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  'Very well, then.' Tamlin gestured with a shimmering jingle of bells. 'You have earned the chance to train.' He paused, and a gleam of admonition lit his eyes. 'But remember, self-defence will not avail if on the day of trial no weapon is ready to your hand.'

  Tamlin winked and promptly vanished. Left alone in the glade, Jaric barely grasped that he had gained the chance to attempt a sorcerer's mastery. Instead, chagrined, he wondered how Tamlin had learned of the sword he inevitably forgot to carry, to the repeated dismay of his instructors.

  * * *

  Lights flickered, patternless as stars across the consoles, as the Vaere sorted the data acquired during Jaric's first trial of will. If the early figures showed promise, they also outlined need for major work to come. To survive the Cycle of Fire, Jaric must bring his present-day resilience to bear upon the inadequacies of his childhood. Motivated, not by hope, but by the relentless reality of numbers, the Vaere sorted options and prepared for the future.

  Mechanical extensions trapped the small, squirming bodies of two earth-diggers from the soil beneath the forest floor. Barely a handspan across, the creatures lacked both eyesight and measurable intelligence; yet within their living bodies Set-Nav would create the seeds of a sorcerer's command of elements. Machinery hummed, and gears spun in frictionless silence. The earth-diggers squeaked protest as needles pierced their hides, inoculating each of them with a separate solution of Sathid matrix. Set-Nav placed the squalling animals in cages. The first would host its crystal until its flesh transformed to seed-matrix at the completion of the Sathid's cycle; when it was secondarily bonded to a human subject, memories stored from the matrix's previous existence would expand. From them Jaric must shape his Earthmaster's powers. If he succeeded, the remaining digger would be set aflame. Sathid matrix recovered from its ashes would initiate Jaric to the Cycle of Fire, if his courage did not fail him. For by the most conservative estimate, Set-Nav determined that Keithland had less than a year to offset the threat of Maelgrim. All too soon the dark dreams of demons would influence humanity toward destruction.

  * * *

  In Keithland the days shortened. Crops ripened to harvest, gathered in before the frosts that withered the stubble in the fields. Leaves cloaked the hillsides in colours until winter winds ripped them away; but while snowfall might silt the thickets elsewhere with drifts, time and season remained constant on the Isle of the Vaere. Grasses flowered soft as spring above the installation that housed Set-Nav. Securely dreaming inside his silver capsule, the boy who aspired to a firelord's mastery slowly completed his training. Through months of careful schooling, Tamlin taught him to reshape the nightmares of his childhood. The insecurities Jaric had known as an apprentice scribe were painstakingly unravelled, early uncertainty excised by the confidence of later achievements until recognition of his own self-worth underlay the boy's being like bedrock. For the first time in his life, Jaric could explore his past without feeling haunted by inadequacy.

  Yet the freedom inspired by his accomplishment was not to last. The moment the odds of probability favoured success, Set-Nav recovered the seed Sathid that had survived the first earth-digger's death and dissolved it in saline solution. Jaric felt no pain as the needle pierced his unconscious flesh. Even as an alien entity entered a vein in his wrist, he dreamed of a twilit grove; there a tiny man dressed in leather and bells delivered final instructions.

  'Remember, your danger lies in the weakness within yourself.' Bells tinkled as the Vaere wagged his finger at the young man who sat before him on the grass. He had been born slight, this son of Ivain; blighted early by rejection and misunderstanding, still he had grown to manhood. Now the hope of Keithland's survival rested upon his shoulders. Forcefully, Tamlin resumed.

  'Fear must be controlled at all times, or you will be lost, forever subservient to the will of the Sathid. If you block the matrix's first attempt at dominance, it will revert and turn its previous memories of the soil against you. You are near then to victory, but do not be careless. At that moment, you must seize control and unriddle the mysteries of the earth. If you misstep then, you shall perish.'

  Kneeling, Jaric fingered the petals of a flower that rested against his knee. The softness of the bloom reminded him of Taen's skin; thought of her woke a tremble deep in his gut. He forced the memory away, only to recall the face of Mathieson Keldric, the elderly fisherman whose boat had borne him safely through seas and storms. Before Keldric and Callinde there had been the forester who had taught him independence, a master scribe who had given him literacy, and later, thirty-nine clansfolk who had lost their lives to secure his safety. Jaric reviewed the sacrifices made by the Kielmark, Brith, and sharp-tongued Corley; and lastly, he considered the Stormwarden, locked living in his tomb of ice. Except for his geas of summoning, Anskiere had forced no man's will, though his rescue depended upon sacrifice of another.

  'Boy,' said Tamlin softly.

  Jaric flinched, and the flower stem snapped between his fingers. He glanced up, bleak with the realization that if he failed his father's inheritance, he would be more fortunate than his friends and fellows. Dead, he would not have to suffer through the demise of Keithland.

  Tamlin folded his arms, his hair and beard shining silver in the gloom of the grove. 'Boy, whatever your father's reputation, remember this: Ivain gave himself for the greater good. He preserved far more than he destroyed in the time he served Keithland as Firelord.'

  But where Ivain had begun his trial of Earthmastery with a shrug and a whistle on his lips, Jaric knelt in silence. He did not look as Tamlin's form faded away into air. Left vulnerable and alone, the boy felt a presence that was no part of himself stir within his mind; already the Sathid germinated inside his body. Since the matrix had previously mastered the flesh of the earth-digger, it did not grope, but quickly established contact with its new partner. Though every instinct rebelled, Jaric forced himself to remain passive, even as his awareness of the clearing slipped away, replaced by scenes from early childhood.

  The memories unreeled more vividly than any dream; then became now, and Jaric regressed to the time he was a babe cradled in his mother's lap. Under the expanded awareness of the Sathid-link, he experienced his surroundings with a clarity no infant could have achieved. His mother's heart beat rapidly beneath his ear; she had carried him in haste to a woodland dell, a place of frost-killed leaves and tangled vines beyond view of any dwelling. The hand poised against her breast gripped the haft of a sharpened knife.

  Jaric watched, fascinated by the gleam of the steel. Too young to understand peril, he saw his mother's knuckles whiten. She murmured an appeal for forgiveness, and a curse against Ivain Firelord; then she raised the dagger and angled the point to murder the son on her knee.

  A frantic shout cut the stillness. 'No!'

  Leaves crunched under a man's running feet. Jaric felt his mother jerk as if slapped. She struck with desperate strength, caught short as the grip of Smithson Kerain imprisoned her fine-boned wrist. Jostled and pinched against the man's leather breeches, her child wailed in fear.

  But the man's voice cut through his cries. 'Kor's mercy! Woman, are you mad? That's our son. Why should you kill him? Your father agreed we could marry!'

  The woman gasped with exertion as she tried and failed to free her arm. 'This brat's none of yours, Kerain. Fires, why did you come here? Nothing I say will make you understand.'

  With a lunge that bumped Jaric on to his stomach, his mother snatched up the knife left-handed. She stabbed at the child a second time, single-mindedly determined.

  Caught off guard as the steel arced down, Kerain shouted and snatched at Jaric's garments. He yanked the howling infant out of death's reach, while the woman cursed with astonishing viciousness.

  Hard fingers bit into Jaric's ribs, jerking him upright. He continued to wail while the smith shouted angrily. 'My love, are you sick? What could you expect? Should I turn my back while you murder our child?'

  But the woman seemed not to hear.
She doubled over, gasping. Blood ran between her fingers. Only at that instant did Kerain discover that his betrothed had continued her stroke and plunged the knife into her own heart. He screamed himself then, his grief blending with the shrill cries of the child. Crushed against the man's shirt of sweaty linen, Jaric knew terror and the mingled smell of blood and damp earth. Not until many years later did he understand that the woman had taken her life with her own hand.

  Established now within the framework of Jaric's mind, the Sathid deepened its hold. Voracious, insistent, it assimilated more memories, passing through the time of upheaval while Kerain stood trial for the murder of his betrothed. Jaric lived in the care of a crabbed old midwife, guarded always by the Earl of Morbrith's men at arms. The woman was deaf. She did not always notice the baby when he cried; and the guards filled long days and nights with endless games of dice.

  Kerain was convicted and hanged. Fed a potion by the midwife, Jaric slept through the execution. He was too small to understand the condemned man's final bequest, that the orphan be named his own get and raised as ward of the Smith's Guild. For Jaric the result was a loveless succession of foster homes, then a bed in the chilly garret over the forge. Driven by the influence of the Sathid, he relived the slights of his peers, the fights, the humiliation, and the lonely nights spent with his face muffled in bedclothes lest the other boys rouse when he woke crying out from his nightmares. Again he endured the degrading moment when, at ten years of age, he still lacked the strength to heft ingots of unwrought iron from the traders' wagons to the forge. In disgust, the smiths sent him back to work the bellows. But the fumes of the coal fire made him cough; work that other youngsters managed easily taxed Jaric's health. Age brought no improvement. As a slight, pale twelve-year-old, he proved too timid to restrain the mares brought in from pasture to be shod.

  'Fires above, but you're useless!' shouted the master smith. Exasperated, he threw his hammer down with a clang and glared at the lad who shrank in the dimmest corner of the forge. 'What can I do but apply to the High Earl for compensation? The guild can't waste silver to feed a ninny. Kor, we've got all the wives and daughters we need to cook and sew shirts!'

  All the next day, Jaric huddled on his cot; the Sathid analysed his misery like a starved predator while, in the yard beneath the dormer, loud-voiced men appointed a delegation to appeal to the Earl. They called Jaric from the loft with impatience, and joked over his girlish ways as they hurried him through the town to the council hall. In a solemn room filled with hard chairs and officials, Jaric listened while the smiths presented their case. The phrases 'cursed since birth' and 'not Kerain's get' occurred frequently. The boy they referred to twisted slender fingers in his lap. He tried desperately not to weep, while the Earl listened, frowning, his wrists and collar resplendent with emerald clasps.

  The Sathid savoured Jaric's discomfort as the petition grew heated. But before the Earl made judgement, the stooped old scribe who kept records interceded in the boy's behalf.

  Master Iveg had a quiet voice. A moment passed before anyone noticed his offer. Then clamour abruptly stilled, and the elderly scholar's words echoed through the tapestried chamber. 'If Jaric is a burden to the smiths, let him apprentice as a copyist. I need help with the archives anyway. If the boy applies himself, his earnings can pay for his upkeep at the forge.'

  'Done,' snapped the Earl, impatient to be away to his hawks.

  His decree changed the life of Kerainson Jaric. By day, the boy studied letters and books. The silence of the library became his haven; each night he dreaded his return to the loft, and the gibes of the smiths' apprentices. With years his roommates grew brown and boisterous and burly, while he stayed slight and pale. At fifteen, the older boys' boasts rang through the alehouse. They arm-wrestled for the chance to kiss the barmaid; and the wench, who was buxom and shameless, turned from them to chaff Jaric for his slenderness. She coddled him, bringing bowls of hot milk for his coughs. Once she caught him peeping down the laces of her blouse. She pinched his cheek like a child's; but the box on the ears he deserved would have hurt less.

  Two years later, Jaric's delicate stature had not changed, except that he learned to excel at his scholarly trade. Then, without warning, Anskiere's geas sundered the life he knew at Morbrith. The Sathid was taken aback. It saw its subject outgrow the debilitating insecurities of childhood. Jaric acquired self-reliance under the guidance of the forester, Telemark, and strength through restoring the timbers of Callinde's neglected hull. Through the experiences and the year that followed, the matrix realized with growing frustration that Jaric had faced and overcome every trace of his former softness. Only one chink remained in the boy's integrity when Tamlin's training was complete: Jaric still feared his father's madness, and the awesome potential for destruction inherent in a sorcerer's powers. This a Sathid parasite might exploit to secure its goal of permanent self-awareness. Accustomed to dominance from its interval with the earth-digger, it shaped its snare cunningly and well.

  The bond between crystal and human consciousness evolved toward completion. Like a sleeper wakened from drugged rest, Jaric stirred within the stillness of the grove. At once he experienced the vastly expanded awareness that accompanied the Sathid-link. His thoughts rang strange and resonant with energy; intuitive perception and latent talent had now transformed to tangible force. Jaric experimented and discovered he could channel this power at whim. The crystalline entity encouraged curiosity, urging the fledgling mage to explore his newfound abilities.

  Jaric stood, struck motionless by wonder. Preternaturally aware of the grass and soil under his feet, he blinked and realized he viewed the trees through altered vision. His eyes perceived the life force in the lofty grey trunks; each leaf was limned by a faint halo of light. If he listened, the boy could hear the plants around him, their growth and flowering a deep, subliminal buzz. The novelty overwhelmed him. At first he failed to realize that the living essence of the grove was also answerable to his will.

  A moment later, a tree leaned to one side simply because he wished to see beyond it. Revelation struck with a rush that turned him dizzy. Stunned to find he could command the living forest, Jaric sat abruptly. How could he marshal such power? Touched by self-doubt, his imagination supplied visions of withered branches and trunks drained to sapless husks. The boy chafed his hands on his forearms in distress, until a presence within his mind jostled recognition that he could preserve with equal facility. Wards could reverse the effects of age and storm, even avert the depredations of the axe.

  Soothed, Jaric failed to distinguish that the reassurance arose from an entity not part of himself. Unaware that the Sathid manipulated him, he found himself imagining ways to curb fate, perhaps defend the Dreamweaver he loved from the brother who threatened her life. Yet even as he planned, his fears betrayed him. Jaric recalled the ruins of Tierl Enneth with vivid and appalling clarity. Hemmed in by walls of crumbled stone, he stood exposed while unburied skulls accused him with empty, beseeching eye sockets. Fleshless mouths seemed to wail in anguish, reminding that Anskiere of Elrinfaer had taken oath to protect, then unleashed destruction when a witch enslaved by demons usurped his powers.

  Jaric bowed his head. His hands whitened in his lap as he tried to shut the image out. But the Sathid tightened its net of terror over his mind. Every sorcerer trained by the Vaere represented a threat, a magnet for disaster and a target for demon conquest. The Sathid supplied grisly detail; Jaric saw his gifts raised against the sanctuaries at Landfast, his own hands drenched with the blood of the innocent slain. He cried out in purest despair, unaware of the enemy that sapped his defences.

  The Sathid felt him weaken; in a bid for swift and final victory, it seized the one thing Jaric prized above all else, and set that in jeopardy. Helplessly the boy watched as the wards he had raised to safeguard Taen twisted out of control. Power exploded with the fury of a cyclone and bashed her bones through rags of torn flesh.

  'No!' Jaric clenched his fingers into fist
s. His mind seductively insisted that he could avoid such ruin if he chose to relinquish control; Taen could be kept safe if he yielded his mastery to wisdom. But the plurality of the concept rang false. Warned alert, Jaric corrected the Sathid's misapprehension. He realigned reason with a human fact he had nearly been lulled into forgetting: no power on Keithland or beyond could induce him to betray the Dreamweaver of Imrill Kand, for he loved Taen beyond life.

  The Sathid drew back, uncertain; it knew little of love. Few clues existed to inform it of the nature of its error, for Jaric's past had been cruelly solitary. For a fractional instant, the matrix hesitated in its attack.

  The reprieve gave the boy space to realize that the images of torment were none of his own. Now aware that the matrix challenged him for dominance, Jaric responded with anger.

  The crystal counterattacked, cut him with reminders that Ivain's fine intentions had soured into unbridled wickedness. Like his father before him, so might the son ravage and betray. Jaric choked on denial. Driven to his knees by visions of Elrinfaer, of people and lands blasted by the depredations of the Mharg, he strove to hold firm. But the Sathid sensed uncertainty; it pressured him ever closer to despair. Battered into retreat, the boy backed his resistance with advice Telemark the forester had offered when he had confronted a seemingly impossible problem in the depths of a winter storm.

  'Remember that no man can handle more than one step at a time. The most troublesome difficulty must be broken down into small tasks, each one easily mastered.' On the night those words were spoken, Jaric had surpassed his former limits. He had saved the life of his friend. Later, perhaps, he might not manage power with total infallibility; but to the end of conscious will he could ensure he never harmed his own, even if his only means of defence was to yield up his life as prevention.