Fire and Moonlight
It is not enough to see flight as a means of transport; lesser creatures have been doing that for millennia. We have taken to the sky; let us master it. We have found our wings; let us dance!
–Xart Oglevert, “Cyclopedia of Aerodynamics and Aerobatics”
I gave up on sleep and opened the smithy before dawn. I paused for a moment to stare into the forge, and suddenly Tayma materialized in the fire. I fell backwards out of my crouch, and then scuttled away; Tayma rose life size and burning in front of me, as if she had just ascended a stairway up from hell. Her expression was painfully sad and lonely as she reached out to me, then kneeled at my feet and laid a timid hand on my leg.
“What do you want?” I asked. “What can I do?” And then I just stared mutely into her face until the pain in my burning leg made me jump and yelp; Tayma disintegrated into a shower of sparks and embers. I was forced to ignore my leg until I had policed the smithy for burning coals.
Perrin entered as I was cutting my trousers away from the burn; my hands were shaking from the pain. “That’s a hand print,” he said admiringly; I clenched my teeth and nodded. Perrin shook his head and began to rummage around until he had found some clean ash. He poured the ash over the burn, then cast a healing spell.
“What was the ash for?” I asked.
Perrin grinned. “So the scar will last longer.” I growled at that, and Perrin just laughed. “So what happened?” I told him; he frowned and shook his head. “Sounds like you’ve got a ghost after you, or at least obsessed with you. Except that there is no way a ghost could exist around here without my being aware of it. And even if I DID manage to miss her, Ravin patrols the Spirit Plane where it touches this place pretty regularly…” He shook his head and sighed, then looked around the smithy. “Go bother ‘Bacco for a while; I need to think about this.”
I didn’t quite do what I was told; ‘Bacco was already in the middle of the river, sprawled against his windlass and looking for potential customers on the Lechmore side of the river. I sat down on a convenient rock-the same rock I had been sitting on when Stragus had “introduced” himself, so many weeks before-and watched Brindle lose a hopeless game of tag with a crow. It would peck nonchalantly at the ground, pretending to ignore Brindle while she stalked it, then flutter out of the way just before she was close enough to pounce. I admired Brindle’s tenacity, and her optimism. It occurred to me that the crow would regret its audacity in short order if Brindle could fly, and suddenly…
It is difficult to communicate the process of spell casting to someone who has never studied wizardry; it involves complex mental contortions which are often dizzying and which many find impossible. As I watched Brindle stalk her crow, I realized that I knew exactly how to bend my consciousness in order to cause a pair of feathered wings to sprout from Brindle’s shoulders. Suddenly the crow was off across the river at terror driven top speed, and Brindle was following, gurgling as she flew with demented joy. I grinned.
The crow soon recovered its composure, and put its lifetime of flight practice and habitual guile to work; Brindle had nothing going for her but energy and enthusiasm. The crow went into a slow, straight climb up the river course, deliberately letting Brindle catch up, then dove steeply toward the river. Brindle followed. The crow pulled out of the dive and shot across the river surface horizontally, inches from the surface of the water; Brindle, heavier and unskilled, went straight into the water.
I dropped the spell and hailed ‘Bacco, telling him that he should intercept the strange disturbance that was drifting down the river toward him. He was puzzled, but complied; he was even more puzzled when he pulled an exhausted, sodden, and furious cat out of the river. He set Brindle on the downstream side of the ferry and started to crank his way home.
Brindle was still shivering when the ferry landed; I pulled off my shirt and used it to dry her off. ‘Bacco leaned against the windlass and watched in bewilderment.
“You COULD NOT have thrown her from here to where she hit; it’s more than a hundred and fifty yards. So how did the cat get into the middle of the river?” ‘Bacco didn’t like being bewildered.
“She flew,” I answered; ‘Bacco was unimpressed. I thought for a moment, and suddenly realized how exhausted I really was. But just possibly… “Follow me,” I said, and carried Brindle, still wrapped in my shirt, into the smithy. Perrin was sitting on a barrel against the wall, smoking and thinking; he acknowledged our presence with one cocked eyebrow. “I think I can provide another piece of the puzzle, Perrin,” I said. I closed my eyes for a moment to collect my thoughts, then stared into the forge.
Once again Tayma rose out of the coals; ‘Bacco and Perrin both gaped, though Perrin quickly clamped his pipe in his teeth and pretended he had not been surprised; ‘Bacco just stared.
“Perrin, ‘Bacco,” I said, “This is Tayma.” The burning girl bowed to Perrin, and then to ‘Bacco. ‘Bacco pointed and tried to frame a question, but before he could say anything coherent, the burning girl shrank, sprouted wings, and turned into a cat. The winged cat did a lap around the smithy, then landed on the anvil. The cat’s wings disappeared, and the cat hunkered into a sodden crouch. The effect was diminished by the fact that the droplets of fire ran up rather than down, but ‘Bacco had just seen a sodden cat, and Perrin glanced from the cat on the anvil to the still soggy cat in my arms and made the connection.
“Fire Show spell,” Perrin said quietly.
“As easy and low energy as they come,” I continued. “I didn’t know I could do the spell this morning when the ghost burned me, but it seems to have come back.”
Perrin kept looking at me through hard eyes. “Do you remember anything besides spellcraft?”
I shook my head. “No. And I don’t know much of that. I’m still feeling the effects of yesterday’s escapades, and my mind feels like an empty barn. Though I seem to be more AWARE of my exhaustion, this morning; almost as if I have a better idea of what’s missing than I did.”
Perrin nodded; ‘Bacco looked from one of us to the other and shrugged, then scratched Brindle on the head and ambled back to his ferry. Perrin continued to stare at me until his pipe burned out, then he set the pipe aside and stared into the forge. “I always thought that if I started to teach you the way of the Goddess… Witchcraft… that you might begin to remember your wizardry, Quill. And you approach witchcraft with a wizard’s attitude. So the question is, how much DO you remember? Does any of it include necromancy? And can I still trust you?”
I glared at him. “I don’t know any more than you do except for that last one. And you should KNOW that by now.”
Perrin smiled, but still didn’t look at me. “Yesterday I did, Quill. But last night you betrayed a trust, and this morning you started casting spells, and now I’m not quite so sure.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. “That.”
“That,” Perrin answered, and looked at me. “Go rest. Figure out what really is in your head. And if there’s anything in there that is going to hurt one of my people…”
“Don’t come back.”
“No, come straight back let me put you out of my misery,” Perrin waved his pipe at the battle axe that hung on the wall; there may have been a trace of humor in his eyes, but I wasn’t sure.
I retreated to my cellar, where I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and sank into the restorative meditation that Perrin had taught me; Brindle disentangled herself from my shirt and began to preen the river out of her fur.
It was nearly midnight when I broke out of the trance; sleep would have been possible, but pointless. I considered putting on a shirt, and then realized that I didn’t own one appropriate for what I had in mind; I grinned and made my way outside. There was a half moon rising over Lechmore, and it threw more than enough light for my purposes. I faced the rising moon, did some mental contortions, and felt a pair of feathered wings sprout from my shoulders. I took a few running steps, leaped, and was airborne.
I had done this before; I suspected that I had once been fairly skilled at it. I was absolutely certain that I had Oglevert’s “Cyclopedia of Aerodynamics and Aerobatics” nearly memorized. I caught the small thermal over the forge and flew in tight circles while it carried me into noticeably thin air. I did one long, slow circle to take in as much of Kanchaka valley as I could see, and then started on Oglevert’s exercises.
Natural fliers seldom do stunts; the instincts that let them fly tell them that inverted flight is a very bad idea. Magical fliers lack those instincts, and are free to indulge in all manner of stupidity, like wingovers and rolls and loops and stalls. It is truly glorious stupidity, provided one has made one’s peace with the possibility of impacting the ground at terrifying speeds.
I felt the twitches of the spell expiring, and recast it in mid-air, then realized that I was not alone. Something-another humanoid flyer-was gliding toward me in a shallow dive from somewhere over Lechmore. I found the forge thermal and beat my way upward, suddenly aware that I did not even have a dagger on my person.
The other flyer continued to close; it was a bat-winged female, and I suspected that it was Sojourner’s warped elf girl. She flicked her tail at me, and I felt a spike bite into leg. I fought an urge to panic; she had a ranged weapon, she had claws, she was a born flier…
No she wasn’t. She was a warpspawn, and not a particularly bright one. It was a certainty that she had never heard of Oglevert… I went vertical and did a half roll as I was stalling, then dove straight into her. The impact startled her and killed her forward momentum. I punched her once in the face to disorient her further, then kicked away and tucked tight. My wingtips pulled me into a nose first dive, and I carefully opened my wings and leveled out. By the time I had turned and had a chance to look for the lizard girl, she was far below me, still tumbling helplessly as she tried to recover from a simple stall. There was more than one sharp crack as she hit the trees; plainly audible in the still night air. I tried to memorize the spot as I circled downward.
I took the time put on my leathers and arm myself before I went looking for her, but she was long dead when I found her; the fall had left her dead or dying. I was surprised to see a blonde wolf standing guard over the body, though. “Good morning, Lady Willow,” I said.
Willow yawned and shifted to a more humanoid form. “I thought she had your scent on her,” she said. “And that you would come looking for her, at least to see she was dead.” I nodded. “What do you intend to do with her?”
“Weight her a bit and throw her in the river, probably. She used to belong to a powerful necromancer, and the more we can confuse the manner of her death, the better.” I looked at the dead creature, and could see the girl she had once been all too clearly. It made me sad, and angry. I started to lift the body, but Willow waved me away and threw it over her shoulder effortlessly.
“Old habit,” Willow said with a lupine grin. “In the old days, I just automatically did any hard labor that needed to be done. They used to say that I was the strongest man in the village.” She grinned again, but there were more teeth in it this time. We started walking.
“You were waiting for me, Willow?” I asked.
She nodded. “I need to leave this place, and I have heard that you are going to
Leave soon, and take some people with you.” I started at that, but she just shrugged. “I keep a closer watch on Ferrypoint than even the Hunter Rat knows.. They are good folk, and I miss being human sometimes. More and more lately; I am becoming less good at being a wolf.”
We reached the river; at my instructions, Willow held the body underwater and squeezed the air out of its lungs and stomach, then let them fill with water. Once we were sure the body would sink, Willow pushed it out into the current, then climbed out of the water and shook herself thoroughly. I led her to the rock I had come to think of as “Perrin’s Bench.”
“You are becoming less good at being a wolf? What does that mean?”
Willow sighed heavily. “It means that I disrupt their order. Wolves don’t like having a queen; it upsets them. There was a time when they needed me, but now that Shadow is full grown, he can offer them anything I can. And they want him to be their King.”
“I am still not seeing the problem. Can’t you step down?”
“Only if I am dead, or missing completely. So I want to leave.” She shrugged. “Shadow’s father was King when I joined the pack. When he was killed by drakkels, I took over the pack by force, and led them to war with the drakkels. And now Shadow is full grown, and it is his time.”
I stared at her, and tried to understand. “He’s your son. Shadow is your son.”
Willow seemed puzzled by my confusion. “Of course.”
It was my turn to shrug. “I did not understand just how thoroughly you had become a wolf. It makes sense now. Except… Why me?”
Willow snorted, and laughed as well as her wolf’s face would let her. “I do not know my way outside of these woods. I need to follow someone. And I have been the wolf queen; I will not follow someone I do not respect. Who else is there?”
I scowled at that, then nodded. “The sun will be up soon; I need to get back and open the forge.” Willow responded by shifting back to wolf shape and following at my heels.
Brindle was waiting inside the smithy; she took one look at Willow and hissed; Willow stared back placidly. Something transpired between them, and then Brindle climbed down and started to do an odd hopping sort of dance at my feet; Willow settled into a place in the sun with her back to the open door. I stared at Brindle.
“Do you want to fly, silly Cat? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Brindle stopped hopping and stared at me expectantly. “Sorry, all out of wings for now. Maybe later.” Brindle blinked a few times, and then started to slink away. “Of course, if you just want to practice landing, I could throw you in the river right now,” I said under my breath; Brindle was already out of sight. I got on with my work.
A long stretch of hard labor later I noticed that Willow was still in her place by the open door, but now sound asleep. Brindle was curled up inside the circle of Willow’s legs, sleeping with her head on Willow’s paw. I closed my eyes and shook my head, but nothing changed. It was a pleasant, homey, restful scene-with overtones of significant madness. I stared for a moment while I considered the course of my life, then went back to my work.