“I want to see the rock.” My father spoke with sudden strength. “I want to know what is so unique about it. Let me see the rock.”
“I told you before, sir. It has been misplaced. I cannot show it to you. You must take my word for it that it shows a most uncommon mix of elements. It will be of great interest to those who study geology, but likely laymen will only find it boring. Scholars of the origins of the earth will be intrigued if they can view its place of origin.”
As I danced, I shook my head. The man was lying. He had no scholarly interest in that stone. There was something else about that rock, something of monetary value. I was sure of it, though I did not know enough geology to say what it might be. Then, unnervingly, my father’s eyes met mine. He did not stare through me; he seemed to really see me. In response to the shaking of my head, he slowly shook his own. “No,” he said, and swung his gaze to Stiet. “No. You are not telling me the full story. And even when Sergeant Duril returns, he will not help you. Not until you are honest with us. And if my son lives”—his voice grew stronger—“if my son lives, he will come home. Don’t dangle that pale little boy before me like bait. He’s barely out of short trousers, and my daughter has told me she does not wish to marry so young. She’ll tell you so herself.” He lifted his voice suddenly. “Yaril! Yaril, I want you!” And for a moment he sounded like the father I recalled from my youth rather than the man crazed by my failure at the Academy and broken by the grief of his plague losses.
I heard the sound of a chair pushed back, and then the hurrying patter of Yaril’s feet down the corridor. “Never mind, never mind,” Stiet was saying hastily. “Send her away; you’ve no need of her. Don’t make yourself upset. I only asked a simple question.”
“I need her,” the old man replied testily. Again, he looked directly at me, and I would have sworn he could see me. “I need her to do the things that I cannot do. The things I no longer have the strength to do for myself.” He kept his gaze on my face as he spoke, and I had the strangest sensation of an interchange between us, as if the magic I had infected him with was now returning to me. I felt more whole for it coming back to me, and I could almost see it leaving my father and allowing him to become more himself again. How much magic had I spread, and to how many people? I knew that it had touched Epiny strongly, and Spink. Carsina, it had forced to come to me after her death, to beg my forgiveness. Yaril? I’d touched Caulder with it, when I turned him back on the bridge. Who else? How many? A part of me wished to feel guilt over what I had done. Another part effortlessly recognized that it was not me, but the magic that had acted so. It would not accept or tolerate the guilt.
The dancing of my distant body intruded again in my thoughts. Kinrove knew how to express the magic only as dance, and at his bidding, at his summons, I danced. How had I expressed the magic? I suddenly wondered, and then speculated that perhaps words had been my strongest manifestation of it. The journal, the hastily sketched map, even the letters that had flown between Carsina and Yaril and Epiny and myself. I felt something in the distant physicality. Water flowing down my back. Feeders were pouring cooling water over me. I felt it trickle and flow. Somewhere, I thirsted. I did not stop dancing, but opened my mouth and someone trickled water into it. Olikea? Perhaps.
But I could not think of her now, could not think of anything except stitching up the holes in my magical tasks. All that my separate halves could not accomplish was coming together for me. It takes two hands to weave, and that was what I was doing.
When Yaril entered the room, I knew what I had to do. A furrow creased her brow and she suddenly clasped herself in an embrace. “Is there a draft in here?” she demanded, and then hurried about the room, drawing curtains and checking to be sure that the casement windows were securely closed and latched. That done, she hurried up to my father, her skirts rustling and her feet tapping on the floor. Those simple sounds, so often ignored, suddenly seemed a part of the music and I danced with her. Her words seemed a song when she said, “Here I am, Father. What did you need?”
“I need an answer!” Abruptly my father slapped his palm against his leg, as if somehow Yaril had been deceiving him and he was upbraiding her for it.
It broke my heart to see the quiver that passed through her. But she drew herself up straight and met his gaze. “An answer to what question, Father?” she asked him. Her voice was grave, without impertinence. I saw how she used her own demeanor to recall him to his.
“This man’s son—his adopted son, this Caulder. Do you wish to be engaged to him?”