Certain Symmetry (3 page)

"Perhaps one of us can," Lute replied and
stood. "Excuse me a moment, Housemother. I must consult with my
apprentice."

* * *

"FORGET?" LUTE REPEATED. "But it is the
possibility of forgetting that is terrifying her out of all
sense!"

"Nonetheless," Moonhawk said, with rather
more patience than she felt, "forgetfulness is all I have to offer.
I know of no spell or blessing that will insure memory. I only know
how to remove such pain as this, which is become a threat to a good
and decent woman's life. She suffers much, and I may ease her--will
ease her, if she wishes it. But I think she will choose instead to
honor her vow." She hesitated, caught by a rare feeling of
inadequacy.

"I am sorry, Master Lute."

"Sorry mends no breakage," Lute snapped.
Moonhawk felt a sharp retort rise to her tongue and managed, just,
to keep it behind her teeth. After all, she reminded herself, Lute,
too, had taken losses--not only Rowan, but Veverain, was gone
beyond him.

"Your pardon, Lady Moonhawk," his voice was
formal, without the edge of irony that often accompanied his use of
her title. "That was ill-said of me. I find the Goddess entirely
too greedy, that She must always Call the best so soon. How are the
rest of us to find the way to grace, when our Rowans are snatched
away before their teaching is done?" He sighed.

"But that is matter between myself and the
Goddess, not between you and I."

Moonhawk inclined her head, accepting his
apology. "It is ...," she said formally, and bit down on the last
word before it escaped, silently cursing herself for fool.

"Forgotten," Lute finished the phrase,
tiredly, and looked past her, up into the starry sky. "There must
be something," he murmured, and then said nothing more for several
minutes, his eyes on the clear glitter of stars, for all the world
as if he had entered trance.

Finally, he shook himself, much as a Witch
might do when leaving trance, to re-acquaint herself with the
physical body. He brought his eyes down to her face.

"I must try," he said, soberly. "Rowan would
want me to try." He extended a hand and touched her lightly on the
sleeve. "You are a Witch and have the ear of the Goddess. Now would
be a good time to pray."

* * *

VEVERAIN SAT AT the table where they had
left her, hands tucked around the empty tea cup, shoulders slumped.
Her eyes were closed, her cheeks shining with tears in the
lamplight.

Seeing her thus, Lute paused, and Moonhawk
saw him bring his hands up and move them in one of his more
grandiose gestures, plucking a bright silk scarf from empty air.
Another pass and the scarf was gone. Lute took a breath.

"There is something that may be attempted,"
he announced, and it was the Master Magician's full performance
voice now. "If you are willing to turn your hand to magic."

Veverain opened her eyes, looking up at him.
"Magic?"

"A very old and fragile magic," Lute assured
her solemnly. "It was taught me by my master, who had it from his,
who had it from his, who had it from the Mother of Huntress City
Temple herself. From Whose Hand the lady received the spell, we
need not ask. But!" He raised his hand, commanding attention. "For
this magic, as for any great magic, there is a price. Are you
willing to pay?"

Veverain stared into his face. "I am," she
said, shockingly quiet.

"Then let it begin!" Lute's hands carved the
air in the same eloquent gesture that had lately summoned the
scarf. Stepping forward, he placed an object on the table: a small,
extremely supple leather pouch. Moonhawk had seen thousands like it
in her life--a common spell-bag, made to be suspended from the neck
by a ribbon, or a leather cord.

"Into this bag," he intoned, "will be placed
five items evocative of Rowan. No less than five, no more than
five." He stepped back and looked sternly into Veverain's face.
"You will choose the five."

"Five?" she protested. "Rowan was
multitudes! Five--"

"Five, a number beloved of the Goddess. No
more, no less." Lute was implacable. "Choose."

Veverain pushed herself to her feet, her
eyes wide. "How long?" she whispered. "How long do I have to
choose?"

"Five minutes to choose five items. Listen
to your heart and your choices will be true."

For a moment, Moonhawk thought the other
woman would refuse, would crumple back onto the bench, hide her
face in her hands and wail. But Veverain had been woven of tougher
cord than that. She swayed a moment, but made a good recover, chin
up and showing a flash, perhaps, of the woman she had been.

"Very well," she said to Lute. "Await me
here." She swept from the room as if her faded houserobe were grand
with embroidery and the stone floor not thick with dust.

When she was gone, Lute looked up at the
beam with its dangling bunches of herbs, reached up and snapped off
a single sprig. It was no sooner in his hand than it vanished,
where, Moonhawk could not hazard a guess.

That done, he went over to the table, pulled
out the bench and sat, his hands flat on the table, apparently
content to await Veverain's return in silence.

Moonhawk drifted over to the wall bench and
settled in to watch.

* * *

"HERE," VEVERAIN SAID, and placed them, one
by one, on the table before her: a curl of russet-colored hair, a
scrap of paper, a gray and green stone, a twig.

"That is four," Lute said, chidingly.

"I have not done," she answered and raised
her hands to her neck, drawing a rawhide cord up over her head.
Something silver flashed in the lamplight; flashed again as she had
it off the cord and placed by the others.

"His promise-ring," she said quietly. "And
that is five, Master Lute."

"And that is five," he agreed, hands still
palm-flat against the table-top, in an attitude both quiescent and
entirely un-Lute-like.

"What will you do now?" Veverain inquired.
Lute raised his eyebrows.

"You misunderstand; it is not I who will do,
but you. If you expect that you will sit there and be done to, pray
disabuse yourself of the notion."

"But," she stared at him, distress growing,
"I am no Witch. I have no schooling, no talent. How am I to build a
spell?" Moonhawk could only applaud the housemother's good sense.
By her own certain reckoning, it required some number of years to
become proficient in spell-craft.

Lute, however, was unworried on this
point.

"Have I not said that I have the way of it
from my master and all the way back to she who first received the
gift of the Goddess? I am here to guide you. But it is you who must
actually perform the task, or the spell will have no power."

"I will--put these things in that bag?"
Veverain asked. "That is all?"

"Not quite all. Each item must receive its
charge. The best technique is to pick up a single item, hold it in
your hand and recall--in words or in thought--the connection
between Rowan and the object. In this manner, the spell will build,
piece by piece, each piece interlocked with and informed by the
others."

Which was as apt a description of spell
structure as she had ever heard, thought Moonhawk. But Veverain had
no glimmer of Witch-sense about her and the tiny flickerings of
talent she sometimes caught from Lute were not nearly sufficient to
build and bind the spell he described.

Even if such a spell were possible.

At the table, Veverain glanced down among
her choices, and put forth a hand. Moonhawk leaned forward,
Witch-sense questing, shivering as she encountered the raging gray
torrent of Veverain's grief.

Veverain's hand descended, taking up the
bright lock of hair.

"This is Rowan's hair," she said
tentatively, and Moonhawk felt--something--stir against her
Witch-sense. "When we had kept household less than a year, he was
chosen by the Master of the Vine to work a season at Veyru in
exchange of which we received a vineman of Veyru. The Master of the
Vine came with a delegation and petitioned my permission for
Rowan--as if I would have denied him such an opportunity! We had
been together so short a time, and Veyru is no small journey--I
joked that I would not recognize him when he returned. In answer,
he cut off this curl and told me that I should always know him, by
the flame that lived in his hair."

Carefully, she put the lock into the small
leather bag. Lute said nothing, sitting still as a statue of
himself.

Veverain chose the gray and green rock.

"When Rowan left home for that season in
Veyru he bore with him this stone from our land, so that, wherever
he was, he would always be home."

The stone joined the lock of hair in the bag
and there was definitely something a-building now. Moonhawk could
see two thick lines of flame, intersecting at a right angle,
hanging just above Veverain's head. She held her breath, staring,
and Veverain picked up the scrap of paper.

"The winter after Rowan returned from Veyru
was a bitter one. We spent the days in the window, a book between
us, while I taught him his letters. He learned to read--and
write!--quickly, nor, once he had the skills, did he rest. He read
every book in the village, and came back from the vineyards one
evening to tell me that he had determined to write a book on the
lore of the vine, so that the young vinemen would have a constant
teacher and the old a check to their memories. He wrote that book,
and others, and kept his journals. More, he passed his skills to
other men of the village, who have taught their sons, so Karn need
not forget the cure for a vine blight encountered in my mother's
time." She hesitated, fingers caressing the scrap.

"This paper bears his signature--the very
first time he signed his name."

Lingeringly, the scrap of paper went into
the bag and Moonhawk very nearly gasped. The third interlock was a
bar of flame as thick as her arm, burning a pure, luminous
white.

Carefully, Veverain picked up the scrap of
wood.

"This is a piece from our vines on the hill.
Rowan loved the vines, the grapes, the wine."

A fourth bar of fire joined the first three,
blazing. Stretching her Witch-sense, Moonhawk found the other
woman's grief significantly calmer, less gray, melting, like heavy
fog, in the brightness of the spell she built.

For the last time, Veverain reached to the
table, and picked up the scarred silver band.

"This is Rowan's promise-ring," she said, so
quietly Moonhawk had to strain to hear. "He wore it every day for
twenty-five years. If anything on this earth will remember Rowan,
this will."

The fifth bar of fire was
so bright, Moonhawk's Witch-sense shied from it, dazzled. So, the
thing was built, and a powerful spell it was, too. But it wanted
binding and it wanted binding
now
, before the heat of it caught the
timbers of the house.

At the table, Lute moved. His right hand
rose, the fingers flickered, and there between finger and thumb was
the twig he had broken from the herb bundle.

"Rosemary, Queen of Memory," he intoned,
solemn as a prayer, "keep Rowan close." He placed the sprig in the
bag. Reaching out, he took up the rawhide cord on which Veverain
had worn Rowan's ring, and began to tie the spell-bag shut.

"In love, memory; in life, love." His hands
moved more complexly now, creating two elaborate knots, and half of
a third. Sternly, he looked at the woman across from him.

"Once this bag is sealed with the third
knot, the spell is made. Once made, it cannot be unmade." He
extended the bag, the final knot incomplete, the spell burning,
dangerously bright, above the woman's head.

Veverain took the cord in her two hands, and
with infinite care made the final knot complete.

"Sealed with my heart, that I never forget,"
she said, and pulled the cord tight.

Above her head, invisible to all but the
staring Witch, the flaming bars wheeled, blurred and vanished,
leaving behind, for those who could hear such things, the
definitive snap of a spell sturdy-built and bound.

"Stand," Lute said, doing so himself.
Veverain rose and he set the bag on its rawhide cord about her
neck. "Wear it. And never forget."

From the floor, a flash of white-and-black
ascended, landing light-footed on the table. Tween the cat bumped
against the housemother's arm, tail held joyously aloft.

Veverain smiled.

* * *

"HAVE YOU MASTERED the counter yet?" the
magician asked his apprentice as they walked toward the high
village in the morning. Behind them, their hostess was already
engaged with broom and dust rag, the windows flung open to receive
the day.

"You know I haven't!" his apprentice
retorted, hotly. "If you must know, Master Lute, I don't think you
ever made that counter disappear in the first place--you merely
entranced me into believing you had done so!"

"Ah, very good!" Lute said unexpectedly.
"You have learned a basic truth of our trade: People make their own
magic."

Moonhawk faltered, thinking of what had gone
forth last night. "Master Lute, the spell you made last night for
Veverain..."

"An illustrative case," he said, refusing to
meet her eyes.

"No," she said, and put a hand on his arm,
stopping him. Determined, she waited until he met her eyes, though
she did not compel him do so--indeed, she was not certain that she
could compel him to do so, Witch though she was.

The black eyes were on hers.

"I wanted you to know--the
spell you made for Veverain was
true
. I saw it building; I saw its
binding." She took a breath. "It was well done, Master
Lute."

"So." He sighed, then
shrugged. "But that does not change the original
premise--people
do
make their own magic, just as many see only what they wish to
see. Now, about the disappearing counter...." He flipped his cloak
behind his shoulders and showed her his hands.