"Tomas ..."
"They look on you as some kind of wonder, the common people of Gallia. They almost worship you. The innocent young girl whose purity and power saved Gallia from a Demon."
Purity, I thought ironically.
"Tomas ..."
"Yet you've even changed you name so that those who would honor you do not even know to do so."
"I was confused. I needed time to think ..."
"About what? Who needs to think about glory and wealth and ... and opportunities? Surely you just take them with open hands. I don't understand. It was a great victory you won and yet you've made it into a defeat."
"It was a defeat."
"How? How? Tell me that?"
"I would if you would just let me speak," I snapped.
He was silent for a moment.
"I want to understand," he said quietly. "Tell me."
"Tomas I ..." I was lost for words again. I didn't want to tell him anything.
"So when you slew the demon," he said gently. "It was a defeat for you? Not a victory? Why?"
I suddenly saw my way clear.
"There would have been no demon to slay had I not through one act of foolishness upon another caused it to be freed in the first place."
He stiffened.
"Did you dabble in necromancy, little sister?"
"Oh no, no. Nothing like that. No these were errors of judgment. I trusted the wrong people. I was irresponsible. I showed myself unworthy to wield great power and that is why I have hidden from it. Do you understand now?"
There was a long silence.
"I think I understand better," said Tomas. "That's not to say I agree, mind you. There are plenty of fools with power in this world. You at least have the wit to know and heal your mistakes."
He smiled at me, ruefully. "Don't look on me so anxiously, sister. We are one blood. That means a lot to me however angry I may be. I will stand by you always from now till my death."
"How can you say that? You hardly know me."
"We are both the bastard children of Marnie Holyhands. The world has little time for bastards. Now she is gone, we have nobody else but each other. Even were you a necromancer still you would have my loyalty. When you look into my mind you will see that for yourself. Come now. You know all that I have to hide. The sooner you do this search the sooner the headache will be past."
I lifted my hands and pressed my thumbs to his temples.
I think part of me hoped that Tomas would be proved to be a villain, I don't know, part of some crazy plot to lure mages in exile back into Moria so that they could be executed by the Burning Light perhaps. But his truthfulness was quite clear and his loyalty to me was, if anything, even stronger than Hamel's, strong because I was a stranger to him and thus needed special care. The only fearful things I saw were his ambition for me which was writ large in his mind and his frustration that I did not share that ambition. And images of the stone woman. She seemed to loom large in all our minds.
Afterwards when Tomas lay asleep, I went outside and sat under a tree at the edge of the forest and tried to think calmly, but our dreams, so similar, of the stone woman kept coming back into my mind and I found myself shivering again. Now I could be sure that my brothers' intentions were honest, I had to seriously face the idea of going into Moria. I was horribly afraid. For a moment I toyed with the idea of waiting for the Gallian Army to come and joining them as they passed. If Tasha was being fed on by the stone woman however and if she was enduring the kinds of tortures necromancers inflicted on their victims, I was amazed she had survived this long. Surely she could not go on much longer. And think of all the others that might be there with her. No. Armies moved slowly and something must be done as soon as possible.
I knew I could not refuse to go with my brothers and keep my self respect. But what about the Witchhunters? What terrible things might I find following Tasha's dreams?
Your fears are not relevant, I told myself sternly. You know the right thing to do. You must simply do your best to do it.
As I sat staring at my home, breathing deeply and trying to still my fear, a magpie flew down into the garden and began waddling importantly about it searching for snails. A family of blue and red honey parrots squabbled raucously over the sweet oil blossoms above me and away in the forest I heard someone cutting wood. I had been so happy here in Cardun. Was I really going to leave it now?
But under all these miserable and confused thoughts I felt another emotion. Excitement. Part of me was actually looking forward to the adventure, to hunting down this necromancer and to being a proper mage again.
Chapter 3
If we had all followed our own wishes, we would have set off the very next day like heroes in some old tale. First however there was the matter of how to be safe in Moria.
Here Tomas took control. As I had discovered under mind search, he was indeed experienced at smuggling magic into Moria and since he had no guilty memories of failure, I had to assume he was successful at it. Certainly he seemed to know what he was doing.
The first thing next morning, he sent Hamel into the village to find a horse and some suitable clothes for me. He asked to see my hands and was torn between disapproval and relief that they were much more work hardened than the hands of mages normally are.
"Don't you use magic for anything, Dion?"
"If most mages have nice hands," I said tartly, "it's because they get servants to do everything, not because they choose to waste magic on household tasks. My foster father and tutors would be most disapproving of the mundane things I use magic for."
Most magic users needed to marshal their powers or they quickly became exhausted and were unable to call on those powers in emergencies. I had never had a problem with this. Magic seemed to just flow and flow from me and so I used it for unpleasant tasks like cleaning out Pony's stable, or bringing wood into the house on cold nights. I had a positively luxurious system of transporting water. A small stream ran through the nearby forest and I had set up a pipe to it. I could magically draw water up through it at will and even heat it on the way.
Other things however like weeding the garden or picking apples I did by hand, partly because I enjoyed the physical exercise and partly because old habits die hard. My foster father for mysterious reasons of his own had never told me that I was more powerful than other mages although he'd never had any qualms about telling me I was more silly. I, isolated under his care, had no way of knowing otherwise and so for the first 17 years of my life I had nurtured and rationed my strength just like any other mage. I still felt uncomfortable taking it too much for granted.
My brother shrugged at my forthrightness and changing the subject asked for pen and paper.
He seated himself at my table and began writing, copying from a paper that he spread out on the table. When I had finished my chores, I came and watched him. I felt better now that the decision had been made. My mind felt free to think about other things, like my mother for instance. The memory of her had been even more present in Tomas's mind than in Hamel's. In Tomas' mind she shone brightly surrounded both by love and admiration, almost like the icon of a saint. I was interested in her despite myself. As I watched him writing, I wondered how to bring up the subject.
Tomas wrote in a fine and aristocratic hand and he wrote in old Aramayan, the language of legal documents.
"You speak Aramayan?" I said surprised and wondered then if I had been tactful.
He smiled at me.
"No. I only know some phrases. Like those suitable for travel documents which is what I'm copying out now. Nice handwriting isn't it?"
"Aye indeed it is."
"It's