Magic Steps

A bit of Sandry's worry evaporated. "Thank you, Yazmнn."

The dancer flapped a hand—no thanks necessary—then entered the warded room with Pasco. "Come on," she cried gleefully. "I've got you all to myself. We'll do some real work now!"

"That's what I'm afraid of," muttered Pasco.

Sandry's visit to the fishing village turned out better than she had hoped. Grandmother Netmender was quite willing to let her examine the net that Pasco had used to dance for fish. Able to inspect every inch of it, Sandry found that some of the net's power lay in the unusual knots that held the rope squares in place. The old lady taught her how to tie them, making her practice until Sandry could do each of the three different knots perfectly. Sandry could see that when she tied these with unmagic and combined them in her net, she would double her spell's power.

From the fishing village she rode to the Market Square coop, where Wulfric's office and workroom had been. There she talked to Behazin and Ulrina, who promised to distill the unmagic from the silk they had gathered at Rokat House the day before. She also looked at the stuff collected earlier, which was kept in spelled glass bottles. Since there was no weight to the nothingness, there was no way to tell how much they had, but Sandry was sure that with the unmagic from Rokat House, she would have enough for her net.

When they finished, they tidied up and went to the temple of Harrier the Clawed for Wulfric's last rites. Harrier's worshippers saw no point to burial or to preservation of a body for several days while mourners came to view it. They expected to join their god the day after their deaths. With the other mourners at the temple, Sandry made an offering of feathers and incense in Wulfric's name. A priest called for testimony of his ser vice to the god. Then the lady provost Behazin, even two dedicates from Winding Circle—Monstream, the dedicate who ruled the temple city, and Crane, head of the Air temple and a friend of Wulfrics—all spoke about his honors and the work he had done on behalf of Summersea.

The duke spoke last, and simply. "Murderers have taken the best harrier-mage I have ever known," he said, his voice ringing from the temples stone walls. "They shall, pay for it."

Sandry fought tears all through the ceremony. Tears would just make her weak, she thought, and she had to be strong for the work ahead. They came anyway, as the acolyte set Wulfric's funeral pyre ablaze. Sandry hadn't realized the duke and Baron Erdogun had come to stand with her until Vedris put his arm around her. She leaned against her great-uncle for a moment, then straightened, and. blew her nose. Watching the flames rise around Wulfric's body, Sandry made him a promise: she would snap the trap on the killers and their mage.

That night she dreamed she drowned in unmagic, trying to scream when it flooded her mouth. She got out of bed and worked on her plans for the net until dawn.

She rode with the duke, took breakfast with him and Erdogun, then went straight to Yazmin's. There she sketched the dimensions of the net on the workroom floor, using a measuring cord and chalk to lay out the design. Once it was perfect, she took a roll of scarlet ribbon and laid it over the chalked lines, then smoothed it down with her magic. Pasco, ever curious, tried to peel the ribbon off the floor, without success. He couldn't even get a corner free of the wood.

"I'll take it up again, after," Sandry promised Yazmнn.

"I don't know," the dancer said, raising the wards on the room so they could get to work. "It's a bit of pretty."

They meditated first—to Sandry's surprise, Yazmнn had been trained in it. Then Yazmнn and Pasco showed her what they had done on the net dance. The three worked on shaping it, crafting each step. They stopped to eat their midday and then returned. With the dance itself set, Yazmнn went to work on Pasco. This was the time for him to learn precision. If he so much as brushed the edge of a ribbon square, Yazmнn was on him like a tiny wild cat, scolding furiously and positioning his feet and body with rough hands.

That night Sandry dreamed again of the lake of dark ness swallowing her. This time she sat up, walked around the room, splashed her face with water, then tried to go back to sleep. Twice more she dreamed of unmagic, waking in the dark as she gasped for air. She fell asleep again near dawn and slept for several hours, dreamless at last, Her attempts to scold the servants, Erdogun, and her uncle for letting her sleep late were ignored. When she got to Yazmin's, she discovered that the dancer and Pasco had already meditated in the protected room and were working on the dance-spell.

When they came back from midday, the boy Wamuko gave Sandry a note. It was from Captain Behazin: he and Ulrina had distilled and bottled all the nothingness they could find. Two hours later a courier from Winding Circle arrived with a package for Sandry. Wrapped in canvas, it had spells of protection, and cleanliness laid so thickly on it that looking at it too often left spots on Sandry's vision. She sighed. Of course they would spell everything for this working with all the strength of the Winding Circle mages—, she just hadn't realized what that would do to her poor eyes. She cleared her mind, then drew a kind of veil over her sight, one that would shade her eyes from, the brightest magical fires.

When, she opened them, the blaze on the package was dimmed to a pearly shimmer. Opening the canvas wrap Sandry found a note:

The tent is being raised on the spot we discussed on Weben Ridge. Unless I hear from you otherwise, I will meet you there at eleven of the clock tonight with your remaining supplies.

Gods bless—Lark

"What is it?" Pasco reached for the sturdy, pointed, two-foot-long dowel rod that was part of the package's contents.

"Don't touch that!" She smacked his hand gently. Pasco jerked it away and stuck his ringers in his mouth. "Oh, stop it," Sandry told him, exasperated. "You aren't hurt.”

He took his fingers from his mouth and asked, "So what's all this for?"

"The rod's the stern for a drop spindle. It fits through here—" She picked up the second piece of wood in the canvas, a flat round piece six inches in diameter with a hole in the center. She inserted the pointed end of the rod through the hole. Three inches down the rods length, the round stuck. Assembled, the spindle looked like a very large top with an extra-long stem.

"My aunts and cousins and the maids use those, but theirs are smaller," Pasco remarked.

"Mine's bigger because I'm doing cord, not thread." Sandry ran the oversized spindle through her fingers. And I'm in a hurry."

Winding Circle's carpenters had done a beautiful job.

First they had carved strips of ebony, elder, and willow, all magically protective woods, to fit together into a rod and a disk without using glue. They had done so precise a job that Sandry couldn't take the pieces apart. The rod and disk might as well have been made of solid wood. Moreover, the carpenters had laid more signs of protection, strength, and cleanliness on their work. When Sandry spun the unmagic, all of it would go into her cord and only her cord.

"Its beautiful," commented Yazmнn, leaning over Pasco's shoulder to look at it. "They do nice work at the temple." Her brown eyes met Sandry's. "This is it, right? You have to start."

Sandry nodded. She wrapped her spindle in canvas and tied the package up again. "I should be ready for Pasco tomorrow." If nothing goes wrong, she thought nervously. If I don't mess things up.

"Well, then, Pasco, come on—enough loafing." Yazmнn rapped the boy's head with her knuckles and moved out to the corner of the ribbon net. "I want to see that jump again, and you'd better hit the mark clean this time."