it or lose it, people!”
They pushed hard that day, stopping only once, to change mounts. By noon Daine felt as if her teeth would never stop rattling from the wagon, even though she’d switched to riding Cloud twice. About then she found a brush rabbit by the road: he’d been slashed by a goshawk and was dying. Daine took him into her lap, giving Mangle control of the wagon, and went to work.
The healing was harder than before, partly because concentration in a wagon traveling over a rutted road was more difficult than it had been in Numair’s tent, late at night. Several times Daine was banged out of her meditation. Finally she switched places with Numair, asking Spots to give her as easy a ride as possible. On a large and placid horse, her luck was better than it would have been on a pony, or than it had been in the wagon. Still, by the time she finished, she had drenched her clothes in sweat, and she had been working throughout the early afternoon.
Weary to the bone, she freed the rabbit. He thanked her and fled, promising to keep a better eye out for predator birds in the future. She watched him go, elated in spite of her exhaustion.
They camped on a wide, open space that ended in a bluff over a tumble of rocks. “Daine, look!” Miri said as they were caring for the horses. She pointed out to sea. Three long, sleek, gray shapes broke from the waves and plunged in again, then four shapes, then two. “Dolphins!”
Once her chores were over, she went to the edge of the bluff. This was her first sighting of dolphins, and she wanted to talk to them. Sitting on the grass, she reached for her magic—and felt it slip from her grip. Working on the rabbit had tired her to the point of being unable to bear down with her mind. She closed her eyes and tried again. Tahoi barked. One of the trainees loosed an ear-piercing whistle. “Concentrate,” she ordered herself through gritted teeth. “You can do this!”
Slowly she discarded every sound nearby, until the only one left was her own heartbeat. Bearing down, she pushed it away, and farther. Perversely, it hammered in her ears louder than ever. She forced it back one more time.
Numair saw her collapse.
“Alanna!” he roared. “Come quick!”
A wide, smooth path sloped ahead, bordered in wildflowers. At the top of the hill two people waited in the shade of an old and gnarled oak.
“Ma?” she whispered, her eyes filling, and the woman held out open arms. Daine floated up the path toward her. The man was unfamiliar: he stood by Ma lazily, wearing only a loincloth. He was very brown, heavily muscled, and carried an unstrung bow like a man born with it in his hand. With so much of his skin bare, she could see that there were streaks of green in his tan, a deep green that gleamed in his eyes. Strangest of all, she could see what looked like antlers planted firmly in his curling brown hair.
“New friend, Ma?” she asked dryly.
The woman laughed. “Still mothering me, Daine?”
A bolt of lightning shot through her chest once, twice.
Her mother’s face saddened. “No!” she cried. Daine fought, but a force was pulling her away.
“Ma!” she yelled.
“Sarra!” The man’s voice was commanding. “It isn’t time. Let her go.”
Suddenly she felt reality shatter. Now she hung in open air, high over a rocky bluff where ants gathered around a purple fire. She looked back toward the hill, and a Stormwing dropped between her and her mother.
He looked her over, a nasty grin showing filthy teeth. “Well, well—what a surprise. What brings you here, little pigeon? Aren’t you the darling Queen Zhaneh has offered so much to have brought to her alive?”
“Your queen can eat my arrows!” she screamed. “I want my ma!”
“Kiss my claws and say ‘pretty please,’” he taunted, and vanished. Daine fell to earth and back into her body.
Numair shook Daine as he held her. “You fiend!” he yelled. “What on earth possessed you? You were dead! I ought to kill you myself!”
“Numair, calm down.” The Lioness bent over Daine, looking white and drawn. “How are you, youngling? You gave us a scare.”
Daine grabbed her hand. “You’re the purple fire. You brought me back?”
“I gave you a direct jolt to the heart. We thought we’d lost you.”
“My heart?” She frowned, remembering. “It made too much noise. I wanted it to quiet down so I could talk with the dolphins.”
“Do you hear her?” Numair asked the clouds. “She wanted to talk to dolphins, so she stopped her own blessed heart! Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith!”
Daine sat up. “I never.”
Numair opened his mouth and Onua, behind him, covered it. “Not until you can talk without screaming,” she said firmly.
“Daine, meditation is done for control over body responses, and thus over the mind.” Alanna’s purple eyes were amused, but serious as well. “In cutting back the sound of your heart, you were cutting the heartbeat itself.”
“Well, I won’t do that again,” Daine promised, sitting up. “I feel like a mule kicked me in the ribs.”
The knight chuckled. “In a way, one did. I gave you quite a shot, youngster.” She reached a hand to Evin, who helped her get to her feet.
“Will you behave now?” Onua asked Numair. He nodded, and sighed as she took her hands from his mouth. “And men say we’re emotional,” the K’mir to
ld Daine. “Don’t do that again. I’d hate to find another assistant at this time of year.” Wiping her hands on her breeches, she went back to the trainees.
“May I ask why you couldn’t hear dolphins in the usual way?” Numair’s voice was dangerously pleasant.
Daine rubbed her eyes with her fists. “I was tired.”
“You were tired—ah. That makes it much clearer. Listen, magelet. The next time you’re tired, try resting for a while. If you simply can’t rest, go where you’ll get nice and chilled, or step into salt water.” He indicated the ocean below. “As you can see, there is quite a bit of it down there.”
“I don’t get it.”
He sighed. “Reductions in temperature or contact with salt water can act as amplifiers for magic.”
“So that’s why the whale songs are so loud in the water!”
“Yes, that’s why they’re loud. Daine, you must realize—these things you’re doing when you meditate are real. When you reduce the inner sound of your breathing, you are reducing your breath. When you quiet your heart, you’re slowing it down. Your body will react—understand?”
“Yes, sir.” She got to her feet with a groan. “Do people have visions when they think they’re dead?”
His control vanished. “I don’t know! I’ve never tried it!”
“Oh, well, I can see there’s no talking to you the rest of the night,” she said wisely. “Not till you’re out of this pet you’re in.”
“The pet I’m in?” he bellowed.
Definitely time to go groom the horses, she thought.
She fell asleep during supper, and slept through the night. She felt rested when she woke, an hour before dawn, with something already on her mind.
It was the Stormwing. He had been nastily real, in a way Ma and her friend had not been. Even now she could smell that thing’s reek, fouling the salt air—
