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Fringilla’s keeping to herself as she browses a grey stall of woolen goods at the Gors Velen market. Her mind’s not on the price of raw fleece or even on the simple dresses, but across the marketplace, trying to follow Rectoress de Vries’s recitation of a poem. This visit to the city is a rare excursion outside Aretuza with specific purposes: to learn to telepathically communicate in spite of the distractions of other minds.
Before her mind was forced wide open by the Aretuzan curriculum, Fringilla lived in a silent world, alone with her own thoughts. Loud as those can be, they are nothing compared to the rabble that gibbers constantly in her mental ears. Common folk all have the same set of dull concerns, it turns out. Money, and food, and whether they can afford to dye a threadbare shawl. Concerns as dull as the colours of this stall, dull as the Rectoress’s choice of poetry.
Likely that’s part of the challenge, for it would surely be much easier to follow an interesting text. Too easy.
She wants us to fail.
Fringilla startles in place on hearing the voice of Yennefer of Vengerberg in her mind. Wide-eyed, she locates the other girl immediately with her gaze: Yennefer’s browsing the neighbouring stall. When their eyes meet, she smirks.
Before Fringilla can decide whether Yennefer is trying to show solidarity or is mocking her, a sudden shout shatters the marketplace’s quiet bustle.
“Thief!” wails a woman’s shrill voice. “Stop, thief! Stop!”
As everyone whips around, including Fringilla and Yennefer, all thoughts suddenly unite, almost deafening. What’s happening? It’s the question on everybody’s mind, and even as the resultant physical uproar draws all eyes, a blessed note of mental silence fills the world.
The reedy wailing continues— “Thief! Pickpocket! Guards!”
To their left, a few dozen yards away, the crowd sways. A figure darts between the peasants, only distinguishable as the culprit because he’s running, nearly slipping in the mud. The silence gives way to further mental clamour, now about life and theft and prison, tides of fear and anger given visible form by open mouths and curled lips.
A guard clad in a thick leather jerkin shoves through the crowd, closing in, hand at the scabbard on his hip. “Yield!” he cries, face red and bulging.
The thief spins on his heel like a human whirlwind in motion. His cloak whips out behind him as he changes direction. He sprints straight for the space between the stalls where Fringilla and Yennefer stand.
A light flashes in the corner of her eyes. Fringilla feels time stretch out as her gaze is torn away, to the centre of the market, where a member of the city guard always stands watch beside the well. The guard is loading his crossbow with an arrow, the head glinting twice more in the sunlight.
“Yield, you scum!” the guard with the scabbard yells.
A man in the crowd tries to trip the thief. He leaps wildly, toe catching on the other man’s foot, arms wheeling for balance. There’s a thud as he lands, he’s closer now, mere feet away, and Fringilla realises the crowd’s scattering around her. She can’t look anywhere else, and she can’t hear anything—the clamour has died.
She knows before it happens that this man is about to die as well.
There’s a noise, a combination of a whir and a whistle, followed by a swift wet noise. Mid-stride, the thief’s body jerks massively and then goes slack.
Fringilla’s breath catches as she feels a sharp snap in the Chaos that’s always present in the world. It’s like she’s standing in the presence of a force of nature, as if she were above the unimaginable power in the waves crashing against the rocks beneath Aretuza... except this force is contained within a broken vessel that sprawls at her feet.
The thief crashes down into the mud between her and Yennefer. The crossbow bolt sticks out of his back, buried deep in his body. Around the hole, his dirty shirt turns red. It’s so thin. He had no chance.
Death is nothing new to the youth of the Continent. Life is hard, and death is frequent. Even Fringilla, sheltered as she has been by her family’s connections, has seen death often. But she was rarely witness to human death, and she hasn’t seen it since she’s had the ability to detect Chaos.
There is magic here, breathtaking magic, that’s clear. Though she can’t tell if the magic is actively at work or if it’s merely responding to death. She had no idea Chaos was responsive to death.
She sways in place, staring at the crossbow bolt. Her stomach flutters, unsettled, for in one moment she feels that she’s looking at the finest display of jewellery, and in the next like she’s observing the rotting carcass of a piece of livestock.
The ripple in Chaos wraps around her fingers, causing them to flex. Already the power is weaker.
A telepathic command from the Rectoress makes them both jolt in place. Do not move!
Briefly distracted by Tissaia, Fringilla belatedly notices that she’s kneeling on the ground. She doesn’t remember doing that. She glances up to see Yennefer kneeling across from her, with an expression that mirrors Fringilla’s emotions: fascination, disgust, curiosity. Distant shame over the reaction.
Yennefer’s hand twitches towards the corpse, and Fringilla urges her on, riveted.
Does she imagine it, or does the body twitch as well?
Rectoress de Vries arrives on the scene, towering above them. The other students gather at her back. The city guards are present as well, their faces cruel and hard. Their number includes the guard with the scabbard, whose sword is half-drawn.
“Get up now!” Tissaia orders, her voice like ice. Fringilla stares at them, and then back at the body.
“Sabrina, Anica, get them up.”
Hands yank Fringilla upright. Someone speaks to her, and she tries to nod, watching in a daze as Tissaia says something to the guards, a conciliatory smile painted on her face. But it’s not until Sabrina grabs her chin roughly that she breaks fully from the reverie. The power in the air is fading, draining away with the man’s blood seeping into the ground.
“Girls, with me now,” the Rectoress says, pulling her and Yennefer especially close as she ushers them all out of the marketplace. “We shall return to Aretuza immediately. We’ll only do this again once things have settled.”
The noises of the world are audible again, and the mental hubbub of the market too. But it doesn't hold Fringilla’s attention. Yennefer’s violet eyes are always rather magnetic, especially so now, as the deformed girl whispers to Fringilla telepathically.
It must be necromancy, she says. Fringilla feels a cold prickle creeping up her spine and shivers, knowing it to be true.
Tissaia’s hand grips her shoulder tightly. “You two will speak no more of this,” she hisses to them. “Necromancy is a vile practice, forbidden. No decent mage would ever sink as low as to use dark magic.” Her hand grips tighter, biting deep, and Fringilla winces. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Rectoress,” Fringilla says, hearing the words in her mind over and over.
The Rectoress’s grip loosens, but doesn’t withdraw. She doesn’t let go until they’re back at Aretuza. For weeks, Fringilla feels the weight of her scrutiny on the back of her neck, and she attends to their lessons all the more studiously, to make the attention stop. Because she is repulsed by necromancy, truly.
At least, part of her is.
But the true power of life—of death—has been partially revealed. It nags at her like a shadow in the dark, hinting at the unknown. She remembers the tingle of that power across her fingertips, and in the dark, she wonders about its potential.