Chapter Text
9:26 Dragon
Clan Lavellan, Somewhere in the Central Free Marches
i.
At the rock set in the river,
The water flows both ways—
To the left and to the right,
But first it has to choose.
—“At the Rock Set in the River,” verse 1, Estral Lavellan, age 12
WHOOSH! Estral’s barrier flickered out like a firefly. She dropped to her knees in an instant. Rian’s fireball sizzled the hairs on the back of her neck as it passed overhead. A crackling hearth fire in a stone-circled pit in front of a family’s tent was some of the best music Estral knew. Wild and spitting from a mage’s staff, fire possessed a very different timbre.
Ignoring the jolting vibrations in her kneecaps and up and down her legs, Estral thrust out with her staff, desperate to make a showing. Razor-sharp teeth of ice shot out from the dirt toward Rian. Halfway to him, they died and melted. A jet of cold water splashed him, head to toe, which did a fair job of extinguishing the glowing embers at the tip of his staff but didn’t accomplish much else.
Rian called time anyway. Since this was because he was laughing too hard at her to do magic, Estral didn’t consider it one for the victory column. She let her staff fall to the ground and sat back on her heels with a groan, burying her head in her hands.
Behind her, she heard a rush of air as the Keeper extinguished the remaining flames of Rian’s attack, then the soft sound of Deshanna’s bare feet, padding over the grass. “Easy, now,” came the Keeper’s voice behind her. “Tell me where it is that you went wrong.”
Estral scrubbed at her arms with her hands, irritated. “I hate the way the barriers feel,” she complained. “Oily and thick. It’s like I’m suffocating.”
She could just feel Rian about to interject, so she lifted her head and glared at him. “I know I’m not, really. I can’t help the way it feels.”
“You don’t want your barriers to hold, so they don’t,” Deshanna summarized, her voice so calm and nonjudgmental that Estral wanted to scream. “Your magic will do nothing you don’t ask of it, in some small part of your heart or mind. The corollary is, da’len, when you lack fortitude, desire, or conviction, your magic will fall short. Now. How does this translate into your difficulty with the combat spells?”
Estral grimaced. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I don’t really want to hurt Rian, so I don’t?”
“You’re pulling your punches, Estral,” Rian, ever blunter than the tactful Keeper, told her. “Come, now! You know the spells themselves backwards and forwards; up, down, and sideways. Do not tell me that you don’t.”
Estral closed her eyes, and without bothering to stand or pick her staff up from the ground, let the power of the Beyond flow through her, moving just her hands, this way and that, as though conducting a song. She felt rather than saw the pillars of spirit-stone shake the earth as they rose and fell in radius around her. She shot flame spurts from her hands, then raised a wall of ice around her, a meter and a half high and a handspan thick, that sent the flames vanishing into mist. Finally, she closed her fists, and the ice melted away into floating globes of water that she held a moment before letting them fall to the broken, torn up ground as rain.
She opened her eyes and looked at Rian and Deshanna, drained and completely despairing. “But it all goes wrong when we’re fighting,” she whispered. “Nothing works. It all just . . . fizzles out before it lands.”
“Because somewhere inside that silly head of yours, instead of trusting that a mage sixteen years older than yourself with twelve more years of practice than you’ve got can probably handle himself,” Rian answered, “you think you’re about to take my head off and hold back. Vhenan. Gods all bless you, but can you have a little faith?”
He was smiling at her, but he was frustrated too. Estral could tell. “I don’t mean not to have!” she protested. “I just—oh, you don’t understand, Rian!"
Deshanna knelt in front of her. “You’ve run into a block, Estral. We all of us find them from time to time. The thing is to keep working to move past them. Come. You’re tired. You’re out of sorts. We’ll try again tomorrow. And—if it helps, it is a very different thing to attack a friend than it is to attack a demon or a bandit on the road.”
She held out her hand, and Estral took it, letting the Keeper help her up onto her feet.
“But of course, if you practice bad technique now, you may run into some difficulties when it is a demon or a bandit on the road,” Rian added, with forced cheerfulness. “So let’s get it before then, shall we?”
And what if I can’t, Estral wanted to snap. What if I’m just bad at fighting? What then?
Rian looked more closely at her. “Why don’t you head on back to the camp, Deshanna?” he said. “Sure, Sellin and Dermot will looking for you for supper. Estral and I will be along.”
The Keeper hesitated. Estral could see it: Be the Keeper and see to a failing, needy apprentice, or go home and be with the husband and son who always seem to get the short end of the staff? Deshanna was Keeper because she hesitated. Or she has to hesitate because she’s Keeper. Anyway, today, the temptation Rian offered her was just too much to resist. She clasped his hand and ran her fingers through Estral’s hair, and then she was gone, vanishing through the trees.
Estral picked up her staff and conjured another globe of water, smaller this time. She moved it in one of the control exercises she had mastered years ago, streaming it through figure-eights and circles and studiously avoiding Rian’s eye. Under her breath she chanted,
“At the rock set in the river,
The water flows both ways—
To the left and to the right,
But first it has to choose.”
“What’s that one, then?” Rian asked.
“Nothing,” Estral muttered. “It isn’t finished yet.”
“Will you sing it for us when it is?”
Estral shook her head. “Not this time.” She let the water globe fall to the ground again and started walking back toward the camp.
Rian stuck his staff out to block her path. Estral hit her shins against it, and she huffed, glaring up at him. “Rian, please.”
“It’s just a hiccup, vhenan,” Rian said. “You’ll get past it. You will. I had trouble with world sensing, and sometimes I still need cheat sheets for the youngsters’ history lessons. And here you are, twelve years old with all the lore half memorized!”
Estral snapped. “And it won’t mean a thing if I can’t actually work the spells the Second of Clan Lavellan is supposed to be able to do! If the hunters can’t rely on me, if in a fight with wolves or shem’len, I’m just a—just a drain—”
“Never that,” Rian broke in, fiercely. “You hear me now, Estral: You aren’t a drain, and you aren’t a burden, whatever kind of mage you end up being. Clan Lavellan has got on perfectly well without a Second these past thirteen years. We’re grand now, and wherever you’re at when you finally take up your duties, we’ll be even better then. Understand? Anything you do will make us better.”
“But they’ll talk if I’m rubbish,” Estral insisted. “They’ll all feel it, especially at the Arlathvhen, when we stand up next to the other clans and have a substandard Second.”
“You won’t be substandard,” Rian told her. “You might not be a battle mage, though I do think you’ll get past this block and figure it all out—”
“It’s been weeks,” Estral started.
“I believe in you.” Rian said, interrupting again, looking her straight in the eye. “But—even if you aren’t a battle mage, you can be a healer. You can be the finest loremaster in any clan among the People. You can write fifty new songs about the Dalish so Clan Lavellan is the pride and envy of everyone who shows up at Arlathvhen.”
“But I can’t stop at that,” Estral said. “No matter what, I’ve got to be a mage. I’ve got to be Second, and the only ways I’ve got out of it are even worse—becoming a flat-ear apostate or Circle mage or Keeper or First in some other clan, with people depending on me even more.”
“You have magic, Estral,” Rian answered, frowning. “You’re not telling me you’d wish to deny your gift?”
Estral felt the moss beneath her feet, the shift of the earth and the small pebbles in it. The wind whispered through the canopy overhead, and she knew on the other side of the Veil, the spirits were listening to hear what she said next. Hot, prickly shame rushed through her. She wouldn’t know them if she weren’t a mage. She wouldn’t know a lot of things. There was so much of the world she could never touch without her magic. But so much of the world was barred to her with it.
“Left or right? Left or right?” she murmured. “One path or the other?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I want, Rian. Except to be left alone right now. Go. I’ve already made the Keeper late. Your family’s waiting supper for you just as much as hers is.”
“And yours,” Rian said, raising his eyebrows.
“And mine,” Estral agreed.
Rian looked at her. “Don’t be too long about it,” he said finally. “You’re a titch young yet to be in the forest on your own.”
Estral rolled her eyes. “Maybe if I’m attacked by wolves or ghoulies, I’ll figure out how to stick a fireball.”
Rian sighed, and wandered off toward the camp. Estral meandered after him, walking slowly. She drew her flute out of her belt, feeling the grain of the wood under her fingers, the weathered relief carvings of leaves and larks on the shaft. Her lute would be better for the eventual accompaniment on the air she was working on, but her old flute was easy to carry and was often helpful for working out melodies ahead of time. Unfortunately, she was as stuck on the melody for the song she was working on as she seemed to be on combat magic.
Anything you can do will make us better. Technically true, but galling. She didn’t want to be some little hedgewitch and loremaster, pottering around with potions and creams and trusting the hunters not to get in too much trouble when she ought to be able to protect them, to lead the charge against any enemies of the clan right next to the Keeper. Smiling and spreading her hands at the Arlathvhen when it came time to show the other clans what knowledge she had to share. If she had to be a mage, she wanted to be good.
But I would prefer not to be a mage at all, Estral thought, with a desperate, guilty defiance. Not to not have magic. Just not to be a mage. I wish having magic didn’t mean you had to be a mage.
Other girls in the clan could be hunters. They could be weavers or basket-makers, herd the halla or repair the aravels. They could be bowyers and family arbiters or tradeswomen especially trained to deal with other clans or the shem’len in the cities and towns to get the best deal possible. They could even be teachers and storytellers. Even Deshanna, Rian, and Estral all together couldn’t teach every child in Lavellan every minute of every day.
But Estral had to be a mage. And if she failed at that, she couldn’t just up and try something else. Fingering her flute, she thought, I can’t try anything else anyway. It’s not done. And anyway, I hardly have the time.
She could smell the fires of the campsite now. One for each tent—or group of two or three tents together. Around them, the families of Lavellan had all gathered for supper, tossing greens in long-handled, cast-iron pans or roasting skewers of rabbit, pheasant, or venison with mushrooms over the embers.
Estral’s family fire was near the center of the camp. This wasn’t just because Estral was apprentice to the Keeper and it was more convenient for her lessons, or an honor due her because she’d be Second one day. Her parents had earned pride of place too due to their contributions to the clan. Estral’s mother was the best weaver in the camp. Her blankets and tapestries were prized possessions in the homes of most the clan—wedding and name day gifts, and they reliably turned a substantial profit any time the clan traded with outsiders. Estral’s father was a great hunter, and liked and respected for his good humor and reliable judgment.
Of course, Estral was coming to believe that growing up the daughter of two pillars of the community wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. The light was going now, and her mother was still at the loom. Mam always did have a way of making her feel lazy.
Estral walked past her mother for now, tossing her staff inside the family pavilion, its flaps drawn back to take advantage of the fine weather. She stalked over to the family fire, stooped low, and draped her arms around her father’s neck. He was minding their own skewers—just seasoned rabbit tonight, without greens or mushrooms to fill out the meal—and Estral closed her eyes against the guilt. These days, there was always something she forgot to do.
Dad didn’t say a word about the stuff she should have gathered for supper though. He just crossed his free hand over his chest, hugging her arms to him. Mam wasn’t quite so forgiving.
“Estral.”
Estral rose, wincing and repressing a sigh. “Yes, Mam?”
“Would you care to tell me why I am still at my work tonight, although the light is going? Why I’ll still be at it until I can no longer squint to see, just to stay on track to finish this tapestry before we hit the Tantervale Market Road?”
Mam didn’t turn away from her work, even to scold. She didn’t raise her voice. Estral’s eyes fell on the thread basket beside her mother. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I forgot to brush and sort your thread for today.”
“It’s not the only thing you’ve forgotten lately. You’ll have seen the missing greens, and we shall certainly all miss them by the morning, but your father also had to explain to Deiniol why it was that the rug for his new daughter-in-law would not be ready for the wedding as promised, seeing as it still smells of the beast that once wore it. Deiniol is a patient and forgiving man. He didn’t upbraid or blame your father. I’d be surprised if Glenys was as generous, with us or with her father-in-law.”
“Siar,” Dad started.
“Eylan.”
Estral walked away from her father, away from the fire, away from her mother’s steady, unrelenting displeasure and disappointment. She stopped just on the edge of the shadows, still in eye- and earshot of her parents, and out of the hearing of anyone else around. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “Sometimes I have to choose between being the Keeper’s apprentice and being your daughter. Sometimes I don’t have time for everything.”
“Learn,” Mam suggested. “Do you see the Keeper letting her son go hungry? Do you see Rian neglecting his mam or his duties to his sister and brother-in-law?” She answered her own question. “No. And both of them have just a few more tasks to do each day than you do.”
“They’re also more than a few years older than she is, wife,” Dad pointed out. “It’s fine, darling,” he said to Estral. “We can tighten our belts tonight, and odds are we’ll find a honeycomb or some watercress tomorrow so we can have a real feast. If not, we’ll be at market in a few days’ time. Your mam will finish her work in good time for it, and I can handle Deiniol and Glenys.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Mam said, bringing her shuttle to rest and turning to face the two of them. “If your daughter had done her work today, you wouldn’t be looking at Deiniol’s family thinking you’re shiftless and a liar, or else that you’re offering Glenys insult on purpose.”
“Although—” Dad murmured, and in the light still filtering down through the treetops and the glow from the fire, Estral saw a twitch, hidden away in the corner of Mam’s mouth. Glenys had been unpopular since her adoption into the clan four years ago at the Arlathvhen. She was pretty, with cold, precise features and shining flaxen hair, and she’d brought two halla to the herd and fine skills in making and repairing both tents and aravels with her when she came. But she was also snobbish, whining, and quick tempered, and had been feuding with people ever since her arrival.
“Hush, Eylan,” Mam scolded through her smiling lips. “Estral, how are you going to make things right?”
“Maybe by becoming a mage that won’t be a shame to you and the entire clan?” Estral muttered, feeling rebellious. She was so tired. The only thing she wanted to make right was the coverlet on the top of her bedroll and about a ten hours’ sleep.
But Mam’s eyes had narrowed at her sarcasm, and Estral sighed, closing her eyes for the count of three. “I’ll see what provisions I can gather tonight by the river after supper. There’s a moon tonight, so if I’m out there’ll still be light to see by. And I’ll wake early tomorrow to tan the rug for Glenys. It won’t be finished in time for the wedding, and I’ll have to clean up beforehand to help the Keeper and Rian with the ceremony. But I’ll make a public apology to Glenys on Deiniol’s behalf, accepting all responsibility for the tardiness of his gift. Since the gift will be tardy anyway, I can probably use some techniques to burn and dye a pattern onto it to make it more beautiful and more valuable to the newlyweds. Will that be sufficient, Mam?”
“I’d advise sticking to dyes, darling,” Mam replied. “If you ruin the pelt with your burning, your father will owe the family another. You may use some of my own dyes if your own herbs are not sufficient, and trade at market from your own resources to make up the difference.”
That was hard, Estral thought. She’d been saving polished shells and bone knives, belt pouches she’d woven from river reeds, and simple potions she’d made under Rian’s tutelage for months now against the next market day. She even had a geode she’d found. But dyes were expensive, and if her mother insisted Glenys’s new tent rug be dyed to make up for its tardiness to her, doing without burning techniques entirely, Estral would probably have to borrow some of her mother’s dyes and replace what she used at market. Rian had recommended Estral buy her own set of copper measures for herbalism; she might not be able to afford both the measures and the music and the books she had wanted. That was probably her mother’s plan, Estral thought, just in case making a public apology at Glenys’s wedding tomorrow didn’t sting enough next week.
She stalked back over to the fire to crouch beside Dad without comment, holding out her hand for one of the skewers. Dad was a fantastic cook. Even without the greens, supper would be worth eating. But Mam was right too. They’d all miss them, especially when night turned into morning. Estral should’ve remembered supper at least, even if she had forgotten to tan Glenys’s stupid rug or brush out the thread Mam could handle well enough herself.
“I don’t mean to fail at everything, Mam,” she said, unable quite to keep the resentment out of her voice. “I’m sure it’s awful dealing with such a trial and an embarrassment.”
Siar rolled her eyes, coming over to sit with Estral and her father and taking her own skewer from her husband. “You’re either being dramatic or fishing for praise and comfort. In both cases, I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy that I can spare you. You may not believe it, darling, but your father and I are just as exhausted as you by the end of the day.”
Estral stared into the fire, hoping that the smoke would cloud her eyes and give her an excuse for how they watered and stung. She didn’t think Mam and Dad were as tired as she was. They couldn’t be. Neither one of them had to be a mage.
Mam’s free hand reached out. She combed her fingers through Estral’s tangled hair and brushed the backs of them against Estral’s cheek. “Things have been easy for you up to now, I think,” she said quietly. “You’ve been a good girl and a fine student to the Keeper and to Rian, and your father and I have been just as proud of you and everything you’re doing as everyone in the clan. Your keeping it up now that things are getting a little harder will show who you really are, and the kind of girl, scholar, and warrior you truly mean to be. Do you understand me?”
Estral’s stomach churned, and she handed her father her half-finished skewer. The juices of the salted and spiced rabbit still lingered in her mouth, hot and savory, and the meat was delicious and tender, but even though she knew she should eat and she would eventually feel it if she didn’t, somehow now she just couldn’t.
Dad was watching her. “Estral,” he said. “You should hear what Rian and Deshanna say about you when you’re not around. Don’t you doubt they are proud, as proud as they could be. You’ve had Rian wrapped around your little finger since you were four years old. Likes you better than his blood sister, and the way Deshanna tells it, you’re some kind of spiritual prodigy. You’ll get past this rough patch. It’s like stalking some fresh new quarry. The rules change with every creature. All you’ve got to do is learn them.”
Estral shook her head. “I’m sure you’re right. Summoning magic from the reaches of the Beyond to attack an enemy is just like stalking some new creature.” She closed her eyes again, leaned over, and pressed her face into her father’s shoulder. “Forgive me. That was rude. And thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“Oh, my girl,” Dad sighed, wrapping an arm around her head and pressing a kiss to her hair. “Always.”
Estral looked at her mother. She wanted to make things right with Mam too, but she was frustrated too. She couldn’t do it all, whatever her mother said. Some days, she just couldn’t. Especially lately. So as she rose, she just stopped by Mam’s shoulder, unable to meet her eyes and focusing instead on her left shoulder. “If . . . if I find that honeycomb of Dad’s, I’ll use the wax and trade with Sellin to make you a lantern. Just in case. He’ll make me a good bargain.”
Mam reached up for her hand, and clasped it to her shoulder, and then Estral left her parents, reaching down into the family’s things beside the pavilion for the broad basket she used for gathering.
While it was too early to expect to find any berries, she could probably collect a whole basket full of dandelions, nettles, clover, and watercress, and if she got lucky, she might find some wild mustard or garlic or some mushrooms. Some mushrooms would pair well with the milk and cheese Teilthe and her apprentices would be handing round in the morning. But in any event, she wouldn’t be able to go back home until she had filled the entire basket. It was going to be a long night, with a longer day tomorrow.