Briarheart Read online

  And that was when she coughed dryly, and the girl who had brought us there moved toward her with a look of fear and concern on her face.

  The old woman waved her away. “Enough, little one. Even hearts wear out, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  But once again, my human magic rose up inside me, rebelling against that statement. It wanted me to do something!

  But I’m no healer! I thought. I don’t know how to focus the power to actually do anything like healing!

  But I had to try. The Abbess had said that spells were a way to mentally channel and focus human magic. Puri Daj said it was her heart… maybe I can… make something up!

  I don’t know where the words came from, but I found myself whispering them under my breath, and the magic responded to them in the same way it had to the Cradle Song. “Not yet is your story ended! Weary hearts can still be mended. Kindness shown when unexpected, now your kindness is reflected!”

  The human magic seemed to approve. I sensed it flowing into Puri Daj and concentrating on her chest as Giles watched in puzzlement.

  I continued to hold the old woman’s hands and let the magic flow into her until it stopped abruptly. Taking that as a sign that I had done everything I could, I let go of her hands and straightened up.

  I might not have been a healer, but even I could tell that whatever I’d done had been an improvement. Underneath the weathering of many, many years of being in the sun, her face had been pale with grayish undertones. Now she was flushed with new vigor. She was breathing easier too, and she stared at me with surprise and delight.

  “I’m not a healer,” I said apologetically. “And I’m not even sure what I did, but I hope it helped.”

  She said something in her own tongue that I didn’t understand, but the girl burst into tears and ran off.

  “What did I do?” I asked in alarm, starting to get up to run after her.

  But the old woman motioned for me to sit back down. “She is just happy,” Puri Daj said. “I told her that, thanks to you, my drubarick would be serving the clan for many more years and that she should run to tell her father, who is my son, our leader.”

  Before I could say or do anything, the girl was back, dragging a middle-aged but still handsome man by the hand. Actually, he was awfully handsome. He had expressive dark eyes that were slightly slanted, hair as black as a shadow on a moonless night, a chiseled face that should have graced the statue of a hero, and a very long, handsome moustache. Anna would have fallen in love at the sight of him despite the fact that he was at least as old as Papa. The girl babbled at him in their tongue, and he cut her off with a kindly gesture to ask something of his mother. She replied, and to my acute embarrassment, he went to one knee in front of me, bowing deeply.

  “Our clan can never repay you for your gift, dear lady,” he said as Giles stared from me to him and back again with his mouth hanging open. “But if you ever need help from any of our people, tell them Batbayar of Clan Uru’ut requires it of them.”

  I flushed so hard that it felt as if my face were on fire, but I tried to act like Papa or Mama and thanked him sincerely even though I had no idea what he was actually offering. I still didn’t know where these people had come from or who they were. But I certainly would be able to recognize them if ever I saw them again! And then I realized how late it had gotten.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but we have duties and we are going to have to run to get back to them!” I blurted out.

  But Batbayar smiled and rose to his feet. “No need to run. I can give you a tiny payment for your great gift now.”

  He said something to the girl, who ran off and came back within mere moments with two of the most beautiful black horses I had ever seen. They had heavily feathered feet, white stars on their foreheads, one white foot, and manes that reached down to their knees, and they were saddled with light saddle pads with leather-loop stirrups and bridled with hackamores. “Take these as our gift,” Batbayar said, and before I could protest, he had boosted me into the saddle. Giles was already in place, as his mare stood like a rock. “They can run for days and will serve you long. But never put a bit in their soft mouths. They are daughters of the wind herself!” And then he gave them each a light smack on their rumps, and they launched themselves into a canter, taking us out of the camp and on the road to the palace without a chance for me to say anything more.

  “Oh! My! Infinite Light!” Anna squealed. “They gave you a horse?” She seemed much more impressed with the horse than with the fact that I had healed the lovely old woman without actually being a healer. She skipped around the horse and clapped her hands, which did not seem to disturb the horse in the least.

  “They gave me a horse too,” Giles pointed out, pasty in one hand, horse’s reins in the other. For those of us at the bottom of the table, lunch had been pasties—crescents of pie crust stuffed with chopped leftovers. Which had made it convenient for Giles and me to leave our horses in the hands of the grooms, dash in, grab a couple of pasties, collect the rest of the Companions, and lead everyone back to the stable yard.

  “Miri’s is prettier,” said Anna.

  “They’re practically identical,” I said. “Except that the white foot on mine is the left foreleg and the white foot on his is the right hind leg. That’s the only difference. They’re even both mares.”

  This was when Sir Delacar came lumbering into the stable yard. “Let’s see these gift horses, and tell me what happened,” he huffed, taking the reins from Giles and putting his hand on the horse’s nose to get it to lower its head. “Hmm,” he said, looking into her mouth. “Young.” He looked over all four of her feet, felt her hocks, and ran his hand over her coat while I explained how we came to have the horses. “Sound legs and feet. No sign she’s been dosed. I did not expect this.” Only then did he turn to look at me. “You’ve made yourself some interesting friends, young Miri. For your information, those folk call themselves the People of the East Wind, and they travel about during the summer months selling horses, horse tack, and a kind of wool, and in the fall, they vanish. No one really knows where.”

  “What are you going to call her?” Anna demanded.

  I said the first thing that came into my head. “Star.”

  Giles smirked. “Not exactly original.”

  “I could have picked Blackie to match Brownie.”

  Sir Delacar laughed. “I do see the reason behind their gift, though,” he said as Nat and Rob gazed on our horses with unconcealed envy. “There are two of you but six Companions, and I have no doubt that your new friends know this. If they’d only given you a horse, Miri, well, that would be one thing. But they gave Giles one too. They knew the others would be wanting horses to match, and that’s money in their pockets.”

  Anna and Elle looked stricken, and I knew why; there was no way their families would buy them horses to match mine and Giles’s—and now that I thought about it, there was no reason why they should. My father’s armor and horses had always been supplied by the King because he was the King’s Champion, but everyone else, the knights included, had to supply their own. So by all that was proper—

  “Sir Delacar, may I go run a quick errand?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow at me and gave a slight jerk of his head at my horse. I nodded. “Be quick about it,” he said.

  He kept the others there talking while I ran off. The last thing I heard him say were the lines from a poem about horse buying that I’d heard before. “One white foot, buy him; two white feet, try him; three white feet, send him far away; four white feet, keep him not a day.”

  I remembered my father telling me that as I looked at his massive chestnut warhorse with four white feathered feet. And he’d laughed. “Silly poem,” he’d said. “White feet often mean pale hooves, and foolish folk think that pale hooves are weak hooves. Not true. Remember that, my love, and don’t let four white feet keep you from taking a fine horse.”

  I returned as quickly as my feet could carry m
e, having determined from the seneschal that, yes, my household income would extend to buying four horses and housing six. “No more extravagant expenses, however,” he cautioned. “No more gowns or other costly items until the harvest. You can afford this only because the costs of your estate are reasonable and you had a good profit last autumn.” And he had given me the exact amount of coin that he considered appropriate for spending on horses for my Companions. Sir Delacar was still pointing out all the things that made Star and Giles’s mare superior animals for the sort of work we’d need them for. “They don’t need to be warhorses; you aren’t going to war. But you likely will need them for travel when the King and Queen take Aurora on the Royal Progress and when Aurora gets older and goes out hunting, so they need strong hocks.” He heard me coming in the stable door and turned, smiling when he saw the pouch in my hand. “And now, I presume, this afternoon’s lesson will be one in horse buying?”

  I nodded. He fetched the stablemaster for a second opinion, and to the dazed glee of the other four, we all went back down to the faire. And we soon had four more black-and-white horses, three geldings and a mare, all bought from my new friends after much palaver and bargaining. Three of them had two white feet; one of them had only one. They all had some white on their faces, from a little dot to a long, fat stripe, and we’d all learned more about buying horses in that one afternoon than any of us had in our entire lives.

  “Now we’ll add new lessons,” Delacar proclaimed as Nat, Rob, Elle, and Anna led their new mounts up the hill—Delacar had deemed them too green as riders to ride unknown animals through town. “I suspect you are going to find yourselves sorer after the first day of riding than you were after your first day of fighting practice.”

  Giles looked a bit smug at that. I already knew I would be all right; if I could survive a bareback ride on Clarion’s back, I could take anything. Giles had seemed to me to be a perfectly competent rider, but I wondered about the others. It didn’t necessarily follow that if you were a noble, you automatically knew how to ride the sort of horses we’d just bought. Especially if you were a girl. Most boys learned to ride so they could hunt, but I knew that many girls never rode anything more exciting than a gentle palfrey, and that at an amble.

  But Anna and Elle just smirked. Well, time would tell.

  We all assembled at the stables the next morning and saddled and “bridled” our new horses under the supervision of the head groom. Sir Delacar insisted that we know how to do this quickly and competently, just as he had when he made us groom and put our charges up in their new stalls last night. I say “bridled” because we’d been ordered never to put bits in their mouths. Giles and I had the saddles our mares had come with; the rest had the lightest saddles the head groom could find.

  Then we spent the morning riding in the big field behind the palace where jousts were held and the knights trained every day. I loved every minute of it. Brownie was a good little pony, but Star was just… elegant. Sir Delacar made sure that we could all competently ride every pace from a walk to a full gallop, first singly then as a group. “I confess I am pleasantly surprised,” Sir Delacar said, before he dismissed us for lunch. We dismounted as he crossed his arms over his chest and wore a satisfied expression, then we led our horses to the stable. He gave us permission to leave them in the hands of the grooms so we would have time to wash up before luncheon.

  We’d all passed his trials with flying colors and that included our horses too. Anna and Elle smirked again, and all the boys looked exceedingly pleased with themselves. But Delacar’s next words changed those expressions to surprise tinged with alarm. “We’ll be jumping tomorrow. And if that goes well, we’ll start accustoming the horses to fighting. You’ll be practicing against the pells while mounted.”

  I could tell that Star had been well trained in the basics—but I very much doubted that she’d ever had someone whacking a stick around her ears. This could be a problem—for us, not the horses. They would certainly react, at least initially, with alarm. And an alarmed horse usually bucks and sometimes bolts.

  On the other hand, Sir Delacar was the best trainer. I was sure that he knew this already. I decided to put it out of my mind and get fed before I ran off to my magic lessons. I had a lot to tell Brianna.

  I was afraid that the other squires were going to be jealous of us, but to my relief, they weren’t—and it turned out, as I listened to everyone talking over lunch, it was because having a horse just meant having extra work as far as they were concerned. “It’s not as if you’re ever going to get a chance to ride for fun,” one of them said with a knowing smile. “And you are going to have to take care of that tack all on your own. You’re just lucky you don’t have to feed and muck out too.”

  And I could see their point. We weren’t at war. None of their knights went on tourneys to earn prizes and money. All the squires ever did—all they had time to do—was train and take care of their knight’s property. Even if they had a horse of their own, when would they have time to ride it and enjoy it, much less have the money to feed it? They were perfectly happy to make do with the stolid retired warhorses that belonged to their knights that they were allowed to use in training. To them, a horse was just another thing, like a sword or armor, that needed taking care of, not something to enjoy.

  But we weren’t like that. In a way, we were almost knights even though we didn’t have the rank. We would have time to ride as well as train with our horses. Well, the others would, anyway. And because we were Aurora’s Companions and I had my household income, the feed and upkeep were taken care of for my five friends.

  It was a relief to know that the squires weren’t going to resent us for our new acquisitions. This wasn’t going to upset the fairly decent rapport we’d finally forged with them.

  I ate in a hurry, hardly tasting anything, and debated as I ran to the oak tree whether I should tell Lobo about how I had cured the old woman. I decided I had better wait to see what Brianna said first, so I just told him how we’d all bought horses at the faire. He wanted to know if any of them talked, and when I said that they didn’t, he snorted. “So, not interested in getting into debates with your mount, then?” he said, referring, of course, to Clarion.

  “You have to admit that conversation could be a problem. For one thing, I doubt that Star would be willing to carry me into an actual battle if she was able to talk to me and decide things for herself.”

  “Probably not.” Lobo laughed.

  Brianna was far more interested in the fact that I had essentially “made up” a human spell on the spot that had worked. A healing spell at that!

  “Human magicians are not necessarily able to heal,” she told me. “Nor are Fae, actually. Did you sense any of your Fae magic working while you were doing this?”

  “Nothing,” I said with confidence. “This was all human. And the verse I made up—I think it was very specific to Puri Daj and what she had done for me. I don’t think I could use it a second time even on someone with a similar ailment.”

  “Fascinating,” Brianna murmured. “Well, I hope that Gerrold can keep up with you. It sounds to me as if you are going to be a challenge to his abilities as a teacher.”

  That took me aback. It certainly didn’t sound auspicious!

  “I would like you to talk to him tonight and tell him exactly what you told me. And in the meantime, it is time for your lessons. You have the basics now, and I’m quite pleased. Now we are going to start lessons about concentrating on very fine control.”

  Brianna wasn’t joking. The only thing I can compare this to was when I was trying to learn how to embroider over one or two threads at a time with a thread no bigger around than a hair. Today I practiced on levitating a single grain of wheat in the air in front of me while simultaneously peeling off its outer husk. Neatly. Without shattering, crushing, or otherwise mangling what was inside. And when I said that it was impossible, after destroying twenty grains in a row, Brianna showed me that it was not impossible by deftly
doing the same—to a moonflower seed, which was a quarter of the size of a grain of wheat.

  By the time she dismissed me, I was more than ready to be finished for the day.

  And I was not looking forward to climbing all those steps to Gerrold’s tower. But I was fortunate that I didn’t have to. As I left the table and the Great Hall, he intercepted me on the stairs before I got very far. I wondered if he’d ended his own dinner early to make sure he caught me.

  “I heard something of your adventure with the People of the East Wind from Sir Delacar, and I was wondering if you could spare me part of your evening, my lady?” he asked me politely enough. “And what would you say if we repaired to the garden for a discussion?”

  “I’d say it’s better than climbing all the way up to your tower, Sir Wizard,” I replied politely. He laughed.

  It was still light outside; I loved these long summer evenings. I always have. But it was a pity that it looked as if I wasn’t going to get much chance to enjoy them this year.

  I wasn’t surprised when Gerrold chose that wild part of the garden I liked so much. I was surprised when he led me to a little overgrown bower behind “my” oak, where two small seats sat facing each other. They were made of smooth river rocks cemented together in the shape of a tilted cup. I hadn’t even known that they were here!

  We sat down in them in the fading light of sunset, and they were a lot more comfortable than you’d think for being made of stone.

  When I had finished my tale, he sighed. “Well, I am going to tell you what I think Brianna has already guessed. I cannot teach you.”

  “Wait, what?” I said, bewildered. This was not what I had expected to hear. I’d expected that he’d insist that I immediately double up on my lessons with him.

  “That is, I cannot teach you much. Let me explain. There are two kinds of human magicians, wizards and sorcerers.”

  I nodded because I knew that already.

  “Witches and wizards must study, learn great control, and memorize specific ways of implementing that control. Spells, in other words. Witches are less powerful than wizards—much like the difference between a hearth fire and a forge fire. This is why witches work in groups when they need to do something that requires a great deal of power. But for sorcerers—and sorceresses, of course—control is instinctive. They make up spells to focus their power on the spot if they need to.” Gerrold shrugged a little. “Wizard magic is predictable. A sorcerer’s magic is not quite as predictable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it”—he made a little pfft motion with his fingers—“just vanishes in a shower of sparks. Wizards are reliable. Sorcerers, not so much. And sorcerers are incredibly rare. They’re like musical prodigies; there is perhaps one born for every five hundred wizards. In fact, now that I think about it, sorcerers are exactly like musical prodigies. Magic is something that comes naturally to them.”